Talking about bushfires: Difference and division in Australia's environmental crisis

In late 2019 and early 2020, bushfires consumed vast swathes of land across southern parts of Australia. The scale and intensity of the fires was unprecedented and the extent of destruction was without parallel. This article asks to what extent anthropology's focus on culture and cultural processes can inform our understanding of the complex politics generated by a situation such as this. It is argued that local people, who were directly affected by the fires, and the political elite, who commented on them from a distance, had different understandings of – and attached different meanings to – these extraordinary events. These cultural differences were especially evident on the question of the extent to which climate change was responsible for generating this environmental disaster.     

Between hospitality and hostility: Russian citizens in Georgia

Since the Russian attack on Ukraine, as many as 100,000 citizens of the Russian Federation may have migrated to Georgia to avoid military service or to escape the impact of Western sanctions on their employment prospects. While Russian political activists abroad have received some attention, the reception in Georgia of other Russian émigré groups remains understudied. This article distinguishes four groups of Russian newcomers to Georgia based on their class and regional affiliations. It analyses their relationships and how Georgian government officials and citizens receive each group. Regardless of such categorizations, the massive, temporary and uncertain presence of Russian citizens affiliated with a large country currently attacking a smaller country whose sovereignty it does not recognize erodes the foundations of hospitality, which is held in high esteem in Georgia.     

Barometrical Determination of Heights in Lebanon

Abstract

A unique moulded lamp was recovered at the 'Temple of the Winged Lions' by the American Expedition to Petra. It displays the signs of the zodiac running clockwise round the filler hole. Apparently beginning with the sign for Scorpio, the regular order of zodiac representations was not followed. A female bust (a goddess?) is shown on the handle, and a walking cock, with a schematized plant, is shown next to the wick hole. This is only the second representation of the zodiac known in Nabataean iconography. The other example surrounds the bust of the 'Vegetation Goddess' from Khirbet et-Tannur.     

Land of Grass: the Loss of Australia's Grasslands

To a large extent, the Australia of 1788 was characterised not by forests but by open woodlands and grasslands. Yet many of these areas now contain dense forest. Possible explanations for this dramatic vegetational shift include the cessation of Aboriginal burning regimes and the displacement by domestic stock of mammals that ate tree seedlings. While Australia's grasslands were being overrun, elsewhere destructive and wasteful felling of timber continued apace. The problems resulting from such clearance began to be widely articulated in the last two decades of the nineteenth century, but general attitudes to ringbarking and felling have changed only slowly. The result of all this is that Australia's vegetation is now thoroughly disorganised. The grassy woodlands have gone and with them birds, animals and numerous varieties of grass. Any attempt to provide an environment suitable for the majority of native plants and animals in temperate Australia must depend on the restoration of a pre-European-type mosaic of interconnected grassy woodlands.     

Diaphyseal aclasis in citizens of ancient Jericho

Three cases of multiple osteochondromatosis are reported among 843 skeletons excavated from the site of the ancient city of Jericho. Radiocarbon dating and archaeological evidence both suggest that two of the skeletons date from about 1700 BC . These skeletons represent the earliest known cases of diaphyseal aclasis.     

Bringing lessons from crisis management into the realm of wicked problems

Despite long-term research agendas around how to better understand and address wicked problems, they remain ‘wicked’ while crises generally come to an end. The objective of this paper is to assess whether governments seeking to address wicked problems can learn lessons from the insights of crisis management. While we are careful to avoid stretching the lessons of crisis management too far, we argue that there is untapped potential in establishing the broader applicability of crisis research to wicked problems. In doing so, we identify traditional roadblocks to addressing wicked issues and suggest that they are much less discernible in many crisis conditions. We then illustrate via a case study of the whole-of-government response to the 2011 Queensland Floods in Australia. The case has broader relevance beyond Australia in identifying how the challenges of crisis management can help us find better ways of addressing seemingly intractable wicked policy problems, particularly through strategic crisis framing.     

Stuck in a Rut: The Problem with Australia's Electoral Apparatus

The origins of the distinguishing features of the Australian Electoral Commission can be found in nineteenth-century South Australia, when that colony led the world in electoral administration. It was the first jurisdiction to develop a professional, permanent, independent election management body, with salaried electoral officials, and to pursue continuous, State-initiated enrolment. South Australia evolved this way because, to extend path dependence terminology, it was ‘locked out’ of inefficient British practices. After Federation in 1901, the new Australian Electoral Office, largely based on the South Australian model, continued the tradition. One unique and defining feature was the strong, permanent role of divisional returning officers –‘Electoral Kings’, in the words of the first Australian Chief Electoral Officer. The ‘Kings’ were an integral component of much that was good about Australia's way of running elections. However, this structure is no longer the most appropriate for an organisation such as the AEC. It has long outlived its usefulness and is holding the Commission back. And, perhaps ironically for an organisation with a long record of resistance to political interference, it is House of Representatives politicians, of all major parties, who are restraining the AEC from adopting sensible arrangements. The AEC is now, in path dependence terms, ‘locked in’ to inefficient practices.     

In defence of the Indo-Pacific: Australia's new strategic map

The 2013 Australian Defence White Paper categorically termed Australia's zone of strategic interest the Indo-Pacific, the first time any government has defined its region this way. This raises questions about what the Indo-Pacific means, whether it is a coherent strategic system, the provenance of the concept and its implications for Asian security as well as Australian policy. Indo-Pacific Asia can best be understood as an expansive definition of a maritime super-region centred on South-East Asia, arising principally from the emergence of China and India as outward-looking trading states and strategic actors. It is a strategic system insofar as it involves the intersecting interests of key powers such as China, India and the USA, although the Indo-Pacific subregions will retain their own dynamics too. It suits Australia's two-ocean geography and expanding links with Asia, including India. The concept is, however, not limited to an Australian perspective and increasingly reflects US, Indian, Japanese and Indonesian ways of seeing the region. It also reflects China's expanding interests in the Indian Ocean, suggesting that the Chinese debate may shift towards partial acceptance of Indo-Pacific constructs alongside Asia-Pacific and East Asian ones, despite suspicions about its association with the US rebalance to Asia. Questions about Australia's ability to implement an effective Indo-Pacific strategy must account for force posture, alliance ties and defence diplomacy, as well as constraints on force structure and spending.     

Political participation in Australia: contingency in the behaviour and attitudes of citizens

This article explores the idea that a citizen's relationship with their polity is contingent on and liable to change under certain conditions. The assessment of the prospects for political reform requires an understanding of the contingent nature of political engagement. Drawing from a survey of a representative sample of Australians three insights emerge. First, although many Australian citizens are not directly engaged in political actions beyond voting most do present a ‘standby’ role that suggests potential to engage. Second, willingness to shift patterns of engagement may depend on general orientations towards the polity and we find extensive evidence of negative understanding of the political system as well as more positive endorsement of representative political practices. Our third finding is that citizens might be prepared to change their relationship with the polity depending on the kind of politics that is offered; hence providing a creative space for political reform.     

‘They'd Rather Go Play Footy’: an Exploratory Study of the Enjoyment and Benefits of the Arts in Western Australia's Remote Murchison Region

The role of the arts in the revitalisation and strengthening of Australia's rural, remote, and Indigenous communities has been of particular interest to Australian State and Federal Governments, as reflected through various policy and positioning documents. In order to understand the relationship between the arts and communities, it is important to explore why people engage in the arts and what might be some of the barriers to that engagement. For the rural, remote and Indigenous communities of the Murchison Region, the arts has been a useful way of reaching and engaging with residents to build a stronger sense of community, provide light relief and entertainment, and facilitate communication among community members, government, and industry. However, there are several barriers that impact on the viability of arts projects. These barriers are amplified in rural and remote areas, and particularly for the three case study communities of the Murchison Region for a number of reasons. These include the transient nature of the population, a lack of resources, isolation and remoteness, and local politics, culture and history. The arts can provide a context in which other non‐arts related outcomes, such as health, capacity building, income generation, and so on, are facilitated and achieved. It is important for policy makers to recognise and address the barriers which hinder activity and serve to lessen the impact of the arts on communities.     

The limited capacity of management to rescue UK defence policy: a review and a word of caution

Political and media attention in the UK is devoted to three interrelated aspects of defence: policy, the management of defence resources and military operations. This article argues that the 1998 Strategic Defence Review placed excessive reliance on anticipated improvements in the management of defence resources to render Labour's defence policies affordable. The field of attempted defence management improvements is surveyed and it is concluded that no final answers were generated on the key issues of the division of tasks among uniformed personnel, civil servants and the private sector, or on whether defence should be run largely on a capability basis or on single service lines. Given the demonstrated similarity between the government's concepts of the UK's role in the world in the Strategic Defence Review (1998) and the Strategic Defence and Security Review (SDSR) (2010), there is a clear danger that the SDSR also relies too much on efficiency savings. By reference to the inherent complications of defence management and to three strands of management thought (complexity management, wicked problems and principal–agent theory), the article argues that some inefficiency will always be present. It suggests that the Clausewitzian concept of friction, accepted as pertinent to the area of military operations, might also be applied to efforts to generate military capability. It concludes that defence reviews should not be based on assumptions about efficiency savings and that students of international security and defence need to pay attention to both the volume of resources going into defence and the mechanisms by which they are managed.