Journal articles on the topic 'Australia Foreign relations Asia, Southeastern'

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1

Vietrynskyi, I. "Australian Foreign Policy during the World War II." Problems of World History, no. 18 (November 8, 2022): 65–88. http://dx.doi.org/10.46869/2707-6776-2022-18-3.

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The article is related to the establishment of Australian foreign policy tradition and becoming of Australia as a subject of international relations. The significant role of the dominions during First World War Great and their help for Great Britain victory, intensified their struggle for independence. As the result of long-term efforts, dominions reached the proclamation of the Balfour Declaration in 1926 by London, which was later confirmed by the Statute of Westminster (1931), which established the authority for dominions for an independent foreign policy. The development of Australian foreign policy before and during World War II was analyzed. The evolution of the relations of the Australia and Great Britain in the context of the events of the World War II is traced, in particular the peculiarities of the allied relations of the two countries. There is shown the regional dimension of the World War II within the Asia-Pacific region, in the context of Australia and the United States actions against Japanese aggression. There are analyzed the peculiarities of external threats effect on the transformation of the Australian foreign policy strategy, in particular in the national security sphere. The main threat for Australia in that period become Japanise aggressive and expansionist policy in the Asia-Pacific region. A lot of Australian soldiers and military equipment were sent to Great Britain to support traditional allie. But in actual strategic situation in Europe there were great doubts that British troops and the navy would be able to effectively help Australians in case of an attack by Japan. Politics of national security and defense of Australia in the context of its participation in World War II is considered. In the conditions of real threat of Japanese invasion, as well as the lack of sure to receive necessary support from Great Britain, the Australian government start to find a military alliance with the USA. There were identified the key implications of World War II for Australian socio-economic system.
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2

Darmawan, Harry. "LONGING FOR KEVIN RUDD AND HIS LEGACY IN IMPROVING AUSTRALIA-INDONESIA RELATIONS." Journal of Social Political Sciences 2, no. 2 (May 29, 2021): 189–204. http://dx.doi.org/10.52166/jsps.v2i2.58.

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Indonesia misses Kevin Rudd's figure. The emergence and victory of Kevin Rudd in the 2007 Australian elections seemed to be a speck of light in the improvement of bilateral relations between Australia and Indonesia at that time. He succeeded in turning Australia's foreign policy into a more humanist and Asia-centric direction. A thing that was previously very rare in the era of Prime Minister John Howard. Various policies were able to reconcile the romanticism of Garuda and the Kangaroo, which is the largest ruler in Southeast Asia and the Oceania Zone. This paper examines the dynamics of Kevin Rudd's victory in the 2007 Australian Election, as well as his golden legacy in fighting for harmonization of relations between Australia and Indonesia.
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Antonopoulos, Paul. "The Kangaroo, the Bear, and the Dragon: Australia-Russia-China Relations in the “Asian Century”." China Quarterly of International Strategic Studies 03, no. 03 (January 2017): 411–28. http://dx.doi.org/10.1142/s2377740017500208.

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With Australia and Russia increasingly seeing their future in the Asia-Pacific, neither can reach its full economic potential except under the guidance of Beijing’s control of ports on its “Maritime Silk Road.” Cold War clichés of the “Yankee lapdog” and the big bad “Russian bear” continue to dominate how Canberra and Moscow view each other. Yet when it comes to the future of Australia-Russia-China relations, one must look beyond Moscow, Beijing, and Canberra, but rather at Vladivostok and Darwin, symbols of an as-yet unrealized goal to shift emphasis onto each country’s sparsely-populated regions bordering the Asia-Pacific. With the dawning of the “Asian Century,” how does the United States change the geopolitical dynamics of the region, and how do China, Russia, and Australia react to “America’s Pacific Century”? Rather than a capitulation to America’s aggressive posture in the Asia-Pacific, China and Russia have consolidated the integration of their economies and militaries to counter such penetration. This emerging rivalry creates a challenge for Australia to balance its military alliance with the United States and its economic reliance on China. The necessity of finetuning this balance should be Canberra’s primary foreign policy issue.
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Abdullah, Anzar. "Diplomatic Relations between Indonesia-Australia Since Whitlam, Fraser, Until Hawke Era in An Attempt To Establish Political Stability in Southeast Asia." Jurnal Ilmiah Peuradeun 5, no. 2 (May 27, 2017): 237. http://dx.doi.org/10.26811/peuradeun.v5i2.135.

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Talking about foreign policy relations of a country, it cannot be explained without adapting to the changes that occur in the growing environment or situation of both countries. Adjustments to the environment and the situation, especially the foreign policy are done in order to maintain the physical, economic, politic and social culture of the country in the midst of the real conditions of the situation occurred, like the history of bilateral relations between Indonesia and Australia). This is a study of the history of Australian foreign policy towards Indonesia since Whitlam government in 1972 until Hawke. The goal of the study is to explain how the foreign policy of the Australian Prime Ministers during their reigns. Although in reality in the course of its history, Australian and Indonesian diplomatic relations were full of intrigues, turmoil and conflicts, but it did not severe the relation of the two nations. Eventually, the conclusion of this study explicitly states that Australia and Indonesia still need each other in an attempt to establish political stability, economic and security in Southeast Asia and the Pacific peacefully.
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Garin, Artyom. "THE FEATURES OF MODERN SINO-AUSTRALIAN TRADE AND ECONOMIC RELATION IN THE CONTEXT OF CHANGING ASIA-PACIFIC." Eastern Analytics, no. 2 (2021): 32–42. http://dx.doi.org/10.31696/2227-5568-2021-02-032-042.

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Australia successfully combines a unique geopolitical position in the Asia- Pacific, as well as economic potential. At the same time, the emerging trade dependence of the Fifth Continent on the People’s Republic of China (PRC) is increasingly affecting Canberra’s foreign policy year by year. The aggravation of Sino- U.S. relations has also led to tension between Australia and China. In 2020, the world faced the COVID-19 pandemic, which caused negative impacts on the global economy, and trade tensions began between the two states. In early 2021 Beijng also suspended all activity under the China- Australia Strategic Economic Dialogue for an indefinite period. All these events give the research of trade and economic relations between Australia and the PRC a great practical focus, including allowing us to more specifically identify the degree of dependence of the economy of the Fifth Continent on the situation in China or the degree of Sino- Australian relation. This article examines the consequences of the suspension China- Australia Strategic Economic Dialogue, in particular, its impact on the future prospects for the Free Trade Agreement (FTA) between the two countries. Special attention is paid to the impact of China’s economic growth rates on the Australian economy. At the same time, the author aggregates the trade and economic strategies of Australia as a middle power, considering Canberra’s response to the transformation of the regional architecture in the Asia- Pacific. The provisions and conclusions presented in this article are based on the study of the works of leading international researchers specializing in foreign policy and economic issues of Australia, as well as Sino- Australian relations.
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Pramanta, Rio Akbar, Roihanatul Maziyah, Dela Karisma, Putri Rahma Asri, Ayu Tiara Karel Bua, Dimas Bagas Priambodo, and Bayu Mahendra. "Kemitraan Strategis Non-Zero Sum Game: Hubungan ASEAN-Australia dalam Konteks Geopolitik." Indonesian Perspective 3, no. 2 (March 12, 2019): 111. http://dx.doi.org/10.14710/ip.v3i2.22347.

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ASEAN and Australia has a long history of mutual partnership. It is a strategic foreign policy for both parties. ASEAN needs to maintain its power and influence with their neighboring countries to maintain the political stability in the Southeast Asian region. On the other hand, Australia needs Southeast Asia because it serves as a strategic and crucial pivot of numerous benefits and interests for them, including but not limited to security and economics. However, ASEAN-Australia relations is not separated from the geopolitical implications. The geopolitical factors determine the strategic partnership between ASEAN and Australia, thus leading to the hypothesis in this article where Australia needs ASEAN more than the vice versa, and Australia is the one who benefits more in terms of relative gain, relative to ASEAN.Keywords: ASEAN-Australia relations, neorealism, relative gain, geopolitics
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7

Benvenuti, Andrea, and David Martin Jones. "Myth and Misrepresentation in Australian Foreign Policy: Menzies and Engagement with Asia." Journal of Cold War Studies 13, no. 4 (October 2011): 57–78. http://dx.doi.org/10.1162/jcws_a_00168.

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The prevailing orthodoxy in the academic literature devoted to the history of Australia's post-1945 international relations posits that a mixture of suspicion and condescension permeated the attitude of the governments headed by Robert Menzies (1949–1966) toward the Asia-Pacific region. Menzies's regional policies, according to this view, not only prevented Australia from engaging meaningfully with its Asian neighbors but also ended up antagonizing them. This article rejects the conventional view and instead shows that the prevailing left-Labor assessments of Menzies's regional policy are fundamentally marred by an anachronistic disregard of the diplomatic dynamics, political challenges, and economic realities of Cold War Asia.
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8

Khudoliy, Anatoliy. "Modern challenges in the Asia-Pacific." American History & Politics Scientific edition, no. 6 (2018): 72–82. http://dx.doi.org/10.17721/2521-1706.2018.06.72-82.

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The article deals with American-Chinese and American-Indian relationships in the 21st century. The researcher focused on political, military and economic aspects of cooperation between Washington and Beijing, Washington and New Deli over the last few years of the twenty-first century. The author of the article has analyzed major tendencies of development of American-Chinese relationships in the context of bilateral cooperation during the presidency of Barack Obama and Donald Trump. The economic and security activities of China, oriented to a strengthening of leadership positions of Beijing, as a key actor, in the regional policy were detailed. Along with it, the author shifted attention to Washington priorities in bilateral relations considering its pragmatic purposes and national interests which considerably influence foreign policy course of the United States. Despite close relations between the USA and the People’s Republic of China, there are factors that set limits for the strategic partnerships between the two countries. The author analyzed not only foreign policy of the United States but also the foreign policy strategy of China that hides interventionism behind the economic policy, trade, economic activity and projects such as ‘One belt, one road’. Some cases of conflict situations between China and its neighbors are analyzed in order to highlight problems. The author analyzed definite political and economic steps made by President Trump in order to strengthen American positions and regional security. Under the support of Washington, India, Japan, and Australia play more important roles as regional actors. India’s role in the regional confrontation between the United States and China is well depicted. Since 2017 India increased its positions in exporting goods and services to the United States, which is one of the main markets after China and the EU. Nevertheless, the USA is still a key player in the region. So, developing trade, financial and military relations, the USA is attempting not only to preserve, but also to strengthen its own positions in the Asia-Pacific and, as a result, to contain China.
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9

Benvenuti, Andrea, and David Martin Jones. "Engaging Southeast Asia? Labor's Regional Mythology and Australia's Military Withdrawal from Singapore and Malaysia, 1972–1973." Journal of Cold War Studies 12, no. 4 (October 2010): 32–62. http://dx.doi.org/10.1162/jcws_a_00047.

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This article draws on previously classified Australian and British archival material to reevaluate Australian Prime Minister Gough Whitlam's foreign policy. The article focuses on the Whitlam government's decision in 1973 to withdraw Australian forces from Malaysia and Singapore—a decision that constitutes a neglected but defining episode in the evolution of Australian postwar diplomacy. An analysis of this decision reveals the limits of Whitlam's attempt to redefine the conduct of Australian foreign policy from 1972 to 1975, a policy he saw as too heavily influenced by the Cold War. Focusing on Whitlam's approach to the Five Power Defence Arrangement, this article contends that far from being an adroit and skillful architect of Australian engagement with Asia, Whitlam irritated Australia's regional allies and complicated Australia's relations with its immediate neighbors. Australia's subsequent adjustment to its neighborhood was not the success story implied in the general histories of Australian diplomacy. Whitlam's policy toward Southeast Asia, far from being a “watershed” in foreign relations, as often assumed, left Australia increasingly isolated from its region and more reliant on its chief Cold War ally, the United States.
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10

GARIN, Artyom A. "AUKUS AND THE SOUTH PACIFIC: FOREIGN POLICY AND SECURITY IMPLICATIONS FOR AUSTRALIA." Southeast Asia: Actual Problems of Development, no. 1 (54) (2022): 223–33. http://dx.doi.org/10.31696/2072-8271-2022-1-1-54-223-233.

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The United States, the UK and Australia continue to enhance defence cooperation in the dual space of the Indian and Pacific Oceans. These powers announced the establishing of a trilateral security pact AUKUS on September 15, 2021. The U.S. will transfer nuclear submarine technology to Australia but the nature of AUKUS implies a broader technological interaction between the parties. Despite the Anglosphere's attempts to indicate that their actions aren't directed against any power, all their actions reveal intensifying rivalry with the People's Republic of China (PRC). This article examines the nature of AUKUS and the reasons for its appearance. Special attention is paid to the influence of the alliance on the Fifth Continent's defense capabilities and its domestic policy dimension. At the same time, the author analyzes the impact of AUKUS on Australia's relations with the countries of Southeast Asia and Oceania.
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11

Rimmer, Susan Harris. "Australian experiments in creative governance, regionalism, and plurilateralism." International Journal: Canada's Journal of Global Policy Analysis 71, no. 4 (December 2016): 630–50. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0020702016686383.

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The previous Abbott government had prioritized a general attitude to foreign policy captured by the phrase “Jakarta not Geneva,” which signified a preference for bilateral or minilateral interactions with the region rather than United Nations-based multilateralism. With Julie Bishop MP as Australia’s first female foreign minister, the Coalition also prioritized economic diplomacy, as exemplified by the repeated refrain that Australia is “open for business.” This approach led to a preference for diplomatic venues and processes that focused on continuing investments in regional architecture, new emphasis on minilateral dialogues such as the Indian Ocean Rim Association (IORA) and Mexico, Indonesia, Korea, Turkey, and Australia (MIKTA), and more effort directed to bilateral and plurilateral processes such as the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade negotiations. This approach has been continued under Prime Minister Turnbull, with a renewed focus on innovation. Part 1 considers minilateral and regional investments in the Indo-Pacific region, primarily, IORA, the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC), and the Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN). I consider MIKTA a unique vehicle for Australian diplomacy. Part 2 considers what issues Australia should be pursuing through these forums, with a focus on the two themes of gender equality (as an example of niche diplomacy) and trade (multilateralism under pressure) as case studies. Beeson and Higgott argue that middle powers have the potential to successfully implement “games of skill,” especially at moments of international transition. How skilful have Australia’s efforts been in these minilateral dialogues, enhanced regionalism, and plurilateral processes, and what more can be achieved in these forums? Are these efforts creating more fragmentation of the rules-based order, or are they a way to overcome global governance stalemates? I set out the arguments for whether Australia, as a pivotal power, should generate more global options, or be more focused on inclusion in the Asia-Pacific region.
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12

Toyoda, Tetsuya, Ekaterina Vaseneva, and Ryo Takahama. "Security Policy Options for Japan in Three Time Frameworks." RUDN Journal of World History 14, no. 4 (December 15, 2022): 410–26. http://dx.doi.org/10.22363/2312-8127-2022-14-4-410-426.

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This paper examines security policy options for Japan at the present stage that may be worth considering in the short term, the midterm, and the long term, respectively. Hence, the aim of the paper is to examine foreign policy security options for Japan in the foreseeable future. While providing a comprehensive overview of the Japanese foreign and security policy at the present stage, the article employs the case study methodological framework to analyze Japan’s foreign policy objectives in case of Tokyo’s relations with the most critical partners in the Asia-Pacific Region - namely, the United States, China, Russia, ASEAN, and Taiwan. Examining the origin and further development of the QUAD, the authors highlight the absence of ASEAN members and India’s hesitation to institutionalize the grouping, while analyzing the Russia-Japan relations they focus on common interests in security cooperation, as well on its limitations. As a result, in the short term, the expansion of the Japan-US alliance to the Indo-Pacific region is the most plausible option. However, without involving the ASEAN countries, the Free and Open IndoPacific (FOIP) strategy can only add Australia and India to the existing Japan-US alliance. In the midterm, an alliance with Russia may be, with some serious limitations, geographically a natural option. In the long term, Japan might need to find a proper place in a China-centered order in East Asia. Therefore, the authors conclude that the relative decline of US influence in East Asia is unavoidable in the coming decades, Japan must adjust or even reconsider its security policy.
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13

Benvenuti, Andrea, and David Martin Jones. "With Friends Like These: Australia, the United States, and Southeast Asian Détente." Journal of Cold War Studies 21, no. 2 (May 2019): 27–57. http://dx.doi.org/10.1162/jcws_a_00876.

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A generation of scholars has depicted the premiership of Labor Party leader Gough Whitlam as a watershed in Australian foreign policy. According to the prevailing consensus, Whitlam carved out a more independent and progressive role in international affairs without significantly endangering relations with Western-aligned states in East and Southeast Asia or with Australia's traditionally closest allies, the United States and the United Kingdom. This article takes issue with these views and offers a more skeptical assessment of Whitlam's diplomacy and questions his handling of Australia's alliance with the United States. In doing so, it shows that Whitlam, in his eagerness to embrace détente, reject containment, and project an image of an allegedly more progressive and independent Australia, in fact exacerbated tensions with Richard Nixon's Republican administration and caused disquiet among Southeast Asian countries that were aligned with or at least friendly toward the West.
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Brouwer, Gordon de. "Financial Markets, Institutions, and Integration in East Asia." Asian Economic Papers 2, no. 1 (January 2003): 53–80. http://dx.doi.org/10.1162/153535103322022896.

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East Asia has enormous scope to upgrade and integrate its financial markets, covering the spectrum of equity, bond, foreign-exchange, and derivatives markets. Financial markets and institutions in East Asia tend to be narrow and undeveloped, although there are important exceptions. Japan dominates the top tier of the region's markets by virtue of its size, but its markets are not advanced, and many of its private institutions are weak. Although the markets in Australia, Hong Kong SAR, and Singapore are smaller than those of Japan, they are more innovative, market-oriented, and technologically advanced. Markets in Malaysia, South Korea, Taiwan, and Thailand have made substantial progress to varying degrees; but China, Indonesia, and the Philippines have a considerable way to go in developing the information and governance infrastructure that financial markets need to function well. For all these countries, there is a clear role for regional cooperation among policymakers in building capacity in, and links between, financial markets in East Asia, as well as in encouraging stable speculation and the participation of nonresident and institutional investors in domestic financial markets. ASEAN+3 is an important and welcome advance in regional cooperation, but its membership does not span the depth of experience in financial markets and institutions that exists in East Asia.
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Woolcott *, Richard. "Foreign policy priorities for the Howard government's fourth term: Australia, Asia and America in the post-11th September world." Australian Journal of International Affairs 59, no. 2 (June 2005): 141–52. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/10357710500134491.

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16

Robb, Thomas K., and David James Gill. "The ANZUS Treaty during the Cold War: A Reinterpretation of U.S. Diplomacy in the Southwest Pacific." Journal of Cold War Studies 17, no. 4 (October 2015): 109–57. http://dx.doi.org/10.1162/jcws_a_00599.

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This article explains the origins of the Australia–New Zealand–United States (ANZUS) Treaty by highlighting U.S. ambitions in the Pacific region after World War II. Three clarifications to the historiography merit attention. First, an alliance with Australia and New Zealand reflected the pursuit of U.S. interests rather than the skill of antipodean diplomacy. Despite initial reservations in Washington, geostrategic anxiety and economic ambition ultimately spurred cooperation. The U.S. government's eventual recourse to coercive diplomacy against the other ANZUS members, and the exclusion of Britain from the alliance, substantiate claims of self-interest. Second, the historiography neglects the economic rationale underlying the U.S. commitment to Pacific security. Regional cooperation ensured the revival of Japan, the avoidance of discriminatory trade policies, and the stability of the Bretton Woods monetary system. Third, scholars have unduly played down and misunderstood the concept of race. U.S. foreign policy elites invoked ideas about a “White Man's Club” in Asia to obscure the pursuit of U.S. interests in the region and to ensure British exclusion from the treaty.
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Nadergulov, Minlegali Kh, and Ilshat S. Igdavletov. "К вопросу присоединения Средней Азии к России (обзор некоторых башкирских письменных источников второй половины XIX в.)." Oriental Studies 13, no. 5 (December 28, 2020): 1234–42. http://dx.doi.org/10.22162/2619-0990-2020-51-5-1234-1242.

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Introduction. The article studies southeastern policies of the Russian Empire in the second half of the 19th century, its campaigns and the annexation of Central Asia. Goals. The work analyzes reasons for the activation of foreign policy in the region during the mentioned period. The course and goals of the conquest of the Khanates of Kokand and Khiva, Emirate of Bukhara are considered. Materials. The paper investigates data contained in reports by the State Councilor М. Bekchurin, and one more document ― Arabic-script travel records (manuscript) by a private soldier Husniyar currently stored at the Manuscript Collection of the Institute of History, Language and Literature (Ufa Federal Research Centre of the RAS) and for the first time studied as a historical source. Results. Messages about the beauty of Eastern cities and Asian wealth had long attracted attention of Russian monarchs. Finally, Russia’s attempts to penetrate into Central Asia were crowned with success. In just two decades, the vast country further extended its borders far to the south and became a neighbor of another one ― the British Empire. Nowadays, the study of the history of establishing relations with Kazakhstan and Central Asia, when the southeastern borders of Russia almost returned to those of the early 18th century, is relevant and practically expedient. Reports by State Councilor M. Bekchurin reveal the economic objectives of the government: Russian industry and trade were looking for new markets for their products. So, M. Bekchurin gives his suggestions how to facilitate the growth of trade. The manuscript of Husniyar’s travel notes contains observations of an ordinary soldier, his attitude and experience as a Muslim in the campaign against his co-religionists. The source makes it possible to present the set and route of one military formation. Both the documents provide an opportunity to depict this region in the late 19th century. Currently, there are independent countries across this territory with different state borders, and the ethnic composition of many settlements has changed significantly.
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CHEN, PING-KUEI. "The Prospects of the US Alliance System in Asia: Managing from the Hub." Issues & Studies 56, no. 03 (September 2020): 2040012. http://dx.doi.org/10.1142/s1013251120400123.

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This paper examines the implications of the United States’ “hub-and-spoke” alliance system in Asia. It argues that the US enjoys a bargaining advantage in the current bilateral security relations with its Asian allies. In contrast to a multilateral alliance, the US can better prevent free riders and joint resistance in its bilateral relations. It can effectively restrain the behavior of its allies and compel them to accommodate American interests. The hub-and-spoke system helps the US consolidate its policy influence over the Asian allies, supervise inter-alliance cooperation, and increase defense cooperation between allies and non-allies. This paper uses episodes of defense cooperation between the US, Japan, South Korea, Australia, and India to illustrate the American alliance management techniques since 2016. During this time, the US allies have increasingly participated in regional security affairs due to US demands and guidance rather than autonomous decisions. Facing strong US pressure, allies have found it hard to challenge the US under the hub-and-spoke system despite common grievances. This leads to two implications for the future: First, the US allies may have less autonomy in their foreign policies, restraining their ability to pursue neutral positions and policies in regional affairs such as the South China Sea dispute. Second, the US may discourage or even undermine the emergence of multilateral security institutions in Asia. The US is likely to maintain the “hub-and-spoke” system to safeguard its strategic interests in the Indo-Pacific.
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Won, Tae Joon. "Britain's Retreat East of Suez and the Conundrum of Korea 1968–1974." Britain and the World 9, no. 1 (March 2016): 76–95. http://dx.doi.org/10.3366/brw.2016.0215.

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This article examines the discussions and decisions which occurred within the British government concerning Britain's military involvement in the Korean peninsula at a time when Britain was pulling out of its military obligations in Asia – colloquially known as the ‘retreat East of Suez’ – in the late 1960s and the early 1970s. After the end of the Korean War, Britain created the Commonwealth Liaison Mission in Seoul and provided a frigate for use in Korean waters by the American-led United Nations Command and British soldiers for the United Nations Honour Guard. When relations between North and South Korea reached crisis point at the end of the 1960s, London was concerned that Britain could be entangled in an unaffordable military conflict in the Korean peninsula. The Ministry of Defence therefore argued for the abolition of the commitment of the British frigate, but the Foreign Office opposed this initiative so as to mitigate the blow to Anglo-American relations caused by Britain's refusal to commit troops to Vietnam. When Edward Heath's government negotiated a Five Power Defence Agreement with Singapore, Malaysia, Australia and New Zealand in April 1971, the Ministry of Defence was, despite the objections of the Foreign Office, finally successful in repealing the frigate commitment for reasons of overstretching military resources. Furthermore, the Ministry of Defence then called for the abolition of the Commonwealth Liaison Mission altogether when it was then discovered that the British contingent of the United Nations Honour Guard would have to fight under the command of the United Nations Commander in case of a military conflict in the Korean peninsula. But this proposal too was rebuffed by the Foreign Office, concerned that such a move would greatly damage Anglo-Korean relations at a time when Britain was considering establishing diplomatic relations with North Korea.
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TOROPCHIN, GLEB. "U.S. INDO-PACIFIC STRATEGY: THE NUCLEAR DIMENSION." History and modern perspectives 3, no. 1 (February 28, 2020): 54–58. http://dx.doi.org/10.33693/2658-4654-2021-3-1-54-58.

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The given article is dedicated to scrutinising the role of nuclear factor in the U.S. policy in the Asia Pacific region lately. The work is written based on the analysis of the official doctrinal documents defining U.S. foreign policy. The aim of the paper is defining the significance of the nuclear dimension in Washington’s Indo-Pacific strategy and trends in its evolution in late 2010s and early 2020s. The author dwells upon the features of conceptualising the term “Indo-Pacific” in the U.S. foreign policy strategy taking into account its transition from the expert discourse to the official one. Three layers of analysis are singled out: doctrinal, operational and institutional. Special attention is paid to the relations between the U.S. and its allies in the macroregion, including parties to the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue (i.e. India, Japan and Australia), as well as other countries, such as South Korea. The influence of China’s growing power and its claims for regional and global leadership on the shift in Washington’s foreign policy is also unveiled. The author discovers a direct correlation between the role of the maritime constituent in the “Indo-Pacific security” and the intention of the U.S. to develop the sea and air components in its nuclear triad. Various directions of the U.S. advancing its nuclear forces in the Asia Pacific are shown, as well as the role of adjacent projects in the field of security (such as “Global ABM”). Apart from this, the article demonstrates the factors that might have an impact on the U.S. nuclear policy in the region during J. Biden’s presidency. An attempt is made to predict possible scenarios in the near future.
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Abbott, Jason P., and Kevin Fahey. "The State and Direction of Asian Comparative Politics: Who, What, Where, How?" Journal of East Asian Studies 14, no. 1 (April 2014): 109–34. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s1598240800009607.

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In this article we explore the state of the discipline of comparative Asian politics. In particular we analyze five aspects of research on Asia: whether the empirical scope of research is largely noncomparative; the extent to which that research is empirical rather than theory-generative; whether it pertains to public or foreign policy; if it relies on qualitative rather than quantitative methods; and the gender and geographic concentration of those conducting the research. After coding and analyzing data from 461 articles from eight different journals, we demonstrate that research on comparative Asian politics is more likely to be empirical, qualitative, focused on the country as unit of analysis, and disproportionately written by male academics educated and/or working in North America, Western Europe, or Australia.
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Kumar, Ashutosh. "Changing Dynamics of Nihon-Indo Diplomatic Ties :." Jindal Journal of International Affairs 1, no. 5 (June 1, 2021): 28–37. http://dx.doi.org/10.54945/jjia.v1i5.54.

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The geopolitical scenario in the Indo-Pacific2 region is changing rapidly. India, Japan and other oceanic states are facing new multidimensional challenges manifested in the unpeaceful3 rise of China. In this shadow, India-Japan ties have witnessed unprecedented growth in the last decade. Outgoing Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and his counterpart in India have been instrumental for India-Japan bilateral relations taking a dramatic leap forward. Abe's visionary approach recognised India's strategic importance, as he worked tirelessly to take the relations to its new heights with his personal chemistry with the Indian Prime Minister. His proactive policy transformed South Block's expectations of Japan as a strong, influential and dependable partner in East Asia. Yoshihide Suga has succeeded Shinzo Abe as Japanese Prime minister. The initial days of Suga's foreign policy began by prioritising Vietnam, the USA and Australia, pointing out a different approach to Japan's foreign policy. Suga's political commitment to foreign affairs is secondary to the focus on domestic issues. The article is a comparative study of the foreign policy approaches of two Japanese Prime Ministers Abe and Suga towards India. In view of Abe's accomplishments, it is natural that India might be concerned about the transition to a new leader. The paper will try to analyse the reliability of Japan in the vulnerable security architecture of the Indo-Pacific region and the Suga government's willingness to engage actively in the Asian order for democratic values and the rule of law. Though India may not be Suga's top priority, India needs to actively leverage the strengths of the Abe-era partnership to keep it relevant.
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Vartanyan, A. "International Student Migration: Regional Aspect." World Economy and International Relations 60, no. 2 (2016): 113–21. http://dx.doi.org/10.20542/0131-2227-2016-60-2-113-121.

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The article provides a profound analysis of the main trends of international student migration for tertiary education, discusses the key factors influencing the choice of destination for studying abroad, and reveals the regional peculiarities of instruments for student migration regulation. The first part of the paper highlights the official statistics showing that in recent decades the world witnessed the steady increase in the number of international students, concentrating mainly in the USA and the European Union. Almost 48% of all international students in the world study in the European Union. This region also shows the highest internal student mobility. Among others, such countries as Austria, Luxemburg, Switzerland, Australia and New Zealand demonstrate the biggest shares of foreign students in the total number of university students. As for donor countries, the dynamics proves the major role of the Asia region, with a half of all international students originated from it. The largest number of foreign students come from China, India and South Korea. Nonetheless, the Asia region becomes a popular destination of student mobility nowadays. The second part of the article concerns different coordination policies of tertiary migration in the regional context. Mostly in developed countries, practices of attracting foreign students to study in professional programs and degree programs with a perspective to enter a national labor market after graduation become more and more popular. Postgraduate migration remains a priority. Most countries encourage job-searching for foreign graduate students, as they are considered to have a high-skill level, international views and an opportunity to live and work in a variety of socio-cultural conditions. Further analysis refers to the main factors determining the choice of destination for foreign students, which are: geographical proximity, language skills, cultural proximity, the cost of education, and a country's reputation in the field of higher education. The paper reveals the leading role of the EU in the developed intraregional educational mobility, the regional asymmetry of migration processes in other regions of the world, and Asian countries actively promoting temporary educational and labor migration to developed countries with incentives to return to a home-country in the future. In recent years, due to positive dynamics of the return migrants number, an interest in the creation of the returnees strategy grows as well as desire of developed and developing countries to benefit most from the return migration.
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Baykov, A. A., and V. A. Gnevasheva. "Econometric Estimates of Russia's Turn to the East." MGIMO Review of International Relations 13, no. 6 (December 31, 2020): 175–207. http://dx.doi.org/10.24833/2071-8160-2020-6-75-175-207.

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The emerging trend in Russia’s foreign policy is its reorientation from active interstate and socio-economic interaction with the states of the "collective West" to the countries that make up the Asian macroregion. The article presents the qualitative and quantitative assessment of the emerging relations between Russia and the countries of the East, namely the ASEAN countries, Northeast Asia and the Indo-Pacific region. Assuming that the prerequisites for the strengthening of such relationships between countries should be reflected in changes in trade relations, increased migration flows, and changes in policy in terms of countries' military spending, the study attempts to evaluate such changes econometrically. We use the method of constructing multiple linear regression, as well as indicators for assessing country-by-country correlation and cluster analysis. The object of the research is the countries of Northeast Asia (China, Japan, Republic of Korea); ASEAN countries (Thailand, Indonesia, Vietnam, Malaysia, Singapore); India; Australia and Oceania. The empirical base of the study is the official statistics of World Bank, SIPRI, FSGS. The findings indicate the emerging conditions for Russia's turn to the East. The analysis reveals a number of stable features indicating the possibility of modeling a reasonable predictive scenario. The proposed estimates can also be used for further study of the directions of interaction between Russia and the East, methodological and empirical clarification of the emerging relationships, determination of significant factors strengthening the noted interactions.
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25

Nash, Marian. "Contemporary Practice of the United States Relating to International Law." American Journal of International Law 86, no. 3 (July 1992): 547–52. http://dx.doi.org/10.2307/2203968.

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The material in this section is arranged according to the system employed in the annual Digest of United States Practice in International Law, published by the Department of State.Alan J. Kreczko, Deputy Legal Adviser of the Department of State, appeared before the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations on April 8, 1992, to testify in support of various pending treaties, among them four extradition treaties: the Extradition Treaty between the Government of the United States of America and the Government of the Commonwealth of The Bahamas, signed at Nassau on March 9, 1990; the Protocol Amending the Treaty on Extradition between the United States of America and Australia, signed on September 4, 1990, at Seoul, Republic of Korea (where the Asia-Pacific Attorneys General Conference was being held); the Supplementary Treaty to the Treaty between the United States of America and the Federal Republic of Germany concerning Extradition, signed at Washington on October 21, 1986; and the Second Supplementary Treaty on Extradition between the United States and Spain, signed at Madrid on February 9, 1988.
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26

Surya Diarta, I. Ketut. "Promotion Strategy of Borobudur World Cultural Heritage Site for International Tourists." Udayana Journal of Social Sciences and Humanities (UJoSSH) 1, no. 2 (September 29, 2017): 190. http://dx.doi.org/10.24843/ujossh.2017.v01.i02.p12.

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The poor promotion strategies of Borobudur caused the low international tourists’ arrival. Therefore, this study aimed to develop promotion strategies for the Borobudur world cultural heritage site as a tourist attraction for foreign tourists. Respondents were selected by accidental sampling of 50 tourists combined with FGD of local tourism stakeholders. Data were analyzed using descriptive qualitative method and SWOT analysis. The results showed that: (1) Strategy SO can be reached by public relations by making online publicity and using endorser to reach international coverage, (2) Strategy WO achieved through the financial support for advertising, sales promotion, personal selling, and direct marketing ( 3) Strategies ST approached with the digital promotion supported by strong branding and assisted personal selling and direct marketing, and (d) Strategies WT by promoting Borobudur market in Asia, America, and especially Australia through increasing frequency of sales promotio.n and direct marketing supported by advertising to the target market.
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Ryazantsev, S. V., and L. S. Ruban. "GEOPOLITICAL TRANSFORMATION AND NEW TRENDS OF RUSSIAN FOREIGN POLICY IN THE CONDITIONS OF GLOBALIZATION." BULLETIN 2, no. 390 (April 15, 2021): 235–44. http://dx.doi.org/10.32014/2021.2518-1467.75.

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The article analyzes the process of globalization and the role of the Russian Federation in this process. The relevance of considering the current stage of globalization is due to the strengthening of the inter-connectedness and interdependence of the world, which requires the improvement of interstate relations and mechanisms of global governance with the primacy of the economic aspect of the development of society in the conditions of the functioning of the global scale of production. The historiography presents the regulation of international relations from the Westphalian system (state-centrist model of the world) to the Vienna Congress and the attempt to create a system of collective security and regulation of international relations: to the League of Nations and the United Nations. The formation of global governance institutions is shown: the largest international intergovernmental organizations (UN, WTO, IMF, IBRD, G-8, G-20, etc.), the most important function of which is to determine the norms and rules of interstate interaction. The main idea of the authors of the article is to show the historical conditionality of the transition to a polycentric model of development, as it most fully meets the needs of society on a global scale. The main purpose of this work was to substantiate and confirm the characteristics of the role of Russia in the international arena at the present stage of development by empirical material obtained during international surveys of experts from sixteen APR countries (VIPs and decision-makers). Thus, among the current trends in global development, the authors highlight the dilemma globalism - sovereignty and the correlation of globalism - transregionalism, in particular, the concept of the Indian-Pacific region (Indo-Pacific) instead of the Asia-Pacific region, put forward by the United States, Japan, Australia and India and the concept of "One belt is one road ”, initiated by China. Another trans-regional structure, such as BRICS, remains largely insufficiently structured, institutionalized and little realized in the specific political and economic activities of the countries that gave the name to this abbreviation.
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He, Kai, and Mingjiang Li. "Understanding the dynamics of the Indo-Pacific: US–China strategic competition, regional actors, and beyond." International Affairs 96, no. 1 (January 1, 2020): 1–7. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/ia/iiz242.

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Abstract As a geographical concept, ‘Indo-Pacific’ has existed for decades. As a political and strategic concept, it has since 2010 gradually become established in the foreign policy lexicon of some countries, especially Australia, India, Japan and the United States. However, China seems to be reluctant to identify itself as part of the Indo-Pacific; Chinese leaders believe that the US-led Indo-Pacific strategy aims to contain China's rise. While the battle between the two geographical concepts ‘Indo-Pacific’ and ‘Asia–Pacific’ may be fairly easily settled in the future, US–China strategic competition has just begun. Will the Indo-Pacific become a battlefield for US–China rivalry? How will China cope with the US ‘free and open Indo-Pacific’ (FOIP) strategy? How will other regional actors respond to the US–China strategic competition in the Indo-Pacific? What are the strategic implications of the ‘Indo-Pacific’ concept for regional order transformation? How will the Indo-Pacific be institutionalized, economically, politically and strategically? This article introduces the January 2020 special issue of International Affairs, which aims to address those questions, using both country-specific and regional perspectives. Seven articles focus on the policy responses of major players (Australia, China, India, Indonesia, Japan and ASEAN) to the US FOIP strategy and related US–China rivalry in the region. A further three articles examine the profound implications of Indo-Pacific dynamics for regional institution-building and for geopolitical and geo-economic architecture.
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Leonova, Olga. "The Impact of the Strategic Partnership AUKUS on the Geopolitical Situation in the Indo-Pacific Region." International Organisations Research Journal 17, no. 3 (October 1, 2022): 194–211. http://dx.doi.org/10.17323/1996-7845-2022-08.

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The purpose of the AUKUS strategic alliance is to develop cooperation between the member countries (U.S., UK and Australia) in the field of security and defence in the Indo-Pacific region. The agreement provides for the supply of submarines powered by nuclear reactors to Australia. The emergence of this new strategic alliance was caused by the following factors: the increased power of China in the region; the weakening of the U.S. position in the Indo-Pacific; the desire of the UK to implement the “global Britain” strategy in practice; and the need for the U.S. to have reliable allies to contain China. These factors reveal the true purpose of AUKUS—containment of China and opposition to its active policy in the region. In this article, the author uses comparative analysis to reveal the different goals and geopolitical interests of the AUKUS countries. The systematic approach helps to describe the essence of the complex developing geopolitical system of the Indo-Pacific region.The theories of new institutionalism and constructivism make it possible to identify both continuity and gaps in the security policy and foreign policy of regional actors. Australia’s participation in the AUKUS allows it to: strengthen its political ties with influential partners—the United States and Great Britain; receive additional security guarantees from them in the context of increased activity of Chinese policy in the region; raise the country’s status in the regional hierarchy; and strengthen its defence capability. Australia’s entry into the AUKUS means the formation of a new, anti-Chinese strategy in the region. For the UK, membership in the AUKUS allows it to: expand its naval presence in the Indo-Pacific region; strengthen its special relations with the United States; improve its image, which was shaken after the country’s exit from the EU; and restore traditional ties with Australia. For the United States, AUKUS is the implementation of the strategy of “pivot” to Asia and the creation of a new alliance that has greater opportunities for military-strategic cooperation in the face of the threat from China to use the Pacific Ocean to oust the United States from a leading position. There are some possible geopolitical consequences of creating AUKUS for the region. They are escalation of tension and the nuclear arms race of the opposing parties; a new cold war with China; expansion of the club of nuclear powers because of Australia; imbalance of geopolitical forces in the region; undermining transatlantic unity; and a common strategy in the foreign policy of European countries and the United States.
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30

Leonova, Olga. "The Impact of the Strategic Partnership AUKUS on the Geopolitical Situation in the Indo-Pacific Region." International Organisations Research Journal 17, no. 3 (October 1, 2022): 194–211. http://dx.doi.org/10.17323/1996-7845-2022-03-08.

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The purpose of the AUKUS strategic alliance is to develop cooperation between the member countries (U.S., UK and Australia) in the field of security and defence in the Indo-Pacific region. The agreement provides for the supply of submarines powered by nuclear reactors to Australia. The emergence of this new strategic alliance was caused by the following factors: the increased power of China in the region; the weakening of the U.S. position in the Indo-Pacific; the desire of the UK to implement the “global Britain” strategy in practice; and the need for the U.S. to have reliable allies to contain China. These factors reveal the true purpose of AUKUS—containment of China and opposition to its active policy in the region. In this article, the author uses comparative analysis to reveal the different goals and geopolitical interests of the AUKUS countries. The systematic approach helps to describe the essence of the complex developing geopolitical system of the Indo-Pacific region.The theories of new institutionalism and constructivism make it possible to identify both continuity and gaps in the security policy and foreign policy of regional actors. Australia’s participation in the AUKUS allows it to: strengthen its political ties with influential partners—the United States and Great Britain; receive additional security guarantees from them in the context of increased activity of Chinese policy in the region; raise the country’s status in the regional hierarchy; and strengthen its defence capability. Australia’s entry into the AUKUS means the formation of a new, anti-Chinese strategy in the region. For the UK, membership in the AUKUS allows it to: expand its naval presence in the Indo-Pacific region; strengthen its special relations with the United States; improve its image, which was shaken after the country’s exit from the EU; and restore traditional ties with Australia. For the United States, AUKUS is the implementation of the strategy of “pivot” to Asia and the creation of a new alliance that has greater opportunities for military-strategic cooperation in the face of the threat from China to use the Pacific Ocean to oust the United States from a leading position. There are some possible geopolitical consequences of creating AUKUS for the region. They are escalation of tension and the nuclear arms race of the opposing parties; a new cold war with China; expansion of the club of nuclear powers because of Australia; imbalance of geopolitical forces in the region; undermining transatlantic unity; and a common strategy in the foreign policy of European countries and the United States.
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31

"DOCUMENTATION: Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation, Ministerial-Level Meeting, Summary Statement by the Chairman, Senator the Hon. Gareth Evans QC, Minister for Foreign Affairs and Trade of Australia, 7 November 1989, Canberra." Southeast Asian Economies 6, no. 3 (1990): 361–68. http://dx.doi.org/10.1355/ae6-3l.

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32

Hartwell, John. "2009 Release of offshore petroleum exploration acreage." APPEA Journal 49, no. 1 (2009): 463. http://dx.doi.org/10.1071/aj08030.

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John Hartwell is Head of the Resources Division in the Department of Resources, Energy and Tourism, Canberra Australia. The Resources Division provides advice to the Australian Government on policy issues, legislative changes and administrative matters related to the petroleum industry, upstream and downstream and the coal and minerals industries. In addition to his divisional responsibilities, he is the Australian Commissioner for the Australia/East Timor Joint Petroleum Development Area and Chairman of the National Oil and Gas Safety Advisory Committee. He also chairs two of the taskforces, Clean Fossil Energy and Aluminium, under the Asia Pacific Partnership for Clean Development and Climate (AP6). He serves on two industry and government leadership groups delivering reports to the Australian Government, strategies for the oil and gas industry and framework for the uranium industry. More recently he led a team charged with responsibility for taking forward the Australian Government’s proposal to establish a global carbon capture and storage institute. He is involved in the implementation of a range of resource related initiatives under the Government’s Industry Action Agenda process, including mining and technology services, minerals exploration and light metals. Previously he served as Deputy Chairman of the Snowy Mountains Council and the Commonwealth representative to the Natural Gas Pipelines Advisory Committee. He has occupied a wide range of positions in the Australian Government dealing with trade, commodity, and energy and resource issues. He has worked in Treasury, the Department of Trade, Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade and the Department of Primary Industries and Energy before the Department of Industry, Science and Resources. From 1992–96 he was a Minister Counsellor in the Australian Embassy, Washington, with responsibility for agriculture and resource issues and also served in the Australian High Commission, London (1981–84) as the Counsellor/senior trade relations officer. He holds a MComm in economics, and Honours in economics from the University of New South Wales, Australia. Prior to joining the Australian Government, worked as a bank economist. He was awarded a public service medal in 2005 for his work on resources issues for the Australian Government.
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Essefi, Elhoucine. "Homo Sapiens Sapiens Progressive Defaunation During The Great Acceleration: The Cli-Fi Apocalypse Hypothesis." International Journal of Toxicology and Toxicity Assessment 1, no. 1 (July 17, 2021): 18–23. http://dx.doi.org/10.55124/ijt.v1i1.114.

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This paper is meant to study the apocalyptic scenario of the at the perspectives of the Great Acceleration. the apocalyptic scenario is not a pure imagination of the literature works. Instead, scientific evidences are in favour of dramatic change in the climatic conditions related to the climax of Man actions. the modelling of the future climate leads to horrible situations including intolerable temperatures, dryness, tornadoes, and noticeable sear level rise evading coastal regions. Going far from these scientific claims, Homo Sapiens Sapiens extended his imagination through the Climate-Fiction (cli-fi) to propose a dramatic end. Climate Fiction is developed into a recording machine containing every kind of fictions that depict environmental condition events and has consequently lost its true significance. Introduction The Great Acceleration may be considered as the Late Anthropocene in which Man actions reached their climax to lead to dramatic climatic changes paving the way for a possible apocalyptic scenario threatening the existence of the humanity. So, the apocalyptic scenario is not a pure imagination of the literature works. Instead, many scientific arguments especially related to climate change are in favour of the apocalypse1. As a matter of fact, the modelling of the future climate leads to horrible situations including intolerable temperatures (In 06/07/2021, Kuwait recorded the highest temperature of 53.2 °C), dryness, tornadoes, and noticeable sear level rise evading coastal regions. These conditions taking place during the Great Acceleration would have direct repercussions on the human species. Considering that the apocalyptic extinction had really caused the disappearance of many stronger species including dinosaurs, Homo Sapiens Sapiens extended his imagination though the Climate-Fiction (cli-fi) to propose a dramatic end due to severe climate conditions intolerable by the humankind. The mass extinction of animal species has occurred several times over the geological ages. Researchers have a poor understanding of the causes and processes of these major crises1. Nonetheless, whatever the cause of extinction, the apocalyptic scenario has always been present in the geological history. For example, dinosaurs extinction either by asteroids impact or climate changes could by no means denies the apocalyptic aspect2.At the same time as them, many animal and plant species became extinct, from marine or flying reptiles to marine plankton. This biological crisis of sixty-five million years ago is not the only one that the biosphere has suffered. It was preceded and followed by other crises which caused the extinction or the rarefaction of animal species. So, it is undeniable that many animal groups have disappeared. It is even on the changes of fauna that the geologists of the last century have based themselves to establish the scale of geological times, scale which is still used. But it is no less certain that the extinction processes, extremely complex, are far from being understood. We must first agree on the meaning of the word "extinction", namely on the apocalyptic aspect of the concept. It is quite understood that, without disappearances, the evolution of species could not have followed its course. Being aware that the apocalyptic extinction had massacred stronger species that had dominated the planet, Homo Sapiens Sapiens has been aware that the possibility of apocalyptic end at the perspective of the Anthropocene (i.e., Great Acceleration) could not be excluded. This conviction is motivated by the progressive defaunation in some regions3and the appearance of alien species in others related to change of mineralogy and geochemistry4 leading to a climate change during the Anthropocene. These scientific claims fed the vast imagination about climate change to set the so-called cli-fi. The concept of the Anthropocene is the new geological era which begins when the Man actions have reached a sufficient power to modify the geological processes and climatic cycles of the planet5. The Anthropocene by no means excludes the possibility of an apocalyptic horizon, namely in the perspectives of the Great Acceleration. On the contrary, two scenarios do indeed seem to dispute the future of the Anthropocene, with a dramatic cross-charge. The stories of the end of the world are as old as it is, as the world is the origin of these stories. However, these stories of the apocalypse have evolved over time and, since the beginning of the 19th century, they have been nourished particularly by science and its advances. These fictions have sometimes tried to pass themselves off as science. This is the current vogue, called collapsology6. This end is more than likely cli-fi driven7and it may cause the extinction of the many species including the Homo Sapiens Sapiens. In this vein, Anthropocene defaunation has become an ultimate reality8. More than one in eight birds, more than one in five mammals, more than one in four coniferous species, one in three amphibians are threatened. The hypothesis of a hierarchy within the living is induced by the error of believing that evolution goes from the simplest to the most sophisticated, from the inevitably stupid inferior to the superior endowed with an intelligence giving prerogative to all powers. Evolution goes in all directions and pursues no goal except the extension of life on Earth. Evolution certainly does not lead from bacteria to humans, preferably male and white. Our species is only a carrier of the DNA that precedes us and that will survive us. Until we show a deep respect for the biosphere particularly, and our planet in general, we will not become much, we will remain a predator among other predators, the fiercest of predators, the almighty craftsman of the Anthropocene. To be in the depths of our humanity, somehow giving back to the biosphere what we have taken from it seems obvious. To stop the sixth extinction of species, we must condemn our anthropocentrism and the anthropization of the territories that goes with it. The other forms of life also need to keep their ecological niches. According to the first, humanity seems at first to withdraw from the limits of the planet and ultimately succumb to them, with a loss of dramatic meaning. According to the second, from collapse to collapse, it is perhaps another humanity, having overcome its demons, that could come. Climate fiction is a literary sub-genre dealing with the theme of climate change, including global warming. The term appears to have been first used in 2008 by blogger and writer Dan Bloom. In October 2013, Angela Evancie, in a review of the novel Odds against Tomorrow, by Nathaniel Rich, wonders if climate change has created a new literary genre. Scientific basis of the apocalyptic scenario in the perspective of the Anthropocene Global warming All temperature indices are in favour of a global warming (Fig.1). According to the different scenarios of the IPCC9, the temperatures of the globe could increase by 2 °C to 5 °C by 2100. But some scientists warn about a possible runaway of the warming which can reach more than 3 °C. Thus, the average temperature on the surface of the globe has already increased by more than 1.1 °C since the pre-industrial era. The rise in average temperatures at the surface of the globe is the first expected and observed consequence of massive greenhouse gas emissions. However, meteorological surveys record positive temperature anomalies which are confirmed from year to year compared to the temperatures recorded since the middle of the 19th century. Climatologists point out that the past 30 years have seen the highest temperatures in the Northern Hemisphere for over 1,400 years. Several climatic centres around the world record, synthesize and follow the evolution of temperatures on Earth. Since the beginning of the 20th century (1906-2005), the average temperature at the surface of the globe has increased by 0.74 °C, but this progression has not been continuous since 1976, the increase has clearly accelerated, reaching 0.19 °C per decade according to model predictions. Despite the decline in solar activity, the period 1997-2006 is marked by an average positive anomaly of 0.53 °C in the northern hemisphere and 0.27 °C in the southern hemisphere, still compared to the normal calculated for 1961-1990. The ten hottest years on record are all after 1997. Worse, 14 of the 15 hottest years are in the 21st century, which has barely started. Thus, 2016 is the hottest year, followed closely by 2015, 2014 and 2010. The temperature of tropical waters increased by 1.2 °C during the 20th century (compared to 0.5 °C on average for the oceans), causing coral reefs to bleach in 1997. In 1998, the period of Fort El Niño, the prolonged warming of the water has destroyed half of the coral reefs of the Indian Ocean. In addition, the temperature in the tropics of the five ocean basins, where cyclones form, increased by 0.5 °C from 1970 to 2004, and powerful cyclones appeared in the North Atlantic in 2005, while they were more numerous in other parts of the world. Recently, mountains of studies focused on the possible scenario of climate change and the potential worldwide repercussions including hell temperatures and apocalyptic extreme events10 , 11, 12. Melting of continental glaciers As a direct result of the global warming, melting of continental glaciers has been recently noticed13. There are approximately 198,000 mountain glaciers in the world; they cover an area of approximately 726,000 km2. If they all melted, the sea level would rise by about 40 cm. Since the late 1960s, global snow cover has declined by around 10 to 15%. Winter cold spells in much of the northern half of the northern hemisphere are two weeks shorter than 100 years ago. Glaciers of mountains have been declining all over the world by an average of 50 m per decade for 150 years. However, they are also subject to strong multi-temporal variations which make forecasts on this point difficult according to some specialists. In the Alps, glaciers have been losing 1 meter per year for 30 years. Polar glaciers like those of Spitsbergen (about a hundred km from the North Pole) have been retreating since 1880, releasing large quantities of water. The Arctic has lost about 10% of its permanent ice cover every ten years since 1980. In this region, average temperatures have increased at twice the rate of elsewhere in the world in recent decades. The melting of the Arctic Sea ice has resulted in a loss of 15% of its surface area and 40% of its thickness since 1979. The record for melting arctic sea ice was set in 2017. All models predict the disappearance of the Arctic Sea ice in summer within a few decades, which will not be without consequences for the climate in Europe. The summer melting of arctic sea ice accelerated far beyond climate model predictions. Added to its direct repercussions of coastal regions flooding, melting of continental ice leads to radical climatic modifications in favour of the apocalyptic scenario. Fig.1 Evolution of temperature anomaly from 1880 to 2020: the apocalyptic scenario Sea level rise As a direct result of the melting of continental glaciers, sea level rise has been worldwide recorded14 ,15. The average level of the oceans has risen by 22 cm since 1880 and 2 cm since the year 2000 because of the melting of the glaciers but also with the thermal expansion of the water. In the 20th century, the sea level rose by around 2 mm per year. From 1990 to 2017, it reached the relatively constant rate of just over 3mm per year. Several sources contributed to sea level increase including thermal expansion of water (42%), melting of continental glaciers (21%), melting Greenland glaciers (15%) and melting Antarctic glaciers (8%). Since 2003, there has always been a rapid rise (around 3.3 mm / year) in sea level, but the contribution of thermal expansion has decreased (0.4 mm / year) while the melting of the polar caps and continental glaciers accelerates. Since most of the world’s population is living on coastal regions, sea level rise represents a real threat for the humanity, not excluding the apocalyptic scenario. Multiplication of extreme phenomena and climatic anomalies On a human scale, an average of 200 million people is affected by natural disasters each year and approximately 70,000 perish from them. Indeed, as evidenced by the annual reviews of disasters and climatic anomalies, we are witnessing significant warning signs. It is worth noting that these observations are dependent on meteorological survey systems that exist only in a limited number of countries with statistics that rarely go back beyond a century or a century and a half. In addition, scientists are struggling to represent the climatic variations of the last two thousand years which could serve as a reference in the projections. Therefore, the exceptional nature of this information must be qualified a little. Indeed, it is still difficult to know the return periods of climatic disasters in each region. But over the last century, the climate system has gone wild. Indeed, everything suggests that the climate is racing. Indeed, extreme events and disasters have become more frequent. For instance, less than 50 significant events were recorded per year over the period 1970-1985, while there have been around 120 events recorded since 1995. Drought has long been one of the most worrying environmental issues. But while African countries have been the main affected so far, the whole world is now facing increasingly frequent and prolonged droughts. Chile, India, Australia, United States, France and even Russia are all regions of the world suffering from the acceleration of the global drought. Droughts are slowly evolving natural hazards that can last from a few months to several decades and affect larger or smaller areas, whether they are small watersheds or areas of hundreds of thousands of square kilometres. In addition to their direct effects on water resources, agriculture and ecosystems, droughts can cause fires or heat waves. They also promote the proliferation of invasive species, creating environments with multiple risks, worsening the consequences on ecosystems and societies, and increasing their vulnerability. Although these are natural phenomena, there is a growing understanding of how humans have amplified the severity and impacts of droughts, both on the environment and on people. We influence meteorological droughts through our action on climate change, and we influence hydrological droughts through our management of water circulation and water processes at the local scale, for example by diverting rivers or modifying land use. During the Anthropocene (the present period when humans exert a dominant influence on climate and environment), droughts are closely linked to human activities, cultures, and responses. From this scientific overview, it may be concluded apocalyptic scenario is not only a literature genre inspired from the pure imagination. Instead, many scientific arguments are in favour of this dramatic destiny of Homo Sapiens Sapiens. Fig.2. Sea level rise from 1880 to 2020: a possible apocalyptic scenario (www.globalchange.gov, 2021) Apocalyptic genre in recent writing As the original landmark of apocalyptic writing, we must place the destruction of the Temple of Jerusalem in 587 BC and the Exile in Babylon. Occasion of a religious and cultural crossing with imprescriptible effects, the Exile brought about a true rebirth, characterized by the maintenance of the essential ethical, even cultural, of a national religion, that of Moses, kept as pure as possible on a foreign land and by the reinterpretation of this fundamental heritage by the archaic return of what was very old, both national traditions and neighbouring cultures. More precisely, it was the place and time for the rehabilitation of cultures and the melting pot for recasting ancient myths. This vast infatuation with Antiquity, remarkable even in the vocabulary used, was not limited to Israel: it even largely reflected a general trend. The long period that preceded throughout the 7th century BC and until 587, like that prior to the edict of Cyrus in 538 BC, was that of restorations and rebirths, of returns to distant sources and cultural crossings. In the biblical literature of this period, one is struck by the almost systematic link between, on the one hand, a very sustained mythical reinvestment even in form and, on the other, the frequent use of biblical archaisms. The example of Shadday, a word firmly rooted in the Semites of the Northwest and epithet of El in the oldest layers of the books of Genesis and Exodus, is most eloquent. This term reappears precisely at the time of the Exile as a designation of the divinity of the Patriarchs and of the God of Israel; Daily, ecological catastrophes now describe the normal state of societies exposed to "risks", in the sense that Ulrich Beck gives to this term: "the risk society is a society of catastrophe. The state of emergency threatens to become a normal state there1”. Now, the "threat" has become clearer, and catastrophic "exceptions" are proliferating as quickly as species are disappearing and climate change is accelerating. The relationship that we have with this worrying reality, to say the least, is twofold: on the one hand, we know very well what is happening to us; on the other hand, we fail to draw the appropriate theoretical and political consequences. This ecological duplicity is at the heart of what has come to be called the “Anthropocene”, a term coined at the dawn of the 21st century by Eugene Stoermer (an environmentalist) and Paul Crutzen (a specialist in the chemistry of the atmosphere) in order to describe an age when humanity would have become a "major geological force" capable of disrupting the climate and changing the terrestrial landscape from top to bottom. If the term “Anthropocene” takes note of human responsibility for climate change, this responsibility is immediately attributed to overpowering: strong as we are, we have “involuntarily” changed the climate for at least two hundred and fifty years. Therefore, let us deliberately change the face of the Earth, if necessary, install a solar shield in space. Recognition and denial fuel the signifying machine of the Anthropocene. And it is precisely what structures eco-apocalyptic cinema that this article aims to study. By "eco-apocalyptic cinema", we first mean a cinematographic sub-genre: eco-apocalyptic and post-eco-apocalyptic films base the possibility (or reality) of the end of the world on environmental grounds and not, for example, on damage caused by the possible collision of planet Earth with a comet. Post-apocalyptic science fiction (sometimes abbreviated as "post-apo" or "post-nuke") is a sub-genre of science fiction that depicts life after a disaster that destroyed civilization: nuclear war, collision with a meteorite, epidemic, economic or energy crisis, pandemic, alien invasion. Conclusion Climate and politics have been linked together since Aristotle. With Montesquieu, Ibn Khaldûn or Watsuji, a certain climatic determinism is attributed to the character of a nation. The break with modernity made the climate an object of scientific knowledge which, in the twentieth century, made it possible to document, despite the controversies, the climatic changes linked to industrialization. Both endanger the survival of human beings and ecosystems. Climate ethics are therefore looking for a new relationship with the biosphere or Gaia. For some, with the absence of political agreements, it is the beginning of inevitable catastrophes. For others, the Anthropocene, which henceforth merges human history with natural history, opens onto technical action. The debate between climate determinism and human freedom is revived. The reference to the biblical Apocalypse was present in the thinking of thinkers like Günther Anders, Karl Jaspers or Hans Jonas: the era of the atomic bomb would mark an entry into the time of the end, a time marked by the unprecedented human possibility of 'total war and annihilation of mankind. The Apocalypse will be very relevant in describing the chaos to come if our societies continue their mad race described as extra-activist, productivist and consumerist. In dialogue with different theologians and philosophers (such as Jacques Ellul), it is possible to unveil some spiritual, ethical, and political resources that the Apocalypse offers for thinking about History and human engagement in the Anthropocene. What can a theology of collapse mean at a time when negative signs and dead ends in the human situation multiply? What then is the place of man and of the cosmos in the Apocalypse according to Saint John? Could the end of history be a collapse? How can we live in the time we have left before the disaster? Answers to such questions remain unknown and no scientist can predict the trajectory of this Great Acceleration taking place at the Late Anthropocene. When science cannot give answers, Man tries to infer his destiny for the legend, religion and the fiction. Climate Fiction is developed into a recording machine containing every kind of fictions that depict environmental condition events and has consequently lost its true significance. Aware of the prospect of ecological collapse additionally as our apparent inability to avert it, we tend to face geology changes of forceful proportions that severely challenge our ability to imagine the implications. Climate fiction ought to be considered an important supplement to climate science, as a result, climate fiction makes visible and conceivable future modes of existence inside worlds not solely deemed seemingly by science, however that area unit scientifically anticipated. Hence, this chapter, as part of the book itself, aims to contribute to studies of ecocriticism, the environmental humanities, and literary and culture studies. References David P.G. Bondand Stephen E. Grasby. "Late Ordovician mass extinction caused by volcanism, warming, and anoxia, not cooling and glaciation: REPLY." Geology 48, no. 8 (Geological Society of America2020): 510. Cyril Langlois.’Vestiges de l'apocalypse: ‘le site de Tanis, Dakota du Nord 2019’. Accessed June, 6, 2021, https://planet-terre.ens-lyon.fr/pdf/Tanis-extinction-K-Pg.pdf NajouaGharsalli,ElhoucineEssefi, Rana Baydoun, and ChokriYaich. ‘The Anthropocene and Great Acceleration as controversial epoch of human-induced activities: case study of the Halk El Menjel wetland, eastern Tunisia’. Applied Ecology and Environmental Research 18(3) (Corvinus University of Budapest 2020): 4137-4166 Elhoucine Essefi, ‘On the Geochemistry and Mineralogy of the Anthropocene’. International Journal of Water and Wastewater Treatment, 6(2). 1-14, (Sci Forschen2020): doi.org/10.16966/2381-5299.168 Elhoucine Essefi. ‘Record of the Anthropocene-Great Acceleration along a core from the coast of Sfax, southeastern Tunisia’. Turkish journal of earth science, (TÜBİTAK,2021). 1-16. Chiara Xausa. ‘Climate Fiction and the Crisis of Imagination: Alexis Wright’s Carpentaria and The Swan Book’. Exchanges: The Interdisciplinary Research Journal 8(2), (WARWICK 2021): 99-119. Akyol, Özlem. "Climate Change: An Apocalypse for Urban Space? An Ecocritical Reading of “Venice Drowned” and “The Tamarisk Hunter”." Folklor/Edebiyat 26, no. 101 (UluslararasıKıbrısÜniversitesi 2020): 115-126. Boswell, Suzanne F. "The Four Tourists of the Apocalypse: Figures of the Anthropocene in Caribbean Climate Fiction.". Paradoxa 31, (Academia 2020): 359-378. Ayt Ougougdal, Houssam, Mohamed YacoubiKhebiza, Mohammed Messouli, and Asia Lachir. "Assessment of future water demand and supply under IPCC climate change and socio-economic scenarios, using a combination of models in Ourika Watershed, High Atlas, Morocco." Water 12, no. 6 (MPDI 2020): 1751.DOI:10.3390/w12061751. Wu, Jia, Zhenyu Han, Ying Xu, Botao Zhou, and Xuejie Gao. "Changes in extreme climate events in China under 1.5 C–4 C global warming targets: Projections using an ensemble of regional climate model simulations." Journal of Geophysical Research: Atmospheres 125, no. 2 (Wiley2020): e2019JD031057.https://doi.org/10.1029/2019JD031057 Khan, Md Jamal Uddin, A. K. M. Islam, Sujit Kumar Bala, and G. M. Islam. "Changes in climateextremes over Bangladesh at 1.5° C, 2° C, and 4° C of global warmingwith high-resolutionregionalclimate modeling." Theoretical&AppliedClimatology 140 (EBSCO2020). Gudoshava, Masilin, Herbert O. Misiani, Zewdu T. Segele, Suman Jain, Jully O. Ouma, George Otieno, Richard Anyah et al. "Projected effects of 1.5 C and 2 C global warming levels on the intra-seasonal rainfall characteristics over the Greater Horn of Africa." Environmental Research Letters 15, no. 3 (IOPscience2020): 34-37. Wang, Lawrence K., Mu-Hao Sung Wang, Nai-Yi Wang, and Josephine O. Wong. "Effect of Global Warming and Climate Change on Glaciers and Salmons." In Integrated Natural Resources Management, ed.Lawrence K. Wang, Mu-Hao Sung Wang, Yung-Tse Hung, Nazih K. Shammas(Springer 2021), 1-36. Merschroth, Simon, Alessio Miatto, Steffi Weyand, Hiroki Tanikawa, and Liselotte Schebek. "Lost Material Stock in Buildings due to Sea Level Rise from Global Warming: The Case of Fiji Islands." Sustainability 12, no. 3 (MDPI 2020): 834.doi:10.3390/su12030834 Hofer, Stefan, Charlotte Lang, Charles Amory, Christoph Kittel, Alison Delhasse, Andrew Tedstone, and Xavier Fettweis. "Greater Greenland Ice Sheet contribution to global sea level rise in CMIP6." Nature communications 11, no. 1 (Nature Publishing Group 2020): 1-11.
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SCOTT, DAVID. "India’s China Challenge: Foreign Policy Dilemmas Post-Galwan and Post-Covid." Journal of Indian and Asian Studies, September 22, 2021, 2140003. http://dx.doi.org/10.1142/s2717541321400039.

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The paper analyzes the challenge to India from China, and the dilemmas faced by India in shaping an appropriate response. A two-level theory analysis indicates that some diminishing cooperation is possible at the global level, for example over environmental issues. However, regionally, this has been overtaken structurally by increasing sharp confrontation along the Himalayas and by rising geopolitical and geo-economic competition across Asia and the Indo-Pacific. This has been overlaid in 2020–2021 by the particularly negative effect on Indian relations with China of the clashes and casualties at Galwan and the impact of Covid-19. Given this sharpening challenge, the paper finds that India’s cherished axiom of full strategic autonomy now has to be tempered in its response by balancing dictates, particularly in the light of Stephen Walt’s balance of threat model. India’s responses pose various dilemmas in terms of effectiveness and counter-productiveness. Geopolitically, dilemmas continue to revolve for India around how far to invoke a Tibet Card and a Taiwan Card in its One China policy; and how far India can shape an immediate web (in effect around China) through strengthening security links with Vietnam, Mongolia and South Korea. Dilemmas also follow from how far India should pursue tighter security/military arrangements with more powerful China-concerned states like Australia, Japan, France, and above all, the United States. Geo-economically, India’s dilemmas revolve around how to respond to the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) and to China’s Maritime Silk Road scheme. Looking forward, an important factor will be how far India pulls away from Covid-19 disruption to the economy, and how far it will need to divert long-term economic funding away from immediate short-term military projects.
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35

McDonald, Matt. "Fear, Security and the Politics of Representing Asylum Seekers." M/C Journal 5, no. 1 (March 1, 2002). http://dx.doi.org/10.5204/mcj.1943.

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The stand-off involving the asylum-seekers on board the Tampa, off the coast of Australia in August-September 2001, represented a critical confluence of security, fear. The Australian government’s response to the issue of stranded asylum-seekers, it is argued here, was a directly calculated political representation aimed at creating fear in the Australian populace: fear of a threat to Australian security. The fear generated by the Australian government, in which the national media was a willing accomplice, allowed for a perception among Australians that the government’s actions, in refusing to allow the Tampa to offload its passengers, were consistent with the provision of national security. The government was preserving the territorial integrity and sovereignty of the state in the face of this constructed ‘threat’ to Australia’s security. The provision of security is central to the state’s reason for being. If the state is not capable of providing security, however that security is to be defined, the continued legitimacy and even existence of the state itself must necessarily be questioned, as Michael Dillon has argued. The power and importance of the security narrative can therefore not be underestimated. Further, Dillon argues, this security has generally been conceived as the security of the ‘self’ against the ‘other’. Attempts to be seen to be ‘doing the job’ of security has throughout history involved the identification and vilification of this other, with the fear of the other consequently constituting or reifying the self and contributing to the legitimacy of governments. The nature of this relationship between identity, security and fear is central to the government’s politics of representing the asylum seekers. The Howard government acknowledged, rightly, that making people afraid of the threat posed by waves of foreign asylum seekers and evoking the narrative of security would contribute to a solidification of the Australian self, and unite the people of Australia behind its political leaders, who were working to protect Australians from this ‘threat’. The fear created by the Australian government was constructed in a number of ways. First, the government argued that Australia was faced with a possible future wave of illegal immigrants, a situation that threatened the future security of the country. Seen in this light, the decision to prevent the Tampa from offloading asylum seekers was a means of achieving security by sending a message to would-be boat people that Australia was not a ‘soft touch’. Second, the government evoked a range of images central to traditional discourses of security, concerned predominantly with the preservation of the nation-state from military attack. As Burke argues, the government variously talked of ‘territorial integrity’, ‘sovereignty’ and ‘national interests’, concepts that, when spoken of together, would seem more suited to a situation of armed conflict rather than one involving the captain of a cargo boat looking to offload asylum seekers for processing in Australia. The consistency of this type of language with earlier depictions of the threat of Japanese invasion during World War II, for example, is not an historical coincidence. It is argued here that the use of such language helped create a context in which the idea of asylum seekers as threatening to Australian security, and therefore to be feared, had resonance with the domestic population. Finally, the government constructed fear through its attempts to depict the asylum-seekers as an ‘other’, foreign to Australian identity. This was achieved in part through questioning the legitimacy of their claims to asylum over others awaiting processing, and also through the very act of depicting them as threats to security. Their religious and ethnic otherness was not played on specifically by the government, although claims that asylum seekers threw children into the ocean, which were to later be proved erroneous, portrayed asylum-seekers as less than human. The combination of these acts constructed a fear in the Australian populace, a fear of the threat to Australian self from a foreign other, thus pointing to the relationship between fear, security and identity. In an excellent recent text on Australian security, Anthony Burke convincingly argues that the government’s response to, or indeed creation of, the Tampa crisis can be viewed as the continuation of an enduring narrative of security and fear that has been the cornerstone of Australian identity and subjectivity since 1788. This narrative, he argues, has been constitutive and reflective of Australia’s sense of self, and has allowed for politics that has denied the rights of the other throughout Australia’s history. This perspective is not limited to the Australian subject. In a seminal text on US security, David Campbell argues that the provision of security in the United States has similarly been linked to identity politics in which the fear of a vilified other was central to the constitution of the self and the legitimacy of governments. The relationship between fear, identity politics and security is particularly evident, Campbell argues, in the McCarthy era attacks on ‘communist dissidents’ during the early years of the Cold War. The point to be made from these examples is that fear is not just implicated in the construction of security and indeed the self: it is integral to that project. Facile as the comparison may be, the approach of the Australian government to this issue is reminiscent of the plot of the 1995 movie, Canadian Bacon. In the film, a US President suffering from low popularity ratings invents a confrontation with Canada in order to unite the American people behind him and enhance his chances of winning a second term in office. In inventing this threat, his administration portrayed Canadians residing in the United States as possible spies for the Canadian administration and also expressed suspicion of the hegemonic aspirations of the Canadian government in general. The fear created through such a depiction, it was hoped, would allow the President enough popularity to be re-elected. Perhaps the central difference between this example and the Howard government’s approach to the asylum seeker ‘threat’ is that the fictional US President in question was not successful in his bid for re-election. Joseph Camilleri has persuasively argued that security is a psychological rather than material state. In other words, security is about feeling rather than being secure. As such, governments must seek to create conditions in which this feeling of security is engendered in order to retain legitimacy. Enter the narrative of fear. Fear creates a basis for perceptions that the government is providing security, because once a population becomes concerned at threats posed by different actors, that population becomes almost necessarily supportive of actors viewed as capable of addressing that threat. Seen in this light, the creation of threat, regardless of the material significance of the threat itself, is a useful tool for governments to maintain legitimacy. Importantly, in the case of the asylum-seekers, these individuals themselves, and the nature of their plight, had limited relevance to the political project of the Australian government. This is aside from the important caveat that they were not of Anglo-Saxon appearance, and therefore ‘different’ to dominant depictions of the Australian self, a difference reinforced by claims of their willingness to endanger the lives of their own children. The fact that many asylum seekers were escaping the oppression of a regime Howard himself had described as evil, and whose invasion he was simultaneously supporting, seems to have slipped through the cracks of popular consciousness. This paradox did not seem to bother the Australian government, whose political representation of asylum seekers did not require any attention to where they had come from or why they had been willing to risk their lives in seeking refuge. The government merely had to point to a future ‘wave of boat-people’: queue-jumping ‘illegals’ who had targeted Australia as an international ‘soft touch’. The fear created by such an image was enough to suppress any lingering form of empathy or, for that matter, rationality. Even a rationalist would struggle to reconcile the government’s commitment to international human rights norms, its support for the war against terrorism and depiction of the evil Taliban regime of Afghanistan, and its commitment to preventing Afghani asylum-seekers from having claims processed in Australia. The government was riding on a wave of fear, a fear that would play a significant role in the re-election of the Howard government and the continued popular support for mandatory detention of asylum-seekers and the government’s ‘Pacific Solution’. Can we imagine a situation in which security can mean something other than the security of the self (in this case the Australian nation-state) at the expense of the other (asylum seekers)? Can we imagine a situation in which security is associated with emancipation of individuals, as Critical Security theorists advocate, rather than the (military) protection of the sovereignty of the state? Burke is sceptical, largely because the narrative of security as fear has permeated Australian politics, and the Australian subject, since the initial dispossession of indigenous people in the eighteenth century. In an international climate where fear still prevails, particularly in the wording of President Bush’s recent State of the Union address in which he warned Americans of the ‘Axis of Evil’, it is difficult to see how, or where, normatively progressive security politics would be located. When government or regime legitimacy can be assisted through recourse to an identity politics predicated on fear, what incentive could we imagine for an acknowledgment of the claims of ‘others’? The answer to this question lies partly in this paper itself, and in the other contributions in this journal to the question of fear and social relations. The power of fear, it is argued here, is necessarily undermined by an analysis of the construction of fear itself. This form of critique, following Foucault, is critical to breaking down a knowledge-power nexus that, in the case of security and the asylum seekers renders us secure through the suffering of others. While we may not expect critical analysis to reconstitute politics and identity in the short-term, we can reasonably expect such analyses to undermine the resonance of such narratives of fear. References Burke, Anthony. In Fear of Security: Australia’s Invasion Anxiety. Sydney: Pluto, 2002. Camilleri, Joseph. ‘The security dilemma revisited: Implications for the Asia-Pacific’, in W. Tow, R. Thakur and I. Hyun eds. Asia’s Emerging Regional Order: Reconciling Traditional and Human Security. Tokyo: UN University Press, 2000. Campbell, David. Writing Security: United States Foreign Policy and the Politics of Identity. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Dillon, Michael. The Politics of Security: Towards a Philosophy of Continental Thought. London: Routledge, 1996. Foucault, Michel. Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison. New York: Vintage, 1979. Canadian Bacon. Dir. Micheal Moore. PolyGram, 1995 (Screenplay by Michael Moore). Citation reference for this article MLA Style McDonald, Matt. "Fear, Security and the Politics of Representing Asylum Seekers" M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 5.1 (2002). [your date of access] < http://www.media-culture.org.au/0203/security.php>. Chicago Style McDonald, Matt, "Fear, Security and the Politics of Representing Asylum Seekers" M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 5, no. 1 (2002), < http://www.media-culture.org.au/0203/security.php> ([your date of access]). APA Style McDonald, Matt. (2002) Fear, Security and the Politics of Representing Asylum Seekers. M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 5(1). < http://www.media-culture.org.au/0203/security.php> ([your date of access]).
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36

Treagus, Mandy. "Pu'aka Tonga." M/C Journal 13, no. 5 (October 17, 2010). http://dx.doi.org/10.5204/mcj.287.

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I have only ever owned one pig. It didn’t have a name, due as it was for the table. Just pu‘aka. But I liked feeding it; nothing from the household was wasted. I planned not to become attached. We were having a feast and a pig was the one essential requirement. The piglet came to us as a small creature with a curly tail. It would not even live an adult life, as the fully-grown local pig is a fatty beast with little meat. Pigs are mostly killed when partly grown, when the meat/fat ratio is at its optimum. The pig was one of the few animals to accompany Polynesians as they made the slow journey across the islands and oceans from Asia: pigs and chickens and dogs. The DNA of island pigs reveals details about the route taken that were previously hidden (Larsen et al.). Of these three animals, pigs assumed the most ceremonial importance. In Tonga, pigs often live an exalted life. They roam freely, finding food where they can. They wallow. Wherever there is a pool of mud, often alongside a road, there is a pig wallowing. Huge beasts emerge from their pools with dark mud lining their bellies as they waddle off, teats swinging, to another pleasure. Pig snouts are extraordinarily strong; with the strength of a pig behind them, they can dig holes, uproot crops, and generally wreak havoc. How many times have I chased them from my garden, despairing at the loss of precious vegetables I could get no other way? But they must forage. They are fed scraps, and coconut for protein, but often must fend for themselves. Despite the fact that many meet an early death, their lives seem so much more interesting than those lived by the anonymous residents of intensive piggeries in Australia, my homeland. When the time came for the pig to be sacrificed to the demands of the feast, two young Tongan men did the honours. They also cooked the pig on an open fire after skewering it on a pole. Their reward was the roasted sweetmeats. The ‘umu was filled with taro and cassava, yam and sweet potato, along with lū pulu and lū ika: tinned beef and fish cooked in taro leaves and coconut cream. In the first sitting, all those of high status—church ministers, college teachers, important villagers and pālangi like me—had the first pick of the food. Students from the college and lowly locals had the second. The few young men who remained knew it was their task to finish off all of the food. They set about this activity with intense dedication, paying particular attention to the carcass of the pig. By the end of the night, what was left of our little pig was a pile of bones, the skeleton taken apart at every joint. Not a scrap of anything edible remained. In the early 1980s, I went to live on a small island in the Kingdom of Tonga, where my partner was the Principal of an agricultural college, in the main training young men for working small hereditary mixed farms. Memories of that time and a recent visit inform this reflection on the contemporary Tongan diet and problems associated with it. The role of food in a culture is never a neutral issue. Neither is body size, and Tongans have traditionally favoured the large body as an indication of status (Pollock 58). Similarly the capacity to eat has been seen as positive. Many Tongans are larger than is healthy, with 84% of men and 93% of women “considered overweight or obese” (Kirk et al. 36). The rate of diabetes, 80% of it undiagnosed, has doubled since the 1970s to 15% of the adult population (Colagiuri et al. 1378). In the Tongan diaspora there are also high rates of so-called “metabolic syndrome,” leading to this tendency to diabetes and cardiovascular disease. In Auckland, for instance, Pacific Islanders are 2.5 times more likely to suffer from this condition (Gentles et al.). Its chief cause is not, however, genetic, but comes from “differences in obesity,” leading to a much higher incidence of cardiovascular disease and diabetes (Gentles et al.). Deaths from diabetes in Tonga are common. When a minister’s wife in the neighbouring village to mine died, everyone of status on the island attended the putu. Though her gangrenous foot could have been amputated, the family decided against this, and she soon died from the complications of her diabetes. On arrival at the putu, as well as offering gifts such as mats and tapa, participants lined up to pay very personal respects to the dead woman. This took the form of a kiss on her face. I had never touched a dead person before, let alone someone who had died of gangrene, but life in another culture requires many firsts. I bent down and kissed the dry, cold face of a woman who had suffered much before dying. Young men of the family pushed sand over the grave with their own hands as the rest of us stood around, waiting for the funeral food: pigs, yes, but also sweets made from flour and refined sugar. Diet and eating practices are informed by culture, but so are understandings of illness and its management. In a study conducted in New Zealand, sharp differences were seen between the Tongan diaspora and European patients with diabetes. Tongans were more likely “to perceive their diabetes as acute and cyclical in nature, uncontrollable, and caused by factors such as God’s will, pollution in the environment, and poor medical care in the past”, and this was associated “with poorer adherence to diet and medication taking” (Barnes et al. 1). This suggests that as well as being more likely to suffer from illnesses associated with diet and body size, Tongans may also be less likely to manage them, causing these diseases to be even more debilitating. When James Cook visited the Tongan group and naively named them the Friendly Islands, he was given the customary hospitality shown to one of obviously high status. He and his officers were fed regularly by their hosts, even though this must have put enormous pressure on the local food systems, in which later supply was often guaranteed by the imposition of tapu in order to preserve crops and animals. Further pressure was added by exchanges of hogs for nails (Beaglehole). Of course, while they were feeding him royally and entertaining his crew with wrestling matches and dances, the local chiefs of Ha‘apai were arguing about exactly when they were going to kill him. If it were by night, it would be hard to take the two ships. By day, it might be too obvious. They never could agree, and so he sailed off to meet his fate elsewhere (Martin 279-80). As a visitor of status, he was regularly fed pork, unlike most of the locals. Even now, in contemporary Tonga, pigs are killed to mark a special event, and are not eaten as everyday food by most people. That is one of the few things about the Tongan diet that has not changed since the Cook visits. Pigs are usually eaten on formal feasting occasions, such as after church on the Sabbath (which is rigorously kept by law), at weddings, funerals, state occasions or church conferences. During such conferences, village congregations compete with each other to provide the most lavish spreads, with feasting occurring three times a day for a week or more. Though each pola is spread with a range of local root crops, fish and seafood, and possibly beef or even horse, the pola is not complete unless there is at least one pig on it. Pigs are not commercially farmed in Tonga, so these pigs have been hand- and self-raised in and around villages, and are in short supply after these events. And, although feasts are a visible sign of tradition, they are the exception. Tongans are not suffering from metabolic syndrome because they consume too much pork; they are suffering because in everyday life traditional foods have been supplanted by imports. While a range of traditional foods is still eaten, they are not always the first choice. Some imported foods have become delicacies. Mutton flap is a case in point. Known as sipi (sheep), it is mostly fat and bone, and even when barbequed it retains most of its fat. It is even found on outer islands without refrigeration, because it can be transported frozen and eaten when it arrives, thawed. I remember once the local shopkeeper said she had something I might like. A leg of lamb was produced from under the counter, mistakenly packed in the flap box. The cut was so unfamiliar that nobody else had much use for it. The question of why it is possible to get sipi in Tonga and very difficult to get any other kind of fresh meat other than one’s own pigs or chickens raises the question of how Tonga’s big neighbours think of Pacific islands. Such islands are the recipients of Australian and New Zealand aid; they are also the recipients of their waste. It’s not uncommon to find out of date medications, banned agricultural chemicals, and food that is really unsuitable for human consumption. Often the only fresh and affordable meat is turkey tails, chicken backs, and mutton flap. From July 2006 to July 2007, New Zealand exported $73 million worth of sheep off-cuts to the Pacific (Edwardes & Frizelle). Australia and the US account for the supply of turkey tails. Not only are these products some of the few fresh meat sources available, they are also relatively inexpensive (Rosen et al.). These foods are so detrimental to the health of locals that importing them has been banned in Fiji and independent Samoa (Edwardes & Frizelle). The big nations around the Pacific have found a market for the meat by-products their own citizens will not eat. Local food sources have also been supplanted as a result of the high value placed on other foods, like rice, flour and sugar, which from the nineteenth century became associated with “civilisation and progress” (Pollock 233). To counter this, education programs have been undertaken in Tonga and elsewhere in the Pacific in order to promote traditional local foods. These have also sought to address the impact of high food imports on the trade balance (Pollock 232). Food choices are not just determined by preference, but also by cost and availability. Similarly, the Tonga Healthy Weight Loss Program ran during the late 1990s, but it was found that a lack of “availability of healthy low-cost food was a problem” to its success (Englberger et al. 147). In a recent study of Tongan food preferences, it was found that “in general, Tongans prefer healthier traditional, indigenously produced, foods”, but that they are not always available (Evans et al. 170). In the absence of a consistent supply of local protein sources, the often inferior but available imported sources become the default ingredient. Fish in particular are in short supply. Though many Tongans can still be seen harvesting the reef for seafood at low tide, there is no extensive fishing industry capable of providing for the population at large. Intensive farming of pigs has been considered—there was a model piggery on the college where I lived, complete with facilities for methane collection—but it has not been undertaken. Given the strongly ceremonial function of the pig, it would take a large shift in thinking for it to be considered an everyday food. The first cooked pig I encountered arrived at my house in a woven coconut leaf basket, surrounded by baked taro and yam. It was a small pig, given by a family too poor to hold the feast usually provided after church when it was their turn. Instead, they gave the food portion owed directly to the preacher. There’s a faded photo of me squatting on a cracked linoleum floor, examining the contents of the basket, and wondering what on earth I’m going to do with them. I soon learnt the first lesson of island life: food must be shared. With no refrigeration, no family of strapping youths, and no plans to eat the pig myself, it had to be given away to neighbours. It was that simple. Even watermelon went off within the day. In terms of eating, that small pig would have been better kept until a later day, when it reached optimum size, but each family’s obligation came around regularly, and had to be fulfilled. Feasting, and providing for feasting, was a duty, even a fatongia mamafa: a “heavy duty” among many duties, in which the pig was an object deeply “entangled” in all social relations (Thomas). A small pig was big enough to carry the weight of such obligations, even if it could not feed a crowd. Growing numbers of tourists to Tonga, often ignored benignly by their hosts, are keen to snap photos of grazing pigs. It is unusual enough for westerners to see pigs freely wandering, but what is more striking about some pigs on Tongatapu and ‘Eua is that they venture onto the reefs and mudflats at low tide, going after the rich marine pickings, just as their human counterparts do. The silhouette of a pig in the water as the tropical sun sinks behind, caught in a digital frame, it is a striking memory of a holiday in a place that remains largely uninterested in its tourist potential. While an influx of guests is seen by development consultants as the path to the nation’s economic future, Tongans bemusedly refuse to take this possibility seriously (Menzies). Despite a negative trade balance, partly caused by the importation of foreign food, Tonga survives on a combination of subsistence farming and remittances from Tongans living overseas; the tourist potential is largely unrealised. Dirk Spennemann’s work took a strange turn when, as an archaeologist working in Tonga, it became necessary for him to investigate whether these reef-grazing pigs were disturbing midden contents on Tongatapu. In order to establish this, he collected bags of both wet and dry “pig excreta” (107). Spenemann’s methodology involved soaking the contents of these bags for 48 hours, stirring them frequently; “they dissolved, producing considerable smell” (107). Spennemann concluded that pigs do appear to have been eating fish and shellfish, along with grass and “the occasional bit of paper” (107). They also feed on “seaweed and seagrass” (108). I wonder if these food groups have any noticeable impact on the taste of their flesh? Creatures fed particular diets in order to create a certain distinct taste are part of the culinary traditions of the world. The deli around the corner from where I live sells such gourmet items as part of its lunch fare: Saltbush lamb baguettes are one of their favourites. In the Orkneys, the rare and ancient North Ronaldsay Sheep are kept from inland foraging for most of the year by a high stone fence in order to conserve the grass for lambing time. This forces them to eat seaweed on the beach, producing a distinct marine taste, one that is highly valued in certain Parisian restaurants. As an economy largely cut out of the world economic loop, Tonga is unlikely to find select menus on which its reef pigs might appear. While living on ‘Eua, I regularly took a three hour ferry trip to Tongatapu in order to buy food I could not get on my home island. One of these items was wholemeal flour, from which I baked bread in a mud oven we had built outside. Bread was available on ‘Eua, but it was white, light and transported loose in the back of truck. I chose to make my own. The ferry trip usually involved a very rough crossing, though on calmer days, roof passengers would cook sipi on the diesel chimney, added flavour guaranteed. It usually only took about thirty minutes on the way out from Nafanua Harbour before the big waves struck. I could endure them for a while, but soon the waves, combined with a heavy smell of diesel, would have me heading for the rail. On one journey, I tried to hold off seasickness by focussing on an island off shore from Tongatapu. I went onto the front deck of the ferry and faced the full blast of the wind. With waves and wind, it was difficult to stand. I diligently stared at the island, which only occasionally disappeared beneath the swell, but I soon knew that this trip would be like the others; I’d be leaning over the rail as the ocean came up to meet me, not really caring if I went over. I could not bear to share the experience, so in many ways being alone on the foredeck was ideal for me, if I had to be on the boat at all. At least I thought I was alone, but I soon heard a grunt, and looked across to see an enormous sow, trotters tied front and back, lying across the opposite side of the boat. And like me, she too was succumbing to her nausea. Despite the almost complete self-absorption seasickness brings, we looked at each other. I may have imagined an acknowledgement, but I think not. While the status of pigs in Tongan life remains important, in many respects the imposition of European institutions and the availability of imported foods have had an enormous impact on the rest of the Tongan diet, with devastating effects on the health of Tongans. Instead of the customary two slow-cooked meals, one before noon and one in the evening (Pollock 56), consisting mostly of roots crops, plantains and breadfruit, with a relish of meat or fish, most Tongans eat three meals a day in order to fit in with school and work schedules. In current Tongan life, there is no time for an ‘umu every day; instead, quick and often cheaper imported foods are consumed, though local foods can also be cooked relatively quickly. While some still start the day by grabbing a piece of left over cassava, many more would sit down to the ubiquitous Pacific breakfast food: crackers, topped with a slab of butter. Food is a neo-colonial issue. If larger nations stopped dumping unwanted and nutritionally poor food products, health outcomes might improve. Similarly, the Tongan government could tip the food choice balance by actively supporting a local and traditional food supply in order to make it as cheap and accessible as the imported foods that are doing such harm to the health of Tongans References Barnes, Lucy, Rona Moss-Morris, and Mele Kaufusi. “Illness Beliefs and Adherence in Diabetes Mellitus: A Comparison between Tongan and European Patients.” The New Zealand Medical Journal 117.1188 (2004): 1-9. Beaglehole, J.C. Ed. The Journals of Captain James Cook on his Voyages of Discovery: The Voyage of the Resolution and Discovery 1776-1780. Parts I & II. Cambridge: Hakluyt Society, 1967. ­­­____. Ed. The Journals of Captain James Cook on his Voyages of Discovery: The Voyage of the Resolution and Adventure 1772-1775. Cambridge: Hakluyt Society, 1969. Colagiuri, Stephen, Ruth Colgaiuri, Siva Na‘ati, Soana Muimuiheata, Zafirul Hussein, and Taniela Palu. “The Prevalence of Diabetes in the Kingdom of Tonga.” Diabetes Care 28.2 (2002): 1378-83. Edwardes, Brennan, and Frank Frizelle. “Globalisation and its Impact on the South Pacific.” The New Zealand Medical Journal 122.1291 (2009). 4 Aug. 2010 Englberger, L., V. Halavatau, Y. Yasuda, & R, Yamazaki. “The Tonga Healthy Weight Loss Program.” Asia Pacific Journal of Clinical Nutrition 8.2 (1999): 142-48. Gentles, Dudley, et al. “Metabolic Syndrome Prevalence in a Multicultural Population in Auckland, New Zealand.” Journal of the New Zealand Medical Association 120.1248 (2007). 4 Aug. 2010 Kirk, Sara F.L., Andrew J. Cockbain, and James Beasley. “Obesity in Tonga: A cross-sectional comparative study of perceptions of body size and beliefs about obesity in lay people and nurses.” Obesity Research & Clinical Practice 2.1 (2008): 35-41. Larsen, Gregor, et al. “Phylogeny and Ancient DNA of Sus Provides New Insights into Neolithic Expansion in Island Southeast Asia and Oceania.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 104.12 (2007): 4834-39. Martin, John. Tonga Islands: William Mariner’s Account, 1817. Neiafu, Tonga: Vava‘u, 1981. Menzies, Isa. “Cultural Tourism and International Development in Tonga: Notes from the Field”. Unpublished paper. Oceanic Passages Conference. Hobart, June 2010. Pollock, Nancy J. These Roots Remain: Food Habits in Islands of the Central and Eastern Pacific since Western Contact. Honolulu: Institute for Polynesian Studies, 1992. Rosen, Rochelle K., Judith DePue, and Stephen T. McGarvey. “Overweight and Diabetes in American Samoa: The Cultural Translation of Research into Health Care Practice.” Medicine and Health/ Rhode Island 91.12 (2008): 372-78. Spennemann, Dirk H.R. “On the Diet of Pigs Foraging on the Mud Flats of Tongatapu: An Investigation in Taphonomy.” Archaeology in New Zealand 37.2 (1994): 104-10. Thomas, Nicholas. Entangled Objects: Exchange, Material Objects and Colonialism in the Pacific. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard UP, 1991.
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Kabir, Nahid. "Depiction of Muslims in Selected Australian Media." M/C Journal 9, no. 4 (September 1, 2006). http://dx.doi.org/10.5204/mcj.2642.

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Abstract:
Give me the liberty to know, to utter, and to argue freely according to conscience, above all liberties. —John Milton (1608-1674) Introduction The publication of 12 cartoons depicting images of Prophet Mohammed [Peace Be Upon Him] first in Denmark’s Jyllands-Posten on 30 September 2005, and later reprinted in European media and two New Zealand newspapers, sparked protests around the Muslim world. The Australian newspapers – with the exception of The Courier-Mail, which published one cartoon – refrained from reprinting the cartoons, acknowledging that depictions of the Prophet are regarded as “blasphemous by Muslims”. How is this apparent act of restraint to be assessed? Edward Said, in his book Covering Islam has acknowledged that there have been many Muslim provocations and troubling incidents by Islamic countries such as Iran, Libya, Sudan, and others in the 1980s. However, he contends that the use of the label “Islam” by non-Muslim commentators, either to explain or indiscriminately condemn “Islam”, ends up becoming a form of attack, which in turn provokes more hostility (xv-xvi). This article examines how two Australian newspapers – The Australian and The West Australian – handled the debate on the Prophet Muhammad cartoons and considers whether in the name of “free speech” it ended in “a form of attack” on Australian Muslims. It also considers the media’s treatment of Muslim Australians’ “free speech” on previous occasions. This article is drawn from the oral testimonies of Muslims of diverse ethnic background. Since 1998, as part of PhD and post-doctoral research on Muslims in Australia, the author conducted 130 face-to-face, in-depth, taped interviews of Muslims, aged 18-90, both male and female. While speaking about their settlement experience, several interviewees made unsolicited remarks about Western/Australian media, all of them making the point that Muslims were being demonised. Australian Muslims Many of Australia’s 281,578 Muslims — 1.5 per cent of the total population (Australian Bureau of Statistics) — believe that as a result of media bias, they are vilified in society as “terrorists”, and discriminated in the workplace (Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission; Dreher 13; Kabir 266-277). The ABS figures support their claim of discrimination in the workplace; in 1996 the unemployment rate for Muslim Australians was 25 per cent, compared to 9 per cent for the national total. In 2001, it was reduced to 18.5 per cent, compared to 6.8 per cent for the national total, but the ratio of underprivileged positions in the labour market remained almost three times higher than for the wider community. Instead of reflecting on Muslims’ labour market issues or highlighting the social issues confronting Muslims since 9/11, some Australian media, in the name of “free speech”, reinforce negative perceptions of Muslims through images, cartoons and headlines. In 2004, one Muslim informant offered their perceptions of Australian media: I think the Australian media are quite prejudiced, and they only do show one side of the story, which is quite pro-Bush, pro-Howard, pro-war. Probably the least prejudiced media would be ABC or SBS, but the most pro-Jewish, pro-America, would be Channel Seven, Channel Nine, Channel Ten. They only ever show things from one side of the story. This article considers the validity of the Muslim interviewee’s perception that Australian media representation is one-sided. On 26 October 2005, under the headline: “Draw a Cartoon about Mohammed and You Must Die”, The Australian warned its readers: ISLAM is no laughing matter. Danish newspaper, Jyllands-Posten, is being protected by security guards and several cartoonists have gone into hiding after the newspaper published a series of 12 cartoons about the prophet Mohammed. According to Islam, it is blasphemous to make images of the prophet. Muslim fundamentalists have threatened to bomb the paper’s offices and kill the cartoonists (17). Militant Muslims The most provocative cartoons appearing in the Danish media are probably those showing a Muhammad-like figure wearing a turban shaped as a bomb with a burning fuse coming out of it, or a queue of smoking suicide bombers on a cloud with an Islamic cleric saying, “Stop stop we have run out of virgins”. Another showed a blindfolded Muslim man with two veiled Muslim women standing behind him. These messages appeared to be concerned with Islam’s repression of women (Jyllands-Posten), and possibly with the American channel CBS airing an interview in August 2001 of a Palestinian Hamas activist, Muhammad Abu Wardeh, who recruited terrorists for suicide bombings in Israel. Abu Wardeh was quoted as saying: “I described to him [the suicide bomber] how God would compensate the martyr for sacrificing his life for his land. If you become a martyr, God will give you 70 virgins, 70 wives and everlasting happiness” (The Guardian). Perhaps to serve their goals, the militants have re-interpreted the verses of the Holy Quran (Sura 44:51-54; 55:56) where it is said that Muslims who perform good deeds will be blessed by the huris or “pure being” (Ali 1290-1291; 1404). However, since 9/11, it is also clear that the Muslim militant groups such as the Al-Qaeda have become the “new enemy” of the West. They have used religion to justify the terrorist acts and suicide bombings that have impacted on Western interests in New York, Washington, Bali, Madrid amongst other places. But it should be noted that there are Muslim critics, such as Pakistani-born writer, Irshad Manji, Bangladeshi-born writer Taslima Nasreen and Somalian-born Dutch parliamentarian Ayaan Hirsi Ali, who have been constant critics of Muslim men’s oppression of women and have urged reformation. However, their extremist fellow believers threatened them with a death sentence for their “free speech” (Chadwick). The non-Muslim Dutch film director, Theo van Gogh, also a critic of Islam and a supporter of Ayaan Hirsi Ali, advocated a reduction in immigration into Holland, especially by Muslims. Both van Gogh and Hirsi Ali – who co-scripted and co-produced the film Submission – received death threats from Muslim extremists because the film exhibited the verses of the Quran across the chest, stomach and thighs of an almost naked girl, and featured four women in see-through robes showing their breasts, with texts from the Quran daubed on their bodies, talking about the abuse they had suffered under Islam (Anon 25). Whereas there may be some justification for the claim made in the film, that some Muslim men interpret the Quran to oppress women (Doogue and Kirkwood 220), the writing of the Quranic verses on almost-naked women is surely offensive to all Muslims because the Quran teaches Muslim women to dress modestly (Sura 24: 30-31; Ali 873). On 4 November 2004, The West Australian reported that the Dutch director Theo van Gogh was murdered by a 26-year-old Dutch-Moroccan Muslim on 2 November 2004 (27). Hirsi Ali, the co-producer of the film was forced to go into hiding after van Gogh’s murder. In the face of a growing clamour from both the Dutch Muslims and the secular communities to silence her, Ayaan Hirsi Ali resigned from the Dutch Parliament in May 2006 and decided to re-settle in Washington (Jardine 2006). It should be noted that militant Muslims form a tiny but forceful minority of the 1.4 billion Muslims worldwide. The Muslim majority are moderate and peaceful (Doogue and Kirkwood 79-80). Some Muslim scholars argue that there is specific instruction in the Quran for people to apply their knowledge and arrive at whatever interpretation is of greatest benefit to the community. It may be that stricter practitioners would not agree with the moderate interpretation of the Quran and vice versa (Doogue and Kirkwood 232). Therefore, when the Western media makes a mockery of the Muslim religion or their Prophet in the name of “free speech”, or generalises all Muslims for the acts of a few through headlines or cartoons, it impacts on the Muslims residing in the West. Prophet Muhammad’s Cartoons With the above-mentioned publication of Prophet Muhammad’s cartoons in Denmark, Islamic critics charged that the cartoons were a deliberate provocation and insult to their religion, designed to incite hatred and polarise people of different faiths. In February 2006, regrettably, violent reactions took place in the Middle East, Europe and in Asia. Danish embassies were attacked and, in some instances, were set on fire. The demonstrators chanted, “With our blood and souls we defend you, O Prophet of God!”. Some replaced the Danish flag with a green one printed with the first pillar of Islam (Kalima): “There is no god but God and Mohammed is the messenger of God”. Some considered the cartoons “an unforgivable insult” that merited punishment by death (The Age). A debate on “free speech” soon emerged in newspapers throughout the world. On 7 February 2006 the editorial in The West Australian, “World Has Had Enough of Muslim Fanatics”, stated that the newspaper would not publish cartoons of Mohammad that have drawn protests from Muslims around the world. The newspaper acknowledged that depictions of the prophet are regarded as “blasphemous by Muslims” (18). However, the editorial was juxtaposed with another article “Can Liberty Survive a Clash of Cultures?”, with an image of bearded men wearing Muslim head coverings, holding Arabic placards and chanting slogans, implying the violent nature of Islam. And in the letters page of this newspaper, published on the same day, appeared the following headlines (20): Another Excuse for Muslims to Threaten Us Islam Attacked Cartoon Rage: Greatest Threat to World Peace We’re Living in Dangerous Times Why Treat Embassies with Contempt? Muslim Religion Is Not So Soft Civilised World Is Threatened The West Australian is a state-based newspaper that tends to side with the conservative Liberal party, and is designed to appeal to the “man in the street”. The West Australian did not republish the Prophet Muhammad cartoon, but for 8 days from 7 to 15 February 2006 the letters to the editor and opinion columns consistently criticised Islam and upheld “superior” Western secular values. During this period, the newspaper did publish a few letters that condemned the Danish cartoonist, including the author’s letter, which also condemned the Muslims’ attack on the embassies. But the overall message was that Western secular values were superior to Islamic values. In other words, the newspaper adopted a jingoistic posture and asserted the cultural superiority of mainstream Australians. The Danish cartoons also sparked a debate on “free speech” in Australia’s leading newspaper, The Australian, which is a national newspaper that also tends to reflect the values of the ruling national government – also the conservative Liberal party. And it followed a similar pattern of debate as The West Australian. On 14 February 2006, The Australian (13) published a reader’s criticism of The Australian for not republishing the cartoons. The author questioned whether the Muslims deserved any tolerance because their Holy Book teaches intolerance. The Koran [Quran] (22:19) says: Garments of fire have been prepared for the unbelievers. Scalding water shall be poured upon their heads, melting their skins and that which is in their bellies. Perhaps this reader did not find the three cartoons published in The Australian a few days earlier to be ‘offensive’ to the Australian Muslims. In the first, on 6 February 2006, the cartoonist Bill Leak showed that his head was chopped off by some masked people (8), implying that Muslim militants, such as the Hamas, would commit such a brutal act. The Palestinian Hamas group often appear in masks before the media. In this context, it is important to note that Israel is an ally of Australia and the United States, whereas the Hamas is Israel’s enemy whose political ideology goes against Israel’s national interest. On 25 January 2006, the Hamas won a landslide victory in the Palestine elections but Israel refused to recognise this government because Hamas has not abandoned its militant ideology (Page 13). The cartoon, therefore, probably means that the cartoonist or perhaps The Australian has taken sides on behalf of Australia’s ally Israel. In the second cartoon, on 7 February 2006, Bill Leak sketched an Arab raising his sword over a school boy who was drawing in a classroom. The caption read, “One more line and I’ll chop your hand off!” (12). And in the third, on 10 February 2006, Bill Leak sketched Mr Mohammed’s shadow holding a sword with the caption: “The unacceptable face of fanaticism”. A reporter asked: “And so, Mr Mohammed, what do you have to say about the current crisis?” to which Mr Mohammed replied, “I refuse to be drawn on the subject” (16). The cartoonist also thought that the Danish cartoons should have been republished in the Australian newspapers (Insight). Cartoons are supposed to reflect the theme of the day. Therefore, Bill Leak’s cartoons were certainly topical. But his cartoons reveal that his or The Australian’s “freedom of expression” has been one-sided, all depicting Islam as representing violence. For example, after the Bali bombing on 21 November 2002, Leak sketched two fully veiled women, one carrying explosives under her veil and asking the other, “Does my bomb look big in this”? The cartoonist’s immediate response to criticism of the cartoon in a television programme was, “inevitably, when you look at a cartoon such as that one, the first thing you’ve got to do is remember that as a daily editorial cartoonist, you’re commenting first and foremost on the events of the day. They’re very ephemeral things”. He added, “It was…drawn about three years ago after a spate of suicide bombing attacks in Israel” (Insight). Earlier events also suggested that that The Australian resolutely supports Australia’s ally, Israel. On 13-14 November 2004 Bill Leak caricatured the recently deceased Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat in The Weekend Australian (18). In the cartoon, God appeared to be displeased with him and would not allow him to enter paradise. Arafat was shown with explosives strapped to his body and threatening God by saying, “A cloud to myself or the whole place goes up….”. On the other hand, on 6 January 2006 the same cartoonist sympathetically portrayed ailing Israeli leader Ariel Sharon as a decent man wearing a black suit, with God willing to accept him (10); and the next day Sharon was portrayed as “a Man of Peace” (12). Politics and Religion Thus, the anecdotal evidence so far reveals that in the name of “freedom of expression”, or “free speech” The West Australian and The Australian newspapers have taken sides – either glorifying their “superior” Western culture or taking sides on behalf of its allies. On the other hand, these print media would not tolerate the “free speech” of a Muslim leader who spoke against their ally or another religious group. From the 1980s until recently, some print media, particularly The Australian, have been critical of the Egyptian-born Muslim spiritual leader Imam Taj el din al-Hilali for his “free speech”. In 1988 the Australian Federation of Islamic Councils bestowed the title of Mufti to Imam al- Hilali, and al-Hilali was elevated to a position of national religious leadership. Al-Hilali became a controversial figure after 1988 when he gave a speech to the Muslim students at Sydney University and accused Jews of trying to control the world through “sex, then sexual perversion, then the promotion of espionage, treason and economic hoarding” (Hewett 7). The Imam started being identified as a “Muslim chief” in the news headlines once he directly criticised American foreign policy during the 1990-91 Gulf crisis. The Imam interpreted US intervention in Kuwait as a “political dictatorship” that was exploiting the Gulf crisis because it was seen as a threat to its oil supply (Hewett 7). After the Bali bombings in 2002, the Howard government distributed information on terrorism through the “Alert and Alarmed” kit as part of its campaign of public awareness. The first casualty of the “Be alert, but not alarmed” campaign was the Imam al-Hilali. On 6 January 2003, police saw a tube of plastic protruding from a passenger door window and suspected that al-Hilali might have been carrying a gun when they pulled him over for traffic infringements. Sheikh al-Hilali was charged with resisting arrest and assaulting police (Morris 1, 4). On 8 January 2003 The Australian reminded its readers “Arrest Adds to Mufti’s Mystery” (9). The same issue of The Australian portrayed the Sheikh being stripped of his clothes by two policemen. The letter page also contained some unsympathetic opinions under the headline: “Mufti Deserved No Special Treatment” (10). In January 2004, al-Hilali was again brought under the spotlight. The Australian media alleged that al-Hilali praised the suicide bombers at a Mosque in Lebanon and said that the destruction of the World Trade Center was “God’s work against oppressors” (Guillatt 24). Without further investigation, The Australian again reported his alleged inflammatory comments. Under the headline, “Muslim Leader’s Jihad Call”, it condemned al-Hilali and accused him of strongly endorsing “terrorist groups Hezbollah and Hamas, during his visit to Lebanon”. Federal Labor Member of Parliament Michael Danby said, “Hilali’s presence in Australia is a mistake. He and his associates must give authorities an assurance he will not assist future homicide attacks” (Chulov 1, 5). Later investigations by Sydney’s Good Weekend Magazine and SBS Television found that al-Hilali’s speech had been mistranslated (Guillatt 24). However, the selected print media that had been very critical of the Sheikh did not highlight the mistranslation. On the other hand, the Archbishop of Sydney, Cardinal George Pell has been critical of Islam and is also opposed to Australia’s involvement in the Iraq war in 2003, but the print media appeared to ignore his “free speech” (Dateline). In November 2004, Dr Pell said that secular liberal democracy was empty and selfish, and Islam was emerging as an alternative world view that attracted the alienated (Zwartz 3). In May 2006, Dr Pell said that he tried to reconcile claims that Islam was a faith of peace with those that suggested the Quran legitimised the killings of non-Muslims but: In my own reading of the Koran [Quran], I began to note down invocations to violence. There are so many of them, however, that I abandoned this exercise after 50 or 60 or 70 pages (Morris). Muslim leaders regarded Dr Pell’s anti-Islam statement as “inflammatory” (Morris). However, both the newspapers, The Australian and The West Australian remained uncritical of Dr Pell’s “free speech” against Islam. Conclusion Edward Said believed that media images are informed by official definitions of Islam that serve the interests of government and business. The success of the images is not in their accuracy but in the power of the people who produce them, the triumph of which is hardly challenged. “Labels have survived many experiences and have been capable of adapting to new events, information and realities” (9). In this paper the author accepts that, in the Australian context, militant Muslims are the “enemy of the West”. However, they are also the enemy of most moderate Australian Muslims. When some selected media take sides on behalf of the hegemony, or Australia’s “allies”, and offend moderate Australian Muslims, the media’s claim of “free speech” or “freedom of expression” remains highly questionable. Muslim interviewees in this study have noted a systemic bias in some Australian media, but they are not alone in detecting this bias (see the “Abu Who?” segment of Media Watch on ABC TV, 31 July 2006). To address this concern, Australian Muslim leaders need to play an active role in monitoring the media. This might take the form of a watchdog body within the Australian Federation of Islamic Councils. If the media bias is found to be persistent, the AFIC might then recommend legislative intervention or application of existing anti-discrimination policies; alternatively, AFIC could seek sanctions from within the Australian journalistic community. One way or another this practice should be stopped. References Ali, Abdullah Yusuf. The Holy Quran: Text, Translation and Commentary. New Revised Ed. Maryland, USA: Amana Corporation, 1989. Anonymous. “Dutch Courage in Aftermath of Film-Maker’s Slaying.” The Weekend Australian 6-7 Nov. 2004. Chadwick, Alex. “The Caged Virgin: A Call for Change in Islam.” 4 June 2006 http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5382547>. Chulov, Martin. “Muslim Leader’s Jihad Call.” The Australian 19 Feb. 2004. Dateline. “Cardinal George Pell Interview.” SBS TV 6 April 2005. 7 June 2006 http://news.sbs.com.au/dateline/>. Dreher, Tanya. “Targeted”, Experiences of Racism in NSW after September 11, 2001. Sydney: University of Technology, 2005. Doogue, Geraldine, and Peter Kirkwood. Tomorrow’s Islam: Understanding Age-Old Beliefs and a Modern World. Sydney: ABC Books, 2005. Insight. “Culture Clash.” SBS TV 7 March 2006. 11 June 2006 http://news.sbs.com.au/insight/archive.php>. Guillatt, Richard. “Moderate or Menace.” Sydney Morning Herald Good Weekend 21 Aug. 2004. Hewett, Tony. “Australia Exploiting Crisis: Muslim Chief.” Sydney Morning Herald 27 Nov. 1990. Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission. Ismaa – Listen: National Consultations on Eliminating Prejudice against Arab and Muslim Australians. Sydney: Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission, 2004. Jyllands-Posten. 24 Jan. 2006. http://www.di2.nu/files/Muhammad_Cartoons_Jyllands_Posten.html>. Jardine, Lisa. “Liberalism under Pressure.” BBC News 5 June 2006. 12 June 2006 http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/5042418.stm>. Kabir, Nahid. Muslims in Australia: Immigration, Race Relations and Cultural History. London: Kegan Paul, 2005. Media Watch. “Abu Who?” ABC Television 31 July 2006. http://abc.net.au/mediawatch/>. Morris, Linda. “Imam Facing Charges after Row with Police.” Sydney Morning Herald 7 Jan. 2003. Morris, Linda. “Pell Challenges Islam – O Ye, of Little Tolerant Faith.” Sydney Morning Herald 5 May 2006. Page, Jeremy. “Russia May Sell Arms to Hamas.” The Australian 18 Feb. 2006. Said, Edward. Covering Islam: How the Media and the Experts Determine How We See the Rest of the World. London: Vintage, 1981, 1997. Submission. “Film Clip from Short Submission.” Submission. 11 June 2006. http://www.ifilm.com/ifilmdetail/2655656?htv=12> The Age. “Embassies Torched over Cartoons.” 5 Feb. 2006. http://www.theage.com.au>. The Guardian. “Virgins? What Virgins?” 12 Jan. 2002. 4 June 2006 http://www.guardian.co.uk/>. Zwartz, Barney. “Islam Could Be New Communism, Pell Tells US Audience.” Sydney Morning Herald 12 Nov. 2004. Citation reference for this article MLA Style Kabir, Nahid. "Depiction of Muslims in Selected Australian Media: Free Speech or Taking Sides." M/C Journal 9.4 (2006). echo date('d M. Y'); ?> <http://journal.media-culture.org.au/0609/1-kabir.php>. APA Style Kabir, N. (Sep. 2006) "Depiction of Muslims in Selected Australian Media: Free Speech or Taking Sides," M/C Journal, 9(4). Retrieved echo date('d M. Y'); ?> from <http://journal.media-culture.org.au/0609/1-kabir.php>.
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38

Wessell, Adele. "Making a Pig of the Humanities: Re-centering the Historical Narrative." M/C Journal 13, no. 5 (October 18, 2010). http://dx.doi.org/10.5204/mcj.289.

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As the name suggests, the humanities is largely a study of the human condition, in which history sits as a discipline concerned with the past. Environmental history is a new field that brings together scholars from a range of disciplines to consider the changing relationships between humans and the environment over time. Critiques of anthropocentrism that place humans at the centre of the universe or make assessments through an exclusive human perspective provide a challenge to scholars to rethink our traditional biases against the nonhuman world. The movement towards nonhumanism or posthumanism, however, does not seem to have had much of an impression on history as a discipline. What would a nonhumanist history look like if we re-centred the historical narrative around pigs? There are histories of pigs as food (see for example, The Cambridge History of Food which has a chapter on “Hogs”). There are food histories that feature pork in terms of its relationship to multiethnic identity (such as Donna Gabaccia’s We Are What We Eat) and examples made of pigs to promote ethical eating (Singer). Pigs are central to arguments about dietary rules and what motivates them (Soler; Dolander). Ancient pig DNA has also been employed in studies on human migration and colonisation (Larson et al.; Durham University). Pigs are also widely used in a range of products that would surprise many of us. In 2008, Christien Meindertsma spent three years researching the products made from a single pig. Among some of the more unexpected results were: ammunition, medicine, photographic paper, heart valves, brakes, chewing gum, porcelain, cosmetics, cigarettes, hair conditioner and even bio diesel. Likewise, Fergus Henderson, who coined the term ‘nose to tail eating’, uses a pig on the front cover of the book of that name to suggest the extraordinary and numerous potential of pigs’ bodies. However, my intention here is not to pursue a discussion of how parts of their bodies are used, rather to consider a reorientation of the historical narrative to place pigs at the centre of stories of our co-evolution, in order to see what their history might say about humans and our relationships with them. This is underpinned by recognition of the inter-relationality of humans and animals. The relationships between wild boar and pigs with humans has been long and diverse. In a book exploring 10,000 years of interaction, Anton Ervynck and Peter Rowley-Conwy argue that pigs have been central to complex cultural developments in human societies and they played an important role in human migration patterns. The book is firmly grounded within the disciplines of zoology, anthropology and archaeology and contributes to an understanding of the complex and changing relationship humans have historically shared with wild boar and domestic pigs. Naturalist Lyall Watson also explores human/pig relationships in The Whole Hog. The insights these approaches offer for the discipline of history are valuable (although overlooked) but, more importantly, such scholarship also challenges a humanist perspective that credits humans exclusively with historical change and suggests, moreover, that we did it alone. Pigs occupy a special place in this history because of their likeness to humans, revealed in their use in transplant technology, as well as because of the iconic and paradoxical status they occupy in our lives. As Ervynck and Rowley-Conwy explain, “On the one hand, they are praised for their fecundity, their intelligence, and their ability to eat almost anything, but on the other hand, they are unfairly derided for their apparent slovenliness, unclean ways, and gluttonous behaviour” (1). Scientist Niamh O’Connell was struck by the human parallels in the complex social structures which rule the lives of pigs and people when she began a research project on pig behaviour at the Agricultural Research Institute at Hillsborough in County Down (Cassidy). According to O’Connell, pigs adopt different philosophies and lifestyle strategies to get the most out of their life. “What is interesting from a human perspective is that low-ranking animals tend to adopt one of two strategies,” she says. “You have got the animals who accept their station in life and then you have got the other ones that are continually trying to climb, and as a consequence, their life is very stressed” (qtd. in Cassidy). The closeness of pigs to humans is the justification for their use in numerous experiments. In the so-called ‘pig test’, code named ‘Priscilla’, for instance, over 700 pigs dressed in military uniforms were used to study the effects of nuclear testing at the Nevada (USA) test site in the 1950s. In When Species Meet, Donna Haraway draws attention to the ambiguities and contradictions promoted by the divide between animals and humans, and between nature and culture. There is an ethical and critical dimension to this critique of human exceptionalism—the view that “humanity alone is not [connected to the] spatial and temporal web of interspecies dependencies” (11). There is also that danger that any examination of our interdependencies may just satisfy a humanist preoccupation with self-reflection and self-reproduction. Given that pigs cannot speak, will they just become the raw material to reproduce the world in human’s own image? As Haraway explains: “Productionism is about man the tool-maker and -user, whose highest technical production is himself […] Blinded by the sun, in thrall to the father, reproduced in the sacred image of the same, his rewards is that he is self-born, an auto telic copy. That is the mythos of enlightenment and transcendence” (67). Jared Diamond acknowledges the mutualistic relationship between pigs and humans in Guns, Germs and Steel and the complex co-evolutionary path between humans and domesticated animals but his account is human-centric. Human’s relationships with pigs helped to shape human history and power relations and they spread across the world with human expansion. But questioning their utility as food and their enslavement to this cause was not part of the account. Pigs have no voice in the histories we write of them and so they can appear as passive objects in their own pasts. Traces of their pasts are available in humanity’s use of them in, for example, the sties built for them and the cooking implements used to prepare meals from them. Relics include bones and viruses, DNA sequences and land use patterns. Historians are used to dealing with subjects that cannot speak back, but they have usually left ample evidence of what they have said. In the process of writing, historians attempt to perform the miracle, as Curthoys and Docker have suggested, of restoration; bringing the people and places that existed in the past back to life (7). Writing about pigs should also attempt to bring the animal to life, to understand not just their past but also our own culture. In putting forward the idea of an alternative history that starts with pigs, I am aware of both the limits to such a proposal, and that most people’s only contact with pigs is through the meat they buy at the supermarket. Calls for a ban on intensive pig farming (RSPCA, ABC, AACT) might indeed have shocked people who imagine their dinner comes from the type of family farm featured in the movie Babe. Baby pigs in factory farms would have been killed a long time before the film’s sheep dog show (usually at 3 to 4 months of age). In fact, because baby pigs do grow so fast, 48 different pigs were used to film the role of the central character in Babe. While Babe himself may not have been aware of the relationship pigs generally have to humans, the other animals were very cognisant of their function. People eat pigs, even if they change the name of the form it takes in order to do so:Cat: You know, I probably shouldn’t say this, but I’m not sure if you realize how much the other animals are laughing at you for this sheep dog business. Babe: Why would they do that? Cat: Well, they say that you’ve forgotten that you’re a pig. Isn't that silly? Babe: What do you mean? Cat: You know, why pigs are here. Babe: Why are any of us here? Cat: Well, the cow’s here to be milked, the dogs are here to help the Boss's husband with the sheep, and I’m here to be beautiful and affectionate to the boss. Babe: Yes? Cat: [sighs softly] The fact is that pigs don’t have a purpose, just like ducks don’t have a purpose. Babe: [confused] Uh, I—I don’t, uh ... Cat: Alright, for your own sake, I’ll be blunt. Why do the Bosses keep ducks? To eat them. So why do the Bosses keep a pig? The fact is that animals don’t seem to have a purpose really do have a purpose. The Bosses have to eat. It’s probably the most noble purpose of all, when you come to think about it. Babe: They eat pigs? Cat: Pork, they call it—or bacon. They only call them pigs when they’re alive (Noonan). Babe’s transformation into a working pig to round up the sheep makes him more useful. Ferdinand the duck tried to do the same thing by crowing but was replaced by an alarm clock. This is a common theme in children’s stories, recalling Charlotte’s campaign to praise Wilbur the pig in order to persuade the farmer to let him live in E. B. White’s much loved children’s novel, Charlotte’s Web. Wilbur is “some pig”, “terrific”, “radiant” and “humble”. In 1948, four years before Charlotte’s Web, White had published an essay “Death of a Pig”, in which he fails to save a sick pig that he had bought in order to fatten up and butcher. Babe tried to present an alternative reality from a pig’s perspective, but the little pig was only spared because he was more useful alive than dead. We could all ask the question why are any of us here, but humans do not have to contemplate being eaten to justify their existence. The reputation pigs have for being filthy animals encourages distaste. In another movie, Pulp Fiction, Vincent opts for flavour, but Jules’ denial of pig’s personalities condemns them to insignificance:Vincent: Want some bacon? Jules: No man, I don’t eat pork. Vincent: Are you Jewish? Jules: Nah, I ain’t Jewish, I just don’t dig on swine, that’s all. Vincent: Why not? Jules: Pigs are filthy animals. I don’t eat filthy animals. Vincent: Bacon tastes gooood. Pork chops taste gooood. Jules: Hey, sewer rat may taste like pumpkin pie, but I’d never know ’cause I wouldn’t eat the filthy motherfucker. Pigs sleep and root in shit. That’s a filthy animal. I ain’t eat nothin’ that ain’t got sense enough to disregard its own feces [sic]. Vincent: How about a dog? Dogs eats its own feces. Jules: I don’t eat dog either. Vincent: Yeah, but do you consider a dog to be a filthy animal? Jules: I wouldn’t go so far as to call a dog filthy but they’re definitely dirty. But, a dog’s got personality. Personality goes a long way. Vincent: Ah, so by that rationale, if a pig had a better personality, he would cease to be a filthy animal. Is that true? Jules: Well we’d have to be talkin’ about one charming motherfuckin’ pig. I mean he’d have to be ten times more charmin’ than that Arnold on Green Acres, you know what I’m sayin’? In the 1960s television show Green Acres, Arnold was an exceptional pig who was allowed to do whatever he wanted. He was talented enough to write his own name and play the piano and his attempts at painting earned him the nickname “Porky Picasso”. These talents reflected values that are appreciated, and so he was. The term “pig” is, however, chiefly used a term of abuse, however, embodying traits we abhor—gluttony, obstinence, squealing, foraging, rooting, wallowing. Making a pig of yourself is rarely honoured. Making a pig of the humanities, however, could be a different story. As a historian I love to forage, although I use white gloves rather than a snout. I have rubbed my face and body on tree trunks in the service of forestry history and when the temperature rises I also enjoy wallowing, rolling from side to side rather than drawing a conclusion. More than this, however, pigs provide a valid means of understanding key historical transitions that define modern society. Significant themes in modern history—production, religion, the body, science, power, the national state, colonialism, gender, consumption, migration, memory—can all be understood through a history of our relationships with pigs. Pigs play an important role in everyday life, but their relationship to the economic, social, political and cultural matters discussed in general history texts—industrialisation, the growth of nation states, colonialism, feminism and so on—are generally ignored. However “natural” this place of pigs may seem, culture and tradition profoundly shape their history and their own contribution to those forces has been largely absent in history. What, then, would the contours of such a history that considered the intermeshing of humans and pigs look like? The intermeshing of pigs in early human history Agricultural economies based on domestic animals began independently in different parts of the world, facilitating increases in population and migration. Evidence for long-term genetic continuity between modern and ancient Chinese domestic pigs has been established by DNA sequences. Larson et al. have made an argument for five additional independent domestications of indigenous wild boar populations: in India, South East Asia and Taiwan, which they use to develop a picture of both pig evolution and the development and spread of early farmers in the Far East. Domestication itself involves transformation into something useful to animals. In the process, humans became transformed. The importance of the Fertile Crescent in human history has been well established. The area is attributed as the site for a series of developments that have defined human history—urbanisation, writing, empires, and civilisation. Those developments have been supported by innovations in food production and animal husbandry. Pig, goats, sheep and cows were all domesticated very early in the Fertile Crescent and remain four of the world’s most important domesticated mammals (Diamond 141). Another study of ancient pig DNA has concluded that the earliest domesticated pigs in Europe, believed to be descended from European wild boar, were introduced from the Middle East. The research, by archaeologists at Durham University, sheds new light on the colonisation of Europe by early farmers, who brought their animals with them. Keith Dobney explains:Many archaeologists believe that farming spread through the diffusion of ideas and cultural exchange, not with the direct migration of people. However, the discovery and analysis of ancient Middle Eastern pig remains across Europe reveals that although cultural exchange did happen, Europe was definitely colonised by Middle Eastern farmers. A combination of rising population and possible climate change in the ‘fertile crescent’, which put pressure on land and resources, made them look for new places to settle, plant their crops and breed their animals and so they rapidly spread west into Europe (ctd in ScienceDaily). Middle Eastern farmers colonised Europe with pigs and in the process transformed human history. Identity as a porcine theme Religious restrictions on the consumption of pigs come from the same area. Such restrictions exist in Jewish dietary laws (Kashrut) and in Muslim dietary laws (Halal). The basis of dietary laws has been the subject of much scholarship (Soler). Economic and health and hygiene factors have been used to explain the development of dietary laws historically. The significance of dietary laws, however, and the importance attached to them can be related to other purposes in defining and expressing religious and cultural identity. Dietary laws and their observance may have been an important factor in sustaining Jewish identity despite the dispersal of Jews in foreign lands since biblical times. In those situations, where a person eats in the home of someone who does not keep kosher, the lack of knowledge about your host’s ingredients and the food preparation techniques make it very difficult to keep kosher. Dietary laws require a certain amount of discipline and self-control, and the ability to make distinctions between right and wrong, good and evil, pure and defiled, the sacred and the profane, in everyday life, thus elevating eating into a religious act. Alternatively, people who eat anything are often subject to moral judgments that may also lead to social stigmatisation and discrimination. One of the most powerful and persuasive discourses influencing current thinking about health and bodies is the construction of an ‘obesity epidemic’, critiqued by a range of authors (see for example, Wright & Harwood). As omnivores who appear indiscriminate when it comes to food, pigs provide an image of uncontrolled eating, made visible by the body as a “virtual confessor”, to use Elizabeth Grosz’s term. In Fat Pig, a production by the Sydney Theatre Company in 2006, women are reduced to being either fat pigs or shrieking shallow women. Fatuosity, a blog by PhD student Jackie Wykes drawing on her research on fat and sexual subjectivity, provides a review of the play to describe the misogyny involved: “It leaves no options for women—you can either be a lovely person but a fat pig who will end up alone; or you can be a shrill bitch but beautiful, and end up with an equally obnoxious and shallow male counterpart”. The elision of the divide between women and pigs enacted by such imagery also creates openings for new modes of analysis and new practices of intervention that further challenge humanist histories. Such interventions need to make visible other power relations embedded in assumptions about identity politics. Following the lead of feminists and postcolonial theorists who have challenged the binary oppositions central to western ideology and hierarchical power relations, critical animal theorists have also called into question the essentialist and dualist assumptions underpinning our views of animals (Best). A pig history of the humanities might restore the central role that pigs have played in human history and evolution, beyond their exploitation as food. Humans have constructed their story of the nature of pigs to suit themselves in terms that are specieist, racist, patriarchal and colonialist, and failed to grasp the connections between the oppression of humans and other animals. The past and the ways it is constructed through history reflect and shape contemporary conditions. In this sense, the past has a powerful impact on the present, and the way this is re-told, therefore, also needs to be situated, historicised and problematicised. The examination of history and society from the standpoint of (nonhuman) animals offers new insights on our relationships in the past, but it might also provide an alternative history that restores their agency and contributes to a different kind of future. As the editor of Critical Animals Studies, Steve Best describes it: “This approach, as I define it, considers the interaction between human and nonhuman animals—past, present, and future—and the need for profound changes in the way humans define themselves and relate to other sentient species and to the natural world as a whole.” References ABC. “Changes to Pig Farming Proposed.” ABC News Online 22 May 2010. 10 Aug. 2010 http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2010/05/22/2906519.htm Against Animal Cruelty Tasmania. “Australia’s Intensive Pig Industry: The Intensive Pig Industry in Australia Has Much to Hide.” 10 Sep. 2010 http://www.aact.org.au/pig_industry.htm Babe. Dir. Chris Noonan. Universal Pictures, 1995. Best, Steven. “The Rise of Critical Animal Studies: Putting Theory into Action and Animal Liberation into Higher Education.” Journal for Critical Animal Studies 7.1 (2009): 9-53. Cassidy, Martin. “How Close are Pushy Pigs to Humans?”. BBC News Online 2005. 10 Sep. 2010 http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/northern_ireland/4482674.stmCurthoys, A., and Docker, J. “Time Eternity, Truth, and Death: History as Allegory.” Humanities Research 1 (1999) 10 Sep. 2010 http://www.anu.edu.au/hrc/publications/hr/hr_1_1999.phpDiamond, Jared. Guns, Germs and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies. New York: W. W. Norton, 1999. Dolader, Miguel-Àngel Motis. “Mediterranean Jewish Diet and Traditions in the Middle Ages”. Food: A Culinary History. Eds. Jean-Louis Flandrin and Massimo Montanari. Trans. Clarissa Botsford, Arthus Golhammer, Charles Lambert, Frances M. López-Morillas and Sylvia Stevens. New York: Columbia UP, 1999. 224-44. Durham University. “Chinese Pigs ‘Direct Descendants’ of First Domesticated Breeds.” ScienceDaily 20 Apr. 2010. 29 Aug. 2010 http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/04/100419150947.htm Gabaccia, Donna R. We Are What We Eat: Ethnic Food and the Making of Americans. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1998. Grosz, Elizabeth. Volatile Bodies: Toward a Corporeal Feminism. St Leonards: Allen & Unwin, 1994. Haraway, D. “The Promises of Monsters: A Regenerative Politics for Inappropriate/d Others.” The Haraway Reader. New York: Routledge, 2005. 63-124. Haraway, D. When Species Meet: Posthumanities. 3rd ed. London: University of Minnesota Press, 2008. Henderson, Fergus. Nose to Tail Eating: A Kind of British Cooking. London: Bloomsbury, 2004. Kiple, Kenneth F., Kriemhild Coneè Ornelas. Cambridge History of Food. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000. Larson, G., Ranran Liu, Xingbo Zhao, Jing Yuan, Dorian Fuller, Loukas Barton, Keith Dobney, Qipeng Fan, Zhiliang Gu, Xiao-Hui Liu, Yunbing Luo, Peng Lv, Leif Andersson, and Ning Li. “Patterns of East Asian Pig Domestication, Migration, and Turnover Revealed by Modern and Ancient DNA.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, United States 19 Apr. 2010. 10 Sep. 2010 http://www.pnas.org/cgi/content/full/0912264107/DCSupplemental Meindertsma, Christien. “PIG 05049. Kunsthal in Rotterdam.” 2008. 10 Sep. 2010 http://www.christienmeindertsma.com/index.php?/books/pig-05049Naess, A. “The Shallow and the Deep, Long-Range Ecology Movement.” Inquiry 16 (1973): 95-100. Needman, T. Fat Pig. Sydney Theatre Company. Oct. 2006. Noonan, Chris [director]. “Babe (1995) Memorable Quotes”. 10 Sep. 2010 http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0112431/quotes Plumwood, V. Feminism and the Mastery of Nature. London: Routledge, 1993. Pulp Fiction. Dir. Quentin Tarantino. Miramax, 1994. RSPCA Tasmania. “RSPCA Calls for Ban on Intensive Pig Farming.” 10 Sep. 2010 http://www.rspcatas.org.au/press-centre/rspca-calls-for-a-ban-on-intensive-pig-farming ScienceDaily. “Ancient Pig DNA Study Sheds New Light on Colonization of Europe by Early Farmers” 4 Sep. 2007. 10 Sep. 2010 http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/09/070903204822.htm Singer, Peter. “Down on the Family Farm ... or What Happened to Your Dinner When it was Still an Animal.” Animal Liberation 2nd ed. London: Jonathan Cape, 1990. 95-158. Soler, Jean. “Biblical Reasons: The Dietary Rules of the Ancient Hebrews.” Food: A Culinary History. Eds. Jean-Louis Flandrin and Massimo Montanari. Trans. Clarissa Botsford, Arthus Golhammer, Charles Lambert, Frances M. López-Morillas and Sylvia Stevens. New York: Columbia University Press, 1999. 46-54. Watson, Lyall. The Whole Hog: Exploring the Extraordinary Potential of Pigs. London: Profile, 2004. White, E. B. Essays of E. B. White. London: HarperCollins, 1979. White, E. B. Charlotte’s Web. London: HarperCollins, 2004. Wright, J., and V. Harwood. Eds. Biopolitics and the ‘Obesity Epidemic’. New York: Routledge, 2009. Wykes, J. Fatuosity 2010. 29 Aug. 2010 http://www.fatuosity.net
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39

Watson, Robert. "E-Press and Oppress." M/C Journal 8, no. 2 (June 1, 2005). http://dx.doi.org/10.5204/mcj.2345.

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From elephants to ABBA fans, silicon to hormone, the following discussion uses a new research method to look at printed text, motion pictures and a teenage rebel icon. If by ‘print’ we mean a mechanically reproduced impression of a cultural symbol in a medium, then printing has been with us since before microdot security prints were painted onto cars, before voice prints, laser prints, network servers, record pressings, motion picture prints, photo prints, colour woodblock prints, before books, textile prints, and footprints. If we accept that higher mammals such as elephants have a learnt culture, then it is possible to extend a definition of printing beyond Homo sapiens. Poole reports that elephants mechanically trumpet reproductions of human car horns into the air surrounding their society. If nothing else, this cross-species, cross-cultural reproduction, this ‘ability to mimic’ is ‘another sign of their intelligence’. Observation of child development suggests that the first significant meaningful ‘impression’ made on the human mind is that of the face of the child’s nurturer – usually its mother. The baby’s mind forms an ‘impression’, a mental print, a reproducible memory data set, of the nurturer’s face, voice, smell, touch, etc. That face is itself a cultural construct: hair style, makeup, piercings, tattoos, ornaments, nutrition-influenced skin and smell, perfume, temperature and voice. A mentally reproducible pattern of a unique face is formed in the mind, and we use that pattern to distinguish ‘familiar and strange’ in our expanding social orbit. The social relations of patterned memory – of imprinting – determine the extent to which we explore our world (armed with research aids such as text print) or whether we turn to violence or self-harm (Bretherton). While our cultural artifacts (such as vellum maps or networked voice message servers) bravely extend our significant patterns into the social world and the traversed environment, it is useful to remember that such artifacts, including print, are themselves understood by our original pattern-reproduction and impression system – the human mind, developed in childhood. The ‘print’ is brought to mind differently in different discourses. For a reader, a ‘print’ is a book, a memo or a broadsheet, whether it is the Indian Buddhist Sanskrit texts ordered to be printed in 593 AD by the Chinese emperor Sui Wen-ti (Silk Road) or the US Defense Department memo authorizing lower ranks to torture the prisoners taken by the Bush administration (Sanchez, cited in ABC). Other fields see prints differently. For a musician, a ‘print’ may be the sheet music which spread classical and popular music around the world; it may be a ‘record’ (as in a ‘recording’ session), where sound is impressed to wax, vinyl, charged silicon particles, or the alloys (Smith, “Elpida”) of an mp3 file. For the fine artist, a ‘print’ may be any mechanically reproduced two-dimensional (or embossed) impression of a significant image in media from paper to metal, textile to ceramics. ‘Print’ embraces the Japanese Ukiyo-e colour prints of Utamaro, the company logos that wink from credit card holographs, the early photographs of Talbot, and the textured patterns printed into neolithic ceramics. Computer hardware engineers print computational circuits. Homicide detectives investigate both sweaty finger prints and the repeated, mechanical gaits of suspects, which are imprinted into the earthy medium of a crime scene. For film makers, the ‘print’ may refer to a photochemical polyester reproduction of a motion picture artifact (the reel of ‘celluloid’), or a DVD laser disc impression of the same film. Textualist discourse has borrowed the word ‘print’ to mean ‘text’, so ‘print’ may also refer to the text elements within the vision track of a motion picture: the film’s opening titles, or texts photographed inside the motion picture story such as the sword-cut ‘Z’ in Zorro (Niblo). Before the invention of writing, the main mechanically reproduced impression of a cultural symbol in a medium was the humble footprint in the sand. The footprints of tribes – and neighbouring animals – cut tracks in the vegetation and the soil. Printed tracks led towards food, water, shelter, enemies and friends. Having learnt to pattern certain faces into their mental world, children grew older and were educated in the footprints of family and clan, enemies and food. The continuous impression of significant foot traffic in the medium of the earth produced the lines between significant nodes of prewriting and pre-wheeled cultures. These tracks were married to audio tracks, such as the song lines of the Australian Aborigines, or the ballads of tramping culture everywhere. A typical tramping song has the line, ‘There’s a track winding back to an old-fashion shack along the road to Gundagai,’ (O’Hagan), although this colonial-style song was actually written for radio and became an international hit on the airwaves, rather than the tramping trails. The printed tracks impressed by these cultural flows are highly contested and diverse, and their foot prints are woven into our very language. The names for printed tracks have entered our shared memory from the intersection of many cultures: ‘Track’ is a Germanic word entering English usage comparatively late (1470) and now used mainly in audio visual cultural reproduction, as in ‘soundtrack’. ‘Trek’ is a Dutch word for ‘track’ now used mainly by ecotourists and science fiction fans. ‘Learn’ is a Proto-Indo-European word: the verb ‘learn’ originally meant ‘to find a track’ back in the days when ‘learn’ had a noun form which meant ‘the sole of the foot’. ‘Tract’ and ‘trace’ are Latin words entering English print usage before 1374 and now used mainly in religious, and electronic surveillance, cultural reproduction. ‘Trench’ in 1386 was a French path cut through a forest. ‘Sagacity’ in English print in 1548 was originally the ability to track or hunt, in Proto-Indo-European cultures. ‘Career’ (in English before 1534) was the print made by chariots in ancient Rome. ‘Sleuth’ (1200) was a Norse noun for a track. ‘Investigation’ (1436) was Latin for studying a footprint (Harper). The arrival of symbolic writing scratched on caves, hearth stones, and trees (the original meaning of ‘book’ is tree), brought extremely limited text education close to home. Then, with baked clay tablets, incised boards, slate, bamboo, tortoise shell, cast metal, bark cloth, textiles, vellum, and – later – paper, a portability came to text that allowed any culture to venture away from known ‘foot’ paths with a reduction in the risk of becoming lost and perishing. So began the world of maps, memos, bills of sale, philosophic treatises and epic mythologies. Some of this was printed, such as the mechanical reproduction of coins, but the fine handwriting required of long, extended, portable texts could not be printed until the invention of paper in China about 2000 years ago. Compared to lithic architecture and genes, portable text is a fragile medium, and little survives from the millennia of its innovators. The printing of large non-text designs onto bark-paper and textiles began in neolithic times, but Sui Wen-ti’s imperial memo of 593 AD gives us the earliest written date for printed books, although we can assume they had been published for many years previously. The printed book was a combination of Indian philosophic thought, wood carving, ink chemistry and Chinese paper. The earliest surviving fragment of paper-print technology is ‘Mantras of the Dharani Sutra’, a Buddhist scripture written in the Sanskrit language of the Indian subcontinent, unearthed at an early Tang Dynasty site in Xian, China – making the fragment a veteran piece of printing, in the sense that Sanskrit books had been in print for at least a century by the early Tang Dynasty (Chinese Graphic Arts Net). At first, paper books were printed with page-size carved wooden boards. Five hundred years later, Pi Sheng (c.1041) baked individual reusable ceramic characters in a fire and invented the durable moveable type of modern printing (Silk Road 2000). Abandoning carved wooden tablets, the ‘digitizing’ of Chinese moveable type sped up the production of printed texts. In turn, Pi Sheng’s flexible, rapid, sustainable printing process expanded the political-cultural impact of the literati in Asian society. Digitized block text on paper produced a bureaucratic, literate elite so powerful in Asia that Louis XVI of France copied China’s print-based Confucian system of political authority for his own empire, and so began the rise of the examined public university systems, and the civil service systems, of most European states (Watson, Visions). By reason of its durability, its rapid mechanical reproduction, its culturally agreed signs, literate readership, revered authorship, shared ideology, and distributed portability, a ‘print’ can be a powerful cultural network which builds and expands empires. But print also attacks and destroys empires. A case in point is the Spanish conquest of Aztec America: The Aztecs had immense libraries of American literature on bark-cloth scrolls, a technology which predated paper. These libraries were wiped out by the invading Spanish, who carried a different book before them (Ewins). In the industrial age, the printing press and the gun were seen as the weapons of rebellions everywhere. In 1776, American rebels staffed their ‘Homeland Security’ units with paper makers, knowing that defeating the English would be based on printed and written documents (Hahn). Mao Zedong was a book librarian; Mao said political power came out of the barrel of a gun, but Mao himself came out of a library. With the spread of wireless networked servers, political ferment comes out of the barrel of the cell phone and the internet chat room these days. Witness the cell phone displays of a plane hitting a tower that appear immediately after 9/11 in the Middle East, or witness the show trials of a few US and UK lower ranks who published prints of their torturing activities onto the internet: only lower ranks who published prints were arrested or tried. The control of secure servers and satellites is the new press. These days, we live in a global library of burning books – ‘burning’ in the sense that ‘print’ is now a charged silicon medium (Smith, “Intel”) which is usually made readable by connecting the chip to nuclear reactors and petrochemically-fired power stations. World resources burn as we read our screens. Men, women, children burn too, as we watch our infotainment news in comfort while ‘their’ flickering dead faces are printed in our broadcast hearths. The print we watch is not the living; it is the voodoo of the living in the blackout behind the camera, engaging the blood sacrifice of the tormented and the unfortunate. Internet texts are also ‘on fire’ in the third sense of their fragility and instability as a medium: data bases regularly ‘print’ fail-safe copies in an attempt to postpone the inevitable mechanical, chemical and electrical failure that awaits all electronic media in time. Print defines a moral position for everyone. In reporting conflict, in deciding to go to press or censor, any ‘print’ cannot avoid an ethical context, starting with the fact that there is a difference in power between print maker, armed perpetrators, the weak, the peaceful, the publisher, and the viewer. So many human factors attend a text, video or voice ‘print’: its very existence as an aesthetic object, even before publication and reception, speaks of unbalanced, and therefore dynamic, power relationships. For example, Graham Greene departed unscathed from all the highly dangerous battlefields he entered as a novelist: Riot-torn Germany, London Blitz, Belgian Congo, Voodoo Haiti, Vietnam, Panama, Reagan’s Washington, and mafia Europe. His texts are peopled with the injustices of the less fortunate of the twentieth century, while he himself was a member of the fortunate (if not happy) elite, as is anyone today who has the luxury of time to read Greene’s works for pleasure. Ethically a member of London and Paris’ colonizers, Greene’s best writing still electrifies, perhaps partly because he was in the same line of fire as the victims he shared bread with. In fact, Greene hoped daily that he would escape from the dreadful conflicts he fictionalized via a body bag or an urn of ashes (see Sherry). In reading an author’s biography we have one window on the ethical dimensions of authority and print. If a print’s aesthetics are sometimes enduring, its ethical relationships are always mutable. Take the stylized logo of a running athlete: four limbs bent in a rotation of action. This dynamic icon has symbolized ‘good health’ in Hindu and Buddhist culture, from Madras to Tokyo, for thousands of years. The cross of bent limbs was borrowed for the militarized health programs of 1930s Germany, and, because of what was only a brief, recent, isolated yet monstrously horrific segment of its history in print, the bent-limbed swastika is now a vilified symbol in the West. The sign remains ‘impressed’ differently on traditional Eastern culture, and without the taint of Nazism. Dramatic prints are emotionally charged because, in depicting Homo sapiens in danger, or passionately in love, they elicit a hormonal reaction from the reader, the viewer, or the audience. The type of emotions triggered by a print vary across the whole gamut of human chemistry. A recent study of three genres of motion picture prints shows a marked differences in the hormonal responses of men compared to women when viewing a romance, an actioner, and a documentary (see Schultheiss, Wirth, and Stanton). Society is biochemically diverse in its engagement with printed culture, which raises questions about equality in the arts. Motion picture prints probably comprise around one third of internet traffic, in the form of stolen digitized movie files pirated across the globe via peer-to-peer file transfer networks (p2p), and burnt as DVD laser prints (BBC). There is also a US 40 billion dollar per annum legitimate commerce in DVD laser pressings (Grassl), which would suggest an US 80 billion per annum world total in legitimate laser disc print culture. The actively screen literate, or the ‘sliterati’ as I prefer to call them, research this world of motion picture prints via their peers, their internet information channels, their television programming, and their web forums. Most of this activity occurs outside the ambit of universities and schools. One large site of sliterate (screen literate) practice outside most schooling and official research is the net of online forums at imdb.com (International Movie Data Base). Imdb.com ‘prints’ about 25,000,000 top pages per month to client browsers. Hundreds of sliterati forums are located at imdb, including a forum for the Australian movie, Muriel’s Wedding (Hogan). Ten years after the release of Muriel’s Wedding, young people who are concerned with victimization and bullying still log on to http://us.imdb.com/title/tt0110598/board/> and put their thoughts into print: I still feel so bad for Muriel in the beginning of the movie, when the girls ‘dump’ her, and how much the poor girl cried and cried! Those girls were such biartches…I love how they got their comeuppance! bunniesormaybemidgets’s comment is typical of the current discussion. Muriel’s Wedding was a very popular film in its first cinema edition in Australia and elsewhere. About 30% of the entire over-14 Australian population went to see this photochemical polyester print in the cinemas on its first release. A decade on, the distributors printed a DVD laser disc edition. The story concerns Muriel (played by Toni Collette), the unemployed daughter of a corrupt, ‘police state’ politician. Muriel is bullied by her peers and she withdraws into a fantasy world, deluding herself that a white wedding will rescue her from the torments of her blighted life. Through theft and deceit (the modus operandi of her father) Muriel escapes to the entertainment industry and finds a ‘wicked’ girlfriend mentor. From a rebellious position of stubborn independence, Muriel plays out her fantasy. She gets her white wedding, before seeing both her father and her new married life as hollow shams which have goaded her abandoned mother to suicide. Redefining her life as a ‘game’ and assuming responsibility for her independence, Muriel turns her back on the mainstream, image-conscious, female gang of her oppressed youth. Muriel leaves the story, having rekindled her friendship with her rebel mentor. My methodological approach to viewing the laser disc print was to first make a more accessible, coded record of the entire movie. I was able to code and record the print in real time, using a new metalanguage (Watson, “Eyes”). The advantage of Coding is that ‘thinks’ the same way as film making, it does not sidetrack the analyst into prose. The Code splits the movie print into Vision Action [vision graphic elements, including text] (sound) The Coding splits the vision track into normal action and graphic elements, such as text, so this Coding is an ideal method for extracting all the text elements of a film in real time. After playing the film once, I had four and a half tightly packed pages of the coded story, including all its text elements in square brackets. Being a unique, indexed hard copy, the Coded copy allowed me immediate access to any point of the Muriel’s Wedding saga without having to search the DVD laser print. How are ‘print’ elements used in Muriel’s Wedding? Firstly, a rose-coloured monoprint of Muriel Heslop’s smiling face stares enigmatically from the plastic surface of the DVD picture disc. The print is a still photo captured from her smile as she walked down the aisle of her white wedding. In this print, Toni Collette is the Mona Lisa of Australian culture, except that fans of Muriel’s Wedding know the meaning of that smile is a magical combination of the actor’s art: the smile is both the flush of dreams come true and the frightening self deception that will kill her mother. Inserting and playing the disc, the text-dominant menu appears, and the film commences with the text-dominant opening titles. Text and titles confer a legitimacy on a work, whether it is a trade mark of the laser print owners, or the household names of stars. Text titles confer status relationships on both the presenters of the cultural artifact and the viewer who has entered into a legal license agreement with the owners of the movie. A title makes us comfortable, because the mind always seeks to name the unfamiliar, and a set of text titles does that job for us so that we can navigate the ‘tracks’ and settle into our engagement with the unfamiliar. The apparent ‘truth’ and ‘stability’ of printed text calms our fears and beguiles our uncertainties. Muriel attends the white wedding of a school bully bride, wearing a leopard print dress she has stolen. Muriel’s spotted wild animal print contrasts with the pure white handmade dress of the bride. In Muriel’s leopard textile print, we have the wild, rebellious, impoverished, inappropriate intrusion into the social ritual and fantasy of her high-status tormentor. An off-duty store detective recognizes the printed dress and calls the police. The police are themselves distinguished by their blue-and-white checked prints and other mechanically reproduced impressions of cultural symbols: in steel, brass, embroidery, leather and plastics. Muriel is driven in the police car past the stenciled town sign (‘Welcome To Porpoise Spit’ heads a paragraph of small print). She is delivered to her father, a politician who presides over the policing of his town. In a state where the judiciary, police and executive are hijacked by the same tyrant, Muriel’s father, Bill, pays off the police constables with a carton of legal drugs (beer) and Muriel must face her father’s wrath, which he proceeds to transfer to his detested wife. Like his daughter, the father also wears a spotted brown print costume, but his is a batik print from neighbouring Indonesia (incidentally, in a nation that takes the political status of its batik prints very seriously). Bill demands that Muriel find the receipt for the leopard print dress she claims she has purchased. The legitimate ownership of the object is enmeshed with a printed receipt, the printed evidence of trade. The law (and the paramilitary power behind the law) are legitimized, or contested, by the presence or absence of printed text. Muriel hides in her bedroom, surround by poster prints of the pop group ABBA. Torn-out prints of other people’s weddings adorn her mirror. Her face is embossed with the clown-like primary colours of the marionette as she lifts a bouquet to her chin and stares into the real time ‘print’ of her mirror image. Bill takes the opportunity of a business meeting with Japanese investors to feed his entire family at ‘Charlie Chan’’s restaurant. Muriel’s middle sister sloppily wears her father’s state election tee shirt, printed with the text: ‘Vote 1, Bill Heslop. You can’t stop progress.’ The text sets up two ironic gags that are paid off on the dialogue track: “He lost,’ we are told. ‘Progress’ turns out to be funding the concreting of a beach. Bill berates his daughter Muriel: she has no chance of becoming a printer’s apprentice and she has failed a typing course. Her dysfunction in printed text has been covered up by Bill: he has bribed the typing teacher to issue a printed diploma to his daughter. In the gambling saloon of the club, under the arrays of mechanically repeated cultural symbols lit above the poker machines (‘A’ for ace, ‘Q’ for queen, etc.), Bill’s secret girlfriend Diedre risks giving Muriel a cosmetics job. Another text icon in lights announces the surf nightclub ‘Breakers’. Tania, the newly married queen bitch who has made Muriel’s teenage years a living hell, breaks up with her husband, deciding to cash in his negotiable text documents – his Bali honeymoon tickets – and go on an island holiday with her girlfriends instead. Text documents are the enduring site of agreements between people and also the site of mutations to those agreements. Tania dumps Muriel, who sobs and sobs. Sobs are a mechanical, percussive reproduction impressed on the sound track. Returning home, we discover that Muriel’s older brother has failed a printed test and been rejected for police recruitment. There is a high incidence of print illiteracy in the Heslop family. Mrs Heslop (Jeannie Drynan), for instance, regularly has trouble at the post office. Muriel sees a chance to escape the oppression of her family by tricking her mother into giving her a blank cheque. Here is the confluence of the legitimacy of a bank’s printed negotiable document with the risk and freedom of a blank space for rebel Muriel’s handwriting. Unable to type, her handwriting has the power to steal every cent of her father’s savings. She leaves home and spends the family’s savings at an island resort. On the island, the text print-challenged Muriel dances to a recording (sound print) of ABBA, her hand gestures emphasizing her bewigged face, which is made up in an impression of her pop idol. Her imitation of her goddesses – the ABBA women, her only hope in a real world of people who hate or avoid her – is accompanied by her goddesses’ voices singing: ‘the mystery book on the shelf is always repeating itself.’ Before jpeg and gif image downloads, we had postcard prints and snail mail. Muriel sends a postcard to her family, lying about her ‘success’ in the cosmetics business. The printed missal is clutched by her father Bill (Bill Hunter), who proclaims about his daughter, ‘you can’t type but you really impress me’. Meanwhile, on Hibiscus Island, Muriel lies under a moonlit palm tree with her newly found mentor, ‘bad girl’ Ronda (Rachel Griffiths). In this critical scene, where foolish Muriel opens her heart’s yearnings to a confidante she can finally trust, the director and DP have chosen to shoot a flat, high contrast blue filtered image. The visual result is very much like the semiabstract Japanese Ukiyo-e woodblock prints by Utamaro. This Japanese printing style informed the rise of European modern painting (Monet, Van Gogh, Picasso, etc., were all important collectors and students of Ukiyo-e prints). The above print and text elements in Muriel’s Wedding take us 27 minutes into her story, as recorded on a single page of real-time handwritten Coding. Although not discussed here, the Coding recorded the complete film – a total of 106 minutes of text elements and main graphic elements – as four pages of Code. Referring to this Coding some weeks after it was made, I looked up the final code on page four: taxi [food of the sea] bq. Translation: a shop sign whizzes past in the film’s background, as Muriel and Ronda leave Porpoise Spit in a taxi. Over their heads the text ‘Food Of The Sea’ flashes. We are reminded that Muriel and Ronda are mermaids, fantastic creatures sprung from the brow of author PJ Hogan, and illuminated even today in the pantheon of women’s coming-of-age art works. That the movie is relevant ten years on is evidenced by the current usage of the Muriel’s Wedding online forum, an intersection of wider discussions by sliterate women on imdb.com who, like Muriel, are observers (and in some cases victims) of horrific pressure from ambitious female gangs and bullies. Text is always a minor element in a motion picture (unless it is a subtitled foreign film) and text usually whizzes by subliminally while viewing a film. By Coding the work for [text], all the text nuances made by the film makers come to light. While I have viewed Muriel’s Wedding on many occasions, it has only been in Coding it specifically for text that I have noticed that Muriel is a representative of that vast class of talented youth who are discriminated against by print (as in text) educators who cannot offer her a life-affirming identity in the English classroom. Severely depressed at school, and failing to type or get a printer’s apprenticeship, Muriel finds paid work (and hence, freedom, life, identity, independence) working in her audio visual printed medium of choice: a video store in a new city. Muriel found a sliterate admirer at the video store but she later dumped him for her fantasy man, before leaving him too. One of the points of conjecture on the imdb Muriel’s Wedding site is, did Muriel (in the unwritten future) get back together with admirer Brice Nobes? That we will never know. While a print forms a track that tells us where culture has been, a print cannot be the future, a print is never animate reality. At the end of any trail of prints, one must lift one’s head from the last impression, and negotiate satisfaction in the happening world. References Australian Broadcasting Corporation. “Memo Shows US General Approved Interrogations.” 30 Mar. 2005 http://www.abc.net.au>. British Broadcasting Commission. “Films ‘Fuel Online File-Sharing’.’’ 22 Feb. 2005 http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/3890527.stm>. Bretherton, I. “The Origins of Attachment Theory: John Bowlby and Mary Ainsworth.” 1994. 23 Jan. 2005 http://www.psy.med.br/livros/autores/bowlby/bowlby.pdf>. Bunniesormaybemidgets. Chat Room Comment. “What Did Those Girls Do to Rhonda?” 28 Mar. 2005 http://us.imdb.com/title/tt0110598/board/>. Chinese Graphic Arts Net. Mantras of the Dharani Sutra. 20 Feb. 2005 http://www.cgan.com/english/english/cpg/engcp10.htm>. Ewins, R. Barkcloth and the Origins of Paper. 1991. 20 Feb. 2005 http://www.justpacific.com/pacific/papers/barkcloth~paper.html>. Grassl K.R. The DVD Statistical Report. 14 Mar. 2005 http://www.corbell.com>. Hahn, C. M. The Topic Is Paper. 20 Feb. 2005 http://www.nystamp.org/Topic_is_paper.html>. Harper, D. Online Etymology Dictionary. 14 Mar. 2005 http://www.etymonline.com/>. Mask of Zorro, The. Screenplay by J McCulley. UA, 1920. Muriel’s Wedding. Dir. PJ Hogan. Perf. Toni Collette, Rachel Griffiths, Bill Hunter, and Jeannie Drynan. Village Roadshow, 1994. O’Hagan, Jack. On The Road to Gundagai. 1922. 2 Apr. 2005 http://ingeb.org/songs/roadtogu.html>. Poole, J.H., P.L. Tyack, A.S. Stoeger-Horwath, and S. Watwood. “Animal Behaviour: Elephants Are Capable of Vocal Learning.” Nature 24 Mar. 2005. Sanchez, R. “Interrogation and Counter-Resistance Policy.” 14 Sept. 2003. 30 Mar. 2005 http://www.abc.net.au>. Schultheiss, O.C., M.M. Wirth, and S.J. Stanton. “Effects of Affiliation and Power Motivation Arousal on Salivary Progesterone and Testosterone.” Hormones and Behavior 46 (2005). Sherry, N. The Life of Graham Greene. 3 vols. London: Jonathan Cape 2004, 1994, 1989. Silk Road. Printing. 2000. 20 Feb. 2005 http://www.silk-road.com/artl/printing.shtml>. Smith, T. “Elpida Licenses ‘DVD on a Chip’ Memory Tech.” The Register 20 Feb. 2005 http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/02>. —. “Intel Boffins Build First Continuous Beam Silicon Laser.” The Register 20 Feb. 2005 http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/02>. Watson, R. S. “Eyes And Ears: Dramatic Memory Slicing and Salable Media Content.” Innovation and Speculation, ed. Brad Haseman. Brisbane: QUT. [in press] Watson, R. S. Visions. Melbourne: Curriculum Corporation, 1994. Citation reference for this article MLA Style Watson, Robert. "E-Press and Oppress: Audio Visual Print Drama, Identity, Text and Motion Picture Rebellion." M/C Journal 8.2 (2005). echo date('d M. Y'); ?> <http://journal.media-culture.org.au/0506/08-watson.php>. APA Style Watson, R. (Jun. 2005) "E-Press and Oppress: Audio Visual Print Drama, Identity, Text and Motion Picture Rebellion," M/C Journal, 8(2). Retrieved echo date('d M. Y'); ?> from <http://journal.media-culture.org.au/0506/08-watson.php>.
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