Farm women and femocracy

While rural and farm women have a long history of interaction with the Australian state, it is only recently that Commonwealth government departments have established specifically dedicated policy machinery to address their needs. What is notable is that this has occurred at a time when other gender equity infrastructure is being disbanded. This article examines this anomaly. To begin, it documents the material and discursive changes in terms of equity for women which have occurred since the election of the Howard government in 1996. Following this, it details the emergence of a state agenda for rural and farm women in Australia and explains some of the definitive elements of this agenda. In the final section, the article gives attention to explaining why equity for farm and rural women has been emphasised by government in a period marked by the erosion of state-sponsored equity initiatives.     

Dangerous Places and Wild Spaces: Creating Meaning with Materials and Space at Contemporary Maya Shrines on El Duende Mountain

Ethnoarchaeological observations at Maya shrines on a sacred mountain suggest that three potent material strategies imbue ritual practices with different social meanings: 1) the use of different types of materials as offerings in various rites, 2) the ways in which the physical conditions of an offering are altered during deposition, and 3) the choice of location where the offering is deposited within the site relative to a ceremonial focal point. Through these strategies, individuals creatively negotiate limited access to material resources and assign diverse meanings to the material culture, practices, and places of ritual. Materials that represent commoners' rituals may primarily consist of quotidian items that are transformed in meaning by how and where they are deposited into an archaeological context.     

An Experiment in Political Communication: The British Columbia Citizens' Assembly on Electoral Reform

The British Columbian Citizens' Assembly on Electoral Reform comprised a representative group of 160 randomly selected voters who were empowered to review the Province's electoral system and to decide if change was needed. It first met in January 2004 and issued its final report in December of that year. The Assembly has since been hailed as a democratic invention and attracted worldwide interest as a remarkable experiment in deliberative democracy. Its Terms of Reference required that it consult British Columbians. It did so via a series of public hearings held across the Province, and by establishing a website to publicise its purpose and to obtain public input. Hence, the Citizens' Assembly provides a case study or natural experiment that permits the comparative assessment of two very different forms of political communication – one traditional and the other a form of ‘e-consultation’, relying on newer information and communications technology. Based on published sources, as well as interviews with former members of the Assembly, this paper investigates the public input the Assembly obtained, and considers whether ‘e-consultation’– as is often claimed – does allow citizens to genuinely contribute to the making of public policy.     

Ancient DNA in human bones from Neolithic and Bronze Age sites in Greece and Crete

Attempts were made to detect ancient DNA (aDNA) in samples of 88 human skeletons from eight Neolithic and Bronze Age sites in Greece and Crete. Ancient DNA was absent in specimens from Nea Nikomedia, Lerna, Karaviádena (Zakro), Antron Grave Circle A and Mycenae Grave Circle A. For each of three skeletons from Antron Grave Circle B that were sampled, polymerase chain reactions (PCRs) gave products for nuclear but not mitochondrial DNA, but amplicon yield was low and inconsistent with replicate PCRs failing to give reproducible results. With specimens from Mycenae Grave Circle B, evidence for mitochondrial aDNA was obtained for four of the 22 skeletons that were studied, and at Kouphovouno evidence for mitochondrial and/or nuclear aDNA was obtained with eight of the 20 skeletons that were examined. We conclude that, although aDNA might be present in some Eastern Mediterranean skeletons from later centuries of the Bronze Age, it is not commonly found in material from this period and is likely to be absent from older material.     

The limits of engagement: British foreign policy and the crisis in Zimbabwe

This article examines how the British government has responded to Zimbabwe’s ongoing crisis. This case raises several wider issues for British foreign policy, most notably the question of how much leverage London can exercise on the international scene in general, and over relatively small and weak states like Zimbabwe in particular. Zimbabwe’s crisis also raises profound questions about the appropriate balance between bilateral and multilateral policies, and between engaging in public criticism and conducting so–called ‘quiet diplomacy’. While bilateralism clearly has not worked, multilateralism has revealed its own frustrations, especially given the reluctance of many African elites within a number of organizations to criticize President Mugabe’s policies. This reluctance threatens to unravel the British Labour government’s stated objectives in Africa while at the same time raising important doubts over the credibility of the New Partnership for Africa’s Development (NEPAD), and whether an ‘Africa moment’ can be discerned in the manner articulated by prime minister Tony Blair.     

What Was Parliamentary Reporting? A Study of Aims and Results in the London Daily Newspapers, 1780–96*

The nature of these newspaper reports – that is, the character of their principal content – has never been studied, despite its obvious importance and, as we shall see, its marked differences from our Hansard. This article relates their nature to a vital feature of parliamentary leadership, the ability to lead the argument in debate. The practical reasoning in parliamentary deliberation and justification, especially what speakers contributed towards the outcome or ‘the sense of the debate’, predominated in these reports. This implied a need for reporters to concentrate on the ‘substance’ of speeches and their bearing on the motion. One result was that speeches which were judged to define or develop arguments pro and con were treated at length, the defining speeches most extensively and others in proportion to what they added. Conversely, speeches which reiterated known positions or which were irrelevant to the arguments in hand were omitted or downplayed, even if they were important in some other way, while whole debates which added little to ongoing discussion could be treated quite briefly. But if being a front bencher did not guarantee coverage, being a back bencher was no bar: the criterion was the importance of a speaker's contribution, while the manner of coverage accented what was contributed. The reporters’ concerns emphasized debates that promised significant change in matters of national importance, but gave relatively little attention to recurrent or localised business as such. Their writing – they were known as debate writers or news-writers – was interpretation answering to evaluative and selective criteria rather than a record in a simple sense. Their work is not to be understood in the same terms as a modern Hansard, and in particular not as a defective Hansard, but rather is such that it requires further work on a wide range of new research questions if it is to be understood to best effect, a requirement which suggests a need to study it critically before using it as source material.