Journal articles on the topic 'China Commerce Australia'

AbstractChina and Australia are extremely significant trade partners and investors. Australia has a very well established competition law, now called the Competition and Consumer Law 2010, with a well-established merger regime. China has a relatively new competition law, the Anti-Monopoly Law 2007. This article compares merger control in the two jurisdictions. The Ministry of Commerce (MOFCOM) has already referred to an Australian decision in rejecting a merger, the only reference to a foreign decision to date, which confirms the utility of the comparison. This article critically evaluates the determinations of MOFCOM and compares the approach of the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC), the Australian regulator. It assesses the transparency and predictability of procedures and decision-making in the two jurisdictions.

Indonesia has experienced an increase in users of e-commerce platforms, resulting in increased income for sellers, both individuals and entities, who conduct online sales transactions. Therefore, the Indonesian government sets a tax policy for online sellers. However, the Indonesian government still has several obstacles, one of which is that e-commerce transactions have an eternal nature. To answer these problems, the author compares the taxation policies on e-commerce transactions that apply in Indonesia with the tax policies on e-commerce transactions that apply in other countries, namely the European Union, Australia, South Korea, India, China, the United States, and Japan. The writing method used by the author is a literature study method. This paper shows that the taxation policy on e-commerce transactions in Indonesia, the European Union, Australia, South Korea, India, China, the United States, and Japan imposes a Value Added Tax (VAT) or the like as a consumption tax on goods. And services as well as sales tax and Income Tax. In addition, several countries have created platforms or special teams to manage taxes from e-commerce transactions, namely the platform Mini One Stop Shop (MOSS), now called OSS (European Union); Korean Fair Trade Commission (KFTC) (South Korea); Professional Team for E-Commerce Taxation (Protect) (Japan). Therefore, Indonesia needs to follow the example of the European Union, South Korea, and Japan in terms of establishing a system or team dedicated to managing tax collection from e-commerce transactions

The implicit value to Chinese consumers of the country-of-origin (COO) characteristic of dairy products is of great importance to estimate. This study adopted the hedonic price model to evaluate the shadow price of the COO attribute of both UHT fluid milk and infant formula collected from the five leading e-commerce platforms (Alibaba’s Tmall Supermarket, Jingdong, Suning Purchase, COFCO I buy nets, and Yihaodian) in China. The target countries were Germany, France, the Netherlands, and Spain from the EU, and Australia and New Zealand from Oceania. The results show that the implicit values of the COO of UHT fluid milk and infant formula are reversed. Having a COO of Spain and Germany decreased the price of UHT fluid milk compared with China, while Germany, New Zealand, France, the Netherlands, and Spain all earned a price premium on infant formula. The B2C platforms Yihaodian, Jingdong, Alibaba’s Tmall Supermarket and Suning Purchase all earned a price premium above COFCO I buy nets. These findings have important implications for dairy industry of EU countries, Australia, New Zealand, and China in terms of the promotion of domestic dairy products. Moreover, this study contributes to the existing body of literature by innovating in employing sales data from e-commerce scanners to study the implicit value of food attributes.

AbstractThis article provides an empirical case study of the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on global beverage markets, particularly the wine sector. Both international trade and domestic sales have been adversely affected by temporary shifts away from on-premise sales by social distancing measures and self-isolation that led to the closure of restaurants, bars, and clubs, plus declines in international travel and tourism. Partly offsetting this has been a boost to off-premise and direct e-commerce sales. We first estimate those impacts in 2020 and their expected partial recovery in 2021 using a new model of global beverage markets. Further recent disruption to the global wine trade has been the imposition by China in late 2020 of prohibitive tariffs on its imports of bottled wine from Australia. Its diversionary and trade-reducing effects are compared with those due to COVID-19. (JEL Classifications: C63, D12, F14, F17, Q17)

Singapore in the Malay Peninsula was targeted by the British East India Company (EIC) to be the epicentre of their direct rule in Southeast Asia. Seeking new sources of revenue at the end of the 18th century, after attaining domination in India, the Company sought to extend its reach into China, and Malaya was the natural region to do this, extending outposts to Penang and Singapore. The latter was first identified as a key site by Stamford Raffles. The EIC Governor General Marquess Hastings (r. 1813-1823) planned to facilitate Raffle’s attention on the Malay Peninsula from Sumatra. Raffles’ plan for Singapore was approved by the EIC’s Bengal Government. The modern system of administration came into the Straits Settlements under the EIC’s Bengal Presidency. In 1819 in Singapore, Raffles established an Anglo-Oriental College (AOC) for the study of Eastern languages, literature, history, and science. The AOC was intended firstly to be the centre of local research and secondly to increase inter-cultural knowledge of the East and West. Besides Raffles’ efforts, the EIC developed political and socio-economic systems for Singapore. The most important aspects of the social development of Singapore were proper accommodation for migrants, poverty eradication, health care, a new system of education, and women’s rights. The free trade introduced by Francis Light (and later Stamford Raffles) in Penang and Singapore respectively gave enormous opportunities for approved merchants to expand their commerce from Burma to Australia and from Java to China. Before the termination of the China trade in 1833 Singapore developed tremendously, and cemented the role of the European trading paradigm in the East.

International Business Research wishes to acknowledge the following individuals for their assistance with peer review of manuscripts for this issue. Their help and contributions in maintaining the quality of the journal are greatly appreciated.International Business Research is recruiting reviewers for the journal. If you are interested in becoming a reviewer, we welcome you to join us. Please find the application form and details at http://recruitment.ccsenet.org and e-mail the completed application form to ibr@ccsenet.org.Reviewers for Volume 10, Number 10Alina Badulescu, University of Oradea, RomaniaAshford C Chea, Benedict College, USAAtallah Ahmad Alhosban, Aqaba University of Technology, JordanAurelija Burinskiene, Vilnius Gediminas Technical University, LithuaniaBenjamin James Inyang, University of Calabar, NigeriaCelina Maria Olszak, University of Economics in Katowice, PolandDea’a Al-Deen Al-Sraheen, Al-Zaytoonah University of Jordan, JordanEjindu Iwelu MacDonald Morah, University of Westminster, London, UKEva Mira Bolfíková, Univerzity of P. J. Šafárik in Košice, Slovak RepublicFederica De Santis, University of Pisa , ItalyFlorin Ionita, The Bucharest Academy of Economic Studies, RomaniaFoued Hamouda, Ecole Supérieure de Commerce, TunisiaFrancesco Ciampi, Florence University, ItalyHanna Trojanowska, Warsaw University of Technology, PolandHerald Monis, Milagres College, IndiaHongliang Qiu, Tourism College of Zhejiang, ChinaHsiao-Ching Kuo, Washington and Jefferson College, USAHung-Che Wu, Nanfang College of Sun Yat-sen University, ChinaJoanna Katarzyna Blach, University of Economics in Katowice, PolandJorge Mongay-Hurtado, ESIC Business and Marketing School, SpainMansour Esmaeil Zaei, Panjab University, India/IranMarcelino José Jorge, Evandro Chagas Clinical Research Institute of Oswaldo Cruz Foundation, BrazilMaria Teresa Bianchi, University of Rome “LA SAPIENZA”, ItalyMithat Turhan, Mersin University, TurkeyMuath Eleswed, American University of Kuwait, USAPascal Stiefenhofer, University of Brighton, UKRadoslav Jankal, University of Zilina, SlovakiaRafiuddin Ahmed, James Cook University, AustraliaRoberto Campos da Rocha Miranda, University Center Iesb, BrazilRoxanne Helm Stevens, Azusa Pacific University, USASang-Bing Tsai, University of Electronic Science and Technology of China, ChinaSerhii Kozlovskiy, Donetsk National University, UkraineShun Mun Helen Wong, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Hong KongSumathisri Bhoopalan, Sastra University, IndiaVassili JOANNIDES de LAUTOUR, Grenoble École de Management (France) and Queensland University of Technology School of Accountancy (Australia), FranceVincent Grèzes, University of Applied Sciences Western Switzerland (HES-SO Valais-Wallis), SwitzerlandWejdene Yangui, Institute of High Business Studies of Sfax _ Tunisia (IHEC), Tunisia

The first fly fossil discovered from the Upper Jurassic Talbragar Fish Bed in Australia is described and illustrated. Based on a single, well preserved wing,Calosargus (Calosargus) talbragarensisnew species is assigned to the extinct brachyceran family Archisargidae. Wing morphology suggests a relationship between this extinct family and Stratiomyidae. The Archisargidae have so far only been found in China, Kazakhstan and Mongolia.CalosargusMostovski, 1997 currently comprises seven species from the Callovian (late Middle Jurassic) of China and three species from the Oxfordian (early Upper Jurassic) of Kazakhstan. This oldest brachyceran fossil from Australia and first record of the Archisargidae in the southern hemisphere presents evidence that higher flies were present in this region in the Jurassic, when this group is thought to have commenced its diversification.

The recently signed Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP), considered of great significance, is not the first trade agreement signed by ASEAN member countries, or either any of their five (5) Free Trade Agreement (FTA) partners, China, Japan, New Zealand, Australia, and South Korea. But what makes this newly signed trade agreement between its participating countries unique and different from all other trade agreements signed in the past? Of interest, RCEP is currently the second major trade agreement with pronounced emphasis on Asia. Respectively, RCEP is now perceived as the world’s largest trade alliance, and is envisioned to facilitate economic trade integration in the Asian region. Correspondingly, the participating member countries have all agreed to reduce or completely eliminate tariff and non-tariff barriers on imports and exports within the free trade zone. Deciphered to be a milestone, RCEP is intended to link about thirty (30%) percent of the world’s population and output, which is expected will generate meaningful benefits. Given the continued rapid development of digital technologies in this era, it is certainly unavoidable if companies want to move forward in the future. This, most likely is one reason, why RCEP members included a chapter in the trade agreement relating to e-commerce and trade. Without a doubt, the tremendous impact of technology on the way economic activities are conducted worldwide has been a catalyst, forcing companies to redirect their businesses, to lean more towards the inclusion of technology in every aspects of their daily operation.Thus, as part of the continued development of digital technologies, it means the fifteen (15) Asia-Pacific members of RCEP has the added responsibility to play a vital role in facilitating the smooth integration of digital technology in this trade agreement, which clearly will be beneficial for all. Therefore, on what basis can this be made possible? On a whole, it is anticipated that the prospect of trade digitalization will reduce the cost of engaging in international trade and create opportunities for businesses and consumers regionally and globally. Today, many activities are increasingly conducted by way of digital technology. For example: Nowadays, people rely greatly on computers and mobile phones with internet to conduct research and purchase goods and services, in effect transforming the way we acquire and spread information, communicate, and conduct business in this twenty first (21st) century. Nonetheless, in what way and how can RCEP facilitate the digitalization of trade and investment in goods and services to make it advantageous to the region? Accordingly, within this context, this paper intends to explore the specifics and relevance of RCEP, and whether it is destined to be the roadmap for the future of reshaping world trade. Equally, how can trade digitalization facilitate the expansion of trade and investment in the Asia-Pacific region in this digital era?

International Business Research wishes to acknowledge the following individuals for their assistance with peer review of manuscripts for this issue. Their help and contributions in maintaining the quality of the journal are greatly appreciated. International Business Research is recruiting reviewers for the journal. If you are interested in becoming a reviewer, we welcome you to join us. Please find the application form and details at http://www.ccsenet.org/journal/index.php/ibr/editor/recruitment and e-mail the completed application form to ibr@ccsenet.org. Reviewers for Volume 12, Number 3   Alireza Athari, Eastern Mediterranean University, Iran Anca Gabriela Turtureanu, “DANUBIUS” University Galati, Romania Andrea Carosi, University of Sassari, Italy Anna Paola Micheli, Univrtsity of Cassino and Southern Lazio, Italy Antônio André Cunha Callado, Universidade Federal Rural de Pernmabuco, Brazil Ashford C Chea, Benedict College, USA Bruno Marsigalia, University of Casino and Southern Lazio, Italy Chokri Kooli, International Center for Basic Research applied, Paris, Canada Christopher Alozie, Tansian University, Nigeria Cristian Marian Barbu, “ARTIFEX” University, Romania Duminda Kuruppuarachchi, University of Otago, New Zealand Essia Ries Ahmed, Universiti Sains Malaysia, Malaysia Federica Caboni, University of Cagliari, Italy Federica De Santis, University of Pisa, Italy Florin Ionita, The Bucharest Academy of Economic Studies, Romania Foued Hamouda, Ecole Supérieure de Commerce, Tunisia Francesco Ciampi, Florence University, Italy Francesco Scalera, University of Bari "Aldo Moro", Italy Gianluca Ginesti, University of Naples “FEDERICO II”, Italy Hillary Odor, University of Benin, Nigeria Ivana Tomic, IT Company CloudTech, Republic of Serbia Joanna Katarzyna Blach, University of Economics in Katowice, Poland Joseph Lok-Man Lee, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Hong Kong Khaled Mokni, Northern Border University, Tunisia L. Leo Franklin, Bharathidasn University, India Ladislav Mura, University of Ss. Cyril and Methodius in Trnava, Slovakia Leow Hon Wei, SEGi University, Malaysia Manuel A. R. da Fonseca, Federal University of Rio de Janeiro (UFRJ), Brazil Marcelino José Jorge, Evandro Chagas Clinical Research Institute of Oswaldo Cruz Foundation, Brazil Maria do Céu Gaspar Alves, University of Beira Interior, Portugal Maria Teresa Bianchi, University of Rome “LA SAPIENZA”, Italy Miriam Jankalová, University of Zilina, Slovakia Mongi Arfaoui, University of Monastir, Tunisia Muath Eleswed, American University of Kuwait, USA Ozgur Demirtas, Turkish Air Force Academy, Turkey Pascal Stiefenhofer, University of Brighton, UK Prosper Senyo Koto, Dalhousie University, Canada Rafiuddin Ahmed, James Cook University, Australia Razana Juhaida Johari, Universiti Teknologi MARA, Malaysia Riccardo Cimini, University of Tuscia, Viterbo, Italy Roberto Campos da Rocha Miranda, University Center Iesb, Brazil Sang- Bing Tsai, University of Electronic Science and Technology of China, China Sara Saggese, University of Naples Federico II, Italy Shun Mun Helen Wong, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Hong Kong Slavoljub M. Vujović, Economic Institute, Belgrade, Serbia Tariq Tawfeeq Yousif Alabdullah, University of Basrah, Iraq Valerija Botric, The Institute of Economics, Zagreb, Croatia Velia Gabriella Cenciarelli, University of Pisa, Italy Yan Lu, University of Central Florida, USA Yasmin Tahira, Al Ain University of Science and Technology, Al Ain, UAE

International Business Research wishes to acknowledge the following individuals for their assistance with peer review of manuscripts for this issue. Their help and contributions in maintaining the quality of the journal are greatly appreciated.International Business Research is recruiting reviewers for the journal. If you are interested in becoming a reviewer, we welcome you to join us. Please find the application form and details at http://recruitment.ccsenet.org and e-mail the completed application form to ibr@ccsenet.org.Reviewers for Volume 11, Number 7 Alireza Athari, Eastern Mediterranean University, IranBenjamin James Inyang, University of Calabar, NigeriaBruno Ferreira Frascaroli, Federal University of Paraiba, BrazilBrazil,Carlo Alberto Magni, University of Modena and Reggio Emilia, ItalyChemah Tamby Chik, Universiti Teknologi Mara (Uitm), MalaysiaChokri Kooli, International Center for Basic Research applied, Paris, CanadaDonghun Yoon, Seoul Center, Korea Basic Science Institute, Republic of KoreaEjindu Iwelu MacDonald Morah, University of Westminster, London, UKEunju Lee, University of Massachusetts Lowell, USAFevzi Esen, Istanbul Medeniyet University, TurkeyFoued Hamouda, Ecole Supérieure de Commerce, TunisiaGianluca Ginesti, University of Naples “FEDERICO II”, ItalyGuo Zi-Yi, Wells Fargo Bank, N.A., USAHsiao-Ching Kuo, Washington and Jefferson College, USAIonela-Corina Chersan, “Alexandru Ioan Cuza” University from Iași, RomaniaJoanna Katarzyna Blach, University of Economics in Katowice, PolandMaria Teresa Bianchi, University of Rome “LA SAPIENZA”, ItalyMaria-Madela Abrudan, University of ORADEA, RomaniaMichaela Maria Schaffhauser-Linzatti, University of Vienna, AustriaMiriam Jankalová, University of Zilina, SlovakiaMithat Turhan, Mersin University, TurkeyModar Abdullatif, Middle East University, JordanMuath Eleswed, American University of Kuwait, USAOzgur Demirtas, Turkish Air Force Academy, TurkeyPascal Stiefenhofer, University of Brighton, UKRafiuddin Ahmed, James Cook University, AustraliaRoberto Campos da Rocha Miranda, University Center Iesb, BrazilRomana Korez Vide, University of Maribor, SloveniaRoxanne Helm Stevens, Azusa Pacific University, USASerhii Kozlovskiy, Donetsk National University, UkraineSumathisri Bhoopalan, SASTRA Deemed to be University, IndiaVassili JOANNIDES de LAUTOUR, Grenoble École de Management (France) and Queensland University of Technology School of Accountancy (Australia), France

Australia’s Murray–Darling Basin extends over one million square kilometers and supports almost three-quarters of the country’s irrigated agricultural land. Like the Colorado River in America and the Yellow River in China, the Murray–Darling Basin runs across a number of jurisdictional boundaries, and has been a focus for national water reforms for many years. The Murray–Darling Basin Plan is the culmination of more than two decades of water reform experience in Australia. It was adopted by the Commonwealth Water Minister in 2012 to rebalance use of water resources and create a more sustainable footing for a healthy working Basin. The Basin Plan was based on the best science at the time, which was endorsed by peer review. The key features of the Basin Plan that are integrated into its design are optimizing social, economic and environmental (triple bottom line) outcomes; improving transparency of decision-making and flexible and adaptive management. As a result of widespread consultation, the Basin Plan also included suggestions from jurisdictions and communities that served to better balance the competing interests for water resources, and provided a clearly defined timetable for implementation to create certainty for communities and investment. The Basin Plan commenced on 29 November 2012, and early implementation activities are well progressed, meaning that water resources are already better positioned to cope with major drought. Looking forward, continued support for Basin Plan reforms from governments and communities will be an ongoing challenge for implementation. Similarly, separating out the effects of the Basin Plan from other external effects on the social and economic well-being of Basin communities will be a challenge when evaluating whether the Basin Plan has achieved its triple bottom line outcomes and objectives.

the Victorians’ driving interest in exploration and expansion is perhaps one of the best-known scholarly truisms about the age and its literature. While the British Empire was rapidly expanding and commercial competition began to stretch across the globe with a newly perceived urgency, Victorians at home throughout this expanding empire were at once fascinated and anxious in reading about the wider world. Armchair explorers might have confined themselves to a vicarious enjoyment of the gold-nuggets that seem to lay scattered throughout the expanding settler world, of adventures in an excitingly exoticised “bush,” and of shipwrecks and dubious impostors who sometimes seemed to return from the middle of nowhere. Readers could even indulge in a smugly self-congratulatory sense of amusement when witnessing the satirised ignorance of Flora Finching in Charles Dickens's Little Dorrit (1857), when she famously evokes semi-colonial China as such a country to live in for so long a time, and with so many lanterns and umbrellas too how very dark and wet the climate ought to be and no doubt actually is, and the sums of money that must be made by those two trades where everybody carries them and hangs them everywhere, the little shoes too and the feet screwed back in infancy is quite surprising, what a traveller you are! (152; ch. 13) With its bizarre juxtaposition of exotic references and vague gesticulations towards imperial commerce's impact at home, Flora's confusion is first and foremost funny, and readers were clearly meant to recognise it as such. In the same vein, adventure tales set in far-off islands in the Pacific or in new settlements in Australia and Aotearoa/New Zealand certainly continued to feature the enticingly wild and exotic. Yet increasingly, popular fiction made it clear that we ought to know more about the world out there, and that this entailed a different sense of responsibility as well. It is tellingly the satirised, pompous characters who wildly joke about the hero's escapades “down under” in Anthony Trollope's John Caldigate (1879), while the novel instead shows that the widespread notion “that anything done in the wilds of Australia ought not ‘to count’ here, at home in England” (322; ch. 42) does no longer hold in a world that is clearly not only expanding, but contracting and narrowing in the process. But if these widely read Victorian triple-deckers show how aware readers were becoming of the British presence throughout the world – including such indisputably still mystified, exoticised places as China – and how this impacted on literature and culture “back home,” the way the Victorians thought about, imagined, and discussed their own shifting place in this changing world was markedly wide and varied. Public interest in sinology, for example, as reflected in the magazines of the time, or contradictory accounts by missionaries, military officers, and emigration societies, and how these discourses were worked into popular culture productions, all testify to an ambiguous, contested field. The depiction of settler societies in particular underwent enormous shifts in the course of the century. How the most persistent images of the expanding settler and commercial empire were generated and circulated in Victorian Britain can be gleaned from shipboard diaries, popular ballads, broadsides, as well as from more official accounts such as the manuals and pamphlets produced by emigration societies. A close analysis of this rarely discussed material, in turn, compels a reconsideration of the way literary works engaged with discourses on emigration, travel, and imperial adventure. In going beyond what we see merely reflected in Victorian canonical literature, this special issue on nineteenth-century representations of the region spanning, roughly, what we now consider the Pacific Rim allows us to get a wider perspective on what “the Victorians” made of the changing world around them.

Aloe vera (L.) Burm. f. is a perennial succulent plant that is grown worldwide mainly for medicinal and cosmetic uses. In the USA, it is mainly cultivated in some southern states to produce aloe gel for the cosmetic industry (3), and in Louisiana it is also sold commercially as an ornamental. During the summer of 2011, several A. vera plants infected with leaf spots were observed on the campus of Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge. Large, necrotic, sunken, circular to oval, dark brown spots were present on both surfaces of the leaves. Infected leaf tissue pieces were surface disinfested with 1% NaOCl solution for 1 min and plated on potato dextrose agar (PDA). Plates were incubated at 28°C in the dark for 4 days. A dark olivaceous fungus with profuse golden brown, branched, and septate hyphae was consistently isolated from the infected tissue on PDA. The fungus produced conidia with longitudinal and transverse septa, and was morphologically identified as an Alternaria sp. (4). Conidia were produced in long chains, pale to light brown, obpyriform, with a beak (6.0 μm long), one to seven transverse and up to three longitudinal septa, and measured 10 to 45 μm long × 7 to 18 μm wide. Conidiophores were straight, septate, light to olive golden brown with conidial scar, and measured 35 to 100 μm long × 2 to 5 μm wide. Genomic DNA from a single-spored isolate was extracted and the internal transcribed spacer (ITS1-5.8s-ITS2) regions were amplified and sequenced using primers ITS1 and ITS4. BLASTn analysis of a 486-bp sequence (GenBank Accession No. JQ409455) resulted in 100% homology with A. alternata strain DHMJ16 (GenBank Accession No. JN986768) from China and several other Alternaria spp. The fungus was identified as A. alternata based on mycelial and conidia characters after being grown under standard, previously described conditions (4). Pathogenicity tests were carried out by inoculating six potted aloe plants with 0.5-cm diameter discs taken from a 6-day-old culture grown on PDA. Four discs were placed on the upper surface of each of the bottom leaves of every plant. Inoculated plants were individually covered with a plastic bag and maintained in a greenhouse for 1 week at 25 ± 2°C. Six control plants received only agar plugs. Seven days after inoculation, necrotic leaf spots were observed on the inoculated plants and A. alternata was reisolated from these spots. No leaf spots were observed on control plants. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first report of leaf spot caused by A. alternata on A. vera in Louisiana. Several outbreaks of the disease have been reported in Pakistan and India as damaging aloe gel production in those countries (1,2). An outbreak of this disease in Louisiana could represent a serious issue for the state's A. vera ornamental commerce. References: (1) R. Bajwa et al. Can. J. Plant Pathol. 32:490, 2010. (2) A. Kamalakannan et al. Australas. Plant Dis. Notes 3:110, 2008. (3) T. Reynolds. Aloes: The Genus Aloe. CRC Press, Boca Raton, FL, 2004. (4) E. G. Simmons. Alternaria: An Identification Manual: Fully Illustrated and with Catalogue Raisonné 1796-2007. CBS Fungal Biodiversity Centre, Utrecht, The Netherlands, 2007.

Introduction: Recent studies suggest that incidence of multiple myeloma (MM) is increasing in Asian countries. Prevalence is also expected to rise due to ageing populations and advances in treatment. Therapeutic options continue to expand as new, targeted agents enter the market. However, despite advances in therapy and supportive care, MM remains incurable. Most patients receive care outside the setting of clinical trials. Therefore, the generation of Real-World Evidence (RWE) on practice, including long-term monitoring and evaluation of current and future treatment strategies, is important in informing optimal therapies for MM and enable benchmarking to improve outcomes, quality of life (QoL), and cost-effectiveness of care for patients. Some country-specific data are available in Asia, but few at regional level. We established the Asia-Pacific (APAC) Myeloma and Related Diseases Registry (MRDR) in 2018, as a regional collaboration and sister registry to the Australian and New Zealand MRDR (ACTRN12618000659202). The aims are collection of a standardised APAC dataset for analysis and benchmarking. Key opinion leaders from the participating countries were invited to form the steering committee to provide local clinical context and oversight of the registry. Early in the process, ethics committees and legal counsel were consulted to assist with challenges presented by the diversity in data privacy and ethical regulations across the APAC region. Participating hospitals are responsible for obtaining local ethics approval, patient recruitment, and data collection. Participants provide written informed consent before data collection. Methods: The APAC MRDR prospectively collects observational data on patient characteristics, diagnosis, medical history, treatment (including supportive therapies), and outcomes (overall and progression-free survival, and QoL using the EQ-5D-5L) on newly diagnosed MM (NDMM), plasma cell leukaemia, plasmacytoma, and MGUS patients via a secure, country-specific web-based database. Whilst the core dataset is standardised across countries to ensure comparability, regional differences such as units of measurements and local privacy laws were accommodated in the design of each country's database. Participants are reviewed 4-monthly for a minimum of 2 years. Longer-term outcomes will be collected through linkage with local cancer and death registries. Six-monthly hospital reports, providing de-identified, risk-adjusted outcome data at hospital- and country-level, will be provided to contributing hospitals. Preliminary APAC MRDR data from October 2018 to June 2019 were analysed. Results: Eleven hospitals now have Institutional Review Board approval to participate and patient recruitment has commenced at 6 hospitals in Korea and Singapore. Sites in Taiwan, Hong Kong, China, and Malaysia are in progress. To date, 182 patients have been enrolled and data collection on these patients is in progress. At the time of analysis, 85% (96/113) were NDMM. Median age was 66 years (IQR: 59-73) and 54% were male. Median EQ5D VAS Health State score at diagnosis was 70 (IQR: 50-80; self-report: 100=best health imaginable, 0=the worst). Comorbidities were present in 47%. Proportion of patients with main paraprotein type IgG: 64%, IgA: 17%, light chain only Kappa: 13%, light chain only Lambda: 6%. Median number of days from diagnosis to chemotherapy was 9.5 (IQR: 3-15). The top two most frequently used first-line regimens for NDMM patients in Korea and Singapore were: Korea: 1. bortezomib/thalidomide/dexamethasone (VTd: 39%), 2. lenalidomide/dexamethasone (Rd: 27%), and Singapore: 1. VTd: 41%, 2. bortezomib/cyclophosphamide/dexamethasone (VCD): 25%. Overall response rate to first-line chemotherapy (≥PR) was 86% (44/51). Conclusion: The APAC MRDR database is expanding and, as data mature and feedback is provided to participating sites, will provide RWE that will contribute to our understanding on current myeloma treatment strategies and patient outcomes in the Asia-Pacific region. Future plans include expansion to additional sites and countries, and linkage with local cancer and death registries. The registry can also serve as a regional resource by providing infrastructure and identifying eligible participants for clinical trials and other research. Disclosures Aoki: Janssen Asia-Pacific: Research Funding. Moore:Takeda: Research Funding; Gilead: Research Funding. Wood:Bristol-Myers Squibb: Research Funding; Novartis: Research Funding; Alexion: Research Funding; Roche: Research Funding; Takeda: Research Funding; Gilead: Research Funding; Janssen-Cilag: Research Funding; Amgen: Research Funding; CSL Behring: Research Funding; Sanofi: Research Funding; Celgene: Research Funding; Abbvie: Research Funding. McQuilten:Gilead Sciences: Research Funding; CSL Biotherapies: Research Funding; Celgene: Research Funding; AbbVie: Research Funding; Takeda Pharmaceuticals: Research Funding; Janssen-Cilag: Research Funding. Spencer:Takeda: Consultancy, Honoraria, Membership on an entity's Board of Directors or advisory committees, Research Funding, Speakers Bureau; Haemalogix: Consultancy, Honoraria, Membership on an entity's Board of Directors or advisory committees; Celgene: Consultancy, Honoraria, Membership on an entity's Board of Directors or advisory committees, Research Funding, Speakers Bureau; Janssen Oncology: Consultancy, Honoraria, Membership on an entity's Board of Directors or advisory committees, Research Funding, Speakers Bureau; AbbVie: Consultancy, Honoraria, Membership on an entity's Board of Directors or advisory committees, Research Funding; Amgen: Consultancy, Honoraria, Membership on an entity's Board of Directors or advisory committees, Research Funding; Specialised Therapeutics Australia: Consultancy, Honoraria; Sanofi: Consultancy, Honoraria, Membership on an entity's Board of Directors or advisory committees; Secura Bio: Consultancy, Honoraria, Membership on an entity's Board of Directors or advisory committees; Servier: Consultancy, Honoraria, Membership on an entity's Board of Directors or advisory committees.

This fourth number of Volume 2 represents the 8th issue of the Journal of Business Systems, Governance and Ethics and follows the trend for this new journal to include increasing numbers of articles written by researchers from many countries around the world. This issue has articles by researchers from the Peoples Republic of China, Pakistan, India and Australia. It covers a wide range of topics including e-commerce adoption in China, workplace surveillance in academic institutions in Pakistan, technology-enabled distance management education programs in India, health information systems in Australian hospitals and an article addressing the unequal outcomes for female academics.

For decades now, malaria has been an important public health concern in Africa, which bears the greatest burden for the disease, affecting children and adults alike. Although a few countries (Australia, Brunei, Singapore, and Algeria, among others) have previously eliminated malaria, the World Health Organization (WHO), on June 30, 2021, declared China malaria-free. This commentary seeks to explore what China did differently to eliminate malaria and what Africa can learn from China’s experience. First, Africa can use innovative tools and strategies used by China to attain success. Second, Africa can create a multi-sector collaboration among Heads of States in high burden malaria-affected countries by involving all stakeholders such as ministries of health, finance, research, education, development, public security, the army, police, commerce, industry, and information technology, customs, media and tourism to jointly fight malaria in all African countries. Furthermore, African countries could adapt the genetics-based approaches used by China in the elimination of mosquito breeding grounds. Finally, Africa can also adapt a better surveillance system of reporting on malaria daily as China did in their experience. Copyright © 2022 Ngwayu Nkfusai et al. Published by Global Health and Education Projects, Inc. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License CC BY 4.0.

Australia — Patent Problem for Australian Professor Ian Frazer. Australia — Prana co-Founding Scientist, Professor Colin Masters, Receives Lifetime Achievement Award in Alzheimer's Disease Research. Australia — Australia's Topical Pain Relief Lotion to be Exported to Asia and Europe. China — China Media Networks International Inc Changes Name to Medical Solutions Management Inc. China — Joint Study Shows Genetically Modified Cotton Less Profitable in China. China — Important Progress in Functional Genomics Research. China — Promotion of China International Innovation Park of Biotechnology and Medicine. China — Chinese and British Experts Break the Genetic Code. China — 6th Award of Prizes for Young Scientists of China. China — Steady Progress in China's Research on Stem Cell and Tissue Engineering. China — CAS, Karolinska Institutet to Strengthen Collaboration. India — India to Host CPHi —World's Largest Pharmaceutical Convention. India — India Approves a Phase II Study by Napo Pharmaceuticals of Crofelemer. India — Overseas Firms Granted Hundreds of Patents on Yoga in US, Europe. India — India's Polio Outbreak. Indonesia — Bird Flu Cases in Indonesia. Japan — Eisai Commences US Legal Action over Aricept. Japan — Japan's Daiichi Sankyo Sues Mylan over Drug Patent. Japan — Ono Pharm/Medarex Commences Clinical Trials for Cancer Drug. Korea — South Korea to Inject US$846m into Biotech Research. Singapore — New Biomedical Sciences Executive Committee Established to Lead Phase 2 of Singapore's Biomedical Sciences Initiative. Singapore — Singapore Scientists Find Gene that Causes Blindness in Kids. Singapore — Cancer Doctor Honored by American Society of Clinical Oncology. Taiwan — Taiwan Considering Medicine Research Center Proposal. Thailand — Avian Influenza in Thailand. Bangladesh — Bangladesh Immunizes Against Polio.

Australia Commences Drought Resistant Rice Research. International Congress of Genetics in Australia. Unidentified Worm-Like Cysts Found in Brain Stem. China Sets Up Sperm Banks. New Development of CAS. Voyager Dayang Yihao Sets Sail for Oceanic Exploration. Indian Government to Fight Spurious Drugs. GEAC Blocks Commercial Bt Cotton. Development of New Drugs Hampers the Production of Old Ones. Japanese Government to Provide Financial Aid for Fertility Treatment. SARS May Incur US$3 Billion Exports Loss.

Les productions animales représentent 16 % du commerce agroalimentaire international. Le déséquilibre croissant entre l’offre et la demande de produits animaux dans les pays asiatiques où la consommation progresse, surtout en Chine, stimule les échanges au bénéfice des grands pays exportateurs que sont l’Union européenne (UE), les États-Unis, la Nouvelle-Zélande, le Brésil et l’Australie. Si cette évolution offre des opportunités commerciales pour les pays structurellement excédentaires, les achats ne sont pas toujours réguliers d’une année à l’autre et la concurrence par les prix est très forte, même si certains pays ont des exigences qualitatives. L’UE, qui est excédentaire en produits laitiers et en viande porcine, mais déficitaire (en valeur) en viande bovine et en viande de volailles, est le premier exportateur mondial de productions animales (avec 22 % du total, hors commerce intra-UE en 2016). En utilisant les données statistiques des douanes (BACI et COMEXT) de 2000 à 2016, cet article traite de l’évolution du commerce en productions animales. Il présente l’évolution du commerce international pour différents types de biens (produits laitiers, viande bovine, viande porcine, viande de volailles) et met en évidence les trajectoires commerciales des principaux pays déficitaires (Chine, Japon et Russie) et excédentaires (Inde, Australie, Nouvelle-Zélande, Brésil, États-Unis et UE).

Swiss Approval of Unigene's Product Expedites Approvals in China. Kyowa Hakko Launches Clinical Trials of Anti-hypertensive Drug in China. GlaxoSmithKline Expands Investment in West China. Genetastix and Taiwan's Development Center for Biotechnology to Jointly Develop Human Antibody. Fuzhou Branch of Rocky Mountain Explores Retail Market in China. Calypte Receives First Substantial Order from China. Dragon Signs EPO Marketing and Licensing Agreement for Taiwan. Swissray Receives Two Substantial Orders from Taiwan for Its Digital Radiography. Tibetan Medicine Company Passes GMP Assessment. India's Top 3 Pharmaceutical Firms to Co-promote Ranbaxy's Once-daily Ciprofloxacin Formulation. Australia's Panbio Gears Up for Germ Warfare. Sumitomo Seiyaku Releases Influenza Detection Kit. India-based Dr. Reddy's Receives US Approval for Enalapril Maleate and HCTZ Tablets. Eisai Launches Gastrointestinal Medication Selbelle. Mayne Nickless Looks to Southeast Asia for Growth Options. Japan's Dragon Genomics Completes Sequencing of Symbiobacterium toebeii Genome. Singapore's Qugen Therapeutics and Biotech Research Ventures Collaborate on Business Development Services. Australia's Biotron Commences Clinical Trials of Cancer Diagnostic Product.

Abstract Objectives The saline suppression test (SST) serves to confirm the diagnosis of primary aldosteronism (PA), while adrenal vein sampling (AVS) is used to subtype PA as unilateral or bilateral. Criteria that can accurately identify those with bilateral PA based on SST results could reduce the need for AVS. We previously demonstrated that a combination of plasma aldosterone concentration (PAC) < 300 pmol L−1 and a reduction in aldosterone-to-renin ratio (ARR) following recumbent SST had high specificity for predicting bilateral PA in an Australian cohort of 92 patients with PA who have undergone AVS. We sought to validate our predictive criteria in larger, independent cohorts of patients with PA. Design An international, multi-centre cohort study. Methods Data from 55 patients at Monash Health, Victoria, Australia, 106 patients from the First Affiliated Hospital of Chongqing Medical University, China, and 105 patients from Nihon University Itabashi Hospital, Japan were analysed. Results A combination of PAC <300 pmol L−1 and a reduction in ARR following recumbent SST predicted bilateral PA with specificities of 88.2%, 97.0%, and 100.0% in Australian, Chinese, and Japanese cohorts, respectively. This criterion could allow 22%–38% of patients with PA to bypass AVS and proceed directly to medical treatment. Conclusion In patients undergoing the recumbent SST, a post-saline PAC <300 pmol L−1 together with a reduction in ARR can predict bilateral PA with high specificity and may allow targeted treatment to be commenced without AVS in up to a third of patients.

AUSTRALIA — Prototype Test for Predicting Clinical Outcome for Melanoma Patients AUSTRALIA — New Model Predicts Long-term Survival of Critically Ill Patients AUSTRALIA — World's First Computerized System to Predict Premature Births CHINA — Biomagnetics (BMGP) Enters Chinese Biotech Market CHINA — More Than 12 000 Babies Hospitalized for Taking Tainted Milk CHINA — New Test Could Prevent Cervical Cancer INDONESIA — Indonesia's Pharmaceutical Companies Get Boost in Competitive Advantage from Launch of Newport Horizon Premium and IDRAC Solutions INDIA — India's Government Nods to Set up 10 Testing Units for Ayurvedic Drugs INDIA — DuPont India Opens First Research Facility in Hyderabad INDIA — CSIR and Godavari Sugar to Set up India's First Sugarcane Biorefinery INDIA — FRLHT Develops Herbal Drug for Diabetes Mellitus INDIA — Chhattisgarh Government to Set Up Herbal Medicinal Park to Promote Industry INDIA — Escorts Heart to Launch 3D Trans Esophageal Echocardiography INDIA — India Develops Hybrid Mustard Seed, Better Yield Expected INDIA — Hindustan Latex to Develop MediPark NEW ZEALAND — NZ Bird Flu “Could Mutate into More Serious Form” NEW ZEALAND — HRC Invests Over $1.07 million to Help Build International Health Research Partnerships SINGAPORE — Singapore Researchers Find Key Gatekeeper Gene that Plays Key Role in Colon Cancer SINGAPORE — Singapore Research Produces Plastic Micro Needles that can be Mass-Produced More Easily and Cheaply for Painless Injections and Extraction of Bodily Fluids SINGAPORE — Singapore Researchers Develop New Stem Cell Therapy for Heart Disease SINGAPORE — Singapore's First Commercial Developer of Molecular Diagnostic Assays Commences Operation SINGAPORE — Singapore to Host Medical Equipment Manufacturing Show VIETNAM — Local Scientists Create Sperm from Stem Cells VIETNAM — Vietnam to Reinforce Crackdown on Fake Medicine

Shanghai Roche Adopts Siebel eBusiness Applications. Trimedyne Commences Sales in China. HK's Healthy International to Distribute US Baywood Products for the Asia Pacific. Exactech Opens Total Joint Replacement Clinics in China. NexMed's New Erectile Dysfunction Product Launched in China. Singapore Key to Agilent's R&D. Yamanouchi Ties-up with Celera Genomics. Korean Firm Gets FDA Nod for Clinical Trials of New Drugs. Dr. Reddy's Gets Approval to Market Its First Biotech Product. Nicholas Piramal and Reckitt Benckiser Joint Venture Called Off. China's Largest Gene Company Applies for 3700 Patents. Syncor Acquires Australia's Radpharm Scientific. Prana Biotech Develops Potential Cure for Alzheimer's Disease. Progen Enters Into Phase II Trial of Anti-Cancer Drug. Ranbaxy Acquires Indian Herbal Brands. Sumitomo to Commercialize Novirio's Hepatitis B Drug.

Australia is still framed as one of the world’s main meat-eating cultures (OECD qtd. in Ting), with a strong normative connection of meat-eating with national identity, as has been illustrated—supposedly in a tongue in cheek way, although this depends on perspective—in Australia Day campaigning by both Meat and Livestock Australia (see fig. 1), and the National Australia Day Council (see fig. 2). Figure 1: Australia Day lamb promotion, Meat and Livestock Australia, 2006 Figure 2: Australia Day poster, National Australia Day Council, 2010This interconnection of meat-eating and Australian national identity continues in recent Australian Day campaigning by the Meat and Livestock Australia, although campaigns are now released in video form in YouTube. One illustrative example is the 2016 Australia Day lamb campaign, Commence Operation Boomerang. Here the action focuses on bringing home Australians living overseas for Australia Day. In one scene of the YouTube video “commandos” smash their way into the home of a very Hipster looking young man (located in Brooklyn, New York City), who says “but, I am a vegan now.” The commando looks incredulous, blinks, as if these words uttered by an Australian are preposterous, and a flamethrower is then used to burn the young man’s kale meal and furniture. This scene is followed with Lee Lin Chin (the SBS newsreader) contemptuously uttering the word “vegans.”And yet, alongside this very evident hierarchising of meat versus plant-based eating, Australia has also been recognised by Euromonitor International as the third fastest growing vegan market in the world, after the United Arab Emirates and China (Cormack), with this rise of veganism being described as “unstoppable” (Hancox). It is unsurprising that such visible differences and shifts in food norms and eating are socially contentious.This issue of M/C Journal takes a snapshot of the rise of alternative eating norms, primarily with reference to the Australian context, as a predominantly meat-eating culture experiencing changes in eating norms. This issue thus aims to identify and explore a range of the issues, development, and traction of new food norms. These include those of being flexitarian (for example, having meat-free Mondays), reducetarian, pescatarian, kangatarian (a niche form of ethical eating in Australia), vegivores, semi-vegetarian, and vegetarian, through to commitments to veganism—along with consideration of commitments to other kinds of consumption practices.More specifically, the contributions to this issue strive to explore the development and range of such alternative eating practices, some of the initiatives used in their promotion—as well as in their rejection by non-participants—and some of the reasons being mounted for individuals and society to make shifts to their eating patterns. Broadly, the contributions to the issue move from considerations of the norms of meat-eating, including investigations of the diversity of ethical issues caught up in existing and potential practices of meat-eating, through to considerations of the rise of alternative norms, and of some of the contentions surrounding these new norms. Contributions thus explore these diverse topics with considerations of ethical, legal, culturally normative, and personal assumptions and frameworks, as well as examining the way such assumptions and frameworks are established and circulated in our networked society. In total, while the articles together highlight a variety of everyday dietary practices and the various forms of reasoning utilised in their defense—from meat eating to plant-based—they also consider some of the factors troubling these practices.In the feature article of the issue, “From ‘Meat Culture’ to ‘Cultured Meat’: Critically Evaluating the Contested Ontologies and Transformative Potential of Biofabricated Animal Material on Culture and Law”, Hope Johnson inspects the transformative potential of biofabricated animal material as a new food (meat) source, which she reasons may challenge both the production and consumption of meat as well as meat-eating norms in countries such as Australia. These new possibilities are, for instance, leading to debate over what is legally defined as meat. And yet, as she outlines, despite conjectures that biofabricated animal material might be productive for the environment, for human health, and for animals, the introduction of biofabricated meat may actually end up reinforcing the dominance, standard practices, and law of a meat-eating culture.Rachel Ankeny, Michelle Phillipov, and Heather Bray explore the terrain of contested ethical meat norms by investigating the role of celebrity chefs, restaurants and lifestyle media in the promotion and circulation of new norms regarding ethical meat. As they argue, because high-profile chefs have the potential to shape eating practices, rather than promoting any single right mode of eating, they should promote dialogue about the various trade-offs inherent in meat consumption. In a related manner, Nancy Cushing reviews the arguments for kangatarianism and the objections to eating Australia’s most iconic animal. By doing so, she highlights the entanglements of contradictory ethical positions concerning animals, and their impacts on efforts to bring about new food norms and dietary practices. Also considering issues of changing norms regarding meat consumption, Tani Khara and Matthew Ruby offer a different perspective, however. They focus on contemporary urban Indians’ justifications of their shifts from predominantly plant-based eating to an increase in meat-eating. In particular, they examine the increase in availability of different meat-based foods in urban India, emerging interests in meat-based cuisines, and meat becoming understood as a status symbol.Shifting the focus from this diversity of meat-eating practices, the next articles consider different dimensions of the rise of alternative norms, with a focus on the increasing traction—and contestation—of vegan ideals and veganism. Deborah Williams thus examines the UK and Australian dairy industries’ hashtag attempts in their #Februdairy campaign (aimed at promoting the benefits of dairy) to contest activist Veganuary campaign (designed to promote veganism), and her case study reveals that the social media efforts of farmers and dairy supporters are no match to counteract the well-organised and equally passionate vegan and animal activists. In their turn, Debbie Rodan and Jane Mummery demonstrate that despite evident shifts to new food norms and practices, vegan ideals are still being codified and deployed in Australia as aberrant and abnormal, with such adversarial framing apparent in mainstream and online news, and social media commentary. As they discuss, however, such adversarial framing itself promotes broader public discussion concerning animal welfare and ethical norms of eating and consumption.Lelia Green in her autoethnography takes an introspective look at the highly contested nature of what it is to be vegan. Green examines a range of perceived imperatives, benefits and constraints associated with this dietary response to western consumer culture and finally touches on how a more inclusive vision of “being vegan” might help her to feel less “bad”. Continuing this focus on the experience of being vegan, we conclude this issue with Clare Mann’s survey and discussion of the emotional suffering experienced by vegans in their everyday living, based on work conducted in her private psychology practice between 2013 and 2018. In response to what she calls the “burden of knowing”, and wanting to validate this experience, she codifies the pain of vegan experience in a non-vegan world as “Vystopia”. She finally asks the question whether recognition of this experience could increase human empathy to animals and “propel the world towards a vegan norm”.These articles are, necessarily, brief. As noted, they do not neatly align in their understanding of what is right in eating, despite all being driven by a common recognition of the need for change in our norms concerning food production and eating, particularly with regards to meat. They do all shed light on the diverse assumptions and perspectives that inform our practices and our justifications concerning meat-eating, or our rejection of it. They can all, we hope, play a part in bringing this important debate further out of the binarised divisiveness that is often reported upon, including in this issue, when animal activists—vegans and otherwise—trade barbs with proponents of animal agriculture. The question inspiring this issue is what new norms our eating should reflect, and what would make them both sustainable and ethical, and indeed normative. Answering this challenge needs more than historically binarised voices, and this is something that we think this issue provides. We hope, in particular—with an eye again to the ongoing campaigning concerning Australian eating—that it makes us all think twice about what we throw on our barbeques.We extend our thanks to our contributors. We thank, too, all those who engaged in the blind peer review process. We sincerely appreciate the efforts of everyone who offered their expertise and their time as well as offering valuable comments on a wide range of contributions.ReferencesCormack, Lucy. “Australia Is the Third-Fastest Growing Vegan Market in the World.” The Sydney Morning Herald 4 Jun. 2016. 10 Apr. 2019 <https://www.smh.com.au/business/consumer-affairs/australia-is-the-thirdfastest-growing-vegan-market-in-the-world-20160601-gp972u.html>.Hancox, Dan. “The Unstoppable Rise of Veganism: How a Fringe Movement Went Mainstream.” The Guardian 1 Apr. 2018. 10 Apr. 2019 <https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2018/apr/01/vegans-are-coming-millennials-health-climate-change-animal-welfare>.Meat and Livestock Australia (MLA). Australia Day Lamb 2016: Commence Operation Boomerang. Video. 9 Jan. 2016. 11 Apr. 2019 <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7i15OPuFvmA>.Ting, Inga. “Australia Is the Meat-Eating Capital of the World.” The Sydney Morning Herald 27 Oct. 2015. 20 Feb. 2019 <http://www.smh.com.au/national/health/australia-is-the-meateating-capital-of-the-world-20151027-gkjhp4.html>.

In light of the COVID-19 pandemic, where income has become precarious and Internet use has soared, the influencer industry has to strategise over new ways to sustain viewer attention, maintain income flows, and innovate around formats and messaging, to avoid being excluded from continued commercial possibilities. In this article, we review the press coverage of the influencer markets in Australia, Japan, and Korea, and consider how the industry has been attempting to navigate their way through the pandemic through deviations and detours. We consider the narratives and groups of influencers who have been included and excluded in shaping the discourse about influencer strategies in the time of COVID-19. The distinction between inclusion and exclusion has been a crucial mechanism to maintain the social normativity, constructed with gender, sexuality, wealth, able-ness, education, age, and so on (Stäheli and Stichweh, par. 3; Hall and Du Gay 5; Bourdieu 162). The influencer industry is the epitome of where the inclusion-exclusion binary is noticeable. It has been criticised for serving as a locus where social norms, such as femininity and middle-class identities, are crystallised and endorsed in the form of visibility and attention (Duffy 234; Abidin 122). Many are concerned about the global expansion of the influencer industry, in which young generations are led to clickbait and sensational content and normative ways of living, in order to be “included” by their peer groups and communities and to avoid being “excluded” (Cavanagh). However, COVID-19 has changed our understanding of the “normal”: people staying home, eschewing social communications, and turning more to the online where they can feel “virtually” connected (Lu et al. 15). The influencer industry also has been affected by COVID-19, since the images of normativity cannot be curated and presented as they used to be. In this situation, it is questionable how the influencer industry that pivots on the inclusion-exclusion binary is adjusting to the “new normal” brought by COVID-19, and how the binary is challenged or maintained, especially by exploring the continuities and discontinuities in industry. Methodology This cross-cultural study draws from a corpus of articles from Australia, Japan, and Korea published between January and May 2020, to investigate how local news outlets portrayed the contingencies undergone by the influencer industry, and what narratives or groups of influencers were excluded in the process. An extended discussion of our methodology has been published in an earlier article (Abidin et al. 5-7). Using the top ranked search engine of each country (Google for Australia and Japan, Naver for Korea), we compiled search results of news articles from the first ten pages (ten results per page) of each search, prioritising reputable news sites over infotainment sites, and by using targeted keyword searches: for Australia: ‘influencer’ and ‘Australia’ and ‘COVID-19’, ‘coronavirus’, ‘pandemic’; for Japan: ‘インフルエンサー’ (influensā) and ‘コロナ’ (korona), ‘新型コロ ナ’ (shin-gata korona), ‘コロナ禍’ (korona-ka); for Korea: ‘인플루언서’ (Influencer) and ‘코로나’ (corona) and ‘팬데믹’ (pandemic). 111 articles were collected (42 for Australia, 31 for Japan, 38 for Korea). In this article, we focus on a subset of 60 articles and adopt a grounded theory approach (Glaser and Strauss 5) to manually conduct open, axial, and close coding of their headline and body text. Each headline was translated by the authors and coded for a primary and secondary ‘open code’ across seven categories: Income loss, Backlash, COVID-19 campaign, Misinformation, Influencer strategy, Industry shifts, and Brand leverage. The body text was coded in a similar manner to indicate all the relevant open codes covered in the article. In this article, we focus on the last two open codes that illustrate how brands have been working with influencers to tide through COVID-19, and what the overall industry shifts were on the three Asia-Pacific country markets. Table 1 (see Appendix) indicates a full list of our coding schema. Inclusion of the Normal in Shifting Brand Preferences In this section, we consider two main shifts in brand preferences: an increased demand for influencers, and a reliance on influencers to boost viewer/consumer traffic. We found that by expanding digital marketing through Influencers, companies attempted to secure a so-called “new normal” during the pandemic. However, their marketing strategies tended to reiterate the existing inclusion-exclusion binary and exacerbated the lack of diversity and inequality in the industry. Increased Demand for Influencers Across the three country markets, brokers and clients in the influencer industry increased their demand for influencers’ services and expertise to sustain businesses via advertising in the “aftermath of COVID-19”, as they were deemed to be more cost-efficient “viral marketing on social media” (Yoo). By outsourcing content production to influencers who could still produce content independently from their homes (Cheik-Hussein) and who engage with audiences with their “interactive communication ability” (S. Kim and Cho), many companies attempted to continue their business and maintain their relationships with prospective consumers (Forlani). As the newly enforced social distancing measures have also interrupted face-to-face contact opportunities, the mass pivot towards influencers for digital marketing is perceived to further professionalise the industry via competition and quality control in all three countries (Wilkinson; S. Kim and Cho; Yadorigi). By integrating these online personae of influencers into their marketing, the business side of each country is moving towards the new normal in different manners. In Australia, businesses launched campaigns showcasing athlete influencers engaging in meaningful activities at home (e.g. yoga, cooking), and brands and companies reorganised their marketing strategies to highlight social responsibilities (Moore). On the other hand, for some companies in the Japanese market, the disruption from the pandemic was a rare opportunity to build connections and work with “famous” and “prominent” influencers (Yadorigi), otherwise unavailable and unwilling to work for smaller campaigns during regular periods of an intensely competitive market. In Korea, by emphasising their creative ability, influencers progressed from being “mere PR tools” to becoming “active economic subjects of production” who now can play a key role in product planning for clients, mediating companies and consumers (S. Kim and Cho). The underpinning premise here is that influencers are tech-savvy and therefore competent in creating media content, forging relationships with people, and communicating with them “virtually” through social media. Reliance on Influencers to Boost Viewer/Consumer Traffic Across several industry verticals, brands relied on influencers to boost viewership and consumer traffic on their digital estates and portals, on the premise that influencers work in line with the attention economy (Duffy 234). The fashion industry’s expansion of influencer marketing was noticeable in this manner. For instance, Korean department store chains (e.g. Lotte) invited influencers to “no-audience live fashion shows” to attract viewership and advertise fashion goods through the influencers’ social media (Y. Kim), and Australian swimwear brand Vitamin A partnered with influencers to launch online contests to invite engagement and purchases on their online stores (Moore). Like most industries where aspirational middle-class lifestyles are emphasised, the travel industry also extended partnerships with their current repertoire of influencers or international influencers in order to plan for the post-COVID-19 market recovery and post-border reopening tourism boom (Moore; Yamatogokoro; J. Lee). By extension, brands without any prior relationships with influencers, whcih did not have such histories to draw on, were likely to have struggled to produce new influencer content. Such brands could thus only rely on hiring influencers specifically to leverage their follower base. The increasing demand for influencers in industries like fashion, food, and travel is especially notable. In the attention economy where (media) visibility can be obtained and maintained (Duffy 121), media users practice “visibility labor” to curate their media personas and portray branding themselves as arbiters of good taste (Abidin 122). As such, influencers in genres where personal taste can be visibly presented—e.g. fashion, travel, F&B—seem to have emerged from the economic slump with a head start, especially given their dominance on the highly visual platform of Instagram. Our analysis shows that media coverage during COVID-19 repeated the discursive correlation between influencers and such hyper-visible or visually-oriented industries. However, this dominant discourse about hyper-visible influencers and the gendered genres of their work has ultimately reinforced norms of self-presentation in the industry—e.g. being feminine, young, beautiful, luxurious—while those who deviate from such norms seem to be marginalised and excluded in media coverage and economic opportunities during the pandemic cycle. Including Newness by Shifting Format Preferences We observed the inclusion of newness in the influencer scenes in all three countries. By shifting to new formats, the previously excluded and lesser seen aspects of our lives—such as home-based content—began to be integrated into the “new normal”. There were four main shifts in format preferences, wherein influencers pivoted to home-made content, where livestreaming is the new dominant format of content, and where followers preferred more casual influencer content. Influencers Have Pivoted to Home-Made Content In all three country markets, influencers have pivoted to generating content based on life at home and ideas of domesticity. These public displays of homely life corresponded with the sudden occurrence of being wired to the Internet all day—also known as “LAN cable life” (랜선라이프, lan-seon life) in the Korean media—which influencers were chiefly responsible for pioneering (B. Kim). While some genres like gaming and esports were less impacted upon by the pivot, given that the nature and production of the content has always been confined to a desktop at home (Cheik-Hussein), pivots occurred for the likes of outdoor brands (Moore), the culinary industry (Dean), and fitness and workout brands (Perelli and Whateley). In Korea, new trends such as “home cafes” (B. Kim) and DIY coffees—like the infamous “Dalgona-Coffee” that was first introduced by a Korean YouTuber 뚤기 (ddulgi)—went viral on social media across the globe (Makalintal). In Japan, the spike in influencers showcasing at-home activities (Hayama) also encouraged mainstream TV celebrities to open social media accounts explicitly to do the same (Kamada). In light of these trends, the largest Multi-Channel Network (MCN) in Japan, UUUM, partnered with one of the country’s largest entertainment industries, Yoshimoto Kogyo, to assist the latter’s comedian talents to establish a digital video presence—a trend that was also observed in Korea (Koo), further underscoring the ubiquity of influencer practices in the time of COVID-19. Along with those creators who were already producing content in a domestic environment before COVID-19, it was the influencers with the time and resources to quickly pivot to home-made content who profited the most from the spike in Internet traffic during the pandemic (Noshita). The benefits of this boost in traffic were far from equal. For instance, many others who had to turn to makeshift work for income, and those who did not have conducive living situations to produce content at home, were likely to be disadvantaged. Livestreaming Is the New Dominant Format Amidst the many new content formats to be popularised during COVID-19, livestreaming was unanimously the most prolific. In Korea, influencers were credited for the mainstreaming and demotising (Y. Kim) of livestreaming for “live commerce” through real-time advertorials and online purchases. Livestreaming influencers were solicited specifically to keep international markets continuously interested in Korean products and cultures (Oh), and livestreaming was underscored as a main economic driver for shaping a “post-COVID-19” society (Y. Kim). In Australia, livestreaming was noted among art (Dean) and fitness influencers (Dean), and in Japan it began to be adopted among major fashion brands like Prada and Chloe (Saito). While the Australian coverage included livestreaming on platforms such as Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, Twitch, and Douyin (Cheik-Hussein; Perelli and Whateley; Webb), the Japanese coverage highlighted the potential for Instagram Live to target young audiences, increase feelings of “trustworthiness”, and increase sales via word-of-mouth advertising (Saito). In light of reduced client campaigns, influencers in Australia had also used livestreaming to provide online consulting, teaching, and coaching (Perelli and Whateley), and to partner with brands to provide masterclasses and webinars (Sanders). In this era, influencers in genres and verticals that had already adopted streaming as a normative practice—e.g. gaming and lifestyle performances—were likely to have had an edge over others, while other genres were excluded from this economic silver lining. Followers Prefer More Casual Influencer Content In general, all country markets report followers preferring more casual influencer content. In Japan, this was offered via the potential of livestreaming to deliver more “raw” feelings (Saito), while in Australia this was conveyed through specific content genres like “mental or physical health battles” (Moore); specific aesthetic choices like appearing “messier”, less “curated”, and “more unfiltered” (Wilkinson); and the growing use of specific emergent platforms like TikTok (Dean, Forlani, Perelli, and Whateley). In Korea, influencers in the photography, travel, and book genres were celebrated for their new provision of pseudo-experiences during COVID-19-imposed social distancing (Kang). Influencers on Instagram also spearheaded new social media trends, like the “#wheredoyouwannago_challenge” where Instagram users photoshopped themselves into images of famous tourist spots around the world (Kang). Conclusion In our study of news articles on the impact of COVID-19 on the Australian, Japanese, and Korean influencer industries during the first wave of the pandemic, influencer marketing was primed to be the dominant and default mode of advertising and communication in the post-COVID-19 era (Tate). In general, specific industry verticals that relied more on visual portrayals of lifestyles and consumption—e.g. fashion, F&B, travel—to continue partaking in economic recovery efforts. However, given the gendered genre norms in the industry, this meant that influencers who were predominantly feminine, young, beautiful, and luxurious experienced more opportunity over others. Further, influencers who did not have the resources or skills to pivot to the “new normals” of creating content from home, engaging in livestreaming, and performing their personae more casually were excluded from these new economic opportunities. Across the countries, there were minor differences in the overall perception of influencers. There was an increasingly positive perception of influencers in Japan and Korea, due to new norms and pandemic-related opportunities in the media ecology: in Korea, influencers were considered to be the “vanguard of growing media commerce in the post-pandemonium era” (S. Kim and Cho), and in Japan, influencers were identified as critical vehicles during a more general consumer shift from traditional media to social media, as TV watching time is reduced and home-based e-commerce purchases are increasingly popular (Yadogiri). However, in Australia, in light of the sudden influx of influencer marketing strategies during COVID-19, the market seemed to be saturated more quickly: brands were beginning to question the efficiency of influencers, cautioned that their impact has not been completely proven for all industry verticals (Stephens), and have also begun to reduce commissions for influencer affiliate programmes as a cost-cutting measure (Perelli and Whateley). While news reports on these three markets indicate that there is some level of growth and expansion for various influencers and brands, such opportunities were not experienced equally, with some genres and demographics of influencers and businesses being excluded from pandemic-related pivots and silver linings. Further, in light of the increasing commercial opportunities, pressure for more regulations also emerged; for example, the Korean government announced new investigations into tax avoidance (Han). Not backed up by talent agencies or MCNs, independent influencers are likely to be more exposed to the disciplinary power of shifting regulatory practices, a condition which might have hindered their attempt at diversifying their income streams during the pandemic. Thus, while it is tempting to focus on the privileged and novel influencers who have managed to cling on to some measure of success during the pandemic, scholarly attention should also remember those who are being excluded and left behind, lest generations, cohorts, genres, or subcultures of the once-vibrant influencer industry fade into oblivion. References Abidin, Crystal. “#In$tagLam: Instagram as a repository of taste, a burgeoning marketplace, a war of eyeballs.” Mobile Media Making in an Age of Smartphones. Eds. Marsha Berry and Max Schleser. New York: Palgrave Pivot, 2014. 119-128. <https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137469816_11>. Abidin, Crystal, Jin Lee, Tommaso Barbetta, and Miao Weishan. “Influencers and COVID-19: Reviewing Key Issues in Press Coverage across Australia, China, Japan, and South Korea.” Media International Australia (2020). <https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/1329878X20959838>. Bourdieu, Pierre. Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard UP, 1984. Cavanagh, Emily. “‘Snapchat Dysmorphia’ Is Leading Teens to Get Plastic Surgery Based on Unrealistic Filters.” Business Inside 9 Jan. 2020. <https://www.insider.com/snapchat-dysmorphia-low-self-esteem-teenagers-2020-1>. Cheik-Hussein, Mariam. “Brands Turn to Gaming Influencers as Lockdown Gives Sector Boost.” Ad News 21 Apr. 2020. <https://www.adnews.com.au/news/brands-turn-to-gaming-influencers-as-lockdown-gives-sector-boost>. Dean, Lucy. “Coronavirus Is Changing the Influencer World.” Yahoo! Finance. 3 Apr. 2020. <https://au.finance.yahoo.com/news/coronavirus-changing-social-media-225332357.html>. Duffy, Brooke Erin. (Not) Getting Paid to Do What You Love: Gender, Social Media, and Aspirational Work. Cambridge: Yale University Press, 2017. Forlani, Cristina. “What Brands Can Learn from Influencers to Remain Relevant Post-COVID-19.” We Are Social 13 May 2020. <https://wearesocial.com/au/blog/2020/05/what-brands-can-learn-from-influencers-to-remain-relevant-post-covid-19>. Glaser, Barney G., and Anselm L. Strauss. The Discovery of Grounded Theory: Strategies for Qualitative Research. Chicago: Aldine Publishing Company. 1967. Hall, Stuart, and Paul Du Gay. Questions of Cultural Identity. Sage, 1996. Han, Hyojung. “국세청, 20만명 팔로워 가진 유명인 등 고소득 크리에이터 ‘해외광고대가검증’ 나섰다 [National Tax Service Investigates High-Profile Creators’ Income Overseas].” Sejung Ilbo 24 May 2020. <http://www.sejungilbo.com/news/articleView.html?idxno=21347>. Hayama, Riho. “コロナがインスタグラムとインフルエンサーに与える影響 [The Influence of Covid on Instagram and Influencers].” Note 19 May 2020. <https://note.com/hayamari/n/n697a0ec332ee>. Kamada, Kazuki. “動画クリエイターが「公人」に。2020年はインフルエンサー時代の転換点となるか（UUUM鎌田和樹）[Video Creators as Public Figures: Will 2020 Represent a Turning Point for Influencers? (UUUM’s Kamada Kazuki)].” QJweb 8 May 2020. <https://qjweb.jp/journal/18499/>. Kang, Jumi. "[아무튼, 주말] 황금연휴라도 아직은… 사람 드문 야외, 여행 책방, 랜선 여행으로 짧은 여행 즐겨볼까 [[Weekend Anyway] Although It’s Holiday Season, Still... How about Joining the Holiday with a Short LAN-Cable Travel, Travelling Bookstores, and Travelling to Countryside?].” Chosun Daily 25 Apr. 2020. <http://news.chosun.com/site/data/html_dir/2020/04/24/2020042403600.html?utm_source=naver&utm_medium=original&utm_campaign=news>. Kim, Bokyung. “[코로나뉴트렌드] ‘집콕 3개월’...집밖에 안나가도 살 수 있어서 신기 [[COVID-19 New Trend] Staying Home for 3 Months: Don’t Need to Go Outside].” Yonhap News 26 Apr. 2020. <https://www.yna.co.kr/view/AKR20200425045300030?input=1195m>. Kim, Sanghee, and Chulhee Cho. "코로나 이후 인플루언서 경제·사회 영향력 더 커져 [Influencers' Socioeconomic Impact Increased in Covid-19 Era].” MoneyToday 28 Apr. 2020. <https://news.mt.co.kr/mtview.php?no=2020042614390682882>. Kim, Young-Eun. "[포스트 코로나 유망 비즈니스 22]실시간 방송으로 경험하고 손가락으로 산다…판 커진 라이브 커머스 [[Growing Business 22 in Post-COVID-19] Experience with Livestreaming and Purchase with Fingers].” Hankyung Business 19 May 2020. <https://news.naver.com/main/read.nhn?mode=LSD&mid=sec&sid1=101&oid=050&aid=0000053676>. Koo, Jayoon. "코로나 언택트시대… 유튜브 업계는 '승승장구' [Fast-Growing Youtube Industry in the Covid-19 Untact Era].” Financial News 24 Apr. 2020. <https://www.fnnews.com/news/202004241650545778>. Lu, Li, et al. “Forum: COVID-19 Dispatches.” Cultural Studies ↔ Critical Methodologies, Sep. 2020. DOI: 10.1177/1532708620953190. Lee, Jihye. “[포스트 코로나] ‘일상을 여행처럼, 안전을 일상처럼’...해외 대신 국내 활성화 예고 [[Post-COVID-19] ‘Daily Life as Travelling, Safety as Daily Life’... Domestic Travel Expected to Grow].” E-News Today 26 May 2020. <http://www.enewstoday.co.kr/news/articleView.html?idxno=1389486>. Makalintal, Bettina. "People All over the World Are Making Frothy 'Dalgona' Coffee, Thanks to Quarantine." Vice 20 Mar. 2020. <https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/bvgbk8/people-all-over-the-world-are-making-frothy-dalgona-coffee-thanks-to-quarantine>. Moore, Kaleigh. “Influencers’ Currency Has Increased during Covid-19 Crisis.” Vogue Business 13 Apr. 2020. <https://www.voguebusiness.com/companies/influencers-currency-has-increased-during-covid-19-crisis-marketing>. Noshita, Tomoyuki. “コロナ禍で変わるインフルエンサー活動と企業ニーズ［インタビュー］[Influencer Activity and Corporate Needs Changed by the Corona Disaster].” ExchangeWire 26 May 2020. <https://www.exchangewire.jp/2020/05/26/trenders-instagram/>. Oh, Eun-seo. "코트라, 중국·대만 6곳에 중소기업 온라인마케팅 전용 'K스튜디오' 오픈 [KOTRA Launches 6 ‘K-Studios’ in China and Taiwan for Online Marketing for SME].” Global Economics 16 May 2020. <https://news.g-enews.com/ko-kr/news/article/news_all/2020050611155064653b88961c8c_1/article.html?md=20200506141610_R>. Perelli, Amanda, and Dan Whateley. “How the Coronavirus Is Changing the Influencer Business, According to Marketers and Top Instagram and YouTube Stars.” Business Insider Australia 22 Mar. 2020. <https://www.businessinsider.com.au/how-coronavirus-is-changing-influencer-marketing-creator-industry-2020-3?r=US&IR=T>. Reid, Elise. “COVID-19 Could See Advertisers Move from Influencers to Streaming Sites.” Channel News 27 Apr. 2020. <https://www.channelnews.com.au/covid-19-could-see-advertisers-move-from-influencers-to-streaming-sites/>. Rowell, Andrew. “Coronavirus: Big Tobacco Sees an Opportunity in the Pandemic.” The Conversation 14 May 2020. <https://theconversation.com/coronavirus-big-tobacco-sees-an-opportunity-in-the-pandemic-138188>. Saito, Yurika. “コロナ禍で急増の「インスタライブ」。誰でも簡単に出来る視聴・配信方法 [The Boom of Instagram Live during the Pandemic: Anyone Can Easily Watch and Stream Content].” Forbes Japan 19 May 2020. <https://forbesjapan.com/articles/detail/34475>. Sanders, Krystal. “Perth Influencer Brooke Vulinovich Says Instagram Has Become ‘Lifeline’ for Small Businesses.” Perth Now 29 Apr. 2020. <https://www.perthnow.com.au/news/coronavirus/perth-influencer-brooke-vulinovich-says-instagram-has-become-lifeline-for-small-businesses-ng-b881533823z>. Stäheli, Urs, and Rudolf Stichweh. "Introduction: Inclusion/Exclusion–Systems Theoretical and Poststructuralist Perspectives." Inclusion/Exclusion and Socio-Cultural Identities, 2002. Stephens, Lee. “Why Influencer Marketing Will Win after COVID-19.” Ad News 9 Apr. 2020. <https://www.adnews.com.au/opinion/why-influencer-marketing-will-win-after-covid-19>. Tate, Andrew. “How Vanity Viral Marketing Ran Headlong into Coronavirus.” The New Daily 29 Apr. 2020. <https://thenewdaily.com.au/news/coronavirus/2020/04/28/how-vanity-viral-marketing-ran-headlong-into-corornavirus/>. Webb, Loren. “Brands Pivot Their Marketing Strategies in the Wake of the Coronavirus.” Dynamic Business 13 Mar. 2020. <https://dynamicbusiness.com.au/topics/news/brands-pivot-their-marketing-strategies-in-the-wake-of-the-coronavirus.html>. Wilkinson, Zoe. “Head to Head: Will the Economy of Celebrity and Influencer Endorsement Recover after the COVID-19 Crisis?” Mumbrella 28 Apr. 2020. <https://mumbrella.com.au/head-to-head-will-the-economy-of-celebrity-and-influencer-endorsement-recover-after-the-covid-19-crisis-625987>. Yadorigi, Yuki. “【第7回】コロナ禍のなかで生まれた光明、新たなアプローチによるコミュニケーション [Episode 7: A Light Emerged during the Corona Crisis, a Communication Based on a New Approach].” C-Station 28 Apr. 2020. <https://c.kodansha.net/news/detail/36286/>. Yamatogokoro. “アフターコロナの観光・インバウンドを考えるVol.4世界の観光業の取り組みから学ぶ、自治体・DMOが今まさにすべきこと [After Corona Tourism and Inbound Tourism Vol. 4: What Municipalities and DMOs Should Do Right Now to Learn from Global Tourism Initiatives].” Yamatogokoro 19 May 2020. Yoo, Hwan-In. "코로나 여파, 연예인·인플루언서 마케팅 활발 [COVID-19, Star-Influencer Marketing Becomes Active].” SkyDaily 19 May 2020. <http://www.skyedaily.com/news/news_view.html?ID=104772>. Appendix Open codes Axial codes 1) Brand leverage Targeting investors Targeting influencers Targeting new digital media formats Targeting consumers/customers/viewers Types of brands/clients 2) Industry shifts Brand preferences Content production Content format Follower preferences Type of Influencers Table 1: Full list of codes from our analysis

Phylogica Commences Antimicrobial Peptide Discovery under Agreement with MedImmune. Leadtec Systems Australia to Acquire Mimotopes. Sirnaomics Seals Deal for Development of RNAi Therapeutics in China. Simcere and Bristol-Myers Squibb Enter Innovative Partnership to Develop Early-Stage Oncology Compound. Pfizer, Biocon in $350 Million Insulin Pact. Bharat Biotech Announces Launch of 'HNVAC™' India's First Cell-Culture H1N1 Swine Flu Vaccine. Cipla Launches the World's First Generic Pirfenidone in India, Giving Hope to Sufferers of IPF (Idiopathic Pulmonary Fibrosis). Eisai and FORMA Therapeutics Enter into Broad Drug Discovery Collaboration. Philips and Atom Medical Corporation Announce Strategic Alliance to Provide a Complete Neonatal and Perinatal Offering. CiRA and France-based Cellectis Enter Collaboration. Immunovaccine Signs Research Agreement with OncoTherapy Science to Advance Potential Cancer Vaccine. Glycos Biotechnologies Enters Definitive Agreement with Malaysian Bio-XCell. Biocon Plans to Invest $161m in Malaysia to Set Up R&D Unit.

06–782Baumgardner, Robert J. (Texas A&M U, USA; Robert_Baumgardner@tamu-commerce.edu), The appeal of English in Mexican commerce. World Englishes (Blackwell) 25.2 (2006), 251–266.06–783Bunta, Ferenc (Temple U, USA), Ingrid Davidovich & David Ingram, The relationship between the phonological complexity of a bilingual child's words and those of the target languages. International Journal of Bilingualism (Kingston Press), 10.1 (2006), 71–88.06–784Christiansen, Pia Vanting (Roskilde U, Denmark), Language policy in the European Union: European/English/Elite/Equal/Esperanto Union?Language Problems & Language Planning (John Benjamins) 30.1 (2006), 21–44.06–785Cook, Vivian, Benedetta Bassetti, Chise Kasai, Miho Sasaki & Jun Arata Takahashi, Do bilinguals have different concepts? The case of shape and material in Japanese L2 users of English. International Journal of Bilingualism (Kingston Press) 10.2 (2006), 137–152.06–786Costa, Albert (U Barcelona, Spain; acosta@ub.edu), Wido La Heij & Eduardo Navarrette, The dynamics of bilingual lexical access. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition (Cambridge University Press) 9.2 (2006), 137–151.06–787Dagenais, Diane, Elaine Day & Kelleen Toohey (Simon Fraser U, Canada), A multilingual child's literacy practices and contrasting identities in the figured worlds of French immersion classrooms. International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism (Multilingual Matters) 9.2 (2006), 205–218.06–788Dailey-O'Cain, Jennifer & Grit Liebscher, Language learners' use of discourse markers as evidence for a mixed code. International Journal of Bilingualism (Kingston Press), 10.1 (2006), 89–109.06–789De Groot, Annette M. B. (U Amsterdam, The Netherlands; a.m.b.degroot@uva.nl) & Ingrid K. Christoffels, Language control in bilinguals: Monolingual tasks and simultaneous interpreting. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition (Cambridge University Press) 9.2 (2006), 189–201.06–790Finkbeiner, Matthew (Harvard U, USA; msf@wjh.harvard.edu), Tamar H. Gollan & Alfonso Caramazza, Lexical access in bilingual speakers: What's the (hard) problem?Bilingualism: Language and Cognition (Cambridge University Press) 9.2 (2006), 153–166.06–791Francis, Norbert (Northern Arizona U, USA), Democratic language policy for multilingual educational systems: An interdisciplinary approach. Language Problems & Language Planning (John Benjamins) 29.3 (2005), 211–230.06–792Glaser, Evelyne (Johannes Kepler U, Austria), Plurilingualism in Europe: More than a means for communication. Language and International Communication (Multilingual Matters) 5.3&4 (2005), 195–208.06–793Hélot, Christine (U Marc Bloch, France) & Andrea young, Notion of diversity in language education: Policy and practice at primary level in France. Language, Culture and Curriculum (Multilingual Matters) 18.3 (2005), 242–257.06–794Hernandez, Arturo E. (U Houston, USA; aehernandez@uh.edu) & Gayane Meschyan, Executive function is necessary to enhance lexical processing in a less proficient L2: Evidence from fMRI during picture naming. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition (Cambridge University Press) 9.2 (2006), 177–188.06–795Herrero, Elba Alicia (New Jersey City U, USA), Using Dominican oral literature and discourse to support literacy learning among low-achieving students from the Dominican Republic. International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism (Multilingual Matters) 9.2 (2006), 219–238.06–796Kroll, Judith F. (Pennsylvania State U, USA; jfk7@psu.edu), Susan C. Bobb & Zofia Wodniecka, Language selectivity is the exception, not the rule: Arguments against a fixed locus of language selection in bilingual speech. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition (Cambridge University Press) 9.2 (2006), 119–135.06–797Leung, Constant (King's College London, UK; constant.leung@kcl.ac.uk), Language and content in bilingual education. Linguistics and Education (Elsevier) 16.2 (2005), 238–252.06–798Low, Winnie W. M. (Pentecostal Lam Hon Kwong School of Hong Kong, China) & Dan Lu, Persistent use of mixed code: An exploration of its functions in Hong Kong schools. International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism (Multilingual Matters) 9.2 (2006), 181–204.06–799Lung, Rachel (Lingnan U, Hong Kong, China; wclung@ln.edu.hk), Translation training needs for adult learners. Babel (John Benjamins) 51.3 (2005), 224–237.06–800Maloof, Valerie Miller (Gwinnett County Public Schools, USA), Donald L. Rubin & Ann Neville Miller, Cultural competence and identity in cross-cultural adaptation: The role of a Vietnamese heritage language school. International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism (Multilingual Matters) 9.2 (2006), 255–273.06–801Matiki, Alfred J. (U Botswana, Gaborone, Botswana), Literacy, ethnolinguistic diversity and transitional bilingual education in Malawi. International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism (Multilingual Matters) 9.2 (2006), 239–254.06–802Mills, Jean, Talking about silence: Gender and the construction of multilingual identities. International Journal of Bilingualism (Kingston Press) 10.1 (2006), 1–16.06–803Montrul, Silvina, On the bilingual competence of Spanish heritage speakers: Syntax, lexical-semantics and processing. International Journal of Bilingualism (Kingston Press) 10.1 (2006), 37–69.06–804Mooko, Theophilus (U Botswana, Gaborone, Botswana), Counteracting the threat of language death: The case of minority languages in Botswana. Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development (Multilingual Matters) 27.2 (2006), 109–125.06–805Müller-Saini, Gotelind (U Heidelberg, Germany) & Gregor Benton, Esperanto and Chinese anarchism 1907–1920: The translation from diaspora to homeland. Language Problems & Language Planning (John Benjamins) 30.1 (2006), 45–73.06–806Myers-Scotton, Carol (U South Carolina, USA; carolms@gwm.sc.edu), Natural codeswitching knocks on the laboratory door. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition (Cambridge University Press) 9.2 (2006), 203–212.06–807Napier, Jemina (Macquarie U, Australia; jemina.napier@ling.mq.edu.au), Training sign language interpreters in Australia: An innovative approach. Babel (John Benjamins) 51.3 (2005), 207–223.06–808Park, Hyeon-Sook, Structural characteristics of proper nouns in Korean–Swedish discourse. International Journal of Bilingualism (Kingston Press) 10.1 (2006), 17–36.06–809Queen, Robin M., Phrase-final intonation in narratives told by Turkish–German bilinguals. International Journal of Bilingualism (Kingston Press) 10.2 (2006), 153–178.06–810Roelofs, Ardi (Nijmegen Institute for Cognition and Information, Nijmegen, the Netherlands; ardi@mpi.nl) & Kim Verhoef, Modeling the control of phonological encoding in bilingual speakers. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition (Cambridge University Press) 9.2 (2006), 167–176.06–811Rosenhouse, Judith, Lubna Haik & Liat Kishon-Rabin, Speech perception in adverse listening conditions in Arabic–Hebrew bilinguals. International Journal of Bilingualism (Kingston Press) 10.2 (2006), 119–135.06–812Salomon, Frank (U Wisconsin–Madison, USA) & Emilio Chambi Apaza, Vernacular literacy on the Lake Titicaca High Plains, Peru. Reading Research Quarterly (International Reading Association) 41.3 (2006), 304-326.06–813Sandel, Todd L. (U Oklahoma, Norman, USA), Wen-Yu Chao & Chung-Hui Liang, Language shift and language accommodation across family generations in Taiwan. Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development (Multilingual Matters) 27.2 (2006), 126–147.06–814Scott Shenk, Petra, The interactional and syntactic importance of prosody in Spanish–English bilingual discourse. International Journal of Bilingualism (Kingston Press) 10.2 (2006), 179–205.06–815Smith, Daniel J., Thresholds leading to shift: Spanish/English codeswitching and convergence in Georgia, U.S.A., International Journal of Bilingualism (Kingston Press) 10.2 (2006), 207–240.

Apollo Life Sciences Develops Needle Free Topical Vaccine. Avexa Collaborates with TargetDrug for CCR5 Inhibitor HIV Program. BioMaxx Systems to Build Biodiesel Demonstration Plant in Asia. GSK Plans to Launch Cervarix Vaccine Approved by Australia's Therapeutic Administration. LabTech Systems Signs License Agreement with BioMérieux for Innovative Robotic Microbiological Instrumentation. Living Cell Technologies to Conduct Trials of Pig Islet Cell Transplant in Diabetes Patients. Peptech Plans to Merge with Evogenix. Phylogica Collaborates with Opsona Therapeutics for Drug Discovery. China Sky One Medical Receives Grant from Heilongjiang Government. SinoBiomed's Malaria Vaccine Granted US Patent. Biocon to Enter Phase II Clinical Trials for Oral Insulin. Indian Drug Makers, Ranbaxy and Dr Reddy, Build Therapeutic Bridges in Japan. Medtronic Commences Large-Scale Clinical Trial of CRT-D in Japan. Japan's Bioventures Today — Sun Care Fuels Corporation. MerLion Pharmaceuticals to Conduct Trials for Two Anti-infection Drugs.

The Big Pineapple, Big Banana, the Big Potato , Australia positively groans under the weight of big things littered along the highway like jokes awaiting their punch-lines. These commercial road-side enterprises are a constant source of bemusement among Australians and this paper seeks to explore the attraction of the gargantuan and why Australians consider big things to be so funny. Discovering that big things not only give form to national icons but also celebrate the nation's tendency to larrikinism and the associated sardonic, ironic and anti-establishment humour, we are left to consider the role big things may play in the Australian national psyche and how their function as low art turns their collectivity into some strange, impulsive attempt at establishing a system of totems that comes to terms with this big land and its contested ownership. Historically big things like the Colossus of Rhodes, the Pyramids or the Great Wall of China have been physical manifestations of empire and dominion. No laughing matter. But in the United States from the 1920s, particularly in Southern California, we begin to see a profusion of "roadside vernacular architecture" including a big coffee percolator, a big pig, a big corn ear, a big teapot, a big Spanish dancer, a big duck, a big fish and many big hot dogs and big chilli bowls (Heimann and Georges). "Imaginana" is another way to conceptualise these strange forms of cultural production that replicate familiar, safe everyday items (Amdur 12). Early big things, particularly in the United States, had a clearly pragmatic function: to lure car-bound consumers off the highways and into local commercial enterprises with simple, one-to-one signification bringing function to form and high art to low purposes (Gebhard 14). The aim of these big things was to shock, startle and amuse the passing motorist and they took on a humourous edge due to the incongruity of scale and the surreal surprise of reality warping out of all proportion. While big things have a commercial purpose they achieve that purpose because they can be read playfully, always reminding us of the paradox they entail: they act dualistically as both the media and the message, both the referent and the real (Barcan 38). Reading big things as jokes in Freudian terms, we see how they may be eruptions of the unconscious into the mundane (Krahn 158). The first big thing in Australia was the Big Banana, built in Coffs Harbour by an American entomologist, John Landi (Negus). From that time on Australia has had a quirky relationship with big things. The banana is innately funny. The bent phallus, the unique shape, the skin as the standard slapstick cue to pratfall; everything about the banana is an invitation to laugh. Soon the banana was emulated by other funny produce such as the pineapple, the prawn and the lobster and within a decade monstrous agricultural products proliferated beside Australian highways regardless of their innate humour. They were joined by a variety of iconic figures, usually with an obvious connection such as the Big Penguin at the town of Penguin. Big things reinforce notions of national and regional identity: on the national level Australia is portrayed as a land of plenty, a fact emphasized by the sheer vastness of these creations; regionally, these totems function as identity markers and place makers (Barcan 31). Many big things were constructed by migrants and thus can be interpreted as optimistic acts of home making in the vast emptiness of the continent (Barcan 36). There is concern that big things obscure, or even obliterate, the history of regions and the whole continent: the incarcerations, land-grabbing, labour conflicts, corruption and failure. Instead it could be argued that big thing function to both signpost white history and subvert it at the same time: the Big Ned Kelly calling for revolution, the big goldminer looking ever expectant and ever disappointed, the Big Captain Cook in Cairns giving what appears to be a Nazi salute, all point to a larrikin refusal to take the brief and minor white history too seriously. The Australian larrikin sense of humour is mischievous, depreciatory and anti-authoritarian. This sense of humour arises from certain characteristics of the Australian "legend" identified by Ward such as scepticism, egalitarianism and derision towards affectation that are evident in larrikins' confrontations with authority, elaborate practical jokes on each other and the community at large and a "propensity for vulgarising the arts" (Reekie 97). This larrikinism is evident in the way dangerous nuisances (the big crocodile, the big red back spider) and mundane objects (the big jam tin, the big stubby holder, the big mower) are given the same treatment as national icons. There is also the variability of effort and attention to detail, where Aussie "ingenuity" and bush carpentry have been used to turn a good idea into reality in the shortest possible time to produce a very impressionist big koala or just the blob of concrete that is the big strawberry. Ignatius Jones explains: "get your local surfboard maker to cast you a giant prawn in fibreglass and you end up with the cicada that ate Yamba" (Negus). The early documentation of Australian big things was also carried out in a larrikin spirit (Amdur) including the claim that big things are part of an alien conspiracy to make us feel small (Stockwell). Every big thing requires a visionary, a postmodern artist with the passion and the obsession to realise their vision. It is a form of low art, a form of trash culture. But to many who do not frequent galleries and museums, low art is their available form of art and thus becomes their actual art. City planners and the upper middle class tend to denigrate these structures so at odds with their images of beautiful cities, so blatantly bastions of commercialism and so big that they run the risk of obscuring and obliterating real art (Gerbhard 25). Big things are criticised as ugly, kitsch, tacky and giving a wrong impression of a town. There are further concerns that big things allow the tourist to learn without knowing by presenting only one side of the story (Cross 51) and that they make observers minuscule in their presence, dominating the landscape and the attention of tourists (Krahn 165). But looking beyond the aesthetics of the individual instance it becomes apparent that big things also function as a network (Barcan 32), inviting the tourist along the highway of "the arrested fairground (in the) oxymoron of movement" (Krahn 157), offering the hyperreal adventure of collecting the experience, and small mementos, of more big things (Eco 1986). Big things are carnival, inverting social rules, promising some weird utopia (Krahn 171). As a collectivity, the larger psycho-political and metaphysical roles of big things become apparent. For Australia, the crucial question big things raise is the nature of our relationship with the land. Most of white Australia, huddled in cities on the seaboard, has a fear of the empty space at the heart of the continent. Big things are an attempt to assert that the settlers can match the dimensions of the land as, community by community, we write ourselves upon the land. The problem that big things highlight rather than obscure, the problem that can never be sublimated, that constantly erupts from the collective unconscious is that the ownership of the land remains contested, sometimes in the courts, sometimes in the streets, but most importantly in the hearts and dreams of the whole Australian people. All this land once had its own indigenous stories and big things may be seen as a pathetic attempt to replace, re-define and retell those stories by the interlopers now living on the land. "...Big things work allegorically, effacing, most notably, Aboriginal definitions of regional, tribal, spiritual, linguistic or other space" (Barcan 37). There is a sense in which big things are white trash barely obscuring black deaths (Nyoongah 12-14). But like a student's job-work over an old master's self portrait, big things invite us to peek through to the real totems of this land, totems enshrined in the creation myths of the indigenous dreaming. This is big things' contribution to the reconciliation process, to remind us of the fragile hold of white Australia on the land and to demand respect for the stories big things seek to displace. And that is the real big thing for white Australia in the reconciliation process, to accept these stories as our own so the land owns us. This is a much bigger leap than just saying sorry but in some strange way it has already commenced in the massive, mega-fauna that even now are rising from the land like the harbingers of a new dreamtime. A number of authors complain that, intentionally or otherwise, big things exclude indigenous flora and fauna and suggest that this points to a denial of history (Amdur 13, Barcan 36). But in recent years there has been a flood of big indigenous icons, many owned by indigenous corporations: big koalas, big kangaroos, big crocodiles, big bunyips and big barramundi. There is still the potential for indigenous artists to turn the joke around by creating big ancestral beings including rainbow serpents and the like. As Krahn (163) says: "I fear there must have been a Big Aboriginal Elder somewhere, gazing wistfully from the edge of town. But why a chicken?" Works Cited Amdur, Mark. It Really Is A Big Country . Sydney: Angus & Robertson, 1981. Barcan, Ruth. "Big Things: Consumer Totemism and Serial Monumentality." Linq 23.2 (1996): 31-39. Cane Toad Collective. "Big Things." Cane Toad Times 1 1983: 18-23. Eco, Umberto. Travels in Hyperreality. San Diego: Harcourt Brace, 1986. Gebhard, David. "Introduction." California Crazy: Roadside Vernacular Architecture . Eds. Jim Heimann and Rip Georges. San Francisco: Chronicle, 1985. 11-25. Heimann, Jim and Rip Georges. California Crazy: Roadside Vernacular Architecture . San Francisco: Chronicle, 1985. Krahn, Uli "The Arrested Fairground, or, Big Things as Oxymoron of Movement." Antithesis 13 (2002): 157-176. Negus, George, "Big Things", New Dimensions (In Time) . 21 July 2003. 26 September 2003 < http://www.abc.net.au/dimensions/dimensions_in_time/Transcripts/2003_default.htm >. Nyoongah, Janine Little. "'Unsinkable' Big Things: Spectacle, Race, and Class through Elvis, Titanic, O.J. and Sumo." Overland 148 (1997): 12-15. Reekie, Gail. "Nineteenth-Century Urbanization." Australian Studies: A Survey. Ed. James Walter. Melbourne: Oxford University Press, 1989. Stockwell, Stephen. "Cairns Collossi." Cane Toad Times 2 1984: 21. Ward, Russel. The Australian Legend . Melbourne: Oxford University Press, 1989. Links http://members.ozemail.com.au/~arundell/bigthing.htm http://www.alphalink.com.au/~richardb/page4.htm http://www.general.uwa.edu.au/u/rpinna/big/big_things_intro.html http://www.bigthings.com.au/ http://www.alphalink.com.au/~richardb/page4.htm Citation reference for this article MLA Style Stockwell, Stephen & Carlisle, Bethany. "Big Things" M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture <http://www.media-culture.org.au/0311/6-stockwell-carlisle-big-things.php>. APA Style Stockwell, S. & Carlisle, B. (2003, Nov 10). Big Things. M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture, 6, <http://www.media-culture.org.au/0311/6-stockwell-carlisle-big-things.php>

Introduction: Artist Villages in Beijing Many of the most renowned sites of Beijing are found in the inner-city districts of Dongcheng and Xicheng: for instance, the Forbidden City, Tiananmen Square, the Lama Temple, the National Theatre, the Central Opera Academy, the Bell Tower, the Drum Tower, the Imperial College, and the Confucius Temple. However, in the past decade a new attraction has been added to the visitor “must-see” list in Beijing. The 798 Art District originated as an artist village within abandoned factory buildings at Dashanzi, right between the city’s Central Business District and the open outer rural space on Beijing’s north-east. It is arguably the most striking symbol of China’s contemporary art scene. The history of the 798 Art District is by now well known (Keane), so this paper will provide a short summary of its evolution. Of more concern is the relationship between the urban fringe and what Howard Becker has called “art worlds.” By art worlds, Becker refers to the multitude of agents that contribute to a final work of art: for instance, people who provide canvasses, frames, and art supplies; critics and intermediaries; and the people who run exhibition services. To the art-world list in Beijing we need to add government officials and developers. To date there are more than 100 artist communities or villages in Beijing; almost all are located in the city’s outskirts. In particular, a high-powered art centre outside the city of Beijing has recently established a global reputation. Songzhuang is situated in outer Tongzhou District, some 30 kilometres east of Tiananmen Square. The Beijing Municipal Government officially classifies Songzhuang as the Capital Art District (CAD) or “the Songzhuang Original Art Cluster.” The important difference between 798 and Songzhuang is that, whereas the former has become a centre for retail and art galleries, Songzhuang operates as an arts production centre for experimental art, with less focus on commercial art. The destiny of the artistic communities is closely related to urban planning policies that either try to shut them down or protect them. In this paper I will take a close look at three artist villages: Yuanmingyuan, 798, and Songzhuang. In tracing the evolution of the three artist villages, I will shed some light on artists’ lives in city fringes. I argue that these outer districts provide creative industries with a new opportunity for development. This is counter to the conventional wisdom that central urban areas are the ideal locality for creative industries. Accordingly, this argument needs to be qualified: some types of creative work are more suitable to rural and undeveloped areas. The visual art “industry” is one of these. Inner and Outer Worlds Urban historians contend that innovation is more likely to happen in inner urban areas because of intensive interactions between people (Jacobs). City life has been associated with the development of creative industries and economic benefits brought about by the interaction of creative classes. In short, the argument is that cities, or, more specifically, urban areas are primary economic entities (Montgomery) whereas outer suburbs are uncreative and dull (Florida, "Cities"). The conventional wisdom is that talented creative people are attracted to the creative milieu in cities: universities, book shops, cafes, museums, theatres etc. These are both the hard and the soft infrastructure of modern cities. They illustrate diversified built forms, lifestyles and experiences (Lorenzen and Frederiksen; Florida, Rise; Landry; Montgomery; Leadbeater and Oakley). The assumption that inner-city density is the cradle of creative industries has encountered critique. Empirical studies in Australia have shown that creative occupations are found in relatively high densities in urban fringes. The point made in several studies is that suburbia has been neglected by scholars and policy makers and may have potential for future development (Gibson and Brennan-Horley; Commission; Collis, Felton, and Graham). Moreover, some have argued that the practice of constructing inner city enclaves may be leading to homogenized and prescriptive geographies (Collis, Felton, and Graham; Kotkin). As Jane Jacobs has indicated, it is not only density of interactions but diversity that attracts and accommodates economic growth in cities. However, the spatiality of creative industries varies across different sectors. For example, media companies and advertising agencies are more likely to be found in the inner city, whereas most visual artists prefer working in the comparatively quiet and loosely-structured outskirts. Nevertheless, the logic embodied in thinking around the distinctions between “urbanism” and “suburbanism” pays little attention to this issue, although both schools acknowledge the causal relationship between locality and creativity. According to Drake, empirical evidence shows that the function of locality is not only about encouraging interactions between SMEs (small to medium enterprises) within clusters which can generate creativity, but also a catalyst for individual creativity (Drake). Therefore for policy makers in China, the question here is how to plan or prepare a better space to accommodate creative professionals’ needs in different sectors while making the master plan. This question is particularly urgent to the Chinese government, which is undertaking a massive urbanization transition throughout the country. In placing a lens on Beijing, it is important to note the distinctive features of its politics, forms of social structure, and climate. As Zhu has described it, Beijing has spread in a symmetrical structure. The reasons have much to do with ancient history. According to Zhu, the city which was planned in the era of Genghis Khan was constituted by four layers or enclosures, with the emperor at the centre, surrounded by the gentry and other populations distributed outwards according to wealth, status, and occupation. The outer layer accommodated many lower social classes, including itinerant artists, musicians, and merchants. This ”outer city” combined with open rural space. The system of enclosures is carried on in today’s city planning of Beijing. Nowadays Beijing is most commonly described by its ring roads (Mars and Hornsby). However, despite the existing structure, new approaches to urban policy have resulted in a great deal of flux. The emergence of new landscapes such as semi-urbanized villages, rural urban syndicates (chengxiang jiehebu), and villages-within-cities (Mars and Hornsby 290) illustrate this flux. These new types of landscapes, which don’t correspond to the suburban concept that we find in the US or Australia, serve to represent and mediate the urban-rural relationship in China. The outer villages also reflect an old tradition of “recluse” (yin shi), which since the Wei and Jin Dynasties allowed intellectuals to withdraw themselves from the temporal world of the city and live freely in the mountains. The Lost Artistic Utopia: Yuanmingyuan Artist Village Yuanmingyuan, also known as the Ming Dynasty summer palace, is located in Haidian District in the north-west of Beijing. Haidian has transformed from an outer district of Beijing into one of its flourishing urban districts since the mid-1980s. Haidian’s success is largely due to the electronics industry which developed from spin-offs from Peking University, Tsinghua University and the Chinese Academy of Sciences in the 1980s. This led to the rapid emergence of Zhongguancun, sometimes referred to as China’s Silicon Valley. However there is another side of Haidian’s transformation. As the first graduates came out of Chinese Academies of the Arts following the Cultural Revolution (1966–1976), creative lifestyles became available. Some people quit jobs at state-owned institutions and chose to go freelance, which was unimaginable in China under the former regime of Mao Zedong. By 1990, the earliest “artist village” emerged around the Yuanmingyuan accommodating artists from around China. The first site was Fuyuanmen village. Artists living and working there proudly called their village “West Village” in China, comparing it to the Greenwich Village in New York. At that time they were labelled as “vagabonds” (mangliu) since they had no family in Beijing, and no stable job or income. Despite financial difficulties, the Yuanmingyuan artist village was a haven for artists. They were able to enjoy a liberating and vigorous environment by being close to the top universities in Beijing[1]. Access to ideas was limited in China at that time so this proximity was a key ingredient. According to an interview by He Lu, the Yuanmingyuan artist village gave artists a sense of belonging which went far beyond geographic identification as a marginal group unwelcomed by conservative urban society. Many issues arose along with the growth of the artist village. The non-traditional lifestyle and look of these artists were deemed abnormal by many of the general public; the way of their expression and behaviour was too extreme to be accepted by the mainstream in what was ultimately a political district; they were a headache for local police who saw them as troublemakers; moreover, their contact with the western world was a sensitive issue for the government at that time. Suddenly, the village was closed by the government in 1993. Although the Yuanmingyuan artist village existed for only a few years, it is of significance in China’s contemporary art history. It is the birth place of the cynical realism movement as well as the genesis of Fang Lijun, Zhang Xiaogang and Yue Mingjun, now among the most successful Chinese contemporary artists in global art market. The Starting Point of Art Industry: 798 and Songzhuang After the Yuanmingyuan artist village was shut down in 1993, artists moved to two locations in the east of Beijing to escape from the government and embrace the free space they longed for. One was 798, an abandoned electronic switching factory in Beijing’s north-east urban fringe area; the other was Songzhuang in Tongzhou District, a further twenty kilometres east. Both of these sites would be included in the first ten official creative clusters by Beijing municipal government in 2006. But instead of simply being substitutes for the Yuanmingyuan artist village, both have developed their own cultures, functioning and influencing artists’ lives in different ways. Songzhuang is located in Tongzhou which is an outer district in Beijing’s east. Songzhuang was initially a rural location; its livelihood was agriculture and industry. Just before the closing down of the Yuanmingyuan village, several artists including Fang Lijun moved to this remote quiet village. Through word of mouth, more artists followed their steps. There are about four thousand registered artists currently living in Songzhuang now; it is already the biggest visual art community in Beijing. An artistic milieu and a local sense of place have grown with the increasing number of artists. The local district government invests in building impressive exhibition spaces and promoting art in order to bring in more tourists, investors and artists. Compared with Songzhuang, 798 enjoys a favourable location along the airport expressway, between the capital airport and the CBD of Beijing. The unused electronics plant was initially rented as classrooms by the China Central Academy of Fine Arts in the 1990s. Then several artists moved their studios and workshops to the area upon eviction from the Yuanmingyuan village. Until 2002 the site was just a space to rent cheap work space, a factor that has stimulated many art districts globally (Zukin). From that time the resident artists began to plan how to establish a contemporary art district in China. Led by Huang Rui, a leading visual artist, the “798 collective” launched arts events and festivals, notably a “rebuilding 798” project of 2003. More galleries, cafés, bars, and restaurants began to set up, culminating in a management takeover by the Chaoyang District government with the Seven Stars Group[2] prior to the Beijing Olympics. The area now provides massive tax revenue to the local and national government. Nonetheless, both 798 and Songzhuang face problems which reflect the conflict between artists’ attachment to fringe areas and the government’s urbanization approach. 798 can hardly be called an artist production village now due to the local government’s determination to exploit cultural tourism. Over 50 percent of enterprises and people working in 798 now identify 798 as a tourism area rather than an art or “creative” cluster (Liu). Heavy commercialization has greatly disappointed many leading artists. The price for renting space has gone beyond the affordability of artists, and many have chosen to leave. In Songzhuang, the story is similar. In addition to rising prices, a legal dispute between artists and local residents regarding land property rights in 2008 drove some artists out of Songzhuang because they didn’t feel it was stable anymore (Smith). The district’s future as a centre of original art runs up against the aspirations of local officials for more tax revenue and tourist dollars. In the Songzhuang Cultural Creative Industries Cluster Design Plan (cited in Yang), which was developed by J.A.O Design International Architects and Planners Limited and sponsored by the Songzhuang local government in 2007, Songzhuang is designed as an “arts capital incorporated with culture, commerce and tourism.” The down side of this aspiration is that more museums, galleries, shopping centres, hotels, and recreation infrastructure will inevitably be developed in order to capitalise on Songzhuang’s global reputation. Concluding Reflections In reflecting on the recent history of artist villages in Beijing, we might conclude that rural locations are not only a cheap place for artists to live but also a space to showcase their works. More importantly, the relation of artists and outlying district has evolved into a symbiotic relationship. They interact and grow together. The existence of artists transforms the locale and the locale in turn reinforces the identity of artists. In Yuanmingyuan the artists appreciated the old “recluse” tradition and therefore sought spiritual liberation after decades of suppression. The outlying location symbolized freedom to them and provided distance from the world of noisy interaction. But isolation of artists from the local community and the associated constant conflict with local villagers deepened estrangement; these events brought about the end of the dream. In contrast, at 798 and Songzhuang, artists not only regarded the place as their worksite but also engaged with the local community. They communicated with local people and co-developed projects to transform the local landscape. Local communities changed; they started to learn about the artistic world while gaining economic benefits in many ways, such as house renting, running small grocery stores, providing art supplies and even modelling. Their participation into the “art worlds” (Becker) contributed to a changing cultural environment, in turn strengthening the brand of these artist villages. In many regards there were positive externalities for both artists and the district, although as I mentioned in relation to Songzhuang, tensions about land use have never completely been resolved. Today, the fine arts in China have gone far beyond the traditional modes of classics, aesthetics, liberation or rebellion. Art is also a business which requires the access to the material world in order to produce incomes and make profits. It appears that many contemporary artists are not part of a movement of rebellion (except several artists, such as Ai Weiwei), adopting the pure spirit of art as their life-time mission, as in the Yuanmingyuan artist village. They still long for recognition, but they are also concerned with success and producing a livelihood. The boundary between inner urban and outer urban areas is not as significant to them as it once was for artists from a former period. While many artists enjoy the quiet and space of the fringe and rural areas to work; they also require urban space to exhibit their works and earn money. This factor explains the recent emergence of Caochangdi and other artist villages in the neighbouring area around the 798. These latest artist villages in the urban fringe still have open and peaceful spaces and can be accessed easily due to convenient transportation. Unfortunately, the coalition of business and government leads to rapid commercialization of place which is not aligned with the basic need of artists, which is not only a free or affordable place but also a space for creativity. As mentioned above, 798 is now so commercialized that it is too crowded and expensive for artists due to the government’s overdevelopment; whereas the government’s original intention was to facilitate the development of 798. Furthermore, although artists are a key stakeholder in the government’s agenda for visual art industry, it is always the government’s call when artists’ attachment to rural space comes into conflict with Beijing government’s urbanization plan. Hence the government decides which artist villages should be sacrificed to give way to urban development and which direction the reserved artist villages or art clusters should be developed. The logic of government policy causes an absolute distinction between cities and outlying districts. And the government’s enthusiasm for “urbanization” leads to urbanized artist villages, such as the 798. A vicious circle is formed: the government continuously attempts to have selected artist villages commercialized and transformed into urbanized or quasi-urbanized area and closes other artist villages. One of the outcomes of this policy is that in the government created creative clusters, many artists do not stay, and move away into rural and outlying areas because they prefer to work in non-urban spaces. To resolve this dilemma, greater attention is required to understand artists needs and ways to combine urban convenience and rural tranquillity into their development plans. This may be a bridge too far, however. Reference Becker, Howard Saul. Art Worlds. 25th anniversary, updated and expanded ed. Berkeley, CA: U of California P, 2008. Collis, Christy, Emma Felton, and Phil Graham. "Beyond the Inner City: Real and Imagined Places in Creative Place Policy and Practice." The Information Society: An International Journal 26.2 (2010): 104–12. Commission, Outer London. The Mayor's Outer London Commission: Report. London: Great London Authority, 2010. Drake, Graham. "'This Place Gives Me Space': Place and Creativity in the Creative Industries." Geoforum 34.4 (2003): 511–24. Florida, Richard. "Cities and the Creative Class." The Urban Sociology Reader. Eds. Jan Lin and Christopher Mele. London: Routledge, 2005. 290–301. ———. The Rise of the Creative Class. New York: Basic Books, 2002. Gibson, Chris, and Chris Brennan-Horley. "Goodbye Pram City: Beyond Inner/Outer Zone Binaries in Creative City Research." Urban Policy and Research 24.4 (2006): 455–71. Jacobs, Jane. The Economy of Cities. New York: Random House, 1969. Keane, Michael. "The Capital Complex: Beijing's New Creative Clusters." Creative Economies, Creative Cities: Asian-European Perspectives. Ed. Lily Kong and Justin O'Connor. London: Springer, 2009. 77–95. Kotkin, Joel. "The Protean Future of American Cities." New Geographer 7 Mar. 2011. 27 Mar. 2011 ‹http://blogs.forbes.com/joelkotkin/2011/03/07/the-protean-future-of-american-cities/›. Landry, Charles. The Creative City: A Toolkit for Urban Innovators. London: Earthscan Publications, 2000. Leadbeater, Charles, and Kate Oakley. The Independents: Britain's New Cultural Entrepreneurs. London: Demos, 1999. Liu, Mingliang. "Beijing 798 Art Zone: Field Study and Follow-Up Study in the Context of Market." Chinese National Academy of Arts, 2010. Lorenzen, Mark, and Lars Frederiksen. "Why Do Cultural Industries Cluster? Localization, Urbanization, Products and Projects." Creative Cities, Cultural Clusters and Local Economic Development. Ed. Philip Cooke and Luciana Lazzeretti. Cheltenham, UK: Edward Elgar, 2008. 155-79. Mars, Neville, and Adrian Hornsby. The Chinese Dream: A Society under Construction. Rotterdam: 010 Publishers, 2008. Montgomery, John. The New Wealth of Cities: City Dynamics and the Fifth Wave. Aldershot: Ashgate, 2007. Smith, Karen. "Heart of the Art." Beijing: Portrait of a City. Ed. Alexandra Pearson and Lucy Cavender. Hong Kong: The Middle Kingdom Bookworm, 2008. 106–19. Yang, Wei, ed. Songzhuang Arts 2006. Beijing: Hunan Fine Arts Press, 2007. Zhu, Jianfei. Chinese Spatial Strategies Imperial Beijing, 1420-1911. Routledge Curzon, 2004. Zukin, Sharon. The Cultures of Cities. Cambridge, MA: Blackwell, 1995. [1] Most prestigious Chinese universities are located in the Haidian District of Beijing, such as Peking University, Tsinghua University, etc. [2] Seven Star Group is the landholder of the area where 798 is based.

Abstract In December 2019, a novel coronavirus (SARS-CoV-2) appeared in the city of Wuhan, China. Since little was known about the new virus at the time, the initial reaction in many countries, including most countries in Europe, was to follow their existing pandemic influenza response plans. Countries that adopted this approach presumed that case- and contact-based management would be unable to cope with the scale of the outbreak and widespread community transmission would be inevitable. Yet it became increasingly apparent that COVID-19 was not like pandemic influenza, not least because it was caused by a coronavirus similar to SARS that had emerged in 2003 and whose successful management, maximum suppression leading to elimination, had been very different to that normally adopted with influenza. This was soon confirmed by knowledge of its transmission dynamics and epidemiology, as well as evidence from Wuhan, where the virus has been effectively eliminated even after widespread community transmission had commenced. There was also strong evidence to support the elimination approach from the early success of Taiwan, Hong Kong and South Korea and several countries outside Asia, such as New Zealand and Australia, which adopted a similar approach. As the pandemic continues into its second year, national responses to COVID-19 so far offer useful learning for the months ahead, as well as broader lessons for health system strengthening for the post-pandemic recovery. Countries that have been the most effective in containing the virus and preventing its resurgence offer valuable lessons to those that are still struggling with large numbers of cases and deaths. Mistakes or mis-steps are also important for future learning and decision-making. This workshop draws on the conceptual framework for analysing health system resilience developed by the European Observatory on Health Systems and Policies (Policy Brief 36 ‘Strengthening health systems resilience: key concepts and strategies') and on the methodology and content compiled in the COVID-19 Health System Response Monitor (HSRM), which tracks policy responses to the pandemic in the WHO European Region. The purpose of the workshop is to distil learning from national and international responses into a set of resilience enhancing strategies, thereby offering crucial learning for reacting to similar shocks in the future and enabling the commitment to ‘build back better'. The workshop is organised as five presentations, each covering the key resilience enhancing strategies as well as examples of metrics to assess them: Governing the COVID-19 response Financing the COVID-19 response Mobilizing human resources Delivering public health interventions Delivering health and social services Key messages Analysis of national responses to the pandemic so far enables distilling a set of resilience enhancing strategies that offer crucial learning for responding to similar shocks in the future. Governance plays a crucial role in ensuring that financing, human and physical resources are optimally deployed, in their given national contexts, to ensure effective delivery of services.

Helen Harrison in her opening editorial in issue number 2 of the IASA Journal notes, “...on no account should we be complacent about the Journal or other IASA publications, ideas for change are always welcome and material for inclusion even more so.” She was contemplating the state of the Journal on the heels of its transformation from the Phonographic Bulletin (1971–1993) to the IASA Journal (1993–present). The name had changed, but Harrison took the role of editor with ideas for additional improvements to the structure, content, operation, and aesthetics of the Journal; and she found herself also faced with the task of developing a new reputation for the newly minted IASA Journal. That was 26 years ago, and the IASA Journal has now been the IASA Journal longer than it was the Phonographic Bulletin. The transformation, we can say, was a success. Today, in 2018, as editor, I face a similar challenge: whether to transform the IASA Journal to an e-Journal, and whether to push for an open access model for content in the IASA Journal. These are two slightly independent changes that I am proposing for the Journal, and both have a variety of options associated with them. The IASA Journal as an e-Journal When we think about the IASA Journal as an electronic journal, we can consider it with or without a printed version. At one extreme, we can imagine an online platform that serves as the only access point to IASA Journal publications. Such a platform can provide a variety of discovery and access options for IASA Journal content, including text-based search, author indexes, online reading via PDF or HTML, syndication for subscribers, and API access for data aggregators, among others. We can also imagine these online access options with additional options for printed issues, either “on-demand” or in small batches. At the opposite extreme, we could imagine the same full print scenario we have today with the addition of an online access point with the options I mention above (although, this option, of course, requires the greatest cost to the organization). These are the types of options we are considering as we develop a strategy for moving the IASA Journal to an online home. The IASA Journal as an Open Access Journal A related question, once the Journal has an e-Journal access point, is whether the content of the IASA Journal should remain closed to the World, open only to IASA members and subscribers, for five years after its publication. This has been, and still is, the policy of the IASA Journal. But, should it be? Does such a policy support the central mission of IASA, as stated in its constitution, “to promote, encourage, and support the development of best professional standards and practice in all countries through communication, cooperation, advocacy, promulgation, dissemination, training and/or education, amongst public or private archives or libraries, institutions, businesses, organisations and associations which share these purposes?” Could we, as an organization, do better to disseminate the writings in the Journal to the global audiovisual archives community? Could we, instead of using the content as bait for membership, rather use the content as a shared resource that enriches IASA’s network and entices new members to the organization? Launching an e-Journal does not require IASA to provide Open Access to the content; it merely offers the opportunity, and because of that, I think it valuable to have the conversation. So, these are the types of access questions that we are also considering as we develop a strategy for the IASA Journal online platform. If you, as a IASA member or subscriber, have thoughts on these topics, please feel free to reach out to me at editor@iasa-web.org. I am eager to hear from you. The Issue at Hand This issue, our third peer-reviewed issue, features a wide variety of topics important to the audiovisual archives communities today, including digital preservation, born-digital video, contemporary memories, diversification of the archive(s), repatriation of colonial and radio collections, and building stronger connections between archives and users of archival collections. The issue commences with three profiles highlighting the human labor that underlies all archives and archival collections. In Ghana, Judith Opoku-Boateng interviews J. H. Kwabena Nketia about his work recording the songs and interviews that would become the cross-cultural foundation for the J. H. Kwabena Nketia Archives of the Institute for African Studies at the University of Ghana. In Australia, Melinda Barrie talks with sound scholar Robyn Holmes about her lifelong passion to dissemination and document Australian music. And, in Italy, Ettore Pacetti and Daniela Floris discuss the pioneering fieldwork of the Italian ethnomusicologist, Diego Carpitella, and how his efforts laid the seeds for the current project of the Audiovisual Archives at RAI Teche to bring Italian cultural heritage to a worldwide audience. Paul Conway and Kelly Askew, both of the University of Michigan, provide a glimpse into efforts to organize, describe, and “re-broadcast” content from Voice of America’s radio program Music Time in Africa to new audiences. Conway and Askew contextualize the issues associated with providing access to cultural heritage resources, and conclude with a proposal for a proactive strategy for online dissemination. Approaching the topic of repatriation of cultural heritage from another angle, Diane Thram, from the International Library of African Music in South Africa, articulates the effort that she and her colleagues undertook to hand-deliver (or, digitally return) recorded copies of performances to musicians across the African continent. Beginning with Uganda, and then Kenya, Thram and colleagues located performers and descendents from recordings made by Hugh Tracey and coordinated visits to return and re-study the music and performances that had been recorded more than 50 years ago with musicians in these locales. Together, these two articles offer a thorough glimpse into the theory and practice of post-colonial archival practice. Reformulating a talk that was delivered at this year’s IASA conference in Berlin, Gisa Jähnichen of the Shanghai Conservatory of Music in China, along with colleagues Ahmad Faudzi Musib (Malaysia), Thongbang Homsombat (Laos), Chinthaka Prageeth Meddegooda (Sri Lanka), and Xiao Mei (China), take a close look at the successes and failures they see in the small-scale audiovisual archives where they work in China, Malaysia, Laos, and Sri Lanka. The work of these authors lays a foundation for conversations about how to ensure that audiovisual archives maintain living networks and continue to develop capacity within and outside of the archives themselves. If smaller archives in Asia are to sustain themselves in the digital present, what are the key issues that must be addressed? And, what can archives in other regions of the world learn from this study? The remaining articles in this issue move from questions of the management of archives, to technical questions about the digital infrastructures and digital formats that we are facing in audiovisual archives today. Silvester Stöger, from NOA in Austria, looks at the needs of broadcast archives with regard to production and preservation workflows, describing the values of an archive asset management system that can integrate with other business systems in a broadcast environment. Iain Richardson, from Vcodex, Ltd. in the UK, illustrates the lossy process of data reduction as a compression technique in digital video, offering insight into quantitative and qualitative methods to compare quality in digital video objects. From the Alexander Turnbull Library, National Library of New Zealand, Valerie Love describes the changes that the acquisition of born-digital content, specifically oral history content, has brought to the archive’s standard operating procedures. Wrapping up this issue, Ariane Gervásio, from the Brazilian Association of Audiovisual Archives, challenges readers to re-imagine the concept of personal memories in today’s transmedia world, where traditional concepts of content and media—e.g., a song exists as a single recording in a single place—must be understood as a multifarious entity, perhaps existing initially as a video posted to one web platform, yet then interacted with by users in another web platform, leaving a complex trail of engagement that ultimately constitutes the object that will be collected by an archive. Are we, as audiovisual archivists, ready to conceive of contemporary born-digital content in this way? Do we have a choice? I look forward to hearing your thoughts on the contents of this Issue, as well as on the future of the IASA Journal. Bertram Lyons, CAIASA Editor

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>.

This article investigates the prosthesis of identity through the process of branding. It examines cross-cultural manifestations of this phenomena from sixth millennium BCE Syria to twelfth century Japan and Britain. From the Neolithic Era, humanity has sort to extend their identities using pictorial signs that were characteristically simple. Designed to be distinctive and instantly recognisable, the totemic symbols served to signal the origin of the bearer. Subsequently, the development of branding coincided with periods of increased in mobility both in respect to geography and social strata. This includes fifth millennium Mesopotamia, nineteenth century Britain, and America during the 1920s.There are fewer articles of greater influence on contemporary culture than A Theory of Human Motivation written by Abraham Maslow in 1943. Nearly seventy-five years later, his theories about the societal need for “belongingness” and “esteem” remain a mainstay of advertising campaigns (Maslow). Although the principles are used to sell a broad range of products from shampoo to breakfast cereal they are epitomised by apparel. This is with refence to garments and accessories bearing corporation logos. Whereas other purchased items, imbued with abstract products, are intended for personal consumption the public display of these symbols may be interpreted as a form of signalling. The intention of the wearers is to literally seek the fulfilment of the aforementioned social needs. This article investigates the use of brands as prosthesis.Coats and Crests: Identity Garnered on Garments in the Middle Ages and the Muromachi PeriodA logo, at its most basic, is a pictorial sign. In his essay, The Visual Language, Ernest Gombrich described the principle as reducing images to “distinctive features” (Gombrich 46). They represent a “simplification of code,” the meaning of which we are conditioned to recognise (Gombrich 46). Logos may also be interpreted as a manifestation of totemism. According to anthropologist Claude Levi-Strauss, the principle exists in all civilisations and reflects an effort to evoke the power of nature (71-127). Totemism is also a method of population distribution (Levi-Strauss 166).This principle, in a form garnered on garments, is manifested in Mon Kiri. The practice of cutting out family crests evolved into a form of corporate branding in Japan during the Meiji Period (1868-1912) (Christensen 14). During the Muromachi period (1336-1573) the crests provided an integral means of identification on the battlefield (Christensen 13). The adorning of crests on armour was also exercised in Europe during the twelfth century, when the faces of knights were similarly obscured by helmets (Family Crests of Japan 8). Both Mon Kiri and “Coat[s] of Arms” utilised totemic symbols (Family Crests of Japan 8; Elven 14; Christensen 13). The mon for the imperial family (figs. 1 & 2) during the Muromachi Period featured chrysanthemum and paulownia flowers (Goin’ Japaneque). “Coat[s] of Arms” in Britain featured a menagerie of animals including lions (fig. 3), horses and eagles (Elven).The prothesis of identity through garnering symbols on the battlefield provided “safety” through demonstrating “belongingness”. This constituted a conflation of two separate “needs” in the “hierarchy of prepotency” propositioned by Maslow. Fig. 1. The mon symbolising the Imperial Family during the Muromachi Period featured chrysanthemum and paulownia. "Kamon (Japanese Family Crests): Ancient Key to Samurai Culture." Goin' Japaneque! 15 Nov. 2015. 27 July 2019 <http://goinjapanesque.com/05983/>.Fig. 2. An example of the crest being utilised on a garment can be found in this portrait of samurai Oda Nobunaga. "Japan's 12 Most Famous Samurai." All About Japan. 27 Aug. 2018. 27 July 2019 <https://allabout-japan.com/en/article/5818/>.Fig. 3. A detail from the “Index of Subjects of Crests.” Elven, John Peter. The Book of Family Crests: Comprising Nearly Every Family Bearing, Properly Blazoned and Explained, Accompanied by Upwards of Four Thousand Engravings. Henry Washbourne, 1847.The Pursuit of Prestige: Prosthetic Pedigree from the Late Georgian to the Victorian Eras In 1817, the seal engraver to Prince Regent, Alexander Deuchar, described the function of family crests in British Crests: Containing The Crest and Mottos of The Families of Great Britain and Ireland; Together with Those of The Principal Cities and Heraldic Terms as follows: The first approach to civilization is the distinction of ranks. So necessary is this to the welfare and existence of society, that, without it, anarchy and confusion must prevail… In an early stage, heraldic emblems were characteristic of the bearer… Certain ordinances were made, regulating the mode of bearing arms, and who were entitled to bear them. (i-v)The partitioning of social classes in Britain had deteriorated by the time this compendium was published, with displays of “conspicuous consumption” displacing “heraldic emblems” as a primary method of status signalling (Deuchar 2; Han et al. 18). A consumerism born of newfound affluence, and the desire to signify this wealth through luxury goods, was as integral to the Industrial Revolution as technological development. In Rebels against the Future, published in 1996, Kirkpatrick Sale described the phenomenon:A substantial part of the new population, though still a distinct minority, was made modestly affluent, in some places quite wealthy, by privatization of of the countryside and the industrialization of the cities, and by the sorts of commercial and other services that this called forth. The new money stimulated the consumer demand… that allowed a market economy of a scope not known before. (40)This also reflected improvements in the provision of “health, food [and] education” (Maslow; Snow 25-28). With their “physiological needs” accommodated, this ”substantial part” of the population were able to prioritised their “esteem needs” including the pursuit for prestige (Sale 40; Maslow).In Britain during the Middle Ages laws “specified in minute detail” what each class was permitted to wear (Han et al. 15). A groom, for example, was not able to wear clothing that exceeded two marks in value (Han et al. 15). In a distinct departure during the Industrial Era, it was common for the “middling and lower classes” to “ape” the “fashionable vices of their superiors” (Sale 41). Although mon-like labels that were “simplified so as to be conspicuous and instantly recognisable” emerged in Europe during the nineteenth century their application on garments remained discrete up until the early twentieth century (Christensen 13-14; Moore and Reid 24). During the 1920s, the French companies Hermes and Coco Chanel were amongst the clothing manufacturers to pioneer this principle (Chaney; Icon).During the 1860s, Lincolnshire-born Charles Frederick Worth affixed gold stamped labels to the insides of his garments (Polan et al. 9; Press). Operating from Paris, the innovation was consistent with the introduction of trademark laws in France in 1857 (Lopes et al.). He would become known as the “Father of Haute Couture”, creating dresses for royalty and celebrities including Empress Eugene from Constantinople, French actress Sarah Bernhardt and Australian Opera Singer Nellie Melba (Lopes et al.; Krick). The clothing labels proved and ineffective deterrent to counterfeit, and by the 1890s the House of Worth implemented other measures to authenticate their products (Press). The legitimisation of the origin of a product is, arguably, the primary function of branding. This principle is also applicable to subjects. The prothesis of brands, as totemic symbols, assisted consumers to relocate themselves within a new system of population distribution (Levi-Strauss 166). It was one born of commerce as opposed to heraldry.Selling of Self: Conferring Identity from the Neolithic to Modern ErasIn his 1817 compendium on family crests, Deuchar elaborated on heraldry by writing:Ignoble birth was considered as a stain almost indelible… Illustrious parentage, on the other hand, constituted the very basis of honour: it communicated peculiar rights and privileges, to which the meaner born man might not aspire. (v-vi)The Twinings Logo (fig. 4) has remained unchanged since the design was commissioned by the grandson of the company founder Richard Twining in 1787 (Twining). In addition to reflecting the heritage of the family-owned company, the brand indicated the origin of the tea. This became pertinent during the nineteenth century. Plantations began to operate from Assam to Ceylon (Jones 267-269). Amidst the rampant diversification of tea sources in the Victorian era, concerns about the “unhygienic practices” of Chinese producers were proliferated (Wengrow 11). Subsequently, the brand also offered consumers assurance in quality. Fig. 4. The Twinings Logo reproduced from "History of Twinings." Twinings. 24 July 2019 <https://www.twinings.co.uk/about-twinings/history-of-twinings>.The term ‘brand’, adapted from the Norse “brandr”, was introduced into the English language during the sixteenth century (Starcevic 179). At its most literal, it translates as to “burn down” (Starcevic 179). Using hot elements to singe markings onto animals been recorded as early as 2700 BCE in Egypt (Starcevic 182). However, archaeologists concur that the modern principle of branding predates this practice. The implementation of carved seals or stamps to make indelible impressions of handcrafted objects dates back to Prehistoric Mesopotamia (Starcevic 183; Wengrow 13). Similar traditions developed during the Bronze Age in both China and the Indus Valley (Starcevic 185). In all three civilisations branding facilitated both commerce and aspects of Totemism. In the sixth millennium BCE in “Prehistoric” Mesopotamia, referred to as the Halaf period, stone seals were carved to emulate organic form such as animal teeth (Wengrow 13-14). They were used to safeguard objects by “confer[ring] part of the bearer’s personality” (Wengrow 14). They were concurrently applied to secure the contents of vessels containing “exotic goods” used in transactions (Wengrow 15). Worn as amulets (figs. 5 & 6) the seals, and the symbols they produced, were a physical extension of their owners (Wengrow 14).Fig. 5. Recreation of stamp seal amulets from Neolithic Mesopotamia during the sixth millennium BCE. Wengrow, David. "Prehistories of Commodity Branding." Current Anthropology 49.1 (2008): 14.Fig. 6. “Lot 25Y: Rare Syrian Steatite Amulet – Fertility God 5000 BCE.” The Salesroom. 27 July 2019 <https://www.the-saleroom.com/en-gb/auction-catalogues/artemis-gallery-ancient-art/catalogue-id-srartem10006/lot-a850d229-a303-4bae-b68c-a6130005c48a>. Fig. 7. Recreation of stamp seal designs from Mesopotamia from the late fifth to fourth millennium BCE. Wengrow, David. "Prehistories of Commodity Branding." Current Anthropology 49. 1 (2008): 16.In the following millennia, the seals would increase exponentially in application and aesthetic complexity (fig. 7) to support the development of household cum cottage industries (Wengrow 15). In addition to handcrafts, sealed vessels would transport consumables such as wine, aromatic oils and animal fats (Wengrow 18). The illustrations on the seals included depictions of rituals undertaken by human figures and/or allegories using animals. It can be ascertained that the transition in the Victorian Era from heraldry to commerce, from family to corporation, had precedence. By extension, consumers were able to participate in this process of value attribution using brands as signifiers. The principle remained prevalent during the modern and post-modern eras and can be respectively interpreted using structuralist and post-structuralist theory.Totemism to Simulacrum: The Evolution of Advertising from the Modern to Post-Modern Eras In 2011, Lisa Chaney wrote of the inception of the Coco Chanel logo (fig. 8) in her biography Chanel: An Intimate Life: A crucial element in the signature design of the Chanel No.5 bottle is the small black ‘C’ within a black circle set as the seal at the neck. On the top of the lid are two more ‘C’s, intertwined back to back… from at least 1924, the No5 bottles sported the unmistakable logo… these two ‘C’s referred to Gabrielle, – in other words Coco Chanel herself, and would become the logo for the House of Chanel. Chaney continued by describing Chanel’s fascination of totemic symbols as expressed through her use of tarot cards. She also “surrounded herself with objects ripe with meaning” such as representations of wheat and lions in reference prosperity and to her zodiac symbol ‘Leo’ respectively. Fig. 8. No5 Chanel Perfume, released in 1924, featured a seal-like logo attached to the bottle neck. “No5.” Chanel. 25 July 2019 <https://www.chanel.com/us/fragrance/p/120450/n5-parfum-grand-extrait/>.Fig. 9. This illustration of the bottle by Georges Goursat was published in a women’s magazine circa 1920s. “1921 Chanel No5.” Inside Chanel. 26 July 2019 <http://inside.chanel.com/en/timeline/1921_no5>; “La 4éme Fête de l’Histoire Samedi 16 et dimache 17 juin.” Ville de Perigueux. Musée d’art et d’archéologie du Périgord. 28 Mar. 2018. 26 July 2019 <https://www.perigueux-maap.fr/category/archives/page/5/>. This product was considered the “financial basis” of the Chanel “empire” which emerged during the second and third decades of the twentieth century (Tikkanen). Chanel is credited for revolutionising Haute Couture by introducing chic modern designs that emphasised “simplicity and comfort.” This was as opposed to the corseted highly embellished fashion that characterised the Victorian Era (Tikkanen). The lavish designs released by the House of Worth were, in and of themselves, “conspicuous” displays of “consumption” (Veblen 17). In contrast, the prestige and status associated with the “poor girl” look introduced by Chanel was invested in the story of the designer (Tikkanen). A primary example is her marinière or sailor’s blouse with a Breton stripe that epitomised her ascension from café singer to couturier (Tikkanen; Burstein 8). This signifier might have gone unobserved by less discerning consumers of fashion if it were not for branding. Not unlike the Prehistoric Mesopotamians, this iteration of branding is a process which “confer[s]” the “personality” of the designer into the garment (Wengrow 13 -14). The wearer of the garment is, in turn, is imbued by extension. Advertisers in the post-structuralist era embraced Levi-Strauss’s structuralist anthropological theories (Williamson 50). This is with particular reference to “bricolage” or the “preconditioning” of totemic symbols (Williamson 173; Pool 50). Subsequently, advertising creatives cum “bricoleur” employed his principles to imbue the brands with symbolic power. This symbolic capital was, arguably, transferable to the product and, ultimately, to its consumer (Williamson 173).Post-structuralist and semiotician Jean Baudrillard “exhaustively” critiqued brands and the advertising, or simulacrum, that embellished them between the late 1960s and early 1980s (Wengrow 10-11). In Simulacra and Simulation he wrote,it is the reflection of a profound reality; it masks and denatures a profound reality; it masks the absence of a profound reality; it has no relation to any reality whatsoever: it is its own pure simulacrum. (6)The symbolic power of the Chanel brand resonates in the ‘profound reality’ of her story. It is efficiently ‘denatured’ through becoming simplified, conspicuous and instantly recognisable. It is, as a logo, physically juxtaposed as simulacra onto apparel. This simulacrum, in turn, effects the ‘profound reality’ of the consumer. In 1899, economist Thorstein Veblen wrote in The Theory of the Leisure Class:Conspicuous consumption of valuable goods it the means of reputability to the gentleman of leisure… costly entertainments, such as potlatch or the ball, are peculiarly adapted to serve this end… he consumes vicariously for his host at the same time that he is witness to the consumption… he is also made to witness his host’s facility in etiquette. (47)Therefore, according to Veblen, it was the witnessing of “wasteful” consumption that “confers status” as opposed the primary conspicuous act (Han et al. 18). Despite television being in its experimental infancy advertising was at “the height of its powers” during the 1920s (Clark et al. 18; Hill 30). Post-World War I consumers, in America, experienced an unaccustomed level of prosperity and were unsuspecting of the motives of the newly formed advertising agencies (Clark et al. 18). Subsequently, the ‘witnessing’ of consumption could be constructed across a plethora of media from the newly emerged commercial radio to billboards (Hill viii–25). The resulting ‘status’ was ‘conferred’ onto brand logos. Women’s magazines, with a legacy dating back to 1828, were a primary locus (Hill 10).Belonging in a Post-Structuralist WorldIt is significant to note that, in a post-structuralist world, consumers do not exclusively seek upward mobility in their selection of brands. The establishment of counter-culture icon Levi-Strauss and Co. was concurrent to the emergence of both The House of Worth and Coco Chanel. The Bavarian-born Levi Strauss commenced selling apparel in San Francisco in 1853 (Levi’s). Two decades later, in partnership with Nevada born tailor Jacob Davis, he patented the “riveted-for-strength” workwear using blue denim (Levi’s). Although the ontology of ‘jeans’ is contested, references to “Jene Fustyan” date back the sixteenth century (Snyder 139). It involved the combining cotton, wool and linen to create “vestments” for Geonese sailors (Snyder 138). The Two Horse Logo (fig. 10), depicting them unable to pull apart a pair of jeans to symbolise strength, has been in continuous use by Levi Strauss & Co. company since its design in 1886 (Levi’s). Fig. 10. The Two Horse Logo by Levi Strauss & Co. has been in continuous use since 1886. Staff Unzipped. "Two Horses. One Message." Heritage. Levi Strauss & Co. 1 July 2011. 25 July 2019 <https://www.levistrauss.com/2011/07/01/two-horses-many-versions-one-message/>.The “rugged wear” would become the favoured apparel amongst miners at American Gold Rush (Muthu 6). Subsequently, between the 1930s – 1960s Hollywood films cultivated jeans as a symbol of “defiance” from Stage Coach staring John Wayne in 1939 to Rebel without A Cause staring James Dean in 1955 (Muthu 6; Edgar). Consequently, during the 1960s college students protesting in America (fig. 11) against the draft chose the attire to symbolise their solidarity with the working class (Hedarty). Notwithstanding a 1990s fashion revision of denim into a diversity of garments ranging from jackets to skirts, jeans have remained a wardrobe mainstay for the past half century (Hedarty; Muthu 10). Fig. 11. Although the brand label is not visible, jeans as initially introduced to the American Goldfields in the nineteenth century by Levi Strauss & Co. were cultivated as a symbol of defiance from the 1930s – 1960s. It documents an anti-war protest that occurred at the Pentagon in 1967. Cox, Savannah. "The Anti-Vietnam War Movement." ATI. 14 Dec. 2016. 16 July 2019 <https://allthatsinteresting.com/vietnam-war-protests#7>.In 2003, the journal Science published an article “Does Rejection Hurt? An Fmri Study of Social Exclusion” (Eisenberger et al.). The cross-institutional study demonstrated that the neurological reaction to rejection is indistinguishable to physical pain. Whereas during the 1940s Maslow classified the desire for “belonging” as secondary to “physiological needs,” early twenty-first century psychologists would suggest “[social] acceptance is a mechanism for survival” (Weir 50). In Simulacra and Simulation, Jean Baudrillard wrote: Today abstraction is no longer that of the map, the double, the mirror or the concept. Simulation is no longer that of a territory, a referential being or a substance. It is the generation by models of a real without origin or reality: a hyperreal… (1)In the intervening thirty-eight years since this document was published the artifice of our interactions has increased exponentially. In order to locate ‘belongness’ in this hyperreality, the identities of the seekers require a level of encoding. Brands, as signifiers, provide a vehicle.Whereas in Prehistoric Mesopotamia carved seals, worn as amulets, were used to extend the identity of a person, in post-digital China WeChat QR codes (fig. 12), stored in mobile phones, are used to facilitate transactions from exchanging contact details to commerce. Like other totems, they provide access to information such as locations, preferences, beliefs, marital status and financial circumstances. These individualised brands are the most recent incarnation of a technology that has developed over the past eight thousand years. The intermediary iteration, emblems affixed to garments, has remained prevalent since the twelfth century. Their continued salience is due to their visibility and, subsequent, accessibility as signifiers. Fig. 12. It may be posited that Wechat QR codes are a form individualised branding. Like other totems, they store information pertaining to the owner’s location, beliefs, preferences, marital status and financial circumstances. “Join Wechat groups using QR code on 2019.” Techwebsites. 26 July 2019 <https://techwebsites.net/join-wechat-group-qr-code/>.Fig. 13. Brands function effectively as signifiers is due to the international distribution of multinational corporations. This is the shopfront of Chanel in Dubai, which offers customers apparel bearing consistent insignia as the Parisian outlet at on Rue Cambon. Customers of Chanel can signify to each other with the confidence that their products will be recognised. “Chanel.” The Dubai Mall. 26 July 2019 <https://thedubaimall.com/en/shop/chanel>.Navigating a post-structuralist world of increasing mobility necessitates a rudimental understanding of these symbols. Whereas in the nineteenth century status was conveyed through consumption and witnessing consumption, from the twentieth century onwards the garnering of brands made this transaction immediate (Veblen 47; Han et al. 18). The bricolage of the brands is constructed by bricoleurs working in any number of contemporary creative fields such as advertising, filmmaking or song writing. They provide a system by which individuals can convey and recognise identities at prima facie. They enable the prosthesis of identity.ReferencesBaudrillard, Jean. Simulacra and Simulation. Trans. Sheila Faria Glaser. United States: University of Michigan Press, 1994.Burstein, Jessica. Cold Modernism: Literature, Fashion, Art. United States: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2012.Chaney, Lisa. Chanel: An Intimate Life. United Kingdom: Penguin Books Limited, 2011.Christensen, J.A. Cut-Art: An Introduction to Chung-Hua and Kiri-E. New York: Watson-Guptill Publications, 1989. Clark, Eddie M., Timothy C. Brock, David E. Stewart, David W. Stewart. Attention, Attitude, and Affect in Response to Advertising. United Kingdom: Taylor & Francis Group, 1994.Deuchar, Alexander. British Crests: Containing the Crests and Mottos of the Families of Great Britain and Ireland Together with Those of the Principal Cities – Primary So. London: Kirkwood & Sons, 1817.Ebert, Robert. “Great Movie: Stage Coach.” Robert Ebert.com. 1 Aug. 2011. 10 Mar. 2019 <https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/great-movie-stagecoach-1939>.Elven, John Peter. The Book of Family Crests: Comprising Nearly Every Family Bearing, Properly Blazoned and Explained, Accompanied by Upwards of Four Thousand Engravings. London: Henry Washbourne, 1847.Eisenberger, Naomi I., Matthew D. Lieberman, and Kipling D. Williams. "Does Rejection Hurt? An Fmri Study of Social Exclusion." Science 302.5643 (2003): 290-92.Family Crests of Japan. California: Stone Bridge Press, 2007.Gombrich, Ernst. "The Visual Image: Its Place in Communication." Scientific American 272 (1972): 82-96.Hedarty, Stephanie. "How Jeans Conquered the World." BBC World Service. 28 Feb. 2012. 26 July 2019 <https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-17101768>. Han, Young Jee, Joseph C. Nunes, and Xavier Drèze. "Signaling Status with Luxury Goods: The Role of Brand Prominence." Journal of Marketing 74.4 (2010): 15-30.Hill, Daniel Delis. Advertising to the American Woman, 1900-1999. United States of Ame: Ohio State University Press, 2002."History of Twinings." Twinings. 24 July 2019 <https://www.twinings.co.uk/about-twinings/history-of-twinings>. icon-icon: Telling You More about Icons. 18 Dec. 2016. 26 July 2019 <http://www.icon-icon.com/en/hermes-logo-the-horse-drawn-carriage/>. Jones, Geoffrey. Merchants to Multinationals: British Trading Companies in the 19th and 20th Centuries. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2002.Kamon (Japanese Family Crests): Ancient Key to Samurai Culture." Goin' Japaneque! 15 Nov. 2015. 27 July 2019 <http://goinjapanesque.com/05983/>. Krick, Jessa. "Charles Frederick Worth (1825-1895) and the House of Worth." Heilburnn Timeline of Art History. The Met. Oct. 2004. 23 July 2019 <https://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/wrth/hd_wrth.htm>. Levi’s. "About Levis Strauss & Co." 25 July 2019 <https://www.levis.com.au/about-us.html>. Lévi-Strauss, Claude. Totemism. London: Penguin, 1969.Lopes, Teresa de Silva, and Paul Duguid. Trademarks, Brands, and Competitiveness. Abingdon: Routledge, 2010.Maslow, Abraham. "A Theory of Human Motivation." British Journal of Psychiatry 208.4 (1942): 313-13.Moore, Karl, and Susan Reid. "The Birth of Brand: 4000 Years of Branding History." Business History 4.4 (2008).Muthu, Subramanian Senthikannan. Sustainability in Denim. Cambridge Woodhead Publishing, 2017.Polan, Brenda, and Roger Tredre. The Great Fashion Designers. Oxford: Bloomsbury Publishing, 2009.Pool, Roger C. Introduction. Totemism. New ed. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1969.Press, Claire. Wardrobe Crisis: How We Went from Sunday Best to Fast Fashion. Melbourne: Schwartz Publishing, 2016.Sale, K. Rebels against the Future: The Luddites and Their War on the Industrial Revolution: Lessons for the Computer Age. Massachusetts: Addison-Wesley, 1996.Snow, C.P. The Two Cultures and the Scientific Revolution. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1959. Snyder, Rachel Louise. Fugitive Denim: A Moving Story of People and Pants in the Borderless World of Global Trade. New York: W.W. Norton, 2008.Starcevic, Sladjana. "The Origin and Historical Development of Branding and Advertising in the Old Civilizations of Africa, Asia and Europe." Marketing 46.3 (2015): 179-96.Tikkanen, Amy. "Coco Chanel." Encyclopaedia Britannica. 19 Apr. 2019. 25 July 2019 <https://www.britannica.com/biography/Coco-Chanel>.Veblen, Thorstein. The Theory of the Leisure Class: An Economic Study in the Evolution of Institutions. London: Macmillan, 1975.Weir, Kirsten. "The Pain of Social Rejection." American Psychological Association 43.4 (2012): 50.Williamson, Judith. Decoding Advertisements: Ideology and Meaning in Advertising. Ideas in Progress. London: Boyars, 1978.