Agnieszka Sobocinska
Biographic Data
| ID | 728902 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Agnieszka Sobocinska |
| GIVEN NAMES | Agnieszka |
| FAMILY NAME | Sobocinska |
| SIGNATURE | SOBOCINSKA A |
| AFFILIATIONS | Monash University |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-0238-3581 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 19 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 20 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 19 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2008 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2024 |
| H-INDEX | 3 |
Orienting Australia: David Walker’s Anxious Nation in the historiographies of Australia and Asia
s 'Anxious Nation' had had its greatest influence on scholars working on Australian encounters with Asia. But the book's most significant achievement was to identify the central importance occupied by Asia -or, more precisely, the spectre of Asia -in Australian history. It diagnosed Australia's desperate search for security, its defensive posturing as a 'White Man's Country', and the longstanding search for 'engagement' as part of the same malady…
Paul Adler. No Globalization Without Representation: U.S. Activists and World Inequality
Journal Article Paul Adler. No Globalization Without Representation: U.S. Activists and World Inequality. Get access Paul Adler. No Globalization Without Representation: U.S. Activists and World Inequality. Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2021. Pp. 344. Cloth $45.00. Agnieszka Sobocinska Agnieszka Sobocinska King's College London, England Email: [email protected] Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Ac…
The Interpersonal and the International: Development, Volunteering and Grassroots Diplomacy in the 1960s
This article examines the vexed nature of grassroots diplomacy by tracing the experiences and management of volunteers working in Asia and Africa with Britain's Voluntary Service Overseas (VSO) and the United States Peace Corps during the 1960s.Development volunteering blurred the divide between individual bodies and the body politic and rendered the interpersonal relationships of otherwise ordinary individuals into a form of diplomatic encounter…
New histories of foreign aid
This article claims a space for cultural approaches to histories of foreign aid in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. It begins by tracing the historiographies of humanitarianism and international development, arguing that historians can best approach the plans and projects of humanitarian NGOs and international development agencies as a shared project of foreign aid. It then outlines various forms of culture that impacted on twentieth-cen…
Australia’s Asian Garrisons: Decolonisation and the Colonial Dynamics of Expatriate Military Communities in Cold War Asia
Focused on Australia’s Royal Australian Air Force and Army garrison communities in Malaysia from the late 1950s, this article probes the creation and management of a complex power dynamic between the hosts in a postcolonial nation and an expatriate community modelled along colonial lines. These overseas military communities comprised Australian service personnel, their family members and schoolteachers. Thousands of locally employed civilians wor…
Popular Causes: The Volunteer Graduate Scheme, the Freedom from Hunger Campaign and Altruistic Internationalism in Australia
This article foregrounds the importance of non-elite actors in international affairs by exploring the rise of altruistic internationalism in Australia from the early 1950s and into the 1960s. From the mid-twentieth century, humanitarianism and international development became popular causes through which Australians engaged with the region and the world. The Volunteer Graduate Scheme (VGS), established in 1951, and the Freedom from Hunger Campaig…
Sophie Loy-Wilson, Australians in Shanghai: Race, Rights and Nation in Treaty Port China
Enduring Connections: Soft Power and Pedagogy in Short-Term Study Tours to Indonesia
Since 2013, the Australian government has funded Australian students to undertake short periods of study abroad with an emphasis on Asia, including Indonesia. Universities, too, have been enhancing their study-abroad options as part of broader internationalization campaigns. In a short time, the number of Australian higher-education students undertaking study abroad as part of their undergraduate degrees has doubled, to one in five students. This…
How to win friends and influence nations: The international history of Development Volunteering
This article traces the personal and institutional networks that facilitated the transnational spread of Development Volunteering in the 1950s and 1960s. Examining Australia’s Volunteer Graduate Scheme, Britain’s Voluntary Service Overseas, and the United States Peace Corps, it destabilizes each nation’s claims to pioneering Development Volunteering, and interrogates the reasons for these claims. Once national frames are removed, broader patterns…
Measuring or Creating Attitudes? Seventy Years of Australian Public Opinion Polling about Indonesia
This article critically evaluates the relationship between public opinion polling and foreign affairs. It plots key trends in public opinion polls of Australian attitudes towards Indonesia from the 1940s to the present day. Despite variations in polling companies and questions, Australian attitudes to Indonesia appear surprisingly stable, especially since the 1970s. Reading across multiple polls over this period reveals that, both as a mass and a…
A New Kind of Mission: The Volunteer Graduate Scheme and the Cultural History of International Development
This article contributes to the cultural history of humanitarianism and international development by tracing the origins of development volunteering programs, which are a key point of public interaction with foreign aid and international development. Australia's Voluntary Graduate Scheme was established in 1951. This article traces the program's first decade, tracing its interactions with postcolonial politics, international development policy, a…
Visiting the Neighbours: Australians in Asia
A million Australians went to Bali last year, following the millions of others who have made their way across Asia over the past century. Many travellers returned thinking they knew Asia and their personal experiences helped shape popular attitudes. This absorbing book unpacks their experiences, showing how their encounters changed the way Australians thought about themselves in the world. Visiting the Neighbours tells the story of Australian rel…
Overturning the Point: Exploring Change in Australian–Asian relations
The historiography of Australian–Asian relations is punctuated with numerous ‘turning points’. This article explores the ramifications of ascribing change in Australian–Asian relations to single events. It suggests that this mode encourages ahistorical and teleological interpretations and has implications for contemporary politics. Instead of looking for ‘turning points’, this article suggests that explaining shifts in Australian relations with A…
"Following the "Hippie Sahibs: Colonial cultures of travel and the Hippie Trail
Imperial attitudes and colonial cultures persisted long beyond the period of formal colonisation. This article investigates how colonial attitudes were translated into the postcolonial context within the "alternative" subculture of travel and tourism in South and Southeast Asia. It argues that colonial-era attitudes were translated into the culture of "alternative" tourism through the dual conduits of the Oxford-Cambridge Far Eastern Expedition a…
Visiting the Neighbours: The Political Meanings of Australian Travel to Cold War Asia
Travel and tourism contributed to shifts in Australian perceptions of Asia during the Cold War period. By facilitating personal contact, travel and tourism allowed individuals to gain firsthand experience with racial and cultural Others across the region. The impressions gained, both personal and as represented in travel writing, led some Australians to reconsider their preconceptions about Asia. This helped destabilise the Orientalist images typ…
Australia's Asia: From yellow peril to Asian century
Australia's Asia provides an account of Australia's multiple responses to Asia over the last 150 years. Asia has long been at or near the centre of Australian thinking. For many, Australia's much-discussed proximity to Asia appeared as a threat. Shadowy Asian figures seemed to lurk around the edge of the continent, biding their time. Yet proximity also offered new opportunities for trade, travel and cultural exchange. A great number of Australian…
Innocence lost and paradise regained Tourism to Bali and Australian perceptions of Asia
Bali has long held a special place in the Australian imagination. Since the 1970s, it has been a favourite holiday destination. More recently, it has taken on darker associations, as the bombings of 2002 and 2005 precipitated a widespread reassessment of Australia’s place in the region and the world. This article traces the ways in which Australians have imagined, experienced and represented Bali from the 1970s to the present-day. It finds that t…
The Language of Scars’ Australian Prisoners of War and the Colonial Order
Before the Pacific War, many Australians conceived of colonialism in Southeast Asia as a natural phenomenon, based on a widespread belief that the European race was superior to the Asian. This sense of a ‘colonial order of things’ was challenged by the Japanese advance across Southeast Asia. This article isolates the captivity and physical mistreatment of those Australian soldiers who were held as prisoners of war (POWs) in Southeast Asia as a sy…
Australian fellow-travellers to China: Devotion and deceit in the People's Republic
Surmounting the Manichean logic of the cold war, hundreds of Australians travelled to China during the 1950s, 60s and 70s, to act as eyewitnesses to the progresses made by its Communist regime. Although this phenomenon was the Australian counterpart to the broader Western trend of ‘fellow-travelling,’ these travellers were not simply intellectuals alienated from their societies. Instead, Australian travellers to China came from all walks of life.…
How to win friends and influence nations: The international history of Development Volunteering
This article traces the personal and institutional networks that facilitated the transnational spread of Development Volunteering in the 1950s and 1960s. Examining Australia’s Volunteer Graduate Scheme, Britain’s Voluntary Service Overseas, and the United States Peace Corps, it destabilizes each nation’s claims to pioneering Development Volunteering, and interrogates the reasons for these claims. Once national frames are removed, broader patterns…
Innocence lost and paradise regained Tourism to Bali and Australian perceptions of Asia
Bali has long held a special place in the Australian imagination. Since the 1970s, it has been a favourite holiday destination. More recently, it has taken on darker associations, as the bombings of 2002 and 2005 precipitated a widespread reassessment of Australia’s place in the region and the world. This article traces the ways in which Australians have imagined, experienced and represented Bali from the 1970s to the present-day. It finds that t…
Popular Causes: The Volunteer Graduate Scheme, the Freedom from Hunger Campaign and Altruistic Internationalism in Australia
This article foregrounds the importance of non-elite actors in international affairs by exploring the rise of altruistic internationalism in Australia from the early 1950s and into the 1960s. From the mid-twentieth century, humanitarianism and international development became popular causes through which Australians engaged with the region and the world. The Volunteer Graduate Scheme (VGS), established in 1951, and the Freedom from Hunger Campaig…
The Language of Scars’ Australian Prisoners of War and the Colonial Order
Before the Pacific War, many Australians conceived of colonialism in Southeast Asia as a natural phenomenon, based on a widespread belief that the European race was superior to the Asian. This sense of a ‘colonial order of things’ was challenged by the Japanese advance across Southeast Asia. This article isolates the captivity and physical mistreatment of those Australian soldiers who were held as prisoners of war (POWs) in Southeast Asia as a sy…
Visiting the Neighbours: The Political Meanings of Australian Travel to Cold War Asia
Travel and tourism contributed to shifts in Australian perceptions of Asia during the Cold War period. By facilitating personal contact, travel and tourism allowed individuals to gain firsthand experience with racial and cultural Others across the region. The impressions gained, both personal and as represented in travel writing, led some Australians to reconsider their preconceptions about Asia. This helped destabilise the Orientalist images typ…
Australian fellow-travellers to China: Devotion and deceit in the People's Republic
Surmounting the Manichean logic of the cold war, hundreds of Australians travelled to China during the 1950s, 60s and 70s, to act as eyewitnesses to the progresses made by its Communist regime. Although this phenomenon was the Australian counterpart to the broader Western trend of ‘fellow-travelling,’ these travellers were not simply intellectuals alienated from their societies. Instead, Australian travellers to China came from all walks of life.…
Australia’s Asian Garrisons: Decolonisation and the Colonial Dynamics of Expatriate Military Communities in Cold War Asia
Focused on Australia’s Royal Australian Air Force and Army garrison communities in Malaysia from the late 1950s, this article probes the creation and management of a complex power dynamic between the hosts in a postcolonial nation and an expatriate community modelled along colonial lines. These overseas military communities comprised Australian service personnel, their family members and schoolteachers. Thousands of locally employed civilians wor…
Australian fellow-travellers to China: Devotion and deceit in the People's Republic
Surmounting the Manichean logic of the cold war, hundreds of Australians travelled to China during the 1950s, 60s and 70s, to act as eyewitnesses to the progresses made by its Communist regime. Although this phenomenon was the Australian counterpart to the broader Western trend of ‘fellow-travelling,’ these travellers were not simply intellectuals alienated from their societies. Instead, Australian travellers to China came from all walks of life.…
The Language of Scars’ Australian Prisoners of War and the Colonial Order
Before the Pacific War, many Australians conceived of colonialism in Southeast Asia as a natural phenomenon, based on a widespread belief that the European race was superior to the Asian. This sense of a ‘colonial order of things’ was challenged by the Japanese advance across Southeast Asia. This article isolates the captivity and physical mistreatment of those Australian soldiers who were held as prisoners of war (POWs) in Southeast Asia as a sy…
Innocence lost and paradise regained Tourism to Bali and Australian perceptions of Asia
Bali has long held a special place in the Australian imagination. Since the 1970s, it has been a favourite holiday destination. More recently, it has taken on darker associations, as the bombings of 2002 and 2005 precipitated a widespread reassessment of Australia’s place in the region and the world. This article traces the ways in which Australians have imagined, experienced and represented Bali from the 1970s to the present-day. It finds that t…
Australia's Asia: From yellow peril to Asian century
Australia's Asia provides an account of Australia's multiple responses to Asia over the last 150 years. Asia has long been at or near the centre of Australian thinking. For many, Australia's much-discussed proximity to Asia appeared as a threat. Shadowy Asian figures seemed to lurk around the edge of the continent, biding their time. Yet proximity also offered new opportunities for trade, travel and cultural exchange. A great number of Australian…
Visiting the Neighbours: The Political Meanings of Australian Travel to Cold War Asia
Travel and tourism contributed to shifts in Australian perceptions of Asia during the Cold War period. By facilitating personal contact, travel and tourism allowed individuals to gain firsthand experience with racial and cultural Others across the region. The impressions gained, both personal and as represented in travel writing, led some Australians to reconsider their preconceptions about Asia. This helped destabilise the Orientalist images typ…
Visiting the Neighbours: Australians in Asia
A million Australians went to Bali last year, following the millions of others who have made their way across Asia over the past century. Many travellers returned thinking they knew Asia and their personal experiences helped shape popular attitudes. This absorbing book unpacks their experiences, showing how their encounters changed the way Australians thought about themselves in the world. Visiting the Neighbours tells the story of Australian rel…
Overturning the Point: Exploring Change in Australian–Asian relations
The historiography of Australian–Asian relations is punctuated with numerous ‘turning points’. This article explores the ramifications of ascribing change in Australian–Asian relations to single events. It suggests that this mode encourages ahistorical and teleological interpretations and has implications for contemporary politics. Instead of looking for ‘turning points’, this article suggests that explaining shifts in Australian relations with A…
"Following the "Hippie Sahibs: Colonial cultures of travel and the Hippie Trail
Imperial attitudes and colonial cultures persisted long beyond the period of formal colonisation. This article investigates how colonial attitudes were translated into the postcolonial context within the "alternative" subculture of travel and tourism in South and Southeast Asia. It argues that colonial-era attitudes were translated into the culture of "alternative" tourism through the dual conduits of the Oxford-Cambridge Far Eastern Expedition a…
A New Kind of Mission: The Volunteer Graduate Scheme and the Cultural History of International Development
This article contributes to the cultural history of humanitarianism and international development by tracing the origins of development volunteering programs, which are a key point of public interaction with foreign aid and international development. Australia's Voluntary Graduate Scheme was established in 1951. This article traces the program's first decade, tracing its interactions with postcolonial politics, international development policy, a…
How to win friends and influence nations: The international history of Development Volunteering
This article traces the personal and institutional networks that facilitated the transnational spread of Development Volunteering in the 1950s and 1960s. Examining Australia’s Volunteer Graduate Scheme, Britain’s Voluntary Service Overseas, and the United States Peace Corps, it destabilizes each nation’s claims to pioneering Development Volunteering, and interrogates the reasons for these claims. Once national frames are removed, broader patterns…
Measuring or Creating Attitudes? Seventy Years of Australian Public Opinion Polling about Indonesia
This article critically evaluates the relationship between public opinion polling and foreign affairs. It plots key trends in public opinion polls of Australian attitudes towards Indonesia from the 1940s to the present day. Despite variations in polling companies and questions, Australian attitudes to Indonesia appear surprisingly stable, especially since the 1970s. Reading across multiple polls over this period reveals that, both as a mass and a…
Popular Causes: The Volunteer Graduate Scheme, the Freedom from Hunger Campaign and Altruistic Internationalism in Australia
This article foregrounds the importance of non-elite actors in international affairs by exploring the rise of altruistic internationalism in Australia from the early 1950s and into the 1960s. From the mid-twentieth century, humanitarianism and international development became popular causes through which Australians engaged with the region and the world. The Volunteer Graduate Scheme (VGS), established in 1951, and the Freedom from Hunger Campaig…
Sophie Loy-Wilson, Australians in Shanghai: Race, Rights and Nation in Treaty Port China
Enduring Connections: Soft Power and Pedagogy in Short-Term Study Tours to Indonesia
Since 2013, the Australian government has funded Australian students to undertake short periods of study abroad with an emphasis on Asia, including Indonesia. Universities, too, have been enhancing their study-abroad options as part of broader internationalization campaigns. In a short time, the number of Australian higher-education students undertaking study abroad as part of their undergraduate degrees has doubled, to one in five students. This…
New histories of foreign aid
This article claims a space for cultural approaches to histories of foreign aid in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. It begins by tracing the historiographies of humanitarianism and international development, arguing that historians can best approach the plans and projects of humanitarian NGOs and international development agencies as a shared project of foreign aid. It then outlines various forms of culture that impacted on twentieth-cen…
Australia’s Asian Garrisons: Decolonisation and the Colonial Dynamics of Expatriate Military Communities in Cold War Asia
Focused on Australia’s Royal Australian Air Force and Army garrison communities in Malaysia from the late 1950s, this article probes the creation and management of a complex power dynamic between the hosts in a postcolonial nation and an expatriate community modelled along colonial lines. These overseas military communities comprised Australian service personnel, their family members and schoolteachers. Thousands of locally employed civilians wor…
The Interpersonal and the International: Development, Volunteering and Grassroots Diplomacy in the 1960s
This article examines the vexed nature of grassroots diplomacy by tracing the experiences and management of volunteers working in Asia and Africa with Britain's Voluntary Service Overseas (VSO) and the United States Peace Corps during the 1960s.Development volunteering blurred the divide between individual bodies and the body politic and rendered the interpersonal relationships of otherwise ordinary individuals into a form of diplomatic encounter…
Orienting Australia: David Walker’s Anxious Nation in the historiographies of Australia and Asia
s 'Anxious Nation' had had its greatest influence on scholars working on Australian encounters with Asia. But the book's most significant achievement was to identify the central importance occupied by Asia -or, more precisely, the spectre of Asia -in Australian history. It diagnosed Australia's desperate search for security, its defensive posturing as a 'White Man's Country', and the longstanding search for 'engagement' as part of the same malady…
Paul Adler. No Globalization Without Representation: U.S. Activists and World Inequality
Journal Article Paul Adler. No Globalization Without Representation: U.S. Activists and World Inequality. Get access Paul Adler. No Globalization Without Representation: U.S. Activists and World Inequality. Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2021. Pp. 344. Cloth $45.00. Agnieszka Sobocinska Agnieszka Sobocinska King's College London, England Email: [email protected] Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Ac…
Sociology (16 works) · Political science (15 works) · Law (14 works) · Law (11 works) · Politics (11 works) · Australian History and Society (10 works) · History (10 works) · Gender Studies (7 works) · History (7 works) · Media studies (7 works)