A man-made environment? A century of health in tropical Australia. Historical perspectives as frameworks for future strategies

This paper has emerged from the intersection of a number of disparate research interests. First, from my involvement in the broad sociological project focusing on the Australian sugar industry as one component of research and development being undertaken by the Co-operative Research Centre for Sustainable Sugar Production (CRC Sugar)2. Second, my feminist perspective in the social sciences — that is, that my frameworks for understanding social issues foreground difference from within a broader project of what could be understood as Foucault’s “history of the present”3 (see Baert 1998). Finally, from recent readings and attendance at national health conferences — such as this one — where debates about public health are largely presented epidemiologically or sociologically, but rarely historically. All too often such “history” tends to be a concentration of so-called “truths” of a powerful progressive future, where oppressed and dispossessed voices are rarely heard. One exciting exception to this was a paper given at a recent national conference4, which developed an historical perspective on the social determinants of health, and which started me reflecting about my own research intersections5. This paper begins with a brief outline of the Australian sugar industry and its place in tropical Australia today from a health perspective. Taking up the idea developed by Michel Foucault of a “history of the present”, the paper then develops the framework by which an exploration of health issues in the sugar industry in tropical Australia in the 1920s can assist in developing a more full appreciation of today’s issues. The paper concludes with a summary of these issues and the need for future research into them.