Is there a Sovietology of South‐East Asian studies?

This article provides an indictment of the study of South-East Asian international relations by confronting head-on the problems that have arisen within this field, in particular the way in which Western academics ended up colluding with deeply illiberal regimes in the area, which excluded dissenting opinions, often by deliberately denouncing these opinions as 'polemical'. This study uses the discipline of Sovietology to explore the reasons why South-East Asian studies developed into a closed community of scholarship, often hostile to dissenting viewpoints. The disciplines bear comparison because they both manifestly failed to predict the cataclysms that befell their respective areas of study. The analysis identifies similarities in the way in which the two disciplines seemed to ignore sceptical voices and evolved a shared belief in 'system stability'. As a result, both Soviet studies and the study of South-East Asian international relations developed serious methodological flaws. However, this study argues that South-East Asian studies suffered even more severe disciplinary shortcomings than its Sovietological counterpart because the academic space was further de-intellectualized by the pervasive influence of the authoritarian South-East Asian developmental state which blurred the distinction between scholarship and bureaucracy and which succeeded in co-opting Western academics. The result was to create a field of study that promulgated the tyranny of the single truth, which erroneously perceived South-East Asia as a region of domestic tranquillity and regional order. What, in fact, emerged was an intellectual culture of self-censorship that kept South-East Asian studies within tacit, self-regulated boundaries.     

Colgi, Cajal and the Neuron Doctrine

Camillo Golgi and Santiago Ramon y Cajal shared the Nobel Prize in 1906 for their work on the histology of the nerve cell, but both held diametrically opposed views about the Neuron Doctrine which emphasizes the structural, functional and developmental singularity of the nerve cell. Golgi's reticularist views remained entrenched and his work on the nervous system did not venture greatly into new territories after its original flowering, which had greater impact than is now commonly credited. Cajal, by contrast, by the time he was awarded the Nobel Prize, was already breaking new ground with a new staining technique in the field of peripheral nerve regeneration, seeing the reconstruction of a severed nerve by sprouting from the proximal stump as another manifestation of the Neuron Doctrine. Paradoxically, identical studies were going on simultaneously in Golgi's laboratory in the hands of Aldo Perroncito, but the findings did not seem to influence Golgi's thinking on the Neuron Doctrine.     

The Extra‐Parliamentary Organisation of the Whig Junto in the Reign of William III

There is much evidence for the parliamentary organisation of the whig junto in Queen Anne's reign, but little for its extra‐parliamentary organisation. This note gives evidence for such extra‐parliamentary organisation late in the reign of William III from letters by both James Vernon and Robert Harley, which describe meetings of the junto and some of its supporters in the country houses of followers in the summers of 1698, 1699 and 1700.     

The charophyte Lamprothamnium succinctum as an environmental indicator: a Holocene example from Tom Thumbs Lagoon,eastern Australia

The palaeobiota from a middle to late Holocene succession in Tom Thumbs Lagoon, N.S.W., Australia, reflects a range of environmental conditions caused by sea-level changes and active estuarine sedimentation. At the base of the succession (～ ?0.4 m AHD) a thin bed, containing molluscs dated at 6.7 ka B.P. by radiocarbon and amino acid racemisation, and foraminifers is indicative of open estuarine conditions. From +0.35 m AHD towards the top of the sequence the charophyte Lamprothamnium succinctum occurs in subrecent deposits. This species is characterised here by statistical measurements, and new characters are described and illustrated. The charophytes record a drop in sea level and the establishment of a lower salinity artificial wetland. The investigation has also established that decalcification in charophytes can be related to acidification produced by the release of organic acids, aggravated after 1928 by anthropogenic pollution.