The Electoral Politics of Economic Reform in Australia: The 1998 Election

Like many other advanced industrial democracies, Australia has experienced major and ongoing economic reform over the last two decades, the pace of which has, if anything, increased since the election of the Liberal‐National government in 1996. These developments have led to a growing sense of economic insecurity among many voters. Many of these concerns were focused on the 1998 election, when the Liberal‐National Coalition advocated the introduction of a goods and services tax. This paper uses the 1998 Australian Election Study (AES) survey to examine the impact of economic evaluations, economic insecurity and economic issues on voting in the election. The results demonstrate the existence of widespread economic concerns across the electorate, but that the Coalition gained a marginal electoral advantage on the tax reform issue. Economic issues were also a cause of defection to the new One Nation Party, although further analysis reveals that its support was motivated more by race and ethnic concerns than by economic discontent.     

Village Inventions: Historical Variations Upon a Regional Theme in Uiaku,Papua New Guinea

Anthropologists have come to realize that even the most ‘traditional’ Melanesian practices and ideologies may be historically shaped by the people's experiences within encompassing regional systems. This article examines the reshaping of local understandings of the village among the Maisin people of Oro Province over the past century. I distinguish three contexts within which Maisin notions of the village have been formed: colonial models of village government imposed before the Second World War; Christian village cooperatives in the post-war colonial period; and village meetings in the 1980s. The paper shows that the idea of the village has a complex evolution, shaped within overlapping dialogues between villagers and significant outsiders and between elder and younger village leaders who have had differing experiences of the outside world and the place of their own community within it.     

Obsidian sources in highland Yemen and their relevance to archaeological research in the Red Sea region

The Red Sea and surrounding area formed through dynamic uplift and rifting of Afro-Arabia, and associated volcanism (both oceanic and continental in character). As a result, volcanic landforms and products are widespread and play a vital role in the natural and cultural landscapes of humans occupying the highlands and lowlands on both sides of the Red Sea. Archaeologists have suggested for some time that Afro-Arabian trade in obsidian had its roots in the prehistoric period and that the region was very likely the source of an abundance of obsidian artefacts found as far afield as Egypt, the Persian Gulf and Mesopotamia, and which do not match the well-known Anatolian, Transcaucasian or Mediterranean sources. Nonetheless, the southern Red Sea is one of the few obsidian-rich regions exploited in antiquity that has been barely investigated. In this paper, we highlight new geochemical analyses (carried out by LA-ICP-MS) of obsidian sources in Southern Arabia and beyond, that enhance our knowledge of obsidian exploitation from as early as the Neolithic period, and which enable us to evaluate the role that highland Yemen obsidian sources played in prehistoric long-distance trade. In addition, we present new evidence for explosive volcanic eruptions that likely affected the highland populations of Yemen in the 4th millennium BC.     

Publications briefly noted

SUEHIRO KITAGUCHI (trans. Alastair McLauchlan). An Introduction to the Buraku Issue: Questions and Answers. Richmond, Surrey: Japan Library, 1999. 213 pp. £35.00, hardcover.

WANG LING‐CHI and WANG GUNGWU (eds). The Chinese Diaspora: selected Essays. Two Volumes. Singapore: Times Academic Press, 1998. Vol. 1: xiv, 287 pp. US$39.00, hardcover; Vol. 2: xii, 300 pp. US$39.00, hardcover.

JOHN S. BOWMAN (ed). Columbia Chronologies of Asian History and Culture. New York: Cornell University Press, 2000. US$85.00; £52.50, hardcover.

PHYLLIS L. THOMPSON (ed). Dear Alice: letters Home from American Teachers Learning to Live in China. Berkeley: The Institute of East Asian Studies, 1998. xiv, 337 pp. US$19.95, paper.

PAUL W. LEWIS and BAI BIBO (PIU BO). Hani‐English English‐Hani Dictionary. London: Kegan Paul International, 1996. 837 pp. £95.00, hardcover.

DONALD DENOON, PHILIPPA MEIN‐SMITH with MARIVIC WYNDHAM. A History of Australia, New Zealand and the Pacific. Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, 2000. xviii, 523 pp. US$60.00, hardcover; £16.00, paper.

WANG GUNGWU and JOHN WONG (eds). Hong Kong in China: the Challenges of Transition. Singapore: Times Academic Press, 1999. 324 pp. Tables. No price given, hardcover.

JOHN McCREERY. Japanese Consumer Behavior: from Worker Bees to Wary Shoppers. Richmond, Surrey: Curzon Press, 2000. 278 pp. Illustrations. £14.99, paper.

ENGELBERT KAEMPFER. Kaempfer's Japan: Tokugawa Culture Observed. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1999. 545 pp. US$64.00, hardcover; US$34.95, paper.

HIROMITSU IWAMOTO. Nanshin: Japanese Settlers in Papua and New Guinea 1890–1949. Canberra: The Journal of Pacific History, 1999. 175 pp.

BARBARA BENNETT PETERSON (editor in chief). Notable Women of China: Shang Dynasty to the Early Twentieth Century. Armonk NY: M. E. Sharpe, 2000. 402 pp. US$74.95, hardcover.

JOSEPH CHENG (ed). Political Participation in Hong Kong: theoretical Issues and Historical Legacy. Hong Kong: City University of Hong Kong Press, 1999. xviii, 321 pp. Tables. US$34.00, paper.

NEIL J. DIAMANT. Revolutionizing the Family: politics, Love, and Divorce in Urban and Rural China 1949–1968. Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2000. xviii, 440 pp. US$55.00, hardcover.

DONALD KEENE. Seeds in the Heart: Japanese Literature from Earliest Times to the Late Sixteenth Century. A History of Japanese Literature, Vol. 1. New York: Columbia University Press, 1999. xiii, 1,265 pp. US$32.50, paper.

DONALD KEENE. World within Walls: Japanese Literature of the Pre‐modern Era, 1600–1867. A History of Japanese Literature, Vol. 2. New York: Columbia University Press, 1999. xv, 606 pp. US$25.00, paper.

WM. THEODORE DE BARY and RICHARD LUFRANO (eds). Sources of Chinese Tradition. Second Edition, Vol. II. New York: Columbia University Press, 2000. xviii, 636 pp. US$49.50, hardcover.

RAE YANG. Spider Eaters: a Memoir. Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1998. xi, 285 pp. US$16.95, paper.     

Election Campaigns and Television News Coverage: The Case of the 2001 Australian Election

This paper examines the patterns of television news coverage of the political parties, their leaders and the issues they raised during the 2001 Australian federal election campaign. By focusing on some issues, parties and leaders, television has long been argued to constrain voters' evaluations. We find that television news coverage in the 2001 Australian election campaign focused primarily on international issues, especially terrorism and asylum seekers, and on the two major parties—virtually to the exclusion of coverage of the minor parties and their leaders. Within the major party ‘two-horse race’, television gave substantially more coverage to the leaders than to the parties themselves, thereby sustaining what some have called a ‘presidential’-style political contest. John Howard emerged as the winner in the leaders' stakes, garnering more coverage than Labor's Kim Beazley.