‘Lend me your ears’: social policy and the hearing body

Recent developments in music regulation policy in some European countries show a recognition of changes in the built environment, contemporary demographics and the sonic profile of popular music. These initiatives have not been echoed in Australian music policy, where the primary focus is on the cultural and economic conditions of production and consumption, with little interest in the mechanics and biology of sound production and circulation, and their social welfare implications. Within the general category of noise pollution, it appears that the proliferation of low-frequency noise (LFN) is the fastest growing problem, in which contemporary popular music is increasingly implicated. This paper explores why LFN should suddenly become so pervasive that it has begun to attract specific social policy and legislative measures, its own scientific journals, and attempts to establish standards of its measurement specific to a profile that evades traditional sound pollution analysis.     

The influence of race and class on resident response to economic restructuring in Franklin County,Florida, USA

This project offers a finer interpretation of whiteness by highlighting responses of white, working-class commercial fishermen and working-class African Americans to initiatives aimed at shifting Franklin County, Florida's economy from a production base to real estate and tourism development. We qualitatively examine the influence of working-class whiteness on workers' ‘structure of feeling’ or emotive responses regarding the move to post-production activities. Building on critical white studies, we argue that white fishermen have not been able to secure black support for the fishermen's resistance to restructuring because of differing structures of feeling these groups have towards economic diversification. In turn, alternative structures of feelings for whites and blacks derive from racialized, local landscapes and contemporary occupational segregation in fisheries.     

Corruption European Style: The 1861 Frémont Scandal and Popular Fears in the Civil War North

Union General John C. Frémont excited considerable controversy during the Civil War, and not just due to his dubious military competence and early advocacy of emancipation. Many republican‐influenced citizens suspected Frémont of the corrupt misuse of power, and undermining the essential moral basis of the republic. While ultimately his ineffectual generalship might have reassured Northerners that “the Pathfinder” was hardly likely to succeed in his suspected schemes, it is striking that even during the war for national survival, citizens remained deeply concerned with the possible threat of power (particularly in the hands of corrupt, designing men) to liberty.     

High-resolution radiocarbon dating of marine materials in archaeological contexts: radiocarbon marine reservoir variability between Anadara, Gafrarium, Batissa, Polymesoda spp. and Echinoidea at Caution Bay, Southern Coastal Papua New Guinea

The remains of shellfish dominate many coastal archaeological sites in the Pacific and provide a wealth of information about economy, culture, environment and climate. Shells are therefore the logical sample type to develop local and regional radiocarbon chronologies. The calibration of radiocarbon (¹⁴C) dates on marine animals is not straightforward, however, requiring an understanding of habitat and dietary preferences as well as detailed knowledge of local ocean conditions. The most complex situations occur where terrestrial influences impinge on the marine environment resulting in both the enrichment and depletion of ¹⁴C (Ulm Geoarchaeology 17(4):319–348, 2002; Petchey and Clark Quat Geochronol 6:539–549, 2011). A sampling protocol that combines a high-resolution excavation methodology, selection of short-lived samples identified to species level, and a tri-isotope approach using ¹⁴C, δ¹³C and δ¹⁸O, has given us the ability to identify ¹⁴C source variation that would otherwise have been obscured. Here, we present new research that details high-resolution mapping of marine ¹⁴C reservoir variation between Gafrarium tumidum, Gafrarium pectinatum, Anadara granosa, Anadara antiquata, Batissa violacea, Polymesoda erosa and Echinoidea from the Bogi 1 archaeological site, Caution Bay, southern coastal Papua New Guinea. These isotopes highlight specific dietary, habitat and behavioural variations that are key to obtaining chronological information from shell radiocarbon determinations.     

Empire and Globalisation: from ‘High Imperialism’ to Decolonisation

Reviewing the expansion and ultimate demise of the British and French empires, this article takes a long view of globalisation as an integral part of Europe's recent imperial past. The authors’ argument is that these empires were not simply a global phenomenon. Rather, the processes that built and destroyed them were more actively ‘globalising’. In this context, they argue that the rise and fall of the two pre-eminent overseas empires had several globalising effects. These globalising effects include distinct patterns of migration and communication, critical shifts in the movement of goods and capital, new forms of transnational connection, changing conceptualisations of community and individual rights, and discrete forms of violence and conflict that outlasted the ‘formal’ end of empires.     

‘A Puppet,Even Though He Probably Doesn't Know So’: Racial Identity and the Eisenhower Administration's Encounter with Gamal Abdel Nasser and the Arab Nationalist Movement

This article demonstrates that US beliefs concerning racial identity guided the Eisenhower administration's encounter with Egypt, Gamal Abdel Nasser, and Arab nationalism during the 1950s. It establishes that US texts propagated certain racial-identity assumptions about Arab peoples. The most important of these included the assertions that Arab peoples were irrational and easily manipulated or deceived. Policy-makers utilised these beliefs to explain and contextualise Arab actions, especially those of Egypt and its Arab nationalist government. Officials within the Eisenhower administration believed that Arab irrationality prompted Egyptian leaders to adopt a neutralist position in the cold war. The assumption that Arabs were susceptible to deception and manipulation convinced policy-makers that this position was unacceptable. The Soviets would ultimately, they believed, prey upon Arab manipulability and subjugate Egypt, the Arab nationalist movement, and the entire Middle East. These concerns made the Eisenhower administration's decision to contain Egypt, Gamal Abdel Nasser, and the Arab nationalist movement seem logical and necessary.     

An Item Veto for the President?

In their efforts to reduce federal deficits, national political leaders sometimes have embraced bold constitutional and statutory “reform” measures. President Reagan, for example, has campaigned for a constitutional amendment to permit the President to veto subsections contained within appropriations bills. This article describes the history and assesses the advantages and disadvantages of this proposed item veto. By pointing out potentially undesirable consequences of the item veto, we note that unintended side-effects may weaken Congress and provide more power than an effective president needs, and more power than an imperial president should ever have. We conclude the item veto is overrated and its effects not well understood. It would not greatly reduce deficits and it would disrupt the existing system of checks and balances. More important, it is an example of escapism from the basic tasks of statecraft and political decisionmaking that should be center stage in the legislative and executive branches.     

Recent Books in the Field of Medieval Languages and Literatures

This article examines the contradictions underlying the Falangist feminine ideal as it oscillated between demure/traditional and enterprising/modern in the rhetoric of the Sección Femenina. As the author demonstrates, the peculiarity of the Sección Femenina—which acted as the dominant cultural filter for women's familial, social, and political obligations at the time—stems from its leaders' at once-dominated (vis-à-vis the state) and dominant (vis-à-vis the female constituents) position in the cultural, social, national, and political landscape of post-civil war Spain. Although the retrograde ways of the Sección Femenina, whose statutes and rhetoric drew on the nineteenth-century bourgeois discourse of different and complementary gender relations, have elicited numerous studies, this article examines the use of this familiar and unthreatening (to the regime) model of female formation as the legitimating basis of its unconventional praxis.