Dispossession 1990s style: Aborigines,islanders and the policy making process of the Goss labor government

Aboriginal and Islander people in Queensland remain unempowered in the policy making process of government. This is achieved by downgrading and under‐resourcing the relevant portfolio, by co‐locating it with welfare, by giving other departments statutory rights in decision making on indigenous issues which are not reciprocal, by relocating key indigenous policy areas into otherwise antagonistic departments, by ghettoising the issues in Cabinet and by failing to elucidate clear policy guidelines on indigenous issues. The Goss government has also ensured that indigenous people remain unempowered outside of government by failing to legislate for regional land councils, Aboriginal majority on national parks boards of management and an Aboriginal‐controlled statutory acquisitions fund and by retaining excessive discretionary power in the administration of the 1991 Land Acts.     

The chronology of the Valley Enclosures: implications for the interpretation of Great Zimbabwe

The recent structuralist model of the social organization of space at Great Zimbabwe, proposed by Huffman, is critically examined in the light of new chronological data. Architectural histories of the Western and Central Valley Enclosures (Posselt and Phillips Ruins respectively) are used to show the complex changes that occur through time in the social meaning of spatial organization. It is argued that these changes are not adequately accounted for in Huffman's model. The Western Valley Enclosure, dated on the basis of a large piece of blue-on-white Chinese porcelain of the Honghzi period (Ming Dynasty, AD 1488–1505) recovered from a sealed context, was still occupied when most other areas of Great Zimbabwe were abandoned. Huffman's incorporation of these enclosures into a synchronic structuralist interpretation of the site is therefore probably invalid. These new data highlight the importance of chronological control in the development of structural and symbolic interpretations of Great Zimbabwe.

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Résumé Le modèle structuraliste de l'organisation sociale de l'espace à la Grande Zimbabwe proposé récemment par Huffman est examiné de façon critique, en fonction de données chronologiques récentes. Les histories architecturales des enclos des vallées Ouest et du Centre (Posselt et Phillips Ruins) sont utilisées afin de démontrer les changements complexes subit au cours du temps par la dimension sociale de l'organisation de l'espace. Les auteurs proposent que ces changements ne sont pas reflétés de manière convaincante par le modèle de Huffman. L'enclos de la vallée de l'Ouest est daté par la présence d'un fragment de porcelaine chinoise large, bleu sur blanc, appartenant à la période Houghzi (Dinastie de Ming 1488–1505 AD), trouvé dans un contexte scéllé; ceci prouve que le site était encore occupé alors que la plupart des autres quartiers de la Grande Zimbabwe étaient déjá abandonnés. L'incorporation par Huffman de ces enclos dans l'interprétation synchronique structuraliste du site n'est donc probablement pas correcte. Ces données nouvelles mettent en lumière l'importance du control chronologique pour le développement d'interpretations symboliques et structuralistes de la Grande Zimbabwe.

     

How to talk (and not to talk) about school shootings

In this guest editorial, the author addresses the latest school shootings at the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida. This event is weighed up against reports written by prominent academics, including anthropologists, during previous school shootings.     

The New Commonwealth

THE COMMONWEALTH IN THE WORLD. J. D. B. Miller. Duckworth, 1958, 25/‐ stg.

THE CABINET IN THE COMMONWEALTH: POST‐WAR DEVELOPMENTS IN AFRICA, THE WEST INDIES AND SOUTHEAST ASIA. H. V. Wiseman. Stevens, 1958, 50/‐ stg.     

Organisational geographies of corporate responsibility: a UK-US comparison of retailers' ethical trading initiatives

Ethical trade, involving corporate codes of conduct for sitesof production, has become a key means through which labour inretailers’ global supply chains is regulated. Yet, thereis evidence to suggest that retail corporations vary markedlyin their approaches to ethical trade and that such variationis shaped, in part, by the national-institutional contexts inwhich retailers are based. This article explores this insightby evaluating the distinct roles played by multi-stakeholderinitiatives for ethical trade in the UK and USA. While the UK'score multi-stakeholder initiative, the Ethical Trading Initiative(ETI), encompasses retailers from a variety of sectors and takesa developmental and continuous learning approach to ethicaltrade, the US multi-stakeholder initiatives are focussed moreon corporate accountability based on compliance monitoring exclusivelyin the clothing sector. Given recent organisational attemptsto foster transnational dialogue between multi-stakeholder initiatives,though, we argue that the precise ways in which national-institutionalcontexts shape retailers’ ethical trading approaches arefluid and mutable. We contribute to the literature on the governanceof global supply chains, retailer power and corporate responsibilityby emphasising the political significance of national-institutionalenvironments. However, in line with notions of relational economicgeography, we understand these national-institutional environmentsas active and dynamic contexts, and accentuate the coalitionalways in which nationally based organisations evolve in theirhome countries and go on to shape broader transnational agendasfor ethical trade.     

Empire and Domestic Space in the Fiction of Jamaica Kincaid

Three novels by Jamaica Kincaid are critically investigated for their representation of colonial and domestic space. Aspiring middle-class Afro-Caribbean families in the patriarchal-colonial society of 1950s and 1960s British Antigua occupied social spaces gendered largely according to western design. In Kincaid’s fiction, the house and yard are designated as feminine and reproductive spaces, while outside the home lies the public world of employment, administration, formal education and migration opportunity, all of which are governed by the norms and expectations of a white Eurocentric culture. Kincaid’s female characters display strategies of subversion and resistance which disrupt the homogeneity of territorial and cultural colonisation.     

The Foreign Secretary Goes to Court: John Simon and his Critics

In January 1935, Sir John Simon won an action for slander againsta Methodist minister from Norfolk who had accused the ForeignSecretary of attacking the Peace Ballot because it would damagehis financial interests in the armaments business. The casewas the culmination of more than two years of rumours and allegationsagainst Simon. The charge made by the Revd J. W. Bond againstthe Foreign Secretary was entirely without foundation, but invoicing his belief that the private manufacture of armamentswas damaging to the cause of disarmament, he was expressinga view that was widely held both in his own Church and amongthe wider peace movement. The Methodist Church was deeply dividedover international questions in the 1930s. Simon, for his part,took legal action against Bond both because he was weary ofthe allegations against him and in the hope of protecting hisreputation as Foreign Secretary, which had long been under attackboth in the press and in Parliament.