'They didn't want work, you see': inequality and blame in the Great Depression

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'They didn't want work, you see': inequality and blame in the Great Depression

Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: http://hdl.handle.net/1959.3/51877

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Title: 'They didn't want work, you see': inequality and blame in the Great Depression
Author(s): Kimber, Julie
Abstract: An unwelcome addition to the suffering that many experienced during the economic depression of the interwar years was the moral strictures imposed on the unemployed and underemployed---particularly, the perception by many Australians that the inability to find or keep work was an indication of indolence and personal failure. Janet McCalman suggests that the Depression dented the collectivism which Australia had generated since Federation and the Great War and that it fostered, instead, 'individualism'. Here Julie Kimber analyses the nature of blame within the Depression years: of the self-blame carried by individuals, and of the scapegoats sought within and by the community.
Publication type: Book chapter
Research centre: Swinburne University of Technology
Source: Making Australian history: perspectives on the past since 1788 / Deborah Gare and David Ritter (eds.), Section 12: the interwar years, pp. 367-374
Publication year: 2008
FOR Code(s): 160601 Australian Government and Politics; 160699 Political Science not elsewhere classified; 2103 Historical Studies; 210303 Australian History (excl. Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander History)
Keyword(s): 20th century history; Australia; Blame; Great Depression; History; Interwar years; Individualism; Labour history; Poverty; Prejudice; Scapegoats; Unemployment
Publisher: Thomson Learning Australia
ISBN: 9780170132107, 0170132102
Publisher URL: http://higher.cengage.com.au/title/0170132102
Peer reviewed