Popular support for ‘Mr Keating's republic’

[The recent changes in popular attitudes towards an Australian republic] provide an object lesson in the way in which a relatively dormant issue characterised by more or less stable opinions over a long period can quickly be transformed when opinion leaders suddenly raise its profile and put it high on the public agenda (Bean 1993, 194–5).     

What did the Greeks mean?

By tracing in the work of medical authorities, some of whom are not widely quoted, the changing meaning of three neurological terms used in ancient Greece - poplexia, epilepsia and cephalalgia - the development of Greek ideas about neurological science may be appreciated. It may be concluded that the achievement of the schools of Greek medicine was in keeping with the level attained by the ancient Greeks in philosophy and other aspects of civilization.     

‘Europe’: What Kind of Idea?

Salman Rushdie posed the question, “What kind of idea are you?” We have borrowed his provoking question and held it up to ‘Europe.’ In this article, we suggest that ‘Europe’ cannot be primarily identified or located in terms of geographies, histories, religions, cultures or values, and that attempts to do so diminish the idea of ‘Europe.’ We also contest the vision of ‘Europe’ as a series of concentric circles emanating from Brussels and suggest that this conception indefensibly marginalizes vital portions of ‘Europe.’ We propose that, while the European Union (EU) is attempting to define core concepts of ‘Europe,’ ‘Europe's’ frontiers and borders (wherever or whatever they may be, inside or outside ‘Europe’) are actively constructing, contesting and resisting ‘Europe.’ The peripheries and perimeters are no less important than the core. On the contrary, they give substance to the idea of ‘Europe.’ Finally, we argue that ‘Europe’ can best be understood as a non-teleological construct, a narrative à la Roland Barthes. Inspired by Barthes, we propose a ‘Europe’ Theory of Classification operating at the levels of functions, actions and narration.     

‘An entirely new land’? Italy’s post-war culture and its Fascist past

Scholarship has for decades emphasized the significant continuities in Italian culture and society after Fascism, calling into question the rhetoric of post-war renewal. This article proposes a reassessment of that rhetoric through the analysis of five key metaphors with which Italian intellectuals represented national recovery after 1945: parenthesis, disease, flood, childhood and discovery. While the current critical consensus would lead us to expect a cultural conversation characterized by repression and evasion, an analysis of these five post-war metaphors instead reveals both a penetrating reassessment of Italian culture after Fascism and an earnest adherence to the cause of national revitalization. Foregrounding the inter-relation of Italy’s prospects for change and its continuities with Fascism, these metaphors suggest that post-war Italian intellectuals conceived of their country’s hopes for renewal, as well as its connections to the recent past, in terms that transcend the binary division favoured in many historical accounts.     

On the ‘Meishan Phenomenon’ in Song culture

The Song Dynasty enjoyed a splendid culture. Meishan, a small county in Southwest Sichuan, was one of the most developed cultural areas. This is closely related to a large-scale immigration after the collapse of the Tang Dynasty and the ‘Jingkang defeat’ in the Song Dynasty. Meishan was an area receiving more immigrants than other regions. A great number of distinguished families from North China brought with them the advanced culture of the Yellow River areas to Meishan, which combined with native culture, and produced many “cultural clans” from this “clan culture.” Some of these people became elites in various areas through education and the Civil Service Examinations. The so-called “Meishan Phenomenon” was a result of cultural melting. Translated by Li He and Zhang Hai from the Journal of Sichuan University, 2004: 3     

‘Popular demands do not fit in ballot boxes’: graffiti as intangible heritage at the Iglesia de San Francisco,Santiago?

Contemporary practices and conflicts of cultural heritage preservation reflect shifting conceptions of what heritage is and what it should conserve. As such, the traditional notion of graffiti upon national monuments is currently being called into question, and within the context of this debate, this study argues that the emerging framework of intangible heritage is a useful model for reconsidering graffiti at heritage sites. Arguments for such graffiti as intangible heritage are particularly strong when it can be shown to function as a societal mirror that reflects political climates and protest activities. Such graffiti poses tensions between traditional theories and practices of heritage preservation, in which these markings are seen to interrupt conservation, and emerging inclusive models such that view these works as relevant layers of a site’s history. Within this context, we explore the case of the political graffiti on the north wall of a historical monument, the Iglesia de San Francisco in Santiago, Chile, through the lens of the emerging field of intangible heritage.     

Zimbabwe's ‘Fast Track’ Land Reform: What about women?

The wave of occupations of commercial farms in Zimbabwe starting in the year 2000 captured worldwide attention. By the end of that year, the government of Zimbabwe initiated the ‘fast track’ land reform process meant to formalize the occupations, and encourage further land appropriation and redistribution. Where are women in this process? The Women and Land Lobby Group (WLLG) was formed in 1998 by Zimbabwean women activists committed to the land issue. Since 1998 they have lobbied government to include women's interests in the design of land reform, and have made some inroads in improving women's formal rights to land as stated in policy documents. However, the current ‘fast track’ practices continue to privilege men as primary recipients of resettlement land, and the emerging role of traditional authorities in the land reform process marginalizes women. Other legal provisions that may help women struggle for changes remain weak. The contradiction between customary law, practices and attitudes and modern individual rights represents a complex battleground for women and land in Southern Africa, and calls for new feminist conceptualizations of the state as a vehicle for gender justice.     

‘What you say when you're pissing’: gender and sexual difference in heteronormative toilets

This article is part of a review symposium of Sheila Cavanagh's book Queering bathrooms: gender, sexuality and the hygienic imagination, 2010, Toronto, University of Toronto Press, 295 pp., £19.94 (paperback), ISBN 978-1-4426-10736     

What do aqueous geothermometers really tell us?

The application of chemical geothermometry to shallow groundwaters or spring discharge assumes that there is minimal mixing or re-equilibration of water as it travels from depth to the surface. In this study, we examine the potential for mixing and re-equilibration by examining heat and fluid flow along crustal-scale faults in tectonic geothermal systems. Numerical modeling results indicate that maximum in situ temperatures could be under-predicted by up to 30% due to mixing of fluids that enter the fault at different depths. This, coupled with the depression of isotherms by downward groundwater flow in the hanging wall, could cause underestimates of maximum circulation depth of greater than 80% in extreme cases. Kinetics does not favor re-equilibration in the shallower portions of faults due to low temperatures and higher fluid velocities. However, in areas of deeper circulation or higher heat flow such reactions are possible.     

Putting the Records Straight: ‘What is up with WAC?’

This paper is a reaction to the paper of Nick Shepherd and Alejandro Haber titled ??What is up with WAC? Archaeology and ??Engagement?? in a Globalised World??, published in Public Archaeology volume 10, number 2 of May 2011. Having been associated with WAC since its inception in 1986 and having been a player in all the programmes criticized by Nick Shepherd and Alejandro Haber, I am reluctantly obliged to provide some information to put the records straight. WAC being a true worldwide organization (not just international) has membership from different social, cultural, linguistic, political, economic, religious and ideological backgrounds. This calls for mutual respect and conscious effort to understand people and their points of view and also to be very sensitive to our differences. Summing up issues in the context of simplistic ??globalised world?? is big error of judgment.     

‘What say you to free trade in literature?’ The Thief and the Politics of Piracy in the 1830s

Between 1832 and 1834, Henry Mayhew and Gilbert Abbot à Beckett produced a weekly twopenny paper called The Thief. As its title suggested, this publication consisted of articles, stories and illustrations extracted, condensed and brazenly stolen from other periodicals, magazines, newspapers and books. Modelled on the format of Le Voleur, an early paper of Émile de Girardin, the great innovator of French popular journalism, scholars of Mayhew have generally treated The Thief as inconsequential hack work, if they even mention it at all. This essay, the first analysis of the paper itself, argues that The Thief is less ‘throwaway’ than it first appears. In satirical fashion, the paper used the methods of the radical press to critique the ‘liberal values’ of useful knowledge and free trade. Mayhew's involvement with The Thief connected him with a vibrant radical underground print culture. Moreover, in its suspicion of middle-class liberalism and of the rhetoric of free trade, The Thief set the thematic tone for much of Mayhew's later work.     

What else? some more ways of thinking and doing ‘Children's Geographies’

‘Children's Geographies’ could do more. In this paper we present a succession of key ideas currently arising in and of new and emergent theoretical, philosophical and conceptual work in the Social Sciences. We invite reflection upon each of these ideas in turn, with a mind, specifically, to ‘Children's Geographies’. In so doing, we make two broad claims. First, that greater engagement with some or all of these ideas might prove useful, enabling, thought-provoking, profound, constructive, challenging, telling, or interesting to ‘Children's Geographers’. Second, that—particularly given the nature of its extant concerns and efforts— ‘Children's Geographies’ could do much more to speak back to (these) wider contemporary lines of thought.