Gaeltacht Thuaisceart an Oileáin Úir: post-territorial Irishness and Canadian multiculturalism

In 2007 a remarkable development for the Irish language outside of Ireland took place. A dedicated space for speaking and learning the language was established in Ontario, Canada, now known as Gaeltacht Thuaisceart an Oileáin Úir. While the adoption of the term ‘Gaeltacht’ may be controversial in an allochthonous context, this site is sustained by a diasporic community that endeavours to preserve an Irish cultural identity through learning and speaking the language. This paper presents the results of fieldwork conducted among Irish-language learners in Canada who have invested time and resources to establish a permanent space for the language. Data retrieved through an online survey reveal that the language serves as a vehicle for those wishing to maintain or connect with an Irish cultural identity, as well as for those outside of the diaspora who learn the language for other social, professional or educational purposes. Notably, such narratives are perfectly at ease within a modern, multicultural Canada.     

Engaging with place: artists,site-specificity and the Hebden Bridge Sculpture Trail

This paper traces the creative processes employed by artists participating in the 2004 Hebden Bridge Sculpture Trail and examines relationships between place, art and site-specificity. The Trail is a popular, temporary annual local arts event that invites international artists, students and community art groups to create and exhibit site-sensitive sculpture within Hardcastle Crags in Yorkshire, England. We consider some of the multiple ways in which artists mediate relationships between ‘site’ and artwork. We connect geographical concepts of place that highlight location, locale and sense of place, with mobile understandings of site as porous and flowing. The paper positions geographical research of art, opening out art and site in a non-urban environment through comparative discussion of concepts of ‘place’ and three ‘paradigms’ in site-specific art (phenomenological, social/institutional and discursive, Kwon 2002 Kwon, M. 2002. One Place After Another: Site-specific Art and Locational Identity, Cambridge MA: MIT Press. [Crossref] , [Google Scholar]). Three elements of site-specificity – histories, natures, interactions – are then explored through fourteen artists' creative practices and our documentation of the installation of their artwork in the Trail. We highlight the juxtaposition of ‘sites’ within the Trail, the over-lapping of ‘paradigms’ within individual artworks, and transitory aspects of ‘site’ to suggest that ‘time’ holds great significance in understanding site-specificity, place and art outdoors.     

Stories of crossings and connections from Bawaka,North East Arnhem Land,Australia

This paper engages with Indigenous peoples' conceptualisations of borders, arguing that these unsettle dominant Eurocentric constructs of the border as terrestrial, linear, bound and defined through western legal frameworks. It does this by drawing on one aspect of the many storytelling experiences offered by members of the Indigenous-owned Yolngu tourism business Bawaka Cultural Experiences in northern Australia. We argue that stories told to visitors about multiple and diverse connections between Yolngu and Makassan people from Sulawesi, Indonesia, are intentional constructions which challenge dominant conceptions of Australia as an isolated island-nation. The stories redefine the border as a dynamic and active space and as a site of complex encounters. The border itself is continuously recreated through stories in ways that emphasise the continuity and richness of land and sea-scapes and are based on non-linear conceptions of time. The stories invite non-Indigenous people to engage with different kinds of realities that exist in the north and to re-imagine Australia's north as a place of crossings and connections.     

Multiculture,middle class competencies and friendship practices in super-diverse geographies

In this paper we use a small number of in-depth interviews with parents with primary school children to examine social mixing and friendship practices in two super-diverse North London boroughs. In these complex geographical contexts, characterized by gentrification processes and old and new migrations, we suggest that primary schools are convergent places where adults and children from different backgrounds are likely to meet and interact, and the paper explores the extent to which adults and children, thrown together in and through these sites, negotiate relationships with those who are differently socially and culturally situated to themselves. Informed by the interview narratives, the paper highlights the importance of focusing on the micro, quotidian ways in which differences in social and/or ethnic background shape those relationships and it explores some instances of the ways in which those differences are routinely encountered, managed and/or avoided. In this way the paper contributes theoretical and empirical nuance to current concerns around difference and diversity and the interactions of complex urban populations by ‘adding’ social class to everyday multiculture perspectives and everyday multiculture perspectives to urban middle class debates.     

Duty to God/my Dharma/Allah/Waheguru: diverse youthful religiosities and the politics and performance of informal worship

This paper draws on a case study of the Scout Movement in the UK to explore the everyday, informal expressions of ‘worship’ by young people that occur outside of ‘designated’ religious spaces and the politics of these performances over time. In analysing the explicit geographies of how young people in UK scouting perform their ‘duty to God’ (or Dharma and so forth), it is argued that a more expanded concept of everyday and embodied worship is needed. This paper also attends to recent calls for more critical historical geographies of religion, drawing on archival data to examine the organisation's relationship with religion over time and in doing so contributes new insights into the production of youthful religiosities and re-thinking their designated domains.     

Other People’s Data: A Demonstration of the Imperative of Publishing Primary Data

This study explores issues in using data generated by other analysts. Three researchers independently analyzed an orphaned, decades-old zooarchaeological dataset and then compared their analytical approaches and results. Although they took a similar initial approach to determine the dataset’s suitability for analysis, the three researchers generated markedly different interpretive conclusions. In examining how researchers use legacy data, this paper highlights interpretive issues, data integrity concerns, and data documentation needs. In order to meet these needs, we propose greater professional recognition for data dissemination, favoring models of “data publication” over “data sharing” or “data archiving.”     

Micropalaeontology of the Late Proterozoic Arcoona Quartzite Member of the Tent Hill Formation,Stuart Shelf,South Australia

Shales of the Late Proterozoic Arcoona Quartzite Member of the Tent Hill Formation, Stuart Shelf, South Australia, contain a well-preserved microfossil assemblage consisting of leiosphaerid acritarchs, cyanobacterial filaments and relatively large organic sheets interpreted as probable fragments of vendotaenid algae. Stratigraphically, the Arcoona Quartzite Member is thought to be the equivalent of the ABC Range Quartzite of the Flinders Ranges, which underlies metazoan-bearing sandstones of the Pound Subgroup but overlies recently discovered animal fossils of the basal Wilpena Group. The ABC Quartzite is included in the stratotype of the Ediacarian System proposed by Cloud & Glaessner (1982). The Arcoona assemblage thus provides an excellent opportunity for microfossil-based biostratigraphic characterization of sequences containing the earliest invertebrate biotas. Arcoona microfossils illustrate well both the problems and potential of Precambrian micropalaeontology. The morphologic complexity and diversity of the leiosphaerids is limited; however, the assemblage as a whole compares closely with microbiotas of late Vendian age from the Georgina Basin in northern Australia and the Nama Group in Namibia, as well as with several localities in the Northern Hemisphere. The assemblage described here differs from phytoplankton assemblages of both late Riphean and Cambrian age found in many other parts of the world.     

A l'attac. Globalisation and Ideological Renewal on the French Left

The question of globalisation has become a focus of intense debate on the French Left with growing attempts to redefine the nature and forms of leftist opposition. More than any other grouping Attac, created in 1998, has been at the centre of a movement of opposition that contests the terms of neo-liberal globalisation and posits an alternative vision of social and political change. This article focuses on Attac's role in constructing a new discourse of opposition in relation to a global economic order. Whilst Attac seems to offer the possibility for ideological renewal on the Left, it has so far been unable to mobilise widespread support behind its political project. For some observers, Attac has failed to make explicit the connections between particular social problems and grievances in France and a universal context of change at international level. It tends to treat globalisation as an abstract ‘scientific’ problem, a distant and reified phenomenon rather than a social reality affecting millions of French citizens in their everyday lives.

Comment cela s'appelle-t-il, ce moment o[ugrave] un autre monde devient possible? Cela a un très beau nom, camarades. Cela s'appelle l'aurore.1 ?[1] Ramonet, I. (2002 Ramonet, I. 2002. “Cela s'appelle l'aurore”. In Attac au Zénith, 13–25. Paris: Mille et Une Nuits.  [Google Scholar]) ‘Cela s'appelle l'aurore’, in Attac au Zénith, Attac, Mille et Une Nuits, Paris, p. 21. The slogan un autre monde est possible was first devised by Attac and has since become the main symbolic reference for the French anti-globalisation movement.