'From our first experiences to our last, institutions structure our world – through education and medicine to politics, justice, civics and religion. But in recent years even the most entrenched of institutions are seemingly on the edge of implosion. Either through deliberate political attacks or as an effect of wider disruption, new social forces have issued a comprehensive challenge to the established order.
'Does this new uncertainty mark a profound loss of trust in how our society is organised and how it operates? Might this be an opportunity for thoroughgoing reform to regain lost legitimacy, or does it mark an end-point for a social structure that is no longer tenable in the twenty-first century? Can institutions adapt? Can trust be rebuilt? Or will new forms of social organisation eventuate from this gathering sense of crisis?' (Editorial)
Only literary material within AustLit's scope individually indexed. Other material in this issue includes:
Active Citizens, Constructive Answers : Taking Control of the Processes of Democracy by Anne Tiernan
Weaponising Privilege : Winning the War on the War on Drugs by Cameron Muir
Remembering Who You Report To : Pathways to Good Policy Outcomes by Ken Smith
Let the River Flow : Building a New Politics for the Murray-Darling by David Ritter
Towards a Reconception of Power : Modernising our Magical Thinking by Chi Luu
Order, Not Chaos : The Politics of Change by Siobhan Harvey
Less Than 20/20 Vision : The Impossibility of Predicting Complexity by Glyn Davis
Ministry of Truth a graphic narrative by Alex Mankiewicz
Negotiating the Grey Zone : Special Interests, Money and the Democratic Deficit by Kate Griffith and Danielle Wood
Co-Operation, Mutualisation, Innovation by Lochlan Morrissey
'Imagine Us as Part of You' by Francis Flannagan
Truth, Lies and Diplomacy : Fostering Co-Operation in a Fractured World by Caitlin Byrne
Hail Hydra : On Comics, Ethics and Politics by Damon Young
Archival Secrets and Hidden Histories by Jenny Hocking
Conversation by David Ishaya Osu
A Great Experiment : Finding Sanctuary for Attention in the Digital World by David Threlfall
The Burning Question : Collateral Damage and the Catholic Church by Suzanne Smith
'We work together as co-directors of the Indigenous Settler Relations Collaboration, a research unit at the University of Melbourne. In this context, our working relationship requires a high level of trust, but as an Indigenous person (Sana is a Torres Strait Islander) and a non-Indigenous person (Sarah is a white settler), we don't take the trust between up for granted. We a conscious that relations between Indigenous peoples and settlers do not generally have a bank of trust for either side to draw upon in difficult times, which means Indigenous-settler relations are always contingent, always at risk. To further understanding of these challenges, we have staged a number of public conversations that explore the question of trust in our professional relationship. Prompted by a single question - 'Do you trust me?' - these conversations have changed over time to explore different aspects of the positionality and conditionality of trust between Indigenous peoples and settlers through the lens of our own working relationship. Here, we have edited on conversation about building trust in each other over time.' (Introduction)