The haves and have nots in Australia's Tropical North – New Perspectives on a Persisting Problem

There is significant confluence in the literature that leads one to expect groups of haves and groups of have nots in socio‐economic systems within common spatial contexts. Several economic theories suggest economic activity to be concentrated in a few core areas with geographically large ‘peripheries’ relying on one or two industries for employment and income. In the context of the north of Australia, issues of disparities in socio‐economic status between the region and elsewhere in Australia, and also within the region have been highlighted in the literature for some time. This paper discusses the contemporary situation using customised data collected and analysed for 55 river‐basin catchments in the Tropical Rivers region of northern Australia to highlight the extent of the haves and have nots problem. A range of spatial economic theories are discussed as theoretical bases for the present day situation and as pointers to revisionist approaches which may address it. Transforming the have nots to improved states of well‐being will be a costly and difficult process. Consequently, we argue that factors other than raw incomes and economic production should be reconsidered and re‐prioritised by governments as redress to the ongoing ‘problem’ of the North.     

1. DECENTERING HISTORY: LOCAL STORIES AND CULTURAL CROSSINGS IN A GLOBAL WORLD

This essay was first presented at the 2010 Ludwig Holberg Prize Symposium in Bergen, Norway, where I, as the prize recipient, was asked to describe my work and its import for our period of globalization. The essay first traces the interconnected processes of “decentering” history in Western historiography in the half century after World War II: the move to working people and “subaltern classes”; to women and gender; to communities defined by ethnicity and race; to the study of non‐Western histories and world or global history, in which the European trajectory is only one of several models. Can the historian hold onto the subjects of “decentered” social and cultural history, often local and full of concrete detail, and still address the perspectives of global history? To suggest an answer to this question, I describe my own decentering path from work on sixteenth‐century artisans in the 1950s to recent research on non‐European figures such as the Muslim “Leo Africanus” (Hasan al‐Wazzan). I then offer two examples in which concrete cases can serve a global perspective. One is a comparison of the literary careers of Ibn Khaldun and Christine de Pizan in the scribal cultures on either side of the Mediterranean in the late fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries. The other is the transmission and transformation of practices of divination, healing, and detection from Africa to the slave communities of Suriname in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.     

Real Institutional Responses to Neoliberalism in Australia

The paper defines the state's apparatus as a site of power and contestation. This view enables contingency in the realm of government to be taken seriously. Accordingly, the paper takes a critical view of the idea of neoliberalism as a general global process. The paper reviews Paul du Gay's history of the state's apparatus, including his nostalgia for bureaucracy and his disdain for entrepreneurship. The paper contrasts du Gay's stylised take with a study of shifts in institutional structures and behaviours in Australia's state apparatus since the mid 1970s leading to the present period of Howard neoliberalism. The paper positions these shifts in the context of Coombs‐led institutional reform in Australia; it examines the potential for institutional resistances and responses; and draws implications for how we view institutions as having agency in the political processes of state apparatus reform.     

CELTIC SHRINES IN CENTRAL EUROPE: A SCEPTICAL APPROACH

Summary: This paper deals with the archaeological manifestations of religious activities of the Central European Celts. Until recently, the rectangular enclosures in Central Europe ('Viereckschanzen') were considered solely as sanctuaries, though present evidence allows other interpretations of the function of these sites as well. the criteria for recognizing the wooden structures situated inside the enclosed areas as shrines are far from being unambiguous and in some cases a profane, i.e. non-religious purpose may be presumed. the questions put forward here were prompted by the find of an unusual structure in the enclosure of MšeckéŽehrovice in Bohemia.     

The Changing Value of Australian Tropical Rivers

Until recently the objectives of tropical river management were narrowly construed: the development imperative drove resource policy. During recent decades, community attitudes to river and water management have changed considerably and the national program of water reform, the National Water Initiative, is accelerating alterations to the way that water is used, managed and priced. A broader range of values and imperatives is now influencing water resource management policy. Not least is the concern over the ecological impacts and economic inefficiencies of the large‐scale hydrological schemes that once excited the public's imagination. This paper reports on a recent study of social and economic values of tropical rivers conducted by the authors for an Australian statutory research and development corporation. The study shows that the values associated with tropical rivers have changed and diversified over time with growing societal awareness of the contribution made by unregulated, healthy river systems to human wellbeing and cultural identity. As a consequence of substantial social change, tropical river management must now contend with a more complex array of societal values and water management objectives.     

"Between Belonging": Habitus and the migration experience

This paper explores the impacts of migration both on the small island community of Grand Manan, New Brunswick, and on the group of Newfoundland families who have moved there from their homes 1500 km away. Based upon personal interviews with individuals and families, impacts and meanings are examined in terms of social networks, community cleavages, and intergenerational differences. The complexity of patterns and the ambiguities experienced by both groups are related to Bourdieu's concept of ‘habitus’, and its relevance for changing meanings of ‘place’ and ‘community’. In exploring the changing patterns of social relationships and meanings of community, this paper highlights issues of social cohesion and tensions associated with forging new identities, and examines the particular impacts upon youth whose sense of belonging is explicitly between homes. The experience of migration for those who decide to stay permanently is shown to be different than for the majority who come as seasonal migrants. In the decision to stay through the winter or not, crucial factors are both the sense of belonging back in Newfoundland and whether or not families have children, whose abilities to forge new relationships are the everyday concerns for parents. While the importance of jobs provides the main incentive to migrate, the difficulties associated with integrating into new social groups, negotiating new identities, and adjusting to different educational requirements pose almost insurmountable challenges for many families. It is in the details of family lives, values and perceptions, told through their narratives of experience, that we begin to discern the ambiguities and fluidity of evolving habitus for both groups. Cet article analyse les effets de la migration à la fois sur la petite communauté insulaire de Grand Manan au Nouveau‐Brunswick et sur les families qui s'y sont déplacées, depuis Terre‐Neuve, à plus de 1500 km de distance. Basé sur des entrevues auprès d'individus et de families, il examine le sens et l'effet de la migration en accordant une attention particulière aux réseaux sociaux, aux disparités communautaires et au fossé intergénérationnel. On y fait appel au concept d'habitus de Bourdieu pour rendre compte de la complexité des pratiques propres à chacun des deux groupes et de l'ambiguité du sens qu'ils confèrent à leur expérience. L'analyse contextualisée de la dynamique des relations sociales et du sens de la communauté met en lumière des questions liées à la cohésion sociale et aux inévitables tensions liées à ces dynamiques. Plus particulièrement, l'article examine les effets de la migration sur les jeunes dont le sentiment d'appartenance se définit précisément entre deux ‘chez soi’. L'éxpérience de la migration chez ceux qui ont décidé de s'établir de façon permanente est bien différente de celle vécue par la majorité qui se déplace de façon saisonnière. Le sentiment d'appartenance à Terre‐Neuve et le fait d'avoir ou non des enfants (leur capacité de tisser de nouvelles relations sociales étant un souci permanent pour les parents) sont des facteurs fondamentaux dans la décision de ‘passer l'hiver’ ou non. Bien que les emplois soient la principale motivation pour migrer, les difficultés d'intégration au sein de nouveaux groupes sociaux, le développement de nouvelles identités, l'adaptation à un nouveau régime scolaire sont très difficiles à surmonter pour de nombreuses families. Par l'entremise du récit de leur expérience, qui révèle les détails de la vie de famille, des valeurs et des perceptions individuelles et collectives, il est possible de cerner les ambiguïtés et la fluidité de l'habitus changeant des deux groupes.