'People Try to Put Us Down …': Participatory Citizenship of 'Generation X'

This article evaluates the participatory citizenship of Australian young people. Its argument is that in the utilisation of empirical research 'contemporary citizenship needs to recognise what people actually do' (R. Prokhovnik, Feminist Review 60(2) 1998: 95). For this research, an alternative approach to the exploration of participation has been developed which questions the traditional, institutionalised measures of political participation and/or notions of civic engagement that do not look at a broad range of individual and organisational experiences. The article is based on a survey of 18-34-year-old Australians conducted via telephone, by Newspoll Market Research, in early 2001. The article shows that rather than 'Generation X' having homogeneous (or even negligible) participatory experiences, four distinct participatory typologies emerge. These four typologies are labelled as Activist, Communitarian, Party and Individualistic to reflect the clustered modes of participation. The article also explores the relationships between participation and the discussion of political and social issues.     

Old Tibet:A Paradise for…

Accordingtothe14thDalaiLama,oldTibetunderhisrulesome40yearsagowasakparadise;peopleinthepar-adiseledalifefeaturingmore-than-enoughsupplyoffood;andthelifewassogoodthatevendogswerefedwithmeat.Whatthe14thDalaiLamasaidistrue.Itwasaparadise,butjustfortheofficials,aristocrats,andmonasteriesandlamasoftheupperrulingclass,whomadeuplessthan5percentoftheTibetanpopulation.Theremain-der95percentofthepopulation,however,livedinthehell.TibetfollowedthefeudalserfdombeforetheDemocraticReform,whichcombinedtem…     

A few “big players”: Systems approach to immigrant employment in a mid-sized city

Canada's immigration policy is regarded globally as a best practice model for selecting highly skilled migrants. Yet, upon arrival many immigrants face challenges integrating into employment. Where immigrants settle is one factor that has been shown to impact on employment integration. In Canada, regionalization policies have resulted in more immigrants settling in small to mid-sized cities. It is important to understand how these local systems are organized to promote immigrant integration into employment. Using a systems approach, this paper presents a case study of immigrant employment in a mid-sized city in Ontario, Canada. Through a document review and stakeholder interviews, a systems map was developed, and local perspectives were analyzed. Results demonstrate that in a mid-sized city, few organizations play a large role in immigrant employment. The connections between these core organizations and the local labour market are complex. Any potential challenges to the system that interfere with these connections can cause a delay for newcomers seeking employment. As cities begin to experience growth driven by immigration, there is a need to ensure local services are not only available but also working effectively within the larger employment system.     

The city as a set of problems: A non‐synthesizing approach to understanding urban places

Neil C. Kalt and Sheldon S. Zalkind. Urban Problems: Psychological Inquiries. New York: Oxford University Press, 1976. v + 543 pp. Author index, subject index. $13.00 cloth, $8.00 paper.     

Indigenous minorities of Siberia and Russian sociolinguistics of the 1920s: A life apart?

ABSTRACT

In the 1920s, two strong intellectual trends were simultaneously developing in Russia: the studies of languages and cultures of the indigenous population of Siberia and the Far North (led by Vladimir Bogoras, Leo Shternberg, and others), and sociolinguistic studies (led by Evgeniy Polivanov, Afanasiy Selischev, Rosaliya Shor, and others). Sociolinguistics as a new and fashionable branch of knowledge included many topics (sociolinguistic theory, social dialectology, influence of rapid social changes on language), but there never were attempts to study sociolinguistically the languages of indigenous “Northern” minorities. In 1929 Roman Jakobson and Nikolai Trubetskoy, who by that time were both living abroad, launched a project called “Languages of the USSR.” The project could have united the two trends, but it was soon terminated because of the Great Depression in the West and a sharp turn in Stalin's policy in 1929 when many Russian scholars were prosecuted, academia became split in a fight over who represented “the true Marxism”, and international collaboration became dangerous for Russian scholars. Another reason for the lack of interest in sociolinguistic studies of indigenous minority languages was the evolutionist paradigm of Siberianist cultural anthropology of the time. As a result, the Soviet language planning for Northern indigenous minority languages in the1930s and later did not sufficiently take into account the sociolinguistic aspect of the problem; this may be responsible for its many failures and inconsistencies.     

'[…;] all poetry is difficult […]: the limitations of Seferis' modernist poetics

Abstract

In Greece, as in several other countries in the period between the two World Wars, one of the serious charges frequently made against Modernism was that it was impossibly bad mannered towards the reader – that it made no effort at all to communicate and that modernist poetry was ‘difficult’ or ‘obscure’. For example, as early as 1931, Kostis Palamas – the poet who had had an enormous impact on Greek literary affairs in the first half of this century – in a charming if not somewhat condescending letter addressed to George Seferis, noted that the poems of <inline-graphic href="splitsection4_in1.tif"/>were ‘cryptographic’ and stated that he was personally unable to find the ‘key’ that was needed for deciphering such difficult poetry (Palamas 1931). A few years earlier, Seferis himself had noted in his journals that whenever he tried to read Valery's poems to Palamas and his circle, they had reacted by saying that they did not have time to solve ‘puzzles’ (1975: 62).     

Welcome to Australia? A reappraisal of the Fraser government's approach to refugees, 1975–83

The Fraser government's response to the Indo-Chinese refugee crisis and the presentation, for the first time, of asylum-seekers arriving in Australia by boat is almost universally acclaimed as having been proactive, generous and humanitarian in spirit—the antithesis of both the preceding Whitlam Labor government and subsequent governments, particularly since 2001. Adopting a policy of ‘forward selection’ of refugees from camps in South-East Asia, the Fraser government was able to stem the flow of boats and oversaw the relatively uncontroversial resettlement of nearly 70,000 Indo-Chinese. However, the author argues that this was not the brave and principled course of action for which Fraser and his immigration ministers are regularly fêted, but rather a delayed response that was motivated by fear and desperation rather than pure humanitarian intent. The celebrated outcomes of Fraser's policies belie the self-interested way in which they were constructed and neglect the fact that the government did not act until it was forced. Fraser's policies were neither a departure from the past nor the antithesis of current polices; to the contrary, they were the seeds of the contemporary Australian model of asylum.     

Australia's flawed approach to trade negotiations: and where do we sign?

Economists have warned for many years that preferential trade agreements (PTAs) will not necessarily increase economic welfare in Australia given the relatively small size of the economy and the country’s lack of negotiating coin. The Productivity Commission cautioned in its major report on PTAs that there seemed to be a mindset of ‘agreements for agreement’s sake’, in part because of fears of missing out on a bandwagon that has attracted Australia’s major trading partners. Political and security considerations have played an important role in shaping Australia’s approach to PTAs. When politics trumps economics in negotiations of PTAs there is a risk of a rush to premature agreement that produces sub-optimal outcomes, that undermines broader plurilateral and global negotiations, and that introduces new and undesirable distortions in trade and public policies. Various theoretical approaches to trade policymaking provide insights into why Australian governments have been willing to conclude these sub-optimal deals.     

A stage and eclectic approach to industrial district development: two policy keys for ‘survival’ clusters in developing countries

This article analyses the history of Italian industrial districts (IDs) to identify lessons to help small and medium‐sized enterprise (SME) clusters in developing countries to move to higher stages of development. Transforming the 1990 seminal work of Brusco on distinct models of SME clustering into a stage approach, this article identifies a sequence of different maturity stages which the IDs passed through: initial craft production; industrialization through large firms; the fragmentation of production followed by the growth of smaller specialized units; and, finally, new routes to innovation and competitiveness. These phases help explain how development is a stage process which needs to be carefully considered and not rushed, through attempting to cross too many stages at once. Realistic steps are always necessary to create an effective base for growth. Furthermore, a theoretical framework is presented, which identifies three factorial levels that have intervened in the ID development process over the past 50 years. Economic, policy and social factors are identified and presented as drivers that work together to produce the structural changes that explain an effective development process. The final section emphasizes the relevance that this kind of analysis can have on the policy‐making schemes being applied in developing countries, with special reference to less developed types of clusters.