Playing with the future: social irrealism and the politics of aesthetics

In this article we wish to explore the political possibilities of video games. Numerous scholars now take seriously the place of popular culture in the remaking of our geographies, but video games still lag behind. For us, this tendency reflects a general response to them as imaginary spaces that are separate from everyday life and ‘real’ politics. It is this disconnect between abstraction and lived experience that we complicate by defining play as an event of what Brian Massumi calls lived abstraction. We wish to short-circuit the barriers that prevent the aesthetic resonating with the political and argue that through their enactment, video games can animate fantastical futures that require the player to make, and reflect upon, profound ethical decisions that can be antagonistic to prevailing political imaginations. We refer to this as social irrealism to demonstrate that reality can be understood through the impossible and the imagined.     

On Authority and Political Destination: Michael Polanyi and the Threshold of Postmodernism

ABSTRACT

This study challenges a prevalent view that Aquinas's political thought develops over time on the question of legitimate resistance to tyranny. Many scholars argue that Aquinas gradually restricts the scope of legitimate political resistance and morally permissible tyrannicide. On this view Aquinas defends tyrannicide in his early Commentary on the Sentences, adds strong qualifications in the Summa Theologiae, and finally repudiates tyrannicide in De Regno. This study finds the evidence for such a development lacking and seeks to rehabilitate a long and diverse Thomistic tradition of legitimate resistance including tyrannicide. Indeed, a close reading of De Regno shows that Aquinas upholds a doctrine of political resistance and defends the legitimacy of tyrannicide under certain circumstances. Moreover, Aquinas's doctrine of political resistance is wide open and underdeveloped. Later attempts to clarify and qualify Aquinas's doctrine of political resistance, therefore, are appropriate and even necessary.     

REGIONAL PLANNING IN THE USSR

The theory and practice of drawing up and implementing regional plans, or “territorial plans,” as they are known in the Soviet Union, has been a matter of considerable debate in the Soviet literature, a debate that has been complicated by differences in terminology. The author discusses various Soviet definitions of “territorial planning” and points out disagreement concerning its nature and scope. The major forms of territorial planning as now practiced in the USSR are reviewed, and two forms in particular—regional economic planning and regional physical planning—are distinguished. It is concluded that territorial planning continues to have a somewhat uncertain status in the USSR, with inadequate official support, although the issue remains a matter of considerable interest to the leadership under the Gorbachev administration.     

Biodiversity and palaeoecology of Foulden Maar: an early Miocene Konservat-Lagerstätte deposit in southern New Zealand

Lee, D.E., Kaulfuss, U, Conran, J.G., Bannister, J.M. & Lindqvist, J.K., August 2016. Biodiversity and palaeoecology of Foulden Maar: an early Miocene Konservat-Lagerstätte deposit in southern New Zealand. Alcheringa 40, xxx–xxx. ISSN 0311-5518.

This paper highlights the biodiversity and palaeoecology of the 23 million year old Foulden Maar, the first Konservat-Lagerstätte deposit described from New Zealand and a key site for reconstructing early Miocene Southern Hemisphere terrestrial ecosystems. The 1000-m-diameter, ca 200-m-deep Foulden Maar volcanic crater lake was a closed system with anoxic bottom waters, capturing and preserving in exquisite detail organisms from the lake and adjacent rainforest. The fossils include numerous leaves, flowers with in situ pollen, fruits, seeds, fish and arthropods. Surrounding Foulden Maar was an evergreen, Lauraceae-dominated notophyll vine forest with a diverse understorey, lianes, epiphytes and mistletoes. Diverse pollination and seed dispersal modes are evident. Fish include larval to adult stages of articulated specimens of Galaxias, some with preserved soft tissue and a species of eel resembling Anguilla. The arthropod fauna comprises ca 20 families in the orders Araneae (spiders), Plecoptera (stoneflies), Odonata (dragonflies), Isoptera (termites), Hemiptera (true bugs), Diptera (true flies), Coleoptera (beetles), Trichoptera (caddis flies) and Hymenoptera (wasps, ants and bees), representing faunas typical of soil, leaf litter, forest floor or freshwater habitats. Many fossil taxa have close relatives in the extant New Zealand biota; others are now locally extinct. Coprolites containing quartz sands sourced from outside the lake indicate the presence of volant birds, presumably waterfowl. The Foulden Maar Lagerstätte is crucial for reconstructing Miocene lake and forest ecosystems in New Zealand, particularly the terrestrial arthropod component.

Daphne E. Lee [daphne.lee@otago.ac.nz], Department of Geology, University of Otago, PO Box 56, Dunedin, New Zealand., Uwe Kaulfuss [uwe.kaulfuss@otago.ac.nz] and Jon K. Lindqvist, [jonlind@ihug.co.nz], Department of Geology, University of Otago, PO Box 56, Dunedin, New Zealand; John G. Conran [john.conran@adelaide.edu.au], Australian Centre for Evolutionary Biology & Biodiversity and Sprigg Geobiology Centre, School of Biological Sciences, Benham Bldg DX 650 312, The University of Adelaide, SA 5005, Australia; Jennifer M. Bannister [jennifer.bannister@xtra.co.nz], Department of Botany, University of Otago, PO Box 56, Dunedin, New Zealand.     

HOBY — AN EXCEPTIONAL EARLY ROMAN IRON AGE SITE IN THE WESTERN BALTIC REGION

Hoby on the island of Lolland in the western part of the Baltic Sea is strategically located in a coastal landscape offering abundant resources. In 1920, one of the most richly furnished so‐called “Lübsow type” graves dating to the first century AD was discovered at Hoby. The settlement associated with the grave was recognised in 1999. Excavations of the settlement between 2001 and 2016 have confirmed the central role of Hoby in the Iron Age society. The research has focused on the Iron Age population and the infrastructure on Lolland. The Iron Age open cultural landscape encompassed numerous settlements, richly furnished burials and fortifications, and has produced unique metal finds. The article presents a summary of investigation results.