Mixed Outcomes: The Impact of Regional Autonomy and Decentralization on Indigenous Ethnic Minorities in Indonesia

This article examines how indigenous ethnic minorities in Indonesia are being affected by the implementation of decentralization and regional autonomy policies. New legislation transferred responsibility and authority over various issues, including resource extraction and local governance, from the central government to regional authorities at the district level. Members of the growing indigenous rights movement hoped that this decentralization process would allow ethnic minority communities to retain or regain control over natural resources through local‐level politics. Furthermore, some ethnic minorities saw the implementation of decentralization as an opportunity to return to local forms of land tenure and resource management that had been disparaged by the national government for most of the twentieth century. However, these new laws also encourage district level governments to generate income through natural resource exploitation, as they will receive a certain percentage of these revenues. Minority communities could be adversely affected as local governments disregard their land rights in efforts to raise income to cover their new expenses, essentially continuing the practices of previous governments. This article examines the new opportunities, as well as the new threats, posed by decentralization to ethnic minorities throughout Indonesia.     

Colonialism in the periphery: Spanish linguistic policy in New Granada,c. 1574–1625

This article examines how the Spanish Crown's attempt to implement a systematic linguistic policy across the New World from the last quarter of the sixteenth century failed in the New Kingdom of Granada. Based on the ambiguous and problematic idea of ‘general languages’ that had arisen in Mexico and Peru, this one-size-fits-all policy was wholly unsuited to even the Muisca heartlands of the archdiocese of Santa Fe. Instead, local authorities settled on the use of bespoke translations of catechetical and pastoral texts into individual local languages, even at parish level, thereby reinforcing linguistic particularism—but availing themselves of the disciplinary and procedural framework of the legislation to support their strategy. In doing so, the article seeks to challenge established assumptions about the treatment of indigenous languages in New Granada in this period, and to throw new light on unanswered questions about the Spanish response to the region's linguistic heterogeneity.     

Local autonomies and economic development in Italy's incomplete transition

Since the 1990s Italy's autonomous local governing bodies have experienced important changes in their powers and functions in ways that have been shaped by national and international developments. The two decades of Italy's ‘transition’ have seen structural changes in the system that enabled the country in the second half of the twentieth century to take a place at the centre of the world economic system. But the evidence of the last two decades indicates that the changes that have taken place do not constitute a transition, but reveal instead a country that in terms of its politics and the economy is living an extremely diversified and complex phase of its history. This essay explores these processes at the level of the provinces and local government, showing how their capacity to contribute, locally and nationally, to growth through increasing territorial competiveness has been hampered by uncertainties resulting from the reforms that have been introduced and by growing financial restrictions.     

Keeping the Gates? Women as Ministers in Australia, 1970-96

Contrary to expectations based on 1980s west-European research, women's representation in Australian cabinets over the last quarter century has exceeded their proportional strength in parliaments. The paper examines this and canvasses explanations. Consistent with west-European findings, Australian women ministers are overrepresented in social portfolio areas and underrepresented in defining and physical resource mobilisation areas. The paper considers implications and explanations of women's work in cabinet. 'There are only two ways of getting into the Cabinet. One way is to crawl up the staircase of preferment on your belly; the other way is to kick them in the teeth.' Aneurin Bevan quoted in Hennessy (1986, 94)     

'Euroscepticism', Political Agendas and Spatial Planning: British National and Regional Planning Policy in Uncertain Times

Over the last 10 years, European Union interest in planning has increased significantly. Although land use planning remains a function of each member state, the legal obligations imposed by the EU in the fields of environmental law, structural funds, the Common Agricultural Policy, and Trans-European Transport Networks, have all impacted upon the context of the operation of the British planning process. Many of the EU initiatives have had to be transposed into domestic legislation, while others form an important-if oft-times uncertain-framework for British policy-makers. This paper examines the relationship between the European Union's policies and initiatives as they have potentially impacted upon the British planning system and the contents of Britain's national and regional planning policy guidance to local planning authorities in the assessment period 1988-1997. But the Conservative governments adopted a 'Eurosceptic' approach to their relations with Europe and, as demonstrated within this paper, also towards spatial planning issues that caused uncertainty in practice. The research indicates that although the EU has impacted upon British planning, particularly at the local level of government, this has not been reflected at the national and regional levels in planning policy documentation, mainly because of the 'Eurosceptic' attitude of the government. Policy-makers at both the national and regional levels in England, Scotland and Wales are now recognizing the need, however, to keep apace with changes occurring simultaneously with regard to enhanced European integration, and the approach of the Blair government since 1997 has re-focused the relationship between the EU and UK over spatial planning.     

Seaborne Ethnography and the Natural History of Man*

This paper examines intellectual interchanges between European theorists in the science of man and sailors, naturalists and artists on scientific voyages in Oceania during the century after 1750. I argue that travellers' narratives and ethnographic representations were not mere reflexes of dominant metropolitan discourses, but were also personal productions generated in the tensions and ambiguities of cross-cultural encounters. I identify countersigns of indigenous agency embedded in such materials and evaluate their trajectory from the interactions which provoked them, through varied genres and media of voyagers' representations, to their contorted appropriation by European savants. My examples are drawn from British and French accounts of visits to New Holland and Van Diemen's Land between 1770 and 1802. In this paper, Aboriginal Australians, especially Tasmanians, serve as synecdoche for the indigenous inhabitants of Oceania generally, using the regional term in its extended early 19th-century sense which encompassed the present Indonesia and Australia along with Papua New Guinea, Aotearoa/New Zealand and the Pacific Islands.     

The Sydney 2000 Olympics and Urban Entrepreneurialism: Local Variations in Urban Governance

Hallmark events are important redevelopment tools utilised by entrepreneurial governments. The features of these events are analogous to those of entrepreneurial urban governance. This study examined the local impacts of the Sydney 2000 Olympic Games, particularly in relation to its social and political legacies, in three local government areas which hosted Olympic venues. It also investigated the nature of urban governance in Sydney, Australia, as it was manifested in the planning of the Sydney 2000 Olympics. Examples of entrepreneurialism in planning for the Olympics included the centralisation of planning powers, the increasing involvement of the private sector in government activities, and the relaxation of planning processes, resulting in reduced openness, accountability and public participation. Examples of resistance to the anti–democratic tendencies of entrepreneurialism were however evident in some areas, with managerial and democratic concerns remaining important to some local governments. Local community activism was imperative to achieving civic participation and ensuring commitment by local government to these managerial and democratic concerns. Activism also enabled some local communities to secure significant benefits from the Olympic Games.     

Expanding Women's Co-operatives in China through Institutional Linkages

This article examines the institutional linkages between three women workers' co-operatives, the first women's credit co-operative in China, and the co-operative support organization, the International Committee for the Promotion of Chinese Industrial Co-operatives (ICCIC). The study shows that Chinese women in rural areas have increasingly adopted co-operatives as a form of organization in their efforts to address the problem of their lack of access to resources, including land, credit, jobs, training and information, and to participate in the mainstream economy as an organized force. This article demonstrates that stronger institutional linkages between local offices of the All-China Women's Federation and the ICCIC encourage the growth of women's co-operative activities. It raises two sets of policy issues that are central to the development of co-operatives and women's banking: the continued growth of these activities will depend upon the government adopting legislation to define the legal framework governing co-operative relations and management systems, and establishing gender-inclusive policies to increase credit to women's income-generating activities.     

Impersonating a Voter: Constructions of Race,and Conceptions of Subjecthood in the Franchise of Colonial New South Wales,c. 1850–1865

ABSTRACT

This article investigates the treatment of Aboriginal Australians as politically entitled subjects within New South Wales during that colony's first elections under ‘universal’ male suffrage. Using the case of Yellow Jimmy, a ‘half-caste’ resident prosecuted for impersonating a white settler at an election in 1859, it examines the uncertainties that surrounded Aboriginal Australians’ position as British subjects within the colony's first constitutions. By contrast to the early colonial franchises of New Zealand and the Cape – where questions of indigenous residents’ access to enfranchisement dominated discussions of the colonies’ early constitutions – in the rare instances in which indigenous men claimed their right to vote in New South Wales, local officials used their own discretion in determining whether they held the political entitlements of British subjects. This formed a continuity with the earlier treatment of Aboriginal Australians under settler law, where British authority and imperial jurisdiction was often advanced ‘on-the-ground’ via jurists and administrators rather than via the statutes or orders of Parliament or the Colonial Office.     

A Long History of Faith‐Based Welfare in Australia: Origins and Impact

In a nation where governments and churches have collaborated in the delivery of welfare services since 1788, such faith‐based welfare was seen as normative rather than problematic. Indeed most Australians would struggle to imagine a welfare system that was not built on such an arrangement. However, by the late twentieth century, the world views and ideologies of church leaders and politicians were no longer in alignment, creating tensions in the relationship. This article explores the origins and development of church–state collaboration in the delivery of welfare, and examines the impact this has had on both the shape of charity and the mission of the churches as faith‐based agencies are increasingly challenged in an environment in which government funding is tied to policies that potentially transgress the principles of the gospels, and victims of past welfare practices demand reparation.     

Natural and unnatural complexities: flood control along Manitoba's Assiniboine River

Flooding and flood control long have been topics of concern for geographers and historians of North America, from Gilbert White's foundational work to attempts to understand the recent disaster in New Orleans. This paper considers the problem of flood control along the Assiniboine River in the province of Manitoba, Canada. The first section addresses the local landscape and the larger context, explaining changes in the relevant human and physical geography. The second section examines efforts to mitigate flooding, focusing on how the risk of inundation was shifted in location (not eliminated altogether) and compounded through time (not progressively resolved). The third focuses on a further source of complexity: the contested character of government jurisdiction. This final section also addresses major mid twentieth century changes in mitigation efforts: in the light of flooding on an unprecedented scale, governments became more open to compromise and more willing to undertake substantial projects. Gilbert White asserted that while floods are natural occurrences, flood damages are the responsibility of humanity. The question of responsibility might seem relatively clear in relation to flood mitigation, given that dykes are human constructions. The history of flood mitigation along the Assiniboine would suggest, however, that assigning responsibility for the failures and successes of flood mitigation is not so straightforward.     

Northern Ireland, British-Irish Relations and American Concerns, 1942-1956

This article considers the political impact of particular Irishcontroversies during the Second World War and the post-war period.It highlights the American dimension to these controversies,and examines what they reveal about different sets of inter-governmentalrelations, especially that of London and Belfast. The articleargues that the context of wartime, and the circumstances ofthe post-war era, should have led to more effective cooperationbetween the Westminster and Stormont governments to the endof improving the operation of devolution and ensuring the curtailmentof corrupt practices. The article also contends that there weresignificant tensions between different areas of successive Londongovernments which hampered the effective handling of Irish matters.     

Remarks on an Enamelled Tablet,Preserved in the Museum at Mans,and Supposed to Represent the Effigy of Geoffrey Plantagenet

Abstract

One of the most intriguing problems in the study of Gothic architecture in the Latin East concerns the network of interrelationships between the major architectural centres in the eastern Mediterranean, especially the Crusader states of the Levant, the kingdom of Cyprus and Hospitaller Rhodes. Although scholars have been aware of the artistic links between these areas for decades, the Cyprus-Rhodes connection remains to this day largely unexplored, despite the obvious interest it presents for the development of ecclesiastical architecture in the region. This article examines the architecture of the Carmelite church in Famagusta and its formal affinities with Rhodes cathedral, in order to identify the conditions and modes of transmission of architectural designs from Cyprus to Rhodes in the second quarter of the 14th century. It will also attempt to demonstrate that the same basic design had been employed for two buildings of radically different status and function, in a reflection of the circumstances, financial or ideological, surrounding their creation.     

Policymaking and Management in Israeli Local Government

Israeli local government has reemerged despite a highly centralized political system, as local politics have become more autonomous, as a political party based on grass roots movements assumed national power, and as economic stagnation revealed shortcomings of national policies. Central-local relations are still cooperative as well as cooperative, continuing to provide safety nets in the event of local mistakes. Austerity and recurring financial crises have necessitated new management orientations and organizational adaptation among local governments. The mode of learning (and unlearning) is highly contingent: in some circumstances a quick process based on opportunism, in others having been fuelled by entrepreneurial forces. The development of strategic organizational capabilities still encounters great difficulties.     

Chinese Students in White Australia: State,Community, and Individual Responses to the Student Visa Program, 1920-25

A recent archival discovery reveals that around four hundred visas were issued to students from China to study in Australia from 1920 to 1925. This article explains and explores the significance of this little-known initiative under the White Australia Policy by reference to China's global resurgence, the role of the Chinese consulate-general in local community affairs, and support and resistance among Chinese community leaders in response to these developments. It highlights a paradox associated with the students' arrival, specifically the Melbourne publication of fabricated ‘Chinese letters home’ at a time when literate students were writing personal letters to their families and friends in China about their impressions of Melbourne, their understanding of local labour and gender relations, and their engagement with the big political and business issues of the day. The recently-released letters and papers of a contemporary student, Joe Tong, tell an untold story of Chinese Australians in the postwar era.     

Havelock Mill,Manchester: A case-study in the emergency recording of a large urban mill complex

Abstract

The early nineteenth century textile industry in Manchester is best known for its large steam-powered 'town mills', usually built in closely-packed groups alongside the canals, and for the local dominance of the cotton trade. Havelock Mill illustrates the size and complexity of these buildings but is distinguished because it incorporates the city's last intact silk mill. Documentary research and comparison with silk mills in other areas indicates that this was an exceptionally large example which was at the forefront of developments in the mechanisation of silk manufacturing. A cotton mill was later added to the site. Although parts of the complex were structurally unsound, an unusually high proportion of the original features and fittings survived.     

Material constraints to popular imaginaries: The extractive economy and resource nationalism in Bolivia

Widespread neoliberal-era privatizations in South America's extractive economies rekindled longstanding social movement demands for nationalist control of non-renewable resources and propelled the region's left political turn over the last decade. In Bolivia, where resource extraction has dominated exports since colonial times, social movements employing resource nationalist master frames overturned governments in 1952, 2003, and 2005. In 2005 indigenous leader Evo Morales was elected president promising to direct resource wealth to generate economic development, but the structural constraints created by an extractive economy have made these goals impossible to achieve over the short and medium term. This article suggests that the clash between resource nationalist imaginaries embedded in contentious social movements and the realities of long-term extractive dependent economies not only limits government policy options but also fuels continued social protest.     

West Papua,Indonesia and the Melanesian Spearhead Group: competing logics in regional and international politics

The idea of a shared Melanesian identity has been consolidated over the last three decades or so through the most important subregional organisation in the South-West Pacific—the Melanesian Spearhead Group (MSG). The solidarity of this group has been strained over various issues from time to time, but none is as fraught as the Indonesian occupation of what is commonly known as West Papua, whose indigenous Papuan people are ethnically Melanesian. In addition to recounting the Indonesian takeover of West Papua in the context of the dynamics of decolonisation, the Cold War and early regional development, the article examines the emergence of Melanesian identity and the MSG, before considering more recent developments. These focus on a recent bid by West Papuans for MSG membership, key aspects of Indonesia's role in the Melanesian subregion, and the extent to which these developments highlight competing logics in regional and international politics.     

Orientalism at Work? Dundee's Response to Competition from Calcutta,circa 1870–1914

From the late nineteenth century the Dundee jute industry faced intensifying competition from Calcutta. This article examines the responses in Dundee to this competition, focusing upon the ways Dundonians understood Calcutta and India, and how these understandings shaped the debate on possible lines of action. It argues that the diversity of approaches to the threat, inter-linked with the complexities of local politics, led to a concentration of effort on seeking to establish and then strengthen Indian factory legislation. The severity of competition from another empire country posed acute dilemmas for pro-imperial politics in the city: how could such a politics be sustained if the local economy was being so harmed by Calcutta's invasion of Dundee's markets, yet a protective response was ruled out by the realities of imperial policy?     

Christianity and Indigenous Peoples: A Personal Overview

This article summarizes its author's response over more than 30 years to the various arguments advanced against the possibility of the appropriation of Christianity by indigenous peoples. It sets out the intellectual and evidential reasons for rejecting these arguments. However, it admits that while indigenous appropriation of Christianity is always possible, under some circumstances it has been improbable. Many indigenous peoples have made use of Christianity but in the past there has been comparatively little appropriation by Native Americans or Australian Aborigines. This article explores the reasons for this. When the factors that have accounted for resistance and rejection rather than adaption no longer exist, it may be expected that Aborigines will indeed appropriate Christianity. The article concludes with a brief examination of academic work on African appropriations and suggests that new developments in Aboriginal Christianity will reveal how far comparisons can be made.