Anchoring trilateralism: Can Australia-Japan-US security relations work?

Editor's Note: Both Japan and Australia are evaluating how to manage their respective alliances with the United States at a time when no clear international order has yet emerged to replace Cold War bipolarity. As America's two closest allies in the region, both of these countries have a growing interest in exploring how their own security relations should develop in conjunction with or independent of their US affiliation. Two major workshops were convened in Tokyo and Brisbane during July 2004 to consider this question, employing a rich array of approaches and perspectives to the task. The two authors served as the rapporteurs for the respective workshops and have collaborated here to summarise and assess the results.     

The Urban Emergence of a New Information Industry: Sydney's Multimedia Firms

This paper analyses the multimedia industry in Sydney. It seeks to understand whether the emergence of the industry has involved dense horizontal and vertical inter‐firm linkages characteristic of an industrial cluster, or whether the industry has grown because of general urbanisation economies related to such factors as skilled labour supply and market demand. The industry is highly concentrated in and around central Sydney. This provides the best access to firms’ main clients, notably advertising companies and other multimedia firms. It also reflects the centralised location of skilled labour such as web designers. While there is evidence of an emerging inner Sydney multimedia cluster which includes graphic design and advertising and related media, the main driver of the industry's development appears to have been general demand from advertising and related media companies, in association with the pool of computer graphics talent generated by these companies.     

Milton,drama, and Greek texts: preface

ABSTRACT

This collection of essays explores the connection between Milton’s approach to drama and his engagement with Greek antiquity. Paying attention to early Christian and early modern interpretive traditions as well as Greek literature, it situates the power of this conjunction for Milton within the larger project of the northern Renaissance.     

Considering the effects of the Byzantine–Islamic transition: Umayyad glass tesserae and vessels from the <Emphasis Type="Italic">qasr</Emphasis> of Khirbet al-Mafjar (Jericho,Palestine)

The paper reports and discusses data obtained by archaeological and archaeometric studies of glass vessels and tesserae from the qasr of Khirbet al-Mafjar (near Jericho, Palestine). Archaeological contextualisation of the site and chrono-typological study of glass vessels were associated to EPMA and LA–ICP–MS analyses, performed to characterise the composition of the glassy matrix (major and minor components as well as trace elements). Analyses allowed achieving meaningful and intriguing results, which gain insights into the production and consumption of glass vessels and tesserae in the near East during the Umayyad period (seventh–eighth centuries). Within the analysed samples, both an Egyptian and a Levantine manufacture have been identified: such data provide evidence of a double supply of glass from Egypt and the Syro-Palestinian coast in the Umayyad period occurring not only in the glassware manufacture but also in the production of base glass intended to be used in the manufacture of mosaic tesserae. Thus, the achieved results represent the first material evidence of a non-exclusive gathering of glass tesserae from Byzantium and the Byzantines in the manufacture of early Islamic mosaics.     

Geographic film as public research: re-visualizing/vitalizing a terraced landscape in the Italian Alps (Piccola terra/Small land, 2012)

This article describes an experience of geographic filmmaking carried out within a long-term research process (2000–2012) involving the terraced landscape of the Brenta Valley in the Italian Alps. The documentary Piccola terra [Small land] (2012) was co-produced by geographers and professional directors. Engaging in the recent debate on filmic geographies, the aim of this article is to discuss and show what makes a film ‘geographic’. The geographer authored a filmic interpretation of landscape which is spatially and temporally complex, open and mobile, anchored to material features and to personal stories and socio-economic contexts. Produced to support a campaign for the adoption of abandoned terraces by ‘new farmers’, the documentary Piccola terra serves as a means to engage society and produce landscape change. Geographic filmmaking as an action-, public- and social-oriented activity is discussed with reference to the so-called ‘impact agenda’. We propose a style of active engagement through filmmaking which is workable, rather than critical. In order to avoid purely auto-reflective, auto-referential academic speculation on doing filmic and public geographies, this paper, which ideally is read along with viewing of the documentary, materially enters the researched/filmed landscape, developing into a supplementary tool for the international dissemination of Piccola terra.     

“Whiteness” and natural resource management: let's talk about race baby,let's talk about sovereignty!

Issues of race and sovereignty are embedded in every cross‐cultural collaboration in natural resource management (NRM). This article aims to bring these issues to the forefront by incorporating the term whiteness. Whiteness enables a critique of the privileging of Western sovereignty and the so‐called objective and universal value of Western science. By reversing the gaze away from the colonised Other and onto systems descended from colonial authority and its inheritors, whiteness identifies how race privilege works. A critical whiteness lens provides an analytical and practical tool for decolonising NRM. We provide a case study of the South Australian Department of Environment and Water to consider how NRM professionals reproduce and deconstruct whiteness in nuanced ways, where (a) participants are defeated by Western sovereignty when whiteness is seen as normal or as the only way; (b) the privilege of Western sovereignty begins to be unsettled; and (c) the gaze is reversed. Thus,Western sovereignty is problematized, and solutions to persistent problems are found in collaboration. We argue that reversing the gaze is a process that opens spaces to co‐develop context specific solutions with Indigenous nations that decolonise cross‐cultural engagement in NRM and respect Indigenous sovereignty.