Crane,Elaine Forman The Poison Plot: A Tale of Adultery and Murder in Colonial Newport,Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 257 pp., $32.95, ISBN 2131-1 978-1-5017

Elaine Forman Crane’s The Poison Plot opens with the core challenge facing her as a scholar and author. “How,” she asks, “to frame a narrative that more closely resembles fiction than most nonfiction works, while remaining faithful to the historical record?” (xi). It is a matter of historical record that Newport, Rhode Island, resident Benedict Arnold petitioned to divorce his wife, Mary Arnold, in 1738 and that his petition accused her of attempting to poison him. Whether she had, in fact, poisoned him and her motivations for doing so, by contrast, remain unknown, particularly because there are no surviving documents from her perspective. The Poison Plot also poses readers with challenges. What can a reader gain from a historical monograph whose conclusions must, by their very nature, be rooted more in circumstantial evidence and speculation than in concrete documentary evidence? In what contexts might readers approach this book?     

White environmental subjectivity and the politics of belonging

In a society dominated by a colorblind approach to racial difference, racial categories are often viewed as unchanging and constructed in a time past. This article examines the making of racial categories and subjectivities in everyday perceptions and portrayals of place and belonging related to environmentalism. It examines the ways in which middle-class white people, who engage regularly with Latino immigrants, simultaneously construct the racial category of ‘white’ and affirm their own belonging in Boulder, Colorado through an exclusionary discourse of environmentalism. In Boulder, immigrants and non-immigrant Latinos are often portrayed as unaware of environmentalism, not interested in environmentalism, and/or too busy or poor to participate in environmentalism. In interviews, white residents of the city reproduce discourses of privilege and exclusion through environmental discourses and reinforce their own white environmental subjectivity as the norm. The insider/outsider division established through environmental discourse in Boulder is a specific example of how exclusion is enforced through the racialization of ‘natural’ spaces and environmental activities and how environmentalism itself is an important articulation of difference.     

Have we failed our neighbour?

In April 2006, rioting broke out in Honiara, Solomon Islands, following the parliamentary election of Snyder Rini. Occurring almost three years after the commencement of the Australian-led Regional Assistance Mission to Solomon Islands (RAMSI), the riots sparked intense deliberations about the nature of Australia's engagement with Solomon Islands and the success, or otherwise, of RAMSI. Within the context of discussions about state-building in Melanesia, this article seeks to outline challenges to the success of RAMSI. Ultimately, we argue that successful state-building in Melanesia is highly dependent upon awareness of local conditions, rather than simply the application of international best practice. Moreover, we suggest that unless the current approach is modified to accommodate local circumstances—including social and political structures and locally defined needs and desires—the existing growth of anti-RAMSI sentiment will continue to escalate. In conclusion, we offer policy-relevant suggestions aimed at assisting mission stakeholders to improve RAMSI's viability and impact.