China's Response to Pandemics: From Inaction to Overreaction

Two U.S. specialists (on the governance and foreign policy aspects of China's public health issues as well as its human and medical geography) examine how two different sets of policies implemented by the government of China have affected both the geography and political ecology of pandemic disease outbreaks (HIV/AIDS, SARS, and H1N1) over the past two decades. More specifically, they argue that: (1) broad development and reform policies largely responsible for China's rapid modernization/urbanization and increasingly successful perfomance in the global economic arena have generated unexpected side-effects in terms of the location, incidence, and spread of pandemics as well as the state's capacity to mount an adequate health care response; and (2) politically motivated public health policies implemented in response to the spread of specific pandemics in China have had unanticipated impacts on the progression of disease outbreaks and their outcomes. Journal of Economic Literature, Classification Numbers: H510, H750, I180. 3 figures, 2 tables, 76 references.     

Kincentric Ecology,Species Maintenance and the Relational Power of Place in Northern Australia

This paper considers themes of species maintenance and place engagement in Yanyuwa country, northern Australia. It traces the complexity of interpretations and relational contexts involved in places that are commonly – and we argue – misleadingly, referred to as increase and magic sites. Examining one specific place, at which people carry out maintenance rituals, we explore the complex bonds that unite Yanyuwa with the geography that is the Ancestral Hill Kangaroo. Not content with the classificatory habit of declaring actions either increase oriented or hunting magic, this research more fully explicates the relational substance of places that play a key role in ecological health. This is achieved by asking how might the profundity of a place of relational importance, such as a maintenance site, be better understood and written of in ways that convey an Indigenous ontology and epistemology?     

Making a Life: Getting Ahead,and Getting a Living in Aboriginal New South Wales

ABSTRACT This paper offers an ethnographically grounded examination of the intersections between work, employment and identity for Indigenous people living in a country town in far western New South Wales, Australia. It argues that work, employment and labour are locally deployed categories that meet mainstream discourse in a precarious fashion and, that this disjunction has clear material and ideological repercussions. For most Aboriginal people in Wilcannia, you are who you are, not by virtue of what you have ‘become’ in any economic, professional or educational sense. Who you are is not a becoming, it is established at birth. These genealogical forms of being through kinship see a construction of self which in many ways is at variance to the standard ‘autonomous self‐regulating individual’ (Sennett 1998:215). This sense of self, for most, is not determined by engagement in the capitalist division of labour; indeed, the greater the engagement in the capitalist economy, the more problematic and fraught a sense of self and of belonging can become.     

Carrying the Cross,Caring for Kin: The Everyday Life of Charismatic Christianity in Remote Aboriginal Australia

ABSTRACT In this paper, I address the important yet under‐examined role of charismatic Protestant Christianity in the reconfiguring of personhood and social relations in the remote Yolngu settlement of Galiwin'ku. I focus in particular on the ways in which this form of Christianity, locally articulated, brings together indigenous concepts of personhood with those introduced by the market, the state, and evangelism to produce what I refer to as Christian individuality and Christian relatedness. These dialectical tendencies in postcolonial settlement life call attention to the ways Yolngu converts use their Christian practices both to continue kin‐based moralities in the present and to engage (if selectively) modern individualism. This paper addresses post‐colonial conditions where demands of state institutions and modern governance interact with changing ideas of personhood and sociality. It contributes to the growing anthropological literature on Pentecostal and charismatic Christianity.     

Betwixt and Between: Trauma,Survival and the Aboriginal Troopers of the Queensland Native Mounted Police

ABSTRACT

Much has been written about the history of the Queensland Native Mounted Police, mostly focussing on its development, its white officers, how much the Colonial Government genuinely knew about the actions of the Force, and how many people were killed during the frontier wars. Far less attention has been given to the Aboriginal men of the force, the nature of their recruitment, and the long-term traumatic impacts on Aboriginal peoples’ and communities’ psyches rather than broadscale changes to Aboriginal culture per se. This article examines the historical and ongoing psychological impacts of dispossession and frontier violence on Aboriginal people. Specifically, we argue that massacres, frontier violence, displacement, and the ultimate dispossession of land and destruction of traditional cultural practices resulted in both individual and collective inter-generational trauma for Aboriginal peoples. We posit that, despite the Australian frontier wars taking place over a century ago, their impacts continue to reverberate today in a range of different ways, many of which are as yet only partially understood.     

Boats on Bark: an Analysis of Groote Eylandt Aboriginal Bark-Paintings featuring Macassan Praus from the 1948 Arnhem Land Expedition, Northern Territory, Australia

This paper examines a group of Aboriginal bark-paintings featuring Macassan prau s that were collected in 1948 during the American-Australian Scientific Expedition to Arnhem Land. These paintings were studied in an effort to understand issues related to Aboriginal and Macassan cross-cultural interaction, stylistic adaptation and change, and maritime technologies. Furthermore it is one example in which the collaborative efforts of maritime and Indigenous archaeologies can achieve a more holistic technological and stylistic cross-analysis of watercraft imagery.
© 2009 The Authors     

From icons to institutions: Heritage conservation in Sydney

Over the course of the twentieth century, the Identification of heritage values in the urban environment has undergone a slow but in recent years quite dramatic shift from an elite emphasis on individual landmarks to a more inclusive appreciation also characterised by bureaucratisation, institutionalisation and commodification. Heritage is no longer an ‘add on’ to the planning system, although management, financial and philosophical problems remain. This paper traces the evolution of urban heritage consciousness and policy in Australia from the late colonial period to the postmodern era, focussing on Sydney.     

Marriage,Love Magic,and Adultery: Warlpiri Relationships as Seen by Three Generations of Anthropologists

ABSTRACT A nuclear family, that is the social unit comprising a husband, wife(s) and their children, is one of the significant core elements around which the great majority of societies are built. An individual's most immediate social and emotional relationships, those between children and parents, between husband and wife, and between siblings are encapsulated within it. How these relationships are realised in actual practice is partly dependent upon the form marriage takes. In this paper, I analyse Warlpiri marriage as practice and institution by drawing on and comparing material by Mervyn Meggitt (from his work at Lajamanu in the 1950s), Diane Bell (based on her work at Alekarenge in the 1970s) and my own data from my fieldwork at Yuendumu (from the mid 1990s and onward). My aim is to explore the following questions: What constitutes a marriage in Warlpiri eyes today? Are there continuities with the past? What has changed since the 1950s? And, what do these continuities and changes mean in regard to the way Warlpiri people live their lives today?     

New collaborations in old institutional spaces: setting a new research agenda to transform Indigenous-settler relations

ABSTRACT

Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people navigate the social and political order of the Australian settler state in ways that seek to increase their personal freedoms and political autonomy. For some groups this means seeking a firmer place within the social, political and economic life of Australia, and for others it means navigating away, towards a more distant relationship based in the resurgence of Indigenous nationhood. This navigation is composed of multifaceted and multidirectional relations between Indigenous Australians, settler Australians, and the settler state. As a discipline, political science must move beyond the study of settler institutions and begin to engage more comprehensively in research that considers the dynamics and structures of Indigenous-settler relations as a matter of priority.     

Reshaping Environments: Agriculture and Water Interactions and the Creation of Vulnerability

With reference to empirical evidence from the Caribbean and Brazil, the paper assesses how environmental vulnerability is being created through different types of agricultural intensification and abandonment. Critical to understanding this reshaping of environments is the social management of agriculture and water. The results suggest the need for new models of agro-water relations which incorporate internal and external market influences on food production and resource management. External demands for the quality of food products, over and above the environmental or labour conditions in which they are produced, tend to devalue environments and exacerbate vulnerability. These processes lead to new patterns of environmental uneven development whereby regions rapidly intensify or deintensify their agricultures and their use and availability of water.     

基于集对分析法（SPA）的中国旅游经济系统脆弱性测度研究

文章运用集对分析法,从旅游经济系统的敏感性和应对性两个方面构建指标体系,测度1983—2011年间中国旅游经济系统的脆弱性。研究表明：我国旅游经济系统整体上敏感性呈上升趋势、应对性呈上升趋势、脆弱性呈下降趋势;我国旅游经济系统敏感性具有高弹性,但其弹性在逐渐降低;近期,我国旅游经济系统脆弱性出现了翘尾现象,说明我国旅游经济系统发展中矛盾在增加。基于实证研究结果,文章认为：旅游经济系统脆弱性可以分为“内生性结构累积式脆弱”和“外生性环境胁迫式脆弱”两种类型;旅游经济系统脆弱性的深层压力,来源于“内生性结构累积式脆弱”的不断积累;利他性的工具性旅游产业政策,在一定程度上会加大后期旅游经济系统的脆弱性风险。     

Towards a Political Theology of Vulnerability Anthropological and Theological Propositions

Abstract

Recent experiences of terror, violence, and catastrophe, such as the terror attacks in Norway in 2011 or the Peshawar School Massacre leaving 132 children and nine staff dead on December 16, 2014, strengthen the sense of the fundamental vulnerability in human existence. In this article, it is argued that political theology, in responding to such experiences, should aim at perceiving and protecting vulnerability as a value. For this purpose, basic propositions for a theological anthropology of vulnerability are put forward. Likewise, propositions for interpreting God as vulnerable are presented, criticizing the traditional theistic concept of God as immutable and hence unable to suffer. The relevance of these propositions for political theology is finally addressed.     

Vulnerability and nationalism: the support for the war against Iraq in five established states

ABSTRACT. This essay attempts to shed light on why aggressive ideas gain support within established western states. To do that it attempts to answer the question why the armed conflict against Iraq received such varied support during the first four months of 2003 within the United States, the United Kingdom, Australia, France and Spain. A comparative study indicates that the justifications for the armed conflict must be endorsed in the national identities of the particular states. If not, either the justifications or national identities have to be modified. The dominant elite emerge as essential to this process, as does the public experience of vulnerability. It appears that the war against Iraq received such varied support because the initial definitions of national identities endorsed the justifications for the war to different degrees, the dominant elites promoted different opinions and the people experienced different degrees of vulnerability.     

The ‘Society’ at Bora Ceremonies: A Manifestation of a Body of Traditional Law and Custom in Aboriginal Australia relevant to Native Title Case Law

Anthropologists working on native title cases in Australia are commonly asked to identify the Aboriginal ‘society’ that holds the body of laws and customs that confer land ownership rights on certain groups of people. In this paper I investigate how the early documentation of bora initiation ceremonies is relevant to understanding contemporary Aboriginal societies and the normative laws and customs that give rise to rights and interests in land. The vast ethnographic oeuvre of R.H. Mathews (1841–1918) includes detailed documentation of bora gatherings, which allows the reconstruction of the wider social reaches of people's networks in the lower Darling Downs of eastern Australia, and can in turn be understood as the ‘society’ so often sought in current native title case law.     

From Battleship to Breakwater: post‐military adaptive reuse of the Australian warship Protector

The light cruiser Protector, built 1884, served as an Australian naval asset for 40 years. Decommissioned from the Royal Australian Navy in 1924, it was subsequently converted into a lighter. The vessel re‐entered military service during the Second World War, but was involved in a collision, condemned, and ultimately installed as a breakwater on Australia's Great Barrier Reef. While much of Protector's military career is well documented, little is known of its conversion and adaptation to civilian roles. What follows is a discussion of efforts to archaeologically document Protector's surviving hull and identify signatures of adaptive reuse indicative of its post‐military career.     

Going for Wombat — Transformations in Wirangu and the Scotdesco Community on the Far West Coast of South Australia

ABSTRACT Becoming an object of touristic interest is only one of a series of ways that Aboriginality is being transformed in contemporary Australia, as the space opens up for individuals and groups to reposition themselves as Aborigines within the nation, with a distinctive culture in various forms. The nation's appetite for Aboriginal ‘culture’, within desirable limits (Povinelli 2002) and energised by a sentimental politics (Cowlishaw 2010), continues to grow. There is, however, a destructive flip side to the politics of difference being played out within Aboriginal societies. This is evidenced by the many battles for access to or control of ‘cultural’ resources for their commercial benefits or collective survival value. In many places communities or groups are faced with the terrible choice of distinction or extinction (Comaroff & Comaroff 2009). That is, they must find, and make alienable, something distinctive about themselves or face collective extinction. How one Aboriginal community is responding to these threats and challenges is the subject of this paper. This paper also adds to the growing literature on ethno‐commercialisation by focusing on the central role of language in these processes.     

Making Skins: Initiation,Sorcery, and Eastern Min Notions of Knowledge

In this paper I consider the Kwermin notion of knowledge as ‘making skin’ of physical experience. The skin is acted upon in women's scarification and male initiations with the aim of instilling dispositions in the novices that are conducive to their becoming competent adult beings in their particular sociocultural environment. The scarification of women's abdominal skin is thought to enhance the fertility of their wombs, whereas the acts upon male novices’ skins in the initiation rituals are focused upon making them fierce warriors, vigorous husbands, and respectful communicators with ancestral spirits. It is argued that through the male initiations the Min reenact their joint origins from the ground at Yam (‘mother’) on Oksapmin land. Contrary to this initiatory emphasis on proper skin‐knowledge as fitness of being, sorcerers, and witches are greatly feared as they wrongfully penetrate the skin, either infusing the victim with suicidal desire or extracting its life‐substance until the victim withers and dies.     

Asian migration to Australia: Changing trends and implications

International migration between Asia and Australia has undergone profound change in the last two decades. This paper outlines the major changes which have occurred in this movement. The proportion of Australia's resident population born in Asia has increased from 1.1 % in 1976 to 5.5 % in 2001. Asians now make up more than a third of new settlers to Australia but there has been an increased diversity in the flow of Asian settlers to Australia as well as the substantial increase in numbers. Australian international migration has entered a new era since the mid‐1990s with a greatly increased flow of temporary workers to Australia. The inflow of these workers is less dominated by Asia‐born people than is the permanent flow except for student migration. There is also an increasing flow of movers from Australia to Asia. Much current knowledge and research remain focused on Asian permanent settlement in Australia. While this is important and worthwhile, there is a need to broaden the work to encompass the full range of population movements between Asia and Australia if the impact of international migration is to be adequately assessed.     

Sorcery at court and manor: Margery Jourdemayne, the witch of Eye next Westminster

Margery Jourdemayne, the ‘witch of Eye next Westminster’, Eleanor, duchess of Gloucester, and three scholars of the ducal household were foremost amongst those accused of treasonable witchcraft in 1441. The paper explores Margery's part in this episode, and then examines her background: her husband William came from a prosperous Middlesex yeoman family living at Acton, and he himself was a manorial official on Westminster Abbey's Ebury (Eye) estate.