Working holiday makers in Australia: food security,climate change,and the backpacker tax

This commentary considers an often overlooked contribution to food security in Australia—the labour of working holiday makers. Their ability to act as a flexible and mobile temporary workforce is essential to the maintenance of the Australian agricultural industry. Previously, no tax was payable on income below $18,200, but a 2015 proposal to increase their tax rate sparked a vigorous political debate and so revealed their importance to the agricultural industry. A decline in backpacker numbers would cause agriculture to shrink to cope with smaller workforces. But the effects of climate change are expected to further shrink agricultural areas as extreme events and hotter temperatures impact crops, livestock, and the productivity of agricultural workers. Issues that appear manageable when viewed in isolation, such as increases in the tax rate on working holiday makers, become more problematic when viewed in conjunction with other impacts affecting agriculture. Thus, the ‘backpacker tax’ risks making food security harder to maintain at a time when Australia's agricultural system is already vulnerable to climate change.     

The Two Eschatological Perspectives of the Book of Daniel

The revelatory traditions found in chs. 2,7-12 of the book of Daniel are exceptional in connecting the historical circumstances pertaining to the persecution under Antiochus IV Epiphanes with the eschatological hopes of the Hebrew Bible. We will argue that the nature of this connection is twofold. On the one hand, for the redactor who gave the book of Daniel its canonical form, the distress associated with Antiochus was the distress associated with the last days. On the other hand, for the original composers of the book of Daniel, the distress associated with Antiochus was only a precursor to the distress associated with the last days. Finally, we will apply the insights gained from making this argument to the question of the book of Daniel’s composition.     

Pray the gay away: identity conflict between Christianity and sexuality in Hong Kong sexual minorities

Recognition and respect for sexual minorities in Hong Kong is still a contested area. Public sexual identity politics in Hong Kong has been framed by traditional Chinese gender ideology and imported Christian beliefs which are profoundly negative. Focusing on the interpersonal relationships in three spheres of life, the research adopted the sociological perspective of personal life and the feminist geographers’ idea of spatialization of identity management to analyze how the sexual self of sexual minorities has been marginalized and excluded in intimate social spaces of family, church communities and schools in Hong Kong with specific spatial practices and different forms of power/knowledge. By examining overlooked intimate injustice in personal life, this study illustrates that identity conflicts between Christianity and non-heterosexuality in everyday life is constructed through misrepresentation, misrecognition, harassment and exclusion in intimate relationships. Different types of knowledge are being used to reiterate pre-existing norms and institutionalized patterns of cultural value that constitute the sexual minorities as comparatively unworthy of respect. These micro-political processes involve both conformity and resistance to gender and sexual stereotypes. Participants managed to develop spatial coping strategies such as concealment, compartmentalization, confrontation and alternative sources of support to manage their lives with dignity and self-esteem.     

Project SAMPHIRE: Crowd Sourcing Maritime Archaeology data off Scotland's West Coast

Perhaps the greatest barrier to effective management of underwater cultural heritage is the lack of data on the nature and location of offshore archaeological resources. This is a problem shared with terrestrial archaeology, but is particularly acute due to the limitations of survey techniques in the underwater environment. In Scotland <15% of known ship losses from the last 200 years have been located and the record is far less comprehensive for earlier periods, verging on a near total data gap. Most known archaeological sites in Scottish waters have been discovered through large-scale sonar survey of relatively low resolution and a considerable bias has been introduced in the archaeological record; this has favored the discovery and documentation of larger and more recent, often upstanding, metal shipwrecks. This article presents the methods and results from a three-year project designed to reduce this bias by demonstrating large-scale prospecting for maritime archaeology through a community-based crowd-sourcing approach. Project SAMPHIRE (the Scottish Atlantic Maritime Past: Heritage, Investigation, Research and Education Project) was geographically focused on the west coast of the Scottish mainland and was undertaken between 2013 and 2015, resulting in a large number of new archaeological discoveries, including shipwrecks, aircraft, and other material of a much more varied nature than what is typically found through large-scale hydrographic surveys.     

Arms Racing in ‘Space’: Spatial Modelling of Military Spending around the World

This paper builds on previous research into determinants of military spending by examining global and local spatial effects. Other research has examined the effects of regional differences and neighbours' spending levels with standard econometric techniques. This paper uses spatial econometrics to gain a better understanding of the influence of location and distance on levels of defence spending. I find that a spatial lag specification provides much more robust evidence of arms racing and security dilemma dynamics than previous studies. These basic dynamics have been difficult to detect empirically without the context and nuance introduced by spatial modelling. The paper represents a first cut at the topic, but two specific findings emerge. First, globally there is positive spatial correlation (nearby states have similar levels of spending). This conforms to arms racing and security dilemma expectations. And, second, locally there is variation in the patterns of spatial clustering across broad international regions (e.g. Europe, Asia etc.). The second finding supports previous research suggesting important qualitative regional variation in patterns of defence spending and international conflict. The models also confirm the effects of political regime type and interstate war on defence spending, and are robust to the inclusion of a temporally lagged dependent variable.     

Book reviews

The Solitary Self: Jean‐Jacques Rousseau in Exil and Adversity. By Maurice Cranston (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1997) xii + 247 pp. $29.95 cloth.

The Self‐Aware Image: An Insight into Early Modern Meta‐Painting. By Victor I. Stoichita (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997) xv + 345 pp. $85.00, £55.00 cloth.

The Cambridge Companion to Nietzsche. Edited by Bernd Magnus and Kathleen M. Higgins (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996) ix + 403 pp. $18.95, £13.95 paper, $59.95, £40.00 cloth.

David Hume: Political Essays. Edited by Knud Haakonssen, Cambridge Texts in the History of Political Thought (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994) lxvi + 346 pp. $49.95, £30.00 cloth, $15.95, £10.95 paper.

Sartre, Foucault, and Historical Reason. By Thomas R. Flynn (Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 1997) 340 + xvi pages. $18.95 paper.

Shaping World History: Breakthroughs in Ecology, Technology, Science, and Politics. By Mary Kilbourne Matossian (Armonk, NY: M.E. Sharpe, 1997) 264 pp. $62.95 cloth, $22.95 paper.     

Forbidden Images: Rock Paintings and the Nyau Secret Society of Central Malaŵi and Eastern Zambia

This paper examines the rock art of the nyau secret society of eastern Zambia and central Malai. The art dates principally from the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. It has been known to researchers since the 1970s but has given up few of its secrets. I examine the questions of why the art was made and why the tradition ceased. Key to answering these is the realization that the art belonged to a specific historical and geographic context: the era and area where nyau was forced to become an underground movement because of its suppression by Ngoni invaders, missions, and the later colonial government. The art provides us with detailed insights into the way nyau has served in the process of overcoming and manipulating the traumatic social changes faced by Chea society in the last few centuries.Cet article examine l'art rupestre de la société secrète de nyau au est du Zambia et Malai centrale. L'art date principalement aux dix-neuvième et bas vingtième siècles. Recherchers ont su l'art depuis les années soixante-dix, mais ils ont appris peu de ses secrets. J'examine les questions de pourquoi l'art était fabriquer et pourquoi la tradition a cessé. Pour résoudre ces questions c'est important à réaliser que l'art était à sa place dans un milieu spécifique d'histoire et géographie: au temps et place où nyau était forcer à devenir un mouvement clandestin à cause de sa répression par les envahisseurs Ngoni, les missions et, plus tard, le gouvernement colonial. L'art nous donne les aperçus détaillé sur comment nyau a servi dans le procès à surmonter et manipuler les changements traumatiques que la société Chea a bravé dans les siècles récents.