New leaf
The
Politics of Fear: Lighting the Wik
Written by Peter Gale; published by Pearson Education Australia; ISBN 0 7339 7024 9; 188 pages; $28; available at Imprints booksellers
The beginning of the 21st century has been marked by fear and conflict, from the September 11 attacks in the US, to the Bali bombings and wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.
It is against this background that The Politics of Fear: Lighting the Wik explores how perceptions of fear have become central in contemporary politics, with a particular emphasis on the Howard government in Australia.
From race and the media, to native title, reconciliation and the stolen generation, multiculturalism, Hansonism, immigration, and Australia's place in Asia, this book brings together a range of disparate policy areas in an analysis of racism and fear in Australia.
It was written by Dr Peter Gale, a senior lecturer at UniSA's Uniapon School who teaches a range of courses in Australian history and politics and has published and presented papers both nationally and internationally based on his research on racism, politics and the media.
Urban
Regeneration, Community Power and the (In)Significance of 'Race'
Written by Dr Paul J Maginn; published by Ashgate; ISBN 0 7546 4166 X; 216 pages; £50; order via www.ashgate.com
Written by Dr Paul J Maginn, a lecturer at UniSA's School of Natural and Built Environments, this book focuses on the nature of 'community power' within regeneration partnerships.
Adopting an ethnographic approach in the study of community participation and power and the significance of race in three ethnically diverse neighbourhoods in London, Urban Regeneration, Community Power and the (In)Significance of 'Race' highlights that there has been a pluralistic turn in British urban regeneration policy.
Local communities, often portrayed as the least powerful partner within partnerships, are shown to use various strategies to influence decision-making, thus giving rise to a new typology of pluralism - 'pragmatic'; 'hyper-' and 'paternalistic'.
The book challenges the significance of 'race' (and racism) within community forums and regeneration partnerships, the playful use of the term (In)Significance in the title linked to the argument that, although racism exists, 'race' does not always matter.
Water
Sensitive Urban Design: basic procedures for 'source control' of storm water
Edited by John R Argue; published by AWA; ISBN 1 920927 18 2; 246 pages; $167; order via bookshop@awa.org.au
Aimed primarily at practitioners involved in designing, building and managing urban Australia, this handbook is a 'how to' guide to solve everyday problems of stormwater management.
Edited by Professor John Argue from UniSA's Urban Water Resources Centre, the handbook looks at flood control, pollution control and stormwater harvesting, bringing together lessons learned from more than 20 case studies.
The material in the handbook is robust, having been trialled over the past six years in undergraduate and postgraduate classes at UniSA, and modified to incorporate student review and comments.
As Argue writes in the preface, water sensitive urban design "provides an urgent call to our post-industrial urban society to reclaim the seasons, to celebrate the presence of rainfall and sensitively managed runoff in the built environment and, by so doing, to protect the community and, at the same time, promote amenity and restore treasured waterways and their biotic communities."
"The indigenous peoples who inhabited our great continent for tens of thousands of years before European settlement … showed profound reverence for the land, the water and it fauna and flora. The cultural and technological differences brought by the 'newcomers' have resulted in a wide range of environmental problems for our nation non-indigenous Australian, in particular, are being called upon to solve as a matter of urgency.
"WSUD has, unquestioningly, a significant role to play in this process: its end result could well be a new appreciation for community values within our urban concentrations, hand-in-hand with a reverence for the land and water and for our native fauna and flora."