Endangered musical heritage as a wicked problem

The issue of the widespread decline and loss of musical heritage has recently found increasing prominence in ethnomusicological discourse, and many applied projects from grassroots to international levels strive to support genres perceived to be under threat. Much recent literature on the subject features rhetoric that draws on metaphors from ecology, including, for example, the ideas of music ‘ecosystems’, ‘endangerment’ and ‘sustainability’. Offering an alternative (though not contradictory) perspective, I here characterise the widespread loss of musical heritage as a ‘wicked problem’– one with complex interdependencies, uncertainties and conflicting stakeholder perspectives, which defies resolution more than some of the ecological metaphors arguably imply. By drawing on theoretical notions of ‘wickedness’ from social policy planning and other areas, I aim to bring interdisciplinary insights to the discussion of strategies to mitigate the global threat to music as intangible cultural heritage. Offering three ‘stories’ about the problem of music genres ‘at risk’ and critiquing each of these stories against the theory of wicked problems, I explore the implications of this conceptualisation for heritage scholars, music researchers, policy-makers and other cultural stakeholders, in terms of moving us closer to realising effective, resilient and innovative approaches to the problem at hand.     

Challenges for global environmental diplomacy in Australia and the European Union

One of the predominant issues on the agenda of diplomats and politicians is how to address the consequences of shifts in perception about threats to the environment and the actual short and long‐term characteristics and effects of environmental degradation. Another challenge is that such issues as climate change impact on many areas including trade, economic and fiscal policies, employment, transport, agriculture and regional development. Furthermore, decisions taken at a national level cannot be isolated from international concerns, as in the case of the Kyoto Protocol.

This article maps out some of the differences between Australia and the European Union in relation to the role of developing countries in tackling climate change, the use of market mechanisms to tackle environmental problems and the implementation of punitive compliance systems. We explore the challenges facing Australia and the EU in sustainable development, why the EU has a reputation as a leader in this field, how Australia has engaged the challenge and why the similarities in the approach of Australia and the EU are more striking than the differences.     

‘The Charter of its Birthright’: The Civil War and American Nationalism

Abstract. This article examines the role of warfare in the development of American nationalism, focusing in particular on the American Civil War (1861–5). The American response to warfare, and especially to the two major conflicts that created and consolidated the American nation -the Revolution and the Civil War - is revealing in terms of how Americans went about the process of defining themselves as a nation. Evidence is offered here of how nineteenthcentury Americans used the American Revolution for both national and sectional definition; and how it in turn came to be supplanted by the Civil War as the positive act of American national construction. This article argues that the American response to the Civil War provides an opportunity for scholars to trace the development of the myths that are central to the construction of nationalism but that have, to date, only been examined in any depth in a European context. Specifically, it addresses the question of how and why a destructive, internecine Civil War is still regarded today as the ‘salvation drama’ of the American nation.     

LOCAL PUBLIC GOODS AND SPATIAL EQUILIBRIUM IN AN IDEAL URBAN CENTRE

T he major raison d'ětre of democratic governments, local and otherwise, is to provide public goods and services that their citizens wish to have and for which they are willing to pay taxes. However, it is not feasible or expedient for individuals to choose types and amounts of public goods that they wish to "consume" at a given "price" as they would for products sold on the market place-because public goods are non-rival and/or non-excludable, and/or they generate externalities. Therefore, decisions regarding public goods and the taxes to pay for them have to be placed in the hands of representatives who are entrusted with the task of articulating the citizens' collective will.     

Toward a topography of national trauma: mapping the past onto the future of American nationalism

Since the inception of the United States, many of those who have spoken for and to the nation have struggled to define and defend a coherent American nationalism. This article proposes that one of the reasons for this lies in the fault lines inherent in the invented traditions that underpin American, as many other nationalisms. Determined by warfare and by the desire for land, and frequently defined in racial terms, they have undermined more than they have stabilized the nationalist structures they seek to support through what they have excluded from the national imaginary. In common with other settler nations, in fact arguably with most Western nations, America's nationalist narratives struggle to serve as cohesive foundation myths. They represent the lasting legacies of national trauma derived from the nation's violent colonial past and the severing of the imperial bond in the eighteenth century, chattel slavery, and the civil war it caused, and westward expansion and the imperative toward hemispheric control. Through the mapping of a topography of national trauma predicated on these national traditions and located within the tensions arising from warfare, land, and race, scholars can better comprehend the still frequently acrimonious debates over American nationalism that persist today.