Journal articles on the topic 'Round Table Negotiation'

Negotiators are routinely exhorted to prepare well, but what do they do in practice? This article draws on data collected as a team of negotiators prepared their strategy during the lengthy negotiations over a major power generation infrastructure contract. Using a framework that we developed using terms from the literature, the team’s preparation meetings were observed and then analysed for content, timing and changes in participation. It is shown that the standard checklist notion of preparation needs to be reconsidered as a multilevel, dynamic concept that changes in character over time. Far from just a first stage, the team’s continued preparation occurred in feedback meetings after rounds of negotiation at the table, between negotiation sessions and immediately before the next round of negotiations, and progress was seen to hinge on the differentiation of the preparation. Consequently, this long-term study provides insight into a key element of any general theory of negotiation while also suggesting implications for practitioners working with negotiating teams.

When will states receive concessions in multilateral negotiations? And on which issues are those concessions likely to be received? I highlight two factors that influence the likelihood a state will receive concessions on an issue in multilateral negotiations: (1) the degree to which the issues linked together in the negotiation are “differently valued” by the negotiating states, and (2) the costliness of states’ “best alternative to a negotiated agreement” on each individual issue. The former creates the opportunity for an exchange of concessions; the latter creates the incentive for that exchange to occur. It is the interaction of having more differently valued issues on the table and having a more costly best alternative to a negotiated agreement on an issue that makes a state more likely to receive concessions on that issue. This argument stands in contrast to the standard negotiation literature, which has shown that having a more beneficial best alternative to a negotiated agreement will yield greater concessions. I argue that these contradictory assertions exist because there are two types of best alternatives to a negotiated agreement that must be taken into account – one at the negotiation level and those at the issue-specific level. The current literature has tended to focus on the former while I focus on the latter. I test my argument on an originally constructed dataset of concessions states received in the Uruguay Round trade negotiations of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade. For each issue in the Round, I coded the costliness of each state's issue-specific best alternative to a negotiated agreement and the level of concessions it received on that issue. The results provide insights into the workings of multilateral negotiations.

Fundamentally, Irian Barat (Papua) dispute between The Netherlands Indonesia was a territorial conflict or an overlapping claim. The Netherlands as the former colonialist did not want to leave Irian Barat (Papua) or remained still in the region, meanwhile Indonesia as the former colony denied the Netherlands status quo policy in Irian Barat (Papua). Potential dispute of the Irian Barat (Papua) was begun in the Round Table Conference (RTC) 1949. There was a point of agreement in RTC which regulates status quo on Irian Barat (Papua) and it was approved by Head of Indonesia Delegation, Mohammad Hatta and Van Maarseven, Head of the Netherlands Delegation. As a mandate of the RTC in 1950s there was a diplomacy on Irian Barat (Papua) in Jakarta and Den Haag. Upon the diplomacy, there were two negotiations held by diplomats of both countries, yet it never reached a result. As a consequence, in 1954 Indonesia Government decided to stop the negotiation and searched for other ways as a solution for the dispute. At the present time, Jakarta-Papua relationship is relatively better and it is based on a special autonomy, which gives great authority to the Local Government of Papua.

Services trade reform matters, but what is Doha doing about it? It has been hard to judge because of the opaqueness of services policies and the opaqueness of the request-offer negotiating process. This paper attempts to assess what is on the table. It presents the results of the first survey of applied trade policies in the major services sectors of fifty-six industrial and developing countries. These policies are then compared with these countries’ Uruguay Round (UR) commitments in services and the best offers that they have made in the current Doha negotiations. The paper finds that at this stage, Doha promises greater security of access to markets but not any additional liberalization. Uruguay Round commitments are on average 2.3 times more restrictive than current policies. The best offers submitted so far as part of the Doha negotiations improve on Uruguay Round commitments by about 13% but remain on average 1.9 times more restrictive than actual policies. The World Trade Organization’s (WTO’s) Hong Kong Ministerial had set out ambitious goals for services, but the analysis here shows that much remains to be done to achieve them.

Abstract How does the agenda management process influence the effectiveness of multilateral trade talks in the World Trade Organization (WTO)? How can the all-important agenda be shaped so as to enhance the prospects of an agreement being reached? How the agenda is managed directly affects the negotiation process which follows and the eventual outcome. Yet researchers have paid little attention to the particular dynamics and challenges of agenda management in large-scale multilateral negotiations, and actual practice points to several weaknesses. This article proposes that the complexity of the agenda in multilateral talks needs to be managed and reduced in procedurally just ways if a successful outcome (agreement) is to result. It develops an analytical framework of agenda management in multilateral negotiations and conducts a structured focused comparison to explain the differences in outcomes of two rounds of WTO negotiations: the failure of the 2003 Cancún Ministerial Conference and the success of the 2004 Geneva negotiations in reaching an agreement. The findings support the proposition that a successful outcome depends in part on reducing agenda complexity and that this needs to be achieved in procedurally acceptable (if not just) ways.

The catastrophe and terror in the recent history of the Old Continent have precipitated unprecedented socio-political change witnessed, and experienced, by three generations of central-eastern Europeans. The collective political conscience of the continent was forged in the reconciliation of former belligerents, the dismantling of barriers assumed by newly broken alliances, and the construction of supranational structures of democracy. This required the work and sacrifice of a generation, living out shifting state ideologies; people who had to forego former prejudices and engage in a new, fluid dialogue, which had been formerly discouraged and repressed. Here, I reflect upon how the inauguration of a new, political dialogue at the executive level helped to establish today’s democratic, pluralist, and markedly stable, Polish state…

The Round Table Talks in Hungary and Poland were widely criticized by opposition forces not participating in the negotiations. One of them was the Hungarian October Party, which considered this form of transformation to have been flawed and against the interests of society. The formation, which also had Polish connections and was led by György Krassó, became known primarily through its street happenings. Its criticisms of the participants in the Round Table Talks bear a strong resemblance to the opinion of the so-called non-constructive Polish opposition forces.

SummaryIn 1994, Canada and China began negotiating a bilateral foreign investment promotion and protection agreement (FIPA). After sixteen years and multiple rounds of negotiations, the two states have not been able to solidify a workable treaty. By examining each country’s substantive and procedural preferences in their respective bilateral investment treaty models and in past treaties, this article outlines some of the likely “on-the-table” obstacles in the negotiating process. The analysis indicates that there are areas of considerable convergence between each country’s preferences, although significant areas of divergence exist on some key issues. Further confounding the disagreement that exists between the two countries are “off-the-table” factors such as general bilateral relations. One further aspect that is considered is the idea of coordinating compliance between international trade and human rights norms in the context of the Canada–China FIPA. While bilateral investment treaties are economic agreements, pronounced non-economic elements shape the practical and legal effect that these treaties have on various affected actors. Despite the important implications the Canada–China FIPA has for human rights and environmental policy concerns, it can be inferred that these factors will have little bearing on the actual negotiated outcome of the agreement.

The plurilateral negotiations on a Trade in Services Agreement ( TISA) have attracted much attention in trade policy circles. Policy and economic implications are intensely debated given the number and economic importance of participants. This article aims to provide insights into the market access issues arising in such negotiations. Should TISA negotiations result in participants exchanging the best commitments they have so far undertaken in their preferential trade agreements (PTAs) - a reasonable starting point -,TISA market access commitments would go well beyond commitments under the General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS) and services offers tabled in the Doha Round. While this would be in itself a significant outcome (especially in terms of predictability and stability), we also highlight, however, that the real economic benefits would be reduced by the fact that a number of participants have already exchanged significant concessions amongst themselves through bilateral PTAs. Further, and more importantly, exchanging 'best PTA' commitments would not meet the participants' most important export interests. These have often remained unaddressed in many of the previous bilateral negotiations or involve countries not currently participating in TISA. Addressing better these export interests would require going beyond an exchange of 'best PTA' commitments among TISA participants - with the more difficult policy and negotiating decisions that this implies - and/or seeking to expand the group of participants. We also discuss the different forms that such a plurilateral agreement may take vis-à-vis the WTO framework.

In modern international conditions, cooperation with representatives of other countries is becoming an objective need for pre-trial investigation bodies and forensic science institutions. And it requires not only the improvement of current forms and methods of negotiations but also the search for new forms of cooperation between countries based on mutual interests. The Article purpose is to identify problem areas in holding scientific events in round table format as a means of finding solutions to detected issues in the field of forensic science at the regional and international levels. Recommendations for enhancing efficiency in round tables holding have been developed. While research, the main issues leading to unsuccessful organization of round tables as a result of inconsistencies, lack of interactivity, insufficient argumentation framework, uncontrolled polyphonic discussion, inability to justify and develop their point of view have been considered. Referring to the analysis of held round tables, a number of recommendations have been created and several methods have been developed for successful holding in the form of project with a clear division of preparation stages and allocation of specific tasks at each stage. Validity of obtained results and conclusions is ensured thanks to general scientific and special research methods, being means for research, in particular for observation and formal logic (analysis, synthesis, deduction, induction, analogy, abstraction); the systemic and structural method was used to define peculiarities in holding of business meetings. Implementation of these recommendations into forensic expert practice while business meetings will contribute to search for rational ways of problems solution, exchange of experience at the regional and international levels with forensic experts from leading countries of the world.

Marjorie Castle's volume in the Harvard Cold War Studies Book Series, Triggering Communism's Collapse: Perceptions and Power in Poland's Transition, discusses events in the late 1980s that induced the leaders of the Polish Communist party to open negotiations with senior opposition figures, including the head of the still-banned Solidarity trade union. Preliminary talks in 1988 led to agreement on the holding of Round Table talks, which formally began on 6 February 1989 and ended two months later, on 5 April 1989, with arrangements to hold partly free parliamentary elections in early June. Contrary to the expectations of both the regime and the opposition, those elections resulted in an overwhelming victory for Solidarity, starting a chain of events that led to the formation of the first non-Communist government in a Soviet-bloc country since 1948. Three distinguished experts on Poland comment on Castle's analysis of Poland's transition and offer their own assessments of the importance and legacy of the Round Table talks.

The article discusses the events in Poland of 1989, specifically of the Round Table Negotiations and the elections of June the 4th 1989. A short overview of the 1980s that led to the fall of communist regime is presented, and main representatives of historiographic production devoted to this topic are laid out, with some controversies as well. Much attention is devoted to variations of memory of that events. The division of political scenery today runs mostly along the same lines which divide different memories of 1989.

AbstractFollowing the skeptical attitude towards foreign nations and cultures during the Renaissance, travel fictions during the English Restoration took a more liberal approach to ethnic difference. The anonymous novel Peppa (1689) artfully presents Western stereotypes about ethnic others as being based on false assumptions and outright lies. A crucial scene in this cross-national love plot is based on ethnic fakery, thereby presenting to its readers the constructedness of national and cultural identities. A second text example discusses John Dunton’s A Voyage round the World (1691), arguing that through its unusual form and the resulting openness it reveals the relativity of all cultural norms and national stereotypes. By presenting domestic scenes through the prism of colonialist derision, Dunton turns the tables on English nationalist discourse. Both texts thus invite their readers to confront national, ethnic, and cultural difference more open-mindedly and be aware of the power of language and discourse to influence public opinion.

The objective of the present article is to systematize the knowledge about the political conditions that in 1989 were decisive for the restoration of the Senate with quite limited powers. The reasoning consists of an introduction, two main parts listed in chronological order, and a conclusion. The article presents the concepts of reactivation of the second chamber of parliament, which usually appeared in the years of Polish socio-political crises, and then goes on to present the political and constitutional effect of negotiations on the Senate at the "Polish round table". The main result of the research carried out is the fact that the 1989 Senate decision, part of the consensus enabling the "Polish round table" agreement to be reached, resulted in fully democratic elections to the Second House, in which the political opposition won 99 out of 100 senatorial seats. The success of "Solidarity" did not have any real impact on the practice of governance, because (apart from the election of the president) the Senate had no major influence on the then existing system of power. However, the unprecedented victory of the opposition in this election undoubtedly gave an impulse to take steps to establish the cabinet of Tadeusz Mazowiecki - the first non-communist prime minister, who initiated the political process of establishing democracy and a free market economy.

The round table, “Information resources of the State Historical Public Library of Russia for Slavists: the practice of using” was held on 25 February 2020 at the State Historical Public Library of Russia. It was opened by the director of the Historical Public Library, Mikhail D. Afanasiev, and by the director of the Institute of Slavic Studies, Konstantin V. Nikiforov, who underscored the importance of libraries for education, historical science, and Slavic studies in Russia. Specialists from the Historical Public Library discussed ways of acquiring foreign literature for Slavic studies and of networking with colleagues, libraries, and science centres in other Slavic countries; and provided information regarding Slavic studies in Belarus, Bulgaria, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Macedonia, Poland, Serbia, Slovenia, Slovakia, Ukraine, Croatia, Montenegro, and the Czech Republic. For the Round table, an exhibition of foreign literature for Slavic studies was opened, which included items acquired by the Historical Public Library in 2018 and 2019. The exhibition contained more than 700 publications. Colleagues from the Institute of Slavic Studies presented some books published by the Institute of Slavic Studies, including “Slaves and Russia”. They have been publishing since 2013, when they released the translation of M. Sekulich’s book “Knin failed in Belgrad. Why did the Serb Republic of Krajina die?” and N. Vujović’s memoirs “The last fl ight from Dayton. Closed-door negotiations”.

In the first half of 2001 the US Department of State, following a request from the National Security Archive (a US non-governmental organisation), declassified documents relating to the Round Table negotiations, the presidential elections, the crisis over choice of a prime minister and the creation of government (coalition) in Poland in 1989. Those documents, highly confidential until their release, allow us to look at the most important events in the transformation in Poland from a different perspective, which has not yet been extensively analysed. In essence, they indicate the role of external factors which have influenced the political situation of Poland – the transformation and actual decomposition of communism. They include cables detailing the US embassy’s participation in, and its analysis of the events during Poland’s ‘revolution’.

Tobacco market liberalization can have a profound impact on health. This article analyzes internal documents of British American Tobacco (BAT), released as a result of litigation in the United States, in order to examine the company's attempts to influence negotiations over China's accession to the World Trade Organization. The documents demonstrate that BAT attempted to influence these negotiations through a range of mechanisms, including personal access of BAT employees and lobbyists to policymakers; employment of former civil servants from key U.K. government departments; use of organized business groups such as the Multinational Chairmen's Group and the European Round Table; and participation and leadership in forums organized by Chatham House. These processes contributed to significant concessions on the liberalization of the tobacco market in China, although the failure to break the Chinese state monopoly over the manufacture and distribution of cigarettes has ensured that foreign tobacco companies' share of the Chinese market has remained small. World Trade Organization accession has nevertheless led to a profound restructuring of the Chinese tobacco industry in anticipation of foreign competition, which may result in more market-based and internationally oriented Chinese tobacco firms.

Women all over the world and in Nigeria play vital role in the maintenance and nurturing of peace in homes and in the society. Despite this, in times of conflict, women are not represented in peace negotiations and in planning and execution of post- conflict reconstruction efforts and strategies. Women's participation and strong influence in peace building and maintenance bring about an immediate agreement. The influence of their intervention processes positively correlates with a great likelihood of the agreements implemented. Peace agreement, including women in reconstruction, rehabilitation, and negotiations for peace improves the quality of agreements made and increases the likelihood that they will be carried through. This paper examines the role and place of women in the maintenance of peace in rural communities in Nigeria. The paper adopts womanism as its theoretical framework as it looks into the activities of the Oshi ekwa leka, a women's group of the Eziobodo Alachara Mgbowo of Awgu Local government Area of Enugu state, Nigeria. The study employed the survey method, where key informant interviews or in-depth interview (IDI) was used to collect qualitative data from the women leader and chairman of the community. The paper identifies the activities of the women in the maintenance of peace in their community and advocates women's inclusion in peace negotiations at round tables.

After the proclamation of Indonesian independence in 1945, Indonesia was not yet fully independent. The Dutch returned and wanted to dominate Indonesia. There was a conflict between Indonesia and Dutch caused them confront to the negotiating table. Through the Round Table Conference, Indonesia was recognized as an independent country both de facto and de jure. The full independence was obtained with several agreements whereas other was harmed. The agreement is about the problems of debt, the Union, and West Irian. These problems caused controversy at later time. The Union problem in 1956 which Indonesia unilaterally canceled the Indonesia-Dutch Union. Also, the West Irian problem between the Indonesia and Dutch conflict was difficult to resolve. Based on the results of researches, the emergence of the problem of West Irian was motivated by different views in assessing the status of West Irian. It refers to the conviction of each country to entitled West Irian into its territory. Finally, the problem of West Irian could be resolved through act of free choice (PEPERA), but it caused new complex problems. The problems were the Free Papua Organization (OPM), the Freeport case and Special Autonomy (Otsus).

Delgamuukw v. B.C. is a pivotal decision in the evolution of Canadian law on Aboriginal rights.Numerous meetings, round-tables, workshops and conferences have been held to discuss its potential impact on litigation and negotiation.1 Delgamuukw has also served as a vehicle for discussion of more fundamental issues such as the appropriateness of selecting the judicial forum to resolve Aboriginal title claims and the role of legal reasoning in furthering the process of colonization.2 Given the influence of British colonial law on the development of Aboriginal rights jurisprudence in former British colonies and the restrictions placed by evidentiary presumptions originating in English courts, Delgamuukw may also have persuasive precedential value outside of Canada. In particular, the Supreme Court's elaboration of the concept of Aboriginal rights and its discussion of the weight to be given to oral histories may influence other commonwealth courts which face the demanding task of accommodating the rights of colonized peoples within a contemporary political and legal rights regime.3

Abstract In October 2009, the European Union, in conjunction with the United States, launched a high-level mediation effort in Butmir, Bosnia and Herzegovina, to reform the political structure of the state. Since 2005, the constitution which was included in the Dayton Peace Accord has been widely perceived as dysfunctional. In two negotiation rounds, the EU and the US put a comprehensive proposal on the table and showed strong leverage. However, the talks ended without a tangible result. To explain this failure, a theoretical model is developed based on both mediation and Europeanization literature to explore mediation by conditionality as a type of ‘directive mediation’ in a systematic way. Contrary to the argument that the EU lacked muscle, it is argued that pre-conditions for political conditionality were not fulfilled and strong leverage proved ineffective and counterproductive. These results question conditionality as an effective mediation strategy when state-building is contested between local parties.

This contribution offers an overview of the current as well as potential future obligations on export credit support for agricultural products under the Agreement on Agriculture and the Agreement on Subsidies and Countervailing Measures (SCM). The US – Upland Cotton rulings have not only shown that such disciplines are actually in place, yet they are also in line with – and even go beyond – the obligations imposed on direct export subsidies for agricultural products. Even negotiators seemed surprised by this jurisprudence as they were unintentionally drafting more fl exible rules instead of more rigid ones on export credit support for agricultural products in the Doha Round. This contribution explains that the latest draft on the table would, however, impose additional disciplines that are clearly stricter than those imposed on direct export subsidies but, at the same time, fails to equalize the level playing fi eld among World Trade Organization (WTO) Members and is hard to read in a coherent way.

The article presents the materials of a round table held at the National Research Institute for the Communications Development (Moscow, Russia), the main topic of which was the experience of resolving territorial conflicts.A wide range of issues related to the theory and practice of crisis resolution practices is considered. The main political and legal approaches and diplomatic instruments to international mediation in the settlement of territorial conflicts are characterized. The results of the study of the historical experience of international mediation in the settlement of territorial conflicts are presented. A data-based methodology is proposed that allows evaluate information sources covering the conflict.The conflicts in Central Asia and the Caucasus that took place in different periods are considered. Territorial conflicts are numerous in the Central Asian region. They are mainly related to the absence of official state borders between the three countries: Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan. The most complex, large-scale, and bloody is the conflict between Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan in 2021, which was supported by the armed forces of the two countries. Negotiations, delimitation, and demarcation of borders are still the most significant alternative to existing conflicts.The tools for managing these events are highlighted. A set of recommendations is proposed that has scientific and practical significance in terms of anti-crisis response strategies in the post-Soviet space.

How can mass graves be protected to safeguard truth and justice for survivors? This was the question motivating the research project to produce international protection and investigative standards for mass graves, which resulted in the creation of the Bournemouth Protocol on Mass Grave Protection and Investigation. The research was premised upon broad and inclusive stakeholder consultation to ensure suitability, completeness and sustainability of project outcomes as well as to generate acceptance, endorsement and implementation. To realise the project we used a combination of desk-based research, round-table discussion with expert-participants from a variety of disciplines and cultural backgrounds and anonymous external consultation. In this paper, we reflect on the methods and processes used for the purpose of international standard setting based on legal norms. We discuss the choices made along the way in facilitating this cross-disciplinary, international, inclusive and collaborative project. In doing so, we explore the function of the research process in light of the need to ensure that the Protocol reflects the different and possibly conflicting needs and sensitivities of survivors vis-à-vis the demands of criminal justice, capacity, resources and scientifically robust practices. We outline the challenges experienced and anticipated in evaluating approaches, agreeing definitions, identifying commonalities, negotiating differences and adapting to Covid-19 as part of the process of translating legal norms into policy and practice for achieving effective impact.

Communication is the essence of interpersonal relations. The outcomes of all the activities we carry out depend on how we communicate, and in spite of the fact that it is essential that we prove our communication skills, we are poorer and poorer at doing so. Our study aims at revealing whether and to what extent young graduates of Romanian universities are aware of the importance of acquiring, practising and improving their communication skills, the more so that such abilities are decisive when it comes to achieving success in one’s career. Our study was conducted between 2-13 May, 2019 on the basis of an online questionnaire. The research methodology used in order to achieve the objectives formulated in the study consists in quantitative research, by means of a survey supported via an online questionnaire. The analysis of the data collected by means of the questionnaire was done using techniques such as: frequency of occurence of the answers to the questions addressed to the participants in the study, multiple response analysis and, where appropriate, in order to enhance the interpretation of the results, the calculation of the interquartiles applied to the questions quoted on a 10 point Likert-type scale. The 195 answers received were validated, analysed and processed econometrically using the SPSS for Windows and ANOVA applications. On the one hand, We have noticed that universities do not ensure minimum training to the future graduates with respect to the acquisition and development of communication and negotiation skills. For this matter we intend to extend the study in the near future, to see if this is the result of a lack of concern/interest on the part of the universities and/or on the part of future graduates. At the same time, we have found that the future university graduates are not stimulated to become aware of the importance of developing their communication and negotiation skills or to actively participate in various forms of scientific interaction such as national or international scientific sessions, round tables, meetings with outstanding representatives of the business environment, etc. Obviously, we are aware of the limitations of our study. Thus, we consider that its addressability was rather restricted. The group of respondents included very young graduates of economic higher education institutions. On the other hand, the respondents were not previously selected, so that there is the risk that the points of view expressed would be based not only on experience, but on intuition. Extending the respondent base (both in terms of age/expertise and field of activity) is also and important point for future action. Finally, we have formulated several proposals meant to contribute, in our opinion, to giving more importance to the training and development of business communication and negotiation abilities as a prerequisite of career success. Keywords: career success, graduates, communication abilities, interpersonal relations

On the 25th of September, 2015 the Polish Parliament adopted the act amending the 1989 Act on Associations. Though there had been eight subsequent amendments, the 2015 act was the first aiming to substantially adapt the Act on Associations – the first legal effect of the political consensus achieved within the Round Table negotiations of the then Communist government and the “democratic opposition” – to new social and economic conditions of Poland. 26 years of functioning of the Act have been the time of passage from “real socialism” to “democratic state of law” having to base, according to the 1997 Constitution, on “social market economy”, and from a practical isolation of Poland within its borders to its opening to the world, in particular within the framework of European institutions. The article sketches, also on the basis of the author’s personal experience due to his participation in drafting and legislative works, the course of the revision works initiated in 2009, in particular of parliamentary works on the 2014 President’s draft law, as well as their limited results achieved in the 2015 act. Analyses of causes of such limitation are presented on the plane of the most important items of the pre- -parliamentary and parliamentary debates, i.e. right of legal persons to associate on equal terms with physical persons (not included in the President’s proposal), right of foreigners to associate on equal terms with citizens (and inhabitants) of Poland (its application had been proposed by the President, but not included in the act), and legal effect of the, generally agreed, elevation of the status of “ordinary association” on functioning of the present ordinary associations that would not wish to become new ordinary associations; the latter question relates to the fundamental issue of the sense of the freedom of association.

2018 we are commemorating the hundredth anniversary of Polish independence regained after the years of partitions of Poland. Special celebrations are on all over the country; many events are planned to be continued up to 2021 in line with, inter alia, the programme of the Ministry of Culture and National Heritage named Niepodległa 2017– 2021. The article presents the results of research on the material artefacts left behind by the not easily defined historic formation of the years 1968–1989, which can be generally described as an anti-communist civil resistance in the Polish People’s Republic. The actions taken by the resistance started from the so-called March events as well as the foundation of the “Ruch” Organisation. It was followed by: the Workers’ Defence Committee, the Committee for Social Self-Defence “KOR”, the Movement for Defence of Human and Civic Rights, the Confederation of Independent Poland, the Movement of Young Poland; next came: the Independent Self-governing Labour Union “Solidarity”, the Independent Students’ Association, and many smaller organisations or parties, up to the negotiations of the so-called Round Table. The opposition to communist regime was a major factor in the process of regaining by Poland its full independence, restoration of market economy, and putting an end to censorship that had been affecting the freedom of speech. The huge amount of published prohibited materials from this historic period, the so-called second circulation, remained: books, periodicals, leaflets, photos, posters, stamps, badges, cassette tapes, as well as printing machines, duplicating machines, broadcasting equipment, and other material remains. They are presently collected by Polish museums, some of them still in the process of organisation; they are also in possession of associations and foundations as well as private owners who often create remarkable collections, e.g. Krzysztof Bronowski’s “Muzeum Wolnego Słowa” (Museum of Free Speech) containing 700 000 items that arouse interest of foreign museums. Information about the individual oppositionists, events, underground prints and organisations published in the Internet also adds to the legacy of anticommunist resistance; among the available sources are: mentioned above “Muzeum Wolnego Słowa”, Dictionary Niezależni dla Kultury 1976–1989 by the Association of Free Speech, or collection of the “Karta” Centre. The author of the article attempts to classify these collections after interviewing the representatives of relevant institutions and organisations or private owners.

At the beginning of the 1990s the “winds of change” blew through Europe, leading to the fall of Communism and regime change in several Eastern-European countries. The domino effect started in Poland with the Round Table negotiations that ultimately led to democratization of the country. The context that allowed this historical event to occur has been studied, but the talks themselves have not been analyzed in detail. In this article, we undertake this task. Using several complementary analytical approaches – negotiation theory, turning points analysis and dynamical systems – we study the process of getting to an agreement, focusing on the seven key issues of the negotiations. We treat the Round Table Talks both as a unique case of negotiations, given its structure and the context in which it happened, as well as an event comparable to other negotiations and connecting to the broader negotiation literature. Results of our inquiries show the importance of procedures during the talks and highlight the role played by motivation in propelling the negotiating parties to an agreement. We discuss the implications of our findings for negotiation theory and for the broader context of the historical event.

Poland in 1988 was on the edge of economic, social and political collapse. The two antagonistic entities – the communist party and the government on one side and the Solidarity movement on the other - were each too weak to overcome the crisis by itself. Undertaking negotiations appeared to be the last chance to solve the crisis peacefully. There was a number of external circumstances and opportunities that supported undertaking the Talks, including Michail Gorbachev's perestroika in the East, Ronald Reagan's anti-communist policies in the West, the support of the Catholic Church and the support of the vast majority of Polish society. The whole Round Table story can be viewed as a transformation from a zero-sum game to a cooperative non zero-sum game with the solution close to a Pareto optimal solution. The processes included, among others: concentration on problems rather than people; building a mutual trust; creating the idea of the common good; and partitioning negotiations into many teams thereby creating a decision-making structure that was both hierarchical and flexible. After thirty years, both democracy and the rule of law are at stake again in Poland. Unfortunately, however, it does not seem that today’s socio-political situation is capable of fostering negotiation methods for solving the nation’s problems.

Abstract There is widespread recognition that trade and investment agreements (TIAs) can affect health services, access to medicines, NCD prevention (particularly related to tobacco, alcohol and unhealthy food) and health systems structures. In addition, these binding international economic agreements can constrain the policy space available for innovative, evidence-based health policymaking. Although TIAs can have positive outcomes for employment and economic growth, these benefits are only likely to accrue when governments are pro-active in implementing complementary policies to mitigate impacts on other sectors and to address potential inequalities arising. The aim of this panel session is to examine the ways in which TIAs can be designed to achieve economic goals while also protecting public health, and identify complementary policy measures that may be needed as well as strategies for strategic policy engagement. This panel will be hosted by the UK-PRP PETRA Network (Prevention of the noncommunicable disease using trade agreements). The UK will be negotiating a range of new TIAs over the coming years, representing a window of opportunity for strategic engagement with policymakers regarding how public health can be protected and promoted within these agreements. There is an emerging global body of evidence regarding how consideration of health can be integrated into TIAs, both textually and through strategic engagement with policymakers before and during the negotiation phase. Experience to date indicates common global challenges and opportunities for health and trade, as well as significant potential for cross country learning regarding trade and health. The panel discussion will use the UK experience as a springboard to address these global issues. The expert panel, drawn from the PETRA Network with expertise in political economy, trade law, economics and public health advocacy, will provide brief overview of the current issues in trade and health and how public health can be protected in trade agreements. The 5-minute panel presentations will briefly summarise how inclusions in TIAs can support and protect policy space for health systems and health services, access to medicines, NCD prevention, and nutrition and food systems. The session will then open for a roundtable discussion among participants regarding 1) country-specific examples and questions regarding health protections; 2) experiences related to health-trade policy engagement; 3) lessons for elevating health on the political agenda, particularly regarding trade. (Note that if there are more than 16 participants, then the workshop will split into small groups for discussion with panel/ PETRA Network resource people. The panel session and discussion will provide the basis for a planned public health-oriented briefing note by the PETRA Network on including public health considerations in trade and investment agreements. Key messages Including consideration of health in trade and investment, agreements can protect policy autonomy for public health and promote good public health outcomes; In order to promote consideration of public health in trade and investment agreements, strategic engagement with trade policymakers before and during the negotiation period is critical.

When we think of human history, it is easy to conclude that violent conflicts are unavoidable. Furthermore, in remembering history, we usually recall violent times and are less likely to remember peaceful societal change. Given the way we remember our history, it is easy to lose sight of the existence of peaceful conflict resolutions or other positive societal changes. The Polish Round Table Talks (RT) that took place in 1989 at times of growing political and economic instabilities serve as an example of peaceful and effective negotiation between two opposing and, one might argue, exclusive ideologies. These talks resulted in an agreement between the Communist government of Poland and the opposition movement Solidarity and paved the road towards the present, democratic and independent Polish state. In this commentary I am going to extrapolate some important socio-psychological mechanisms in the light of contributions made by Janusz Reykowski and Janusz Grzelak - both social psychologists. More specifically, I would like to discuss a specific perception of the other negotiating partner that was activated, formed and maintained during the negotiation, which facilitated the successful outcome. I will argue that the perception of shared morality (perceptions of similarity between the in-group and the out-group on the dimension of morality) was an important socio-psychological mechanism that enabled a stream of other positive psychological processes such as development of trust, as well as cooperative and common-oriented goal tendencies.

Abstract Achieving Universal Health Coverage (UHC) represents a global commitment and is part of the Sustainable Development Goals. The UHC Political Declaration states 'high prices for some health products, and inequitable access to such products within and among countries, as well as financial hardships associated with high prices of health products continue to impede progress towards achieving UHC'. The rapid rise and cost of new therapies has led to polarised discussions on what constitutes a fair price, whether R&D costs justify the prices, and whether the current intellectual property protection framework is appropriate for global public health goods. In this light, we are progressively moving from value-based pricing to fair and sustainable pricing; fair pricing carries the notion of just proportion of value to all involved parties. To render this possible, all relevant stakeholders need to be involved in transparent processes characterized by democratic representation, with communication and information exchanges safeguarded to establish what is fair and what is sustainable. HTA can help towards this as it is a tool to inform pricing and planning decisions, potential investment or disinvestment decisions, decisions on cross-country collaboration for price negotiation, and state decisions to invest in R&D or in manufacturing, or to negotiate supply. HTA allows capturing the needs and preferences of users of the health system and carries the potential to determine societal value in relation to public reimbursement. Governance mechanisms allowing HTA to be organised as a continuous evidence-informed deliberative process could function as the necessary exchange platform for all relevant stakeholders. For an interdisciplinary examination of deliberation in HTA, and to establish the key attributes the notion of fairness can carry, it is important to bring together different perspectives. Evidence-informed decision-making, and processes which ensure transparency and legitimacy, may require changes in evidence generation, but, also, in the legislative, regulatory and pricing frameworks. What is already feasible will be discussed, e.g., cases where information exchange and centralised procurement resulted in improved negotiation, along with how sound governance structures could support stakeholder representation and involvement. The principal objectives of the workshop are 1) to explore notions of fairness and approaches deemed feasible and relevant, and 2) to identify, through multistakeholder dialogue, key attributes for ensuring legitimate decision-making, and UHC incl. through fair pricing. Academia, HTA agencies, incl. from Low- and Middle-Income Countries (LMICs), the World Health Organization, payers, and patients are represented in the panel. Each speaker will make a 12-min presentation, followed by a 30-min discussion between panel and audience. An interactive element will allow the audience to respond to Yes/No statements and submit questions. Key messages Deliberative processes can contribute to establish multi-stakeholder agreement on what constitutes fair pricing. HTA as a deliberative process can critically contribute towards legitimate decision-making.

Abstract Access to medicines, equity and fair pricing have been intensely debated in the context of EU policies and global health priorities for many years prior to the COVID-19 pandemic. To this effect, there have been efforts to develop mechanisms to jointly assess health technologies (HTA Regulation) and to establish cross-border partnerships for price negotiation and procurement. Although TFEU (art.168) is limiting the scope of activities and decisions to be taken at the EU level for public health matters, the Commission has also played an active part in global health discussions in the G20 and in the G7 since 2010, and there is explicit commitment to SDGs, and in particular UHC (SDG3.8) ‘leaving no one behind’ (2019). Indeed, according to its commitments “the EU advocates equitable, universal and high-quality healthcare coverage and promotes fair, effective financing of research to benefit the health of all [and] it is working to ensure that new products are safe, effective, accessible and affordable.” In the context of the COVID-19 pandemic, the EU came together in solidarity within and beyond its borders, including through joint procurement of countermeasures. At the same time, different instruments were developed to combat the pandemic globally, such ACT-Accelerator deploying the diagnostic and medicinal products, including, vaccines, and its COVAX Global Vaccines Facility to scale up production and establish consensus on the international allocation of these products. In this transitional phase, issues that arise are: What is the role of the EU in shaping European public health and global health? What are the fundamental principles enshrined in legislative and non-legislative instruments determining EU policies and actions of global health impact? Is such EU policymaking informed by evidence? Are the necessary interdisciplinary and intersectoral partnerships in place to generate the necessary evidence? Which instruments and mechanisms have been the most efficient and effective in combating the COVID-19 pandemic? Are they relevant for future pandemics and for increasing preparedness and resilience? What has been the role and contribution of the EU in these initiatives? What are the values and fundamental principles determining EU action and policy, and to what degree are EU policies evidence-informed? Will the EU's efforts be determined by G20 decision-making, interests and priorities? Each panel member will briefly (5 min) present work conducted to inform European public health and global health policies. The panel will then discuss EU public health and global health policies, assessing the extent to which they are evidence-informed and the degree to which they reflect the fundamental principles of the Union. There will be two rounds of questions/statements, the first elucidating the role of the EU, the second examining it in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic and future pandemics, incl. in the context of the development of the Pandemic Treaty. Key messages • Sound governance, transparency and implementation monitoring is required for all instruments and mechanisms to combat the COVID-19 pandemic and ones, with due consideration to sustainability and UHC. • The EU’s role in global health needs to be strengthened via interdisciplinary and intersectoral collaboration for evidence-informed policies, and in a manner consistent with EU fundamental principles. Speakers/Panellists Dimitra Lingri National Organization for Health Care Services Provision, Athens, Greece Rosa Castro European Public Health Alliance, Brussels, Belgium Tom Buis Wemos, Amsterdam, Netherlands Aurelie Mahalatchimy UMR DICE CERIC & EAHL Interest Group on Supranational Biolaw, Aix-en-Provence, France

The Round Table (RT) Talks in Poland in February-April 1989 initiated rapid transition from an authoritarian political system and a centralized, state-controlled economy to democratic capitalism. They also triggered a cascade of changes across the whole of Eastern Europe (the former Soviet block). In this paper I analyze the psychological factors that contributed to success of the talks. During the RT talks, the representatives of the ruling party in Poland („communists”) negotiated with the representatives of „Solidarity” (“democratic opposition”) - the very broad socio-political movement representing Polish aspirations to democracy and sovereignty, separate from the Soviet Union. The paper describes the organization of the negotiations (a complex structure with about 700 participants) and the sources of an initial deep antagonism between the two sides. It addresses the main psychological factors that made it possible for this antagonism to be overcome and for the development of an agreed plan to democratize the Polish political system. This includes an analysis of: the general approach to negotiations; the initial definitions of the negotiating situation and the ways in which these definitions changed; the psychological characteristics of the negotiating situation which fostered cooperative attitudes amongst the negotiations, including in particular the role of group forces. The paper also discusses more generally the relationship between psychological factors and objective conditions in achieving (or impeding) positive outcomes to negotiations around entrenched, seemingly untractable, political conflicts.

The Polish Round Table offers a rare historical example where negotiations between representatives of opposing political sides achieved major political transformation in a peaceful way. Such an outcome should undoubtedly be labeled a success. However, in our commentary, taking the example of the Polish Round Table, we take a critical look at the interpretation of success of social movements by social scientists. In line with the ethos of social sciences, social scientists value (harmoniously achieved) progressive types of change, such as the change that followed the negotiations of the Polish Round Table. Indeed, when it comes to the Round Table, our definition of success may be blurred by the political evaluation of the changes of 1989 from a liberal perspective. The target articles point out the importance of specific structural conditions (both internal and international) and psychological processes (perceptions of power, efficacy and moral commitment) that led to the successful outcome. We therefore argue that it is pivotal to delineate the conditions of success, if we want to apply them to other contexts without bias. Neither hindsight, nor liberal bias are problematic per se, but they can evoke a form of wishful thinking that, as scientists, we may want to treat with some skepticism.

In this introductory piece to the special issue, I seek to establish the importance of the topic under discussion: that is, the psychology of the 1989 Polish Round Table Talks. I start by underlining the unique opportunity to gain insight into this topic given that two of the main protagonists, Janusz Reykowski on the Government side and Janusz Grzelak on the Solidarity side, are social psychologists. Next, I argue for both the world-historical significance of the Round Table Talks and for the necessity of a psychological dimension to the analysis of what happened. I then address what Psychology provides for an understanding of the Round Table process and what the Round Table process contributes to an understanding of Psychology. Specifically, this turns on the need for a more complex and historical conceptualisation of intergroup relations in which the very nature of the groups in relation may be transformed. I conclude by pointing to further research opportunities on this key question of the configuration and reconfiguration of social groups.

This article discusses the role of historical closure in conflict resolution and reconciliation, departing from the example of the Polish Round Table negotiations in 1989. The concept of a “thick line” (“Gruba kreska” or “Schlussstrich”) was used in several historical contexts, showing the intention to detach from history when resolving pressing current societal issues. Historical evidence suggests that it was an intentionally chosen strategy by both sides taking part in the Round Table negotiations in 1989. Historical closure is known to have good consequences for building mutual trust, improving attitudes and making contact interventions more effective in improving intergroup relations. This is mostly attributed to the fact that historical crimes can have a long-standing impact on intergroup relations: past victimhood and perpetratorship lead to current grievances, denial, and mistrust. Only when these historical roles are overcome can both parties achieve any agreement. At the same time, historical closure breeds a sense of injustice among political followers and gives birth to numerous conspiracy theories. This article analyzes these problems in the Polish context and beyond.

Abstract How do adversaries build social bonds in peace talks and how decisive are such bonds for the success of peace processes? The article investigates the micro-sociological thesis that diplomatic face-to-face interaction can generate social bonds. It is based on direct observations from peace talks between the Philippine government and the communist party (NDFP) in January 2017 and backchannel talks in 2020. The article shows that the talks took the form of friendly and disengaged interaction with very little dominating or conflictual interaction. Observations and interviews with participants show that social bonds were generated at the negotiations. However, the talks broke down immediately after the third round and has not been running since, apart from back-channel negotiations. The article discusses the remarkable contrast between the good atmosphere at the table and the breakdown of negotiations, arguing that while face-to-face interaction holds transformative potential, the right people need to be at the table for it to bring peace. As neither the president of the Philippines, Rodrigo Duterte, nor the hardliners of his government were present at the table, the transformative potential was limited. The article therefore questions the transformative potential of peace talks, if leaders and hardliners are not present.

AbstractIn January 1983, Japan finalized an economic assistance agreement with the Republic of Korea (ROK), pledging to extend $4 billion in economic aid to the country concerned. Prior to the finalization of the agreement, both countries held rounds of negotiation on the aid package conditions, and this led to them entering into a period of growing political friction. Despite this, a political consensus was eventually hammered out in 1983 over their disagreement, and this had a far-reaching effect in stabilizing the political relationship between the countries. Substantial academic research has been carried out on this topic, but the reasons behind Japan’s commitment to rounds of political negotiation with the ROK have yet to be positively analyzed and convincingly substantiated. In light of this fact, the main aim of this article is to analyze the motivational forces that brought Japan to the negotiating table with the ROK. More specifically, it focuses on analyzing the effects of the formalization process of the US-Japan agreement that served to induce Japan to address the ROK-aid negotiation issue conscientiously. The analysis reveals clearly that the major factor that spurred Japan to revisit its ROK’s aid package conditions was Japan’s concern over its security burden-sharing scheme with the United States. It is likely that in July 1981, in his summit meeting with President Ronald Reagan, Prime Minister Suzuki Zenkō pledged to initiate official talks with the ROK in response to the ROK’s request for an extended economic aid package. In tracing the course of US-Japan political negotiations from the period between 1977 and the formalization of the ROK’s aid agreement, this analysis reveals that the United States and Japan were of one mind concerning the need for the agreement as one of the critical means of resolving a myriad of their security concerns. It is also shown, however, that the countries arrived at their shared view from different perspectives, which were politically beneficial to their own interests. On the one hand, the United States expected Japan to assume greater responsibilities in security burden sharing, in line with its global economic status. On the other hand, partly because of the political limitations of shouldering a regional security role, Japan’s primary concern was to minimize its share of security burdens as far as possible and in such a way as not to disrupt its harmonious relationship with the United States. On top of this, insofar as the United States was concerned, it seemed to be unwise to request that Japan overshare the bilateral security defense expenditure, which might be detrimental to its political stability at home and at the same time might affect the credibility of their security alliance. In sum, the article shows that the consensus on aid for the ROK was beneficial to both Japan and the United States in terms of resolving their differences in the political operation of their security alliance scheme, including burden-sharing responsibilities. This was the real reason for Japan’s commitment to revisit its economic aid package with the ROK.

Based on the Round Table Conference between Indonesia and the Netherlands' representatives in 1949, West Papua will be delivered to Indonesia a year later. Nevertheless, the Dutch broke their promise to return West Papua to Indonesian sovereignty. The Dutch continued to insist on West Papua as their land and then increased their military presence in West Papua to prepare for defending the territory. Responding to this, initially, Indonesia made peaceful efforts, namely bilateral diplomacy within the Indonesian-Dutch Union ties, continued with trilateral diplomacy and diplomacy efforts using the Asian African Conference and United Nations organizations. However, Indonesian diplomatic efforts met with deadlock. Hence, another form of diplomacy, the military effort, has been displayed. This study's main aim is to review the 1962 military confrontation on salvaging West Papua in the analysis on war theory. Also, to prove that with sufficient military strength, the country will confidently step up to be the negotiating table winner. The Indonesian military strength at that time was playing a significant role as a deterrent effect. The research uses a qualitative descriptive phenomenology method, using data sources from several books and journals available. The result of the research shows that Indonesia absolutely needs a modern and more rigid military force to maintain its sovereignty, protect our Island and its natural resources. Without the deterrent effect of military power, Indonesia will be underestimated in international politics.

Abstract Although the potential for price transparency in pharmaceutical systems has been widely debated, there has been less discussion of the empirical basis to inform policymaking in this area. The lack of price transparency is viewed as one of the biggest barriers to joint pharmaceutical procurement, an initiative that has the potential to drive down pharmaceutical prices by pooling the purchasing power of smaller populations and thus improve the affordability of medicines. However, critics of the call for increased transparency in pharmaceutical pricing argue that such policies would lead to price inflation, particularly for countries with lower ability to pay or limited negotiating power. Given the widespread use of negotiated confidential discounts granted to different payers by manufacturers and the pervasiveness of international reference pricing as a policy mechanism for determining pharmaceutical prices, transparency policies would not only affect countries directly implementing them. As a result, policy-makers are often reluctant and unsure about how to proceed; this became readily apparent in the discussions around the Transparency Resolution at the World Health Assembly in May 2019. A concise overview of the evidence on the consequences of transparency policies is lacking. This panel draws on a wide-ranging literature review that sought to answer the following key research questions: Is there empirical evidence that examines the effect of price transparency on price development (within countries implementing the policy as well as other countries) In the area of pharmaceuticals? Regarding other types of healthcare goods and services? Regarding products from other industries? What insights can we learn from the available evidence and how transferrable is evidence from other healthcare dimensions or other industries to the issue of price transparency for pharmaceuticals? In this workshop we will bring together researchers to discuss the type of evidence available the extent to which it is empirically grounded. The workshop aims to address this issue and highlight evidence gaps for and against price transparency policies. Each panellist will talk for a maximum of 10 minutes presenting insights from their work; audience members will be actively invited to share their insights and reflections. Key messages The debate on price transparency in pharmaceutical systems needs to advance by looking at the full range of evidence available. Highlighting evidence gaps can endorse real world experiments to test theoretical arguments.

The political events of the late 1980s, as well as the results of the Round Table negotiations, needed their formal confirmation in the Constitution in order to secure their durability. During the political transformation in the years 1989–1991, there were seven amendments of the Constitution of 1952 adopted, out of which the first two were particularly important. The first amendment of April 1989 restored, among others, the office of the President as a head of state and the Senate, as well as established the National Council of the Judiciary as the body protecting independent courts and judges. The second amendment of December 1989 introduced the fundamental principles such as a democratic state ruled by law, social justice, political pluralism, freedom of economic activity and property protection. The current Constitution of 1997 has been amended only twice – in 2006 in regard to the extradition of a Polish citizen (art. 55 par. 3) and in 2009 in regard to passive electoral rights (art. 99 par. 3). As shown by the political experience after 2015, the procedure for adopting the amendment to the Constitution set out in art. 235 is extremely difficult, which has led to a situation in which it is bypassed and the content of constitutional provisions is changed by ordinary provisions.

Topic: Perspectives on Linkage Involving Indigenous dataIndigenous populations across the globe are reaffirming their sovereignty rights in the collection and use of Indigenous data. The Indigenous data sovereignty movement has been widely influential and can be unsettling for those who routinely use population-level linked data that include Indigenous identifiers. Ethical policies that stipulate community engagement for access, interpretation and dissemination of Indigenous data create an enabling environment through the critical process of negotiating and navigating data access in partnership with communities. This session will be designed to create space for leading Indigenous voices to set the tone for the discussion around Indigenous population data linkage. Objectives: To provide participants with an opportunity to build on the themes of Indigenous Data Sovereignty presented in the keynote session as they apply to diverse Indigenous populations. To explore approaches to the linkage of Indigenous-identified population data across four countries, including First Nations in three Canadian regions. To share practical applications of Indigenous data sovereignty on data linkage and analysis and discussion. To center Indigenous-driven data linkage and research. Facilitator:Jennifer Walker. Canada Research Chair in Indigenous Health, Laurentian University and Indigenous Lead, Institute for Clinical Evaluative Sciences. Collaborators: Alberta: Bonnie Healy, Tina Apsassin, Chyloe Healy and William Wadsworth (Alberta First Nations Information Governance Centre) Ontario: Carmen R. Jones (Chiefs of Ontario) and Jennifer Walker (Institute for Clinical Evaluative Sciences) British Columbia: Jeff Reading (Providence Health Centre) and Laurel Lemchuk-Favel (First Nations Health Authority) Australia: Raymond Lovett (Australian National University) Aotearoa / New Zealand: Donna Cormack (University of Otago) United States: Stephanie Rainie and Desi Rodriguez-Lonebear (University of Arizona) Session format: 90 minutesCollaborators will participate in a round-table introduction to the work they are doing. Collaborators will discuss the principles underlying their approaches to Indigenous data linkage as well as practical and concrete solutions to challenges. Questions to guide the discussion will be pre-determined by consensus among the collaborators and the themes will include: data governance, community engagement, Indigenous-led linkage and analysis of data, and decision-making regarding access to linked data. Other participants attending the session will be encouraged to listen and will have an opportunity to engage in the discussion and ask questions. Intended output or outcome:The key outcome of the session will be twofold. First, those actively working with Indigenous linked data will have an opportunity for an in-depth and meaningful dialogue about their work, which will promote international collaboration and sharing of ideas. Second, those with less experience and knowledge of the principles of Indigenous data sovereignty and their practical application will have an opportunity to listen to Indigenous people who are advancing the integration of Indigenous ways of knowing into data linkage and analysis. The output of the session will be a summary paper highlighting both the diversity and commonalities of approaches to Indigenous data linkage internationally. Areas where consensus exists, opportunities for collaboration, and challenges will be highlighted.

Introduction There is much to be said about house and home and about our media’s role in defining, enabling, as well as undermining it. […] For we can no longer think about home, any longer than we can live at home, without our media. (Silverstone, “Why Study the Media” 88) For lesbians, inhabiting the queer slant may be a matter of everyday negotiation. This is not about the romance of being off line or the joy of radical politics (though it can be), but rather the everyday work of dealing with the perception of others, with the “straightening devices” and the violence that might follow when such perceptions congeal into social forms. (Ahmed 107) Picture this. Once or twice a week a small, black, portable TV set goes on a journey; down from the lofty heights of the top shelf of the built in storage cupboard into the far corner of the living room. A few hours later, it is being stuffed back into the closet. Not far away across town, another small TV set sits firmly in the corner of a living room. Yet, it remains inanimate for days on end. What do you see? The techno-stories conveyed in this paper are presented through – and anchored to – the idea of the cultural biography of things (Kopytoff 1986), revealing how objects (more specifically media technologies) produce and become part of an articulation of particular and conflicting moral economies of households (Silverstone, “Domesticating Domestication”; Silverstone, Hirsch and Morley, “Information and Communication”; Green). In this context, the concept of the domestication of ICTs has been widely applied in Media Studies during the 1990s and, more recently, been updated to account for the changes in technology, household composition, media regulation, and in fact the dislocation of domesticity itself (Berker, Hartmann, Punie and Ward). Remarkable as these mainstream techno-stories are in their elucidation of contemporary techno-practices, what is still absent is the consideration of how gender and sexuality intersect and are being done through ICT consumption at home, work and during leisure practices in alternative or queer households and families. Do lesbians ‘make’ house and home and in what ways are media and ICTs implicated in the everyday work of queer home-making strategies? As writings on queer subjects and cyberspace have proliferated in recent years, we can now follow a move to contextualize queer virtualities across on and offline experiences, mapping ‘complex geographies of un/belonging’ (Bryson, MacIntosh, Jordan and Lin) and a return to consider online media as part of a bigger ICT package that constitutes our queer everyday life-worlds (Karl). At the same time, fresh perspectives are now being developed with regards to the reconfiguration of domestic values by gay men and lesbians, demonstrating the ongoing processes of probing and negotiation of ‘home’ and the questioning of domesticity itself (Gorman-Murray). By aligning ideas and concepts developed by media theorists in the field of media domestication and consumption as well as (sexual) geographers, this paper makes a contribution towards our understanding of a queer sense of home and domesticity through the technological and more specifically television. It is based on two case studies, part of a larger longitudinal ethnographic study of women-centred households in Brighton, UK. Gill Valentine has identified the home and workplaces as spaces, which are encoded as heterosexual. Sexual identities are being constrained by ‘regulatory regimes’, promoting the normalcy of heterosexuality (4). By recounting the techno-stories of lesbian women, we can re-examine notions of the home as a stable, safe, given entity; the home as a particular feminine sphere as well as the leaky boundaries between public and private. As media and ICTs are also part of a (hetero)sexual economy where they, in their materiality as well as textual significance become markers of sexual difference, we can to a certain extent perceive them as ‘straightening devices’, to borrow a phrase from Sara Ahmed. Here, we will find the articulation of a host of struggles to ‘fight the norms’, but not necessarily ‘step outside the system completely, full-time’ (Ben, personal interview [all the names of the interviewees have been changed to protect their anonymity]). In this sense, the struggle is not only to counter perceived heterosexual home-making and techno-practices, but also to question what kinds of practices to adopt and repeat as ‘fitting in’ mechanism. Significantly, these practices leave neither ‘homonormative’ nor ‘heteronormative’ imaginaries untouched and remind us that: In the case of sexual orientation, it is not simply that we have it. To become straight means that we not only have to turn towards the objects that are given to us by heterosexual culture, but also that we must “turn away” from objects that take us off this line. (Ahmed 21) In this sense then, we are all part of drawing and re-drawing the lines of belonging and un-belonging within the confines of a less than equal power-economy. Locating Dys-Location – Is There a Lesbian in the Home? In his effort to re-situate the perspective of media domestication in the 21st century, David Morley points us to ‘the process of the technologically mediated dislocation of domesticity itself’ (“What’s ‘home’” 22). He argues that ‘under the impact of new technologies and global cultural flows, the home nowadays is not so much a local, particular “self-enclosed” space, but rather, as Zygmunt Bauman puts it, more and more a “phantasmagoric” place, as electronic means of communication allow the radical intrusion of what he calls the “realm of the far” (traditionally, the realm of the strange and potentially troubling) into the “realm of the near” (the traditional “safe space” of ontological security) (23). The juxtaposition of home as a safe, ‘given’ place of ontological security vis a vis the more virtual and mediated realm of the far and potentially intrusive is itself called into question, if we re-consider the concepts of home and (dis)location in the light of lesbian geographies and ‘the production and regulation of heterosexual space’ (Valentine 1). The dislocation of home and domesticity experienced through consumption of (mobile) media technologies has always already been under-written by the potential feeling of dys-location and ‘trouble’ by lesbians on the grounds of sexual orientation. The lesbian experience disrupts the traditionally modern and notably western ideal of home as a safe haven and refuge by making visible the leaky boundaries between private seclusion and public surveillance, as much as it may (re)invest in the production of ideas and ideals of home-making and domesticity. This is illustrated for example by the way in which the heterosexuality of a parental home ‘can inscribe the lesbian body by restricting the performative aspects of a lesbian identity’, which may be subverted by covert acts of resistance (Johnston and Valentine 111; Elwood) as well as by the potentially greater freedoms of lesbian identity within a ‘lesbian home’, which may nevertheless come under scrutiny and ‘surveillance of others, especially close family, friends and neighbours’ (112). Nevertheless, more recently it has also been demonstrated how even overarching structures of familial heteronormativity are opportune to fissures and thereby queered, as Andrew Gorman-Murray illustrates in his study of Australian gay, lesbian and bisexual youth in supportive family homes. So what is, or rather, what can constitute a ‘lesbian home’ and how is it negotiated through everyday techno-practices? In and Out of the Closet – The Straight-Speaking ‘Telly’ As places go, the city of Brighton and Hove in the south-east of England fetches the prize for the highest ratio of LGBT people amongst its population in the UK, sitting at about 15%. In this sense, the home-making stories to which I will refer, of a white, lesbian single mother in her early 40s from a working-class background and a white lesbian/dyke couple in their 30s (from middle-/working-class backgrounds), are already engendered in the sense that Brighton (to them) represented in part a kind of ‘home-coming’ in itself. Helen and Ben, a lesbian butch-femme couple (‘when it takes our fancy’, Helen), had recently bought a terraced 1930s three-bedroom house with a sizeable garden in a soon to be up and coming residential area of Brighton. The neighbours are a mix of elderly, long-standing residents and ‘hetero’ families, or ‘breeders’, as Ben sometimes referred to them. Although they had lived together before, the new house constituted their first purchase together. This was significant especially for Helen, as it made their lives more ‘equal’ in terms of what goes where and the input on the overall interior decoration. Ben had shifted from London to Brighton a few years previously for a ‘quieter life’, but wished to remain connected to a queer community. Helen had made the move to Brighton from Germany – to study and enjoy the queer feel, and never left. Both full-time professionals, Helen worked in the publishing industry and Ben as a social worker. Already considering Brighton their ‘home’ town, the house purchase itself constituted another home-making challenge: as a lesbian/dyke couple on equal footing they were prepared to accept to live in a pre-dominantly straight neighbourhood, as it afforded them more space for money compared to the more visibly gay male living areas in the centre of town. The relative invisibility of queer women (and their neighbourhoods) compared to queer men in Brighton may, as it does elsewhere, be connected to issues of safety (Elwood) as well as the comparative lack of financial capacity (Bell and Valentine). Walking up to this house on the first night of my stay with them, I am struck by just how inconspicuous it appears – one of many in a long street, up a steep hill: ‘Most housing in contemporary western societies is “designed, built, financed and intended for nuclear families”’ (Bell in Bell and Valentine 7). I cannot help but think – more as a reflection on myself than of what I am about to experience – is this it? Is this the ‘domesticated lesbian’? What I see appears ‘familiar’, ‘tamed’, re-tracing the straight lines of heterosexual culture. Helen opens the door and orders me directly into the kitchen. She says ‘Ben is in the living room, watching television… Ben takes great pleasure in watching “You’ve been Framed”’. (Fieldnotes) In this context, it is appropriate to focus on the television and its place within their home-making strategies. Television, in its historical and symbolic significance, could be deemed the technological co-terminus to the ideal nuclear family home. Lynn Spigel has shown through her examination of the cultural history of TV’s formative years in post World War America how television became central to providing representations of family life, but also how the technology itself, as an object, informed material and symbolic transformations within the domestic sphere and beyond. Over the past fifty years as Morley points out, the TV has moved from its fixed place in the living room to become more personalised and encroach on other spaces in house and home and has now, in fact, re-entered the public realm (see airports and shopping malls) where it originated. At present, ‘the home itself can seen as having become … the “last vehicle”, where comfort, safety and stability can happily coexist with the possibility of instantaneous digitalised “flight” to elsewhere – and the instantaneous importation of desired elements of the “elsewhere” into the home’ (Morley, “Media, Modernity” 200). Importantly, as Morley confirms, today’s high-tech discourse is often still framed by a nostalgic vision of ‘family values’. There was only one TV set in Helen and Ben’s house: a black plastic cube with a 16” screen. It was decidedly ‘unglamorous’ as Helen pointed out. During the first round of ‘home-making’ efforts, it had found its way into a corner in the front room, with the sofa and armchair arranged in viewing distance. It was a very ‘traditional’ living room set-up. During my weeklong stay and for some weeks after, it was mostly Ben on her own ‘watching the telly’ in the early evenings ‘vegging out’ after work. Helen, meanwhile, was in the kitchen with the radio on or a CD playing, or in her ‘ICT free’ bedroom, reading. Then, suddenly, the TV had disappeared. During one of our ‘long conversations’ (Silverstone, Hirsch and Morley, “Listening”, 204) it transpired that it was now housed for most of the time on the top shelf of a storage cupboard and only ‘allowed out’ ever so often. As a material object, it had easily found its place as a small, but nevertheless quite central feature in the living room. Imbued with the cultural memory of their parents’ and that of many other living rooms, it was ‘tempting’ and easy for them to ‘accept’ it as part of a setting up home as a couple. Ben explained that they both fell into a habit, an everyday routine, to sit around it. However, settling into their new home with too much ‘ease’, they began to question their techno-practice around the TV. For Helen in particular, the aesthetics of the TV set did not fit in with her plans to re-decorate the house loosely in art deco style, tethered to her femme identity. They did not envisage creating a home that would potentially signal that a family with 2.4 children lives here. ‘The “normality” of [working] 9-5’ (Ben), was sufficient. Establishing a perceived visual difference in their living room, partly by removing the TV set, Helen and Ben aimed to ‘draw a line’ around their home and private sphere vis a vis the rest of the street and, metaphorically speaking, the straight world. The boundaries between the public and private are nevertheless porous, as it is exactly that the public perceptions of a mostly private, domesticated media technology prevent Helen and Ben from feeling entirely comfortable in its presence. It was not only the TV set’s symbolic function as a material object that made them restrict and consciously control the presence of the TV in their home space. One of Helen and Ben’s concerns in this context was that TV, as a broadcast medium, is utterly ‘conservative’ in its content and as such, very much ‘straight speaking’. To paraphrase Helen – you can only read so much between the lines and shout at the telly, it can get tiring. ‘I like watching nature programmes, but they somehow manage even here to make it sound like a hetero narrative’. Ben: ‘yeah – mind the lesbian swans’. The employment of the VCR and renting movies helps them to partly re-dress this perceived imbalance. At the same time, TV’s ‘water-cooler’ effect helps them to stay in tune with what is going on around them and enables them, for example, to participate and intervene in conversations at work. In this sense, watching TV can turn into home-work, which affords a kind of entry ticket to shared life-worlds outside the home and as such can be controlled, but not necessarily abandoned altogether. TV as a ‘straightening device’ may afford the (dis)comfort of a sense of participation in mainstream discourses and the (dis)comfort of serving as a reminder of difference at the same time. ‘It just sits there … apart from Sundays’ – and when the girls come round… Single-parent households are on the rise in the US (Russo Lemor) as well as in the UK. However, the attention given to single-parent families so far focuses pre-dominantly on single mothers and fathers after separation or divorce from a heterosexual marriage (Russo Lemor; Silverstone, “Beneath the Bottom Line”). As (queer) sociologists have began to map the field of ‘families of choice and other life experiments’ (Weeks, Heaphy and Donovan), a more concerted effort to bring together the literatures and to shed more light on the queer techno-practices of alternative families seems necessary. Liz and her young son Tim had moved to Brighton from London. As a lesbian working single mother, she raises Tim pre-dominantly on her own: ‘we are a small family, and that’s fine’. Liz’s home-making narrative is very much driven by her awareness of what she sees as her responsibilities as a mother, a lesbian mother. The move to Brighton was assessed by being able to keep her clients in London (she worked as a self-employed communication and PR person for various London councils) – ‘this is what feeds us’, and the fact that she did not want Tim to go to a ‘badly performing’ school in London. The terraced three-bedroom house she found was in a residential area, not too far from the station and in need of updating and re-decorating. The result of the combined efforts of builders, her dad (‘for some of the DIY’) and herself produced a ‘conventional’ set-up with a living room, a kitchen-diner, a small home-office (for tele-working) and Tim’s and her bedroom. Inconspicuous in its appearance, it was clearly child-oriented with a ‘real jelly bean arch’ in the hallway. The living room is relatively bare, with a big sofa, table and chairs, ‘an ancient stereo-system’ and a ‘battered TV and Video-recorder’ in the corner. ‘We hardly use it’, Liz exclaims. ‘We much rather spend time out and about if there is a chance … quality time, rather than watching TV … or I read him stories in bed. I hate the idea of TV as a baby sitter … I have very deliberately chosen to have Tim and I want to make the most of it’. For Liz, the living room with the TV set in it appears as a kind of gesture to what family homes ‘look like’. As such, the TV and furniture set-up function as a signal and symbol of ‘normality’ in a queer household – perhaps a form of ‘passing’ for visitors and guests. The concern for the welfare of her son in this context is a sign and reflection of a constant negotiation process within a pre-dominantly heterosexual system of cultural symbols and values, which he, of course, is already able to ‘compare’ and evaluate when he is out and about at school or visiting friends in their homes. Unlike in Helen and Ben’s home, the TV is therefore allowed to stay out of the closet. Still, Liz rarely watches TV at all, for reasons not dissimilar to those of Helen and Ben. Apart from this, she shares a lack of spare time with many other single parents. Significantly, the living room and TV do receive a queer ‘make-over’ now and then, when Tim is in bed or with his father on a weekend and ‘the girls’ come over for a drink, chat and video viewing (noticeably, the living room furniture and TV get pushed around and re-arranged to accommodate the crowd). In this sense, Liz, in her home-making practices, carefully manages and performs ‘object relationships’ that allow her and her son to ‘fit in’ as much as to advocate ‘difference’ within the construction of ‘normalcy’. The pressures of this negotiation process are clearly visible. Conclusion – Re-Engendering Home and Techno-Practices As women as much as lesbians, Helen, Ben and Liz are, like so many others, part of a historical and much wider struggle regarding visibility, equality and justice. If this article had been dedicated to gay/queer men and their techno- and home-making sensibilities, it would have read somewhat differently to be sure. Of course, questions of gender and sexual identities would have remained equally paramount, as they always should, enfolding questions of class, race and ethnicity (Pink 2004). The concept and practice of home have a deeply engendered history. Queer practices ‘at home’ are always already tied up with knowledges of gendered practices and spaces. As Morley has observed, ‘space is gendered on a variety of scales … the local is often associated with femininity and seen as the natural basis of home and community, into which an implicitly masculine realm intrudes’ (“Home Territories” 59). As the public and private realms have been gendered masculine and feminine respectively, so have media and ICTs. Although traditional ideas of home and gender relations are beginning to break down and the increasing personalization and mobilization of ICTs blur perceptions of the public and private, certain (idealized, heterosexualized and gendered) images of home, domesticity and family life seem to be recurring in popular discourse as well as mainstream academic writing. As feminist theorists have illustrated the ways in which gender needs to be seen as performative, feminist and queer theorists also ought to work further on finding vocabularies and discourses that capture and highlight diversity, without re-invoking the spectre of the nuclear family (home) itself (Weeks, Heaphy and Donovan). What I found was not the ‘domesticated’ lesbian ‘at home’ in a traditional feminine sphere. Rather, I experienced a complex set of re-negotiations and re-inscriptions of the domestic, of gender and sexual values and identities as well as techno-practices, leaving a trace, a mark on the system no matter how small (Helen: ‘I do wonder what the neighbours make of us’). The pressure and indeed desire to ‘fit in’ is often enormous and therefore affords the re-tracing of certain trodden paths of domesticity and ICT consumption. Nevertheless, I am looking forward to the day when even Liz can put that old telly into the closet as it has lost its meaning as a cultural signifier of a particular kind. References Ahmed, Sara. Queer Phenomenology – Orientations, Objects, Others. Durham and London: Duke UP, 2006. Bell, David, and Gill Valentine. “Introduction: Orientations.” mapping desire. Eds. David Bell and Gill Valentine. London: Routledge, 1995. 1-27. Berker, Thomas, Maren Hartmann, Yves Punie and Katie J. Ward, eds. Domestication of Media and Technology. Maidenhead: Open UP, 2006. Bryson, Mary, Lori MacIntosh, Sharalyn Jordan, Hui-Ling Lin. “Virtually Queer?: Homing Devices, Mobility, and Un/Belongings.” Canadian Journal of Communication 31.3 (2006). Elwood, Sarah A.. “Lesbian Living Spaces: Multiple Meanings of Home.” From Nowhere to Everywhere – Lesbian Geographies. Ed. Gill Valentine. New York and London: Harrington Park Press, 2000. 11-27. 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Citation reference for this article MLA Style Karl, Irmi. "Domesticating the Lesbian?: Queer Strategies and Technologies of Home-Making." M/C Journal 10.4 (2007). echo date('d M. Y'); ?> <http://journal.media-culture.org.au/0708/06-karl.php>. APA Style Karl, I. (Aug. 2007) "Domesticating the Lesbian?: Queer Strategies and Technologies of Home-Making," M/C Journal, 10(4). Retrieved echo date('d M. Y'); ?> from <http://journal.media-culture.org.au/0708/06-karl.php>.

It was always based on a teenage love story between the two kids. One is a sniffer and one is not. It was designed for Central Australia because we do write these kids off there. Not only in town, where the headlines for the newspapers every second day is about ‘the problem,’ ‘the teenager problem of kids wandering the streets’ and ‘why don’t we send them back to their communities’ and that sort of stuff. Then there’s the other side of it. Elders in Aboriginal communities have been taught that kids who sniff get brain damage, so as soon as they see a kid sniffing they think ‘well they’re rubbish now, they’re brain damaged.’ So the elders are writing these kids off as well, as in ‘they are brain damaged so they’re no use now, they’ll be in wheelchairs for the rest of their lives.’ This is not true, it’s just information for elders that hasn’t been given to them. That is the world I was working with. I wanted to show two incredibly beautiful children who have fought all their lives just to breathe and how incredibly strong they are and how we should be celebrating them and backing them up. I wanted to show that to Central Australia, and if the rest of Australia or the world get involved that’s fantastic. (Thornton in interview)Warwick Thornton’s 2009 film Samson and Delilah won the hearts of Australians as well as a bag of awards — and rightly so. It is a breathtaking film that, as review after review will tell you, is about the bravery, hopelessness, optimism and struggles of two Indigenous youths. In telling this story, the film extends, inverts and challenges notions of waste: wasted youths, wasted memory, wasted history, wasted opportunities, getting wasted and wasted voices. The narrative and the film as a cultural object raise questions about being discarded and “the inescapable fact that the experience of catastrophe in the past century can only be articulated from its remains, our history sifted from among these storied deposits.” (Neville and Villeneuve 2). The purpose of this paper is to examine reaction to the film, and where this reaction has positioned the film in Australian filmmaking history. In reading the reception of the film, I want to consider the film’s contribution to dialogical cultural representations by applying Marcia Langton’s idea of intersubjectivity.In his review, Sean Gorman argues thatThe main reason for the film’s importance is it enables white Australians who cannot be bothered reading books or engaging with Indigenous Australians in any way (other than watching them play football perhaps) the smallest sliver of a world that they have no idea about. The danger however in an engagement by settler society with a film like Samson and Delilah is that the potential shock of it may be too great, as the world which it portrays is, for many, an unknown Australia. Hence, for the settler filmgoer, the issues that the film discusses may be just too hard, too unreal, and their reaction will be limited to perhaps a brief bout of anger or astonishment followed by indifference. (81.1)It is this “engagement by settler society” that I wish to consider: how the voices that we hear speaking about the film are shifting attention from the ‘Other’ to more dialogical cultural representations, that is, non-Indigenous Australia’s emerging awareness of what has previously been wasted, discarded and positioned as valueless. I find Gorman’s surmise of white Australia’s shock with a world they know nothing about, and their potential power to return to a state of indifference about it, to be an interesting notion. Colonisation has created the world that Samson and Delilah live in, and the white community is as involved as the Indigenous one in the struggles of Samson and Delilah. If “settler” society is unaware, that unawareness comes from a history of non-Indigenous power that denies, excludes, and ignores. For this reason, Samson and Delilah is a dialogical cultural representation: it forces a space where the mainstream doesn’t just critique the Aborigine, but their own identity and involvement in the construction of that critique.Wasted VoicesWaste is a subjective notion. Items that some discard and perceive as valueless can be of importance to others, and then it also becomes a waste not to acknowledge or use that item. Rather than only focusing on the concept of “waste” as items or materials that are abandoned, I wish to consider the value in what is wasted. Centring my discussion of ‘waste’ on Thornton’s film provides the opportunity to view a wasteland of dispossession from another cultural and social perspective. Reaction to the film has constructed what could be perceived as an exceptional moment of engagement between Indigenous and non-Indigenous voices in dialogic intercultural dialogue. By revisiting early examples of ethnographic collaboration, and re-examining contemporary reactions to Samson and Delilah, I hope to forge a space for intervention in Australian film criticism that focuses on how ‘non-Aboriginality’ depends on ‘Aboriginality’ in a vast wasteland of colonial dispossession and appropriation.Many of the reviews of Thornton’s film (Buckmaster; Collins; Davis; Gorman; Hall; Isaac; Ravier; Redwood; Rennie; Simpson) pay attention to the emotional reaction of non-Indigenous viewers. Langton states that historically non-Indigenous audiences know ‘the Aborigine’ through non-Indigenous representations and monologues about Aboriginality: “In film, as in other media, there is a dense history of racist, distorted and often offensive representation of Aboriginal people” (24). The power to define has meant that ethnographic discourses in the early days of colonisation established their need to record Indigenous peoples, knowledges and traditions before they ‘wasted away.’ At the 1966 Round Table on Ethnographic Film in the Pacific Area, Stanley Hawes recounts how Ian Dunlop, an Australian documentary filmmaker, commented that “someone ought to film the aborigines of the Western Desert before it was too late. They had already almost all disappeared or gone to live on Mission stations” (69). This popular belief was one of the main motivations for research on Indigenous peoples and led to the notion of “smoothing the dying pillow,” which maintained that since Aborigines were a dying race, they should be allowed to all die out peacefully (Chandra-Shekeran 120). It was only the ‘real’ Aborigine that was valued: the mission Black, the urban Black, the assimilated Black, was a waste (Cowlishaw 108). These representations of Aboriginality depended on non-Indigenous people speaking about Aboriginality to non-Indigenous people. Yet, the impetus to speak, as well as what was being spoken about, and the knowledge being discussed and used, relied on Indigenous voices and presences. When Australia made its “important contribution to ethnographic films of its Aborigines” (McCarthy 81), it could not have done so without the involvement of Indigenous peoples. In her work on intersubjectivity, Langton describes “Aboriginality” as a “social thing” that is continually remade through dialogue, imagination, representation and interpretation. She describes three broad categories of Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal intersubjectivity: when Aboriginal people interact with other Aboriginal people; when non-Aboriginal people stereotype, iconise, and mythologise Aboriginal people without any Aboriginal contact; and when Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal people engage in dialogue (81). Since W. Baldwin Spencer’s first ethnographic film, made between 1901 and 1912, which recorded the customs of the Aranda and neighbouring Central Australian tribes (McCarthy 80), the development of Australian cinema depended on these categories of intersubjectivity. While the success of Samson and Delilah could be interpreted as opening mainstream eyes to the waste that Indigenous communities have experienced since colonisation — wasted knowledge, wasted youths, wasted communities — it could also signify that what was once perceived by dominant non-Indigenous society as trash is now viewed as treasure. Much like the dot paintings which Delilah and her nana paint in exchange for a few bucks, and which the white man then sells for thousands of dollars, Aboriginal stories come to us out of context and filtered through appropriation and misinterpretation.Beyond its undeniable worth as a piece of top-notch filmmaking, Samson and Delilah’s value also resides in its ability to share with a wide audience, and in a language we can all understand, a largely untold story steeped in the painful truth of this country’s bloody history. (Ravier)In reading the many reviews of Samson and Delilah, it is apparent there is an underlying notion of such a story being secret, and that mainstream Australia chose to engage with the film’s dialogical representation because it was sharing this secret. When Ravier states that Aboriginal stories are distorted by appropriation and misinterpretation, I would add that such stories are examples of Langton’s second category of intersubjectivity: they reveal more about the processes of non-Indigenous constructions of ‘the Aborigine’ and the need to stereotype, iconise and mythologise. These processes have usually involved judgements about what is to be retained as ‘valuable’ in Indigenous cultures and knowledges, and what can be discarded — in the same way that the film’s characters Samson and Delilah are discarded. The secret that Samson and Delilah is sharing with white Australia has never been a secret: it is that non-Indigenous Australia chooses what it wants to see or hear. Wasted SilencesIn 1976 Michael Edols directed and produced Floating about the Mowanjum communities experiences of colonisation, mission life and resistance. That same year Alessandro Cavadini directed and Carolyn Strachan produced Protected, a dramatised documentary about life on the Queensland Aboriginal reserve of Palm Island — “a dumping ground for unwanted persons or those deemed to be in need of ‘protection’” (Treole 38). Phillip Noyce’s Backroads, a story about the hardships facing a young man from a reserve in outback New South Wales, was released in 1977. In 1979, Essie Coffey produced and directed My Survival as an Aboriginal, where she documented her community’s struggles living under white domination. Two Laws, a feature film made by four of the language groups around Borroloola in 1981, examines the communities’ histories of massacre, dispossession and institutionalisation. These are just some of many films that have dealt with the ‘secrets’ about Indigenous peoples. In more recent times the work of Noyce, Rolf de Heer, Stephen Johnson, Iven Sen, Rachel Perkins and Romaine Moreton, to name only a few, have inspired mainstream engagement with films representing Indigenous experiences and knowledges. “We live in a world in which, increasingly, people learn of their own and other cultures and histories through a range of visual media — film, television, and video,” writes Faye Ginsburg (5). Changing understandings of culture and representation means that there appears to be a shift away from the “monologic, observational and privileged Western gaze” towards more dialogic, reflexive and imaginative mediation. Perhaps Samson and Delilah’s success is partly due to its contribution to social action through compelling the non-Indigenous viewer to “revise our comfortable and taken for granted narrative conventions that fetishise the text and reify ‘culture’ and ‘cultural difference.’ Instead, we — as producers, audiences, and ethnographers — are challenged to comprehend the multiple ways that media operate as a site where culture is produced, contested, mediated and continually re-imagined” (Ginsburg 14). In his review, Tom Redwood writes about the filmLike life in the desert, everything is kept to a minimum here and nothing is wasted. ... Perhaps it took an Indigenous filmmaker from Alice Springs to do this, to lead the way in reinstating meaningfulness and honesty as core values in Australian cinema. But, whatever the case, Thornton's Indigenous heritage won't make his difficult vision any easier for local audiences to swallow. Most Australians aren't used to this degree of seriousness at the movies and though many here will embrace Samson and Delilah, there will no doubt also be a minority who, unable to reject the film as a cultural curiosity, will resist its uncompromising nature with cries of 'pessimism!' or even 'reverse-racism!’ (28-29)Perhaps the film’s success has to do with the way the story is told? — “everything kept to a minimum” and “nothing is wasted.” In attempts to construct Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal intersubjectivity in previous representations perhaps language, words, English got in the way of communication? For mainstream white Australian society’s engagement in dialogic representations, for Indigenous voices to speak and be heard, for non-Indigenous monologues to be challenged, perhaps silence was called for? As the reviews for the film have emphasised, non-Indigenous reactions contribute to the dialogic nature of the film, its story, as well as its positioning as a site of cultural meaning, social relations, and power. Yet even while critiquing constructions of Aboriginality, non-Aboriginality has historically remained uncritiqued—non-Aboriginal endorsement and reaction is discussed, but what this reaction and engagement, or lack of engagement (whether because of ignorance, unawareness, or racism) reveals is not. That is, non-Aboriginality has not had to critique the power it has to continue to remain ignorant of stories about wasted Indigenous lives. Thornton’s film appears to have disrupted this form of non-engagement.With the emergence of Indigenous media and Indigenous media makers, ethnographic films have been reconceptualised in terms of aesthetics, cultural observations and epistemological processes. By re-exploring the history of ethnographic film making and shifting attention from constructions of the ‘other’ to reception by the mainstream, past films, past representations of colonisation, and past dialogues will not be wasted. With the focus on constructing Aboriginality, the cultural value of non-Aboriginality has remained unquestioned and invisible. By re-examining the reactions of mainstream Australians over the last one hundred years in light of the success of Samson and Delilah, cultural and historical questions about ‘the Aborigine’ can be reframed so that the influence Indigenous discourses have in Australian nation-building will be more apparent. The reception of Samson and Delilah signifies the transformational power in wasted voices, wasted dialogues and the wasted opportunities to listen. Wasted DialoguesFelicity Collins argues that certain “cinematic events that address Indigenous-settler relations do have the capacity to galvanise public attention, under certain conditions” (65). Collins states that after recent historical events, mainstream response to Aboriginal deprivation and otherness has evoked greater awareness of “anti-colonial politics of subjectivity” (65). The concern here is with mainstream Australia dismantling generations of colonialist representations and objectifications of the ‘other.’ What also needs to be re-examined is the paradox and polemic of how reaction to Aboriginal dispossession and deprivation is perceived. Non-Indigenous reaction remains a powerful framework for understanding, viewing and positioning Indigenous presence and representation — the power to see or not to see, to hear or to ignore. Collins argues that Samson and Delilah, along with Australia (Luhrmann, 2009) and First Australians (Perkins, 2008), are national events in Australian screen culture and that post-apology films “reframe a familiar iconography so that what is lost or ignored in the incessant flow of media temporality is precisely what invites an affective and ethical response in cinematic spaces” (75).It is the notion of reframing what is lost or ignored to evoke “ethical responses” that captures my attention; to shift the gaze from Aboriginal subjectivity, momentarily, to non-Aboriginal subjectivity and examine how choosing to discard or ignore narratives of violence and suffering needs to be critiqued as much as the film, documentary or representation of Indigenality. Perhaps then we can start to engage in dialogues of intersubjectivity rather than monologues about Aboriginality.I made [Samson and Delilah] for my mob but I made sure that it can work with a wider audience as well, and it’s just been incredible that it’s been completely embraced by a much wider audience. It’s interesting because as soon as you knock down that black wall between Aboriginals and white Australia, a film like this does become an Australian film and an Australian story. Not an Aboriginal story but a story about Australians, in a sense. It’s just as much a white story as it is a black one when you get to that position. (Thornton in interview)When we “get to that position” described by Thornton, intercultural and intersubjective dialogue allows both Aboriginality and non-Aboriginality to co-exist. When a powerful story of Indigenous experiences and representations becomes perceived as an Australian story, it provides a space for what has historically been ignored and rendered invisible to become visible. It offers a different cultural lens for all Australians to question and critique notions of value and waste, to re-assess what had been relegated to the wasteland by ethnographic editing and Westernised labels. Ever since Spencer, Melies, Abbie and Elkin decided to retain an image of Aboriginality on film, which they did with specific purposes and embedded values, it has been ‘the Aborigine’ that has been dissected and discussed. It would be a waste not to open this historiography up to include mainstream reaction, or lack of reaction, in the development of cultural and cinematic critique. A wasteland is often perceived as a dumping ground, but by re-visiting that space and unearthing, new possibilities are discovered in that wasteland, and more complex strategies for intersubjectivity are produced. At the centre of Samson and Delilah is the poverty and loss that Indigenous communities experience on a daily basis. The experiences endured by the main characters are not new or recent ones and whether cinematic reception of them produces guilt, pity, sympathy, empathy, fear or defensiveness, it is the very potential to be able to react that needs to be critiqued. As Williamson Chang points out, the “wasteland paradigm is invisible to those embedded in its structure” (852). By looking more closely at white society’s responses in order to discern more clearly if they are motivated by feelings that their wealth—whether material, cultural or social—or their sense of belonging is being challenged or reinforced then ruling values and epistemologies are challenged and dialogic negotiations engaged. If dominant non-Indigenous society has the power to classify Indigenous narratives and representation as either garbage or something of value, then colonialist structures remain intact. If they have the self-reflexive power to question their own response to Indigenous narratives and representations, then perhaps more anti-colonial discourses emerge. Notions of value and waste are tied to cultural hierarchies, and it is through questioning how a dominant culture determines value that processes of transformation and mediation take place and the intersubjective dialogue sparked by Samson and Delilah can continueIn her review of Samson and Delilah, Therese Davis suggests that the film brings people closer to truthfulness, forcing the audience to engage with that realism: “those of us ‘outside’ of the community looking in can come to know ourselves differently through the new languages of this film, both cultural and cinematic. Reformulating the space of the national from an ‘insider,’ Aboriginal community-based perspective, the film positions its spectators, both Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal, in a shared space, a space that allows for new forms of attachment, involvement and self-knowledge, new lines of communication.” Davis goes on to caution that while the film is groundbreaking, the reviews situating the film as what Australian cinema should be need to be mindful of feeding “notions of anti-diversity, which “is an old debate in Australian Cinema Studies, but in this instance anti-diversity is doubly problematic because it also runs the risk of narrowly defining Indigenous cinema.” The danger, historically, is that anything Indigenous, has always been narrowly defined by the mainstream and yes, to continue to limit Indigenous work in any medium is colonising and problematic. However, rather than just caution against this reaction, I am suggesting that reaction itself be critiqued. While currently contemporary mainstream response to Samson and Delilah is one of adoration, is the centre from which it comes the same centre which less than fifty years ago critiqued Indigenous Australians as a savage, noble, and/or dying race wasting away? Davis writes that the film constructs a new “relation” in Australian cinema but that it should not be used as a marker against which “all new (and old) Indigenous cinema is measured.” This concern resembles, in part, my concern that until recently mainstream society has constructed their own markers of Aboriginal cultural authenticity, deciding what is to be valued and what can be discarded. I agree with Davis’s caution, yet I cannot easily untangle the notion of ‘measuring.’ As a profound Australian film, certainly cinematic criticism will use it as a signifier of ‘quality.’ But by locating it singularly in the category of Indigenous cinema, the anti-colonial and discursive Indigenous discourses the film deploys and evokes are limited to the margins of Australian film and film critique once more. After considering the idea of measuring, and asking who would be conducting this process of measuring, my fear is that the gaze returns to ‘the Aborigine’ and the power to react remains solely, and invisibly, with the mainstream. Certainly it would be a waste to position the film in such a way that limits other Indigenous filmmakers’ processes, experiences and representations. I see no problem with forcing non-Indigenous filmmakers, audiences and perceptions to have to ‘measure’ up as a result of the film. It would be yet another waste if they didn’t, and Samson and Delilah was relegated to being simply a great ‘Indigenous Australian film,’ instead of a great Australian film that challenges, inverts and re-negotiates the construction of both Aboriginality and non-Aboriginality. By examining reaction to the film, and not just reading the film itself, discussions of dialogical cultural representation can include non-Aboriginality as well as Aboriginality. Films like this are designed to create a dialogue and I’m happy if someone doesn’t like the film and they tell me why, because we’re creating dialogue. We’re talking about this stuff and taking a step forward. That’s important. (Thornton)The dialogue opened up by the success of Thornton’s beautiful film is one that also explores non-Aboriginality. If we waste the opportunity that Samson and Delilah provides, then Australia’s ongoing cinematic history will remain a wasteland, and many more Indigenous voices, stories, and experiences will continue to be wasted.ReferencesBuckmaster, Luke. “Interview with Warwick Thornton”. Cinetology 12 May 2009. 18 Aug. 2010 ‹http://blogs.crikey.com.au/cinetology/2009/05/12/interview-with-warwick-thornton-writerdirector-of-samson-delilah›.———. “Samson and Delilah Review: A Seminal Indigenous Drama of Gradual and Menacing Beauty”. Cinetology 6 May 2009. 14 June 2010 ‹http://blogs.crikey.com.au/cinetology/2009/05/06/samson-delilah-film-review-a-seminal-indigenous-drama-of-gradual-and-menacing-beauty›.Chang, Williamson, B. C. “The ‘Wasteland’ in the Western Exploitation of ‘Race’ and the Environment”. University of Colorado Law Review 849 (1992): 849-870.Chandra-Shekeran, Sangeetha. “Challenging the Fiction of the Nation in the ‘Reconciliation’ Texts of Mabo and Bringing Them Home”. 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