Making Space: Women's urban and rural activism and the Australian state

Recent discussions of political actions have emphasised the ways that strategic use of spaces, places and various spatial scales helps to constitute activist practice. Advancing their interests involves activists in spatial practices that seek simultaneously to achieve cohesion and identity for their group, and to negotiate the shifting 'opportunity structures' of their context. In this article, the authors use examples of Australian women's activism in urban and rural contexts to show (1) the spatial processes with which activist groups have negotiated their strategic identities, and (2) how activist groups have constructed their politics spatially with reference to the opportunities presented by the Australian state of the early to mid-1990s. The urban activism discussed is that of parents (primarily women) contesting the quality of children's services in an outer suburban Melbourne municipality; the rural activism is that of the national Women in Agriculture movement, seeking increased recognition of the roles of women in agricultural occupations and sectors. The article elaborates on how the groups have mobilised to develop their constituencies within the contexts of the Australian state of the time, using different spaces and sites, finding appropriate languages and bureaucratic targets, and making a space for their concerns politically, symbolically and materially.     

Large carnivores as taphonomic agents of space modification: an experimental approach with archaeological implications

At most Pleistocene archaeological sites it is difficult to observe structured complex spatial behaviour. This common phenomenon could be a taphonomic issue. Problems in the preservation of the original spatial intra-site distribution could be related to hominid–carnivore alternation in the use of space. In the present paper we analyse the results of our experimentation with large extant carnivores (bears, wolves, hyenas and lions) and propose these animals acted as hearth and hearth-related assemblage modifiers. In this sense, the role of carnivores in the modification of these elements can cause problems in the interpretation and visibility of modern and complex behaviour in the conception of space in the archaeological record.     

The study of a region: An exercise in taste,temperament, and training?

Brenda E. F. Beck. Peasant Society in Koñku: A Study of Right and Left Subcastes in South India. Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, 1972. xix + 354 pp. Diagrams, tables, appendixes, glossary, bibliography, and index. $16.50.     

Legalism: Law,morals, and political trials

The purpose of this article is to critically undermine two commonly held and closely related contentions regarding the British idealist tradition. The first is that the British idealist tradition went into rapid and terminal decline shortly after the outbreak of the First World War. The second is that J. A. Smith was largely responsible for it. These aims are achieved through a diachronic analysis of Smith's conception of human imperfection as well as an assessment of Smith's intellectual legacy. As this article will show, contrary to the received view, Smith was a philosophical innovator who instigated an intellectual evolution within the British idealist. In particular, this article shows that Smith substituted aspects of his early Greenian philosophy with elements of Italian idealism. As a result, Smith was instrumental in moving British idealism away from its traditional underpinnings and towards more a Croce–Gentilian foundation. It is this neglected philosophical innovation which has given scholars the false impression of the tradition's collapse. By establishing Smith's intellectual innovation this article intends to show that Smith made a much more significant intellectual contribution to the philosophical tradition to which he belongs than has so far been recognised.