The paradigm shift: 11 September and Australia's strategic reformation

This article argues that the perceptual shock of 11 September transformed the mental picture which shapes the Australian government's approach to national security. The expansive and transformationalist range of strategic concepts introduced post-11 September by key government ministers and the prime minister in their public commentary, and formally expressed in a variety of post-11 September policy releases, have been substantial enough to conclude that the central geostrategic narrative underpinning Australia's pre-11 September strategic posture has been diluted sufficiently to render it ‘one of many’ shapers of Australia's post-11 September strategic orientation. It is this article's finding that the perceptual shock of 11 September has been sufficiently consequential to produce a paradigm shift in Australian strategy.     

The beginning of ideology: Consciousness and society in the French reformation

David Lewis presented Convention as an alternative to the conventionalism characteristic of early-twentieth-century analytic philosophy. Rudolf Carnap is well known for suggesting the arbitrariness of any particular linguistic convention for engaging in scientific inquiry. Analytic truths are self-consistent, and are not checked against empirical facts to ascertain their veracity. In keeping with the logical positivists before him, Lewis concludes that linguistic communication is conventional. However, despite his firm allegiance to conventions underlying not just languages but also social customs, he pioneered the view that convening need not require any active agreement to participate. Lewis proposed that conventions arise from “an exchange of manifestations of a propensity to conform to a regularity” (87–8).

In reasserting the conventional quality of languages and other practices resting on mutual expectations, Lewis comfortably works within the analytic tradition. Yet he also deviates from his predecessors because his conventionalist approach is comprehensively grounded in instrumentalism. Lewis adopts an extension of David Hume's desire-belief psychology articulated in rational choice theory. He develops his philosophy of convention relying on the highly formal mid-twentieth-century expected utility and game theories. This attempt to account for language and social customs wholly in terms of instrumental rationality has the implication of reducing normativity to preference satisfaction. Lewis’ approach continues in the trend of undermining normative political philosophy because institutions and practices arise spontaneously, without the deliberate involvement of agents. Perhaps Lewis’ Convention is best seen as a resurgent form of analytic philosophy, characterized by “a style of argument, hostility to [ambitious] metaphysics, focus on language, and the dominance of logic and formalization” that solves the dilemma of “combining the analytic inheritance…with normative concerns” by reducing normativity to individuals’ preference fulfillment consistent with the axioms of rational choice.     

Legalism: Law,morals, and political trials

The purpose of this article is to critically undermine two commonly held and closely related contentions regarding the British idealist tradition. The first is that the British idealist tradition went into rapid and terminal decline shortly after the outbreak of the First World War. The second is that J. A. Smith was largely responsible for it. These aims are achieved through a diachronic analysis of Smith's conception of human imperfection as well as an assessment of Smith's intellectual legacy. As this article will show, contrary to the received view, Smith was a philosophical innovator who instigated an intellectual evolution within the British idealist. In particular, this article shows that Smith substituted aspects of his early Greenian philosophy with elements of Italian idealism. As a result, Smith was instrumental in moving British idealism away from its traditional underpinnings and towards more a Croce–Gentilian foundation. It is this neglected philosophical innovation which has given scholars the false impression of the tradition's collapse. By establishing Smith's intellectual innovation this article intends to show that Smith made a much more significant intellectual contribution to the philosophical tradition to which he belongs than has so far been recognised.     

Research note: The Scottish household survey

Abstract

My personal recollection of the ‘relevance revolution’ in the 1970s is that it was a reaction to a quantitative geography that was overly-focused on technique and under-concerned with real-world issues. The consequent search for relevance took the form of a commitment to liberal- and left-leaning ideologies and issues. This differed from concepts of relevance as pertinence/timeliness, or as applied geography. Postmodern thought is significant in current debates on relevance in all three of its manifestations: relevance as commitment, pertinence and application.     

The invisible man: body and ritual in a fifteenth-century noble household

Ritual and gesture were central to medieval political cultures, yet few documents survive which attest to daily comportment in non-royal elite households. This article examines the late fifteenth-century ‘Harleian Ordinances’ (from British Library Harl. MS 6815), which describe in rare detail the ceremonies and servants' gestures used in an unnamed earl's house. It focuses on the para-liturgical elements of the household ceremony (notably the use of ritual kisses), argues that the Burgundian court provided direct inspiration for the ordinance, and suggests a connection to Richard, earl of Warwick (‘the Kingmaker’). More broadly, it explores aspects of the relationship between lord and noble servant in the later fifteenth century and contends that nobility – an essentially invisible quality – was in part conjured up through the gestures and deportment of a nobleman's servants. In their attempts to portray power and prestige, noblemen such as the invisible earl of this ordinance established secular household rites which required that their bodies be attended to with an almost religious reverence.     

The reformation of Iraq's foreign relations: new elites and enduring legacies

Iraq has not enjoyed regular foreign relations since 2003, and arguably for several years before. Looking ahead, Iraq is now in a position to develop its foreign relations fully, yet how these relations will be constructed remains unclear. As with all states, Iraq's foreign policy remains conditioned by geopolitical factors— and in particular control of resources, access to waterways, and its geographical location between the Arab world, Turkey, and Iran. There are also the legacies of the Ba'athist regime to consider—and especially the way foreign policy was constructed, and how ‘foreign’ was defined in terms of foreign to the regime, rather than to Iraq. Layered on top of these geopolitical determinants and legacies is the reality of the post‐2003 state. With the removal of the structures of the Ba'athist regime and the emergence of new political elites under the guidance of the US, Iraq's foreign relations are now clearly different, yet some of the patterns of the past still remain very much in place.     

The authority of science and the postmodern reformation

Abstract

Popular reactions against science are as old as science itself. The challenge from postmodernity, however, is more fundamental, because it challenges not only what science does, but what science is. The epistemological authority of science is now challenged in much the same way as the spiritual authority of the Catholic Church was challenged by the Reformation. The experience of disruption and instability, the pluralism, relativism, and loss of absolutes of the earlier period are not unlike what we find in our own postmodern condition. Luther's priesthood of all believers has become a priesthood of all knowers in our postmodern reformation. More particularly, we can see how the advent of printing, the humanist cultivation of individuality, and the Copernican mapping of the heavens all have their (post)modern counterparts, in the development of the internet, the cult of narcissism, and the mapping of the human genome.     

From Senegal to Augsburg: Gum Arabic and the Central European Textile Industry in the Eighteenth Century

West Africa’s role in the early modern economy is usually reduced to that of a supplier of forced labour for American plantations while other types of trade — especially direct trade between Western Africa and Europe — are often marginalised in scholarship. This article argues that the West African substance gum arabic played a vital role in the large-scale production of printed cottons and linens in Europe — one of the major areas of popular consumption at the time. Its unique qualities and the fact that it was available in large quantities made gum arabic from Senegal and Mauritania indispensable in producing high-quality prints in large numbers for a reasonable price. The article advances this argument by looking at Central instead of Western Europe, in order to illustrate how pervasive this substance was in the eighteenth century. Even regions far removed from the Atlantic — such as the South German city of Augsburg, in today’s Bavaria — needed to find a way to access this Senegambian product in order to produce their popular textiles. The article thus seeks to contribute to a better understanding of Africa’s role in the development of European textile industries and its contribution to consumption patterns by following a specific material from Western Africa to Central Europe — from Senegal to Augsburg.     

The Marriage Well at Teltown: holy well ritual at royal cult sites and the rite of temporary marriage

This article discusses Lag an Aonaigh, the ‘Marriage Well’ of Teltown, and the unusual temporary marriage ritual that once took place there during the annual Lughnasa festival. The relationship of Lag an Aonaigh to the modern and ancient fairs (aonach and óenach), and to the broader cult of holy wells is considered, which it is suggested largely represents the local adoption of the Mediterranean healing-spring cult. The article investigates the possibility that this marriage rite was informed by lore of a divine wedding at Teltown, and by the inaugurations carried out at many royal centres that entailed the matrimonial symbolism of the king marrying the Goddess of the land. The relationship of this site to the broader landscape of Teltown, especially to the nearby Knockans linear earthwork is explored. This relationship is then used to analyse the landscapes of the other main ‘royal’ sites, where linear earthworks similar to the Knockans that terminate near springs or ponds are also found. It is considered that all of these earthworks may have been used in ritual processions involving the springs, or even as devices to segregate young men and women at these assemblies, and lead them to the spring to start their own ‘Teltown weddings’.     

Dead or alive? The holy man as healer in East and West in the late sixth century

A rigid distinction cannot be drawn between the living holy man as healer in Eastern Christendom and the dead man healing from his tomb in the West, since examples of both kinds of healing are found throughout the Mediterranean area. As examples of dead holy men working miracles from their tombs, a comparison is made between Martin, as described in the writings of Gregory of Tours, and Demetrius of Thessalonica. Nevertheless the dead holy man as cult-figure is more common in the West than in the East, because of certain differences between the pre-Christian religious in East and West. Roman law attached great importance of the sacrosanctity of a corpse, whereas in the East there was not always the same distaste for the dismemberment of bodies, though there are many exceptions to this general principle. The cult of the living holy man in the East may be a Christianization of the Greek notion of the hero. At any rate the cultural and spiritual unity of the Mediterranean area was such that the idea of the living holy man as healer could penetrate to Western Christendom.