Young people’s everyday securities: pre-emptive and pro-active strategies towards ontological security in Scotland

Abstract

This paper uses a framework of ‘ontological security’ to discuss the psychosocial strategies of self-securitisation employed by ethnic and religious minority young people in Scotland. We argue that broad discourses of securitisation are present in the everyday risks and threats that young people encounter. In response and as resistance young people employ pre-emptive and pro-active strategies to preserve ontological security. Yet, these strategies are fraught with ambivalence and contradiction as young people withdraw from social worlds or revert to essentialist positions when negotiating complex fears and anxieties. Drawing on feminist geographies of security the paper presents a multi-scalar empirical analysis of young people’s everyday securities, connecting debates on youth and intimacy-geopolitics with the social and cultural geographies of young people, specifically work that focuses upon young people’s negotiations of racialised, gendered and religious landscapes.     

A review of Australia’s Mesozoic fishes

Abstract

The Australian Mesozoic fish fauna is considered to be depauperate in comparison with fish faunas in the Northern Hemisphere. However, due to its geographical location as a potential radiation center in the Southern Hemisphere, Australia’s Mesozoic fish fauna is important for understanding fish radiations. Most of the modern fish groups originated during the Mesozoic, but the first records of a modern fish fauna (freshwater and marine) in Australia does not occur until the lower Paleogene. Here, we review all known fossil fish-bearing localities from the Mesozoic of Australia, to improve the understanding of the record. The apparent low Australian Mesozoic fish diversity is likely due to its understudied status of the constituent fossils rather than to a depauperate record. In addition, we review recent work with the aim of placing the Australian Mesozoic fish fauna in a global context. We review the taxonomy of Australian fossil fishes and conclude that the assignments of many actinopterygians need major revision within a modern phylogenetic context. The vast majority of chondrichthyans are yet to be formally described; to the contrary all of the known lungfish specimens have been described. This study considers the microscopic and fragmented remains of Mesozoic fish already found in Australia, allowing a more complete view of the diversity of the fishes that once inhabited this continent.

Rodney W. Berrell [r.berrell@postgrad.curtin.edu.au], School of Earth and Planetary Sciences, Curtin University, Kent Street, Bentley, Western Australia, 6102, Australia; Catherine Boisvert [Catherine.Boisvert@curtin.edu.au], School of Molecular and Life Sciences (MLS), Curtin University, Kent Street, Bentley, Western Australia, 6102, Australia; Kate Trinajstic [K.Trinajstic@curtin.edu.au], School of Molecular and Life Sciences (MLS), Curtin University, Kent Street, Bentley, Western Australia, 6102, Australia; Mikael Siversson# [mikael.siversson@museum.wa.gov.au], Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences, Western Australian Museum, 49 Kew Street, Welshpool, Western Australia, 6106, Australia; Jesús Alvarado-Ortega [jalvarado@yahoo.com.mx], Instituto Geologia Cd universitaria, Circuito de la investigacion, Del. coyoacan, C.P. 04510, Ciudad de México, México; Lionel Cavin [lionel.cavin@ville-ge.ch], Section of Earth Sciences, Muséum d’Histoire naturelle de la Ville de Genèeve, CP 6434, 1211 Genève 6, Switzerland; Steven W. Salisbury [s.salisbury@uq.edu.au], School of Biological Sciences, The University of Queensland, Brisbane St Lucia, Queensland, 4072, Australia; Anne Kemp [annerkemp@gmail.com], 9 Hampton Grove, Norwood, Adelaide, South Australia 5067, Australia. #Also affiliated with: School of Molecular and Life Sciences, Curtin University, Kent Street, Bentley, WA 6102, Australia.     

INTEGRATING INDIGENOUS AND SCIENTIFIC KNOWLEDGE BASES FOR DISASTER RISK REDUCTION IN PAPUA NEW GUINEA

In investigating ways to reduce community vulnerability to environmental hazards it is essential to recognize the interaction between indigenous and scientific knowledge bases. Indigenous and scientific knowledge bases are dynamic entities. Using a Process Framework to identify how indigenous and scientific knowledge bases may be integrated, three communities impacted upon by environmental hazards in Papua New Guinea, a Small Island Developing State, have established how their vulnerability to environmental hazards may be reduced. This article explores the application of the framework within the communities of Kumalu, Singas and Baliau, and how this could impact upon the future management of environmental hazards within indigenous communities in Small Island Developing States.     

Negotiating human research ethics: Case notes from anthropologists in the field (Respond to this article at http://www.therai.org.uk/at/debate)

The human ethics issues surrounding the conduct of health science research have been the subject of increasing debate among biomedical and social science researchers in recent years. Ethics procedures in health‐science research are typically concerned with protecting anonymity and confidentiality, and are tailored to work that primarily uses quantitative methodologies. For qualitative research in the health social sciences, a different set of ethical issues often arises in the research process. This article examines three case studies of qualitative researchers working with Indigenous Australian communities, focusing on the researchers’ experiences with ethics committees and how they approached a range of ethical issues arising in the course of their research. Key issues include: obtaining informed consent for participant observation; the evolving nature of qualitative research; the difficulties in foreseeing changes in approach; and the distinction between the research team and the researched in participatory action research.