Journal articles on the topic 'Prison libraries Victoria History'

To see the other types of publications on this topic, follow the link: Prison libraries Victoria History.

Create a spot-on reference in APA, MLA, Chicago, Harvard, and other styles

Select a source type:

Consult the top 40 journal articles for your research on the topic 'Prison libraries Victoria History.'

Next to every source in the list of references, there is an 'Add to bibliography' button. Press on it, and we will generate automatically the bibliographic reference to the chosen work in the citation style you need: APA, MLA, Harvard, Chicago, Vancouver, etc.

You can also download the full text of the academic publication as pdf and read online its abstract whenever available in the metadata.

Browse journal articles on a wide variety of disciplines and organise your bibliography correctly.

1

Beckett, J. V. "Libraries and the Victoria County History." Library & Information History 25, no. 4 (December 2009): 217–26. http://dx.doi.org/10.1179/175834809x12489648790016.

Full text
APA, Harvard, Vancouver, ISO, and other styles
2

Smorodinskova, Irina A., and Natalya P. Gnedova. "Prison Libraries in the History of the Russian Penitentiary System." CRIMINAL-EXECUTORY SYSTEM: LAW, ECONOMICS, MANAGEMENT 1 (January 18, 2018): 19–22. http://dx.doi.org/10.18572/2072-4438-2018-1-19-22.

Full text
APA, Harvard, Vancouver, ISO, and other styles
3

Chegoni, Ravi Kumar. "Status and Conditions of Prison Libraries in India." Pearl : A Journal of Library and Information Science 15, no. 3 (2021): 185–92. http://dx.doi.org/10.5958/0975-6922.2021.00021.8.

Full text
APA, Harvard, Vancouver, ISO, and other styles
4

Wagner, Robin. "What Munn Missed: The Queensland Schools of Arts." Queensland Review 20, no. 2 (October 30, 2013): 187–202. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/qre.2013.20.

Full text
Abstract:
American Librarian Ralph Munn's historic tour of Australian libraries in 1934 is well documented. Along with Ernest Pitt, Chief Librarian of the State Library of Victoria, he spent nearly ten weeks travelling from Sydney and back again, visiting libraries in all the state capitals and many regional towns throughout the country. Munn's trip was funded by the Carnegie Corporation of New York, which was then, through its Dominions fund, turning attention to philanthropic opportunities in the Antipodes. The resulting report, Australian Libraries: A Survey of Conditions and Suggestions for their Improvement (commonly referred to as the Munn–Pitt Report) is often credited with initiating the public library movement in Australia.
APA, Harvard, Vancouver, ISO, and other styles
5

Wiener, Martin J., and Janet Fyfe. "Books behind Bars: The Role of Books, Reading, and Libraries in British Prison Reform, 1701-1911." History of Education Quarterly 33, no. 3 (1993): 410. http://dx.doi.org/10.2307/368212.

Full text
APA, Harvard, Vancouver, ISO, and other styles
6

Naumenko, Olga N., and Evgeny A. Naumenko. "Book as a Cure of the Condemned: From the History of Penitentiary System of Western Siberia (second half of the 19th - beginning of the 20th century)." Bibliotekovedenie [Library and Information Science (Russia)] 1, no. 2 (April 28, 2016): 171–76. http://dx.doi.org/10.25281/0869-608x-2016-1-2-171-176.

Full text
Abstract:
Historical experience of education by the means of books, known as culture of reading, started being weakened in “the age of Internet”. Novelty of the article is in the described process of impact of the book on criminals in the territory of Western Siberia considered through the cultural, historical and psychological aspects. With the use of previously unknown archival materials there are revealed the cure methods of the condemned by using the book, and the relationship to the prison literature of the political prisoners. The personality of prisoners differed by a set of moral qualities, but almost all of them were ready to the perception of people around and themselves through the literature. Illiteracy was the main obstacle in education of the condemned, but the administration of prisons opened prison schools and organized reading literature aloud. The first prison libraries appeared in the 1860-ies and were replenished generally at the expense of philanthropists. F.M. Dostoyevsky’s novels “Crime and Punishment” and “Notes from the Dead House”, fairy tales and poems by A.S. Pushkin were the most popular books: they filled life with romanticism and were a compensation factor. Political prisoners denied any educational methods, preferring to read revolutionary literature. It is impossible to track extent of impact of book on the process of correction of criminals, but it is possible to claim that libraries started forming the atmosphere of book which is the most important condition of education in prisons, and is a necessary prerequisite for correction of a convicted person.
APA, Harvard, Vancouver, ISO, and other styles
7

Evans, Brian L. "The Panthay Mission of 1872 and its Legacies." Journal of Southeast Asian Studies 16, no. 1 (March 1985): 117–28. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0022463400012790.

Full text
Abstract:
On the last day of May 1872, “three respectably, but not ostentatiously dressed Chinamen” arrived at the Charing Cross Hotel, London. They brought with them three letters and four heavy boxes for presentation to Her Majesty, Queen Victoria. While they waited for a reply to their letters and for an opportunity to present the boxes, they toured London, visiting the Mint, Woolwich Arsenal, Newgate Prison, the Enfield Ordnance Factory, the Powder Mills at Waltham Abbey, the Post Office and the Bank of England. At the end of July they were informed that Her Majesty's Government could not accept the proposals outlined in their letters and that Her Majesty could not receive the boxes. On 21 September 1872, the three Chinese departed, leaving behind the four sealed boxes. Thus appeared to end one of the more bizarre episodes in nineteenth-century Anglo-Chinese relations.
APA, Harvard, Vancouver, ISO, and other styles
8

Stewart, Ashleigh C., Reece D. Cossar, Anna L. Wilkinson, Brendan Quinn, Paul Dietze, Shelley Walker, Tony Butler, et al. "The Prison and Transition Health (PATH) cohort study: Prevalence of health, social, and crime characteristics after release from prison for men reporting a history of injecting drug use in Victoria, Australia." Drug and Alcohol Dependence 227 (October 2021): 108970. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.drugalcdep.2021.108970.

Full text
APA, Harvard, Vancouver, ISO, and other styles
9

Jenstad, Janelle, and Erin E. Kelly. "A Curatorial Model for Teaching Renaissance Book History in Canada." Renaissance and Reformation 37, no. 4 (April 30, 2015): 81–100. http://dx.doi.org/10.33137/rr.v37i4.22641.

Full text
Abstract:
Only by holding early printed books can students learn both the strangeness of the past and its oddly familiar struggle with technological innovation. Even partial collections like the one at the University of Victoria have enough rare books to serve these purposes. But how do we teach book culture and intellectual history when we do not have multiple or even representative books from many authors, countries, and sometimes whole decades? We adopt a curatorial teaching model that invites students to find, select, and chart a narrative through the materials that we do have. This article describes our curatorial projects in the hope that others will undertake similar endeavours. It also explains how the very partiality of our collection has generated wonderful opportunities for students to learn not just book history but also the history of Canadian universities, libraries, collectors, and Renaissance studies. C’est seulement en ayant des livres anciens entre les mains que les étudiants peuvent faire l’expérience de l’altérité du passé et de la familiarité des difficultés liées aux innovations technologiques. Même une collection limitée comme celle de la University of Victoria est suffisante pour atteindre ces objectifs. Mais comment peut-on enseigner l’histoire et la culture du livre et l’histoire intellectuelle lorsque nos ressources ne contiennent pas suffisamment de livres ou des livres représentatifs de plusieurs auteurs, pays, voire de décennies ? Nous avons adopté un modèle d’enseignement de la conservation invitant les étudiants à trouver, sélectionner, et élaborer un récit historique à travers les ressources auxquelles nous avons accès. Cet article décrit nos projets de conservation dans l’espoir de susciter d’autres projets similaires. Nous y expliquons aussi comment une collection même très partielle comme la nôtre a donné le jour à d’extraordinaires possibilités d’apprentissage pour les étudiants, non seulement dans le domaine de l’histoire du livre mais aussi en histoire des universités, des bibliothèques, et des collectionneurs canadiens, dans le domaine des études de la Renaissance.
APA, Harvard, Vancouver, ISO, and other styles
10

Weber, Anke, Willem Hovestreydt, and Lea Rees. "Third Report on the Publication and Conservation of the Tomb of Ramesses III in the Valley of the Kings (KV 11)." Journal of Egyptian Archaeology 107, no. 1-2 (June 2021): 79–104. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/03075133211060539.

Full text
Abstract:
Since antiquity, the tomb of Ramesses III (KV 11) has been among the most frequently visited royal tombs in the Valley of the Kings. It was also one of the first to be described and documented in detail by European travellers in the eighteenth to nineteenth centuries. As large parts of the wall decoration of the tomb, especially in its rear, are now destroyed, the drawings, notes and squeezes of those early researchers who saw the site in its former splendour offer an invaluable resource for the reconstruction of the tomb’s unique decoration programme. The collection, revision, and publication of all relevant archive material concerning KV 11 is an important goal of The Ramesses III (KV 11) Publication and Conservation Project. The following article reports on first and preliminary results from the authors’ research in the archives of the British Library and the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, as well as the Bodleian Libraries and the Griffith Institute in Oxford, carried out in September 2019 and made possible through the Centenary Award 2019 of the Egypt Exploration Society.
APA, Harvard, Vancouver, ISO, and other styles
11

Martin, Patrick, and John Finnis. "Tyrwhitt of Kettleby, Part I: Goddard Tyrwhitt, Martyr, 1580." Recusant History 26, no. 2 (October 2002): 301–13. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0034193200030892.

Full text
Abstract:
Nor must we think them only to achieve this triumph, who by apparent violence, by wounds or effusion of blood conclude their life: but all they, though never so unknown, whose days by imprisonment, banishment or any other oppression are abridged in defence of the Catholic FaithAmong the most prominent Lincolnshire families in Tudor and Jacobean times were the Tyrwhitts of Kettleby and Twigmore. Other Lincolnshire branches of the family were seated at Scotter, Cammeringham and Stainfield. The Victoria County History of Lincolnshire says, ‘To follow various members of the Tyrwhitt family, whose names re-appear from first to last in connexion with Romanist sympathy, is to trace the history of recusancy in the county.’ But some important parts of the history of the Kettleby Tyrwhitts have been confused or overlooked by historians, and the record should be corrected. Here we shall focus on one of the sons of Sir Robert Tyrwhitt of Kettleby, a son who died in prison in 1580. In a further article we will identify a grandson of Sir Robert who gave John Gerard SJ much financial support from about 1598 until Gerard left England in 1606.
APA, Harvard, Vancouver, ISO, and other styles
12

Cossar, Reece David, Ashleigh Cara Stewart, Anna Lee Wilkinson, Paul Dietze, James R. P. Ogloff, Campbell Aitken, Tony Butler, et al. "Emergency department presentations in the first weeks following release from prison among men with a history of injecting drug use in Victoria, Australia: A prospective cohort study." International Journal of Drug Policy 101 (March 2022): 103532. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.drugpo.2021.103532.

Full text
APA, Harvard, Vancouver, ISO, and other styles
13

Stolyarov, Yury. "Nature of bibliophiles. Reflections inspired by the book of Alexander Yu. Samarin and Leonid I. Fursenko “Bibliophiles-bibliographers of the late XIX – early XX century”." Scientific and Technical Libraries, no. 9 (August 31, 2019): 102–9. http://dx.doi.org/10.33186/1027-3689-2019-9-102-109.

Full text
Abstract:
In the analyzed book, the cause of the emergence and support of the phenomenon of bibliophilia is installs. The idea is that the effect of book selection belongs to the sphere of irrational, but thanks to its characteristic property libraries are enriched with the most valuable cultural heritage of different times. The main content of the publication is to assess the information about the contribution to the book culture of famous bibliophiles XIX-early XX centurynot only indicated in the subtitle of the book. Pavel K. Simoni carefully examined the Izbornik Svyatoslav (1076), a Word about Igor's regiment, monuments of old Russian folklore. In the history of book culture returned significant strokes from the biography of Dmitry V. Ulyaninsky, which allowed to recreate an objective description of his life. A lot of information about the life and work of Nikolai N. Orlov during prison and exile, as well as in the post-rehabilitation period. The value of this information is increased by the fact that Nikolai N. Orlov is known not only as a bibliophile, the author of dozens of publications in the professional press, but also as the Director of the Moscow higher technical school. Nikolai E. Bauman (now MSTU im. Nikolai E. Bauman). In General, the publication is evaluated as a good and in form and content.
APA, Harvard, Vancouver, ISO, and other styles
14

van der Wateren, Jan. "National Library Provision for Art in the United Kingdom: The Role of the National Art Library." Alexandria: The Journal of National and International Library and Information Issues 6, no. 3 (December 1994): 173–92. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/095574909400600303.

Full text
Abstract:
From its beginnings in 1836 as the library of the Government School of Design, the National Art Library (NAL) in the UK was intended to have an impact on design in the country. After the Great Exhibition of 1851 it former part of what was to become known as the Victoria and Albert Museum (V & A). By the 1850s it had already adopted the title of National Art Library, although it was called the V & A Museum Library between 1908 and 1985. By 1853 collections aimed to cover the arts and trades comprehensively, and by 1869 the NAL aimed also at comprehensive access to individual objects created in the course of history. By 1852, the library was open to all, although a charge was made at first. Various forms of subject indexing have been used; from 1877 to 1895 subject lists were prepared for internal use and sold to the public, and from 1869 to 1889 a remarkable Universal catalogue of books on art was produced. The present mission statement of the NAL focuses on collecting, documenting and making available information on the history and practice of art, craft and design, and the library aims its services at both the national and international community. However, its great 19th century contribution to published subject control of art materials has been almost completely absent in the 20th century. During 1994 the NAL will contribute records to the British Library (BL) Conspectus database, though there is little formal cooperation between the two libraries. As a specialist library it can organize its collections and index them in ways that are impossible for a comprehensive library such as the BL, and it therefore has an important part to play in the national library scene.
APA, Harvard, Vancouver, ISO, and other styles
15

Lapeña, José Florencio. "Open Access: DOAJ and Plan S, Digitization and Disruption." Philippine Journal of Otolaryngology Head and Neck Surgery 34, no. 2 (December 2, 2019): 4–6. http://dx.doi.org/10.32412/pjohns.v34i2.1111.

Full text
Abstract:
“Those with access to these resources — students, librarians, scientists — you have been given a privilege. You get to feed at this banquet of knowledge while the rest of the world is locked out. But you need not — indeed, morally, you cannot — keep this privilege for yourselves. You have a duty to share it with the world.” - Aaron Swartz1 (who killed himself at the age of 26, facing a felony conviction and prison sentence for downloading millions of academic journal articles) The Philippine Journal of Otolaryngology Head and Neck Surgery was accepted into the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) on October 9, 2019. The DOAJ is “a community-curated online directory that indexes and provides access to high quality, open access, peer-reviewed journals”2 and is often cited as a source of quality open access journals in research and scholarly publishing circles that has been considered a sort of “whitelist” as opposed to the now-defunct Beall’s (black) Lists.3 As of this writing, the DOAJ includes 13,912 journals with 10,983 searchable at article level, from 130 countries with a total of 4,410,788 articles.2 Our article metadata is automatically supplied to, and all our articles are searchable on DOAJ. Because it is OpenURL compliant, once an article is on DOAJ, it is automatically harvestable. This is important for increasing the visibility of our journal, as there are more than 900,000 page views and 300,000 unique visitors a month to DOAJ from all over the world.2 Moreover, many aggregators, databases, libraries, publishers and search portals (e.g. Scopus, Serial Solutions and EBSCO) collect DOAJ free metadata and include it in their products. The DOAJ is also Open Archives Initiative (OAI) compliant, and once an article is in DOAJ, it is automatically linkable.4 Being indexed in DOAJ affirms that we are a legitimate open access journal, and enhances our compliance with Plan S.5 The Plan S initiative for Open Access publishing launched in September 2018 requires that from 2021, “all scholarly publications on the results from research funded by public or private grants provided by national, regional, and international research councils and funding bodies, must be published in Open Access Journals, on Open Access Platforms, or made immediately available through Open Access Repositories without embargo.”5 Such open access journals must be listed in DOAJ and identified as Plan S compliant. There are mixed reactions to Plan S. A recent editorial observes that subscription and hybrid journals (including such major highly-reputable journals as the New England Journal of Medicine, JAMA, Science and Nature) will be excluded,6 quoting the COAlition S argument that “there is no valid reason to maintain any kind of subscription-based business model for scientific publishing in the digital world.”5 As Gee and Talley put it, “will the rise of open access journals spell the end of the subscription model?”6 If full open access will be unsustainable for such a leading hybrid medical journal as the Medical Journal of Australia,6 what will happen to the many smaller, low- and middle-income country (southern) journals that cannot sustain a fully open-access model? For instance, challenges facing Philippine journals have been previously described.7 According to Tecson-Mendoza, “these challenges relate to (1) the proliferation of journals and related problems, such as competition for papers and sub-par journals; (2) journal funding and operation; (3) getting listed or accredited in major citation databases; (4) competition for papers; (5) reaching a wider and bigger readership and paper contribution from outside the country; and (6) meeting international standards for academic journal publications.”7 Her 2015 study listed 777 Philippine scholarly journals, of which eight were listed in both the (then) Thomson Reuters (TR) and Scopus master lists, while an additional eight were listed in TR alone and a further twelve were listed in Scopus alone.7 To date, there are 11,207 confirmed Philippine periodicals listed on the International Standard Serial Number (ISSN) Portal,8 but these include non-scientific and non-scholarly publications like magazines, newsletters, song hits, and annual reports. What does the future have in store for small scientific publications from the global south? I previously shared my insights from the Asia Pacific Association of Medical Journal Editors (APAME) 2019 Convention (http://apame2019.whocc.org.cn) on the World Association of Medical Editors (WAME) Newsletter, a private Listserve for WAME members only.9 These reflections on transformation pressures journals are experiencing were the subject of long and meaningful conversations with the editor of the Philippine Journal of Pathology, Dr. Amado Tandoc III during the APAME 2019 Convention in Xi’an China from September 3-5, 2019. Here are three main points: the real need for and possibility of joining forces- for instance, the Journal of the ASEAN Federation of Endocrinology Societies (JAFES) currently based in the Philippines has fully absorbed previous national endocrinology journals of Malaysia and the Philippines, which have ceased to exist. While this merger has resulted in a much stronger regional journal, it would be worthwhile to consider featuring the logos and linking the archives of the discontinued journals on the JAFES website. Should the Philippine Journal of Otolaryngology Head and Neck Surgery consider exploring a similar model for the ASEAN Otorhinolaryngological – Head and Neck Federation? Or should individual specialty journals in the Philippines merge under a unified Philippine Medical Association Journal or the National Health Science Journal Acta Medica Philippina? Such mergers would dramatically increase the pool of authors, reviewers and editors and provide a sufficient number of higher-quality articles to publish monthly (or even fortnightly) and ensure indexing in MEDLINE (PubMed). the migration from cover-to-cover traditional journals (contents, editorial, sections, etc.) to publishing platforms (e.g. should learned Philippine societies and institutions consider establishing a single platform instead of trying to sustain their individual journals)? Although many scholarly Philippine journals have a long and respectable history, a majority were established after 2000,7 possibly reflecting compliance with requirements of the Commission on Higher Education (CHED) for increased research publications. Many universities, constituent colleges, hospitals, and even academic and clinical departments strove to start their own journals. The resulting journal population explosion could hardly be sustained by the same pool of contributors and reviewers. In our field for example, faculty members of departments of otorhinolaryngology who submitted papers to their departmental journals were unaware that simultaneously submitting these manuscripts to their hospital and/or university journals was a form of misconduct. Moreover, they were not happy when our specialty journal refused to publish their papers as this would constitute duplicate publication. The problem stemmed from their being required to submit papers for publication in department, hospital and/or university journals instead of crediting their submissions to our pre-existing specialty journal. This escalated the tension on all sides, to the detriment of the new journals (some department journals ceased publication after one or two issues) and authors (whose articles in these defunct journals are effectively lost). The older specialty journals are also suffering from the increased number of players with many failing to publish their usual number of issues or to publish them on time. But how many (if any at all) of these journals (especially specialty journals) would agree to yield to a merger with others (necessitating the end of their individual journal)? Would a common platform (rather than a common journal) provide a solution? more radically, the individual journal as we know it today (including the big northern journals) will cease to exist- as individual OA articles (including preprints) and open (including post-publication) review become freely available and accessible to all. However proud editors may be of the journals they design and develop from cover to cover, with all the special sections and touches that make their “babies” unique, readers access and download individual articles rather than entire journals. A similar fate befell the music industry a decade ago. From the heyday of vinyl (33 and 78 rpm long-playing albums and 45 rpm singles) and 8-tracks, to cassettes, then compact disks (CD’s) and videos, the US recorded music industry was down 63% in 2009 from its peak in the late 70’s, and down 45% from where it was in 1973.10 In 2011, DeGusta observed that “somewhat unsurprisingly, the recording industry makes almost all their money from full-length albums” but “equally unsurprising, no one is buying full albums anymore,” concluding that “digital really does appear to have brought about the era of the single.10 As McDowell opines, “In the end, the digital transforms not only the ability to disrupt standard publishing practices but instead it has already disrupted and continues to break these practices open for consideration and transformation.”11 Where to then, scientific journals? Without endorsing either, will Sci-Hub (https://sci-hub.se) be to scholarly publishing what Spotify (https://www.spotify.com) is to the music industry? A sobering thought that behooves action.
APA, Harvard, Vancouver, ISO, and other styles
16

Walker, Shelley, Michael Curtis, Emma Woods, Lyn Pierce, Amy Kirwan, Ashleigh C. Stewart, Reece Cossar, et al. "Reflections on the in-prison recruitment and participation of men with a history of injecting drug use, in a longitudinal cohort study in Australia." Journal of Criminology, September 26, 2022, 263380762211270. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/26338076221127047.

Full text
Abstract:
Studies aimed at improving the health and well-being needs of people in prison are increasing in number. The ethical and logistical challenges of conducting this research, however, pose challenges for researchers which can limit its scope. Emerging literature provides insights into these challenges, but little is focused on the Australian perspective, and most are based on the experiences of recruiting and collecting data for ethnographic and qualitative research. Literature describing the challenges of conducting quantitative prospective studies in prisons is limited. Furthermore, despite the fact that people who inject drugs are overrepresented amongst prison populations, and experience higher levels of socioeconomic disadvantage and poorer health than the general prison population, we are unaware of literature describing the particular sensitivities associated with their recruitment and participation in research in prisons. We intend to address these gaps by drawing on our experience and reflecting on learnings that emerged from longitudinal research we conducted with 400 incarcerated males with recent histories of injecting drug use, in Victoria, Australia. Our aim is to provide guidance and lessons for future research.
APA, Harvard, Vancouver, ISO, and other styles
17

Stewart, Ashleigh Cara, Reece Cossar, Shelley Walker, Anna Lee Wilkinson, Brendan Quinn, Paul Dietze, Rebecca Winter, et al. "Strategies to maximise study retention and limit attrition bias in a prospective cohort study of men reporting a history of injecting drug use released from prison: the prison and transition health study." BMC Medical Research Methodology 21, no. 1 (September 12, 2021). http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12874-021-01380-0.

Full text
Abstract:
Abstract Background There are significant challenges associated with studies of people released from custodial settings, including loss to follow-up in the community. Interpretation of findings with consideration of differences between those followed up and those not followed up is critical in the development of evidence-informed policies and practices. We describe attrition bias in the Prison and Transition Health (PATH) prospective cohort study, and strategies employed to minimise attrition. Methods PATH involves 400 men with a history of injecting drug use recruited from three prisons in Victoria, Australia. Four interviews were conducted: one pre-release (‘baseline’) and three interviews at approximately 3, 12, and 24 months post-release (‘follow-up’). We assessed differences in baseline characteristics between those retained and not retained in the study, reporting mean differences and 95% confidence intervals (95% CIs). Results Most participants (85%) completed at least one follow-up interview and 162 (42%) completed all three follow-up interviews. Retained participants were younger than those lost to follow-up (mean diff − 3.1 years, 95% CI -5.3, − 0.9). There were no other statistically significant differences observed in baseline characteristics. Conclusion The high proportion of participants retained in the PATH cohort study via comprehensive follow-up procedures, coupled with extensive record linkage to a range of administrative datasets, is a considerable strength of the study. Our findings highlight how strategic and comprehensive follow-up procedures, frequent contact with participants and secondary contacts, and established working relationships with the relevant government departments can improve study retention and potentially minimise attrition bias.
APA, Harvard, Vancouver, ISO, and other styles
18

Allen, Rob. "Lost and Now Found: The Search for the Hidden and Forgotten." M/C Journal 20, no. 5 (October 13, 2017). http://dx.doi.org/10.5204/mcj.1290.

Full text
Abstract:
The Digital TurnMuch of the 19th century disappeared from public view during the 20th century. Historians recovered what they could from archives and libraries, with the easy pickings-the famous and the fortunate-coming first. Latterly, social and political historians of different hues determinedly sought out the more hidden, forgotten, and marginalised. However, there were always limitations to resources-time, money, location, as well as purpose, opportunity, and permission. 'History' was principally a professionalised and privileged activity dominated by academics who had preferential access to, and significant control over, the resources, technologies and skills required, as well as the social, economic and cultural framework within which history was recovered, interpreted, approved and disseminated.Digitisation and the broader development of new communication technologies has, however, transformed historical research processes and practice dramatically, removing many constraints, opening up many opportunities, and allowing many others than the professional historian to trace and track what would have remained hidden, forgotten, or difficult to find, as well as verify (or otherwise), what has already been claimed and concluded. In the 21st century, the SEARCH button has become a dominant tool of research. This, along with other technological and media developments, has altered the practice of historians-professional or 'public'-who can now range deep and wide in the collection, portrayal and dissemination of historical information, in and out of the confines of the traditional institutional walls of retained information, academia, location, and national boundaries.This incorporation of digital technologies into academic historical practice generally, has raised, as Cohen and Rosenzweig, in their book Digital History, identified a decade ago, not just promises, but perils. For the historian, there has been the move, through digitisation, from the relative scarcity and inaccessibility of historical material to its (over) abundance, but also the emerging acceptance that, out of both necessity and preference, a hybridity of sources will be the foreseeable way forward. There has also been a significant shift, as De Groot notes in his book Consuming History, in the often conflicted relationship between popular/public history and academic history, and the professional and the 'amateur' historian. This has brought a potentially beneficial democratization of historical practice but also an associated set of concerns around the loss of control of both practice and product of the professional historian. Additionally, the development of digital tools for the collection and dissemination of 'history' has raised fears around the commercialised development of the subject's brand, products and commodities. This article considers the significance and implications of some of these changes through one protracted act of recovery and reclamation in which the digital made the difference: the life of a notorious 19th century professional agitator on both sides of the Atlantic, John De Morgan. A man thought lost, but now found."Who Is John De Morgan?" The search began in 1981, linked to the study of contemporary "race riots" in South East London. The initial purpose was to determine whether there was a history of rioting in the area. In the Local History Library, a calm and dusty backwater, an early find was a fading, but evocative and puzzling, photograph of "The Plumstead Common Riots" of 1876. It showed a group of men and women, posing for the photographer on a hillside-the technology required stillness, even in the middle of a riot-spades in hand, filling in a Mr. Jacob's sandpits, illegally dug from what was supposed to be common land. The leader of this, and other similar riots around England, was John De Morgan. A local journalist who covered the riots commented: "Of Mr. De Morgan little is known before or since the period in which he flashed meteorlike through our section of the atmosphere, but he was indisputably a remarkable man" (Vincent 588). Thus began a trek, much interrupted, sometimes unmapped and haphazard, to discover more about this 'remarkable man'. "Who is John De Morgan" was a question frequently asked by his many contemporary antagonists, and by subsequent historians, and one to which De Morgan deliberately gave few answers. The obvious place to start the search was the British Museum Reading Room, resplendent in its Victorian grandeur, the huge card catalogue still in the 1980s the dominating technology. Together with the Library's newspaper branch at Colindale, this was likely to be the repository of all that might then easily be known about De Morgan.From 1869, at the age of 21, it appeared that De Morgan had embarked on a life of radical politics that took him through the UK, made him notorious, lead to accusations of treasonable activities, sent him to jail twice, before he departed unexpectedly to the USA in 1880. During that period, he was involved with virtually every imaginable radical cause, at various times a temperance advocate, a spiritualist, a First Internationalist, a Republican, a Tichbornite, a Commoner, an anti-vaccinator, an advanced Liberal, a parliamentary candidate, a Home Ruler. As a radical, he, like many radicals of the period, "zigzagged nomadically through the mayhem of nineteenth century politics fighting various foes in the press, the clubs, the halls, the pulpit and on the street" (Kazin 202). He promoted himself as the "People's Advocate, Champion and Friend" (Allen). Never a joiner or follower, he established a variety of organizations, became a professional agitator and orator, and supported himself and his politics through lecturing and journalism. Able to attract huge crowds to "monster meetings", he achieved fame, or more correctly notoriety. And then, in 1880, broke and in despair, he disappeared from public view by emigrating to the USA.LostThe view of De Morgan as a "flashing meteor" was held by many in the 1870s. Historians of the 20th century took a similar position and, while considering him intriguing and culturally interesting, normally dispatched him to the footnotes. By the latter part of the 20th century, he was described as "one of the most notorious radicals of the 1870s yet remains a shadowy figure" and was generally dismissed as "a swashbuckling demagogue," a "democratic messiah," and" if not a bandit … at least an adventurer" (Allen 684). His politics were deemed to be reactionary, peripheral, and, worst of all, populist. He was certainly not of sufficient interest to pursue across the Atlantic. In this dismissal, he fell foul of the highly politicised professional culture of mid-to-late 20th-century academic historians. In particular, the lack of any significant direct linkage to the story of the rise of a working class, and specifically the British Labour party, left individuals like De Morgan in the margins and footnotes. However, in terms of historical practice, it was also the case that his mysterious entry into public life, his rapid rise to brief notability and notoriety, and his sudden disappearance, made the investigation of his career too technically difficult to be worthwhile.The footprints of the forgotten may occasionally turn up in the archived papers of the important, or in distant public archives and records, but the primary sources are the newspapers of the time. De Morgan was a regular, almost daily, visitor to the pages of the multitude of newspapers, local and national, that were published in Victorian Britain and Gilded Age USA. He also published his own, usually short-lived and sometimes eponymous, newspapers: De Morgan's Monthly and De Morgan's Weekly as well as the splendidly titled People's Advocate and National Vindicator of Right versus Wrong and the deceptively titled, highly radical, House and Home. He was highly mobile: he noted, without too much hyperbole, that in the 404 days between his English prison sentences in the mid-1870s, he had 465 meetings, travelled 32,000 miles, and addressed 500,000 people. Thus the newspapers of the time are littered with often detailed and vibrant accounts of his speeches, demonstrations, and riots.Nonetheless, the 20th-century technologies of access and retrieval continued to limit discovery. The white gloves, cradles, pencils and paper of the library or archive, sometimes supplemented by the century-old 'new' technology of the microfilm, all enveloped in a culture of hallowed (and pleasurable) silence, restricted the researcher looking to move into the lesser known and certainly the unknown. The fact that most of De Morgan's life was spent, it was thought, outside of England, and outside the purview of the British Library, only exacerbated the problem. At a time when a historian had to travel to the sources and then work directly on them, pencil in hand, it needed more than curiosity to keep searching. Even as many historians in the late part of the century shifted their centre of gravity from the known to the unknown and from the great to the ordinary, in any form of intellectual or resource cost-benefit analysis, De Morgan was a non-starter.UnknownOn the subject of his early life, De Morgan was tantalisingly and deliberately vague. In his speeches and newspapers, he often leaked his personal and emotional struggles as well as his political battles. However, when it came to his biographical story, he veered between the untruthful, the denial, and the obscure. To the twentieth century observer, his life began in 1869 at the age of 21 and ended at the age of 32. His various political campaign "biographies" gave some hints, but what little he did give away was often vague, coy and/or unlikely. His name was actually John Francis Morgan, but he never formally acknowledged it. He claimed, and was very proud, to be Irish and to have been educated in London and at Cambridge University (possible but untrue), and also to have been "for the first twenty years of his life directly or indirectly a railway servant," and to have been a "boy orator" from the age of ten (unlikely but true). He promised that "Some day-nay any day-that the public desire it, I am ready to tell the story of my strange life from earliest recollection to the present time" (St. Clair 4). He never did and the 20th century could unearth little evidence in relation to any of his claims.The blend of the vague, the unlikely and the unverifiable-combined with an inclination to self-glorification and hyperbole-surrounded De Morgan with an aura, for historians as well as contemporaries, of the self-seeking, untrustworthy charlatan with something to hide and little to say. Therefore, as the 20th century moved to closure, the search for John De Morgan did so as well. Though interesting, he gave most value in contextualising the lives of Victorian radicals more generally. He headed back to the footnotes.Now FoundMeanwhile, the technologies underpinning academic practice generally, and history specifically, had changed. The photocopier, personal computer, Internet, and mobile device, had arrived. They formed the basis for both resistance and revolution in academic practices. For a while, the analytical skills of the academic community were concentrated on the perils as much as the promises of a "digital history" (Cohen and Rosenzweig Digital).But as the Millennium turned, and the academic community itself spawned, inter alia, Google, the practical advantages of digitisation for history forced themselves on people. Google enabled the confident searching from a neutral place for things known and unknown; information moved to the user more easily in both time and space. The culture and technologies of gathering, retrieval, analysis, presentation and preservation altered dramatically and, as a result, the traditional powers of gatekeepers, institutions and professional historians was redistributed (De Groot). Access and abundance, arguably over-abundance, became the platform for the management of historical information. For the search for De Morgan, the door reopened. The increased global electronic access to extensive databases, catalogues, archives, and public records, as well as people who knew, or wanted to know, something, opened up opportunities that have been rapidly utilised and expanded over the last decade. Both professional and "amateur" historians moved into a space that made the previously difficult to know or unknowable now accessible.Inevitably, the development of digital newspaper archives was particularly crucial to seeking and finding John De Morgan. After some faulty starts in the early 2000s, characterised as a "wild west" and a "gold rush" (Fyfe 566), comprehensive digitised newspaper archives became available. While still not perfect, in terms of coverage and quality, it is a transforming technology. In the UK, the British Newspaper Archive (BNA)-in pursuit of the goal of the digitising of all UK newspapers-now has over 20 million pages. Each month presents some more of De Morgan. Similarly, in the US, Fulton History, a free newspaper archive run by retired computer engineer Tom Tryniski, now has nearly 40 million pages of New York newspapers. The almost daily footprints of De Morgan's radical life can now be seen, and the lives of the social networks within which he worked on both sides of the Atlantic, come easily into view even from a desk in New Zealand.The Internet also allows connections between researchers, both academic and 'public', bringing into reach resources not otherwise knowable: a Scottish genealogist with a mass of data on De Morgan's family; a Californian with the historian's pot of gold, a collection of over 200 letters received by De Morgan over a 50 year period; a Leeds Public Library blogger uncovering spectacular, but rarely seen, Victorian electoral cartoons which explain De Morgan's precipitate departure to the USA. These discoveries would not have happened without the infrastructure of the Internet, web site, blog, and e-mail. Just how different searching is can be seen in the following recent scenario, one of many now occurring. An addition in 2017 to the BNA shows a Master J.F. Morgan, aged 13, giving lectures on temperance in Ledbury in 1861, luckily a census year. A check of the census through Ancestry shows that Master Morgan was born in Lincolnshire in England, and a quick look at the 1851 census shows him living on an isolated blustery hill in Yorkshire in a railway encampment, along with 250 navvies, as his father, James, works on the construction of a tunnel. Suddenly, literally within the hour, the 20-year search for the childhood of John De Morgan, the supposedly Irish-born "gentleman who repudiated his class," has taken a significant turn.At the end of the 20th century, despite many efforts, John De Morgan was therefore a partial character bounded by what he said and didn't say, what others believed, and the intellectual and historiographical priorities, technologies, tools and processes of that century. In effect, he "lived" historically for a less than a quarter of his life. Without digitisation, much would have remained hidden; with it there has been, and will still be, much to find. De Morgan hid himself and the 20th century forgot him. But as the technologies have changed, and with it the structures of historical practice, the question that even De Morgan himself posed – "Who is John De Morgan?" – can now be addressed.SearchingDigitisation brings undoubted benefits, but its impact goes a long way beyond the improved search and detection capabilities, into a range of technological developments of communication and media that impact on practice, practitioners, institutions, and 'history' itself. A dominant issue for the academic community is the control of "history." De Groot, in his book Consuming History, considers how history now works in contemporary popular culture and, in particular, examines the development of the sometimes conflicted relationship between popular/public history and academic history, and the professional and the 'amateur' historian.The traditional legitimacy of professional historians has, many argue, been eroded by shifts in technology and access with the power of traditional cultural gatekeepers being undermined, bypassing the established control of institutions and professional historian. While most academics now embrace the primary tools of so-called "digital history," they remain, De Groot argues, worried that "history" is in danger of becoming part of a discourse of leisure, not a professionalized arena (18). An additional concern is the role of the global capitalist market, which is developing, or even taking over, 'history' as a brand, product and commodity with overt fiscal value. Here the huge impact of newspaper archives and genealogical software (sometimes owned in tandem) is of particular concern.There is also the new challenge of "navigating the chaos of abundance in online resources" (De Groot 68). By 2005, it had become clear that:the digital era seems likely to confront historians-who were more likely in the past to worry about the scarcity of surviving evidence from the past-with a new 'problem' of abundance. A much deeper and denser historical record, especially one in digital form seems like an incredible opportunity and a gift. But its overwhelming size means that we will have to spend a lot of time looking at this particular gift horse in mouth. (Cohen and Rosenzweig, Web).This easily accessible abundance imposes much higher standards of evidence on the historian. The acceptance within the traditional model that much could simply not be done or known with the resources available meant that there was a greater allowance for not knowing. But with a search button and public access, democratizing the process, the consumer as well as the producer can see, and find, for themselves.Taking on some of these challenges, Zaagsma, having reminded us that the history of digital humanities goes back at least 60 years, notes the need to get rid of the "myth that historical practice can be uncoupled from technological, and thus methodological developments, and that going digital is a choice, which, I cannot emphasis strongly enough, it is not" (14). There is no longer a digital history which is separate from history, and with digital technologies that are now ubiquitous and pervasive, historians have accepted or must quickly face a fundamental break with past practices. However, also noting that the great majority of archival material is not digitised and is unlikely to be so, Zaagsma concludes that hybridity will be the "new normal," combining "traditional/analogue and new/digital practices at least in information gathering" (17).ConclusionA decade on from Cohen and Rozenzweig's "Perils and Promises," the digital is a given. Both historical practice and historians have changed, though it is a work in progress. An early pioneer of the use of computers in the humanities, Robert Busa wrote in 1980 that "the principal aim is the enhancement of the quality, depth and extension of research and not merely the lessening of human effort and time" (89). Twenty years later, as Google was launched, Jordanov, taking on those who would dismiss public history as "mere" popularization, entertainment or propaganda, argued for the "need to develop coherent positions on the relationships between academic history, the media, institutions…and popular culture" (149). As the digital turn continues, and the SEARCH button is just one part of that, all historians-professional or "amateur"-will take advantage of opportunities that technologies have opened up. Looking across the whole range of transformations in recent decades, De Groot concludes: "Increasingly users of history are accessing the past through complex and innovative media and this is reconfiguring their sense of themselves, the world they live in and what history itself might be about" (310). ReferencesAllen, Rob. "'The People's Advocate, Champion and Friend': The Transatlantic Career of Citizen John De Morgan (1848-1926)." Historical Research 86.234 (2013): 684-711.Busa, Roberto. "The Annals of Humanities Computing: The Index Thomisticus." Computers and the Humanities 14.2 (1980): 83-90.Cohen, Daniel J., and Roy Rosenzweig. Digital History: A Guide to Gathering, Preserving, and Presenting the Past on the Web. Philadelphia, PA: U Pennsylvania P, 2005.———. "Web of Lies? Historical Knowledge on the Internet." First Monday 10.12 (2005).De Groot, Jerome. Consuming History: Historians and Heritage in Contemporary Popular Culture. 2nd ed. Abingdon: Routledge, 2016.De Morgan, John. Who Is John De Morgan? A Few Words of Explanation, with Portrait. By a Free and Independent Elector of Leicester. London, 1877.Fyfe, Paul. "An Archaeology of Victorian Newspapers." Victorian Periodicals Review 49.4 (2016): 546-77."Interchange: The Promise of Digital History." Journal of American History 95.2 (2008): 452-91.Johnston, Leslie. "Before You Were Born, We Were Digitizing Texts." The Signal 9 Dec. 2012, Library of Congress. <https://blogs.loc.gov/thesignal/292/12/before-you-were-born-we-were-digitizing-texts>.Jordanova, Ludmilla. History in Practice. 2nd ed. London: Arnold, 2000.Kazin, Michael. A Godly Hero: The Life of William Jennings Bryan. New York: Anchor Books, 2006.Saint-Clair, Sylvester. Sketch of the Life and Labours of J. De Morgan, Elocutionist, and Tribune of the People. Leeds: De Morgan & Co., 1880.Vincent, William T. The Records of the Woolwich District, Vol. II. Woolwich: J.P. Jackson, 1890.Zaagsma, Gerban. "On Digital History." BMGN-Low Countries Historical Review 128.4 (2013): 3-29.
APA, Harvard, Vancouver, ISO, and other styles
19

Wilken, Rowan. "Peter Carey's Laptop." Cultural Studies Review 20, no. 1 (March 19, 2014). http://dx.doi.org/10.5130/csr.v20i1.3835.

Full text
Abstract:
In 2001, the State Library of Victoria in Melbourne built on its holdings of Australian literary manuscripts by acquiring all the papers, drafts and other items associated with Peter Carey’s Booker Prize-winning novel, True History of the Kelly Gang. The centrepiece of this acquisition, and the focus of this article, is Carey’s Apple Mac Classic laptop computer. The argument that is developed in this article is that Carey’s laptop is a technological artefact that operates, especially at the time of its acquisition, as an important talisman in three interrelated senses. First, it was viewed by library staff as a key means of gaining access to the ‘true history’ of Carey’s own creative drive or creative unconscious. Second, its public display alongside other textual objects (mostly books) served to reinforce a reconstructed corporate image that endeavoured to reposition the library as a vital contemporary cultural site and key player in Melbourne’s institutional gallery scene. Third, it was a crucial symbolic acquisition insofar as it spoke to certain desires within library management at that time, and which responded to similar moves at major libraries elsewhere around the world, to embrace collection digitisation as the path forward.
APA, Harvard, Vancouver, ISO, and other styles
20

Morton, Kimberley. "The Innocence Device by W. Kowalski." Deakin Review of Children's Literature 4, no. 4 (April 20, 2015). http://dx.doi.org/10.20361/g2mk6c.

Full text
Abstract:
Kowalski, William. The Innocence Device. Victoria, BC: Raven Books, 2014. Print.From award-winning author, William Kowalski, comes another thought-provoking, quick-read, thriller, The Innocence Device. Set in the year 2147, we meet Chago, a twenty-four year old prisoner in the JustiCorps McDowell prison-city. Each day is filled with fear, misery, and extreme poverty for many living within the prison-city walls. The only gift in Chago’s wretched life is his son, Jim-Jim, born to a female prison guard. With overcrowding and prison living conditions growing worse each day, JustiCorps develops a “good and merciful” solution. Prisoners will have the choice to walk through the newly developed Innocence Device, a high-tech machine that the Warden claims can accurately determine a prisoner’s innocence or guilt. If the device determines an inmate to be truly innocent of his crimes, he receives immediate freedom. If guilt is decided, death is instantaneous. Many prisoners choose to risk their lives for the chance at freedom, but too many good inmates are struck with unexpected death. It is soon discovered that the device is rigged, and the prisoners revolt. The highest-ranking prisoner, Krios, takes control of the prison-city, and establishes a rule worse than before. After Jim-Jim’s mother is executed by Krios, Chago is sent outside the prison walls to dispose of her body. Here, he realizes the outside world is not what he was led to believe, but despite this, chooses to return to the prison. Chago soon finds himself in a position of power, and so, must decide whether to embrace this power or save what he values most.Chago, although simple and unassuming, is a character that many readers will cheer on to due to his familiar struggles with bullying, fear, authority, and love for family. Although his resourcefulness and ingenuity aids in his success, it does not seem believable at times, and leaves the reader questioning whether his success was just luck or actually a result of his unexpected cleverness. He is, however, a character that strikes emotion, and readers truly want him to win in the end. Yet, with little time to develop plot, many situations are left unexplained, and readers are left to question why certain things are the way they are, or how situations came to be. A stretch of the imagination may be needed in some places, and with a serious tone, this book may not appeal to those looking for a lighthearted tale.Intended as an adult fiction book for English language learners, this book would work well for those high school students who are reluctant and/or struggling readers. The writing is fairly simple in style, with short sentences and short chapters. This is a positive, however, as it allows for students to read small sections at a time, lessening frustration. Simple language, mixed with the occasional challenging word, also presents opportunities for literacy development.Despite some flaws in plot and a lack of detail, the relevant themes, a unique setting, and timely suspense, this book will engage young adult readers, and certainly be a popular addition to any school library.Recommended: 3 out of 4 StarsReviewer: Kimberley K. MortonKim Morton is a secondary History teacher and Learning Coordinator with the Saskatoon Public School Division. She is currently working toward her Masters of Education, specializing in Teacher-Librarianship, through the University of Alberta. She strives to make research and inquiry meaningful, relevant, and fun for her students, and is looking to gain more experience with current technology, trends, and tools. She enjoys sports, is an avid reader of historical novels, and loves going to the movies.
APA, Harvard, Vancouver, ISO, and other styles
21

Lymn, Jessie. "Migration Histories, National Memory, and Regional Collections." M/C Journal 22, no. 3 (June 19, 2019). http://dx.doi.org/10.5204/mcj.1531.

Full text
Abstract:
IntroductionThis article suggests extensions to the place of ‘national collections’ of Australia’s migration histories, and considers the role of regional libraries and museums in collecting, preserving, and making accessible the history of migration. The article describes a recent collaboration between the Bonegilla Migrant Experience site, the Albury LibraryMuseum and the regionally-based Charles Sturt University (CSU) to develop a virtual, three-dimensional tour of Bonegilla, a former migrant arrival centre. Through this, the role of regional collections as keeping places of migration memories and narratives outside of those institutions charged with preserving the nation’s memory is highlighted and explored.What Makes a Nation’s Memory?In 2018 the Australian Research Council (ARC) awarded a Linkage grant to a collaboration between two universities (RMIT and Deakin), and the National Library of Australia, State Library of South Australia, State Library of Victoria, and State Library of New South Wales titled “Representing Multicultural Australia in National and State Libraries” (LP170100222). This Linkage project aimed to “develop a new methodology for evaluating multicultural collections, and new policies and strategies to develop and provide access to these collections” (RMIT Centre for Urban Research).One planned output of the Linkage project was a conference, to be held in early 2019, titled “Collecting for a Society’s Memory: National and State Libraries in Culturally Diverse Societies.” The conference call for papers suggested themes that included an interrogation of the relationship between libraries and ‘the collecting sector’, but with a focus still on National and State Libraries (Boyd). As an aside, the correlation between libraries and memories seemed slightly incongruous here, as archives and museums in particular would also be key in this collecting (and preserving) society’s memory, and also the libraries that exist outside of the national and state capitals.It felt like the project and conference had a definite ‘national’ focus, with the ‘regional’ mentioned only briefly in a suggested theme.At the same time that I was reading this call for papers and about the Linkage, I was part of a CSU Learning and Teaching project to develop online learning materials for students in our Teacher Education programs (history in particular) based around the Bonegilla Migrant Arrival Centre in Wodonga, Victoria. This project uses three-dimensional film technology to bring students to the Centre site, where they can take an interactive, curriculum-based tour of the site. Alongside the interactive online tour, a series of curricula were developed to work with the Australian History Curriculum. I wondered why community-led collections like these in the regions fall to the side in discussions of a ‘national’ (aka institutional) memory, or as part of a representation of a multicultural Australia, such as in this Linkage.Before I start exploring this question I want to acknowledge the limitations of the ARC Linkage framework in terms of the project mentioned above, and that the work that is being done in the “Representing Multicultural Australia in National and State Libraries” project is of value to professional practice and community; in this article I am using the juxtaposition of the two projects as an impetus to interrogate the role of regional collaboration, and to argue for a notion of national memory as a regional collecting concern.Bonegilla: A Contested SiteFrom 1947 through to 1971 over 300,000 migrants to Australia passed through the Bonegilla Migrant Reception and Training Centre (“Bonegilla”) at a defining time in Australia’s immigration history, as post-World War II migration policies encompassed non-English speaking Europeans displaced by the war (Pennay "Remembering Bonegilla" 43). Bonegilla itself is a small settlement near the Hume Dam, 10 km from the New South Wales town of Albury and the Victorian town of Wodonga. Bonegilla was a former Army Camp repurposed to meet the settlement agendas of multiple Australian governments.New migrants spent weeks and months at Bonegilla, learning English, and securing work. The site was the largest (covering 130 hectares of land) and longest-lasting reception centre in post-war Australia, and has been confirmed bureaucratically as nationally significant, having been added to the National Heritage Register in 2007 (see Pennay “Remembering Bonegilla” for an in-depth discussion of this listing process). Bonegilla has played a part in defining and redefining Australia’s migrant and multicultural history through the years, with Bruce Pennay suggesting thatperhaps Bonegilla has warranted national notice as part of an officially initiated endeavour to develop a more inclusive narrative of nation, for the National Heritage List was almost contemporaneously expanded to include Myall Creek. Perhaps it is exemplary in raising questions about the roles of the nation and the community in reception and training that morph into modern day equivalents. (“Memories and Representations” 46)Given its national significance, both formally and colloquially, Bonegilla has provided rich material for critical thinking around, for example, Australian multicultural identity, migration commemorations and the construction of cultural memory. Alexandra Dellios argues that Bonegilla and its role in Australia’s memory is a contested site, and thatdespite criticisms from historians such as Persian and Ashton regarding Bonegilla’s adherence to a revisionist narrative of multicultural progress, visitor book comments, as well as exchanges and performances at reunions and festivals, demonstrate that visitors take what they will from available frameworks, and fill in the ‘gaps’ according to their own collective memories, needs and expectations. (1075)This recognition of Bonegilla as a significant, albeit “heritage noir” (Pennay, “Memories and Representations” 48), agent of Australia’s heritage and memory makes it a productive site to investigate the question of regional collections and collaborations in constructing a national memory.Recordkeeping: By Government and CommunityThe past decade has seen a growth in the prominence of community archives as places of memory for communities (for example Flinn; Flinn, Stevens, and Shepherd; Zavala et al.). This prominence has come through the recognition of community archives as both valid sites of study as well as repositories of memory. In turn, this body of knowledge has offered new ways to think about collection practices outside of the mainstream, where “communities can make collective decisions about what is of enduring value to them, shape collective memory of their own pasts, and control the means through which stories about their past are constructed” (Caswell, Cifor, and Ramirez 58). Jimmy Zavala, and colleagues, argue that these collections “challenge hierarchical structures of governance found in mainstream archival institutions” (212), and offer different perspectives to those kept on the official record. By recognising both the official record and the collections developed and developing outside of official repositories, there are opportunities to deepen understandings and interpretations of historical moments in time.There are at least three possible formal keeping places of memories for those who passed through, worked at, or lived alongside Bonegilla: the National Archives of Australia, the Albury LibraryMuseum in Albury, New South Wales, and the Bonegilla Migrant Experience site itself outside of Wodonga. There will of course be records in other national, state, local, and community repositories, along with newspaper articles, people’s homes, and oral lore that contribute to the narrative of Bonegilla memories, but the focus for this article are these three key sites as the main sources of primary source material about the Bonegilla experience.Official administrative and organisational records of activity during Bonegilla’s reception period are held at the National Archives of Australia in the national capital, Canberra; these records contribute to the memory of Bonegilla from a nation-state perspective, building an administrative record of the Centre’s history and of a significant period of migration in Australia’s past. Of note, Bonegilla was the only migrant centre that created its own records on site, and these records form part of the series known as NAA: A2567, NAA A2571 1949–56 and A2572 1957–71 (Hutchison 70). Records of local staff employed at the site will also be included in these administrative files. Very few of these records are publicly accessible online, although work is underway to provide enhanced online and analogue access to the popular arrival cards (NAA A2571 1949-56 and A2572 1957–71) onsite at Bonegilla (Pennay, personal communication) as they are in high demand by visitors to the site, who are often looking for traces of themselves or their families in the official record. The National Archives site Destination Australia is an example of an attempt by the holder of these administrative records to collect personal stories of this period in Australia’s history through an online photograph gallery and story register, but by 2019 less than 150 stories have been published to the site, which was launched in 2014 (National Archives of Australia).This national collection is complemented and enhanced by the Bonegilla Migration Collection at the Albury LibraryMuseum in southern New South Wales, which holds non-government records and memories of life at Bonegilla. This collection “contains over 20 sustained interviews; 357 personal history database entries; over 500 short memory pieces and 700 photographs” (Pennay “Memories and Representations” 45). It is a ‘live’ collection, growing through contributions to the Bonegilla Personal History Register by the migrants and others who experienced the Centre, and through an ongoing relationship with the current Bonegilla Migrant Experience site to act as a collection home for their materials.Alongside the collection in the LibraryMuseum, there is the collection of infrastructure at the Bonegilla Migrant Experience (BME) site itself. These buildings and other assets, and indeed the absence of buildings, plus the interpretative material developed by BME staff, give further depth and meaning to the lived experience of post-war migration to Australia. Whilst both of these collections are housed and managed by local government agencies, I suggest in this article that these collections can still be considered community archives, given the regional setting of the collections, and the community created records included in the collections.The choice to locate Bonegilla in a fairly isolated regional setting was a strategy of the governments of the time (Persian), and in turn has had an impact on how the site is accessed; by who, and how often (see Dellios for a discussion of the visitor numbers over the history of the Bonegilla Migrant Experience over its time as a commemorative and tourist site). The closest cities to Bonegilla, Albury and Wodonga, sit on the border of New South Wales and Victoria, separated by the Murray River and located 300 km from Melbourne and 550 km from Sydney. The ‘twin towns’ work collaboratively on many civic activities, and are an example of a 1970s-era regional development project that in the twenty-first century is still growing, despite the regional setting (Stein 345).This regional setting justifies a consideration of virtual, and online access to what some argue is a site of national memory loaded with place-based connections, with Jayne Persian arguing that “the most successful forays into commemoration of Bonegilla appear to be website-based and institution-led” (81). This sentiment is reflected in the motivation to create further online access points to Bonegilla, such as the one discussed in this article.Enhancing Teaching, Learning, and Public Access to CollectionsIn 2018 these concepts of significant heritage sites, community archives, national records, and an understanding of migration history came together in a regionally-based Teaching and Learning project funded through a CSU internal grant scheme. The scheme, designed to support scholarship and enhance learning and teaching at CSU, funded a small pilot project to pilot a virtual visit to a real-life destination: the Bonegilla Migrant Experience site. The project was designed to provide key teaching and learning material for students in CSU Education courses, and those training to teach history in particular, but also enhance virtual access to the site for the wider public.The project was developed as a partnership between CSU, Albury LibraryMuseum, and Bonegilla Migrant Experience, and formalised through a Memorandum of Understanding with shared intellectual property. The virtual visit includes a three-dimensional walkthrough created using Matterport software, intuitive navigation of the walkthrough, and four embedded videos linked with online investigation guides. The site is intended to help online visitors ‘do history’ by locating and evaluating sources related to a heritage site with many layers and voices, and whose narrative and history is contested and told through many lenses (Grover and Pennay).As you walk through the virtual site, you get a sense of the size and scope of the Migrant Arrival Centre. The current Bonegilla Migrant Experience site sits at Block 19, one of 24 blocks that formed part of the Centre in its peak time. The guiding path takes you through the Reception area and then to the ‘Beginning Place’, a purpose built interpretative structure that “introduces why people came to Australia searching for a new beginning” (Bonegilla site guide). Moving through, you pass markers on the walls and other surfaces that link through to further interpretative materials and investigation guides. These guides are designed to introduce K-10 students and their teachers to practices such as exploring online archives and thematic inquiry learning aligned to the Australian History Curriculum. Each guide is accompanied by teacher support material and further classroom activities.The guides prompt and guide visitors through an investigation of online archives, and other repositories, including sourcing files held by the National Archives of Australia, searching for newspaper accounts of controversial events through the National Library of Australia’s digital repository Trove, and access to personal testimonies of migrants and refugees through the Albury LibraryMuseum Bonegilla Migration Collection. Whilst designed to support teachers and students engaging with the Australian History Curriculum, these resources are available to the public. They provide visitors to the virtual site an opportunity to develop their own critical digital literacy skills and further their understanding of the official records along with the community created records such as those held by the Albury LibraryMuseum.The project partnership developed from existing relationships between cultural heritage professionals in the Albury Wodonga region along with new relationships developed for technology support from local companies. The project also reinforced the role of CSU, with its regional footprint, in being able to connect and activate regionally-based projects for community benefit along with teaching and learning outcomes.Regional CollaborationsLiz Bishoff argues for a “collaboration imperative” when it comes to the galleries, libraries, archives, and museums (GLAM) sector’s efficacy, and it is the collaborative nature of this project that I draw on in this article. Previous work has also suggested models of convergence, where multiple institutions in the GLAM sector become a single institution (Warren and Matthews 3). In fact the Albury LibraryMuseum is an example of this model. These converged models have been critiqued from resourcing, professionalisation and economic perspectives (see for example Jones; Hider et al.; Wellington), but in some cases for local government agencies especially, they are an effective way of delivering services to communities (Warren and Matthews 9). In the case of this virtual tour, the collaboration between local government and university agencies was temporal for the length of the project, where the pooling of skills, resources, and networks has enabled the development of the resource.In this project, the regional setting has allowed and taken advantage of an intimacy that I argue may not have been possible in a metropolitan or urban setting. The social intimacies of regional town living mean that jobs are often ‘for a long time (if not for life)’, lives intersect in more than a professional context, and that because there are few pathways or options for alternative work opportunities in the GLAM professions, there is a vested interest in progress and success in project-based work. The relationships that underpinned the Bonegilla virtual tour project reflect many of these social intimacies, which included former students, former colleagues, and family relationships.The project has modelled future strategies for collaboration, including open discussions about intellectual property created, the auspicing of financial arrangements and the shared professional skills and knowledge. There has been a significant enhancement of collaborative partnerships between stakeholders, along with further development of professional and personal networks.National Memories: Regional ConcernsThe focus of this article has been on records created about a significant period in Australia’s migration history, and the meaning that these records hold based on who created them, where they are held, and how they are accessed and interpreted. Using the case study of the development of a virtual tour of a significant site—Bonegilla—I have highlighted the value of regional, non-national collections in providing access to and understanding of national memories, and the importance of collaborative practice to working with these collections. These collections sit physically in the regional communities of Albury and Wodonga, along with at the National Archives of Australia in Canberra, where they are cared for by professional staff across the GLAM sector and accessed both physically and virtually by students, researchers, and those whose lives intersected with Bonegilla.From this, I argue that by understanding national and institutional recordkeeping spaces such as the National Archives of Australia as just one example of a place of ‘national memory’, we can make space for regional and community-based repositories as important and valuable sources of records about the lived experience of migration. Extending this further, I suggest a recognition of the role of the regional setting in enabling strong collaborations to make these records visible and accessible.Further research in this area could include exploring the possibility of giving meaning to the place of record creation, especially community records, and oral histories, and how collaborations are enabling this. In contrast to this question, I also suggest an exploration of the role of the Commonwealth staff who created the records during the period of Bonegilla’s existence, and their social and cultural history, to give more meaning and context to the setting of the currently held records.ReferencesBishoff, Liz. “The Collaboration Imperative.” Library Journal 129.1 (2004): 34–35.Boyd, Jodie. “Call for Papers: Collecting for a Society’s Memory: National and State Libraries in Culturally Diverse Societies.” 2018. 1 Apr. 2019 <https://networks.h-net.org/node/73374/announcements/2079324/collecting-society%E2%80%99s-memory-national-and-state-libraries>.Caswell, Michelle, Marika Cifor, and Mario H. Ramirez. “‘To Suddenly Discover Yourself Existing': Uncovering the Impact of Community Archives.” The American Archivist 79.1 (2016): 56–81.Dellios, Alexandra. “Marginal or Mainstream? Migrant Centres as Grassroots and Official Heritage.” International Journal of Heritage Studies 21.10 (2015): 1068–83.Flinn, Andrew. “Community Histories, Community Archives: Some Opportunities and Challenges.” Journal of the Society of Archivists 28.2 (2007): 151–76.Flinn, Andrew, Mary Stevens, and Elizabeth Shepherd. “Whose Memories, Whose Archives? Independent Community Archives, Autonomy and the Mainstream.” Archival Science 9.1–2 (2009): 71.Grover, Paul, and Bruce Pennay. “Learning & Teaching Grant Progress Report.” Albury Wodonga: Charles Sturt U, 2019.Hider, Philip, Mary Anne Kennan, Mary Carroll, and Jessie Lymn. “Exploring Potential Barriers to Lam Synergies in the Academy: Institutional Locations and Publishing Outlets.” The Expanding LIS Education Universe (2018): 104.Hutchison, Mary. “Accommodating Strangers: Commonwealth Government Records of Bonegilla and Other Migrant Accommodation Centres.” Public History Review 11 (2004): 63–79.Jones, Michael. “Innovation Study: Challenges and Opportunities for Australia’s Galleries, Libraries, Archives and Museums.” Archives & Manuscripts 43.2 (2015): 149–51.National Archives of Australia. “Snakes in the Laundry... and Other Horrors”. Canberra, 29 May 2014. <http://www.naa.gov.au/about-us/media/media-releases/2014/25.aspx>.Pennay, Bruce. “‘But No One Can Say He Was Hungry’: Memories and Representations of Bonegilla Reception and Training Centre.” History Australia 9.1 (2012): 43–63.———. “Remembering Bonegilla: The Construction of a Public Memory Place at Block 19.” Public History Review 16 (2009): 43–63.Persian, Jayne. “Bonegilla: A Failed Narrative.” History Australia 9.1 (2012): 64–83.RMIT Centre for Urban Research. “Representing Multicultural Australia in National and State Libraries”. 2018. 11 Feb. 2019 <http://cur.org.au/project/representing-multicultural-australia-national-state-libraries/>.Stein, Clara. “The Growth and Development of Albury-Wodonga 1972–2006: United and Divided.” Macquarie U, 2012.Warren, Emily, and Graham Matthews. “Public Libraries, Museums and Physical Convergence: Context, Issues, Opportunities: A Literature Review Part 1.” Journal of Librarianship and Information Science (2018): 1–14.Wellington, Shannon. “Building Glamour: Converging Practice between Gallery, Library, Archive and Museum Entities in New Zealand Memory Institutions.” Wellington: Victoria U, 2013.Zavala, Jimmy, Alda Allina Migoni, Michelle Caswell, Noah Geraci, and Marika Cifor. “‘A Process Where We’re All at the Table’: Community Archives Challenging Dominant Modes of Archival Practice.” Archives and Manuscripts 45.3 (2017): 202–15.
APA, Harvard, Vancouver, ISO, and other styles
22

Wallace, Elizabeth. "Seeing Red: The True Story of Blood by T. L. Kyi." Deakin Review of Children's Literature 2, no. 2 (October 9, 2012). http://dx.doi.org/10.20361/g2q306.

Full text
Abstract:
Kyi, Tanya L. Seeing Red: The True Story of Blood. Illus. Steve Rolston. Toronto: Annick Press, 2012. Print. Seeing Red is an informative, humourous, gory, and decidedly irreverent treatment of a subject close to all of our hearts. Canadian author Tanya Lloyd Kyi is best known for the 50 Questions series for young readers, featuring topics as diverse as fire, poison and underwear. The very clever illustrations, by award-winning comic and graphic novel artist Steve Rolston, are presented in shades of black, grey, and (naturally) blood red. The main narrative provides a fascinating overview of the red stuff, human and otherwise, and the central role it has played in history, culture, and science. Alongside the text in each chapter, the reader is treated to a comic book featuring (in a nod to Bram Stoker) a boy named Harker who keeps a notebook of his blood-filled adventures as he finds himself at the centre of the topic under discussion. And throughout, the author provides a wealth of related trivia and factoids using insets on subtle background graphics of red blood cells and band aids. Individual chapters focus on ritual and religion, coming of age, food and drink, family ties and genetics, medicine and forensics, and the human fascination with violence. And while not following a strict chronology, the author clearly demonstrates how human understanding of this vital fluid has developed throughout history. The chapter Rites of Passage should be of particular interest to pre-teens, with its graphic descriptions of how various cultures have developed painful and bloody initiation rituals to mark a boy’s transition to adulthood, and of the wide range of celebrations and taboos surrounding a girl’s first menstrual period. The ever-popular vampire is featured no more prominently than any other topic in the text, with only a couple of sections in the chapter Sips and Suppers that discusses the utility of blood in all manner of drinking and dining. But the introduction of a cute young female vampire to Harker’s story midway through the book will no doubt appease any disappointed Twilight fans. Pop culture references abound, and the author’s black humour skewers major religions and historical figures alike. A discussion of hemophilia features an illustration of Queen Victoria handing a jumbo pack of bandages to her daughter with the words “Don’t forget your dowry dear.” There’s no lack of gory detail in this book, from Aztec priests ripping beating hearts from the chests of their captives, to classifications of blood spatter velocities and how they correspond to different levels of violent injury. This book would be a great addition to any public or school library. Each chapter ends with a few questions from Harker’s notebook that may provide some interesting starting points for classroom discussion: “Is it okay to sacrifice animals for religious reasons? How is that different than killing for meat, or hunting for sport?” The reader is provided with a list of titles for further reading, and a selected bibliography. And with its fairly in-depth indexing, Seeing Red provides a handy reference to a lot of bloody information. Highly recommended: 4 out of 4 stars Reviewer: Elizabeth WallaceElizabeth Wallace is the Collections Manager in the Science and Technology Library of the University of Alberta. She holds an undergraduate degree in Geography and Environmental Studies, and an MLIS, both from McGill University. She has been a Science and Engineering librarian for her entire professional career, working in both public and academic libraries in the U.S. and Canada.
APA, Harvard, Vancouver, ISO, and other styles
23

Hair, Margaret. "Invisible Country." M/C Journal 8, no. 6 (December 1, 2005). http://dx.doi.org/10.5204/mcj.2460.

Full text
Abstract:
The following article is in response to a research project that took the form of a road trip from Perth to Lombadina re-enacting the journey undertaken by the characters in the play Bran Nue Dae by playwright Jimmy Chi and Broome band Kuckles. This project was facilitated by the assistance of a Creative and Research Publication Grant from the Faculty of Communications and Creative Industries, Edith Cowan University, Western Australia. The project was carried out by researchers Kara Jacob and Margaret Hair. One thing is plainly clear. Aboriginal art expresses the possibility of human intimacy with landscapes. This is the key to its power: it makes available a rich tradition of human ethics and relationships with place and other species to a worldwide audience. For the settler Australian audience, caught ambiguously between old and new lands, their appreciation of this art embodies at least a striving for the kind of citizenship that republicans wanted: to belong to this place rather than to another (Marcia Langton in Watson 191). Marcia Langton is talking here about painting. My question is whether this “kind of citizenship” can also be accessed through appreciation of indigenous theatre, and specifically through the play Bran Nue Dae, by playwright Jimmy Chi and Broome band Kuckles, a play closely linked to the Western Australian landscape through its appropriation of the road trip genre. The physical journey taken by the characters metaphorically takes them also through the contact history of black and white Australians in Western Australia. Significantly, the non-indigenous characters experience the redemptive power of “human intimacy with landscapes” through travelling to the traditional country of their road trip companions. The road trip genre typically places its characters on a quest for knowledge. American poet Gary Snyder says that the two sources of human knowledge are symbols and sense-impressions (vii). Bran Nue Dae abounds with symbols, from the priest’s cassock and mitre to Roebourne prison; however, the sense impressions, which are so strong in the performance of the play, are missing from the written text, apart from ironic comments on the weather. In my efforts to understand Bran Nue Dae, I undertook the road trip from Perth to the Kimberley myself in order to discover those missing sense-impressions, as they form part of the “back story” of the play. In the play there is a void between the time the characters leave Perth and reach first Roebourne, where they are locked up, and then Roebuck Plains, not far from Broome, yet in the “real world” they would have travelled more than two thousand kilometres. What would they have seen and experienced on this journey? I took note of Krim Benterrak, Paddy Roe and Stephen Muecke’s Reading the Country, a cross-cultural and cross-textual study on Roebuck Plains, near Broome. Muecke talks about “stories being contingent upon place … Aboriginal storytellers have a similar policy. If one is not prepared to take the trouble to go to the place, then its story can only be given as a short version” (72). In preparing for the trip, I collected tourist brochures and maps. The use of maps, seemingly essential on any road trip as guides to “having a look at” country (Muecke ibid.), was instantly problematic in itself, in that maps represent country as colonised space. In Saltwater People, Nonie Sharp discusses the “distinction between mapping and personal journeying”: Maps and mapping describe space in a way that depersonalises it. Mapping removes the footprints of named creatures – animal, human, ancestral – who belong to this place or that place. A map can be anywhere. ‘Itineraries’, however, are actions and movements within a named and footprinted land (Sharp 199-200). The country journeyed through in Bran Nue Dae, which privileges indigenous experience, could be designated as the potentially dangerous liminal space between the “map” and the “itinerary”. This “space between” resonates with untold stories, with invisibilities. One of the most telling discoveries on the research trip was the thoroughness with which indigenous people have been made to disappear from the “mapped” zones through various colonial policies. It was very evident that indigenous people are still relegated to the fringes of town, as in Onslow and Port Hedland, in housing situations closely resembling the old missions and reserves. Although my travelling companion and I made an effort in every place we visited to pay our respects by at least finding out the language group of the traditional owners, it became clear that a major challenge in travelling through post-colonial space is in avoiding becoming complicit in the disappearance of indigenous people. We wanted our focus to be “on the people whose bodies, territories, beliefs and values have been travelled though” (Tuhiwai Smith 78) but our experience was that finding even written guides into the “footprinted land” is not easy when few tourist pamphlets acknowledge the traditional owners of the country. Even when “local Aboriginal” words are quoted, as in the CALM brochure for Nambung National Park (i.e., the Pinnacles), the actual language or language group is not mentioned. In many interpretive brochures and facilities, traditional owners are represented as absent, as victims or as prisoners. The fate of the “original inhabitants of the Greenough Flats”, the Yabbaroo people, is alluded to in the Greenough River Nature Walk Trail Guide, under the title, “A short history of Greenough River from the Rivermouth to Westbank Road”: The Gregory brothers, exploring for pastoral land in 1848, peacefully met with a large group of Aborigines camped beside a freshwater spring in a dense Melaleuca thicket. They named the spring Bootenal, from the Nyungar word Boolungal, meaning pelican. Gregory’s glowing reports of good grazing prompted pastoralists to move their flocks to Greenough, and by 1852 William Criddle was watering cattle for the Cattle Company at the Bootenal Spring. The Aborigines soon resented this intrusion and in 1854, large numbers with many from surrounding tribes, gathered in the relative safety of the Bootenal thicket. Making forays at night, they killed cattle and sheep and attacked homesteads. The pastoralists retaliated by forming a posse at Glengarry under the command of the Resident Magistrate. On the night of the 4th/5th July they rode to Bootenal and drove the Aborigines from the thicket. No arrests were made and no official report given of casualties. Aboriginal resistance in the area was finished. The fact that the extract actually describes a massacre while purporting to be a “history of Greenough River” subverts the notion that the land can ever really be “depersonalised”. At the very heart of the difference lie different ways of being human: in Aboriginal classical tradition the person dwells within a personified landscape which is alive, named, inscribed by spiritual and human agents. It is a ‘Thou’ not an ‘It’, and I and Thou belong together (Sharp 199-200). Peter Read’s book Belonging: Australians, Place and Aboriginal Ownership contains a section titled “The Past Embedded in the Landscape” in which Read discusses whether the land holds the memory of events enacted upon it, so forming a tangible link between the dispossessed and the possessors. While discussing Judith Wright’s poem Bora Ring, Read states: “The unlaid violence of dispossession lingers at the sites of evil or old magic”, bringing to mind Wright’s notion of Australia as “a haunted country” (14). It is not surprising that the “unlaid violence of dispossession lingers” at the sites of old prisons and lock-ups, since it is built into the very architecture. The visitor pamphlet states that the 1890s design by George Temple Poole of the third Roebourne gaol, further up the great Northern Highway from Greenough and beautifully constructed from stone, “represents a way in which the state ideology of control of a remote and potentially dangerous population could be expressed in buildings”. The current Roebourne prison, still holding a majority of Aboriginal inmates, does away with any pretence of architectural elegance but expresses the same state ideology with its fence topped with razor wire. Without a guide like Bran Nue Dae’s Uncle Tadpole to keep us “off the track”, non-indigenous visitors to these old gaols, now largely museums, may be quickly led by the interpretation into the “mapped zone” – the narrative of imperialist expansion. However, we can follow Paul Carter’s injunction to “deepen grooves” and start with John Pat’s story at the Roebourne police lock-up, or the story of any indigenous inmate of the present Roebuck prison, spiralling back a century to the first Roebuck prison in settler John Withnell’s woolshed (Weightman 4). Then we gain a sense of the contact experience of the local indigenous peoples. John Withnell and his wife Emma are represented as particularly resourceful by the interpretation at the old Roebourne gaol (now Roebourne Visitors Centre and Museum). The museum has a replica of a whalebone armchair that John Withnell built for his wife with vertebrae as the seat and other bones as the back and armrests. The family also invented the canvas waterbag. The interpretation fails to mention that the same John Withnell beat an Aboriginal woman named Talarong so severely for refusing to care for sheep at Withnell’s Hillside Station that “she retreated into the bush and died of her injuries two days later”. No charges were brought against Withnell because, according to the Acting Government Resident, of the “great provocation” by Talarong in the incident (Hunt 99-100). Such omissions and silences in the official record force indigenous people into a parallel “invisible country” and leave us stranded on the highways of the “mapped zone”, bereft of our rights and responsibilities to connect either to the country or to its traditional owners. Roebourne, and its coastal port Cossack, stand on the hauntingly beautiful country of the Ngarluma and seaside Yapurarra peoples. Settlers first arrived in the 1860s and Aboriginal people began to be officially imprisoned soon after, primarily as a result of their resistance to being “blackbirded” and exploited as labour for the pearling and pastoral industries. Prisoners were chained by the neck, day and night, and forced to build roads and tramlines, ostensibly a “civilising” practice. As the history pamphlet for The Old Roebourne Gaol reads: “It was widely believed that the Roebourne Gaol was where the ‘benefit’ of white civilisation could be shown to the ‘savage’ Aboriginal” (Weightman 2). The “back story” I discovered on this research trip was one of disappearance – indigenous people being made to disappear from their countries, from non-indigenous view and from the written record. The symbols I surprisingly most engaged with and which most affected me were the gaols and prisons which the imperialists used as tools of their trade in disappearance. The sense impressions I experienced – extreme beauty, isolation, heat and sandflies – reinforced the complexity of Western Australian contact history. I began to see the central achievement of Bran Nue Dae as being the return of indigenous people to country and to story. This return, so beautifully realised in when the characters finally reach Lombadina and a state of acceptance, is critical to healing the country and to the attainment of an equitable “kind of citizenship” that denotes belonging for all. References Aboriginal Tourism Australia. Welcome to Country: Respecting Indigenous Culture for Travellers in Australia. 2004. Benterrak, Krim, Stephen Muecke, and Paddy Roe. Reading the Country. Perth: Fremantle Arts Centre Press, 1984. Carter, Paul. The Lie of the Land. London: Faber & Faber, 1996. Dalton, Peter. “Broome: A Multiracial Community. A Study of Social and Cultural Relationships in a Town in the West Kimberleys, Western Australia”. Thesis for Master of Arts in Anthropology. Perth: University of Western Australia, 1964. Hunt, Susan Jane. Spinifex and Hessian: Women’s Lives in North-Western Australia 1860–1900. Nedlands, WA: U of Western Australia P, 1986. Read, Peter. Belonging: Australians, Place and Aboriginal Ownership. UK: Cambridge UP, 2000. Reynolds, Henry. North of Capricorn: The Untold History of Australia’s North. Sydney: Allen & Unwin, 2003. Reynolds, Henry. Why Weren’t We Told? Ringwood, Victoria: Penguin Books Australia, 1999. Sharp, Nonie. Saltwater People: The Waves of Memory. Sydney: Allen & Unwin, 2002. Shire of Greenough. Greenough River Nature Walk Trail Guide. 2005. Tuhiwai Smith, Linda. Decolonizing Methodologies. Dunedin, New Zealand: U of Otago P, 1999. Watson, Christine. Piercing the Ground. Perth: Fremantle Arts Centre P, 2003. Weightman, Llyrus. The Old Roebourne Gaol: A History. Pilbara Classies & Printing Service. Wright, Judith. The Cry for the Dead. 1981. 277-80. Citation reference for this article MLA Style Hair, Margaret. "Invisible Country." M/C Journal 8.6 (2005). echo date('d M. Y'); ?> <http://journal.media-culture.org.au/0512/09-hair.php>. APA Style Hair, M. (Dec. 2005) "Invisible Country," M/C Journal, 8(6). Retrieved echo date('d M. Y'); ?> from <http://journal.media-culture.org.au/0512/09-hair.php>.
APA, Harvard, Vancouver, ISO, and other styles
24

Wishart, Alison. "Make It So: Harnessing Technology to Provide Professional Development to Regional Museum Workers." M/C Journal 22, no. 3 (June 19, 2019). http://dx.doi.org/10.5204/mcj.1519.

Full text
Abstract:
IntroductionIn regional Australia and New Zealand, museums and art galleries are increasingly becoming primary sites of cultural engagement. They are one of the key tourist attractions for regional towns and expected to generate much needed tourism revenue. In 2017 in New South Wales alone, there were three million visitors to regional galleries and museums (MGNSW 13). However, apart from those (partially) funded by local councils, they are often run on donations, good will, and the enthusiasm of volunteers. Regional museums and galleries provide some paid, and more unpaid, employment for ageing populations. While two-thirds of Australia’s population lives in capital cities, the remainder who live in regional towns are likely to be in the 60+ age cohort because people are choosing to retire away from the bustling, growing cities (ABS). At last count, there were about 3000 museums and galleries in Australia with about 80% of them located in regional areas (Scott). Over the last 40 years, this figure has tripled from the 1000 regional and provincial museums estimated by Peter Piggott in his 1975 report (24). According to a 2014 survey (Shaw and Davidson), New Zealand has about 470 museums and galleries and about 70% are located outside capital cities. The vast majority, 85%, have less than five, full-time paid staff, and more than half of these were run entirely by ageing volunteers. They are entrusted with managing the vast majority of the history and heritage collections of Australia and New Zealand. These ageing volunteers need a diverse range of skills and experience to care for and interpret collections. How do you find the time and budget for professional development for both paid staff and volunteers? Many professional development events are held in capital cities, which are often a significant distance from the regional museum—this adds substantially to the costs of attending and the time commitment required to get there. In addition, it is not uncommon for people working in regional museums to be responsible for everything—from security, collection management, conservation, research, interpretation and public programs to changing the light bulbs. While there are a large number of resources available online, following a manual is often more difficult than learning from other colleagues or learning in a more formal educational or vocational environment where you can receive timely feedback on your work. Further, a foundational level of prior knowledge and experience is often required to follow written instructions. This article will suggest some strategies for low cost professional development and networking. It involves planning, thinking strategically and forming partnerships with others in the region. It is time to harness the power of modern communications technology and use it as a tool for professional development. Some models of professional development in regional areas that have been implemented in the past will also be reviewed. The focus for this article is on training and professional development for workers in regional museums, heritage sites and keeping places. Regional art galleries have not been included because they tend to have separate regional networks and training opportunities. For example, there are professional development opportunities provided through the Art Galleries Association of Australia and their state branches. Regional galleries are also far more likely to have one or more paid staff members (Winkworth, “Fixing the Slums” 2). Regional Museums, Volunteers, and Social CapitalIt is widely accepted that regional museums and galleries enhance social capital and reduce social isolation (Kelly 32; Burton and Griffin 328). However, while working in a regional museum or gallery can help to build friendship networks, it can also be professionally isolating. How do you benchmark what you do against other places if you are two or more hours drive from those places? How do you learn from other colleagues if all your colleagues are also isolated by the ‘tyranny of distance’ and struggling with the same lack of access to training? In 2017 in New South Wales alone, there were 8,629 active volunteers working in regional museums and galleries giving almost five million hours, which Museums and Galleries NSW calculated was worth over $150 million per annum in unpaid labour (MGNSW 1). Providing training and professional development to this group is an investment in Australia’s social and cultural capital.Unlike other community-run groups, the museums and heritage places which have emerged in regional Australia and New Zealand are not part of a national or state branch network. Volunteers who work for the Red Cross, Scouts or Landcare benefit from being part of a national organisation which provides funding, support workers, a website, governance structure, marketing, political advocacy and training (Winkworth, “Let a Thousand Flowers” 11). In Australia and New Zealand, this role is undertaken by the Australian Museums and Galleries Association AMaGA (formerly Museums Australia) and Museums Aotearoa respectively. However, both of these groups operate at the macro policy level, for example organising annual conferences, publishing a journal and developing Indigenous policy frameworks, rather than the local, practical level. In 1995, due to their advocacy work, Landcare Australia received $500 million over five years from the federal government to fund 5000 Landcare groups, which are run by 120,000 volunteers (Oppenheimer 177). They argued successfully that the sustainable development of land resources started at the local level. What do we need to do to convince government of the need for sustainable development of our local and regional museum and heritage resources?Training for Volunteers Working in Regional Museums: The Current SituationAnother barrier to training for regional museum workers is the assumption that the 70:20:10 model of professional development should apply. That is, 70% of one’s professional development is done ‘on the job’ by completing tasks and problem-solving; 20% is achieved by learning from mentors, coaches and role models and 10% is learnt from attending conferences and symposia and enrolling in formal courses of study. However, this model pre-supposes that there are people in your workplace whom you can learn from and who can show you how to complete a task, and that you are not destroying or damaging a precious, unique object if you happen to make a mistake.Some museum volunteers come with skills in research, marketing, administration, customer service or photography, but very few come with specific museum skills like writing exhibition text, registering an acquisition or conserving artefacts. These skills need to be taught. As Kylie Winkworth has written, museum management now requires a [...] skills set, which is not so readily found in small communities, and which in many ways is less rewarding for the available volunteers, who may have left school at 15. We do not expect volunteer librarians to catalogue books, which are in any case of low intrinsic value, but we still expect volunteers in their 70s and 80s to catalogue irreplaceable heritage collections and meet ever more onerous museum standards. That so many volunteers manage to do this is extraordinary. (“Let a Thousand Flowers” 13)Workers in regional museums are constantly required to step outside their comfort zones and learn new skills with minimal professional support. While these challenging experiences can be very rewarding, they are also potentially damaging for our irreplaceable material cultural heritage.Training for museum professionals has been on the agenda of the International Council of Museums (ICOM) since 1947 (Boylan 62). However, until 1996, their work focused on recommending curricula for new museum professionals and did not include life-long learning and on-going professional development. ICOM’s International Committee for the Training of Personnel (ICTOP) and the ICOM Executive has responded to this in their new curricula—ICOM Curricula Guidelines for Professional Museum Development, but this does not address the difficulties staff or volunteers working in regional areas face in accessing training.In some parts of Australia, there are regional support and professional development programs in place. For example, in Queensland, there is the Museum Development Officer (MDO) network. However, because of the geographic size of the state and the spread of the museums, these five regionally based staff often have 60-80 museums or keeping places in their region needing support and so their time and expertise is spread very thinly. It is also predominantly a fee-for-service arrangement. That is, the museums have to pay for the MDO to come and deliver training. Usually this is done by the MDO working with a local museum to apply for a Regional Arts Development Fund (RADF) grant. In Victoria there is a roving curator program where eligible regional museums can apply to have a professional curator come and work with them for a few days to help the volunteers curate exhibitions. The roving curator can also provide advice on “develop[ing] high quality exhibitions for diverse audiences” via email, telephone and networking events. Tasmania operates a similar scheme but their two roving curators are available for up to 25 days of work each year with eligible museums, provided the local council makes a financial contribution. The New South Wales government supports the museum advisor program through which a museum professional will come to your museum for up to 20 days/year to give advice and hands-on training—provided your local council pays $7000, an amount that is matched by the state government—for this service. In 2010, in response to recommendations in the Dunn Report (2007), the Collections Council of Australia (CCA) established a pilot project with the City of Kalgoorlie-Boulder in Western Australia and $120,000 in funding from the Myer Foundation to trial the provision of a paid Collections Care Coordinator who would provide free training, expertise and support to local museums in the region. Tragically, CCA was de-funded by the Cultural Ministers Council the same year and the roll-out of a hub and spoke regional model was not supported by government due to the lack of an evidence base (Winkworth, “Let a Thousand Flowers” 18). An evaluation of the trial project would have tested a different model of regional training and added to the evidence base.All these state-based models (except the aborted Collections Care hub in Western Australia) require small regional museums to compete with each other for access to a museum professional and to successfully apply for funding, usually from their local council or state government. If they are successful, the training that is delivered is a one-off, as they are unlikely to get a second slice of the regional pie.An alternative to this competitive, fly-in fly-out, one-off model of professional development is to harness the technology and resources of local libraries and other cultural facilities in regional areas. This is what the Sydney Opera House Trust did in March 2019 to deliver their All about Women program of speakers via live streaming to 37 satellite sites throughout Australia and New Zealand.Harnessing Technology and Using Regional Library Infrastructure to Provide Training: ScenarioImagine the following scenario. It is a Monday morning in a regional library in Dubbo, New South Wales. Dubbo is 391 km or five hours drive by car from the nearest capital city (Sydney) and there are 50 regional museums within a 100 km radius. Ten people are gathered in a meeting room at the library watching a live stream of the keynote speakers who are presenting at their national museums conference. They are from five regional museums where they work as volunteers or part-time paid staff. They cannot afford to pay $2000, or more, to attend the conference, but they are happy to self-fund to drive for an hour or two to link up with other colleagues to listen to the presentations. They make notes and tweet in their questions using the conference twitter handle and hashtag. They have not been exposed to international speakers in the industry before and the ideas presented are fresh and stimulating. When the conference breaks for morning tea, they take a break too and get to know each other over a cuppa (provided free of charge by the library). Just as the networking sessions at conferences are vitally important for the delegates, they are even more important to address social isolation amongst this group. When they reconvene, they discuss their questions and agree to email the presenters with the questions that are unresolved. After the conference keynote sessions finish, the main conference (in the capital city) disperses into parallel sessions, which are no longer available via live stream.To make the two-hour drive more worthwhile and continue their professional development, they have arranged to hold a significance assessment workshop as well. Each museum worker has brought along photographs of one item in their collection that they want to do more research on. Some of them have also brought the object, if it is small and robust enough to travel. They have downloaded copies of Significance 2.0 and read it before they arrived. They started to write significance reports but could not fully understand how to apply some of the criteria. They cannot afford to pay for professional workshop facilitators, but they have arranged for the local studies librarian to give them an hour of free training on using the library’s resources (online and onsite) to do research on the local area and local families. They learn more about Trove, Papers Past and other research tools which are available online. This is hands-on and computer-based skills training using their own laptops/tablets or the ones provided by the library. After the training with the librarian, they break into two groups and read each other’s significance reports and make suggestions. The day finishes with a cuppa at 2.30pm giving them time to drive home before the sun sets. They agree to exchange email addresses so they can keep in touch. All the volunteers and staff who attended these sessions in regional areas feel energised after these meetings. They no longer feel so isolated and like they are working in the dark. They feel supported just knowing that there are other people who are struggling with the same issues and constraints as they are. They are sick of talking about the lack of budget, expertise, training and resources and want to do something with what they have.Bert (fictional name) decides that it is worth capitalising on this success. He emails the people who came to the session in Dubbo to ask them if they would like to do it again but focus on some different training needs. He asks them to choose two of the following three professional development options. First, they can choose to watch and discuss a recording of the keynote presentations from day two of the recent national conference. The conference organisers have uploaded digital recordings of the speakers’ presentations and the question time to the AMaGA website. This is an option for local libraries that do not have sufficient bandwidth to live stream video. The local library technician will help them cast the videos to a large screen. Second, they can each bring an object from their museum collection that they think needs conservation work. If the item is too fragile or big to move, they will bring digital photographs of it instead. Bert consulted their state-based museum and found some specialist conservators who have agreed to Skype or Facetime them in Dubbo free of charge, to give them expert advice about how to care for their objects, and most importantly, what not to do. The IT technician at Dubbo Library can set up their meeting room so that they can cast the Skype session onto a large smart screen TV. One week before the event, they will send a list of their objects and photographs of them to the conservator so that she can prepare, and they can make best use of her time. After this session, they will feel more confident about undertaking small cleaning and flattening treatments and know when they should not attempt a treatment themselves and need to call on the experts. Third, they could choose to have a training session with the council’s grants officer on writing grant applications. As he assesses grant applications, he can tell them what local councils look for in a successful grant application. He can also inform them about some of the grants that might be relevant to them. After the formal training, there will be an opportunity for them to exchange information about the grants they have applied for in the past—sometimes finding out what’s available can be difficult—and work in small groups to critique each other’s grant applications.The group chooses options two and three, as they want more practical skills development. They take a break in the middle of the day for lunch, which gives them the opportunity to exchange anecdotes from their volunteer work and listen to and support each other. They feel validated and affirmed. They have gained new skills and don’t feel so isolated. Before they leave, Alice agrees to get in touch with everyone to organise their next regional training day.Harnessing Technology and Using Regional Library Infrastructure to Provide Training: BenefitsThese scenarios need not be futuristic. The training needs are real, as is the desire to learn and the capacity of libraries to support regional groups. While funding for regional museums has stagnated or declined in recent years, libraries have been surging ahead. In August 2018, the New South Wales Government announced an “historic investment” of $60 million into all 370 public libraries that would “transform the way NSW’s public libraries deliver much-needed services, especially in regional areas” (Smith). Libraries are equipped and charged with the responsibility of enabling local community groups to make best use of their resources. Most state and national museum workers are keen to share their expertise with their regional colleagues: funding and distance are often the only barriers. These scenarios allow national conference keynote speakers to reach a much larger audience than the conference attendees. While this strategy might reduce the number of workers from regional areas who pay to attend conferences, the reality is that due to distance, other volunteer commitments, expense and family responsibilities, they probably would not attend anyway. Most regional museums and galleries and their staff might be asset-rich, but they are cash-poor, and the only way their workers get to attend conferences is if they win a bursary or grant. In 2005, Winkworth said: “the future for community museums is to locate them within local government as an integral part of the cultural, educational and economic infrastructure of the community, just like libraries and galleries” (“Fixing the Slums” 7). Fourteen years on, very little progress has been made in this direction. Those museums which have been integrated into the local council infrastructure, such as at Orange and Wagga Wagga in western New South Wales, are doing much better than those that are still stuck in ‘cultural poverty’ and trying to operate independently.However, the co-location and convergence of museums, libraries and archives is only successful if it is well managed. Helena Robinson has examined the impact on museum collection management and interpretation of five local government funded, converged collecting institutions in Australia and New Zealand and found that the process is complex and does not necessarily result in “optimal” cross-disciplinary expertise or best practice outcomes (14158).ConclusionRobinson’s research, however, did not consider community-based collecting institutions using regional libraries as sites for training and networking. By harnessing local library resources and making better use of existing communications technology it is possible to create regional hubs for professional development and collegiate support, which are not reliant on grants. If the current competitive, fly-in fly-out, self-funded model of providing professional development and support to regional museums continues, then the future for our cultural heritage collections and the dedicated volunteers who care for them is bleak. Alternatively, the scenarios I have described give regional museum workers agency to address their own professional development needs. This in no way removes the need for leadership, advocacy and coordination by national representative bodies such as AMaGA and Museums Aotearoa. If AMaGA partnered with the Australian Library and Information Association (ALIA) to stream their conference keynote sessions to strategically located regional libraries and used some of their annual funding from the Department of Communication and the Arts to pay for museum professionals to travel to some of those sites to deliver training, they would be investing in the nation’s social and cultural capital and addressing the professional development needs of regional museum workers. This would also increase the sustainability of our cultural heritage collections, which are valuable economic assets.ReferencesAustralian Bureau of Statistics. “2071.0—Census of Population and Housing: Reflecting Australia—Snapshot of Australia, 2016”. Canberra: Australian Bureau of Statistics, 2017. 17 Mar. 2019 <https://www.abs.gov.au/ausstats/abs@.nsf/Lookup/by%20Subject/2071.0~2016~Main%20Features~Snapshot%20of%20Australia,%202016~2>.Boylan, Patrick. “The Intangible Heritage: A Challenge and an Opportunity for Museums and Museum Professional Training.” International Journal of Intangible Heritage 1 (2006): 53–65.Burton, Christine, and Jane Griffin. “More than a Museum? Understanding How Small Museums Contribute to Social Capital in Regional Communities.” Asia Pacific Journal of Arts & Cultural Management 5.1 (2008): 314–32. 17 Mar. 2019 <http://apjacm.arts.unimelb.edu.au/article/view/32>.Dunn, Anne. The Dunn Report: A Report on the Concept of Regional Collections Jobs. Adelaide: Collections Council of Australia, 2007.ICOM Curricula Guidelines for Professional Museum Development. 2000. <http://museumstudies.si.edu/ICOM-ICTOP/comp.htm>.Kelly, Lynda. “Measuring the Impact of Museums on Their Communities: The Role of the 21st Century Museum.” New Roles and Issues of Museums INTERCOM Symposium (2006): 25–34. 17 Mar. 2019 <https://media.australianmuseum.net.au/media/dd/Uploads/Documents/9355/impact+paper+INTERCOM+2006.bb50ba1.pdf>.Museums and Galleries New South Wales (MGNSW). 2018 NSW Museums and Galleries Sector Census. Museums and Galleries of New South Wales. Data and Insights—Culture Counts. Sydney: MGNSW, 2019. 17 Mar. 2019 <https://mgnsw.org.au/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/2018-NSW-Museum-Gallery-Sector-Census.pdf>Oppenheimer, Melanie. Volunteering: Why We Can’t Survive without It. Sydney: U of New South Wales P, 2008.Pigott, Peter. Museums in Australia 1975. Report of the Committee of Inquiry on Museums and National Collections Including the Report of the Planning Committee on the Gallery of Aboriginal Australia. Canberra: Australian Government Printing Service, 1975. 17 Mar. 2019 <https://apo.org.au/node/35268>.Public Sector Commission, Western Australia. 70:20:10 Framework Learning Philosophy. Perth: Government of Western Australia, 2018. 17 Mar. 2019 <https://publicsector.wa.gov.au/centre-public-sector-excellence/about-centre/702010-framework>.Robinson, Helena. “‘A Lot of People Going That Extra Mile’: Professional Collaboration and Cross-Disciplinarity in Converged Collecting Institutions.” Museum Management and Curatorship 31 (2016): 141–58.Scott, Lee. National Operations Manager, Museums Australia, Personal Communication. 22 Oct. 2018.Shaw, Iain, and Lee Davidson, Museums Aotearoa 2014 Sector Survey Report. Wellington: Victoria U, 2014. 17 Mar. 2019 <http://www.museumsaotearoa.org.nz/sites/default/files/documents/museums_aotearoa_sector_survey_2014_report_-_final_draft_oct_2015.pdf>.Smith, Alexandra. “NSW Libraries to Benefit from $60 Million Boost.” Sydney Morning Herald 24 Aug. 2018. 17 Mar. 2019 <https://www.smh.com.au/politics/nsw/nsw-libraries-to-benefit-from-60-million-boost-20180823-p4zzdj.html>. Winkworth, Kylie. “Fixing the Slums of Australian Museums; or Sustaining Heritage Collections in Regional Australia.” Museums Australia Conference Paper. Canberra: Museums Australia, 2005. ———. “Let a Thousand Flowers Bloom: Museums in Regional Australia.” Understanding Museums—Australian Museums and Museology. Eds. Des Griffin and Leon Paroissien. Canberra: National Museum of Australia, 2011. 17 Mar. 2019 <https://nma.gov.au/research/understanding-museums/KWinkworth_2011.html>.
APA, Harvard, Vancouver, ISO, and other styles
25

Warner, Kate. "Relationships with the Past: How Australian Television Dramas Talk about Indigenous History." M/C Journal 20, no. 5 (October 13, 2017). http://dx.doi.org/10.5204/mcj.1302.

Full text
Abstract:
In recent years a number of dramas focussing on Indigenous Australians and Australian history have appeared on the ABC, one of Australia's two public television channels. These dramas have different foci but all represent some aspects of Australian Indigenous history and how it interacts with 'mainstream' representations of Australian history. The four programs I will look at are Cleverman (Goalpost Pictures, 2016-ongoing), Glitch (Matchbox Films, 2015-ongoing), The Secret River (Ruby Entertainment, 2015) and Redfern Now (Blackfella Films, 2012), each of which engages with the past in a unique way.Clearly, different creators, working with different plots and in different genres will have different ways of representing the past. Redfern Now and Cleverman are both produced by Indigenous creators whereas the creators of The Secret River and Glitch are white Australians. Redfern Now and The Secret River are in a realist mode, whereas Glitch and Cleverman are speculative fiction. My argument proceeds on two axes: first, speculative genres allow for more creative ways of representing the past. They give more freedom for the creators to present affective representations of the historical past. Speculative genres also allow for more interesting intellectual examinations of what we consider to be history and its uncertainties. My second axis argues, because it is hard to avoid when looking at this group of texts, that Indigenous creators represent the past in different ways than non-Indigenous creators. Indigenous creators present a more elliptical vision. Non-Indigenous creators tend to address historical stories in more overt ways. It is apparent that even when dealing with the same histories and the same facts, the understanding of the past held by different groups is presented differently because it has different affective meanings.These television programs were all made in the 2010s but the roots of their interpretations go much further back, not only to the history they represent but also to the arguments about history that have raged in Australian intellectual and popular culture. Throughout most of the twentieth century, indigenous history was not discussed in Australia, until this was disturbed by WEH Stanner's reference in the Boyer lectures of 1968 to "our great Australian silence" (Clark 73). There was, through the 1970s and 80s, increased discussion of Indigenous history, and then in the 1990s there was a period of social and cultural argument known locally as the 'History Wars'. This long-running public disagreement took place in both academic and public arenas, and involved historians, other academics, politicians, journalists and social commentators on each side. One side argued that the arrival of white people in Australia led to frontier wars, massacre, attempted genocide and the ongoing oppression of Indigenous people (Reynolds). The other posited that when white people arrived they killed a few Aborigines but mostly Aboriginal people were killed by disease or failure to 'defend' their culture (Windschuttle). The first viewpoint was revisionist from the 1960s onwards and the second represented an attempt at counter-revision – to move the understanding of history back to what it was prior to the revision. The argument took place not only among historians, but was taken up by politicians with Paul Keating, prime minister 1993-1996, holding the first view and John Howard, prime minister 1996-2007, aggressively pursuing the second. The revisionist viewpoint was championed by historians such as Henry Reynolds and Lyndall Ryan and academics and Aboriginal activists such as Tony Birch and Aileen Moreton Robinson; whereas the counter-revisionists had Keith Windschuttle and Geoffrey Blainey. By and large the revisionist viewpoint has become dominant and the historical work of the counter-revisionists is highly disputed and not accepted.This argument was prominent in Australian cultural discourse throughout the 1990s and has never entirely disappeared. The TV shows I am examining were not made in the 1990s, nor were they made in the 2000s - it took nearly twenty years for responses to the argument to make the jump from politicians' speeches and opinion pieces to television drama. John Ellis argues that the role of television in popular discourse is "working through," meaning contentious issues are first raised in news reports, then they move to current affairs, then talk shows and documentaries, then sketch comedy, then drama (Ellis). Australian Indigenous history was extensively discussed in the news, current affairs and talk shows in the 1990s, documentaries appeared somewhat later, notably First Australians in 2008, but sketch comedy and drama did not happen until in 2014, when Black Comedy's programme first aired, offering sketches engaging often and fiercely with indigenous history.The existence of this public discourse in the political and academic realms was reflected in film before television. Felicity Collins argues that the "Blak Wave" of Indigenous film came to exist in the context of, and as a response to, the history wars (Collins 232). This wave of film making by Indigenous film makers included the works of Rachel Perkins, Warwick Thornton and Ivan Sen – whose films chronicled the lives of Indigenous Australians. There was also what Collins calls "back-tracking films" such as Rabbit-Proof Fence (2002) and The Tracker (2010) made by white creators that presented arguments from the history wars for general audiences. Collins argues that both the "blak wave" and the "back track" created an alternative cultural sphere where past injustices are acknowledged. She says: "the films of the Blak Wave… cut across the history wars by turning an Indigenous gaze on the colonial past and its afterlife in the present" (Collins 232). This group of films sees Indigenous gazes relate the past and present whereas the white gaze represents specific history. In this article I examine a similar group of representations in television programs.History is not an innocent discourse. In western culture 'history' describes a certain way of looking at the past that was codified in the 19th century (Lloyd 375). It is however not the only way to look at the past, theorist Mark Day has described it as a type of relation with the past and argues that other understandings of the past such as popular memory and mythology are also available (Day). The codification of history in the 19th century involved an increased reliance on documentary evidence, a claim to objectivity, a focus on causation and, often though not always, a focus on national, political history. This sort of history became the academic understanding of history – which claims to be, if not objective, at least capable of disinterest; which bases its arguments on facts and which can establish its facts through reference to documentary records (Froeyman 219). Aileen Moreton-Robinson would call this "white patriarchal knowledge" that seeks to place the indigenous within its own type of knowledge production ("The White Man's Burden" 414). The western version of history tends to focus on causation and to present the past as a coherent narrative leading to the current point in time. This is not an undisputed conception of history in the western academy but it is common and often dominant.Post-colonialist analyses of history argue that western writing about non-western subjects is biased and forces non-westerners into categories used to oppress them (Anderson 44). These categories exist ahistorically and deny non-westerners the ability to act because if history cannot be perceived then it is difficult to see the future. That is to say, because non-western subjects in the past are not seen as historical actors, as people whose actions effected the future, then, in the present, they are unable to access to powerful arguments from history. Historians' usual methodology casts Indigenous people as the 'subjects' of history which is about them, not by them or for them (Tuhiwai Smith 7, 30-32, 144-5). Aboriginal people are characterised as prehistoric, ancient, timeless and dying (Birch 150). This way of thinking about Indigenous Australia removes all agency from Aboriginal actors and restoring agency has been a goal of Aboriginal activists and historians. Aileen Moreton Robinson discusses how Aboriginal resistance is embodied through "oral history (and) social memory," engaging with how Aboriginal actors represent themselves and are represented in relation to the past and historical settings is an important act ("Introduction" 127).Redfern Now and Cleverman were produced through the ABC's Indigenous Department and made by Indigenous filmmakers, whereas Glitch and The Secret River are from the ABC drama department and were made by white Australians. The different programs also have different generic backgrounds. Redfern Now and The Secret River are different forms of realist texts; social realism and historical realism. Cleverman and Glitch, however, are speculative fiction texts that can be argued to be in the mode of magical realism, they "denaturalise the real and naturalise the marvellous" they are also closely tied ideas of retelling colonial stories and "resignify(ing) colonial territories and pasts" (Siskind 834-5).Redfern Now was produced by Blackfella Films for the ABC. It was, with much fanfare, released as the first drama made for television, by Aboriginal people and about Aboriginal people (Blundell). The central concerns of the program are issues in the present, its plots and settings are entirely contemporary. In this way it circumvents the idea and standard representation of Indigenous Australians as ancient and timeless. It places the characters in the program very much in the present.However, one episode "Stand Up" does obliquely engage with historical concerns. In this episode a young boy, Joel Shields, gets a scholarship to an expensive private school. When he attends his first school assembly he does not sing the national anthem with the other students. This leads to a dispute with the school that forms the episode's plot. As punishment for not singing Joel is set an assignment to research the anthem, which he does and he finds the song off-putting – with the words 'boundless plains to share' particularly disconcerting. His father supports him saying "it's not our song" and compares Joel singing it to a "whitefella doing a corrobboree". The national anthem stands metaphorically for the white hegemony in Australia.The school itself is also a metaphor for hegemony. The camerawork lingers on the architecture which is intended to imply historical strength and imperviousness to challenge or change. The school stands for all the force of history white Australia can bring to bear, but in Australia, all architecture of this type is a lie, or at least an exaggeration – the school cannot be more than 200 years old and is probably much more recent.Many of the things the program says about history are conveyed in half sentences or single glances. Arguably this is because of its aesthetic mode – social realism – that prides itself on its mimicry of everyday life and in everyday life people are unlikely to set out arguments in organised dot-point form. At one point the English teacher quotes Orwell, "those who control the past control the future", which seems overt but it is stated off-screen as Joel walks into the room. This seeming aside is a statement about history and directly recalls central arguments of the history wars, which make strong political arguments about the effects of the past, and perceptions of the past, on the present and future. Despite its subtlety, this story takes place within the context of the history wars: it is about who controls the past. The subtlety of the discussion of history allows the film makers the freedom to comment on the content and effects of history and the history wars without appearing didactic. They discuss the how history has effected the present history without having to make explicit historical causes.The other recent television drama in the realist tradition is The Secret River. This was an adaptation of a novel by Kate Grenville. It deals with Aboriginal history from the perspective of white people, in this way it differs from Redfern Now which discusses the issues from the perspective of Aboriginal people. The plot concerns a man transported to Australia as a convict in the early 19th century. The man is later freed and, with his family, attempts to move to the Hawksbury river region. The land they try to settle is, of course, already in use by Aboriginal people. The show sets up the definitional conflict between the idea of settler and invader and suggests the difference between the two is a matter of perspective. Of the shows I am examining, it is the most direct in its representation of historical massacre and brutality. It represents what Felicity Collins described as a back-tracking text recapitulating the colonial past in the light of recovered knowledge. However, from an Indigenous perspective it is another settler tale implying Aboriginal people were wiped out at the time of colonisation (Godwin).The Secret River is told entirely from the perspective of the invaders. Even as it portrays their actions as wrong, it also suggests they were unavoidable or inevitable. Therefore it does what many western histories of Indigenous people do – it classifies and categorises. It sets limits on interpretation. It is also limited by its genre, as a straightforward historical drama and an adaptation, it can only tell its story in a certain way. The television series, like the book before it, prides itself on its 'accurate' rendition of an historical story. However, because it comes from such a very narrow perspective it falls into the trap of categorising histories that might have usefully been allowed to develop further.The program is based on a novel that attracted controversy of its own. It became part of ongoing historiographical debate about the relationship between fiction and history. The book's author Kate Grenville claimed to have written a kind of affectively accurate history that actual history can never convey because the emotions of the past are hidden from the present. The book was critiqued by historians including Inge Clendinnen, who argued that many of the claims made about its historical accuracy were largely overblown (Clendinnen). The book is not the same as the TV program, but the same limitations identified by Clendinnen are present in the television text. However, I would not agree with Clendinnen that formal history is any better. I argue that the limitation of both these mimetic genres can be escaped in speculative fiction.In Glitch, Yurana, a small town in rural Victoria becomes, for no apparent reason, the site of seven people rising from the dead. Each person is from a different historical period. None are Indigenous. They are not zombies but simply people who used to be dead. One of the first characters to appear in the series is an Aboriginal teenager, Beau, we see from his point of view the characters crawling from their graves. He becomes friendly with one of the risen characters, Patrick Fitzgerald, who had been the town's first mayor. At first Fitzgerald's story seems to be one of working class man made good in colonial Australia - a standard story of Australian myth and historiography. However, it emerges that Fitzgerald was in love with an Aboriginal woman called Kalinda and Beau is his descendant. Fitzgerald, once he becomes aware of how he has been remembered by history, decides to revise the history of the town – he wants to reclaim his property from his white descendants and give it to his Indigenous descendants. Over the course of the six episodes Fitzgerald moves from being represented as a violent, racist boor who had inexplicably become the town's mayor, to being a romantic whose racism was mostly a matter of vocabulary. Beau is important to the plot and he is a sympathetic character but he is not central and he is a child. Indigenous people in the past have no voice in this story – when flashbacks are shown they are silent, and in the present their voices are present but not privileged or central to the plot.The program demonstrates a profoundly metaphorical relationship with the past – the past has literally come to life bringing with it surprising buried histories. The program represents some dominant themes in Australian historiography – other formerly dead characters include a convict-turned-bush-ranger, a soldier who was at Gallipoli, two Italian migrants and a girl who died as a result of sexual violence – but it does not engage directly with Indigenous history. Indigenous people's stories are told only in relation to the stories of white people. The text's magical realism allows a less prescriptive relationship with the past than in The Secret River but it is still restricted in its point of view and allows only limited agency to Aboriginal actors.The text's magical realism allows for a thought-provoking representation of relationships with the past. The town of Yurana is represented as a place deeply committed to the representation and glorification of its past. Its main street contains statues of its white founders and war memorials, one of its main social institutions is the RSL, its library preserves relics of the past and its publican is a war history buff. All these indicate that the past is central to the town's identity. The risen dead however dispute and revise almost every aspect of this past. Even the history that is unmentioned in the town's apparent official discourse, such as the WWII internment camp and the history of crimes, is disputed by the different stories of the past that the risen dead have to tell. This indicates the uncertainty of the past, even when it seems literally set in stone it can still be revised. Nonetheless the history of Indigenous people is only revised in ways that re-engage with white history.Cleverman is a magical realist text profoundly based in allegory. The story concerns the emergence into a near future society of a group of people known as the "Hairies." It is never made clear where they came from or why but it seems they appeared recently and are unable to return. They are an allegory for refugees. Hairypeople are part of many Indigenous Australian stories, the show's creator, Ryan Griffen, stated that "there are different hairy stories throughout Australia and they differ in each country. You have some who are a tall, some are short, some are aggressive, some are friendly. We got to sort of pick which ones will fit for us and create the Hairies for our show" (Bizzaca).The Hairies are forced to live in an area called the Zone, which, prior to the arrival of the Hairy people, was a place where Aboriginal people lived. This place might be seen as a metaphor for Redfern but it is also an allegory for Australia's history of displacing Aboriginal people and moving and restricting them to missions and reserves. The Zone is becoming increasingly securitised and is also operating as a metaphor for Australia's immigration detention centres. The prison the Hairy characters, Djukura and Bunduu, are confined to is yet another metaphor, this time for both the over-representation of Aboriginal people in prison and the securitisation of immigration detention. These multiple allegorical movements place Australia's present refugee policies and historical treatment of Aboriginal people within the same lens. They also place the present, the past and the future within the same narrative space.Most of the cast is Aboriginal and much of the character interaction is between Aboriginal people and Hairies, with both groups played by Indigenous actors. The disadvantages suffered by Indigenous people are part of the story and clearly presented as affecting the behaviour of characters but within the story Aboriginal people are more advantaged than Hairies, as they have systems, relationships and structures that Hairy people lack. The fact that so much of the interaction in the story is between Indigenous people and Hairies is important: it can be seen to be an interaction between Aboriginal people and Aboriginal mythology or between Indigenous past and present. It demonstrates Aboriginal identities being created in relation to other Aboriginal identities and not in relation to white people, where in this narrative, Aboriginal people have an identity other than that allowed for in colonialist terms.Cleverman does not really engage with the history of white invasion. The character who speaks most about this part of Aboriginal history and whose stated understanding of himself is based on that identity is Waruu. But Waruu is also a villain whose self-identity is also presented as jealous and dishonest. However, despite only passing mentions of westernised history the show is deeply concerned with a relationship with the past. The program engages with Aboriginal traditions about the past that have nothing to do with white history. It presents a much longer view of history than that of white Australia. It engages with the Aboriginal tradition of the Cleverman - demonstrated in the character of Uncle Jimmy who passes a nulla nulla (knob-headed hardwood club), as a symbol of the past, to his nephew Koen and tells him he is the new Cleverman. Cleverman demonstrates a discussion of Australian history with the potential to ignore white people. It doesn't ignore them, it doesn't ignore the invasion but it presents the possibility that it could be ignored.There is a danger in this sort of representation of the past that Aboriginal people could be relegated to the type of ahistorical, metahistorical myths that comprise colonialist history's representation of Indigenous people (Birch). But Cleverman's magical realist, near future setting tends to undermine this. It grounds representation in history through text and metaphor and then expands the definition.The four programs have different relationships with the past but all of them engage with it. The programs are both restrained and freed by the genres they operate in. It is much easier to escape the bounds of formal history in the genre of magical realism and both Glitch and Cleverman do this but have significantly different ways of dealing with history. "Stand up" and The Secret River both operate within more formally realist structures. The Secret River gives us an emotional reading of the past and a very affective one. However, it cuts off avenues of interpretation by presenting a seemingly inevitable tragedy. Through use of metaphor and silence "Stand up" presents a much more productive relationship with the past – seeing it as an ongoing argument rather than a settled one. Glitch engages with the past as a topic that is not settled and that can therefore be changed whereas Cleverman expands our definition of past and understanding of the past through allegory.It is possible to draw further connections. Those stories created by Indigenous people do not engage with the specifics of traditional dominant Australian historiography. However, they work with the assumption that everyone already knows this historiography. They do not re-present the pain of the past, instead they deal with it in oblique terms with allegory. Whereas the programs made by non-Indigenous Australians are much more overt in their representation of the sins of the past, they overtly engage with the History Wars in specific historical arenas in which those wars were fought. The non-Indigenous shows align themselves with the revisionist view of history but they do so in a very different way than the Indigenous shows.ReferencesAnderson, Ian. "Introduction: The Aboriginal Critique of Colonial Knowing." Blacklines: Contemporary Critical Writing by Indigenous Australians. Ed. Michele Grossman. Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, 2003.Birch, Tony. "'Nothing Has Changed': The Making and Unmaking of Koori Culture." Blacklines: Contemporary Critical Writing by Indigenous Australians. Ed. Michele Grossman. Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, 2003.Bizzaca, Chris. "The World of Cleverman." Screen Australia 2016.Blundell, Graeme. "Redfern Now Delves into the Lives of Ordinary People." The Australian 26 Oct. 2013: News Review.Clark, Anna. History's Children: History Wars in the Classroom. Sydney: New South, 2008.Clendinnen, Inga. “The History Question: Who Owns the Past?” The Quarterly Essay. Melbourne: Black Inc., 2006.Collins, Felicity. "After Dispossession: Blackfella Films and the Politics of Radical Hope." The Routledge Companion to Cinema and Politics. Eds. Yannis Tzioumakis and Claire Molloy. New York: Routledge, 2016.Day, Mark. "Our Relations with the Past." Philosophia 36.4 (2008): 417-27.Ellis, John. Seeing Things: Television in the Age of Uncertainty. London: I.B. Tauris, 2000.Froeyman, Anton. "The Ideal of Objectivity and the Public Role of the Historian: Some Lessons from the Historikerstreit and the History Wars." Rethinking History 20.2 (2016): 217-34.Godwin, Carisssa Lee. "Shedding the 'Victim Narrative' for Tales of Magic, Myth and Superhero Pride." The Conversation 2016.Lloyd, Christopher. "Historiographic Schools." A Companion to the Philosophy of History and Historiography Ed. Tucker, Aviezer. Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 2009.Moreton-Robinson, Aileen. "Introduction: Resistance, Recovery and Revitalisation." Blacklines: Contemporary Critical Writing by Indigenous Australians. Ed. Michele Grossman. Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, 2003.———. "The White Man's Burden." Australian Feminist Studies 26.70 (2011): 413-31.Reynolds, Henry. The Other Side of the Frontier: Aboriginal Resistance to the European Invasion of Australia. 2nd ed. Ringwood, Vic.: Penguin Books, 1995.Siskind, Mariano. "Magical Realism." The Cambridge History of Postcolonial Literature. Vol. 2. Ed. Ato Quayson. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012. 833-68.Tuhiwai Smith, Linda. Decolonizing Methodologies Research and Indigenous Peoples. 2nd ed. London: Zed Books, 2012.Windschuttle, Keith. The Fabrication of Aboriginal History. Paddington, NSW: Macleay Press, 2002.
APA, Harvard, Vancouver, ISO, and other styles
26

Webb, Damien, and Rachel Franks. "Metropolitan Collections: Reaching Out to Regional Australia." M/C Journal 22, no. 3 (June 19, 2019). http://dx.doi.org/10.5204/mcj.1529.

Full text
Abstract:
Special Care NoticeThis article discusses trauma and violence inflicted upon the Indigenous peoples of Tasmania through the processes of colonisation. Content within this article may be distressing to some readers. IntroductionThis article looks briefly at the collection, consultation, and digital sharing of stories essential to the histories of the First Nations peoples of Australia. Focusing on materials held in Sydney, New South Wales two case studies—the object known as the Proclamation Board and the George Augustus Robinson Papers—explore how materials can be shared with Aboriginal peoples of the region now known as Tasmania. Specifically, the authors of this article (a Palawa man and an Australian woman of European descent) ask how can the idea of the privileging of Indigenous voices, within Eurocentric cultural collections, be transformed from rhetoric to reality? Moreover, how can we navigate this complex work, that is made even more problematic by distance, through the utilisation of knowledge networks which are geographically isolated from the collections holding stories crucial to Indigenous communities? In seeking to answer these important questions, this article looks at how cultural, emotional, and intellectual ownership can be divested from the physical ownership of a collection in a way that repatriates—appropriately and sensitively—stories of Aboriginal Australia and of colonisation. Holding Stories, Not Always Our OwnCultural institutions, including libraries, have, in recent years, been drawn into discussions centred on the notion of digital disruption and “that transformative shift which has seen the ongoing realignment of business resources, relationships, knowledge, and value both facilitating the entry of previously impossible ideas and accelerating the competitive impact of those same impossible ideas” (Franks and Ensor n.p.). As Molly Brown has noted, librarians “are faced, on a daily basis, with rapidly changing technology and the ways in which our patrons access and use information. Thus, we need to look at disruptive technologies as opportunities” (n.p.). Some innovations, including the transition from card catalogues to online catalogues and the provision of a wide range of electronic resources, are now considered to be business as usual for most institutions. So, too, the digitisation of great swathes of materials to facilitate access to collections onsite and online, with digitising primary sources seen as an intermediary between the pillars of preserving these materials and facilitating access for those who cannot, for a variety of logistical and personal reasons, travel to a particular repository where a collection is held.The result has been the development of hybrid collections: that is, collections that can be accessed in both physical and digital formats. Yet, the digitisation processes conducted by memory institutions is often selective. Limited resources, even for large-scale digitisation projects usually only realise outcomes that focus on making visually rich, key, or canonical documents, or those documents that are considered high use and at risk, available online. Such materials are extracted from the larger full body of records while other lesser-known components are often omitted. Digitisation projects therefore tend to be devised for a broader audience where contextual questions are less central to the methodology in favour of presenting notable or famous documents online only. Documents can be profiled as an exhibition separate from their complete collection and, critically, their wider context. Libraries of course are not neutral spaces and this practice of (re)enforcing the canon through digitisation is a challenge that cultural institutions, in partnerships, need to address (Franks and Ensor n.p.). Indeed, our digital collections are as affected by power relationships and the ongoing impacts of colonisation as our physical collections. These power relationships can be seen through an organisation’s “processes that support acquisitions, as purchases and as the acceptance of artefacts offered as donations. Throughout such processes decisions are continually made (consciously and unconsciously) that affect what is presented and actively promoted as the official history” (Thorpe et al. 8). While it is important to acknowledge what we do collect, it is equally important to look, too, at what we do not collect and to consider how we continually privilege and exclude stories. Especially when these stories are not always our own, but are held, often as accidents of collecting. For example, an item comes in as part of a larger suite of materials while older, city-based institutions often pre-date regional repositories. An essential point here is that cultural institutions can often become comfortable in what they collect, building on existing holdings. This, in turn, can lead to comfortable digitisation. If we are to be truly disruptive, we need to embrace feeling uncomfortable in what we do, and we need to view digitisation as an intervention opportunity; a chance to challenge what we ‘know’ about our collections. This is especially relevant in any attempts to decolonise collections.Case Study One: The Proclamation BoardThe first case study looks at an example of re-digitisation. One of the seven Proclamation Boards known to survive in a public collection is held by the Mitchell Library, State Library of New South Wales, having been purchased from Tasmanian collector and photographer John Watt Beattie (1859–1930) in May 1919 for £30 (Morris 86). Why, with so much material to digitise—working in a program of limited funds and time—would the Library return to an object that has already been privileged? Unanswered questions and advances in digitisation technologies, created a unique opportunity. For the First Peoples of Van Diemen’s Land (now known as Tasmania), colonisation by the British in 1803 was “an emotionally, intellectually, physically, and spiritually confronting series of encounters” (Franks n.p.). Violent incidents became routine and were followed by a full-scale conflict, often referred to as the Black War (Clements 1), or more recently as the Tasmanian War, fought from the 1820s until 1832. Image 1: Governor Arthur’s Proclamation to the Aborigines, ca. 1828–1830. Image Credit: Mitchell Library, State Library of New South Wales, Call No.: SAFE / R 247.Behind the British combatants were various support staff, including administrators and propagandists. One of the efforts by the belligerents, behind the front line, to win the war and bring about peace was the production of approximately 100 Proclamation Boards. These four-strip pictograms were the result of a scheme introduced by Lieutenant Governor George Arthur (1784–1854), on the advice of Surveyor General George Frankland (1800–38), to communicate that all are equal under the rule of law (Arthur 1). Frankland wrote to Arthur in early 1829 to suggest these Proclamation Boards could be produced and nailed to trees (Morris 84), as a Eurocentric adaptation of a traditional method of communication used by Indigenous peoples who left images on the trunks of trees. The overtly stated purpose of the Boards was, like the printed proclamations exhorting peace, to assert, all people—black and white—were equal. That “British Justice would protect” everyone (Morris 84). The first strip on each of these pictogram Boards presents Indigenous peoples and colonists living peacefully together. The second strip shows “a conciliatory handshake between the British governor and an Aboriginal ‘chief’, highly reminiscent of images found in North America on treaty medals and anti-slavery tokens” (Darian-Smith and Edmonds 4). The third and fourth strips depict the repercussions for committing murder (or, indeed, any significant crime), with an Indigenous man hanged for spearing a colonist and a European man hanged for shooting an Aboriginal man. Both men executed in the presence of the Lieutenant Governor. The Boards, oil on Huon pine, were painted by “convict artists incarcerated in the island penal colony” (Carroll 73).The Board at the State Library of New South Wales was digitised quite early on in the Library’s digitisation program, it has been routinely exhibited (including for the Library’s centenary in 2010) and is written about regularly. Yet, many questions about this small piece of timber remain unanswered. For example, some Boards were outlined with sketches and some were outlined with pouncing, “a technique [of the Italian Renaissance] of pricking the contours of a drawing with a pin. Charcoal was then dusted on to the drawing” (Carroll 75–76). Could such a sketch or example of pouncing be seen beneath the surface layers of paint on this particular Board? What might be revealed by examining the Board more closely and looking at this object in different ways?An important, but unexpected, discovery was that while most of the pigments in the painting correlate with those commonly available to artists in the early nineteenth century there is one outstanding anomaly. X-ray analysis revealed cadmium yellow present in several places across the painting, including the dresses of the little girls in strip one, uniform details in strip two, and the trousers worn by the settler men in strips three and four (Kahabka 2). This is an extraordinary discovery, as cadmium yellows were available “commercially as an artist pigment in England by 1846” and were shown by “Winsor & Newton at the 1851 Exhibition held at the Crystal Palace, London” (Fiedler and Bayard 68). The availability of this particular type of yellow in the early 1850s could set a new marker for the earliest possible date for the manufacture of this Board, long-assumed to be 1828–30. Further, the early manufacture of cadmium yellow saw the pigment in short supply and a very expensive option when compared with other pigments such as chrome yellow (the darker yellow, seen in the grid lines that separate the scenes in the painting). This presents a clearly uncomfortable truth in relation to an object so heavily researched and so significant to a well-regarded collection that aims to document much of Australia’s colonial history. Is it possible, for example, the Board has been subjected to overpainting at a later date? Or, was this premium paint used to produce a display Board that was sent, by the Tasmanian Government, to the 1866 Intercolonial Exhibition in Melbourne? In seeking to see the finer details of the painting through re-digitisation, the results were much richer than anticipated. The sketch outlines are clearly visible in the new high-resolution files. There are, too, details unable to be seen clearly with the naked eye, including this warrior’s headdress and ceremonial scarring on his stomach, scars that tell stories “of pain, endurance, identity, status, beauty, courage, sorrow or grief” (Australian Museum n.p.). The image of this man has been duplicated and distributed since the 1830s, an anonymous figure deployed to tell a settler-centric story of the Black, or Tasmanian, War. This man can now be seen, for the first time nine decades later, to wear his own story. We do not know his name, but he is no longer completely anonymous. This image is now, in some ways, a portrait. The State Library of New South Wales acknowledges this object is part of an important chapter in the Tasmanian story and, though two Boards are in collections in Tasmania (the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery, Hobart and the Queen Victoria Museum and Art Gallery, Launceston), each Board is different. The Library holds an important piece of a large and complex puzzle and has a moral obligation to make this information available beyond its metropolitan location. Digitisation, in this case re-digitisation, is allowing for the disruption of this story in sparking new questions around provenance and for the relocating of a Palawa warrior to a more prominent, perhaps even equal role, within a colonial narrative. Image 2: Detail, Governor Arthur’s Proclamation to the Aborigines, ca. 1828–1830. Image Credit: Mitchell Library, State Library of New South Wales, Call No.: SAFE / R 247.Case Study Two: The George Augustus Robinson PapersThe second case study focuses on the work being led by the Indigenous Engagement Branch at the State Library of New South Wales on the George Augustus Robinson (1791–1866) Papers. In 1829, Robinson was granted a government post in Van Diemen’s Land to ‘conciliate’ with the Palawa peoples. More accurately, Robinson’s core task was dispossession and the systematic disconnection of the Palawa peoples from their Country, community, and culture. Robinson was a habitual diarist and notetaker documenting much of his own life as well as the lives of those around him, including First Nations peoples. His extensive suite of papers represents a familiar and peculiar kind of discomfort for Aboriginal Australians, one in which they are forced to learn about themselves through the eyes and words of their oppressors. For many First Nations peoples of Tasmania, Robinson remains a violent and terrible figure, but his observations of Palawa culture and language are as vital as they are problematic. Importantly, his papers include vibrant and utterly unique descriptions of people, place, flora and fauna, and language, as well as illustrations revealing insights into the routines of daily life (even as those routines were being systematically dismantled by colonial authorities). “Robinson’s records have informed much of the revitalisation of Tasmanian Aboriginal culture in the twentieth century and continue to provide the basis for investigations of identity and deep relationships to land by Aboriginal scholars” (Lehman n.p.). These observations and snippets of lived culture are of immense value to Palawa peoples today but the act of reading between Robinson’s assumptions and beyond his entrenched colonial views is difficult work.Image 3: George Augustus Robinson Papers, 1829–34. Image Credit: Mitchell Library, State Library of New South Wales, A 7023–A 7031.The canonical reference for Robinson’s archive is Friendly Mission: The Tasmanian Journals and Papers of George Augustus Robinson, 1829–1834, edited by N.J.B. Plomley. The volume of over 1,000 pages was first published in 1966. This large-scale project is recognised “as a monumental work of Tasmanian history” (Crane ix). Yet, this standard text (relied upon by Indigenous and non-Indigenous researchers) has clearly not reproduced a significant percentage of Robinson’s Tasmanian manuscripts. Through his presumptuous truncations Plomley has not simply edited Robinson’s work but has, quite literally, written many Palawa stories out of this colonial narrative. It is this lack of agency in determining what should be left out that is most troubling, and reflects an all-too-familiar approach which libraries, including the State Library of New South Wales, are now urgently trying to rectify. Plomley’s preface and introduction does not indicate large tranches of information are missing. Indeed, Plomley specifies “that in extenso [in full] reproduction was necessary” (4) and omissions “have been kept to a minimum” (8). A 32-page supplement was published in 1971. A new edition, including the supplement, some corrections made by Plomley, and some extra material was released in 2008. But much continues to be unknown outside of academic circles, and far too few Palawa Elders and language revival workers have had access to Robinson’s original unfiltered observations. Indeed, Plomley’s text is linear and neat when compared to the often-chaotic writings of Robinson. Digitisation cannot address matters of the materiality of the archive, but such projects do offer opportunities for access to information in its original form, unedited, and unmediated.Extensive consultation with communities in Tasmania is underpinning the digitisation and re-description of a collection which has long been assumed—through partial digitisation, microfilming, and Plomley’s text—to be readily available and wholly understood. Central to this project is not just challenging the canonical status of Plomley’s work but directly challenging the idea non-Aboriginal experts can truly understand the cultural or linguistic context of the information recorded in Robinson’s journals. One of the more exciting outcomes, so far, has been working with Palawa peoples to explore the possibility of Palawa-led transcriptions and translation, and not breaking up the tasks of this work and distributing them to consultants or to non-Indigenous student groups. In this way, people are being meaningfully reunited with their own histories and, crucially, given first right to contextualise and understand these histories. Again, digitisation and disruption can be seen here as allies with the facilitation of accessibility to an archive in ways that re-distribute the traditional power relations around interpreting and telling stories held within colonial-rich collections.Image 4: Detail, George Augustus Robinson Papers, 1829–34. Image Credit: Mitchell Library, State Library of New South Wales, A 7023–A 7031.As has been so brilliantly illustrated by Bruce Pascoe’s recent work Dark Emu (2014), when Aboriginal peoples are given the opportunity to interpret their own culture from the colonial records without interference, they are able to see strength and sophistication rather than victimhood. For, to “understand how the Europeans’ assumptions selectively filtered the information brought to them by the early explorers is to see how we came to have the history of the country we accept today” (4). Far from decrying these early colonial records Aboriginal peoples understand their vital importance in connecting to a culture which was dismantled and destroyed, but importantly it is known that far too much is lost in translation when Aboriginal Australians are not the ones undertaking the translating. ConclusionFor Aboriginal Australians, culture and knowledge is no longer always anchored to Country. These histories, once so firmly connected to communities through their ancestral lands and languages, have been dispersed across the continent and around the world. Many important stories—of family history, language, and ways of life—are held in cultural institutions and understanding the role of responsibly disseminating these collections through digitisation is paramount. In transitioning from physical collections to hybrid collections of the physical and digital, the digitisation processes conducted by memory institutions can be—and due to the size of some collections is inevitably—selective. Limited resources, even for large-scale and well-resourced digitisation projects usually realise outcomes that focus on making visually rich, key, or canonical documents, or those documents considered high use or at risk, available online. Such materials are extracted from a full body of records. Digitisation projects, as noted, tend to be devised for a broader audience where contextual questions are less central to the methodology in favour of presenting notable documents online, separate from their complete collection and, critically, their context. Our institutions carry the weight of past collecting strategies and, today, the pressure of digitisation strategies as well. Contemporary librarians should not be gatekeepers, but rather key holders. In collaborating across sectors and with communities we open doors for education, research, and the repatriation of culture and knowledge. We must, always, remember to open these doors wide: the call of Aboriginal Australians of ‘nothing about us without us’ is not an invitation to collaboration but an imperative. Libraries—as well as galleries, archives, and museums—cannot tell these stories alone. Also, these two case studies highlight what we believe to be one of the biggest mistakes that not just libraries but all cultural institutions are vulnerable to making, the assumption that just because a collection is open access it is also accessible. Digitisation projects are more valuable when communicated, contextualised and—essentially—the result of community consultation. Such work can, for some, be uncomfortable while for others it offers opportunities to embrace disruption and, by extension, opportunities to decolonise collections. For First Nations peoples this work can be more powerful than any simple measurement tool can record. Through examining our past collecting, deliberate efforts to consult, and through digital sharing projects across metropolitan and regional Australia, we can make meaningful differences to the ways in which Aboriginal Australians can, again, own their histories.Acknowledgements The authors acknowledge the Palawa peoples: the traditional custodians of the lands known today as Tasmania. The authors acknowledge, too, the Gadigal people upon whose lands this article was researched and written. We are indebted to Dana Kahabka (Conservator), Joy Lai (Imaging Specialist), Richard Neville (Mitchell Librarian), and Marika Duczynski (Project Officer) at the State Library of New South Wales. Sincere thanks are also given to Jason Ensor of Western Sydney University.ReferencesArthur, George. “Proclamation.” The Hobart Town Courier 19 Apr. 1828: 1.———. Proclamation to the Aborigines. Graphic Materials. Sydney: Mitchell Library, State Library of New South Wales, SAFE R / 247, ca. 1828–1830.Australian Museum. “Aboriginal Scarification.” 2018. 11 Jan. 2019 <https://australianmuseum.net.au/about/history/exhibitions/body-art/aboriginal-scarification/>.Brown, Molly. “Disruptive Technology: A Good Thing for Our Libraries?” International Librarians Network (2016). 26 Aug. 2018 <https://interlibnet.org/2016/11/25/disruptive-technology-a-good-thing-for-our-libraries/>.Carroll, Khadija von Zinnenburg. Art in the Time of Colony: Empires and the Making of the Modern World, 1650–2000. Farnham, UK: Ashgate Publishing, 2014.Clements, Nicholas. The Black War: Fear, Sex and Resistance in Tasmania. St Lucia, U of Queensland P, 2014.Crane, Ralph. “Introduction.” Friendly Mission: The Tasmanian Journals and Papers of George Augustus Robinson, 1829-1834. 2nd ed. Launceston and Hobart: Queen Victoria Museum and Art Gallery, and Quintus Publishing, 2008. ix.Darian-Smith, Kate, and Penelope Edmonds. “Conciliation on Colonial Frontiers.” Conciliation on Colonial Frontiers: Conflict, Performance and Commemoration in Australia and the Pacific Rim. Eds. Kate Darian-Smith and Penelope Edmonds. New York: Routledge, 2015. 1–14.Edmonds, Penelope. “‘Failing in Every Endeavour to Conciliate’: Governor Arthur’s Proclamation Boards to the Aborigines, Australian Conciliation Narratives and Their Transnational Connections.” Journal of Australian Studies 35.2 (2011): 201–18.Fiedler, Inge, and Michael A. Bayard. Artist Pigments, a Handbook of Their History and Characteristics. Ed. Robert L. Feller. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1986. 65–108. Franks, Rachel. “A True Crime Tale: Re-Imagining Governor Arthur’s Proclamation Board for the Tasmanian Aborigines.” M/C Journal 18.6 (2015). 1 Feb. 2019 <http://journal.media-culture.org.au/index.php/mcjournal/article/view/1036>.Franks, Rachel, and Jason Ensor. “Challenging the Canon: Collaboration, Digitisation and Education.” ALIA Online: A Conference of the Australian Library and Information Association, 11–15 Feb. 2019, Sydney.Kahabka, Dana. Condition Assessment [Governor Arthur’s Proclamation to the Aborigines, ca. 1828–1830, SAFE / R247]. Sydney: State Library of New South Wales, 2017.Lehman, Greg. “Pleading Robinson: Reviews of Friendly Mission: The Tasmanian Journals and Papers of George Augustus Robinson (2008) and Reading Robinson: Companion Essays to Friendly Mission (2008).” Australian Humanities Review 49 (2010). 1 May 2019 <http://press-files.anu.edu.au/downloads/press/p41961/html/review-12.xhtml?referer=1294&page=15>. Morris, John. “Notes on A Message to the Tasmanian Aborigines in 1829, popularly called ‘Governor Davey’s Proclamation to the Aborigines, 1816’.” Australiana 10.3 (1988): 84–7.Pascoe, Bruce. Dark Emu. Broome: Magabala Books, 2014/2018.Plomley, N.J.B. Friendly Mission: The Tasmanian Journals and Papers of George Augustus Robinson, 1829–1834. Hobart: Tasmanian Historical Research Association, 1966.Robinson, George Augustus. Papers. Textual Records. Sydney: Mitchell Library, State Library of NSW, A 7023–A 7031, 1829–34. Thorpe, Kirsten, Monica Galassi, and Rachel Franks. “Discovering Indigenous Australian Culture: Building Trusted Engagement in Online Environments.” Journal of Web Librarianship 10.4 (2016): 343–63.
APA, Harvard, Vancouver, ISO, and other styles
27

Mallan, Kerry Margaret, and Annette Patterson. "Present and Active: Digital Publishing in a Post-print Age." M/C Journal 11, no. 4 (June 24, 2008). http://dx.doi.org/10.5204/mcj.40.

Full text
Abstract:
At one point in Victor Hugo’s novel, The Hunchback of Notre Dame, the archdeacon, Claude Frollo, looked up from a book on his table to the edifice of the gothic cathedral, visible from his canon’s cell in the cloister of Notre Dame: “Alas!” he said, “this will kill that” (146). Frollo’s lament, that the book would destroy the edifice, captures the medieval cleric’s anxiety about the way in which Gutenberg’s print technology would become the new universal means for recording and communicating humanity’s ideas and artistic expression, replacing the grand monuments of architecture, human engineering, and craftsmanship. For Hugo, architecture was “the great handwriting of humankind” (149). The cathedral as the material outcome of human technology was being replaced by the first great machine—the printing press. At this point in the third millennium, some people undoubtedly have similar anxieties to Frollo: is it now the book’s turn to be destroyed by yet another great machine? The inclusion of “post print” in our title is not intended to sound the death knell of the book. Rather, we contend that despite the enduring value of print, digital publishing is “present and active” and is changing the way in which research, particularly in the humanities, is being undertaken. Our approach has three related parts. First, we consider how digital technologies are changing the way in which content is constructed, customised, modified, disseminated, and accessed within a global, distributed network. This section argues that the transition from print to electronic or digital publishing means both losses and gains, particularly with respect to shifts in our approaches to textuality, information, and innovative publishing. Second, we discuss the Children’s Literature Digital Resources (CLDR) project, with which we are involved. This case study of a digitising initiative opens out the transformative possibilities and challenges of digital publishing and e-scholarship for research communities. Third, we reflect on technology’s capacity to bring about major changes in the light of the theoretical and practical issues that have arisen from our discussion. I. Digitising in a “post-print age” We are living in an era that is commonly referred to as “the late age of print” (see Kho) or the “post-print age” (see Gunkel). According to Aarseth, we have reached a point whereby nearly all of our public and personal media have become more or less digital (37). As Kho notes, web newspapers are not only becoming increasingly more popular, but they are also making rather than losing money, and paper-based newspapers are finding it difficult to recruit new readers from the younger generations (37). Not only can such online-only publications update format, content, and structure more economically than print-based publications, but their wide distribution network, speed, and flexibility attract advertising revenue. Hype and hyperbole aside, publishers are not so much discarding their legacy of print, but recognising the folly of not embracing innovative technologies that can add value by presenting information in ways that satisfy users’ needs for content to-go or for edutainment. As Kho notes: “no longer able to satisfy customer demand by producing print-only products, or even by enabling online access to semi-static content, established publishers are embracing new models for publishing, web-style” (42). Advocates of online publishing contend that the major benefits of online publishing over print technology are that it is faster, more economical, and more interactive. However, as Hovav and Gray caution, “e-publishing also involves risks, hidden costs, and trade-offs” (79). The specific focus for these authors is e-journal publishing and they contend that while cost reduction is in editing, production and distribution, if the journal is not open access, then costs relating to storage and bandwith will be transferred to the user. If we put economics aside for the moment, the transition from print to electronic text (e-text), especially with electronic literary works, brings additional considerations, particularly in their ability to make available different reading strategies to print, such as “animation, rollovers, screen design, navigation strategies, and so on” (Hayles 38). Transition from print to e-text In his book, Writing Space, David Bolter follows Victor Hugo’s lead, but does not ask if print technology will be destroyed. Rather, he argues that “the idea and ideal of the book will change: print will no longer define the organization and presentation of knowledge, as it has for the past five centuries” (2). As Hayles noted above, one significant indicator of this change, which is a consequence of the shift from analogue to digital, is the addition of graphical, audio, visual, sonic, and kinetic elements to the written word. A significant consequence of this transition is the reinvention of the book in a networked environment. Unlike the printed book, the networked book is not bound by space and time. Rather, it is an evolving entity within an ecology of readers, authors, and texts. The Web 2.0 platform has enabled more experimentation with blending of digital technology and traditional writing, particularly in the use of blogs, which have spawned blogwriting and the wikinovel. Siva Vaidhyanathan’s The Googlization of Everything: How One Company is Disrupting Culture, Commerce and Community … and Why We Should Worry is a wikinovel or blog book that was produced over a series of weeks with contributions from other bloggers (see: http://www.sivacracy.net/). Penguin Books, in collaboration with a media company, “Six Stories to Start,” have developed six stories—“We Tell Stories,” which involve different forms of interactivity from users through blog entries, Twitter text messages, an interactive google map, and other features. For example, the story titled “Fairy Tales” allows users to customise the story using their own choice of names for characters and descriptions of character traits. Each story is loosely based on a classic story and links take users to synopses of these original stories and their authors and to online purchase of the texts through the Penguin Books sales website. These examples of digital stories are a small part of the digital environment, which exploits computer and online technologies’ capacity to be interactive and immersive. As Janet Murray notes, the interactive qualities of digital environments are characterised by their procedural and participatory abilities, while their immersive qualities are characterised by their spatial and encyclopedic dimensions (71–89). These immersive and interactive qualities highlight different ways of reading texts, which entail different embodied and cognitive functions from those that reading print texts requires. As Hayles argues: the advent of electronic textuality presents us with an unparalleled opportunity to reformulate fundamental ideas about texts and, in the process, to see print as well as electronic texts with fresh eyes (89–90). The transition to e-text also highlights how digitality is changing all aspects of everyday life both inside and outside the academy. Online teaching and e-research Another aspect of the commercial arm of publishing that is impacting on academe and other organisations is the digitising and indexing of print content for niche distribution. Kho offers the example of the Mark Logic Corporation, which uses its XML content platform to repurpose content, create new content, and distribute this content through multiple portals. As the promotional website video for Mark Logic explains, academics can use this service to customise their own textbooks for students by including only articles and book chapters that are relevant to their subject. These are then organised, bound, and distributed by Mark Logic for sale to students at a cost that is generally cheaper than most textbooks. A further example of how print and digital materials can form an integrated, customised source for teachers and students is eFictions (Trimmer, Jennings, & Patterson). eFictions was one of the first print and online short story anthologies that teachers of literature could customise to their own needs. Produced as both a print text collection and a website, eFictions offers popular short stories in English by well-known traditional and contemporary writers from the US, Australia, New Zealand, UK, and Europe, with summaries, notes on literary features, author biographies, and, in one instance, a YouTube movie of the story. In using the eFictions website, teachers can build a customised anthology of traditional and innovative stories to suit their teaching preferences. These examples provide useful indicators of how content is constructed, customised, modified, disseminated, and accessed within a distributed network. However, the question remains as to how to measure their impact and outcomes within teaching and learning communities. As Harley suggests in her study on the use and users of digital resources in the humanities and social sciences, several factors warrant attention, such as personal teaching style, philosophy, and specific disciplinary requirements. However, in terms of understanding the benefits of digital resources for teaching and learning, Harley notes that few providers in her sample had developed any plans to evaluate use and users in a systematic way. In addition to the problems raised in Harley’s study, another relates to how researchers can be supported to take full advantage of digital technologies for e-research. The transformation brought about by information and communication technologies extends and broadens the impact of research, by making its outputs more discoverable and usable by other researchers, and its benefits more available to industry, governments, and the wider community. Traditional repositories of knowledge and information, such as libraries, are juggling the space demands of books and computer hardware alongside increasing reader demand for anywhere, anytime, anyplace access to information. Researchers’ expectations about online access to journals, eprints, bibliographic data, and the views of others through wikis, blogs, and associated social and information networking sites such as YouTube compete with the traditional expectations of the institutions that fund libraries for paper-based archives and book repositories. While university libraries are finding it increasingly difficult to purchase all hardcover books relevant to numerous and varied disciplines, a significant proportion of their budgets goes towards digital repositories (e.g., STORS), indexes, and other resources, such as full-text electronic specialised and multidisciplinary journal databases (e.g., Project Muse and Proquest); electronic serials; e-books; and specialised information sources through fast (online) document delivery services. An area that is becoming increasingly significant for those working in the humanities is the digitising of historical and cultural texts. II. Bringing back the dead: The CLDR project The CLDR project is led by researchers and librarians at the Queensland University of Technology, in collaboration with Deakin University, University of Sydney, and members of the AustLit team at The University of Queensland. The CLDR project is a “Research Community” of the electronic bibliographic database AustLit: The Australian Literature Resource, which is working towards the goal of providing a complete bibliographic record of the nation’s literature. AustLit offers users with a single entry point to enhanced scholarly resources on Australian writers, their works, and other aspects of Australian literary culture and activities. AustLit and its Research Communities are supported by grants from the Australian Research Council and financial and in-kind contributions from a consortium of Australian universities, and by other external funding sources such as the National Collaborative Research Infrastructure Strategy. Like other more extensive digitisation projects, such as Project Gutenberg and the Rosetta Project, the CLDR project aims to provide a centralised access point for digital surrogates of early published works of Australian children’s literature, with access pathways to existing resources. The first stage of the CLDR project is to provide access to digitised, full-text, out-of-copyright Australian children’s literature from European settlement to 1945, with selected digitised critical works relevant to the field. Texts comprise a range of genres, including poetry, drama, and narrative for young readers and picture books, songs, and rhymes for infants. Currently, a selection of 75 e-texts and digital scans of original texts from Project Gutenberg and Internet Archive have been linked to the Children’s Literature Research Community. By the end of 2009, the CLDR will have digitised approximately 1000 literary texts and a significant number of critical works. Stage II and subsequent development will involve digitisation of selected texts from 1945 onwards. A precursor to the CLDR project has been undertaken by Deakin University in collaboration with the State Library of Victoria, whereby a digital bibliographic index comprising Victorian School Readers has been completed with plans for full-text digital surrogates of a selection of these texts. These texts provide valuable insights into citizenship, identity, and values formation from the 1930s onwards. At the time of writing, the CLDR is at an early stage of development. An extensive survey of out-of-copyright texts has been completed and the digitisation of these resources is about to commence. The project plans to make rich content searchable, allowing scholars from children’s literature studies and education to benefit from the many advantages of online scholarship. What digital publishing and associated digital archives, electronic texts, hypermedia, and so forth foreground is the fact that writers, readers, publishers, programmers, designers, critics, booksellers, teachers, and copyright laws operate within a context that is highly mediated by technology. In his article on large-scale digitisation projects carried out by Cornell and University of Michigan with the Making of America collection of 19th-century American serials and monographs, Hirtle notes that when special collections’ materials are available via the Web, with appropriate metadata and software, then they can “increase use of the material, contribute to new forms of research, and attract new users to the material” (44). Furthermore, Hirtle contends that despite the poor ergonomics associated with most electronic displays and e-book readers, “people will, when given the opportunity, consult an electronic text over the print original” (46). If this preference is universally accurate, especially for researchers and students, then it follows that not only will the preference for electronic surrogates of original material increase, but preference for other kinds of electronic texts will also increase. It is with this preference for electronic resources in mind that we approached the field of children’s literature in Australia and asked questions about how future generations of researchers would prefer to work. If electronic texts become the reference of choice for primary as well as secondary sources, then it seems sensible to assume that researchers would prefer to sit at the end of the keyboard than to travel considerable distances at considerable cost to access paper-based print texts in distant libraries and archives. We considered the best means for providing access to digitised primary and secondary, full text material, and digital pathways to existing online resources, particularly an extensive indexing and bibliographic database. Prior to the commencement of the CLDR project, AustLit had already indexed an extensive number of children’s literature. Challenges and dilemmas The CLDR project, even in its early stages of development, has encountered a number of challenges and dilemmas that centre on access, copyright, economic capital, and practical aspects of digitisation, and sustainability. These issues have relevance for digital publishing and e-research. A decision is yet to be made as to whether the digital texts in CLDR will be available on open or closed/tolled access. The preference is for open access. As Hayles argues, copyright is more than a legal basis for intellectual property, as it also entails ideas about authorship, creativity, and the work as an “immaterial mental construct” that goes “beyond the paper, binding, or ink” (144). Seeking copyright permission is therefore only part of the issue. Determining how the item will be accessed is a further matter, particularly as future technologies may impact upon how a digital item is used. In the case of e-journals, the issue of copyright payment structures are evolving towards a collective licensing system, pay-per-view, and other combinations of print and electronic subscription (see Hovav and Gray). For research purposes, digitisation of items for CLDR is not simply a scan and deliver process. Rather it is one that needs to ensure that the best quality is provided and that the item is both accessible and usable by researchers, and sustainable for future researchers. Sustainability is an important consideration and provides a challenge for institutions that host projects such as CLDR. Therefore, items need to be scanned to a high quality and this requires an expensive scanner and personnel costs. Files need to be in a variety of formats for preservation purposes and so that they may be manipulated to be useable in different technologies (for example, Archival Tiff, Tiff, Jpeg, PDF, HTML). Hovav and Gray warn that when technology becomes obsolete, then content becomes unreadable unless backward integration is maintained. The CLDR items will be annotatable given AustLit’s NeAt funded project: Aus-e-Lit. The Aus-e-Lit project will extend and enhance the existing AustLit web portal with data integration and search services, empirical reporting services, collaborative annotation services, and compound object authoring, editing, and publishing services. For users to be able to get the most out of a digital item, it needs to be searchable, either through double keying or OCR (optimal character recognition). The value of CLDR’s contribution The value of the CLDR project lies in its goal to provide a comprehensive, searchable body of texts (fictional and critical) to researchers across the humanities and social sciences. Other projects seem to be intent on putting up as many items as possible to be considered as a first resort for online texts. CLDR is more specific and is not interested in simply generating a presence on the Web. Rather, it is research driven both in its design and implementation, and in its focussed outcomes of assisting academics and students primarily in their e-research endeavours. To this end, we have concentrated on the following: an extensive survey of appropriate texts; best models for file location, distribution, and use; and high standards of digitising protocols. These issues that relate to data storage, digitisation, collections, management, and end-users of data are aligned with the “Development of an Australian Research Data Strategy” outlined in An Australian e-Research Strategy and Implementation Framework (2006). CLDR is not designed to simply replicate resources, as it has a distinct focus, audience, and research potential. In addition, it looks at resources that may be forgotten or are no longer available in reproduction by current publishing companies. Thus, the aim of CLDR is to preserve both the time and a period of Australian history and literary culture. It will also provide users with an accessible repository of rare and early texts written for children. III. Future directions It is now commonplace to recognize that the Web’s role as information provider has changed over the past decade. New forms of “collective intelligence” or “distributed cognition” (Oblinger and Lombardi) are emerging within and outside formal research communities. Technology’s capacity to initiate major cultural, social, educational, economic, political and commercial shifts has conditioned us to expect the “next big thing.” We have learnt to adapt swiftly to the many challenges that online technologies have presented, and we have reaped the benefits. As the examples in this discussion have highlighted, the changes in online publishing and digitisation have provided many material, network, pedagogical, and research possibilities: we teach online units providing students with access to e-journals, e-books, and customized archives of digitised materials; we communicate via various online technologies; we attend virtual conferences; and we participate in e-research through a global, digital network. In other words, technology is deeply engrained in our everyday lives. In returning to Frollo’s concern that the book would destroy architecture, Umberto Eco offers a placatory note: “in the history of culture it has never happened that something has simply killed something else. Something has profoundly changed something else” (n. pag.). Eco’s point has relevance to our discussion of digital publishing. The transition from print to digital necessitates a profound change that impacts on the ways we read, write, and research. As we have illustrated with our case study of the CLDR project, the move to creating digitised texts of print literature needs to be considered within a dynamic network of multiple causalities, emergent technological processes, and complex negotiations through which digital texts are created, stored, disseminated, and used. Technological changes in just the past five years have, in many ways, created an expectation in the minds of people that the future is no longer some distant time from the present. Rather, as our title suggests, the future is both present and active. References Aarseth, Espen. “How we became Postdigital: From Cyberstudies to Game Studies.” Critical Cyber-culture Studies. Ed. David Silver and Adrienne Massanari. New York: New York UP, 2006. 37–46. An Australian e-Research Strategy and Implementation Framework: Final Report of the e-Research Coordinating Committee. Commonwealth of Australia, 2006. Bolter, Jay David. Writing Space: The Computer, Hypertext, and the History of Writing. Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum, 1991. Eco, Umberto. “The Future of the Book.” 1994. 3 June 2008 ‹http://www.themodernword.com/eco/eco_future_of_book.html>. Gunkel, David. J. “What's the Matter with Books?” Configurations 11.3 (2003): 277–303. Harley, Diane. “Use and Users of Digital Resources: A Focus on Undergraduate Education in the Humanities and Social Sciences.” Research and Occasional Papers Series. Berkeley: University of California. Centre for Studies in Higher Education. 12 June 2008 ‹http://www.themodernword.com/eco/eco_future_of_book.html>. Hayles, N. Katherine. My Mother was a Computer: Digital Subjects and Literary Texts. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 2005. Hirtle, Peter B. “The Impact of Digitization on Special Collections in Libraries.” Libraries & Culture 37.1 (2002): 42–52. Hovav, Anat and Paul Gray. “Managing Academic E-journals.” Communications of the ACM 47.4 (2004): 79–82. Hugo, Victor. The Hunchback of Notre Dame (Notre-Dame de Paris). Ware, Hertfordshire: Wordsworth editions, 1993. Kho, Nancy D. “The Medium Gets the Message: Post-Print Publishing Models.” EContent 30.6 (2007): 42–48. Oblinger, Diana and Marilyn Lombardi. “Common Knowledge: Openness in Higher Education.” Opening up Education: The Collective Advancement of Education Through Open Technology, Open Content and Open Knowledge. Ed. Toru Liyoshi and M. S. Vijay Kumar. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2007. 389–400. Murray, Janet H. Hamlet on the Holodeck: The Future of Narrative in Cyberspace. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2001. Trimmer, Joseph F., Wade Jennings, and Annette Patterson. eFictions. New York: Harcourt, 2001.
APA, Harvard, Vancouver, ISO, and other styles
28

Wong, Rita. "Past and Present Acts of Exclusion." M/C Journal 4, no. 1 (February 1, 2001). http://dx.doi.org/10.5204/mcj.1893.

Full text
Abstract:
In the summer of 1999, four ships carrying 599 Fujianese people arrived on the west coast of Canada. They survived a desperate and dangerous journey only for the Canadian Government to put them in prison. After numerous deportations, there are still about 40 of these people in Canadian prisons as of January 2001. They have been in jail for over a year and a half under mere suspicion of flight risk. About 24 people have been granted refugee status. Most people deported to China have been placed in Chinese prisons and fined. It is worth remembering that these migrants may have been undocumented but they are not "illegal" in that they have mobility rights. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights recognizes everyone's right to leave any country and to seek asylum. It can be argued that it is not the migrants who are illegal, but the unjust laws that criminalize their freedom of movement. In considering people's rights, we need to keep in mind not only the civil and political rights that the West tends to privilege, but equally important social and economic rights as well. As a local response to a global phenomenon, Direct Action Against Refugee Exploitation (DAARE) formed in Vancouver to support the rights of the Fujianese women, eleven of whom at the time of writing are still being held in the Burnaby Correctional Centre for Women (BCCW). In DAARE’s view, Immigration Canada's decision to detain all these people is based on a racialized group-profiling policy which violates basic human rights and ignores Canadian responsibility in the creation of the global economic and societal conditions which give rise to widespread migration. In light of the Canadian government's plans to implement even more punitive immigration legislation, DAARE endorses the Coalition for a Just Immigration and Refugee Policy's "Position Paper on Bill C31." They call for humanitarian review and release for the remaining Fujianese people. This review would include a few released refugee claimants who are still in Canada, children, women who were past victims of family planning, people facing religious persecution and, of course, those who are still in prison after 18 months and who have never been charged with any crime. Suspicion of flight risk is not a valid reason to incarcerate people for such a long time. Who Is a Migrant? The lines between "voluntary" and "forced" migration are no longer adequate to explain the complexities of population movements today. Motives for forced displacement include political, economic, social and environmental factors. This spectrum runs from the immediate threats to life, safety and freedom due to war or persecution, to situations where economic conditions make the prospects of survival marginal and non-existent. (Moussa 2000). Terms like "economic migrant" and "bogus refugee" have been used in the media to discredit migrants such as the Fujianese and to foster hostility against them. This scapegoating process oversimplifies the situation, for all refugees and all migrants are entitled to the basic respect due all human beings as enshrined in the UN Declaration of Human Rights. There can be multiple reasons for an individual to migrate—ranging from family reunification to economic pressures to personal survival; to fear of government corruption and of political persecution, to name just a few. The reduction of everything to merely the economic does not allow one to understand why migration is occurring and likely to increase in the future. Most immigrants to Canada could also be described as economic migrants. Conrad Black is an economic migrant. The privileging of rich migrants over poor ones romanticizes globalization as corporate progress and ignores the immense human suffering it entails for the majority of the world's population as the gap between the wealthy and the poor rapidly increases. Hundreds of years ago, when migrants came to this aboriginal territory we now call Canada, they came in order to survive—in short, they too were "economic migrants." Many of those migrants who came from Europe would not qualify to enter Canada today under its current immigration admissions guidelines. Indeed, over 50% of Canadians would not be able to independently immigrate to Canada given its current elitist restrictions. One of the major reasons for an increase in migration is the destruction of rural economies in Asia and elsewhere in the world. Millions of people have been displaced by changes in agriculture that separate people from the land. These waves of internal migration also result in the movement of peoples across national borders in order to survive. Chinese provinces such as Fujian and Guangdong, whose people have a long history of overseas travel, are particularly common sources of out-migration. In discussing migration, we need to be wary of how we can inadvertently reinforce the colonization of First Nations people unless we consciously work against that by actively supporting aboriginal self-determination. For example, some First Nations people have been accused of "smuggling" people across borders—this subjects them to the same process of criminalization which the migrants have experienced, and ignores the sovereign rights of First Nations people. We need ways of relating to one another which do not reenact domination, but which work in solidarity with First Nations' struggles. This requires an understanding of the ways in which racism, colonialism, classism, and other tactics through which "dividing and conquering" take place. For those of us who are first, second, third, fourth, fifth generation migrants to this land, our survival and liberation are intimately connected to that of aboriginal people. History Repeating Itself? The arrival of the Fujianese people met with a racist media hysteria reminiscent of earlier episodes of Canadian history. Front page newspaper headlines such as "Go Home" increased hostility against these people. In Victoria, people were offering to adopt the dog on one of the ships at the same time that they were calling to deport the Chinese. From the corporate media accounts of the situation, one would think that most Canadians did not care about the dangerous voyage these people had endured, a voyage during which two people from the second ship died. Accusations that people were trying to enter the country "illegally" overlooked how historically, the Chinese, like other people of colour, have had to find ways to compensate for racist and classist biases in Canada's immigration system. For example, from 1960 to 1973, Canada granted amnesty to over 12,000 "paper sons," that is, people who had immigrated under names other than their own. The granting of "legal" status to the "paper sons" who arrived before 1960 finally recognized that Canada's legislation had unfairly excluded Chinese people for decades. From 1923 to 1947, Canada's Chinese Exclusion Act had basically prevented Chinese people from entering this country. The xenophobic attitudes that gave rise to the Chinese Exclusion Act and the head tax occurred within a colonial context that privileged British migrants. Today, colonialism may no longer be as rhetorically attached to the British empire, but its patterns—particularly the globally inequitable distribution of wealth and resources—continue to accelerate through the mechanism of transnational corporations, for example. As Helene Moussa has pointed out, "the interconnections of globalisation with racist and colonialist ideology are only too clear when all evidence shows that globalisation '¼ legitimise[s] and sustain[s] an international system that tolerates an unbelievable divide not only between the North and the South but also inside them'" (2000). Moreover, according to the United Nations Development Programme, the income gap between people in the world's wealthiest nations and the poorest nations has shifted from 30:1 in 1960 to 60:1 in 1990 and to 74:1 in 1997. (Moussa 2000) As capital or electronic money moves across borders faster than ever before in what some have called the casino economy (Mander and Goldsmith), change and instability are rapidly increasing for the majority of the world's population. People are justifiably anxious about their well-being in the face of growing transnational corporate power; however, "protecting" national borders through enforcement and detention of displaced people is a form of reactive, violent, and often racist, nationalism which scapegoats the vulnerable without truly addressing the root causes of instability and migration. In short, reactive nationalism is ineffective in safe-guarding people's survival. Asserting solidarity with those who are most immediately displaced and impoverished by globalization is strategically a better way to work towards our common survival. Substantive freedom requires equitable economic relations; that is, fairly shared wealth. Canadian Response Abilities The Canadian government should take responsibility for its role in creating the conditions that displace people and force them to migrate within their countries and across borders. As a major sponsor of efforts to privatize economies and undertake environmentally devastating projects such as hydro-electric dams, Canada has played a significant role in the creation of an unemployed "floating population" in China which is estimated to reach 200 million people this year. Punitive tactics will not stop the movement of people, who migrate to survive. According to Peter Kwong, "The well-publicized Chinese government's market reforms have practically eliminated all labor laws, labour benefits and protections. In the "free enterprise zones" workers live virtually on the factory floor, laboring fourteen hours a day for a mere two dollars—that is, about 20 cents an hour" (136). As Sunera Thobani has phrased it, "What makes it alright for us to buy a t-shirt on the streets of Vancouver for $3, which was made in China, then stand up all outraged as Canadian citizens when the woman who made that t-shirt tries to come here and live with us on a basis of equality?" Canada should respond to the urgent situations which cause people to move—not only on the grounds upon which Convention refugees were defined in 1949 (race, religion, nationality, social group, political opinion) which continue to be valid—but also to strengthen Canada's system to include a contemporary understanding that all people have basic economic and environmental survival rights. Some migrants have lives that fit into the narrow definition of a UN Convention refugee and some may not. Those who do not fit this definition have nonetheless urgent needs that deserve attention. The Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives has pointed out that there are at least 18 million people working in 124 export zones in China. A living wage in China is estimated to be 87 cents per hour. Canadians benefit from these conditions of cheap labour, yet when the producers of these goods come to our shores, we hypocritically disavow any relationship with them. Responsibility in this context need not refer so much to some stern sense of duty, obligation or altruism as to a full "response"—intellectual, emotional, physical, and spiritual—that such a situation provokes in relations between those who "benefit"—materially at least—from such a system and those who do not. References Anderson, Sarah, et al. Field Guide to the Global Economy. New York: New Press, 2000. Canadian Council of Refugees. "Migrant Smuggling and Trafficking in Persons." February 20, 2000. Canadian Woman Studies: Immigrant and Refugee Women. 19.3 (Fall 1999). Chin, Ko-lin. Smuggled Chinese. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1999. Coalition for a Just Immigration and Refugee Policy. "Position Paper on Bill C31." 2000. Davis, Angela. The Angela Davis Reader. Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishers, 1998. Global Alliance Against Traffic in Women, Foundation Against Trafficking in Women, and International Human Rights Law Group. "Human Rights Standards for the Treatment of Trafficked Persons." January 1999. Henry, Frances and Tator, Carol. Racist Discourses in Canada's English Print Media. Toronto: Canadian Foundation for Race Relations, 2000. Jameson, Fredric and Miyoshi, Masao, Eds. The Cultures of Globalization. Durham: Duke University Press, 1998. Kwong, Peter. Forbidden Workers. New York: New Press, 1997. Mander, Jerry and Goldsmith, Edward, Eds. The Case Against the Global Economy. San Francisco: Sierra Club Books, 1996. Moussa, Helene. "The Interconnections of Globalisation and Migration with Racism and Colonialism: Tracing Complicity." 2000. ---. "Violence against Refugee Women: Gender Oppression, Canadian Policy, and the International Struggle for Human Rights." Resources for Feminist Research 26 (3-4). 1998 Migrant Forum statement (from Asia Pacific People's Assembly on APEC) 'Occasional Paper Migration: an economic and social analysis.' Pizarro, Gabriela Rodriguez. "Human Rights of Migrants." United Nations Report. Seabrook, Jeremy. "The Migrant in the Mirror." New Internationalist 327 (September 2000): 34-5. Sharma, Nandita. "The Real Snakeheads: Canadian government and corporations." Kinesis. October/November (1999): 11. Spivak, Gayatri. "Diasporas Old and New: Women in the Transnational World." Class Issues. Ed. Amitava Kumar. New York: New York University Press, 1997. States of Disarray: The Social Effects of Globalization. London: United Nations Research Institute for Social Development (UN RISD), 1995. Thobani, Sunera. "The Creation of a ‘Crisis’." Kinesis October/November (1999): 12-13. Whores, Maids and Wives: Making Links. Proceedings of the North American Regional Consultative Forum on Trafficking in Women, 1997.
APA, Harvard, Vancouver, ISO, and other styles
29

Brien, Donna Lee. "Bringing a Taste of Abroad to Australian Readers: Australian Wines & Food Quarterly 1956–1960." M/C Journal 19, no. 5 (October 13, 2016). http://dx.doi.org/10.5204/mcj.1145.

Full text
Abstract:
IntroductionFood Studies is a relatively recent area of research enquiry in Australia and Magazine Studies is even newer (Le Masurier and Johinke), with the consequence that Australian culinary magazines are only just beginning to be investigated. Moreover, although many major libraries have not thought such popular magazines worthy of sustained collection (Fox and Sornil), considering these publications is important. As de Certeau argues, it can be of considerable consequence to identify and analyse everyday practices (such as producing and reading popular magazines) that seem so minor and insignificant as to be unworthy of notice, as these practices have the ability to affect our lives. It is important in this case as these publications were part of the post-war gastronomic environment in Australia in which national tastes in domestic cookery became radically internationalised (Santich). To further investigate Australian magazines, as well as suggesting how these cosmopolitan eating habits became more widely embraced, this article will survey the various ways in which the idea of “abroad” is expressed in one Australian culinary serial from the post-war period, Australian Wines & Food Quarterly magazine, which was published from 1956 to 1960. The methodological approach taken is an historically-informed content analysis (Krippendorff) of relevant material from these magazines combined with germane media data (Hodder). All issues in the serial’s print run have been considered.Australian Post-War Culinary PublishingTo date, studies of 1950s writing in Australia have largely focused on literary and popular fiction (Johnson-Wood; Webby) and literary criticism (Bird; Dixon; Lee). There have been far fewer studies of non-fiction writing of any kind, although some serial publications from this time have attracted some attention (Bell; Lindesay; Ross; Sheridan; Warner-Smith; White; White). In line with studies internationally, groundbreaking work in Australian food history has focused on cookbooks, and includes work by Supski, who notes that despite the fact that buying cookbooks was “regarded as a luxury in the 1950s” (87), such publications were an important information source in terms of “developing, consolidating and extending foodmaking knowledge” at that time (85).It is widely believed that changes to Australian foodways were brought about by significant post-war immigration and the recipes and dishes these immigrants shared with neighbours, friends, and work colleagues and more widely afield when they opened cafes and restaurants (Newton; Newton; Manfredi). Although these immigrants did bring new culinary flavours and habits with them, the overarching rhetoric guiding population policy at this time was assimilation, with migrants expected to abandon their culture, language, and habits in favour of the dominant British-influenced ways of living (Postiglione). While migrants often did retain their foodways (Risson), the relationship between such food habits and the increasingly cosmopolitan Australian food culture is much more complex than the dominant cultural narrative would have us believe. It has been pointed out, for example, that while the haute cuisine of countries such as France, Italy, and Germany was much admired in Australia and emulated in expensive dining (Brien and Vincent), migrants’ own preference for their own dishes instead of Anglo-Australian choices, was not understood (Postiglione). Duruz has added how individual diets are eclectic, “multi-layered and hybrid” (377), incorporating foods from both that person’s own background with others available for a range of reasons including availability, cost, taste, and fashion. In such an environment, popular culinary publishing, in terms of cookbooks, specialist magazines, and recipe and other food-related columns in general magazines and newspapers, can be posited to be another element contributing to this change.Australian Wines & Food QuarterlyAustralian Wines & Food Quarterly (AWFQ) is, as yet, a completely unexamined publication, and there appears to be only three complete sets of this magazine held in public collections. It is important to note that, at the time it was launched in the mid-1950s, food writing played a much less significant part in Australian popular publishing than it does today, with far fewer cookbooks released than today, and women’s magazines and the women’s pages of newspapers containing only small recipe sections. In this environment, a new specialist culinary magazine could be seen to be timely, an audacious gamble, or both.All issues of this magazine were produced and printed in, and distributed from, Melbourne, Australia. Although no sales or distribution figures are available, production was obviously a struggle, with only 15 issues published before the magazine folded at the end of 1960. The title of the magazine changed over this time, and issue release dates are erratic, as is the method in which volumes and issues are numbered. Although the number of pages varied from 32 up to 52, and then less once again, across the magazine’s life, the price was steadily reduced, ending up at less than half the original cover price. All issues were produced and edited by Donald Wallace, who also wrote much of the content, with contributions from family members, including his wife, Mollie Wallace, to write, illustrate, and produce photographs for the magazine.When considering the content of the magazine, most is quite familiar in culinary serials today, although AWFQ’s approach was radically innovative in Australia at this time when cookbooks, women’s magazines, and newspaper cookery sections focused on recipes, many of which were of cakes, biscuits, and other sweet baking (Bannerman). AWFQ not only featured many discursive essays and savory meals, it also featured much wine writing and review-style content as well as information about restaurant dining in each issue.Wine-Related ContentWine is certainly the most prominent of the content areas, with most issues of the magazine containing more wine-related content than any other. Moreover, in the early issues, most of the food content is about preparing dishes and/or meals that could be consumed alongside wines, although the proportion of food content increases as the magazine is published. This wine-related content takes a clearly international perspective on this topic. While many articles and advertisements, for example, narrate the long history of Australian wine growing—which goes back to early 19th century—these articles argue that Australia's vineyards and wineries measure up to international, and especially French, examples. In one such example, the author states that: “from the earliest times Australia’s wines have matched up to world standard” (“Wine” 25). This contest can be situated in Australia, where a leading restaurant (Caprice in Sydney) could be seen to not only “match up to” but also, indeed to, “challenge world standards” by serving Australian wines instead of imports (“Sydney” 33). So good, indeed, are Australian wines that when foreigners are surprised by their quality, this becomes newsworthy. This is evidenced in the following excerpt: “Nearly every English businessman who has come out to Australia in the last ten years … has diverted from his main discussion to comment on the high quality of Australian wine” (Seppelt, 3). In a similar nationalist vein, many articles feature overseas experts’ praise of Australian wines. Thus, visiting Italian violinist Giaconda de Vita shows a “keen appreciation of Australian wines” (“Violinist” 30), British actor Robert Speaight finds Grange Hermitage “an ideal wine” (“High Praise” 13), and the Swedish ambassador becomes their advocate (Ludbrook, “Advocate”).This competition could also be located overseas including when Australian wines are served at prestigious overseas events such as a dinner for members of the Overseas Press Club in New York (Australian Wines); sold from Seppelt’s new London cellars (Melbourne), or the equally new Australian Wine Centre in Soho (Australia Will); or, featured in exhibitions and promotions such as the Lausanne Trade Fair (Australia is Guest;“Wines at Lausanne), or the International Wine Fair in Yugoslavia (Australia Wins).Australia’s first Wine Festival was held in Melbourne in 1959 (Seppelt, “Wine Week”), the joint focus of which was the entertainment and instruction of the some 15,000 to 20,000 attendees who were expected. At its centre was a series of free wine tastings aiming to promote Australian wines to the “professional people of the community, as well as the general public and the housewife” (“Melbourne” 8), although admission had to be recommended by a wine retailer. These tastings were intended to build up the prestige of Australian wine when compared to international examples: “It is the high quality of our wines that we are proud of. That is the story to pass on—that Australian wine, at its best, is at least as good as any in the world and better than most” (“Melbourne” 8).There is also a focus on promoting wine drinking as a quotidian habit enjoyed abroad: “We have come a long way in less than twenty years […] An enormous number of husbands and wives look forward to a glass of sherry when the husband arrives home from work and before dinner, and a surprising number of ordinary people drink table wine quite un-selfconsciously” (Seppelt, “Advance” 3). However, despite an acknowledged increase in wine appreciation and drinking, there is also acknowledgement that this there was still some way to go in this aim as, for example, in the statement: “There is no reason why the enjoyment of table wines should not become an Australian custom” (Seppelt, “Advance” 4).The authority of European experts and European habits is drawn upon throughout the publication whether in philosophically-inflected treatises on wine drinking as a core part of civilised behaviour, or practically-focused articles about wine handling and serving (Keown; Seabrook; “Your Own”). Interestingly, a number of Australian experts are also quoted as stressing that these are guidelines, not strict rules: Crosby, for instance, states: “There is no ‘right wine.’ The wine to drink is the one you like, when and how you like it” (19), while the then-manager of Lindemans Wines is similarly reassuring in his guide to entertaining, stating that “strict adherence to the rules is not invariably wise” (Mackay 3). Tingey openly acknowledges that while the international-style of regularly drinking wine had “given more dignity and sophistication to the Australian way of life” (35), it should not be shrouded in snobbery.Food-Related ContentThe magazine’s cookery articles all feature international dishes, and certain foreign foods, recipes, and ways of eating and dining are clearly identified as “gourmet”. Cheese is certainly the most frequently mentioned “gourmet” food in the magazine, and is featured in every issue. These articles can be grouped into the following categories: understanding cheese (how it is made and the different varieties enjoyed internationally), how to consume cheese (in relation to other food and specific wines, and in which particular parts of a meal, again drawing on international practices), and cooking with cheese (mostly in what can be identified as “foreign” recipes).Some of this content is produced by Kraft Foods, a major advertiser in the magazine, and these articles and recipes generally focus on urging people to eat more, and varied international kinds of cheese, beyond the ubiquitous Australian cheddar. In terms of advertorials, both Kraft cheeses (as well as other advertisers) are mentioned by brand in recipes, while the companies are also profiled in adjacent articles. In the fourth issue, for instance, a full-page, infomercial-style advertisement, noting the different varieties of Kraft cheese and how to serve them, is published in the midst of a feature on cooking with various cheeses (“Cooking with Cheese”). This includes recipes for Swiss Cheese fondue and two pasta recipes: spaghetti and spicy tomato sauce, and a so-called Italian spaghetti with anchovies.Kraft’s company history states that in 1950, it was the first business in Australia to manufacture and market rindless cheese. Through these AWFQ advertisements and recipes, Kraft aggressively marketed this innovation, as well as its other new products as they were launched: mayonnaise, cheddar cheese portions, and Cracker Barrel Cheese in 1954; Philadelphia Cream Cheese, the first cream cheese to be produced commercially in Australia, in 1956; and, Coon Cheese in 1957. Not all Kraft products were seen, however, as “gourmet” enough for such a magazine. Kraft’s release of sliced Swiss Cheese in 1957, and processed cheese slices in 1959, for instance, both passed unremarked in either the magazine’s advertorial or recipes.An article by the Australian Dairy Produce Board urging consumers to “Be adventurous with Cheese” presented general consumer information including the “origin, characteristics and mode of serving” cheese accompanied by a recipe for a rich and exotic-sounding “Wine French Dressing with Blue Cheese” (Kennedy 18). This was followed in the next issue by an article discussing both now familiar and not-so familiar European cheese varieties: “Monterey, Tambo, Feta, Carraway, Samsoe, Taffel, Swiss, Edam, Mozzarella, Pecorino-Romano, Red Malling, Cacio Cavallo, Blue-Vein, Roman, Parmigiano, Kasseri, Ricotta and Pepato” (“Australia’s Natural” 23). Recipes for cheese fondues recur through the magazine, sometimes even multiple times in the same issue (see, for instance, “Cooking With Cheese”; “Cooking With Wine”; Pain). In comparison, butter, although used in many AWFQ’s recipes, was such a common local ingredient at this time that it was only granted one article over the entire run of the magazine, and this was largely about the much more unusual European-style unsalted butter (“An Expert”).Other international recipes that were repeated often include those for pasta (always spaghetti) as well as mayonnaise made with olive oil. Recurring sweets and desserts include sorbets and zabaglione from Italy, and flambéd crepes suzettes from France. While tabletop cooking is the epitome of sophistication and described as an international technique, baked Alaska (ice cream nestled on liquor-soaked cake, and baked in a meringue shell), hailing from America, is the most featured recipe in the magazine. Asian-inspired cuisine was rarely represented and even curry—long an Anglo-Australian staple—was mentioned only once in the magazine, in an article reprinted from the South African The National Hotelier, and which included a recipe alongside discussion of blending spices (“Curry”).Coffee was regularly featured in both articles and advertisements as a staple of the international gourmet kitchen (see, for example, Bancroft). Articles on the history, growing, marketing, blending, roasting, purchase, percolating and brewing, and serving of coffee were common during the magazine’s run, and are accompanied with advertisements for Bushell’s, Robert Timms’s and Masterfoods’s coffee ranges. AWFQ believed Australia’s growing coffee consumption was the result of increased participation in quality internationally-influenced dining experiences, whether in restaurants, the “scores of colourful coffee shops opening their doors to a new generation” (“Coffee” 39), or at home (Adams). Tea, traditionally the Australian hot drink of choice, is not mentioned once in the magazine (Brien).International Gourmet InnovationsAlso featured in the magazine are innovations in the Australian food world: new places to eat; new ways to cook, including a series of sometimes quite unusual appliances; and new ways to shop, with a profile of the first American-style supermarkets to open in Australia in this period. These are all seen as overseas innovations, but highly suited to Australia. The laws then controlling the service of alcohol are also much discussed, with many calls to relax the licensing laws which were seen as inhibiting civilised dining and drinking practices. The terms this was often couched in—most commonly in relation to the Olympic Games (held in Melbourne in 1956), but also in relation to tourism in general—are that these restrictive regulations were an embarrassment for Melbourne when considered in relation to international practices (see, for example, Ludbrook, “Present”). This was at a time when the nightly hotel closing time of 6.00 pm (and the performance of the notorious “six o’clock swill” in terms of drinking behaviour) was only repealed in Victoria in 1966 (Luckins).Embracing scientific approaches in the kitchen was largely seen to be an American habit. The promotion of the use of electricity in the kitchen, and the adoption of new electric appliances (Gas and Fuel; Gilbert “Striving”), was described not only as a “revolution that is being wrought in our homes”, but one that allowed increased levels of personal expression and fulfillment, in “increas[ing] the time and resources available to the housewife for the expression of her own personality in the management of her home” (Gilbert, “The Woman’s”). This mirrors the marketing of these modes of cooking and appliances in other media at this time, including in newspapers, radio, and other magazines. This included features on freezing food, however AWFQ introduced an international angle, by suggesting that recipe bases could be pre-prepared, frozen, and then defrosted to use in a range of international cookery (“Fresh”; “How to”; Kelvinator Australia). The then-new marvel of television—another American innovation—is also mentioned in the magazine ("Changing concepts"), although other nationalities are also invoked. The history of the French guild the Confrerie de la Chaine des Roitisseurs in 1248 is, for instance, used to promote an electric spit roaster that was part of a state-of-the-art gas stove (“Always”), and there are also advertisements for such appliances as the Gaggia expresso machine (“Lets”) which draw on both Italian historical antecedence and modern science.Supermarket and other forms of self-service shopping are identified as American-modern, with Australia’s first shopping mall lauded as the epitome of utopian progressiveness in terms of consumer practice. Judged to mark “a new era in Australian retailing” (“Regional” 12), the opening of Chadstone Regional Shopping Centre in suburban Melbourne on 4 October 1960, with its 83 tenants including “giant” supermarket Dickens, and free parking for 2,500 cars, was not only “one of the most up to date in the world” but “big even by American standards” (“Regional” 12, italics added), and was hailed as a step in Australia “catching up” with the United States in terms of mall shopping (“Regional” 12). This shopping centre featured international-styled dining options including Bistro Shiraz, an outdoor terrace restaurant that planned to operate as a bistro-snack bar by day and full-scale restaurant at night, and which was said to offer diners a “Persian flavor” (“Bistro”).ConclusionAustralian Wines & Food Quarterly was the first of a small number of culinary-focused Australian publications in the 1950s and 1960s which assisted in introducing a generation of readers to information about what were then seen as foreign foods and beverages only to be accessed and consumed abroad as well as a range of innovative international ideas regarding cookery and dining. For this reason, it can be posited that the magazine, although modest in the claims it made, marked a revolutionary moment in Australian culinary publishing. As yet, only slight traces can be found of its editor and publisher, Donald Wallace. The influence of AWFQ is, however, clearly evident in the two longer-lived magazines that were launched in the decade after AWFQ folded: Australian Gourmet Magazine and The Epicurean. Although these serials had a wider reach, an analysis of the 15 issues of AWFQ adds to an understanding of how ideas of foods, beverages, and culinary ideas and trends, imported from abroad were presented to an Australian readership in the 1950s, and contributed to how national foodways were beginning to change during that decade.ReferencesAdams, Jillian. “Australia’s American Coffee Culture.” Australian Journal of Popular Culture 2.1 (2012): 23–36.“Always to Roast on a Turning Spit.” The Magazine of Good Living: Australian Wines and Food 4.2 (1960): 17.“An Expert on Butter.” The Magazine of Good Living: The Australian Wine & Food 4.1 (1960): 11.“Australia Is Guest Nation at Lausanne.” The Magazine of Good Living: Australian Wines and Food 4.2 (1960): 18–19.“Australia’s Natural Cheeses.” The Magazine of Good Living: The Australian Wine & Food 4.1 (1960): 23.“Australia Will Be There.” The Magazine of Good Living: Australian Wines and Food 4.2 (1960): 14.“Australian Wines Served at New York Dinner.” Australian Wines & Food Quarterly 1.5 (1958): 16.“Australia Wins Six Gold Medals.” Australian Wines & Food: The Magazine of Good Living 2.11 (1959/1960): 3.Bancroft, P.A. “Let’s Make Some Coffee.” The Magazine of Good Living: The Australian Wine & Food 4.1 (1960): 10. Bannerman, Colin. Seed Cake and Honey Prawns: Fashion and Fad in Australian Food. Canberra: National Library of Australia, 2008.Bell, Johnny. “Putting Dad in the Picture: Fatherhood in the Popular Women’s Magazines of 1950s Australia.” Women's History Review 22.6 (2013): 904–929.Bird, Delys, Robert Dixon, and Christopher Lee. Eds. Authority and Influence: Australian Literary Criticism 1950-2000. Brisbane: U of Queensland P, 2001.“Bistro at Chadstone.” The Magazine of Good Living 4.3 (1960): 3.Brien, Donna Lee. “Powdered, Essence or Brewed? Making and Cooking with Coffee in Australia in the 1950s and 1960s.” M/C Journal 15.2 (2012). 20 July 2016 <http://journal.media-culture.org.au/index.php/mcjournal/article/view/475>.Brien, Donna Lee, and Alison Vincent. “Oh, for a French Wife? Australian Women and Culinary Francophilia in Post-War Australia.” Lilith: A Feminist History Journal 22 (2016): 78–90.De Certeau, Michel. The Practice of Everyday Life. Berkeley: U of California P, 1998.“Changing Concepts of Cooking.” Australian Wines & Food 2.11 (1958/1959): 18-19.“Coffee Beginnings.” Australian Wines & Food Quarterly 1.4 (1957/1958): 37–39.“Cooking with Cheese.” Australian Wines & Food Quarterly 1.4 (1957/1958): 25–28.“Cooking with Wine.” Australian Wines & Food: The Magazine of Good Living 2.11 (1959/1960): 24–30.Crosby, R.D. “Wine Etiquette.” Australian Wines & Food Quarterly 1.4 (1957/1958): 19–21.“Curry and How to Make It.” Australian Wines & Food Quarterly 1.2 (1957): 32.Duruz, Jean. “Rewriting the Village: Geographies of Food and Belonging in Clovelly, Australia.” Cultural Geographies 9 (2002): 373–388.Fox, Edward A., and Ohm Sornil. “Digital Libraries.” Encyclopedia of Computer Science. 4th ed. Eds. Anthony Ralston, Edwin D. Reilly, and David Hemmendinger. London: Nature Publishing Group, 2000. 576–581.“Fresh Frozen Food.” Australian Wines & Food: The Magazine of Good Living 2.8 (1959): 8.Gas and Fuel Corporation of Victoria. “Wine Makes the Recipe: Gas Makes the Dish.” Advertisement. Australian Wines & Food Quarterly 1.3 (1957): 34.Gilbert, V.J. “Striving for Perfection.” The Magazine of Good Living: The Australian Wine & Food 4.1 (1960): 6.———. “The Woman’s Workshop.” The Magazine of Good Living: The Australian Wines & Food 4.2 (1960): 22.“High Praise for Penfolds Claret.” The Magazine of Good Living: The Australian Wine & Food 4.1 (1960): 13.Hodder, Ian. The Interpretation of Documents and Material Culture. Thousand Oaks, CA.: Sage, 1994.“How to Cook Frozen Meats.” Australian Wines & Food: The Magazine of Good Living 2.8 (1959): 19, 26.Johnson-Woods, Toni. Pulp: A Collector’s Book of Australian Pulp Fiction Covers. Canberra: National Library of Australia, 2004.Kelvinator Australia. “Try Cooking the Frozen ‘Starter’ Way.” Australian Wines & Food: The Magazine of Good Living 2.9 (1959): 10–12.Kennedy, H.E. “Be Adventurous with Cheese.” The Magazine of Good Living: The Australian Wine & Food 3.12 (1960): 18–19.Keown, K.C. “Some Notes on Wine.” The Magazine of Good Living: The Australian Wine & Food 4.1 (1960): 32–33.Krippendorff, Klaus. Content Analysis: An Introduction to Its Methodology. 2nd ed. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 2004.“Let’s Make Some Coffee.” The Magazine of Good Living: The Australian Wines and Food 4.2: 23.Lindesay, Vance. The Way We Were: Australian Popular Magazines 1856–1969. Melbourne: Oxford UP, 1983.Luckins, Tanja. “Pigs, Hogs and Aussie Blokes: The Emergence of the Term “Six O’clock Swill.”’ History Australia 4.1 (2007): 8.1–8.17.Ludbrook, Jack. “Advocate for Australian Wines.” The Magazine of Good Living: Australian Wines and Food 4.2 (1960): 3–4.Ludbrook, Jack. “Present Mixed Licensing Laws Harm Tourist Trade.” Australian Wines & Food: The Magazine of Good Living 2.9 (1959): 14, 31.Kelvinator Australia. “Try Cooking the Frozen ‘Starter’ Way.” Australian Wines & Food: The Magazine of Good Living 2.9 (1959): 10–12.Mackay, Colin. “Entertaining with Wine.” Australian Wines &Foods Quarterly 1.5 (1958): 3–5.Le Masurier, Megan, and Rebecca Johinke. “Magazine Studies: Pedagogy and Practice in a Nascent Field.” TEXT Special Issue 25 (2014). 20 July 2016 <http://www.textjournal.com.au/speciss/issue25/LeMasurier&Johinke.pdf>.“Melbourne Stages Australia’s First Wine Festival.” Australian Wines & Food: The Magazine of Good Living 2.10 (1959): 8–9.Newton, John, and Stefano Manfredi. “Gottolengo to Bonegilla: From an Italian Childhood to an Australian Restaurant.” Convivium 2.1 (1994): 62–63.Newton, John. Wogfood: An Oral History with Recipes. Sydney: Random House, 1996.Pain, John Bowen. “Cooking with Wine.” Australian Wines & Food Quarterly 1.3 (1957): 39–48.Postiglione, Nadia.“‘It Was Just Horrible’: The Food Experience of Immigrants in 1950s Australia.” History Australia 7.1 (2010): 09.1–09.16.“Regional Shopping Centre.” The Magazine of Good Living: Australian Wines and Food 4.2 (1960): 12–13.Risson, Toni. Aphrodite and the Mixed Grill: Greek Cafés in Twentieth-Century Australia. Ipswich, Qld.: T. Risson, 2007.Ross, Laurie. “Fantasy Worlds: The Depiction of Women and the Mating Game in Men’s Magazines in the 1950s.” Journal of Australian Studies 22.56 (1998): 116–124.Santich, Barbara. Bold Palates: Australia’s Gastronomic Heritage. Kent Town: Wakefield P, 2012.Seabrook, Douglas. “Stocking Your Cellar.” Australian Wines & Foods Quarterly 1.3 (1957): 19–20.Seppelt, John. “Advance Australian Wine.” Australian Wines & Foods Quarterly 1.3 (1957): 3–4.Seppelt, R.L. “Wine Week: 1959.” Australian Wines & Food: The Magazine of Good Living 2.10 (1959): 3.Sheridan, Susan, Barbara Baird, Kate Borrett, and Lyndall Ryan. (2002) Who Was That Woman? The Australian Women’s Weekly in the Postwar Years. Sydney: UNSW P, 2002.Supski, Sian. “'We Still Mourn That Book’: Cookbooks, Recipes and Foodmaking Knowledge in 1950s Australia.” Journal of Australian Studies 28 (2005): 85–94.“Sydney Restaurant Challenges World Standards.” Australian Wines & Food Quarterly 1.4 (1957/1958): 33.Tingey, Peter. “Wineman Rode a Hobby Horse.” Australian Wines & Food: The Magazine of Good Living 2.9 (1959): 35.“Violinist Loves Bach—and Birds.” The Magazine of Good Living: The Australian Wine & Food 3.12 (1960): 30.Wallace, Donald. Ed. Australian Wines & Food Quarterly. Magazine. Melbourne: 1956–1960.Warner-Smith, Penny. “Travel, Young Women and ‘The Weekly’, 1959–1968.” Annals of Leisure Research 3.1 (2000): 33–46.Webby, Elizabeth. The Cambridge Companion to Australian Literature. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2000.White, Richard. “The Importance of Being Man.” Australian Popular Culture. Eds. Peter Spearritt and David Walker. Sydney: Allen & Unwin, 1979. 145–169.White, Richard. “The Retreat from Adventure: Popular Travel Writing in the 1950s.” Australian Historical Studies 109 (1997): 101–103.“Wine: The Drink for the Home.” Australian Wines & Food Quarterly 2.10 (1959): 24–25.“Wines at the Lausanne Trade Fair.” The Magazine of Good Living: Australian Wines and Food 4.2 (1960): 15.“Your Own Wine Cellar” Australian Wines & Food Quarterly 1.2 (1957): 19–20.
APA, Harvard, Vancouver, ISO, and other styles
30

Franks, Rachel. "A True Crime Tale: Re-imagining Governor Arthur’s Proclamation to the Aborigines." M/C Journal 18, no. 6 (March 7, 2016). http://dx.doi.org/10.5204/mcj.1036.

Full text
Abstract:
Special Care Notice This paper discusses trauma and violence inflicted upon the Indigenous peoples of Tasmania through the process of colonisation. Content within this paper may be distressing to some readers. Introduction The decimation of the First Peoples of Van Diemen’s Land (now Tasmania) was systematic and swift. First Contact was an emotionally, intellectually, physically, and spiritually confronting series of encounters for the Indigenous inhabitants. There were, according to some early records, a few examples of peaceful interactions (Morris 84). Yet, the inevitable competition over resources, and the intensity with which colonists pursued their “claims” for food, land, and water, quickly transformed amicable relationships into hostile rivalries. Jennifer Gall has written that, as “European settlement expanded in the late 1820s, violent exchanges between settlers and Aboriginal people were frequent, brutal and unchecked” (58). Indeed, the near-annihilation of the original custodians of the land was, if viewed through the lens of time, a process that could be described as one that was especially efficient. As John Morris notes: in 1803, when the first settlers arrived in Van Diemen’s Land, the Aborigines had already inhabited the island for some 25,000 years and the population has been estimated at 4,000. Seventy-three years later, Truganinni, [often cited as] the last Tasmanian of full Aboriginal descent, was dead. (84) Against a backdrop of extreme violence, often referred to as the Black War (Clements 1), there were some, admittedly dubious, efforts to contain the bloodshed. One such effort, in the late 1820s, was the production, and subsequent distribution, of a set of Proclamation Boards. Approximately 100 Proclamation Boards (the Board) were introduced by the Lieutenant Governor of the day, George Arthur (after whom Port Arthur on the Tasman Peninsula is named). The purpose of these Boards was to communicate, via a four-strip pictogram, to the Indigenous peoples of the island colony that all people—black and white—were considered equal under the law. “British Justice would protect” everyone (Morris 84). This is reflected in the narrative of the Boards. The first image presents Indigenous peoples and colonists living peacefully together. The second, and central, image shows “a conciliatory handshake between the British governor and an Aboriginal ‘chief’, highly reminiscent of images found in North America on treaty medals and anti-slavery tokens” (Darian-Smith and Edmonds 4). The third and fourth images depict the repercussions for committing murder, with an Indigenous man hanged for spearing a colonist and a European man also hanged for shooting an Aborigine. Both men executed under “gubernatorial supervision” (Turnbull 53). Image 1: Governor Davey's [sic - actually Governor Arthur's] Proclamation to the Aborigines, 1816 [sic - actually c. 1828-30]. Image Credit: Mitchell Library, State Library of NSW (Call Number: SAFE / R 247). The Board is an interesting re-imagining of one of the traditional methods of communication for Indigenous peoples; the leaving of images on the bark of trees. Such trees, often referred to as scarred trees, are rare in modern-day Tasmania as “the expansion of settlements, and the impact of bush fires and other environmental factors” resulted in many of these trees being destroyed (Aboriginal Heritage Tasmania online). Similarly, only a few of the Boards, inspired by these trees, survive today. The Proclamation Board was, in the 1860s, re-imagined as the output of a different Governor: Lieutenant Governor Davey (after whom Port Davey, on the south-west coast of Tasmania is named). This re-imagining of the Board’s creator was so effective that the Board, today, is popularly known as Governor Davey’s Proclamation to the Aborigines. This paper outlines several other re-imaginings of this Board. In addition, this paper offers another, new, re-imagining of the Board, positing that this is an early “pamphlet” on crime, justice and punishment which actually presents as a pre-cursor to the modern Australian true crime tale. In doing so this work connects the Proclamation Board to the larger genre of crime fiction. One Proclamation Board: Two Governors Labelled Van Diemen’s Land and settled as a colony of New South Wales in 1803, this island state would secede from the administration of mainland Australia in 1825. Another change would follow in 1856 when Van Diemen’s Land was, in another process of re-imagining, officially re-named Tasmania. This change in nomenclature was an initiative to, symbolically at least, separate the contemporary state from a criminal and violent past (Newman online). Tasmania’s violent history was, perhaps, inevitable. The island was claimed by Philip Gidley King, the Governor of New South Wales, in the name of His Majesty, not for the purpose of building a community, but to “prevent the French from gaining a footing on the east side of that island” and also to procure “timber and other natural products, as well as to raise grain and to promote the seal industry” (Clark 36). Another rationale for this land claim was to “divide the convicts” (Clark 36) which re-fashioned the island into a gaol. It was this penal element of the British colonisation of Australia that saw the worst of the British Empire forced upon the Aboriginal peoples. As historian Clive Turnbull explains: the brutish state of England was reproduced in the English colonies, and that in many ways its brutishness was increased, for now there came to Australia not the humanitarians or the indifferent, but the men who had vested interests in the systems of restraint; among those who suffered restraint were not only a vast number who were merely unfortunate and poverty-stricken—the victims of a ‘depression’—but brutalised persons, child-slaughterers and even potential cannibals. (Turnbull 25) As noted above the Black War of Tasmania saw unprecedented aggression against the rightful occupants of the land. Yet, the Aboriginal peoples were “promised the white man’s justice, the people [were] exhorted to live in amity with them, the wrongs which they suffer [were] deplored” (Turnbull 23). The administrators purported an egalitarian society, one of integration and peace but Van Diemen’s Land was colonised as a prison and as a place of profit. So, “like many apologists whose material benefit is bound up with the systems which they defend” (Turnbull 23), assertions of care for the health and welfare of the Aboriginal peoples were made but were not supported by sufficient policies, or sufficient will, and the Black War continued. Colonel Thomas Davey (1758-1823) was the second person to serve as Lieutenant Governor of Van Diemen’s Land; a term of office that began in 1813 and concluded in 1817. The fourth Lieutenant Governor of the island was Colonel Sir George Arthur (1784-1854); his term of office, significantly longer than Davey’s, being from 1824 to 1836. The two men were very different but are connected through this intriguing artefact, the Proclamation Board. One of the efforts made to assert the principle of equality under the law in Van Diemen’s Land was an outcome of work undertaken by Surveyor General George Frankland (1800-1838). Frankland wrote to Arthur in early 1829 and suggested the Proclamation Board (Morris 84), sometimes referred to as a Picture Board or the Tasmanian Hieroglyphics, as a tool to support Arthur’s various Proclamations. The Proclamation, signed on 15 April 1828 and promulgated in the The Hobart Town Courier on 19 April 1828 (Arthur 1), was one of several notices attempting to reduce the increasing levels of violence between Indigenous peoples and colonists. The date on Frankland’s correspondence clearly situates the Proclamation Board within Arthur’s tenure as Lieutenant Governor. The Board was, however, in the 1860s, re-imagined as the output of Davey. The Clerk of the Tasmanian House of Assembly, Hugh M. Hull, asserted that the Board was the work of Davey and not Arthur. Hull’s rationale for this, despite archival evidence connecting the Board to Frankland and, by extension, to Arthur, is predominantly anecdotal. In a letter to the editor of The Hobart Mercury, published 26 November 1874, Hull wrote: this curiosity was shown by me to the late Mrs Bateman, neé Pitt, a lady who arrived here in 1804, and with whom I went to school in 1822. She at once recognised it as one of a number prepared in 1816, under Governor Davey’s orders; and said she had seen one hanging on a gum tree at Cottage Green—now Battery Point. (3) Hull went on to assert that “if any old gentleman will look at the picture and remember the style of military and civil dress of 1810-15, he will find that Mrs Bateman was right” (3). Interestingly, Hull relies upon the recollections of a deceased school friend and the dress codes depicted by the artist to date the Proclamation Board as a product of 1816, in lieu of documentary evidence dating the Board as a product of 1828-1830. Curiously, the citation of dress can serve to undermine Hull’s argument. An early 1840s watercolour by Thomas Bock, of Mathinna, an Aboriginal child of Flinders Island adopted by Lieutenant Governor John Franklin (Felton online), features the young girl wearing a brightly coloured, high-waisted dress. This dress is very similar to the dresses worn by the children on the Proclamation Board (the difference being that Mathinna wears a red dress with a contrasting waistband, the children on the Board wear plain yellow dresses) (Bock). Acknowledging the simplicity of children's clothing during the colonial era, it could still be argued that it would have been unlikely the Governor of the day would have placed a child, enjoying at that time a life of privilege, in a situation where she sat for a portrait wearing an old-fashioned garment. So effective was Hull’s re-imagining of the Board’s creator that the Board was, for many years, popularly known as Governor Davey’s Proclamation to the Aborigines with even the date modified, to 1816, to fit Davey’s term of office. Further, it is worth noting that catalogue records acknowledge the error of attribution and list both Davey and Arthur as men connected to the creation of the Proclamation Board. A Surviving Board: Mitchell Library, State Library of New South Wales One of the surviving Proclamation Boards is held by the Mitchell Library. The Boards, oil on Huon pine, were painted by “convict artists incarcerated in the island penal colony” (Carroll 73). The work was mass produced (by the standards of mass production of the day) by pouncing, “a technique [of the Italian Renaissance] of pricking the contours of a drawing with a pin. Charcoal was then dusted on to the drawing” (Carroll 75-76). The images, once outlined, were painted in oil. Of approximately 100 Boards made, several survive today. There are seven known Boards within public collections (Gall 58): five in Australia (Mitchell Library, State Library of NSW, Sydney; Museum Victoria, Melbourne; National Library of Australia, Canberra; Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery, Hobart; and Queen Victoria Museum and Art Gallery, Launceston); and two overseas (The Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology, Harvard University and the Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology, University of Cambridge). The catalogue record, for the Board held by the Mitchell Library, offers the following details:Paintings: 1 oil painting on Huon pine board, rectangular in shape with rounded corners and hole at top centre for suspension ; 35.7 x 22.6 x 1 cm. 4 scenes are depicted:Aborigines and white settlers in European dress mingling harmoniouslyAboriginal men and women, and an Aboriginal child approach Governor Arthur to shake hands while peaceful soldiers look onA hostile Aboriginal man spears a male white settler and is hanged by the military as Governor Arthur looks onA hostile white settler shoots an Aboriginal man and is hanged by the military as Governor Arthur looks on. (SAFE / R 247) The Mitchell Library Board was purchased from J.W. Beattie in May 1919 for £30 (Morris 86), which is approximately $2,200 today. Importantly, the title of the record notes both the popular attribution of the Board and the man who actually instigated the Board’s production: “Governor Davey’s [sic – actually Governor Arthur] Proclamation to the Aborigines, 1816 [sic – actually c. 1828-30].” The date of the Board is still a cause of some speculation. The earlier date, 1828, marks the declaration of martial law (Turnbull 94) and 1830 marks the Black Line (Edmonds 215); the attempt to form a human line of white men to force many Tasmanian Aboriginals, four of the nine nations, onto the Tasman Peninsula (Ryan 3). Frankland’s suggestion for the Board was put forward on 4 February 1829, with Arthur’s official Conciliator to the Aborigines, G.A. Robinson, recording his first sighting of a Board on 24 December 1829 (Morris 84-85). Thus, the conception of the Board may have been in 1828 but the Proclamation project was not fully realised until 1830. Indeed, a news item on the Proclamation Board did appear in the popular press, but not until 5 March 1830: We are informed that the Government have given directions for the painting of a large number of pictures to be placed in the bush for the contemplation of the Aboriginal Inhabitants. […] However […] the causes of their hostility must be more deeply probed, or their taste as connoisseurs in paintings more clearly established, ere we can look for any beneficial result from this measure. (Colonial Times 2) The remark made in relation to becoming a connoisseur of painting, though intended to be derogatory, makes some sense. There was an assumption that the Indigenous peoples could easily translate a European-styled execution by hanging, as a visual metaphor for all forms of punishment. It has long been understood that Indigenous “social organisation and religious and ceremonial life were often as complex as those of the white invaders” (McCulloch 261). However, the Proclamation Board was, in every sense, Eurocentric and made no attempt to acknowledge the complexities of Aboriginal culture. It was, quite simply, never going to be an effective tool of communication, nor achieve its socio-legal aims. The Board Re-imagined: Popular Media The re-imagining of the Proclamation Board as a construct of Governor Davey, instead of Governor Arthur, is just one of many re-imaginings of this curious object. There are, of course, the various imaginings of the purpose of the Board. On the surface these images are a tool for reconciliation but as “the story of these paintings unfolds […] it becomes clear that the proclamations were in effect envoys sent back to Britain to exhibit the ingenious attempts being applied to civilise Australia” (Carroll 76). In this way the Board was re-imagined by the Administration that funded the exercise, even before the project was completed, from a mechanism to assist in the bringing about of peace into an object that would impress colonial superiors. Khadija von Zinnenburg Carroll has recently written about the Boards in the context of their “transnational circulation” and how “objects become subjects and speak of their past through the ventriloquism of contemporary art history” (75). Carroll argues the Board is an item that couples “military strategy with a fine arts propaganda campaign” (Carroll 78). Critically the Boards never achieved their advertised purpose for, as Carroll explains, there were “elaborate rituals Aboriginal Australians had for the dead” and, therefore, “the display of a dead, hanging body is unthinkable. […] being exposed to the sight of a hanged man must have been experienced as an unimaginable act of disrespect” (92). The Proclamation Board would, in sharp contrast to feelings of unimaginable disrespect, inspire feelings of pride across the colonial population. An example of this pride being revealed in the selection of the Board as an object worthy of reproduction, as a lithograph, for an Intercolonial Exhibition, held in Melbourne in 1866 (Morris 84). The lithograph, which identifies the Board as Governor Davey’s Proclamation to the Aborigines and dated 1816, was listed as item 572, of 738 items submitted by Tasmania, for the event (The Commissioners 69-85). This type of reproduction, or re-imagining, of the Board would not be an isolated event. Penelope Edmonds has described the Board as producing a “visual vernacular” through a range of derivatives including lantern slides, lithographs, and postcards. These types of tourist ephemera are in addition to efforts to produce unique re-workings of the Board as seen in Violet Mace’s Proclamation glazed earthernware, which includes a jug (1928) and a pottery cup (1934) (Edmonds online). The Board Re-imagined: A True Crime Tale The Proclamation Board offers numerous narratives. There is the story that the Board was designed and deployed to communicate. There is the story behind the Board. There is also the story of the credit for the initiative which was transferred from Governor Arthur to Governor Davey and subsequently returned to Arthur. There are, too, the provenance stories of individual Boards. There is another story the Proclamation Board offers. The story of true crime in colonial Australia. The Board, as noted, presents through a four-strip pictogram an idea that all are equal under the rule of law (Arthur 1). Advocating for a society of equals was a duplicitous practice, for while Aborigines were hanged for allegedly murdering settlers, “there is no record of whites being charged, let alone punished, for murdering Aborigines” (Morris 84). It would not be until 1838 that white men would be punished for the murder of Aboriginal people (on the mainland) in the wake of the Myall Creek Massacre, in northern New South Wales. There were other examples of attempts to bring about a greater equity under the rule of law but, as Amanda Nettelbeck explains, there was wide-spread resistance to the investigation and charging of colonists for crimes against the Indigenous population with cases regularly not going to trial, or, if making a courtroom, resulting in an acquittal (355-59). That such cases rested on “legally inadmissible Aboriginal testimony” (Reece in Nettelbeck 358) propped up a justice system that was, inherently, unjust in the nineteenth century. It is important to note that commentators at the time did allude to the crime narrative of the Board: when in the most civilized country in the world it has been found ineffective as example to hang murderers in chains, it is not to be expected a savage race will be influenced by the milder exhibition of effigy and caricature. (Colonial Times 2) It is argued here that the Board was much more than an offering of effigy and caricature. The Proclamation Board presents, in striking detail, the formula for the modern true crime tale: a peace disturbed by the act of murder; and the ensuing search for, and delivery of, justice. Reinforcing this point, are the ideas of justice seen within crime fiction, a genre that focuses on the restoration of order out of chaos (James 174), are made visible here as aspirational. The true crime tale does not, consistently, offer the reassurances found within crime fiction. In the real world, particularly one as violent as colonial Australia, we are forced to acknowledge that, below the surface of the official rhetoric on justice and crime, the guilty often go free and the innocent are sometimes hanged. Another point of note is that, if the latter date offered here, of 1830, is taken as the official date of the production of these Boards, then the significance of the Proclamation Board as a true crime tale is even more pronounced through a connection to crime fiction (both genres sharing a common literary heritage). The year 1830 marks the release of Australia’s first novel, Quintus Servinton written by convicted forger Henry Savery, a crime novel (produced in three volumes) published by Henry Melville of Hobart Town. Thus, this paper suggests, 1830 can be posited as a year that witnessed the production of two significant cultural artefacts, the Proclamation Board and the nation’s first full-length literary work, as also being the year that established the, now indomitable, traditions of true crime and crime fiction in Australia. Conclusion During the late 1820s in Van Diemen’s Land (now Tasmania) a set of approximately 100 Proclamation Boards were produced by the Lieutenant Governor of the day, George Arthur. The official purpose of these items was to communicate, to the Indigenous peoples of the island colony, that all—black and white—were equal under the law. Murderers, be they Aboriginal or colonist, would be punished. The Board is a re-imagining of one of the traditional methods of communication for Indigenous peoples; the leaving of drawings on the bark of trees. The Board was, in the 1860s, in time for an Intercolonial Exhibition, re-imagined as the output of Lieutenant Governor Davey. This re-imagining of the Board was so effective that surviving artefacts, today, are popularly known as Governor Davey’s Proclamation to the Aborigines with the date modified, to 1816, to fit the new narrative. The Proclamation Board was also reimagined, by its creators and consumers, in a variety of ways: as peace offering; military propaganda; exhibition object; tourism ephemera; and contemporary art. This paper has also, briefly, offered another re-imagining of the Board, positing that this early “pamphlet” on justice and punishment actually presents a pre-cursor to the modern Australian true crime tale. The Proclamation Board tells many stories but, at the core of this curious object, is a crime story: the story of mass murder. Acknowledgements The author acknowledges the Palawa peoples: the traditional custodians of the lands known today as Tasmania. The author acknowledges, too, the Gadigal people of the Eora nation upon whose lands this paper was researched and written. The author extends thanks to Richard Neville, Margot Riley, Kirsten Thorpe, and Justine Wilson of the State Library of New South Wales for sharing their knowledge and offering their support. The author is also grateful to the reviewers for their careful reading of the manuscript and for making valuable suggestions. ReferencesAboriginal Heritage Tasmania. “Scarred Trees.” Aboriginal Cultural Heritage, 2012. 12 Sep. 2015 ‹http://www.aboriginalheritage.tas.gov.au/aboriginal-cultural-heritage/archaeological-site-types/scarred-trees›.Arthur, George. “Proclamation.” The Hobart Town Courier 19 Apr. 1828: 1.———. Governor Davey’s [sic – actually Governor Arthur’s] Proclamation to the Aborigines, 1816 [sic – actually c. 1828-30]. Graphic Materials. Sydney: Mitchell Library, State Library of NSW, c. 1828-30.Bock, Thomas. Mathinna. Watercolour and Gouache on Paper. 23 x 19 cm (oval), c. 1840.Carroll, Khadija von Zinnenburg. Art in the Time of Colony: Empires and the Making of the Modern World, 1650-2000. Farnham, UK: Ashgate Publishing, 2014.Clark, Manning. History of Australia. Abridged by Michael Cathcart. Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, 1997 [1993]. Clements, Nicholas. The Black War: Fear, Sex and Resistance in Tasmania. St Lucia, Qld.: U of Queensland P, 2014.Colonial Times. “Hobart Town.” Colonial Times 5 Mar. 1830: 2.The Commissioners. Intercolonial Exhibition Official Catalogue. 2nd ed. Melbourne: Blundell & Ford, 1866.Darian-Smith, Kate, and Penelope Edmonds. “Conciliation on Colonial Frontiers.” Conciliation on Colonial Frontiers: Conflict, Performance and Commemoration in Australia and the Pacific Rim. Eds. Kate Darian-Smith and Penelope Edmonds. New York: Routledge, 2015. 1–14. Edmonds, Penelope. “‘Failing in Every Endeavour to Conciliate’: Governor Arthur’s Proclamation Boards to the Aborigines, Australian Conciliation Narratives and Their Transnational Connections.” Journal of Australian Studies 35.2 (2011): 201–18.———. “The Proclamation Cup: Tasmanian Potter Violet Mace and Colonial Quotations.” reCollections 5.2 (2010). 20 May 2015 ‹http://recollections.nma.gov.au/issues/vol_5_no_2/papers/the_proclamation_cup_›.Felton, Heather. “Mathinna.” Companion to Tasmanian History. Hobart: Centre for Tasmanian Historical Studies, University of Tasmania, 2006. 29 Sep. 2015 ‹http://www.utas.edu.au/library/companion_to_tasmanian_history/M/Mathinna.htm›.Gall, Jennifer. Library of Dreams: Treasures from the National Library of Australia. Canberra: National Library of Australia, 2011.Hull, Hugh M. “Tasmanian Hieroglyphics.” The Hobart Mercury 26 Nov. 1874: 3.James, P.D. Talking about Detective Fiction. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2009.Mace, Violet. Violet Mace’s Proclamation Jug. Glazed Earthernware. Launceston: Queen Victoria Museum and Art Gallery, 1928.———. Violet Mace’s Proclamation Cup. Glazed Earthernware. Canberra: National Museum of Australia, 1934.McCulloch, Samuel Clyde. “Sir George Gipps and Eastern Australia’s Policy toward the Aborigine, 1838-46.” The Journal of Modern History 33.3 (1961): 261–69.Morris, John. “Notes on a Message to the Tasmanian Aborigines in 1829, popularly called ‘Governor Davey’s Proclamation to the Aborigines, 1816’.” Australiana 10.3 (1988): 84–7.Nettelbeck, Amanda. “‘Equals of the White Man’: Prosecution of Settlers for Violence against Aboriginal Subjects of the Crown, Colonial Western Australia.” Law and History Review 31.2 (2013): 355–90.Newman, Terry. “Tasmania, the Name.” Companion to Tasmanian History, 2006. 16 Sep. 2015 ‹http://www.utas.edu.au/library/companion_to_tasmanian_history/T/Tasmania%20name.htm›.Reece, Robert H.W., in Amanda Nettelbeck. “‘Equals of the White Man’: Prosecution of Settlers for Violence against Aboriginal Subjects of the Crown, Colonial Western Australia.” Law and History Review 31.2 (2013): 355–90.Ryan, Lyndall. “The Black Line in Van Diemen’s Land: Success or Failure?” Journal of Australian Studies 37.1 (2013): 3–18.Savery, Henry. Quintus Servinton: A Tale Founded upon Events of Real Occurrence. Hobart Town: Henry Melville, 1830.Turnbull, Clive. Black War: The Extermination of the Tasmanian Aborigines. Melbourne: Sun Books, 1974 [1948].
APA, Harvard, Vancouver, ISO, and other styles
31

King, Emerald L., and Denise N. Rall. "Re-imagining the Empire of Japan through Japanese Schoolboy Uniforms." M/C Journal 18, no. 6 (March 7, 2016). http://dx.doi.org/10.5204/mcj.1041.

Full text
Abstract:
Introduction“From every kind of man obedience I expect; I’m the Emperor of Japan.” (“Miyasama,” from Gilbert and Sullivan’s musical The Mikado, 1885)This commentary is facilitated by—surprisingly resilient—oriental stereotypes of an imagined Japan (think of Oscar Wilde’s assertion, in 1889, that Japan was a European invention). During the Victorian era, in Britain, there was a craze for all things oriental, particularly ceramics and “there was a craze for all things Japanese and no middle class drawing room was without its Japanese fan or teapot.“ (V&A Victorian). These pastoral depictions of the ‘oriental life’ included the figures of men and women in oriental garb, with fans, stilt shoes, kimono-like robes, and appropriate headdresses, engaging in garden-based activities, especially tea ceremony variations (Landow). In fact, tea itself, and the idea of a ceremony of serving it, had taken up a central role, even an obsession in middle- and upper-class Victorian life. Similarly, landscapes with wild seas, rugged rocks and stunted pines, wizened monks, pagodas and temples, and particular fauna and flora (cranes and other birds flying through clouds of peonies, cherry blossoms and chrysanthemums) were very popular motifs (see Martin and Koda). Rather than authenticity, these designs heightened the Western-based romantic stereotypes associated with a stylised form of Japanese life, conducted sedately under rule of the Japanese Imperial Court. In reality, prior to the Meiji period (1868–1912), the Emperor was largely removed from everyday concerns, residing as an isolated, holy figure in Kyoto, the traditional capital of Japan. Japan was instead ruled from Edo (modern day Tokyo) led by the Shogun and his generals, according to a strict Confucian influenced code (see Keene). In Japan, as elsewhere, the presence of feudal-style governance includes policies that determine much of everyday life, including restrictions on clothing (Rall 169). The Samurai code was no different, and included a series of protocols that restricted rank, movement, behaviour, and clothing. As Vincent has noted in the case of the ‘lace tax’ in Great Britain, these restrictions were designed to punish those who seek to penetrate the upper classes through their costume (28-30). In Japan, pre-Meiji sumptuary laws, for example, restricted the use of gold, and prohibited the use of a certain shade of red by merchant classes (V&A Kimono).Therefore, in the governance of pre-globalised societies, the importance of clothing and textile is evident; as Jones and Stallybrass comment: We need to understand the antimatedness of clothes, their ability to “pick up” subjects, to mould and shape them both physically and socially—to constitute subjects through their power as material memories […] Clothing is a worn world: a world of social relations put upon the wearer’s body. (2-3, emphasis added)The significant re-imagining of Japanese cultural and national identities are explored here through the cataclysmic impact of Western ideologies on Japanese cultural traditions. There are many ways to examine how indigenous cultures respond to European, British, or American (hereafter Western) influences, particularly in times of conflict (Wilk). Western ideology arrived in Japan after a long period of isolation (during which time Japan’s only contact was with Dutch traders) through the threat of military hostility and war. It is after this outside threat was realised that Japan’s adoption of military and industrial practices begins. The re-imagining of their national identity took many forms, and the inclusion of a Western-style military costuming as a schoolboy uniform became a highly visible indicator of Japan’s mission to protect its sovereign integrity. A brief history of Japan’s rise from a collection of isolated feudal states to a unified military power, in not only the Asian Pacific region but globally, demonstrates the speed at which they adopted the Western mode of warfare. Gunboats on Japan’s ShorelinesJapan was forcefully opened to the West in the 1850s by America under threat of First Name Perry’s ‘gunboat diplomacy’ (Hillsborough 7-8). Following this, Japan underwent a rapid period of modernisation, and an upsurge in nationalism and military expansion that was driven by a desire to catch up to the European powers present in the Pacific. Noted by Ian Ferguson in Civilization: The West and the Rest, Unsure, the Japanese decided […] to copy everything […] Japanese institutions were refashioned on Western models. The army drilled like Germans; the navy sailed like Britons. An American-style system of state elementary and middle schools was also introduced. (221, emphasis added)This was nothing short of a wide-scale reorganisation of Japan’s entire social structure and governance. Under the Emperor Meiji, who wrested power from the Shogunate and reclaimed it for the Imperial head, Japan steamed into an industrial revolution, achieving in a matter of years what had taken Europe over a century.Japan quickly became a major player-elect on the world stage. However, as an island nation, Japan lacked the essentials of both coal and iron with which to fashion not only industrial machinery but also military equipment, the machinery of war. In 1875 Japan forced Korea to open itself to foreign (read: Japanese) trade. In the same treaty, Korea was recognised as a sovereign nation, separate from Qing China (Tucker 1461). The necessity for raw materials then led to the Sino-Japanese War (1894–95), a conflict between Japan and China that marked the emergence of Japan as a major world power. The Korean Peninsula had long been China’s most important client state, but its strategic location adjacent to the Japanese archipelago, and its natural resources of coal and iron, attracted Japan’s interest. Later, the Russo-Japanese War (1904–05), allowed a victorious Japan to force Russia to abandon its expansionist policy in the Far East, becoming the first Asian power in modern times to defeat a European power. The Russo-Japanese War developed out of the rivalry between Russia and Japan for dominance in Korea and Manchuria, again in the struggle for natural resources (Tucker 1534-46).Japan’s victories, together with the county’s drive for resources, meant that Japan could now determine its role within the Asia-Pacific sphere of influence. As Japan’s military, and their adoption of Westernised combat, proved effective in maintaining national integrity, other social institutions also looked to the West (Ferguson 221). In an ironic twist—while Victorian and Continental fashion was busy adopting the exotic, oriental look (Martin and Koda)—the kimono, along with other essentials of Japanese fashions, were rapidly altered (both literally and figuratively) to suit new, warlike ideology. It should be noted that kimono literally means ‘things that you wear’ and which, prior to exposure to Western fashions, signified all worn clothing (Dalby 65-119). “Wearing Things” in Westernised JapanAs Japan modernised during the late 1800s the kimono was positioned as symbolising barbaric, pre-modern, ‘oriental’ Japan. Indeed, on 17 January 1887 the Meiji Empress issued a memorandum on the subject of women’s clothing in Japan: “She [the Empress] believed that western clothes were in fact closer to the dress of women in ancient Japan than the kimonos currently worn and urged that they be adopted as the standard clothes of the reign” (Keene 404). The resemblance between Western skirts and blouses and the simple skirt and separate top that had been worn in ancient times by a people descended from the sun goddess, Amaterasu wo mikami, was used to give authority and cultural authenticity to Japan’s modernisation projects. The Imperial Court, with its newly ennobled European style aristocrats, exchanged kimono silks for Victorian finery, and samurai armour for military pomp and splendour (Figure 1).Figure 1: The Meiji Emperor, Empress and Crown Prince resplendent in European fashions on an outing to Asukayama Park. Illustration: Toyohara Chikanobu, circa 1890.It is argued here that the function of a uniform is to prepare the body for service. Maids and butlers, nurses and courtesans, doctors, policemen, and soldiers are all distinguished by their garb. Prudence Black states: “as a technology, uniforms shape and code the body so they become a unit that belongs to a collective whole” (93). The requirement to discipline bodies through clothing, particularly through uniforms, is well documented (see Craik, Peoples, and Foucault). The need to distinguish enemies from allies on the battlefield requires adherence to a set of defined protocols, as referenced in military fashion compendiums (see Molloy). While the postcolonial adoption of Western-based clothing reflects a new form of subservience (Rall, Kuechler and Miller), in Japan, the indigenous garments were clearly designed in the interests of ideological allegiance. To understand the Japanese sartorial traditions, the kimono itself must be read as providing a strong disciplinary element. The traditional garment is designed to represent an upright and unbending column—where two meters of under bindings are used to discipline the body into shape are then topped with a further four meters of a stiffened silk obi wrapped around the waist and lower chest. To dress formally in such a garment requires helpers (see Dalby). The kimono both constructs and confines the women who wear it, and presses them into their roles as dutiful, upper-class daughters (see Craik). From the 1890s through to the 1930s, when Japan again enters a period of militarism, the myth of the kimono again changes as it is integrated into the build-up towards World War II.Decades later, when Japan re-established itself as a global economic power in the 1970s and 1980s, the kimono was re-authenticated as Japan’s ‘traditional’ garment. This time it was not the myth of a people descended from solar deities that was on display, but that of samurai strength and propriety for men, alongside an exaggerated femininity for women, invoking a powerful vision of Japanese sartorial tradition. This reworking of the kimono was only possible as the garment was already contained within the framework of Confucian family duty. However, in the lead up to World War II, Japanese military advancement demanded of its people soldiers that could win European-style wars. The quickest solution was to copy the military acumen and strategies of global warfare, and the costumes of the soldiery and seamen of Europe, including Great Britain (Ferguson). It was also acknowledged that soldiers were ‘made not born’ so the Japanese educational system was re-vamped to emulate those of its military rivals (McVeigh). It was in the uptake of schoolboy uniforms that this re-imagining of Japanese imperial strength took place.The Japanese Schoolboy UniformCentral to their rapid modernisation, Japan adopted a constitutional system of education that borrowed from American and French models (Tipton 68-69). The government viewed education as a “primary means of developing a sense of nation,” and at its core, was the imperial authorities’ obsession with defining “Japan and Japaneseness” (Tipton 68-69). Numerous reforms eventually saw, after an abolition of fees, nearly 100% attendance by both boys and girls, despite a lingering mind-set that educating women was “a waste of time” (Tipton 68-69). A boys’ uniform based on the French and Prussian military uniforms of the 1860s and 1870s respectively (Kinsella 217), was adopted in 1879 (McVeigh 47). This jacket, initially with Prussian cape and cap, consists of a square body, standing mandarin style collar and a buttoned front. It was through these education reforms, as visually symbolised by the adoption of military style school uniforms, that citizen making, education, and military training became interrelated aspects of Meiji modernisation (Kinsella 217). Known as the gakuran (gaku: to study; ran: meaning both orchid, and a pun on Horanda, meaning Holland, the only Western country with trading relations in pre-Meiji Japan), these jackets were a symbol of education, indicating European knowledge, power and influence and came to reflect all things European in Meiji Japan. By adopting these jackets two objectives were realised:through the magical power of imitation, Japan would, by adopting the clothing of the West, naturally rise in military power; and boys were uniformed to become not only educated as quasi-Europeans, but as fighting soldiers and sons (suns) of the nation.The gakuran jacket was first popularised by state-run schools, however, in the century and a half that the garment has been in use it has come to symbolise young Japanese masculinity as showcased in campus films, anime, manga, computer games, and as fashion is the preeminent garment for boybands and Japanese hipsters.While the gakuran is central to the rise of global militarism in Japan (McVeigh 51-53), the jacket would go on to form the basis of the Sun Yat Sen and Mao Suits as symbols of revolutionary China (see McVeigh). Supposedly, Sun Yat Sen saw the schoolboy jacket in Japan as a utilitarian garment and adopted it with a turn down collar (Cumming et al.). For Sun Yat Sen, the gakuran was the perfect mix of civilian (school boy) and military (the garment’s Prussian heritage) allowing him to walk a middle path between the demands of both. Furthermore, the garment allowed Sun to navigate between Western style suits and old-fashioned Qing dynasty styles (Gerth 116); one was associated with the imperialism of the National Products Movement, while the other represented the corruption of the old dynasty. In this way, the gakuran was further politicised from a national (Japanese) symbol to a global one. While military uniforms have always been political garments, in the late 1800s and early 1900s, as the world was rocked by revolutions and war, civilian clothing also became a means of expressing political ideals (McVeigh 48-49). Note that Mahatma Ghandi’s clothing choices also evolved from wholly Western styles to traditional and emphasised domestic products (Gerth 116).Mao adopted this style circa 1927, further defining the style when he came to power by adding elements from the trousers, tunics, and black cotton shoes worn by peasants. The suit was further codified during the 1960s, reaching its height in the Cultural Revolution. While the gakuran has always been a scholarly black (see Figure 2), subtle differences in the colour palette differentiated the Chinese population—peasants and workers donned indigo blue Mao jackets, while the People’s Liberation Army Soldiers donned khaki green. This limited colour scheme somewhat paradoxically ensured that subtle hierarchical differences were maintained even whilst advocating egalitarian ideals (Davis 522). Both the Sun Yat Sen suit and the Mao jacket represented the rejection of bourgeois (Western) norms that objectified the female form in favour of a uniform society. Neo-Maoism and Mao fever of the early 1990s saw the Mao suit emerge again as a desirable piece of iconic/ironic youth fashion. Figure 2: An example of Gakuran uniform next to the girl’s equivalent on display at Ichikawa Gakuen School (Japan). Photo: Emerald King, 2015.There is a clear and vital link between the influence of the Prussian style Japanese schoolboy uniform on the later creation of the Mao jacket—that of the uniform as an integral piece of worn propaganda (Atkins).For Japan, the rapid deployment of new military and industrial technologies, as well as a sartorial need to present her leaders as modern (read: Western) demanded the adoption of European-style uniforms. The Imperial family had always been removed from Samurai battlefields, so the adoption of Western military costume allowed Japan’s rulers to present a uniform face to other global powers. When Japan found itself in conflict in the Asia Pacific Region, without an organised military, the first requirement was to completely reorganise their system of warfare from a feudal base and to train up national servicemen. Within an American-style compulsory education system, the European-based curriculum included training in mathematics, engineering and military history, as young Britons had for generations begun their education in Greek and Latin, with the study of Ancient Greek and Roman wars (Bantock). It is only in the classroom that ideological change on a mass scale can take place (Reference Please), a lesson not missed by later leaders such as Mao Zedong.ConclusionIn the 1880s, the Japanese leaders established their position in global politics by adopting clothing and practices from the West (Europeans, Britons, and Americans) in order to quickly re-shape their country’s educational system and military establishment. The prevailing military costume from foreign cultures not only disciplined their adopted European bodies, they enforced a new regime through dress (Rall 157-174). For boys, the gakuran symbolised the unity of education and militarism as central to Japanese masculinity. Wearing a uniform, as many authors suggest, furthers compliance (Craik, Nagasawa Kaiser and Hutton, and McVeigh). As conscription became a part of Japanese reality in World War II, the schoolboys just swapped their military-inspired school uniforms for genuine military garments.Re-imagining a Japanese schoolboy uniform from a European military costume might suit ideological purposes (Atkins), but there is more. The gakuran, as a uniform based on a close, but not fitted jacket, was the product of a process of advanced industrialisation in the garment-making industry also taking place in the 1800s:Between 1810 and 1830, technical calibrations invented by tailors working at the very highest level of the craft [in Britain] eventually made it possible for hundreds of suits to be cut up and made in advance [...] and the ready-to-wear idea was put into practice for men’s clothes […] originally for uniforms for the War of 1812. (Hollander 31) In this way, industrialisation became a means to mass production, which furthered militarisation, “the uniform is thus the clothing of the modern disciplinary society” (Black 102). There is a perfect resonance between Japan’s appetite for a modern military and their rise to an industrialised society, and their conquests in Asia Pacific supplied the necessary material resources that made such a rapid deployment possible. The Japanese schoolboy uniform was an integral part of the process of both industrialisation and militarisation, which instilled in the wearer a social role required by modern Japanese society in its rise for global power. Garments are never just clothing, but offer a “world of social relations put upon the wearer’s body” (Jones and Stallybrass 3-4).Today, both the Japanese kimono and the Japanese schoolboy uniform continue to interact with, and interrogate, global fashions as contemporary designers continue to call on the tropes of ‘military chic’ (Tonchi) and Japanese-inspired clothing (Kawamura). References Atkins, Jaqueline. Wearing Propaganda: Textiles on the Home Front in Japan, Britain, and the United States. Princeton: Yale UP, 2005.Bantock, Geoffrey Herman. Culture, Industrialisation and Education. London: Routledge & K. Paul, 1968.Black, Prudence. “The Discipline of Appearance: Military Style and Australian Flight Hostess Uniforms 1930–1964.” Fashion & War in Popular Culture. Ed. Denise N. Rall. Bristol: Intellect/U Chicago P, 2014. 91-106.Craik, Jenifer. Uniforms Exposed: From Conformity to Transgression. Oxford: Berg, 2005.Cumming, Valerie, Cecil Williet Cunnington, and Phillis Emily Cunnington. “Mao Style.” The Dictionary of Fashion History. Eds. Valerie Cumming, Cecil Williet Cunnington, and Phillis Emily Cunnington. Oxford: Berg, 2010.Dalby, Liza, ed. Kimono: Fashioning Culture. London: Vintage, 2001.Davis, Edward L., ed. Encyclopaedia of Contemporary Chinese Culture. London: Routledge, 2005.Dees, Jan. Taisho Kimono: Speaking of Past and Present. Milan: Skira, 2009.Ferguson, N. Civilization: The West and the Rest. London: Penguin, 2011.Foucault, Michel. Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison. Trans. Alan Sheridan. London: Penguin, 1997. Gerth, Karl. China Made: Consumer Culture and the Creation of the Nation, Cambridge: East Asian Harvard Monograph 224, 2003.Gilbert, W.S., and Arthur Sullivan. The Mikado or, The Town of Titipu. 1885. 16 Nov. 2015 ‹http://math.boisestate.edu/gas/mikado/mk_lib.pdf›. Hillsborough, Romulus. Samurai Revolution: The Dawn of Modern Japan Seen through the Eyes of the Shogun's Last Samurai. Vermont: Tuttle, 2014.Jones, Anne R., and Peter Stallybrass, Renaissance Clothing and the Materials of Memory. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2000.Keene, Donald. Emperor of Japan: Meiji and His World, 1852-1912. New York: Columbia UP, 2002.King, Emerald L. “Schoolboys and Kimono Ladies.” Presentation to the Un-Thinking Asian Migrations Conference, University of Otago, Dunedin, New Zealand, 24-26 Aug. 2014. Kinsella, Sharon. “What’s Behind the Fetishism of Japanese School Uniforms?” Fashion Theory 6.2 (2002): 215-37. Kuechler, Susanne, and Daniel Miller, eds. Clothing as Material Culture. Oxford: Berg, 2005.Landow, George P. “Liberty and the Evolution of the Liberty Style.” 22 Aug. 2010. ‹http://www.victorianweb.org/art/design/liberty/lstyle.html›.Martin, Richard, and Harold Koda. Orientalism: Vision of the East in Western Dress. New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1994.McVeigh, Brian J. Wearing Ideology: State, Schooling, and Self-Presentation in Japan. Oxford: Berg, 2000.Molloy, John. Military Fashion: A Comparative History of the Uniforms of the Great Armies from the 17th Century to the First World War. New York: Putnam, 1972.Peoples, Sharon. “Embodying the Military: Uniforms.” Critical Studies in Men’s Fashion 1.1 (2014): 7-21.Rall, Denise N. “Costume & Conquest: A Proximity Framework for Post-War Impacts on Clothing and Textile Art.” Fashion & War in Popular Culture, ed. Denise N. Rall. Bristol: Intellect/U Chicago P, 2014. 157-74. Tipton, Elise K. Modern Japan: A Social and Political History. 3rd ed. London: Routledge, 2016.Tucker, Spencer C., ed. A Global Chronology of Conflict: From the Ancient World to the Modern Middle East. Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO, 2013.V&A Kimono. Victoria and Albert Museum. “A History of the Kimono.” 2004. 2 Oct. 2015 ‹http://www.vam.ac.uk/content/articles/h/a-history-of-the-kimono/›.V&A Victorian. Victoria and Albert Museum. “The Victorian Vision of China and Japan.” 10 Nov. 2015 ‹http://www.vam.ac.uk/content/articles/t/the-victorian-vision-of-china-and-japan/›.Vincent, Susan J. The Anatomy of Fashion: Dressing the Body from the Renaissance to Today. Berg: Oxford, 2009.Wilde, Oscar. “The Decay of Lying.” 1889. In Intentions New York: Berentano’s 1905. 16 Nov. 2015 ‹http://virgil.org/dswo/courses/novel/wilde-lying.pdf›. Wilk, Richard. “Consumer Goods as a Dialogue about Development.” Cultural History 7 (1990) 79-100.
APA, Harvard, Vancouver, ISO, and other styles
32

Dados, Nour. "Anything Goes, Nothing Sticks: Radical Stillness and Archival Impulse." M/C Journal 12, no. 1 (March 1, 2009). http://dx.doi.org/10.5204/mcj.126.

Full text
Abstract:
IntroductionThe perception of the archive as the warehouse of tradition is inflected with the notion that what it stores is also removed from the everyday, at once ancient but also irrelevant, standing still outside time. Yet, if the past is of any relevance, the archive cannot maintain a rigid fixity that does not intersect with the present. In the work of the Atlas Group, the fabrication of “archival material” reflects what Hal Foster has termed an “archival impulse” that is constructed of multiple temporalities. The Atlas Group archive interrogates forms that are at once still, excavated from life, while still being in the present. In the process, the reductive singularity of the archive as an immobile monument is opened up to the complexity of a radical stillness through which the past enters the present in a moment of recognition. What is still, and what is still there, intersect in the productivity of a stillness that cuts through an undifferentiated continuity. This juncture echoes the Benjaminian flash which heralds the arrival of past in the presentTo articulate the past historically does not mean to recognize it ‘the way it really was’ (Ranke). It means to seize hold of a memory as it flashes up at a moment of danger. (Benjamin, Theses)Klee’s Angelus Novus stands still between past and future as a momentary suspension of motion brings history and prophecy into the present. For “the historian of the dialectic at a standstill”, Walter Benjamin, historical materialism was not simply a means of accessing the past in the present, but of awakening the potential of the future (Tiedemann 944-945). This, Rolf Tiedemann suggests, was the revolution of historical perception that Benjamin wanted to bring about in his unfinished Arcades Project (941). By carrying the principle of montage into history, Benjamin indicates an intention “to discover in the analysis of the small individual moment the crystal of the total event” (Benjamin Arcades 461). This principle had already been alluded to in his “Theses on the Philosophy of History” where he had written that a historical materialist cannot do without a present in which time stands still, and later, that it is in the arrest of thought that what has been and what will be “crystallizes into a monad” (Benjamin “Theses” 262-263).Everywhere in Benjamin’s writings on history, there is something of the irreducibility of the phrase “standing still”. Standing still: still as an active, ongoing form of survival and endurance, still as an absence of movement. The duality of stillness is amplified as semantic clarity vacillates between one possibility and another: to endure and to be motionless. Is it possible to reduce “standing still” to a singularity? Benjamin’s counsel to take hold of memory at the “moment of danger” might be an indication of this complexity. The “moment of danger” emerges as the flash of the past in the present, but also the instant at which the past could recede into the inertia of eternity, at once a plea against the reduction of the moment into a “dead time” and recognition of the productivity of stillness.Something of that “flash” surfaces in Gilles Deleuze’s reading of Michel Foucault: “a first light opens up things and brings forth visibilities as flashes and shimmerings, which are the ‘second light’” (Deleuze 50). The first flash makes “visibilities visible” and determines what can be seen in a given historical period, while the second makes “statements articulable” and defines what can be said (Deleuze 50). These visibilities and statements, however, are distributed into the stratum and constitute knowledge as “stratified, archivized, and endowed with a relatively rigid segmentarity” (Deleuze 61). Strata are historically determined, what they constitute of perceptions and discursive formations varies across time and results in the presence of thresholds between the stratum that come to behave as distinct layers subject to splits and changes in direction (Deleuze 44). Despite these temporal variations that account for differences across thresholds, the strata appear as fixed entities, they mimic rock formations shaped over thousands of years of sedimentation (Deleuze and Guattari 45). Reading Deleuze on Foucault in conjunction with his earlier collaborative work with Felix Guattari brings forth distant shadows of another “stratification”. A Thousand Plateaus is notably less interested in discursive formations and more concerned with “striation”, the organisation and arrangement of space by the diagrams of power. Striated space is state space. It is offset by moving in the opposite direction, effectively turning striated space into smooth space (Deleuze and Guattari 524).Whether on striation or stratification, Deleuze’s work exhibits more than a cautionary distrust of processes of classification, regulation, and organization. Despite the flash that brings visibilities and statements into being, stratification, as much as striation, remains a technique of knowledge shaped by the strategies of power. It is interesting however, that Deleuze sees something as indeterminate as a flash, creating structures that are as determined as stratum. Yet perhaps this is a deceptive conjecture since while the strata appear relatively rigid they are also “extremely mobile” (Deleuze and Guattari 553). Foucault had already given an indication that what the archaeological method uncovers is not necessarily suspended, but rather that it suspends the notion of an absolute continuity (Archaeology 169). He suggests that “history is that which transforms documents into monuments” (7). The task of archaeology, it would seem, is to recover documents from monuments by demonstrating rather than reversing the process of sedimentation and without necessarily relying on a motionless past. While there is a relative, albeit interstratically tentative, stillness in the strata, absolute destratification proceeds towards deterritorialisation through incessant movement (Deleuze and Guattari 62-63).If A Thousand Plateaus is any indication, the imperative for the creative thinker today seems to be stirring in this direction: movement, motion, animation. Whatever forms of resistance are to be envisioned, it is motion, rather than stillness, that emerges as a radical form of action (Deleuze and Guattari 561). The question raised by these theoretical interventions is not so much whether such processes are indeed valuable forms of opposition, but rather, whether movement is always the only means, or the most effective means, of resistance? To imagine resistance as “staying in place” seems antithetical to nomadic thinking but is it not possible to imagine moments when the nomad resists not by travelling, but by dwelling? What of all those living a life of forced nomadism, or dying nomadic deaths, those for whom movement is merely displacement and loss? In Metamorphoses Rosi Braidotti reflects upon forced displacement and loss, yet her emphasis nonetheless remains on “figurations”, mappings of identity through time and space, mappings of movement (2-3). Braidotti certainly does not neglect the victims of motion, those who are forced to move, yet she remains committed to nomadism as a form of becoming. Braidotti’s notion of “figurations” finds a deeply poignant expression in Joseph Pugliese’s textual maps of some of these technically “nomadic” bodies and their movement from the North African littoral into the waters of the Mediterranean where they eventually surface on southern European shores as corpses (Pugliese 15). While Braidotti recognizes the tragedy of these involuntary nomads, it is in Pugliese’s work that this tragedy is starkly exposed and given concrete form in the figures of Europe’s refugees. This is movement as death, something akin to what Paul Virilio calls inertia, the product of excessive speed, the uncanny notion of running to stand still (Virilio 16).This tension between motion and stillness surfaces again in Laura Marks’ essay “Asphalt Nomadism.” Despite wanting to embrace the desert as a smooth space Marks retorts that “smooth space seems always to be elsewhere” (Marks 126). She notes the stability of the acacia trees and thorny shrubs in the desert and the way that nomadic people are constantly beset with invitations from the “civilising forces of religion and the soporific of a daily wage” (Marks 126). Emphatically she concludes that “the desert is never really ‘smooth’, for that is death” (Marks 126). On this deviation from Deleuze and Guattari’s notion of the desert as smooth space she concludes: “we who inherit their thinking need to stay on the ground: both in thought, moving close to the surface of concepts, and literally, remaining alert to signs of life in the sand and the scrub of the desert” (Marks 126). In Marks’ appeal for groundedness the tension between motion and stillness is maintained rather than being resolved through recourse to smoothness or in favour of perpetual movement. The sedentary and still structures that pervade the desert remain: the desert could not exist without them. In turn we might ask whether even the most rigorous abstraction can convince us that the ground between radical nomadism and perpetual displacement does not also need to be rethought. Perhaps this complexity is starkest when we begin to think about war, not only the potentiality of the war-machine to destabilize the state (Deleuze and Guattari 391), but war as the deterritorialisation of bodies, lives and livelihoods. Is the war of nomadism against the state not somehow akin to war as the violence that produces nomadic bodies through forced displacement? One of the questions that strikes me about the work of the Atlas Group, “an imaginary non-profit research foundation established in Beirut to research and document the contemporary history of Lebanon” (Raad 68) through the production and exhibition of “archival” material, is whether their propensity towards still forms in the creation of documentary evidence cannot be directly attributed to war as perpetual movement and territorial flexibility, as the flattening of structure and the creation of “smooth space” (Deleuze and Guattari 389). One need only think of the reigns of terror that begin with destratification – abolishing libraries, destroying documents, burning books. On the work of the Atlas Group, Andre Lepecki offers a very thorough introduction:The Atlas Group is an ongoing visual and performative archival project initiated by Walid Raad …whose main topic and driving force are the multiple and disparate events that history and habit have clustered into one singularity named “The Lebanese Civil Wars of 1975-1991”. (Lepecki 61).While the “inventedness” of the Atlas Group’s archive, its “post-event” status as manufactured evidence, raises a myriad of questions about how to document the trauma of war, its insistence on an “archival” existence, rather than say a purely artistic one, also challenges the presumption that the process of becoming, indeed of producing or even creating, is necessarily akin to movement or animation by insisting on the materiality of producing “documents” as opposed to the abstraction of producing “art”. The Atlas Group archive does not contribute directly to the transformation of visibilities into statements so much as statements into visibilities. Indeed, the “archival impulse” that seems to be present here works against the constitution of discursive formations precisely by making visible those aspects of culture which continue to circulate discursively while not necessarily existing. In other words, if one reads the sedimentary process of stratification as forming knowledge by allowing the relationships between “words” and “things” to settle or to solidify into historical strata, then the Atlas Group project seems to tap into the stillness of these stratified forms in order to reverse the signification of “things” and “words”. Hal Foster’s diagnosis of an “archival impulse” is located in a moment where, as he says, “almost anything goes and almost nothing sticks” in reference to the current obliviousness of contemporary artistic practices to political culture (Foster 2-3). Foster’s observation endows this paper with more than just an appropriate title since what Foster seems to identify are the limitations of the current obsession with speed. What one senses in the Atlas Group’s “archival impulse” and Foster’s detection of an “archival impulse” at play in contemporary cultural practices is a war against the war on form, a war against erasure through speed, and an inclination to dwell once more in the dusty matter of the past, rather than to pass through it. Yet the archive, in the view of nomadology, might simply be what Benjamin Hutchens terms “the dead-letter office of lived memory” (38). Indeed Hutchens’s critical review of the archive is both timely and relevant pointing out that “the preservation of cultural memories eradicated from culture itself” simply establishes the authority of the archive by erasing “the incessant historical violence” through which the archive establishes itself (Hutchens 38). In working his critique through Derrida’s Archive Fever, Hutchens revisits the concealed etymology of the word “archive” which “names at once the commencement and the commandment” (Derrida 1). Derrida’s suggestion that the concept of the archive shelters both the memory of this dual meaning while also sheltering itself from remembering that it shelters such a memory (Derrida 2) leads Hutchens to assert that “the archival ‘act’ opens history to the archive, but it closes politics to its own archivization” (Hutchens 44). The danger that “memory cultures”, archives among them, pose to memory itself has also been explored elsewhere by Andreas Huyssen. Although Huyssen does not necessary hold memory up as something to be protected from memory cultures, he is critical of the excessive saturation of contemporary societies with both (Huyssen 3). Huyssen refers to this as the “hypertrophy of memory” following Nietzsche’s “hypertrophy of history” (Huyssen 2-3). Although Hutchens and Huyssen differ radically in direction, they seem to concur nonetheless that what could be diagnosed as an “archival impulse” in contemporary societies might describe only the stagnation and stiltedness of the remainders of lived experience.To return once more to Foster’s notion of an “archival impulse” in contemporary art practices, rather than the reinstitution of the archive as the warehouse of tradition, what seems to be at stake is not necessarily the agglutination of forms, but the interrogation of formations (Foster 3). One could say that this is the archive interrogated through the eyes of art, art interrogated through the eyes of the archive. Perhaps this is precisely what the Atlas Group does by insisting on manufacturing documents in the form of documentary evidence. “Missing Lebanese Wars”, an Atlas Group project produced in 1998, takes as its point of departure the hypothesisthat the Lebanese civil war is not a self-evident episode, an inert fact of nature. The war is not constituted by unified and coherent objects situated in the world; on the contrary, the Lebanese civil war is constituted by and through various actions, situations, people, and accounts. (Raad 17-18)The project consists of a series of plates made up of pages taken from the notebook of a certain Dr Fadl Fakhouri, “the foremost historian of the civil war in Lebanon” until his death in 1993 (Raad 17). The story goes that Dr Fakhouri belonged to a gathering of “major historians” who were also “avid gamblers” that met at the race track every Sunday – the Marxists and the Islamists bet on the first seven races, while the Maronite nationalists and the socialists bet on the last eight (Raad 17). It was alleged that the historians would bribe the race photographer to take only one shot as the winning horse reached the post. Each historian would bet on exactly “how many fractions of a second before or after the horse crossed the line – the photographer would expose his frame” (Raad 17). The pages from Dr Fakhouri’s notebook are comprised of these precise exposures of film as the winning horse crossed the line – stills, as well as measurements of the distance between the horse and the finish line amid various other calculations, the bets that the historians wagered, and short descriptions of the winning historians given by Dr Fakhouri. The notebook pages, with photographs in the form of newspaper clippings, calculations and descriptions of the winning historians in English, are reproduced one per plate. In producing these documents as archival evidence, the Atlas Group is able to manufacture the “unified and coherent objects” that do not constitute the war as things that are at once irrelevant, incongruous and non-sensical. In other words, presenting material that is, while clearly fictitious, reflective of individual “actions, situations, people, and accounts” as archival material, the Atlas Group opens up discourses about the sanctity of historical evidence to interrogation by producing documentary evidence for circulating cultural discourses.While giving an ironic shape to this singular and complete picture of the war that continues to pervade popular cultural discourses in Lebanon through the media with politicians still calling for a “unified history”, the Atlas Group simultaneously constitute these historical materials as the work of a single person, Dr Fakhouri. Yet it seems that our trustworthy archivist also chooses not to write about the race, but about the winning historian – echoing the refusal to conceive of the war as a self-evident fact (to talk about the race as a race) and to see it rather as an interplay of individuals, actions and narratives (to view the race through the description of the winning historian). Indeed Dr Fakhouri’s descriptions of the winning historians are almost comical for their affinity with descriptions of Lebanon’s various past and present political leaders. A potent shadow, and a legend that has grown into an officially sanctioned cult (Plate 1).Avuncular rather than domineering, he was adept at the well-timed humorous aside to cut tension. (Plate 3).He is 71. But for 6 years he was in prison and for 10 years he was under house arrest and in exile, so those 16 years should be deducted – then he’s 55 (Plate 5). (Raad 20-29)Through these descriptions of the historians, Lebanon’s “missing” wars begin to play themselves out between one race and the next. While all we have are supposed “facts” with neither narrative, movement, nor anything else that could connect one fact to another that is not arbitrary, we are also in the midst of an archive that is as random as these “facts.” This is the archive of the “missing” wars, wars that are not documented and victims that are not known, wars that are “missing” for no good reason.What is different about this archive may not be the way in which order is manufactured and produced, but rather the background against which it is set. In his introduction to The Order of Things Michel Foucault makes reference to “a certain Chinese encyclopaedia” in a passage by Borges whereanimals are divided into: (a) belonging to the Emperor, (b) embalmed, (c) tame, (d) suckling pigs, (e) sirens, (f) fabulous, (g) stray dogs, (h) included in the present classification, (i) frenzied, (j) innumerable… (xvi)“The uneasiness that makes us laugh when we read Borges”, writes Foucault, is the sense of loss of a “common” name and place (Order, xx). Whereas in Eusethenes, (“I am no longer hungry. Until the morrow, safe from my saliva all the following shall be: Aspics, Acalephs, Acanathocephalates […]”) the randomness of the enumerated species is ordered by their non-location in Eusthenes’ mouth (Foucault, Order xvii), in Borges there is no means through which the enumerated species can belong in a common place except in language (Foucault, Order, xviii). In the same way, the work of the Atlas Group is filtered through the processes of archival classification without belonging to the archives of any real war. There is no common ground against which they can be read except the purported stillness of the archive itself, its ability to put things in place and to keep them there.If the Atlas Group’s archives of Lebanon’s wars are indeed to work against the fluidity of war and its ability to enter and reshape all spaces, then the archival impulse they evoke must be one in which the processes of sedimentation that create archival documents are worked through a radical stillness, tapping into the suspended motion of the singular moment – its stillness, in order to uncover stillness as presence, survival, endurance, to be there still. Indeed, if archives turn “documents into monuments” (Enwezor 23), then the “theatre of statements” that Foucault unearths (Deleuze 47) are not those recovered in the work of the Atlas Group since is not monuments, but documents, that the Atlas Group archive uncovers.It is true that Benjamin urges us to seize hold of memory at the moment of danger, but he does not instruct us as to what to do with it once we have it, yet, what if we were to read this statement in conjunction with another, “for every image of the past that is not recognized by the present as one of its own concerns threatens to disappear irretrievably” (Benjamin, “Theses” 255). By turning monuments into documents it is possible that the Atlas Group reconfigure the formations that make up the archive, indeed any archive, by recognizing images of the past as being still in the present. Not still as a past tense, motionless, but still as enduring, remaining. In the work of the Atlas Group the archival impulse is closely aligned to a radical stillness, letting the dust of things settle after its incitation by the madness of war, putting things in place that insist on having a place in language. Against such a background Benjamin’s “moment of danger” is more than the instant of sedimentation, it is the productivity of a radical stillness in which the past opens onto the present, it is this moment that makes possible a radical reconfiguration of the archival impulse.ReferencesBenjamin, Walter. The Arcades Project. Trans. Howard Eiland and Kevin McLaughlin. Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press of Harvard U Press, 2002.———. “Theses on the Philosophy of History.” Illuminations. Ed. Hannah Arendt. New York: Schocken Books, 2007.Braidotti, Rosi. Metamorphoses: Towards a Materialist Theory of Becoming. Cambridge: Polity, 2002.Deleuze, Gilles. Foucault. Trans. Seán Hand. New York: Continuum, 1999.Deleuze, Gilles, and Felix Guattari. A Thousand Plateaus. Trans. Brian Massumi. New York: Continuum, 2004.Derrida, Jacques. Archive Fever: A Freudian Impression. Trans. Eric Prenowitz. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1996.Enwezor, Okwui. Archive Fever: Uses of the Document in Contemporary Art. Göttingen: Steidl Publishers, 2008.Foster, Hal. “An Archival Impulse.” October 110 (Fall 2004): 3-22.Foucault, Michel. The Archaeology of Knowledge. Trans. Alan Sheridan. London: Routledge, 1992.———. The Order of Things. London: Routledge, 2002.Hutchens, Benjamin. “Techniques of Forgetting? Hypo-Amnesic History and the An-Archive.” SubStance 36.3 (2007): 37-55.Huyssen, Andreas. Urban Palimpsests and the Politics of Memory. Stanford: Stanford U P, 2003.Lepecki, Andre. “In the Mist of the Event: Performance and the Activation of Memory in the Atlas Group Archive.” Scratching on the Things I Could Disavow. Ed.Walid Raad. Köln: Verlag der Buchhandlung Walther König, 2007.Marks, Laura. “Asphalt Nomadism: The New Desert in Arab Independent Cinema.” Landscape and Film. Ed. Martin Lefebvre. New York: Routledge, 2006.Pugliese, Joseph. “Bodies of Water.” Heat 12 (2006): 12-20. Raad, Walid. Scratching on the Things I Could Disavow. Köln: Verlag der Buchhandlung Walther König, 2007.Schmitz, Britta, and Kassandra Nakas. The Atlas Group (1989-2004). Köln: Verlag der Buchhandlung Walther König, 2006.Tiedemann, Rolf. “Dialectics at a Standstill.” The Arcades Project. Walter Benjamin. Trans. Howard Eiland and Kevin McLaughlin. Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press of Harvard U P, 2002.Virilio, Paul. Open Sky. Trans. Julie Rose. London: Verso, 1997.
APA, Harvard, Vancouver, ISO, and other styles
33

Campays, Philippe, and Vioula Said. "Re-Imagine." M/C Journal 20, no. 4 (August 16, 2017). http://dx.doi.org/10.5204/mcj.1250.

Full text
Abstract:
To Remember‘The central problem of today’s global interactions is the tension between cultural homogenisation and cultural heterogenisation.’ (Appadurai 49)While this statement has been made more than twenty years, it remains more relevant than ever. The current age is one of widespread global migrations and dis-placement. The phenomenon of globalisation is the first and major factor for this newly created shift of ground, of transmigration as defined by its etymological meaning. However, a growing number of migrations also result from social or political oppression and war as we witness the current flow of refugees from Africa or Syria to Europe and with growing momentum, from climate change, the people of Tokelau or Nauru migrating as a result of the rise of sea levels in their South Pacific homeland. Such global migrations lead to an intense co-habitation of various cultures, ethnicities and religions in host societies. In late twentieth century Giddens explains this complexity and discusses how globalisation requires a re-organisation of time and space in social and cultural life of both the host and the migrant (Giddens 14). In the host country, Appadurai terms the physical consequences of this phenomenon as the new ‘ethnoscape’ (Appadurai 51). This fact is particularly relevant to New Zealand, a country that is currently seeing an unprecedented level of immigration from various and numerous ethnic groups which is evidently influencing the makeup of its entire population.For the migrant, according to Xavier & Rosaldo, social life following migration re-establishes itself on two fronts: the first is the pre-modern manner of being present through participation in localised activities at specific locales; the second is about fostering relationships with absent others through media and across the world. These “settings for distanced relations – for relations at a distance, [are] stretched out across time and space” (Xavier & Rosaldo 8). Throughout the world, people in dis-placement reorganise their societies in both of these fronts.Dis-placement is ‘a potentially traumatic event that is collectively experienced" (Norris 128). Disaster and trauma related dis-placement as stressors happen to entire communities, not just individuals, families and neighbourhoods. Members are exposed together and it has been argued, must, therefore, recover together, (Norris 145). On one hand, in the situation of collective trauma some attachment to a new space ‘increases the likelihood that a community as a whole has the will to rebuild’ (Norris 145). On the other, it is suggested that for the individual, place attachment makes the necessary relocation much harder. It is in re-location however that the will to recreate or reproduce will emerge. Indeed part of the recovery in the case of relocation can be the reconstruction of place. The places of past experiences and rituals for meaning are commonly recreated or reproduced as new places of attachment abroad. The will and ability to reimagine and re-materialise (Gupta & Ferguson 70) the lost heritage is motivational and defines resilience.This is something a great deal of communities such as the displaced Coptic community in New Zealand look to achieve, re-constructing a familiar space, where rituals and meaning can reaffirm their ideal existence, the only form of existence they have ever known before relocation. In this instance it is the reconstruction and reinterpretation of a traditional Coptic Orthodox church. Resilience can be examined as a ‘sense of community’, a concept that binds people with shared values. Concern for community and respect for others can transcend the physical and can bind disparate individuals in ways that otherwise might require more formal organisations. It has been noted that trauma due to displacement and relocation can enhance a sense of closeness and stronger belonging (Norris 139). Indeed citizen participation is fundamental to community resilience (Norris 139) and it entails the engagement of community members in formal organisations, including religious congregations (Perkins et al. 2002; Norris 139) and collective gatherings around cultural rituals. However, the displacement also strengthens the emotional ties at the individual level to the homeland, to kinfolk and to the more abstract cultural mores and ideas.Commitment and AttachmentRecalling places of collective events and rituals such as assembly halls and spaces of worship is crucially important for dis-placed communities. The attachment to place exposes the challenges and opportunities for recollecting the spirit of space in the situation of a people abroad. This in turn, raises the question of memory and its representation in re-creating the architectural qualities of the cultural space from its original context. This article offers the employ of visual representation (drawings) as a strategy of recall. To explore these ideas further, the situation of the Egyptian community of Coptic Orthodox faith, relocated, displaced and living ‘abroad’ in New Zealand is being considered. This small community that emigrated to New Zealand firstly in the 1950s then in the 1970s represents in many ways the various ethnicities and religious beliefs found in New Zealand.Rituals and congregations are held in collective spaces and while the attachment to the collective is essential, the question to be addressed here relates to the role of the physical community space in forming or maintaining the attachment to community (Pretty, Chipuer, and Bramston 78). Groups or societies use systems of shared meanings to interpret and make sense of the world. However, shared meanings have traditionally been tied to the idea of a fixed territory (Manzo & Devine-Wright 335, Xavier & Rosaldo 10). Manzo and Perkins further suggest that place attachments provide stability and are integral to self-definitions (335-350). Image by Vioula Said.Stability and self-definition and ultimately identity are in turn, placed in jeopardy with the process of displacement and de-territorilisation. Shared meanings are shifted and potentially lost when the resultant instability occurs. Norris finds that in the strongest cases, individuals, neighbourhoods and communities lose their sense of identity and self-definition when displaced due to the destruction of natural and built environments (Norris 139). This comment is particularly relevant to people who are emigrating to New Zealand as refugees from climate change such as Pasifika or from wars and oppression such as the Coptic community. This loss strengthens the requirement for something greater than just a common space of congregation, something that transcends the physical. The sense of belonging and identity in the complexity of potential cultural heterogenisation is at issue. The role of architecture in dis-placement is thereby brought into question seeking answers to how it should facilitate a space of attachment for resilience, for identity and for belonging.A unity of place and people has long been assumed in the anthropological concept of culture (Gupta & Ferguson: 75). According to Xavier & Rosaldo the historical tendency has been to connect the realm of constructing meaning to the particularities of place (Xavier & Rosaldo 10). Thereby, cultural meanings are intrinsically linked to place. Therefore, place attachment to the reproduced or re-interpreted place is crucially important for dis-placed societies in re-establishing social and cultural content. Architectural spaces are the obvious holders of cultural, social and spiritual content for such enterprises. Hillier suggests that all "architecture is, in essence, the application of speculative and abstract thought to the non-discursive aspects of building, and because it is so, it is also its application to the social and cultural contents of buildings” (Hillier 3).To Re-ImagineAn attempt to reflect the history, stories and the cultural mores of the Coptic community in exile by privileging material and design authenticity, merits attention. An important aspect of the Coptic faith lies within its adherence to symbolism and rituals and strict adherence to the traditional forms and configurations of space may reflect some authenticity of the customary qualities of the space (Said 109). However, the original space is itself in flux, changing with time and environmental conditions; as are the memories of those travelling abroad as they come from different moments in time. Experience has shown that a communities’ will to re-establish social and cultural content through their traditional architecture on new sites has not always resurrected their history and reignited their original spirit. The impact of the new context’s reality on the reproduction or re interpretation of place may not fully enable its entire community’s attachment to it. There are significant implications from the displacement of site that lead to a disassociation from the former architectural language. Consequently there is a cultural imperative for an approach that entails the engagement of community in the re-making of a cultural space before responding to the demands of site. Cultures come into conflict when the new ways of knowing and acting are at odds with the old. Recreating a place without acknowledging these tensions may lead to non-attachment. Facing cultural paradox and searching for authenticity explains in part, the value of intangible heritage and the need to privilege it over its tangible counterpart.Intangible HeritageThe intangible qualities of place and the memory of them are anchors for a dis-placed community to reimagine and re-materialise its lost heritage and to recreate a new place for attachment. This brings about the notion of the authenticity of cultural heritage, it exposes the uncertain value of reconstruction and it exhibits the struggles associated with de-territorilisation in such a process.In dealing with cultural heritage and contemporary conservation practice with today’s wider understanding of the interdisciplinary field of heritage studies, several authors discuss the relevance and applicability of the 1964 Venice Charter on architectural heritage. Glendinning argues that today’s heritage practices exploit the physical remains of the past for useful modern and aesthetic purposes as they are less concerned with the history they once served (Glendinning 3). For example, the act of modernising and restoring a historic museum is counterbalanced by its ancient exhibits thereby highlighting modern progress. Others support this position by arguing that relationships, associations and meanings that contribute to the value of a site should not be dismissed in favour of physical remains (Hill 21). Smith notes that the less tangible approaches struggle to gain leverage within conventional practice, and therefore lack authenticity. This can be evidenced in so many of our reconstructed heritage sites. This leads to the importance of the intangible when dealing with architectural heritage. Image by Vioula Said.In practice, a number of different methods and approaches are employed to safeguard intangible cultural heritage. In order to provide a common platform for considering intangible heritage, UNESCO developed the 2003 ‘Convention for the Safeguarding of Intangible Cultural Heritage’. Rather than simply addressing physical heritage, this convention helped to define the intangible and served to promote its recognition. Intangible cultural heritage is defined as expressions, representations, practices, skills and knowledge that an individual a community or group recognise as their cultural heritage.Safeguarding intangible heritage requires a form of translation, for example, from the oral form into a material form, e.g. archives, inventories, museums and audio or film records. This ‘freezing’ of intangible heritage requires thoughtfulness and care in the choosing of the appropriate methods and materials. At the same time, the ephemeral aspects of intangible heritage make it vulnerable to being absorbed by the typecast cultural models predominant at any particular time. This less tangible characteristic of history and the pivotal role it plays in conveying a dialogue between the past and the present demands alternative methods. At a time when the identity of dis-placed people is in danger of being diminished by dominant host societies, the safeguarding of intangible cultural heritage is critically important in re-establishing social and cultural content.Recent news has shown the destruction of many Coptic churches in Egypt, through fire at increasing rates since 2011 or by bombings such as the ones witnessed in April 2017. For this particular problem of the Coptic Community, the authors propose that visual representation of spiritual spaces may aid in recollecting and re-establishing such heritage. The illustrations in this article present the personal journey of an artist of Egyptian Copt descent drawing from her memories of a place and time within the sphere of religious rituals. As Treib suggests, “Our recollections are situational and spatialised memories; they are memories attached to places and events” (Treib 22). The intertwining of real and imagined memory navigates to define the spirit of place of a lost time and community.The act of remembering is a societal ritual and in and of itself is part of the globalised world we live in today. The memories lodged in physical places range from incidents of personal biography to the highly refined and extensively interpreted segments of cultural lore (Treib 63). The act of remembering allows for our sense of identity and reflective cultural distinctiveness as well as shaping our present lives from that of our past. To remember is to celebrate or to commemorate the past (Treib 25).Memory has the aptitude to generate resilient links between self and environment, self and culture, as well as self and collective. “Our access to the past is no longer mediated by the account of a witness or a narrator, or by the eye of a photographer. We will not respond to a re-presentation of the historical event, but to a presentation or performance of it” (van Alphen 11). This statement aligns with Smith’s critical analysis of heritage and identity, not as a set of guidelines but as a performance experienced through the imagination, “experienced within a layering of performative qualities that embody remembrance and commemoration and aim to construct a sense of place and understanding within the present”(van Alphen 11). Heritage is hereby investigated as a re-constructed experience; attempting to identify a palette of memory-informed qualities that can be applied to the re-establishing of the heritage lost. Here memory will be defined as Aristotle’s Anamnesis, to identify the capacity to stimulate a range of physical and sensory experiences in the retrieval of heritage that may otherwise be forgotten (Cubitt 75; Huyssen 80). In architectural terms, Anamnesis, refers to the process of retrieval associated with intangible heritage, as a performance aimed at the recovery of memory, experienced through the imagination (Said 143). Unfortunately, when constructing an experience aimed at the recovery of memory, the conditions of a particular moment do not, once passed, move into a state of retirement from which they can be retrieved at a later date. Likewise, the conditions and occurrences of one moment can never be precisely recaptured, Treib describes memory as an interventionist:it magnifies, diminishes, adjusts, darkens, or illuminates places that are no longer extant, transforming the past anew every time it is called to mind, shorn or undesirable reminiscence embellished by wishful thinking, coloured by present concerns. (Treib 188)To remember them, Cubitt argues, we must reconstruct them; “not in the sense of reassembling something that has been taken to pieces and carefully stored, but in the sense of imaginatively configuring something that can no longer have the character of actuality” (Cubitt 77). Image by Vioula Said.Traditionally, history and past events have been put in writing to preserve their memory within the present. However, as argued by Treib, this mode of representation is inherently linear and static; contributing to a flattening of history. Similarly, Nelson states; “I consider how a visual mode of representation – as opposed to textual or oral – helps to shape memory” (Nelson 37). The unflattening of past events can occur by actively engaging with culture and tradition through the mechanism of reconstruction and representation of the intangible heritage (Said 145). As memory becomes crucial in affirming collective identity, place also becomes crucial in anchoring such experience. Interactive exhibition facilitates this act using imagery, interpretation and physical engagement while architectural place gives distinctiveness to cultural products and practices. Architectural space is always intrinsically bound with cultural practice. Appadurai says that where a groups’ past increasingly becomes part of museums, exhibits and collection, its culture becomes less a realm of reproducible practices and more an arena of choices and cultural reproduction (59). When place is shifted (de-territorilisation in migration) the loss of territorial roots brings “an erosion of the cultural distinctiveness of places, a de-territorilisation of identity” (Gupta & Ferguson 68). According to Gupta & Ferguson, “remembered places have …. often served as symbolic anchors of community for dispersed people” (Gupta & Ferguson 69).To Re-MakeIn the context of de-territorialisation the intangible qualities of the original space offer an avenue for the creation and experience of a new space in the spirit of its source. Simply reproducing a traditional building layout in the new territory or recollecting artefacts does not suffice in recalling the essence of place, nor does descriptive writing no matter how compelling. Issues of authenticity and identity underpin both of these strategies. Accepting the historical tendency to reconnect the realm of constructing meaning to the particularities of place requires an investigation on those ‘particularities of place’. Intangible heritage can bridge the problems of being out of one’s country, overseas, or ‘abroad’. While architecture can be as Hillier suggests, “in essence, the application of speculative and abstract thought to the non-discursive aspects of building” (Hillier 3). Architecture should not be reproduced but rather re-constructed as a holder or facilitator of recollection and collective performance. It is within the performance of intangible heritage in the ‘new’ architecture that a sense of belonging, identity and reconnection with home can be experienced abroad. Its visual representation takes centre stage in the process. The situation of the Egyptian community of Coptic faith in New Zealand is here looked at as an illustration. The intangibility of architectural heritage is created through one of the author’s graphic work here presented. Image by Vioula Said.The concept of drawing as an anchor for memory and drawing as a method to inhabit space is exposed and this presents a situation where drawing has an experiential nature in itself.It has been argued that a drawing is simply an image that compresses an entire experience of temporality. Pallasmaa suggests that “every drawing is an excavation into the past and memory of its creator” (Pallasmaa 91). The drawing is considered as a process of both observation and expression, of receiving and giving. The imagined or the remembered space turns real and becomes part of the experiential reality of the viewer and of the image maker. The drawing as a visual representation of the remembered experience within the embrace of an interior space is drawn from the image maker’s personal experience. It is the expression of their own recollection and not necessarily the precise realityor qualities perceived or remembered by others. This does not suggest that such drawing has a limited value. This article promotes the idea that such visual representation has potentially a shared transformative role. The development of drawings in this realm of intangible heritage exposes the fact that the act of drawing memory may provide an intimate relationship between architecture, past events within the space, the beholder of the memory and eventually the viewer of the drawing. The drawings can be considered a reminder of moments past, and an alternative method to the physical reproduction or preservation of the built form. It is a way to recollect, express and give new value to the understanding of intangible heritage, and constructs meaning.From the development of a personal spatial and intuitive recall to produce visual expressions of a remembered space and time, the image author optimistically seeks others to deeply engage with these images of layered memories. They invite the viewer to re-create their own memory by engaging with the author’s own perception. Simply put, drawings of a personal memory are offered as a convincing representation of intangible heritage and as an authentic expression of the character or essence of place to its audience. This is offered as a method of reconstructing what is re-membered, as a manifestation of symbolic anchor and as a first step towards attachment to place. The relevance of which may be pertinent for people in exile in a foreign land.ReferencesAppadurai, A. “Sovereignty without Territoriality: Notes for a Postnational Geography.” The Geography of Identity. Ed. Patricia Yaeger. Ann Arbor: U of Michigan Press, 1997. 40–58. Brown, R.H., and B. Brown. “The Making of Memory: The Politics of Archives, Libraries and Museum in the Construction of National Consciousness.” History of Human Sciences 11.4 (1993): 17–32.Clifford, James. Routes: Travel and Translation in the Late Twentieth Century. Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP, 1997.Cubitt, Geoffrey. History and Memory. London: Oxford UP, 2013.Giddens, A. The Consequences of Modernity. Stanford: Stanford UP, 1990.Gupta, A., and J. Ferguson. “Beyond ‘Culture’: Space, Identity, and the Politics of Difference.” Religion and Social Justice for Immigrants. Ed. Pierrette Hondagneu-Sotelo. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers UP, 2006.Glendinning, Miles. The Conservation Movement: A History of Architectural Preservation: Antiquity to Modernity. London: Routledge, 2013.Hill, Jennifer. The Double Dimension: Heritage and Innovation. Canberra: The Royal Australian Institute of Architects, 2004.Hillier, Bill, Space Is the Machine. Cambridge, Mass.: Cambridge UP, 1996.Huyssen, Andreas. Present Pasts, Urban Palimpsests and the Politics of Memory. Stanford: Stanford UP, 2003.Lira, Sergio, and Rogerio Amoeda. Constructing Intangible Heritage. Barcelos, Portugal: Green Lines Institute for Sustainable Development, 2010.Manzo, Lynne C., and Douglas Perkins. “Finding Common Ground: The Importance of Place Attachment to Community Participation and Planning.” Journal of Planning Literature 20 (2006): 335–350. Manzo, Lynne C., and Patrick Devine-Wright. Place Attachment: Advances in Theory, Methods and Applications. London: Routledge. 2013.Nelson, Robert S., and Margaret Olin. Monuments and Memory, Made and Unmade. Chicago: U of Chicago Press, 2003.Norris, F.H., S.P. Stevens, B. Pfefferbaum, KF. Wyche, and R.L. Pfefferbaum. “Community Resilience as a Metaphor, Theory, Set of Capacities and Strategy for Disaster Readiness.” American Journal of Community Psychology 41 (2008): 127–150.Perkins, D.D., J. Hughey, and P.W. Speer. “Community Psychology Perspectives on Social Capital Theory and Community Development Practice.” Journal of the Community Development Society 33.1 (2002): 33–52.Pretty, Grace, Heather H. Chipuer, and Paul Bramston. “Sense of Place Amongst Adolescents and Adults in Two Rural Australian Towns: The Discriminating Features of Place Attachment, Sense of Community and Place Dependence in Relation to Place Identity.” Journal of Environmental Psychology 23.3 (2003): 273–87.Said, Vioula. Coptic Ruins Reincarnated. Thesis. Master of Interior Architecture. Victoria University of Wellington, 2014.Smith, Laura Jane. Uses of Heritage. New York: Routledge, 2006.Treib, Marc. Spatial Recall: Memory in Architecture and Landscape. New York: Routledge, 2013.UNESCO. “Text of the Convention for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Human Heritage.” 2003. 15 Aug. 2017 <http://www.unesco.org/culture/ich/en/convention>.Van Alphen, Ernst. Caught by History: Holocaust Effects in Contemporary Art, Literature and Theory. Redwood City, CA: Stanford UP, 1997.Xavier, Jonathan, and Renato Rosaldo. “Thinking the Global.” The Anthropology of Globalisation. Eds. Jonathan Xavier Inda and Renato Rosaldo. Wiley-Blackwell Publishers, Oxford, 2002.
APA, Harvard, Vancouver, ISO, and other styles
34

Hartley, John. "Lament for a Lost Running Order? Obsolescence and Academic Journals." M/C Journal 12, no. 3 (July 15, 2009). http://dx.doi.org/10.5204/mcj.162.

Full text
Abstract:
The academic journal is obsolete. In a world where there are more titles than ever, this is a comment on their form – especially the print journal – rather than their quantity. Now that you can get everything online, it doesn’t really matter what journal a paper appears in; certainly it doesn’t matter what’s in the same issue. The experience of a journal is rapidly obsolescing, for both editors and readers. I’m obviously not the first person to notice this (see, for instance, "Scholarly Communication"; "Transforming Scholarly Communication"; Houghton; Policy Perspectives; Teute), but I do have a personal stake in the process. For if the journal is obsolete then it follows that the editor is obsolete, and I am the editor of the International Journal of Cultural Studies. I founded the IJCS and have been sole editor ever since. Next year will see the fiftieth issue. So far, I have been responsible for over 280 published articles – over 2.25 million words of other people’s scholarship … and counting. We won’t say anything about the words that did not get published, except that the IJCS rejection rate is currently 87 per cent. Perhaps the first point that needs to be made, then, is that obsolescence does not imply lack of success. By any standard the IJCS is a successful journal, and getting more so. It has recently been assessed as a top-rating A* journal in the Australian Research Council’s journal rankings for ERA (Excellence in Research for Australia), the newly activated research assessment exercise. (In case you’re wondering, M/C Journal is rated B.) The ARC says of the ranking exercise: ‘The lists are a result of consultations with the sector and rigorous review by leading researchers and the ARC.’ The ARC definition of an A* journal is given as: Typically an A* journal would be one of the best in its field or subfield in which to publish and would typically cover the entire field/ subfield. Virtually all papers they publish will be of very high quality. These are journals where most of the work is important (it will really shape the field) and where researchers boast about getting accepted.Acceptance rates would typically be low and the editorial board would be dominated by field leaders, including many from top institutions. (Appendix I, p. 21; and see p. 4.)Talking of boasting, I love to prate about the excellent people we’ve published in the IJCS. We have introduced new talent to the field, and we have published new work by some of its pioneers – including Richard Hoggart and Stuart Hall. We’ve also published – among many others – Sara Ahmed, Mohammad Amouzadeh, Tony Bennett, Goran Bolin, Charlotte Brunsdon, William Boddy, Nico Carpentier, Stephen Coleman, Nick Couldry, Sean Cubitt, Michael Curtin, Daniel Dayan, Ben Dibley, Stephanie Hemelryk Donald, John Frow, Elfriede Fursich, Christine Geraghty, Mark Gibson, Paul Gilroy, Faye Ginsberg, Jonathan Gray, Lawrence Grossberg, Judith Halberstam, Hanno Hardt, Gay Hawkins, Joke Hermes, Su Holmes, Desmond Hui, Fred Inglis, Henry Jenkins, Deborah Jermyn, Ariel Heryanto, Elihu Katz, Senator Rod Kemp (Australian government minister), Youna Kim, Agnes Ku, Richard E. Lee, Jeff Lewis, David Lodge (the novelist), Knut Lundby, Eric Ma, Anna McCarthy, Divya McMillin, Antonio Menendez-Alarcon, Toby Miller, Joe Moran, Chris Norris, John Quiggin, Chris Rojek, Jane Roscoe, Jeffrey Sconce, Lynn Spigel, John Storey, Su Tong, the late Sako Takeshi, Sue Turnbull, Graeme Turner, William Uricchio, José van Dijck, Georgette Wang, Jing Wang, Elizabeth Wilson, Janice Winship, Handel Wright, Wu Jing, Wu Qidi (Chinese Vice-Minister of Education), Emilie Yueh-Yu Yeh, Robert Young and Zhao Bin. As this partial list makes clear, as well as publishing the top ‘hegemons’ we also publish work pointing in new directions, including papers from neighbouring disciplines such as anthropology, area studies, economics, education, feminism, history, literary studies, philosophy, political science, and sociology. We have sought to represent neglected regions, especially Chinese cultural studies, which has grown strongly during the past decade. And for quite a few up-and-coming scholars we’ve been the proud host of their first international publication. The IJCS was first published in 1998, already well into the internet era, but it was print-only at that time. Since then, all content, from volume 1:1 onwards, has been digitised and is available online (although vol 1:2 is unaccountably missing). The publishers, Sage Publications Ltd, London, have steadily added online functionality, so that now libraries can get the journal in various packages, including offering this title among many others in online-only bundles, and individuals can purchase single articles online. Thus, in addition to institutional and individual subscriptions, which remain the core business of the journal, income is derived by the publisher from multi-site licensing, incremental consortial sales income, single- and back-issue sales (print), pay-per-view, and deep back file sales (electronic). So what’s obsolete about it? In that boasting paragraph of mine (above), about what wonderful authors we’ve published, lies one of the seeds of obsolescence. For now that it is available online, ‘users’ (no longer ‘readers’!) can search for what they want and ignore the journal as such altogether. This is presumably how most active researchers experience any journal – they are looking for articles (or less: quotations; data; references) relevant to a given topic, literature review, thesis etc. They encounter a journal online through its ‘content’ rather than its ‘form.’ The latter is irrelevant to them, and may as well not exist. The Cover Some losses are associated with this change. First is the loss of the front cover. Now you, dear reader, scrolling through this article online, might well complain, why all the fuss about covers? Internet-generation journals don’t have covers, so all of the work that goes into them to establish the brand, the identity and even the ‘affect’ of a journal is now, well, obsolete. So let me just remind you of what’s at stake. Editors, designers and publishers all take a good deal of trouble over covers, since they are the point of intersection of editorial, design and marketing priorities. Thus, the IJCS cover contains the only ‘content’ of the journal for which we pay a fee to designers and photographers (usually the publisher pays, but in one case I did). Like any other cover, ours has three main elements: title, colour and image. Thought goes into every detail. Title I won’t say anything about the journal’s title as such, except that it was the result of protracted discussions (I suggested Terra Nullius at one point, but Sage weren’t having any of that). The present concern is with how a title looks on a cover. Our title-typeface is Frutiger. Originally designed by Adrian Frutiger for Charles de Gaulle Airport in Paris, it is suitably international, being used for the corporate identity of the UK National Health Service, Telefónica O2, the Royal Navy, the London School of Economics , the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, the Conservative Party of Canada, Banco Bradesco of Brazil, the Finnish Defence Forces and on road signs in Switzerland (Wikipedia, "Frutiger"). Frutiger is legible, informal, and reads well in small copy. Sage’s designer and I corresponded on which of the words in our cumbersome name were most important, agreeing that ‘international’ combined with ‘cultural’ is the USP (Unique Selling Point) of the journal, so they should be picked out (in bold small-caps) from the rest of the title, which the designer presented in a variety of Frutiger fonts (regular, italic, and reversed – white on black), presumably to signify the dynamism and diversity of our content. The word ‘studies’ appears on a lozenge-shaped cartouche that is also used as a design element throughout the journal, for bullet points, titles and keywords. Colour We used to change this every two years, but since volume 7 it has stabilised with the distinctive Pantone 247, ‘new fuchsia.’ This colour arose from my own environment at QUT, where it was chosen (by me) for the new Creative Industries Faculty’s academic gowns and hoods, and thence as a detailing colour for the otherwise monochrome Creative Industries Precinct buildings. There’s a lot of it around my office, including on the wall and the furniture. New Fuchsia is – we are frequently told – a somewhat ‘girly’ colour, especially when contrasted with the Business Faculty’s blue or Law’s silver; its similarity to the Girlfriend/Dolly palette does introduce a mild ‘politics of prestige’ element, since it is determinedly pop culture, feminised, and non-canonical. Image Right at the start, the IJCS set out to signal its difference from other journals. At that time, all Sage journals had calligraphic colours – but I was insistent that we needed a photograph (I have ‘form’ in this respect: in 1985 I changed the cover of the Australian Journal of Cultural Studies from a line drawing (albeit by Sydney Nolan) to a photograph; and I co-designed the photo-cover of Cultural Studies in 1987). For IJCS I knew which photo I wanted, and Sage went along with the choice. I explained it in the launch issue’s editorial (Hartley, "Editorial"). That original picture, a goanna on a cattle grid in the outback, by Australian photographer Grant Hobson, lasted ten years. Since volume 11 – in time for our second decade – the goanna has been replaced with a picture by Italian-based photographer Patrick Nicholas, called ‘Reality’ (Hartley, "Cover Narrative"). We have also used two other photos as cover images, once each. They are: Daniel Meadows’s 1974 ‘Karen & Barbara’ (Hartley, "Who"); and a 1962 portrait of Richard Hoggart from the National Portrait Gallery in London (Owen & Hartley 2007). The choice of picture has involved intense – sometimes very tense – negotiations with Sage. Most recently, they were adamant the Daniel Meadows picture, which I wanted to use as the long-term replacement of the goanna, was too ‘English’ and they would not accept it. We exchanged rather sharp words before compromising. There’s no need to rehearse the dispute here; the point is that both sides, publisher and editor, felt that vital interests were at stake in the choice of a cover-image. Was it too obscure; too Australian; too English; too provocative (the current cover features, albeit in the deep background, a TV screen-shot of a topless Italian game-show contestant)? Running Order Beyond the cover, the next obsolete feature of a journal is the running order of articles. Obviously what goes in the journal is contingent upon what has been submitted and what is ready at a given time, so this is a creative role within a very limited context, which is what makes it pleasurable. Out of a limited number of available papers, a choice must be made about which one goes first, what order the other papers should follow, and which ones must be held over to the next issue. The first priority is to choose the lead article: like the ‘first face’ in a fashion show (if you don’t know what I mean by that, see FTV.com. It sets the look, the tone, and the standard for the issue. I always choose articles I like for this slot. It sends a message to the field – look at this! Next comes the running order. We have about six articles per issue. It is important to maintain the IJCS’s international mix, so I check for the country of origin, or failing that (since so many articles come from Anglosphere countries like the USA, UK and Australia), the location of the analysis. Attention also has to be paid to the gender balance among authors, and to the mix of senior and emergent scholars. Sometimes a weak article needs to be ‘hammocked’ between two good ones (these are relative terms – everything published in the IJCS is of a high scholarly standard). And we need to think about disciplinary mix, so as not to let the journal stray too far towards one particular methodological domain. Running order is thus a statement about the field – the disciplinary domain – rather than about an individual paper. It is a proposition about how different voices connect together in some sort of disciplinary syntax. One might even claim that the combination of cover and running order is a last vestige of collegiate collectivism in an era of competitive academic individualism. Now all that matters is the individual paper and author; the ‘currency’ is tenure, promotion and research metrics, not relations among peers. The running order is obsolete. Special Issues An extreme version of running order is the special issue. The IJCS has regularly published these; they are devoted to field-shaping initiatives, as follows: Title Editor(s) Issue Date Radiocracy: Radio, Development and Democracy Amanda Hopkinson, Jo Tacchi 3.2 2000 Television and Cultural Studies Graeme Turner 4.4 2001 Cultural Studies and Education Karl Maton, Handel Wright 5.4 2002 Re-Imagining Communities Sara Ahmed, Anne-Marie Fortier 6.3 2003 The New Economy, Creativity and Consumption John Hartley 7.1 2004 Creative Industries and Innovation in China Michael Keane, John Hartley 9.3 2006 The Uses of Richard Hoggart Sue Owen, John Hartley 10.1 2007 A Cultural History of Celebrity Liz Barry 11.3 2008 Caribbean Media Worlds Anna Pertierra, Heather Horst 12.2 2009 Co-Creative Labour Mark Deuze, John Banks 12.5 2009 It’s obvious that special issues have a place in disciplinary innovation – they can draw attention in a timely manner to new problems, neglected regions, or innovative approaches, and thus they advance the field. They are indispensible. But because of online publication, readers are not held to the ‘project’ of a special issue and can pick and choose whatever they want. And because of the peculiarities of research assessment exercises, editing special issues doesn’t count as research output. The incentive to do them is to that extent reduced, and some universities are quite heavy-handed about letting academics ‘waste’ time on activities that don’t produce ‘metrics.’ The special issue is therefore threatened with obsolescence too. Refereeing In many top-rating journals, the human side of refereeing is becoming obsolete. Increasingly this labour-intensive chore is automated and the labour is technologically outsourced from editors and publishers to authors and referees. You have to log on to some website and follow prompts in order to contribute both papers and the assessment of papers; interactions with editors are minimal. At the IJCS the process is still handled by humans – namely, journal administrator Tina Horton and me. We spend a lot of time checking how papers are faring, from trying to find the right referees through to getting the comments and then the author’s revisions completed in time for a paper to be scheduled into an issue. The volume of email correspondence is considerable. We get to know authors and referees. So we maintain a sense of an interactive and conversational community, albeit by correspondence rather than face to face. Doubtless, sooner or later, there will be a depersonalised Text Management System. But in the meantime we cling to the romantic notion that we are involved in refereeing for the sake of the field, for raising the standard of scholarship, for building a globally dispersed virtual college of cultural studies, and for giving everyone – from unfavoured countries and neglected regions to famous professors in old-money universities – the same chance to get their research published. In fact, these are largely delusional ideals, for as everyone knows, refereeing is part of the political economy of publicly-funded research. It’s about academic credentials, tenure and promotion for the individual, and about measurable research metrics for the academic organisation or funding agency (Hartley, "Death"). The IJCS has no choice but to participate: we do what is required to qualify as a ‘double-blind refereed journal’ because that is the only way to maintain repute, and thence the flow of submissions, not to mention subscriptions, without which there would be no journal. As with journals themselves, which proliferate even as the print form becomes obsolete, so refereeing is burgeoning as a practice. It’s almost an industry, even though the currency is not money but time: part gift-economy; part attention-economy; partly the payment of dues to the suzerain funding agencies. But refereeing is becoming obsolete in the sense of gathering an ‘imagined community’ of people one might expect to know personally around a particular enterprise. The process of dispersal and anonymisation of the field is exacerbated by blind refereeing, which we do because we must. This is suited to a scientific domain of objective knowledge, but everyone knows it’s not quite like that in the ‘new humanities’. The agency and identity of the researcher is often a salient fact in the research. The embedded positionality of the author, their reflexiveness about their own context and room-for-manoeuvre, and the radical contextuality of knowledge itself – these are all more or less axiomatic in cultural studies, but they’re not easily served by ‘double-blind’ refereeing. When refereeing is depersonalised to the extent that is now rife (especially in journals owned by international commercial publishers), it is hard to maintain a sense of contextualised productivity in the knowledge domain, much less a ‘common cause’ to which both author and referee wish to contribute. Even though refereeing can still be seen as altruistic, it is in the service of something much more general (‘scholarship’) and much more particular (‘my career’) than the kind of reviewing that wants to share and improve a particular intellectual enterprise. It is this mid-range altruism – something that might once have been identified as a politics of knowledge – that’s becoming obsolete, along with the printed journals that were the banner and rallying point for the cause. If I were to start a new journal (such as cultural-science.org), I would prefer ‘open refereeing’: uploading papers on an open site, subjecting them to peer-review and criticism, and archiving revised versions once they have received enough votes and comments. In other words I’d like to see refereeing shifted from the ‘supply’ or production side of a journal to the ‘demand’ or readership side. But of course, ‘demand’ for ‘blind’ refereeing doesn’t come from readers; it comes from the funding agencies. The Reading Experience Finally, the experience of reading a journal is obsolete. Two aspects of this seem worthy of note. First, reading is ‘out of time’ – it no longer needs to conform to the rhythms of scholarly publication, which are in any case speeding up. Scholarship is no longer seasonal, as it has been since the Middle Ages (with university terms organised around agricultural and ecclesiastical rhythms). Once you have a paper’s DOI number, you can read it any time, 24/7. It is no longer necessary even to wait for publication. With some journals in our field (e.g. Journalism Studies), assuming your Library subscribes, you can access papers as soon as they’re uploaded on the journal’s website, before the published edition is printed. Soon this will be the norm, just as it is for the top science journals, where timely publication, and thereby the ability to claim first discovery, is the basis of intellectual property rights. The IJCS doesn’t (yet) offer this service, but its frequency is speeding up. It was launched in 1998 with three issues a year. It went quarterly in 2001 and remained a quarterly for eight years. It has recently increased to six issues a year. That too causes changes in the reading experience. The excited ripping open of the package is less of a thrill the more often it arrives. Indeed, how many subscribers will admit that sometimes they don’t even open the envelope? Second, reading is ‘out of place’ – you never have to see the journal in which a paper appears, so you can avoid contact with anything that you haven’t already decided to read. This is more significant than might first appear, because it is affecting journalism in general, not just academic journals. As we move from the broadcast to the broadband era, communicative usage is shifting too, from ‘mass’ communication to customisation. This is a mixed blessing. One of the pleasures of old-style newspapers and the TV news was that you’d come across stories you did not expect to find. Indeed, an important attribute of the industrial form of journalism is its success in getting whole populations to read or watch stories about things they aren’t interested in, or things like wars and crises that they’d rather not know about at all. That historic textual achievement is in jeopardy in the broadband era, because ‘the public’ no longer needs to gather around any particular masthead or bulletin to get their news. With Web 2.0 affordances, you can exercise much more choice over what you attend to. This is great from the point of view of maximising individual choice, but sub-optimal in relation to what I’ve called ‘population-gathering’, especially the gathering of communities of interest around ‘tales of the unexpected’ – novelty or anomalies. Obsolete: Collegiality, Trust and Innovation? The individuation of reading choices may stimulate prejudice, because prejudice (literally, ‘pre-judging’) is built in when you decide only to access news feeds about familiar topics, stories or people in which you’re already interested. That sort of thing may encourage narrow-mindedness. It is certainly an impediment to chance discovery, unplanned juxtaposition, unstructured curiosity and thence, perhaps, to innovation itself. This is a worry for citizenship in general, but it is also an issue for academic ‘knowledge professionals,’ in our ever-narrower disciplinary silos. An in-close specialist focus on one’s own area of expertise need no longer be troubled by the concerns of the person in the next office, never mind the next department. Now, we don’t even have to meet on the page. One of the advantages of whole journals, then, is that each issue encourages ‘macro’ as well as ‘micro’ perspectives, and opens reading up to surprises. This willingness to ‘take things on trust’ describes a ‘we’ community – a community of trust. Trust too is obsolete in these days of performance evaluation. We’re assessed by an anonymous system that’s managed by people we’ll never meet. If the ‘population-gathering’ aspects of print journals are indeed obsolete, this may reduce collegiate trust and fellow-feeling, increase individualist competitiveness, and inhibit innovation. In the face of that prospect, I’m going to keep on thinking about covers, running orders, referees and reading until the role of editor is obsolete too. ReferencesHartley, John. "'Cover Narrative': From Nightmare to Reality." International Journal of Cultural Studies 11.2 (2005): 131-137. ———. "Death of the Book?" Symposium of the National Scholarly Communication Forum & Australian Academy of the Humanities, Sydney Maritime Museum, 2005. 26 Apr. 2009 ‹http://www.humanities.org.au/Resources/Downloads/NSCF/RoundTables1-17/PDF/Hartley.pdf›. ———. "Editorial: With Goanna." International Journal of Cultural Studies 1.1 (1998): 5-10. ———. "'Who Are You Going to Believe – Me or Your Own Eyes?' New Decade; New Directions." International Journal of Cultural Studies 11.1 (2008): 5-14. Houghton, John. "Economics of Scholarly Communication: A Discussion Paper." Center for Strategic Economic Studies, Victoria University, 2000. 26 Apr. 2009 ‹http://www.caul.edu.au/cisc/EconomicsScholarlyCommunication.pdf›. Owen, Sue, and John Hartley, eds. The Uses of Richard Hoggart. International Journal of Cultural Studies (special issue), 10.1 (2007). Policy Perspectives: To Publish and Perish. (Special issue cosponsored by the Association of Research Libraries, Association of American Universities and the Pew Higher Education Roundtable) 7.4 (1998). 26 Apr. 2009 ‹http://www.arl.org/scomm/pew/pewrept.html›. "Scholarly Communication: Crisis and Revolution." University of California Berkeley Library. N.d. 26 Apr. 2009 ‹http://www.lib.berkeley.edu/Collections/crisis.html›. Teute, F. J. "To Publish or Perish: Who Are the Dinosaurs in Scholarly Publishing?" Journal of Scholarly Publishing 32.2 (2001). 26 Apr. 2009 ‹http://www.utpjournals.com/product/jsp/322/perish5.html›."Transforming Scholarly Communication." University of Houston Library. 2005. 26 Apr. 2009 ‹http://info.lib.uh.edu/scomm/transforming.htm›.
APA, Harvard, Vancouver, ISO, and other styles
35

Lambert, Anthony. "Rainbow Blindness: Same-Sex Partnerships in Post-Coalitional Australia." M/C Journal 13, no. 6 (November 17, 2010). http://dx.doi.org/10.5204/mcj.318.

Full text
Abstract:
In Australia the “intimacy” of citizenship (Berlant 2), is often used to reinforce subscription to heteronormative romantic and familial structures. Because this framing promotes discourses of moral failure, recent political attention to sexuality and same-sex couples can be filtered through insights into coalitional affiliations. This paper uses contemporary shifts in Australian politics and culture to think through the concept of coalition, and in particular to analyse connections between sexuality and governmentality (or more specifically normative bias and same-sex relationships) in what I’m calling post-coalitional Australia. Against the unpredictability of changing parties and governments, allegiances and alliances, this paper suggests the continuing adherence to a heteronormatively arranged public sphere. After the current Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard deposed the previous leader, Kevin Rudd, she clung to power with the help of independents and the Greens, and clichés of a “rainbow coalition” and a “new paradigm” were invoked to describe the confused electorate and governmental configuration. Yet in 2007, a less confused Australia decisively threw out the Howard–led Liberal and National Party coalition government after eleven years, in favour of Rudd’s own rainbow coalition: a seemingly invigorated party focussed on gender equity, Indigenous Australians, multi-cultural visibility, workplace relations, Austral-Asian relations, humane refugee processing, the environment, and the rights and obligations of same-sex couples. A post-coalitional Australia invokes something akin to “aftermath culture” (Lambert and Simpson), referring not just to Rudd’s fall or Howard’s election loss, but to the broader shifting contexts within which most Australian citizens live, and within which they make sense of the terms “Australia” and “Australian”. Contemporary Australia is marked everywhere by cracks in coalitions and shifts in allegiances and belief systems – the Coalition of the Willing falling apart, the coalition government crushed by defeat, deposed leaders, and unlikely political shifts and (re)alignments in the face of a hung parliament and renewed pushes toward moral and cultural change. These breakdowns in allegiances are followed by swift symbolically charged manoeuvres. Gillard moved quickly to repair relations with mining companies damaged by Rudd’s plans for a mining tax and to water down frustration with the lack of a sustainable Emissions Trading Scheme. And one of the first things Kevin Rudd did as Prime Minister was to change the fittings and furnishings in the Prime Ministerial office, of which Wright observed that “Mr Howard is gone and Prime Minister Kevin Rudd has moved in, the Parliament House bureaucracy has ensured all signs of the old-style gentlemen's club… have been banished” (The Age, 5 Dec. 2007). Some of these signs were soon replaced by Ms. Gillard herself, who filled the office in turn with memorabilia from her beloved Footscray, an Australian Rules football team. In post-coalitional Australia the exile of the old Menzies’ desk and a pair of Chesterfield sofas works alongside the withdrawal of troops from Iraq and renewed pledges for military presence in Afghanistan, apologising to stolen generations of Indigenous Australians, the first female Governor General, deputy Prime Minister and then Prime Minister (the last two both Gillard), the repealing of disadvantageous workplace reform, a focus on climate change and global warming (with limited success as stated), a public, mandatory paid maternity leave scheme, changes to the processing and visas of refugees, and the amendments to more than one hundred laws that discriminate against same sex couples by the pre-Gillard, Rudd-led Labor government. The context for these changes was encapsulated in an announcement from Rudd, made in March 2008: Our core organising principle as a Government is equality of opportunity. And advancing people and their opportunities in life, we are a Government which prides itself on being blind to gender, blind to economic background, blind to social background, blind to race, blind to sexuality. (Rudd, “International”) Noting the political possibilities and the political convenience of blindness, this paper navigates the confusing context of post-coalitional Australia, whilst proffering an understanding of some of the cultural forces at work in this age of shifting and unstable alliances. I begin by interrogating the coalitional impulse post 9/11. I do this by connecting public coalitional shifts to the steady withdrawal of support for John Howard’s coalition, and movement away from George Bush’s Coalition of the Willing and the War on Terror. I then draw out a relationship between the rise and fall of such affiliations and recent shifts within government policy affecting same-sex couples, from former Prime Minister Howard’s amendments to The Marriage Act 1961 to the Rudd-Gillard administration’s attention to the discrimination in many Australian laws. Sexual Citizenship and Coalitions Rights and entitlements have always been constructed and managed in ways that live out understandings of biopower and social death (Foucault History; Discipline). The disciplining of bodies, identities and pleasures is so deeply entrenched in government and law that any non-normative claim to rights requires the negotiation of existing structures. Sexual citizenship destabilises the post-coalitional paradigm of Australian politics (one of “equal opportunity” and consensus) by foregrounding the normative biases that similarly transcend partisan politics. Sexual citizenship has been well excavated in critical work from Evans, Berlant, Weeks, Richardson, and Bell and Binnie’s The Sexual Citizen which argues that “many of the current modes of the political articulation of sexual citizenship are marked by compromise; this is inherent in the very notion itself… the twinning of rights with responsibilities in the logic of citizenship is another way of expressing compromise… Every entitlement is freighted with a duty” (2-3). This logic extends to political and economic contexts, where “natural” coalition refers primarily to parties, and in particular those “who have powerful shared interests… make highly valuable trades, or who, as a unit, can extract significant value from others without much risk of being split” (Lax and Sebinius 158). Though the term is always in some way politicised, it need not refer only to partisan, multiparty or multilateral configurations. The subscription to the norms (or normativity) of a certain familial, social, religious, ethnic, or leisure groups is clearly coalitional (as in a home or a front, a club or a team, a committee or a congregation). Although coalition is interrogated in political and social sciences, it is examined frequently in mathematical game theory and behavioural psychology. In the former, as in Axelrod’s The Evolution of Cooperation, it refers to people (or players) who collaborate to successfully pursue their own self-interests, often in the absence of central authority. In behavioural psychology the focus is on group formations and their attendant strategies, biases and discriminations. Experimental psychologists have found “categorizing individuals into two social groups predisposes humans to discriminate… against the outgroup in both allocation of resources and evaluation of conduct” (Kurzban, Tooby and Cosmides 15387). The actions of social organisation (and not unseen individual, supposedly innate impulses) reflect the cultural norms in coalitional attachments – evidenced by the relationship between resources and conduct that unquestioningly grants and protects the rights and entitlements of the larger, heteronormatively aligned “ingroup”. Terror Management Particular attention has been paid to coalitional formations and discriminatory practices in America and the West since September 11, 2001. Terror Management Theory or TMT (Greenberg, Pyszczynski and Solomon) has been the main framework used to explain the post-9/11 reassertion of large group identities along ideological, religious, ethnic and violently nationalistic lines. Psychologists have used “death-related stimuli” to explain coalitional mentalities within the recent contexts of globalised terror. The fear of death that results in discriminatory excesses is referred to as “mortality salience”, with respect to the highly visible aspects of terror that expose people to the possibility of their own death or suffering. Naverette and Fessler find “participants… asked to contemplate their own deaths exhibit increases in positive evaluations of people whose attitudes and values are similar to their own, and derogation of those holding dissimilar views” (299). It was within the climate of post 9/11 “mortality salience” that then Prime Minister John Howard set out to change The Marriage Act 1961 and the Family Law Act 1975. In 2004, the Government modified the Marriage Act to eliminate flexibility with respect to the definition of marriage. Agitation for gay marriage was not as noticeable in Australia as it was in the U.S where Bush publicly rejected it, and the UK where the Civil Union Act 2004 had just been passed. Following Bush, Howard’s “queer moral panic” seemed the perfect decoy for the increased scrutiny of Australia’s involvement in the Iraq war. Howard’s changes included outlawing adoption for same-sex couples, and no recognition for legal same-sex marriages performed in other countries. The centrepiece was the wording of The Marriage Amendment Act 2004, with marriage now defined as a union “between a man and a woman to the exclusion of all others”. The legislation was referred to by the Australian Greens Senator Bob Brown as “hateful”, “the marriage discrimination act” and the “straight Australia policy” (Commonwealth 26556). The Labor Party, in opposition, allowed the changes to pass (in spite of vocal protests from one member) by concluding the legal status of same-sex relations was in no way affected, seemingly missing (in addition to the obvious symbolic and physical discrimination) the equation of same-sex recognition with terror, terrorism and death. Non-normative sexual citizenship was deployed as yet another form of “mortality salience”, made explicit in Howard’s description of the changes as necessary in protecting the sanctity of the “bedrock institution” of marriage and, wait for it, “providing for the survival of the species” (Knight, 5 Aug. 2003). So two things seem to be happening here: the first is that when confronted with the possibility of their own death (either through terrorism or gay marriage) people value those who are most like them, joining to devalue those who aren’t; the second is that the worldview (the larger religious, political, social perspectives to which people subscribe) becomes protection from the potential death that terror/queerness represents. Coalition of the (Un)willing Yet, if contemporary coalitions are formed through fear of death or species survival, how, for example, might these explain the various forms of risk-taking behaviours exhibited within Western democracies targeted by such terrors? Navarette and Fessler (309) argue that “affiliation defences are triggered by a wider variety of threats” than “existential anxiety” and that worldviews are “in turn are reliant on ‘normative conformity’” (308) or “normative bias” for social benefits and social inclusions, because “a normative orientation” demonstrates allegiance to the ingroup (308-9). Coalitions are founded in conformity to particular sets of norms, values, codes or belief systems. They are responses to adaptive challenges, particularly since September 11, not simply to death but more broadly to change. In troubled times, coalitions restore a shared sense of predictability. In Howard’s case, he seemed to say, “the War in Iraq is tricky but we have a bigger (same-sex) threat to deal with right now. So trust me on both fronts”. Coalitional change as reflective of adaptive responses thus serves the critical location of subsequent shifts in public support. Before and since September 11 Australians were beginning to distinguish between moderation and extremism, between Christian fundamentalism and productive forms of nationalism. Howard’s unwavering commitment to the American-led war in Iraq saw Australia become a member of another coalition: the Coalition of the Willing, a post 1990s term used to describe militaristic or humanitarian interventions in certain parts of the world by groups of countries. Howard (in Pauly and Lansford 70) committed Australia to America’s fight but also to “civilization's fight… of all who believe in progress and pluralism, tolerance and freedom”. Although Bush claimed an international balance of power and influence within the coalition (94), some countries refused to participate, many quickly withdrew, and many who signed did not even have troops. In Australia, the war was never particularly popular. In 2003, forty-two legal experts found the war contravened International Law as well as United Nations and Geneva conventions (Sydney Morning Herald 26 Feb. 2003). After the immeasurable loss of Iraqi life, and as the bodies of young American soldiers (and the occasional non-American) began to pile up, the official term “coalition of the willing” was quietly abandoned by the White House in January of 2005, replaced by a “smaller roster of 28 countries with troops in Iraq” (ABC News Online 22 Jan. 2005). The coalition and its larger war on terror placed John Howard within the context of coalitional confusion, that when combined with the domestic effects of economic and social policy, proved politically fatal. The problem was the unclear constitution of available coalitional configurations. Howard’s continued support of Bush and the war in Iraq compounded with rising interest rates, industrial relations reform and a seriously uncool approach to the environment and social inclusion, to shift perceptions of him from father of the nation to dangerous, dithery and disconnected old man. Post-Coalitional Change In contrast, before being elected Kevin Rudd sought to reframe Australian coalitional relationships. In 2006, he positions the Australian-United States alliance outside of the notion of military action and Western territorial integrity. In Rudd-speak the Howard-Bush-Blair “coalition of the willing” becomes F. Scott Fitzgerald’s “willingness of the heart”. The term coalition was replaced by terms such as dialogue and affiliation (Rudd, “Friends”). Since the 2007 election, Rudd moved quickly to distance himself from the agenda of the coalition government that preceded him, proposing changes in the spirit of “blindness” toward marginality and sexuality. “Fix-it-all” Rudd as he was christened (Sydney Morning Herald 29 Sep. 2008) and his Labor government began to confront the legacies of colonial history, industrial relations, refugee detention and climate change – by apologising to Aboriginal people, timetabling the withdrawal from Iraq, abolishing the employee bargaining system Workchoices, giving instant visas and lessening detention time for refugees, and signing the Kyoto Protocol agreeing (at least in principle) to reduce green house gas emissions. As stated earlier, post-coalitional Australia is not simply talking about sudden change but an extension and a confusion of what has gone on before (so that the term resembles postcolonial, poststructural and postmodern because it carries the practices and effects of the original term within it). The post-coalitional is still coalitional to the extent that we must ask: what remains the same in the midst of such visible changes? An American focus in international affairs, a Christian platform for social policy, an absence of financial compensation for the Aboriginal Australians who received such an eloquent apology, the lack of coherent and productive outcomes in the areas of asylum and climate change, and an impenetrable resistance to the idea of same-sex marriage are just some of the ways in which these new governments continue on from the previous one. The Rudd-Gillard government’s dealings with gay law reform and gay marriage exemplify the post-coalitional condition. Emulating Christ’s relationship to “the marginalised and the oppressed”, and with Gillard at his side, Rudd understandings of the Christian Gospel as a “social gospel” (Rudd, “Faith”; see also Randell-Moon) to table changes to laws discriminating against gay couples – guaranteeing hospital visits, social security benefits and access to superannuation, resembling de-facto hetero relationships but modelled on the administering and registration of relationships, or on tax laws that speak primarily to relations of financial dependence – with particular reference to children. The changes are based on the report, Same Sex, Same Entitlements (HREOC) that argues for the social competence of queer folk, with respect to money, property and reproduction. They speak the language of an equitable economics; one that still leaves healthy and childless couples with limited recognition and advantage but increased financial obligation. Unable to marry in Australia, same-sex couples are no longer single for taxation purposes, but are now simultaneously subject to forms of tax/income auditing and governmental revenue collection should either same-sex partner require assistance from social security as if they were married. Heteronormative Coalition Queer citizens can quietly stake their economic claims and in most states discreetly sign their names on a register before becoming invisible again. Mardi Gras happens but once a year after all. On the topic of gay marriage Rudd and Gillard have deferred to past policy and to the immoveable nature of the law (and to Howard’s particular changes to marriage law). That same respect is not extended to laws passed by Howard on industrial relations or border control. In spite of finding no gospel references to Jesus the Nazarene “expressly preaching against homosexuality” (Rudd, “Faith”), and pre-election promises that territories could govern themselves with respect to same sex partnerships, the Rudd-Gillard government in 2008 pressured the ACT to reduce its proposed partnership legislation to that of a relationship register like the ones in Tasmania and Victoria, and explicitly demanded that there be absolutely no ceremony – no mimicking of the real deal, of the larger, heterosexual citizens’ “ingroup”. Likewise, with respect to the reintroduction of same-sex marriage legislation by Greens senator Sarah Hanson Young in September 2010, Gillard has so far refused a conscience vote on the issue and restated the “marriage is between a man and a woman” rhetoric of her predecessors (Topsfield, 30 Sep. 2010). At the same time, she has agreed to conscience votes on euthanasia and openly declared bi-partisan (with the federal opposition) support for the war in Afghanistan. We see now, from Howard to Rudd and now Gillard, that there are some coalitions that override political differences. As psychologists have noted, “if the social benefits of norm adherence are the ultimate cause of the individual’s subscription to worldviews, then the focus and salience of a given individual’s ideology can be expected to vary as a function of their need to ally themselves with relevant others” (Navarette and Fessler 307). Where Howard invoked the “Judaeo-Christian tradition”, Rudd chose to cite a “Christian ethical framework” (Rudd, “Faith”), that saw him and Gillard end up in exactly the same place: same sex relationships should be reduced to that of medical care or financial dependence; that a public ceremony marking relationship recognition somehow equates to “mimicking” the already performative and symbolic heterosexual institution of marriage and the associated romantic and familial arrangements. Conclusion Post-coalitional Australia refers to the state of confusion borne of a new politics of equality and change. The shift in Australia from conservative to mildly socialist government(s) is not as sudden as Howard’s 2007 federal loss or as short-lived as Gillard’s hung parliament might respectively suggest. Whilst allegiance shifts, political parties find support is reliant on persistence as much as it is on change – they decide how to buffer and bolster the same coalitions (ones that continue to privilege white settlement, Christian belief systems, heteronormative familial and symbolic practices), but also how to practice policy and social responsibility in a different way. Rudd’s and Gillard’s arguments against the mimicry of heterosexual symbolism and the ceremonial validation of same-sex partnerships imply there is one originary form of conduct and an associated sacred set of symbols reserved for that larger ingroup. Like Howard before them, these post-coalitional leaders fail to recognise, as Butler eloquently argues, “gay is to straight not as copy is to original, but as copy is to copy” (31). To make claims to status and entitlements that invoke the messiness of non-normative sex acts and romantic attachments necessarily requires the negotiation of heteronormative coalitional bias (and in some ways a reinforcement of this social power). As Bell and Binnie have rightly observed, “that’s what the hard choices facing the sexual citizen are: the push towards rights claims that make dissident sexualities fit into heterosexual culture, by demanding equality and recognition, versus the demand to reject settling for heteronormativity” (141). The new Australian political “blindness” toward discrimination produces positive outcomes whilst it explicitly reanimates the histories of oppression it seeks to redress. The New South Wales parliament recently voted to allow same-sex adoption with the proviso that concerned parties could choose not to adopt to gay couples. The Tasmanian government voted to recognise same-sex marriages and unions from outside Australia, in the absence of same-sex marriage beyond the current registration arrangements in its own state. In post-coalitional Australia the issue of same-sex partnership recognition pits parties and allegiances against each other and against themselves from within (inside Gillard’s “rainbow coalition” the Rainbow ALP group now unites gay people within the government’s own party). Gillard has hinted any new proposed legislation regarding same-sex marriage may not even come before parliament for debate, as it deals with real business. Perhaps the answer lies over the rainbow (coalition). As the saying goes, “there are none so blind as those that will not see”. References ABC News Online. “Whitehouse Scraps Coalition of the Willing List.” 22 Jan. 2005. 1 July 2007 ‹http://www.abc.net.au/news/newsitems/200501/s1286872.htm›. Axelrod, Robert. The Evolution of Cooperation. New York: Basic Books, 1984. Berlant, Lauren. The Queen of America Goes to Washington City: Essays on Sex and Citizenship. Durham: Duke University Press, 1997. Bell, David, and John Binnie. The Sexual Citizen: Queer Politics and Beyond. Cambridge, England: Polity, 2000. Butler, Judith. Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity. New York: Routledge, 1990. Commonwealth of Australia. Parliamentary Debates. House of Representatives 12 Aug. 2004: 26556. (Bob Brown, Senator, Tasmania.) Evans, David T. Sexual Citizenship: The Material Construction of Sexualities. London: Routledge, 1993. Foucault, Michel. Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison. Trans. A. Sheridan. London: Penguin, 1991. ———. The Will to Knowledge: The History of Sexuality. Vol. 1. Trans. Robert Hurley. London: Penguin, 1998. Greenberg, Jeff, Tom Pyszczynski, and Sheldon Solomon. “The Causes and Consequences of the Need for Self-Esteem: A Terror Management Theory.” Public Self, Private Self. Ed. Roy F. Baumeister. New York: Springer-Verlag, 1986. 189-212. Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission. Same-Sex: Same Entitlements Report. 2007. 21 Aug. 2007 ‹http://www.hreoc.gov.au/human_rights/samesex/report/index.html›. Kaplan, Morris. Sexual Justice: Democratic Citizenship and the Politics of Desire. New York: Routledge, 1997. Knight, Ben. “Howard and Costello Reject Gay Marriage.” ABC Online 5 Aug. 2003. Kurzban, Robert, John Tooby, and Leda Cosmides. "Can Race Be Erased? Coalitional Computation and Social Categorization." Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 98.26 (2001): 15387–15392. Lambert, Anthony, and Catherine Simpson. "Jindabyne’s Haunted Alpine Country: Producing (an) Australian Badland." M/C Journal 11.5 (2008). 20 Oct. 2010 ‹http://journal.media-culture.org.au/index.php/mcjournal/article/view/81›. Lax, David A., and James K. Lebinius. “Thinking Coalitionally: Party Arithmetic Process Opportunism, and Strategic Sequencing.” Negotiation Analysis. Ed. H. Peyton Young. Michigan: University of Michigan Press, 1991. 153-194. Naverette, Carlos, and Daniel Fessler. “Normative Bias and Adaptive Challenges: A Relational Approach to Coalitional Psychology and a Critique of Terror Management Theory.” Evolutionary Psychology 3 (2005): 297-325. Pauly, Robert J., and Tom Lansford. Strategic Preemption: US Foreign Policy and Second Iraq War. Aldershot: Ashgate, 2005. Randall-Moon, Holly. "Neoliberal Governmentality with a Christian Twist: Religion and Social Security under the Howard-Led Australian Government." Eds. Michael Bailey and Guy Redden. Mediating Faiths: Religion and Socio- Cultural Change in the Twenty-First Century. Farnham: Ashgate, in press. Richardson, Diane. Rethinking Sexuality. London: Sage, 2000. Rudd, Kevin. “Faith in Politics.” The Monthly 17 (2006). 31 July 2007 ‹http://www.themonthly.com.au/monthly-essays-kevin-rudd-faith-politics--300›. Rudd, Kevin. “Friends of Australia, Friends of America, and Friends of the Alliance That Unites Us All.” Address to the 15th Australian-American Leadership Dialogue. The Australian, 24 Aug. 2007. 13 Mar. 2008 ‹http://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/climate/kevin-rudds-address/story-e6frg6xf-1111114253042›. Rudd, Kevin. “Address to International Women’s Day Morning Tea.” Old Parliament House, Canberra, 11 Mar. 2008. 1 Oct. 2010 ‹http://pmrudd.archive.dpmc.gov.au/node/5900›. Sydney Morning Herald. “Coalition of the Willing? Make That War Criminals.” 26 Feb. 2003. 1 July 2007 ‹http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2003/02/25/1046064028608.html›. Topsfield, Jewel. “Gillard Rules Out Conscience Vote on Gay Marriage.” The Age 30 Sep. 2010. 1 Oct. 2010 ‹http://www.theage.com.au/national/gillard-rules-out-conscience-vote-on-gay-marriage-20100929-15xgj.html›. Weeks, Jeffrey. "The Sexual Citizen." Theory, Culture and Society 15.3-4 (1998): 35-52. Wright, Tony. “Suite Revenge on Chesterfield.” The Age 5 Dec. 2007. 4 April 2008 ‹http://www.theage.com.au/news/national/suite-revenge-on-chesterfield/2007/12/04/1196530678384.html›.
APA, Harvard, Vancouver, ISO, and other styles
36

Ting, Tin-yuet. "Digital Narrating for Contentious Politics: Social Media Content Curation at Movement Protests." M/C Journal 18, no. 4 (August 7, 2015). http://dx.doi.org/10.5204/mcj.995.

Full text
Abstract:
IntroductionThe popularity of social networking sites (SNSs) bears witness to thriving movement protests worldwide. The development of new hardware technologies such as mobile devices and digital cameras, in particular, has fast enhanced visual communications among users that help document and broadcast contemporary social movements. Using social media with these technologies thus presents new opportunities for grassroots social movement organisations (SMOs) and activist groups to become narrators of their activist lives, and to promote solidarity and recognition for advancing varied civic and political agendas. With the case of a student activist group that led and organised a 10-day occupation protest in Hong Kong, this article examines the idea of new media-savvy SMOs as political curators that employ SNS platforms to (co-)create digital narratives at large-scale movement protests. Invoking the concepts of curation and choreography, it highlights how these processes can work together to encourage contentious engagement and collaboration in contemporary social movements.The New Media-Savvy SMO as Political CuratorWhereas traditional social movement studies stressed the importance of pre-existing social networks and organisational structures for collective action, developments in new information and communication technologies (ICTs) challenge the common theories of how people are drawn into and participate in social movements. In recent years, a spate of research has particularly emphasised the ability of individuals and small groups to self-organise on the Internet (e.g. Rheingold). Lately, observing the use of SNSs such as Facebook and Twitter in contemporary social movements, work in this area has focused on how SNSs enable movement diffusion through personal networks and individuals’ online activities even without either the aid or the oversight of an organisation (e.g. Shirky).However, horizontal activism self-organised by atomised new media users seems insufficient as an explanation of how many recent protest movements achieved their high tides. While the flourishing literature shows writers have correctly centred their study on the changing dynamics in control over information and the growing importance of individual users’ contributions, it fails to account for the crucial role that SMOs continue to play. In fact, recent studies consistently observe the continuing importance of SMOs in mobilising and coordinating collective actions in online environments (Bimber, Flanagin, and Stohl, Collective). Whereas new ICTs have provided activist groups with the instrument to deal with their contentious activities with less cueing and leadership from conventional institutionalised structures, SMOs have created their own new media resources. Nowadays, a significant percentage of protest participants have received their information from online platforms that are run by or affiliated with these organisations. The critical questions remain about the kinds of communication methods they utilise to activate and integrate independent activists’ networks and participation, especially in emerging social media environments.Unfortunately, existing research tends to overlook the discursive potentials and cultural dimensions in online activism while emphasising the cost-effectiveness and organisational function of new ICTs. In particular, social movement and new media scholars merely attended to the ways in which digital media enable widescale, relatively un-coordinated contributions to repositories of resources for networks of activists and interest groups, as SNS applications stress the importance of user participation, openness, and network effects in the processes of content production and sharing. However, the mere existence or even “surplus” (Shirky 27) of “second-order communal goods” (Bimber, Flanagin, and Stohl, “Reconceptualizing” 372)—a collection of resources created collectively but without a bounded community, through video-posting, tagging, and circulation practices engaged in by individuals—does not accidentally result in critical publics that come to take part in political activism. Rather, social movements are, above all, the space for manifesting ideas, choices, and a collective will, in which people produce their own history through their cultural creations and social struggles (Touraine). As such, the alteration of meaning, the struggle to define the situation, and the discursive practices carried out within a social movement are all major aspects of social movements and change (Melucci).Indeed, SMOs and marginalised communities worldwide have increasingly learnt the ability to become narrators of their activist and community lives, and to express solidarity and recognition afforded through technology adoption. The recent proliferation of social media applications and mobile digital technologies has allowed activist groups to create and distribute their own stories regarding concrete actions, ongoing campaigns, and thematic issues of protest movements on more multimedia platforms. In order to advance political ideas and collective action frames, they may bring together a variety of online content in such a way that the collated materials offer a commentary on a subject area by articulating and negotiating new media artefacts, while also inviting responses. Therefore, not only are the new media channels for activist communication comparatively inexpensive, but they also provide for a richer array of content and the possibility of greater control by SMOs over its (re-)creation, maintenance, and distribution for potential digital narrating. To understand how digital narrating takes place in contemporary protest movements with SNSs, we now turn to two analytic concepts—curation and choreography.Social Media Content Curation and Choreography Curation, as a new media practice, involves finding, categorising, and organising relevant online content on specific issues. For instance, museums and libraries may have curators to select and feature digital items for collection and display, improving the types of information accessible to a public audience. In protest movements, SMOs and political actors may also curate peer-produced content on SNS platforms so as to filter and amplify useful information for mobilising collective action. In fact, this process by SMOs and political actors is particularly important, as it helps sort and draw timely attention to these information sources, especially at times when users are faced with a large amount of noise created by millions of producers (Bennett, Segerberg, and Walker). More importantly, not only does content curating entail the selection and preservation of online materials that may facilitate collective action, but it may also involve the (re-)presentation of selected content by telling stories not being told or by telling existing stories in a different way (Fotopoulou and Couldry). In contrast to professional collecting, it is a much more deliberate process, one which clearly articulates and puts forwards (opportunities for) new meanings or new understanding of a subject (Franks). For example, when new media content is re-posted or shared in its original form but in a new context, digital narrating occurs as it may result in a new or additional layer of meaning (Baym and Shah). Therefore, more than merely expending information resources available to activists, the power of curation can be understood primarily as discursive, as users may pick up particular versions of reality in interpreting social issues and protest movements (Bekkers, Moody, and Edwards).Moreover, nowadays, social media curating is not restricted to text but also includes image and video streaming, as the development of mobile devices and digital cameras has facilitated and enhanced instant communication and information retrieval almost regardless of location. The practice of content curating with SNSs may also involve the process of choreographing with various social media modules, such as posting a series of edited pictures under an overarching schema and organising user-generated photos into an album that suggests a particular theme. Rather than simply using a single visual item designed to tell a story, the idea of choreographing is thus concerned with how curated items are seen and experienced from the users’ perspectives as it “allows curators not just to expose elements of a story but to tell a structured tale with the traditional elements of beginning, middle and end” (Franks 288).In practice, the implementation of choreography can be envisioned to bring together the practice of content curating and that of enhancing and connecting contentious engagement at protest movements. For example, when SMOs make use of images and video to help frame an issue in a more advanced way by sharing a picture with a comment added on Facebook, they may at once, whether consciously or unconsciously, suggest possible endorsement to the selected content and/or the source—may it be that of an individual user or a formal organisation—while drawing attention to the image and circulating it beyond the original network for which it was posted (Bennett, Segerberg, and Walker). As such, by posting pictures with captions and sharing user-generated photos that do not belong to the SMO but are produced by other users, curating and choreographing with social media content can create a temporary space for practicing mutual recognition and extending the relationship between the SMO and the larger public. Combined, they may therefore “entail the creation of norms and boundaries in particular user communities and their platforms” (Bennett, Segerberg, and Walker 239).This article examines the ways in which a new media-savvy SMO employed SNS platforms to (co-)create digital narratives, with the case of the 2012 Anti-National Education Movement in Hong Kong. By highlighting how social media content curating and choreographing may work together to encourage engagement and collaboration at large-scale protests, we can better understand how emerging SNS-enabled affordances can be translated into concrete contentious activities, as well as the discursive aspects and cultural expressions of using new media platforms and digital technologies in contemporary protest movements.Digital Narrating for Grassroots Mobilisation Since 2010, the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region government has undertaken “national education” curriculum reform. However, the worry about mainland-Chinese style national education in schools brought people out to defend values that were held dear in Hong Kong. Scholarism, a new media-savvy SMO founded by about 20 secondary school students in May 2011, became the first pressure group formed against the “Moral and National Education” curriculum and became the leading activist group. On 30 August 2012, about 50 members and supporters of Scholarism started occupying the public area in front of the government’s headquarters, while three of its members went on a hunger strike. At the same time, Scholarism made active use of Facebook to undertake grassroots mobilisation, prompting both online activism and offline participation. On 7 September, over 120,000 people went to Occupy Headquarters. The next day, the Chief Executive, C. Y. Leung, succumbed to the pressure and declared that the curriculum would not be imposed in Hong Kong schools. In order to initiate a grassroots mobilisation, upon the beginning of Occupy Headquarters, Scholarism carried out the new media practice of telling the story of the student hunger strikers on Facebook to create a “moral shock” (Jasper 106) among the general public. On the first day of the occupation protest, 30 August, a poster on the hunger strike was released by Scholarism on its Facebook page. Instead of providing detailed information about the protest movement, this poster was characterised by the pictures of the three student hunger strikers. The headline message simply stated “We have started the hunger strike.” This poster was very popular among Facebook users; it accumulated more than 16,000 likes.By appealing to the hardships and sufferings of the three student hunger strikers, more photos were uploaded to narrate the course of the hunger strike and the occupation protest. In particular, pictures with captions added were posted on Facebook every couple of hours to report on the student hunger strikers’ latest situation. Although the mobilising power of these edited pictures did not come from their political ideology or rational argumentation, they sought to appeal to the “martyr-hood” of the student activists. Soon thereafter, as the social media updates of the student hunger strikers spread, feelings of shock and anger grew rapidly. Most of the comments that were posted under the updates and photos of the student hunger strikers on Scholarism’s Facebook page protested against the government’s brutality.In addition, as the movement grew, Scholarism extended the self-reporting activities on Facebook from members to non-members. For instance, it frequently (self-)reported on the amount of people joining the movement days and nights. This was especially so on 7 September, when Scholarism uploaded multiple photos and text messages to report on the physical movement of the 120,000 people. As a movement strategy, the display of images of protests and rallies on the Internet can help demonstrate the legitimacy, unity, numbers, and commitment of people supporting the movement goals (Carty and Onyett). Curating and choreographing with protest images on Facebook therefore facilitated the symbolic interactions and emotional exchanges among activists for maintaining movement solidarity and consolidating activist identity.To demonstrate the public support for its organisation and the movement, Scholarism extensively reported on its own, as well as other, protest activities and efforts on Facebook against the introduction of the “Moral and National Education” curriculum, creating unprecedented parallel public records of these events. In fact, throughout the entire movement protest, Scholarism took tight photo records of protest activities, systematically organised them into albums, and uploaded them onto Facebook every day between 30 August and 8 September.Content Co-Creation for Counter-Hegemonic ExpressionsFrom a (neo-)Gramscian perspective, counter-hegemony is often embedded and embodied in music, novels, drama, movies, and so on (Boggs). An example of counter-hegemony in the traditional media is a documentary that questions the government’s involvement in a war (Cohen). Therefore, popular culture in the media may help foster counter-hegemony on the terrain of civil society in preparation for political change (Pratt). For Chinese communities in East Asia, pop music, for example, had played a significant role in organising patriotic feelings in mass protest events, such as the Tiananmen demonstrations of 1989 and the many subsequent protests in Hong Kong, Taiwan, and elsewhere against the violence of the Beijing government (Chow 153). During the occupation protest, Facebook was turned into an open and flexible discursive space, in which cutting-edge counter-hegemonic narratives were produced, distributed, and expressed. Scholarism and many individual activists adopted the social media platform to (co-)create activists’ discourses and knowledge in order to challenge the dominant political and cultural codes (Melucci). An example is a poster created by Scholarism, posted on its Facebook page on 4 September. The title message of this poster is: “This is not the government headquarters. This is our CIVIC SQUARE. Come and occupy!” This message represents a discursive intervention that seeks to “illuminate the limits of normative discourses of knowledge and power” (Lane 138). It did so by replacing the original, official name and meaning of the government headquarters as well as its authority with the counter-hegemonic idea of “civic square,” a term developed and coined by Scholarism during the occupation protest to represent the public space in front of the headquarters.Moreover, the Facebook page of Scholarism was by no means the only source of content out of which counter-hegemonic knowledge and discourses were produced. Conversely, most of the new media artefacts observed on the Facebook page of Scholarism were originally created by and posted on, and therefore re-posted and shared from, the Facebook pages of other individual or group users. They are in forms of text, picture, video, and the like that sought to undermine the legitimacy of the Hong Kong government, ridicule the rationale of the “Moral and National Education” curriculum, and discredit figures in the opposition.An example is a cartoon made by an individual user and re-posted on the Facebook page of Scholarism on 2 September, the day before schools restarted in Hong Kong after the summer break. This cartoon features a schoolboy in his school uniform, who is going to school with a bunch of identical locks tied to his head. The title message is: “School begins, keep your brain safe.” This cartoon was created to ridicule the rationale of the introduction of the “Moral and National Education” by “making visible the underlying and hidden relations of power on which the smooth operation of government repression depends” (Lane 136).Another new media artefact re-posted on the Facebook page of Scholarism was originally created by a well-known Hong Kong cartoon painter of a major local newspaper. This cartoon sought to humanise the student activists and to condemn the brutality of the Hong Kong government. It paints an imagined situation in which a public conversation between the Secretary for Education, Hak-kim Eddie Ng, and the three students on the hunger strike takes place. In this cartoon, Ng is cast as the wholesaler of the “Moral and National Education” curriculum. Holding a bottle of liquid in his hand, he says to the students: “This is the tears of the chief executive from last night. Kids, should you all go home now?”Thus, counter-hegemonic expressions did not flow unidirectionally from Scholarism to the society at large. The special role of Scholarism was indeed to curate and choreograph new media artefacts by employing social media modules such as re-posting and sharing user-generated content. In so doing, it facilitated the mobilisation of the occupation protest and instant collaboration, as it connected scattered activities, turned them into a collective, and branded it with a common identity, conviction, and/or purpose.ConclusionThis article has briefly looked at the case of a new media-savvy SMO in Hong Kong as an example of how activist groups can become political curators at large-scale protest events. In particular, it highlights the concepts of curation and choreography in explaining how emerging SNS-enabled affordances can be translated into concrete contentious activities. This article argues that, rather than simply producing and disseminating content on SNS platforms, SMOs today have learnt to actively construct stories about protest movements with social media modules such as (re-)posting edited pictures and sharing user-generated photos in order to mobilise effective political interventions and sustain a vibrant participatory culture.ReferencesBaym, Geoffrey, and Chirag Shah. “Circulating Struggle: The On-Line Flow of Environmental Advocacy Clips from the Daily Show and the Colbert Report.” Information Communication & Society 14.7 (2011): 1017–38. Bekkers, Victor, Rebecca Moody, and Arthur Edwards. “Micro-Mobilization, Social Media and Coping Strategies: Some Dutch Experiences.” Policy and Internet 3.4 (2011): 1–29. Bennett, W. Lance, Alexandra Segerberg, and Shawn Walker. “Organization in the Crowd: Peer Production in Large-Scale Networked Protests.” Information, Communication & Society 17.2 (2014): 232–60. Bimber, Bruce, Andrew J. Flanagin, and Cynthia Stohl. “Reconceptualizing Collective Action in the Contemporary Media Environment.” Communication Theory 15.4 (2005): 365–88. ———. Collective Action in Organizations. New York: Cambridge UP, 2012.Boggs, Carl. The Two Revolutions: Antonio Gramsci and the Dilemmas of Western Marxism. Boston, MA: South End P, 1984. Carty, Victoria, and Jake Onyett. “Protest, Cyberactivism and New Social Movements: The Reemergence of the Peace Movement Post 9/11.” Social Movement Studies 5.3 (2006): 229–49. Chow, Ray. “Between Colonizers: Hong Kong’s Postcolonial Self-Writing in the 1990s.” Diaspora 2.2 (1992): 151–70. Cohen, Theodore. Global Political Economy. New York: Longman, 2003. Fotopoulou, Aristea, and Nick Couldry. “Telling the Story of the Stories: Online Content Curation and Digital Engagement.” Information, Communication & Society 18.2 (2015): 235–49. Franks, Rachel. “Establishing an Emotional Connection: The Librarian as (Digital) Storyteller.” The Australian Library Journal 62.4 (2013): 285–94. Jasper, James M. The Art of Moral Protest: Culture, Biography, and Creativity in Social Movement. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1997. Lane, Jill. “Digital Zapatistas.” The Drama Review 47.2 (2003): 129–44. Melucci, Alberto. Challenging Codes: Collective Action in the Information Age. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1996.Pratt, Nicola. “Bringing Politics Back in: Examining the Link between Globalization and Democratization.” Review of International Political Economy 11.2 (2004): 311–36. Rheingold, Howard. Smart Mobs: The Next Social Revolution. Cambridge, MA: Basic Books, 2003. Shirky, Clay. Cognitive Surplus: Creativity and Generosity in a Connected Age. London: Allen Lane, 2010. Touraine, Alain. Return of the Actor: Social Theory in Postindustrial Society. Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P, 1988.
APA, Harvard, Vancouver, ISO, and other styles
37

Holleran, Samuel. "Better in Pictures." M/C Journal 24, no. 4 (August 19, 2021). http://dx.doi.org/10.5204/mcj.2810.

Full text
Abstract:
While the term “visual literacy” has grown in popularity in the last 50 years, its meaning remains nebulous. It is described variously as: a vehicle for aesthetic appreciation, a means of defence against visual manipulation, a sorting mechanism for an increasingly data-saturated age, and a prerequisite to civic inclusion (Fransecky 23; Messaris 181; McTigue and Flowers 580). Scholars have written extensively about the first three subjects but there has been less research on how visual literacy frames civic life and how it might help the public as a tool to address disadvantage and assist in removing social and cultural barriers. This article examines a forerunner to visual literacy in the push to create an international symbol language born out of popular education movements, a project that fell short of its goals but still left a considerable impression on graphic media. This article, then, presents an analysis of visual literacy campaigns in the early postwar era. These campaigns did not attempt to invent a symbolic language but posited that images themselves served as a universal language in which students could receive training. Of particular interest is how the concept of visual literacy has been mobilised as a pedagogical tool in design, digital humanities and in broader civic education initiatives promoted by Third Space institutions. Behind the creation of new visual literacy curricula is the idea that images can help anchor a world community, supplementing textual communication. Figure 1: Visual Literacy Yearbook. Montebello Unified School District, USA, 1973. Shedding Light: Origins of the Visual Literacy Frame The term “visual literacy” came to the fore in the early 1970s on the heels of mass literacy campaigns. The educators, creatives and media theorists who first advocated for visual learning linked this aim to literacy, an unassailable goal, to promote a more radical curricular overhaul. They challenged a system that had hitherto only acknowledged a very limited pathway towards academic success; pushing “language and mathematics”, courses “referred to as solids (something substantial) as contrasted with liquids or gases (courses with little or no substance)” (Eisner 92). This was deemed “a parochial view of both human ability and the possibilities of education” that did not acknowledge multiple forms of intelligence (Gardner). This change not only integrated elements of mass culture that had been rejected in education, notably film and graphic arts, but also encouraged the critique of images as a form of good citizenship, assuming that visually literate arbiters could call out media misrepresentations and manipulative political advertising (Messaris, “Visual Test”). This movement was, in many ways, reactive to new forms of mass media that began to replace newspapers as key forms of civic participation. Unlike simple literacy (being able to decipher letters as a mnemonic system), visual literacy involves imputing meanings to images where meanings are less fixed, yet still with embedded cultural signifiers. Visual literacy promised to extend enlightenment metaphors of sight (as in the German Aufklärung) and illumination (as in the French Lumières) to help citizens understand an increasingly complex marketplace of images. The move towards visual literacy was not so much a shift towards images (and away from books and oration) but an affirmation of the need to critically investigate the visual sphere. It introduced doubt to previously upheld hierarchies of perception. Sight, to Kant the “noblest of the senses” (158), was no longer the sense “least affected” by the surrounding world but an input centre that was equally manipulable. In Kant’s view of societal development, the “cosmopolitan” held the key to pacifying bellicose states and ensuring global prosperity and tranquillity. The process of developing a cosmopolitan ideology rests, according to Kant, on the gradual elimination of war and “the education of young people in intellectual and moral culture” (188-89). Transforming disparate societies into “a universal cosmopolitan existence” that would “at last be realised as the matrix within which all the original capacities of the human race may develop” and would take well-funded educational institutions and, potentially, a new framework for imparting knowledge (Kant 51). To some, the world of the visual presented a baseline for shared experience. Figure 2: Exhibition by the Gesellschafts- und Wirtschaftsmuseum in Vienna, photograph c. 1927. An International Picture Language The quest to find a mutually intelligible language that could “bridge worlds” and solder together all of humankind goes back to the late nineteenth century and the Esperanto movement of Ludwig Zamenhof (Schor 59). The expression of this ideal in the world of the visual picked up steam in the interwar years with designers and editors like Fritz Kahn, Gerd Arntz, and Otto and Marie Neurath. Their work transposing complex ideas into graphic form has been rediscovered as an antecedent to modern infographics, but the symbols they deployed were not to merely explain, but also help education and build international fellowship unbounded by spoken language. The Neuraths in particular are celebrated for their international picture language or Isotypes. These pictograms (sometimes viewed as proto-emojis) can be used to represent data without text. Taken together they are an “intemporal, hieroglyphic language” that Neutrath hoped would unite working-class people the world over (Lee 159). The Neuraths’ work was done in the explicit service of visual education with a popular socialist agenda and incubated in the social sphere of Red Vienna at the Gesellschafts- und Wirtschaftsmuseum (Social and Economic Museum) where Otto served as Director. The Wirtschaftsmuseum was an experiment in popular education, with multiple branches and late opening hours to accommodate the “the working man [who] has time to see a museum only at night” (Neurath 72-73). The Isotype contained universalist aspirations for the “making of a world language, or a helping picture language—[that] will give support to international developments generally” and “educate by the eye” (Neurath 13). Figure 3: Gerd Arntz Isotype Images. (Source: University of Reading.) The Isotype was widely adopted in the postwar era in pre-packaged sets of symbols used in graphic design and wayfinding systems for buildings and transportation networks, but with the socialism of the Neuraths’ peeled away, leaving only the system of logos that we are familiar with from airport washrooms, charts, and public transport maps. Much of the uptake in this symbol language could be traced to increased mobility and tourism, particularly in countries that did not make use of a Roman alphabet. The 1964 Olympics in Tokyo helped pave the way when organisers, fearful of jumbling too many scripts together, opted instead for black and white icons to represent the program of sports that summer. The new focus on the visual was both technologically mediated—cheaper printing and broadcast technologies made the diffusion of image increasingly possible—but also ideologically supported by a growing emphasis on projects that transcended linguistic, ethnic, and national borders. The Olympic symbols gradually morphed into Letraset icons, and, later, symbols in the Unicode Standard, which are the basis for today’s emojis. Wordless signs helped facilitate interconnectedness, but only in the most literal sense; their application was limited primarily to sports mega-events, highway maps, and “brand building”, and they never fulfilled their role as an educational language “to give the different nations a common outlook” (Neurath 18). Universally understood icons, particularly in the form of emojis, point to a rise in visual communication but they have fallen short as a cosmopolitan project, supporting neither the globalisation of Kantian ethics nor the transnational socialism of the Neuraths. Figure 4: Symbols in use. Women's bathroom. 1964 Tokyo Olympics. (Source: The official report of the Organizing Committee.) Counter Education By mid-century, the optimism of a universal symbol language seemed dated, and focus shifted from distillation to discernment. New educational programs presented ways to study images, increasingly reproducible with new technologies, as a language in and of themselves. These methods had their roots in the fin-de-siècle educational reforms of John Dewey, Helen Parkhurst, and Maria Montessori. As early as the 1920s, progressive educators were using highly visual magazines, like National Geographic, as the basis for lesson planning, with the hopes that they would “expose students to edifying and culturally enriching reading” and “develop a more catholic taste or sensibility, representing an important cosmopolitan value” (Hawkins 45). The rise in imagery from previously inaccessible regions helped pupils to see themselves in relation to the larger world (although this connection always came with the presumed superiority of the reader). “Pictorial education in public schools” taught readers—through images—to accept a broader world but, too often, they saw photographs as a “straightforward transcription of the real world” (Hawkins 57). The images of cultures and events presented in Life and National Geographic for the purposes of education and enrichment were now the subject of greater analysis in the classroom, not just as “windows into new worlds” but as cultural products in and of themselves. The emerging visual curriculum aimed to do more than just teach with previously excluded modes (photography, film and comics); it would investigate how images presented and mediated the world. This gained wider appeal with new analytical writing on film, like Raymond Spottiswoode's Grammar of the Film (1950) which sought to formulate the grammatical rules of visual communication (Messaris 181), influenced by semiotics and structural linguistics; the emphasis on grammar can also be seen in far earlier writings on design systems such as Owen Jones’s 1856 The Grammar of Ornament, which also advocated for new, universalising methods in design education (Sloboda 228). The inventorying impulse is on display in books like Donis A. Dondis’s A Primer of Visual Literacy (1973), a text that meditates on visual perception but also functions as an introduction to line and form in the applied arts, picking up where the Bauhaus left off. Dondis enumerates the “syntactical guidelines” of the applied arts with illustrations that are in keeping with 1920s books by Kandinsky and Klee and analyse pictorial elements. However, at the end of the book she shifts focus with two chapters that examine “messaging” and visual literacy explicitly. Dondis predicts that “an intellectual, trained ability to make and understand visual messages is becoming a vital necessity to involvement with communication. It is quite likely that visual literacy will be one of the fundamental measures of education in the last third of our century” (33) and she presses for more programs that incorporate the exploration and analysis of images in tertiary education. Figure 5: Ideal spatial environment for the Blueprint charts, 1970. (Image: Inventory Press.) Visual literacy in education arrived in earnest with a wave of publications in the mid-1970s. They offered ways for students to understand media processes and for teachers to use visual culture as an entry point into complex social and scientific subject matter, tapping into the “visual consciousness of the ‘television generation’” (Fransecky 5). Visual culture was often seen as inherently democratising, a break from stuffiness, the “artificialities of civilisation”, and the “archaic structures” that set sensorial perception apart from scholarship (Dworkin 131-132). Many radical university projects and community education initiatives of the 1960s made use of new media in novel ways: from Maurice Stein and Larry Miller’s fold-out posters accompanying Blueprint for Counter Education (1970) to Emory Douglas’s graphics for The Black Panther newspaper. Blueprint’s text- and image-dense wall charts were made via assemblage and they were imagined less as charts and more as a “matrix of resources” that could be used—and added to—by youth to undertake their own counter education (Cronin 53). These experiments in visual learning helped to break down old hierarchies in education, but their aim was influenced more by countercultural notions of disruption than the universal ideals of cosmopolitanism. From Image as Text to City as Text For a brief period in the 1970s, thinkers like Marshall McLuhan (McLuhan et al., Massage) and artists like Bruno Munari (Tanchis and Munari) collaborated fruitfully with graphic designers to create books that mixed text and image in novel ways. Using new compositional methods, they broke apart traditional printing lock-ups to superimpose photographs, twist text, and bend narrative frames. The most famous work from this era is, undoubtedly, The Medium Is the Massage (1967), McLuhan’s team-up with graphic designer Quentin Fiore, but it was followed by dozens of other books intended to communicate theory and scientific ideas with popularising graphics. Following in the footsteps of McLuhan, many of these texts sought not just to explain an issue but to self-consciously reference their own method of information delivery. These works set the precedent for visual aids (and, to a lesser extent, audio) that launched a diverse, non-hierarchical discourse that was nonetheless bound to tactile artefacts. In 1977, McLuhan helped develop a media textbook for secondary school students called City as Classroom: Understanding Language and Media. It is notable for its direct address style and its focus on investigating spaces outside of the classroom (provocatively, a section on the third page begins with “Should all schools be closed?”). The book follows with a fine-grained analysis of advertising forms in which students are asked to first bring advertisements into class for analysis and later to go out into the city to explore “a man-made environment, a huge warehouse of information, a vast resource to be mined free of charge” (McLuhan et al., City 149). As a document City as Classroom is critical of existing teaching methods, in line with the radical “in the streets” pedagogy of its day. McLuhan’s theories proved particularly salient for the counter education movement, in part because they tapped into a healthy scepticism of advertisers and other image-makers. They also dovetailed with growing discontent with the ad-strew visual environment of cities in the 1970s. Budgets for advertising had mushroomed in the1960s and outdoor advertising “cluttered” cities with billboards and neon, generating “fierce intensities and new hybrid energies” that threatened to throw off the visual equilibrium (McLuhan 74). Visual literacy curricula brought in experiential learning focussed on the legibility of the cities, mapping, and the visualisation of urban issues with social justice implications. The Detroit Geographical Expedition and Institute (DGEI), a “collective endeavour of community research and education” that arose in the aftermath of the 1967 uprisings, is the most storied of the groups that suffused the collection of spatial data with community engagement and organising (Warren et al. 61). The following decades would see a tamed approach to visual literacy that, while still pressing for critical reading, did not upend traditional methods of educational delivery. Figure 6: Beginning a College Program-Assisting Teachers to Develop Visual Literacy Approaches in Public School Classrooms. 1977. ERIC. Searching for Civic Education The visual literacy initiatives formed in the early 1970s both affirmed existing civil society institutions while also asserting the need to better inform the public. Most of the campaigns were sponsored by universities, major libraries, and international groups such as UNESCO, which published its “Declaration on Media Education” in 1982. They noted that “participation” was “essential to the working of a pluralistic and representative democracy” and the “public—users, citizens, individuals, groups ... were too systematically overlooked”. Here, the public is conceived as both “targets of the information and communication process” and users who “should have the last word”. To that end their “continuing education” should be ensured (Study 18). Programs consisted primarily of cognitive “see-scan-analyse” techniques (Little et al.) for younger students but some also sought to bring visual analysis to adult learners via continuing education (often through museums eager to engage more diverse audiences) and more radical popular education programs sponsored by community groups. By the mid-80s, scores of modules had been built around the comprehension of visual media and had become standard educational fare across North America, Australasia, and to a lesser extent, Europe. There was an increasing awareness of the role of data and image presentation in decision-making, as evidenced by the surprising commercial success of Edward Tufte’s 1982 book, The Visual Display of Quantitative Information. Visual literacy—or at least image analysis—was now enmeshed in teaching practice and needed little active advocacy. Scholarly interest in the subject went into a brief period of hibernation in the 1980s and early 1990s, only to be reborn with the arrival of new media distribution technologies (CD-ROMs and then the internet) in classrooms and the widespread availability of digital imaging technology starting in the late 1990s; companies like Adobe distributed free and reduced-fee licences to schools and launched extensive teacher training programs. Visual literacy was reanimated but primarily within a circumscribed academic field of education and data visualisation. Figure 7: Visual Literacy; What Research Says to the Teacher, 1975. National Education Association. USA. Part of the shifting frame of visual literacy has to do with institutional imperatives, particularly in places where austerity measures forced strange alliances between disciplines. What had been a project in alternative education morphed into an uncontested part of the curriculum and a dependable budget line. This shift was already forecasted in 1972 by Harun Farocki who, writing in Filmkritik, noted that funding for new film schools would be difficult to obtain but money might be found for “training in media education … a discipline that could persuade ministers of education, that would at the same time turn the budget restrictions into an advantage, and that would match the functions of art schools” (98). Nearly 50 years later educators are still using media education (rebranded as visual or media literacy) to make the case for fine arts and humanities education. While earlier iterations of visual literacy education were often too reliant on the idea of cracking the “code” of images, they did promote ways of learning that were a deep departure from the rote methods of previous generations. Next-gen curricula frame visual literacy as largely supplemental—a resource, but not a program. By the end of the 20th century, visual literacy had changed from a scholarly interest to a standard resource in the “teacher’s toolkit”, entering into school programs and influencing museum education, corporate training, and the development of public-oriented media (Literacy). An appreciation of image culture was seen as key to creating empathetic global citizens, but its scope was increasingly limited. With rising austerity in the education sector (a shift that preceded the 2008 recession by decades in some countries), art educators, museum enrichment staff, and design researchers need to make a case for why their disciplines were relevant in pedagogical models that are increasingly aimed at “skills-based” and “job ready” teaching. Arts educators worked hard to insert their fields into learning goals for secondary students as visual literacy, with the hope that “literacy” would carry the weight of an educational imperative and not a supplementary field of study. Conclusion For nearly a century, educational initiatives have sought to inculcate a cosmopolitan perspective with a variety of teaching materials and pedagogical reference points. Symbolic languages, like the Isotype, looked to unite disparate people with shared visual forms; while educational initiatives aimed to train the eyes of students to make them more discerning citizens. The term ‘visual literacy’ emerged in the 1960s and has since been deployed in programs with a wide variety of goals. Countercultural initiatives saw it as a prerequisite for popular education from the ground up, but, in the years since, it has been formalised and brought into more staid curricula, often as a sort of shorthand for learning from media and pictures. The grand cosmopolitan vision of a complete ‘visual language’ has been scaled back considerably, but still exists in trace amounts. Processes of globalisation require images to universalise experiences, commodities, and more for people without shared languages. Emoji alphabets and globalese (brands and consumer messaging that are “visual-linguistic” amalgams “increasingly detached from any specific ethnolinguistic group or locality”) are a testament to a mediatised banal cosmopolitanism (Jaworski 231). In this sense, becoming “fluent” in global design vernacular means familiarity with firms and products, an understanding that is aesthetic, not critical. It is very much the beneficiaries of globalisation—both state and commercial actors—who have been able to harness increasingly image-based technologies for their benefit. To take a humorous but nonetheless consequential example, Spanish culinary boosters were able to successfully lobby for a paella emoji (Miller) rather than having a food symbol from a less wealthy country such as a Senegalese jollof or a Morrocan tagine. This trend has gone even further as new forms of visual communication are increasingly streamlined and managed by for-profit media platforms. The ubiquity of these forms of communication and their global reach has made visual literacy more important than ever but it has also fundamentally shifted the endeavour from a graphic sorting practice to a critical piece of social infrastructure that has tremendous political ramifications. Visual literacy campaigns hold out the promise of educating students in an image-based system with the potential to transcend linguistic and cultural boundaries. This cosmopolitan political project has not yet been realised, as the visual literacy frame has drifted into specialised silos of art, design, and digital humanities education. It can help bridge the “incomplete connections” of an increasingly globalised world (Calhoun 112), but it does not have a program in and of itself. Rather, an evolving visual literacy curriculum might be seen as a litmus test for how we imagine the role of images in the world. References Brown, Neil. “The Myth of Visual Literacy.” Australian Art Education 13.2 (1989): 28-32. Calhoun, Craig. “Cosmopolitanism in the Modern Social Imaginary.” Daedalus 137.3 (2008): 105–114. Cronin, Paul. “Recovering and Rendering Vital Blueprint for Counter Education at the California Institute for the Arts.” Blueprint for Counter Education. Inventory Press, 2016. 36-58. Dondis, Donis A. A Primer of Visual Literacy. MIT P, 1973. Dworkin, M.S. “Toward an Image Curriculum: Some Questions and Cautions.” Journal of Aesthetic Education 4.2 (1970): 129–132. Eisner, Elliot. Cognition and Curriculum: A Basis for Deciding What to Teach. Longmans, 1982. Farocki, Harun. “Film Courses in Art Schools.” Trans. Ted Fendt. Grey Room 79 (Apr. 2020): 96–99. Fransecky, Roger B. Visual Literacy: A Way to Learn—A Way to Teach. Association for Educational Communications and Technology, 1972. Gardner, Howard. Frames Of Mind. Basic Books, 1983. Hawkins, Stephanie L. “Training the ‘I’ to See: Progressive Education, Visual Literacy, and National Geographic Membership.” American Iconographic. U of Virginia P, 2010. 28–61. Jaworski, Adam. “Globalese: A New Visual-Linguistic Register.” Social Semiotics 25.2 (2015): 217-35. Kant, Immanuel. Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View. Cambridge UP, 2006. Kant, Immanuel. “Perpetual Peace.” Political Writings. Ed. H. Reiss. Cambridge UP, 1991 [1795]. 116–130. Kress, G., and T. van Leeuwen. Reading images: The Grammar of Visual Design. Routledge, 1996. Literacy Teaching Toolkit: Visual Literacy. Department of Education and Training (DET), State of Victoria. 29 Aug. 2018. 30 Sep. 2020 <https://www.education.vic.gov.au:443/school/teachers/teachingresources/discipline/english/literacy/ readingviewing/Pages/litfocusvisual.aspx>. Lee, Jae Young. “Otto Neurath's Isotype and the Rhetoric of Neutrality.” Visible Language 42.2: 159-180. Little, D., et al. Looking and Learning: Visual Literacy across the Disciplines. Wiley, 2015. Messaris, Paul. “Visual Literacy vs. Visual Manipulation.” Critical Studies in Mass Communication 11.2: 181-203. DOI: 10.1080/15295039409366894 ———. “A Visual Test for Visual ‘Literacy.’” The Annual Meeting of the Speech Communication Association. 31 Oct. to 3 Nov. 1991. Atlanta, GA. <https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED347604.pdf>. McLuhan, Marshall. Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man. McGraw-Hill, 1964. McLuhan, Marshall, Quentin Fiore, and Jerome Agel. The Medium Is the Massage, Bantam Books, 1967. McLuhan, Marshall, Kathryn Hutchon, and Eric McLuhan. City as Classroom: Understanding Language and Media. Agincourt, Ontario: Book Society of Canada, 1977. McTigue, Erin, and Amanda Flowers. “Science Visual Literacy: Learners' Perceptions and Knowledge of Diagrams.” Reading Teacher 64.8: 578-89. Miller, Sarah. “The Secret History of the Paella Emoji.” Food & Wine, 20 June 2017. <https://www.foodandwine.com/news/true-story-paella-emoji>. Munari, Bruno. Square, Circle, Triangle. Princeton Architectural Press, 2016. Newfield, Denise. “From Visual Literacy to Critical Visual Literacy: An Analysis of Educational Materials.” English Teaching-Practice and Critique 10 (2011): 81-94. Neurath, Otto. International Picture Language: The First Rules of Isotype. K. Paul, Trench, Trubner, 1936. Schor, Esther. Bridge of Words: Esperanto and the Dream of a Universal Language. Henry Holt and Company, 2016. Sloboda, Stacey. “‘The Grammar of Ornament’: Cosmopolitanism and Reform in British Design.” Journal of Design History 21.3 (2008): 223-36. Study of Communication Problems: Implementation of Resolutions 4/19 and 4/20 Adopted by the General Conference at Its Twenty-First Session; Report by the Director-General. UNESCO, 1983. Tanchis, Aldo, and Bruno Munari. Bruno Munari: Design as Art. MIT P, 1987. Warren, Gwendolyn, Cindi Katz, and Nik Heynen. “Myths, Cults, Memories, and Revisions in Radical Geographic History: Revisiting the Detroit Geographical Expedition and Institute.” Spatial Histories of Radical Geography: North America and Beyond. Wiley, 2019. 59-86.
APA, Harvard, Vancouver, ISO, and other styles
38

Heise, Franka. ""I’m a Modern Bride": On the Relationship between Marital Hegemony, Bridal Fictions, and Postfeminism." M/C Journal 15, no. 6 (October 12, 2012). http://dx.doi.org/10.5204/mcj.573.

Full text
Abstract:
Introduction This article aims to explore some of the ideological discourses that reinforce marriage as a central social and cultural institution in US-American society. Andrew Cherlin argues that despite social secularisation, rising divorce rates and the emergence of other, alternative forms of love and living, marriage “remains the most highly valued form of family life in American culture, the most prestigious way to live your life” (9). Indeed, marriage in the US has become an ideological and political battlefield, with charged debates about who is entitled to this form of state-sanctioned relationship, with the government spending large sums of money to promote the value of marriage and the highest number of people projected to get married (nearly 90 per cent of all people) compared to other Western nations (Cherlin 4). I argue here that the idea of marriage as the ideal form for an intimate relationship permeates US-American culture to an extent that we can speak of a marital hegemony. This hegemony is fuelled by and reflected in the saturation of American popular culture with celebratory depictions of the white wedding as public performance and symbolic manifestation of the values associated with marriage. These depictions contribute to the discursive production of weddings as “one of the major events that signal readiness and prepare heterosexuals for membership in marriage as an organizing practice for the institution of marriage” (Ingraham 4). From the representation of weddings as cinematic climax in a huge number of films, to TV shows such as The Bachelor, Bridezillas and Race to the Altar, to the advertisement industry and the bridal magazines that construct the figure of the bride as an ideal that every girl and woman should aspire to, popular discourses promote the desirability of marriage in a wide range of media spheres. These representations, which I call bridal fictions, do not only shape and regulate the production of gendered, raced, classed and sexual identities in the media in fundamental ways. They also promote the idea that marriage is the only adequate framework for an intimate relationship and for the constitution of an acceptable gendered identity, meanwhile reproducing heterosexuality as norm and monogamy as societal duty. Thus I argue that we can understand contemporary bridal fictions as a symbolic legitimation of marital hegemony that perpetuates the idea that “lifelong marriage is a moral imperative” (Coontz 292). Marital Hegemony By drawing on Gramsci’s term and argument of cultural hegemony, I propose that public, political, religious and popular discourses work together in intersecting, overlapping, ideologically motivated and often even contradictory ways to produce what can be conceptualised as marital hegemony. Gramsci understands the relationship between state coercion and legitimation as crucial to an understanding of constituted consensus and co-operation. By legitimation Gramsci refers to processes through which social elites constitute their leadership through the universalizing of their own class-based self-interests. These self-interests are adopted by the greater majority of people, who apprehend them as natural or universal standards of value (common sense). This ‘hegemony’ neutralizes dissent, instilling the values, beliefs and cultural meanings into the generalized social structures. (Lewis 76-77)Marital hegemony also consists of those two mechanisms, coercion and legitimation. Coercion by the social elites, in this case by the state, is conducted through intervening in the private life of citizens in order to regulate and control their intimate relationships. Through the offering of financial benefits, medical insurance, tax cuts and various other privileges to married partners only (see Ingraham 175-76), the state withholds these benefits from all those that do not conform to this kind of state-sanctioned relationship. However, this must serve as the topic of another discussion, as this paper is more interested in the second aspect of hegemony, the symbolic legitimation. Symbolic legitimation works through the depiction of the white wedding as the occasion on which entering the institution of marriage is publicly celebrated and marital identity is socially validated. Bridal fictions work on a semiotic and symbolic level to display and perpetuate the idea of marriage as the most desirable and ultimately only legitimate form of intimate, heterosexual relationships. This is not to say that there is no resistance to this form of hegemony, as Foucault argues, eventually there is no “power without resistances” (142). However, as Engstrom contends, contemporary bridal fictions “reinforce and endorse the idea that romantic relationships should and must lead to marriage, which requires public display—the wedding” (3). Thus I argue that we can understand contemporary bridal fictions as one key symbolic factor in the production of marital hegemony. The ongoing centrality of marriage as an institution finds its reflection, as Otnes and Pleck argue, in the fact that the white wedding, in spite of all changes and processes of liberalisation in regard to gender, family and sexuality, “remains the most significant ritual in contemporary culture” (5). Accordingly, popular culture, reflective as well as constitutive of existing cultural paradigms, is saturated with what I have termed here bridal fictions. Bridal representations have been subject to rigorous academic investigation (c.f. Currie, Geller, Bambacas, Boden, Otnes and Pleck, Wallace and Howard). But, by using the term “bridal fictions”, I seek to underscore the fictional nature of these apparent “representations”, emphasising their role in producing pervasive utopias, rather than representing reality. This is not to say that bridal fictions are solely fictive. In fact, my argument here is that these bridal fictions do have discursive influence on contemporary wedding culture and practices. With my analysis of a bridal advertisement campaign later on in this paper, I aim to show exemplarily how bridal fictions work not only in perpetuating marriage, monogamy and heteronormativity as central organizing principles of intimate life. But moreover, how bridal fictions use this framework to promote certain kinds of white, heterosexual, upper-class identities that normatively inform our understanding of who is seen as entitled to this form of state-sanctioned relationship. Furthermore my aim is to highlight the role of postfeminist frames in sustaining marital hegemony. Second Wave feminism, seeing marriage as a form of “intimate colonization” (in Finlay and Clarke 416), has always been one of the few sources of critique in regard to this institution. In contrast, postfeminist accounts, now informing a significant amount of contemporary bridal fictions, evoke marriage as actively chosen, unproblematic and innately desired state of being for women. By constructing the liberated, self-determined figure of the postfeminist bride, contemporary bridal fictions naturalise and re-modernise marriage as framework for the constitution of modern feminine identity. An analysis of postfeminist bridal identities, as done in the following, is thus vital to my argument, because it highlights how postfeminist accounts deflect feminism’s critique of marriage as patriarchal, political and hegemonic institution and hence contribute to the perpetuation and production of marital hegemony. The Postfeminist Bride Postfeminism has emerged since the early 1990s as the dominant mode of constructing femininities in the media. Angela McRobbie understands postfeminism as “to refer to an active process by which feminist gains of the 1970s and 80s come to be undermined”, while simultaneously appearing to be “a well-informed and even well-intended response to feminism” (“Postfeminism” 255). Based on the assumption that women nowadays are no longer subjected to patriarchal power structures anymore, postfeminism actively takes feminism into account while, at the same time, “undoing” it (McRobbie “Postfeminism” 255). In contemporary postfeminist culture, feminism is “decisively aged and made to seem redundant”, which allows a conscious “dis-identification” and/or “forceful non-identity” with accounts of Second Wave feminism (McRobbie Aftermath 15). This demarcation from earlier forms of feminism is particularly evident with regard to marriage and wedding discourses. Second wave feminist critics such as Betty Friedan (1973) and Carole Pateman were critical of the influence of marriage on women’s psychological, financial and sexual freedom. This generation of feminists saw marriage as a manifestation of patriarchal power, which is based on women’s total emotional and erotic loyalty and subservience (Rich 1980), as well as on “men’s domination over women, and the right of men to enjoy equal sexual access to women” (Pateman 1988 2). In contrast, contemporary postfeminism enunciates now that “equality is achieved, in order to install a whole repertoire of new meanings which emphasise that it [feminism] is no longer needed, it is a spent force” (McRobbie “Postfeminism” 255). Instead of seeing marriage as institutionlised subjugation of women, the postfeminist generation of “educated women who have come of age in the 1990s feel that the women’s liberation movement has achieved its goals and that marriage is now an even playing field in which the two sexes operate as equal partners” (Geller 110). As McRobbie argues “feminism was anti-marriage and this can now to be shown to be great mistake” (Aftermath 20). Accordingly, postfeminist bridal fictions do not depict the bride as passive and waiting to be married, relying on conservative and patriarchal notions of hegemonic femininity, but as an active agent using the white wedding as occasion to act out choice, autonomy and power. Genz argues that a characteristic of postfemininities is that they re-negotiate femininity and feminism no longer as mutually exclusive and irreconcilable categories, but as constitutive of each other (Genz; Genz and Brabon). What I term the postfeminist bride embodies this shifted understanding of feminism and femininity. The postfeminist bride is a figure that is often celebrated in terms of individual freedom, professional success and self-determination, instead of resting on traditional notions of female domesticity and passivity. Rather than fulfilling clichés of the homemaker and traditional wife, the postfeminist bride is characterised by an emphasis on power, agency and pleasure. Characteristic of this figure, as with other postfemininities in popular culture, is a simultaneous appropriation and repudiation of feminist critique. Within postfeminist bridal culture, the performance of traditional femininity through the figure of the bride, or by identification with it, is framed in terms of individual choice, depicted as standing outside of the political and ideological struggles surrounding gender, equality, class, sexuality and race. In this way, as Engstrom argues, “bridal media’s popularity in the late 20th and early 21st centuries in the United States as indicative of a postfeminist cultural environment” (18). And although the contemporary white wedding still rests on patriarchal traditions that symbolise what the Second Wave called an “intimate colonization” (such as the bride’s vow of obedience; the giving away of the bride by one male chaperone, her father, to the next, the husband; her loss of name in marriage etc.), feminist awareness of the patriarchal dimensions of marriage and the ritual of the wedding is virtually absent from contemporary bridal culture. Instead, the patriarchal customs of the white wedding are now actively embraced by the women themselves in the name of tradition and choice. This reflects a prevailing characteristic of postfeminism, which is a trend towards the reclamation of conservative ideals of femininity, following the assumption that the goals of traditional feminist politics have been attained. This recuperation of traditional forms of femininity is one key characteristic of postfeminist bridal culture, as Engstrom argues: “bridal media collectively have become the epitomic example of women’s culture, a genre of popular culture that promotes, defends, and celebrates femininity” (21). Bridal fictions indeed produce traditional femininity by positioning the cultural, social and historical significance of the wedding as a necessary rite of passage for women and as the most important framework for the constitution of their (hetero)sexual, classed and gendered identities. Embodied in its ritual qualities, the white wedding symbolises the transition of women from single to belonging, from girlhood to womanhood and implicitly from childlessness to motherhood. However, instead of seeing this form of hegemonic femininity as a product of unequal, patriarchal power relations as Second Wave did, postfeminism celebrates traditional femininity in modernised versions. Embracing conservative feminine roles (e.g. that of the bride/wife) is now a matter of personal choice, individuality and freedom, characterised by awareness, knowingness and sometimes even irony (McRobbie “Postfeminism”). Nevertheless, the wedding is not only positioned as the pinnacle of a monogamous, heterosexual relationship, but also as the climax of a (female) life-story (“the happiest day of the life”). Combining feminist informed notions of power and choice, the postfeminist wedding is constructed as an event which supposedly enables women to act out those notions, while serving as a framework for gendered identity formation and self-realisation within the boundaries of an officialised and institutionalised relationship. “Modern” Brides I would like to exemplarily illustrate how postfeminism informs contemporary bridal fictions by analysing an advertising campaign of the US bridal magazine Modern Bride that paradigmatically and emblematically shows how postfeminist frames are used to construct the ‘modern’ bride. These advertisements feature American celebrities Guiliana Rancic (“host of E! News”), Daisy Fuentes (“host of Ultimate Style”) and Layla Ali, (“TV host and world champion”) stating why they qualify as a “modern bride”. Instead of drawing on notions of passive femininity, these advertisements have a distinct emphasis on power and agency. All advertisements include the women’s profession and other accomplishments. Rancic claims that she is a modern bride because: “I chased my career instead of guys.” These advertisements emphasise choice and empowerment, the key features of postfeminism, as Angela McRobbie (“Postfeminism”) and Rosalind Gill argue. Femininity, feminism and professionalism here are not framed as mutually exclusive, but are reconciled in the identity of the “modern” bride. Marriage and the white wedding are clearly bracketed in a liberal framework of individual choice, underpinned by a grammar of self-determination and individualism. Layla Ali states that she is a modern bride: “Because I refuse to let anything stand in the way of my happiness.” This not only communicates the message that happiness is intrinsically linked to marriage, but clearly resembles the figure that Sharon Boden terms the “super bride”, a role which allows women to be in control of every aspect of their wedding and “the heroic creator of her big day” while being part of a fairy-tale narrative in which they are the centre of attention (74). Agency and power are clearly visible in all of these ads. These brides are not passive victims of the male gaze, instead they are themselves gazing. In Rancic’s advertisement this is particularly evident, as she is looking directly at the viewer, where her husband, looking into another direction, remains rather face- and gazeless. This is in accord with bridal fictions in general, where husbands are often invisible, serving as bystanders or absent others, reinforcing the ideal that this is the special day of the bride and no one else. Furthermore, all of these advertisements remain within the limited visual repertoire that is common within bridal culture: young to middle-aged, heterosexual, able-bodied, conventionally attractive women. The featuring of the non-white bride Layla Ali is a rare occasion in contemporary bridal fictions. And although this can be seen as a welcomed exception, this advertisement remains eventually within the hegemonic and racial boundaries of contemporary bridal fictions. As Ingraham argues, ultimately “the white wedding in American culture is primarily a ritual by, for, and about the white middle to upper classes. Truly, the white wedding” (33). Furthermore, these advertisements illustrate another key feature of bridal culture, the “privileging of white middle- to upper-class heterosexual marriage over all other forms” (Ingraham 164). Semiotically, the discussed advertisements reflect the understanding of the white wedding as occasion to perform a certain classed identity: the luscious white dresses, the tuxedos, the jewellery and make up, etc. are all signifiers for a particular social standing. This is also emphasised by the mentioning of the prestigious jobs these brides hold, which presents a postfeminist twist on the otherwise common depictions of brides as practising hypergamy, meaning the marrying of a spouse of higher socio-economic status. But significantly, upward social mobility is usually presented as only acceptable for women, reinforcing the image of the husband as the provider. Another key feature of postfeminism, the centrality of heterosexual romance, becomes evident through Daisy Fuentes’ statement: “I’m a modern bride, because I believe that old-school values enhance a modern romance.” Having been liberated from the shackles of second wave feminism, which dismissed romance as “dope for dupes” (Greer in Pearce and Stacey 50), the postfeminist bride unapologetically embraces romance as central part of her life and relationship. Romance is here equated with traditionalism and “old school” values, thus reinforcing sexual exclusiveness, traditional gender roles and marriage as re-modernised, romantic norms. Angela McRobbie describes this “double entanglement” as a key feature of postfeminism that is comprised of “the co-existence of neo-conservative values in relation to gender, sexuality and family life […] with processes of liberalisation in regard to choice and diversity in domestic, sexual and kinship relations” (“Postfeminism” 255–56). These advertisements illustrate quite palpably that the postfeminist bride is a complex figure. It is simultaneously progressive and conservative, fulfilling ideals of conservative femininity while actively negotiating in the complex field of personal choice, individualism and social conventions; it oscillates between power and passivity, tradition and modern womanhood, between feminism and femininity. It is precisely this contradictory nature of the postfeminist bride that makes the figure so appealing, as it allows women to participate in the fantasy world of bridal utopias while still providing possibilities to construct themselves as active and powerful agents. Conclusion While we can generally welcome the reconfiguration of brides as powerful and self-determined, we have to remain critical of the postfeminist assumption of women as “autonomous agents no longer constrained by any inequalities or power imbalances whatsoever” (Gill 153). Where marriage is assumed to be an “even playing field” as Geller argues (110), feminism is no longer needed and traditional marital femininity can be, once again, performed without guilt. In these ways postfeminism deflects feminist criticism with regard to the political dimensions of marital femininity and thus contributes to the production of marital hegemony. But why is marital hegemony per se problematic? Firstly, by presenting marital identity as essential for the construction of gendered identity, bridal fictions leave little room for (female) self-definition outside of the single/married binary. As Ingraham argues, not only “are these categories presented as significant indices of social identity, they are offered as the only options, implying that the organization of identity in relation to marriage is universal and in no need of explanation” (17). Hence, by positioning marriage and singledom as opposite poles on the axis of proper femininity, bridal fictions stigmatise single women as selfish, narcissistic, hedonistic, immature and unable to attract a suitable husband (Taylor 20, 40). Secondly, within bridal fictions “weddings, marriage, romance, and heterosexuality become naturalized to the point where we consent to the belief that marriage is necessary to achieve a sense of well-being, belonging, passion, morality and love” (Ingraham 120). By presenting the white wedding as a publicly endorsed and visible entry to marriage, bridal fictions produce in fundamental ways normative notions about who is ‘fit’ for marriage and therefore capable of the associated cultural and social values of maturity, responsibility, ‘family values’ and so on. This is particularly critical, as postfeminist identities “are structured by, stark and continuing inequalities and exclusions that relate to ‘race’ and ethnicity, class, age, sexuality and disability as well as gender” (Gill 149). These postfeminist exclusions are very evident in contemporary bridal fictions that feature almost exclusively young to middle-aged, white, able-bodied couples with upper to middle class identities that conform to the heteronormative matrix, both physically and socially. By depicting weddings almost exclusively in this kind of raced, classed and gendered framework, bridal fictions associate the above mentioned values, that are seen as markers for responsible adulthood and citizenship, with those who comply with these norms. In these ways bridal fictions stigmatise those who are not able or do not want to get married, and, moreover, produce a visual regime that determines who is seen as entitled to this kind of socially validated identity. The fact that bridal fictions indeed play a major role in producing marital hegemony is further reflected in the increasing presence of same-sex white weddings in popular culture. These representations, despite their message of equality for everyone, usually replicate rather than re-negotiate the heteronormative terms of bridal culture. This can be regarded as evidence of bridal fiction’s scope and reach in naturalising marriage not only as the most ideal form of a heterosexual relationship, but increasingly as the ideal for any kind of intimate relationship. References Bambacas, Christyana. “Thinking about White Weddings.” Journal of Australian Studies 26.72 (2002): 191–200.The Bachelor, ABC, 2002–present. Boden, Sharon. Consumerism, Romance and the Wedding Experience. Houndsmills: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003. Bridezillas, We TV, 2004–present. Cherlin, Andrew. The-Marriage-Go-Round. The State of Marriage and the Family in America Today. New York: Vintage, 2010. Coontz, Stephanie. Marriage. A History. New York: Penguin, 2005. Currie, Dawn. “‘Here Comes the Bride’: The Making of a ‘Modern Traditional’ Wedding in Western Culture.” Journal of Comparative Family Studies 24.3 (1993): 403–21. Engstrom, Erika. The Bride Factory. Mass Portrayals of Women and Weddings. New York: Peter Lang, 2012. Fairchild Bridal Study (2005) 27 May 2012. ‹http://www.sellthebride.com/documents/americanweddingsurvey.pdf›. Finlay, Sara-Jane, and Victoria Clarke. “‘A Marriage of Inconvenience?’ Feminist Perspectives on Marriage.” Feminism & Psychology 13.4 (2003): 415–20. Foucault, M. (1980) “Body/Power and Truth/Power” in Gordon, C. (ed.) Michel Foucault: Power/Knowledge, Harvester, U.K. Friedan, Betty. The Feminine Mystique. Ringwood: Penguin Books, 1973. Geller, Jaqlyn. Here Comes the Bride. Women, Weddings, and the Marriage Mystique. New York: Four Walls Eight Windows, 2001. Genz, Stéphanie. Postfemininities in Popular Culture. New York: Palgrave, 2009. Genz, Stéphanie, and Benjamin Brabon. Postfeminsm. Cultural Texts and Theories. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2009. Gill, Rosalind. “Postfeminist Media Culture. Elements of a Sensibility.” European Journal of Cultural Studies 10.2 (2007): 147–66. Gramsci, Antonio. Selections from the Prison Notebooks. London: Lawrence and Wishart, 1971. Howard, Vicki. Brides, Inc. American Weddings and the Business of Tradition. Philadelphia: U of Pen Press, 2006. Ingraham, Chrys. White Weddings. Romancing Heterosexuality in Popular Discourse. New York: Routledge, 1999. Lewis, Jeff. Cultural Studies. London: Sage, 2008. McRobbie, Angela. “Post-Feminism and Popular Culture.” Feminist Media Studies 4.3 (2004): 255– 64. McRobbie, A. (2009). The Aftermath of Feminism. Gender, Culture and Social Change. London: Sage. Modern Bride, Condé Nast. Otnes, Cele, and Elizabeth Pleck. Cinderella Dreams. The Allure of the Lavish Wedding. Berkeley: U of California P, 2003. Pateman, Carole. The Sexual Contract. Cambridge: Polity Press, 1988. Pearce, Lynn, and Jackie Stacey. Romance Revisited. London: Lawrence and Wishart, 1995. Race to the Altar, NBC, 2003. Rich, Adrienne. “Compulsory Heterosexuality and Lesbian Existence.” Signs Summer.5 (1980): 631–60. Taylor, Anthea. Single Women in Popular Culture. The Limits of Postfeminism. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012. Wallace, Carol. All Dressed in White. The Irresistible Rise of the American Wedding. London: Penguin Books, 2004. Advertisements Analysed Guiliana Rancic. 29 Sept. 2012 ‹http://slackerchic.blogspot.de/2008/06/im-modern-bride-because-my-witness-was.html›. Daisy Fuentes. 29 Sept. 2012 ‹http://slackerchic.blogspot.de/2008/06/im-modern-bride-because-my-witness-was.html›. Layla Ali. 29 Sept. 2012 ‹http://slackerchic.blogspot.de/2008/06/im-modern-bride-because-my-witness-was.html›.
APA, Harvard, Vancouver, ISO, and other styles
39

Eades, David. "Resilience and Refugees: From Individualised Trauma to Post Traumatic Growth." M/C Journal 16, no. 5 (August 28, 2013). http://dx.doi.org/10.5204/mcj.700.

Full text
Abstract:
This article explores resilience as it is experienced by refugees in the context of a relational community, visiting the notions of trauma, a thicker description of resilience and the trajectory toward positive growth through community. It calls for going beyond a Western biomedical therapeutic approach of exploration and adopting more of an emic perspective incorporating the worldview of the refugees. The challenge is for service providers working with refugees (who have experienced trauma) to move forward from a ‘harm minimisation’ model of care to recognition of a facilitative, productive community of people who are in a transitional phase between homelands. Contextualising Trauma Prior to the 1980s, the term ‘trauma’ was not widely used in literature on refugees and refugee mental health, hardly existing as a topic of inquiry until the mid-1980’s (Summerfield 422). It first gained prominence in relation to soldiers who had returned from Vietnam and in need of medical attention after being traumatised by war. The term then expanded to include victims of wars and those who had witnessed traumatic events. Seahorn and Seahorn outline that severe trauma “paralyses you with numbness and uses denial, avoidance, isolation as coping mechanisms so you don’t have to deal with your memories”, impacting a person‘s ability to risk being connected to others, detaching and withdrawing; resulting in extreme loneliness, emptiness, sadness, anxiety and depression (6). During the Civil War in the USA the impact of trauma was referred to as Irritable Heart and then World War I and II referred to it as Shell Shock, Neurosis, Combat Fatigue, or Combat Exhaustion (Seahorn & Seahorn 66, 67). During the twenty-five years following the Vietnam War, the medicalisation of trauma intensified and Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) became recognised as a medical-psychiatric disorder in 1980 in the American Psychiatric Association international diagnostic tool Diagnostic Statistical Manual (DSM–III). An expanded description and diagnosis of PTSD appears in the DSM-IV, influenced by the writings of Harvard psychologist and scholar, Judith Herman (Scheper-Hughes 38) The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM-IV) of Mental Disorders (American Psychiatric Association, 2000) outlines that experiencing the threat of death, injury to oneself or another or finding out about an unexpected or violent death, serious harm, or threat of the same kind to a family member or close person are considered traumatic events (Chung 11); including domestic violence, incest and rape (Scheper-Hughes 38). Another significant development in the medicalisation of trauma occurred in 1998 when the Victorian Foundation for Survivors of Torture (VFST) released an influential report titled ‘Rebuilding Shattered Lives’. This then gave clinical practice a clearer direction in helping people who had experienced war, trauma and forced migration by providing a framework for therapeutic work. The emphasis became strongly linked to personal recovery of individuals suffering trauma, using case management as the preferred intervention strategy. A whole industry soon developed around medical intervention treating people suffering from trauma related problems (Eyber). Though there was increased recognition for the medicalised discourse of trauma and post-traumatic stress, there was critique of an over-reliance of psychiatric models of trauma (Bracken, et al. 15, Summerfield 421, 423). There was also expressed concern that an overemphasis on individual recovery overlooked the socio-political aspects that amplify trauma (Bracken et al. 8). The DSM-IV criteria for PTSD model began to be questioned regarding the category of symptoms being culturally defined from a Western perspective. Weiss et al. assert that large numbers of traumatized people also did not meet the DSM-III-R criteria for PTSD (366). To categorize refugees’ experiences into recognizable, generalisable psychological conditions overlooked a more localized culturally specific understanding of trauma. The meanings given to collective experience and the healing strategies vary across different socio-cultural groupings (Eyber). For example, some people interpret suffering as a normal part of life in bringing them closer to God and in helping gain a better understanding of the level of trauma in the lives of others. Scheper-Hughes raise concern that the PTSD model is “based on a conception of human nature and human life as fundamentally vulnerable, frail, and humans as endowed with few and faulty defence mechanisms”, and underestimates the human capacity to not only survive but to thrive during and following adversity (37, 42). As a helping modality, biomedical intervention may have limitations through its lack of focus regarding people’s agency, coping strategies and local cultural understandings of distress (Eyber). The benefits of a Western therapeutic model might be minimal when some may have their own culturally relevant coping strategies that may vary to Western models. Bracken et al. document case studies where the burial rituals in Mozambique, obligations to the dead in Cambodia, shared solidarity in prison and the mending of relationships after rape in Uganda all contributed to the healing process of distress (8). Orosa et al. (1) asserts that belief systems have contributed in helping refugees deal with trauma; Brune et al. (1) points to belief systems being a protective factor against post-traumatic disorders; and Peres et al. highlight that a religious worldview gives hope, purpose and meaning within suffering. Adopting a Thicker Description of Resilience Service providers working with refugees often talk of refugees as ‘vulnerable’ or ‘at risk’ populations and strive for ‘harm minimisation’ among the population within their care. This follows a critical psychological tradition, what (Ungar, Constructionist) refers to as a positivist mode of inquiry that emphasises the predictable relationship between risk and protective factors (risk and coping strategies) being based on a ‘deficient’ outlook rather than a ‘future potential’ viewpoint and lacking reference to notions of resilience or self-empowerment (342). At-risk discourses tend to focus upon antisocial behaviours and appropriate treatment for relieving suffering rather than cultural competencies that may be developing in the midst of challenging circumstances. Mares and Newman document how the lives of many refugee advocates have been changed through the relational contribution asylum seekers have made personally to them in an Australian context (159). Individuals may find meaning in communal obligations, contributing to the lives of others and a heightened solidarity (Wilson 42, 44) in contrast to an individual striving for happiness and self-fulfilment. Early naturalistic accounts of mental health, influenced by the traditions of Western psychology, presented thin descriptions of resilience as a quality innate to individuals that made them invulnerable or strong, despite exposure to substantial risk (Ungar, Thicker 91). The interest then moved towards a non-naturalistic contextually relevant understanding of resilience viewed in the social context of people’s lives. Authors such as Benson, Tricket and Birman (qtd. in Ungar, Thicker) started focusing upon community resilience, community capacity and asset-building communities; looking at areas such as - “spending time with friends, exercising control over aspects of their lives, seeking meaningful involvement in their community, attaching to others and avoiding threats to self-esteem” (91). In so doing far more emphasis was given in developing what Ungar (Thicker) refers to as ‘a thicker description of resilience’ as it relates to the lives of refugees that considers more than an ability to survive and thrive or an internal psychological state of wellbeing (89). Ungar (Thicker) describes a thicker description of resilience as revealing “a seamless set of negotiations between individuals who take initiative, and an environment with crisscrossing resources that impact one on the other in endless and unpredictable combinations” (95). A thicker description of resilience means adopting more of what Eyber proposes as an emic approach, taking on an ‘insider perspective’, incorporating the worldview of the people experiencing the distress; in contrast to an etic perspective using a Western biomedical understanding of distress, examined from a position outside the social or cultural system in which it takes place. Drawing on a more anthropological tradition, intervention is able to be built with local resources and strategies that people can utilize with attention being given to cultural traditions within a socio-cultural understanding. Developing an emic approach is to engage in intercultural dialogue, raise dilemmas, test assumptions, document hopes and beliefs and explore their implications. Under this approach, healing is more about developing intelligibility through one’s own cultural and social matrix (Bracken, qtd. in Westoby and Ingamells 1767). This then moves beyond using a Western therapeutic approach of exploration which may draw on the rhetoric of resilience, but the coping strategies of the vulnerable are often disempowered through adopting a ‘therapy culture’ (Furedi, qtd. in Westoby and Ingamells 1769). Westoby and Ingamells point out that the danger is by using a “therapeutic gaze that interprets emotions through the prism of disease and pathology”, it then “replaces a socio-political interpretation of situations” (1769). This is not to dismiss the importance of restoring individual well-being, but to broaden the approach adopted in contextualising it within a socio-cultural frame. The Relational Aspect of Resilience Previously, the concept of the ‘resilient individual’ has been of interest within the psychological and self-help literature (Garmezy, qtd. in Wilson) giving weight to the aspect of it being an innate trait that individuals possess or harness (258). Yet there is a need to explore the relational aspect of resilience as it is embedded in the network of relationships within social settings. A person’s identity and well-being is better understood in observing their capacity to manage their responses to adverse circumstances in an interpersonal community through the networks of relationships. Brison, highlights the collective strength of individuals in social networks and the importance of social support in the process of recovery from trauma, that the self is vulnerable to be affected by violence but resilient to be reconstructed through the help of others (qtd. in Wilson 125). This calls for what Wilson refers to as a more interdisciplinary perspective drawing on cultural studies and sociology (2). It also acknowledges that although individual traits influence the action of resilience, it can be learned and developed in adverse situations through social interactions. To date, within sociology and cultural studies, there is not a well-developed perspective on the topic of resilience. Resilience involves a complex ongoing interaction between individuals and their social worlds (Wilson 16) that helps them make sense of their world and adjust to the context of resettlement. It includes developing a perspective of people drawing upon negative experiences as productive cultural resources for growth, which involves seeing themselves as agents of their own future rather than suffering from a sense of victimhood (Wilson 46, 258). Wilson further outlines the display of a resilience-related capacity to positively interpret and derive meaning from what might have been otherwise negative migration experiences (Wilson 47). Wu refers to ‘imagineering’ alternative futures, for people to see beyond the current adverse circumstances and to imagine other possibilities. People respond to and navigate their experience of trauma in unique, unexpected and productive ways (Wilson 29). Trauma can cripple individual potential and yet individuals can also learn to turn such an experience into a positive, productive resource for personal growth. Grief, despair and powerlessness can be channelled into hope for improved life opportunities. Social networks can act as protection against adversity and trauma; meaningful interpersonal relationships and a sense of belonging assist individuals in recovering from emotional strain. Wilson asserts that social capabilities assist people in turning what would otherwise be negative experiences into productive cultural resources (13). Graybeal (238) and Saleeby (297) explore resilience as a strength-based practice, where individuals, families and communities are seen in relation to their capacities, talents, competencies, possibilities, visions, values and hopes; rather than through their deficiencies, pathologies or disorders. This does not present an idea of invulnerability to adversity but points to resources for navigating adversity. Resilience is not merely an individual trait or a set of intrinsic behaviours that can be displayed in ‘resilient individuals’. Resilience, rather than being an unchanging attribute, is a complex socio-cultural phenomenon, a relational concept of a dynamic nature that is situated in interpersonal relations (Wilson 258). Positive Growth through a Community Based Approach Through migrating to another country (in the context of refugees), Falicov, points out that people often experience a profound loss of their social network and cultural roots, resulting in a sense of homelessness between two worlds, belonging to neither (qtd. in Walsh 220). In the ideological narratives of refugee movements and diasporas, the exile present may be collectively portrayed as a liminality, outside normal time and place, a passage between past and future (Eastmond 255). The concept of the ‘liminal’ was popularised by Victor Turner, who proposed that different kinds of marginalised people and communities go through phases of separation, ‘liminali’ (state of limbo) and reincorporation (qtd. in Tofighian 101). Difficulties arise when there is no closure of the liminal period (fleeing their former country and yet not being able to integrate in the country of destination). If there is no reincorporation into mainstream society then people become unsettled and feel displaced. This has implications for their sense of identity as they suffer from possible cultural destabilisation, not being able to integrate into the host society. The loss of social supports may be especially severe and long-lasting in the context of displacement. In gaining an understanding of resilience in the context of displacement, it is important to consider social settings and person-environment transactions as displaced people seek to experience a sense of community in alternative ways. Mays proposed that alternative forms of community are central to community survival and resilience. Community is a source of wellbeing for building and strengthening positive relations and networks (Mays 590). Cottrell, uses the concept of ‘community competence’, where a community provides opportunities and conditions that enable groups to navigate their problems and develop capacity and resourcefulness to cope positively with adversity (qtd. in Sonn and Fisher 4, 5). Chaskin, sees community as a resilient entity, countering adversity and promoting the well-being of its members (qtd. in Canavan 6). As a point of departure from the concept of community in the conventional sense, I am interested in what Ahmed and Fortier state as moments or sites of connection between people who would normally not have such connection (254). The participants may come together without any presumptions of ‘being in common’ or ‘being uncommon’ (Ahmed and Fortier 254). This community shows little differentiation between those who are welcome and those who are not in the demarcation of the boundaries of community. The community I refer to presents the idea as ‘common ground’ rather than commonality. Ahmed and Fortier make reference to a ‘moral community’, a “community of care and responsibility, where members readily acknowledge the ‘social obligations’ and willingness to assist the other” (Home office, qtd. in Ahmed and Fortier 253). Ahmed and Fortier note that strong communities produce caring citizens who ensure the future of caring communities (253). Community can also be referred to as the ‘soul’, something that stems out of the struggle that creates a sense of solidarity and cohesion among group members (Keil, qtd. in Sonn and Fisher 17). Often shared experiences of despair can intensify connections between people. These settings modify the impact of oppression through people maintaining positive experiences of belonging and develop a positive sense of identity. This has enabled people to hold onto and reconstruct the sociocultural supplies that have come under threat (Sonn and Fisher 17). People are able to feel valued as human beings, form positive attachments, experience community, a sense of belonging, reconstruct group identities and develop skills to cope with the outside world (Sonn and Fisher, 20). Community networks are significant in contributing to personal transformation. Walsh states that “community networks can be essential resources in trauma recovery when their strengths and potential are mobilised” (208). Walsh also points out that the suffering and struggle to recover after a traumatic experience often results in remarkable transformation and positive growth (208). Studies in post-traumatic growth (Calhoun & Tedeschi) have found positive changes such as: the emergence of new opportunities, the formation of deeper relationships and compassion for others, feelings strengthened to meet future life challenges, reordered priorities, fuller appreciation of life and a deepening spirituality (in Walsh 208). As Walsh explains “The effects of trauma depend greatly on whether those wounded can seek comfort, reassurance and safety with others. Strong connections with trust that others will be there for them when needed, counteract feelings of insecurity, hopelessness, and meaninglessness” (208). Wilson (256) developed a new paradigm in shifting the focus from an individualised approach to trauma recovery, to a community-based approach in his research of young Sudanese refugees. Rutter and Walsh, stress that mental health professionals can best foster trauma recovery by shifting from a predominantly individual pathology focus to other treatment approaches, utilising communities as a capacity for healing and resilience (qtd. in Walsh 208). Walsh highlights that “coming to terms with traumatic loss involves making meaning of the trauma experience, putting it in perspective, and weaving the experience of loss and recovery into the fabric of individual and collective identity and life passage” (210). Landau and Saul, have found that community resilience involves building community and enhancing social connectedness by strengthening the system of social support, coalition building and information and resource sharing, collective storytelling, and re-establishing the rhythms and routines of life (qtd. in Walsh 219). Bracken et al. suggest that one of the fundamental principles in recovery over time is intrinsically linked to reconstruction of social networks (15). This is not expecting resolution in some complete ‘once and for all’ getting over it, getting closure of something, or simply recovering and moving on, but tapping into a collective recovery approach, being a gradual process over time. Conclusion A focus on biomedical intervention using a biomedical understanding of distress may be limiting as a helping modality for refugees. Such an approach can undermine peoples’ agency, coping strategies and local cultural understandings of distress. Drawing on sociology and cultural studies, utilising a more emic approach, brings new insights to understanding resilience and how people respond to trauma in unique, unexpected and productive ways for positive personal growth while navigating the experience. This includes considering social settings and person-environment transactions in gaining an understanding of resilience. Although individual traits influence the action of resilience, it can be learned and developed in adverse situations through social interactions. Social networks and capabilities can act as a protection against adversity and trauma, assisting people to turn what would otherwise be negative experiences into productive cultural resources (Wilson 13) for improved life opportunities. The promotion of social competence is viewed as a preventative intervention to promote resilient outcomes, as social skill facilitates social integration (Nettles and Mason 363). As Wilson (258) asserts that resilience is not merely an individual trait or a set of intrinsic behaviours that ‘resilient individuals’ display; it is a complex, socio-cultural phenomenon that is situated in interpersonal relations within a community setting. References Ahmed, Sara, and Anne-Marie Fortier. “Re-Imagining Communities.” International of Cultural Studies 6.3 (2003): 251-59. Bracken, Patrick. J., Joan E. Giller, and Derek Summerfield. Psychological Response to War and Atrocity: The Limitations of Current Concepts. Elsevier Science, 1995. 8 Aug, 2013 ‹http://www.freedomfromtorture.org/sites/default/files/documents/Summerfield-PsychologicalResponses.pdf>. Brune, Michael, Christian Haasen, Michael Krausz, Oktay Yagdiran, Enrique Bustos and David Eisenman. “Belief Systems as Coping Factors for Traumatized Refugees: A Pilot Study.” Eur Psychiatry 17 (2002): 451-58. Canavan, John. “Resilience: Cautiously Welcoming a Contested Concept.” Child Care in Practice 14.1 (2008): 1-7. Chung, Juna. Refugee and Immigrant Survivors of Trauma: A Curriculum for Social Workers. Master’s Thesis for California State University. Long Beach, 2010. 1-29. Eastmond, Maria. “Stories of Lived Experience: Narratives in Forced Migration Research.” Journal of Refugee Studies 20.2 (2007): 248-64. Eyber, Carola “Cultural and Anthropological Studies.” In Forced Migration Online, 2002. 8 Aug, 2013. ‹http://www.forcedmigration.org/research-resources/expert-guides/psychosocial- issues/cultural-and-anthropological-studies>. Graybeal, Clay. “Strengths-Based Social Work Assessment: Transforming the Dominant Paradigm.” Families in Society 82.3 (2001): 233-42. Kleinman, Arthur. “Triumph or Pyrrhic Victory? The Inclusion of Culture in DSM-IV.” Harvard Rev Psychiatry 4 (1997): 343-44. Mares, Sarah, and Louise Newman, eds. Acting from the Heart- Australian Advocates for Asylum Seekers Tell Their Stories. Sydney: Finch Publishing, 2007. Mays, Vicki M. “Identity Development of Black Americans: The Role of History and the Importance of Ethnicity.” American Journal of Psychotherapy 40.4 (1986): 582-93. Nettles, Saundra Murray, and Michael J. Mason. “Zones of Narrative Safety: Promoting Psychosocial Resilience in Young People.” The Journal of Primary Prevention 25.3 (2004): 359-73. Orosa, Francisco J.E., Michael Brune, Katrin Julia Fischer-Ortman, and Christian Haasen. “Belief Systems as Coping Factors in Traumatized Refugees: A Prospective Study.” Traumatology 17.1 (2011); 1-7. Peres, Julio F.P., Alexander Moreira-Almeida, Antonia, G. Nasello, and Harold, G. Koenig. “Spirituality and Resilience in Trauma Victims.” J Relig Health (2006): 1-8. Saleebey, Dennis. “The Strengths Perspective in Social Work Practice: Extensions and Cautions.” Social Work 41.3 (1996): 296-305. Scheper-Hughes, Nancy. “A Talent for Life: Reflections on Human Vulnerability and Resilience.” Ethnos 73.1 (2008): 25-56. Seahorn, Janet, J. and Anthony E. Seahorn. Tears of a Warrior. Ft Collins, USA: Team Pursuits, 2008. Sonn, Christopher, and Adrian Fisher. “Sense of Community: Community Resilient Responses to Oppression and Change.” Unpublished article. Curtin University of Technology & Victoria University of Technology: undated. Summerfield, Derek. “Childhood, War, Refugeedom and ‘Trauma’: Three Core Questions for Medical Health Professionals.” Transcultural Psychiatry 37.3 (2000): 417-433. Tofighian, Omid. “Prolonged Liminality and Comparative Examples of Rioting Down Under”. Fear and Hope: The Art of Asylum Seekers in Australian Detention Centres Literature and Aesthetics (Special Edition) 21 (2011): 97-103. Ungar, Michael. “A Constructionist Discourse on Resilience: Multiple Contexts, Multiple Realities Among at-Risk Children and Youth.” Youth Society 35.3 (2004): 341-365. Ungar, Michael. “A Thicker Description of Resilience.” The International Journal of Narrative Therapy and Community Work 3 & 4 (2005): 85-96. Walsh, Froma. “Traumatic Loss and Major Disasters: Strengthening Family and Community Resilience.” Family Process 46.2 (2007): 207-227. Weiss, Daniel. S., Charles R. Marmar, William. E. Schlenger, John. A. Fairbank, Kathleen Jordon, Richard L. Hough, and Richard A. Kulka. “The Prevalence of Lifetime and Partial Post- Traumatic Stress Disorder in Vietnam Theater Veterans.” Journal of Traumatic Stress 5.3 (1992):365-76. Westoby, Peter, and Ann Ingamells. “A Critically Informed Perspective of Working with Resettling Refugee Groups in Australia.” British Journal of Social Work 40 (2010): 1759-76. Wilson, Michael. “Accumulating Resilience: An Investigation of the Migration and Resettlement Experiences of Young Sudanese People in the Western Sydney Area.” PHD Thesis. University of Western Sydney ( 2012): 1-297. Wu, K. M. “Hope and World Survival.” Philosophy Forum 12.1-2 (1972): 131-48.
APA, Harvard, Vancouver, ISO, and other styles
40

Humphry, Justine, and César Albarrán Torres. "A Tap on the Shoulder: The Disciplinary Techniques and Logics of Anti-Pokie Apps." M/C Journal 18, no. 2 (April 29, 2015). http://dx.doi.org/10.5204/mcj.962.

Full text
Abstract:
In this paper we explore the rise of anti-gambling apps in the context of the massive expansion of gambling in new spheres of life (online and offline) and an acceleration in strategies of anticipatory and individualised management of harm caused by gambling. These apps, and the techniques and forms of labour they demand, are examples of and a mechanism through which a mode of governance premised on ‘self-care’ and ‘self-control’ is articulated and put into practice. To support this argument, we explore two government initiatives in the Australian context. Quit Pokies, a mobile app project between the Moreland City Council, North East Primary Care Partnership and the Victorian Local Governance Association, is an example of an emerging service paradigm of ‘self-care’ that uses online and mobile platforms with geo-location to deliver real time health and support interventions. A similar mobile app, Gambling Terminator, was launched by the NSW government in late 2012. Both apps work on the premise that interrupting a gaming session through a trigger, described by Quit Pokies’ creator as a “tap on the shoulder” provides gamblers the opportunity to take a reflexive stance and cut short their gambling practice in the course of play. We critically examine these apps as self-disciplining techniques of contemporary neo-liberalism directed towards anticipating and reducing the personal harm and social risk associated with gambling. We analyse the material and discursive elements, and new forms of user labour, through which this consumable media is framed and assembled. We argue that understanding the role of these apps, and mobile media more generally, in generating new techniques and technologies of the self, is important for identifying emerging modes of governance and their implications at a time when gambling is going through an immense period of cultural normalisation in online and offline environments. The Australian context is particularly germane for the way gambling permeates everyday spaces of sociality and leisure, and the potential of gambling interventions to interrupt and re-configure these spaces and institute a new kind of subject-state relation. Gambling in Australia Though a global phenomenon, the growth and expansion of gambling manifests distinctly in Australia because of its long cultural and historical attachment to games of chance. Australians are among the biggest betters and losers in the world (Ziolkowski), mainly on Electronic Gaming Machines (EGM) or pokies. As of 2013, according to The World Count of Gaming Machine (Ziolkowski), there were 198,150 EGMs in the country, of which 197,274 were slot machines, with the rest being electronic table games of roulette, blackjack and poker. There are 118 persons per machine in Australia. New South Wales is the jurisdiction with most EGMs (95,799), followed by Queensland (46,680) and Victoria (28,758) (Ziolkowski). Gambling is significant in Australian cultural history and average Australian households spend at least some money on different forms of gambling, from pokies to scratch cards, every year (Worthington et al.). In 1985, long-time gambling researcher Geoffrey Caldwell stated thatAustralians seem to take a pride in the belief that we are a nation of gamblers. Thus we do not appear to be ashamed of our gambling instincts, habits and practices. Gambling is regarded by most Australians as a normal, everyday practice in contrast to the view that gambling is a sinful activity which weakens the moral fibre of the individual and the community. (Caldwell 18) The omnipresence of gambling opportunities in most Australian states has been further facilitated by the availability of online and mobile gambling and gambling-like spaces. Social casino apps, for instance, are widely popular in Australia. The slots social casino app Slotomania was the most downloaded product in the iTunes store in 2012 (Metherell). In response to the high rate of different forms of gambling in Australia, a range of disparate interest groups have identified the expansion of gambling as a concerning trend. Health researchers have pointed out that online gamblers have a higher risk of experiencing problems with gambling (at 30%) compared to 15% in offline bettors (Hastings). The incidence of gambling problems is also disproportionately high in specific vulnerable demographics, including university students (Cervini), young adults prone to substance abuse problems (Hayatbakhsh et al.), migrants (Tanasornnarong et al.; Scull & Woolcock; Ohtsuka & Ohtsuka), pensioners (Hing & Breen), female players (Lee), Aboriginal communities (Young et al.; McMillen & Donnelly) and individuals experiencing homelessness (Holsworth et al.). While there is general recognition of the personal and public health impacts of gambling in Australia, there is a contradiction in the approach to gambling at a governance level. On one hand, its expansion is promoted and even encouraged by the federal and state governments, as gambling is an enormous source of revenue, as evidenced, for example, by the construction of the new Crown casino in Barangaroo in Sydney (Markham & Young). Campaigns trying to limit the use of poker machines, which are associated with concerns over problem gambling and addiction, are deemed by the gambling lobby as un-Australian. Paradoxically, efforts to restrict gambling or control gambling winnings have also been described as un-Australian, such as in the Australian Taxation Office’s campaign against MONA’s founder, David Walsh, whose immense art collection was acquired with the funds from a gambling scheme (Global Mail). On the other hand, people experiencing problems with gambling are often categorised as addicts and the ultimate blame (and responsibility) is attributed to the individual. In Australia, attitudes towards people who are arguably addicted to gambling are different than those towards individuals afflicted by alcohol or drug abuse (Jean). While “Australians tend to be sympathetic towards people with alcohol and other drug addictions who seek help,” unless it is seen as one of the more socially acceptable forms of occasional, controlled gambling (such as sports betting, gambling on the Melbourne Cup or celebrating ANZAC Day with Two-Up), gambling is framed as an individual “problem” and “moral failing” (Jean). The expansion of gambling is the backdrop to another development in health care and public health discourse, which have for some time now been devoted to the ideal of what Lupton has called the “digitally engaged patient” (Lupton). Technologies are central to the delivery of this model of health service provision that puts the patient at the centre of, and responsible for, their own health and medical care. Lupton has pointed out how this discourse, while appearing new, is in fact the latest version of the 1970s emphasis on the ‘patient as consumer’, an idea given an extra injection by the massive development and availability of digital and interactive web-based and mobile platforms, many of these directed towards the provision of health and health-related information and services. What this means for patients is that, rather than relying solely on professional medical expertise and care, the patient is encouraged to take on some of this medical/health work to conduct practices of ‘self-care’ (Lupton). The Discourse of ‘Self-Management’ and ‘Self-Care’ The model of ‘self-care’ and ‘self-management’ by ‘empowering’ digital technology has now become a dominant discourse within health and medicine, and is increasingly deployed across a range of related sectors such as welfare services. In recent research conducted on homelessness and mobile media, for example, government department staff involved in the reform of welfare services referred to ‘self-management’ as the new service paradigm that underpins their digital reform strategy. Echoing ideas and language similar to the “digitally engaged patient”, customers of Centrelink, Medicare and other ‘human services’ are being encouraged (through planned strategic initiatives aimed at shifting targeted customer groups online) to transact with government services digitally and manage their own personal profiles and health information. One departmental staff member described this in terms of an “opportunity cost”, the savings in time otherwise spent standing in long queues in service centres (Humphry). Rather than view these examples as isolated incidents taking place within or across sectors or disciplines, these are better understood as features of an emerging ‘discursive formation’ , a term Foucault used to describe the way in which particular institutions and/or the state establish a regime of truth, or an accepted social reality and which gives definition to a new historical episteme and subject: in this case that of the self-disciplined and “digitally engaged medical/health patient”. As Foucault explained, once this subject has become fully integrated into and across the social field, it is no longer easy to excavate, since it lies below the surface of articulation and is held together through everyday actions, habits and institutional routines and techniques that appear to be universal, necessary and/normal. The way in which this citizen subject becomes a universal model and norm, however, is not a straightforward or linear story and since we are in the midst of its rise, is not a story with a foretold conclusion. Nevertheless, across a range of different fields of governance: medicine; health and welfare, we can see signs of this emerging figure of the self-caring “digitally engaged patient” constituted from a range of different techniques and practices of self-governance. In Australia, this figure is at the centre of a concerted strategy of service digitisation involving a number of cross sector initiatives such as Australia’s National EHealth Strategy (2008), the National Digital Economy Strategy (2011) and the Australian Public Service Mobile Roadmap (2013). This figure of the self-caring “digitally engaged” patient, aligns well and is entirely compatible with neo-liberal formulations of the individual and the reduced role of the state as a provider of welfare and care. Berry refers to Foucault’s definition of neoliberalism as outlined in his lectures to the College de France as a “particular form of post-welfare state politics in which the state essentially outsources the responsibility of the ‘well-being' of the population” (65). In the case of gambling, the neoliberal defined state enables the wedding of two seemingly contradictory stances: promoting gambling as a major source of revenue and capitalisation on the one hand, and identifying and treating gambling addiction as an individual pursuit and potential risk on the other. Risk avoidance strategies are focused on particular groups of people who are targeted for self-treatment to avoid the harm of gambling addiction, which is similarly framed as individual rather than socially and systematically produced. What unites and makes possible this alignment of neoliberalism and the new “digitally engaged subject/patient” is first and foremost, the construction of a subject in a chronic state of ill health. This figure is positioned as terminal from the start. They are ‘sick’, a ‘patient’, an ‘addict’: in need of immediate and continuous treatment. Secondly, this neoliberal patient/addict is enabled (we could even go so far as to say ‘empowered’) by digital technology, especially smartphones and the apps available through these devices in the form of a myriad of applications for intervening and treating ones afflictions. These apps range fromself-tracking programs such as mood regulators through to social media interventions. Anti-Pokie Apps and the Neoliberal Gambler We now turn to two examples which illustrate this alignment between neoliberalism and the new “digitally engaged subject/patient” in relation to gambling. Anti-gambling apps function to both replace or ‘take the place’ of institutions and individuals actively involved in the treatment of problem gambling and re-engineer this service through the logics of ‘self-care’ and ‘self-management’. Here, we depart somewhat from Foucault’s model of disciplinary power summed up in the institution (with the prison exemplifying this disciplinary logic) and move towards Deleuze’s understanding of power as exerted by the State not through enclosures but through diffuse and rhizomatic information flows and technologies (Deleuze). At the same time, we retain Foucault’s attention to the role and agency of the user in this power-dynamic, identifiable in the technics of self-regulation and in his ideas on governmentality. We now turn to analyse these apps more closely, and explore the way in which these articulate and perform these disciplinary logics. The app Quit Pokies was a joint venture of the North East Primary Care Partnership, the Victorian Local Governance Association and the Moreland City Council, launched in early 2014. The idea of the rational, self-reflexive and agentic user is evident in the description of the app by app developer Susan Rennie who described it this way: What they need is for someone to tap them on the shoulder and tell them to get out of there… I thought the phone could be that tap on the shoulder. The “tap on the shoulder” feature uses geolocation and works by emitting a sound alert when the user enters a gaming venue. It also provides information about each user’s losses at that venue. This “tap on the shoulder” is both an alert and a reprimand from past gambling sessions. Through the Responsible Gambling Fund, the NSW government also launched an anti-pokie app in 2013, Gambling Terminator, including a similar feature. The app runs on Apple and Android smartphone platforms, and when a person is inside a gambling venue in New South Wales it: sends reminder messages that interrupt gaming-machine play and gives you a chance to re-think your choices. It also provides instant access to live phone and online counselling services which operate 24 hours a day, seven days a week. (Google Play Store) Yet an approach that tries to prevent harm by anticipating the harm that will come from gambling at the point of entering a venue, also eliminates the chance of potential negotiations and encounters a user might have during a visit to the pub and how this experience will unfold. It reduces the “tap on the shoulder”, which may involve a far wider set of interactions and affects, to a software operation and it frames the pub or the club (which under some conditions functions as hubs for socialization and community building) as dangerous places that should be avoided. This has the potential to lead to further stigmatisation of gamblers, their isolation and their exclusion from everyday spaces. Moreland Mayor, Councillor Tapinos captures the implicit framing of self-care as a private act in his explanation of the app as a method for problem gamblers to avoid being stigmatised by, for example, publicly attending group meetings. Yet, curiously, the app has the potential to create a new kind of public stigmatisation through potentially drawing other peoples’ attention to users’ gambling play (as the alarm is triggered) generating embarrassment and humiliation at being “caught out” in an act framed as aberrant and literally, “alarming”. Both Quit Pokies and Gambling Terminator require their users to perform ‘acts’ of physical and affective labour aimed at behaviour change and developing the skills of self-control. After downloading Quit Pokies on the iPhone and launching the app, the user is presented an initial request: “Before you set up this app. please write a list of the pokies venues that you regularly use because the app will ask you to identify these venues so it can send you alerts if you spend time in these locations. It will also use your set up location to identify other venues you might use so we recommend that you set up the App in the location where you spend most time. Congratulation on choosing Quit Pokies.”Self-performed processes include installation, setting up, updating the app software, programming in gambling venues to be detected by the smartphone’s inbuilt GPS, monitoring and responding to the program’s alerts and engaging in alternate “legitimate” forms of leisure such as going to the movies or the library, having coffee with a friend or browsing Facebook. These self-performed labours can be understood as ‘technologies of the self’, a term used by Foucault to describe the way in which social members are obliged to regulate and police their ‘selves’ through a range of different techniques. While Foucault traces the origins of ‘technologies of the self’ to the Greco-Roman texts with their emphasis on “care of oneself” as one of the duties of citizenry, he notes the shift to “self-knowledge” under Christianity around the 8th century, where it became bound up in ideals of self-renunciation and truth. Quit Pokies and Gambling Terminator may signal a recuperation of the ideal of self-care, over confession and disclosure. These apps institute a set of bodily activities and obligations directed to the user’s health and wellbeing, aided through activities of self-examination such as charting your recovery through a Recovery Diary and implementing a number of suggested “Strategies for Change” such as “writing a list” and “learning about ways to manage your money better”. Writing is central to the acts of self-examination. As Jeremy Prangnell, gambling counsellor from Mission Australia for Wollongong and Shellharbour regions explained the app is “like an electronic diary, which is a really common tool for people who are trying to change their behaviour” (Thompson). The labours required by users are also implicated in the functionality and performance of the platform itself suggesting the way in which ‘technologies of the self’ simultaneously function as a form of platform work: user labour that supports and sustains the operation of digital systems and is central to the performance and continuation of digital capitalism in general (Humphry, Demanding Media). In addition to the acts of labour performed on the self and platform, bodies are themselves potentially mobilised (and put into new circuits of consumption and production), as a result of triggers to nudge users away from gambling venues, towards a range of other cultural practices in alternative social spaces considered to be more legitimate.Conclusion Whether or not these technological interventions are effective or successful is yet to be tested. Indeed, the lack of recent activity in the community forums and preponderance of issues reported on installation and use suggests otherwise, pointing to a need for more empirical research into these developments. Regardless, what we’ve tried to identify is the way in which apps such as these embody a new kind of subject-state relation that emphasises self-control of gambling harm and hastens the divestment of institutional and social responsibility at a time when gambling is going through an immense period of expansion in many respects backed by and sanctioned by the state. Patterns of smartphone take up in the mainstream population and the rise of the so called ‘mobile only population’ (ACMA) provide support for this new subject and service paradigm and are often cited as the rationale for digital service reform (APSMR). Media convergence feeds into these dynamics: service delivery becomes the new frontier for the merging of previously separate media distribution systems (Dwyer). Letters, customer service centres, face-to-face meetings and web sites, are combined and in some instances replaced, with online and mobile media platforms, accessible from multiple and mobile devices. These changes are not, however, simply the migration of services to a digital medium with little effective change to the service itself. Health and medical services are re-invented through their technological re-assemblage, bringing into play new meanings, practices and negotiations among the state, industry and neoliberal subjects (in the case of problem gambling apps, a new subjectivity, the ‘neoliberal addict’). These new assemblages are as much about bringing forth a new kind of subject and mode of governance, as they are a solution to problem gambling. This figure of the self-treating “gambler addict” can be seen to be a template for, and prototype of, a more generalised and universalised self-governing citizen: one that no longer needs or makes demands on the state but who can help themselves and manage their own harm. Paradoxically, there is the potential for new risks and harms to the very same users that accompanies this shift: their outright exclusion as a result of deprivation from basic and assumed digital access and literacy, the further stigmatisation of gamblers, the elimination of opportunities for proximal support and their exclusion from everyday spaces. References Albarrán-Torres, César. “Gambling-Machines and the Automation of Desire.” Platform: Journal of Media and Communication 5.1 (2013). Australian Communications and Media Authority. “Australians Cut the Cord.” Research Snapshots. Sydney: ACMA (2013) Berry, David. Critical Theory and the Digital. Broadway, New York: Bloomsbury Academic, 2014 Berry, David. Stunlaw: A Critical Review of Politics, Arts and Technology. 2012. ‹http://stunlaw.blogspot.com.au/2012/03/code-foucault-and-neoliberal.html›. Caldwell, G. “Some Historical and Sociological Characteristics of Australian Gambling.” Gambling in Australia. Eds. G. Caldwell, B. Haig, M. Dickerson, and L. Sylan. Sydney: Croom Helm Australia, 1985. 18-27. Cervini, E. “High Stakes for Gambling Students.” The Age 8 Nov. 2013. ‹http://www.theage.com.au/national/education/high-stakes-for-gambling-students-20131108-2x5cl.html›. Deleuze, Gilles. "Postscript on the Societies of Control." October (1992): 3-7. Foucault, Michel. “Technologies of the Self.” Eds. Luther H. Martin, Huck Gutman and Patrick H. Hutton. Boston: University of Massachusetts Press, 1988 Hastings, E. “Online Gamblers More at Risk of Addiction.” Herald Sun 13 Oct. 2013. ‹http://www.heraldsun.com.au/news/online-gamblers-more-at-risk-of-addiction/story-fni0fiyv-1226739184629#!›.Hayatbakhsh, Mohammad R., et al. "Young Adults' Gambling and Its Association with Mental Health and Substance Use Problems." Australian and New Zealand Journal of Public Health 36.2 (2012): 160-166. Hing, Nerilee, and Helen Breen. "A Profile of Gaming Machine Players in Clubs in Sydney, Australia." Journal of Gambling Studies 18.2 (2002): 185-205. Holdsworth, Louise, Margaret Tiyce, and Nerilee Hing. "Exploring the Relationship between Problem Gambling and Homelessness: Becoming and Being Homeless." Gambling Research 23.2 (2012): 39. Humphry, Justine. “Demanding Media: Platform Work and the Shaping of Work and Play.” Scan: Journal of Media Arts Culture, 10.2 (2013): 1-13. Humphry, Justine. “Homeless and Connected: Mobile Phones and the Internet in the Lives of Homeless Australians.” Australian Communications Consumer Action Network. Sep. 2014. ‹https://www.accan.org.au/grants/completed-grants/619-homeless-and-connected›.Lee, Timothy Jeonglyeol. "Distinctive Features of the Australian Gambling Industry and Problems Faced by Australian Women Gamblers." Tourism Analysis 14.6 (2009): 867-876. Lupton, D. “The Digitally Engaged Patient: Self-Monitoring and Self-Care in the Digital Health Era.” Social Theory & Health 11.3 (2013): 256-70. Markham, Francis, and Martin Young. “Packer’s Barangaroo Casino and the Inevitability of Pokies.” The Conversation 9 July 2013. ‹http://theconversation.com/packers-barangaroo-casino-and-the-inevitability-of-pokies-15892›. Markham, Francis, and Martin Young. “Who Wins from ‘Big Gambling’ in Australia?” The Conversation 6 Mar. 2014. ‹http://theconversation.com/who-wins-from-big-gambling-in-australia-22930›.McMillen, Jan, and Katie Donnelly. "Gambling in Australian Indigenous Communities: The State of Play." The Australian Journal of Social Issues 43.3 (2008): 397. Ohtsuka, Keis, and Thai Ohtsuka. “Vietnamese Australian Gamblers’ Views on Luck and Winning: Universal versus Culture-Specific Schemas.” Asian Journal of Gambling Issues and Public Health 1.1 (2010): 34-46. Scull, Sue, Geoffrey Woolcock. “Problem Gambling in Non-English Speaking Background Communities in Queensland, Australia: A Qualitative Exploration.” International Gambling Studies 5.1 (2005): 29-44. Tanasornnarong, Nattaporn, Alun Jackson, and Shane Thomas. “Gambling among Young Thai People in Melbourne, Australia: An Exploratory Study.” International Gambling Studies 4.2 (2004): 189-203. Thompson, Angela, “Live Gambling Odds Tipped for the Chop.” Illawarra Mercury 22 May 2013: 6. Metherell, Mark. “Virtual Pokie App a Hit - But ‘Not Gambling.’” Sydney Morning Herald 13 Jan. 2013. ‹http://www.smh.com.au/digital-life/smartphone-apps/virtual-pokie-app-a-hit--but-not-gambling-20130112-2cmev.html#ixzz2QVlsCJs1›. Worthington, Andrew, et al. "Gambling Participation in Australia: Findings from the National Household Expenditure Survey." Review of Economics of the Household 5.2 (2007): 209-221. Young, Martin, et al. "The Changing Landscape of Indigenous Gambling in Northern Australia: Current Knowledge and Future Directions." International Gambling Studies 7.3 (2007): 327-343. Ziolkowski, S. “The World Count of Gaming Machines 2013.” Gaming Technologies Association, 2014. ‹http://www.gamingta.com/pdf/World_Count_2014.pdf›.
APA, Harvard, Vancouver, ISO, and other styles
We offer discounts on all premium plans for authors whose works are included in thematic literature selections. Contact us to get a unique promo code!

To the bibliography