Destitute Women and Smoking at the Hyde Park Barracks,Sydney, Australia

The Hyde Park Barracks in Sydney, Australia, was established in 1819 to accommodate male convicts, but in later years the building served as a depot for immigrant women (1848–86) and as an asylum for destitute women (1862–86). The occupation of the latter group in particular resulted in the loss of large numbers of clay tobacco pipes under the floorboards. The quantity and distribution of the pipes is used here to examine smoking behavior among the destitute female inmates, and to assess their relationships with each other and the institution in which they were confined.     

THE IMPACT OF SPECIFIC-SECTOR CHANGES IN EMPLOYMENT ON ECONOMIC GROWTH, LABOR MARKET PERFORMANCE AND MIGRATION

ABSTRACT.  It is common in empirical regional economics to use total employment as an explanatory variable while investigating issues such as the level and distribution of income and migration. This paper argues that sector-specific changes in employment and labor market performance can have different effects on economic growth, the collection of tax revenue, migration, and the level and distribution of household income. As such, it is important to model sectors separately. We find that expansions in employment opportunities for a high-wage sector such as computer manufacturing or bioengineering, a medium-wage sector manufacturing, and the lower-wage sector of retailing have differing economic consequences for a small city. We use a data intensive computable general equilibrium model to obtain these results.     

Controlling Forum Choice and Controlling Policy: Congress,Courts and the IRS

Considerable scholarly attention has been paid to litigation and its influence on social and bureaucratic policy. One area of research has focused on interest group litigation. Another area of scholarship has shown that Congress encourages individual use of the courts to monitor and control bureaucratic behavior. In several areas of law, litigants have a choice of forum by deliberate legislative design, which is sometimes derided as “forum shopping.” Little attention has been paid to the dominant national political coalition's ability to encourage forum shopping through legislation and the appointment process. One area of law that the coalition can encourage forum shopping is in challenging tax audits. It can do so through implict legislative signals and the appointment process to influence litigants to sue the Internal Revenue Service in the forum that offers the litigant the greatest chance of success. Given the prominent role of courts in setting and determining policy and given the particular prominence of taxes and tax policy over the past three decades, whether and where tax litigants choose to sue is critically important to understanding the dynamics of both tax policy and tax enforcement, as well as public policy creation and change. To demonstrate the influence of political forces on tax forum choice, I compare tax and district court filings from 1994 through to 2000. I find that as the Tax Court and national political coalition become more conservative, more taxpayers sue in the Tax Court and this “forum shopping” choice is supported by the national political coalition.     

Instagram photography and the geography field course: snapshots from Berlin

Although geography has long associated itself with photography, the rapid advancement of technology has created a clear divide between the visual practices regularly used in wider society and the way photography is utilized by critical geographers in their teaching. We suggest the door is ajar for new modes of (geo)photographic thinking, and one visual tool at our disposal is social media applications that allow images to be instantly shared, analysed, and discussed. This article critically reflects on the use of Instagram to enhance student participation, engagement, and learning on a geography field course in Berlin. Based on interviews with students, their field journals, and our own critical reflections, this paper looks at some advantages of using Instagram in teaching geography, but also promotes caution and presents drawbacks to relying on instant visual digital methods.     

Estranging Ireland: The underground self of the Irish free state in Joseph O’Neill’s Land Under England

Land Under England is an out of print, rarely-cited Irish science fiction novel by the author Joseph O’Neill. Written at a time of crisis in Irish society in the 1930s, the novel has been relatively ignored in studies of the literature of the period. Although critics of science fiction tend to situate the novel as a purely anti-fascist work, taking its cues from events happening in Europe, this article places the novel firmly within its postcolonial Irish context, opening up the text to alternative readings based on the writings of Irish historians, as well as Marxist, cultural materialist and postcolonial critics. The article also utilises documents such as work written by O’Neill in his capacity as a civil servant, letters to the author from the controversial author Francis Stuart, and reviews contemporary to the publication of the novel.