Average Reviews:
(More customer reviews)What does it take to make a difference? Is a good heart and a strong will enough? This book shows that from the point of view of working inside a government department making a difference is an incredibly fraught enterprise and that the best outcomes don't always come from the best intentions. Ultimately it shows that despite all the earnest people working in government who genuinely do want to help the other -- this book deals primarily with government bureaucrats whose job it is is to administer projects relating to indigenous Australians in the far north -- in the end what they do is provide more of the same, that is more whitefella government. The stories this book has to tell are as frustrating as hell because they seem to point to one conclusion, that implementing meaningful progressive change is impossible. And yet it may be, in a very Brechtian way, that by pointing up all the bad new things, it enables us to better see where the good new things might arise. An amazing book.
Click Here to see more reviews about: Bureaucrats and Bleeding Hearts: Indigenous Health in Northern Australia
Bureaucrats and Bleeding Hearts takes you on an intimate journey into the lives of people armed with the task of ending Australian Aboriginal disadvantage in the frontier north of Australia. Taking a fresh look at longstanding issues, Lea examines the culture of bureaucracy, its need to create the look of action, how intelligent inhabitants uphold the apparatus of government even whilst they critique it, and how benevolent efforts to improve health have brought about unexpected co-dependencies and tragic failures. She paints a sympathetic yet discomforting portrait of those who, working on behalf of and for Aboriginal health, fiercely defend the ideas and principles that paradoxically reinstate the primary need for greater levels of government intervention.
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