Miscellaneous Artifacts From Casselden Place, Melbourne

The miscellaneous artifacts from Casselden Place derive from an urban working-class community in nineteenth-century Melbourne, Australia. They include a broad range of items associated with work, recreation, education, fashion, food consumption, health, and other facets of everyday life. In this paper the miscellaneous assemblage is examined in light of research questions relating to health and hygiene, leisure and work, and access to luxury items amongst the working-class of the mid to late nineteenth century.     

Inside and outside the school lunchbox: themes and reflections

We examine here the discourses surrounding the lunchbox taken to school by children: aspects both of the contents and of how children consume and understand these.1 The observations presented here form part of the preliminary stages of a broader project examining ‘Men, Children and Food’. The project itself is part of a large research programme – ‘Changing Families, Changing Food’ – funded by the Leverhulme Trust (award number F/00118/AQ) from 2006 to 2008, and situated at the University of Sheffield, working in collaboration with colleagues at Royal Holloway University of London. Our aims, in ‘Men, Children and Food’, are to explore the experiences of fathers (and other male figures in the household) and of children, in relation to food practices, including ways in which the two interconnect. View all notes Examples within and beyond the UK suggest that the lunchbox is a container for various aspects of the private and public. What traces can be found inside of wider social relations, including processes of care and surveillance? We argue that the lunchbox consists of intersecting spatialities, within which children constitute a public face, and create identities, relationships and subjectivities; this perspective frames opportunities for priorities in future empirical research with children.     

Path dependence,policy learning and Australian manufacturing since the 1970s

The impending demise of passenger motor vehicle manufacturing in Australia provides a good opportunity to view the trajectory of industry policy since the Whitlam government commenced the process of tariff cuts in 1973. It is argued that industry policy over this period demonstrates the effects of path dependence and a lack of policy learning. In the industry policy context, the path dependence perspective suggests three key factors in explaining policy effects: the importance of initial conditions; the role of cumulative causation in the interaction between policy settings, actors and firms; and the shaping role of networks. While political or electoral factors could, on occasion, generate support for threatened industries, overall, neo-liberal policy ideas guided decision-making. An examination of Australian defence industry, and a comparison of the Australian and New Zealand dairy and milk processing industries reinforces the importance of institutionally shaped path dependency.     

Radicalizing Relationships To and Through Shared Geographies: Why Anarchists Need to Understand Indigenous Connections to Land and Place

Abstract: Indigenous activists and anarchist Settler people are articulating common ground in opposition to imperialism and colonialism. However, many anarchists have faced difficulties in Indigenous solidarity work through unintentional (often unwitting) transgressions and appropriations. Through the introduction of settler colonialism as a complicating power dynamic, we observe that anarchists bring unconscious spatial perceptions into their solidarity work. Further, Indigenous activists often perceive anarchists as Settler people first and foremost, which carries another set of spatial implications. We examine a number of examples of anarchist and Indigenous activism, at times empowering and at times conflictual, in order to reveal some general trends. Through an intensive synthesis of Indigenous peoples’ theories and articulations of place‐based relationships, we suggest that deeper understandings of these relationships can be of great importance in approaching solidarity work in place and with respect.     

When Policy Goes Wrong: The Problem of Transmitted Risk

Why do policies fail? There are many answers to this question, and many ways of answering it. In this paper, we use the tools of policy framing and systems thinking to investigate two recent Australian examples of public policy failure, each involving a different policy milieu and time-span. We show that, in both these cases, unintended consequences arose because governments lost control of the implementation process while remaining politically accountable for the outcomes. We develop the concept of transmitted risk to show how this occurred. We argue that governments expose themselves to this kind of risk when they make policy decisions involving a combination of excessive incentives and poorly controlled third parties.     

Some reflections on the study of iron age burial customs in Norway

A reappraisal of the material from Norwegian grave finds is necessary, with the primary object of throwing light on the burial custom itself. The study should be based on a minimum of uniform criteria. This will allow direct comparison between the various parts of the country and the different periods.

Those surveys of Norwegian burial customs published to date are no longer in agreement with existing facts.

If such studies are not undertaken, the stagnation evident in the research into the Norwegian Iron Age will only increase.     

Toward a new humanism in social science

Maurice Roche. Phenomenology, Language and the Social Sciences. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1973. x. + 361 pp. Bibliography and index. $15.50.