The Politics of Superannuation in Australasia: Saving the New Zealand Standard of Living

Support for retired individuals is one of the key policy issues facing governments throughout the OECD. The need for a long-term approach to the issue of retirement saving is well established. New Zealand and Australia have adopted different approaches to retirement saving. Two primary differences exist in retirement saving policy – New Zealand offers little in the way of incentives and there is no compulsion; conversely, Australia provides highly concessionary tax incentives and a mandatory occupational retirement savings scheme exists. This paper offers suggestions on how and why two countries that typically approach policy issues from a similar direction have adopted such different attitudes to the topic of retirement saving.     

Three geographers in an archive: positions, predilections and passing comment on transient lives

Despite the existence of research conducted by geographers eschewing or professing religious faith, the influence of researchers and their methods have yet to receive critical attention within the study of religion. The experience of three geographers working on a three-year research project suggests that it is vital to reflect upon the inter-subjective relationships and methodologies used to reconstruct the religious past. How do different subject positions influence our selections from historical records? We also consider whether the spatialities of putatively 'religious' archives, whether formally or informally constituted, make a difference to the construction of historiographical knowledge. In attempting to answer these questions, the paper argues that developing an awareness of different types of positionality, vis-à-vis religious faith and practice, combined with reflexivity, vis-à-vis methodology, can enrich the interpretative reconstruction of the religious past.     

Benevolent and Benign? Using Environmental Justice to Investigate Waste‐related Impacts of Ecotourism in Destination Communities

Abstract:  We contribute to the diversification of environmental justice (EJ) by using it to frame ecotourism-related solid waste management problems. Ecotourism is a service industry portrayed as benevolent (providing benefits), and benign (reducing negative impacts). We propose four characteristics shared by ecotourism-based communities in the Global South and communities struggling with more conventional EJ conflicts. We apply these characteristics to the solid waste crisis in Tortuguero, Costa Rica, a renowned ecotourism destination. First, we show that, despite their general absences from the EJ literature, service industries such as tourism and hospitality can create environmental injustices that disproportionately impact certain types of communities. Second, we highlight the roles of location and socio-economic marginality in siting ecotourism development, in complicating related environmental impact management, and in limiting local abilities to respond to environmental management shortcomings. Third, we provide an example of opportunities to introduce EJ concepts and theory into the study of tourism.     

From Husbands and Housewives to Suckers and Whores: Marital‐Political Anxieties in the ‘House of Egypt’, 1919–48

This article traces the transformation in the symbolic role of the modern, bourgeois Egyptian home and the political and personal relationships it allegedly engendered, showing that what had originally appeared as promising became the potential site of treason and deceit. The article relies on archival materials, political caricatures and articles from the popular press. Beginning with an assessment of the political discourse of 1919, it then illustrates how, by the 1930s, home life and marriage appeared as zones of crisis rather than promise. By the late 1940s, as a stand‐in for political commentary, the domicile appeared as a space from which men had to escape at all costs, presaging a revolution in which a new political order would restore the household to its previous order and centrality.     

Subsistence and mobility strategies in the Epipalaeolithic: a stable isotope analysis of human and faunal remains at 'Uyun al-Hammam,northern Jordan

This paper investigates evidence for subsistence and settlement activities in the Levantine Middle Epipalaeolithic through the application of stable isotope analysis to human and non-human remains from the site of 'Uyun al-Hammam, northern Jordan. In general, bone from the site suffers a high degree of diagenesis and collagen could not be extracted for analysis here. Carbon and oxygen isotopic values from human tooth enamel samples were variable, but within expected values for the Middle Epipalaeolithic, whereas animal carbon and oxygen isotopic values varied widely, most likely due to hydrological and climatological factors. Carbon and isotopic values for the human samples indicated a predominantly C₃ plant dietary input, while animal samples appeared to have varying amounts of C₄ inputs into their diet. This is the first isotopic analysis conducted on material from the Middle Epipalaeolithic of the southern Levant and, as such, even results constrained by temporal and climatological variants within the region contribute to the overall knowledge of settlement and subsistence strategies during this cultural period.     

Counselling Citizens and Producing Patronage: AIDS Treatment in South African and Ugandan Clinics

Global health interventions to provide antiretroviral (ARV) drug treatment for people living with HIV/AIDS in developing countries have linked global and local actors in unprecedented ways. These uneven relationships have been described as creating new forms of citizenship that challenge the liberal understanding of rights and responsibilities bestowed by the state. A comparative case study based on fieldwork from South Africa and Uganda suggests different theoretical understandings of the link between technologies of AIDS treatment and relationships of belonging. Yet, ethnographic data from local clinics in both countries point to similarities that exist across AIDS interventions, and to the importance of counsellors in negotiating the rules of ARVs. Neither patients living with HIV nor the local providers of their AIDS treatment are ‘bare life’ subjects to be acted upon by a global development intervention. As ARV technologies are increasingly prescribed in developing country clinics, diverse social relationships are taught and negotiated as part of the pedagogy of biopolitics. The following discussion demonstrates how local counsellors and clients negotiate the rules of AIDS treatment together for mutual benefit. The article concludes that AIDS treatment creates relationships of therapeutic citizenship and clientship in ways that constrain the possibilities of citizenship and development.     

Reconstructing Iron Age Community Dynamics in Eski?ehir Province, Central Turkey

Current understanding of the Iron Age polity of Phrygia in Central Anatolia is primarily based on excavations and survey in the region of the Phrygian capital of Gordion. In order to expand our knowledge of the Phrygian polity, we assess the scale and nature of Iron Age communities in the western (Eski?ehir) region of Phrygia. We address the challenge of interpreting ceramics derived from large-scale archaeological survey by utilizing Neutron Activation Analysis (NAA) of ceramics from 12 sites across the region collected by the Eski?ehir archaeological survey project as well as an excavated assemblage from ?ar H?yük. While the uniformity in ceramic technology and styles suggest the region is part of the larger Phrygian community, NAA results reveal that (a) ceramic production was regionally highly localized with limited evidence of standardization during the Iron Age and (b) based on evidence of community interaction it is possible to establish a partial chronological sequence of development. These results have implications not only for understanding the internal dynamics within the Phrygian core but also for developing a methodology for comparing ancient polities using commensurate units of interacting communities. The present study is part of the larger Anatolian Iron Age Ceramics project (http://www.une.edu.au/a-ia).     

Archaeological magnetometry in an Arctic setting: a case study from Maguse Lake,Nunavut

Magnetometry has been little used on Arctic archaeological sites, but has great potential to help us understand site structure by identifying buried features and providing additional detail about the construction and use of visible surface features. In the Arctic environment, magnetometer surveys have to deal with the effects of permafrost activity on soils and the potential influence of glacial erratics of varying geological composition. Here, we present the results of magnetometer surveys of a non-cultural site with periglacial features and two archaeological sites located in the Canadian low Arctic. Despite considerable “noise” apparently caused by igneous erratics, the surveys successfully identified several frost features and a range of archaeological feature types. They also appear to have located buried archaeological features and identified activity areas within some dwellings. These preliminary results suggest that the technique is worth pursuing on northern sites.     

The Body Embarrassed? Rethinking the Leaky Male Body in Eighteenth‐Century England and France

According to early modern European medical theory, men could menstruate vicariously through various bodily orifices. Although some medical men thought that the flow was pathological, others believed it brought significant health benefits. However, as the ability to control one's body and mind became central to eighteenth‐century definitions of manhood, leaky male bodies became increasingly problematic. The understanding of male bodily flows was complicated by age and class. As such, it is important to examine ‘male menstruation’ within the broader context of masculinity and other flows. Looking at medical literature alongside experiences of sufferers, this article considers the extent to which male bleeding (particularly haemorrhoids) was considered desirable in the eighteenth century. A comparison of England and France also reveals regional differences, with male menstruation being seen more positively in France than in England.     

Stories of suburbia (Bournville,UK): from planning to people tales

In this paper we show that the avoidance or reduction of difference found in the popular history of Bournville was the result of storytellers situated in specific institutional contexts. During the initial development of Bournville a particular (sub)urban future was imagined and mediated by these storytellers, through processes of simplification and choice, which served to reduce the past to an imposed and arbitrary simplicity or organised saga. In this saga the voices of residents are silenced. Our approach is, first, to explore ways of conceptualising the construction of urban history and, second, to construct two different and deliberately conflicting representations of Bournville. The first account provides a critique of the common representation or town planning account of Bournville. In contrast, the second account works through the voices of residents providing an opportunity for them to construct a lived account of Bournville with specific reference to temperance and the consumption of alcohol. Our first story is about the construction of a particular urban space whilst the second is about the ways in which the space was partially ‘colonised’ by residents. By constructing conflicting accounts of the same place we aim to open the dominant discourses associated with Bournville to complexity and heterogeneity.