Combining research-based student fieldwork with staff research to reinforce teaching and learning

This paper addresses the relationship between teaching and research in a fieldwork context by seeking student views over 3 years across two institutions to assess the perceived value of blending staff research activity with student fieldwork. Student views were solicited using questionnaires. Despite the contrasting environments, locations and approaches of the institutions’ respective field courses, student perceptions are remarkably similar. Engaging in research activity in fieldwork (and specifically combining research-based student fieldwork with staff research) is perceived strongly to add value to study for a degree, as well as stimulate interest in the subject and improve understanding of methodologies employed.     

Home divided,home reconstructed: children in rural–urban migration in contemporary China

This article is centred on the geographies of Chinese children in contemporary China – an area which has been problematically overlooked in geographical literature on childhood. In employing unique mobile research methods by tracking migrant children through the migration cycle, the author conducted an extensive ethnographic study of rural migrant children aged 8–17 in China. The article explores rural children's everyday lived experience of migration and how migrant children negotiate and articulate home and belonging while on the move. The study demonstrates the dynamic environment that migrant children inhabit, the fluid, contextual and mobile nature of their life in rural migrant households, their migrancy and their active involvement in homemaking.     

Walking a Fine Scientific Line: The Extraordinary Deeds of Dutch Neuroscientist C. U. Ariëns Kappers Before and During World War II

Dutch neuroscientist Cornelius Ubbo Ariëns Kappers is famous for pioneering neuroembryological work and for establishing the Amsterdam Central Institute for Brain Research. Less well known is his anthropological work, which ultimately played a role in saving Dutch Jews from deportation to their deaths during the Holocaust. Ariëns Kappers extensively campaigned against anti-Semitism and Nazi persecution during the 1930s. During World War II, he utilized his credentials to help create anthropological reports “proving” full-Jews were “actually” partial- or non-Jews to evade Nazi criteria, and at least 300 Jews were thus saved by Ariëns Kappers and colleagues. His earlier work demonstrating differences between Ashkenazic and Sephardic Jewish skull indices became the focus of an attempt to save hundreds of Dutch Portuguese Jews collectively from deportation. Ariëns Kappers and colleagues brilliantly understood how anthropology and neuroscience could be utilized to make a difference and to save lives during a tragic era.     

Terminal Pleistocene–Early Holocene lithic technological organization around Lake Mojave,California

Abstract

The surface lithic scatters at two areas around Soda Lake were intensively surveyed and 3133 artifacts were analyzed in the field using four main variables to infer how Terminal Pleistocene–Early Holocene foragers organized lithic technology around pluvial Lake Mojave, California. Results indicate that early stage bifaces and flake tool blanks were created at a fine-grained volcanic (felsite) quarry/workshop complex in the Soda Mountains survey area and transported elsewhere. In addition, fine-grained volcanic bifaces were reduced and bifaces and flake tools of cryptocrystalline silicates and obsidian were finished, used, and/or discarded at a habitation area on the ancient shorelines near Little Cowhole Mountain. Comparisons with nearby sites of similar ages (at Ft. Irwin and China Lake) reveal many similarities in lithic technological organization. Lake Mojave—an important locus of prior research—can now be integrated into recent Mojave Desert and Great Basin technological organization studies.     

The role of the AALD in preserving the Australia–US alliance

This article critically evaluates the agenda and strategy of the Australian American Leadership Dialogue (AALD) for protecting and strengthening the Australia–US alliance. Nominally an exercise in informal diplomacy dedicated to fostering mutual understanding, the AALD functions more like a pro-American lobby group as it seeks to preserve orthodox thinking and eschew dissenting perspectives. The AALD performs this function in three main ways: by carefully framing discussion and debate, by socialising Australian elites into the alliance orthodoxy and by serving as a ‘gatekeeper’ of the status quo.

本文对保卫、加强澳美联盟的澳美领袖对话提出批评。该对话虽然名义上只是加强共同理解的非正式外交实践, 但其作用更像是亲美游说集团,因为它要保持正统的思路,回避不同的观点。该对话用三种方式实现这一功能：小心地设置讨论和辩论;向澳大利亚精英灌输联盟的正统观;充当现状的守门人。     

The case of Asialink’s arts residency program: towards a critical cosmopolitan approach to cultural diplomacy

This paper explores the ways in which one of Australia’s cultural diplomacy initiatives aimed at bringing Australia closer to Asia – the Asialink Arts Residency Program – may provide valuable insights for reimagining cultural diplomacy with a revised understanding of the national interest that reflects the increasingly transnational realities of the contemporary world. Drawing on extensive data gained from interviews and an online survey, the author found that program participants are engaging in exceptionally complex and at times unintended activities, and that policy concerns, such as positive image projection abroad, are rarely high on the residents’ list of priorities. However, these experiences are of particular value for the national interest, in ways not yet formulated by or included in existing cultural diplomacy discourses. With the findings in mind, the author takes a critical cosmopolitan approach to reconceptualising cultural diplomacy.     

Bringing Chinese Law in Line with Western Standards? Problematizing “Chinese” and “Western” in the Late Qing Debate over the New Criminal Code of Great Qing

This article examines the intense debates over the New Criminal Code of Great Qing (Da-Qing xin xinglü) in the National Assembly (Zizheng yuan) during the Qing empire’s New Policy Reform (1901–11). The focus is on the conflict between those who drafted and supported the new code and those who expressed reservations, especially over reform of the laws on filial piety and fornication. The issue of reconfiguring the family and social order through law was closely related to the overarching agenda of twentieth century legal reform in China—making an empire that “ruled through the principle of filial piety” into a modern nation-state that had direct relationships with its citizens. More importantly, an analysis of the late Qing debate over family law enables this article to problematize such concepts as “Chinese” and “Western” during this crucial moment of China’s empire-to-nation transformation. It showcases the paradox of China’s modern-era reforms—a contradiction between imposing Western-inspired order with a largely indigenous logic and maintaining existing sociopolitical order in the name of preserving national identity.