Mission-Based Indigenous Production at the Weipa Presbyterian Mission, Western Cape York Peninsula (1932–66)

Previous research on remote nineteenth-and early twentieth-century Indigenous missions in northern and central Australia point to their often tenuous existence and the complex nature of engagements between Christian Missionaries and Indigenous people. This paper explores the contribution and significance of Indigenous production of wild foods in the context of one such settlement located at Weipa on Cape York Peninsula, north eastern Australia. It is premised on the assertion that investigation of the economies of these often remote settlements has the potential to reveal much about the character of cross-cultural engagements within the context of early mission settlements. Many remote missions had a far from secure economic basis and were sometimes unable to produce the consistent food supplies that were central to their proselytizing efforts. In this paper it is suggested that Indigenous-produced wild foods were of significant importance to the mission on a day-to-day basis in terms of their dietary contribution (particularly in terms of protein sources) and were also important to Indigenous people from a social and cultural perspective. We develop this argument through the case study of culturally modified trees that resulted from the collection of wild honey.     

Cost-efficient Reserve Site Selection Favoring Persistence of Threatened and Endangered Species

This article formulates and tests set covering and related models with spatial characteristics for selecting sites that provide habitat for species that are identified as "critical" (e.g., typically threatened, endangered, or rare), thereby enhancing their persistence. The first two models presented require the creation of a core area for each critical species and a buffer zone surrounding the core, with and without being constrained to include at least one representation of each and every common (i.e., noncritical) species. The final model aims at minimizing costs of protecting predetermined numbers of common species while all critical species remain covered and buffered. These models are implemented for occurrence data of terrestrial mammals in Oregon. They enable, among other things, a comparison between the budgetary impacts of reserve networks with and without buffering rings for critical species, and a determination of the marginal cost of common species protection.     

Truth,plausibility, and the virtues of narrative at the millennium

While it is widely understood that medieval historiographers employed the techniques of rhetorical invention in their work, less attention has been paid to the way in which the standard of plausibility, upon which rhetorical invention was premised, could be reconciled with the historian's traditional obligation to tell the truth. This paper examines the ways in which the rhetorical doctrine of narratio probabilis was understood and put into practice by three authors active around the turn of the millennium: Richer of Saint-Rémi, Dudo of Saint-Quentin, and Adalbero of Laon. All three had been trained in the schools of northern Francia in the late tenth century and all reveal a sophisticated understanding of the doctrines of Ciceronian rhetoric, according to which plausible inventions were not seen to be incompatible with historical truth.     

Hope and everyday crisis: Young adult experiences in COVID-free Tasmania

The COVID-19 pandemic is characterised by more than mass viral spread. Interviews with young adults in the Australian island-state of Tasmania narrate how COVID-19 is shared socially, economically, and biologically, but not equally. During the time interviews were done, border policies separated Tasmania from mass infections experienced elsewhere, giving us an opportunity to understand how separation does not equate with a lack of socio-material and emotional impact from the pandemic. Recognising spatially diverse impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic means becoming more reflexively aware of the structural inequalities informing how it has been experienced, particularly in the early period of the pandemic. We warn against exclusionary narratives of the pandemic that do not value impacts on those without high physical risk or exposure to the virus. Responding to such exclusionary narratives involves promoting a form of hope that is reflexive, self-aware, and critical. We develop on these aims by reference to the themes of COVID-19 as a syndemic, the temporal narrative of a boom-bust cycle, and COVID-19 as a crisis in everyday life.     

Loyal to the Crown: shifting public opinion towards the monarchy in Australia

Over the past half century, the Australian public has remained divided on the issue of whether Australia should retain the monarchy or become a republic. Clive Bean found that there had been remarkable stability on the issue and evidence of a long-term trend away from support for the monarchy with a sudden decline in 1992. This article adopts Bean's longitudinal cross-sectional methods to examine the social and political basis of public attitudes. This article analyses the Australian Election Study (1993–2013) to compare Bean's results and re-analyse earlier data from the National Social Science Surveys and Australian National Political Attitudes surveys (1967–90). Public opinion has been fluid and is now at a crossroads between the 1980s high and the 1990s lows. Cohort analysis suggests socialisation impacts long-term opinions. Gender and ethnic nationalism also influences opinion.     

A Matter of Framing: Explaining the Failure of Post‐Islamist Social Movements in the Arab Spring

Shortly after the Arab Spring began in 2010, multiple scholars noted that the dominant discursive trend present within these protests was that of post‐Islamism. Post‐Islamism is broadly defined as an ideology seeking to establish a democratic state within a distinctly Islamic society. Despite the presence of post‐Islamist opportunity structures, social movements embodying post‐Islamist principles have had little success consolidating power. The theoretical argument presented here is that the failure of these movements is the result of inherent flaws within post‐Islamist frames. Specifically, this study posits that unlike traditional Islamist frames (i.e., frames emphasizing the creation of a state governed by Shari‘a) post‐Islamist frames limit the ability of movements’ to monopolize religion as a cultural asset. As such, when post‐Islamist movements face political challenges during contentious periods they cannot rely on nontemporal legitimacy to retain power. Additionally, the challenging task of integrating Islamic and democratic frames in contentious moments renders post‐Islamist movements susceptible to counterframing. The preceding claims will be tested through a comparative analysis of the Iranian Hierocracy (1977–1979), and the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood (2011–2014). Comparing the experiences of a post‐Islamist movement (Brotherhood) with that of an Islamist movement (Hierocracy) will explicate the flaws within post‐Islamist frames.     

Outside the Economy: Women’s Work and Feminist Economics in the Construction and Critique of National Income Accounting

Concerns about women’s work were present at the advent of the modern method of national income accounting, and they have featured prominently in the most radical critiques of this method. During and after the Second World War, Phyllis Deane, a young researcher working under the supervision of Richard Stone, Austin Robinson and Arthur Lewis, grappled with the conceptual difficulties involved in measuring the ‘national’ incomes of mostly rural subsistence colonies in British central Africa. In constructing her estimates, Deane relied heavily on a multidisciplinary survey of nutrition conducted in interwar Nyasaland. Deane’s work was essentially an exercise in reductionism and bounding; she sought to extract from these data a single monetary estimate of production. Yet Deane also proved unwilling to exclude too much. She broke with her advisors’ favoured convention that activities not involved in market exchange should be excluded from the national income. Successive national income accountants around the world would reach disparate conclusions on method, particularly on the question of the ‘production boundary’—that is, the dividing line between those productive activities that would be included in the national income and those that would not. This issue became most contentious in the sphere of ‘non-monetary’ or ‘subsistence’ production performed mostly by female producers. While some statisticians included firewood collection, beer brewing and cooking, many others thought such activities beyond the bounds of ‘the economy’. Early decisions about the status of non-monetary production influenced the international standards enshrined in the United Nations System of National Accounts, first published in 1953. Beginning in the 1970s, second-wave feminists criticised the invisibility of women’s work in national income estimates. These critiques helped spur the inclusion of non-monetary activities in the accounts of many nations. Yet by the 1990s, many feminist critics—most notably New Zealand-born political economist Marilyn Waring—sought to move beyond GDP as a measure of welfare. These feminists called instead for greater reliance on measures such as the Human Development Index and time-use surveys. These measures may have appeared new, but they required the same multidisciplinary and intensive methods as Nyasaland’s interwar nutrition survey, which had served as the substrate for the earliest calculation of a ‘colonial national’ income. Drawing upon archives in the United Kingdom, Malawi and the United States, this paper argues that feminist economists and women’s work were central to both the post-war construction and the late-twentieth century critique of national income.