Digital Technology in Research and Documentation of Hunter-Gatherer Rock Art in South Africa

The use of digital technology to enhance and manipulate photographs of rock paintings affords researchers insights into imagery that was formerly invisible or obscure. Image enhancement and manipulation software have greatly increased the data set available for study. There is a wide range of techniques available in the digital repertoire, depending on the aim of the research. Here, three South African case studies are discussed in which hunter-gatherer rock paintings are enhanced and manipulated to create digital “tracings” using the computer programmes Adobe Lightroom, Adobe Photoshop and DStretch. The results obtained with these simple techniques are presented here, because they might prove useful for rock art research elsewhere in the world. It must be noted, however, that these technological developments do not eliminate the subjective nature of recording and interpreting rock art or the necessity of a theoretical framework in which to understand the imagery.     

The firm as citizen? Social responsibility of business in Australia

A model of corporate citizenship is advanced with the help of research on United Kingdom business responses to mass unemployment. This model suggests the need to review our theories of the firm and to widen assumptions about the political role of business. Australian findings, both of the institutionalisation of social responsibility in some large firms and of the emergence of a new sort of business community organisation, fit the citizenship model. Explanations and implications of the findings are considered.     

Against Nostalgia: Place and Memory in Myles Lalor's ‘Oral History’

Western thought tends to see aboriginal identity as dependent upon a particularistic ubiety. Myles Lalor, a New South Wales Aborigine, proposes another kind of identity which recognises that for his generation the tie between place and people is liable to be ruptured, but asserts that wherever there are Aboriginal people there are other places to be Aboriginal. Lalor presents his refusal of nostalgia in the form of an autobiography which articulates memories through a sense of his own agency.