Troubled Waters: Borders, Boundaries and Possession in the Timor Sea
Ruth Balint. Allen & Unwin, 2005. isbn 1 741 14361 6, rrp $24.95
Ruth Balint’s Troubled Waters demonstrates the power of well-written history. Her exploration of the impact that Australia’s zealous safeguarding of its Timor Sea borders has had on traditional Indonesian fishermen is absorbing reading.
As the first non-fiction recipient of The Australian/Vogel Literary award, Balint proves history can be as engaging as fiction. For me, a history student battling to produce my own thesis, Balint’s crafting of history is inspiring. She masterfully captures the anguish and tragedy of the Indonesian fishermen as they struggle to maintain a traditional livelihood in conflict with an unsympathetic modern world of unseen borders and inflexible bureaucracy.
Combining this emotional aspect with lucid and logical argument, Balint shows the inability of ‘progress’ to accommodate those who struggle to adapt. She is perhaps unfair, however, in her portrayal of Australian border-patrol personnel. The important service they provide is downplayed and they are often treated as policy creators, not just enforcers. Like the fishermen, they too are just trying to make a livelihood.
Balint also spends a disproportionate time rebuking Australian insensitivity to the Indonesian fishermen but neglects examining the role of wealthy Indonesians exploiting their own countrymen’s tragic situation. Nevertheless, Troubled Waters’s eloquent exploration of an often-ignored issue is outstanding. It is interesting, informative and passionate. This is how history should be written.
John James
Blush: Faces of Shame
Elspeth Probyn. University of New South Wales, 2005. isbn 0 868 40896 4, rrp $32.95
In Blush, academic Elspeth Probyn explores the essence of shame in human life—for individuals, societies and countries. Probyn looks beyond blushing, the undeniable physical evidence of shame (caused by embarrassment, shyness or humiliation) to reflect on being shamed, being a shamer, doing shame, writing shame and ancestral shame.
It is essential not to skip Probyn’s introduction, in which she acknowledges, ‘I want you to see shame from different perspectives.’ That was reassuring, as I found my simple understanding of shame (as feeling guilt or remorse for doing something wrong) challenged. Probyn shows that shame is much more than that. Emotionally, she explains, shame is a sensitive, intimate exposure of oneself in society; socially, it enables us to consider how others perceive us and how we perceive ourselves; culturally, our ignorance of others’ history and ways of life can make us feel out of place; physically,