The Gaze In The City: Video Surveillance In Perth

The gaze is a technique of power/knowledge that creates and exploits a new kind of visibility, of organising people so that they can be seen, known, surveilled and controlled. There is a complex interaction between the gaze and power, power and space, space and social subjectivity. Examples from Perth, Western Australia, illustrate how techniques of surveillance are used to gaze on the public, inviting consequent redefinition of what is public and private in the city. The possibilities of resistance to the gaze are outlined. There is a need to rethink the apparatus of the gaze, to debate publicly its enabling and oppressive aspects.     

Beyond the Washington Consensus? Asia and Latin America in search of more autonomous development

International economic power (the ability to shape rules of global economic conduct) needs to be understood in terms of the interactions between rule‐makers and rule‐takers in the global economy. Attempts to reshape development paradigms through interventions during financial crisis have been highly significant for the domestic political economy of the developing world. In the 1980s and early 1990s, the primary question was how much countries would liberalize in response to financial crisis. Reactions to the crises of the late 1990s in Asia and Latin America were more varied. This article explores domestic political responses to crises in both regions in the 1980s and late 1990s. It argues that countries are finding it increasingly difficult to trump domestic political pressure for change with arguments about technocratic necessity. Popular pressure is pushing governments into new experiments in economic nationalism, not a radical rejection of global economic integration, but a reshaping of relationships in an attempt to secure national interests and, in some cases, to devote more resources to welfare. Experiments to date are modest, but could presage more significant change in the future.     

MESOLITHIC PLANT EXPLOITATION AT THE BALMA ABEURADOR (FRANCE)

Summary. Research conducted at the Balma Abeurador and a complex of related Epipalaeolithic and Mesolithic sites in the western Languedoc and eastern Pyrenees region of France (Abri de Dourgne, Grotte Gazel, Balma Margineda) reveals the complex processes of cultural and economic development during the early Holocene at a time of significant environmental change. Mesolithic groups expanded their subsistence base into a veritable "broad spectrum" economy including the hunting of large mammals, small game and birds; seasonal fishing for salmonids; collecting terrestrial and marine molluscs; and the gathering of wild legumes, fruits and nuts. The identification at Abeurador of lentils, peas and chick peas morphologically indistinguishable from the early cultigens of Southwest Asia raises the question of incipient cultivation practices in the west Mediterranean as early as 10,000 b.p.