The segregation of generations: ancestral groups in Sydney, 2011

Most models of immigrant minority enclave formation in cities represent their situation as relatively transient elements in urban residential mosaics. As minority group members become both economically integrated and socially–culturally assimilated into the host society, so they move away from the enclaves where they initially concentrated. Such shifts are especially likely in the second and later generations of group members, who are more likely to overcome the disadvantages experienced by many of the original settlers with regard to human capital. This paper evaluates that model using data on the residential distributions of three generations of those claiming one of 19 different ancestral groups in Sydney in 2011, at four nested spatial scales, deploying a recently developed inferential method for evaluating the intensity of residential segregation. The findings are not consistent with the model: in general, members of the second and third generations in any ancestral group are as segregated as the first generation (that is, those born outside Australia) at both regional and neighbourhood scales.     

An Imperial Vision: The American Presence at European Trade Fairs

Book reviewed in this article:
Robert H. Haddow, Pavilions of Plenty: Exhibiting American Culture Abroad in the 1950s     

Authors, Editors and Authority in the Postmodern Academy

Textbooks are presented, by their authors and publishers, as authoritative statements regarding the nature of a scientific discipline or sub-discipline: in Kuhn's words, they are the "vehicles for the perpetuation of normal science." One of the main contributions of postmodern and poststructuralist thought, however, has been to challenge the nature of power and authority in the academy, a challenge that has been widely taken up in contemporary geographical research. There has been much less impact on textbook production and other teaching resources, however, where the "authority of the disembodied scholar" still holds sway. This is illustrated with respect to readers, collections of both original and reprinted pieces (the latter often in abridged form) where editorial authority ("this is what I think you should read") is frequently as firm as its predecessor, authorial authority. The reasons for this are sought in contemporary developments in higher education.     

Erasmus’ ethnological hierarchy of peoples and races

No comprehensive research of Erasmus’ ethnological mind has been published, so far. Erasmus’ attitudes toward Turks and Jews were discussed analytically but not synthetically or comparatively. An attempt to widen the ethnological scope and to define and classify Erasmus’ attitudes toward different non-Christian groups is presented here. Christian Europeans (populus Christianus) were at the top of Erasmus’ echelon. Second to them were ‘half-Christians’, i.e. Turks, or Muslims in general. Below them were Jews, and lower in the hierarchy were black Africans (Aethiopes). Yet, no one was unworthy of conversion to Christianity, even barbarians of the third kind – according to Bartolomé Las Casas’ sort – the most inferior barbarians, slaves by nature, as defined by Aristotle. According to Las Casas, these barbarians were too low to ask for God and were not candidates for conversion to Christianity. Erasmus’ believed that Barbarians of any kind deserved Christianity without being brutally forced to accept it. Yet, in practice, converts from Judaism to Christianity were rated, even by Erasmus, as lower than Christians. This, in addition to the principle that Christian peace excludes war against the Turks, is the very essence of Erasmus’ pax et concordia.     

The earliest fractured tetrapod bone

A tetrapod radius from the Early Carboniferous Ducabrook Formation of the Drummond Basin, Queensland, is described. Early tetrapod radii are scarce in the fossil record but comparison with those available suggests that the new specimen is morphologically primitive. An unusual swelling of the proximal extensor surface is shown, by X-ray, to be a comminuted fracture, the earliest bone fracture recorded among tetrapods.     

Book reviews

AUSTRALIA IN PEACE AND WAR: EXTERNAL RELATIONS 1788–1977, T.B. Millar, ANU Press, Canberra, 1978, 578 pp.

CHINA AND AMERICA: THE SEARCH FOR A NEW RELATIONSHIP, William Barnds, ed., New York University Press, New York, 1977. $15.00 cloth.

CHINA AND THE WORLD SINCE 1949, Wang Gungwu, The Macmillan Company of Australia, December 1977, $17.50 bound, $8.75 paper.

THE DIPLOMACY OF DETENTE: THE KISSINGER ERA, Coral Bell, Martin Robinson, London, 1977, pp. 278.

THE PROBLEM OF CHEMICAL AND BIOLOGICAL WARFARE, Volume IV: CB DISARMAMENT NEGOTIATIONS, 1920–1970, Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, Almquist and Wiksell International, Stockholm, 1971.

CHEMICAL DISARMAMENT: NEW WEAPONS FOR OLD, Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, Almquist and Wiksell International, Stockholm, 1975.

DELAYED TOXIC EFFECTS OF CHEMICAL WARFARE AGENTS, Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, Almquist and Wiksell International, Stockholm, 1975.

ECOLOGICAL CONSEQUENCE OF THE SECOND INDOCHINA WAR, Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, Almquist and Wiksell International, Stockholm, 1976.