The Bush administration and Asia Pacific multilateralism: unrequited love?

This article challenges the presumed multilateral aversion of the George W. Bush administration. It argues that, at least in its approach toward the Asia-Pacific, this administration has been a more active and stimulatory advocate of multilateral approaches than is commonly acknowledged. The article begins by documenting the Bush administration's multilateral activism in the Asia-Pacific and examines those factors which appear to have contributed towards it. It then goes on to demonstrate, however, that Bush's at times unexpected enthusiasm for multilateral approaches has encountered a high degree of regional reticence. For a part of the world that has been affording an increased prominence to multilateral institutions and activities, this finding is initially both surprising and significant. The article concludes by seeking to account for this apparent anomaly and by considering its possible implications for the emerging regional architecture.     

Pre-pottery farmers on the Pacific coast of southern Mexico

Large island-like shell mounds along the southern coast of Mexico are the earliest known archaeological sites on the Pacific margin of Mesoamerica. These aceramic deposits date to between 7500 and 3800 cal BP and have been interpreted as locations where foragers, living elsewhere seasonally on the coastal plain, harvested shellfish and other estuarine resources. Based on an accumulation of paleoecological data from elsewhere in the lowland Neotropics of Mesoamerica, southern Central America and South America we pose and provide a first test of an alternative subsistence model: that the Archaic Period populations in this area were slash and burn farmers. Burned maize phytoliths first appear in these sedimentary records at 6500 cal BP in association with macroscopic charcoal and forest disturbance plant taxa. Periodic burning and forest disturbance, consistent with farming activities, are also evident in the macroscopic charcoal record between 6500 and 4700 cal BP. Pollen, phytolith and charcoal records all point to sustained burning, forest disturbance and the cultivation of maize between 4700 and 3800 cal BP. These data suggest that people were slash and burn farming during the Archaic Period prior to the adoption of pottery and the proliferation of Early Formative Period villages and full-fledged agriculture based on near or total reliance on crop plants after ∼3800 cal BP.     

Urban research and child-friendly cities: a new Australian outline

Recent public debates about Australia's children and young people have begun to acknowledge the direct impact of urban development on their health and well-being. This paper reviews a broad range of trans-disciplinary literature addressing child-friendliness in contemporary Australian cities, drawing particular attention to the fact that even some of the most recognised texts on children and young people in Australia still make few references in their analysis to the issue of place and neighbourhood. More specifically, the paper points to two particular research challenges confronting the ongoing study of young people's well-being in urban areas, including (a) the need for a more thorough analysis, both conceptual and applied, about how children and young people's well-being is affected by different urban forms and by the social and ecological variations that occur throughout cities; and (b) the focus on younger children needs to be complemented by a focus on adolescents and young adults who in turn need to be actively involved in confronting these challenges.     

Eric Voegelin as a Teacher's Teacher

ABSTRACT

Eric Voegelin was never interested in forming a school—his quest for truth was so Socratic that the last thing he wanted was people simply commenting on his own work. At the same time, his approach to the key texts of Western experience—and in his later years, of Eastern and archaic Neolithic and Paleolithic—blazed the way for his readers to get out there into that wide field of the human quest for transcendence and expand on his work in their own way. What this essay attempts, however sketchily, is to record his impact on my own teaching, with five samples of Voegelin-inspired courses I've developed. I begin with headlines from a philosophical effort at articulating an Irish Neolithic experience at Newgrange (3200 BC)—elsewhere, and following Voegelin, I've pushed that work back through Lascaux to Chauvet (32,000 BC). Then a brief mention of a Voegelinian reading of the beautiful Hindu Bhagavad Gita, followed by interpretations of Dostoevsky and Solzhenitsyn, and finally, a critique of Richard Dawkins' God Delusion. While, over the years, my classes also expanded on The World of the Polis and Plato and Aristotle, what Voegelin always seemed to demand was for us to engage in what he calls ‘the quest of the quest,' rather than simply repeat him. That's why I see him as the teacher's teacher: he wanted you, as a philosophy lecturer, to get on with your own search, and to awaken in your students what he called ‘the Question as a constant structure in the experience of reality.’     

Beyond Mainstream Approaches to Political Participation: A Response to Aaron Martin

Aaron Martin's (2012) recent article is the first to use survey data to compare the political participation of young people with that of older age groups in Australia. As such, it adds to our empirical knowledge of political participation, particularly by emphasising the changing focus of young people's engagement. Yet, like most mainstream, and especially quantitative, political participation researchers, Martin does not engage adequately with the growing, more critical literature). This response raises some of the issues emphasised in this literature, relating them directly to Martin's contribution. It has four sections: firstly, a brief consideration of Martin's main conclusions; secondly, a discussion of putative reasons for the change in forms of participation; thirdly, a consideration of broader forms of political participation; and finally, a consideration of the relationship between identity and political participation, which is at the core of most broader discussions of the latter.

阿隆·马丁（2012）在最近的文章中首先使用调查资料对澳大利亚年轻人和更年长者的政治参与做了比较。他的研究,特别是关于年轻人参与焦点的转移那部分,丰富了关于政治参与的实证知识。但与从事政治参与的主流尤其是定量研究的学者一样,马丁对于正在出现的、批判性的文献缺乏足够的关注。本文根据这些文献提出跟马丁研究相关的问题。本文包括四个部分：1）简要评述马丁的主要结论;2）讨论参与形式变化的推定原因;3）思考更为宽广的政治参与形式;4）思考身份与政治参与之间的关系,那是在更大范围内讨论政治参与的核心问题。     

US-China relations after 11 September: a long engagement or marriage of convenience?

This article traces the evolution of US–Sino relations in the period since the 11 September attacks on the World Trade Centre and the Pentagon. It argues that the resultant, largely unanticipated rapprochement that has occurred between Beijing and Washington is actually more robust than many analysts have thus far been prepared to acknowledge. While conflictual elements will remain a feature of this all-important bilateral relationship, the article contends that the current ‘honeymoon period’ in US–Sino relations is likely to persist for some time yet, largely because it is underwritten by a deeper combination of economic, political and strategic considerations. While recognising that it is both natural and necessary to contemplate the ‘worst of times’ that may still lie ahead in US–Sino relations, the article concludes that it is particularly important for Australian policymakers to acknowledge the potential for a prolongation of the post-11 September ‘honeymoon’ and to actively encourage this possibility as they contemplate alternative approaches to managing China's rise.     

Learning About Regionalism from Europe: ‘Economic Normalisation’ and Beyond

This paper critically analyses the European Union's regional policy framework and considers its implications for Australia's multi‐level governance system. The analysis is made with reference to the ‘new regionalist’ debates in Europe and North America that have asserted the importance of regional economic development in the context of globalisation. New regionalism's advocacy of ‘economic normalisation’ as a leading regional policy aim is critically evaluated against the EU policy experience. Conclusions about the adequacy of new regionalist claims are drawn for Australian policy debates.