Regeneration processes in Northern Ireland: The public sector and partnership structures

The peripheral location of Northern Ireland as an Objective 1 region in the EU and consequences in terms of competitiveness and economic disadvantage are discussed. The need for high levels of public expenditure to at least partly offset these effects is argued; this is particularly apparent in the mechanisms which have been adopted to promote urban regeneration. The dominance of central government in the planning and development process is highlighted together with recent policy initiatives that place increasing emphasis upon partnerships as a delivery mechanism. The paper examines various forms of partnership arrangements highlighting how structures and actors differ depending upon local circumstances and objectives.     

Anthropology,Self-determination and Aboriginal Belief in the Christian God

Over the past forty years the Aboriginal people of Galiwin'ku (Elcho Island) in north-east Arnhem Land have successfully incorporated Christianity into their world view. However, a Uniting Church report characterises members of this same Yolngu (Aboriginal) community as being overwhelmed with feelings of inferiority and powerlessness and unable to function within structures established by Balanda (non-Aborigines). This paper contrasts the ways in which Christianity has helped break down the separation between cultural groups with its function as a structure for explicit discourse on Aboriginal/non-Aboriginal relations and inequality. While some Elcho Islanders see anthropologists as people who listen in order to work for Aborigines, Aboriginal Christians see them and other ‘scientists’ as attempting to undermine Aboriginal belief in the Christian God. They are seen as degrading a spiritual movement which has its foundation in the Dreaming and as posing a potential threat to the momentum of Aboriginal directed change in the community.     

Heritage and participatory governance: An analysis of political strategies and social fractures in Spain

In the heritage field, institutions tend to see social participation as a synonym for good governance practice. This extends to other areas such as the environment, humanitarian aid, and sustainable development. In this article, the authors analyze the use of participatory models in the management of heritage through the study of three heritage sites in Spain: the prehistoric paintings in Altamira, the Mosque‐Cathedral in Córdoba, and the Cabo de Gata‐Nijar Natural Park. Their study suggests that, despite the promises of more democratic heritage governance, participatory methods are commonly bounded by social fractures that are concomitant to certain ‘heritage regimes’. They conclude that the critical study of participation in heritage should go beyond the dichotomy between ‘good and bad’ participation. Rather, it should focus on understanding what participation does to the entire heritagization process.     

Two places and three times: fragments retrieved of India and Australia in the 1950s, 1960s and 1980s.

This article uses memory and specifically my memories to build up a sense of how Australians perceived India in the second half of the 20th century. I focus first on the late 1950s to consider Australian perceptions of India as seen through my eyes as a university student. I then present my observations as a student studying in India in the first half of the 1960s to track the limited awareness of Australia in India. The final section, based mainly on newspaper clippings of the late 1980s, assesses how India featured in Australian perceptions some two decades on and in the very different world of the day – one that was much more knowledgeable but not necessarily significantly more involved.     

Book reviews

Gunnar Fermann (ed.), International Politics of Climate Change: Key Issues and Critical Actors. Oslo: Scandinavian University Press, 1997. vi + 472pp. US$45.00 (cloth).

Sanjay Chaturvedi, The Polar Regions: A Political Geography. Chichester: John Wiley & Sons, in association with the Scott Polar Research Institute, 1996. xviii + 306 pp. £35.00 (cloth).

G.R. Sloan, The Geopolitics of Anglo‐Irish Relations in the Twentieth Century. Leicester: Leicester University Press, 1997. xii + 320 pp. £45.00 (cloth).

William T. Tow (ed.), Australian‐American Relations: Looking toward the Next Century. Melbourne: Macmillan, in association with the Australian Institute of International Affairs, 1998. xiv + 226 pp. $36.50 (paper).

Paul Earnshaw, Billion Dollar Business: Strategies and Lessons in Australian Arms Acquisitions. Canberra: Australian Defence Studies Centre, 1998. ix + 165 pp. $20.00 (paper).

Derek McDougall, The International Politics of the New Asia Pacific. Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner, 1997. xi + 257 pp. US $55.00 (cloth), US $19.95 (paper).

Nicholas Tarling, Nations and States in Southeast Asia. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998. 138 pp. £69.95 (cloth), £24.95 (paper).

David Martin Jones, Political Development in Pacific Asia. Cambridge: Polity Press, 1997. x + 235 pp. $34.95 (paper).

Scott Burchill and Andrew Linklater, with Richard Devetak, Matthew Paterson and Jacqui True, Theories of International Relations. London: Macmillan, 1996. 274 pp. $32.95 (paper).

William Maley (ed.), Fundamentalism Reborn? Afghanistan and the Taliban. London: C. Hurst, 1998. xiii + 25 3pp. £14.95 (paper).

Nancy Viviani, The Indochinese in Australia 1975–1995: From Burnt Boats to Barbeques. Melbourne: Oxford University Press, 1996. xvi + 208 pp. $24.95 (paper).

Stuart Harris and Andrew Mack (eds), Asia‐Pacific Security: The Economics‐Politics Nexus. St. Leonards: Allen & Unwin, with the Department of International Relations and the Northeast Asia Program, ANU, 1997. vi + 305 pp. $24.95 (paper).

Andrew Elek (ed.), Building an Asia‐Pacific Community. Development Cooperation within APEC. Brisbane: The Foundation for Development Cooperation, 1997. xiii + 118 pp. $20.00 (paper).

Markus Wolf, with Anne McElvoy, Man without a Face. London: Jonathan Cape, 1997. xii + 367 pp. £17.99 (cloth).

Mordechai Bar‐On, In Pursuit of Peace: A History of the Israeli Peace Movement. Washington, DC: United States Institute of Peace Press, 1996. xix + 470 pp. US $37.50 (cloth), US 24.95 (paper).

Paul Cammack, Capitalism and Democracy in the Third World: The Doctrine for Political Development. London and Washington: Leicester University Press, 1997. 277 pp. £45.00 (cloth), £14.99 (paper).     

Masculine hegemony,the state and the incorporation of gender equity discourse: The case of Australian sport

Although the impact of affirmative action, equal opportunity and gender equity programs on the lives of Australian women have been explored in a number of areas, state interventions related to sport have received scant attention from public policy analysts. This paper examines how the Australian Sports Commission has framed its gender equity policy in the mutually reinforcing hegemonic discourses of masculinity and corporate managerialism. It is argued that the Commission's articulation of gender equity policy in terms of ‘market‐oriented individualism’ is both constituted by, and constitutive of, the shift from a ‘patriarchal‐welfare state’ to a ‘patriarchal‐managerial state’ in Australia. The paper also provides an example of the tensions between bureaucratic and feminist discourses in the state sphere.     

Legal heritage and urban slums

This paper studies the effect of legal origins (common law vs. civil law) on contemporary slum formation in developing countries. First, we provide a cross-country correlation analysis. Second, we provide a regression discontinuity analysis using household data from Cameroon. The results suggest that a common law heritage is associated with a lower probability of slum conditions. The legal philosophies transplanted through colonization appear to be associated with the pattern of contemporary urban housing stocks in developing countries.     

Deconstructing the Lapita Cultural Complex in the Bismarck Archipelago

Within the Pacific Islands, the archaeological phenomenon called the Lapita Cultural Complex is widely regarded as first appearing in the Bismarck Archipelago of Papua New Guinea and then spreading southward. This complex supposedly represents the sudden arrival of migrants from Island Southeast Asia with new technologies, foreign languages, and a different worldview. We question these interpretations and the assumptions behind them and suggest instead that current evidence supports the introduction of new cultural traits over several centuries, rather than the sudden intrusion of foreign migrants.