Richard Bourke: For the Honour of God and the Good of Man

The Church Act (1836) was arguably the most significant ecclesiastical legislation in Australia's history, as it profoundly impacted on the nation's social and political development in its formative years. The Act was instigated by Governor Richard Bourke and was welcomed by the people as establishing “religious equality on a just and firm basis.” However, historically it is often categorised as being part of Bourke's liberal reform agenda where the legislation's attributes of religious toleration have been magnified and its function to expand Christianity minimised. The fact that Bourke was a devout Christian is something that none of his biographers have disputed, but this belief is rarely portrayed as fundamental to his motives. This article explores the nature of Bourke's Christianity and discusses how that influenced his public policy in relation to religion and education. It reveals a complex man who had sincere orthodox Anglican faith, but recognised the part played by other denominations in the Christian mission. This examination will demonstrate the difficulty in differentiating between secular and spiritual motives and intentions in this period.     

Hedwig revisited

The mainstream success of the 2014 Broadway revival of John Cameron Mitchell’s Hedwig and the Angry Inch is in stark contrast to the precarity of the central protagonist’s life and the communities out of which the original Hedwig production emerged. While these tensions reveal some of the complicities between homonormativity, gentrification, and neoliberalism, by tracing Hedwig’s other genealogies, a more complicated vision of queer possibility emerges.     

Islamism revisited

While contemporary Islamism is a response to the domestic political situation in many Muslim countries, as well as to US and western policies in the Muslim world, it is also about religious assertion and the forging of an alternative ideology, not only as a means of empowerment but also as a means of establishing a particular social order. The debate is as much an internal one as it is a global one and in many ways mirrors the struggles of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries for political and cultural independence.     

Planning theory revisited*

After brief personal recollections of the origins of planning theory, the author poses the question of why, after five decades of active theorizing, it is still impossible for people engaged in writing planning theory to agree on a formal definition of their subject. Four possible answers are explored: the problem of defining planning as an object to be theorized; the impossibility of talking about planning disconnected from actual institutional and political contexts; the several modes of doing planning theory and the dilemma of choosing among them; and the difficulty of incorporating power relations into planning discourse. The paper concludes with a brief comment on three themes that should be made central to theorizing; the production of the urban habitat, the rise of civil society, and the question of power.     

Ex oriente lux revisited

Champion, Timothy, Clive Gamble, Stephen Shennan, and Alasdair Whittle. Prehistoric Europe. New York: Academic Press, 1984. ix + 359 pp. including references and index. $45.00 cloth, $23.50 paper.

Champion, T. C, and J. V. S. Megaw, eds. Settlement and Society: Aspects of West European Prehistory in the First Millennium B.C. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1985. xi + 243 pp. including chapter references and index. $29.95 cloth.

Ammerman, Albert J., and L. L. Cavalli‐Sforza. The Neolithic Transition and the Genetics of Populations in Europe. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1984. xv + 176 pp. including appendix, bibliography, and index. $25.00 cloth.     

An urban slum revisited

William Foote Whyte. Street Corner Society: The Social Structure of an Italian Slum. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1943.xii + 284 pp. $5.00.     

The Kapthurin Formation revisited

This contribution reports on the results obtained from the 1980–7 research in the Kapthurin Formation (Baringo, Kenya) which aimed at the refinement of the chronology, stratigraphy and environmental evidence in order to establish a framework for the interpretation of the prehistoric sites. In 1966 a Late Acheulean industry with prepared-core technique and blade component, dated betweenca 0.82/0.64 myr and 0.23 myr had been described in the area concerned. All the sites belong to the middle Kapthurin formation which is situated in the Bruhnes normal polarity chron and has a lower limit of 0.58 myr. The upper limit of 0.23 myr could not be confirmed. The fauna is consistent with the available dating evidence. The sites are situated in a flat savanna landscape which was built up by a braided river system under slightly more humid conditions than the present climate. On some of the sites artifacts were found in association with palaeosoils. Although the interpretation of such assemblages must consider the impact of natural turbation processes, the palaeosoils provide exceptional conditions for comparing sites from the same phase of landscape stabilization. The present archaeological evidence suggests a sequence of Late Acheulean and Post-Acheulean (Sangoan?, Middle Stone Age) assemblages rather than the presence of one single industry as described previously. The relation between these assemblages and the two mandibles ofHomo sp. (aff.erectus) BK67 and BK8518 (found in 1966 and 1982) emphasizes the need for more research in the area.