Sit,Cook, Eat,Full Stop: Religion and the Rejection of Ritual in Auhelawa (Papua New Guinea)

ABSTRACT The Auhelawa people of Normanby Island (Milne Bay Province, Papua New Guinea) typically observe the death of an individual through a series of feasts in which the lineage of the deceased and its lateral relatives exchange food and perform rituals of mourning. Recently, a number of people have decided to reject all forms of ‘custom’ in favor of a practice of ‘Christian custom’ in which no food is exchanged and no rituals are performed. This paper examines the way people view custom and its Christian alternative. It argues that the basis for Christian forms of mortuary feasting is a shift away from thinking of feasts in terms of reciprocity and towards thinking of them in terms of traditional customary rules. In this context, active church members have begun to represent the absence of markers of custom as itself a marker of an alternative Christian custom. I argue that this reformulation of the relationship of custom and change is meant to give concrete form to the value of Christian individualism as the basis for sociality. The paper then concludes that in order to explain historical changes in ritual systems, the study of ritual needs to examine ritual in relation to the values that underlie it.     

Palaeopathology in late Pleistocene and early Holocene Central Plains bison: dental enamel hypoplasia,fluoride toxicosis and the archaeological record

Multiple formative agents are cited for dental enamel hypoplasia (DEH) in modern and fossil mammals. Here, four late Pleistocene-early Holocene bison assemblages from the Central Great Plains are analyzed for DEH and other bone pathologies to investigate the possible influence of chronic fluoride toxicosis, a condition that may have presented a long-term source of duress for prehistoric bison and devalued them as nutritional resources to human hunters. Although DEH is present in all the analyzed assemblages, the lack of corroborating dental and post-cranial anomalies consistent with chronic fluoride toxicosis speaks against it as a primary factor of DEH formation or general ill health in these bison. Rather, maternal nutritional stress, weaning, and seasonal forage condition are invoked as probable promoters of DEH formation. Other identified abnormalities are discussed in reference to their contribution to reduced feeding efficiency and lameness, as are their roles in developing palaeoecological models applicable to archaeological questions about ancient human lifeways.     

The High Court of Australia and political science: A revised historiography and new research agenda

The judiciary has not been the subject of sustained scrutiny within the political science discipline. The High Court plays a central role in the Australian political system, however, and the exercise of judicial power has far reaching consequences for the legislative and executive branches of government. This article presents a historiography of the study of the High Court by political scientists, using Helen Irving's ‘The Constitution and the judiciary’ as a foil. In order to foster cross-disciplinary study and research within the political science discipline, this article concludes by setting out a new research agenda for the future study of the High Court and the law by political scientists. This research agenda provides new insights into (among other topics) how judges exercise power and the changing relationship between the judiciary and the legislative and executive branches.

在政治学里,司法并不一直是审视的对象。不过,高等法院在澳大利亚的政治体系内扮演了关键的角色,司法权力对于立法和行政部门有着深远的影响。本文将政治学者对高等法院的研究做了历史的梳理,采用了海伦厄万的“宪法和司法”理论为参照。本文为将来政治学者研究高等法院及法律提出了新的研究课题,希望以此促进跨学科以及政治学科的研究。这些课题探讨法官如何行使权力,探讨司法与立法以及行政部门之间变动不居的关系。     

The racialisation of local heritage

Abstract

The region of Camden, located on the outskirts of Sydney, is a growing area set to morph from a country town to a thriving suburban district. In 2007, a Sydney Islamic charity sought to build an Islamic school in the region. Local opponents protested the application in ways that expressed contemporary forms of anti-Muslim racisms in Australia. This article pays close attention to the narratives of heritage within these voices of opposition, as a sizeable number of protesters claimed the school would violate the local settler heritage in Camden. In uncovering these discourses, it was evident that a narrative of white peaceful settlement informed the ways locals mobilised local heritage in relation to the school. The racialisation and whiteness of local heritage negated the Aboriginal presence and history in Camden, and provided a template for the maintenance of white colonial hegemony and the construction of many racialised discourses. Further, these racialisations underpinned the popular anti-Muslim sentiment expressed in ways that positioned local heritage as that of national significance.     

Irish Female Emigration in the 1930s: Transgressing space and culture

Following the establishment of the Irish Free State in the 1920s, the continuing levels of emigration from Ireland came as a disappointment to many who believed that British colonialism had caused and perpetuated the emigration problem. Within this context, there was a need to explain emigration in ways that deflected blame away from the new state authorities. In this article, the author contributes to a gendered analysis of these shifting constructions of emigration. Drawing upon Irish newspapers of the period, she suggests that the figure of the 'emigrant girl' was central to post-colonial discourses on emigration. During the 1930s, the emigration of thousands of young Irish women to English cities such as London sparked widespread comment and criticism. The Irish press and the Catholic hierarchy in particular propagated an image of these vulnerable young women as lost and alone in the big, bad cities of England. The author analyses the ways in which the 'emigrant girl' embodied specific representations of place, culture and gendered identity; the 'emigrant girl' embodied an Irishness marked by religion, culture and landscape. Through her transgression of physical, cultural and religious spaces, she encountered loneliness, danger and the risk of denationalisation.