A gendered and racialised electoral franchise was established following Federation, from the passage of the Commonwealth Franchise Act 1902 to the federal elections held on 16 December 1903, the first conducted by an electorate of all white adult male and female voters. The argument traces the social imaginary of disenfranchising the indigenous, enfranchising women while limiting the terms of inclusion, performing participation in the election campaign, and following electors through the experience of the polling station. The social imaginary 'accounts for the orientation of social institutions, for the constitution of motives and needs, for the existence of symbolism, tradition and myth'. The social imaginary of post-Federation nation-building was expressed through visual representations and spatialised ceremonials; the press was a key instrument in constituting the social imaginary of enfranchisement. In the election campaign women's enfranchisement focused the contested terms of gendered post-Federation governance.

Late modern histories of the fin de si & egrave;cle have projected present dilemmas and their premonitions of the future into historicalanalysis. Recent historiographical focus on the global nature of the fin de si & egrave;cle has also reframed interpretations, both complicating and enriching the history of the period and its relationship with present future. This article explores how historians have in recent decades returned to the fin de si & egrave;cle and the aspirations of its actors, grappling with the dilemma of reviving progressive ideals and politics in the early twenty-first century through their analysis of the creative and at times contradictory turbulence at work in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

Late modern histories of the fin de siècle have projected present dilemmas and their premonitions of the future into historical analysis. Recent historiographical focus on the global nature of the fin de siècle has also reframed interpretations, both complicating and enriching the history of the period and its relationship with present future. This article explores how historians have in recent decades returned to the fin de siècle and the aspirations of its actors, grappling with the dilemma of reviving progressive ideals and politics in the early twenty-first century through their analysis of the creative and at times contradictory turbulence at work in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

Labour's social imaginary in the Federation period 1901-02 was constituted by a symbolic order summoned to represent participation and performance under the terms of the liberal state. Labour's social imaginary functioned through structures and forms of display that were inherited from existing patterns and imaginings of governance, and which the movement adapted in its own forms and interests. It was expressed in parades and banquets, in the display of union banners; evident in public meetings and deputations, in the formal domains of conference and congress. Labour's social imaginary was observed in the surveillance of the mainstream daily press and expressed in an increasingly sophisticated labour press. This process was at once an accommodation with the terms of the liberal state and political culture, and a challenge posed to it. The labour movement's participation in liberal governance in the post-Federation period was a complex process of accommodation and assertion.

AbstractEric Hobsbawm's account of the fin de siècle of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, and its post-First World War aftermath, raises the questions of how historians place themselves autobiographically in their histories, and how personal history informs their interpretations. A focus on the fin de siècle reveals Hobsbawm exploring a cultural social democracy as an alternative to the market capitalism that provided the turbulent dynamics tipping towards twentieth-century catastrophe. From the past Hobsbawm offered the people of his present potential alternative models of a more politically harmonious and culturally richer future, a story in which he placed himself. Elements of Hobsbawm's life story emerge in his histories and autobiography, highlighting the personal significance of memory and material objects that Hobsbawm retained – family photos, a school atlas, and his copy of Karl Kraus's Last days of humanity – reflecting an enduring presence of the past that Hobsbawm drew attention to in his work, and helping to shape significant narratives in Hobsbawm's response to the lost realm of fin de siècle Vienna; a ‘twilight zone’, in Hobsbawm's description of that pre-war world, ‘still part of us, but no longer quite within our personal reach’.

Developing an effective theory of periodization requires an engagement with the multilayered figurative constructions of historical time made by historians and historical actors. The fin de siecle c1890-1914, a period variously interpreted as reflecting an historical endpoint or an anxious transition to twentieth century modernity, provides a compelling focus for this engagement. John Zammito has argued that '[Reinhart] Koselleck's formal theory of historical time points ultimately to periodization as the fundamental theoretical domain for historical practice'. Koselleck argued that the condition of modern 'historical time' stimulated the development of 'multiple temporalities', 'different passages of time which reveal different tempos of change'. This complex dynamic was reflected in the cultural manifestations of the fin de siecle, and the interpretations made by both historical actors and historians of its temporal nature. Following Koselleck, I argue that the fin de siecle may be best understood as a 'synchronic unit', a discrete temporal domain within the multiple temporalities of Neuzeit, the new time of modernity.

This book explores the fin de siècle, an era of powerful global movements and turbulent transition, in Australia and beyond through a series of biographical microhistories. From the first wave feminist Rose Summerfield and the working class radical John Dwyer, to the indigenous rights advocate David Unaipon and the poet Christopher Brennan, Hearn traces the transnational identities, philosophies, ideas and cultures that characterised this era.

Across three key texts, the historian Alan Atkinson has projected an unease with twenty-first-century Australia into the past development of the Australian nation. Atkinson traces a 'singularity' from the 'age of Australian Federation & mldr; fixed on the Centre as the pivot of a new national domain'. By the early twenty-first century, for him, the nation had become an all-consuming focus of identity, degraded by globalisation. Atkinson's 'single Australia' is a claim with significant implications for the historiography of the emerging Australian Commonwealth and historicising the nature of late modern Australia. Atkinson's focus on late modernity addresses a theme developed in international scholarship but one largely absent in Australian historiography. Assessing Atkinson's narrative construction of singularity offers insights into the relationship between past and present described in historical narratives.

This Review highlights the stigma associated with irritable bowel syndrome and its impact on patient care and clinical outcomes. Stigma around irritable bowel syndrome is prevalent among the general public, health-care professionals, and co-workers, and is often related to poor understanding of the condition. Furthermore, stigma is associated with unsatisfactory outcomes for people with irritable bowel syndrome, including increased health-care use, psychological distress, and impaired quality of life. Comparative studies suggest that stigma is much higher for irritable bowel syndrome than it is for inflammatory bowel disease, a so-called organic gastrointestinal disorder with overlapping symptomatology. In this Review, we discuss the lack of interest in irritable bowel syndrome among members of the general public and health-care professionals, and the need for it to be better understood. These problems should be addressed by appropriate educational strategies to raise awareness and by relevant interventions.

ABSTRACT From the early 1890s, application of the term fin de siècle functioned as an ambiguous metaphor that could symbolise hope invested in progress and technological innovation, or a fear of national decline. The term was most consistently employed to regulate the behaviour of women, in the reinforcement of prevailing gender roles and in resistance to the emergence of the New Woman, identified as an unwelcome embodiment of the fin de siècle and feared for her potential to destabilise the emerging nation’s future. The press functioned as a key technology for the transmission of this narrative, and its extensive deployment in the public sphere spread as its meaning was embraced and contested, and faded in the early 20th century as its usefulness in making sense of a transition to the challenges and opportunities of a new century seemed spent. As a device for repudiating outmoded or illegitimate values and forms of behaviour, its deployment cleared a path for approved forms of progress. As a metaphor of modernity, the fin de siècle narrative helped Australians break with the past in order to compose the future.

In National Life and Character (1893), Charles Pearson argued that the breakdown in "character" threatening social cohesion in Britain was a phenomenon that was replicated on a global scale in the late nineteenth century. The economic and technological progress that characterised the industrial revolution in Britain had stimulated urbanisation, and unleashed, Pearson claimed, a "bestial element in man", degrading the quality of civic and economic life, and leading to a rising population of "stunted specimens of humanity". Most analyses of National Life and Character focus on its fear of non-white races and influence on policies of racial restriction; we argue that National Life and Character is a more ambitious work of political economy preoccupied, as Pearson observed, with the "self-preservation" of the white European race, grappling with the tension of managing a potentially degraded population as new forms of state intervention, decline of traditional religious faith, and global expansion transformed white society, leaving it declining into a "stationary state" and vulnerable in the face of the rising non-European peoples. These concerns were shared by many of the architects of Australian Federation, influencing the policy initiatives of the post-Federation period.

Prime Minister Alfred Deakin’s 1903 election ‘Ballarat cry’ of ‘fiscal peace and preferential trade for a white Australia’ provided a peroration that he deployed in speeches throughout the campaign to rally popular support for his nation-building programme. A narrative of trade and race was designed to avoid an unstable or hostile future by reconstituting security within the British Empire and white identity, buttressed by immigration restriction and tariff barriers. The narrative sought to satisfy a teleology of progress stimulated by a sense of exceptionalism as a young nation experimented with public policy innovations. Key elements of trade and race in the Deakinite nation-building programme were deeply contested during the election campaign, reflecting unresolved conflicts over these issues at work across the post-Federation period and challenging an ‘Australian Settlement’ assumption of consensus. With its appeal to both innovation and the security of tradition and identity, Deakin’s narrative reflected an attempt to overcome the sense of loss and disconnection with the past, and anxiety over the future that characterised modern experience. The disruptive elements of the campaign reflected the conditions of modernity shaping post-Federation Australia, defining the unsettled policy-making task and the turbulent exercise of democracy.

As it evolved towards the New Protection program from 1906, Deakinite protectionism manifested as a historicised narrative of modernity: an attempt to impose a rationale of nation-building over the heterogeneous and unstable impact of new economic relations and technologies, and the tense dynamics of competition between nations. History was invoked by actors fashioning the nation-building task in post Federation Australia as they claimed to make decisive breaks with past practice, reflected in innovative government strategies and social reforms. The anxieties and opportunities stimulated by global industrial modernity defined New Protection policy, evident in the formation of political narrative and parliamentary legislation, and government intervention in the conduct of business enterprise and industrial relations. The objectives and contradictions of New Protection were clarified in the political narratives and policy interventions constructed to secure the future of the Sunshine Harvester enterprise and its workforce.

Neville Kirk. Transnational Radicalism and the Connected Lives of Tom Mann and Robert Samuel Ross. Studies in Labour History 8. Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2017. Pp. 304. $120 (cloth). - Volume 57 Issue 4

The same sex marriage postal plebiscite will be as intense as most referendum and election campaigns. Indeed, the special characteristics of this subject, advanced by the government as the reason for going beyond parliamentary means to resolve the issue, mean that the campaign may be more intense than most referendums have been.

"Anzac Labour: Workplace Cultures in the Australian Imperial Force during the First World War." Australian Historical Studies, 47(1), pp. 182–183

Historians have focused on anxiety over the rise of Asia and concern over imperial rivalries as motivating factors in stimulating the development of Australian defence policy in the post-Federation period. Yet these factors cannot entirely explain the imperatives that shaped Prime Minister Alfred Deakin’s statement on defence policy in December 1907, and the key proposals Deakin outlined in his speech – to create an Australian naval squadron and the introduction of compulsory military training. Deakin’s defence statement responded to the accelerating global dynamics of fin de siècle industrial modernity, into which tensions of race and imperialism had been swept.This article has been peer reviewed.