A Framework for Managing Diver Impacts on Historic Shipwrecks

Shipwrecks are becoming increasingly popular and, therefore important attractions for recreational scuba divers. Divers’ usage of these sites has the potential to create a range of adverse impacts on their cultural heritage values. Impacts associated with recreational scuba diving include boat anchor and mooring damage, impairment of site integrity and stability, the effects of intentional and unintentional contact with shipwrecks and artifacts, as well as divers’ exhaled air bubbles coming into contact with shipwrecks. While these consequences may not present a major threat in comparison to other human impacts, such as fishing activities, extractive industries or commercial salvage, their cumulative effect can be significant, particularly at sites where visitation levels are high. Unlike natural events such as storms, diver impacts can be controlled and managing these impacts is an important component of a heritage management strategy for any site. Heritage managers face the difficult challenge of, on the one hand, balancing divers’ access to important underwater cultural heritage sites, and on the other hand, protecting these sites. This paper outlines the causes and nature of potential recreational diver impacts on shipwrecks, briefly describing a range of management approaches that can mitigate such impacts, and presents a framework for the management of diver impacts on cultural heritage values of historic shipwrecks. The framework is designed to assist managers in deciding on appropriate management actions and priorities for particular sites.     

Political utopia or Potemkin village? Italian travellers to the Soviet Union in the early Cold War

Situated on the border between the capitalist West and Communist East, and with the largest Communist party in Western Europe, Italy found itself at the centre of global ideological struggles in the early Cold War years. A number of Italian writers and intellectuals who had joined the PCI (Partito Comunista Italiano) during the Resistance had hoped that the party would play a central role in the post-war reconstruction of Italy and were attracted to the Soviet Union as an example of Communism in action. This article centres on accounts of journeys to the USSR by Sibilla Aleramo, Renata Viganò and Italo Calvino. It will argue that although their writings portray a largely positive vision of the USSR, they should not be dismissed as naive, or worse, disingenuous travellers whose willingness to embrace Soviet-style Communism was based on a wholescale rejection of Western society and its values (see P. Hollander’s 1998 [1981] work, Political Pilgrims: Western Intellectuals in Search of the Good Society). Rather, the article shows how their accounts of the USSR shed light on the writers’ relationship with the PCI and argues that the views expressed in the travelogues emerge from the writers’ personal experiences of war and resistance, a fervent desire to position themselves as anti-Fascist intellectuals, and their concerns regarding the direction that Italian politics was taking at a pivotal moment in the nation’s history.     

Dressing and preening the body

Dalby, Liza. Kimono: Fashioning Culture. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1993. xi + 384 pp. including notes, bibliography, and index. $30.00 cloth, $17.95 paper.

Kawakami, Barbara F. Japanese Immigrant Clothing in Hawaii, 1885–1941. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1993. xvii + 253 pp. including notes, glossary, sources, and index. $19.95 paper.

Rubinstein, Ruth P. Dress Code: Meanings and Messages in American Culture. Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1995. xii + 314 pp. including notes, bibliography, and index. $69.00 cloth, $21.95 paper.     

Front doors to freedom,portal to the past: history at the Ellis Island immigration museum,New York

Heritage sites and museums play a significant role in the production and legitimization of historical knowledges and social identities. The potential for these institutions to act in ways that maintain deep‐rooted inequalities in the relative power of social groups has long been noted by academic commentators. A critique of the role of museums in reproducing ‘official’ histories is now well established. In this paper we explore new ways of conceptualizing and empirically exploring the production and politics of museum histories. By tracing the historical development of museums, we explore the power play between individual actors and institutions involved in production of the museum, and the multi‐vocal histories and landscapes which result from the interaction between these actors. We illustrate these arguments through a case study of Ellis Island Immigration Museum in New York Harbor.     

The rhetoric of consensus

Bob Hawke has used the notion of consensus in three distinct ways. The term was first employed as a polemic to discredit the Fraser government and establish Hawke's claim to the ALP leadership. It then became shorthand for the political program Hawke put forward during the 1983 election campaign. Finally — and perhaps most ambitiously — it sought a new philosophical twist for Australian politics. By 1985, however, the concept lacked credibility and was quietly abandoned as polemic, program or government philosophy. The rhetoric of consensus, for all its success, was short‐lived in its usefulness.     

Book reviews

Ralph Pettman (ed.), Moral Claims in World Affairs. Croom Helm, London, 1979, pp. 199. £8.50.

Michael B. Yahuda, China's Role in World Affairs. Croom Helm, London, 1978, pp.300. $29.95.

Rodger Swearingen, The Soviet Union and Postwar Japan: Escalating Challenge and Response. Hoover Institution Press, 1978, pp.340. US$14.95.

Taketsugu Tsurutani, Political Change in Japan: Response to Post‐industrial Challenge. David McKay, New York, 1977, pp. xii+275. US$12.50 (cloth), $6.95 (paper).

D. M. Fenbury, Practice Without Policy: Genesis of Local Government in Papua New Guinea. Development Studies Centre Monograph No. 13, Australian National University, Canberra, 1978, pp. xvi + 318. $9.00.

Ian Hogbin, The Leaders and the Led: Social Control in Wogeo, New Guinea. Melbourne University Press, Melbourne, 1978. pp. xi + 195.

Clive Kessler, Islam and Politics in a Malay State: Kelantan 1838–1969. Cornell University Press, Ithaca and London, 1978, pp. 274. US $15.00.

Rony Gabbay, Communism and Agrarian Reform in Iraq. Croom Helm, London, 1978, pp. 240. £8.50.

John Dunn (ed), West African States: Failure and Promise. Cambridge University Press, London, 1978, pp. 259. £12.50.

Zdenek Cervenka and Barbara Rogers, The Nuclear Axis: Secret Collaboration between West Germany and South Africa. Julian Friedmann Books, London, 1978, pp. 464. £7.95.

Roger Hill, Political Consultation in Nato. Wellesley Papers 6/1978, Canadian Institute of International Affairs, Toronto, 1978, pp. 143. £3.75.

Lawrence Freedman, Arms Production in the United Kingdom: Problems and Prospects. The Royal Institute of International Affairs, London, 1978, pp. 50. £6.95.

William H. Blanchard, Aggression American Style. Goodyear Publishing Company, Santa Monica, California, 1978 pp.314.

Paul Hasluck, Mucking About: An Autobiography. Melbourne University Press, Melbourne, 1977, pp. 287. $10.99.

J. R. V. Prescott, ed., Australia's Continental Shelf. Nelson for Australian Institute of International Affairs, Melbourne, 1979, pp. 198, $15.00.

P. Hastings and A. Farran, Australia's Resources Future, Thomas Nelson in association with The Australian Institute of International Affairs 1978, pp. 288 + xvi, $14.95.