Shell Middens, Ships and Seeds: Exploring Coastal Subsistence, Maritime Trade and the Dispersal of Domesticates in and Around the Ancient Arabian Peninsula

The Arabian Peninsula occupies a critical position at the intersect of several major Old World landmasses. Inland aridity and a major coastal perimeter have long made maritime activities critical to Arabia’s cultural trajectory. A wealth of recent studies, not previously synthesised, suggest not only that the peninsular littoral offered a rich resource base for thousands of years of human occupation in the region, but also that Arabia witnessed some of the world’s earliest seafaring and maritime exchange activities, and played a role in Bronze Age maritime trade that has often been underestimated. Maritime activities were closely linked to developments in agriculture, which not only fuelled trade and exchange, but were also impacted on by the dispersal of domesticates along early maritime corridors. While regional specialisation has to some degree prevented consideration of the maritime prehistory of the peninsula as a whole, it is clear that there are interesting parallels, as well as important differences, between cultural trajectories in different parts of the peninsula.     

The press and issue framing in the Australian mining tax debate

Using supervised learning techniques to code newspaper articles on the Minerals Resource Rent Tax (originally known as the Resources Super Profits Tax), this article analyses sources of partiality and emphasis in media coverage of the issue. It shows that opponents were more successful in airing their views in the opening stages of the debate, but the government's re-branding led to more favourable media coverage. There was a regional bias, however, with newspapers in states dominated by mining interests more critical than newspapers from other states. The only truly national newspaper (the Australian) was notable for having fewer ‘neutral’ articles, with a relatively high number of both negative and positive articles. The Australian Financial Review, meanwhile, had a greater number of neutral articles. Framing remained homogenous over time though variable across publications.

本文使用指导学习技术,对有关矿产资源租借税的报刊文章进行编码,分析了媒体就此话题的报道其中中立性和重点性的根源。研究显示,反对者在辩论的开始阶段成功地传播他们的观点。不过,政府的再推广也达到了有利的媒体宣传效果。当然,会有地区偏差,矿业利益集团控制的州,那里的报纸会比其他州更持批判立场。唯一名副其实的全国性大报登载的“中性”文章明显要少,负面和正面的文章都比较多,而《澳大利亚财经评论》倒是刊登了较多的中性文章。总之,格局一直比较单一,但具体到出版物则有参差。     

Teaching foreign policy analysis in Australia: on cultivating an ‘FPA disposition’

ABSTRACT

The United States-centric nature of the Foreign Policy Analysis (FPA) subfield poses a range of pedagogical challenges, especially when the subject is taught outside North America. The preponderance of FPA literature written by US scholars and examining US cases can frustrate non-US students, who often wish to study decisions they consider more directly relevant to their own region and experience. I this piece, I reflect on how I have grappled with this tension in teaching a postgraduate FPA course at the Australian National University. I discuss my choice to prioritise cultivating an ‘FPA disposition’ among students and how, as a means of doing so, I chose to design a curriculum based on a semester-long case study examining the US decision to invade Iraq in 2003. While this pedagogical approach may initially seem contradictory to my long-term aim of contributing to the expansion of FPA beyond North America, it reflects my conviction that instilling an ‘FPA disposition’ in the next generation of graduate students is essential to growing and enriching the subfield in the long term.     

‘Talking Itself Out of a Political Future’: Education and Australian Army Engagement with Papua New Guinean Independence, 1966–72

The Australian Army, while having a long association with Papua New Guinea after the Second World War and before independence in 1975, is often conceptualized as a small player in the decolonization process, of interest to scholars because of its cost and potential threat to democratic government. This article examines the Army’s education programme and associated policies in the decade before independence to argue that the institution was acutely aware of looming decolonization, and actively sought to create a national Papua New Guinean military by repurposing policies originally designed to serve Australia’s defence needs, in particular through ‘civic’ education. It embarked on this path without direction from the Department of Territories. While the results of ‘civic’ education are difficult to determine, this article shows that the Australian Army was engaged in the profound shifts occurring around it in Papua New Guinea.     

‘Why did they take him away?’ The theft of Neddy Larkin

Neddy Larkin, a Bundjalung man from New South Wales, Australia, was stolen from his grave and in 1891 sold to the Peabody Museum, Cambridge, MA. This paper uses the methodology and concepts outlined in Latour’s An Inquiry into Modes of Existence to chart Neddy Larkin’s transitions from kinsman to scientific data.