From the interpersonal to the internet: social service digitisation and the implications for vulnerable individuals and communities

In Australia, e-government is continuously re-defining service boundaries. While this may be good in the case of transactional interactions, for example the online submission of tax returns, it is less clear that interpersonal services, such as working closely with the long-term unemployed, are best delivered digitally. We consider the impact of social services digitisation on vulnerable communities drawing on an analysis of remote Aboriginal communities. Digital uptake affords great opportunities, but it also carries risks. Some communities have no digital infrastructure and in certain cases traditional face-to-face services have been curtailed, leaving those not online with reduced assistance. We find that concerns about the ‘digital divide’ are well founded. Problems generated by e-government flow across boundaries and appear left to the third sector to resolve with the state playing an even more diminished role in the lives of disadvantaged citizens.     

Painting Country: Spatial,Somatic and Linguistic Experience in Central Australian Aboriginal Art

A demonstration that the spatial experience informing some Central Australian Aboriginal art is topographically precise brings into question the relevance of structuralist methodologies for appraising these maps of country. Qualitative aspects of spatial, somatic, linguistic and emotional experiences are found to inform the way‐finding depicted in paintings by artists of three language groups.     

The technical is political: settler colonialism and the Australian Indigenous policy system

Contemporary Australian Indigenous policy changes rapidly and regularly fails to deliver its stated aims. Additionally, political and social relationships between Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples and the Australian state remain complex and contested. This article draws on critical Indigenous theory, alongside the increasingly influential scholarly paradigm of settler colonialism, to draw these two elements together. It highlights the ongoing nature of colonial conflict, and the partisan nature of state institutions and processes. While policy is usually framed as a depoliticised, technical practice of public management for Indigenous wellbeing, I suggest that it also seeks to ‘domesticate’ Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples, perform their dysfunction and demonstrate state legitimacy. This is especially the case in Australia, which has a long tradition of framing domestic welfare policy – rather than legal agreements – as the ‘solution’ to settler colonial conflict.     

Conflicting Traditions,Concurrent Treatment: Medical Pluralism in Remote Aboriginal Australia

ABSTRACT In remote Aboriginal communities in Australia, researchers cast health beliefs and treatments as belonging to either an Aboriginal or biomedical system, which are considered to be irreconcilable and in conflict. Warlpiri people also speak of two distinct traditions that, they claim, are able to heal only specific classes of illness. Nevertheless, both Aboriginal and biomedical systems can be used simultaneously. An examination of two illness episodes will illustrate the complexity of how both Aboriginal and biomedical diagnoses and treatments are employed in a similar manner. I argue that while diagnosis is often stressed in statements regarding illness, it is only one of many factors that influence the treatment choices of individuals.     

Indigenous Exceptionalism under Fire: Assessing Indigenous Soldiers in Combat with the Australian,Canadian, New Zealand and American Armies during the Second World War

The literature on Indigenous participation in the Second World War from Canada, the United States, Australia and New Zealand has tended to portray Indigenous soldiers as exceptionally able and courageous in battle. While heart-warmingly laudatory and an understandable product of genuine evidentiary challenges in researching this subject, the image constructed is partial and unrealistic. At best it is misleading; at worst it conflates indigeneity and combat proficiency in ways that reinforce racial stereotypes of Indigenous people as ‘natural’ warriors prevalent during the war. This article argues that we discard the exceptionalism enshrouding Indigenous combat performance in favour of a more culturally nuanced approach.     

The re-emergence of wardship: Aboriginal Australians and the promise of citizenship

In this paper, I suggest that the category of ‘ward,’ a designation used for Aboriginal Australians in the 1950s and 1960s, has re-emerged in contemporary Northern Territory (NT) life. Wardship represents an in-between status, neither citizens nor non-citizens, but rather an anticipatory citizenship formation constructed by the Australian state. The ward is a not-yet citizen, and the deeds, acts, and discourses that define the ward's capacities to act as a political subject can maintain their anticipatory nature even as people ‘achieve’ formal citizenship. Wardship can be layered on top of citizen and non-citizen status alike. Rather than accounting for the grey areas between ‘citizen’ and ‘non-citizen,’ therefore, wards exist beyond this theoretical continuum, demanding a more nuanced accounting of political subjectivities and people's relationships to the state.I trace the emergence of the category ‘ward’ in the 1950s and 1960s in Australia and its re-emergence for Aboriginal Australians impacted by the 2007 Northern Territory Emergency Response legislation. The promise of citizenship offered by the status of ‘ward’ is built upon expectations about family life, economic activity, and appropriate behaviour. These assumptions underscore an implicit bargain between individuals and the state, that neoliberalised self-discipline will lead to both formal citizenship rights and a sense of belonging. Built-in impediments, however, ensure that this bargain is difficult, if not impossible, to fulfil.     

Caretakers of the Earth: integrating Canadian Aboriginal perspectives on culture and sustainability into local plans

Abstract

While still contested in most jurisdictions, a consensus on the four-pillar approach to sustainable development is slowly emerging. This perspective attempts to integrate the environmental, social, economic and cultural elements of a community into local sustainability planning processes and has been widely adopted in Canada as the basis of Integrated Community Sustainability Plans. However, Aboriginal perspectives have generally been marginalised in such efforts, largely because Aboriginal peoples take a more holistic approach to both sustainability and culture than Western-educated planners and decision makers. This article examines current approaches and methodologies adopted by Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal communities in Canada to integrate culture in sustainability planning and presents several case studies that examine the application of medicine wheel and other Aboriginal integrative worldviews to community sustainability planning. It discusses whether Aboriginal perspectives on culture can provide an alternative narrative that will advance our understanding of culture’s role in community sustainability and counteract the monocultural perspectives that are the legacy of colonialism throughout the world.     

"革命局"辨析

据苏俄、共产国际的有关档案记载。1920—1921年间在上海和中国其他几个大城市曾出现过“革命局”(ревбюоро)。对于“革命局”究竟是什么组织。目前已有几位党史学者发表了不同的意见,分别视其为:中共上海发起组及各地共产主义小组、社会主义者同盟的领导机构、具有统一战线性质的机构和俄共在华组织。这几种看法均值得商榷。从档案原文和“革命局”的名称、组织系统、自身结构与功能任务等方面来看,1920年夏成立于上海的“革命局”实际上是直属共产国际东亚书记处的具体负责中国共产主义运动的机构,而在其他城市的“革命局”则是设于上海的“中央局”的分支机构。虽然革命局后来的隶属关系、组织机构有所变化,但其作为共产国际的在华一级机关的性质却始终如一,在指导建立共产党、推动各革命团体的活动、实施共产主义宣传等工作上发挥了重要作用。随其主要使命的基本完成和中共的成立,革命局也归于消失。     

明代羁縻卫所制述论

羁縻卫所制是明朝政府为了实现对西北和东北边疆地区及民族的有效统治 ,而创设的一种地方管理模式 ,与同一时期推行于西南地区的土司制有所不同。文章从羁縻卫所的设立、明朝政府的管理措施、羁縻卫所的特点及其历史作用等四个方面 ,对这一问题进行了分析和探讨。强调指出该项制度的推行和实施 ,对维持明朝北部边疆的相对稳定 ,促进边疆民族的交流与融合 ,起了积极作用。