THE END OF AMERICA: THE BEGINNING OF CANADA -A REPLY TO THE COMMENTARY

I presented 'The End of America: The Beginning of Canada' as a speculative piece of geographical interpretation. Judging by the length of the foregoing commentary and the number of written responses I have personally received, it is evident that my speculations have aroused considerable interest. I welcome the opportunity to clarify my argument. Rather than replying point by point to all the issues raised in the commentary, I will focus my remarks on what I take to be the central objection.     

THE END OF AMERICA: THE BEGINNING OF CANADA -A REPLY TO THE RESPONSE

The author of the foregoing response provides some welcome factual clarification but seems to misunderstand the broader issues raised by the article. Here I will respond briefly to each of the author's major questions.     

Taking perspective of the stories we tell about transgender rights: The narrative policy framework

Our project uses the narrative policy framework (NPF) to explore narrative effects on attitudes about transgender rights. The framework focuses on the stories that are told about public policy. As opposed to conceptualizing communications as informational, NPF suggests that getting lost in the story is primary for attitude change. We also incorporate a perspective taking exercise to examine its effects on individual attitudes. Using an experiment on 1784 American adults, we found that individuals who received the inclusive transgender policy narrative by either watching or reading the narrative held views more supportive of transgender rights, with the effect greater for watching than reading. Those who experienced greater narrative transportation, being more lost in the story, reported more supportive attitudes. We further find that those with traits that lead them to become more imaginatively involved in stories occasionally are more greatly affected by watching policy narratives than those who are less imaginatively involved. However, perspective taking did not influence attitudes and weakened the treatment effects of the narratives. Our findings suggest stories can affect policy attitudes and beliefs, which may be conceptually distinct from traditional framing-based accounts and implies distinctive causal mechanisms that result in attitude change.     

Demythologizing Politicized Myths: A New Interpretation of the Seven Gentlemen Incident

This article investigates a political event in modern China that has received relatively little attention in the West. The Seven Gentlemen Incident occurred in the midst of the national crisis of Japanese aggression, when an independent patriotic movement led by seven Shanghai intellectuals organized the National Salvation Association and urged Chiang Kai-shek to fight the Japanese invaders. The Chiang regime, however, arrested the seven and accused them of plotting to overthrow the government. They were released only after Japan launched a full-scale attack on China in July 1937. Scholars have offered varying images of the incident. While the Seven Gentlemen were denounced as criminals by the Nationalists in Chinese Taiwan, they were respected as national heroes in Chinese mainland. Myths with conflicting viewpoints have been created. What were the life and career backgrounds of these people? Were they petty-bourgeoisie, as some mainlanders assume? Were the seven figures, as mainland Chinese claim, motivated under communist leadership to organize their association? What were their relations with the Nationalist regime and the Communist Party? This article endeavors to answer these questions based on new primary documents in particular archival material and offers new perspectives on this fascinating episode of modern China.     

What has Iberia to do with Jerusalem? Crusade and the Spanish route to the Holy Land in the twelfth century

In spite of repeated papal injunctions forbidding them to abandon their homeland, Iberian Christians, like their co-religionists throughout Europe, were energised by a desire to participate in the Holy Land crusades. The most significant and creative attempt in the first half of the twelfth century to respond to this Spanish desire was the development of the idea of the iter per Hispaniam, which was fostered by Iberian archbishops and monarchs such as Diego Gelmírez of Santiago de Compostela and Alfonso I of Aragon. This Spanish route was intended to unite the conflicts in the peninsula and the Holy Land, forming a single Mediterranean-wide crusading theatre and thereby granting the Iberian conflict a deeper connection with the struggle for control of the holiest sites in Christendom. This article explores the development of crusading ideology in Spain and the difficulties of doing so in a venue outside of the Holy Land. Additionally, the development of the Spanish route idea provides a unique opportunity to contextualise recent historiographical discussions about the essence of the crusades and to highlight the way in which different perspectives helpfully offer insight into various aspects of peninsular crusading.     

Gender and Australian Aid Policy: can women's rights be advanced within a neo-liberal framework?

The issue of gender and development has been an important part of the development discourse since the Mexico City Women Conference in 1973. This concern has been very slow to transform itself into policy. For development agencies including AusAID it has been a subsidiary policy area or an add-on, as a recipe might say'add women and stir'. The White Paper of 2007 brought gender to the centre of policy as an overarching principle. The question that arises is the extent to which these policies fit into or are driven by the neo-liberal paradigm underpinning the aid program, or if these policies can challenge it by positing a rights agenda. The 2007 Gender policy tries to sit between the two in that it focuses on the economic role that women can play in fostering growth on the one hand, and the denial of human rights that marginalisation and disempowerment represents. This paper will explore the development of gender policy in AusAID, and compare it with the development of policy of other agencies that follow the neo-liberal framework in particular the World Bank and ADB. Finally the paper will make some suggestions for the new Labor government to strengthen the Policy.     

Migrant labour,and the neo-liberal development paradigm: balancing the contradictions in the Australian aid program

The zeal with which the free movement of goods is pursued through the World Trade Organisation, or the free moment of capital promoted by the International Monetary Fund is contrasted by the hostility of most government and international organizations towards the free movement of labour (Overbeek 2002, p. 75).     

The quest for good government and development in Africa: is NEPAD the answer?

The New Partnership for Africa’s Development (NEPAD) states that democracy and good governance are preconditions for development. Given the fact that Black Africa is currently suffering widespread economic crisis and political disorder, how probable is it that electoral politics as it has been instituted over the last decade will lead to good government—which all, inside and outside Africa, now claim is the basis for sustainable economic growth? On the face of it, the argument is simple: democracy should reduce the scope for conflict and make good government more likely. In turn, good government should bring about the political stability, the institutional consolidation and the operation of the rule of law that are universally seen as the necessary framework for investment. Greater investment should facilitate economic growth. Growth provides the foundations for development. This article investigates the extent to which the political changes that have occurred in the last decade have made the possibility of good government and development more likely in Africa. It offers an analysis of why it is that the nature of politics in Africa today makes good government difficult and reconsiders the changes that have taken place in the exercise of power over the recent past.     

Roman Rhine settlement dynamics evidenced by coin distribution in a fluvial environment (Oedenburg,Upper Rhine,France)

On the basis of archaeological and alluvial records, this paper presents the first spatial analysis of artefacts in relation to the evolution of the Rhine River, at the Gallo-Roman site of Oedenburg, during the first four centuries AD. The dataset consisted of several thousand Roman artefacts found by pedestrian prospecting over the last twenty years, over half of which were coins. This dataset was used together with high-resolution topography and geomagnetic mapping, to reconstruct settlement evolution, both on the terrace and in the floodplain. A comprehensive monetary chart has been compiled for the Oedenburg site, which highlights four major phases of settlement. These results provide a possible causal link connecting historical factors and alluvial events with intra-site evolution. Therefore, while changes observed during Phases I (until AD 68), II (AD 69 to AD 180) and III (AD 180 to AD 295) seem largely related to historical and societal events, Phase IV (AD 295 to AD 402) shows patterns of abandonment of the lower part of the floodplain that may well be related to an unusually humid period in the fourth century. These results are set in a broader context, from the Rhine catchment area to the Alps, and are in agreement with the wet conditions also documented in alluvial, lacustrine, geomorphological and palynological records in Germany (Lahn River, Lake Constance, Lake Nussbaumen, Kaisersthul area and the Black Forest). Studying the intra-site spatial distribution of artefacts with high temporal constraints, at a long-lived site with contrasted topography, opens new avenues for the detection of discreet events such as a higher water table, affecting only the lower zone.