Remote crisis management: Australia's 2006 rescue of citizens trapped in Lebanon

On 12 July 2006, Hezbollah's kidnapping of two young Israeli soldiers was the catalyst for a sudden escalation of the conflict between Israel and Hezbollah. Lebanon was host to more citizens and permanent residents from Australia than any other country in the world. This article examines the monumental challenge faced by the Australian authorities in rescuing and repatriating its citizens who were caught up in the conflict. It does so through the conceptual lens of ‘remote crisis management’ i.e. episodes where one country's traditional crisis management challenges of rapid threats, uncertainty and the need for swift decision making are compounded by ‘political remoteness’. In other words, it lacks both political sovereignty and local infrastructure capacity for crisis resolution in a faraway county. The article focuses particularly on the remote crisis management challenges of making sense of the crisis, communication with a range of interests, and the logistical challenges of arranging and installing rescue and evacuation procedures. It also addresses the significance of Australia's prior evacuation experiences, as well as the capacity it had built in local and international networks. The article draws on a range of primary and secondary sources, including interviews with public servants and community representatives.     

Whetstone Typology: Or the First Shipwreck of Turid Fiskarbekk and Marine Archaeologists Who Had to Think Again

Finds from the Viking period, the middle ages and from more recent historical trading places and towns in northern Europe show that the export of whetstones from Eidsborg in the Telemark district of southern Norway has a history of more than 1,000 years. The water-based route from the quarry area, 600 m above sea level, to the nearest shipping port consists of 120 km of lakes, rivers and portages. This article takes up the export history in the light of a recently discovered cargo of whetstones found in Flåvann, Telemark. The history of the recovery of the find shows that the cargo examined most probably leads to an incident in the 1820s and, to a woman named Turid Fiskarbekk. The find leads to a wider perspective, more specific to the life of Turid Fiskarbekk. Therefore the article presents a side-story about her, where the intention is to show how integrating a gender perspective in maritime archaeology makes new knowledge possible.     

Participatory Governance in Urban Management and the Shifting Geometry of Power in Mumbai

This article questions the participatory dimension of urban governance in Mumbai. Based on surveys of a number of participatory projects for urban services, it compares the differentiated impacts of participation in middle‐class colonies with those in slums. Results demonstrate that changing citizen–government relationships have led to the empowerment of the middle and upper middle class who harness the potential of new ‘invited space’ to expand their claims on the city and political space. In contrast, the poor end up on the losing side as NGOs function more as contracted agents of the State than as representatives of the poor. Direct community participation empowers influential community members, small private entrepreneurs and middlemen, and contributes to labour informalization. Ultimately, these processes consolidate a form of ‘governing beyond the State’ that promotes a managerial vision of participation and leads to double standards of citizenship.     

Evolving ecosystems: ecological data from an Iron Age small mammal accumulation at Alorda Park (Catalonia,Spain)

Small mammals are considered to be good indicators of ancient environments. One particular layer in a fortification tower of a Mediterranean Iberian village, Alorda Park (4th century BC), provided a large amount of well-preserved small mammal bones (about 19,200 remains) probably accumulated by barn owls (Tyto alba). Such an accumulation is rarely available from the Iron Age. It provides not only palaeoenvironmental data, but also further information about other studies such as morphometrics, ancient DNA and zoogeography. This article focuses on the ecological data, and attempts to develop an accurate taphonomic study to assess the reliability and statistical significance of this archaeological sample.     

Heterochronism in the Moisture Supply of Eurasia in the Middle Ages (Landscape Ethnos,V)

The author relates climatic fluctuations in inner Asia to the political fate of the nomadic inhabitants from the 1st century A. D. to the 18th century. He thus establishes an absolute chronology of climatic changes related to latitudinal shifts in storm tracks. Previous articles in this series appeared in Soviet Geography, June 1964, February 1966, and December 1966.     

On the Subject of the “Unified” Geography (Landscape and Ethnos,VI)

A theory of ethnogenesis is advanced, associating stability of ethnic communities with homogeneous landscapes and ethnic change leading to the formation of new communities with heterogeneous landscapes. The ethnic aspect of population, unlike the social and political aspects, is found to be a function of geographical factors. The study of the interplay between ethnic man and the environment does not require an integration of the geographic disciplines but can be investigated within the framework of a special discipline, say, ethnology within geography.     

Khazaria and the Caspian (Landscape and Ethnos,Part I)

The author combines the techniques of historical geography, archeology, and paleogeography to investigate the distribution of the Khazars, a people settled in the Volga delta from the sixth to tenth centuries. Data on Caspian Sea level changes, obtained in part from study of the Derbent wall, are correlated with known political events in the history of the Khazars. A history of settlement of the Volga delta is reconstructed.