Australia’s trade diplomacy and the Trans-Pacific Partnership: ‘you’ve got to row your own boat’

ABSTRACT

As part of its economic diplomacy, Australia has directed intense effort into both bilateral and plurilateral trade negotiations such as the Trans-Pacific Partnership. According to then Minister for Trade and Investment Andrew Robb, with no major multilateral trade deal in decades, you have to ‘row your own boat’ or risk missing out. With the fundamentals of trade and the nature of trade negotiations changing, trade liberalisation has become an increasingly sophisticated and difficult negotiating area. A case study of the controversial TPP shows the tensions for a middle power navigating this space. The benefits of the TPP are contested and the government faces criticism of the adverse impacts of the agreement, especially investor-state dispute settlement clauses, impact on human rights and suspicion that the TPP is motivated by geopolitical drivers. In order not to lose more than it gains in moving away from the multilateral trade system, Australia must ensure that trade agreements are consistent with WTO rules and have open and fair accession regimes as a basis for signing. Finally, there is the need for higher levels of transparency and democratic accountability than has historically applied. A new white paper is necessary to make the case for trade liberalisation.     

Neoliberalism,massification and teaching transformative politics and international relations

‘Massification’ describes the significant increase in the proportion of the global population seeking tertiary qualifications. It is a defining feature of the global international education sphere and is often seen as linked to negative outcomes such as declining academic standards and increasing managerialism in universities. Massification, however, is not wholly or even mostly a negative for the generations of new students who now have access to tertiary education. Education can still be a transformative experience for students exposed to a rich learning environment. The question this symposium raises is how the disciplines of politics and international relations can ensure they maintain quality teaching and learning for students from subject design to program design. The collection aims to initiate a disciplinary debate in Australia, which has hitherto been missing.     

Recognizing and Moving on from a Failed Paradigm: The Case of Agricultural Landscapes in Anglo-Saxon England c. AD 400–800

A central preoccupation for archaeologists is how and why material culture changes. One of the most intractable examples of this problem can be found between AD 400 and 800 in the enigmatic transformation of sub-Roman into Anglo-Saxon England. That example lies at the heart of this review, explored through the case of the agricultural economy. Although the ideas critically examined below relate specifically to early medieval England, they represent themes of universal interest: the role of migration in the transformation of material culture, politics, and economy in a post-imperial world, the significance of “core” and “periphery” in evolving polities, ethnogenesis as a strategy in kingdom building, property rights as a lens for investigating cultural change, and the relationship between hierarchical political structures and collective forms of governance. The first part of my argument proposes a structured response to paradigmatic stalemate by identifying and testing each underlying assumption, premise, and interpretative framework. The recognition of any fallacies, false premises, and flawed arguments might assist with an overall evaluation of the continuing utility of a discourse—whether it has life in it yet, or should be set aside. In either case, the recognition of its structure should enable arguments to be developed that do not lead into a disciplinary cul-de-sac, prevented by the orthodoxy from exploring new avenues for research. In the second part of the review, I deliberately adopt a starting point outside the limits of the current discourse. Freed from the confines of the conventional consensus, I experiment with an alternative “bottom-up” approach to change in early medieval England that contrasts with conventional “top-down” arguments. I focus in particular on how rights over agricultural property—especially collective rights—and the forms of governance implied by them may assist in illuminating the roles of tradition and transformation in effecting cultural change.     

Reviews

The Book in the Americas: The Role of Books and Printing in the Development of Culture and Society in Colonial Latin America. By JULIE GREER JOHNSON. Providence: The John Carter Brown Library, 1988. Pp. xx, 142.

Emigrants and Society: Extremadura and Spanish America in the Sixteenth Century. IDA ALTMAN. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1989. Pp. viii, 372.

Migration in Colonial Spanish America. Edited by DAVID J. ROBINSON. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990. Pp. xvii, 399.

Trajinantes: caminos indígenas en la sociedad colonial, siglos XVI y XVII. By LUIS MIGUEL GLAVE. Lima: Instituto de Apoyo Agrario, 1989. Pp. 461.

Indigenous Migration and Social Change: The Forasteros of Cuzco, 1570–1720. By ANN WIGHTMAN. Durham: Duke University Press, 1990. Pp. 315.

Sátira hecha por Mateo Rosas de Oquendo a las cosas que pasan en el Pirú, año de 1598. Study and critical edition by PEDRO LASARTE. Madison: Hispanic Seminary of Medieval Studies, 1990. Pp. xci, 181.

A sátira e o engenho: Gregório de Matos e a Bahia do século XVII. JOAO ADOLFO HANSEN. São Paulo: Companhia das Letras: Secretaria do Estado e da Cultura, 1989.

Obras completas de Juan del Valle y Caviedes. Edición y estudios de MARÍA LETICIA CÁCERES A. C. I., LUIS JAIME CISNEROS y GUILLERMO LOHMANN VILLENA. Lima: Banco de Crédito, 1990. Pp. 962.

Historia de la revolución de la Nueva España de Fray Servando Teresa de Mier. Edición crítica de A. SAINT‐LU y M‐C. BÉNNASY‐BERLING (Coordinadores). J. CHENU, J‐P. CLÉMENT, A. PONS, M‐L. RIEU‐MELLAN y P. ROCHE. Prefacio de DAVID A. BRADING. Paris: Publications de la Sorbonne, 1990. Pp. 690     

Field survey in the tumulus zone of Senegal

Thousands of earthen mounds of varying sizes, presumed to be funerary monuments, occur throughout a 32,000 km² area of western Senegal. Previous inventory work and extremely limited excavation have not adequately addressed basic questions such as the relation of tumulus sites to habitation sites, the relative chronology and cultural affinities of the tumulus phenomenon in the northern and southern parts of the tumulus zone, and the temporal and cultural relationship of the southern tumuli to the megalithic monuments whose distribution they partially overlap. We describe here the results of a field survey designed to provide preliminary data relevant to these questions. In addition to locating previously unreported habitation sites in several sectors, analysis of surface pottery has permitted recognition of several temporally differentiated assemblages associated with different types of sites encountered during the survey. The distinctive assemblages of the northern and southern tumulus zones indicate that mound construction should not be considered a unitary, homogeneous phenomenon in Senegal.

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Résumé Des milliers de monticules de terre de dimensions variées, que l'on suppose être des monuments funéraires, sont éparpillés dans une zone de 32.000 km² à l'ouest du Sénégal. Auparavant, des travaux d'inventaire et d'excavation extrêmement limités n'avaient pas suffisamment tenté de répondre aux questions fondamentales telles que le rapport des sites de tumulus aux sites d'habitation, la chronologie relative et les affinités culturelles du phénomène des tumulus au nord et au sud de la zone des tumulus, et le rapport temporel et culturel des tumulus du sud avec les monuments mégalithiques dont ils recouvrent partiellement la zone de répartition. Nous décrivons ici les résultats d'une étude sur le terrain conçue pour fournir des données préliminaires ayant trait à ces questions. En plus de déterminer des sites d'habitation non-signalés auparavant dans plusieurs secteurs, l'analyse d'objets en terre cuite trouvés en surface a permis de reconnaître plusieurs assemblages temporellement différenciés, associés à différents types de sites rencontrés au cours de cette étude. Les assemblages distinctifs des zones de tumulus au nord et au sud indiquent que la construction de monticules ne doit pas être considérée comme un phénomène unitaire et homogène au Sénégal.

     

Variability in Faunal Assemblages: The Influence of Hunting Skill, Sharing, Dogs, and Mode of Cooking on Faunal Remains at a Sedentary Kalahari Community

Variability in faunal assemblages from different sites and/or from different time periods is often attributed to economic or taphonomic factors. The role of sharing on faunal remain distributions is compared to other factors that have been suggested to influence these distributions, such as hunting skill. Faunal species and skeletal elements are compared among three hunter—gatherer camps that form a sharing network. These are contrasted with those of two other hunter—gatherer camps located at the same Kalahari community occupied by an unusual family that is a relative isolate in terms of sharing. The effect of sharing on equalizing variation in hunting success as reflected in the faunal remain inventory is explored from the five camps inventoried in 1990. Complicating factors which tend to affect faunal remain frequencies are also examined, such as cooking technique and dogs. All faunal remains visible on the surface of each camp were recorded according to species, element or fragment portion, age (mature or immature), and, when possible, side. At all but one camp, surface faunal remains were recorded both before and after ethnographic observations during the dry season of 1990. In addition to hunting success, all occurrences of sharing and consumption of meat were recorded during these observation periods and those conducted on and off between 1987 and 1992. Although participation in a sharing network obscures differences in hunting skill in the archaeological record, sharing impacts on faunal assemblages in interesting ways that are potentially archaeologically visible. Sharing in strongly egalitarian societies levels unequal hunting skill that could otherwise affect faunal remain frequencies, taxa richness, meat weight, and other indices measured here. In these societies, sharing reinforces social bonding between kin and friends in ways that help unit families from different camps.Zooarchaeologists have become accustomed to high levels of confidence in their inferences about the origins, functions, and responses to stress of animal remains. This confidence rests on the causal and functional links between attributes of these remains and the processes and contexts which generate them. Their investigations are presently moving toward wider inferences about the context and functions of bones in ancient hominids' behavioral systems… Zooarchaeologists now need a different set of inferential strategies than that which characterized their preceding phase of research. (Gifford 1991:215)