‘Tibet Today’Photo Show in Hong Kong

Lhaba Phuntsog,Vice-President of the Tibet Association for Preservation and Development ot Tibetan Culture attending at the opening ceremony, Photo by Zhou AimingBriefing Tung Chee-hwa, former Hong Kong Chief Executive, with cultural protection in Tibet. Photo by Xu ShaoxiangHaving a picture taken with students of the Moinba and Lhoba ethnic groups from Tibet. Photo by Zhou AimingOpening ceremony held for the photo show and the Exhibition of China's 56 Ethnic Groups in early Janua…     

‘No More Violence nor War’:

This paper is a synoptic history of racial geography in the ‘fifth part of the world’ or Oceania — an extended region embracing what are now Australia, Island Southeast Asia, the Pacific Islands, Aotearoa/New Zealand and Papua New Guinea. The period in question stretches from classical antiquity to the Enlightenment, to focus on the consolidation of European racial thinking with the marriage of geography and raciology in the early 19th century. The paper investigates the naming of places by Europeans and its ultimate entanglement with their racial classifications of people. The formulation of geographical and anthropological knowledge is located at the interface of metropolitan discourses and local experience. This necessitates unpacking the relationships between, on the one hand, the deductive reasoning of metropolitan savants, and, on the other hand, the empirical logic of voyagers and settlers who had visited or lived in particular places, encountered their inhabitants, and been exposed, often unwittingly, to indigenous agency and knowledge.     

Future Non-Analogue Climates for Scotland’s Temperate Rainforest

Temperate rainforest is restricted to a globally rare set of climatic conditions. Scotland has among the best remaining examples of intact temperate rainforest in Europe, characterised ecologically by a unique assemblage of epiphytic bryophytes and lichens. Given climatic control on rainforest distribution and ecology, climate change is a probable risk to Scotland’s rainforest. This study investigated climate change impacts for 20 target sites, classified based on (i) bioclimatic conditions, and (ii) epiphytic diversity, into contrasting rainforest and more continental (non-rainforest) examples. Space-for-time matching identified climate analogues within the European conservation forest network, which at present have a climate similar to that expected of the target sites during the 2080s (WorldClim datasets). The results show that 2080s analogues for sites in more continental north-eastern Scotland occur in Wales and southern England. However, Scottish rainforest sites were their own ‘best analogues’ through to the 2080s, despite the fact that their climate is projected to change significantly; they had no suitable future analogue within Europe’s conservation forest network. These contrasting regional patterns highlight the need for a flexible approach to species conservation during climate change, including a strategy to cope with ecological uncertainty in Scotland’s zone of oceanic rainforest.     

‘Talking Itself Out of a Political Future’: Education and Australian Army Engagement with Papua New Guinean Independence, 1966–72

The Australian Army, while having a long association with Papua New Guinea after the Second World War and before independence in 1975, is often conceptualized as a small player in the decolonization process, of interest to scholars because of its cost and potential threat to democratic government. This article examines the Army’s education programme and associated policies in the decade before independence to argue that the institution was acutely aware of looming decolonization, and actively sought to create a national Papua New Guinean military by repurposing policies originally designed to serve Australia’s defence needs, in particular through ‘civic’ education. It embarked on this path without direction from the Department of Territories. While the results of ‘civic’ education are difficult to determine, this article shows that the Australian Army was engaged in the profound shifts occurring around it in Papua New Guinea.     

Beyond ‘resistance’: rethinking nonhuman agency for a ‘more-than-human’ world

This article argues that rethinking historical agency to include nonhuman agents is one way to integrate better animals into historical narratives. Drawing on posthumanist theories from geography, anthropology and science and technology studies (STS), and forming part of a growing interest in nonhuman, particularly animal, agency, it aims to clear some theoretical and historiographical ground to provide a basis for claims that nature has agency. It then argues that environmental and animal historians have too readily equated nonhuman agency with ‘resistance’, a concept that does not easily map onto animal behaviour and one which also fails to capture the diversity of nonhuman agencies. Using case studies of Police rescue dogs in early twentieth-century France and animals on the Western Front, it argues that exploring the diverse types of nonhuman agencies and their deep and multiple entanglements with human agents will extend studies of nonhumans beyond the resistance model.     

Destroy? ‘Migrate’? Conceal? British Strategies for the Disposal of Sensitive Records of Colonial Administrations at Independence

Publicity given in 2011 to the existence of a Foreign and Commonwealth Office ‘migrated archive’, now known also as the ‘Hanslope disclosure’, following a High Court demand for release of records relative to a case brought by former Mau Mau detainees, led me to explore files already in the public domain which might throw light on British policy towards the ‘disposal’ of locally created records of colonial administrations at independence. This article examines Colonial Office and Commonwealth Relations Office files concerned primarily with Kenya, Tanganyika, Nigeria and the Central African Federation, but which reveal much about policy and practice not only in sub-Saharan Africa, but also in Southeast Asia. Reasons for refusals to pass material to successor independent governments, and the underlying security concerns, are spelled out in the records; some indication of the volume of records destroyed or sent to London is given; methods of destruction and transmission are discussed; deliberate misinformation given to local politicians and officials is admitted; and tensions between the Foreign and Commonwealth Office and the Public Record Office, and between political expediency and archival practice, are revealed. The article continues with a discussion of ultimately inconclusive deliberations led by UNESCO in the 1970s and 1980s which sought the return of, or access to, ‘migrated’ records ‘in the search of historical truth and continuity’.     

Tibet Policies Enrich Region‘s Development

During an interview with the German magazine Der Spiegel published on March 26,the 14th Dalai Lama attacked the Chinese government as“dividing Tibet by letting other provinces govern parts of Tibet“.He also claimed that Tibet was“suffering cultural homicide“.     

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).     

‘Lockout’ laws or ‘rock out’ laws? Governing Sydney’s night-time economy and implications for the ‘music city’

‘Lockout laws’ are not new in Australia – variants exist and have been trialled or continue to operate in Newcastle (since 2008), Melbourne (abandoned in 2008), and Adelaide (since 2013) and Darwin (since 2007). In February 2014, the New South Wales O’Farrell Coalition government introduced 1.30 am lockout and 3 am last drink laws for the Sydney CBD (Central Business District), among a series of other measures. The subsequent controversies about the ‘lockout laws’ in Sydney have provoked a curious and vivid set of debates encompassing crime, medical, moral, social, libertarian, cultural and industrial discourses. In this paper I wish to assess the new regulatory landscape within historical and contemporary perspectives of nightlife economies increasingly privileging cultural and entertainment city uses. Beyond unpacking the ‘lockout’ debate in terms of ‘liveability’ and ‘cultural city’ meanings as practised by Australian cities, this article will focus on the implications for Sydney’s ability to maintain its national and global status as a music city.     

Old Tibet:A Paradise for…

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

Relax,Don’t Do It: A Future for Archaeological Monitoring

Preservation in situ and the monitoring of archaeological sites have become important themes since the acceptance and implementation of the Valletta Treaty. In the last few decades, our knowledge of degradation processes has increased manyfold, and a range of techniques have been tested and applied for use in both assessment and monitoring. Despite these successes, all is not well. First, we have little notion of the speed of the decay processes involved. This makes it difficult to distinguish between acute and protracted degradation. Apart from that, many assessments and subsequent monitoring projects rely (too?) heavily on complex and costly specialist technology. For any future preservation — in situ — projects low-tech observations together with best estimates of decay rates and archaeological site information should be combined to make an accurate assessment of the effects of decay on the archaeological record. Monitoring for preservation purposes is only appropriate if (1) decay processes occur within a relevant and measurable time scale, and (2) if mitigating actions can be taken or preservation ex situ can be performed (i.e. a rescue excavation) if significant degradation takes place.     

Modernization:A Necessary Road for Tibet

TibetanhistoryforthepastmillenniumshowsthatmodernizationisanecessaryroadthatTibetmusttakeinordertoachievesocialandeconomicprogress.OnlyundertheleadershipoftheChineseCommunistPartycantheTibetanpeoplejoinotherethnicgroupsinChinatoachievethispurpose.Inthe19thcentury,ChinasufferedfromseveralinvasionsbyWesternpowers.EventheyinfiltratedChinaculturallyandeconomically,theystillfearedthatChinacouldbecomestrongenoughtochallengetheireconomicandmilitarypowerThisiswhytheWesternpowershavebeenworkingtop…