‘Oh You Pretty Thing!’: How David Bowie ‘Unlocked Everybody’s Inner Queen’ in spite of the music press

The 1967 Sexual Offence Act decriminalised homosexual acts between men allowing gay men to discuss their sexuality in public. Few prominent popular musicians came-out until 1972 when David Bowie claimed that he was bisexual in an interview with Melody Maker. Music papers and Bowie had substantial cultural power: Bowie was a rising star and music papers recruited journalists who discussed and perpetuated social change. The subsequent conversation, however, reinforced negative stereotypes in constructing the queer subject and tried to safeguard commercial concerns due to the assumption that the market for popular music avoided queer music. This undermined arguments that associate permissive legislation with a permissive media and society, but, to some, representation alone empowered people and destabilised preconceptions about queer identity.     

Intimate Mediations of For‐Profit Conservation Finance: Waste,Improvement, and Accumulation

How to understand the marriage between accumulation and conservation? The paper draws from extensive research into one value chain, from the advisor in New York City to a wildlife‐friendly cattle business in Kenya. Making this enterprise return in money requires intimate and relentless efforts to transform wasteful conduct across a range of institutions and people; we focus on the attempted production of NGO economicus, homo economicus plus, and bos Taurus economicus. Drawing from feminist and postcolonial theorists of capitalism, we emphasise how green capitalist value production does not always hinge on extinguishing other‐than‐capitalist‐social relations but rather attempts to mobilise and harness such differences, including non‐profit‐seeking values, logics and relations. The paper concludes by reflecting on the temporal challenges facing for‐profit conservation finance, including those posed by previous regimes of accumulation that it relies on but also wants to overcome.     

Pliocene Mollusca (Bivalvia,Gastropoda) from the Sørsdal Formation,Marine Plain,Vestfold Hills,East Antarctica: taxonomy and implications for Antarctic Pliocene palaeoenvironments

Quilty, P.G., Darragh, T.A., Gallagher, S.J. & Harding, L.A. July 2016. Pliocene Mollusca (Bivalvia, Gastropoda) from the Sørsdal Formation, Marine Plain, Vestfold Hills, East Antarctica: taxonomy and implications for Antarctic Pliocene palaeoenvironments. Alcheringa 40, XXX–XXX. ISSN 0311-5518.

Pliocene shallow-water marine sediments at Marine Plain (centred on 68°37.7?S; 78°07.8?E) and covering approximately 10 km² in the Vestfold Hills, East Antarctica, have yielded six species of gastropods, and 11 species of bivalves from two beds within the Sørsdal Formation. Most of the material is close to in situ but some specimens have been disturbed from their life position; there is no evidence of significant transport. The gastropods include Nacella concinna (Strebel, 1908), Falsimargarita parvispira Quilty, Darragh, Gallagher & Harding sp. nov., indeterminate species of trochids and naticids, Chlanidota (Chlanidota) sp. cf. C. signeyana Powell, 1951, and two species of Trophon/Trophonella. Bivalves include Ennucula sp. aff. E. grayi (d’Orbigny, 1846), Aequiyoldia defossata Quilty, Darragh, Gallagher & Harding, sp. nov., ‘Pectunculina’ sp., Lissarca sp., Austrochlamys anderssoni (Hennig, 1911), Ruthipecten campestris Quilty, Darragh, Gallagher & Harding sp. nov., Adamussium necopinatum Quilty, Darragh, Gallagher & Harding sp. nov., Limatula (Antarctolima) sp. cf. L. hodgsoni (Smith, 1907), Cyclocardia magna Quilty, Darragh, Gallagher & Harding sp. nov., ?Hiatella sp. cf. H. arctica (Linnaeus, 1767) and Laternula elliptica (King, 1832). Preservation varies considerably owing to recrystallization, dissolution or distortion through compaction, so several species are left in open nomenclature. Oxygen isotope data indicate that water temperature was 4–7.5°C at the time of shell growth. Many species or species groups are now extinct or have migrated away from the Antarctic to the sub-Antarctic region. An Antarctic mollusc fauna has been characteristic of the region for much of the Cenozoic.

Patrick G. Quilty [p.quilty@utas.edu.au], Discipline of Earth Sciences, University of Tasmania, Private Bag 79, Hobart, Tasmania 7001, Australia; Thomas A. Darragh [tdarragh@museum.vic.gov.au], Museum Victoria, GPO Box 666 Melbourne, Victoria 3000, Australia; Stephen J. Gallagher [sjgall@unimelb.edu.au], School of Earth Sciences, The University of Melbourne, Victoria 3010, Australia; Lucy A. Harding [harding.lucy.a@edumail.vic.gov.au], School of Earth Sciences, The University of Melbourne, Victoria 3010, Australia.     

Choosing Peace and Order: National Security and Sovereignty in a North American Borderland, 1837–42

This article considers the international ramifications of the Canadian Rebellions of 1837, in particular their impact on US politics and policy-making as well as on the state of the international border. The Rebellions and the ensuing border raids led to the deployment of US and British forces in the borderlands, not in pursuit of war but in the interest of peace. Ignoring popular agitation in the Canadian colonies and in border states, the British and US governments expressed their commitment to peace and recognised that continued friendly relations required further assertion of central state authority on both sides of the boundary line. Thus, the events of 1837–42 mark an important advance in the development of national security and national sovereignty in North America. This paper expands upon purely national depictions of the Canadian Rebellions and integrates international developments by utilising a borderlands approach and traditional diplomatic history.     

Medieval Britain and Ireland in 2014

This section of the journal comprises two core sets of reports linked to work in 2014: on finds and analyses relating to the Portable Antiquities Scheme (PAS) and on site-specific discoveries and reports in medieval Britain and Ireland (MB&I), with a selection of highlighted projects. For the PAS report, reviews on coin and non-coin finds and on specific research angles are presented. For MB&I, the Society is most grateful to all contributors (of field units, museums, universities, developers, specialist groups and individuals) who have provided reports on finds, excavations, field-surveys and building analyses for 2014. For MB&I, see below for the format and content of the Fieldwork Highlights section and for contact details of the compilers. The annual Specialist Groups Reports appear in the Society’s Newsletter.     

James Preston,Malting and Malthouses in Kent. Stroud: Amberley Publishing, 2015. 235 × 165mm, 93 pp., b/w and col. illus. throughout. £14.99. isbn 978-1-4456-5306-8

Abstract

Beehive coking ovens had virtually monopolised coke oven design by the middle of the nineteenth century and their physical remains have been described in several recent articles. The following account identifies an alternative oven arrangement on one of the smaller and less well known British coalfields.     

Late Paleocene foraminiferal faunas with Chapmanina and Reticulophragmium from offshore southeastern Australia: a Tethyan influence

Samples from off southern New South Wales in approximately 1750 m water depth have yielded late Paleocene faunas of benthic and planktonic foraminifera and other invertebrates. Two faunal associations with a strong Tethyan influence, dominated respectively by Chapmanina conjuncta sp. nov. and Reticulophragmium naroomaensis sp. nov., are described; this is the first formal record of these genera from Australasia. The age of the host sediment is based on both benthic species and few planktonic foraminifera.

The environment at the time was warm temperate to subtropical at the southwestern extremity of a counter-clockwise Pacific Ocean gyre. The new occurrence extends the record of Palaeogene marine sediments and palaeoenvironments along the eastern margin of Australia and confirms earlier observations that conditions in the marine environment at that time were considerably warmer along the east coast of Australia than those along the southern margin; the biogeographic association was Tethyan. The circulation model may go some way to explaining coeval warmth along the east Antarctic coast.