Talking about history in eleventh-century England: the Encomium Emmae Reginae and the court of Harthacnut

The Encomium Emmae Reginae was written in the early 1040s to support the interests of Queen Emma amidst the factionalism which marked the end of the period of Danish rule in England. This article argues that the Encomium was shaped by its production and reception in the distinctively multilingual environment of King Harthacnut's court. Attention to Emma's key role in negotiating the interaction of the English, Norse, French, Flemish and Latin literary and linguistic cultures which were present in the Anglo-Danish court reveals growing lay claims to Latin literary culture in eleventh-century England .     

Educating the national citizen in neoliberal times: from the multicultural self to the strategic cosmopolitan

The paper is a broad, comparative investigation of shifts in the educational rhetoric and policy of three countries over the past two decades. Using England, Canada and the United States as case studies, I argue that the spirit of multiculturalism in education has shifted from a concern with the formation of tolerant and democratic national citizens who can work with and through difference, to a more strategic use of diversity for competitive advantage in the global marketplace. This shift is directly linked with and helps to facilitate the entrenchment of neoliberalism as it supports a privatization agenda, reduces the costs of social reproduction for the government, and aids in the constitution of subjects oriented to individual survival and/or success in the global economy.     

The 1999 Republic Referendum: Is there a Cycle?

There are many ways to interpret the results of the 1999 Australian referendum on whether the Constitution should be altered 'to establish the Commonwealth of Australia as a republic with a president appointed by a two-thirds majority of the members of the Commonwealth Parliament'. One possible interpretation that has not been investigated so far suggests that the result reflects the fact that there is a 'preference cycle' over the three constitutional models that dominated the debate preceding the referendum. This research note uses survey data and public choice theory to investigate whether this interpretation sheds any further light on the referendum results.     

War Shields of the Torricelli Mountains,West Sepik Province,Papua New Guinea

ABSTRACT The usefulness of the term ‘ethnolinguistic group’, as a construct suggesting that ‘differences in language automatically translate into differences in culture’, has been questioned by Welsch, Terrel and Nadolski (1992). Not many researchers would insist on the term ‘automatically’, but would nevertheless support an argument for a strong correlation between material culture and language. As a contribution to this debate, we discuss two types of wood shields of the Torricelli Mountains (one of which is being identified for the first time) and pigskin shields to the south of the Torricellis, their use, and the details of the carved designs of the wood shields. The results of our analysis provide limited support for the correlation of material culture and language but highlight the need for analysis of material culture based on reliable data for a large number and wide range of artefacts, from defined regions, presently held in museums and private collections worldwide.     

Studying the Development of Complex Society: Mesopotamia in the Late Fifth and Fourth Millennia BC

Inca specialist D'Altroy (2001, Uruk Mesopatamia and Its Neighbours: Cross-Cultural Interactions in the Era of State Formation, School of American Research, Santa Fe, NM, p. 445) has written, Uruk Mesopotamia has stood as the model for the study of the rise of the state for several decades. Work on this problem of the origin of complexity has remained one of the foci of scholarly research even these several decades after the completion of many of the classic and key studies of Uruk culture and its neighbors in adjoining areas. At the same time, the questions asked, the size and richness of the empirical record, and the interpretations of various scholars have undergone significant change. These changes parallel scholarly trends in studies of similar phenomena in other areas of the world. This article reviews key questions that are currently being asked about societal complexity with a primary focus on the cultures and societies of late fifth and fourth millennia BC Mesopotamia. In doing so, new perspectives and interpretations on perhaps the earliest complex societies are synthesized and assessed.