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.     

Situating In Situ: A Critical Geography of Agricultural Biodiversity Conservation in the Peruvian Andes and Beyond

This paper investigates seed politics through the case study of a native potato repatriation and related livelihood projects at the Parque de la Papa (Parque) in the Peruvian Andes. This in situ oriented agrobiodiversity initiative launches a compelling critique—framed in distinctly spatial terms—of standard ex situ conservation paradigms and policies. Specifically, it works to decentralize seed conservation and to re‐situate agrobiodiversity within in situ sites and situations. This spatial reconfiguration has political and epistemological implications: it recontextualizes agricultural expertise and the fruits thereof in the farms and daily lives of Andean communities; it grounds political interventions, which recently led to Peru's decade‐long moratorium on transgenics; and it offers a decolonizing vision of genetic resource value. Through a variety of practices and discourses the Parque is articulating and actualizing a critical geography of agrobiodiversity and its conservation.     

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。     

London’s Olympic waterscape: capturing transition

The waterways of London are an essential component of the city, with the River Thames playing a prominent role in the heritage, history and identity of place. The upcoming 2012 Olympics are highlighting the Lea Valley waterways in east London as another important part of London’s waterscape, expanding London’s global presence as a ‘water city’. As part of the Creative Campus Initiative, we undertook a project based on the broad themes of water, London and the Olympics that would give voice to the changes taking place. The result is London’s Olympic Waterscape, a 20-minute film comprising both ‘expert’ interview material discussing broad themes and developments and an embodied record of our engagement with the Olympic area during a brief period in the construction process. The present article is about the journey we took through and around the east London ‘Olympic’ waterways as we attempted to capture this transitional moment on video.     

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.     

The Political Economy of Exile in the Great Dismal Swamp

The Great Dismal Swamp in North Carolina and Virginia has a history of profound significance to scholars and historians of North American diasporas. Between 1630 and 1865, thousands of maroons, enslaved canal company laborers, and disenfranchised Native Americans lived within this morass and formed communities that were connected through a dynamic swamp-wide political economy. The Great Dismal Swamp Landscape Study has been initiated to explore the archaeological landscapes of these Diasporans. This essay discusses several aspects of the theoretico-analytical research model that has guided this ongoing project. Also, included are brief explications on the methods and results of the first season of archaeological survey in the Great Dismal Swamp National Wildlife Refuge.     

Eliding the Esoteric: R. J. Campbell and Early Twentieth Century Protestant Discourse in Britain

R. J. Campbell was arguably the most renowned British religious figure of his generation, a prominent promoter of reform as a leader of non‐conforming Protestantism in Britain at the turn of the twentieth century. He is generally regarded as a promulgator of pre‐war optimism, a universalist who courted personal fame and who sparked an intra‐Protestant sectarian crisis when he initiated a new reformist movement, the “New Theology.” Most of the analysis, including Campbell's suspect retrospective memoir, treat this religious ferment as rooted in Protestant/Christian perturbation. This perspective does not allow for a wider consideration of the vibrant religious milieu of enquiry then in vogue which brought Campbell into contact with a variety of esoteric ideas and philosophies and their interlocutors. Absent this focus, important figures participating in that religious colloquy are marginalised. My article seeks to fill out the commonly accepted version of events. Material not previously examined is interrogated towards illuminating Campbell's wider interests. It postulates that Campbell was one of a number of contributors to a broad discussion on religious ideas and their relationship to Christianity, one of a number of figures shaped by, as much as shaping, the contemporary discursive environment.