Journal articles on the topic 'Social control, penal-welfare system, welfare state, social work'

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1

Topol, Olga, and Nataliia Sukhytska. "SOCIAL PAYMENTS, COMPENSATIONS AND BENEFITS AS A RANGE OF SOCIAL WELFARE OF THE POPULATION IN UKRAINE." Problems and prospects of economics and management, no. 4(28) (2021): 7–16. http://dx.doi.org/10.25140/2411-5215-2021-4(28)-7-16.

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The article presents a theoretical justification and empirical verification of the effectiveness of social payments, compensa-tions, and benefits in Ukraine as ranges of social welfare. An analysis of social assistance to families with children performs. The ways of improving the social welfare system indicated: legal (streamline the regulatory framework of social security in Ukraine, generalize the types of assistance, compensation and benefits, eliminate duplication); financial (to provide funding from the State Budget of Ukraine as a separate item of social expenditures, to audit the effectiveness of the use of budget expenditures; topro-vide for the possibility of transferring budget funds to non-state actors, etc.); personnel (increase salaries of specialists, set sur-charges for complexity (responsibility) and scope of activities; social (increase the prestige of the profession, audit and certifica-tion of personnel according to quality standards of social assistance); educational (introduce unified models of professional training, retraining and advanced training) specialists in the field of social work in accordance with the specialization), prognos-tic (provide a targeted order for training with their subsequent employment), organizational (establish effective interaction be-tween social assistance entities, educators, representatives of international organizations), information technology (providefree and technically convenient access of the population to information on social benefits, services, benefits, entities that provide them), information and advertising (use web pages, websites, "personal e-offices", telephone "hot" / consultation lines, on-online and offline consul etc.); management (granting, appointment and control of payments to concentrate in the powers of one central entity; providing assistance to the territorial offices of the main entity).The developed recommendations, among others, are proposed: to create based on legal documents of Ukraine "Unified information base of social assistances, services, and benefits" provided to the population indicating sources of funding (state budget funds, funds of non-governmental organizations, local communities), and "Unified Register of Beneficiaries in Ukraine" which in joint data processing, will provide an opportunity to compare: information on the amount of funding for assistance and the needs of consumers in this aid.
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2

Tian, Yi, Junhai Ma, Zongxian Wang, and Lei Xie. "Complexity and Control of Multichannel Supply Chain Under Carbon Tax Policy." International Journal of Bifurcation and Chaos 31, no. 06 (May 2021): 2150092. http://dx.doi.org/10.1142/s0218127421500929.

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Considering the trends of the carbon tax and online retail market, a comparative study on the order quantity strategy of supply chain under two carbon tax policies are conducted. A multichannel supply chain model is constructed in this work under the flat carbon tax policy and progressive carbon tax policy. The complexity of the supply chain under the channel heterogeneity expectations is studied. The impacts of consumers’ dual preferences and the free-riding of each channel on the system complexity, profits, carbon emissions and social welfare are explored. This study indicates that the supply chain order quantity system under the two types of carbon tax policies will enter into an unstable state with changes in consumers’ preferences and free-riding parameters. In order to positively impact on the profits of all parties, government revenue, consumer surplus, and the environment, the system should be kept in stable region. Consumers’ preferences and free-riding have more obvious influence on the social welfare under the progressive emission carbon tax policy than the flat carbon tax policy. In contrast to the flat carbon tax policy, the progressive carbon tax policy can delay or even prevent the order quantity system from entering into the bifurcation and chaos area, and the chaos control effect under the progressive carbon tax policy is better. The present work expands the practical application scenarios of complex system theory and thereby has an important theoretical and practical value.
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Wódz, Kazimiera, and Krystyna Faliszek. "The ups and downs of the professionalization of social work in Poland after 1990. The comments on the debate." Praca Socjalna 33, no. 6 (December 31, 2018): 108–24. http://dx.doi.org/10.5604/01.3001.0013.1733.

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The article attempts to present the process of professionalization of social work in Poland after 1989. It was shown in terms of the classical attribution model and in the concept of Abbott, in which the essence of the pro-fessionalization process is primarily the functioning of the profession in a complex system of internal and exter-nal dependencies. Analyses indicate that the process of professionalization of social work in Poland is currently far incomplete, and the ongoing and planned changes in the social welfare system are unlikely to favour its development. We deal with specific monopolistic practices of the state in shaping the institutional foundations of social assistance in accordance with the interests of the central administration, which seeks to shift responsibility for implemented activities to external entities, retaining full and even increased possibilities of exerting influence and control. This is also reflected in the ongoing attempt to standardize social services, which is ultimately an element of deprofessionalisation of social work
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Prieur, Annick, Sune Qvotrup Jensen, and Vibeke Bak Nielsen. "Lacking social skills: A social investment state’s concern for marginalized citizens’ ways of being." Critical Social Policy 40, no. 4 (September 26, 2019): 608–26. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0261018319878130.

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The Danish state is preoccupied with its citizens’ social skills, which are seen as important for the nations’ competitiveness. Such skills regard self-presentation, communication, emotional control etc. This article relies primarily on interviews with Danish social workers who are involved either in assessing young marginalized welfare clients’ personal readiness for schooling or employment or in preparing them for this through social skills training. Secondarily, it relies on fieldwork data from young Danes at the margins of the educational system and/or the labour market, who are frequently confronted with a devaluation of their personal ways of being. As personal resources related to ways of being, communicating, handling emotions etc. are ascribed social value, especially at the labour market they may work as a form of capital, while the lack of them may be a source of marginalization. These findings are discussed as signs of more general social normative demands, theoretically grasped in the meeting point of Bourdieu’s understanding of embodied cultural capital, of Skeggs’ analysis of how subjects are attributed value or not, and of Illouz’s investigation of the emotional demands contemporary capitalism puts on employees. Understanding the experiences of those who fail to comply with implicit social requirements for personal resources thus shed light on contemporary requirements regarding how to behave and communicate with other people as well as on the state’s investments in the most personal spheres of its citizens.
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Kolodiychyk, Yuliia. "About the expedience of teaching the discipline of «social partnership» for future social workers." Academic Notes Series Pedagogical Science 1, no. 189 (August 2020): 135–38. http://dx.doi.org/10.36550/2415-7988-2020-1-189-135-138.

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The article reveals the essence of social partnership and its role in the sphere of social and labor relations. The purpose and key elements of social partnership are identified. The peculiarities of the tripartite model of partnership, which operates in Ukraine, are analyzed. The psychological, pedagogical and socio-cultural conditions of relations between social partners, as well the basic principles to which the parties should adhere were noted. Key elements of social partnership include: an existing social problem that needs to be addressed as quickly possible; interests and values of partners; legal validity of the partnership; opportunities and strengths of partners; rules of interaction and mutual control. The essence of social partnership in the field of social work is covered. Social technologies that are used for establishing optimal cooperation between social partners are considered: mediation, extreme support, variations and cross-offers. The most popular of which in the field of social work is social mediation, which serves to establish relationships between the client and the organization. Theoretical knowledge and practical skills necessary for future social workers to build partnerships with clients as objects of social work, as well with representatives of state institutions and public organizations as subjects of social work. The necessity of teaching the discipline «Social Partnership» for future social workers is justified. Therefore, teaching the discipline «Social Partnership» for future social workers is especially important and necessary, because modern society requires from the higher education system a fully developed competitive professional, whose knowledge, skills and abilities will successfully serve the further social development of society. The success of such development is impossible without a highly qualified social worker, whose professionalism and dedication will improve the quality of social services and improve the welfare of the Ukrainian population as a whole. To strengthen the system of social partnership in Ukraine, it is necessary to observe some important aspects: the possibility of unimpeded receipt of social protection, social guarantee or social service; strengthening the socio-regulatory framework in order to bring it into line with international law; motivation of employers to participate in social dialogue; raising public awareness of social partnership.
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Bornarova, Suzana, Natasha Bogoevska, and Svetlana Trbojevik. "Changes in European Welfare State Regimes as a Response to Fertility Trends: Family Policy Perspective." European Journal of Social Sciences Education and Research 11, no. 1 (June 10, 2017): 50. http://dx.doi.org/10.26417/ejser.v11i1.p50-57.

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Following 1945, that is the Second World War, Europe faced a huge demographic increase in the number of births, known as baby-boom. Encouraged by the improvement of the living conditions after the devastating war, the return of the optimism, opening of the employment opportunities and the renewal of the idea about the family, this demographic trend entailed the so-called familism tide. In the mid 1960-ies however, demographic indicators in almost all European countries began to change suddenly. Massive development of contraception, increased birth control and family planning, as well as higher employment of women and their integration in the labour market, took place. As a result of these trends, in the 1970-ties European countries faced a considerable drop in fertility rates. This trend reached its peak during 1970-1980-ties when a dramatic drop in fertility rates took place, known as baby-bust. As a consequence, almost everywhere in Europe, the fertility rate dropped below the level needed for simple population reproduction or below 2.1 children per woman. Several related trends also contributed to the change in the demographic picture of Europe, such as: dropping birthrates, shrinking of the population, delay in births (increase in the age of birth of the first child), increase in the number of one-child families, as well as growth in the number of couples without children (universality of births is no longer present – at least 1 child per family). Similar trends are evidenced in the countries of Central and Eastern Europe (CIE), with one considerable difference – they took place around a decade later compared to the developed European countries. One common characteristic which shaped the demographic changes in CIE countries was the fact that they occurred simultaneously with the radical changes of the societal system from socialism towards democracy in the 1990-ties. Due to this, demographic changes in CIE countries gain in weight, are furthermore under the influence of the transitional processes and thus differ considerably compared to those in the developed countries. The differences are heavily attributable to two sets of factors: a) different institutional settings, especially in the family policies related to employment of women and child raising; and b) different effects of these family policies upon fertility rates and participation of women in the labour market. Given the above demographic trends, welfare states in Europe, adjust accordingly, predominantly through the policies and measures of family policy as one of the social policy domains. Following a detailed statistical analysis of demographic indicators in Europe, this paper will produce an analysis of the family policy responses to demographic trends based on the Esping-Andersens’ classification of welfare states: universal welfare states (Nordic countries); conservative welfare states (Continental European countries); liberal social states (Anglo-Saxon countries) and South-European social states (Mediterranean countries). A specific focus in the paper will be also given to the demographic trends and corresponding family policy developments in the Republic of Macedonia, as a country of South Europe. Cross-cutting issues in the analysis of the family policy models will be: the extent to which family policies are gender-neutral or gender-specific (are they women-friendly and do they promote active fatherhood?), measures for harmonization of work and family life (are women appropriately supported in performing their roles of mothers and active participants in the labour market at the same time) and the scope in which family policy is being designed to serve the purposes of population policy (how the concern and the interest of the state to increase fertility rates shapes family policy?).
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7

Li, Wenzheng, and Yu Song. "History of development of health insurance system after the establishment of the People’s Republic of China." Финансы и управление, no. 3 (March 2020): 1–16. http://dx.doi.org/10.25136/2409-7802.2020.3.32407.

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The object of this research is the healthcare system of China and the implementation of basic health insurance in the country. The subject of this research is the stages of formation and improvement of health insurance system after the establishment of the People's Republic of China (PRC). The data analysis of scientific literature data and the postulates of legislative acts allowed examining the gradual transition of China from the scheme of national welfare towards the model of social health insurance l. The scientific novelty of this work consists in generalization of the key problems in China’s health care system and proposal of ways for their solution. Similar to any developing program, the implemented system of health insurance has a number of shortcomings that require elaboration and amendments. By trial and error with regards to implementation of progressive reforms and reasonable state control, China was able to achieve maturity of the system of heath insurance, however mostly in cities. It is necessary to address the issues of deficit of health insurance fund, as well as the questions of individual financial risk. The application of measures proposed in the article may reduce the risks and improve the quality of health insurance system, as well as increase the level of content of the citizens with healthcare system.
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8

Koval, H., and V. Smyk. "НОРМАТИВНО-ПРАВОВЕ ЗАБЕЗПЕЧЕННЯ СИСТЕМИ СОЦІАЛЬНИХ ПОСЛУГ В УКРАЇНІ." State and Regions. Series: Social Communications, no. 2(46) (August 13, 2021): 158. http://dx.doi.org/10.32840/cpu2219-8741/2021.2(46).23.

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<p><strong><em>Purpose of the study.</em></strong><em> The purpose of our article is to determine the features of the introduction of innovations in the social services provision to the population and to clarify the possibilities of regulatory and legal support for the system of social services.</em></p><p><strong><em>Research methodology.</em></strong><em> The methodology of our research is a system of scientific principles, forms and methods of research activities, namely, the system of social services provision in Ukraine and its regulatory and legal support.</em></p><p><strong><em>Results.</em></strong><em> The article analyzes the current state of the regulatory and legal framework for the system of social services and the strategy for the development of social work in Ukraine; the problems of the evolution of the system of social protection (social services), social policy in relation to the unprotected strata of society, the modern level of innovative social protection of the population, the mechanisms of reforming the system of social services are outlined.</em></p><p><strong><em>Scientific novelty</em></strong><em> of the research results:</em><em> </em><em>identified steps to modernize the current system for the provision of social services;</em><em> </em><em>handled new working methods such as multidisciplinary team, outsourcing services;</em><em> </em><em>it was determined that the modernization of the system of providing social services in Ukraine significantly influenced the principles of implementing the country's social policy, obliging to abandon the usual subsidized nature of social security for categories of people who fell into difficult life circumstances.</em></p><p><strong><em>Practical value.</em></strong><em> The modernization of the existing infrastructure of the system for the social services provision in Ukraine and its regulatory support provides for the deinstitutionalization of the existing network, since for a significant period of time social facilities and institutions were subordinate to different ministries and departments, which led to the lack of a unified approach to their financing. Thus, expenses for inpatient institutions subordinated to the Ministry of Health are determined by the structure of the population of the corresponding administrative-territorial unit, while expenses for institutions that are under the control of the Ministry of Social Policy and the Ministry of Education and Science are determined by the number of persons staying in these institutions or the number of people receiving services from them.</em></p><p><em>The research materials will be useful for the training of future social work specialists, because in the article the authors highlight the main state measures in the direction of strategic planning of innovative approaches to improve the efficiency of the provision of social services in Ukraine.</em></p><p><strong><em>Key</em></strong><strong><em> </em></strong><strong><em>words:</em></strong><em> social policy, phenomena, process, reforming, system, legal provision, welfare state, social services, innovations.</em></p>
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9

Petrunia, Yurii Y., Vira Y. Petrunia, and Olexander I. Guba. "BEHAVIOR OF INDIVIDUAL CONSUMERS AS AN OBJECT MANAGEMENT INTERESTS." Європейський вектор економічного розвитку 2, no. 31 (2021): 62–71. http://dx.doi.org/10.32342/2074-5362-2021-2-31-5.

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The article deals with the reasons, directions and scope of the interest of society, institutions of state regulation and managers of business structures concerning the behavior of households as consumers. It was demonstrated that, in the modern socioeconomic system, households act as independent agents, including the area of consumer behavior. At the same time, the consumer behavior of households has a socialized character: firstly, in the context of the implementation of the procedure for obtaining the goods needed to meet the needs; secondly, in the context of the emergence of certain social consequences from the use of acquired goods by households; thirdly, in the context of the conditions of existence, functioning and development of business organizations. The socialized nature of consumer activity determines that the behavior of individual consumers should be the point of interest and influence from the society, state and local institutions of the government and business. At the same time, that behavior can be the subject of interest and influence from the side of society, state institutions of management and business. It was proved that protection of public interests requires an establishment of the certain social control over consumer behavior. On the basis of the analysis it was established that the social interest in individual consumer behavior can be represented in the following directions (forms): objective, quantitative and subjective-territorial. It was found that the objective public interest in the consumer behavior of households involves the focus on consumer choice of specific goods and services. Assessment of consumer behavior in the context of “buying” is associated with the impact of such choices, firstly, on the health of individuals and society taken as a whole, and secondly, on the worldview, creative and intellectual development as individuals, and society taken as a whole. By contrast, the health condition affects the level of “social happiness” (social welfare), efficiency and productivity of social work (ability to perform a certain amount of work and provide a certain level of intensity), the corresponding costs of the state and local budgets connected with the prevention and treatment of diseases, the use of various compensation payments related to the health problems. Quantitative form (direction) of public interest in the behavior of individual consumers may be related to the health issues, macroeconomic policy, resource potential, ensuring a balanced situation in different commodity markets, achieving the required level of the national economic security. The subjective territorial direction of public interest in the market behavior of households is related to the assessment of the social consequences of individual consumer decisions on the choice of entities in the supply chain of goods and services. Such entities may be business organizations of a particular jurisdiction: residents or non-residents. The aggregate market choice of consumer households in this context has certain macroeconomic implications related to the competitiveness of the national economy, the current and future state of its security
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Samsonsen, Vibeke, and Elisabeth Willumsen. "Narratives from parents in England and Norway." Journal of Comparative Social Work 10, no. 1 (July 1, 2015): 6–30. http://dx.doi.org/10.31265/jcsw.v10i1.120.

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The framework for assessment in child protection, as well as the context of the welfare state, differs between England and Norway. Assessments in England are structured in terms of a set model (the triangle) and procedures to be followed, whereas in Norway there are few national guidelines and not a set model for assessments. This underpins professional judgement as the most important component in Norway. This is a study of parents` experiences from assessment in these two contexts, and patterns and themes of assessment experiences have been identified in the two countries through a narrative analysis of in-depth interviews with parents. When asked about their opinions of the current assessment framework, parents in both countries talk more about feelings than about framework and procedures, as their experiences of assessment are similar in both countries. First and foremost, they experience strong emotions in a stressful situation, including anxiety, frustration and powerlessness, but also relief. These cross-national emotions might provide information about how assessment is a stressful situation for the parents involved. However, we find some differences in the way social work is acted out according to the national assessment framework and policy context. In England, the framework and procedures seem to provide clarity with regard to process and power within the system. In Norway, the assessment is characterized by a professional judgement accompanied by more resources, which we find enables helpful decisions from a family perspective. However, this heavy reliance on relationships using professional judgement might also be viewed as a source of informal power. These findings are discussed in relation to theories of emotions and the concept of power. Regarding implications for practice, we would recommend a more explicit awareness of help and control in assessment among social workers involved, together with a clear communication on the topic of emotions and power in assessment.
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Kurilin, B. L., V. Y. Kisselevskaya-Babinina, N. A. Karasyov, I. V. Kisselevskaya-Babinina, E. V. Kislukhkina, and V. A. Vasilyev. "Selection of Prediction Method of Basic Statistical Work Parameters of N.V. Sklifosovsky Research Institute for Emergency Medicine of the Moscow Healthcare Department." Russian Sklifosovsky Journal "Emergency Medical Care" 8, no. 3 (November 6, 2019): 246–56. http://dx.doi.org/10.23934/2223-9022-2019-8-3-246-256.

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Background The most important part of the state social and economic policy is optimization of the healthcare system, where the loss of public health leads to economic damage. Against this background, forecasting the work of medical institutions is the basis for the successful development of healthcare, despite the fact that the healthcare system, indicators and standards of medical and social welfare are still not stable, and a clear development strategy for the shortand long-term period has not been worked out. Aim of study Determining the most optimal method for predicting the work of a medical institution, based on identification of the main trends in the time series when constructing a model of the dependence of parameters or determining the behavior of data as a stochastic series (i.e. modeling random processes and random events with some random error).Material and methods To predict the main statistical indicators of N.V. Sklifosovsky Research Institute for Emergency Medicine based on a retrospective analysis, data were used that were submitted to the City Bureau of Medical Statistics and entered into official reporting forms (form № 30, approved by Goskomstat of the Russian Federation dated September 10, 2002, № 175): the number of hospitalized patients and mortality rates in inpatient and intensive care units. To select the optimal methodology for the experimental forecast model, data were used for the period from 1991 to 2016. Indicators for 2017 were taken as control values.Results As a result of the comparison of several methods (moving averages, least squares approach, Brown model, Holt–Winters method, autocorrelation model, Box–Jenkins method) as applied to the work of N.V. Sklifosovsky Research Institute for Emergency Medicine, the Holt–Winters model was chosen as the most appropriate one for the data characteristics.Findings 1. When using methods of moving averages, least squares, Box-Jenkins, as well as Brown model and autocorrelation, the forecast result is not always influenced by strictly straight-line indicators of the time series, due to the heterogeneity of the time series and the presence of outliers (often found in a medical institution providing emergency care), which lead to a significant decrease in the reliability of forecasting. 2. The application of the Holt–Winters model, which takes into account the exponential trend (the trend of time series indicators) and additive season (periodic fluctuations observed in the time series), is most suitable for processing statistical data and forecasting for long-term, medium-term and short-term periods taking the specifics of a hospital providing emergency care into account. 3. The choice of the optimal method for predicting the work of a medical institution, based on the identification of the main trends in the time series, taking most of the features in the modeling of random processes and events into account, allowed to reduce the relative forecast error.
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Cheberyako, Oksana, and Yuliya Skulish. "The level of pension provision of the population is a guarantee of social security of the person." University Economic Bulletin, no. 52 (March 18, 2022): 135–46. http://dx.doi.org/10.31470/2306-546x-2022-52-135-146.

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Relevance of the research topic. Various social cataclysms of the twentieth century and recent decades, such as the two world wars, the hybrid wars, the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic, have led to the emergence of the concept of "social security" in the twentieth century. The latter, given the socialization of all spheres of human life, plays a key role in the entire national security system. In a democratic society, the interests of social security of the individual and the state as a whole must be reconciled and harmoniously balanced. In the legal field of Ukraine there is no official definition of the category "social security", and the term "social security" has recently entered into scientific and political circulation. In Ukraine, a new stage of legislative regulation of relations in the sphere of pension provision began with the adoption of the Constitution of Ukraine. Only the laws of Ukraine define the basis of social protection, forms and types of pension provision (paragraph 6 of Article 85). Article 46 of the Constitution provides for the right of citizens to social protection, to ensure them in case of full, partial or temporary loss of working capacity, loss of the employer, unemployment from circumstances beyond their control, as well as in old age and other cases provided for by law [1]. Article 46 of the Constitution provides for the right of citizens to social protection, to provide them in case of complete, partial or temporary disability, loss of breadwinner, unemployment due to circumstances beyond their control, as well as in old age and in other cases provided by law [1]. Since the right to a pension can arise throughout a person's life, starting from birth, replacing lost income with a pension is important for the well-being and prevention of poverty of certain categories of the population. As the de jure three-tier pension system de facto remains only two-tier with a predominant share of first-tier pension benefits, it remains relevant to study the level of pension provision from the solidarity system, which is built on the principle of intergenerational solidarity. Problem solving. The need for a comprehensive study of the issue of pension provision, conceptual definition of its mechanisms (instruments) from different levels of the pension system, especially in the conditions of aging of the nation, is conditioned by the need to improve practice and raise the level of pension provision in Ukraine as a guarantee of social security of the person. Analysis of recent research and publications. The issues of functioning of the pension system, functioning of its components, including the solidarity pension system, as well as reform of the latter have found their coverage in the works of both domestic and foreign scholars. The works of well-known foreign scientists – Otto von Bismarck, D. Wittas, E. Atkinson, K. Bateman, W. Beveridge, R. Disney, K. Clark, K. Conrad, P. Laroc, T. Marshall, G. Rudolf and others. Among the researchers of the domestic pension system, the mechanisms of its financial support should be mentioned first of all L. Barannyk, N. Bolotin, O. Vrublevska, V. Grushka, I. Gnibidenko, O. Dmitriev, O. Zaletov, O. Kurilo, E. Libanov, N. Lavrukhin, O. Paliya, A. Fedorenko, V. Yatsenko and others. The results of their own research on the problem of pensions are given in [10, 13, 14]. The allocation of the investigated parts of the general problem. Despite the current work on the issue of pension provision of the population, further research in terms of social security of the person requires the content and practice of pension reform during the last 20 years, ways and possibilities of raising the level of pension provision of the population of Ukraine, especially in the conditions of Russian aggression against Ukraine. Setting of the task, objectives of the research. The object of the study is the level of pension provision as a guarantee of social security of the person, and the subject is practical aspects of pension provision from the first level of the pension system in Ukraine, the Pension Fund of Ukraine and the issue of its imbalance. The objective of the article is to assess the financial capacity of the solidarity pension system as a guarantee of social security of the person by analyzing the structure of sources of financing of the Pension Fund and the amount of expenditures for pension provision from the state budget. Method and methodology of the study. Statistical, comparative and system methods are used in the study to develop statistical data of PFCs. The results of analysis in the form of tables and graphs were executed by means of graphical and tabular methods and generalization of data. The structural-functional method is used to detect the impact of PFU revenues on expenditure volumes. Field of application of results. The obtained conclusions and results can be used for development and implementation of practical measures to improve the pension system, in the scientific field, in the educational process of higher education institutions in training specialists in major 8.18010014 "Management of financial and economic security", in the social component of economic state security, in particular, social security. The practical relevance of scientific results will contribute to achieving a higher level of social protection, meeting the needs of people who have reached the retirement age. Conclusions. Today, the welfare of almost one third of the population of Ukraine depends on the financial capacity of the pension system. Funding for pension provision should be directed at achieving the main goal – realization of constitutional rights of all citizens to receive financial support in case of loss of the operator, disability, disability, disability, disability, old age and other cases established by the legislation [11]. In Ukraine, for almost 20 years, they are trying to implement pension reform, but effective and effective results have not yet been achieved. The current state of the solidarity system of pension provision is characterized by the "fear" of the population of the retirement age and chronic deficit of the Pension Fund. This is evidence of low social security for people of retirement age, according to international estimates of poverty, at which the cost of daily consumption is set at $ 5 (up to UAH 4,300 per month). That is, 85.4% of Ukrainian pensioners as of January 1, 2021 received a pension in the amount lower or at the level of this limit (up to UAH 5,000). The annexation of Crimea, the fighting in the East and almost 2 million IDPs, Russia's large-scale war against Ukraine, which began on February 24, 2022, gave rise to the concept of "sudden poverty".
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Sobiecki, Roman. "Why does the progress of civilisation require social innovations?" Kwartalnik Nauk o Przedsiębiorstwie 44, no. 3 (September 20, 2017): 4–9. http://dx.doi.org/10.5604/01.3001.0010.4686.

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Social innovations are activities aiming at implementation of social objectives, including mainly the improvement of life of individuals and social groups, together with public policy and management objectives. The essay indicates and discusses the most important contemporary problems, solving of which requires social innovations. Social innovations precondition the progress of civilisation. The world needs not only new technologies, but also new solutions of social and institutional nature that would be conducive to achieving social goals. Social innovations are experimental social actions of organisational and institutional nature that aim at improving the quality of life of individuals, communities, nations, companies, circles, or social groups. Their experimental nature stems from the fact of introducing unique and one-time solutions on a large scale, the end results of which are often difficult to be fully predicted. For example, it was difficult to believe that opening new labour markets for foreigners in the countries of the European Union, which can be treated as a social innovation aiming at development of the international labour market, will result in the rapid development of the low-cost airlines, the offer of which will be available to a larger group of recipients. In other words, social innovations differ from economic innovations, as they are not about implementation of new types of production or gaining new markets, but about satisfying new needs, which are not provided by the market. Therefore, the most important distinction consists in that social innovations are concerned with improving the well-being of individuals and communities by additional employment, or increased consumption, as well as participation in solving the problems of individuals and social groups [CSTP, 2011]. In general, social innovations are activities aiming at implementation of social objectives, including mainly the improvement of life of individuals and social groups together with the objectives of public policy and management [Kowalczyk, Sobiecki, 2017]. Their implementation requires global, national, and individual actions. This requires joint operations, both at the scale of the entire globe, as well as in particular interest groups. Why are social innovations a key point for the progress of civilisation? This is the effect of the clear domination of economic aspects and discrimination of social aspects of this progress. Until the 19th century, the economy was a part of a social structure. As described by K. Polanyi, it was submerged in social relations [Polanyi, 2010, p. 56]. In traditional societies, the economic system was in fact derived from the organisation of the society itself. The economy, consisting of small and dispersed craft businesses, was a part of the social, family, and neighbourhood structure. In the 20th century the situation reversed – the economy started to be the force shaping social structures, positions of individual groups, areas of wealth and poverty. The economy and the market mechanism have become independent from the world of politics and society. Today, the corporations control our lives. They decide what we eat, what we watch, what we wear, where we work and what we do [Bakan, 2006, p. 13]. The corporations started this spectacular “march to rule the world” in the late 19th century. After about a hundred years, at the end of the 20th century, the state under the pressure of corporations and globalisation, started a gradual, but systematic withdrawal from the economy, market and many other functions traditionally belonging to it. As a result, at the end of the last century, a corporation has become a dominant institution in the world. A characteristic feature of this condition is that it gives a complete priority to the interests of corporations. They make decisions of often adverse consequences for the entire social groups, regions, or local communities. They lead to social tensions, political breakdowns, and most often to repeated market turbulences. Thus, a substantial minority (corporations) obtain inconceivable benefits at the expense of the vast majority, that is broad professional and social groups. The lack of relative balance between the economy and society is a barrier to the progress of civilisation. A growing global concern is the problem of migration. The present crisis, left unresolved, in the long term will return multiplied. Today, there are about 500 million people living in Europe, 1.5 billion in Africa and the Middle East, but in 2100, the population of Europe will be about 400 million and of the Middle East and Africa approximately 4.5 billion. Solving this problem, mainly through social and political innovations, can take place only by a joint operation of highly developed and developing countries. Is it an easy task? It’s very difficult. Unfortunately, today, the world is going in the opposite direction. Instead of pursuing the community, empathic thinking, it aims towards nationalism and chauvinism. An example might be a part of the inaugural address of President Donald Trump, who said that the right of all nations is to put their own interests first. Of course, the United States of America will think about their own interests. As we go in the opposite direction, those who deal with global issues say – nothing will change, unless there is some great crisis, a major disaster that would cause that the great of this world will come to senses. J.E. Stiglitz [2004], contrary to the current thinking and practice, believes that a different and better world is possible. Globalisation contains the potential of countless benefits from which people both in developing and highly developed countries can benefit. But the practice so far proves that still it is not grown up enough to use its potential in a fair manner. What is needed are new solutions, most of all social and political innovations (political, because they involve a violation of the previous arrangement of interests). Failure to search for breakthrough innovations of social and political nature that would meet the modern challenges, can lead the world to a disaster. Social innovation, and not economic, because the contemporary civilisation problems have their roots in this dimension. A global problem, solution of which requires innovations of social and political nature, is the disruption of the balance between work and capital. In 2010, 400 richest people had assets such as the half of the poorer population of the world. In 2016, such part was in the possession of only 8 people. This shows the dramatic collapse of the balance between work and capital. The world cannot develop creating the technological progress while increasing unjustified inequalities, which inevitably lead to an outbreak of civil disturbances. This outbreak can have various organisation forms. In the days of the Internet and social media, it is easier to communicate with people. Therefore, paradoxically, some modern technologies create the conditions facilitating social protests. There is one more important and dangerous effect of implementing technological innovations without simultaneous creation and implementation of social innovations limiting the sky-rocketing increase of economic (followed by social) diversification. Sooner or later, technological progress will become so widespread that, due to the relatively low prices, it will make it possible for the weapons of mass destruction, especially biological and chemical weapons, to reach small terrorist groups. Then, a total, individualized war of global reach can develop. The individualisation of war will follow, as described by the famous German sociologist Ulrich Beck. To avoid this, it is worth looking at the achievements of the Polish scientist Michał Kalecki, who 75 years ago argued that capitalism alone is not able to develop. It is because it aggressively seeks profit growth, but cannot turn profit into some profitable investments. Therefore, when uncertainty grows, capitalism cannot develop itself, and it must be accompanied by external factors, named by Kalecki – external development factors. These factors include state expenses, finances and, in accordance with the nomenclature of Kalecki – epochal innovations. And what are the current possibilities of activation of the external factors? In short – modest. The countries are indebted, and the basis for the development in the last 20 years were loans, which contributed to the growth of debt of economic entities. What, then, should we do? It is necessary to look for cheaper solutions, but such that are effective, that is breakthrough innovations. These undoubtedly include social and political innovations. Contemporary social innovation is not about investing big money and expensive resources in production, e.g. of a very expensive vaccine, which would be available for a small group of recipients. Today’s social innovation should stimulate the use of lower amounts of resources to produce more products available to larger groups of recipients. The progress of civilisation happens only as a result of a sustainable development in economic, social, and now also ecological terms. Economic (business) innovations, which help accelerate the growth rate of production and services, contribute to economic development. Profits of corporations increase and, at the same time, the economic objectives of the corporations are realised. But are the objectives of the society as a whole and its members individually realised equally, in parallel? In the chain of social reproduction there are four repeated phases: production – distribution – exchange – consumption. The key point from the social point of view is the phase of distribution. But what are the rules of distribution, how much and who gets from this “cake” produced in the social process of production? In the today’s increasingly global economy, the most important mechanism of distribution is the market mechanism. However, in the long run, this mechanism leads to growing income and welfare disparities of various social groups. Although, the income and welfare diversity in itself is nothing wrong, as it is the result of the diversification of effectiveness of factors of production, including work, the growing disparities to a large extent cannot be justified. Economic situation of the society members increasingly depends not on the contribution of work, but on the size of the capital invested, and the market position of the economic entity, and on the “governing power of capital” on the market. It should also be noted that this diversification is also related to speculative activities. Disparities between the implemented economic and social innovations can lead to the collapse of the progress of civilisation. Nowadays, economic crises are often justified by, indeed, social and political considerations, such as marginalisation of nation states, imbalance of power (or imbalance of fear), religious conflicts, nationalism, chauvinism, etc. It is also considered that the first global financial crisis of the 21st century originated from the wrong social policy pursued by the US Government, which led to the creation of a gigantic public debt, which consequently led to an economic breakdown. This resulted in the financial crisis, but also in deepening of the social imbalances and widening of the circles of poverty and social exclusion. It can even be stated that it was a crisis in public confidence. Therefore, the causes of crises are the conflicts between the economic dimension of the development and its social dimension. Contemporary world is filled with various innovations of economic or business nature (including technological, product, marketing, and in part – organisational). The existing solutions can be a source of economic progress, which is a component of the progress of civilisation. However, economic innovations do not complete the entire progress of civilisation moreover, the saturation, and often supersaturation with implementations and economic innovations leads to an excessive use of material factors of production. As a consequence, it results in lowering of the efficiency of their use, unnecessary extra burden to the planet, and passing of the negative effects on the society and future generations (of consumers). On the other hand, it leads to forcing the consumption of durable consumer goods, and gathering them “just in case”, and also to the low degree of their use (e.g. more cars in a household than its members results in the additional load on traffic routes, which results in an increase in the inconvenience of movement of people, thus to the reduction of the quality of life). Introduction of yet another economic innovation will not solve this problem. It can be solved only by social innovations that are in a permanent shortage. A social innovation which fosters solving the issue of excessive accumulation of tangible production goods is a developing phenomenon called sharing economy. It is based on the principle: “the use of a service provided by some welfare does not require being its owner”. This principle allows for an economic use of resources located in households, but which have been “latent” so far. In this way, increasing of the scope of services provided (transport, residential and tourist accommodation) does not require any growth of additional tangible resources of factors of production. So, it contributes to the growth of household incomes, and inhibition of loading the planet with material goods processed by man [see Poniatowska-Jaksch, Sobiecki, 2016]. Another example: we live in times, in which, contrary to the law of T. Malthus, the planet is able to feed all people, that is to guarantee their minimum required nutrients. But still, millions of people die of starvation and malnutrition, but also due to obesity. Can this problem be solved with another economic innovation? Certainly not! Economic innovations will certainly help to partially solve the problem of nutrition, at least by the new methods of storing and preservation of foods, to reduce its waste in the phase of storage and transport. However, a key condition to solve this problem is to create and implement an innovation of a social nature (in many cases also political). We will not be able to speak about the progress of civilisation in a situation, where there are people dying of starvation and malnutrition. A growing global social concern, resulting from implementation of an economic (technological) innovation will be robotisation, and more specifically – the effects arising from its dissemination on a large scale. So far, the issue has been postponed due to globalisation of the labour market, which led to cheapening of the work factor by more than ten times in the countries of Asia or South America. But it ends slowly. Labour becomes more and more expensive, which means that the robots become relatively cheap. The mechanism leading to low prices of the labour factor expires. Wages increase, and this changes the relationship of the prices of capital and labour. Capital becomes relatively cheaper and cheaper, and this leads to reducing of the demand for work, at the same time increasing the demand for capital (in the form of robots). The introduction of robots will be an effect of the phenomenon of substitution of the factors of production. A cheaper factor (in this case capital in the form of robots) will be cheaper than the same activities performed by man. According to W. Szymański [2017], such change is a dysfunction of capitalism. A great challenge, because capitalism is based on the market-driven shaping of income. The market-driven shaping of income means that the income is derived from the sale of the factors of production. Most people have income from employment. Robots change this mechanism. It is estimated that scientific progress allows to create such number of robots that will replace billion people in the world. What will happen to those “superseded”, what will replace the income from human labour? Capitalism will face an institutional challenge, and must replace the market-driven shaping of income with another, new one. The introduction of robots means microeconomic battle with the barrier of demand. To sell more, one needs to cut costs. The costs are lowered by the introduction of robots, but the use of robots reduces the demand for human labour. Lowering the demand for human labour results in the reduction of employment, and lower wages. Lower wages result in the reduction of the demand for goods and services. To increase the demand for goods and services, the companies must lower their costs, so they increase the involvement of robots, etc. A mechanism of the vicious circle appears If such a mass substitution of the factors of production is unfavourable from the point of view of stimulating the development of the economy, then something must be done to improve the adverse price relations for labour. How can the conditions of competition between a robot and a man be made equal, at least partially? Robots should be taxed. Bill Gates, among others, is a supporter of such a solution. However, this is only one of the tools that can be used. The solution of the problem requires a change in the mechanism, so a breakthrough innovation of a social and political nature. We can say that technological and product innovations force the creation of social and political innovations (maybe institutional changes). Product innovations solve some problems (e.g. they contribute to the reduction of production costs), but at the same time, give rise to others. Progress of civilisation for centuries and even millennia was primarily an intellectual progress. It was difficult to discuss economic progress at that time. Then we had to deal with the imbalance between the economic and the social element. The insufficiency of the economic factor (otherwise than it is today) was the reason for the tensions and crises. Estimates of growth indicate that the increase in industrial production from ancient times to the first industrial revolution, that is until about 1700, was 0.1-0.2 per year on average. Only the next centuries brought about systematically increasing pace of economic growth. During 1700- 1820, it was 0.5% on an annual average, and between 1820-1913 – 1.5%, and between 1913-2012 – 3.0% [Piketty, 2015, p. 97]. So, the significant pace of the economic growth is found only at the turn of the 19th and 20th century. Additionally, the growth in this period refers predominantly to Europe and North America. The countries on other continents were either stuck in colonialism, structurally similar to the medieval period, or “lived” on the history of their former glory, as, for example, China and Japan, or to a lesser extent some countries of the Middle East and South America. The growth, having then the signs of the modern growth, that is the growth based on technological progress, was attributed mainly to Europe and the United States. The progress of civilisation requires the creation of new social initiatives. Social innovations are indeed an additional capital to keep the social structure in balance. The social capital is seen as a means and purpose and as a primary source of new values for the members of the society. Social innovations also motivate every citizen to actively participate in this process. It is necessary, because traditional ways of solving social problems, even those known for a long time as unemployment, ageing of the society, or exclusion of considerable social and professional groups from the social and economic development, simply fail. “Old” problems are joined by new ones, such as the increase of social inequalities, climate change, or rapidly growing environmental pollution. New phenomena and problems require new solutions, changes to existing procedures, programmes, and often a completely different approach and instruments [Kowalczyk, Sobiecki, 2017].
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Kusum Chandrakar, Deepak Kumar Chandrakar, and Debasis Das. "Strengthening tribal populace of Chhattisgarh: Obstacles and opportunities." International Journal of Science and Research Archive 8, no. 1 (February 28, 2023): 766–70. http://dx.doi.org/10.30574/ijsra.2023.8.1.0081.

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Through social welfare programmes, the state of Chhattisgarh seeks to create revenue, reduce unemployment, and provide socioeconomic circumstances for tribal growth. The welfare system, however, is badly impacted by the variety of problems. The lack of control over resources and assets, lack of education and skills, malnutrition, inadequate access to shelter and clean water, vulnerability, crime and victimisation are just a few reasons why tribals are falling behind. Other reasons include geographic and cultural isolation, inadequate health facilities, and the inability to achieve food security. Their life will be tough to live because of all these difficulties. The government works to help the Tribes through different social programmes in light of these problems.This article examines the socio-economic status of the tribal communities and the government schemes introduced by the Governments of Chhattisgarh to assist the tribals communities.
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Velayutham, Uma, Lakshmi Ponnusamy, and Gomathi Venugopal. "Minimization of cost and congestion management using interline power flow controller." COMPEL - The international journal for computation and mathematics in electrical and electronic engineering 35, no. 5 (September 5, 2016): 1495–512. http://dx.doi.org/10.1108/compel-07-2015-0255.

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Purpose The purpose of this paper is to optimally locate and size the FACTS device, namely, interline power flow controller in order to minimize the total cost and relieve congestion in a power system. This security analysis helps independent system operator (ISO) to have a better planning and market clearing criteria during any operating state of the system. Design/methodology/approach A multi-objective optimization problem has been developed including real power performance index (RPPI) and expected security cost (ESC). A security constrained optimal power flow has been developed as expected security cost optimal power flow problem which gives the probabilities of operating the system in all possible pre-contingency and post-contingency states subjected to various equality and inequality constraints. Maximizing social welfare is the objective function considered for normal state, while minimizing compensations for generations rescheduling and maximizing social welfare are the objectives in case of contingency states. The proposed work is viewed as a two level problem wherein the upper-level problem is to optimally locate IPFC using RPPI and the lower-level problem is to minimize the ESC subjected to various system constraints. Both upper-level and lower-level problem are solved using particle swarm optimization and The performance of the proposed algorithm is tested under severe line outages and has been validated using IEEE 30 bus system. Findings The proposed methodology shows that IPFC controls the power flows in the network without generation rescheduling or topological changes and thus improves the performance of the system. It is found that the benefit achieved in the ESC due to the installation of IPFC is greater than the annual investment cost of the device. ISO cannot achieve minimum total system cost by merely rescheduling generators. Instead of rescheduling, FACTS devices can be used for compensation by achieving minimum cost. IPFC can be used to compensate the congested lines and transfer cheaper power from generators to consumers. Originality/value Operational reliability, financial profitability and efficient utilization of the existing transmission system infrastructure has been achieved using single FACTS device. Instead of using multiple FATCS devices, if a single FACTS device like IPFC which itself can compensate several transmission lines is used, then in addition to the facility for independently controlled reactive (series) compensation of each individual line, it provides a capability to directly transfer real power between the compensated lines. Hence an attempt has been made in this paper to incorporate IPFC for relieving congestion in a deregulated environment. However, no previous researches have considered incorporating compensation of multi-transmission line using single IPFC in minimizing ESC. Thus, in this paper, the authors indicate how much the ESC is reduced by installing IPFC.
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GOODIN, ROBERT E. "Temporal Justice." Journal of Social Policy 39, no. 1 (September 18, 2009): 1–16. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0047279409990225.

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AbstractDistributive justice is ordinarily calibrated in monetary terms. But money is not the only resource that matters to people. Talk of the ‘work−life balance’ points to another: time. Control over one's time, the capacity to spend it as one wishes, is another important resource; and its distribution raises another important aspect of justice. Here I describe a new method of distinguishing how much time one has discretionary control over, net of the amount it is necessary to spend in certain ways given one's circumstances. To draw out the distributive-justice implications of these calculations, I contrast the most-to-least privileged, in terms of discretionary time: a person in a dual-earner couple with no children, versus a lone mother. The magnitude of the gap between the discretionary time enjoyed by the best and worst is a measure of temporal injustice. That gap is substantially larger in some countries (such as the US and Australia) than in others (such as Finland and Sweden). Conventional welfare-state interventions – tax and transfer systems, support for child care – contribute pretty similarly to reducing that particular gap across all the countries examined. Differing practices surrounding the dissolution of marriages with children potentially makes a much bigger difference. Differing labour-market policies might make a similarly large difference yet again.
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Barrett, David C., Dan Griffiths, James P. Hopkins, and Ellie Button. "Youngstock health: a focus on Mycoplasma bovis, nematode control and the use of NSAIDS in scour." Livestock 26, Sup6 (November 1, 2021): 3–22. http://dx.doi.org/10.12968/live.2021.26.s5.5.

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Foreword Farming is under increasing scrutiny on environmental issues (including greenhouse gas emissions, resource use, water and air quality, biodiversity and other impacts), in addition to increasing economic and social pressures. It is increasingly clear that we need to ensure that every animal has a good healthy life, while reducing losses throughout the production system. As cattle vets, we work with cattle at every stage of the production cycle, but on many dairy farms, youngstock are still seen as being of secondary importance compared with the mature herd, suffering significant levels of disease, and sustaining high mortality. This is despite the fact that dairy replacements are, or should be, the group with the highest genetic merit on the farm and are the future of the herd. In contrast to the dairy herd, calves from the suckler herd are the only saleable product of the cow and thus her whole production for the year is lost if the calf should die. Despite this, more could still be done on many farms to improve health and productivity of these calves allowing them to be finished faster with associated environmental benefits. For environmental, economic and social reasons, it is no longer acceptable to cull dairy bull calves, or to ignore high levels of morbidity or mortality. An animal that has a suboptimal growth rate or dies represents a financial loss to the farmer, a welfare concern to the consumer, and an environmental impact that is not compensated for by food (milk or meat) production. If we are to serve our clients to the best of our ability and help make their businesses as sustainable as possible, we need a greater focus on youngstock. This supplement is a good place to start with its focus on Mycoplasma bovis, nematode control and the use of NSAIDs in calf scour.
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Ali, Mohd Wasim, and Anam Rakshan. "A STUDY OF WAQF ASSET MANAGEMENT SYSTEM OF INDIA (WAMSI) SOFTWARE: GOVERNANCE, UTILITY AND SOCIO-ECONOMIC IMPACT." Journal of Asian and African Social Science and Humanities 7, no. 4 (January 2, 2022): 29–40. http://dx.doi.org/10.55327/jaash.v7i4.253.

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This study presents an analysis of the management of waqf properties through Remote Sensing and GIS, and GPS techniques. In India, there is a large number of waqf properties; according to the Sachar Committee report (2006) titled Social, Economic, and Educational Status of the Muslim Community of India, the total area under waqf properties at about 600,000 acres at a book value of approximately Rs. 6000 crore[1]. Some famous waqf properties are the Dargah of Moinuddin Chishti at Ajmer or the Shahi Masjid at Fatehpur Sikri. The Central Waqf Council undertakes the management of Waqf to check gross mismanagement and encroachment of Waqf properties. The Ministry of Minority Affairs, Government of India, in 2009, developed the Waqf Asset Management System of India (WAMSI), an integrated online workflow-based information system for managing the Waqf properties under the control of various State/U.T. Waqf Boards. The advantage of this software system is transparency in sharing up-to-date information to the public at large and keeping a check on the revenue generated for the welfare of society in conformity with the noble object of Waqf. The methodology used in the paper is a qualitative research method where available works of literature were reviewed, conceptual and data-based evidence were analysed. The paper explores how WAMSI could be very useful to the countries where the Islamic concept of Waqf is prevalent and in practice, particularly in West Asian, South Asian, and South-Eastern Countries like Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Egypt, Indonesia, Iraq, Iran, Malaysia, Thailand, and UAE.
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Chkhirodze, Darejan. "ENVIRONMENTAL SUSTAINABILITY OF TRANSPORT AS A COMPONENT OF ECONOMIC STABILITY (ON THE EXAMPLE OF KUTAISI)." Economic Profile 16, no. 1(21) (July 16, 2021): 72–81. http://dx.doi.org/10.52244/ep.2021.21.07.

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The intensive growth of industrial processes and transport in cities is directly related to environmental pollution, which is manifested by an increase in the amount of emissions from vehicles and an increase in the concentration of aerosols in the atmosphere. The dynamics of this process depends on many different factors, in particular, the state of atmospheric stratification, wind direction, speed and more. The main source of air pollution in Kutaisi is road transport - more than 90 percent of total air pollution emissions come from road transport. The emission of large amounts of pollutants from vehicles is due to many factors, including improper organization and management of traffic, low fuel quality, catalytic converter malfunctions, and the age of vehicles. The number of passenger cars in Kutaisi is growing, for example, according to the years. In Kutaisi in 2014 -38929, 2015 -47668, according to global trends, if we do not take into account possible changes in policy, we can assume that car ownership will double in the next ten years. According to the data conducted by the National Environment Agency on air pollution in Kutaisi in November 2018, the maximum single concentration of dust exceeded the maximum allowable norm by 2.4 times (4.2 times as of December), and the other components: carbon dioxide, sulfur dioxide, sulfur Also the maximum single concentrations of nitric oxide were within the norm. There have been up to a million cars across the country in recent years, according to this year’s data. 49273 cars (cars, buses, trucks) are registered in Kutaisi. The main part of the increased car fleet in Kutaisi is outdated and does not meet international technical and environmental requirements. Most of the registered cars were produced before 2002. According to the Service Agency of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, the issue amounts to 22,628 units over 20 years old, 11,737 units from 10 to 15 years old, and 387 units under 5 years old. It should be noted that st. Kutaisi has introduced municipal transport, namely buses, based on their ecological passport data, we can assume that air pollution will be minimized, which will contribute to sustainable development of the city, in particular, improving the ecological situation will increase the socio-economic situation. Their economic sustainability will improve and the welfare level will rise, sustainable transport will improve the economy of transport users, as you know, municipal transport is much cheaper compared to other service transport. We have mentioned that the emissions of harmful substances by the new buses are less. The buses were currently out of order due to regulations imposed during the pandemic period, thus increasing the number of light vehicles, their excessive number, thus affecting the air quality composition. The author has made a comparative analysis between the harmful substances emitted by the municipal transport in the previous years and the substances emitted by the new buses, namely we have selected greenhouse gases CO2 and NO em, increasing greenhouse gas emissions leading to temperature rise and resulting in climate change. The IPCC methodology was used. The mathematical relationship between the fuel used by vehicles and the harmful substances emitted into the atmosphere as a result of combustion is as follows: yCO2 = 3.22x-0.003 (1) yNO = 0.035x + 0.0017 The given equations can be used to predict the quantitative pollution of the environment by vehicles during the day, if the intensity of traffic D or the amount of fuel consumed is known. here are the following challenges to ensure transport sustainability in Kutaisi: Develop an appropriate environmental, economic and social development strategy for the functioning of sustainable transport in the city: Reducing the negative impact of traffic on air quality and reducing secondary pollution in the city area; The level of awareness of the population about the air quality in the city; Air pollution quality control; Increasing flow of vehicles, which is not in line with proactively integrated transport planning and demand management, and which negatively affects air quality; Development and implementation of socio-economic policy in the field of transport; Control of vehicle flow, work on updating the vehicle fleet, creation of electric transport infrastructure, appropriate planning for green cover cultivation; Increase the involvement of the Department of Ecology and Landscaping of the Infrastructure Development, Landscaping, Transport and Cleaning Service in the work process of drafting the city master plan; Cultivation of new green zones and restoration of green zones in the area of the city and its surroundings; Participation of the Department of Ecology and Economy and Landscaping in joint measures to be taken by various agencies to reduce transport emissions, such as: Optimization of traffic management in Kutaisi (including the introduction of a traffic light regulation system); Setting an age limit on imported cars; Gradual tightening of fuel quality and emission requirements; Introduction of mandatory use of catalytic converter; Re-introduce annual technical inspection of vehicles, including exhaust inspection. Support for measures to reduce the number of vehicles: Introduction of environmentally friendly vehicles; Improving and complex development of municipal transport in the city and increasing its popularity; Popularization of municipal transport in order to reduce the number of vehicles; Participate in the implementation of the principles of Ecological sustainable transport, energy efficiency, intensive transport planning and demand management, low-carbon fuel and electrification of transport (through new technologies - hybrids, fuel, mobile communications, etc.). Development of electric transport infrastructure and bringing to the forefront alternative transport modes; Expansion of the existing network of pedestrian and bicycle lanes, arrangement of new pedestrian roads and bicycle lanes and development of relevant infrastructure.
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Griffiths, Daniel, Michael Di Donato, Tyler Lane, Shannon Gray, Ross Iles, Janneke Berecki-Gisolf, Peter Smith, and Alex Collie. "Changes in health and welfare after workers’ compensation benefits cease." International Journal of Population Data Science 7, no. 3 (August 25, 2022). http://dx.doi.org/10.23889/ijpds.v7i3.1974.

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ObjectivesTo investigate welfare and health service use among workers with long-duration workers’ compensation claims after workers’ compensation stopped. To identify changes in health and welfare of workers whose compensation benefits ended due to a 260-week limit under s39(1) of the Workers’ Compensation Act New South Wales 2012 legislative amendments, Australia. ApproachWorkers’ compensation claims from the New South Wales State Insurance Regulatory Authority were linked to records for social security payments, hospital and emergency department admissions, and health professional services. A cohort of 15,258 workers with long-duration workers’ compensation claims (>2 years) were classified based on whether compensation ended due to a 260-week limit (s39 group), or in circumstances where compensation benefits stopped independently of a 260-week limit (injured control group), and are contextualised with a community comparator (N=10,703). Changes in welfare and health service use were examined 12 months preceding, and 12 months following, a final workers’ compensation benefit payment. ResultsAfter workers’ compensation benefits ceased under a 260-week limit there was a 53% increase in the uptake of social security benefits such as unemployment or disability payments by the s39 group, and levels of hospitalisation remained elevated compared to a community comparator. In contrast, workers whose compensation ended for other reasons, such as returning to work, saw a 28% increase in receipt of social security payments, and coincided with decreased hospitalisation incidence after exiting the workers’ compensation scheme. Overall, receipt of welfare and use of hospital health services after workers’ compensation ended was more common for people aged 65 or older, non-homeowners, single parents, and people living outside major cities. Social security payments were underrepresented for people with compensable psychological injuries, whilst hospitalisation was overrepresented. ConclusionThe introduction of a 260-week limit on workers’ compensation benefits resulted in a cohort of workers transitioning to the social security system, and did not coincide with a characteristic reduction in hospital service use. Policy changes must recognise interconnected consequences of changes to welfare and health. Transitional supports are encouraged.
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Lane, Tyler, Janneke Berecki-Gisolf, Ross Iles, Alex Collie, and Peter Smith. "impact of workers’ compensation benefit cessation on welfare and health service use." International Journal of Population Data Science 6, no. 1 (May 12, 2021). http://dx.doi.org/10.23889/ijpds.v6i1.1419.

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BackgroundIn 2012, the Australian state of New South Wales passed legislation that reformed its workers’ compensation system. Section 39 introduced a five-year limit on income replacement, with the first affected group having their benefits cease in December 2017. There is limited evidence on how this will affect their healthcare service use and where they will go for financial support. MethodsMultiple data sources will be linked: administrate workers’ compensation claims data from the State Insurance Regulatory Authority (SIRA), universal health insurance data from the Medical Benefits Schedule (MBS) and Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme (PBS), state hospital and emergency department data, and social welfare data from the Department of Social Services’ Data Over Multiple Individual Occurrences (DOMINO). An estimated 4,125 injured workers had their benefits cease due to Section 39. These will form the exposure group who will be compared to 1) a similar group of workers’ compensation claimants who have had at least two years of compensated time off work but whose benefits did not cease due to Section 39; and 2) a community comparison group drawn from state hospital and emergency department records. An accredited third party will link the data, which will be accessible only via secure virtual machine. Initial analyses will compare the prevalence and incidence of service use across groups in both the year before and year after benefit cessation; the community control will be assigned the median benefit cessation date in lieu of an actual date. To estimate the impact of benefit cessation due to Section 39, we will conduct time series analysis of the prevalence and incidence of service use. DiscussionThis study will provide much-needed evidence on the consequences of long-term benefit cessation, particularly on subsequent healthcare and welfare service use.
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Perry, Sara, and Nicole Beale. "The Social Web and Archaeology’s Restructuring: Impact, Exploitation, Disciplinary Change." Open Archaeology 1, no. 1 (May 19, 2015). http://dx.doi.org/10.1515/opar-2015-0009.

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AbstractFrom blogs to crowdfunding, YouTube to LinkedIn, online photo-sharing sites to open-source community-based software projects, the social web has been a meaningful player in the development of archaeological practice for two decades now. Yet despite its myriad applications, it is still often appreciated as little more than a tool for communication, rather than a paradigm-shifting system that also shapes the questions we ask in our research, the nature and spread of our data, and the state of skill and expertise in the profession. We see this failure to critically engage with its dimensions as one of the most profound challenges confronting archaeology today. The social web is bound up in relations of power, control, freedom, labour and exploitation, with consequences that portend real instability for the cultural sector and for social welfare overall. Only a handful of archaeologists, however, are seriously debating these matters, which suggests the discipline is setting itself up to be swept away by our unreflective investment in the cognitive capitalist enterprise that marks much current web-based work. Here we review the state of play of the archaeological social web, and reflect on various conscientious activities aimed both at challenging practitioners’ current online interactions, and at otherwise situating the discipline as a more informed innovator with the social web’s possibilities.
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Moncrieff, Joanna. "The Political Economy of the Mental Health System: A Marxist Analysis." Frontiers in Sociology 6 (January 17, 2022). http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fsoc.2021.771875.

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The present paper analyses the functions of the mental health system in relation to the economic organisation of society, using concepts derived from Marx’s work on political economy and building on previous critiques. The analysis starts from the position that mental health problems are not equivalent to physical, medical conditions and are more fruitfully viewed as problems of communities or societies. Using the example of the United Kingdom, it traces how a public mental health system evolved alongside capitalism in order to manage the problems posed by people whose behaviour was too chaotic, disruptive or inefficient to participate in a labour market based on exploitation. The system provided a mixture of care and control, and under recent, Neoliberal regimes, these functions have been increasingly transferred to the private sector and provided in a capitalistic manner. Welfare payments are also part of the system and support those less seriously affected but unable to work productively enough to generate surplus value and profit. The increased intensity and precarity of work under Neoliberalism has driven up benefit claims at the same time as the Neoliberal state is trying to reduce them. These social responses are legitimised by the idea that mental disorders are medical conditions, and this idea also has a hegemonic function by construing the adverse consequences of social and economic structures as individual problems, an approach that has been particularly important during the rise of Neoliberalism. The concept of mental illness has a strategic role in modern societies, therefore, enabling certain contentious social activities by obscuring their political nature, and diverting attention from the failings of the underlying economic system. The analysis suggests the medical view is driven by political imperatives rather than science and reveals the need for a system that is more transparent and democratic. While the mental health system has some consistent functions across all modern societies, this account highlights one of the endemic contradictions of the capitalist system in the way that it marginalises large groups of people by narrowing the opportunities to make an economic contribution to society.
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Krasivskyi, O., M. Kulynych, and N. Maziy. "Management aspects of socio-economic development of the state in the context of european integration." Efficiency of public administration, no. 67 (June 9, 2021). http://dx.doi.org/10.33990/2070-4011.67.2021.240239.

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Problem setting. On the way to the realization of Ukraine’s European integration aspirations, there are many unresolved problems related to the improper implementation of reforms that slow down the processes of economic development and social security of the population. Ukraine needs proper governmental guidelines, capable of promoting proper socio-economic development of society with the help of methods adopted in the civilized world.Recent research and publications analysis. Features of public administration in the field of socio-economic development are the subject of research by many scholars. In particular, it is necessary to mention such scientists as A. Antonenko, D. Babych, V. Bazylevych, V. Besedin, N. Voronina, V. Geiets, Z. Gerasymchuk, B. Danylyshyn, V. Kutsenko, I. Mikhasyuk, V. Myagkyi, Y. Pakhomov, O. Panukhnyk, V. Savchenko, M. Sokolov and others. These researchers study issues related to public administration and the formation of effective public policy in the field of socio-economic development, focus on the need to implement government functions with maximum effect.Highlighting previously unsettled parts of the general problem. Despite the large number of publications on the peculiarities of economic and social development of the state and public administration of these processes, there is still a need for in-depth scientific research related to the implementation of European integration aspirations of the Ukrainian state. Ukraine’s intention to be a full member of the European Union requires radical transformational changes in the field of socio-economic development and increasing the efficiency of the state’s implementation of its management functions.Paper main body. The fundamental legal framework of Ukraine provides grounds for talking about the close relationship and harmonious combination of social and economic development and determines the overall strategic course of public policy as a whole. Based on this, it is safe to say that the outcome of the functioning of economic entities in the economy of Ukraine directly depends on what are the management actions of public authorities authorized to regulate, coordinate, evaluate and control the actions of these entities and affect the welfare of life population as a whole. Thus, the state performs its functions in all spheres of socio-economic life of the country.Effective economic policy of the state directly affects the social development and well-being of citizens. Increasing the level of welfare, social protection, ensuring equal rights and opportunities for all citizens, the right to property, work and earnings, decent social security, education, health care, etc. are the result of effective management of economic processes in the country. Accordingly, it makes it possible to implement such basic tasks of social policy as improving the quality of life of the population; increasing its employment; providing an opportunity for every citizen to realize his potential to meet his needs for the development of his personality; improving the remuneration of employees in all areas; ensuring the availability of a sufficient number of social infrastructure facilities in the state.Standards of socio-economic development in Ukraine differ from their counterparts in developed European countries. Given the European integration aspirations of the Ukrainian state, it is necessary to ensure continuous and effective transformational transformations that affect this area, and to improve the institutional support of this process, which would correspond to the basic principles, standards and norms of the European Union.At present, it is difficult to talk about the adequacy of public administration actions in the field of socio-economic development of the Ukrainian state, which would meet European standards. Evidence of this is the inefficiency of public finance management, incomplete decentralization transformations, imperfection of regulatory and legal support of processes in the economic and social spheres. Conclusions of the research and prospects for further studies. Socio-economic development of the Ukrainian state has sufficient legal support, but to implement the European integration vector of Ukraine it is necessary to provide a number of tasks: to develop an effective mechanism on the basis of which will systematically and purposefully implement the strategy of socio-economic development; to unify institutional support in the field of development and implementation of strategic plans in the field of socio-economic development; to form new and improve existing approaches to the development of strategic plans for the short, medium and long term at the national and regional levels; to provide a system of monitoring and control over the implementation of those tasks that are set in the implementation of the strategy of socio-economic development; to determine the criteria for analyzing the effectiveness of the implemented measures within the strategy of socio-economic development, which will allow to assess the degree of achievement of the strategic goal. An integrated approach to the implementation of these tasks will allow to take the socio-economic development of Ukraine to a qualitatively new level and to increase the welfare of the population as a whole.
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Capra, Carlo. "IL CONTESTO SOCIALE E POLITICO DELL’ILLUMINISMO LOMBARDO." Istituto Lombardo - Accademia di Scienze e Lettere - Incontri di Studio, December 13, 2011, 243–54. http://dx.doi.org/10.4081/incontri.2011.110.

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The political and social context of the Lombard enlightenment. The dawn of the Lombard enlightenment in the 1760’s was coincidental with the second and more radical wave of Habsburg reforms in the State of Milan, beginning with the adoption on 1st January 1760 of the new fiscal system based on the cadastral survey. In the following decade, new foundations were laid for the relationships between Church and State, a thorough overhaul of legislation and the judiciary was envisaged, new government agencies were established (prominent among them the Supreme Economic Council, chaired by Gian Rinaldo Carli and including Pietro Verri as a councillor), a new and competent bureaucracy replaced patrician rule, and State control was introduced over education, public health, and welfare. Earlier reforms, under Gianluca Pallavicini as plenipotentiary minister, had been largely confined to finance and administration; now the declared goal was public happiness, as described in Lodovico Muratori’s last work. At the same time, political power was decisively shifted from the Milan government to Vienna, where an Italian Department under chancellor Kaunitz’s supervision replaced the old and lethargic Italian Council. Another factor for change was the Seven Years’ War, which proved a hard test for the Austrian Monarchy and thus opened the way to further adjustments of the State machinery both at the centre and in the periphery. Moreover, the diplomatic revolution leading to a rapprochement with Bourbon France had the effect of neutralizing the Italian peninsula, thus making governments more confident and secure in adopting long-range reform policies. Compared with Naples or Florence, Milan was slower in opening itself to the currents of thought radiating from France and to a lesser extent from Britain in the age between Montesquieu’s Esprit des Lois and Rousseau’s Contrat social and Nouvelle Éloise. But when it did, it immediately established itself as one of the foremost European centres of the enlightenment, especially in the fields of criminal law and economic science. A peculiar feature of the Milanese experience, which lasted throughout Maria Theresa’s reign, was the close collaboration of leading intellectuals, such as Pietro Verri, Cesare Beccaria and Giuseppe Parini, with the Habsburg government.
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Hernández, Pablo, Andrés Carmona, Maria S. Tapia, and Siloyde Rivas. "Dismantling of Institutionalization and State Policies as Guarantors of Food Security in Venezuela: Food Safety Implications." Frontiers in Sustainable Food Systems 5 (February 18, 2021). http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fsufs.2021.623603.

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Historically, Venezuela was recognized as a country with solid government food safety policies, science-based legislation, clear national food security goals, strict standards for domestic food production and imports, and a system of institutions committed to ensuring safety and quality along each step of the food chain. Major institutions that aimed to insure people's welfare, nutrition and food availability, and safety were created between 1936 and 1949. Remarkable progress was achieved in terms of control of tropical maladies and fight against hunger and malnutrition. The National Institute of Hygiene set the standards for food safety and the continuous surveillance of available foods. The National Codex Alimentarius Committee was officially created in 2001. Nowadays, the situation has dramatically deteriorated as indicated by a severe decline of national food production and a strong dependence on food imports, whose prices make them inaccessible to the majority of Venezuelans. In response to the humanitarian crisis, the government created a food program, the so-called Local Supply and Production Committee (CLAP), to distribute basic foods at reduced prices but with clear intentions of social and political control of the population. Currently, CLAP products come from government imports at a preferential exchange rate. Under the umbrella of an economic emergency decree, many food safety regulations and surveillance protocols have been relaxed or eliminated, often resulting in the acquisition of low-quality items that do not meet Venezuelan food preferences or quality standards. The objective of this work is to describe, through the Venezuelan case, how the food security infrastructure of a country can be dismantled. We address (1) the development of institutions dedicated to promoting food security and nutrition and the recent dismantling of the sector; (2) the creation, characteristics, and weakness of the CLAP program; and (3) the current food insecurity crisis and the attempts to provide humanitarian help to the Venezuelan population.
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Howarth, Anita. "Food Banks: A Lens on the Hungry Body." M/C Journal 19, no. 1 (April 6, 2016). http://dx.doi.org/10.5204/mcj.1072.

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IntroductionIn Britain, hunger is often hidden in the privacy of the home. Yet otherwise private hunger is currently being rendered public and visible in the growing queues at charity-run food banks, where emergency food parcels are distributed directly to those who cannot afford to feed themselves or their families adequately (Downing et al.; Caplan). Food banks, in providing emergency relief to those in need, are responses to crisis moments, actualised through an embodied feeling of hunger that cannot be alleviated. The growing queues at food banks not only render hidden hunger visible, but also serve as reminders of the corporeal vulnerability of the human body to political and socio-economic shifts.A consideration of corporeality allows us to view the world through the lived experiences of the body. Human beings are “creatures of the flesh” who understand and reason, act and interact with their environments through the body (Johnson 81). The growing academic interest in corporeality signifies what Judith Butler calls a “new bodily ontology” (2). However, as Butler highlights, the body is also vulnerable to injury and suffering. An application of this ontology to hunger draws attention to eating as essential to life, so the denial of food poses an existential threat to health and ultimately to survival. The body’s response to threat is the physiological experience of hunger as a craving or longing that is the “most bodily experience of need […] a visceral desire locatable in a void” in which an empty stomach “initiates” a series of sounds and pangs that “call for action” in the form of eating (Anderson 27). Food bank queues serve as visible public reminders of this precariousness and of how social conditions can limit the ability of individuals to feed themselves, and so respond to an existential threat.Corporeal vulnerability made visible elicits responses that support societal interventions to feed the hungry, or that stigmatise hungry people by withdrawing or disparaging what limited support is available. Responses to vulnerability therefore evoke nurture and care or violence and abuse, and so in this sense are ambiguous (Butler; Cavarero). The responses are also normative, shaped by social and cultural understandings of what hunger is, what its causes are, and whether it is seen as originating in personal or societal failings. The stigmatising of individuals by blaming them for their hunger is closely allied to the feelings of shame that lie at the “irreducible absolutist core” of the idea of poverty (Sen 159). Shame is where the “internally felt inadequacies” of the impoverished individual and the “externally inflicted judgments” of society about the hungry body come together in a “co-construction of shame” (Walker et al. 5) that is a key part of the lived experience of hunger. The experience of shame, while common, is far from inevitable and is open to resistance (see Pickett; Foucault); shame can be subverted, turned from the hungry body and onto the society that allows hunger to happen. Who and what are deemed responsible are shaped by shifting ideas and contested understandings of hunger at a particular moment in time (Vernon).This exploration of corporeal vulnerability through food banks as a historically located response to hunger offers an alternative to studies which privilege representations, objectifying the body and “treating it as a discursive, textual, iconographic and metaphorical reality” while neglecting understandings derived from lived experiences and the responses that visible vulnerabilities elicit (Hamilakis 99). The argument made in this paper calls for a critical reconsideration of classic political economy approaches that view hunger in terms of a class struggle against the material conditions that give rise to it, and responses that ultimately led to the construction of the welfare state (Vernon). These political economy approaches, in focusing on the structures that lead to hunger and that respond to it, are more closed than Butler’s notion of ambiguous and constantly changing social responses to corporeal vulnerability. This paper also challenges the dominant tradition of nutrition science, which medicalises hunger. While nutrition science usefully draws attention to the physiological experiences and existential threat posed by acute hunger, the scientific focus on the “anatomical functioning” of the body and the optimising of survival problematically separates eating from the social contexts in which hunger is experienced (Lupton 11, 12; Abbots and Lavis). The focus in this article on the corporeal vulnerability of hunger interweaves contested representations of, and ideas about, hunger with the physiological experience of it, the material conditions that shape it, and the lived experiences of deprivation. Food banks offer a lens onto these experiences and their complexities.Food Banks: Deprivation Made VisibleSince the 1980s, food banks have become the fastest growing charitable organisations in the wealthiest countries of North America, Europe, and Australasia (Riches), but in Britain they are a recent phenomenon. The first opened in 2000, and by 2014, the largest operator, the Trussell Trust, had over 420 franchised food banks, and more recently was opening more than one per week (Lambie-Mumford et al.; Lambie-Mumford and Dowler). British food banks hand out emergency food relief directly to those who cannot afford to feed themselves or their families adequately, and have become new sites where deprivation is materialised through a congregation of hungry people and the distribution of food parcels. The food relief parcels are intended as short-term immediate responses to crisis moments felt within the body when the individual cannot alleviate hunger through their own resources; they are for “emergency use only” to ameliorate individual crisis and acute vulnerability, and are not intended as long-term solutions to sustained, chronic poverty (Perry et al.). The need for food banks has emerged with the continued shrinkage of the welfare state, which for the past half century sought to mediate the impact of changing individual and social circumstances on those deemed to be most vulnerable to the vicissitudes of life. The proliferation of food banks since the 2009 financial crisis and the increased public discourse about them has normalised their presence and naturalised their role in alleviating acute food poverty (Perry et al.).Media images of food bank queues and stacks of tins waiting to be handed out (Glaze; Gore) evoke collective memories from the early twentieth century of hunger marches in protest at government inaction over poverty, long queues at soup kitchens, and the faces of gaunt, unemployed war veterans (Vernon). After the Second World War, the spectre of communism and the expansionist agenda of the Soviet Union meant such images of hunger could become tools in a propaganda war constructed around the failure of the British state to care for its citizens (Field; Clarke et al; Vernon). The 1945 Labour government, elected on a social democratic agenda of reform in an era of food rationing, responded with a “war on want” based on the normative premise that no one should be without food, medical care, shelter, warmth or work. Labour’s response was the construction of the modern welfare state.The welfare state signified a major shift in ideational understandings of hunger. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, ideas about hunger had been rooted in a moralistic account of divine punishment for individual failure (Vernon). Bodily experiences of hunger were seen as instruments for disciplining the indigent into a work ethic appropriate for a modern industrialised economy. The infamous workhouses, finally abolished in 1948, were key sites of deprivation where restrictions on how much food was distributed served to punish or discipline the hungry body into compliance with the dominant work ethic (Vernon; Foucault). However, these ideas shifted in the second half of the nineteenth century as the hungry citizen in Britain (if not in its colonies) was increasingly viewed as a victim of wider forces beyond the control of the individual, and the notion of disciplining the hungry body in workhouses was seen as reprehensible. A humanitarian treatment of hunger replaced a disciplinarian one as a more appropriate response to acute need (Shaw; Vernon). Charitable and reformist organisations proliferated with an agenda to feed, clothe, house, and campaign on behalf of those most deprived, and civil society largely assumed responsibility for those unable to feed themselves. By the early 1900s, ideas about hunger had begun to shift again, and after the Second World War ideational changes were formalised in the welfare state, premised on a view of hunger as due to structural rather than individual failure, hence the need for state intervention encapsulated in the “cradle to grave” mantra of the welfare state, i.e. of consistent care at the point of need for all citizens for their lifetime (see Clarke and Newman; Field; Powell). In this context, the suggestion that Britons could go to bed hungry because they could not afford to feed themselves would be seen as the failure of the “war on want” and of an advanced modern democracy to fulfil its responsibilities for the welfare of its citizens.Since the 1980s, there has been a retreat from these ideas. Successive governments have sought to rein in, reinvent or shrink what they have perceived as a “bloated” welfare state. In their view this has incentivised “dependency” by providing benefits so generous that the supposedly work-shy or “skivers” have no need to seek employment and can fund a diet of takeaways and luxury televisions (Howarth). These stigmatising ideas have, since the 2009 financial crisis and the 2010 election, become more entrenched as the Conservative-led government has sought to renew a neo-liberal agenda to shrink the welfare state, and legitimise a new mantra of austerity. This mantra is premised on the idea that the state can no longer afford the bloated welfare budget, that responsible government needs to “wean” people off benefits, and that sanctions imposed for not seeking work or for incorrectly filling in benefit claim forms serve to “encourage” people into work. Critics counter-argue that the punitive nature of sanctions has exacerbated deprivation and contributed to the growing use of food banks, a view the government disputes (Howarth; Caplan).Food Banks as Sites of Vulnerable CorporealityIn these shifting contexts, food banks have proliferated not only as sites of deprivation but also as sites of vulnerable corporeality, where people unable to draw on individual resources to respond to hunger congregate in search of social and material support. As growing numbers of people in Britain find themselves in this situation, the vulnerable corporeality of the hungry body becomes more pervasive and more visible. Hunger as a lived experience is laid bare in ever-longer food bank queues and also through the physiological, emotional and social consequences graphically described in personal blogs and in the testimonies of food bank users.Blogger Jack Monroe, for example, has recounted giving what little food she had to her child and going to bed hungry with a pot of ginger tea to “ease the stomach pains”; saying to her curious child “I’m not hungry,” while “the rumblings of my stomach call me a liar” (Monroe, Hunger Hurts). She has also written that her recourse to food banks started with the “terrifying and humiliating” admission that “you cannot afford to feed your child” and has expressed her reluctance to solicit the help of the food bank because “it feels like begging” (Monroe, Austerity Works?). Such blog accounts are corroborated in reports by food bank operators and a parliamentary enquiry which told stories of mothers not eating for days after being sanctioned under the benefit system; of children going to school hungry; of people leaving hospital after a major operation unable to feed themselves since their benefits have been cut; of the elderly having to make “hard choices” between “heat or eat” each winter; and of mixed feelings of relief and shame at receiving food bank parcels (All-Party Parliamentary Inquiry; Beattie; Cooper and Dumpleton; Caplan; Perry et al.). That is, two different visibilities have emerged: the shame of standing or being seen to stand in the food bank queue, and blogs that describe these feelings and the lived experience of hunger – both are vulnerable and visible, but in different ways and in different spaces: the physical or material, and the virtual.The response of doctors to the growing evidence of crisis was to warn that there were “all the signs of a public health emergency that could go unrecognised until it is too late to take preventative action,” that progress made against food poverty since the 1960s was being eroded (Ashton et al. 1631), and that the “robust last line of defence against hunger” provided by the welfare state was failing (Loopstra et al. n.p). Medical professionals thus sought to conscript the rhetorical resources of their professional credibility to highlight that this is a politically created public health crisis.This is not to suggest that acute hunger was absent for 50 years of the welfare state, but that with the closure of the last workhouses, the end of hunger marches, and the shutting of the soup kitchens by the 1950s, it became less visible. Over the past decade, hunger has become more visible in images of growing queues at food banks and stacked tins ready to be handed out by volunteers (Glaze; Gore) on production of a voucher provided on referral by professionals. Doctors, social workers or teachers are therefore tasked with discerning cases of need, deciding whose need is “genuine” and so worthy of food relief (see Downing et al.). The voucher system is regulated by professionals so that food banks are open only to those with a public identity constructed around bodily crisis. The sense of something as intimate as hunger being defined by others contrasts to making visible one’s own hunger through blogging. It suggests again how bodies become caught up in wider political struggles where not only is shame a co-construction of internal inadequacies and external judgements, but so too is hunger, albeit in different yet interweaving ways. New boundaries are being established between those who are deprived and those who are not, and also between those whose bodies are in short-term acute crisis, and those whose bodies are in long-term and chronic crisis, which is not deemed to be an emergency. It is in this context that food banks have also become sites of demarcation, shame, and contestation.Public debates about growing food bank queues highlight the ambiguous nature of societal responses to the vulnerability of hunger made visible. Government ministers have intensified internal shame in attributing growing food bank queues to individual inadequacies, failure to manage household budgets (Gove), and profligate spending on luxury (Johnston; Shipton). Civil society organisations have contested this account of hunger, turning shame away from the individual and onto the government. Austerity reforms have, they argue, “torn apart” the “basic safety net” of social responses to corporeal vulnerability put in place after the Second World War and intended to ensure that no-one was left hungry or destitute (Bingham), their vulnerability unattended to. Furthermore, the benefit sanctions impose punitive measures that leave families with “nothing” to live on for weeks. Hungry citizens, confronted with their own corporeal vulnerability and little choice but to seek relief from food banks, echo the Dickensian era of the workhouse (Cooper and Dumpleton) and indict the UK government response to poverty. Church leaders have called on the government to exercise “moral duty” and recognise the “acute moral imperative to act” to alleviate the suffering of the hungry body (Beattie; see also Bingham), and respond ethically to corporeal vulnerability with social policies that address unmet need for food. However, future cuts to welfare benefits mean the need for relief is likely to intensify.ConclusionThe aim of this paper was to explore the vulnerable corporeality of hunger through the lens of food banks, the twenty-first-century manifestations of charitable responses to acute need. Food banks have emerged in a gap between the renewal of a neo-liberal agenda of prudent government spending and the retreat of the welfare state, between struggles over resurgent ideas about individual responsibility and deep disquiet about wider social responsibilities. Food banks as sites of deprivation, in drawing attention to a newly vulnerable corporeality, potentially pose a threat to the moral credibility of the neo-liberal state. The threat is highlighted when the taboo of a hungry body, previously hidden because of shame, is being challenged by two new visibilities, that of food bank queues and the commentaries on blogs about the shame of having to queue for food.ReferencesAbbots, Emma-Jayne, and Anna Lavis. Eds. Why We Eat, How We Eat: Contemporary Encounters between Foods and Bodies. Farnham: Ashgate, 2013.All-Party Parliamentary Inquiry. “Feeding Britain.” 2014. 6 Jan. 2016 <https://foodpovertyinquiry.files.wordpress.com/2014/12/food>.Anderson, Patrick. “So Much Wasted:” Hunger, Performance, and the Morbidity of Resistance. Durham: Duke UP, 2010.Ashton, John R., John Middleton, and Tim Lang. “Open Letter to Prime Minister David Cameron on Food Poverty in the UK.” The Lancet 383.9929 (2014): 1631.Beattie, Jason. “27 Bishops Slam David Cameron’s Welfare Reforms as Creating a National Crisis in Unprecedented Attack.” Mirror 19 Feb. 2014. 6 Jan. 2016 <http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/27-bishops-slam-david-camerons-3164033>.Bingham, John. “New Cardinal Vincent Nichols: Welfare Cuts ‘Frankly a Disgrace.’” Telegraph 14 Feb. 2014. 6 Jan. 2016 <http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/religion/10639015/>.Butler, Judith. Frames of War: When Is Life Grievable? London: Verso, 2009.Cameron, David. “Why the Archbishop of Westminster Is Wrong about Welfare.” The Telegraph 18 Feb. 2014. 6 Jan. 2016 <http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/david-cameron/106464>.Caplan, Pat. “Big Society or Broken Society?” Anthropology Today 32.1 (2016): 5–9.Cavarero, Adriana. Horrorism: Naming Contemporary Violence. New York: Columbia UP, 2010.Chase, Elaine, and Robert Walker. “The Co-Construction of Shame in the Context of Poverty: Beyond a Threat to the Social Bond.” Sociology 47.4 (2013): 739–754.Clarke, John, Sharon Gewirtz, and Eugene McLaughlin (eds.). New Managerialism, New Welfare. London: Sage, 2000.Clarke, John, and Janet Newman. The Managerial State: Power, Politics and Ideology in the Remaking of Social Welfare. London: Sage, 1997.Cooper, Niall, and Sarah Dumpleton. “Walking the Breadline.” Church Action on Poverty/Oxfam May (2013): 1–20. 6 Jan. 2016 <http://policy-practice.oxfam.org.uk/publications/walking-the-breadline-the-scandal-of-food-poverty-in-21st-century-britain-292978>.Crossley, Nick. “The Politics of the Gaze: Between Foucault and Merleau-Ponty.” Human Studies 16.4 (1996): 399–419.Downing, Emma, Steven Kennedy, and Mike Fell. Food Banks and Food Poverty. London: House of Commons, 2014. 6 Jan. 2016 <http://www.parliament.uk/briefing-papers/SN06657/food-banks-and-food-poverty>.Field, Frank. “The Welfare State – Never Ending Reform.” BBC 3 Oct. 2011. 6 Jan. 2016 <http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/british/modern/field_01.shtml>.Foucault, Michel. Madness and Civilization: A History of Insanity in an Age of Reason. Trans. Richard Howard. New York: Random House, 1996.Glaze, Ben. “Tens of Thousands of Families Will Only Eat This Christmas Thanks to Food Banks.” The Mirror 23 Dec. 2015. 6 Jan. 2016 <http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/tens-thousands-families-only-eat-705>.Gore, Alex. “Schools Teach Cookery on Fridays So Hungry Children from Families Too Poor to Eat Have Food for the Weekend.” The Daily Mail 28 Oct. 2012. 6 Jan. 2016. <http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2224304/Schools-teach-cookery-Friday>.Gove, Michael. “Education: Topical Questions.” Oral Answers to Questions 2 Sep. 2013.Hamilakis, Yannis. “Experience and Corporeality: Introduction.” Thinking through the Body: Archaeologies of Corporeality. Eds. Yannis Hamilakis, Mark Pluciennik, and Sarah Tarlow. New York: Kluwer Academic, 2002. 99-105.Howarth, Anita. “Hunger Hurts: The Politicization of an Austerity Food Blog.” International Journal of E-Politics 6.3 (2015): 13–26.Johnson, Mark. “Human Beings.” The Journal of Philosophy LXXXIV.2 (1987): 59–83.Johnston, Lucy. “Edwina Currie’s Cruel Jibe at the Poor.” Sunday Express Jan. 2014. 6 Jan. 2016 <http://www.express.co.uk/news/uk/454730/Edwina-Currie-s-cruel-jibe-at-poor>.Lambie-Mumford, Hannah, Daniel Crossley, and Eric Jensen. Household Food Security in the UK: A Review of Food Aid Final Report. February 2014. Food Ethics Council and the University of Warwick. 6 Jan. 2016 <https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/283071/household-food-security-uk-140219.pdf>.Lambie-Mumford, Hannah, and Elizabeth Dowler. “Rising Use of ‘Food Aid’ in the United Kingdom.” British Food Journal 116 (2014): 1418–1425.Loopstra, Rachel, Aaron Reeves, David Taylor-Robinson, Ben Barr, Martin McKee, and David Stuckler. “Austerity, Sanctions, and the Rise of Food Banks in the UK.” BMJ 350 (2015).Lupton, Deborah. Food, the Body and the Self. London: Sage, 1996.Monroe, Jack. “Hunger Hurts.” A Girl Called Jack 30 July 2012. 6 Jan. 2016 <http://agirlcalledjack.com/2012/07/30/hunger-hurts/>.———. “Austerity Works? We Need to Keep Making Noise about Why It Doesn’t.” Guardian 10 Sep. 2013. 6 Jan. 2016 <http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/sep/10/austerity-poverty-frugality-jack-monroe>.Perry, Jane, Martin Williams, Tom Sefton and Moussa Haddad. “Emergency Use Only: Understanding and Reducing the Use of Food Banks in the UK.” Child Poverty Action Group, The Church of England, Oxfam and The Trussell Trust. Nov. 2014. 6 Jan. 2016 <http://www.cpag.org.uk/sites/default/files/Foodbank Report_web.pdf>.Pickett, Brent. “Foucault and the Politics of Resistance.” Polity 28.4 (1996): 445–466.Powell, Martin. “New Labour and the Third Way in the British Welfare State: A New and Distinctive Approach?” Critical Social Policy 20.1 (2000): 39–60. Riches, Graham. “Food Banks and Food Security: Welfare Reform, Human Rights and Social Policy: Lessons from Canada?” Social Policy and Administration 36.6 (2002): 648–663.Sen, Amartya. “Poor, Relatively Speaking.” Oxford Economic Papers 35.2 (1983): 153–169. Shaw, Caroline. Britannia’s Embrace: Modern Humanitarianism and the Imperial Origins of Refugee Relief. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2015.Shipton, Martin. “Vale of Glamorgan MP Alun Cairns in Food Bank Row after Claims Drug Addicts Use Them.” Wales Online Sep. 2015. 6 Jan. 2016. <http://www.walesonline.co.uk/news/wales-news/vale-glamorgan-tory-mp-alun-6060730>. Vernon, James. Hunger: A Modern History. Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP, 2009.Walker, Robert, Sarah Purcell, and Ruth Jackson “Poverty in Global Perspective: Is Shame a Common Denominator?” Journal of Social Policy 42.02 (2013): 215–233.
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Shlikov, P. V. "Реформация системы вакфов в поздней Османской империи: институциональный кризис и поиск новой философии вакфа." Istoricheskii vestnik, no. 29(2019) part: 29/2019 (October 9, 2019). http://dx.doi.org/10.35549/hr.2019.2019.47857.

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Аннотация В фокусе внимания статьи процесс трансформации традиционного института вакфа в Османской империи XIX начала XX в., основные детерминанты которого определили судьбу вакфов в раннереспубликанский период истории Турции. Распространение коррупции и снижающаяся эффективность деятельности значительного числа вакфов, использование сомнительных механизмов эксплуатации, замены и аренды вакуфного имущества негативно отразились на общественной репутации института, поставив под сомнение целесообразность и правомерность существования многочисленных вакфов. Озаботившись установлением непосредственного контроля над вакфами и их ресурсами, султан Махмуд II учредил в 1826 г. Министерство вакфов с обширными полномочиями. Однако разрозненность вакфов и их функциональное многообразие свели деятельность министерства к минимуму формальной регистрации решений, принимаемых на местах. В результате, система вакфов сохранила децентрализованный характер, а ее деятельность по-прежнему определялась преимущественно корпоративными и семейно-клановыми, а не государственными интересами. Наряду с распространением злоупотреблений важным катализатором кризиса системы вакфов во второй половине XIXв. стала политика османских властей по наращиванию роли государства в сфере социального обеспечения и благотворительности. В совокупности все это подготовило почву для масштабной конфискации вакуфной собственности, проводившейся в начале XX в. в разных частях Османской империи (от Турции до Сирии и Египта).Abstract The paper analyses the transformation of the traditional waqf institution in the 19th and early 20th century Ottoman Empire the process which determined the fate of waqfs in the early republican period of Turkeys history. The spread of corruption and precarious practices of exchange and rent of waqf properties together with the declining effectiveness of many waqf activities all this had a negative impact on the public reputation of waqfs and questioned both the legitimacy and usefulness of numerous waqfs and the large scale waqf network. The Ottoman authorities were concerned about the direct control of waqfs and their properties, in 1826 the Sultan Mahmud II established a Ministry of Waqfs with extensive power and jurisdiction. However, the scale, diversity and ramified structure of the waqf system reduced the real work of the ministry mostly to the formal registration of the decisions taken at the local level. As a result, the waqf system remained decentralized and its activities were determined mostly by family and corporate interests and not by the state. Along with the widely spread corruption and misuse of waqf properties another factor conducive to the growing of crisis in the waqf system was the Ottoman states aspiration to play an increasingly important role in the sphere of social welfare, social security and charity in the late 19th century. The combination of these factors paved the way for the large-scale confiscation of waqf properties in various parts of the Ottoman Empire in the early 20th century (from Turkey to Syria and Egypt).
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Milton, James, and Theresa Petray. "The Two Subalterns: Perceived Status and Violent Punitiveness." M/C Journal 23, no. 2 (May 13, 2020). http://dx.doi.org/10.5204/mcj.1622.

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From the mid-twentieth century, state and public conceptions of deviance and crime control have turned increasingly punitive (Hallett 115; Hutchinson 138). In a Western context, criminal justice has long been retributive, prioritising punishment over rehabilitation (Wenzel et al. 26). Within that context, there has been an increase in punitiveness—understood here as a measure of a punishment’s severity—the intention of which has been to help restore the moral imbalance created by offending while also deterring future crime (Wenzel et al. 26). Entangled with the global spread of neoliberal capitalism, punitiveness has become internationally pervasive to a near-hegemonic degree (Sparks qtd. in Jennings et al. 463; Unnever and Cullen 100).The punitive turn has troubling characteristics. Punitive policies can be expensive, and increased incarceration stresses the criminal justice system and leads to prison overcrowding (Hutchinson 135). Further, punitiveness is not only applied unequally across categories such as class, race, and age (Unnever and Cullen 105-06; Wacquant 212) but the effectiveness of punitive policy relative to its costs is contested (Bouffard et al. 466, 477; Hutchinson 139). Despite this, evidence suggests public demand is driving punitive policymaking, but that demand is only weakly related to crime rates (Jennings et al. 463).While discussion of punitiveness in the public sphere often focuses on measures such as boot camps for young offenders, increased incarceration, and longer prison sentences, punitiveness also has a darker side. Our research analysing discussion taking place on a large, regional, crime-focused online forum reveals a startling degree and intensity of violence directed at offenders and related groups. Members of the discussion forum do propose unsurprising measures such as incarceration and boot camps, but also an array of violent alternatives, including beating, shooting, dismemberment, and conversion into animal food. This article draws on our research to explore why discussion of punitiveness can be so intensely violent.Our research applies thematic analysis to seven discussion threads posted to a large regional online forum focused on crime, made between September and November 2017. One discussion thread per week of the study period was purposively sampled based on relevance to the topic of punitiveness, ultimately yielding 1200 individual comments. Those comments were coded, and the data and codes were reiteratively analysed to produce categories, then basic, organising, and global themes. We intended to uncover themes in group discussion most salient to punitiveness to gain insight into how punitive social interactions unfold and how those who demand punitiveness understand their interactions and experiences of crime. We argue that, in this online forum, the global theme—the most salient concept related to punitiveness—is a “subaltern citizenship”. Here, a clear division emerges from the data, where the group members perceive themselves as “us”—legitimate citizens with all attendant rights—in opposition to an external “them”, a besieging group of diverse, marginalised Others who have illegitimately usurped certain rights and who victimise citizens. Group members often deride the state as too weak and untrustworthy to stop this victimisation. Ironically, the external Others perceived by the group to hold power are themselves genuinely marginalised, though the group does not recognise or see that form of marginalisation as legitimate. In this essay, to preserve the anonymity of the forum and its members, we refer to them only as “the Forum”, located in “the City”, and refrain from direct quotes except for commonly used words or phrases that do not identify individuals.It is also important to note that the research described here deliberately focused on a specific group in a specific space who were concerned about specific groups of offenders. Findings and discussion, and the views on punitiveness described, cannot be generalised to the broader community. Nor do we suggest these views can be considered representative of all Forum members as we present here only a limited analysis of some violent discourse emerging from our research. Likewise, while our discussion often centres on youth and other marginalised groups in the context of offending, we do not intend to imply that offending is a characteristic of these groups.Legitimate CitizenshipCommonly, citizenship is seen as a conferred status denoting full and equal community membership and the rights and responsibilities dictated by community values and norms (Lister 28-29). Western citizenship norms are informed by neoliberal capitalist values: individual responsibility, an obligation to be in paid employment, participation in economic consumption, the sanctity of ownership, and that the principal role of government is to defend the conditions under which these norms can freely thrive (Walsh 861-62). While norms are shaped by laws and policy frameworks, they are not imposed coercively or always deployed consciously. These norms exist as shared behavioural expectations reproduced through social interaction and embodied as “common sense” (Kotzian 59). As much as Western democracies tend to a universalist representation of one, undifferentiated citizenship, it is clear that gender, race, sexual orientation, religion, ethnicity, and migrant status all exist in different relationships to citizenship as an identity category. Glass ceilings, stolen generations, same-sex marriage debates, and Australian Government proposals to strip citizenship from certain types of criminal offender all demonstrate that the lived experience of norms surrounding citizenship is profoundly unequal for some (Staeheli et al. 629-30). An individual’s citizenship status, therefore, more accurately exists on a spectrum between legitimacy—full community membership, possessing all rights and living up to all associated responsibilities—and illegitimacy—diminished membership, with contested rights and questionable fulfilment of associated responsibilities—depending on the extent of their deviation from societal norms.Discussing punitiveness, Forum members position themselves as “us”, that is, legitimate citizens. Words such as “we” and “us” are used as synonyms for society and for those whose behaviours are “normal” or “acceptable”. Groups associated with offending are described as “they”, “them”, and their behaviours are “not normal”, “disgusting”, “feral”, and merit the removal of “them” from civilisation, usually to “the middle of nowhere” or “the Outback”. Possession of legitimate citizenship is implicit in assuming authority over what is normal and who should be exiled for failing the standard.Another implicit assumption discernible in the data is that Forum members perceive the “normal we” as good neoliberal citizens. “We” work hard, own homes and cars, and take individual responsibility. There is a strong imputation of welfare dependency among offenders, the poor, and other suspect groups. Offending is presented as something curable by stripping offenders or their parents of welfare payments. Members earn their status as legitimate citizens by adhering to the norms of neoliberal citizenship in opposition to potential offenders to whom the benefits of citizenship are simply doled out.Forum members also frame their citizenship as legitimate by asserting ownership over community spaces and resources. This can be seen in their talking as if they, their sympathetic audience, and “the City” are the same (for example, declaring that “the City” demands harsher punishments for juvenile offenders). There are also calls to “take back” the streets, the City, and Australia from groups associated with offending. That a space can and should be “taken back” implies a pre-existing state of control interrupted by those who have no right to ownership. At its most extreme, the assertion of ownership extends to a conviction that members have the right to position offenders as enemies of the state and request that the army, the ultimate tool of legitimate state violence, be turned against them if governments and the criminal justice system are too “weak” or “soft” to constrain them.The Illegitimate OtherThroughout the data, perceived offenders are spoken of with scorn and hatred. “Perceived offenders” may include offenders and their family, youths, Indigenous people, and people of low socioeconomic status, and these marginalised groups are referenced so interchangeably it can be difficult to determine which is being discussed.Commenting on four “atsi [sic] kids” who assaulted an elderly man, group members asserted “they” should be shot like dogs. The original text gives no antecedents to indicate whether “they” is meant to indicate youths, Indigenous youths, or offenders in general. However, Australia has a colonial history of conflating crime and indigeneity and shooting Indigenous people to preserve white social order (Hill and Dawes 310, 312), a consequence of the tendency of white people to imagine criminals as black (Unnever and Cullen 106). It must be noted that the racial identity of individual Forum members is unknown. This does constitute a limitation in the original study, as identity categories such as race and class intersect and manifest in social interactions in complex ways. However, that does not prevent analysis of the text itself.In the Forum’s discursive space, “they” is used to denote offenders, Indigenous youths, youths, or the poor interchangeably, as if they were all a homogeneous, mutually synonymous “Other”. Collectively, these groups are represented as so generally hopeless that they are imagined as choosing to offend so they will be sentenced to the comforts of “holiday camp” prisons where they can access luxuries otherwise beyond their reach: freedom from addicted parents, medical care, food, television, and computers. A common argument, that crime is an individual choice, is often based on the idea that prison is a better option for the poor than going home. As a result, offending by marginalised offenders is reconstructed as a rational choice or a failure of individual responsibility rather than a consequence of structural inequality.Further, parents of those in suspect populations are blamed for intergenerational maintenance of criminality. They are described as too drunk or drugged to care, too unskilled in parenting due to their presumed dreadful upbringing, or too busy enjoying their welfare payments to meet their responsibility to control their children or teach them the values and skills of citizenship. Comments imply parents probably participated in their children’s crimes even when no evidence suggests that possibility and that some groups simply cannot be trusted to raise disciplined children owing to their inherent moral and economic dissipation. That is, not just offenders but entire groups are deemed illegitimate, willing to enjoy benefits of citizenship such as welfare payments but unwilling or unable to earn them by engaging with the associated responsibilities. This is a frequent argument for why they deserve severely punitive punishment for deviance.However, the construction of the Other as illegitimate in Forum discussions reaches far beyond imagining them as lacking normative skills and values. The violence present on the Forum is startling in its intensity. Prevalent within the data is the reduction of people to insulting nicknames. Terms used to describe people range from the sarcastic— “little darlings”—through standard abusive language such as “bastards”, “shits”, “dickheads”, “lowlifes”, to dehumanising epithets such as “maggots”, “scum”, and “subhuman arsewipes”. Individually and collectively, “they” are relentlessly framed as less than human and even less than animals. They are “mongrels” and “vermin”. In groups, they are “packs”, and they deserve to be “hunted” or just shot from helicopters. They are unworthy of life. “Oxygen thieves” is a repeated epithet, as is the idea that they should be dropped out at sea to drown. Other suggestions for punishment include firing squads, lethal injections, and feeding them to animals.It is difficult to imagine a more definitive denial of legitimacy than discursively stripping individuals and groups of their humanity (their most fundamental status) and their right to existence (their most fundamental right as living beings). The Forum comes perilously close to casting the Other as Agamben’s homo sacer, humans who live in a “state of exception”, subject to the state’s power but excluded from the law’s protection and able to be killed without consequence (Lechte and Newman 524). While it would be hyperbole to push this comparison too far—given Agamben had concentration camps in mind—the state of exception as a means of both excluding a group from society and exercising control over its life does resonate here.Themes Underlying PunitivenessOur findings indicate the theme most salient to punitive discussion is citizenship, rooted in persistent concerns over who is perceived to have it, who is not, and what should be done about those Others whose deviance renders their citizenship less legitimate. Citizenship norms—real or aspirational—of society’s dominant groups constitute the standards by which Forum members judge their experiences of and with crime, perceived offenders, the criminal justice system, and the state. However, Forum members do not claim a straightforward belonging to and sharing in the maintenance of the polity. Analysis of the data suggests Forum members consider their legitimate citizenship tainted by external forces such as politics, untrustworthy authorities and institutions, and the unconstrained excess of the illegitimate Other. That is, they perceive their citizenship to be simultaneously legitimate and undeservedly subaltern.According to Gramsci, subaltern populations are subordinate to dominant groups in political and civil society, lulled by hegemonic norms to cooperate in their own oppression (Green 2). Civil society supports the authority of political society and, in return, political society uses the law and criminal justice system to safeguard civil society’s interests against unruly subalterns (Green 7). Rights and responsibilities of citizenship reside within the mutual relationship between political and civil society. Subalternity, by definition, exists outside this relationship, or with limited access to it.Forum members position themselves as citizens within civil society. They lay emphatic claim to fulfilling their responsibilities as neoliberal citizens. However, they perceive themselves to be denied the commensurate rights: they cannot rely on the criminal justice system to protect them from the illegitimate Other. The courts are “soft”, and prisons are “camps” with “revolving doors”. Authorities pamper offenders while doing nothing to stop them from hurting their victims. Human rights are viewed as an imposition by the UN or as policy flowing from a political sphere lacking integrity and dominated by “do gooders”. Rights are reserved only for offenders. Legitimate citizens no longer even have the right to defend themselves. The perceived result is a transfer of rights from legitimate to illegitimate, from deserving to undeserving. This process elides from view the actual subalterns of Australian society—here, most particularly Indigenous people and the socioeconomically vulnerable—and reconstructs them as oppressors of the dominant group, who are reframed as legitimate citizens unjustly made subaltern.The Violence in PunitivenessOn the Forum, as in the broader world, a sense of “white victimisation”—the view, unsupported by history or evidence, that whites are an oppressed people within a structure systematically doling out advantage to minorities (King 89)—is a recurrent legitimising argument for punitiveness and vigilantism. Amid the shrinking social safety nets and employment precarity of neoliberal capitalism, competitiveness increases, and white identity forms around perceived threats to power and status incurred by “losing out” to minorities (Sacks and Lindholm 131). One 2011 study finds a majority of white US citizens believe themselves subject to more racism than black people (King 89). However, these assumptions of whiteness tend to be spared critical examination because, in white-dominated societies, whiteness is the common-sense norm in opposition to which other racial categories are defined (Petray and Collin 2). When whiteness is made the focus of critical questioning, white identities gain salience and imaginings of the “dark other” and besieged white virtues intensify (Bonilla-Silva et al. 232).With respect to feelings of punitiveness, Unnever and Cullen (118-19) find that the social cause for punitiveness in the United States is hostility towards other races, that harsh punishments, including the death penalty, are demanded and accepted by the dominant group because they are perceived to mostly injure “people they do not like” (Unnever and Cullen 119). Moreover, perception that a racial group is inherently criminal amplifies more generalised prejudices against them and diminishes the capacity of the dominant group to feel empathy for suffering inflicted upon them by the criminal justice system (Unnever and Cullen 120).While our analysis of the Forum supports these findings where they touch on crimes committed by Indigenous people, they invite a question. Why, where race is not a factor, do youths and the socioeconomically disadvantaged also inspire intensely violent punitiveness as described above? We argue that the answer relates to status. From this perspective, race becomes one of several categories of differentiation from legitimate citizenship through an ascription of low status.Wenzel, Okimoto, and Cameron (29) contend punitiveness, with respect to specific offences, varies according to the symbolic meaning the offence holds for the observer. Crimes understood as a transgression against status or power inspire a need for “revenge, punishment, and stigmatisation” (Wenzel et al. 41) and justify an increase in the punitiveness required (Wenzel et al. 29, 34). This is particularly true where an offence is deemed to make someone unfit for community membership, such that severe punishment serves as a symbolic marker of exile and a reaffirmation for the community of the violated values and norms (Wenzel et al. 41). Indeed, as noted, Forum posts regularly call for offenders to be removed from society, exiled to the outback, or shipped beyond Australia’s territorial waters.Further, Forum members’ perception of subaltern citizenship, with its assumption of legitimate citizenship as being threatened by undeserving Others, makes them view crime as implicitly a matter of status transgression. This is intensified by perception that the political sphere and criminal justice system are failing legitimate citizens, refusing even to let them defend themselves. Virulent name-calling and comparisons to animals can be understood as attempts by the group to symbolically curtail the undeservedly higher status granted to offenders by weak governments and courts. More violent demands for punishment symbolically remove offenders from citizenship, reaffirm citizen values, and vent anger at a political and criminal justice system deemed complicit, through weakness, in reducing legitimate citizens to subaltern citizens.ConclusionsIn this essay, we highlight the extreme violence we found in our analysis of an extensive online crime forum in a regional Australian city. We explore some explanations for violent public punitiveness, highlighting how members identify themselves as subaltern citizens in a battle against undeserving Others, with no support from a weak state. This analysis centres community norms and a problematic conception of citizenship as drivers of both public punitiveness and dissatisfaction with crime control policy and the criminal justice system. We highlight a real dissonance between community needs and public policy that may undermine effective policymaking. That is, evidence-based crime control policies, successful crime prevention initiatives, and falling crime rates may not increase public satisfaction with how crime is dealt with if policymakers pursue those measures without regard for how citizens experience the process.While studies such as that by Wenzel, Okimoto, and Cameron identify differences in status between legitimate citizens and offenders as amplifiers of punitiveness, we suggest the amplification may be mediated by the status relationship between legitimate citizens and authority figures within legitimate society. The offender and their crime may not contribute as much to the public’s outrage as commonly assumed. Instead, public punitiveness may predominantly arise from the perception that the political sphere, media, and criminal justice system respond to citizens’ experience of crime in ways that devalue the status of legitimate citizens. At least in the context of this regional city, this points to something other than successful crime control being integral to building more effective and satisfactory crime control policy: in this case, the need to rebuild trust between citizens and authority groups.ReferencesBonilla-Silva, Eduardo, Carla Goar, and David G. Embrick. “When Whites Flock Together: The Social Psychology of White Habitus.” Critical Sociology 32.2-3 (2006): 229–253.Bouffard, Jeff, Maisha Cooper, and Kathleen Bergseth. “The Effectiveness of Various Restorative Justice Interventions on Recidivism Outcomes among Juvenile Offenders.” Youth Violence and Juvenile Justice 15.4 (2017): 465–480.Green, Marcus. “Gramsci Cannot Speak: Presentations and Interpretations of Gramsci’s Concept of the Subaltern.” Rethinking Marxism 14.3 (2002): 1–24.Hallett, Michael. “Imagining the Global Corporate Gulag: Lessons from History and Criminological Theory.” Contemporary Justice Review 12.2 (2009): 113–127.Hill, Richard, and Glenn Dawes. “The ‘Thin White Line’: Juvenile Crime, Racialised Narrative and Vigilantism—A North Queensland Study.” Current Issues in Criminal Justice 11.3 (2000): 308–326.Hutchinson, Terry. “‘A Slap on the Wrist’? The Conservative Agenda in Queensland, Australia.” Youth Justice 15.2 (2015): 134–147.Jennings, Will, Stephen Farrall, Emily Gray, and Colin Hay. “Penal Populism and the Public Thermostat: Crime, Public Punitiveness, and Public Policy.” Governance: An International Journal of Policy, Administration, and Institutions 30.3 (2017): 463–481.King, Mike. “The ‘Knockout Game’: Moral Panic and the Politics of White Victimhood.” Race & Class 56.4 (2015): 85–94.Kotzian, Peter. “Good Governance and Norms of Citizenship: An Investigation into the System- and Individual-Level Determinants of Attachment to Civic Norms.” American Journal of Economics and Sociology 73.1 (2014): 58–83.Lechte, John, and Saul Newman. “Agamben, Arendt and Human Rights: Bearing Witness to the Human.” European Journal of Social Theory 15.4 (2012): 522–536.Lister, Ruth. “Citizenship: Towards a Feminist Synthesis.” Feminist Review 57 (1997): 28–48.Petray, Theresa L., and Rowan Collin. “Your Privilege is Trending: Confronting Whiteness on Social Media.” Social Media + Society 3.2 (2017): 1–10.Sacks, Michael A., and Marika Lindholm. “A Room without a View: Social Distance and the Structuring of Privileged Identity.” Working through Whiteness: International Perspectives. Ed. Cynthia Levine-Rasky. Albany, NY: State U of New York P, 2002. 129-151.Staeheli, Lynn A., Patricia Ehrkamp, Helga Leitner, and Caroline R. Nagel. “Dreaming the Ordinary: Daily Life and the Complex Geographies of Citizenship.” Progress in Human Geography 36.5 (2012): 628–644.Unnever, James D., and Francis T. Cullen. “The Social Sources of Americans’ Punitiveness: A Test of Three Competing Models.” Criminology 48.1 (2010): 99–129.Wacquant, Loïc. “Crafting the Neoliberal State: Workfare, Prisonfare, and Social Insecurity.” Sociological Forum 25.2 (2010): 197–220.Walsh, James P. “Quantifying Citizens: Neoliberal Restructuring and Immigrant Selection in Canada and Australia.” Citizenship Studies 15.6-7 (2011): 861–879.Wenzel, Michael, Tyler Okimoto, and Kate Cameron. “Do Retributive and Restorative Justice Processes Address Different Symbolic Concerns?” Critical Criminology 20.1 (2012): 25–44.
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Kowalewska, Helen, and Agnese Vitali. "Breadwinning or on the breadline? Female breadwinners’ economic characteristics across 20 welfare states." Journal of European Social Policy, December 6, 2020, 095892872097109. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0958928720971094.

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In analysing heterosexual couples’ work–family arrangements over time and space, the comparative social policy literature has settled on the framework of the ‘male-breadwinner’ versus the ‘dual-earner’ family. Yet, in assuming men in couple-families are (full-time) employed, this framework overlooks another work–family arrangement, which is the ‘female-breadwinner’ couple. Including female-breadwinner couples matters because of their growing prevalence and, as our analysis shows, greater economic vulnerability. We perform descriptive and regression analyses of Luxembourg Income Study microdata to compare household incomes for female-breadwinner couples and other couple-types across 20 industrialized countries. We then consider how labour earnings and benefit incomes vary for ‘pure’ breadwinner couples – comprising one wage-earner and one inactive/unemployed partner – according to the gender of the breadwinner. We find that pure female breadwinners have lower average individual earnings than male breadwinners, even after controlling for sociodemographic characteristics and occupational and working-time differences. Furthermore, welfare systems across most countries are not working hard enough to compensate for the female breadwinner earnings penalty, including in social-democratic countries. Once controls are included in our regression models, it never happens that pure female breadwinners have higher disposable household incomes than pure male breadwinners. Thus, our study adds to a growing body of evidence showing that female-breadwinner families sit at the intersection of multiple disadvantages. In turn, these couples offer comparative scholars of the welfare state an ‘acid test’ case study for how effectively families are protected from social risk. Our results additionally highlight how cross-national differences in the female breadwinner income disadvantage do not fit neatly with established welfare typologies, suggesting that other factors – in particular, labour market characteristics and the economic cycle – are also at play.
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Lopez, Mario. "From Bride to Care Worker?" M/C Journal 10, no. 3 (June 1, 2007). http://dx.doi.org/10.5204/mcj.2662.

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Introduction This paper explores some specific conjunctions that tie together two nations, Japan and the Philippines. Over the past 30 years both have become entwined as a transfer of people, cultures and societies have connected and formed some interesting developments. Relations between both countries have been highly influenced through the deployment of State intervention (historically colonial and post-colonial), as well as through actors’ initiatives, leading to the development of a complex network that links both countries. It is in these relations that I would like to locate a transition between two stages in Japan-Philippine relations. I argue, this is a transition, where marriages of one kind (international marriages), the bonding of social actors from two distinct cultural spheres, gives way to another form of marriage. This transition locates the term marriage as part of an ongoing process and a discursive realm in a larger ‘affective complex’ that has developed. In this paper, I focus on this term ‘affective complex’ as it offers some interesting avenues in order to understand the continuing development of relations between Japan and the Philippines. By ‘affective complex’ I refer to the ‘cultural responses’ that people use in reaction to situations in which they find themselves which are not mediated by language. I suggest that this complex is a product of a specific encounter that exists between two nations as understood and mediated by Japanese actors’ positionings vis-à-vis foreign resident Filipinos. In tracing a moment between Japan and the Philippines, I delineate emerging properties that currently allude to a transition in relations between both countries. I would like to show that the properties of this transition are creating an emergent phenomena, a complex? This is developing through interactions between human actors whose trajectories as transnational migrants and permanent foreign residents are coming under the scrutiny of Japanese State forces in a heavily contested discursive field. This paper focuses upon the nature of the complex that entwines both countries and examines Japan’s particular restructuring of parts of its workforce in an attempt to include foreign migrants. To do this I first offer an outline of my fieldwork and then delineate the complex that ties both countries within present theoretical boundaries. This paper is based on fieldwork which deals with the theme of International Marriages between Japanese and Filipino couples. In the field I have observed the different ways in which Filipinos or Japanese with a connection to the Philippines orientate themselves within Japanese society vis-à-vis the Philippines. For the purpose of this paper, I will focus exclusively on a particular moment in my field: a care-giver course run privately with approval and recognition from local government. This course was offered exclusively for Filipino nationals with permanent residency and a high level of Japanese. As part of a larger field, a number of overlapping themes and patterns were present within the attitudes of those participating in the course. These were cultural responses that social actors carry with them which constitute part of an ‘affective complex’, its gradual emergence and unfolding. To further locate this fieldwork and its theoretical boundaries, I also position this research within current understandings of complexity. Chesters and Welsh have referred to a complex system as being a non-linear, non-deterministic system. However, from my perspective, these parameters are insufficient if institutions, organisations and human actors exhibit linear and deterministic properties (properties that discursively capture, locate and define elements in a system). In my research, I am dealing with actors, in this case Filipinos who are seen first as recipients and then as providers of welfare services. Japanese actors act as suppliers of a service both to long-term residents and to the State. In this case the following question arises: whose ‘complexes’ may be defined by a mixture of both these parameters and how can it be possible to take into account relationships whose existence cuts across them? Could a complex not be any number of these terrains which have emerged through encounters between two countries? Marriage could be a starting point for complexes that can come under scrutiny at a higher level, that of the State forces. In addition, a study of complexity in the Social Sciences focuses on how structures form rather than by focusing on any prior structured existence. Any focus on a complex system is to analyze holistic multiple elements in order to descriptively locate structures, what they penetrate, and what they are penetrated by. Human actors’ actions, strategies and expectations merge under the influence of these structures, while simultaneously influencing them. As elements interact, emergent phenomena (properties that emerge at a higher level) show a system that is process dependent, organic, and always evolving (Arthur 109). Locating Affect Deleuze and Guattari refined the discursive realm to emphasise how spaces of creation, dialogue and the casting of influence are affective, institutional and State-influenced. Within these spaces I locate the existence of ‘affective complexes’ which are discursively constructed and deployed by local actors. I will to argue that international marriages have laid a groundwork in which ‘affect’ itself has become a catalyst, re-orientating perceptions of and toward Filipinos. Following Deleuze, we can understand ‘affect’ as an intensity which, to repeat, is an expression of human relationships not mediated directly through language (Rodriguez). However, I want to suggest ‘affect’ also comes under the scrutiny of, and is discursively appealed to by, State forces as ‘affective capital’. When I refer to ‘affective capital’ I mean the potential labour discursively constructed. This construction is then “projected and tapped” in response to the changing nature of Japan’s labour market – in particular, the shortage of care-givers. This construction itself exists as an ongoing management strategy that deals with certain foreign nationals in Japan. Here, in response to the transformations of service work, ‘affective capital’ is the commoditised value of care inherent the discourse. It is the kernel of ‘affective labour’. This was very clear in my fieldwork, wherein Filipinos were targeted exclusively as the recipients of training in the health-care sector based on an understanding of the form of ‘affect’ that they possess. In this context, ‘affect’ adds intensity to meaning and is used in a wide range of cultural contexts, yet its very essence eludes description, especially when that essence as used by ‘active agents’ may be misconstrued in its deployment or discursively captured. Returning to the Deleuzian interpretation of ‘affect’, it could be interpreted as the outcome of encounters between actors and as such, a ‘mode’ in which becoming can initiate possibilities. I refer to ‘affect’, the deployment of shared, performed, communicated non-verbal ‘content’, as a powerful tool and an essential component in everyday habituated practice. In other areas of my field (not included in this discussion), ‘affect’ deployed by both actors, husband and wife, within and beyond the family, manifests itself as a mode of being. This at times adds to the location of actors’ intentions, be they spoken or performative. In this sense, locating the ‘affect’ in my research has meant observing the way in which Filipinos negotiate the availability of life strategies and opportunities available to them. At the same time, ‘affect’ is also produced by Japanese actors realigning themselves vis-à-vis both foreign actors and social change, as well as by effectuating strategies to emergent situations in Japan such as care management. ‘Affective capital’ is an inherent long-term strategy which has its roots in the cultural resources at the disposal of non-Japanese partners who, over the years, in the short and long term put to use discursively produced ‘affect’. ‘Affect’, produced in reactions to situations, encounters and events, can work in favour of long-term residents who do not have access to the same conditions Japanese may find in the labour sector. From encounters in my fieldwork, the location of ‘affect’ is an asset not just within immediate relationships, but as a possible expression of strategies that have arisen in response to the recognition of reactionary elements in Japanese society. By reactionary elements I refer to the way in which a complex may realign itself when ‘interfered’ with at another level, that of the State. The Japanese State is facing labour shortages in certain sectors due to social change, therefore they must secure other potential sources of labour. Appropriation of human resources locally available has become one Japanese State solution for this labour shortage. As such, ‘affect’ is brought into the capitalist fold in response to labor shortages in the Health Sector. Background The Philippines is a prime example of a nomad nation, where an estimated eight million of the population currently work or live overseas while remitting home (Phillippines Overseas Employment Agency). Post-colonial global conditions in the Asia Pacific region have seen the Philippines cater to external national situations in order to participate in the global labour market. These have been in the form of flows of labour and capital outsourced to those economies which are entangled with the Philippines. In this context, marriage between both countries has come to be made up almost exclusively of Japanese men with Filipina women (Suzuki). These marriages have created nascent partnerships that have formed links within homes in both countries and supported the creation of a complex system tying together both nations. Yet, in the entanglement of what seems to be two economies of desire, some interesting observations can be drawn from what I consider to be the by-products of these marriages. Yet what does this have to do with a marriage? First, I would like to put forward that certain international marriages may have developed within the above discursive framework and, in the case of the Philippines and Japan, defined certain characteristics that I will explain in more detail. Over the past 20 years, Filipinos who came to Japan on entertainment visas or through encounters with Japanese partners in the Philippines have deployed discursively constructed ‘affective capital’ in strategies to secure relationships and a position in both societies. These strategies may be interpreted as being knowledgeable, creative and possessive of the language necessary for negotiating long-term dialogues, not only with partners and surrounding family, but also with Japanese society. These deployments also function as an attempt to secure additional long term benefits which include strengthening ties to the Philippines through increasing a Japanese spouse’s involvement and interest in the Philippines. It is here that Filipinos’ ‘affect’ may be traced back to a previous deployment of categories that influences local Japanese actors’ decisions in offering a course exclusively for Filipino residents. This offers the first hint as to why only Filipinos were targeted. In Japan, secure permanent work for resident Filipinos can be, at times, difficult even when married to a partner with a stable income. The reality of remitting home to support family members and raising a family in Japan is a double burden which cannot be met solely by the spouse’s salary. This is an issue which means actors (in this case, partners) recourse to their ‘affective capital’ in order to secure means towards a livelihood. In this context, marriages have acted as a primary medium entangling both countries. Yet changes in Japan are re-locating ‘possible’ resources that are rationalised as a surplus from these primary encounters. Shifts in Japan’s social landscape have over the past 10 years led to an increasing awareness of the high stakes involved in care for the ageing and invalid in Japanese society. With over 21% of the population now over 65, the care industry has seen a surge in demand for labour, of which there is currently a shortfall (Statistics Bureau Japan). With the Philippines having strategically relocated its economy to accommodate demands for the outsourcing of health care workers and nurses overseas, Japan, realigning its economy to domestic change, has shown a new type of interest (albeit reluctant) in the Philippines. In 2005, changes and reforms to Japan’s Immigration Control and Refugee Recognition Act successfully curtailed the flow of Filipinos applying to Japan to work as entertainers. This was in part due to pressure from the interventionary power of the U.S: in 2006 the U.S. State department published the Trafficking in Persons Report, which stipulated that Japan had yet to comply in improving the situation of persons trafficked to Japan (U.S. State Department). This watershed reform has become a precursor to the Philippines Economic Partnership Agreement ratified by Japan and the Philippines to promote the ‘trans-border flow of goods, person, services and capital between Japan and the Philippines (Ministry of Foreign Affairs) and has now temporarily realigned both economies into a new relationship. Under the terms ‘movement of natural persons’, Filipino candidates for qualified nurses and certified care workers would be allowed a stay of up to three years as nurses, or four for certified care workers (Ministry of Foreign Affairs). Nonetheless, this lip service in showing openness to admit a new category of Filipino is the continuation of a mode of ‘servicing’ within the Japanese nation, albeit under the guise of ‘care work’, and rests upon the capitalist rationalisation of hired workers for Japan’s tertiary sectors. The Philippines, a nation which is positively export-orientated in terms of its human resources in response to care inequalities that exist between nations at a global level (Parreñas 12-30), is now responding to the problematic issue of care that has become a serious concern in Japan. Fieldwork To place these issues in context I want to locate the above issues within a part of my present fieldwork. In 2006, I participated in a privately funded non-profit venture set up for Filipino residents with the aim of training them to be care-givers. The course was validated and acknowledged by the local prefectural government and primarily limited to a group of 20 participants who paid approximately sixty thousand yen ($485) for the three month course including training and text books. One Filipina acquaintance enthusiastically introduced me to the retired bank manager who had set up a fund for the three month care-giver course for Filipina residents. Through interviews with the course providers, one underlying theme in the planning of the course was clear: the core idea that Filipinos have a predisposition to care for the elderly, reflecting Filipino social values no longer existent in Japan. In particular, two Japanese words employed to reflect these views – ‘omoiyari’ (思いやり), meaning “compassion” or “considerateness” and ‘yasashisa’ (優しさ) meaning “kindness toward others” – were reiterated throughout the course as a requisite for dealing with the elderly or those in need of care. One core presupposition underlining the course was that the Philippines still cherishes values which are on the decline in Japan, offering a care ethos based on Christian values ready for deployment in such work. I believe this marks a transition point in how both countries’ relations are moving away from ‘entertainment-based’ care to ‘care within an institutional setting’, such as private nursing homes or hospitals. In both cases, ‘care’ (as it is ironically known in both industries, the deployment of hospitality and attendance), operates as a dynamic of desire within a social field which orientates how residents (i.e. foreign female residents with permanent residency) are used. Yet, why would the Philippines be such an attractor? It is not difficult to see how ‘affect’ is discursively rationalised and deployed and projected onto Philippine society. This ‘affect’ acts as an attractor and belongs to an ‘imagined’ cultural repertoire that Japan has created in response to its turbulent marriage to the Philippines. In this sense, the care course promoted this ‘caring affective side’ of Filipinas here in Japan, and provided a dynamic engagement for potential negotiation, persuasion and tension between ‘local actors’ (course providers and participants) who come under the direct remit of the Japanese State (care institutions, hospitals and nursing homes). I say “tension”, as to date only a handful (three women out of a total of sixty) of those who participated in the course have taken up employment in the care industry. As one participant, a divorcee, commented, the reluctance to seek work as a qualified care worker resided in an economic framework, she says: this is a useful investment, but I don’t know if I can do this work full time to live off and support my families…but it is another arrow in my bow if the situation changes. Yet, for another woman, care work was an extension of something that they were familiar with. She jokingly added with a sigh of resignation: Oh well, this is something we are used to, after all we did nothing but care for our papa-san (husband)! When I discussed these comments with an N.G.O. worker connected to the course she pessimistically summed up what she thought by saying: The problem of care in Japan was until very recently an issue of unpaid work that women have had to bear. In a sense, looking after the aged living at home has been a traditional way to treat people with respect. Yet, here in Japan we have experienced an excessively long period whereby it was de facto that when a woman married into someone’s family, she would care for the husband and his family. Now, this isn’t an individual problem anymore, it’s a societal one. Care is now becoming an institutional practice which is increasing paid work, yet the State works on the assumption that this is low paid work for people who have finished raising their children; hard labour for low wages. All the women have graduated and are licensed to work, yet at 1000 yen (U.S. $8) an hour for psychologically demanding hard labour they will not work, or start and finish realising the demands. Travelling between locations also is also unpaid, so at the most in one day they will work 2-3 hours. It is the worst situation possible for those who choose to work. The above opinion highlights the ambiguities that exist in the constant re-alignment of offering work to foreign residents in the effort to help integrate people into Japan’s tertiary ‘care sector’ in response to the crisis of a lack of manpower. To date most women who trained on this course have not pursued positions within the health sector. This indicates a resistance to the social beliefs that continue to categorise female foreign residents for gendered care work. Through three successive batches of students (sixty women in total) the president, staff and companies who participated in this pilot scheme have been introduced to Filipino residents in Japanese society. In one respect, this has been an opportunity for the course providers to face those who have worked, or continue to work at night. Yet, even this exposure does not reduce the hyper-feminisation of care; rather, it emphasises positions. One male coordinator brazenly mentioned the phrase ashi wo aratte hoshii, meaning ‘we want to give them a clean break’. This expression is pregnant with the connotation that these women have been involved in night work have done or still participate in. These categorisations still do not shake themselves free from previous classifications of female others located in Japanese society; the ongoing legacy that locates Filipinos in a feminised discursive space. As Butler has elucidated, ‘cultural inscriptions’ and ‘political forces with strategic interests’ work to keep the ‘body bounded and constituted’ (Butler 175). It is possible to see that this care course resides within a continuously produced genealogy that tries to constitute bodies. This resides under the rubric of a dominant fantasy that locates the Philippines in Japan as a source of caring and hospitality. Now, those here are relocated under a restructuring industry outsourcing work to those located in the lower tiers of the labour sector. Why other nationals have not been allowed to participate in the course is, I stress, a testimony to this powerful discourse. Major national and international media coverage of both the course and company and those women who found employment has also raised interest in the curious complex that has arisen from this dynamic, including a series of specials aired on Japanese television by NHK (NHK Kaigo no Jinzai ga Nigete iku). This is very reminiscent of a ‘citationary’ network where writings, news items and articles enter into a perpetuating relationship that foments and bolsters the building up of a body of work (Said) to portray Japan’s changing circumstances. As seen from a traced genealogy, initial entanglements between two nations, in conjunction with societal change in Japan, have created a specific moment in both countries’ trajectories. Here, we can see an emergent phenomena and the relocation of a discursive structure. An affective complex can be located that marks a shift in how foreign residents are perceived and on what terms they can participate or contribute to Japanese society. Within this structure, ‘care’ is relocated – or, rather, trapped – and extracted as labour surplus that resides in an antagonistic relationship of domination highlighting how a specific moment existing between two countries can be ‘structured’ by needs in the ‘engaging’ country, in this case Japan. Non-linear elements in a complex system that contest how discursive practices in Japanese society locate foreign residents, within the rubric of an ‘imagined’ ethos of compassion and kindness that emanates from outside of Japan, seem to display ‘affective’ qualities. Yet, are these not projected categories deployed to continue to locate migrant labour (be they permanent or temporary residents) within an ongoing matrix that defines what resources can be discursively produced? However, these categories do not take into account the diverse structures of experience that both Japanese nationals and Filipino nationals experience in Japan (Suzuki). Conclusion In this paper I have briefly delineated a moment which rests between specific trajectories that tie two nations. A complex of marriages brought about within a specific historic post-colonial encounter has contributed to feminising the Philippines: firstly, for women in marriages, and now secondly for ‘potential resources’ available to tackle societal problems in Japan. As I have argued a discursively produced ‘affective complex’ is an authorising source of otherness and could be part of a precursor complex which is now discursively relocating human resources within one country (Japan) as a ‘reluctant source’ of labour, while entering into a new discursive mode of production that shapes attitudes toward others. I also suggest that there is a very specific complex at work here which follows an as of yet faint trajectory that points to the re-organisation of a relationship between Japan and the Philippines. Yet, there are linear elements (macro-level forces rooted in the Japanese State’s approach to care vis-à-vis the Philippines) operating at the fundamental core of this care-giver course that are being constantly challenged and cut across by non-linear elements, that is, human actors and their ambivalence as the beneficiaries/practitioners of such practices. This is the continued feminisation of a highly gendered dynamic that locates labour as and when it sees fit, but through the willing coercion of local agents, with an interest in mediating services through and for the State, for the welfare of the Nation. The desiring-machine that brings together Japan and the Philippines is also one that continues to locate the potential in foreign actors located within Japan’s institutional interpellation for its care market. Within these newly emergent relationships, available political and social capital is being reshaped and imagined in reaction to social change in Japan. By exploring two entangled nations situated within global capitalist production in the twenty-first century, my research points towards new ways of looking at emerged complexes (international marriages) that precludes the reconfigurations of ongoing emerging complexes that discursively locate residents as caregivers, who fall under the jurisdiction and glare of political powers, government subjects and State forces. References Artur, W. Brian. “Complexity and the Economy.” Science 284.2 (1999): 107-109. Butler, Judith. Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity. New York: Routledge, 2006. Chester, Graeme, and Ian Welsh. “Complexity and Social Movement(s): Process and Emergence in Planetary Action Systems.” Theory, Culture & Society 22.5 (2005): 187-211. Deleuze, Giles, and Felix Guattari. A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia. Minnesota: U of Minnesota P, 1987. Ministry of Foreign Affairs (Japan). Japan-Philippines Economic Partnership Agreement Press Statement. 29 Nov. 2004. 29 Mar. 2007 http://www.mofa.go.jp/region/asia-paci/philippine/joint0411.html>. NHK Kaigo no Jinzai ga Nigete iku. 介護の人材が逃げて行く (“Care Workers Are Fleeing.”) Televised 11 Mar. 2007. 29 Mar. 2007 http://www.nhk.or.jp/special/onair/070311.html>. Parreñas, Rachel Salazar. Children of Global Migration: Transnational Families and Gendered Woes. Stanford: Stanford UP, 2005. Philippines Overseas Employment Agency. “Stock Estimates of Filipinos Overseas.” 2 May 2007 http://www.poea.gov.ph/html/statistics.html>. Rodriguez, Encarnación Gutiérrez. “Reading Affect – On the Heterotopian Spaces of Care and Domestic Work in Private Households.” Forum: Qualitative Social Research 8 (2007). 2 May 2007 http://www.qualitative-research.net/fqs-texte/2-07/07-2-11-e.pdf>. Said, Edward. Orientalism. London: Penguin, 1995. Statistics Bureau and Statistical Research and Training Institute. Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications (Philippines). 2005. 2 May 2007 http://www.poea.gov.ph/docs/STOCK%20ESTIMATE%202004.xls>. Suzuki, Nobue. “Inside the Home: Power and Negotiation in Filipina-Japanese Marriages.” Women’s Studies: An Interdisciplinary Journal 33.4 (2004): 481-506. “Trafficking in Persons Report.” U.S. State Department. 2006. 29 Apr. 2007. http://www.state.gov/documents/organization/66086.pdf>. Citation reference for this article MLA Style Lopez, Mario. "From Bride to Care Worker?: On Complexes, Japan and the Philippines." M/C Journal 10.3 (2007). echo date('d M. Y'); ?> <http://journal.media-culture.org.au/0706/04-lopez.php>. APA Style Lopez, M. (Jun. 2007) "From Bride to Care Worker?: On Complexes, Japan and the Philippines," M/C Journal, 10(3). Retrieved echo date('d M. Y'); ?> from <http://journal.media-culture.org.au/0706/04-lopez.php>.
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32

Pearce, Lynne. "Diaspora." M/C Journal 14, no. 2 (May 1, 2011). http://dx.doi.org/10.5204/mcj.373.

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Abstract:
For the past twenty years, academics and other social commentators have, by and large, shared the view that the phase of modernity through which we are currently passing is defined by two interrelated catalysts of change: the physical movement of people and the virtual movement of information around the globe. As we enter the second decade of the new millennium, it is certainly a timely moment to reflect upon the ways in which the prognoses of the scholars and scientists writing in the late twentieth century have come to pass, especially since—during the time this special issue has been in press—the revolutions that are gathering pace in the Arab world appear to be realising the theoretical prediction that the ever-increasing “flows” of people and information would ultimately bring about the end of the nation-state and herald an era of transnationalism (Appadurai, Urry). For writers like Arjun Appadurai, moreover, the concept of diaspora was key to grasping how this new world order would take shape, and how it would operate: Diasporic public spheres, diverse amongst themselves, are the crucibles of a postnational political order. The engines of their discourse are mass media (both interactive and expressive) and the movement of refugees, activists, students, laborers. It may be that the emergent postnational order proves not to be a system of homogeneous units (as with the current system of nation-states) but a system based on relations between heterogeneous units (some social movements, some interest groups, some professional bodies, some non-governmental organizations, some armed constabularies, some judicial bodies) ... In the short run, as we can see already, it is likely to be a world of increased incivility and violence. In the longer run, free from the constraints of the nation form, we may find that cultural freedom and sustainable justice in the world do not presuppose the uniform and general existence of the nation-state. This unsettling possibility could be the most exciting dividend of living in modernity at large. (23) In this editorial, we would like to return to the “here and now” of the late 1990s in which theorists like Arjun Appaduri, Ulrich Beck, John Urry, Zygmunt Bauman, Robert Robertson and others were “imagining” the consequences of both globalisation and glocalisation for the twenty-first century in order that we may better assess what is, indeed, coming to pass. While most of their prognoses for this “second modernity” have proven remarkably accurate, it is their—self-confessed—inability to forecast either the nature or the extent of the digital revolution that most vividly captures the distance between the mid-1990s and now; and it is precisely the consequences of this extraordinary technological revolution on the twin concepts of “glocality” and “diaspora” that the research featured in this special issue seeks to capture. Glocal Imaginaries Appadurai’s endeavours to show how globalisation was rapidly making itself felt as a “structure of feeling” (Williams in Appadurai 189) as well as a material “fact” was also implicit in our conceptualisation of the conference, “Glocal Imaginaries: Writing/Migration/Place,” which gave rise to this special issue. This conference, which was the culmination of the AHRC-funded project “Moving Manchester: Literature/Migration/Place (2006-10)”, constituted a unique opportunity to gain an international, cross-disciplinary perspective on urgent and topical debates concerning mobility and migration in the early twenty-first century and the strand “Networked Diasporas” was one of the best represented on the program. Attracting papers on broadcast media as well as the new digital technologies, the strand was strikingly international in terms of the speakers’ countries of origin, as is this special issue which brings together research from six European countries, Australia and the Indian subcontinent. The “case-studies” represented in these articles may therefore be seen to constitute something of a “state-of-the-art” snapshot of how Appadurai’s “glocal imaginary” is being lived out across the globe in the early years of the twenty-first century. In this respect, the collection proves that his hunch with regards to the signal importance of the “mass-media” in redefining our spatial and temporal coordinates of being and belonging was correct: The third and final factor to be addressed here is the role of the mass-media, especially in its electronic forms, in creating new sorts of disjuncture between spatial and virtual neighborhoods. This disjuncture has both utopian and dystopian potentials, and there is no easy way to tell how these may play themselves out in the future of the production of locality. (194) The articles collected here certainly do serve as testament to the “bewildering plethora of changes in ... media environments” (195) that Appadurai envisaged, and yet it can clearly also be argued that this agent of glocalisation has not yet brought about the demise of the nation-state in the way (or at the speed) that many commentators predicted. Digital Diasporas in a Transnational World Reviewing the work of the leading social science theorists working in the field during the late 1990s, it quickly becomes evident that: (a) the belief that globalisation presented a threat to the nation-state was widely held; and (b) that the “jury” was undecided as to whether this would prove a good or bad thing in the years to come. While the commentators concerned did their best to complexify both their analysis of the present and their view of the future, it is interesting to observe, in retrospect, how the rhetoric of both utopia and dystopia invaded their discourse in almost equal measure. We have already seen how Appadurai, in his 1996 publication, Modernity at Large, looks beyond the “increased incivility and violence” of the “short term” to a world “free from the constraints of the nation form,” while Roger Bromley, following Agamben and Deleuze as well as Appadurai, typifies a generation of literary and cultural critics who have paid tribute to the way in which the arts (and, in particular, storytelling) have enabled subjects to break free from their national (af)filiations (Pearce, Devolving 17) and discover new “de-territorialised” (Deleuze and Guattari) modes of being and belonging. Alongside this “hope,” however, the forces and agents of globalisation were also regarded with a good deal of suspicion and fear, as is evidenced in Ulrich Beck’s What is Globalization? In his overview of the theorists who were then perceived to be leading the debate, Beck draws distinctions between what was perceived to be the “engine” of globalisation (31), but is clearly most exercised by the manner in which the transformation has taken shape: Without a revolution, without even any change in laws or constitutions, an attack has been launched “in the normal course of business”, as it were, upon the material lifelines of modern national societies. First, the transnational corporations are to export jobs to parts of the world where labour costs and workplace obligations are lowest. Second, the computer-generation of worldwide proximity enables them to break down and disperse goods and services, and produce them through a division of labour in different parts of the world, so that national and corporate labels inevitably become illusory. (3; italics in the original) Beck’s concern is clearly that all these changes have taken place without the nation-states of the world being directly involved in any way: transnational corporations began to take advantage of the new “mobility” available to them without having to secure the agreement of any government (“Companies can produce in one country, pay taxes in another and demand state infrastructural spending in yet another”; 4-5); the export of the labour market through the use of digital communications (stereotypically, call centres in India) was similarly unregulated; and the world economy, as a consequence, was in the process of becoming detached from the processes of either production or consumption (“capitalism without labour”; 5-7). Vis-à-vis the dystopian endgame of this effective “bypassing” of the nation-state, Beck is especially troubled about the fate of the human rights legislation that nation-states around the world have developed, with immense effort and over time (e.g. employment law, trade unions, universal welfare provision) and cites Zygmunt Bauman’s caution that globalisation will, at worst, result in widespread “global wealth” and “local poverty” (31). Further, he ends his book with a fully apocalyptic vision, “the Brazilianization of Europe” (161-3), which unapologetically calls upon the conventions of science fiction to imagine a worst-case scenario for a Europe without nations. While fourteen or fifteen years is evidently not enough time to put Beck’s prognosis to the test, most readers would probably agree that we are still some way away from such a Europe. Although the material wealth and presence of the transnational corporations strikes a chord, especially if we include the world banks and finance organisations in their number, the financial crisis that has rocked the world for the past three years, along with the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the ascendancy of Al-Qaida (all things yet to happen when Beck was writing in 1997), has arguably resulted in the nations of Europe reinforcing their (respective and collective) legal, fiscal, and political might through rigorous new policing of their physical borders and regulation of their citizens through “austerity measures” of an order not seen since World War Two. In other words, while the processes of globalisation have clearly been instrumental in creating the financial crisis that Europe is presently grappling with and does, indeed, expose the extent to which the world economy now operates outside the control of the nation-state, the nation-state still exists very palpably for all its citizens (whether permanent or migrant) as an agent of control, welfare, and social justice. This may, indeed, cause us to conclude that Bauman’s vision of a world in which globalisation would make itself felt very differently for some groups than others came closest to what is taking shape: true, the transnationals have seized significant political and economic power from the nation-state, but this has not meant the end of the nation-state; rather, the change is being experienced as a re-trenching of whatever power the nation-state still has (and this, of course, is considerable) over its citizens in their “local”, everyday lives (Bauman 55). If we now turn to the portrait of Europe painted by the articles that constitute this special issue, we see further evidence of transglobal processes and practices operating in a realm oblivious to local (including national) concerns. While our authors are generally more concerned with the flows of information and “identity” than business or finance (Appaduri’s “ethnoscapes,” “technoscapes,” and “ideoscapes”: 33-7), there is the same impression that this “circulation” (Latour) is effectively bypassing the state at one level (the virtual), whilst remaining very materially bound by it at another. In other words, and following Bauman, we would suggest that it is quite possible for contemporary subjects to be both the agents and subjects of globalisation: a paradox that, as we shall go on to demonstrate, is given particularly vivid expression in the case of diasporic and/or migrant peoples who may be able to bypass the state in the manufacture of their “virtual” identities/communities) but who (Cohen) remain very much its subjects (or, indeed, “non-subjects”) when attempting movement in the material realm. Two of the articles in the collection (Leurs & Ponzanesi and Marcheva) deal directly with the exponential growth of “digital diasporas” (sometimes referred to as “e-diasporas”) since the inception of Facebook in 2004, and both provide specific illustrations of the way in which the nation-state both has, and has not, been transcended. First, it quickly becomes clear that for the (largely) “youthful” (Leurs & Ponzanesi) participants of nationally inscribed networking sites (e.g. “discovernikkei” (Japan), “Hyves” (Netherlands), “Bulgarians in the UK” (Bulgaria)), shared national identity is a means and not an end. In other words, although the participants of these sites might share in and actively produce a fond and nostalgic image of their “homeland” (Marcheva), they are rarely concerned with it as a material or political entity and an expression of their national identities is rapidly supplemented by the sharing of other (global) identity markers. Leurs & Ponzanesi invoke Deleuze and Guattari’s concept of the “rhizome” to describe the way in which social networkers “weave” a “rhizomatic path” to identity, gradually accumulating a hybrid set of affiliations. Indeed, the extent to which the “nation” disappears on such sites can be remarkable as was also observed in our investigation of the digital storytelling site, “Capture Wales” (BBC) (Pearce, "Writing"). Although this BBC site was set up to capture the voices of the Welsh nation in the early twenty-first century through a collection of (largely) autobiographical stories, very few of the participants mention either Wales or their “Welshness” in the stories that they tell. Further, where the “home” nation is (re)imagined, it is generally in an idealised, or highly personalised, form (e.g. stories about one’s own family) or through a sharing of (perceived and actual) cultural idiosyncrasies (Marcheva on “You know you’re a Bulgarian when …”) rather than an engagement with the nation-state per se. As Leurs & Ponzanesi observe: “We can see how the importance of the nation-state gets obscured as diasporic youth, through cultural hybridisation of youth culture and ethnic ties initiate subcultures and offer resistance to mainstream cultural forms.” Both the articles just discussed also note the shading of the “national” into the “transnational” on the social networking sites they discuss, and “transnationalism”—in the sense of many different nations and their diasporas being united through a common interest or cause—is also a focus of Pikner’s article on “collective actions” in Europe (notably, “EuroMayDay” and “My Estonia”) and Harb’s highly topical account of the role of both broadcast media (principally, Al-Jazeera) and social media in the revolutions and uprisings currently sweeping through the Arab world (spring 2011). On this point, it should be noted that Harb identifies this as the moment when Facebook’s erstwhile predominantly social function was displaced by a manifestly political one. From this we must conclude that both transnationalism and social media sites can be put to very different ends: while young people in relatively privileged democratic countries might embrace transnationalism as an expression of their desire to “rise above” national politics, the youth of the Arab world have engaged it as a means of generating solidarity for nationalist insurgency and liberation. Another instance of “g/local” digital solidarity exceeding national borders is to be found in Johanna Sumiala’s article on the circulatory power of the Internet in the Kauhajoki school shooting which took place Finland in 2008. As well as using the Internet to “stage manage” his rampage, the Kauhajoki shooter (whose name the author chose to withhold for ethical reasons) was subsequently found to have been a member of numerous Web-based “hate groups”, many of them originating in the United States and, as a consequence, may be understood to have committed his crime on behalf of a transnational community: what Sumiala has defined as a “networked community of destruction.” It must also be noted, however, that the school shootings were experienced as a very local tragedy in Finland itself and, although the shooter may have been psychically located in a transnational hyper-reality when he undertook the killings, it is his nation-state that has had to deal with the trauma and shame in the long term. Woodward and Brown & Rutherford, meanwhile, show that it remains the tendency of public broadcast media to uphold the raison d’être of the nation-state at the same time as embracing change. Woodward’s feature article (which reports on the AHRC-sponsored “Tuning In” project which has researched the BBC World Service) shows how the representation of national and diasporic “voices” from around the world, either in opposition to or in dialogue with the BBC’s own reporting, is key to the way in which the Commission has changed and modernised in recent times; however, she is also clear that many of the objectives that defined the service in its early days—such as its commitment to a distinctly “English” brand of education—still remain. Similarly, Brown & Rutherford’s article on the innovative Australian ABC children’s television series, My Place (which has combined traditional broadcasting with online, interactive websites) may be seen to be positively promoting the Australian nation by making visible its commitment to multiculturalism. Both articles nevertheless reveal the extent to which these public service broadcasters have recognised the need to respond to their nations’ changing demographics and, in particular, the fact that “diaspora” is a concept that refers not only to their English and Australian audiences abroad but also to their now manifestly multicultural audiences at home. When it comes to commercial satellite television, however, the relationship between broadcasting and national and global politics is rather harder to pin down. Subramanian exposes a complex interplay of national and global interests through her analysis of the Malayalee “reality television” series, Idea Star Singer. Exported globally to the Indian diaspora, the show is shamelessly exploitative in the way in which it combines residual and emergent ideologies (i.e. nostalgia for a traditional Keralayan way of life vs aspirational “western lifestyles”) in pursuit of its (massive) audience ratings. Further, while the ISS series is ostensibly a g/local phenomenon (the export of Kerala to the rest of the world rather than “India” per se), Subramanian passionately laments all the progressive national initiatives (most notably, the campaign for “women’s rights”) that the show is happy to ignore: an illustration of one of the negative consequences of globalisation predicted by Beck (31) noted at the start of this editorial. Harb, meanwhile, reflects upon a rather different set of political concerns with regards to commercial satellite broadcasting in her account of the role of Al-Jazeera and Al Arabiya in the recent (2011) Arab revolutions. Despite Al-Jazeera’s reputation for “two-sided” news coverage, recent events have exposed its complicity with the Qatari government; further, the uprisings have revealed the speed with which social media—in particular Facebook and Twitter—are replacing broadcast media. It is now possible for “the people” to bypass both governments and news corporations (public and private) in relaying the news. Taken together, then, what our articles would seem to indicate is that, while the power of the nation-state has notionally been transcended via a range of new networking practices, this has yet to undermine its material power in any guaranteed way (witness recent counter-insurgencies in Libya, Bahrain, and Syria).True, the Internet may be used to facilitate transnational “actions” against the nation-state (individual or collective) through a variety of non-violent or violent actions, but nation-states around the world, and especially in Western Europe, are currently wielding immense power over their subjects through aggressive “austerity measures” which have the capacity to severely compromise the freedom and agency of the citizens concerned through widespread unemployment and cuts in social welfare provision. This said, several of our articles provide evidence that Appadurai’s more utopian prognoses are also taking shape. Alongside the troubling possibility that globalisation, and the technologies that support it, is effectively eroding “difference” (be this national or individual), there are the ever-increasing (and widely reported) instances of how digital technology is actively supporting local communities and actions around the world in ways that bypass the state. These range from the relatively modest collective action, “My Estonia”, featured in Pikner’s article, to the ways in which the Libyan diaspora in Manchester have made use of social media to publicise and support public protests in Tripoli (Harb). In other words, there is compelling material evidence that the heterogeneity that Appadurai predicted and hoped for has come to pass through the people’s active participation in (and partial ownership of) media practices. Citizens are now able to “interfere” in the representation of their lives as never before and, through the digital revolution, communicate with one another in ways that circumvent state-controlled broadcasting. We are therefore pleased to present the articles that follow as a lively, interdisciplinary and international “state-of-the-art” commentary on how the ongoing revolution in media and communication is responding to, and bringing into being, the processes and practices of globalisation predicted by Appadurai, Beck, Bauman, and others in the 1990s. The articles also speak to the changing nature of the world’s “diasporas” during this fifteen year time frame (1996-2011) and, we trust, will activate further debate (following Cohen) on the conceptual tensions that now manifestly exist between “virtual” and “material” diasporas and also between the “transnational” diasporas whose objective is to transcend the nation-state altogether and those that deploy social media for specifically local or national/ist ends. Acknowledgements With thanks to the Arts and Humanities Research Council (UK) for their generous funding of the “Moving Manchester” project (2006-10). Special thanks to Dr Kate Horsley (Lancaster University) for her invaluable assistance as ‘Web Editor’ in the production of this special issue (we could not have managed without you!) and also to Gail Ferguson (our copy-editor) for her expertise in the preparation of the final typescript. References Appadurai, Arjun. Modernity at Large: Cultural Dimensions of Globalisation. Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P, 1996. Bauman, Zygmunt. Globalization. Cambridge: Polity, 1998. Beck, Ulrich. What is Globalization? Trans. Patrick Camiller. Cambridge: Polity, 2000 (1997). Bromley, Roger. Narratives for a New Belonging: Diasporic Cultural Fictions. Edinburgh: Edinburgh UP, 2000. Cohen, Robin. Global Diasporas. 2nd ed. London and New York: Routledge, 2008. Deleuze, Gilles, and Felix Guattari. A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia. Trans. Brian Massumi. Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P, 1987. Latour, Bruno. Reassembling the Social: An Introduction to Actor-Network Theory. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1995. Pearce, Lynne, ed. Devolving Identities: Feminist Readings in Home and Belonging. London: Ashgate, 2000. Pearce, Lynne. “‘Writing’ and ‘Region’ in the Twenty-First Century: Epistemological Reflections on Regionally Located Art and Literature in the Wake of the Digital Revolution.” European Journal of Cultural Studies 13.1 (2010): 27-41. Robertson, Robert. Globalization: Social Theory and Global Culture. London: Sage, 1992. Urry, John. Sociology beyond Societies. London: Routledge, 1999. Williams, Raymond. Dream Worlds: Mass Consumption in Late Nineteenth-Century France. Berkeley: U of California P, 1982.
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Reid Boyd, Elizabeth, Madalena Grobbelaar, Eyal Gringart, Alise Bender, and Rose Williams. "Introducing ‘Intimate Civility’: Towards a New Concept for 21st-Century Relationships." M/C Journal 22, no. 1 (March 13, 2019). http://dx.doi.org/10.5204/mcj.1491.

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Fig. 1: Photo by Miguel Orós, from unsplash.comFeminism has stalled at the bedroom door. In the post-#metoo era, more than ever, we need intimate civil rights in our relationships to counter the worrisome prevailing trends: Intimate partner violence. Interpersonal abuse. Date rape. Sexual harassment. Online harassment. Bullying. Rage. Sexual Assault. Abusive relationships. Revenge porn. There’s a lot of damage done when we get up close and personal. In the 21st century, we have come far in terms of equality and respect between the genders, so there’s a lot to celebrate. We also note that the Australian government has stepped in recently with the theme ‘Keeping Australians safe and secure’, by pledging $78 million to combat domestic violence, much of which takes place behind closed doors (Morrison 2019). Herein lies the issue: while governments legislate to protect victims of domestic violence — out of the public eye, private behaviours cannot be closely monitored, and the lack of social enforcement of these laws threatens the safety of intimate relationships. Rather, individuals are left to their own devices. We outline here a guideline for intimate civility, an individually-embraced code of conduct that could guide interpersonal dynamics within the intimate space of relationships. Civility does not traditionally ‘belong’ in our most intimate relationships. Rather, it’s been presumed, even idealised, that intimacy in our personal lives transcends the need for public values to govern relationships between/among men and women (i.e., that romantic love is all you need). Civility developed as a public, gendered concept. Historically, a man’s home – and indeed, his partner – became his dominion, promoting hegemonic constructions of masculinity, and values that reflect competition, conquest, entitlement and ownership. Moreover, intimate relationships located in the private domain can also be considered for/by both men and women a retreat, a bastion against, or excluded from the controls and demands of the public or ‘polis’ - thus from the public requirement for civility, further enabling its breakdown. The feminist political theorist Carole Pateman situated this historical separation as an inheritance of Hegel’s double dilemma: first, a class division between civil society and the state (between the economic man/woman, or private enterprise and public power) and second, a patriarchal division between the private family (and intimate relationships) and civil society/the state. The private location, she argues, is “an association constituted by ties of love, blood … subjection and particularity” rather than the public sphere, “an association of free and equal individuals” (225). In Hegel’s dilemma, personal liberty is a dualism, only constructed in relation to a governed, public (patriarchal) state. Alternately, Carter depicts civility as a shared moral good, where civility arises not only because of concern over consequences, but also demonstrates our intrinsic moral obligation to respect people in general. This approach subsequently challenges our freedom to carry out private, uncivil acts within a truly civil society.Challenges to Gender EthicsHow can we respond to this challenge in gender ethics? Intimate civility is a term coined by Elizabeth Reid Boyd and Abigail Bray. It came out of their discussions proposing “a new poetics of romance” which called for rewritten codes of interpersonal conduct, an “entente cordiale; a cordial truce to end the sex wars”. Reid Boyd and Bray go further:Politeness is personal and political. We reclaim courtesy as applied sexual and social ethics, an interpersonal, intimate ethics, respectful and tolerant of difference. Gender ethics must be addressed, for they have global social and cultural ramifications that we should not underestimate. (xx)As researchers, we started to explore the idea of intimate civility in interpersonal violence, developing an analysis using social construction and attachment theory simultaneously. In defining the term, we soon realised the concept had wider applications that could change how we think about our most intimate relationships – and how we behave in them. Conceptualising intimate civility involves imagining rights and responsibilities within the private sphere, whether or not loving, familial and natural. Intimate civility can operate through an individually embraced code of conduct to guide interpersonal dynamics within the intimate space of relationships.Gringart, Grobbelaar, and Bender explored the concept of intimate civility by investigating women’s perspectives on what may harmonise their intimate relationships. Women’s most basic desires included safety, equality and respect in the bedroom. In other words, intimate civility is an enactment of human-rights, the embodiment of regard for another human being, insofar as it is a form of ensuring physical and mental integrity, life, safety and protection of all beings. Thus, if intimate civility existed as a core facet of each individual’s self-concept, the manifestation of intimate partner violence ideally would not occur. Rage, from an intimate civility perspective, rips through any civil response and generates misconduct towards another. When we hold respect for others as equal moral beings, civility is key to contain conflicts, which prevents the escalation of disagreements into rage. Intimate civility proposes that civility becomes the baseline behaviour that would be reciprocated between two individuals within the private domain of intimate relationships. Following this notion, intimate civility is the foremost casualty in many relationships characterised by intimate partner violence. The current criminalisation of intimate partner violence leaves unexplored the previously privatised property of the relational – including the inheritance of centuries of control of women’s bodies and sexuality – and how far, in this domain, notions of civility might liberate and/or oppress. The feminist philosopher Luce Irigaray argues that these kinds of ‘sexuate rights’ must apply to both men and women and the reality of their needs and desires. Equality, she argued, could not be achieved without a rewriting of the rights and obligations of each sex, qua different, in social rights and obligations (Yan).Synonyms for intimacy include, amongst others, closeness, attachment, togetherness, warmth, mutual affection, familiarity and privacy. Indirectly, sexual relations are also often synonymous with intimate relationships. However, sex is not intimacy, as both sex and intimacy both exist without the other. Bowlby proposed that throughout our lives we are attentive to the responsiveness and the availability of those that we are attached to, and suggested that “intimate attachments to other human beings are the hub around which a person’s life revolves, not only when he is an infant or a toddler, but throughout his adolescence and his years of maturity as well, and on into old age” (442). Although love is not by nature reciprocal, in intimacy we seek reciprocity – to love one another at the same time in a shared form of commitment. Kierkegaard hypothesised that genuine love is witnessed by one continuing to love another after their death as it obviates any doubt that the beloved was loved and was not merely instrumental (Soble).Intimate Civility as a Starting PointCivility includes qualities such as trust, duty, morality, sacrifice, self-restraint, respect, and fairness; a common standard allowing individuals to work, live and associate together. Intimacy encourages caring, loyalty, empathy, honesty, and self-knowledge. Thus, intimate civility should begin with those closest to us; being civil in our most intimate relationships. It advocates the genuine use of terms of endearment, not terms of abuse. We can only develop qualities such as morality and empathy, crucial for intimate relationships, if we have experienced secure, intimate relationships. Individuals reared in homes devoid of intimate civility will be challenged to identify and promote the interest or wellbeing of their intimate counterparts, and have to seek outside help to learn these skills: it is a learnt behaviour, both at an interpersonal and societal level. Individuals whose parents were insensitive to their childhood needs, and were unable to perceive, interpret and respond appropriately to their subtle communications, signals, wishes and mood will be flailing in this interpersonal skill (Holmes and Slade). Similarly, the individual’s inclusion in a civil society will only be achieved if their surrounding environment promotes and values virtues such as compassion, fairness and cooperation. This may be a challenging task. We envisage intimate civility as a starting point. It provides a focus to discuss and explore civil rights, obligations and responsibilities, between and among women and men in their personal relationships. As stated above, intimate civility begins with one's relationship with oneself and the closest relationships in the home, and hopefully reaches outwards to all kinds of relationships, including same sex, transgender, and other roles within non-specific gender assignment. Therefore, exploring the concept of intimate civility has applications in personal therapy, family counselling centres and relationship counselling environments, or schools in sexual education, or in universities promoting student safety. For example, the 2019 “Change the Course” report was recently released to augment Universities Australia’s 2016 campaign that raised awareness on sexual assault on campus. While it is still under development, we envision that intimate civility decalogue outlined here could become a checklist to assist in promoting awareness regarding abuse of power and gender roles. A recent example of cultural reframing of gender and power in intimate relationships is the Australian Government’s 2018 Respect campaign against gender violence. These recent campaigns promote awareness that intimate civility is integrated with a more functional society.These campaigns, as the images demonstrate, aim at quantifying connections between interactions on an intimate scale in individual lives, and their impacts in shaping civil society in the arena of gender violence. They highlight the elasticity of the bonds between intimate life and civil society and our collective responsibility as citizens for reworking both the gendered and personal civility. Fig. 2: Photo by Tyler Nix: Hands Spelling Out LOVE, from unsplash.comThe Decalogue of Intimate Civility Overall, police reports of domestic violence are heavily skewed towards male on female, but this is not always the case. The Australian government recently reported that “1 in 6 Australian women and 1 in 16 men have been subjected, since the age of 15, to physical and/or sexual violence by a current or previous cohabiting partner” (Australian Institutes of Health and Welfare). Rather than reiterating the numbers, we envisage the decalogue (below) as a checklist of concepts designed to discuss and explore rights, obligations and responsibilities, between and among both partners in their intimate relationships. As such, this decalogue forms a basis for conversation. Intimate civility involves a relationship with these ten qualities, with ourselves, and each other.1) Intimate civility is personal and political. Conceptualising intimate civility involves imagining rights and responsibilities within the private sphere. It is not an impingement on individual liberty or privacy but a guarantor of it. Civil society requires us not to defend private infringements of inter-personal respect. Private behaviours are both intimate in their performance and the springboard for social norms. In Geoffrey Rush’s recent defamation case his defence relied not on denying claims he repeatedly touched his fellow actor’s genitalia during their stage performance in a specific scene, despite her requests to him that he stop, but rather on how newspaper reporting of her statements made him out to be a “sexual pervert”, reflecting the complex link between this ‘private’ interaction between two people and its very public exposé (Wells). 2) Intimate civility is an enactment of a civil right, insofar as it is a form of ensuring physical and mental integrity, life, safety and protection. Intimate civility should begin with those closest to us. An example of this ethic at work is the widening scope of criminalisation of intimate partner abuse to include all forms of abusive interactions between people. Stalking and the pre-cursors to physical violence such as controlling behaviours, online bullying or any actions used to instil fear or insecurity in a partner, are accorded legal sanctions. 3) Intimate civility is polite. Politeness is more than manners. It relates to our public codes of conduct, to behaviours and laws befitting every civilian of the ‘polis’. It includes the many acts of politeness that are required behind closed doors and the recognition that this is the place from which public civility emerges. For example, the modern parent may hope that what they sanction as “polite” behaviour between siblings at home might then become generalised by the child into their public habits and later moral expectations as adults. In an ideal society, the micro-politics of family life become the blueprint for moral development for adult expectations about personal conduct in intimate and public life.4) Intimate civility is equitable. It follows Luce Irigaray’s call for ‘sexuate rights’ designed to apply to men and women and the reality of their needs and desires, in a rewriting of the social rights and obligations of each sex (Yan and Irigaray). Intimate civility extends this notion of rights to include all those involved in personal relations. This principle is alive within systemic family therapy which assumes that while not all members of the family system are always able to exert equal impacts or influence, they each in principle are interdependent participants influencing the system as a whole (Dallos and Draper). 5) Intimate civility is dialectical. The separation of intimacy and civility in Western society and thought is itself a dualism that rests upon other dualisms: public/private, constructed/natural, male/female, rational/emotional, civil/criminal, individual/social, victim/oppressor. Romantic love is not a natural state or concept, and does not help us to develop safe governance in the world of intimate relationships. Instead, we envisage intimate civility – and our relationships – as dynamic, dialectical, discursive and interactive, above and beyond dualism. Just as individuals do not assume that consent for sexual activity negotiated in one partnership under a set of particular conditions, is consent to sexual activity in all partnerships in any conditions. So, dialectics of intimate civility raises the expectation that what occurs in interpersonal relationships is worked out incrementally, between people over time and particular to their situation and experiences. 6) Intimate civility is humane. It can be situated in what Julia Kristeva refers to as the new humanism, emerging (and much needed) today. “This new humanism, interaction with others – all the others – socially marginalised, racially discriminated, politically, sexually, biologically or psychically persecuted others” (Kristeva, 2016: 64) is only possible if we immerse ourselves in the imaginary, in the experience of ‘the other’. Intimate civility takes on a global meaning when human rights action groups such as Amnesty International address the concerns of individuals to make a social difference. Such organisations develop globally-based digital platforms for interested individuals to become active about shared social concerns, understanding that the new humanism ethic works within and between individuals and can be harnessed for change.7) Intimate civility is empathic. It invites us to create not-yet-said, not-yet-imagined relationships. The creative space for intimate civility is not bound by gender, race or sexuality – only by our imaginations. “The great instrument of moral good is the imagination,” wrote the poet Shelley in 1840. Moral imagination (Reid Boyd) helps us to create better ways of being. It is a form of empathy that encourages us to be kinder and more loving to ourselves and each other, when we imagine how others might feel. The use of empathic imagination for real world relational benefits is common in traditional therapeutic practices, such as mindfulness, that encourages those struggling with self compassion to imagine the presence of a kind friend or ally to support them at times of hardship. 8) Intimate civility is respectful. Intimate civility is the foremost casualty in many relationships characterised by forms of abuse and intimate partner violence. “Respect”, wrote Simone Weil, “is due to the human being as such, and is not a matter of degree” (171). In the intimate civility ethic this quality of respect accorded as a right of beings is mutual, including ourselves with the other. When respect is eroded, much is lost. Respect arises from empathy through attuned listening. The RESPECT! Campaign originating from the Futures without Violence organisation assumes healthy relationships begin with listening between people. They promote the understanding that the core foundation of human wellbeing is relational, requiring inter-personal understanding and respect.9) Intimate civility is a form of highest regard. When we regard another we truly see them. To hold someone in high regard is to esteem them, to hold them above others, not putting them on a pedestal, or insisting they are superior, but to value them for who they are. To be esteemed for our interior, for our character, rather than what we display or what we own. It connects with the humanistic psychological concept of unconditional positive regard. The highest regard holds each other in arms and in mind. It is to see/look at, to have consideration for, and to pay attention to, recently epitomised by the campaign against human trafficking, “Can You See Me?” (Human Trafficking), whose purpose is to foster public awareness of the non-verbal signs and signals between individuals that indicate human trafficking may be taking place. In essence, teaching communal awareness towards the victimisation of individuals. 10) Intimate civility is intergenerational. We can only develop qualities such as morality and empathy, crucial for intimate relationships, if we have experienced (or imagined) intimate relationships where these qualities exist. Individuals reared in homes devoid of intimate civility could be challenged to identify and promote the interest or wellbeing of their intimate counterparts; it is a learnt behaviour, both at an interpersonal and societal level. Childhood developmental trauma research (Spinazzola and Ford) reminds us that the interaction of experiences, relational interactions, contexts and even our genetic amkeup makes individuals both vulnerable to repeating the behaviour of past generations. However, treatment of the condition and surrounding individuals with people in their intimate world who have different life experiences and personal histories, i.e., those who have acquired respectful relationship habits, can have a positive impact on the individuals’ capacity to change their learned negative behaviours. In conclusion, the work on intimate civility as a potential concept to alleviate rage in human relationships has hardly begun. The decalogue provides a checklist that indicates the necessity of ‘intersectionality’ — where the concepts of intimate civility connect to many points within the public/private and personal/political domains. Any analysis of intimacy must reach further than prepositions tied to social construction and attachment theory (Fonagy), to include current understandings of trauma and inter-generational violence and the way these influence people’s ability to act in healthy and balanced interpersonal relationships. While not condoning violent acts, locating the challenges to intimate civility on both personal and societal levels may leverage a compassionate view of those caught up in interpersonal violence. The human condition demands that we continue the struggle to meet the challenges of intimate civility in our personal actions with others as well as the need to replicate civil behaviour throughout all societies. ReferencesBowlby, John. Attachment and Loss. Vol. 3. New York: Basic Books, 1980.Carter, Stephen. Civility: Manners, Morals and the Etiquette of Democracy. New York: Basic Books, 1998.Dallos, Rudi, and Ros Draper. An Introduction to Family Therapy: Systemic Theory and Practice. 2nd ed. Open University Press: Berkshire, 2005.Australian Institutes of Health and Welfare, Australian Government. Family, Domestic and Sexual Violence in Australia. 2018. 6 Feb. 2019 <https://www.aihw.gov.au/reports/domestic-violence/family-domestic-sexual-violence-in-australia-2018/contents/summary>. Fonagy, Peter. Attachment Theory and Psychoanalysis. New York: Other Press, 2001.Gringart, Eyal, Madalena Grobbelaar, and Alise Bender. Intimate Civility: The Perceptions and Experiences of Women on Harmonising Intimate Relationships. Honours thesis, 2018.Holmes, Jeremy, and Arietta Slade. Attachment in Therapeutic Practice. Los Angeles: Sage, 2018. Human Trafficking, Jan. 2019. 14 Feb. 2019 <https://www.a21.org/content/can-you-see-me/gnsqqg?permcode=gnsqqg&site=true>.Kristeva, Julia. Teresa My Love: An Imagined Life of the Saint of Avila. New York: Columbia UP, 2016.Morrison, Scott. “National Press Club Address.” 11 Feb. 2019. 26 Feb. 2019 <https://www.pm.gov.au/media/national-press-club-address-our-plan-keeping-australians-safe-and-secure>.Pateman, Carole. “The Patriarchal Welfare State.” Defining Women: Social Institutions and Gender Divisions. Eds. Linda McDowell and Rosemary Pringle. London: Polity Press, 1994. 223-45.Reid Boyd, Elizabeth. “How Creativity Can Help Us Cultivate Moral Imagination.” The Conversation, 30 Jan. 2019. 11 Feb. 2019 <http://theconversation.com/how-creativity-can-help-us-cultivate-moral-imagination-101968>.Reid Boyd, Elizabeth, and Abigail Bray. Ladies and Gentlemen: Sex, Love and 21st Century Courtesy. Unpublished book proposal, 2005.Commonwealth of Australia. Respect Campaign. 2018, 9 Jan. 2019 <http://www.respect.gov.au/the-campaign/campaign-materials/>.Shelley, Percy Bysshe. A Defence of Poetry. London: Ginn and Company, 1840.Soble, Alan. Philosophy of Sex and Love. St Paul, MN: Paragon House, 1998.Weil, Simone. Waiting on God. London: Fontana Collins, 1968.Wells, Jamelle. “Geoffrey Rush, Erin Norvill and the Daily Telegraph: The Stakes Are High in This Defamation Trial.” ABC News 12 Nov. 2018. 23 Feb. 2019 <http://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-11-10/geoffrey-rush-defamation-trial-a-drama-with-final-act-to-come/10483944>.Yan, Liu, and Luce Irigaray. “Feminism, Sexuate Rights and the Ethics of Sexual Difference: An Interview with Luce Irigaray.” Foreign Literature Studies (2010): 1-9.
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Goggin, Gerard. "Innovation and Disability." M/C Journal 11, no. 3 (July 2, 2008). http://dx.doi.org/10.5204/mcj.56.

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Critique of Ability In July 2008, we could be on the eve of an enormously important shift in disability in Australia. One sign of change is the entry into force on 3 May 2008 of the United Nations convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, which will now be adopted by the Rudd Labor government. Through this, and other proposed measures, the Rudd government has indicated its desire for a seachange in the area of disability. Bill Shorten MP, the new Parliamentary Secretary for Disabilities and Children’s Services has been at pains to underline his commitment to a rights-based approach to disability. In this inaugural speech to Parliament, Senator Shorten declared: I believe the challenge for government is not to fit people with disabilities around programs but for programs to fit the lives, needs and ambitions of people with disabilities. The challenge for all of us is to abolish once and for all the second-class status that too often accompanies Australians living with disabilities. (Shorten, “Address in reply”; see also Shorten, ”Speaking up”) Yet if we listen to the voices of people with disability, we face fundamental issues of justice, democracy, equality and how we understand the deepest aspects of ourselves and our community. This is a situation that remains dire and palpably unjust, as many people with disabilities have attested. Elsewhere I have argued (Goggin and Newell) that disability constitutes a systemic form of exclusion and othering tantamount to a “social apartheid” . While there have been improvements and small gains since then, the system that reigns in Australia is still fundamentally oppressive. Nonetheless, I would suggest that through the rise of the many stranded movements of disability, the demographic, economic and social changes concerning impairment, we are seeing significant changes in how we understand impairment and ability (Barnes, Oliver and Barton; Goggin and Newell, Disability in Australia; Snyder, Brueggemann, and Garland-Thomson; Shakespeare; Stiker). There is now considerable, if still incomplete, recognition of disability as a category that is constituted through social, cultural, and political logics, as well as through complex facets of impairment, bodies (Corker and Shakespeare), experiences, discourses (Fulcher), and modes of materiality and subjectivity (Butler), identity and government (Tremain). Also there is growing awareness of the imbrication of disability and other categories such as sex and gender (Fine and Asch; Thomas), race, age, culture, class and distribution of wealth (Carrier; Cole; Davis, Bending over Backwards, and Enforcing Normalcy; Oliver; Rosenblum and Travis), ecology and war (Bourke; Gerber; Muir). There are rich and wide-ranging debates that offer fundamental challenges to the suffocating grip of the dominant biomedical model of disability (that conceives disability as individual deficit — for early critiques see: Borsay; Walker), as well as the still influential and important (if at times limiting) social model of disability (Oliver; Barnes and Mercer; Shakespeare). All in all,there have been many efforts to transform the social and political relations of disability. If disability has been subject to considerable examination, there has not yet been an extended, concomitant critique of ability. Nor have we witnessed a thoroughgoing recognition of unmarked, yet powerful operations of ability in our lives and thought, and the potential implications of challenging these. Certainly there have been important attempts to reframe the relationship between “ability” and “disability” (for example, see Jones and Mark). And we are all familiar with the mocking response to some neologisms that seek to capture this, such as the awkward yet pointed “differently-abled.” Despite such efforts we lack still a profound critique of ability, an exploration of “able”, the topic that this special issue invites us to consider. If we think of the impact and significance of “whiteness”, as a way to open up space for how to critically think about and change concepts of race; or of “masculinity” as a project for thinking about gender and sexuality — we can see that this interrogation of the unmarked category of “able” and “ability” is much needed (for one such attempt, see White). In this paper I would like to make a small contribution to such a critique of ability, by considering what the concept of innovation and its contemporary rhetorics have to offer for reframing disability. Innovation is an important discourse in contemporary life. It offers interesting possibilities for rethinking ability — and indeed disability. And it is this relatively unexplored prospect that this paper seeks to explore. Beyond Access, Equity & Diversity In this scene of disability, there is attention being given to making long over-due reforms. Yet the framing of many of these reforms, such as the strengthening of national and international legal frameworks, for instance, also carry with them considerable problems. Disability is too often still seen as something in need of remediation, or special treatment. Access, equity, and anti-discrimination frameworks offer important resources for challenging this “special” treatment, so too do the diversity approaches which have supplemented or supplanted them (Goggin and Newell, “Diversity as if Disability Mattered”). In what new ways can we approach disability and policies relevant to it? In a surprisingly wide range of areas, innovation has featured as a new, cross-sectoral approach. Innovation has been a long-standing topic in science, technology and economics. However, its emergence as master-theme comes from its ability to straddle and yoke together previously diverse fields. Current discussions of innovation bring together and extend work on the information society, the knowledge economy, and the relationships between science and technology. We are now familiar for instance with arguments about how digital networked information and communications technologies and their consumption are creating new forms of innovation (Benkler; McPherson; Passiante, Elia, and Massari). Innovation discourse has extended to many other unfamiliar realms too, notably the area of social and community development, where a new concept of social innovation is now proposed (Mulgan), often aligned with new ideas of social entrepreneurship that go beyond earlier accounts of corporate social responsibility. We can see the importance of innovation in the ‘creative industries’ discourses and initiatives which have emerged since the 1990s. Here previously distinct endeavours of arts and culture have become reframed in a way that puts their central achievement of creativity to the fore, and recognises its importance across all sorts of service and manufacturing industries, in particular. More recently, theorists of creative industries, such as Cunningham, have begun to talk about “social network markets,” as a way to understand the new hybrid of creativity, innovation, digital technology, and new economic logics now being constituted (Cunningham and Potts). Innovation is being regarded as a cardinal priority for societies and their governments. Accordingly, the Australian government has commissioned a Review of The National Innovation System, led by Dr Terry Cutler, due to report in the second half of 2008. The Cutler review is especially focussed upon gaps and weaknesses in the Australian innovation system. Disability has the potential to figure very strongly in this innovation talk, however there has been little discussion of disability in the innovation discourse to date. The significance of disability in relation to innovation was touched upon some years ago, in a report on Disablism from the UK Demos Foundation (Miller, Parker and Gillinson). In a chapter entitled “The engine of difference: disability, innovation and creativity,” the authors discuss the area of inclusive design, and make the argument for the “involvement of disabled people to create a stronger model of user design”:Disabled people represented a market of 8.6 million customers at the last count and their experiences aren’t yet feeding through into processes of innovation. But the role of disabled people as innovators can and should be more active; we should include disabled people in the design process because they are good at it. (57) There are two reasons given for this expertise of disabled people in design. Firstly, “disabled people are often outstanding problem solvers because they have to be … life for disabled people at the moment is a series of challenges to be overcome” (57). Secondly, “innovative ideas are more likely to come from those who have a new or different angle on old problems” (57). The paradox in this argument is that as life becomes more equitable for people with disabilities, then these ‘advantages’ should disappear” (58). Accordingly, Miller et al. make a qualified argument, namely that “greater participation of disabled people in innovation in the short term may just be the necessary trigger for creating an altogether different, and better, system of innovation for everyone in the future” (58). The Demos Disablism report was written at a time when rhetorics of innovation were just beginning to become more generalized and mainstream. This was also at a time in the UK, when there was hope that new critical approaches to disability would see it become embraced as a part of the diverse society that Blair’s New Labor Britain had been indicating. The argument Disablism offers about disability and innovation is in some ways a more formalized version of vernacular theory (McLaughlin, 1996). In the disability movement we often hear, with good reason, that people with disability, by dint of their experience and knowledge are well positioned to develop and offer particular kinds of expertise. However, Miller et al. also gesture towards a more generalized account of disability and innovation, one that would intersect with the emerging frameworks around innovation. It is this possibility that I wish to take up and briefly explore here. I want to consider the prospects for a fully-fledged encounter between disability and innovation. I would like to have a better sense of whether this is worth pursuing, and what it would add to our understanding of both disability and innovation? Would the disability perspective be integrated as a long-term part of our systems of innovation rather than, as Miller et al. imply, deployed temporarily to develop better innovation systems? What pitfalls might be bound up with, or indeed be the conditions of, such a union between disability and innovation? The All-Too-Able User A leading area where disability figures profoundly in innovation is in the field of technology — especially digital technology. There is now a considerable literature and body of practice on disability and digital technology (Annable, Goggin, and Stienstra; Goggin and Newell, Digital Disability; National Council on Disability), however for my purposes here I would like to focus upon the user, the abilities ascribed to various kinds of users, and the user with disability in particular. Digital technologies are replete with challenges and opportunities; they are multi-layered, multi-media, and global in their manifestation and function. In Australia, Britain, Canada, the US, and Europe, there have been some significant digital technology initiatives which have resulted in improved accessibility for many users and populations (Annable, Goggin, and Stienstra; National Council on Disability) . There are a range of examples of ways in which users with disability are intervening and making a difference in design. There is also a substantial body of literature that clarifies why we need to include the perspective of the disabled if we are to be truly innovative in our design practices (Annable, Goggin and Stienstra; Goggin and Newell, “Disability, Identity and Interdependence”). I want to propose, however, that there is merit in going beyond recognition of the role of people with disability in technology design (vital and overlooked as it remains), to consider how disability can enrich contemporary discourses on innovation. There is a very desirable cross-over to be promoted between the emphasis on the user-as-expert in the sphere of disability and technology, and on the integral role of disability groups in the design process, on the one hand, and the rise of the user in digital culture generally, on the other. Surprisingly, such connections are nowhere near as widespread and systematic as they should be. It may be that contemporary debates about the user, and about the user as co-creator, or producer, of technology (Haddon et al.; von Hippel) actually reinstate particular notions of ability, and the able user, understood with reference to notions of disability. The current emphasis on the productive user, based as it is on changing understandings of ability and disability, provides rich material for critical revision of the field and those assumptions surrounding ability. It opens up possibilities for engaging more fully with disability and incorporating disability into the new forms and relations of digital technology that celebrate the user (Goggin and Newell, Digital Disability). While a more detailed consideration of these possibilities require more time than this essay allows, let us consider for a moment the idea of a genuine encounter between the activated user springing from the disability movement, and the much feted user in contemporary digital culture and theories of innovation. People with disability are using these technologies in innovative ways, so have much to contribute to wider discussions of digital technology (Annable, Goggin and Stienstra). The Innovation Turn Innovation policy, the argument goes, is important because it stands to increase productivity, which in turn leads to greater international competitiveness and economic benefit. Especially with the emergence of capitalism (Gleeson), productivity has strong links to particular notions of which types of production and produce are valued. Productivity is also strongly conditioned by how we understand ability and, last in a long chain of strong associations, how we as a society understand and value those kinds of people and bodies believed to contain and exercise the ordained and rewarded types of ability, produce, and productivity. Disability is often seen as antithetical to productivity (a revealing text on the contradictions of disability and productivity is the 2004 Productivity Commission Review of the Disability Discrimination Act). When we think about the history of disability, we quickly realize that productivity, and by extension, innovation, are strongly ideological. Ideological, that is, in the sense that these fields of human endeavour and our understanding of them are shaped by power relations, and are built upon implicit ‘ableist’ assumptions about productivity. In this case, the power relations of disability go right to the heart of the matter, highlighting who and what are perceived to be of value, contributing economically and in other ways to society, and who and what are considered as liabilities, as less valued and uneconomical. A stark recent example of this is the Howard government workplace and welfare reforms, which further disenfranchised, controlled, and impoverished people with disability. If we need to rethink our ideas of productivity and ability in the light of new notions of disability, then so too do we need to rethink our ideas about innovation and disability. Here the new discourses of innovation may actually be useful, but also contain limited formulations and assumptions about ability and disability that need to be challenged. The existing problems of a fresh approach to disability and innovation can be clearly observed in the touchstones of national science and technology “success.” Beyond One-Sided Innovation Disability does actually feature quite prominently in the annals of innovation. Take, for instance, the celebrated case of the so-called “bionic ear” (or cochlear implant) hailed as one of Australia’s great scientific inventions of the past few decades. This is something we can find on display in the Powerhouse Museum of Technology and Design, in Sydney. Yet the politics of the cochlear implant are highly controversial, not least as it is seen by many (for instance, large parts of the Deaf community) as not involving people with disabilities, nor being informed by their desires (Campbell, also see “Social and Ethical Aspects of Cochlear Implants”). A key problem with the cochlear implant and many other technologies is that they are premised on the abolition or overcoming of disability — rather than being shaped as technology that acknowledges and is informed by disabled users in their diverse guises. The failure to learn the lessons of the cochlear implant for disability and innovation can be seen in the fact that we are being urged now to band together to support the design of a “bionic eye” by the year 2020, as a mark of distinction of achieving a great nation (2020 Summit Initial Report). Again, there is no doubting the innovation and achievement in these artefacts and their technological systems. But their development has been marked by a distinct lack of consultation and engagement with people with disabilities; or rather the involvement has been limited to a framework that positions them as passive users of technology, rather than as “producer/users”. Further, what notions of disability and ability are inscribed in these technological systems, and what do they represent and symbolize in the wider political and social field? Unfortunately, such technologies have the effect of reproducing an ableist framework, “enforcing normalcy” (Davis), rather than building in, creating and contributing to new modes of living, which embrace difference and diversity. I would argue that this represents a one-sided logic of innovation. A two-sided logic of innovation, indeed what we might call a double helix (at least) of innovation would be the sustained, genuine interaction between different users, different notions of ability, disability and impairment, and the processes of design. If such a two-sided (or indeed many-sided logic) is to emerge there is good reason to think it could more easily do so in the field of digital cultures and technologies, than say, biotechnology. The reason for this is the emphasis in digital communication technologies on decentralized, participatory, user-determined governance and design, coming from many sources. Certainly this productive, democratic, participatory conception of the user is prevalent in Internet cultures. Innovation here is being reshaped to harness the contribution and knowledge of users, and could easily be extended to embrace pioneering efforts in disability. Innovating with Disability In this paper I have tried to indicate why it is productive for discourses of innovation to consider disability; the relationship between disability and innovation is rich and complex, deserving careful elaboration and interrogation. In suggesting this, I am aware that there are also fundamental problems that innovation raises in its new policy forms. There are the issues of what is at stake when the state is redefining its traditional obligations towards citizens through innovation frameworks and discourses. And there is the troubling question of whether particular forms of activity are normatively judged to be innovative — whereas other less valued forms are not seen as innovative. By way of conclusion, however, I would note that there are now quite basic, and increasingly accepted ways, to embed innovation in design frameworks, and while they certainly have been adopted in the disability and technology area, there is much greater scope for this. However, a few things do need to change before this potential for disability to enrich innovation is adequately realized. Firstly, we need further research and theorization to clarify the contribution of disability to innovation, work that should be undertaken and directed by people with disability themselves. Secondly, there is a lack of resources for supporting disability and technology organisations, and the development of training and expertise in this area (especially to provide viable career paths for experts with disability to enter the field and sustain their work). If this is addressed, the economic benefits stand to be considerable, not to mention the implications for innovation and productivity. Thirdly, we need to think about how we can intensify existing systems of participatory design, or, better still, introduce new user-driven approaches into strategically important places in the design processes of ICTs (and indeed in the national innovation system). Finally, there is an opportunity for new approaches to governance in ICTs at a general level, informed by disability. New modes of organising, networking, and governance associated with digital technology have attracted much attention, also featuring recently in the Australia 2020 Summit. Less well recognised are new ideas about governance that come from the disability community, such as the work of Queensland Advocacy Incorporated, Rhonda Galbally’s Our Community, disability theorists such as Christopher Newell (Newell), or the Canadian DIS-IT alliance (see, for instance, Stienstra). The combination of new ideas in governance from digital culture, new ideas from the disability movement and disability studies, and new approaches to innovation could be a very powerful cocktail indeed.Dedication This paper is dedicated to my beloved friend and collaborator, Professor Christopher Newell AM (1964-2008), whose extraordinary legacy will inspire us all to continue exploring and questioning the idea of able. 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Bending Over Backwards: Disability, Dismodernism, and other Difficult Positions. New York, NY: New York University Press, 2002. ———. Enforcing Normalcy: Disability, Deafness and the Body. London: Verso, 1995. Fine, Michelle, and Adrienne Asch, eds. Women with Disabilities: Essays in Psychology, Culture, and Politics. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1988. Fulcher, Gillian. Disabling Policies? London: Falmer Press, 1989. Gerber, David A., ed. Disabled Veterans in History. Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2000. Gleeson, Brendan. Geographies of Disability. London and New York: Routledge, 1999. Goggin, Gerard, and Christopher Newell. Digital Disability: The Social Construction of Disability in New Media. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2003. ———. Disability in Australia: Exposing a Social Apartheid. 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Kelly, Elaine. "Growing Together? Land Rights and the Northern Territory Intervention." M/C Journal 13, no. 6 (December 1, 2010). http://dx.doi.org/10.5204/mcj.297.

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Each community’s title deed carries the indelible blood stains of our ancestors. (Watson, "Howard’s End" 2)IntroductionAccording to the Oxford English Dictionary, the term coalition comes from the Latin coalescere or ‘coalesce’, meaning “come or bring together to form one mass or whole”. Coalesce refers to the unity affirmed as something grows: co – “together”, alesce – “to grow up”. While coalition is commonly associated with formalised alliances and political strategy in the name of self-interest and common goals, this paper will draw as well on the broader etymological understanding of coalition as “growing together” in order to discuss the Australian government’s recent changes to land rights legislation, the 2007 Emergency Intervention into the Northern Territory, and its decision to use Indigenous land in the Northern Territory as a dumping ground for nuclear waste. What unites these distinct cases is the role of the Australian nation-state in asserting its sovereign right to decide, something Giorgio Agamben notes is the primary indicator of sovereign right and power (Agamben). As Fiona McAllan has argued in relation to the Northern Territory Intervention: “Various forces that had been coalescing and captivating the moral, imaginary centre were now contributing to a spectacular enactment of a sovereign rescue mission” (par. 18). Different visions of “growing together”, and different coalitional strategies, are played out in public debate and policy formation. This paper will argue that each of these cases represents an alliance between successive, oppositional governments - and the nourishment of neoliberal imperatives - over and against the interests of some of the Indigenous communities, especially with relation to land rights. A critical stance is taken in relation to the alterations to land rights laws over the past five years and with the Northern Territory Emergency Intervention, hereinafter referred to as the Intervention, firstly by the Howard Liberal Coalition Government and later continued, in what Anthony Lambert has usefully termed a “postcoalitional” fashion, by the Rudd Labor Government. By this, Lambert refers to the manner in which dominant relations of power continue despite the apparent collapse of old political coalitions and even in the face of seemingly progressive symbolic and material change. It is not the intention of this paper to locate Indigenous people in opposition to models of economic development aligned with neoliberalism. There are examples of productive relations between Indigenous communities and mining companies, in which Indigenous people retain control over decision-making and utilise Land Council’s to negotiate effectively. Major mining company Rio Tinto, for example, initiated an Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders Policy platform in the mid-1990s (Rio Tinto). Moreover, there are diverse perspectives within the Indigenous community regarding social and economic reform governed by neoliberal agendas as well as government initiatives such as the Intervention, motivated by a concern for the abuse of children, as outlined in The Little Children Are Sacred Report (Wild & Anderson; hereinafter Little Children). Indeed, there is no agreement on whether or not the Intervention had anything to do with land rights. On the one hand, Noel Pearson has strongly opposed this assertion: “I've got as much objections as anybody to the ideological prejudices of the Howard Government in relation to land, but this question is not about a 'land grab'. The Anderson Wild Report tells us about the scale of Aboriginal children's neglect and abuse" (ABC). Marcia Langton has agreed with this stating that “There's a cynical view afoot that the emergency intervention was a political ploy - a Trojan Horse - to sneak through land grabs and some gratuitous black head-kicking disguised as concern for children. These conspiracy theories abound, and they are mostly ridiculous” (Langton). Patrick Dodson on the other hand, has argued that yes, of course, the children remain the highest priority, but that this “is undermined by the Government's heavy-handed authoritarian intervention and its ideological and deceptive land reform agenda” (Dodson). WhitenessOne way to frame this issue is to look at it through the lens of critical race and whiteness theory. Is it possible that the interests of whiteness are at play in the coalitions of corporate/private enterprise and political interests in the Northern Territory, in the coupling of social conservatism and economic rationalism? Using this framework allows us to identify the partial interests at play and the implications of this for discussions in Australia around sovereignty and self-determination, as well as providing a discursive framework through which to understand how these coalitional interests represent a specific understanding of progress, growth and development. Whiteness theory takes an empirically informed stance in order to critique the operation of unequal power relations and discriminatory practices imbued in racialised structures. Whiteness and critical race theory take the twin interests of racial privileging and racial discrimination and discuss their historical and on-going relevance for law, philosophy, representation, media, politics and policy. Foregrounding contemporary analysis in whiteness studies is the central role of race in the development of the Australian nation, most evident in the dispossession and destruction of Indigenous lands, cultures and lives, which occurred initially prior to Federation, as well as following. Cheryl Harris’s landmark paper “Whiteness as Property” argues, in the context of the US, that “the origins of property rights ... are rooted in racial domination” and that the “interaction between conceptions of race and property ... played a critical role in establishing and maintaining racial and economic subordination” (Harris 1716).Reiterating the logic of racial inferiority and the assumption of a lack of rationality and civility, Indigenous people were named in the Australian Constitution as “flora and fauna” – which was not overturned until a national referendum in 1967. This, coupled with the logic of terra nullius represents the racist foundational logic of Australian statehood. As is well known, terra nullius declared that the land belonged to no-one, denying Indigenous people property rights over land. Whiteness, Moreton-Robinson contends, “is constitutive of the epistemology of the West; it is an invisible regime of power that secures hegemony through discourse and has material effects in everyday life” (Whiteness 75).In addition to analysing racial power structures, critical race theory has presented studies into the link between race, whiteness and neoliberalism. Roberts and Mahtami argue that it is not just that neoliberalism has racialised effects, rather that neoliberalism and its underlying philosophy is “fundamentally raced and produces racialized bodies” (248; also see Goldberg Threat). The effect of the free market on state sovereignty has been hotly debated too. Aihwa Ong contends that neoliberalism produces particular relationships between the state and non-state corporations, as well as determining the role of individuals within the body-politic. Ong specifies:Market-driven logic induces the co-ordination of political policies with the corporate interests, so that developmental discussions favour the fragmentation of the national space into various contiguous zones, and promote the differential regulation of the populations who can be connected to or disconnected from global circuits of capital. (Ong, Neoliberalism 77)So how is whiteness relevant to a discussion of land reform, and to the changes to land rights passed along with Intervention legislation in 2007? Irene Watson cites the former Minister for Indigenous Affairs, Mal Brough, who opposed the progressive individual with what he termed the “failed collective.” Watson asserts that in the debates around land leasing and the Intervention, “Aboriginal law and traditional roles and responsibilities for caring and belonging to country are transformed into the cause for community violence” (Sovereign Spaces 34). The effects of this, I will argue, are twofold and move beyond a moral or social agenda in the strictest sense of the terms: firstly to promote, and make more accessible, the possibility of private and government coalitions in relation to Indigenous lands, and secondly, to reinforce the sovereignty of the state, recognised in the capacity to make decisions. It is here that the explicit reiteration of what Aileen Moreton-Robinson calls “white possession” is clearly evidenced (The Possessive Logic). Sovereign Interventions In the Northern Territory 50% of land is owned by Indigenous people under the Aboriginal Land Rights Act 1976 (ALRA) (NT). This law gives Indigenous people control, mediated via land councils, over their lands. It is the contention of this paper that the rights enabled through this law have been eroded in recent times in the coalescing interests of government and private enterprise via, broadly, land rights reform measures. In August 2007 the government passed a number of laws that overturned aspects of the Racial Discrimination Act 197 5(RDA), including the Northern Territory National Emergency Response Bill 2007 and the Aboriginal Land Rights (Northern Territory) Amendment (Township Leasing) Bill 2007. Ostensibly these laws were a response to evidence of alarming levels of child abuse in remote Indigenous communities, which has been compiled in the special report Little Children, co-chaired by Rex Wild QC and Patricia Anderson. This report argued that urgent but culturally appropriate strategies were required in order to assist the local communities in tackling the issues. The recommendations of the report did not include military intervention, and instead prioritised the need to support and work in dialogue with local Indigenous people and organisations who were already attempting, with extremely limited resources, to challenge the problem. Specifically it stated that:The thrust of our recommendations, which are designed to advise the NT government on how it can help support communities to effectively prevent and tackle child sexual abuse, is for there to be consultation with, and ownership by the local communities, of these solutions. (Wild & Anderson 23) Instead, the Federal Coalition government, with support from the opposition Labor Party, initiated a large scale intervention, which included the deployment of the military, to install order and assist medical personnel to carry out compulsory health checks on minors. The intervention affected 73 communities with populations of over 200 Aboriginal men, women and children (Altman, Neo-Paternalism 8). The reality of high levels of domestic and sexual abuse in Indigenous communities requires urgent and diligent attention, but it is not the space of this paper to unpack the media spectacle or the politically determined response to these serious issues, or the considered and careful reports such as the one cited above. While the report specifies the need for local solutions and local control of the process and decision-making, the Federal Liberal Coalition government’s intervention, and the current Labor government’s faithfulness to these, has been centralised and external, imposed upon communities. Rebecca Stringer argues that the Trojan horse thesis indicates what is at stake in this Intervention, while also pinpointing its main weakness. That is, the counter-intuitive links its architects make between addressing child sexual abuse and re-litigating Indigenous land tenure and governance arrangements in a manner that undermines Aboriginal sovereignty and further opens Aboriginal lands to private interests among the mining, nuclear power, tourism, property development and labour brokerage industries. (par. 8)Alongside welfare quarantining for all Indigenous people, was a decision by parliament to overturn the “permit system”, a legal protocol provided by the ALRA and in place so as to enable Indigenous peoples the right to refuse and grant entry to strangers wanting to access their lands. To place this in a broader context of land rights reform, the Aboriginal Land Rights (Northern Territory) Act 2006, created the possibility of 99 year individual leases, at the expense of communal ownership. The legislation operates as a way of individualising the land arrangements in remote Indigenous communities by opening communal land up as private plots able to be bought by Aboriginal people or any other interested party. Indeed, according to Leon Terrill, land reform in Australia over the past 10 years reflects an attempt to return control of decision-making to government bureaucracy, even as governments have downplayed this aspect. Terrill argues that Township Leasing (enabled via the 2006 legislation), takes “wholesale decision-making about land use” away from Traditional Owners and instead places it in the hands of a government entity called the Executive Director of Township Leasing (3). With the passage of legislation around the Intervention, five year leases were created to enable the Commonwealth “administrative control” over the communities affected (Terrill 3). Finally, under the current changes it is unlikely that more than a small percentage of Aboriginal people will be able to access individual land leasing. Moreover, the argument has been presented that these reforms reflect a broader project aimed at replacing communal land ownership arrangements. This agenda has been justified at a rhetorical level via the demonization of communal land ownership arrangements. Helen Hughes and Jenness Warin, researchers at the rightwing think-tank, the Centre for Independent Studies (CIS), released a report entitled A New Deal for Aborigines and Torres Strait Islanders in Remote Communities, in which they argue that there is a direct casual link between communal ownership and economic underdevelopment: “Communal ownership of land, royalties and other resources is the principle cause of the lack of economic development in remote areas” (in Norberry & Gardiner-Garden 8). In 2005, then Prime Minister, John Howard, publicly introduced the government’s ambition to alter the structure of Indigenous land arrangements, couching his agenda in the language of “equal opportunity”. I believe there’s a case for reviewing the whole issue of Aboriginal land title in the sense of looking more towards private recognition …, I’m talking about giving them the same opportunities as the rest of their fellow Australians. (Watson, "Howard’s End" 1)Scholars of critical race theory have argued that the language of equality, usually tied to liberalism (though not always) masks racial inequality and even results in “camouflaged racism” (Davis 61). David Theo Goldberg notes that, “the racial status-quo - racial exclusions and privileges favouring for the most part middle - and upper class whites - is maintained by formalising equality through states of legal and administrative science” (Racial State 222). While Howard and his coalition of supporters have associated communal title with disadvantage and called for the equality to be found in individual leases (Dodson), Altman has argued that there is no logical link between forms of communal land ownership and incidences of sexual abuse, and indeed, the government’s use of sexual abuse disingenuously disguises it’s imperative to alter the land ownership arrangements: “Given the proposed changes to the ALRA are in no way associated with child sexual abuse in Aboriginal communities […] there is therefore no pressing urgency to pass the amendments.” (Altman National Emergency, 3) In the case of the Intervention, land rights reforms have affected the continued dispossession of Indigenous people in the interests of “commercial development” (Altman Neo-Paternalism 8). In light of this it can be argued that what is occurring conforms to what Aileen Moreton-Robinson has highlighted as the “possessive logic of patriarchal white sovereignty” (Possessive Logic). White sovereignty, under the banner of benevolent paternalism overturns the authority it has conceded to local Indigenous communities. This is realised via township leases, five year leases, housing leases and other measures, stripping them of the right to refuse the government and private enterprise entry into their lands (effectively the right of control and decision-making), and opening them up to, as Stringer argues, a range of commercial and government interests. Future Concerns and Concluding NotesThe etymological root of coalition is coalesce, inferring the broad ambition to “grow together”. In the issues outlined above, growing together is dominated by neoliberal interests, or what Stringer has termed “assimilatory neoliberation”. The issue extends beyond a social and economic assimilationism project and into a political and legal “land grab”, because, as Ong notes, the neoliberal agenda aligns itself with the nation-state. This coalitional arrangement of neoliberal and governmental interests reiterates “white possession” (Moreton-Robinson, The Possessive Logic). This is evidenced in the position of the current Labor government decision to uphold the nomination of Muckaty as a radioactive waste repository site in Australia (Stokes). In 2007, the Northern Land Council (NLC) nominated Muckaty Station to be the site for waste disposal. This decision cannot be read outside the context of Maralinga, in the South Australian desert, a site where experiments involving nuclear technology were conducted in the 1960s. As John Keane recounts, the Australian government permitted the British government to conduct tests, dispossessing the local Aboriginal group, the Tjarutja, and employing a single patrol officer “the job of monitoring the movements of the Aborigines and quarantining them in settlements” (Keane). Situated within this historical colonial context, in 2006, under a John Howard led Liberal Coalition, the government passed the Commonwealth Radioactive Waste Management Act (CRWMA), a law which effectively overrode the rulings of the Northern Territory government in relation decisions regarding nuclear waste disposal, as well as overriding the rights of traditional Aboriginal owners and the validity of sacred sites. The Australian Labor government has sought to alter the CRWMA in order to reinstate the importance of following due process in the nomination process of land. However, it left the proposed site of Muckaty as confirmed, and the new bill, titled National Radioactive Waste Management retains many of the same characteristics of the Howard government legislation. In 2010, 57 traditional owners from Muckaty and surrounding areas signed a petition stating their opposition to the disposal site (the case is currently in the Federal Court). At a time when nuclear power has come back onto the radar as a possible solution to the energy crisis and climate change, questions concerning the investments of government and its loyalties should be asked. As Malcolm Knox has written “the nuclear industry has become evangelical about the dangers of global warming” (Knox). While nuclear is a “cleaner” energy than coal, until better methods are designed for processing its waste, larger amounts of it will be produced, requiring lands that can hold it for the desired timeframes. For Australia, this demands attention to the politics and ethics of waste disposal. Such an issue is already being played out, before nuclear has even been signed off as a solution to climate change, with the need to find a disposal site to accommodate already existing uranium exported to Europe and destined to return as waste to Australia in 2014. The decision to go ahead with Muckaty against the wishes of the voices of local Indigenous people may open the way for the co-opting of a discourse of environmentalism by political and business groups to promote the development and expansion of nuclear power as an alternative to coal and oil for energy production; dumping waste on Indigenous lands becomes part of the solution to climate change. During the 2010 Australian election, Greens Leader Bob Brown played upon the word coalition to suggest that the Liberal National Party were in COALition with the mining industry over the proposed Mining Tax – the Liberal Coalition opposed any mining tax (Brown). Here Brown highlights the alliance of political agendas and business or corporate interests quite succinctly. Like Brown’s COALition, will government (of either major party) form a coalition with the nuclear power stakeholders?This paper has attempted to bring to light what Dodson has identified as “an alliance of established conservative forces...with more recent and strident ideological thinking associated with free market economics and notions of individual responsibility” and the implications of this alliance for land rights (Dodson). It is important to ask critical questions about the vision of “growing together” being promoted via the coalition of conservative, neoliberal, private and government interests.Acknowledgements Many thanks to the reviewers of this article for their useful suggestions. ReferencesAustralian Broadcasting Authority. “Noel Pearson Discusses the Issues Faced by Indigenous Communities.” Lateline 26 June 2007. 22 Nov. 2010 ‹http://www.abc.net.au/lateline/content/2007/s1962844.htm>. Agamben, Giorgio. Homo Sacer. Stanford, California: Stanford University Press, 1998. Altman, Jon. “The ‘National Emergency’ and Land Rights Reform: Separating Fact from Fiction.” A Briefing Paper for Oxfam Australia, 2007. 1 Aug. 2010 ‹http://www.oxfam.org.au/resources/filestore/originals/OAus-EmergencyLandRights-0807.pdf>. Altman, Jon. “The Howard Government’s Northern Territory Intervention: Are Neo-Paternalism and Indigenous Development Compatible?” Centre for Aboriginal Economic Policy Research Topical Issue 16 (2007). 1 Aug. 2010 ‹http://caepr.anu.edu.au/system/files/Publications/topical/Altman_AIATSIS.pdf>. Brown, Bob. “Senator Bob Brown National Pre-Election Press Club Address.” 2010. 18 Aug. 2010 ‹http://greens.org.au/content/senator-bob-brown-pre-election-national-press-club-address>. Davis, Angela. The Angela Davis Reader. Ed. J. James, Oxford: Blackwell, 1998. Dodson, Patrick. “An Entire Culture Is at Stake.” Opinion. The Age, 14 July 2007: 4. Goldberg, David Theo. The Racial State. Massachusetts: Blackwell, 2002.———. The Threat of Race: Reflections on Neoliberalism. Massachusetts: Blackwell, 2008. Harris, Cheryl. “Whiteness as Property.” Harvard Law Review 106.8 (1993): 1709-1795. Keane, John. “Maralinga’s Afterlife.” Feature Article. The Age, 11 May 2003. 24 Nov. 2010 ‹http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2003/05/11/1052280486255.html>. Knox, Malcolm. “Nuclear Dawn.” The Monthly 56 (May 2010). Lambert, Anthony. “Rainbow Blindness: Same-Sex Partnerships in Post-Coalitional Australia.” M/C Journal 13.6 (2010). Langton, Marcia. “It’s Time to Stop Playing Politics with Vulnerable Lives.” Opinion. Sydney Morning Herald, 30 Nov. 2007: 2. McAllan, Fiona. “Customary Appropriations.” borderlands ejournal 6.3 (2007). 22 Nov. 2010 ‹http://www.borderlands.net.au/vol6no3_2007/mcallan_appropriations.htm>. Moreton-Robinson, Aileen. “The Possessive Logic of Patriarchal White Sovereignty: The High Court and the Yorta Yorta Decision.” borderlands e-journal 3.2 (2004). 1 Aug. 2007 ‹http://www.borderlands.net.au/vol3no2_2004/moreton_possessive.htm>. ———. “Whiteness, Epistemology and Indigenous Representation.” Whitening Race. Ed. Aileen Moreton-Robinson. Canberra: Aboriginal Studies Press, 75-89. Norberry, J., and J. Gardiner-Garden. Aboriginal Land Rights (Northern Territory) Amendment Bill 2006. Australian Parliamentary Library Bills Digest 158 (19 June 2006). Ong, Aihwa. Neoliberalism as Exception: Mutations in Citizenship and Sovereignty. Durham: Duke University Press, 2006. 75-97.Oxford English Dictionary. 3rd. ed. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2005. Rio Tinto. "Rio Tinto Aboriginal Policy and Programme Briefing Note." June 2007. 22 Nov. 2010 ‹http://www.aboriginalfund.riotinto.com/common/pdf/Aboriginal%20Policy%20and%20Programs%20-%20June%202007.pdf>. Roberts, David J., and Mielle Mahtami. “Neoliberalising Race, Racing Neoliberalism: Placing 'Race' in Neoliberal Discourses.” Antipode 42.2 (2010): 248-257. Stringer, Rebecca. “A Nightmare of the Neocolonial Kind: Politics of Suffering in Howard's Northern Territory Intervention.” borderlands ejournal 6.2 (2007). 22 Nov. 2010 ‹http://www.borderlands.net.au/vol6no2_2007/stringer_intervention.htm>.Stokes, Dianne. "Muckaty." n.d. 1 Aug. 2010 ‹http://www.timbonham.com/slideshows/Muckaty/>. Terrill, Leon. “Indigenous Land Reform: What Is the Real Aim of Land Reform?” Edited version of a presentation provided at the 2010 National Native Title Conference, 2010. Watson, Irene. “Sovereign Spaces, Caring for Country and the Homeless Position of Aboriginal Peoples.” South Atlantic Quarterly 108.1 (2009): 27-51. Watson, Nicole. “Howard’s End: The Real Agenda behind the Proposed Review of Indigenous Land Titles.” Australian Indigenous Law Reporter 9.4 (2005). ‹http://www.austlii.edu.au/au/journals/AILR/2005/64.html>.Wild, R., and P. Anderson. Ampe Akelyernemane Meke Mekarie: The Little Children Are Sacred. Report of the Northern Territory Board of Inquiry into the Protection of Aboriginal Children from Sexual Abuse. Northern Territory: Northern Territory Government, 2007.
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Humphry, Justine, and César Albarrán Torres. "A Tap on the Shoulder: The Disciplinary Techniques and Logics of Anti-Pokie Apps." M/C Journal 18, no. 2 (April 29, 2015). http://dx.doi.org/10.5204/mcj.962.

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Abstract:
In this paper we explore the rise of anti-gambling apps in the context of the massive expansion of gambling in new spheres of life (online and offline) and an acceleration in strategies of anticipatory and individualised management of harm caused by gambling. These apps, and the techniques and forms of labour they demand, are examples of and a mechanism through which a mode of governance premised on ‘self-care’ and ‘self-control’ is articulated and put into practice. To support this argument, we explore two government initiatives in the Australian context. Quit Pokies, a mobile app project between the Moreland City Council, North East Primary Care Partnership and the Victorian Local Governance Association, is an example of an emerging service paradigm of ‘self-care’ that uses online and mobile platforms with geo-location to deliver real time health and support interventions. A similar mobile app, Gambling Terminator, was launched by the NSW government in late 2012. Both apps work on the premise that interrupting a gaming session through a trigger, described by Quit Pokies’ creator as a “tap on the shoulder” provides gamblers the opportunity to take a reflexive stance and cut short their gambling practice in the course of play. We critically examine these apps as self-disciplining techniques of contemporary neo-liberalism directed towards anticipating and reducing the personal harm and social risk associated with gambling. We analyse the material and discursive elements, and new forms of user labour, through which this consumable media is framed and assembled. We argue that understanding the role of these apps, and mobile media more generally, in generating new techniques and technologies of the self, is important for identifying emerging modes of governance and their implications at a time when gambling is going through an immense period of cultural normalisation in online and offline environments. The Australian context is particularly germane for the way gambling permeates everyday spaces of sociality and leisure, and the potential of gambling interventions to interrupt and re-configure these spaces and institute a new kind of subject-state relation. Gambling in Australia Though a global phenomenon, the growth and expansion of gambling manifests distinctly in Australia because of its long cultural and historical attachment to games of chance. Australians are among the biggest betters and losers in the world (Ziolkowski), mainly on Electronic Gaming Machines (EGM) or pokies. As of 2013, according to The World Count of Gaming Machine (Ziolkowski), there were 198,150 EGMs in the country, of which 197,274 were slot machines, with the rest being electronic table games of roulette, blackjack and poker. There are 118 persons per machine in Australia. New South Wales is the jurisdiction with most EGMs (95,799), followed by Queensland (46,680) and Victoria (28,758) (Ziolkowski). Gambling is significant in Australian cultural history and average Australian households spend at least some money on different forms of gambling, from pokies to scratch cards, every year (Worthington et al.). In 1985, long-time gambling researcher Geoffrey Caldwell stated thatAustralians seem to take a pride in the belief that we are a nation of gamblers. Thus we do not appear to be ashamed of our gambling instincts, habits and practices. Gambling is regarded by most Australians as a normal, everyday practice in contrast to the view that gambling is a sinful activity which weakens the moral fibre of the individual and the community. (Caldwell 18) The omnipresence of gambling opportunities in most Australian states has been further facilitated by the availability of online and mobile gambling and gambling-like spaces. Social casino apps, for instance, are widely popular in Australia. The slots social casino app Slotomania was the most downloaded product in the iTunes store in 2012 (Metherell). In response to the high rate of different forms of gambling in Australia, a range of disparate interest groups have identified the expansion of gambling as a concerning trend. Health researchers have pointed out that online gamblers have a higher risk of experiencing problems with gambling (at 30%) compared to 15% in offline bettors (Hastings). The incidence of gambling problems is also disproportionately high in specific vulnerable demographics, including university students (Cervini), young adults prone to substance abuse problems (Hayatbakhsh et al.), migrants (Tanasornnarong et al.; Scull & Woolcock; Ohtsuka & Ohtsuka), pensioners (Hing & Breen), female players (Lee), Aboriginal communities (Young et al.; McMillen & Donnelly) and individuals experiencing homelessness (Holsworth et al.). While there is general recognition of the personal and public health impacts of gambling in Australia, there is a contradiction in the approach to gambling at a governance level. On one hand, its expansion is promoted and even encouraged by the federal and state governments, as gambling is an enormous source of revenue, as evidenced, for example, by the construction of the new Crown casino in Barangaroo in Sydney (Markham & Young). Campaigns trying to limit the use of poker machines, which are associated with concerns over problem gambling and addiction, are deemed by the gambling lobby as un-Australian. Paradoxically, efforts to restrict gambling or control gambling winnings have also been described as un-Australian, such as in the Australian Taxation Office’s campaign against MONA’s founder, David Walsh, whose immense art collection was acquired with the funds from a gambling scheme (Global Mail). On the other hand, people experiencing problems with gambling are often categorised as addicts and the ultimate blame (and responsibility) is attributed to the individual. In Australia, attitudes towards people who are arguably addicted to gambling are different than those towards individuals afflicted by alcohol or drug abuse (Jean). While “Australians tend to be sympathetic towards people with alcohol and other drug addictions who seek help,” unless it is seen as one of the more socially acceptable forms of occasional, controlled gambling (such as sports betting, gambling on the Melbourne Cup or celebrating ANZAC Day with Two-Up), gambling is framed as an individual “problem” and “moral failing” (Jean). The expansion of gambling is the backdrop to another development in health care and public health discourse, which have for some time now been devoted to the ideal of what Lupton has called the “digitally engaged patient” (Lupton). Technologies are central to the delivery of this model of health service provision that puts the patient at the centre of, and responsible for, their own health and medical care. Lupton has pointed out how this discourse, while appearing new, is in fact the latest version of the 1970s emphasis on the ‘patient as consumer’, an idea given an extra injection by the massive development and availability of digital and interactive web-based and mobile platforms, many of these directed towards the provision of health and health-related information and services. What this means for patients is that, rather than relying solely on professional medical expertise and care, the patient is encouraged to take on some of this medical/health work to conduct practices of ‘self-care’ (Lupton). The Discourse of ‘Self-Management’ and ‘Self-Care’ The model of ‘self-care’ and ‘self-management’ by ‘empowering’ digital technology has now become a dominant discourse within health and medicine, and is increasingly deployed across a range of related sectors such as welfare services. In recent research conducted on homelessness and mobile media, for example, government department staff involved in the reform of welfare services referred to ‘self-management’ as the new service paradigm that underpins their digital reform strategy. Echoing ideas and language similar to the “digitally engaged patient”, customers of Centrelink, Medicare and other ‘human services’ are being encouraged (through planned strategic initiatives aimed at shifting targeted customer groups online) to transact with government services digitally and manage their own personal profiles and health information. One departmental staff member described this in terms of an “opportunity cost”, the savings in time otherwise spent standing in long queues in service centres (Humphry). Rather than view these examples as isolated incidents taking place within or across sectors or disciplines, these are better understood as features of an emerging ‘discursive formation’ , a term Foucault used to describe the way in which particular institutions and/or the state establish a regime of truth, or an accepted social reality and which gives definition to a new historical episteme and subject: in this case that of the self-disciplined and “digitally engaged medical/health patient”. As Foucault explained, once this subject has become fully integrated into and across the social field, it is no longer easy to excavate, since it lies below the surface of articulation and is held together through everyday actions, habits and institutional routines and techniques that appear to be universal, necessary and/normal. The way in which this citizen subject becomes a universal model and norm, however, is not a straightforward or linear story and since we are in the midst of its rise, is not a story with a foretold conclusion. Nevertheless, across a range of different fields of governance: medicine; health and welfare, we can see signs of this emerging figure of the self-caring “digitally engaged patient” constituted from a range of different techniques and practices of self-governance. In Australia, this figure is at the centre of a concerted strategy of service digitisation involving a number of cross sector initiatives such as Australia’s National EHealth Strategy (2008), the National Digital Economy Strategy (2011) and the Australian Public Service Mobile Roadmap (2013). This figure of the self-caring “digitally engaged” patient, aligns well and is entirely compatible with neo-liberal formulations of the individual and the reduced role of the state as a provider of welfare and care. Berry refers to Foucault’s definition of neoliberalism as outlined in his lectures to the College de France as a “particular form of post-welfare state politics in which the state essentially outsources the responsibility of the ‘well-being' of the population” (65). In the case of gambling, the neoliberal defined state enables the wedding of two seemingly contradictory stances: promoting gambling as a major source of revenue and capitalisation on the one hand, and identifying and treating gambling addiction as an individual pursuit and potential risk on the other. Risk avoidance strategies are focused on particular groups of people who are targeted for self-treatment to avoid the harm of gambling addiction, which is similarly framed as individual rather than socially and systematically produced. What unites and makes possible this alignment of neoliberalism and the new “digitally engaged subject/patient” is first and foremost, the construction of a subject in a chronic state of ill health. This figure is positioned as terminal from the start. They are ‘sick’, a ‘patient’, an ‘addict’: in need of immediate and continuous treatment. Secondly, this neoliberal patient/addict is enabled (we could even go so far as to say ‘empowered’) by digital technology, especially smartphones and the apps available through these devices in the form of a myriad of applications for intervening and treating ones afflictions. These apps range fromself-tracking programs such as mood regulators through to social media interventions. Anti-Pokie Apps and the Neoliberal Gambler We now turn to two examples which illustrate this alignment between neoliberalism and the new “digitally engaged subject/patient” in relation to gambling. Anti-gambling apps function to both replace or ‘take the place’ of institutions and individuals actively involved in the treatment of problem gambling and re-engineer this service through the logics of ‘self-care’ and ‘self-management’. Here, we depart somewhat from Foucault’s model of disciplinary power summed up in the institution (with the prison exemplifying this disciplinary logic) and move towards Deleuze’s understanding of power as exerted by the State not through enclosures but through diffuse and rhizomatic information flows and technologies (Deleuze). At the same time, we retain Foucault’s attention to the role and agency of the user in this power-dynamic, identifiable in the technics of self-regulation and in his ideas on governmentality. We now turn to analyse these apps more closely, and explore the way in which these articulate and perform these disciplinary logics. The app Quit Pokies was a joint venture of the North East Primary Care Partnership, the Victorian Local Governance Association and the Moreland City Council, launched in early 2014. The idea of the rational, self-reflexive and agentic user is evident in the description of the app by app developer Susan Rennie who described it this way: What they need is for someone to tap them on the shoulder and tell them to get out of there… I thought the phone could be that tap on the shoulder. The “tap on the shoulder” feature uses geolocation and works by emitting a sound alert when the user enters a gaming venue. It also provides information about each user’s losses at that venue. This “tap on the shoulder” is both an alert and a reprimand from past gambling sessions. Through the Responsible Gambling Fund, the NSW government also launched an anti-pokie app in 2013, Gambling Terminator, including a similar feature. The app runs on Apple and Android smartphone platforms, and when a person is inside a gambling venue in New South Wales it: sends reminder messages that interrupt gaming-machine play and gives you a chance to re-think your choices. It also provides instant access to live phone and online counselling services which operate 24 hours a day, seven days a week. (Google Play Store) Yet an approach that tries to prevent harm by anticipating the harm that will come from gambling at the point of entering a venue, also eliminates the chance of potential negotiations and encounters a user might have during a visit to the pub and how this experience will unfold. It reduces the “tap on the shoulder”, which may involve a far wider set of interactions and affects, to a software operation and it frames the pub or the club (which under some conditions functions as hubs for socialization and community building) as dangerous places that should be avoided. This has the potential to lead to further stigmatisation of gamblers, their isolation and their exclusion from everyday spaces. Moreland Mayor, Councillor Tapinos captures the implicit framing of self-care as a private act in his explanation of the app as a method for problem gamblers to avoid being stigmatised by, for example, publicly attending group meetings. Yet, curiously, the app has the potential to create a new kind of public stigmatisation through potentially drawing other peoples’ attention to users’ gambling play (as the alarm is triggered) generating embarrassment and humiliation at being “caught out” in an act framed as aberrant and literally, “alarming”. Both Quit Pokies and Gambling Terminator require their users to perform ‘acts’ of physical and affective labour aimed at behaviour change and developing the skills of self-control. After downloading Quit Pokies on the iPhone and launching the app, the user is presented an initial request: “Before you set up this app. please write a list of the pokies venues that you regularly use because the app will ask you to identify these venues so it can send you alerts if you spend time in these locations. It will also use your set up location to identify other venues you might use so we recommend that you set up the App in the location where you spend most time. Congratulation on choosing Quit Pokies.”Self-performed processes include installation, setting up, updating the app software, programming in gambling venues to be detected by the smartphone’s inbuilt GPS, monitoring and responding to the program’s alerts and engaging in alternate “legitimate” forms of leisure such as going to the movies or the library, having coffee with a friend or browsing Facebook. These self-performed labours can be understood as ‘technologies of the self’, a term used by Foucault to describe the way in which social members are obliged to regulate and police their ‘selves’ through a range of different techniques. While Foucault traces the origins of ‘technologies of the self’ to the Greco-Roman texts with their emphasis on “care of oneself” as one of the duties of citizenry, he notes the shift to “self-knowledge” under Christianity around the 8th century, where it became bound up in ideals of self-renunciation and truth. Quit Pokies and Gambling Terminator may signal a recuperation of the ideal of self-care, over confession and disclosure. These apps institute a set of bodily activities and obligations directed to the user’s health and wellbeing, aided through activities of self-examination such as charting your recovery through a Recovery Diary and implementing a number of suggested “Strategies for Change” such as “writing a list” and “learning about ways to manage your money better”. Writing is central to the acts of self-examination. As Jeremy Prangnell, gambling counsellor from Mission Australia for Wollongong and Shellharbour regions explained the app is “like an electronic diary, which is a really common tool for people who are trying to change their behaviour” (Thompson). The labours required by users are also implicated in the functionality and performance of the platform itself suggesting the way in which ‘technologies of the self’ simultaneously function as a form of platform work: user labour that supports and sustains the operation of digital systems and is central to the performance and continuation of digital capitalism in general (Humphry, Demanding Media). In addition to the acts of labour performed on the self and platform, bodies are themselves potentially mobilised (and put into new circuits of consumption and production), as a result of triggers to nudge users away from gambling venues, towards a range of other cultural practices in alternative social spaces considered to be more legitimate.Conclusion Whether or not these technological interventions are effective or successful is yet to be tested. Indeed, the lack of recent activity in the community forums and preponderance of issues reported on installation and use suggests otherwise, pointing to a need for more empirical research into these developments. Regardless, what we’ve tried to identify is the way in which apps such as these embody a new kind of subject-state relation that emphasises self-control of gambling harm and hastens the divestment of institutional and social responsibility at a time when gambling is going through an immense period of expansion in many respects backed by and sanctioned by the state. Patterns of smartphone take up in the mainstream population and the rise of the so called ‘mobile only population’ (ACMA) provide support for this new subject and service paradigm and are often cited as the rationale for digital service reform (APSMR). Media convergence feeds into these dynamics: service delivery becomes the new frontier for the merging of previously separate media distribution systems (Dwyer). Letters, customer service centres, face-to-face meetings and web sites, are combined and in some instances replaced, with online and mobile media platforms, accessible from multiple and mobile devices. These changes are not, however, simply the migration of services to a digital medium with little effective change to the service itself. Health and medical services are re-invented through their technological re-assemblage, bringing into play new meanings, practices and negotiations among the state, industry and neoliberal subjects (in the case of problem gambling apps, a new subjectivity, the ‘neoliberal addict’). These new assemblages are as much about bringing forth a new kind of subject and mode of governance, as they are a solution to problem gambling. This figure of the self-treating “gambler addict” can be seen to be a template for, and prototype of, a more generalised and universalised self-governing citizen: one that no longer needs or makes demands on the state but who can help themselves and manage their own harm. Paradoxically, there is the potential for new risks and harms to the very same users that accompanies this shift: their outright exclusion as a result of deprivation from basic and assumed digital access and literacy, the further stigmatisation of gamblers, the elimination of opportunities for proximal support and their exclusion from everyday spaces. References Albarrán-Torres, César. “Gambling-Machines and the Automation of Desire.” Platform: Journal of Media and Communication 5.1 (2013). Australian Communications and Media Authority. “Australians Cut the Cord.” Research Snapshots. Sydney: ACMA (2013) Berry, David. Critical Theory and the Digital. Broadway, New York: Bloomsbury Academic, 2014 Berry, David. Stunlaw: A Critical Review of Politics, Arts and Technology. 2012. ‹http://stunlaw.blogspot.com.au/2012/03/code-foucault-and-neoliberal.html›. Caldwell, G. “Some Historical and Sociological Characteristics of Australian Gambling.” Gambling in Australia. Eds. G. Caldwell, B. Haig, M. Dickerson, and L. Sylan. Sydney: Croom Helm Australia, 1985. 18-27. Cervini, E. “High Stakes for Gambling Students.” The Age 8 Nov. 2013. ‹http://www.theage.com.au/national/education/high-stakes-for-gambling-students-20131108-2x5cl.html›. Deleuze, Gilles. "Postscript on the Societies of Control." October (1992): 3-7. Foucault, Michel. “Technologies of the Self.” Eds. Luther H. Martin, Huck Gutman and Patrick H. Hutton. Boston: University of Massachusetts Press, 1988 Hastings, E. “Online Gamblers More at Risk of Addiction.” Herald Sun 13 Oct. 2013. ‹http://www.heraldsun.com.au/news/online-gamblers-more-at-risk-of-addiction/story-fni0fiyv-1226739184629#!›.Hayatbakhsh, Mohammad R., et al. "Young Adults' Gambling and Its Association with Mental Health and Substance Use Problems." Australian and New Zealand Journal of Public Health 36.2 (2012): 160-166. Hing, Nerilee, and Helen Breen. "A Profile of Gaming Machine Players in Clubs in Sydney, Australia." Journal of Gambling Studies 18.2 (2002): 185-205. Holdsworth, Louise, Margaret Tiyce, and Nerilee Hing. "Exploring the Relationship between Problem Gambling and Homelessness: Becoming and Being Homeless." Gambling Research 23.2 (2012): 39. Humphry, Justine. “Demanding Media: Platform Work and the Shaping of Work and Play.” Scan: Journal of Media Arts Culture, 10.2 (2013): 1-13. Humphry, Justine. “Homeless and Connected: Mobile Phones and the Internet in the Lives of Homeless Australians.” Australian Communications Consumer Action Network. Sep. 2014. ‹https://www.accan.org.au/grants/completed-grants/619-homeless-and-connected›.Lee, Timothy Jeonglyeol. "Distinctive Features of the Australian Gambling Industry and Problems Faced by Australian Women Gamblers." Tourism Analysis 14.6 (2009): 867-876. Lupton, D. “The Digitally Engaged Patient: Self-Monitoring and Self-Care in the Digital Health Era.” Social Theory & Health 11.3 (2013): 256-70. Markham, Francis, and Martin Young. “Packer’s Barangaroo Casino and the Inevitability of Pokies.” The Conversation 9 July 2013. ‹http://theconversation.com/packers-barangaroo-casino-and-the-inevitability-of-pokies-15892›. Markham, Francis, and Martin Young. “Who Wins from ‘Big Gambling’ in Australia?” The Conversation 6 Mar. 2014. ‹http://theconversation.com/who-wins-from-big-gambling-in-australia-22930›.McMillen, Jan, and Katie Donnelly. "Gambling in Australian Indigenous Communities: The State of Play." The Australian Journal of Social Issues 43.3 (2008): 397. Ohtsuka, Keis, and Thai Ohtsuka. “Vietnamese Australian Gamblers’ Views on Luck and Winning: Universal versus Culture-Specific Schemas.” Asian Journal of Gambling Issues and Public Health 1.1 (2010): 34-46. Scull, Sue, Geoffrey Woolcock. “Problem Gambling in Non-English Speaking Background Communities in Queensland, Australia: A Qualitative Exploration.” International Gambling Studies 5.1 (2005): 29-44. Tanasornnarong, Nattaporn, Alun Jackson, and Shane Thomas. “Gambling among Young Thai People in Melbourne, Australia: An Exploratory Study.” International Gambling Studies 4.2 (2004): 189-203. Thompson, Angela, “Live Gambling Odds Tipped for the Chop.” Illawarra Mercury 22 May 2013: 6. Metherell, Mark. “Virtual Pokie App a Hit - But ‘Not Gambling.’” Sydney Morning Herald 13 Jan. 2013. ‹http://www.smh.com.au/digital-life/smartphone-apps/virtual-pokie-app-a-hit--but-not-gambling-20130112-2cmev.html#ixzz2QVlsCJs1›. Worthington, Andrew, et al. "Gambling Participation in Australia: Findings from the National Household Expenditure Survey." Review of Economics of the Household 5.2 (2007): 209-221. Young, Martin, et al. "The Changing Landscape of Indigenous Gambling in Northern Australia: Current Knowledge and Future Directions." International Gambling Studies 7.3 (2007): 327-343. Ziolkowski, S. “The World Count of Gaming Machines 2013.” Gaming Technologies Association, 2014. ‹http://www.gamingta.com/pdf/World_Count_2014.pdf›.
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Skoryk, H., and Yu Grinchyshyn. "Competition policy of the state: implementation problems and recommendations for improvement." Efficiency of public administration, no. 67 (June 9, 2021). http://dx.doi.org/10.33990/2070-4011.67.2021.240245.

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Problem setting. Changes in the socio-economic development of the country, caused by geopolitical, technological, economic and social factors, create new challenges for the competition policy of the state. The COVID-19 pandemic added to this list, significantly affecting the activities of the business environment, households, and the world economy in general. The development of an effective competition environment in commodity markets is a prerequisite for the restoration of stable economic growth on the basis of innovation and investment development.In this regard, there is a need to rethink the mechanism and set of instruments of competition policy on their adequacy to the current situation, their effectiveness and ability to ensure the achievement of goals and objectives. Nowadays, the emphasis of competition policy is changing, caused by changes in the competition environment and the objectives of economic policy in general. At the same time, the formation of competition policy should take place as a holistic system of influence by public authorities on the activities of economic entities and commodity markets in accordance with national goals and priorities of socio-economic development.Recent research and publications analysis. The works of Ukrainian and foreign scientists, including V. Lagutin, Z. Borysenko, A. Gerasimenko, G. Filyuk, K. Kantur, T. Shvydka, Y. Yasko, T. Shcherbakova, M. Porter, O. Kilievich and others.are devoted to the study of theoretical and applied principles of competition policy.Highlighting previously unsettled parts of the general problem. Despite significant developments in competition policy, there are still crucial problems to solve regarding the mechanism, tools and methods of competition policy, considering the socio-economic changes in society, changes of the emphasis in its implementation, given the existing problems, dynamics and structure of violations of competition law, the need for coordination of competition policy with the entire system of state regulation of the national economy and adaptation to competition practices in developed countries. Therefore, further research is needed to improve the state’s competition policy in the face of new challenges.The main purpose of the article is a theoretical study of competition policy, identification of the main problems in the implementation of competition policy on the basis of analysis of the Western Regional Territorial office of Antimonopoly Committee of Ukraine and formulation of recommendations for their elimination.Paper main body. Competition policy is one of the most important and complex forms of economic policy of the state. In its content, it is much broader than antitrust regulation, as it aims not only to limit and terminate monopolistic practices, anticompetitive agreements between economic entities and government actions, but also to develop and maintain effective economic competition, including through the application of competition law.Nowadays, the main focus of the state’s competition policy is to strengthen its preventive nature in order to promote fair competition, as well as to end the monopolistic behavior of both enterprises and public authorities.The most important principles of competition policy, which are mainly reflected in the current legislation and correspond to the best world practices are: improving the welfare of society; flexibility of competition policy; increasing the competitiveness of the national producer; promotion of entrepreneurial activity; creating opportunities for access to the benefits created by natural monopolies; coordination of the state’s competition policy with the priorities of economic policy and the goals of state regulation in general.Analysis of antitrust authorities showed that in the total number of violations of competition law the largest share are anticompetitive concerted actions of economic entities, violations in the form of anticompetitive actions by government, local authorities, bodies of administrative management and control, which significantly reduce the effectiveness of competition policy of the state at all levels.An actual problem in the implementation of state competition policy is to ensure equal conditions for all business entities, regardless of the type of ownership. This is due to the fact that most commodity markets in Ukraine are characterized by the presence of state-owned enterprises. Thus, according to the OECD and the World Bank (as of 2018), approximately 19 commodity markets in Ukraine have at least one state-owned enterprise; The number of utility companies is constantly increasing: at the beginning of 2021, 14,174 of them were registered in Ukraine, which is 22% more than in 2018.A reflection of the existing problems is the discrepancy between the amounts of fines imposed by the regulator for violating competition law and the amounts of fines actually paid. Thus, for the period of 2017-2020, the Western Regional Territorial office of Antimonopoly Committee of Ukraine imposed fines for violation of competition law in the amount of over UAH 95 million, and in fact UAH 11219543 was collected from violators, which is only 11.8%. The factors of this situation are: imperfection of legal norms and insufficient justification of penalties for business entities; low competitive culture of market participants, low responsibility of violators of competition law and “commitment” of government officials to some of them; lack of effective motives to prevent anticompetitive actions in economic activities, and lack of support and development of competition in commodity markets.Among all areas of state competition policy today, we consider the protection of competition and demonopolization of potentially competitive and monopolistic markets to be the main ones. In order to prevent collusion and counteract cartel agreements, it is necessary to establish effective interaction between the regulator and law enforcement agencies, expand the powers of the AMCU to inspect business entities, and introduce competitive conditions at all stages of public procurement. The control, transparency and targeting of state aid, as well as the cessation of discrimination in the actions of public authorities, are the key to ensuring the equality of economic entities, especially in the face of the challenges posed by the COVID-19 pandemic. Termination of unfair competition practices based on fair competition advocacy.Conclusions of the research and prospects for further studies. The main task of the state’s competition policy is to ensure the effectiveness of competitive relations in commodity markets, which leads to increased competitiveness of the domestic economy. All instruments and mechanisms of state competition policy should be used solely to develop effective competition in commodity markets. Competition policy, adapted to modern requirements and challenges, should encourage competition between producers, which will improve the quality of goods, services, the formation of economically reasonable prices and reduce them, and thus increase the level of satisfaction of society’s needs.The main instruments of competition policy should be preventive measures, strengthening the level of responsibility of economic entities for violations of competition law, as well as competition advocacy aimed at forming a competitive culture of market participants, the predominance of the principles of fair, transparent competition.
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McKay, Duncan Robert. "Trading in Freedoms: Creating Value and Seeking Coalition in Western Australian Arts and Culture." M/C Journal 13, no. 6 (November 30, 2010). http://dx.doi.org/10.5204/mcj.313.

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IntroductionAs a visual artist it seems to me that the ideal relationship between government and cultural producers is a coalitional one; an “alliance for combined action of distinct parties, persons or states without permanent incorporation into one body” (Oxford English Dictionary). The word “coalition”, however, is entirely absent from the document that forms the basis of the analysis of this paper, Creating Value: An Arts and Culture Sector Policy Framework 2010-2014, from the Government of Western Australia’s Department of Culture and the Arts. Released in March 2010, Creating Value has been introduced by the DCA’s Deputy Director General Jacqui Allen as the “first arts policy in Australia to adopt a public value approach” (DCA, New Policy Framework) whereby "the Department of Culture and the Arts is charged with delivering public value to the Western Australian community through our partnership with the culture and arts sector." As indicated in Allen’s press release, this document achieves its aim of providing “clarity in [the DCA’s] relationships with the culture and arts sector”. As an artist, cultural worker, or someone generally interested in the cultural wellbeing of Australian communities it would seem timely to consider just how this new and influential policy framework envisages the specific working relationships that make up the “partnerships across the culture and arts sector, government, the public and private sector” (DCA, Creating Value 2).In this brief paper it is my intention to interrogate the idea of “coalition” in relation to the evidence provided in the DCA’s Policy Framework, Creating Value, in order to examine the extent to which this State’s involvement in culture and arts may indeed be considered coalitional. In approaching the notion of the coalitional I take the position that there are two key elements to this idea, the first being the notion of an “alliance for combined action” and the second being that the distinct parties involved are not incorporated into one body. What is difficult, at this intersection between the strategic advances of governance and the more organic development of culture, is to distinguish between levels at which the interests of both parties in a coalition or partnership are served by the alliance. As I will argue later in this paper, there is an important distinction to be made between working under temporary contract to specifications (in which one party’s design is realised through a primarily economic exchange with those providing the requisite goods and services) and the kind of negotiated relationship between means and ends that is required to support the genuine development of culture. The question is whether the artist (or other cultural producer), receiving funding to produce cultural work according to “public value” criteria, is able to develop culture or merely able to reproduce an understanding of culture given by the funding brief and assessment panel? It seems to me that significant cultural development is only possible where the public value of the outcomes of cultural production is subject to continuous negotiation and debate – surely it is in the coalitional outcomes (the alliance of distinct parties for combined action) of such discussion that a meaningful identification with culture occurs?In the following discussion around Creating Value my approach is to focus upon some aspects of the policy framework that provide particular evidence of the kind of “combined action” of government and the culture and arts sector that the DCA is proposing in this document. When seen against a more cultural understanding of the “action” of making art and the dynamic processes of producing and identifying with culture, it becomes clear why it may be considered that the DCA and many Western Australian cultural producers may not be engaged in the same project at all, let alone be in effective partnership or coalition.“Public Value” and the Specifications of Cultural ProductionEliseo Vivas observes that in the process of creatively applying symbolic order and understanding to the physical world, humanity acquires culture and an ability to better exploit the world. He also notes that in this process “of constituting the world, [human-kind’s] merely physiological needs are complicated by new needs” (129); new systems of cultural values that assume no less importance in human activity than our more basic bodily needs. Vivas pertinently states, however, that more often than not in human society within a complex and existing symbolic order these cultural needs simply become an aspect of our practical functioning (an extension of survival), and we tend to inhibit our capacity to constitute the world through creative and symbolic endeavours. This depiction of cultural production as an activity that is constitutive of the world is particularly significant in relation to the DCA’s Creating Value. Despite noting that “it is through creative people that we better understand our world” (DCA, Creating Value 8), which echoes with Vivas’s contention that “the poet is needed to give the practical man his stage” (Vivas 129) the policy framework seems rather to exemplify the inhibiting of culturally constitutive activities (production) in favour of “practical functioning” (reproduction).What can be observed particularly well in the DCA’s policy framework is how effectively ideas associated with creative and cultural production have been co-opted to the cause of “practical functioning”. Looking for instance at the notion of “creativity” within Creating Value we discover that “creativity is the driving force of the arts and culture sector” (DCA, Creating Value 5) and that “creativity” is one of the “priority public value principles” for the policy framework, along with “engagement”. Reading more closely one understands that creativity is seen as producing the “distinctive” and the “unique”, a brand that is recognised as Western Australian and which, through such “recognition” and “significance” and through its “enriching” and “transforming” capacities (7), is seen to “add to a sense of place and belonging” (11) for the WA community. This in turn makes WA a “better place to live, work and visit” and ultimately delivers “economic and social outcomes that encourage and support growth” (2). The DCA’s strategies appear to have little to do with a dynamic conception of culture in which new worlds and systems of values may be constituted, but is focussed upon the optimisation and rationalisation of economic outcomes under the guise of “public value”.My contention is that, as difficult as the notion may be to entertain, a department of culture and the arts ought to understand that creative and cultural production are part of a dynamic system that continually engages in a process of tentatively constituting the world. The arts and culture sector undeniably has an important role to play in the formation of and identification with a national cultural identity, which can manifest in international prestige, tourist dollars and other forms of economic growth (Abbing 246; Chaney 166-67). Western Australian culture is not, however, as the DCA seems to perceive, a static and monumental edifice that acts as a singular landmark for Western Australia in local, national and international contexts. The DCA’s arts and culture policy framework talks of its strategies “reflecting the DCA’s vision, values and strategic objectives” (DCA, Creating Value 13) and in a number of places suggests that it will “respond to changing needs” (2, 5, 8). Surely an approach that was interested in the specific value that creative and cultural production has to offer to the community would recognise that it is not in a singular vision but in the world creatively renegotiated and reconstituted by different people and groups of people that such a value and identification is to be found? Furthermore, if Vivas is right, then the support and promotion of culture ought to be as much about cultural needs not yet anticipated, for cultural products whose significance is not currently recognised, as it is about being responsive and catering to the demands of those whom the DCA identifies as the present consumers and stake-holders in WA arts and culture. What is missing from the partnership, as conceived by the DCA between itself and the culture and arts sector, is an adequate mechanism by which “public value” is recognised as a system of constantly changing values in which the culture and arts sector play an important role in developing, extending and negotiating through their creative and cultural production.As Jürgen Habermas suggests, to approach culture strategically in terms of outcomes and deployment is to compromise the internal development that actually provides arts and cultural work with its meaning and significance (Habermas 71). Culture becomes not a distinctive composite of differing and changing world views linked by the “living” process of their “nature-like” coexistence and development, but a monolithic identity or brand with representative products (no matter how diverse those products may be).This policy framework document would suggest not a coalitional “alliance for combined action” but more accurately a process of putting the various strategic goals and cultural aspirations (with “public value” specifications) of the DCA up for tender in much the same way that another Government department might seek tenders for the construction of a bridge or building. It is perhaps telling that Creating Value is described as a “road map to help the Department achieve its vision” (DCA, Creating Value 2).“Engagement” and the Use Value of FreedomCreating Value states that “there is a complex relationship between creativity and engagement, which are the principles driving the delivery of public value outcomes” (DCA, Creating Value 5). The policy framework goes on to suggest that the conception of “engagement” that informs the document is geared towards notions of participation, access and interaction in response to the demands of society for “more than passive enjoyment of cultural experiences” (5). Ultimately, as the “Framework Measurements” (15) in Creating Value suggest, the public values associated with engagement are about quantifying access and participation in arts and culture, and polling audiences and the public regarding “their satisfaction with their level of engagement” (15). I have been arguing that the public value of creative and cultural production is the result of engagement, but I do not think that it follows that the cultural value of such engagement can be assumed to be the correlative of high attendance numbers or measures that indicate a high level of consumer satisfaction. Nor can one assume that the “impact” or “reach” of a cultural or creative experience can be assessed adequately while the box office is open and the door counter is operational, let alone prior to a project being granted funding.Some of the genuine complexity in the relationship between creativity and engagement and its bearing upon public value can be seen in George Steiner’s writing on the nature of “creation”. Steiner suggests on the one hand that the act of creation is “irresponsible” (Steiner 43); that the work of artists occurs at one remove from world of material consequence. On the other hand Steiner notes that external resistance to artistic production has the effect of reinforcing the necessity and significance of artists’ work, freeing them from “justifying [art’s] vital functions and dignifying its motivations” (189). In this understanding of the value of creativity, it seems to me, there is a delicate balance to be struck between “freedom” and “consequence” in artistic and cultural production. The cultural producer is most able to constitute the world in new or innovative ways when he/she is able to work irresponsibly, however, such culturally constitutive actions are most significant and valuable when access to a freedom sought is denied or challenged and the motivations and mores of our cultural institutions are brought under question.Herbert Marcuse wrote in One Dimensional Man that the high culture of the past, “free from socially necessary labour,” was “the appearance of the realm of freedom: the refusal to behave” (Marcuse 71) but he also suggests that in advanced technological societies such as our own, the “good life” of administered society “reduces the use-value of freedom” (49). Marcuse claims that the achievements of rational society have transcended those of the “culture heroes and half-gods” (56) and, given that rational society appears to be steadily advancing towards the best of all possible worlds (or at least the best of the existing alternatives), the inclination to “hope” and to look beyond our own world and for other means of advance has been lost. Here again there is a sense in which the creative activities of culturally constituting the world have lost significant ground to the administrative concerns of “practical functioning”. What is interesting, however, is that it is possible to see the residual traces of the importance of the concept of “freedom”, however illusory, to the notion of the public value of creative and cultural production, even in Creating Value.In Creating Value, the valuable conception of “freedom” occurs obliquely in the insistence that the policy framework supports and encourages artistic risk taking (DCA, Creating Value 5, 8). A closer examination of Creating Value and the DCA’s Arts Grants Handbook 2010 reveals that “artistic risk” (DCA, Arts Grants 17) is understood as a strength in a proposal that is indicative of artistic merit and quality, and quality, understood in the public value terms of the policy framework, is measured by “the distinctive, innovative and significant elements of the creative experience” (DCA, Creating Value 15). The value of risk-taking in the pursuit of innovation is a recurring theme of some of the literature concerning the creative industries over the past decade. Concepts such as the “no-collar workplace” (Florida) and the “artscience lab” (Edwards) have the appearance of promoting a relatively unfettered space apart in which creativity is unhindered by practical obstacles and institutional barriers. However, the concept becomes problematic as soon as there is an expectation that such a space apart will be “productive” in an economic or any other existing sense. Steiner’s notion of “irresponsible” creation, importantly suggests a creativity that defines its own productivity, in which the consequences of artistic or cultural production are contained within the context of the creative space apart. The greatest risk in a creative project is at the point of engagement, where it is met by consequence, where the public value of the work becomes available for negotiation and debate. The process required in applying for a DCA grant is actually a process of modelling, anticipating and containing the risks associated with artistic or cultural production. The conspicuous absence of genuine consequence in this schema suggests that the DCA seeks to manage the “engagement” to produce its own series of desired outcomes. Yet active control of the relationship between funding organisation and the funded artists may inhibit the production of arts and culture. What is required instead is a coalition of interests and aspirations that has the potential to produce (rather than merely reproduce) culture. In such a circumstance the coalitional relationship will be one where meaning, significance and identification are established in a negotiation between diverse entities and interests. In a realm of cultural values the capacity for these “combined actions” to be meaningful and significant (to possess genuine public value) seems to be compromised by the dominance of the authoritative vision of the Department. ConclusionThe coalitional premise that underpins this paper is predicated on the notion that the “combined action” that is the motivation for the partnership between the Department of Culture and the Arts and the culture and arts sector is to enrich the Western Australian community through “unique and transforming culture and arts experiences” (DCA, Creating Value 1), as stated in the DCA’s strategic charter. What my brief engagement with the DCA’s 2010 policy framework, Creating Value, suggests, however, is that the DCA’s vision is not conceived in terms of the coalitional development of culture, in which culture is acknowledged as a collective work in progress, but rather as a strategic project with instrumental aims. The concept of “public value” that is at the core of Creating Value is not ultimately the product of, or productive of, an ongoing discourse or debate into which cultural producers contribute their various creative outputs. Instead it is presented as a static set of assessment criteria designed to channel creativity into economic growth and to contain the risks associated with cultural production. The ideal of the “coalitional” should inform the concept of public value, as the ongoing work of “combined action” in which creative and cultural producers (through their production), Government (through venues and funding) and the public (through attendance and participation) are engaged in a dialogue whose outcomes provide an indication of public value in a dynamic cultural sphere.George Walden writes:Democratic peoples must be more creative than non-democratic ones, if only because the idea that the opposite might be the case is intolerable. Whatever the merits of the contention that repressive or authoritarian regimes have produced the finest literature or most brilliant artistic movements, it would be a bold politician who took the next logical step in the argument… Like health care or education, art is a public good, a commodity whose provision must be officially guaranteed and overseen. (Walden qtd. in Timms 68)Artistic and cultural freedom, according to this observation, is not actually a freedom at all, but rather a political imperative for welfare states such as ours, which in turn makes the support for creative and cultural production a “socially necessary labour”, that performs instrumental and political functions (Timms 68; Abbing 239) that are at least as important as the cultural wellbeing that seems to be promoted. In contrast Pierre Bourdieu suggests that ultimately the state is the “official guarantor” of “everything that pertains to the universal – that is, to the general interest” (Bourdieu & Haacke 72). If culture is to maintain a critical perspective, he argues, “we should expect (and even demand) from the state the instruments of freedom from economic and political powers – that is from the state itself” (71). Somewhere between “socially necessary labour” and “critical distance”, Charles Esche posits the idea of an “engaged autonomy” for creative and cultural projects operating unavoidably within the economic hegemony of capitalism, whereby they work in “tolerated cultural enclosure called ‘art’, able to act according to different rules,” but “still totally inside the system” (Esche 11). Or perhaps, as Tony Moore suggests:A new cultural renaissance will not be built by bureaucrats subsidising elitism or “picking winners”… but by entrepreneurs and public institutions bold enough to harness the diverse creative energy in the community from suburban garages to inner city garrets. (Moore 122)Ultimately the issue of state interests, support and patronage for the arts is the same balancing act between creativity and engagement, or freedom and consequence, that I introduced referencing Steiner earlier in the paper. The point is, however, that creative irresponsibility brought into an effective engagement ought to lead to a negotiation that allows for the dynamic processes of culture to develop around a debate on public value. Creative and cultural producers should be amongst the coalitional co-creators of contemporary Western Australian culture rather than the contractors brought in to make the DCA’s vision of culture a reality.References Abbing, Hans. Why Are Artists Poor?: The Exceptional Economy of the Arts. Amsterdam: Amsterdam UP, 2008.Bourdieu, Pierre, and Hans Haacke. Free Exchange. Trans. Johnson, Randal and Hans Haacke. Cambridge: Polity P, 1995.Chaney, David. “Cosmopolitan Art and Cultural Citizenship.” Theory, Culture & Society 19.1-2 (2002): 157-74.Department of Culture and the Arts (DCA). Arts Grants Handbook 2010. Government of Western Australia, 2010.———. Creating Value: An Arts and Culture Sector Policy Framework, 2010-2014. Government of Western Australia, 2010.———. New Policy Framework Creates Value for WA Artists. 2010. ‹http://www.dca.wa.gov.au/news/stories/front_page_items/new_policy_framework_creates_value_for_wa_artists>.Edwards, David. Artscience: Creativity in the Post-Google Generation, Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard UP, 2008.Esche, Charles. “The Possibility Forum – Institutional Change and Modest Proposals.” Artlink 22.4 (2002): 11-13.Florida, R. The Rise of the Creative Class: And How It's Transforming Work, Leisure, Community and Everyday Life. New York: Basic Books, 2002.Habermas, Jürgen. Legitimation Crisis, Trans. McCarthy, Thomas. Boston: Beacon P, 1975.Marcuse, Herbert. One Dimensional Man: Studies in the Ideology of Advanced Industrial Society. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1964.Moore, Tony. “The Art of Risk in an Age of Anxiety or in Praise of the Long Lunch.” Making Meaning, Making Money: Directions for the Arts and Cultural Industries in the Creative Age. Eds. Lisa Anderson and Kate Oakley. Newcastle Upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2008. 111-125.Oxford English Dictionary. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1989.Steiner, George. Grammars of Creation: Originating in the Gifford Lectures for 1990. London: Faber and Faber, 2002.Timms, Peter. What’s Wrong with Contemporary Art? Sydney: UNSWP, 2004.Vivas, Eliseo. “What Is a Poem?” Creation and Discovery: Essays in Criticism and Aesthetics. Gateway Editions, Chicago: Henry Regnery, 1954. 111-41.
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Sanders, Shari. "Because Neglect Isn't Cute: Tuxedo Stan's Campaign for a Humane World." M/C Journal 17, no. 2 (March 6, 2014). http://dx.doi.org/10.5204/mcj.791.

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On 10 September 2012, a cat named Tuxedo Stan launched his campaign for mayor of the Halifax Regional Municipality in Nova Scotia, Canada (“Tuxedo Stan for Mayor”). Backed by his human supporters in the Tuxedo Party, he ran on a platform of animal welfare: “Tuxedo Stan for Mayor Because Neglect Isn’t Working.” Artwork Courtesy of Joe Popovitch As a feline activist, Tuxedo Stan joins an unexpected—if not entirely unprecedented—cohort of cats that advocate for animal welfare through their “cute” appeals for humane treatment. From Tuxedo Stan’s internet presence to his appearance on Anderson Cooper’s CNN segment “The RidicuList,” Tuxedo Stan’s cute campaign opens space for a cultural imaginary that differently envisions animals’ and humans’ political responsibilities. Who Can Be a Moral Agent? Iris Marion Young proposes “political responsibility” as a way to answer a question central to human and animal welfare: “How should moral agents—both individual and organizational—think about their responsibilities in relation to structural social injustice?” (7). In legal frameworks, responsibility is connected to liability: an individual acts, harm occurs, and the law decides how much liability the individual should assume. However, Young redefines responsibility in relation to structural injustices, which she conceptualizes as “harms” that result from “structural processes in which many people participate.” Young argues that “because it is therefore difficult for individuals to see a relationship between their own actions and structural outcomes, we have a tendency to distance ourselves from any responsibility for them” (7). Young presents political responsibility as a call to share the responsibility “to engage in actions directed at transforming the structures” and suggests that the less-advantaged might organize and propose “remedies for injustice, because their interests [are] the most acutely at stake” and because they are vulnerable to the actions of others “situated in more powerful and privileged positions” (15). Though Young does not address animals, her conception of responsible agency raises a question: who can be a moral agent? Arguably, the answer to this question changes as cultural imaginaries expand to accommodate difference, including gender- and species-difference. Corey Wrenn analyzes a selection of anti-suffragette postcards that equate granting votes to women as akin to granting votes to cats. Young shifts responsibility from a liability to a political frame, but Wrenn’s work suggests that a further shift is necessary where responsibility is gendered and tied to domestic, feminized roles: Cats and dogs are gendered in contemporary American culture…dogs are thought to be the proper pet for men and cats for women (especially lesbians). This, it turns out, is an old stereotype. In fact, cats were a common symbol in suffragette imagery. Cats represented the domestic sphere, and anti-suffrage postcards often used them to reference female activists. The intent was to portray suffragettes as silly, infantile, incompetent, and ill-suited to political engagement. (Wrenn) Dressing cats in women’s clothing and calling them suffragettes marks women as less-than-human and casts cats as the opposite of human. The frilly garments, worn by cats whose presence evoked the domestic sphere, suggest that women belong in the domestic sphere because they are too soft, or perhaps too cute, to contend with the demands of public life. In addition, the cards that feature domestic scenes suggest that women should account for their families’ welfare ahead of their own, and that women’s refusal to accept this arithmetic marks them as immoral—and irresponsible—subjects. Not Schrödinger's Cat In different ways, Jacques Derrida and Carey Wolfe explore the question Young’s work raises: who can be a moral agent? Derrida and Wolfe complicate the question by adding species difference: how should (human) moral agents think about their responsibilities (to animals)? Prompted by an encounter with his cat, Jacques Derrida follows the figure of the animal, through a variety of texts, in order to make sensible the trace of “the animal” as it has appeared in Western traditions. Derrida’s cat accompanies him as Derrida playfully, and attentively, deconstructs the rationalist, humanist discourses that structure Western philosophy. Discourses, whose tenets reflect the systems of beliefs embedded within a culture, are often both hegemonic and invisible; at least for those who enjoy privileged positions within the culture, discourses may simply appear as common sense or common knowledge. Derrida argues that Western, humanist thinking has created a discourse around “the human” and that this discourse deploys a reductive figure of “the animal” to justify human supremacy and facilitate human exceptionalism. Human exceptionalism is the doctrine that humans’ superiority to animals exempts humans from behaving humanely towards those deemed non-human, and it is the hegemony of the discourse of human exceptionalism that Derrida contravenes. Derrida interrupts by entering the discourse with “his” cat and creating a counter-narrative that troubles “the human” hegemony by redefining what it means to think. Derrida orients his intellectual work as surrender—he surrenders to the gaze of his cat and to his affectionate response to her presence: “the cat I am talking about is a real cat, truly, believe me, a little cat. The cat that looks at me naked and that is truly a little cat, this cat I am talking about…It comes to me as this irreplaceable living being that one day enters my space, into this place where it can encounter me, see me, even see me naked” (6-9, italics in original). The diminutive Derrida uses to describe his cat, she is little and truly a little cat, gestures toward affection, or affect, as the “thing…philosophy has, essentially, had to deprive itself of” (7). For Derrida, rationalist thinking hurries to “enclose and circumscribe the concept of the human as much as that of reason,” and it is through this movement toward enclosure that rationalist humanism fails to think (105). While Derrida questions the ethics of humanist philosophy, Carey Wolfe questions the ethics of humanism. Wolfe argues that “the operative theories and procedures we now have for articulating the social and legal relation between ethics and action are inadequate” because humanism imbues discourses about human and/or animal rights with utilitarian and contractarian logics that are inherently speciesist and therefore flawed (192). Utilitarian approaches attempt to determine the morality of a given action by weighing the act’s aggregate benefit against its aggregate harm. Contractarian approaches evaluate a given (human or animal) subject’s ability to understand and comply with a social contract that stipulates reciprocity; if a subject receives kindness, that subject must understand their implied, moral responsibility to return it. When opponents of animal rights designate animals as less capable of suffering than humans and decide that animals cannot enter moral contracts, animals are then seen as not only undeserving of rights but as incapable of bearing rights. As Wolfe argues, rights discourse—like rationalist humanism—reaches an impasse, and Wolfe proposes posthumanist theory as the way through: “because the discourse of speciesism…anchored in this material, institutional base, can be used to mark any social other, we need to understand that the ethical and philosophical urgency of confronting the institution of speciesism and crafting a posthumanist theory of the subject has nothing to do with whether you like animals” (7, italics in original). Wolfe’s strategic statement marks the necessity of attending to injustice at a structural level; however, as Tuxedo Stan’s campaign demonstrates, at a tactical level, how much you “like” an animal might matter very much. Seriously Cute: Tuxedo Stan as a Moral Agent Tuxedo Stan’s 2012-13 campaign pressed for improved protections for stray and feral cats in the Halifax Regional Municipality (HRM). While “cute” is a subjective, aesthetic judgment, numerous internet sites make claims like: “These 30 Animals With Their Adorable Miniature Versions Are The Cutest Thing Ever. Awwww” (“These 30 Animals”). From Tuxedo Stan’s kitten pictures to the plush versions of Tuxedo Stan, available for purchase on his website, Tuxedo Stan’s campaign positioned him within this cute culture (Chisolm “Official Tuxedo Stan Minion”). Photo Courtesy of Hugh Chisolm, Tuxedo Party The difference between Tuxedo Stan’s cute and the kind of cute invoked by pictures of animals with miniature animals—the difference that connects Tuxedo Stan’s cute to a moral or ethical position—is the narrative of political responsibility attached to his campaign. While existing animal protection laws in Halifax’s Animal Protection Act outlined some protections for animals, “there was a clear oversight in that issues related to cats are not included” (Chisolm TuxedoStan.com). Hugh Chisholm, co-founder of the Tuxedo Party, further notes: There are literally thousands of homeless cats — feral and abandoned— who live by their willpower in the back alleys and streets and bushes in HRM…But there is very little people can do if they want to help, because there is no pound. If there’s a lost or injured dog, you can call the pound and they will come and take the dog and give it a place to stay, and some food and care. But if you do the same thing with a cat, you get nothing, because there’s nothing in place. (Mombourquette) Tuxedo Stan’s campaign mobilizes cute images that reveal the connection between unnoticed and unrelieved suffering. Proceeds from Tuxedo Party merchandise go toward Spay Day HRM, a charity dedicated to “assisting students and low-income families” whose financial situations may prevent them from paying for spay and neuter surgeries (Chisholm TuxedoStan.com). According to his e-book ME: The Tuxedo Stan Story, Stan “wanted to make a difference in the lives of tens of thousands of homeless, unneutered cats in [Halifax Regional Municipality]. We needed a low-cost spay/neuter clinic. We needed a Trap-Neuter-Return and Care program. We needed a sanctuary for homeless, unwanted strays to live out their lives in comfort” (Tuxedo Stanley and Chisholm 14). As does “his” memoir, Tuxedo Stan’s Pledge of Compassion and Action follows Young’s logic of political responsibility. Although his participation is mediated by human organizers, Tuxedo Stan is a cat pressing legislators to “pledge to help the cats” by supporting “a comprehensive feline population control program to humanely control the feline population and prevent suffering” and by creating “an affordable and accessible spay/neuter program” (Chisholm TuxedoStan.com). While framing the feral cat population as a “problem” that must be “fixed” upholds discourses around controlling subjected populations’ reproduction, Tuxedo Stan’s campaign also opens space for a counternarrative that destabilizes the human exceptionalism that encompasses his campaign. A Different ‘Logic’, a Different Cultural Imaginary As Tuxedo Stan launched his campaign in 2012, fellow feline Hank ran for the United States senate seat in Virginia – he received approximately 7,000 votes and placed third (Wyatt) – and “Mayor” Stubbs celebrated his 15th year as the honorary mayor of Talkeetna, Alaska, also in the United States: Fifteen years ago, the citizens of Talkeetna (pop. 800) didn’t like the looks of their candidates for mayor. Around that same time resident Lauri Stec, manager of Nagley’s General Store, saw a box of kittens and decided to adopt one. She named him Stubbs because he didn’t have a tail and soon the whole town was in love with him. So smitten were they with this kitten, in fact, that they wrote him in for mayor instead of deciding on one of the two lesser candidates. (Friedman) Though only Stan and Hank connect their candidacy to animal welfare activism, all three cats’ stories contribute to building a cultural imaginary that has drawn responses across social and news media. Tuxedo Stan’s Facebook page has 19,000+ “likes,” and Stan supporters submit photographs of Tuxedo Stan “minions” spreading Tuxedo Stan’s message. The Tuxedo Party’s website maintains a photo gallery that documents “Tuxedo Stan’s World Tour”: “Tuxedo Stan’s Minions are currently on their world tour spreading his message of hope and compassion for felines around the globe" (Chisholm TuxedoStan.com). Each minion’s photo in the gallery represents humans’ ideological and financial support for Tuxedo Stan. News media supported Tuxedo Stan, Hank for Senate, and Mayor Stubbs’s candidacies in a more ambiguous fashion. While Craig Medred argues that “Silly 'Alaska cat mayor' saga spotlights how easily the media can be scammed” (Medred), a CBC News video announced that Tuxedo Stan was “interested in sinking his claws into the top seat at City Hall” and ready to “mark his territory around the mayor's seat” (“Tuxedo Stan the cat chases Halifax mayor chair”), and Lauren Strapagiel reported on Halifax’s “cuddliest would-be mayor.” In an unexpected echo of Derrida’s language, as Derrida repeats that he is truly talking about a cat, truly a little cat, CNN journalist Anderson Cooper endorses Tuxedo Stan for mayor and follows his endorsement with this statement: If he’s serious about a career in politics, maybe he should come to the United States. Just look at the mayor of Talkeetna, Alaska. That’s Stubbs the cat, and he’s been the mayor for 15 years. I’m not kidding…Not only that, but right now, as we speak, there is a cat running for Senate from Virginia. (Cooper) As he introduces a “Hank for Senate” campaign video, again Cooper mentions that he is “not kidding.” While Cooper’s “not kidding” echoes Derrida’s “truly,” the difference in meanings is différance. For Derrida, his encounter with his cat is “a matter of developing another ‘logic’ of decision, of the response and of the event…a matter of reinscribing the différance between reaction and response, and hence this historicity of ethical, juridical, or political responsibility, within another thinking of life, of the living, within another relation of the living, to their own…reactional automaticity” (126). Derrida proceeds through the impasse, the limit he identifies within philosophical engagements with animals, by tracing the ways his little cat’s presence affects him. Derrida finds another logic, which is not logic but surrender, to accommodate what he, like Young, terms “political responsibility.” Cooper, however, applies the hegemonic logic of human exceptionalism to his engagement with feline interlocutors, Tuxedo Stan, Hank for Senate, and Mayor Stubbs. Although Cooper’s segment, called “The RidicuList,” makes a pretense of political responsibility, it is different in kind from the pretense made in Tuxedo Stan’s campaign. As Derrida argues, a “pretense…even a simple pretense, consists in rendering a sensible trace illegible or imperceptible” (135). Tuxedo Stan’s campaign pretends that Tuxedo Stan fits within humanist, hegemonic notions of mayoral candidacy and then mobilizes this cute pretense in aid of political responsibility; the pretense—the pretense in which Tuxedo Stan’s human fans and supporters engage—renders the “sensible” trace of human exceptionalism illegible, if not imperceptible. Cooper’s pretense, however, works to make legible the trace of human exceptionalism and so to reinscribe its discursive hegemony. Discursively, the political potential of cute in Tuxedo Stan’s campaign is that Tuxedo Stan’s activism complicates humanist and posthumanist thinking about agency, about ethics, and about political responsibility. Thinking about animals may not change animals’ lives, but it may change (post)humans’ responses to these questions: Who can be a moral agent? How should moral agents—both individual and organizational, both human and animal—“think” about how they respond to structural social injustice? Epilogue: A Political Response Tuxedo Stan died of kidney cancer on 8 September 2013. Before he died, Tuxedo Stan’s campaign yielded improved cat protection legislation as well as a $40,000 endowment to create a spay-and-neuter facility accessible to low-income families. Tuxedo Stan’s litter mate, Earl Grey, carries on Tuxedo Stan’s work. Earl Grey’s campaign platform expands the Tuxedo Party’s appeals for animal welfare, and Earl Grey maintains the Tuxedo Party’s presence on Facebook, on Twitter (@TuxedoParty and @TuxedoEarlGrey), and at TuxedoStan.com (Chisholm TuxedoStan.com). On 27 February 2014, Agriculture Minister Keith Colwell of Nova Scotia released draft legislation whose standards of care aim to prevent distress and cruelty to pets and to strengthen their protection. They…include proposals on companion animal restraints, outdoor care, shelters, companion animal pens and enclosures, abandonment of companion animals, as well as the transportation and sale of companion animals…The standards also include cats, and the hope is to have legislation ready to introduce in the spring and enacted by the fall. (“Nova Scotia cracks down”) References Chisolm, Hugh. “Tuxedo Stan Kitten.” Tuxedo Party Facebook Page, 20 Oct. 2012. 2 Mar. 2014. Chisholm, Hugh. “Official Tuxedo Stan Minion.” TuxedoStan.com. Tuxedo Stanley and the Tuxedo Party. 2 Mar. 2014. Chisolm, Hugh. “You're Voting for Fred? Not at MY Polling Station!” Tuxedo Party Facebook Page, 20 Oct. 2012. 2 Mar. 2014. Chisholm, Hugh, and Kathy Chisholm. TuxedoStan.com. Tuxedo Stanley and the Tuxedo Party. 2 Mar. 2014. Cooper, Anderson. “The RidicuList.” CNN Anderson Cooper 360, 24 Sep. 2012. 2 Mar. 2014. Crenshaw, Kimberlé. “Demarginalizing the Intersection of Race and Sex: A Black Feminist Critique of Antidiscrimination Doctrine, Feminist Theory and Antiracist Politics.” University of Chicago Legal Forum 1989: 139–67. 2 Mar. 2014. Derrida, Jacques. The Animal That Therefore I Am. Trans. David Willis. New York: Fordham University Press, 2008. Friedman, Amy. “Cat Marks 15 Years as Mayor of Alaska Town.” Newsfeed.time.com, 17 July 2012. 2 March 2014. Medred, Craig. “Silly ‘Alaska Cat Mayor’ Saga Spotlights How Easily the Media Can Be Scammed.” Alaska Dispatch, 11 Sep. 2014. 2 Mar. 2014. Mombourquette, Angela. “Candidate’s Ethics Are as Finely Honed as His Claws.” The Chronicle Herald, 27 Aug. 2012. 2 Mar. 2014. “Nova Scotia Cracks Down on Tethering of Dogs.” The Chronicle Herald 27 Feb. 2014. 2 Mar. 2014. Pace, Natasha. “Halifax City Council Doles Out Cash to Help Control the Feral Cat Population.” Global News 14 May 2013. 2 Mar. 2014. Popovitch, Joe. “Tuxedo Stan for Mayor Because Neglect Isn’t Working.” RefuseToBeBoring.com. 2 Mar. 2014. Strapagiel, Lauren. “Tuxedo Stan, Beloved Halifax Cat Politician, Dead at 3.” OCanada.com, 9 Sep. 2013. 2 Mar. 2014. “These 30 Animals with Their Adorable Miniatures Are the Cutest Thing Ever. Awwww.” WorthyToShare.com, n.d. 2 Mar. 2014. “Tuxedo Stan for Mayor Dinner Highlights.” Vimeo.com, 2 Mar. 2014. Tuxedo Stanley, and Kathy Chisholm. ME: The Tuxedo Stan Story. Upper Tantallon, Nova Scotia: Ailurophile Publishing, 2014. 2 Mar. 2014. “Tuxedo Stan the Cat Chases Halifax Mayor Chair.” CBC News, 13 Aug. 2012. 2 Mar. 2014. Wolfe, Cary. Animal Rites: American Culture, the Discourse of Species, and Posthumanist Theory. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2003. Wrenn, Corey. “Suffragette Cats Are the Original Cat Ladies.” Jezebel.com, 6 Dec. 2013. 2 Mar. 2014. Wyatt, Susan. “Hank, the Cat Who Ran for Virginia Senate, Gets MMore than 7,000 Votes.” King5.com The Pet Dish, 7 Nov. 2012. 2 Mar. 2014. Young, Iris Marion. “Political Responsibility and Structural Injustice.” Lindley Lecture. Department of Philosophy, University of Kansas. 5 May 2003.
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Muir, Cameron. "Vigilant Citizens: Statecraft and Exclusion in Dubbo City." M/C Journal 9, no. 3 (July 1, 2006). http://dx.doi.org/10.5204/mcj.2628.

Full text
Abstract:
The following petition was circulated in Dubbo in May 2003: Mr Carr, We the undersigned are concerned citizens, tired of Government inaction in dealing with young children who are causing distress around our cities. Children 8, 9 & 10 year olds are roaming the streets day & night and Harassment of the elderly & Intimidation, Truancy, Enter & Steal, Vandalism and Shoplifting are causing major concern in our area. Young children, too young to deal with now, grow up bigger & stronger as they move into the adult world of crime. At present they seem to be untouchable with many people with good intentions making excuses. We need laws in place to help them toward a better future and a safer environment for us all. You have achieved much in relation to crime & punishment with Goals & we need to save this coming generation from a life of crime. Parents should be made responsible for their children’s actions. If parents can’t or won’t, the children should be placed in suitable accommodation where Self Esteem, Education, Health & Responsibilities are taught. Mr Carr, NSW has an opportunity to lead the country in what is a national problem. Anyone shopping in Dubbo’s main street in at that time would have found copies of this petition presented in neat stacks on sales counters and reception desks in the majority of retail stores and other small businesses. One month later, 11 000 people from a population of 36 000 had signed the petition. In examining why such a severe proposal arose, and why it garnered so much support, I am positioning the events in the lead up to and following the petition as part of continuing processes of domination and exclusion within race relations. The theoretical framework for this relies on Roxanne Lynn Doty’s notion of ‘statecraft’, which she draws from the work of Deleuze and Guattari. The main street in Dubbo is a place for consumption and public display. People are welcome as long as they observe the rules ‘concerned citizens’ deem appropriate for that space. The main street is the image of the town, invested with symbolic capital. Those who threaten the construction of a particular image are literally out of place. The petition is a matter of ‘race relations’, or more accurately, domination and resistance, despite no specific indications in the document’s wording. In official and pseudo-official situations in Dubbo, in local newspapers and radio, ‘uncontrollable’ had become a substitute for Aboriginal. Warren Mundine, at the time Deputy Mayor and Dubbo’s only Indigenous Councillor, said, ‘people might say “we haven’t mentioned Aboriginal kids” but everyone knows what they are talking about’ (O’Malley 3). To understand why there were calls for widespread and systematic forcible removal of Aboriginal children – a proposed measure that resonated with the darkest periods of pre-1970s style of removal – we need to contextualise it with discussion of key events in the lead up to the petition’s appearance. A local radio announcer, Leo de Kroo, whose morning talk-back show emulated the programs of metropolitan ‘shock-jocks’ instigated the petition after some months of on-air attacks on young people in Dubbo. Like some metropolitan stations, 2DU aligned itself with conservative political parties. On his show, de Kroo directly and indirectly supported Coalition policies and initiatives such as lobbying for the Parental Responsibility Act to operate in Dubbo as it does in Orange, and to lower the age at which children could be charged with crimes. De Kroo’s individual motivations is partially explained by his political opportunism, but the wider processes his actions are a part of, and the large degree of support for petition from people in Dubbo, are more interesting. De Kroo’s claim that Dubbo was a town ‘out of control’ and in a ‘bad spot with youth on the streets’ (Roberts, “Voice of Youth” 2) came at a time when crime rates were falling. In February 2003 Local Area Commander Supt Ian Lovell said that crime had dropped to ‘unheard of [levels]. Dubbo hasn’t experienced such low levels of crime in years’ (Jacobson, “Viking Cuts” 11). In March the Orana Crime Management Unit declared assaults, car accidents, malicious damage, stealing and traffic offences were down from the previous month (Jacobson, “Burglaries Falling” 4). Again in May Supt Lovell declared a similar range of crimes were down from the previous month (Jacobson, “Crime Cools” 4). Typically, stories about crime statistics were published in the middle sections of the local paper, while complaints about crime were almost invariably on the front page, but this was still a time when one might expect the community to be feeling safer in their everyday lives. However, despite consecutive months of falling crime rates, some inhabitants clearly felt insecure. This is evidenced by the support for the petition one month later, and interviews by the local newspaper, such as one with main street retailers who said they believed crime was spiralling out of control, that children were ‘terrorising staff’, that it was no longer safe to go to work, and that it was a matter of time before a shop assistant would be ‘stuck’ with a drug user’s needle (Jacobson, “We’re Sick of It” 1). To examine this situation I am turning to Doty’s concept of ‘statecraft’, desire and exclusion, which she bases on the work of Deleuze and Guattari. Doty draws on Deleuze and Guattari’s concept of desire to suggest ‘the state’ is always an unattainable desire for order. Desire for Deleuze and Guattari is ‘not a lack or fantasy or pleasure’ (Doty 1) but instead is a free flowing energy, a creative flow of production, that is coded and channelled by forces within the social body (Deleuze and Guattari). Social practices that channel and code desire create systems of meanings, values, hierarchies, inclusions and exclusions (Doty). So desire possesses the simultaneous potential for liberating, breaking down and deterritorialising, as well as for repression, segmentation and reterritorialisation. Deleuze and Guattari see this tension as existing in two poles of desire: ‘the schizophrenic pole deterritorialises and threatens to destroy the codes that inscribe meaning to social forms. The paranoiac pole presses for order and contains an inherent tendency toward despotism, repression, fascism’ (Doty 10). These poles, in Deleuze and Guattari’s writing, are tied to economic systems. Doty, paraphrasing Karl Polaryi – a philosopher whose work critiques liberal economic systems – says that ‘the self-adjusting market of capitalism could not exist for any length of time without annihilating society’ (qtd. in Doty 7). The destabilising flows of liberal economies are always countered by some form of governmentality which reinforces society through welfare, regulation and other protections and interventions. Capitalism ‘liberates flows of desire, but under the social conditions that define its limits and its own dissolution’ (Deleuze and Guattari 139). Capitalism belongs to the fluid pole of desire, the schizophrenic pole, and the fixing, regulating forces of ‘the state’ belong to the paranoiac pole. The state, then, is a desire for order, a movement towards fixedness, rigidness. Doty calls the set of practices that enable these movements ‘statecraft’. It is Doty’s conception of ‘the state’ and statecraft that I have tried to apply to the events that took place in Dubbo. ‘We can speak of “the state” only in a very provisional sense. It is not unitary. It is not an actor. It is not even a concrete “thing”… There is no such thing as “the state”, only a powerful desire that pervades the social realm’ (Doty 12). For Doty, the state is nothing but practices of statecraft that can originate in government bureaucracies, churches, corporations, theatres, newspapers, in our backyards, in our living rooms and bedrooms. They can come from the Federal or State Government, the local Council, the editor of the local newspaper, a journalist, a documentary maker, teenagers exchanging SMSes, the gossip mongers in the street and couples drinking tea in their kitchens. There were a number of key events in the lead up to the release of the petition in Dubbo that exacerbated the paranoiac pole of desire, the desire for order. At the start of 2003 the Federal Government was running an anti-terrorism campaign through television ads and later through a kit delivered to households across Australia. This was to generate fear to try to garner support for its involvement in the invasion of Iraq in March 2003. Also, election campaigns for the March State elections were run on Law and Order platforms. The NSW Government organised an Operation Viking which took place in Dubbo and was the largest police operation ever undertaken outside of Sydney (Jacobson, “Viking Cuts” 11). Hundreds of police officers were bussed in from Sydney and other cities and the ‘high visibility’ policing action included the use of a helicopter which shone a spotlight into people’s backyards. One local Councillor said the operation gave the impression there was ‘some national emergency’ (Jacobson, “Police” 1). Indicative of the tendency for these actions generate more fear are the comments of Supt Lovell, ‘I feel upset when people have to be briefed and calmed down after an operation that was designed to do just that’ (Roberts, “Operation” 1). Then in April there was an arson attack on Dubbo’s Council buildings. The offices were razed and this event is significant because the high public profile and uncommon nature of the incident, and because the accused perpetrators were the same ‘uncontrollable’ children said to be roaming the streets. These events contributed to an elevated sense of fear an anxiety around the same time the petition was circulated despite the fact that crime figures were falling. Indeed, the bulk of the complaints against ‘uncontrollable children’ were not that they were committing any particular crimes. The main street retailers quoted earlier felt intimidated by their presence. The complaints were of ‘antisocial behaviour’ and of minor annoyances incommensurable to the drastic and violent measures called for to deal with perceived problems. Their alleged swearing, spitting and talking in groups – in essence, their mere presence on the street – made people feel unsafe. This is due to a facet of statecraft – the exclusion of certain groups who are deemed antithetical to the social order. Doty notes the poor are often those rendered a threat to social order because of their lack of fixedness, their perceived lack of morals, the public display of behaviour the inside group consider private, and the different priorities relative to the inside group. Any threats to the social order are dealt with violently, as practices of statecraft inherently tend towards violence (Doty). In this case, the call for Government to forcibly remove children is violent, but it can also manifest in vigilante action, over zealous arrests, or casual assaults on the streets of Dubbo. Aboriginal people become an ‘excluded other that is itself constituted by the social order from which it is excluded’ (Doty 14). Practices of statecraft create excluded groups (Indigenous people’s claim to land is certainly antithetical to the social order of colonisers) and these outside groups in turn become feared by the inside group. The petition was never submitted to the Premier, nor tabled in parliament in its own right. Instead it was simply used by NSW National Party leader Andrew Stoner to strengthen his arguments for lowering the age at which children could be charged for crimes. The fact that it was not submitted to the Premier suggests the aim of the petition was to create a sense that all Aboriginal adults are criminals, and that Aboriginal culture is an inherently criminal one. ‘Young children, too young to deal with now, grow up bigger & stronger as they move into the adult world of crime’ (Petition). A local Aboriginal leader, after convening a meeting in response to the petition, said, ‘thinly-veiled comments made on radio and circulating within the community made it clear a lot of Dubbo residents believed Aboriginal people were to blame for all the city’s ills’ (Hodder, “Meeting” 2). The purpose of the petition is to justify exclusion of anyone deemed a threat to the stability of the social order. The Carr government dismissed calls for children to be removed from their parents, but responded to the petition by declaring there would be more Operation Vikings for Dubbo (Stone 1). The desire for order, an order always unattainable, intensified by generation of fear, has enabled vigilante action on the streets of Dubbo. The action targets those the petition constructed as ‘uncontrollable’. Retailers in the CBD have set up networks amongst themselves, with the help of cameras, mobile phones and sirens to assail anyone they suspect of being threatening, or of shoplifting or making a mess of their stores (Hodder, “Retailers” 10). Recently ‘I [heart] Dubbo’ T-shirts were manufactured in a campaign to counter the negative media coverage generated by the petition and subsequent racial tensions. It was a defiant display of localism that seemed specifically designed to shun criticisms of Dubbo-style race relations and separate those who say they want success for the town from those who are said to want to destroy it. After identifying practices of statecraft in this series of events, what is needed is an examination of methods and practices for evading or deterritorialising movements towards order. References Deleuze, Gilles, and Félix Guattari. Anti-Oedipus : Capitalism and Schizophrenia. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1983. Doty, Roxanne Lynn. Anti-Immigrantism in Western Democracies : Statecraft, Desire and the Politics of Exclusion. New York, N.Y.: Routledge, 2003. Hodder, S. “Meeting Declared a Success.” Daily Liberal 12 June 2003: 2. ———. “Retailers Call on Each Other to Fight Thieves.” Daily Liberal 10 November 2004: 2. Jacobson, B. “Viking Cuts City Crime: Police Chief.” Daily Liberal 6 February 2003: 11. ———. “Burglaries Falling.” Daily Liberal 5 March 2003: 4. ———. “Crime Cools Down.” Daily Liberal 6 May 2003: 4. ———. “Police ‘Picked on’ Youth in Blitz.” Daily Liberal 5 February 2003: 1. ———. “We’re Sick of It.” Daily Liberal 3 April 2003: 1. O’Malley, N. “Brogden Backs Dubbo Radio Host’s Hard Line on Child Crime.” Sydney Morning Herald 19 June 2003: 3. Roberts, N. “Operation ‘Was Not Perfect’.” Daily Liberal 7 February 2003: 1. ———. “Voice of Youth to Be Heard across Radio Airwaves.” Daily Liberal 9 May 2003: 2. Stone, K. “Carr Takes Control.” Daily Liberal 18 June 2003: 1. Citation reference for this article MLA Style Muir, Cameron. "Vigilant Citizens: Statecraft and Exclusion in Dubbo City." M/C Journal 9.3 (2006). echo date('d M. Y'); ?> <http://journal.media-culture.org.au/0607/02-muir.php>. APA Style Muir, C. (Jul. 2006) "Vigilant Citizens: Statecraft and Exclusion in Dubbo City," M/C Journal, 9(3). Retrieved echo date('d M. Y'); ?> from <http://journal.media-culture.org.au/0607/02-muir.php>.
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Jethani, Suneel, and Robbie Fordyce. "Darkness, Datafication, and Provenance as an Illuminating Methodology." M/C Journal 24, no. 2 (April 27, 2021). http://dx.doi.org/10.5204/mcj.2758.

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Data are generated and employed for many ends, including governing societies, managing organisations, leveraging profit, and regulating places. In all these cases, data are key inputs into systems that paradoxically are implemented in the name of making societies more secure, safe, competitive, productive, efficient, transparent and accountable, yet do so through processes that monitor, discipline, repress, coerce, and exploit people. (Kitchin, 165) Introduction Provenance refers to the place of origin or earliest known history of a thing. It refers to the custodial history of objects. It is a term that is commonly used in the art-world but also has come into the language of other disciplines such as computer science. It has also been applied in reference to the transactional nature of objects in supply chains and circular economies. In an interview with Scotland’s Institute for Public Policy Research, Adam Greenfield suggests that provenance has a role to play in the “establishment of reliability” given that a “transaction or artifact has a specified provenance, then that assertion can be tested and verified to the satisfaction of all parities” (Lawrence). Recent debates on the unrecognised effects of digital media have convincingly argued that data is fully embroiled within capitalism, but it is necessary to remember that data is more than just a transactable commodity. One challenge in bringing processes of datafication into critical light is how we understand what happens to data from its point of acquisition to the point where it becomes instrumental in the production of outcomes that are of ethical concern. All data gather their meaning through relationality; whether acting as a representation of an exterior world or representing relations between other data points. Data objectifies relations, and despite any higher-order complexities, at its core, data is involved in factualising a relation into a binary. Assumptions like these about data shape reasoning, decision-making and evidence-based practice in private, personal and economic contexts. If processes of datafication are to be better understood, then we need to seek out conceptual frameworks that are adequate to the way that data is used and understood by its users. Deborah Lupton suggests that often we give data “other vital capacities because they are about human life itself, have implications for human life opportunities and livelihoods, [and] can have recursive effects on human lives (shaping action and concepts of embodiment ... selfhood [and subjectivity]) and generate economic value”. But when data are afforded such capacities, the analysis of its politics also calls for us to “consider context” and “making the labour [of datafication] visible” (D’Ignazio and Klein). For Jenny L. Davis, getting beyond simply thinking about what data affords involves bringing to light how continually and dynamically to requests, demands, encourages, discourages, and refuses certain operations and interpretations. It is in this re-orientation of the question from what to how where “practical analytical tool[s]” (Davis) can be found. Davis writes: requests and demands are bids placed by technological objects, on user-subjects. Encourage, discourage and refuse are the ways technologies respond to bids user-subjects place upon them. Allow pertains equally to bids from technological objects and the object’s response to user-subjects. (Davis) Building on Lupton, Davis, and D’Ignazio and Klein, we see three principles that we consider crucial for work on data, darkness and light: data is not simply a technological object that exists within sociotechnical systems without having undergone any priming or processing, so as a consequence the data collecting entity imposes standards and way of imagining data before it comes into contact with user-subjects; data is not neutral and does not possess qualities that make it equivalent to the things that it comes to represent; data is partial, situated, and contingent on technical processes, but the outcomes of its use afford it properties beyond those that are purely informational. This article builds from these principles and traces a framework for investigating the complications arising when data moves from one context to another. We draw from the “data provenance” as it is applied in the computing and informational sciences where it is used to query the location and accuracy of data in databases. In developing “data provenance”, we adapt provenance from an approach that solely focuses on technical infrastructures and material processes that move data from one place to another and turn to sociotechnical, institutional, and discursive forces that bring about data acquisition, sharing, interpretation, and re-use. As data passes through open, opaque, and darkened spaces within sociotechnical systems, we argue that provenance can shed light on gaps and overlaps in technical, legal, ethical, and ideological forms of data governance. Whether data becomes exclusive by moving from light to dark (as has happened with the removal of many pages and links from Facebook around the Australian news revenue-sharing bill), or is publicised by shifting from dark to light (such as the Australian government releasing investigative journalist Andie Fox’s welfare history to the press), or even recontextualised from one dark space to another (as with genetic data shifting from medical to legal contexts, or the theft of personal financial data), there is still a process of transmission here that we can assess and critique through provenance. These different modalities, which guide data acquisition, sharing, interpretation, and re-use, cascade and influence different elements and apparatuses within data-driven sociotechnical systems to different extents depending on context. Attempts to illuminate and make sense of these complex forces, we argue, exposes data-driven practices as inherently political in terms of whose interests they serve. Provenance in Darkness and in Light When processes of data capture, sharing, interpretation, and re-use are obscured, it impacts on the extent to which we might retrospectively examine cases where malpractice in responsible data custodianship and stewardship has occurred, because it makes it difficult to see how things have been rendered real and knowable, changed over time, had causality ascribed to them, and to what degree of confidence a decision has been made based on a given dataset. To borrow from this issue’s concerns, the paradigm of dark spaces covers a range of different kinds of valences on the idea of private, secret, or exclusive contexts. We can parallel it with the idea of ‘light’ spaces, which equally holds a range of different concepts about what is open, public, or accessible. For instance, in the use of social data garnered from online platforms, the practices of academic researchers and analysts working in the private sector often fall within a grey zone when it comes to consent and transparency. Here the binary notion of public and private is complicated by the passage of data from light to dark (and back to light). Writing in a different context, Michael Warner complicates the notion of publicness. He observes that the idea of something being public is in and of itself always sectioned off, divorced from being fully generalisable, and it is “just whatever people in a given context think it is” (11). Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri argue that publicness is already shadowed by an idea of state ownership, leaving us in a situation where public and private already both sit on the same side of the propertied/commons divide as if the “only alternative to the private is the public, that is, what is managed and regulated by states and other governmental authorities” (vii). The same can be said about the way data is conceived as a public good or common asset. These ideas of light and dark are useful categorisations for deliberately moving past the tensions that arise when trying to qualify different subspecies of privacy and openness. The problem with specific linguistic dyads of private vs. public, or open vs. closed, and so on, is that they are embedded within legal, moral, technical, economic, or rhetorical distinctions that already involve normative judgements on whether such categories are appropriate or valid. Data may be located in a dark space for legal reasons that fall under the legal domain of ‘private’ or it may be dark because it has been stolen. It may simply be inaccessible, encrypted away behind a lost password on a forgotten external drive. Equally, there are distinctions around lightness that can be glossed – the openness of Open Data (see: theodi.org) is of an entirely separate category to the AACS encryption key, which was illegally but enthusiastically shared across the internet in 2007 to the point where it is now accessible on Wikipedia. The language of light and dark spaces allows us to cut across these distinctions and discuss in deliberately loose terms the degree to which something is accessed, with any normative judgments reserved for the cases themselves. Data provenance, in this sense, can be used as a methodology to critique the way that data is recontextualised from light to dark, dark to light, and even within these distinctions. Data provenance critiques the way that data is presented as if it were “there for the taking”. This also suggests that when data is used for some or another secondary purpose – generally for value creation – some form of closure or darkening is to be expected. Data in the public domain is more than simply a specific informational thing: there is always context, and this contextual specificity, we argue, extends far beyond anything that can be captured in a metadata schema or a licensing model. Even the transfer of data from one open, public, or light context to another will evoke new degrees of openness and luminosity that should not be assumed to be straightforward. And with this a new set of relations between data-user-subjects and stewards emerges. The movement of data between public and private contexts by virtue of the growing amount of personal information that is generated through the traces left behind as people make use of increasingly digitised services going about their everyday lives means that data-motile processes are constantly occurring behind the scenes – in darkness – where it comes into the view, or possession, of third parties without obvious mechanisms of consent, disclosure, or justification. Given that there are “many hands” (D’Iganzio and Klein) involved in making data portable between light and dark spaces, equally there can be diversity in the approaches taken to generate critical literacies of these relations. There are two complexities that we argue are important for considering the ethics of data motility from light to dark, and this differs from the concerns that we might have when we think about other illuminating tactics such as open data publishing, freedom-of-information requests, or when data is anonymously leaked in the public interest. The first is that the terms of ethics must be communicable to individuals and groups whose data literacy may be low, effectively non-existent, or not oriented around the objective of upholding or generating data-luminosity as an element of a wider, more general form of responsible data stewardship. Historically, a productive approach to data literacy has been finding appropriate metaphors from adjacent fields that can help add depth – by way of analogy – to understanding data motility. Here we return to our earlier assertion that data is more than simply a transactable commodity. Consider the notion of “giving” and “taking” in the context of darkness and light. The analogy of giving and taking is deeply embedded into the notion of data acquisition and sharing by virtue of the etymology of the word data itself: in Latin, “things having been given”, whereby in French données, a natural gift, perhaps one that is given to those that attempt capture for the purposes of empiricism – representation in quantitative form is a quality that is given to phenomena being brought into the light. However, in the contemporary parlance of “analytics” data is “taken” in the form of recording, measuring, and tracking. Data is considered to be something valuable enough to give or take because of its capacity to stand in for real things. The empiricist’s preferred method is to take rather than to accept what is given (Kitchin, 2); the data-capitalist’s is to incentivise the act of giving or to take what is already given (or yet to be taken). Because data-motile processes are not simply passive forms of reading what is contained within a dataset, the materiality and subjectivity of data extraction and interpretation is something that should not be ignored. These processes represent the recontextualisation of data from one space to another and are expressed in the landmark case of Cambridge Analytica, where a private research company extracted data from Facebook and used it to engage in psychometric analysis of unknowing users. Data Capture Mechanism Characteristics and Approach to Data Stewardship Historical Information created, recorded, or gathered about people of things directly from the source or a delegate but accessed for secondary purposes. Observational Represents patterns and realities of everyday life, collected by subjects by their own choice and with some degree of discretion over the methods. Third parties access this data through reciprocal arrangement with the subject (e.g., in exchange for providing a digital service such as online shopping, banking, healthcare, or social networking). Purposeful Data gathered with a specific purpose in mind and collected with the objective to manipulate its analysis to achieve certain ends. Integrative Places less emphasis on specific data types but rather looks towards social and cultural factors that afford access to and facilitate the integration and linkage of disparate datasets Table 1: Mechanisms of Data Capture There are ethical challenges associated with data that has been sourced from pre-existing sets or that has been extracted from websites and online platforms through scraping data and then enriching it through cleaning, annotation, de-identification, aggregation, or linking to other data sources (tab. 1). As a way to address this challenge, our suggestion of “data provenance” can be defined as where a data point comes from, how it came into being, and how it became valuable for some or another purpose. In developing this idea, we borrow from both the computational and biological sciences (Buneman et al.) where provenance, as a form of qualitative inquiry into data-motile processes, centres around understanding the origin of a data point as part of a broader almost forensic analysis of quality and error-potential in datasets. Provenance is an evaluation of a priori computational inputs and outputs from the results of database queries and audits. Provenance can also be applied to other contexts where data passes through sociotechnical systems, such as behavioural analytics, targeted advertising, machine learning, and algorithmic decision-making. Conventionally, data provenance is based on understanding where data has come from and why it was collected. Both these questions are concerned with the evaluation of the nature of a data point within the wider context of a database that is itself situated within a larger sociotechnical system where the data is made available for use. In its conventional sense, provenance is a means of ensuring that a data point is maintained as a single source of truth (Buneman, 89), and by way of a reproducible mechanism which allows for its path through a set of technical processes, it affords the assessment of a how reliable a system’s output might be by sheer virtue of the ability for one to retrace the steps from point A to B. “Where” and “why” questions are illuminating because they offer an ends-and-means view of the relation between the origins and ultimate uses of a given data point or set. Provenance is interesting when studying data luminosity because means and ends have much to tell us about the origins and uses of data in ways that gesture towards a more accurate and structured research agenda for data ethics that takes the emphasis away from individual moral patients and reorients it towards practices that occur within information management environments. Provenance offers researchers seeking to study data-driven practices a similar heuristic to a journalist’s line of questioning who, what, when, where, why, and how? This last question of how is something that can be incorporated into conventional models of provenance that make it useful in data ethics. The question of how data comes into being extends questions of power, legality, literacy, permission-seeking, and harm in an entangled way and notes how these factors shape the nature of personal data as it moves between contexts. Forms of provenance accumulate from transaction to transaction, cascading along, as a dataset ‘picks up’ the types of provenance that have led to its creation. This may involve multiple forms of overlapping provenance – methodological and epistemological, legal and illegal – which modulate different elements and apparatuses. Provenance, we argue is an important methodological consideration for workers in the humanities and social sciences. Provenance provides a set of shared questions on which models of transparency, accountability, and trust may be established. It points us towards tactics that might help data-subjects understand privacy in a contextual manner (Nissenbaum) and even establish practices of obfuscation and “informational self-defence” against regimes of datafication (Brunton and Nissenbaum). Here provenance is not just a declaration of what means and ends of data capture, sharing, linkage, and analysis are. We sketch the outlines of a provenance model in table 2 below. Type Metaphorical frame Dark Light What? The epistemological structure of a database determines the accuracy of subsequent decisions. Data must be consistent. What data is asked of a person beyond what is strictly needed for service delivery. Data that is collected for a specific stated purpose with informed consent from the data-subject. How does the decision about what to collect disrupt existing polities and communities? What demands for conformity does the database make of its subjects? Where? The contents of a database is important for making informed decisions. Data must be represented. The parameters of inclusion/exclusion that create unjust risks or costs to people because of their inclusion or exclusion in a dataset. The parameters of inclusion or exclusion that afford individuals representation or acknowledgement by being included or excluded from a dataset. How are populations recruited into a dataset? What divides exist that systematically exclude individuals? Who? Who has access to data, and how privacy is framed is important for the security of data-subjects. Data access is political. Access to the data by parties not disclosed to the data-subject. Who has collected the data and who has or will access it? How is the data made available to those beyond the data subjects? How? Data is created with a purpose and is never neutral. Data is instrumental. How the data is used, to what ends, discursively, practically, instrumentally. Is it a private record, a source of value creation, the subject of extortion or blackmail? How the data was intended to be used at the time that it was collected. Why? Data is created by people who are shaped by ideological factors. Data has potential. The political rationality that shapes data governance with regard to technological innovation. The trade-offs that are made known to individuals when they contribute data into sociotechnical systems over which they have limited control. Table 2: Forms of Data Provenance Conclusion As an illuminating methodology, provenance offers a specific line of questioning practices that take information through darkness and light. The emphasis that it places on a narrative for data assets themselves (asking what when, who, how, and why) offers a mechanism for traceability and has potential for application across contexts and cases that allows us to see data malpractice as something that can be productively generalised and understood as a series of ideologically driven technical events with social and political consequences without being marred by perceptions of exceptionality of individual, localised cases of data harm or data violence. References Brunton, Finn, and Helen Nissenbaum. "Political and Ethical Perspectives on Data Obfuscation." Privacy, Due Process and the Computational Turn: The Philosophy of Law Meets the Philosophy of Technology. Eds. Mireille Hildebrandt and Katja de Vries. New York: Routledge, 2013. 171-195. Buneman, Peter, Sanjeev Khanna, and Wang-Chiew Tan. "Data Provenance: Some Basic Issues." International Conference on Foundations of Software Technology and Theoretical Computer Science. Berlin: Springer, 2000. Davis, Jenny L. How Artifacts Afford: The Power and Politics of Everyday Things. Cambridge: MIT Press, 2020. D'Ignazio, Catherine, and Lauren F. Klein. Data Feminism. Cambridge: MIT Press, 2020. Hardt, Michael, and Antonio Negri. Commonwealth. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 2009. Kitchin, Rob. "Big Data, New Epistemologies and Paradigm Shifts." Big Data & Society 1.1 (2014). Lawrence, Matthew. “Emerging Technology: An Interview with Adam Greenfield. ‘God Forbid That Anyone Stopped to Ask What Harm This Might Do to Us’. Institute for Public Policy Research, 13 Oct. 2017. <https://www.ippr.org/juncture-item/emerging-technology-an-interview-with-adam-greenfield-god-forbid-that-anyone-stopped-to-ask-what-harm-this-might-do-us>. Lupton, Deborah. "Vital Materialism and the Thing-Power of Lively Digital Data." Social Theory, Health and Education. Eds. Deana Leahy, Katie Fitzpatrick, and Jan Wright. London: Routledge, 2018. Nissenbaum, Helen F. Privacy in Context: Technology, Policy, and the Integrity of Social Life. Stanford: Stanford Law Books, 2020. Warner, Michael. "Publics and Counterpublics." Public Culture 14.1 (2002): 49-90.
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Heemsbergen, Luke J., Alexia Maddox, Toija Cinque, Amelia Johns, and Robert Gehl. "Dark." M/C Journal 24, no. 2 (April 27, 2021). http://dx.doi.org/10.5204/mcj.2791.

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This issue of M/C Journal rejects the association of darkness with immorality. In digital communication, the possibilities of darkness are greater than simple fears of what is hidden in online networks. Instead, new work in an emerging field of “dark social” studies’ consider “dark” as holding the potential for autonomy away from the digital visibilities that pervade economic, political, and surveillance logics of the present age. We shall not be afraid of the dark. We start from a technical rather than moral definition of darkness (Gehl), a definition that conceives of dark spaces as having legitimacies and anonymities against structural surveillance. At the same time, breaking away from techno-centric critiques of the dark allows a humanisation of how dark is embodied and performed at individual and structural levels. Other readings of digitally mediated dark (Fisher and Bolter) suggest tensions between exploitative potentials and deep societal reflection, and the ability for a new dark age (Bridle) to allow us to explore unknown potentials. Together these perspectives allow our authors a way to use dark to question and upend the unresting pressure and acceptance of—and hierarchy given to—the light in aesthetics of power and social transformation. While we reject, however, the reduction of “dark” to “immoral” as we are not blind to “bad actors” lurking in hidden spaces (see Potter, forthcoming). Dark algorithms and their encoded biases shape our online lives. Not everyone has the ability to go off grid or create their own dark networks. Colonial settlerism often hides its brutal logics behind discourses of welfare. And some of us are forced to go dark against our will, as in the case of economies or nations being shut out of communication networks. But above all, the tensions produced in darkness, going dark, and acting dark show the normative powers beyond only focusing on the light. Taken as a whole, the articles in this issue explore the tensions between dark and connected, opting in and opting out, and exposure and retreat. They challenge binaries that reduce our vision to the monochromaticism of dark and light. They explain how the concept of “dark” expands opportunities for existence and persistence beyond datafication. They point to moral, ethical, and pragmatic responses of selves and communities seeking to be/belong in/of the dark. The issue starts with a high-stakes contest: what happens when an entire country is forced to go dark? While the articles in this issue were in review, Australian Facebook users were abruptly introduced to a unique form of darkness when, overnight, all news posts were removed from Facebook. Leaver’s feature article responds to tell the story of how Facebook and Google fought the Australian media law, and nobody won. Simply put, the platforms-cum-infrastructures did not want the government to mandate terms of their payments and business to traditional news organisations, so pulled the plug on Australia. As Leaver points out, Facebook’s cull not only made news media go dark, but in the midst of a pandemic and ongoing bushfires, prevented government agencies from posting and sharing government public health information, weather and wind patterns, and some State Emergency Services information. His article positions darkness on the spectrum from visibility to invisibility and focuses on the complex interplays of who is in control of, or has the power over, visibility. Facebook’s power to darken vital voices in society was unprecedented in Australia, a form of “de-platforming at scale” (Crawford). It seemed that Facebook (and as Leaver explains, Google, to a lesser extent) were using Australia to test platform power and legislative response. The results of this experiment, Leaver argues, was not a dawn of a new dark age—without the misinforming-glare of Facebook (see Cinque in this issue)—but confirmatory evidence of the political economy of national media: News Corp and other large traditional media companies received millions from Facebook and Google in exchange for the latter being exempt from the very law in question. Everyone won, except the Australians looking to experiment and explore alternatives in a new darkness. Scared of the dark, politicians accepted a mutually agreed transfer of ad-revenue from Google and Facebook to large and incumbent media organisations; and with that, hope of exploring a world mediated without the glare of digital incumbents was snuffed out. These agreements, of course, found user privacy, algorithmic biases, and other concerns of computational light out of scope. Playing off the themes of status quo of institutionalised social media companies, Cinque examines how social online spaces (SOS) which are governed by logics of surveillance and datafication embodied in the concept of the “gazing elite” (data aggregators including social media), can prompt anxieties for users regarding data privacy. Her work in the issue particularly observes that anxiety for many users is shaped by this manifestation of the “dark” as it relates to the hidden processes of data capture and processing by the mainstream platforms, surveillant digital objects that are incorporated into the Internet of Things, and “dark” or black boxed automated decisions which censor expression and self-representation. Against this way of conceptualising digital darkness, Cinque argues that dark SOS which use VPNs or the Tor browser to evade monitoring are valuable to users precisely because of their ability to evade the politics of visibility and resist the power of the gazing elite. Continuing away from the ubiquitous and all consuming blue glow of Facebook to more esoteric online communities, Maddox and Heemsbergen use their article to expand a critique on the normative computational logics which define the current information age (based on datafication, tracking, prediction, and surveillance of human socialities). They consider how “digging in the shadows” and “tinkering” with cryptocurrencies in the “dark” is shaping alternative futures based on social, equitable, and reciprocal relations. Their work traces cryptocurrencies—a “community generated technology” made by makers, miners and traders on darknets—from its emergence during a time of global economic upheaval, uncertainty and mistrust in centralised financial systems, through to new generations of cryptocurrencies like Dogecoin that, based on lessons from early cryptocurrencies, are mutating and becoming absorbed into larger economic structures. These themes are explored using an innovative analytical framework considering the “construction, disruption, contention, redirection, and finally absorption of emerging techno-potentials into larger structures”. The authors conclude by arguing that experiments in the dark don’t stay in the dark, but are radical potentials that impact and shape larger social forms. Bradfield and Fredericks take a step back from a focus on potentially arcane online cultures to position dark in an explicit provocation to settler politics’ fears and anxieties. They show how being dark in Australia is embodied and everyday. In doing so, they draw back the veil on the uncontested normality of fear of the dark-as-object. Their article’s examples offer a stark demonstration of how for Indigenous peoples, associations of “dark” fear and danger are built into the structural mechanisms that shape and maintain colonial understandings of Indigenous peoples and their bodies as part of larger power structures. They note activist practices that provoke settlers to confront individuals, communities, and politics that proclaim “I’m not afraid of the Dark” (see Cotes in Bradfield and Fredericks). Drawing on a related embodied refusal of poorly situated connotations of the dark, Hardley considers the embodied ways mobile media have been deployed in the urban night and observes that in darkness, and the night, while vision is obscured and other senses are heightened we also encounter enmeshed cultural relationships of darkness and danger. Drawing on the postphenomenological concept of multistability, Hardley frames engagement with mobile media as a particular kind of body-technology relation in which the same technology can be used by different people in multiple ways, as people assign different meanings to the technology. Presenting empirical research on participants’ night-time mobile media practices, Hardley analyses how users co-opt mobile media functionalities to manage their embodied experiences of the dark. The article highlights how mobile media practices of privacy and isolation in urban spaces can be impacted by geographical location and urban darkness, and are also distinctly gendered. Smith explores how conversations flow across social media platforms and messaging technologies and in and out of sight across the public domain. Darkness is the backstage where backchannel conversations take place outside of public view, in private and parochial spaces, and in the shadow spaces where communication crosses between platforms. This narrative threading view of conversation, which Smith frames as a multiplatform accomplishment, responds to the question held by so many researchers and people trying to interpret what people say in public on social media. Is what we see the tip of an iceberg or just a small blip in the ocean? From Smith’s work we can see that so much happens in the dark, beyond the gaze of the onlooker, where conversational practices move by their own logic. Smith argues that drawing on pre-digital conversational analysis techniques associated with ethnomethodology will illuminate the social logics that structure online interaction and increase our understanding of online sociality forces. Set in the context of merging platforms and the “rise of data”, Lee presents issues that undergird contemporary, globally connected media systems. In translating descriptions of complex systems, the article critically discusses the changing relational quality of “the shadow of hierarchy” and “Platform Power”. The governmental use of private platforms, and the influence it has on power and opportunity for government and civil society is prefigured. The “dark” in this work is lucidly presented as a relationality; an expression of differing values, logics, and (techno)socialities. The author finds and highlights the line between traditional notions of "infrastructure" and the workings of contemporary digital platforms which is becoming increasingly indistinct. Lee concludes by showing how the intersection of platforms with public institutions and infrastructures has moulded society’s light into an evolving and emergent shadow of hierarchy over many domains where there are, as always, those that will have the advantage—and those that do not. Finally, Jethani and Fordyce present an understanding of “data provenance” as a metaphor and method both for analysing data as a social and political artefact. The authors point to the term via an inter-disciplinary history as a way to explain a custodial history of objects. They adroitly argue that in our contemporary communication environment that data is more than just a transact-able commodity. Data is vital—being acquired, shared, interpreted and re-used with significant influence and socio-technical affects. As we see in this article, the key methods that rely on the materiality and subjectivity of data extraction and interpretation are not to be ignored. Not least because they come with ethical challenges as the authors make clear. As an illuminating methodology, “data provenance” offers a narrative for data assets themselves (asking what, when, who, how, and why). In the process, the kinds of valences unearthed as being private, secret, or exclusive reveal aspects of the ‘dark’ (and ‘light’) that is the focus of this issue. References Bridle, James. New Dark Age: Technology and the End of the Future. London, UK: Verso Books, 2018. Crawford, Kate (katecrawford). “It happened: Facebook just went off the deep end in Australia. They are blocking *all* news content to Australians, and *no* Australian media can post news. This is what showdowns between states and platforms look like. It's deplatforming at scale.” 18 Feb. 2021. 22 Apr. 2021 <https://twitter.com/katecrawford/status/1362149306170368004>. Fisher, Joshua A., and Jay David Bolter. "Ethical Considerations for AR Experiences at Dark Tourism Sites." 2018 IEEE International Symposium on Mixed and Augmented Reality Adjunct (ISMAR-Adjunct) (2018): 365-69. Gehl, Robert. Weaving the Dark Web: Legitimacy on Freenet, Tor, and I2p. The Information Society Series. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2018. Potter, Martin. “Bad Actors Never Sleep: Content Manipulation on Reddit.” Eds. Toija Cinque, Robert W. Gehl, Luke Heemsbergen, and Alexia Maddox. Continuum Dark Social Special Issue (forthcoming).
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Green, Lelia. "No Taste for Health: How Tastes are Being Manipulated to Favour Foods that are not Conducive to Health and Wellbeing." M/C Journal 17, no. 1 (March 17, 2014). http://dx.doi.org/10.5204/mcj.785.

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Background “The sense of taste,” write Nelson and colleagues in a 2002 issue of Nature, “provides animals with valuable information about the nature and quality of food. Mammals can recognize and respond to a diverse repertoire of chemical entities, including sugars, salts, acids and a wide range of toxic substances” (199). The authors go on to argue that several amino acids—the building blocks of proteins—taste delicious to humans and that “having a taste pathway dedicated to their detection probably had significant evolutionary implications”. They imply, but do not specify, that the evolutionary implications are positive. This may be the case with some amino acids, but contemporary tastes, and changes in them, are far from universally beneficial. Indeed, this article argues that modern food production shapes and distorts human taste with significant implications for health and wellbeing. Take the western taste for fried chipped potatoes, for example. According to Schlosser in Fast Food Nation, “In 1960, the typical American ate eighty-one pounds of fresh potatoes and about four pounds of frozen french fries. Today [2002] the typical American eats about forty-nine pounds of fresh potatoes every year—and more than thirty pounds of frozen french fries” (115). Nine-tenths of these chips are consumed in fast food restaurants which use mass-manufactured potato-based frozen products to provide this major “foodservice item” more quickly and cheaply than the equivalent dish prepared from raw ingredients. These choices, informed by human taste buds, have negative evolutionary implications, as does the apparently long-lasting consumer preference for fried goods cooked in trans-fats. “Numerous foods acquire their elastic properties (i.e., snap, mouth-feel, and hardness) from the colloidal fat crystal network comprised primarily of trans- and saturated fats. These hardstock fats contribute, along with numerous other factors, to the global epidemics related to metabolic syndrome and cardiovascular disease,” argues Michael A. Rogers (747). Policy makers and public health organisations continue to compare notes internationally about the best ways in which to persuade manufacturers and fast food purveyors to reduce the use of these trans-fats in their products (L’Abbé et al.), however, most manufacturers resist. Hank Cardello, a former fast food executive, argues that “many products are designed for ‘high hedonic value’, with carefully balanced combinations of salt, sugar and fat that, experience has shown, induce people to eat more” (quoted, Trivedi 41). Fortunately for the manufactured food industry, salt and sugar also help to preserve food, effectively prolonging the shelf life of pre-prepared and packaged goods. Physiological Factors As Glanz et al. discovered when surveying 2,967 adult Americans, “taste is the most important influence on their food choices, followed by cost” (1118). A person’s taste is to some extent an individual response to food stimuli, but the tongue’s taste buds respond to five basic categories of food: salty, sweet, sour, bitter, and umami. ‘Umami’ is a Japanese word indicating “delicious savoury taste” (Coughlan 11) and it is triggered by the amino acid glutamate. Japanese professor Kikunae Ikeda identified glutamate while investigating the taste of a particular seaweed which he believed was neither sweet, sour, bitter, or salty. When Ikeda combined the glutamate taste essence with sodium he formed the food additive sodium glutamate, which was patented in 1908 and subsequently went into commercial production (Japan Patent Office). Although individual, a person’s taste preferences are by no means fixed. There is ample evidence that people’s tastes are being distorted by modern food marketing practices that process foods to make them increasingly appealing to the average palate. In particular, this industrialisation of food promotes the growth of a snack market driven by salty and sugary foods, popularly constructed as posing a threat to health and wellbeing. “[E]xpanding waistlines [are] fuelled by a boom in fast food and a decline in physical activity” writes Stark, who reports upon the 2008 launch of a study into Australia’s future ‘fat bomb’. As Deborah Lupton notes, such reports were a particular feature of the mid 2000s when: intense concern about the ‘obesity epidemic’ intensified and peaked. Time magazine named 2004 ‘The Year of Obesity’. That year the World Health Organization’s Global Strategy on Diet, Physical Activity and Health was released and the [US] Centers for Disease Control predicted that a poor diet and lack of exercise would soon claim more lives than tobacco-related disease in the United States. (4) The American Heart Association recommends eating no more than 1500mg of salt per day (Hamzelou 11) but salt consumption in the USA averages more than twice this quantity, at 3500mg per day (Bernstein and Willett 1178). In the UK, a sustained campaign and public health-driven engagement with food manufacturers by CASH—Consensus Action on Salt and Health—resulted in a reduction of between 30 and 40 percent of added salt in processed foods between 2001 and 2011, with a knock-on 15 percent decline in the UK population’s salt intake overall. This is the largest reduction achieved by any developed nation (Brinsden et al.). “According to the [UK’s] National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE), this will have reduced [UK] stroke and heart attack deaths by a minimum of 9,000 per year, with a saving in health care costs of at least £1.5bn a year” (MacGregor and Pombo). Whereas there has been some success over the past decade in reducing the amount of salt consumed, in the Western world the consumption of sugar continues to rise, as a graph cited in the New Scientist indicates (O’Callaghan). Regular warnings that sugar is associated with a range of health threats and delivers empty calories devoid of nutrition have failed to halt the increase in sugar consumption. Further, although some sugar is a natural product, processed foods tend to use a form invented in 1957: high-fructose corn syrup (HFCS). “HFCS is a gloopy solution of glucose and fructose” writes O’Callaghan, adding that it is “as sweet as table sugar but has typically been about 30% cheaper”. She cites Serge Ahmed, a French neuroscientist, as arguing that in a world of food sufficiency people do not need to consume more, so they need to be enticed to overeat by making food more pleasurable. Ahmed was part of a team that ran an experiment with cocaine-addicted rats, offering them a mutually exclusive choice between highly-sweetened water and cocaine: Our findings clearly indicate that intense sweetness can surpass cocaine reward, even in drug-sensitized and -addicted individuals. We speculate that the addictive potential of intense sweetness results from an inborn hypersensitivity to sweet tastants. In most mammals, including rats and humans, sweet receptors evolved in ancestral environments poor in sugars and are thus not adapted to high concentrations of sweet tastants. The supranormal stimulation of these receptors by sugar-rich diets, such as those now widely available in modern societies, would generate a supranormal reward signal in the brain, with the potential to override self-control mechanisms and thus lead to addiction. (Lenoir et al.) The Tongue and the Brain One of the implications of this research about the mammalian desire for sugar is that our taste for food is about more than how these foods actually taste in the mouth on our tongues. It is also about the neural response to the food we eat. The taste of French fries thus also includes that “snap, mouth-feel, and hardness” and the “colloidal fat crystal network” (Rogers, “Novel Structuring” 747). While there is no taste receptor for fats, these nutrients have important effects upon the brain. Wang et al. offered rats a highly fatty, but palatable, diet and allowed them to eat freely. 33 percent of the calories in the food were delivered via fat, compared with 21 percent in a normal diet. The animals almost doubled their usual calorific intake, both because the food had a 37 percent increased calorific content and also because the rats ate 47 percent more than was standard (2786). The research team discovered that in as little as three days the rats “had already lost almost all of their ability to respond to leptin” (Martindale 27). Leptin is a hormone that acts on the brain to communicate feelings of fullness, and is thus important in assisting animals to maintain a healthy body weight. The rats had also become insulin resistant. “Severe resistance to the metabolic effects of both leptin and insulin ensued after just 3 days of overfeeding” (Wang et al. 2786). Fast food restaurants typically offer highly palatable, high fat, high sugar, high salt, calorific foods which can deliver 130 percent of a day’s recommended fat intake, and almost a day’s worth of an adult man’s calories, in one meal. The impacts of maintaining such a diet over a comparatively short time-frame have been recorded in documentaries such as Super Size Me (Spurlock). The after effects of what we widely call “junk food” are also evident in rat studies. Neuroscientist Paul Kenny, who like Ahmed was investigating possible similarities between food- and cocaine-addicted rats, allowed his animals unlimited access to both rat ‘junk food’ and healthy food for rats. He then changed their diets. “The rats with unlimited access to junk food essentially went on a hunger strike. ‘It was as if they had become averse to healthy food’, says Kenny. It took two weeks before the animals began eating as much [healthy food] as those in the control group” (quoted, Trivedi 40). Developing a taste for certain food is consequently about much more than how they taste in the mouth; it constitutes an individual’s response to a mixture of taste, hormonal reactions and physiological changes. Choosing Health Glanz et al. conclude their study by commenting that “campaigns attempting to change people’s perception of the importance of nutrition will be interpreted in terms of existing values and beliefs. A more promising strategy might be to stress the good taste of healthful foods” (1126). Interestingly, this is the strategy already adopted by some health-focused cookbooks. I have 66 cookery books in my kitchen. None of ten books sampled from the five spaces in which these books are kept had ‘taste’ as an index entry, but three books had ‘taste’ in their titles: The Higher Taste, Taste of Life, and The Taste of Health. All three books seek to promote healthy eating, and they all date from the mid-1980s. It might be that taste is not mentioned in cookbook indexes because it is a sine qua non: a focus upon taste is so necessary and fundamental to a cookbook that it goes without saying. Yet, as the physiological evidence makes clear, what we find palatable is highly mutable, varying between people, and capable of changing significantly in comparatively short periods of time. The good news from the research studies is that the changes wrought by high salt, high sugar, high fat diets need not be permanent. Luciano Rossetti, one of the authors on Wang et al’s paper, told Martindale that the physiological changes are reversible, but added a note of caution: “the fatter a person becomes the more resistant they will be to the effects of leptin and the harder it is to reverse those effects” (27). Morgan Spurlock’s experience also indicates this. In his case it took the actor/director 14 months to lose the 11.1 kg (13 percent of his body mass) that he gained in the 30 days of his fast-food-only experiment. Trivedi was more fortunate, stating that, “After two weeks of going cold turkey, I can report I have successfully kicked my ice cream habit” (41). A reader’s letter in response to Trivedi’s article echoes this observation. She writes that “the best way to stop the craving was to switch to a diet of vegetables, seeds, nuts and fruits with a small amount of fish”, adding that “cravings stopped in just a week or two, and the diet was so effective that I no longer crave junk food even when it is in front of me” (Mackeown). Popular culture indicates a range of alternative ways to resist food manufacturers. In the West, there is a growing emphasis on organic farming methods and produce (Guthman), on sl called Urban Agriculture in the inner cities (Mason and Knowd), on farmers’ markets, where consumers can meet the producers of the food they eat (Guthrie et al.), and on the work of advocates of ‘real’ food, such as Jamie Oliver (Warrin). Food and wine festivals promote gourmet tourism along with an emphasis upon the quality of the food consumed, and consumption as a peak experience (Hall and Sharples), while environmental perspectives prompt awareness of ‘food miles’ (Weber and Matthews), fair trade (Getz and Shreck) and of land degradation, animal suffering, and the inequitable use of resources in the creation of the everyday Western diet (Dare, Costello and Green). The burgeoning of these different approaches has helped to stimulate a commensurate growth in relevant disciplinary fields such as Food Studies (Wessell and Brien). One thing that all these new ways of looking at food and taste have in common is that they are options for people who feel they have the right to choose what and when to eat; and to consume the tastes they prefer. This is not true of all groups of people in all countries. Hiding behind the public health campaigns that encourage people to exercise and eat fresh fruit and vegetables are the hidden “social determinants of health: The conditions in which people are born, grow, live, work and age, including the health system” (WHO 45). As the definitions explain, it is the “social determinants of health [that] are mostly responsible for health iniquities” with evidence from all countries around the world demonstrating that “in general, the lower an individual’s socioeconomic position, the worse his or her health” (WHO 45). For the comparatively disadvantaged, it may not be the taste of fast food that attracts them but the combination of price and convenience. If there is no ready access to cooking facilities, or safe food storage, or if a caregiver is simply too time-poor to plan and prepare meals for a family, junk food becomes a sensible choice and its palatability an added bonus. For those with the education, desire, and opportunity to break free of the taste for salty and sugary fats, however, there are a range of strategies to achieve this. There is a persuasive array of evidence that embracing a plant-based diet confers a multitude of health benefits for the individual, for the planet and for the animals whose lives and welfare would otherwise be sacrificed to feed us (Green, Costello and Dare). Such a choice does involve losing the taste for foods which make up the lion’s share of the Western diet, but any sense of deprivation only lasts for a short time. The fact is that our sense of taste responds to the stimuli offered. It may be that, notwithstanding the desires of Jamie Oliver and the like, a particular child never will never get to like broccoli, but it is also the case that broccoli tastes differently to me, seven years after becoming a vegan, than it ever did in the years in which I was omnivorous. When people tell me that they would love to adopt a plant-based diet but could not possibly give up cheese, it is difficult to reassure them that the pleasure they get now from that specific cocktail of salty fats will be more than compensated for by the sheer exhilaration of eating crisp, fresh fruits and vegetables in the future. Conclusion For decades, the mass market food industry has tweaked their products to make them hyper-palatable and difficult to resist. They do this through marketing experiments and consumer behaviour research, schooling taste buds and brains to anticipate and relish specific cocktails of sweet fats (cakes, biscuits, chocolate, ice cream) and salty fats (chips, hamburgers, cheese, salted nuts). They add ingredients to make these products stimulate taste buds more effectively, while also producing cheaper items with longer life on the shelves, reducing spoilage and the complexity of storage for retailers. Consumers are trained to like the tastes of these foods. Bitter, sour, and umami receptors are comparatively under-stimulated, with sweet, salty, and fat-based tastes favoured in their place. Western societies pay the price for this learned preference in high blood pressure, high cholesterol, diabetes, and obesity. Public health advocate Bruce Neal and colleagues, working to reduce added salt in processed foods, note that the food and manufacturing industries can now provide most of the calories that the world needs to survive. “The challenge now”, they argue, “is to have these same industries provide foods that support long and healthy adult lives. And in this regard there remains a very considerable way to go”. If the public were to believe that their sense of taste is mutable and has been distorted for corporate and industrial gain, and if they were to demand greater access to natural foods in their unprocessed state, then that journey towards a healthier future might be far less protracted than these and many other researchers seem to believe. References Bernstein, Adam, and Walter Willett. “Trends in 24-Hr Sodium Excretion in the United States, 1957–2003: A Systematic Review.” American Journal of Clinical Nutrition 92 (2010): 1172–1180. Bhaktivedanta Book Trust. 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Hall, Colin Michael, and Liz Sharples. Eds. Food and Wine Festivals and Events Around the World: Development, Management and Markets. Oxford, UK: Routledge, 2008. Hamzelou, Jessica. “Taste Bud Trickery Needed to Cut Salt Intake.” New Scientist 2799 (2011): 11. Japan Patent Office. History of Industrial Property Rights, Ten Japanese Great Inventors: Kikunae Ikeda: Sodium Glutamate. Tokyo: Japan Patent Office, 2002. L’Abbé, Mary R., S. Stender, C. M. Skeaff, Ghafoorunissa, & M. Tavella. “Approaches to Removing Trans Fats from the Food Supply in Industrialized and Developing Countries.” European Journal of Clinical Nutrition 63 (2009): S50–S67. Lenoir, Magalie, Fuschia Serre, Lauriane Cantin, & Serge H. Ahmed. “Intense Sweetness Surpasses Cocaine Reward.” PLOS One (2007). 2 Feb. 2014 ‹http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0000698›. Lupton, Deborah. Fat. Oxford, UK: Routledge, 2013. MacGregor, Graham, and Sonia Pombo. “The Amount of Hidden Sugar in Your Diet Might Shock You.” The Conversation 9 January (2014). 2 Feb. 2014 ‹http://theconversation.com/the-amount-of-hidden-sugar-in-your-diet-might-shock-you-21867›. Mackeown, Elizabeth. “Cold Turkey?” [Letter]. New Scientist 2787 (2010): 31. Martindale, Diane. “Burgers on the Brain.” New Scientist 2380 (2003): 26–29. Mason, David, and Ian Knowd. “The Emergence of Urban Agriculture: Sydney, Australia.” The International Journal of Agricultural Sustainability 8.1–2 (2010): 62–71. Neal, Bruce, Jacqui Webster, and Sebastien Czernichow. “Sanguine About Salt Reduction.” European Journal of Preventative Cardiology 19.6 (2011): 1324–1325. Nelson, Greg, Jayaram Chandrashekar, Mark A. Hoon, Luxin Feng, Grace Zhao, Nicholas J. P. Ryba, & Charles S. Zuker. “An Amino-Acid Taste Receptor.” Nature 416 (2002): 199–202. O’Callaghan, Tiffany. “Sugar on Trial: What You Really Need to Know.” New Scientist 2954 (2011): 34–39. Rogers, Jenny. Ed. The Taste of Health: The BBC Guide to Healthy Cooking. London, UK: British Broadcasting Corporation, 1985. Rogers, Michael A. “Novel Structuring Strategies for Unsaturated Fats—Meeting the Zero-Trans, Zero-Saturated Fat Challenge: A Review.” Food Research International 42.7 August (2009): 747–753. Schlosser, Eric. Fast Food Nation. London, UK: Penguin, 2002. Super Size Me. Dir. Morgan Spurlock. Samuel Goldwyn Films, 2004. Stafford, Julie. Taste of Life. Richmond, Vic: Greenhouse Publications Ltd, 1983. Stark, Jill. “Australia Now World’s Fattest Nation.” The Age 20 June (2008). 2 Feb. 2014 ‹http://www.theage.com.au/news/health/australia-worlds-fattest-nation/2008/06/19/1213770886872.html›. Trivedi, Bijal. “Junkie Food: Tastes That Your Brain Cannot Resist.” New Scientist 2776 (2010): 38–41. Wang, Jiali, Silvana Obici, Kimyata Morgan, Nir Barzilai, Zhaohui Feng, & Luciano Rossetti. “Overfeeding Rapidly Increases Leptin and Insulin Resistance.” Diabetes 50.12 (2001): 2786–2791. Warin, Megan. “Foucault’s Progeny: Jamie Oliver and the Art of Governing Obesity.” Social Theory & Health 9.1 (2011): 24–40. Weber, Christopher L., and H. Scott Matthews. “Food-miles and the Relative Climate Impacts of Food Choices in the United States.” Environmental Science & Technology 42.10 (2008): 3508–3513. Wessell, Adele, and Donna Lee Brien. Eds. Rewriting the Menu: the Cultural Dynamics of Contemporary Food Choices. Special Issue 9, TEXT: Journal of Writing and Writing Programs October 2010. World Health Organisation. Closing the Gap: Policy into Practice on Social Determinants of Health [Discussion Paper]. Rio de Janeiro, Brazil: World Conference on Social Determinants of Health, World Health Organisation, 19–21 October 2011.
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Ankeny, Rachel A., Michelle Phillipov, and Heather J. Bray. "Celebrity Chefs and New Meat Consumption Norms: Seeking Questions, Not Answers." M/C Journal 22, no. 2 (April 24, 2019). http://dx.doi.org/10.5204/mcj.1514.

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Abstract:
IntroductionWe are increasingly being told to make ethical food choices, often by high-profile chefs advocating what they view as ethical consumption habits. Some actively promote vegetarian or vegan diets, with a growing number of high-profile restaurants featuring only or mainly plant-based meals. However, what makes food or restaurant menus ethical is not assessed by most of us using one standardised definition. Our food values differ based on our outlooks, past experiences, and perhaps most importantly, how we balance various trade-offs inherent in making food choices under different circumstances and in diverse contexts.Restaurants can face difficulties when trying to balance ethical considerations. For instance, is it inconsistent to promote foraging, seasonality, local products, and plant-based eating, yet also serve meat and other animal-derived protein products on the same menu? For example, Danish chef Rene Redzepi, co-owner of the Michelin-starred restaurant Noma in Copenhagen who recently had an extended stay in Australia (Redzepi), recently offered a purely vegetarian menu featuring foraged native ingredients. However, Redzepi followed this with a meat-based menu including teal, moose leg, reindeer tongue, and wild duck brain. These changes make clear that although Redzepi was still conflicted about serving animal products (Ankeny and Bray), he thinks that options for ethical eating are not limited to plants and that it is important to utilise available, and especially neglected, resources in novel ways.In this article, we argue that celebrity and other high-profile chefs have roles to play in conversations about the emerging range of new meat consumption norms, which might include humanely produced meat, wild meat, or other considerations. However, we contend that restaurants and popular media may be limited spaces in which to engage consumers in these conversations. Ultimately, celebrity and high-profile chefs can help us not only to reflect on our eating habits, but also to engage us in ways that help us to ask the right questions rather than encouraging reliance on set answers from them or other supposed experts.Chefs and New Meat NormsChefs are now key voices in the politics of lifestyle, shaping both the grammars and the practices of ethical consumption, which is further reinforced by the increasing mediatisation of food and food politics (Phillipov, Media). Contemporary trends toward ethical consumption have been much critiqued; nevertheless, ethical consumption has become a dominant means through which individuals within contemporary marketised, neoliberal economies are able to invest lifestyle choices with ethical, social, and civic meanings (Barnett et al.; Lewis and Potter). While vegetarianism was once considered a central pillar of ethical diets, the rise of individualized and diverse approaches to food and food politics has seen meat (at least in its “ethical” form) not only remain firmly on the menu, but also become a powerful symbol of “good” politics, taste, and desirable lifestyles (Pilgrim 112).Chefs’ involvement in promoting ethical meat initially began within restaurants catering for an elite foodie clientele. The details provided about meat producers and production methods on the menu of Alice Waters’ Californian restaurant Chez Panisse and her cookbooks (Waters), or the focus by Fergus Henderson on “nose to tail” eating at his London restaurant St. John (Henderson) has led many to cite them as among the originators of the ethical meat movement. But the increasing mediatisation of food and the emergence of chefs as celebrity brands with their own TV shows, cookbooks, YouTube channels, websites, sponsorship deals, and myriad other media appearances has allowed ethical meat to move out of elite restaurants and into more quotidian domestic spaces. High profile UK and US exposés including “campaigning culinary documentaries” fronted by celebrity chefs (Bell, Hollows, and Jones 179), along with the work of popular food writers such as Michael Pollan, have been instrumental in the mainstreaming of diverse new meat norms.The horrifying depictions of intensive chicken, beef, and pork farming in these exposés have contributed to greater public awareness of, and concern about, industrialised meat production. However, the poor welfare conditions of animals raised in battery cages and concentrated animal feeding operations often are presented not as motivations to eschew meat entirely, but instead as reasons to opt for more ethical alternatives. For instance, Hugh’s Chicken Run, Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall’s 2008 television campaign for chicken welfare, resulted in making more free-range products available in British supermarkets (Johnston). More recently, there have been significant expansions in markets for variously defined categories such as grass-fed, free-range, organic, welfare-certified, humane, and/or environmentally friendly meat products in Australia and elsewhere, thanks in part to increased media attention to animal welfare issues (Arcari 169).As media has emerged as a “fundamental component of contemporary foodscapes, how they ‘perform’ and function, and the socio-material means by which they are produced” (Johnston and Goodman 205), ethical meat has increasingly been employed as a strategic resource in mainstream media and marketing. Ethical meat, for example, has been a key pillar in the contemporary rebranding of both of Australia’s major supermarkets (Lewis and Huber 289). Through partnerships that draw upon the “ethical capital” (290) of celebrity chefs including Jamie Oliver and Curtis Stone, and collaborations with animal welfare organisations such as the RSPCA, ethical meat has become central to supermarket advertising campaigns in recent years. Such campaigns have been especially successful for Coles supermarkets, which controls almost 30% of Australia’s highly concentrated grocery market (Roy Morgan). The retailer’s long-term sponsorship of MasterChef Australia (Network 10, 2009–)—a show that presents meat (or, as they term it, “protein”) as an essential component of most dishes and which regularly rates in the top 10 of Australian television programs (OzTAM)—further helps to emphasise that the solution to ethical problems is not to avoid meat, but to choose (Coles’) “better” meat (see fig. 1). This is promoted on the basis of a combination of ethics, price, and taste, and, remarkably, is able to deliver “better welfare at no extra cost to you” (Parker, Carey, and Scrinis 209). In short, chefs are making major contributions to awareness of ethical norms relating to meat consumption in a variety of settings. Figure 1: An example of a current meat product on the shelf at a major Australian retailer with packaging that makes a range of claims relating to production practices and quality, among other attributes. (Emily Buddle)“The Good Life”Lifestyle media has been a key site through which meat eating is normalised and recuperated into “ethical” frameworks (Arcari 169). Utopian visions of small-scale animal agriculture are a key feature of popular texts from the River Cottage Australia (Foxtel Networks, 2013–) series to Gourmet Farmer (SBS, 2010–) and Paddock to Plate (Foxtel Networks, 2013–). These programs are typically set in bucolic rural surrounds and centre on the host’s “escape” from the city to a more fulfilling, happier existence in the country (Phillipov, “Escaping”). Rural self-sufficiency is frequently framed as the solution to urban consumers’ alienation from the sources of their food, and a means of taking responsibility for the food they eat. The opening credits of Gourmet Farmer, for instance, outline host Matthew Evans’s quest to “know and trust what [he] eat[s]”, either by growing the food himself or being “no more than one degree of separation from the person who does”.This sense of connection to one’s food is central to how these programs make meat consumption ethical. Indeed, the production of animals for food reinforces particular notions of “the good life” in which the happiness of the animal is closely aligned with the happiness of its human producer. While texts sometimes show food animals’ full lifecycle from birth to slaughter, lifestyle media focuses mainly on their happy existence while still alive. Evans gives his pigs names that foreground their destiny as food (e.g., Prosciutto and Cassoulet), but he also pampers them as though they are pets, feeding them cherries and apples, and scratching them behind the ears much like he would his dog. These bucolic televisual images serve to anchor the programs’ many “spin-off” media texts, including blog posts, cookbooks (e.g. Evans), and endorsements, that instruct urban audiences who do not have the luxury of raising their own meat on how to source ethical alternatives. They also emphasise the deliciousness of meat raised and killed in humane, “natural” conditions, as opposed to those subjected to more intensive, industrialised production systems.Some argue that the notion of “ethical meat” merely masks the realities of humans’ domination over animals (Arcari). However the transition from “happy animals” to “happy meat” (Pilgrim 123) has been key to lifestyle media’s recuperation of (certain kinds of) meat production as a “humane, benevolent and wholly ‘natural’ process” (Parry 381), which helps to morally absolve the chefs who promote it, and by extension, their audiences.The Good DeathMeat consumption has been theorised to be based on the invisibility of the lives and deaths of animals—what has been termed the “absent referent” by feminist philosopher Carol J. Adams (14; see also Fiddes). This line of argument holds that slaughter and other practices that may raise moral concerns are actively hidden from view, and that animals are “made absent” within food consumption practices (Evans and Miele 298). Few meat consumers, at least those in Western countries, have seen animal slaughter first hand, and a disconnect between meat and animal is actively maintained through current retail practices (such as pre-packaged meat with few identifying cues), as well as in our language use, at least in English where most of the names of the meat are different to those of the animal (Plous; Croney) and where euphemisms such as “harvesting” abound (Abrams, Zimbres, and Carr). In many locales, including Australia, there is squeamishness about talking about slaughter and the processes by which “animal” becomes “meat” which in turn prevents open discussion about the origins of meat (Bray et al., “Conversation”).Campaigning culinary documentaries by chefs, including Matthew Evans’s recent For the Love of Meat (SBS, 2016), aim to reconnect animal and meat in order to critique modern meat production methods. In addition, Gourmet Farmer and River Cottage Australia both feature depictions of hunting (skinning and butchering of the animals is shown but viewers are rarely exposed to the kill itself) and emphasise the use of highly skilled hunters in order to bring about a quick death. By highlighting not only a good life but also what constitutes a “good death”, celebrity chefs and others are arguably generating discussion about what makes meat ethical by emphasizing that the quality of death is as important as the quality of life. In many of these programs, the emphasis is on more boutique or small-scale production systems which typically produce meat products that are higher priced and more difficult to source.Given that such products are likely out of reach for many potential consumers because of price point, convenience, or both, perhaps unsurprisingly the emphasis in many of these programs is on the consumer rather than the consumed. Hence these programs tend to be more about constructing an “ethical meat consumer”, defined implicitly as someone who acknowledges the meat/animal connection through conscious exposure to the realities of animal slaughter (for example, by watching a documentary), by “meeting your meat” such as in the BBC series Kill It, Cook It, Eat It (BBC, 2007; Evans and Miele), or by actively participating in the slaughter process as Evans did with his own chickens on Gourmet Farmer. As anthropologist Catie Gressier notes in her study of wild meat consumers in Australia, “hunting meat is seen as more noble than purchasing it, while wild meat is seen as preferable to farmed” (Gressier 58). Gressier also describes how one of her participants viewed hunting (and eating locally) as preferable to veganism because of the “animal violence that is the inevitable outcome of mass-crop agriculture” (58). However some scholars have argued that highly graphic depictions of slaughter in the popular media are becoming more commonplace as a masculinised type of “gastro-snuff” (a term referring to food-related visual depictions of brutal killings) (Parry 382). These types of efforts thus may fail to create dialogue about what constitutes ethical meat or even an ethical meat consumer, and may well reinforce more traditional ideas about human/non-human hierarchies.In contrast to coverage in popular media, detailed descriptions of commercial slaughter, in particular pre-slaughter (lairage) conditions, are yet to make it on to restaurant menus, despite the connections between meat quality and pre-slaughter conditions being well recognised even by consumers (Evans and Miele). Commercial slaughter conditions are one of the reasons that hunting is framed as more ethical than “ethically farmed” animals. As an Internet post, quoted in Adams (“Redneck” 50), puts it: “Hunting? A creature is peacefully in its own domain, it is shot. How is that worse than being carried for hours in a truck, being forced into a crush, hearing the bellows of other creatures, being physically restrained at the peak of terror, then culled?” Although determining precise rates of consumption of wild meat is methodologically difficult (Conservation Visions 28), available rates of hunting together with limited consumption data indicate that Australians currently eat less game or wild-caught meat per capita than those in Europe or North America. However, there is a sector of the community in Australia who pursue hunting as part of their ethical food habits (Bray et al., “Ferals”) with the largest proportion of wild-meat consumers being those who hunted it themselves (Gressier).In many cases, descriptions of animal lives (using descriptors such as “free range” or “grass fed”) serve implicitly as proxies for assurances that the animals’ deaths also have been good. One exception is the increasing awareness of the use of halal slaughter methods in part due to more transparent labelling, despite limited public awareness about the nature of these methods, particularly in the Australian context where they in fact comply with standard animal welfare requirements such as pre-slaughter stunning (Bergeauld-Blackler). Detailed descriptions of post-mortem conditions (e.g., aging conditions and time) are more common on restaurant menus, although arguably these no longer draw attention to the connections between the animal and the meat, and instead focus on the meat itself, its flavour and other physical qualities, rather than on ethical attributes.Thus, although it would seem obvious that ethical meat consumption should involve considerations about slaughter conditions or what makes a “good death”, most efforts have focused on encouraging people to make better and more reflexive consumer choices, rather than promoting deeper engagement with slaughter processes, perhaps underscoring that this domain may still represent one of the final food taboos. Although it might seem to be counterintuitive that wild or hunted meat could be viewed as an ethical food choice, particularly if vegetarianism or veganism is taken as the main point of comparison, these trends point toward the complexities inherent in food choice and the inevitable trade-offs in values that occur in these processes.Problems with Promoting Ethical Meat Norms: Ways ForwardIt is undeniable that many people are reflecting on their consumption habits in order to pursue decisions that better reflect their values. Attempting to be an “ethical meat consumer” clearly fits within these broader trends. However there are a number of problems associated with current approaches to ethical meat consumption, and these raise questions as to whether such efforts are likely to result in broader changes. First, it is not clear that restaurants are the most appropriate spaces for people to engage with ethical considerations, including those relating to meat consumption. Many people seek to try something new, or to treat themselves when dining out, but these behaviours do not necessarily translate into changes in everyday eating habits. Reasons are varied but include that people cannot reproduce the same types of dishes or concepts at home as what they get at restaurants (or see on TV shows for that matter), and that many products may be out of an acceptable price range or inconvenient for daily consumption. Others want to escape from ethical decisions when dining out by relying on those preparing the food to do the work for them, and thus sometimes simply consume without necessarily investigating every detail relating to its production, preparation, and so on.Perhaps more importantly, many are sceptical about the promotion of various meat-related values by high-profile or celebrity chefs, raising questions about whether ethical categories are merely packaging or window dressing designed to sell products, or if they are truly tied to deeper values and better products. Such concerns are reinforced by tendencies to emphasize one type of meat product—say free-range, grass-fed, or humanely-raised—as better than all others, or even as the only right choice, and thus can at times seem to be elitist in their approaches, since they emphasize that only certain (often extremely expensive boutique products) count as ethical. As scholars have noted about the classed nature of many of these consumption practices (see, for example, Bell and Hollows; Naccarato and LeBesco), these types of value judgments are likely to be alienating to many people, and most importantly will not foster deeper reflections on our consumption habits.However it is clear that celebrity and other high-profile chefs do get the public’s attention, and thus can play important roles in shaping conversations about fostering more ethical ways of eating, including meat consumption. We contend that it is important not to emphasize only one right way of eating, but to actively consider the various trade-offs that we make when choosing what to buy, prepare, and consume. Promoting answers by nominating certain meat products or production methods as always better in all circumstances, no matter how these might be in conflict with other values, such as preferences for local, organic, alignment with cultural or religious values, sustainable, fair trade, and so on, is not likely to result in meaningful public engagement. Critiques of Pollan and other food activists make similar points about the potential elitism and hence limited value of promoting narrow forms of ethical eating (e.g., Guthman et al.; Zimmerman).In addition, such food categories often serve as proxies for deeper values, but not necessarily for the same values for all of us. Simply relying on categories or types of products thus fails to allow engagement with the underlying rationale for various choices. More generally, promoting individual consumer decision-making and market demand as the keys to ethical consumption overlooks the broader systemic issues that limit our choices, and in turn limits attention to changes that might be made in that system (e.g., Lavin; Guthman et al.; DeLind; Ankeny).Thus instead of promoting one right way of eating meat, or a narrow number of acceptable choices, celebrities, chefs, and restauranteurs should consider how they can help to promote dialogue and the posing of the right types of questions to consumers and diners, including about trade-offs inherent in meat consumption and choices of other products, ethical and otherwise. They also should use their roles as change-makers to consider how they might influence the broader food system, but without promoting a single right way of eating. Parallel to recent calls from scientists for a new planetary health diet which promotes increased vegetable consumption and reduced meat consumption for environmental, health, and other reasons, by providing a range of trade-offs to support a diet that that allows individuals to make personalised choices (Willett et al.), hybrid approaches to ethical eating are more likely to have influence on consumers and in turn on changing eating habits.ReferencesAbrams, Katie M., Thais Zimbres, and Chad Carr. “Communicating Sensitive Scientific Issues: The Interplay between Values, Attitudes, and Euphemisms in Communicating Livestock Slaughter.” Science Communication 37 (2015): 485–505.Adams, Carol. The Sexual Politics of Meat: A Feminist Vegetarian Critical Theory. London: Continuum, 2000.Adams, Michael. “‘Redneck, Barbaric, Cashed Up Bogan? I Don’t Think So’: Hunting and Nature in Australia.” Environmental Humanities 2 (2013): 43–56.Ankeny, Rachel A. “From Food Consumers to Food Citizens: Reconceptualising Environmentally-Conscious Food Decision-Making.” Food Justice, the Environment, and Climate Change. Eds. Erinn Gilson, and Sarah Kenehan. New York: Routledge, 2019. 267–79.Ankeny, Rachel A., and Heather J. Bray. “Red Meat and Imported Wine: Why Ethical Eating Often Stops at the Restaurant Door.” The Conversation 8 Jan. 2019. 28 Mar. 2019 <https://theconversation.com/red-meat-and-imported-wine-why-ethical-eating-often-stops-at-the-restaurant-door-106926>.Arcari, Paula. “The Ethical Masquerade: (Un)masking Mechanisms of Power behind ‘Ethical’ Meat.” Alternative Food Politics: From the Margins to the Mainstream. Eds. Michelle Phillipov and Katherine Kirkwood. London: Routledge, 2019. 169–89.Barnett, Clive, Nick Clarke, Paul Cloke, and Alice Malpass. “The Political Ethics of Consumerism.” Consumer Policy Review 15 (2005): 45–51.Bell, David, and Joanne Hollows. “From River Cottage to Chicken Run: Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall and the Class Politics of Ethical Consumption.” Celebrity Studies 2 (2011): 178–91.———, Joanne Hollows, and Steven Jones. “Campaigning Culinary Documentaries and the Responsibilization of Food Crises.” Geoforum 84 (2017): 179–87.Bergeauld-Blackler, Florence. “The Halal Certification Market in Europe and the World: A First Panorama.” Halal Matters: Islam, Politics and Markets in Global Perspective. Eds. Florence Bergeauld-Blackler, Johan Fischer, and John Lever. London: Routledge, 2016. 105–26.Bray, Heather J., Sebastian Konyn, Yvette Wijnandts, and Rachel Ankeny. “Ferals or Food? Does Hunting Have a Role in Ethical Food Consumption in Australia?” Wild Animals and Leisure: Rights and Wellbeing. Eds. Neill Carr and Jeanette Young. London: Routledge, 2018. 210–24.———, Sofia C. Zambrano, Anna Chur-Hansen, and Rachel A. Ankeny. “Not Appropriate Dinner Table Conversation? Talking to Children about Meat Production.” Appetite 100 (2016): 1–9.Conservation Visions. State of Knowledge Report: Consumption Patterns of Wild Protein in North America. A Literature Review in Support of the Wild Harvest Initiative. St John’s: Conservation Visions, April 2016.Croney, C.C. “The Ethics of Semantics: Do We Clarify or Obfuscate Reality to Influence Perceptions of Farm Animal Production?” Poultry Science 87 (2008): 387–91.DeLind, Laura B. “Are Local Food and the Local Food Movement Taking Us Where We Want to Go? Or Are We Hitching Our Wagons to the Wrong Stars?” Agriculture and Human Values 28 (2011): 273–83.Evans, Adrian B., and Mara Miele. “Between Food and Flesh: How Animals Are Made to Matter (and Not Matter) within Food Consumption Practices.” Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 30 (2012): 298–314.Evans, Matthew. For the Love of Meat. Richmond: Hardie Grant Books, 2016.Fiddes, Nick. Meat: A Natural Symbol. London: Routledge, 1991.Gressier, Catie. “Going Feral: Wild Meat Consumption and the Uncanny in Melbourne, Australia.” The Australian Journal of Anthropology 27 (2016): 49–65.Guthman, Julie, et al. “Can’t Stomach It: How Michael Pollan et al. Made Me Want to Eat Cheetos.” Gastronomica 7 (2007): 75–9.Henderson, Fergus. Nose to Tail Eating: A Kind of British Cooking. London: Bloomsbury, 2004 (1999).Johnston, Ian. “Campaign Leads to Free Range Chicken Shortage.” The Telegraph 13 Apr. 2008. 20 Mar. 2019 <https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1584952/Campaign-leads-to-free-range-chicken-shortage.html>.Johnston, Josée, and Michael K. Goodman. “Spectacular Foodscapes: Food Celebrities and the Politics of Lifestyle Mediation in an Age of Inequality.” Food, Culture and Society 18 (2015): 205–22.Lavin, Chad. Eating Anxiety: The Perils of Food Politics. Minneapolis: U of Minnesota Press, 2013.Lewis, Tania, and Alison Huber. “A Revolution in an Eggcup? Supermarket Wars, Celebrity Chefs and Ethical Consumption.” Food, Culture and Society 18 (2015): 289–307.———, and Emily Potter. “Introducing Ethical Consumption.” Ethical Consumption: A Critical Introduction. Eds. Tania Lewis and Emily Potter. London: Routledge, 2011. 3–24.Naccarato, Peter, and Kathleen LeBesco. Culinary Capital. London: Bloomsbury, 2012.OzTAM. “Consolidated Metropolitan Top 20 Programs: Week 22 2018, 27/05/2018–02/06/2018.” OzTAM 20 Mar. 2019 <https://oztam.com.au/documents/2018/OzTAM-20180527-EMetFTARankSumCons.pdf>.Parker, Christine, Rachel Carey, and Gyorgy Scrinis. “The Consumer Labelling Turn in Farmed Animal Welfare Politics: From the Margins of Animal Advocacy to Mainstream Supermarket Shelves.” Alternative Food Politics: From the Margins to the Mainstream. Eds. Michelle Phillipov and Katherine Kirkwood. London: Routledge, 2019. 193–215.Parry, Jovian. “The New Visibility of Slaughter in Popular Gastronomy.” MA thesis. U of Canterbury, 2010.Phillipov, Michelle. “Escaping to the Country: Media, Nostalgia, and the New Food Industries.” Popular Communication 14 (2016): 111–22.———. Media and Food Industries: The New Politics of Food. Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, 2017.Pilgrim, Karyn. “‘Happy Cows’, ‘Happy Beef’: A Critique of the Rationales for Ethical Meat.” Environmental Studies 3 (2013): 111–27.Plous, S.S. “Psychological Mechanisms in the Human Use of Animals.” Journal of Social Issues 49 (1993): 11–52.Pollan, Michael. The Omnivore’s Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals. London: Penguin, 2006.Redzepi, Rene. “Redzepi on Redzepi: The Noma Australia Exit Interview.” Gourmet Traveller 30 Mar. 2016. 20 Mar. 2019 <https://www.gourmettraveller.com.au/news/restaurant-news/redzepi-on-redzepi-the-noma-australia-exit-interview-3702>.Roy Morgan. “Woolworths Increases Lead in $100b+ Grocery War.” Roy Morgan 23 Mar. 2018. 20 Mar. 2019 <http://www.roymorgan.com/findings/7537-woolworths-increases-lead-in-$100b-plus-grocery-war-201803230113>.Waters, Alice. The Chez Panisse Menu Cookbook. London: Chatto and Windus / The Hogarth Press, 1982.———. “The Farm-Restaurant Connection.” A Slice of Life: Contemporary Writers on Food. Ed. Bonnie Marranca. Woodstock: Overlook Duckworth, 2003. 328–36.Willett, Walter, et al. “Food in the Anthropocene: The EAT–Lancet Commission on Healthy Diets from Sustainable Food Systems.” The Lancet 393 (2019): 447–92.Zimmerman, Heidi. “Caring for the Middle Class Soul: Ambivalence, Ethical Eating and the Michael Pollan Phenomenon.” Food, Culture and Society 18 (2013): 31–50.
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Whiting, Sam, Tully Barnett, and Justin O'Connor. "‘Creative City’ R.I.P.?" M/C Journal 25, no. 3 (June 29, 2022). http://dx.doi.org/10.5204/mcj.2901.

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Abstract:
The Creative City Unlike the terms ‘creative industries’, which nobody ever quite understood, and ‘creative class’, about which actual ‘creatives’ were always ambiguous, the ‘creative city’ has been an incredibly successful global policy meme, to which cities across the world continue to aspire. From the early 1990s, faced with de-industrialisation, rising unemployment, and the increased global mobility of capital, professionals, and consumer-tourists, the ‘creative city’ became an essential part of the new urban imaginary for politicians, planners, local growth coalitions, and advocates and practitioners in art and culture. In the later 1980s and early 1990s, much of this policy and practice work had progressive intent; as decaying parts of the city acquired new artistic and cultural uses, and neo-bohemian lifestyles and pop-cultural aspirations seemed to provide the grounds for future-oriented urban identities. Whilst investment in iconic cultural buildings and refurbished heritage sites repositioned cities as destinations for global tourism and finance (Peck et al.), new forms of creative production would provide employment and catalyse the wider urban economy. The creative city was to be a benign economy of innovative small businesses, working in projects and acting in symbiosis with the transformed urban landscape of the city (Pratt; Scott). If at first such a “creativity fix” (Peck, Creativity) was permeable to new actors and radical visions, it rapidly became a codified “cookie cutter” approach (Oakley), primarily concerned with revalorising decaying urban built stock as ‘vibrant’ spaces for upmarket urban consumption. This has stretched from visual arts to popular music (Bennett; O’Connor Music). The “creative imaginary” of entrepreneurial subjects—working in flat networks clustered around zones or milieux of intensified creativity (O’Connor and Shaw; O’Connor and Gu)—was quickly localised in spaces of real estate-led consumption, with production corralled into the ‘managed workspace’ whose image value—a shiny ‘creative hub’—was usually worth far more than any actual production taking place inside of it (O’Connor, Art). From the turn of the millennium, this global “fast policy” flowed through elite circuits of ‘policy transfer’ (Peck, Scale): unevenly distributed nodes assembling politicians, public administrators, planners, ‘cool’ developers, cultural consultants, branded arts institutions, and creative ‘thought-leaders’ (De Beukelaer and O’Connor). Global agencies such as UNESCO, through its Creative Cities Network, or consultancies such as Charles Landry and BOP, have attempted to frame this in a benign narrative of ‘hands across the ocean’ cultural globalisation. But we now know from two decades of creative economy proselytising that culture is a “driver and enabler” of development, not a normative standard against which it might be judged. And however inclusive ‘culture’ is made to sound, the creative city agenda remains firmly in the hands of local elites attempting to harness global flows of finance, media images, tourists, and ‘creatives’ for local development opportunities (Novy and Colomb; Courage and McKeown). By 2008 the creative city was already in trouble, as an increasingly brutal wave of gentrification came to be seen as the necessary corollary of the gleaming images of creative clusters, hipster hangouts, and iconic arts infrastructure. Predicated on a “spatial fix” (Harvey) for the decaying landscapes of the industrial city, the creative city was already producing its own ruins, as culture-led investment projects failed (Brodie). Since 2008, as the paper-thin walls between art, creativity, and real estate capital dissolved, it became increasingly clear that, though the script remained, the utopian moment was dead and buried. For many critics, both inside the cultural sector and out, it was time to roughly bundle it into the catch-all of neoliberalism and ‘gentrification’ and throw it overboard. Creative City RIP. The Ordinary City This critical take was performed early on by geographers such as Ash Amin and others (Amin and Graham; Amin, Massey, and Thrift), who suggested we re-centre the ordinary city—the one in which most people live—rather than fetishise some high-growth, hi-tech, gleaming Creative City. It was reiterated more recently by the Foundational Economy Collective, who argue that it is the everyday infrastructures and services of our towns and cities—and their mundane local economies of nail bars, cafes, and auto-repair shops—that should form the basis of our urban economic thinking (FEC). Jamie Peck, an early critic of the Creative City, had already cast doubt on the real economic weight of ‘creative industries’ and saw the whole thing as cover for the ‘entrepreneurial (read: neoliberal) city’, and a new kind of culturally-inflected growth coalition (Peck and Ward; Peck, Struggling). Similar dissent could be found amongst those writing within the cultural field. For every new city on the global creative smorgasbord, there were local artists and community activists who could show you a whole other side, excluded from the glass boxes and white cubes, from the funding and the hyped-up narratives lavished on the creative city. This mostly targeted the big iconic developments, led by global brands sucking the funding and the imagination from the surrounding city—what we might call ‘the Bilbao effect’. This cynicism toward the Creative City overlapped with a rejection of a ‘high art’ establishment and its elitist forms of culture. The ‘ordinary city’ here did not set the mundane against art and culture but reframed these as part of an everyday creativity. This could mean small-scale, neighbourhood-embedded art and culture, proposed by those in favour of ‘community arts’ and indeed those seeking localised popular culture such as music scenes. But it could also mean a valorisation of creativity writ large; a generalised urban creativity in which imagination and experimentation, but also subversion and contestation permeate the everyday. Following the Global Financial Crisis (GFC), critiques of the creative city concept became increasingly common. Oli Mould’s 2015 book Urban Subversion and the Creative City captures much of this, providing a distinction between the capitalised Creative City and the lower-case creative city. Mould distinguishes between the ‘Creative City’ ideology as extractive, and the ‘creative city’ as enabling citizenship. For Mould, the Creative City is “the antithesis of urban creativity” (Urban 4), and “shorthand for the capitalistic, paradigmatic (bordering on dogmatic) and meta-narrative view of how creativity can be used to economically stimulate and develop the city” (5). It is top-down creative planning at its worst. Against this, Mould evokes the lower-case concept of creative city, seeing some hope for it as a descriptor of urban spaces where “being creative is the very act of citizenship” (5). The Creative City imposed itself as a requirement of urban economic competitiveness (successful or not) and needs to be implacably opposed. Alternatively, the creative city persists in various forms of ‘urban subversion’, though whether the actual term—like creativity itself (Mould, Against)—can be freed from an association with its capitalised nemesis is, for Mould, still moot. Whilst Mould’s distinction allows us to evoke an urban creativity distinct from the commodified, extractive forms of the Creative City—one rooted in the ordinary, everyday creative practices of the city still open to themes of subversion and contestation centring cultural labour over cultural infrastructure—we also have some reservations. The C/creative couplet recalls de Certeau’s opposition of strategy and tactics, skyscraper and street, and has some of its problems. Baldly, this gives control of the city over to the powerful and condemns the rest of us to a game of endless evasion and subversion. For whilst the contemporary Creative City agenda may be largely as Mould describes it, its provenance is more complex than the extractive agenda which currently animates it. Understanding this provenance might give us some pointers beyond this binary impasse. Roots of the Creative City Although the Creative City eventually became integrated into the neoliberal urban script, the policy imaginary that birthed it emerged from the post-1960s rise of urban social movements, anti-development coalitions, new cultural practices (especially around popular music), artist co-ops, squats, and alternative cultures. Across the 1970s and 1980s one might say the C/creative City was an aspect of growing claims for cultural citizenship, the more explicit acknowledgement of a cultural dimension within T.H. Marshall’s ‘social citizenship’ (Marshall). The Greater London Council (GLC) of 1979-86 is exemplary here (Bianchini; Hatherley), but this was only the most visible case in which de-industrialising cities acquired aspirations to a different kind of city living. The utopian-romantic vision of a new kind of urban culture in which the transformative powers of art would abandon the ethereal world of the museum-gallery and take carnal form in the grotesque ruins of an industrial city was most literal in Wim Wenders’s 1987 film Wings of Desire. It was there in Berlin and New York as it was in Melbourne and Manchester, and a hundred other such cities (Whitney). As an industrial urban civilisation no longer seemed viable in the Global North, ‘culture’ became a central stake in anticipating what might come next. What new forms of working and living might be possible? What new identities, pleasures, desires might it accommodate? A new generation, immersed in what Mark Fisher called ‘popular modernism’ (Fisher), sought new forms of artistic expression within popular culture, making demands on the formal cultural system, on the infrastructure of the city, and on how the city could be re-imagined. In short, the C/creative City was not simply an invention of neoliberalism. It carried within it a utopian promise that should not be discounted. Perhaps we can see this in that most vilified of concepts, the ‘creative class’. The (Not-So) Creative Class By the 2008 GFC, the concept of the ‘creative class’—positioned as the primary driver and beneficiary of the creative city—was already coming apart. Unaffordable housing, rent hikes, rising debts, welfare cuts, reducing returns to ‘educational capital’ and the dominance of asset economies, precarious employment, culture budget cuts, and the integration of large sections of creative production into new platform economies have accelerated since that time. Global development capital has now built high-end leisure, entertainment, accommodation, and amenities into its core business model, one that does not require a prior process of valorisation by local creatives. Mould suggests the Creative City was a Trojan Horse and the creative class the Greeks inside (Urban 8). But whilst policymakers and city marketers embraced this term, it was never a class for-itself, with the clear strategic focus of soldiers waiting to pounce. Florida’s statistical fantasy netted a massive chunk of the population—almost 40 percent—as ‘professional, managerial and scientific’ (Florida, Rise). Meanwhile actual ‘creatives’ were always a poor relation and lived very differently to those others, most of whom preferred the suburbs and ex-burbs to the bustling city. Artists were not the storm-troopers of gentrification but its dupes, eventually evicted from the city they helped conquer. Meanwhile, since the advent of Florida and Landry, developers didn’t even need to use these ‘storm-troopers’ to soften up places for gentrification. They could now work directly with compliant city authorities to do the work for them. Creative cities could be deployed by toolkit (Landry) and, of course, measured via economic impact studies and a variety of other econometrics weaponised by corporate consultancies for hire. This was the social and political landscape upon which the Global Financial Crisis dealt an especially severe form of austerity, disproportionately affecting the cultural sector, and exacerbating many of the problematic areas of ‘creative city’ policy that had previously been abated and ameliorated by a veneer of hipster cool. Nonetheless, the ‘creative class’ also articulated a utopian promise, especially in places outside of the ‘Global North’ where more traditional forms of political power, gender roles, and religion remain in play. In a period of rapid globalisation, as relatively insulated economies became integrated into global capital flows, and cities bore the brunt of disruptive social and cultural changes, the C/creative City could stand in for a global modernity with a future. It could make available a new set of aspirations and identities; for a younger, more educated few perhaps, yet still real despite this. De Beukelaer, in the Indonesian context, talks about the “productive friction” between the two C/creative Cities, where the gap between the universal abstract and the local reality can form a site of negotiation. The C/creative City licences an encounter between new aspirations and identities, and the more traditional elites; an unequal struggle to define or give further content to the neoliberal nostrums of creative modernity that emanate from the Creative City meme. Yet it is not clear just why this negotiation is only made possible by the ‘apolitical’ notion of ‘creative’, or what’s at stake in that term. Is it a merely a cypher—or McGuffin—for a more complex conflict of interests? In what form would the “re-politicisation” of the creative city, called for at the end of the article, consist? What Next? We are not then talking about The City & the City (Mieville), in which two cities occupy the same geographic space but codify their separation by routinely ignoring each other and that which is deemed to belong to the other city. They are always in some kind of negotiation and contestation, but around what? We would argue that the imaginary of the C/creative City was annexed by, but not necessarily created by, neoliberalism. If the C/creative City articulated a future beyond a Fordist industrial civilisation, then we must take care in rejecting it not to abandon at the same time the power to imagine a different future. So, too, in attempting to assert the ordinary everyday city, we must also keep hold of a sense of the creative imagination that art and culture articulates, rather than dismissing this as part of the shiny glass palace on the hill. The absence of art and culture from the new progressive social and economic agendas that are currently finding their way into the mainstream—green new deals, doughnuts, well-being, community and ecological economics, and so on—is telling (O’Connor, Reset). In part this reflects the capture of arts and cultural policy by neoliberalism. This is not just ‘economic rationalism’ or market fundamentalism, for in the ‘creative economy’ art and cultural policy fused with neoliberalism at a deep DNA level, and the creative city imaginary was part of this. Mould is right to doubt whether the notion of ‘creative’, so closely enmeshed, could ever be retrieved. But regardless of whether art and culture have been condemned by this close association, the collapse of its romantic-utopian promise into a consumer leisure economy has left a void. If Jameson’s contention that we cannot think the end of capitalism is no longer the case (Jameson; Morozov), then culture is not present at this new moment of transition. So much well-being, community, and ecological economics speaks of culture whilst barely naming it. For us, the rearticulation of the place of art and culture in the contemporary city is crucial. We would even suggest that without art and culture, a full transformation of the contemporary city would be impossible. But how to think this? Any democratic cultural policy would need to reclaim both the ordinary and the creative city. This would entail the creative city of dissent and subversion, so closely aligned with the broad social movements to which we must look, in large part, to transform the city. It would also mean the right to a full participation in the imaginary of the collective city in which we all dwell and where we can imagine different futures. For this to happen, art and culture needs to be taken out of the hands of real estate, tourism, and economic development, and reframed as part of public service and public value. Just as new movements seek to reframe economic growth in terms of sustainability, equity, and human flourishing (Raworth), a radical creative city would be one in which art and culture were constitutive of the social foundations and part of how we live together as citizens, not simply another engine of the consumption economy. This process of re-embedding art and culture in the everyday foundations of the ordinary city is certainly underway. The ‘new municipalism’ (Thompson) has begun to make space for culture, with cities such as Barcelona and organisations such as the UCLG making a lot of the running. Notions of cultural rights, both individual and collective, have returned to challenge the urban consumption model. Just as art and culture try to position themselves alongside other foundational services—health, education, welfare—they also need to engage with new approaches to urban design, where technologies and infrastructures have been repositioned as cultural rather than technological. This suggests both that art and culture engage with the wider ‘cultural’—as in the anthropological, ‘whole way of life’—but that it no longer ‘owns’ this culture. Art and culture are not to be seen, as in the 1980s, as the ‘key’ to a total social transformation, but as one element only, however crucial. So too ‘creative’ needs to be unpicked and reframed, away from its association with ‘progress’ and absolute self-creation towards ‘slowdown’ (Dorling), sustainability, custodianship, care, incrementalism, and restoration – the kinds of values we now associate with First Nations. The shared DNA between creativity and capitalist modernity runs deep. Conclusion The COVID-19 pandemic has devastated large areas of art and culture, putting a question mark next to the urban use patterns that underpinned so much of the creative city model (Banks and O’Connor; de Peuter et al.; Tanghetti et al.; Whiting and Roberts). The Creative City of consumption, commuting, tourism, and entertainment stopped. Though some construction continued, the very purpose of the city centre—which over three decades had been rebranded as the Central Business District—was called into question. But the creative city was devastated too. Not just the collapse in income for cultural workers and business owners, but so too the filigrees of creative connection, the rhizomic mica that underpin the ecosystem of the city. Creatives already made no money, but at least they could go to openings and stay out late. Not anymore. This knockout blow was followed by the recognition that, for all the creative rhetoric, it was construction spending that counted most towards cultural funding budgets (Pacella et al.). Whilst talk quickly became one of getting artists and creatives to kickstart urban activity and animate deserted main street properties—‘build back better’—it is not at all clear where this endless supply of artists is going to come from. Now might be the time to explore how we might rethink art, culture, and the city rather than business as usual. As Arundhati Roy suggested, “nothing could be worse than a return to normality. Historically, pandemics have forced humans to break with the past and imagine their world anew. This one is no different. It is a portal, a gateway between one world and the next” (Roy). If art and culture don’t form part of that search for the new world, they will end up simply defending this one. References Amin, Ash, and Stephen Graham. “The Ordinary City.” Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers 22.4 (1997): 411-429. Amin, Ash, Doreen Massey, and Nigel Thrift. Cities for the Many Not for the Few. Cambridge: Polity, 2000. Banks, Mark, and Justin O’Connor. “‘A Plague upon Your Howling’: Art and Culture in the Viral Emergency.” Cultural Trends 30.1 (2021): 3-18. Bennett, Toby. “The Justification of a Music City: Handbooks, Intermediaries and Value Disputes in a Global Policy Assemblage.” City, Culture and Society 22 (2020). Bianchini, Franco. “GLC R.I.P Cultural Policies in London, 1981-1986.” New Formations 1.1 (1987): 103-117. Brodie, Patrick. “Seeing Ghosts: Crisis, Ruin, and the Creative Industries.” Continuum 33.5 (2019): 525-539. Courage, Cara, and Anita McKeown, eds. Creative Placemaking. Research, Theory and Practice. London: Routledge, 2019. De Beukelaer, Christiaan. “Friction in the Creative City.” Open Cultural Studies 5.1 (2021): 40-53. De Beukelaer, Christiaan, and Justin O’Connor. “The Creative Economy and the Development Agenda: The Use and Abuse of ‘Fast Policy’.” Contemporary Perspectives on Art and International Development. Eds. Polly Stupples and Katerina Teaiwa. London: Routledge, 2016. 27-47. De Certeau, Michel. “Walking in the City.” The Practice of Everyday Life. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984. 91-105. De Peuter, Greig, Kate Oakley, and Madison Trusolino. “The Pandemic Politics of Cultural Work: Collective Responses to the COVID-19 Crisis.” International Journal of Cultural Policy (2022). DOI: 10.1080/10286632.2022.2064459. Dorling, Danny. Slowdown: The End of the Great Acceleration. New Haven: Yale UP, 2020. Fisher, Mark. The Ghosts of My Life. London: Zero Books, 2014. Florida, Richard. The Rise of the Creative Class. New York: Basic Books, 2002. ———. The New Urban Crisis. New York: Simon and Schuster, 2017. Foundational Economy Collective, The (FEC). Foundational Economy. Manchester: Manchester UP, 2022. Harvey, David. “The Geopolitics of Capitalism.” Social Relations and Spatial Structures. Eds. Derek Gregory and John Urry. Houndmills and London: Macmillan, 1985. 128-163. Hatherley, Owen. Red Metropolis. Socialism and the Government of London. London: Repeater Books, 2020. Jameson, Frederic. Postmodernism, or the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism. London: Verso, 1991. Landry, Charles. The Creative City: A Toolkit for Urban Innovators. 2nd ed. London: Routledge, 2008. Marshall, Thomas H. Citizenship and Social Class. New York: Cambridge UP, 1950. Meyrick, Julian, and Tully Barnett. “From Public Good to Public Value: Arts and Culture in a Time of Crisis.” Cultural Trends 30.1 (2020): 75–90. Mieville, China. The City & the City. London: Pan Macmillan, 2009. Mould, Oli. Urban Subversion and the Creative City. London: Routledge, 2015. ———. Against Creativity. New York: Verso Books, 2018. Morozov, Evgeny. “Critique of Techno-Feudal Reason.” New Left Review 133.4 (2022): 89-126. Novy, Johannes, and Claire Colomb. “Struggling for the Right to the (Creative) City in Berlin and Hamburg: New Urban Social Movements, New ‘Spaces of Hope’?” International Journal of Urban and Regional Research 37 (2013): 1816–1838. Oakley, Kate. “Not So Cool Britannia: The Role of the Creative Industries in Economic Development.” International Journal of Cultural Studies 7.1 (2004): 67-77. O’Connor, Justin. “Art as Industry.” 20 June 2020. <https://wakeinalarm.blog/2020/06/20/art-as-industry/>. ———. “Music as Industry.” Music, The Arts and The World. Loudmouth: Music Trust e-Magazine. 1 May 2021 <https://musictrust.com.au/loudmouth/music-as-industry/>. ———. Reset: Art, Culture and the Foundational Economy. 2022. <https://resetartsandculture.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/02/CP3-Working-Paper-Art-Culture-and-the-Foundational-Economy-2022.pdf>. O’Connor, Justin, and Kate Shaw. “What Next for the Creative City.” City, Culture and Society 5 (2014): 165-170. O’Connor, Justin, and Xin Gu. Red Creative: Culture and Modernity in China. Bristol: Intellect, 2020. Pacella, Jessica, Susan Luckman, and Justin O’Connor. “Fire, Pestilence and the Extractive Economy: Cultural Policy after Cultural Policy." Cultural Trends 30.1 (2021): 40-51. Peck, Jamie. “Political Economies of Scale: Fast Policy, Interscalar Relations, and Neoliberal Workfare.” Economic Geography 78 (2002): 331–360. ———. “Struggling with the Creative Class.” International Journal of Urban and Regional Research 29.4 (2005): 740-770. ———. “The Creativity Fix.” Variant 34 (2009): 5-9. Peck, Jamie, and Kevin Ward, eds. City of Revolution: Restructuring Manchester. Manchester UP, 2002. Peck, Jamie, Nick Theodore, and Nick Brenner. “Neoliberal Urbanism Redux?” International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, 37 (2013): 1091–1099. Pratt, Andy. “The Cultural and Creative industries: Organisational and Spatial Challenges to their Governance.” Die Erde 143.4 (2012): 317–334. Porter, Libby, and Kate Shaw, eds. Whose Urban Renaissance? London: Routledge, 2013. Raworth, Kate. Doughnut Economics. White River Junction, VT: Chelsea Green Publishing, 2017. Roy, Arundhati. “The Pandemic Is a Portal.” Life & Arts. Financial Times 4 Apr. 2020. <https://www.ft.com/content/10d8f5e8-74eb-11ea-95fe-fcd274e920ca>. Shaw, Kate. “Can Artists Revive Dead City Centres? Without Long-Term Tenancies It’s Window Dressing.” Arts + Culture. The Conversation 27 Oct. 2021. <https://theconversation.com/can-artists-revive-dead-city-centres-without-long-term-tenancies-its-window-dressing-169822>. Scott, Allen John. "Beyond the Creative City: Cognitive-Cultural Capitalism and the New Urbanism.” Regional Studies 48.4 (2014): 565-578. Tanghetti, Jessica, Roberta Comunian, and Tamsyn Dent. “‘Covid-19 Opened the Pandora Box’ of the Creative City: Creative and Cultural Workers against Precarity in Milan.” Cambridge Journal of Regions, Economy and Society 2022. <https://doi.org/10.1093/cjres/rsac018>. Thompson, Matthew. “What’s So New about New Municipalism?” Progress in Human Geography 45.2 (2020): 317-342 Whiting, Sam, and Rosie Roberts. “The Impact of COVID-19 on Music Venues in Regional South Australia: A Case Study.” Perfect Beat (2021). Whitney, Karl. Hit Factories: A Journey through the Industrial Cities of British Pop. London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2019.
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Sutherland, Thomas. "Counterculture, Capitalism, and the Constancy of Change." M/C Journal 17, no. 6 (September 18, 2014). http://dx.doi.org/10.5204/mcj.891.

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In one of his final pieces of writing, Timothy Leary—one of the most singularly iconic and influential figures of the 1960s counterculture, known especially for his advocacy of a “molecular revolution” premised upon hallucinogenic self-medication—proposes that [c]ounterculture blooms wherever and whenever a few members of a society choose lifestyles, artistic expressions, and ways of thinking and being that wholeheartedly embrace the ancient axiom that the only true constant is change itself. The mark of counterculture is not a particular social form or structure, but rather the evanescence of forms and structures, the dazzling rapidity and flexibility with which they appear, mutate, and morph into one another and disappear. (ix) But it is not just radical activists and ancient philosophers who celebrate the constancy of change; on the contrary, it is a basic principle of post-industrial capitalism, a system which relies upon the constant extraction of surplus value—this being the very basis of the accumulation of capital—through an ever-accelerating creation of new markets and new desires fostered via a perpetual cycle of technical obsolescence and social destabilisation. Far from being unambiguously aligned with a mode of resistance then (as seemingly inferred by the quote above), the imperative for change would appear to be a basic constituent of that which the latter seeks to undermine. The very concept of “counterculture” as an ideal and a practice has been challenged and contested repeatedly over the past fifty or so years, both inside and outside of the academy. For the most part, the notion of counterculture is understood to have emerged out of the tumultuous cultural shifts of the 1960s, and yet, at the same time, as Theodore Roszak—who first coined the term—notes, the intellectual heritage of such a movement draws upon a “stormy Romantic sensibility, obsessed from first to last with paradox and madness, ecstasy and spiritual striving” (91) that dates back to nineteenth century Idealist philosophy and its critique of a rapidly industrialising civilisation. My purpose in this paper is not to address these numerous conceptualisations of counterculture but instead to analyse specifically the enigmatic definition given by Leary above, whereby he conflates counterculture with the demand for continual change or novelty, arguing that the former appears precisely at the point when “equilibrium and symmetry have given way to a complexity so intense as to appear to the eye as chaos” (ix). Concerned that this definition is internally inconsistent given Leary’s understanding of counterculture as a profoundly anti-capitalist force, I will cursorily illustrate the contradictions that proceed when the notion of counterculture as resistance to capitalist hegemony is combined with the identification of counterculture as an authentic and repeated irruption of the new, albeit one that is inevitably domesticated by and subsumed into the dominant culture against which it is posed, as occurs in Leary’s account. The claim that I make here is that this demand for change as an end in itself is inextricably capitalist in its orientation, and as such, cannot be meaningfully understood as a structural externality to the capitalist processes that it strives to interrupt. Capitalism and Growth The study of counterculture is typically, and probably inevitably premised upon an opposition between a dominant culture and those emergent forces that seek to undermine it. In the words of Roszak, the American counterculture of the 1960s arose in defiance of the “modernizing, up-dating, rationalizing, planning” tendencies of technocracy, “that social form in which an industrial society reaches the peak of its organizational integration” (5). Similarly, for Herbert Marcuse, the philosopher perhaps most closely associated with this counterculture, and whose writings formed the intellectual lynchpin of the student protest movement at that time, “intensified progress seems to be bound up with intensified unfreedom,” and as a consequence, we must strive for “a non-repressive civilization, based on a fundamentally different experience of being, a fundamentally different relation between man [sic] and nature, and fundamentally different existential relations” (Eros 4-5). In both cases, the dominant culture is associated with a particular form of repression, based upon the false sense of freedom imposed by the exigencies of the market. “Free choice among a wide variety of goods and services does not signify freedom,” argues Marcuse, “if these goods and services sustain social controls over a life of toil and fear” (One-Dimensional 10). Most importantly, Marcuse observes that this facile freedom of choice is propped up by processes of continual renewal, transformation, and rationalisation—“advertising, public relations, indoctrination, planned obsolescence”—operating on the basis of a “relentless utilization of advanced techniques and science,” such that “a rising standard of living is the almost unavoidable by-product of the politically manipulated industrial society” (One-Dimensional 52-53). Writing at a time when the Keynesian welfare state was still a foregone conclusion, Marcuse denounces the way in which an increase in the quality of life associated with the rise of consumerism and lifestyle culture “reduces the use-value of freedom”, for “there is no reason to insist on self-determination if the administered life is the comfortable and even the ‘good’ life” (One-Dimensional 53). The late industrial society, in other words, is presented as driven by a repressive desublimation which does not merely replace the objects of a so-called “high culture” with those of an inferior mass culture, but totally liquidates any such distinction, reducing all culture to a mere process of consumption, divorced from any higher goals or purposes. This desublimation is able to maintain growth through the constant production of novelty—providing new objects for the purposes of consumption. This society is not stagnant then; rather, “[i]ts productivity and efficiency, its capacity to increase and spread comforts, to turn waste into need, and destruction into construction” all represent the demand for a continual production of the new that undergirds its own stability (One-Dimensional 11). This necessary dynamism, and the creative destruction that goes along with it, is a result of the basic laws of competition: the need not only to generate profit, but to maintain this profitability means that new avenues for growth must constantly be laid down. This leads to both a geographical expansion in search of new markets, and a psychological manipulation in order to cultivate needs, desires, and fantasies in consumers that they never knew they had, combined with a dramatic shift in the search for both raw materials and labour power toward the developing economies of Asia. The result, notes David Harvey, is to “exacerbate insecurity and instability, as masses of capital and workers shift from one line of production to another, leaving whole sectors devastated, while the perpetual flux in consumer wants, tastes, and needs becomes a permanent locus of uncertainty and struggle” (106). What we are seeing then, as these processes of production and demands for consumption accelerate, is not so much the maintenance of the comfortable and carefree life that Marcuse sees as destructive to culture; conversely, this acceleration is engendering a sense of disorientation and even groundlessness that leaves us in a state of continual anxiety and disquietude. Although these processes have certainly accelerated in recent years—not least because of the rise of high-speed digital networking and telecommunications—they were prominent throughout the second-half of the twentieth century (in varying degrees), and indicate a general logic of rationalisation and technical efficiency that has been the focus of critique from the proto-countercultural romanticism of the nineteenth century onward. It is Marx who observes that “[t]he driving motive and determining purpose of capitalist production is the self-valorization of capital to the greatest possible extent,” and it is precisely this seemingly unstoppable impetus toward accumulation that finds its most acute manifestation in our age of digital, post-industrial capitalism (449). What needs to be kept in mind is that capitalism is not opposed to those exteriorities that resist its logic; on the contrary, it is through its ability to appropriate them in a double movement whereby it simultaneously claims to act as the condition of their production and claims the right to represent them on its terms (through the universal sign of money) that capitalism is able to maintain its continual growth. Put simply, capitalism as an economic system and an ideological constellation has proved itself time and time again to be remarkably resilient not only to intellectual critique, but also to the concrete production of new forms of living seemingly contrary to its principles, precisely because it is able to incorporate and thus nullify such threats. The production of the new does not harm capitalism; on the contrary, capitalism thrives on such production. The odd contradiction of the mass society, writes Walter Benjamin, coheres in the way that “the novelty of products—as a stimulus to demand—is accorded an unprecedented importance,” whilst at the same time, “‘the eternal return of the same’ is manifest in mass production” (331). This production of novelty is, in other words, restricted by the parameters of the commodity form—the necessity that it be exchangeable under the terms of capital (as money)—such that its potential heterogeneity is restrained by its identity as a commodity. Capitalism is perfectly capable of creating new modes of living, but it does so specifically according to its terms. This poses a difficulty then for the study and advocacy of counterculture in the terms for which Leary advocates above, because the progressivism of the latter—referring to its demand for continual change and innovation (a demand that admittedly runs counter to the nostalgic romanticism that has motivated a great deal of countercultural thought and praxis, and is certainly not a universally accepted definition of counterculture more broadly)—is not necessarily easily distinguishable from the dominant culture against which it is counterposed. Raymond Williams expresses this frustration well when he observes that “it is exceptionally difficult to distinguish between those which are really elements of some new phase of the dominant culture […] and those which are substantially alternative or oppositional to it” (123). In other words, given that capitalism as an economic system and hegemonic cultural formation is so effective in producing the novelty that we crave—creating objects, ideas, and practices often vastly different to those residual traditions that preceded them—there is no obvious metric for determining when we are looking at a genuine alternative to this hegemony, and when we are looking at yet another variegated product of it. Williams makes a distinction here, whereby the emergence (in the strict sense of coming-into-being or genesis) of a new culture is presumed to be qualitatively different to mere novelty. What is not adequately considered is the possibility that this distinction is entirely illusory—that holding out hope for a qualitatively different mode of existence that will mark a distinct break from capitalist hegemony is in fact the chimera by which this hegemony is sustained, and its cycle of production perpetuated. There is an anxiety here that is present within (and one might suggest even constitutive of) present-day debates over counterculture, particularly in regard to the question of resistance, and what form it might take under the conditions of late capitalism. From Williams’s perspective, it can be argued that “all or nearly all initiatives and contributions, even when they take on manifestly alternative or oppositional forms, are in practice tied to the hegemonic,” such that “the dominant culture, so to say, at once produces and limits its own forms of counter-culture” (114). To argue this though, he goes on to suggest, would: overlook the importance of works and ideas which, while clearly affected by hegemonic limits and pressures, are at least in part significant breaks beyond them, which may again in part be neutralized, reduced, or incorporated, but which in their most active elements nevertheless come through as independent and original. (114)Authentic breaks in specific social conditions are not just a fantasy, he correctly observes, but have occurred many times across history—and not merely in the guise of violent revolutionary activity. What is needed, therefore, is the development of “modes of analysis which instead of reducing works to finished products, and activities to fixed positions, are capable of discerning, in good faith, the finite but significant openness of many actual initiatives and contributions” (114). For Williams, this openness is located chiefly within the semiotic indeterminacy of the artwork, and the resultant potentiality contained within it for individuals to develop resistant readings contrary to any dominant interpretation. These divergent readings become the sites upon which we might imagine new worlds and new ways of living. There is a sense of resignation in his solution though: an appeal to the autonomy of an artwork, and a momentary sublime glimpse of another world, that will inevitably be domesticated by capital. The difficulty that comes with understanding counterculture as an uncompromising demand for the new, over and against the mundane repetitions of commodity culture and lifestyle consumerism, is that it must reckon with the seemingly inevitable appropriation of these new creations by the system against which they are opposed. In such cases, the typical result is a tragic and fundamentally romantic defeatism, in which the creative individual (or community, etc.) must continue to create anew, knowing full well that their output will immediately find itself domesticated and enervated by the forces of capital. This specific conception of counterculture as perpetual change knows that it is doomed to failure, but takes pleasure in the struggle that nonetheless ensues. The Subsumption of Counterculture “Marx and Freud, perhaps, do represent the dawn of our culture,” writes philosopher Gilles Deleuze, “but Nietzsche is something entirely different: the dawn of counterculture” (142). Friedrich Nietzsche seems like an unlikely candidate for the originator of counterculture—his writings certainly bear little overt resemblance to the premises of the various movements that emerged in the 1960s, even though, as Roszak remarks, these movements actually largely issued forth from “the work of Freud and of Nietzsche, the major psychologists of the Faustian soul” (91)—but what he does share with Leary is a belief, expressed most clearly in his posthumous text The Will to Power (1967), in the political and ethical power of becoming, and the need to celebrate and affirm, rather than resist, a world that appears to be in constant, ineluctable flux. Rather than seeking merely to improve the status quo, Nietzsche works toward total and perpetual upheaval—a transvaluation of all values. In Deleuze’s words, he “made thought into a machine of war—a battering ram—into a nomadic force” (149). At a time when resistance to capitalism seems futile; when the possibility of capitalism ending seems more and more distant (which is not to say that it is unlikely to end anytime soon, but merely that its plausible alternatives have been evacuated from the popular imagination), such a claim can seem rather appealing. But how might we distinguish this conception of perpetual revolution of values from the creative destruction of capitalism itself? Why do we presume that there is such a distinction to be made? Why should Leary’s call for rapidity and flexibility—and more broadly, a celebration of change over constancy—be seen as anything other than an acknowledgement and reinforcement of capitalism’s accelerating cycle of obsolescence? The uncomfortable reality we must consider is that the countercultural, as an apparent exteriority waiting to be appropriated, plays an essential role in the accumulation of capital that drives our economic system, and that accordingly, it cannot be plausibly understood as external to the structural conditions that it opposes. This is not to suggest that counterculture does not produce new possibilities, new opportunities, and new ways of living, but simply that its production is always already structured by capitalist relations—the precise anxiety acknowledged by Williams. Once again, this is not a dismissal of counterculture, just the opposite in fact. It is a rejection of the conflation that Leary makes between counterculture and novelty, the combination of which is supposed to provide a potent threat to capitalist hegemony. “The naive supposition of an unambiguous development towards increased production,” argues German philosopher Theodor Adorno, “is itself a piece of that bourgeois outlook which permits development because […] it is hostile to qualitative difference” (156). Capitalism produces many different types of commodities (within which we can include ideas, beliefs, means of communication, as well as physical goods in the traditional sense), but what unites them is their shared identity under the regime of exchange value (money). This exchange value masks their genuine heterogeneity. But what use is it simply reassuring us that if we continue to produce, we may eventually produce something so new, so different that it will evade capture by this logic? Does this not merely reinforce a complicity between the appeal of the countercultural as a force of change and the continuous accumulation of capital? I would contend that to define counterculture as the production of the new underwrites the inexhaustible productivism of the capitalist hegemony that it seeks to challenge. What if, then, this qualitative difference was created not through the production of the new, but the total rejection of this production as the means to resistance? This would not be to engender or encourage a state of total stasis (which is definitely not a preferable or plausible scenario), but rather, to detach the hope for a better world from the idea that we must achieve this by somehow adding to the world that we already have—to recognise, as Adorno would have it, that “the forces of production are not the deepest substratum of man [sic], but represent his historical form adapted to the production of commodities” (156). Leary’s peculiar conception of counterculture that we have been examining throughout this paper refuses to give countenance to any kind of stability or equilibrium, instead proffering an essentially Nietzschean mode of resistance in which incessant creativity becomes the means to the contrivance of a new world—this is part of what Roszak records as the rejection of Marx’s “compulsive hard-headedness” and the embrace of “[m]yth, religion, dreams, visions” which mark the fundamental romanticism of (post-)1960s counterculture, and its heritage in nineteenth century bourgeois sensibilities. For all the benefits that such a conception of counterculture has provided, it would seem misguided to ignore the ways in which Leary’s rhetoric is undermined by the simple fact that it presumes a hierarchy between a dominant culture (capitalism) and its resistant periphery that is already structured by and given through a capitalist mode of thought that presumes its own self-sufficiency (that is, it assumes the adequacy of the logic of exchange to homogenise all products under the commodity form). The postulate that grounds Leary’s understanding of counterculture is a covert identification of man/woman as a restless, alienated being who will never reach a state of stability or actualisation, and must instead continue to produce in the vain hope that this might finally and definitely change things for the better. Instead of embracing the constancy of change, an ideology that ends up justifying the excesses of a capitalist order that knows nothing other than production, perhaps it is possible to begin reconceptualising counterculture in terms that resist precisely this demand for novelty. As Alexander Galloway declares, “[i]t is time now to subtract from this world, not add to it,” for the “political does not arise from the domain of production” (138-139). We do not need more well-intentioned ideas regarding how the world could be a better place or what new possibilities are on offer—we know these things already, we hear about them every day. What we need, and what perhaps counterculture can offer, is to affirm the truth of that which does not need to be produced, which is always already given to us through the immanence of human thought. In the words of François Laruelle, this is an understanding of human individuals as ordinary, “stripped of qualities or attributes by a wholly positive sufficiency,” such that “they lack nothing, are not alienated,” whereby the identity of the individual “is defined by characteristics that are absolutely original, primitive, internal, and without equivalent in the World […] not ideal essences, but finite, inalienable (and consequently irrecusable) lived experiences” (48-49). The job of counterculture then becomes not so much creating that which did not exist prior, but of realising “what we already know to be true” (Galloway 139). References Adorno, Theodor. Minima Moralia: Reflections on a Damaged Life. London and New York: Verso, 1974. Benjamin, Walter. The Arcades Project. Ed. Rolf Tiedemann. Cambridge and London: The Belknapp Press, 1999. Deleuze, Gilles. “Nomad Thought.” The New Nietzsche: Contemporary Styles of Interpretation. Ed. David B. Allison. New York City: Dell Publishing, 1977: 142-149. Galloway, Alexander R. The Interface Effect. Cambridge and Malden: Polity, 2012. Harvey, David. The Condition of Postmodernity: An Enquiry into the Origins of Cultural Change. Cambridge and Oxford: Blackwell, 1989. Laruelle, François. From Decision to Heresy: Experiments in Non-Standard Thought. Ed. Robin Mackay. Falmouth: Urbanomic, 2012. Leary, Timothy. “Foreword.” Counterculture through the Ages: From Abraham to Acid House. Ken Goffman and Dan Joy. New York City: Villard Books, 2004: ix-xiv. Marcuse, Herbert. One Dimensional Man. London and New York: Routledge, 1991. ---. Eros and Civilization: A Philosophical Inquiry into Freud. London: Routledge, 1998. Marx, Karl. Capital, Volume One. London: Penguin, 1976. Nietzsche, Friedrich. The Will to Power. Ed. Walter Kaufmann. New York: Vintage Books, 1967. Roszak, Theodore. The Makings of a Counter Culture. Garden City, New York: Anchor Books, 1969. Williams, Raymond. Marxism and Literature. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 1977.
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Cushing, Nancy. "To Eat or Not to Eat Kangaroo: Bargaining over Food Choice in the Anthropocene." M/C Journal 22, no. 2 (April 24, 2019). http://dx.doi.org/10.5204/mcj.1508.

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Kangatarianism is the rather inelegant word coined in the first decade of the twenty-first century to describe an omnivorous diet in which the only meat consumed is that of the kangaroo. First published in the media in 2010 (Barone; Zukerman), the term circulated in Australian environmental and academic circles including the Global Animal conference at the University of Wollongong in July 2011 where I first heard it from members of the Think Tank for Kangaroos (THINKK) group. By June 2017, it had gained enough attention to be named the Oxford English Dictionary’s Australian word of the month (following on from May’s “smashed avo,” another Australian food innovation), but it took the Nine Network reality television series Love Island Australia to raise kangatarian to trending status on social media (Oxford UP). During the first episode, aired in late May 2018, Justin, a concreter and fashion model from Melbourne, declared himself to have previously been a kangatarian as he chatted with fellow contestant, Millie. Vet nurse and animal lover Millie appeared to be shocked by his revelation but was tentatively accepting when Justin explained what kangatarian meant, and justified his choice on the grounds that kangaroo are not farmed. In the social media response, it was clear that eating only the meat of kangaroos as an ethical choice was an entirely new concept to many viewers, with one tweet stating “Kangatarian isn’t a thing”, while others variously labelled the diet brutal, intriguing, or quintessentially Australian (see #kangatarian on Twitter).There is a well developed literature around the arguments for and against eating kangaroo, and why settler Australians tend to be so reluctant to do so (see for example, Probyn; Cawthorn and Hoffman). Here, I will concentrate on the role that ethics play in this food choice by examining how the adoption of kangatarianism can be understood as a bargain struck to help to manage grief in the Anthropocene, and the limitations of that bargain. As Lesley Head has argued, we are living in a time of loss and of grieving, when much that has been taken for granted is becoming unstable, and “we must imagine that drastic changes to everyday life are in the offing” (313). Applying the classic (and contested) model of five stages of grief, first proposed by Elisabeth Kübler-Ross in her book On Death and Dying in 1969, much of the population of the western world seems to be now experiencing denial, her first stage of loss, while those in the most vulnerable environments have moved on to anger with developed countries for destructive actions in the past and inaction in the present. The next stages (or states) of grieving—bargaining, depression, and acceptance—are likely to be manifested, although not in any predictable sequence, as the grief over current and future losses continues (Haslam).The great expansion of food restrictive diets in the Anthropocene can be interpreted as part of this bargaining state of grieving as individuals attempt to respond to the imperative to reduce their environmental impact but also to limit the degree of change to their own diet required to do so. Meat has long been identified as a key component of an individual’s environmental footprint. From Frances Moore Lappé’s 1971 Diet for a Small Planet through the United Nations’ Food and Agriculture Organisation’s 2006 report Livestock’s Long Shadow to the 2019 report of the EAT–Lancet Commission on Healthy Diets from Sustainable Food Systems, the advice has been consistent: meat consumption should be minimised in, if not eradicated from, the human diet. The EAT–Lancet Commission Report quantified this to less than 28 grams (just under one ounce) of beef, lamb or pork per day (12, 25). For many this would be keenly felt, in terms of how meals are constructed, the sensory experiences associated with eating meat and perceptions of well-being but meat is offered up as a sacrifice to bring about the return of the beloved healthy planet.Rather than accept the advice to cut out meat entirely, those seeking to bargain with the Anthropocene also find other options. This has given rise to a suite of foodways based around restricting meat intake in volume or type. Reducing the amount of commercially produced beef, lamb and pork eaten is one approach, while substituting a meat the production of which has a smaller environmental footprint, most commonly chicken or fish, is another. For those willing to make deeper changes, the meat of free living animals, especially those which are killed accidentally on the roads or for deliberately for environmental management purposes, is another option. Further along this spectrum are the novel protein sources suggested in the Lancet report, including insects, blue-green algae and laboratory-cultured meats.Kangatarianism is another form of this bargain, and is backed by at least half a century of advocacy. The Australian Conservation Foundation made calls to reduce the numbers of other livestock and begin a sustainable harvest of kangaroo for food in 1970 when the sale of kangaroo meat for human consumption was still illegal across the country (Conservation of Kangaroos). The idea was repeated by biologist Gordon Grigg in the late 1980s (Jackson and Vernes 173), and again in the Garnaut Climate Change Review in 2008 (547–48). Kangaroo meat is high in protein and iron, low in fat, and high in healthy polyunsaturated fatty acids and conjugated linoleic acid, and, as these authors showed, has a smaller environmental footprint than beef, lamb, or pork. Kangaroo require less water than cattle, sheep or pigs, and no land is cleared to grow feed for them or give them space to graze. Their paws cause less erosion and compaction of soil than do the hooves of common livestock. They eat less fodder than ruminants and their digestive processes result in lower emissions of the powerful greenhouse gas methane and less solid waste.As Justin of Love Island was aware, kangaroo are not farmed in the sense of being deliberately bred, fed, confined, or treated with hormones, drugs or chemicals, which also adds to their lighter impact on the environment. However, some pastoralists argue that because they cannot prevent kangaroos from accessing the food, water, shelter, and protection from predators they provide for their livestock, they do effectively farm them, although they receive no income from sales of kangaroo meat. This type of light touch farming of kangaroos has a very long history in Australia going back to the continent’s first peopling some 60,000 years ago. Kangaroos were so important to Aboriginal people that a wide range of environments were manipulated to produce their favoured habitats of open grasslands edged by sheltering trees. As Bill Gammage demonstrated, fire was used as a tool to preserve and extend grassy areas, to encourage regrowth which would attract kangaroos and to drive the animals from one patch to another or towards hunters waiting with spears (passim, for example, 58, 72, 76, 93). Gammage and Bruce Pascoe agree that this was a form of animal husbandry in which the kangaroos were drawn to the areas prepared for them for the young grass or, more forcefully, physically directed using nets, brush fences or stone walls. Burnt ground served to contain the animals in place of fencing, and regular harvesting kept numbers from rising to levels which would place pressure on other species (Gammage 79, 281–86; Pascoe 42–43). Contemporary advocates of eating kangaroo have promoted the idea that they should be deliberately co-produced with other livestock instead of being killed to preserve feed and water for sheep and cattle (Ellicott; Wilson 39). Substituting kangaroo for the meat of more environmentally damaging animals would facilitate a reduction in the numbers of cattle and sheep, lessening the harm they do.Most proponents have assumed that their audience is current meat eaters who would substitute kangaroo for the meat of other more environmentally costly animals, but kangatarianism can also emerge from vegetarianism. Wendy Zukerman, who wrote about kangaroo hunting for New Scientist in 2010, was motivated to conduct the research because she was considering becoming an early adopter of kangatarianism as the least environmentally taxing way to counter the longterm anaemia she had developed as a vegetarian. In 2018, George Wilson, honorary professor in the Australian National University’s Fenner School of Environment and Society called for vegetarians to become kangatarians as a means of boosting overall consumption of kangaroo for environmental and economic benefits to rural Australia (39).Given these persuasive environmental arguments, it might be expected that many people would have perceived eating kangaroo instead of other meat as a favourable bargain and taken up the call to become kangatarian. Certainly, there has been widespread interest in trying kangaroo meat. In 1997, only five years after the sale of kangaroo meat for human consumption had been legalised in most states (South Australia did so in 1980), 51% of 500 people surveyed in five capital cities said they had tried kangaroo. However, it had not become a meat of choice with very few found to eat it more than three times a year (Des Purtell and Associates iv). Just over a decade later, a study by Ampt and Owen found an increase to 58% of 1599 Australians surveyed across the country who had tried kangaroo but just 4.7% eating it at least monthly (14). Bryce Appleby, in his study of kangaroo consumption in the home based on interviews with 28 residents of Wollongong in 2010, specifically noted the absence of kangatarians—then a very new concept. A study of 261 Sydney university students in 2014 found that half had tried kangaroo meat and 10% continued to eat it with any regularity. Only two respondents identified themselves as kangatarian (Grant 14–15). Kangaroo meat advocate Michael Archer declared in 2017 that “there’s an awful lot of very, very smart vegetarians [who] have opted for semi vegetarianism and they’re calling themselves ‘kangatarians’, as they’re quite happy to eat kangaroo meat”, but unless there had been a significant change in a few years, the surveys did not bear out his assertion (154).The ethical calculations around eating kangaroo are complicated by factors beyond the strictly environmental. One Tweeter advised Justin: “‘I’m a kangatarian’ isn’t a pickup line, mate”, and certainly the reception of his declaration could have been very cool, especially as it was delivered to a self declared animal warrior (N’Tash Aha). All of the studies of beliefs and practices around the eating of kangaroo have noted a significant minority of Australians who would not consider eating kangaroo based on issues of animal welfare and animal rights. The 1997 study found that 11% were opposed to the idea of eating kangaroo, while in Grant’s 2014 study, 15% were ethically opposed to eating kangaroo meat (Des Purtell and Associates iv; Grant 14–15). Animal ethics complicate the bargains calculated principally on environmental grounds.These ethical concerns work across several registers. One is around the flesh and blood kangaroo as a charismatic native animal unique to Australia and which Australians have an obligation to respect and nurture. Sheep, cattle and pigs have been subject to longterm propaganda campaigns which entrench the idea that they are unattractive and unintelligent, and veil their transition to meat behind euphemistic language and abattoir walls, making it easier to eat them. Kangaroos are still seen as resourceful and graceful animals, and no linguistic tricks shield consumers from the knowledge that it is a roo on their plate. A proposal in 2009 to market a “coat of arms” emu and kangaroo-flavoured potato chip brought complaints to the Advertising Standards Bureau that this was disrespectful to these native animals, although the flavours were to be simulated and the product vegetarian (Black). Coexisting with this high regard to kangaroos is its antithesis. That is, a valuation of them informed by their designation as a pest in the pastoral industry, and the use of the carcasses of those killed to feed dogs and other companion animals. Appleby identified a visceral, disgust response to the idea of eating kangaroo in many of his informants, including both vegetarians who would not consider eating kangaroo because of their commitment to a plant-based diet, and at least one omnivore who would prefer to give up all meat rather than eat kangaroo. While diametrically opposed, the end point of both positions is that kangaroo meat should not be eaten.A second animal ethics stance relates to the imagined kangaroo, a cultural construct which for most urban Australians is much more present in their lives and likely to shape their actions than the living animals. It is behind the rejection of eating an animal which holds such an iconic place in Australian culture: to the dexter on the 1912 national coat of arms; hopping through the Hundred Acre Wood as Kanga and Roo in A.A. Milne’s Winnie-the-Pooh children’s books from the 1920s and the Disney movies later made from them; as a boy’s best friend as Skippy the Bush Kangaroo in a fondly remembered 1970s television series; and high in the sky on QANTAS planes. The anthropomorphising of kangaroos permitted the spectacle of the boxing kangaroo from the late nineteenth century. By framing natural kangaroo behaviours as boxing, these exhibitions encouraged an ambiguous understanding of kangaroos as human-like, moving them further from the category of food (Golder and Kirkby). Australian government bodies used this idea of the kangaroo to support food exports to Britain, with kangaroos as cooks or diners rather than ingredients. The Kangaroo Kookery Book of 1932 (see fig. 1 below) portrayed kangaroos as a nuclear family in a suburban kitchen and another official campaign supporting sales of Australian produce in Britain in the 1950s featured a Disney-inspired kangaroo eating apples and chops washed down with wine (“Kangaroo to Be ‘Food Salesman’”). This imagining of kangaroos as human-like has persisted, leading to the opinion expressed in a 2008 focus group, that consuming kangaroo amounted to “‘eating an icon’ … Although they are pests they are still human nature … these are native animals, people and I believe that is a form of cannibalism!” (Ampt and Owen 26). Figure 1: Rather than promoting the eating of kangaroos, the portrayal of kangaroos as a modern suburban family in the Kangaroo Kookery Book (1932) made it unthinkable. (Source: Kangaroo Kookery Book, Director of Australian Trade Publicity, Australia House, London, 1932.)The third layer of ethical objection on the ground of animal welfare is more specific, being directed to the method of killing the kangaroos which become food. Kangaroos are perhaps the only native animals for which state governments set quotas for commercial harvest, on the grounds that they compete with livestock for pasturage and water. In most jurisdictions, commercially harvested kangaroo carcasses can be processed for human consumption, and they are the ones which ultimately appear in supermarket display cases.Kangaroos are killed by professional shooters at night using swivelling spotlights mounted on their vehicles to locate and daze the animals. While clean head shots are the ideal and regulations state that animals should be killed when at rest and without causing “undue agonal struggle”, this is not always achieved and some animals do suffer prolonged deaths (NSW Code of Practice for Kangaroo Meat for Human Consumption). By regulation, the young of any female kangaroo must be killed along with her. While averting a slow death by neglect, this is considered cruel and wasteful. The hunt has drawn international criticism, including from Greenpeace which organised campaigns against the sale of kangaroo meat in Europe in the 1980s, and Viva! which was successful in securing the withdrawal of kangaroo from sale in British supermarkets (“Kangaroo Meat Sales Criticised”). These arguments circulate and influence opinion within Australia.A final animal ethics issue is that what is actually behind the push for greater use of kangaroo meat is not concern for the environment or animal welfare but the quest to turn a profit from these animals. The Kangaroo Industries Association of Australia, formed in 1970 to represent those who dealt in the marsupials’ meat, fur and skins, has been a vocal advocate of eating kangaroo and a sponsor of market research into how it can be made more appealing to the market. The Association argued in 1971 that commercial harvest was part of the intelligent conservation of the kangaroo. They sought minimum size regulations to prevent overharvesting and protect their livelihoods (“Assn. Backs Kangaroo Conservation”). The Association’s current website makes the claim that wild harvested “Australian kangaroo meat is among the healthiest, tastiest and most sustainable red meats in the world” (Kangaroo Industries Association of Australia). That this is intended to initiate a new and less controlled branch of the meat industry for the benefit of hunters and processors, rather than foster a shift from sheep or cattle to kangaroos which might serve farmers and the environment, is the opinion of Dr. Louise Boronyak, of the Centre for Compassionate Conservation at the University of Technology Sydney (Boyle 19).Concerns such as these have meant that kangaroo is most consumed where it is least familiar, with most of the meat for human consumption recovered from culled animals being exported to Europe and Asia. Russia has been the largest export market. There, kangaroo meat is made less strange by blending it with other meats and traditional spices to make processed meats, avoiding objections to its appearance and uncertainty around preparation. With only a low profile as a novelty animal in Russia, there are fewer sentimental concerns about consuming kangaroo, although the additional food miles undermine its environmental credentials. The variable acceptability of kangaroo in more distant markets speaks to the role of culture in determining how patterns of eating are formed and can be shifted, or, as Elspeth Probyn phrased it “how natural entities are transformed into commodities within a context of globalisation and local communities”, underlining the impossibility of any straightforward ethics of eating kangaroo (33, 35).Kangatarianism is a neologism which makes the eating of kangaroo meat something it has not been in the past, a voluntary restriction based on environmental ethics. These environmental benefits are well founded and eating kangaroo can be understood as an Anthropocenic bargain struck to allow the continuation of the consumption of red meat while reducing one’s environmental footprint. Although superficially attractive, the numbers entering into this bargain remain small because environmental ethics cannot be disentangled from animal ethics. The anthropomorphising of the kangaroo and its use as a national symbol coexist with its categorisation as a pest and use of its meat as food for companion animals. Both understandings of kangaroos made their meat uneatable for many Australians. Paired with concerns over how kangaroos are killed and the commercialisation of a native species, kangaroo meat has a very mixed reception despite decades of advocacy for eating its meat in favour of that of more harmed and more harmful introduced species. Given these constraints, kangatarianism is unlikely to become widespread and indeed it should be viewed as at best a temporary exigency. As the climate warms and rainfall becomes more erratic, even animals which have evolved to suit Australian conditions will come under increasing pressure, and humans will need to reach Kübler-Ross’ final state of grief: acceptance. In this case, this would mean acceptance that our needs cannot be placed ahead of those of other animals.ReferencesAmpt, Peter, and Kate Owen. Consumer Attitudes to Kangaroo Meat Products. Canberra: Rural Industries Research and Development Corporation, 2008.Appleby, Bryce. “Skippy the ‘Green’ Kangaroo: Identifying Resistances to Eating Kangaroo in the Home in a Context of Climate Change.” BSc Hons, U of Wollongong, 2010 <http://ro.uow.edu.au/thsci/103>.Archer, Michael. “Zoology on the Table: Plenary Session 4.” Australian Zoologist 39, 1 (2017): 154–60.“Assn. Backs Kangaroo Conservation.” The Beverley Times 26 Feb. 1971: 3. 22 Feb. 2019 <http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article202738733>.Barone, Tayissa. “Kangatarians Jump the Divide.” Sydney Morning Herald 9 Feb. 2010. 13 Apr. 2019 <https://www.smh.com.au/lifestyle/kangatarians-jump-the-divide-20100209-gdtvd8.html>.Black, Rosemary. “Some Australians Angry over Idea for Kangaroo and Emu-Flavored Potato Chips.” New York Daily News 4 Dec. 2009. 5 Feb. 2019 <https://www.nydailynews.com/life-style/eats/australians-angry-idea-kangaroo-emu-flavored-potato-chips-article-1.431865>.Boyle, Rhianna. “Eating Skippy.” Big Issue Australia 578 11-24 Jan. 2019: 16–19.Cawthorn, Donna-Mareè, and Louwrens C. Hoffman. “Controversial Cuisine: A Global Account of the Demand, Supply and Acceptance of ‘Unconventional’ and ‘Exotic’ Meats.” Meat Science 120 (2016): 26–7.Conservation of Kangaroos. Melbourne: Australian Conservation Foundation, 1970.Des Purtell and Associates. Improving Consumer Perceptions of Kangaroo Products: A Survey and Report. Canberra: Rural Industries Research and Development Corporation, 1997.Ellicott, John. “Little Pay Incentive for Shooters to Join Kangaroo Meat Industry.” The Land 15 Mar. 2018. 28 Mar. 2019 <https://www.theland.com.au/story/5285265/top-roo-shooter-says-harvesting-is-a-low-paid-job/>.Garnaut, Ross. Garnaut Climate Change Review. 2008. 26 Feb. 2019 <http://www.garnautreview.org.au/index.htm>.Gammage, Bill. The Biggest Estate on Earth: How Aborigines Made Australia. Sydney: Allen and Unwin, 2012.Golder, Hilary, and Diane Kirkby. “Mrs. Mayne and Her Boxing Kangaroo: A Married Woman Tests Her Property Rights in Colonial New South Wales.” Law and History Review 21.3 (2003): 585–605.Grant, Elisabeth. “Sustainable Kangaroo Harvesting: Perceptions and Consumption of Kangaroo Meat among University Students in New South Wales.” Independent Study Project (ISP). U of NSW, 2014. <https://digitalcollections.sit.edu/isp_collection/1755>.Haslam, Nick. “The Five Stages of Grief Don’t Come in Fixed Steps – Everyone Feels Differently.” The Conversation 22 Oct. 2018. 28 Mar. 2019 <https://theconversation.com/the-five-stages-of-grief-dont-come-in-fixed-steps-everyone-feels-differently-96111>.Head, Lesley. “The Anthropoceans.” Geographical Research 53.3 (2015): 313–20.Kangaroo Industries Association of Australia. Kangaroo Meat. 26 Feb. 2019 <http://www.kangarooindustry.com/products/meat/>.“Kangaroo Meat Sales Criticised.” The Canberra Times 13 Sep. 1984: 14. 22 Feb 2019 <http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article136915919>.“Kangaroo to Be Food ‘Salesman.’” Newcastle Morning Herald and Miners’ Advocate, 2 Dec. 1954. 22 Feb 2019 <http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article134089767>.Kübler-Ross, Elisabeth. On Death and Dying: What the Dying Have to Teach Doctors, Nurses, Clergy, and their own Families. New York: Touchstone, 1997.Jackson, Stephen, and Karl Vernes. Kangaroo: Portrait of an Extraordinary Marsupial. Sydney: Allen and Unwin, 2010.Lappé, Frances Moore. Diet for a Small Planet. New York: Ballantine Books, 1971.N’Tash Aha (@Nsvasey). “‘I’m a Kangatarian’ isn’t a Pickup Line, Mate. #LoveIslandAU.” Twitter post. 27 May 2018. 5 Apr. 2019 <https://twitter.com/Nsvasey/status/1000697124122644480>.“NSW Code of Practice for Kangaroo Meat for Human Consumption.” Government Gazette of the State of New South Wales 24 Mar. 1993. 22 Feb. 2019 <http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-page14638033>.Oxford University Press, Australia and New Zealand. Word of the Month. June 2017. <https://www.oup.com.au/dictionaries/word-of-the-month>.Pascoe, Bruce. Dark Emu, Black Seeds: Agriculture or Accident? Broome: Magabala Books, 2014.Probyn, Elspeth. “Eating Roo: Of Things That Become Food.” New Formations 74.1 (2011): 33–45.Steinfeld, Henning, Pierre Gerber, Tom Wassenaar, Vicent Castel, Mauricio Rosales, and Cees d Haan. Livestock’s Long Shadow: Environmental Issues and Options. Rome: Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations, 2006.Trust Nature. Essence of Kangaroo Capsules. 26 Feb. 2019 <http://ncpro.com.au/products/all-products/item/88139-essence-of-kangaroo-35000>.Victoria Department of Environment, Land, Water and Planning. Kangaroo Pet Food Trial. 28 Mar. 2019 <https://www.wildlife.vic.gov.au/managing-wildlife/wildlife-management-and-control-authorisations/kangaroo-pet-food-trial>.Willett, Walter, et al. “Food in the Anthropocene: The EAT–Lancet Commission on Healthy Diets from Sustainable Food Systems.” The Lancet 16 Jan. 2019. 26 Feb. 2019 <https://www.thelancet.com/commissions/EAT>.Wilson, George. “Kangaroos Can Be an Asset Rather than a Pest.” Australasian Science 39.1 (2018): 39.Zukerman, Wendy. “Eating Skippy: The Future of Kangaroo Meat.” New Scientist 208.2781 (2010): 42–5.
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48

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

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Special Care Notice This paper discusses trauma and violence inflicted upon the Indigenous peoples of Tasmania through the process of colonisation. Content within this paper may be distressing to some readers. Introduction The decimation of the First Peoples of Van Diemen’s Land (now Tasmania) was systematic and swift. First Contact was an emotionally, intellectually, physically, and spiritually confronting series of encounters for the Indigenous inhabitants. There were, according to some early records, a few examples of peaceful interactions (Morris 84). Yet, the inevitable competition over resources, and the intensity with which colonists pursued their “claims” for food, land, and water, quickly transformed amicable relationships into hostile rivalries. Jennifer Gall has written that, as “European settlement expanded in the late 1820s, violent exchanges between settlers and Aboriginal people were frequent, brutal and unchecked” (58). Indeed, the near-annihilation of the original custodians of the land was, if viewed through the lens of time, a process that could be described as one that was especially efficient. As John Morris notes: in 1803, when the first settlers arrived in Van Diemen’s Land, the Aborigines had already inhabited the island for some 25,000 years and the population has been estimated at 4,000. Seventy-three years later, Truganinni, [often cited as] the last Tasmanian of full Aboriginal descent, was dead. (84) Against a backdrop of extreme violence, often referred to as the Black War (Clements 1), there were some, admittedly dubious, efforts to contain the bloodshed. One such effort, in the late 1820s, was the production, and subsequent distribution, of a set of Proclamation Boards. Approximately 100 Proclamation Boards (the Board) were introduced by the Lieutenant Governor of the day, George Arthur (after whom Port Arthur on the Tasman Peninsula is named). The purpose of these Boards was to communicate, via a four-strip pictogram, to the Indigenous peoples of the island colony that all people—black and white—were considered equal under the law. “British Justice would protect” everyone (Morris 84). This is reflected in the narrative of the Boards. The first image presents Indigenous peoples and colonists living peacefully together. The second, and central, image shows “a conciliatory handshake between the British governor and an Aboriginal ‘chief’, highly reminiscent of images found in North America on treaty medals and anti-slavery tokens” (Darian-Smith and Edmonds 4). The third and fourth images depict the repercussions for committing murder, with an Indigenous man hanged for spearing a colonist and a European man also hanged for shooting an Aborigine. Both men executed under “gubernatorial supervision” (Turnbull 53). Image 1: Governor Davey's [sic - actually Governor Arthur's] Proclamation to the Aborigines, 1816 [sic - actually c. 1828-30]. Image Credit: Mitchell Library, State Library of NSW (Call Number: SAFE / R 247). The Board is an interesting re-imagining of one of the traditional methods of communication for Indigenous peoples; the leaving of images on the bark of trees. Such trees, often referred to as scarred trees, are rare in modern-day Tasmania as “the expansion of settlements, and the impact of bush fires and other environmental factors” resulted in many of these trees being destroyed (Aboriginal Heritage Tasmania online). Similarly, only a few of the Boards, inspired by these trees, survive today. The Proclamation Board was, in the 1860s, re-imagined as the output of a different Governor: Lieutenant Governor Davey (after whom Port Davey, on the south-west coast of Tasmania is named). This re-imagining of the Board’s creator was so effective that the Board, today, is popularly known as Governor Davey’s Proclamation to the Aborigines. This paper outlines several other re-imaginings of this Board. In addition, this paper offers another, new, re-imagining of the Board, positing that this is an early “pamphlet” on crime, justice and punishment which actually presents as a pre-cursor to the modern Australian true crime tale. In doing so this work connects the Proclamation Board to the larger genre of crime fiction. One Proclamation Board: Two Governors Labelled Van Diemen’s Land and settled as a colony of New South Wales in 1803, this island state would secede from the administration of mainland Australia in 1825. Another change would follow in 1856 when Van Diemen’s Land was, in another process of re-imagining, officially re-named Tasmania. This change in nomenclature was an initiative to, symbolically at least, separate the contemporary state from a criminal and violent past (Newman online). Tasmania’s violent history was, perhaps, inevitable. The island was claimed by Philip Gidley King, the Governor of New South Wales, in the name of His Majesty, not for the purpose of building a community, but to “prevent the French from gaining a footing on the east side of that island” and also to procure “timber and other natural products, as well as to raise grain and to promote the seal industry” (Clark 36). Another rationale for this land claim was to “divide the convicts” (Clark 36) which re-fashioned the island into a gaol. It was this penal element of the British colonisation of Australia that saw the worst of the British Empire forced upon the Aboriginal peoples. As historian Clive Turnbull explains: the brutish state of England was reproduced in the English colonies, and that in many ways its brutishness was increased, for now there came to Australia not the humanitarians or the indifferent, but the men who had vested interests in the systems of restraint; among those who suffered restraint were not only a vast number who were merely unfortunate and poverty-stricken—the victims of a ‘depression’—but brutalised persons, child-slaughterers and even potential cannibals. (Turnbull 25) As noted above the Black War of Tasmania saw unprecedented aggression against the rightful occupants of the land. Yet, the Aboriginal peoples were “promised the white man’s justice, the people [were] exhorted to live in amity with them, the wrongs which they suffer [were] deplored” (Turnbull 23). The administrators purported an egalitarian society, one of integration and peace but Van Diemen’s Land was colonised as a prison and as a place of profit. So, “like many apologists whose material benefit is bound up with the systems which they defend” (Turnbull 23), assertions of care for the health and welfare of the Aboriginal peoples were made but were not supported by sufficient policies, or sufficient will, and the Black War continued. Colonel Thomas Davey (1758-1823) was the second person to serve as Lieutenant Governor of Van Diemen’s Land; a term of office that began in 1813 and concluded in 1817. The fourth Lieutenant Governor of the island was Colonel Sir George Arthur (1784-1854); his term of office, significantly longer than Davey’s, being from 1824 to 1836. The two men were very different but are connected through this intriguing artefact, the Proclamation Board. One of the efforts made to assert the principle of equality under the law in Van Diemen’s Land was an outcome of work undertaken by Surveyor General George Frankland (1800-1838). Frankland wrote to Arthur in early 1829 and suggested the Proclamation Board (Morris 84), sometimes referred to as a Picture Board or the Tasmanian Hieroglyphics, as a tool to support Arthur’s various Proclamations. The Proclamation, signed on 15 April 1828 and promulgated in the The Hobart Town Courier on 19 April 1828 (Arthur 1), was one of several notices attempting to reduce the increasing levels of violence between Indigenous peoples and colonists. The date on Frankland’s correspondence clearly situates the Proclamation Board within Arthur’s tenure as Lieutenant Governor. The Board was, however, in the 1860s, re-imagined as the output of Davey. The Clerk of the Tasmanian House of Assembly, Hugh M. Hull, asserted that the Board was the work of Davey and not Arthur. Hull’s rationale for this, despite archival evidence connecting the Board to Frankland and, by extension, to Arthur, is predominantly anecdotal. In a letter to the editor of The Hobart Mercury, published 26 November 1874, Hull wrote: this curiosity was shown by me to the late Mrs Bateman, neé Pitt, a lady who arrived here in 1804, and with whom I went to school in 1822. She at once recognised it as one of a number prepared in 1816, under Governor Davey’s orders; and said she had seen one hanging on a gum tree at Cottage Green—now Battery Point. (3) Hull went on to assert that “if any old gentleman will look at the picture and remember the style of military and civil dress of 1810-15, he will find that Mrs Bateman was right” (3). Interestingly, Hull relies upon the recollections of a deceased school friend and the dress codes depicted by the artist to date the Proclamation Board as a product of 1816, in lieu of documentary evidence dating the Board as a product of 1828-1830. Curiously, the citation of dress can serve to undermine Hull’s argument. An early 1840s watercolour by Thomas Bock, of Mathinna, an Aboriginal child of Flinders Island adopted by Lieutenant Governor John Franklin (Felton online), features the young girl wearing a brightly coloured, high-waisted dress. This dress is very similar to the dresses worn by the children on the Proclamation Board (the difference being that Mathinna wears a red dress with a contrasting waistband, the children on the Board wear plain yellow dresses) (Bock). Acknowledging the simplicity of children's clothing during the colonial era, it could still be argued that it would have been unlikely the Governor of the day would have placed a child, enjoying at that time a life of privilege, in a situation where she sat for a portrait wearing an old-fashioned garment. So effective was Hull’s re-imagining of the Board’s creator that the Board was, for many years, popularly known as Governor Davey’s Proclamation to the Aborigines with even the date modified, to 1816, to fit Davey’s term of office. Further, it is worth noting that catalogue records acknowledge the error of attribution and list both Davey and Arthur as men connected to the creation of the Proclamation Board. A Surviving Board: Mitchell Library, State Library of New South Wales One of the surviving Proclamation Boards is held by the Mitchell Library. The Boards, oil on Huon pine, were painted by “convict artists incarcerated in the island penal colony” (Carroll 73). The work was mass produced (by the standards of mass production of the day) by pouncing, “a technique [of the Italian Renaissance] of pricking the contours of a drawing with a pin. Charcoal was then dusted on to the drawing” (Carroll 75-76). The images, once outlined, were painted in oil. Of approximately 100 Boards made, several survive today. There are seven known Boards within public collections (Gall 58): five in Australia (Mitchell Library, State Library of NSW, Sydney; Museum Victoria, Melbourne; National Library of Australia, Canberra; Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery, Hobart; and Queen Victoria Museum and Art Gallery, Launceston); and two overseas (The Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology, Harvard University and the Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology, University of Cambridge). The catalogue record, for the Board held by the Mitchell Library, offers the following details:Paintings: 1 oil painting on Huon pine board, rectangular in shape with rounded corners and hole at top centre for suspension ; 35.7 x 22.6 x 1 cm. 4 scenes are depicted:Aborigines and white settlers in European dress mingling harmoniouslyAboriginal men and women, and an Aboriginal child approach Governor Arthur to shake hands while peaceful soldiers look onA hostile Aboriginal man spears a male white settler and is hanged by the military as Governor Arthur looks onA hostile white settler shoots an Aboriginal man and is hanged by the military as Governor Arthur looks on. (SAFE / R 247) The Mitchell Library Board was purchased from J.W. Beattie in May 1919 for £30 (Morris 86), which is approximately $2,200 today. Importantly, the title of the record notes both the popular attribution of the Board and the man who actually instigated the Board’s production: “Governor Davey’s [sic – actually Governor Arthur] Proclamation to the Aborigines, 1816 [sic – actually c. 1828-30].” The date of the Board is still a cause of some speculation. The earlier date, 1828, marks the declaration of martial law (Turnbull 94) and 1830 marks the Black Line (Edmonds 215); the attempt to form a human line of white men to force many Tasmanian Aboriginals, four of the nine nations, onto the Tasman Peninsula (Ryan 3). Frankland’s suggestion for the Board was put forward on 4 February 1829, with Arthur’s official Conciliator to the Aborigines, G.A. Robinson, recording his first sighting of a Board on 24 December 1829 (Morris 84-85). Thus, the conception of the Board may have been in 1828 but the Proclamation project was not fully realised until 1830. Indeed, a news item on the Proclamation Board did appear in the popular press, but not until 5 March 1830: We are informed that the Government have given directions for the painting of a large number of pictures to be placed in the bush for the contemplation of the Aboriginal Inhabitants. […] However […] the causes of their hostility must be more deeply probed, or their taste as connoisseurs in paintings more clearly established, ere we can look for any beneficial result from this measure. (Colonial Times 2) The remark made in relation to becoming a connoisseur of painting, though intended to be derogatory, makes some sense. There was an assumption that the Indigenous peoples could easily translate a European-styled execution by hanging, as a visual metaphor for all forms of punishment. It has long been understood that Indigenous “social organisation and religious and ceremonial life were often as complex as those of the white invaders” (McCulloch 261). However, the Proclamation Board was, in every sense, Eurocentric and made no attempt to acknowledge the complexities of Aboriginal culture. It was, quite simply, never going to be an effective tool of communication, nor achieve its socio-legal aims. The Board Re-imagined: Popular Media The re-imagining of the Proclamation Board as a construct of Governor Davey, instead of Governor Arthur, is just one of many re-imaginings of this curious object. There are, of course, the various imaginings of the purpose of the Board. On the surface these images are a tool for reconciliation but as “the story of these paintings unfolds […] it becomes clear that the proclamations were in effect envoys sent back to Britain to exhibit the ingenious attempts being applied to civilise Australia” (Carroll 76). In this way the Board was re-imagined by the Administration that funded the exercise, even before the project was completed, from a mechanism to assist in the bringing about of peace into an object that would impress colonial superiors. Khadija von Zinnenburg Carroll has recently written about the Boards in the context of their “transnational circulation” and how “objects become subjects and speak of their past through the ventriloquism of contemporary art history” (75). Carroll argues the Board is an item that couples “military strategy with a fine arts propaganda campaign” (Carroll 78). Critically the Boards never achieved their advertised purpose for, as Carroll explains, there were “elaborate rituals Aboriginal Australians had for the dead” and, therefore, “the display of a dead, hanging body is unthinkable. […] being exposed to the sight of a hanged man must have been experienced as an unimaginable act of disrespect” (92). The Proclamation Board would, in sharp contrast to feelings of unimaginable disrespect, inspire feelings of pride across the colonial population. An example of this pride being revealed in the selection of the Board as an object worthy of reproduction, as a lithograph, for an Intercolonial Exhibition, held in Melbourne in 1866 (Morris 84). The lithograph, which identifies the Board as Governor Davey’s Proclamation to the Aborigines and dated 1816, was listed as item 572, of 738 items submitted by Tasmania, for the event (The Commissioners 69-85). This type of reproduction, or re-imagining, of the Board would not be an isolated event. Penelope Edmonds has described the Board as producing a “visual vernacular” through a range of derivatives including lantern slides, lithographs, and postcards. These types of tourist ephemera are in addition to efforts to produce unique re-workings of the Board as seen in Violet Mace’s Proclamation glazed earthernware, which includes a jug (1928) and a pottery cup (1934) (Edmonds online). The Board Re-imagined: A True Crime Tale The Proclamation Board offers numerous narratives. There is the story that the Board was designed and deployed to communicate. There is the story behind the Board. There is also the story of the credit for the initiative which was transferred from Governor Arthur to Governor Davey and subsequently returned to Arthur. There are, too, the provenance stories of individual Boards. There is another story the Proclamation Board offers. The story of true crime in colonial Australia. The Board, as noted, presents through a four-strip pictogram an idea that all are equal under the rule of law (Arthur 1). Advocating for a society of equals was a duplicitous practice, for while Aborigines were hanged for allegedly murdering settlers, “there is no record of whites being charged, let alone punished, for murdering Aborigines” (Morris 84). It would not be until 1838 that white men would be punished for the murder of Aboriginal people (on the mainland) in the wake of the Myall Creek Massacre, in northern New South Wales. There were other examples of attempts to bring about a greater equity under the rule of law but, as Amanda Nettelbeck explains, there was wide-spread resistance to the investigation and charging of colonists for crimes against the Indigenous population with cases regularly not going to trial, or, if making a courtroom, resulting in an acquittal (355-59). That such cases rested on “legally inadmissible Aboriginal testimony” (Reece in Nettelbeck 358) propped up a justice system that was, inherently, unjust in the nineteenth century. It is important to note that commentators at the time did allude to the crime narrative of the Board: when in the most civilized country in the world it has been found ineffective as example to hang murderers in chains, it is not to be expected a savage race will be influenced by the milder exhibition of effigy and caricature. (Colonial Times 2) It is argued here that the Board was much more than an offering of effigy and caricature. The Proclamation Board presents, in striking detail, the formula for the modern true crime tale: a peace disturbed by the act of murder; and the ensuing search for, and delivery of, justice. Reinforcing this point, are the ideas of justice seen within crime fiction, a genre that focuses on the restoration of order out of chaos (James 174), are made visible here as aspirational. The true crime tale does not, consistently, offer the reassurances found within crime fiction. In the real world, particularly one as violent as colonial Australia, we are forced to acknowledge that, below the surface of the official rhetoric on justice and crime, the guilty often go free and the innocent are sometimes hanged. Another point of note is that, if the latter date offered here, of 1830, is taken as the official date of the production of these Boards, then the significance of the Proclamation Board as a true crime tale is even more pronounced through a connection to crime fiction (both genres sharing a common literary heritage). The year 1830 marks the release of Australia’s first novel, Quintus Servinton written by convicted forger Henry Savery, a crime novel (produced in three volumes) published by Henry Melville of Hobart Town. Thus, this paper suggests, 1830 can be posited as a year that witnessed the production of two significant cultural artefacts, the Proclamation Board and the nation’s first full-length literary work, as also being the year that established the, now indomitable, traditions of true crime and crime fiction in Australia. Conclusion During the late 1820s in Van Diemen’s Land (now Tasmania) a set of approximately 100 Proclamation Boards were produced by the Lieutenant Governor of the day, George Arthur. The official purpose of these items was to communicate, to the Indigenous peoples of the island colony, that all—black and white—were equal under the law. Murderers, be they Aboriginal or colonist, would be punished. The Board is a re-imagining of one of the traditional methods of communication for Indigenous peoples; the leaving of drawings on the bark of trees. The Board was, in the 1860s, in time for an Intercolonial Exhibition, re-imagined as the output of Lieutenant Governor Davey. This re-imagining of the Board was so effective that surviving artefacts, today, are popularly known as Governor Davey’s Proclamation to the Aborigines with the date modified, to 1816, to fit the new narrative. The Proclamation Board was also reimagined, by its creators and consumers, in a variety of ways: as peace offering; military propaganda; exhibition object; tourism ephemera; and contemporary art. This paper has also, briefly, offered another re-imagining of the Board, positing that this early “pamphlet” on justice and punishment actually presents a pre-cursor to the modern Australian true crime tale. The Proclamation Board tells many stories but, at the core of this curious object, is a crime story: the story of mass murder. Acknowledgements The author acknowledges the Palawa peoples: the traditional custodians of the lands known today as Tasmania. The author acknowledges, too, the Gadigal people of the Eora nation upon whose lands this paper was researched and written. The author extends thanks to Richard Neville, Margot Riley, Kirsten Thorpe, and Justine Wilson of the State Library of New South Wales for sharing their knowledge and offering their support. The author is also grateful to the reviewers for their careful reading of the manuscript and for making valuable suggestions. ReferencesAboriginal Heritage Tasmania. “Scarred Trees.” Aboriginal Cultural Heritage, 2012. 12 Sep. 2015 ‹http://www.aboriginalheritage.tas.gov.au/aboriginal-cultural-heritage/archaeological-site-types/scarred-trees›.Arthur, George. “Proclamation.” The Hobart Town Courier 19 Apr. 1828: 1.———. Governor Davey’s [sic – actually Governor Arthur’s] Proclamation to the Aborigines, 1816 [sic – actually c. 1828-30]. Graphic Materials. Sydney: Mitchell Library, State Library of NSW, c. 1828-30.Bock, Thomas. Mathinna. Watercolour and Gouache on Paper. 23 x 19 cm (oval), c. 1840.Carroll, Khadija von Zinnenburg. Art in the Time of Colony: Empires and the Making of the Modern World, 1650-2000. Farnham, UK: Ashgate Publishing, 2014.Clark, Manning. History of Australia. Abridged by Michael Cathcart. Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, 1997 [1993]. Clements, Nicholas. The Black War: Fear, Sex and Resistance in Tasmania. St Lucia, Qld.: U of Queensland P, 2014.Colonial Times. “Hobart Town.” Colonial Times 5 Mar. 1830: 2.The Commissioners. Intercolonial Exhibition Official Catalogue. 2nd ed. Melbourne: Blundell & Ford, 1866.Darian-Smith, Kate, and Penelope Edmonds. “Conciliation on Colonial Frontiers.” Conciliation on Colonial Frontiers: Conflict, Performance and Commemoration in Australia and the Pacific Rim. Eds. Kate Darian-Smith and Penelope Edmonds. New York: Routledge, 2015. 1–14. Edmonds, Penelope. “‘Failing in Every Endeavour to Conciliate’: Governor Arthur’s Proclamation Boards to the Aborigines, Australian Conciliation Narratives and Their Transnational Connections.” Journal of Australian Studies 35.2 (2011): 201–18.———. “The Proclamation Cup: Tasmanian Potter Violet Mace and Colonial Quotations.” reCollections 5.2 (2010). 20 May 2015 ‹http://recollections.nma.gov.au/issues/vol_5_no_2/papers/the_proclamation_cup_›.Felton, Heather. “Mathinna.” Companion to Tasmanian History. Hobart: Centre for Tasmanian Historical Studies, University of Tasmania, 2006. 29 Sep. 2015 ‹http://www.utas.edu.au/library/companion_to_tasmanian_history/M/Mathinna.htm›.Gall, Jennifer. Library of Dreams: Treasures from the National Library of Australia. Canberra: National Library of Australia, 2011.Hull, Hugh M. “Tasmanian Hieroglyphics.” The Hobart Mercury 26 Nov. 1874: 3.James, P.D. Talking about Detective Fiction. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2009.Mace, Violet. Violet Mace’s Proclamation Jug. Glazed Earthernware. Launceston: Queen Victoria Museum and Art Gallery, 1928.———. Violet Mace’s Proclamation Cup. Glazed Earthernware. Canberra: National Museum of Australia, 1934.McCulloch, Samuel Clyde. “Sir George Gipps and Eastern Australia’s Policy toward the Aborigine, 1838-46.” The Journal of Modern History 33.3 (1961): 261–69.Morris, John. “Notes on a Message to the Tasmanian Aborigines in 1829, popularly called ‘Governor Davey’s Proclamation to the Aborigines, 1816’.” Australiana 10.3 (1988): 84–7.Nettelbeck, Amanda. “‘Equals of the White Man’: Prosecution of Settlers for Violence against Aboriginal Subjects of the Crown, Colonial Western Australia.” Law and History Review 31.2 (2013): 355–90.Newman, Terry. “Tasmania, the Name.” Companion to Tasmanian History, 2006. 16 Sep. 2015 ‹http://www.utas.edu.au/library/companion_to_tasmanian_history/T/Tasmania%20name.htm›.Reece, Robert H.W., in Amanda Nettelbeck. “‘Equals of the White Man’: Prosecution of Settlers for Violence against Aboriginal Subjects of the Crown, Colonial Western Australia.” Law and History Review 31.2 (2013): 355–90.Ryan, Lyndall. “The Black Line in Van Diemen’s Land: Success or Failure?” Journal of Australian Studies 37.1 (2013): 3–18.Savery, Henry. Quintus Servinton: A Tale Founded upon Events of Real Occurrence. Hobart Town: Henry Melville, 1830.Turnbull, Clive. Black War: The Extermination of the Tasmanian Aborigines. Melbourne: Sun Books, 1974 [1948].
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Rodriguez, Mario George. "“Long Gone Hippies in the Desert”: Counterculture and “Radical Self-Reliance” at Burning Man." M/C Journal 17, no. 6 (October 10, 2014). http://dx.doi.org/10.5204/mcj.909.

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Abstract:
Introduction Burning Man (BM) is a festival of art and music that materialises for one week each year in the Nevada desert. It is considered by many to be the world’s largest countercultural event. But what is BM, really? With record attendance of 69,613 in 2013 (Griffith) (the original event in 1986 had twenty), and recent event themes that have engaged with mainstream political themes such as “Green Man” (2007) and “American Dream” (2008), can BM still be considered countercultural? Was it ever? In the first part of this article, we define counterculture as a subculture that originates in the hippie movement of 1960s America and the rejection of “mainstream” values associated with post-WWII industrial culture, that aligns itself with environmentalism and ecological consciousness, and that is distinctly anti-consumer (Roszak, Making). Second, we identify BM as an art and music festival that transcends the event to travel with its desert denizens out into the “real world.” In this way, it is also a festival that has countercultural connections. Third, though BM bears some resemblance to counterculture, given that it is founded upon “Radical Self-Reliance”, BM is actually anything but countercultural because it interlocks with the current socioeconomic zeitgeist of neoliberalism, and that reflects a “new individualism” (Elliot & Lemert). BM’s ambition to be a commercial-free zone runs aground against its entanglement with market relations, and BM is also arguably a consumer space. Finally, neoliberal ideology and “new individualism” are encoded in the space of BM at the level of the spectacle (Debord). The Uchronian’s structure from BM 2006 (a cavernous wooden construction nicknamed the “Belgian Waffle”) could be read as one example. However, opportunities for personal transformation and transcendent experience may persist as counterculture moves into a global age. Defining Counterculture To talk about BM as a counterculture, we must first define counterculture. Hebdige provided a useful distinction between subculture and counterculture in an endnote to a discussion of Teds versus Rockers (148). According to Hebdige, what distinguishes counterculture from mere subculture and related styles is its association with a specific era (1967–70), that its adherents tended to hail from educated, middle-class families, and that it is “explicitly political and ideological” and thus more easily “read” by the dominant powers. Finally, it opposes the dominant culture. Counterculture has its roots in “the hippies, the flower children, the yippies” of the 60s. However, perhaps Hebdige’s definition is too narrow; it is more of an instance of counterculture than a definition. A more general definition of counterculture might be a subculture that rejects “mainstream” values, and examples of this have existed throughout time. For example, we might include the 19th century Romantics with their rejection of the Enlightenment and distrust of capitalism (Roszak 1972), or the Beat generation and post-War America (Miller). Perhaps counterculture even requires one to be a criminal: the prominent Beat writer William S. Burroughs shot guns and heroin, was a homosexual, and accidentally shot and killed his wife in a drug haze (Severo). All of these are examples of subcultures that rejected or opposed the mainstream values of the time. But it was Roszak (Making) who originally defined counterculture as the hippie movement of 1960s era college-aged middle-class American youth who revolted against the values and society inherited not only from their parents, but from the “military-industrial complex” itself, which “quite simply was the American political system” (3). Indeed, the 1960s counterculture—what the term “counterculture” has more generally come to mean—was perhaps the most radical expression of humanity ever in its ontological overthrow of industrial culture and all that it implied (and also, Roszak speculates, in so much that it may have been an experiment gone wrong on the part of the American establishment): The Communist and Socialist Left had always been as committed to industrialism as their capitalist foes, never questioning it as an inevitable historical stage. From this viewpoint, all that needed to be debated was the ownership and control of the system. But here was a dissenting movement that yearned for an entirely different quality of life. It was not simply calling the political superstructure into question; with precocious ecological insight, it was challenging the culture of industrial cities on which that superstructure stood. And more troubling still, there were those among the dissenters who questioned the very sanity of that culture. These psychic disaffiliates took off in search of altered states of consciousness that might generate altered states of society. (8) For the purposes of this paper, then, counterculture refers specifically to those cultures that find their roots in the hippie movement of the late 1960s. I embrace both Roszak’s and Hebdige’s definitions of counterculture because they define it as a unique reaction of post-WWII American youth against industrial culture and a rejection of the accompanying values of home, marriage and career. Instead, counterculture embraced ecological awareness, rejected consumption, and even directed itself toward mystical altered states. In the case of the espoused ecological consciousness, that blossomed into the contemporary (increasingly mainstream) environmental movement toward “green” energy. In the case of counterculture, the specific instance really is the definition in this case because the response of postwar youth was so strong and idiosyncratic, and there is overlap between counterculture and the BM community. So what is Burning Man? Defining Burning Man According to the event’s website: Burning Man is an annual event and a thriving year-round culture. The event takes place the week leading up to and including Labor Day, in Nevada’s Black Rock Desert. The Burning Man organization […] creates the infrastructure of Black Rock City, wherein attendees (or “participants”) dedicate themselves to the spirit of community, art, self-expression, and self-reliance. They depart one week later, leaving no trace […] Outside the event, Burning Man’s vibrant year-round culture is growing through the non-profit Burning Man Project, including worldwide Regional Groups and associated non-profits who embody Burning Man’s ethos out in the world. (“What is Burning Man?”) I interpret BM as a massive art festival and party that materialises in the desert once a year to produce one of the largest cities in Nevada, but one with increasingly global reach in which the participants feel compelled to carry the ethos forward into their everyday lives. It is also an event with an increasing number of “regional burns” (Taylor) that have emerged as offshoots of the original. Creator Larry Harvey originally conceived of burning the effigy of a man on San Francisco’s Baker Beach in 1986 in honor of the solstice (“Burning Man Timeline”). Twenty people attended the first BM. That figure rapidly rose to 800 by 1990 when for legal reasons it became necessary to relocate to the remote Black Rock desert in Nevada, the largest expanse of flat land in the United States. In the early 90s, when BM had newly relocated and attendees numbered in the low thousands, it was not uncommon for participants to mix drugs, booze, speeding cars and firearms (Bonin) (reminiscent of the outlaw associations of counterculture). As the Internet became popular in the mid-1990s word spread quickly, leading to a surge in the population. By the early 2000s attendance regularly numbered in the tens of thousands and BM had become a global phenomenon. In 2014 the festival turned 28, but it had already been a corporation for nearly two decades before transitioning to a non-profit (“Burning Man Transitions”). Burning Man as Countercultural Event BM has connections to the counterculture, though the organisation is quick to dispel these connections as myths (“Media Myths”). For example, in response to the notion that BM is a “90s Woodstock”, the organisers point out that BM is for all ages and not a concert. Rather, it is a “noncommercial environment” where the participants come to entertain each other, and thus it is “not limited by the conventions of any subculture.” The idea that BM is a “hippie” festival is also a myth, but one with some truth to it: Hippies helped create environmental ethics, founded communes, wore colorful clothing, courted mysticism, and distrusted the modern industrial economy. In some ways, this counterculture bears a resemblance to aspects of Burning Man. Hippie society was also a youth movement that often revolved around drugs, music, and checks from home. Burning Man is about “radical self-reliance”–it is not a youth movement, and it is definitely not a subculture (“Media Myths”). There are some familiar aspects of counterculture here, particularly environmental consciousness, anti-consumer tendencies and mysticism. Yet, looking at the high attendance numbers and the progression of themes in recent years one might speculate that BM is no longer as countercultural as it once was. For instance, psychedelic themes such as “Vault of Heaven” (2004) and “Psyche” (2005) gave way to “The Green Man” (2007) and “American Dream” (2008). Although “Green Man” was an environmental theme it debuted the year after Vice President Al Gore’s “An Inconvenient Truth” (2006) brought the issue of climate change to a mainstream audience. Indeed, as a global, leaderless event with a strong participatory ethos in many respects BM followed suit with the business world, particularly given it was a Limited Liability Corporation (LLC) for many years (though it was ahead of the curve): “Capitalism has learned from the counter culture. But this is not news” (Rojek 355). Similarly, just in time for the 2008 U.S. Presidential election the organisational committee decided to juxtapose “the Man” with the American flag. Therefore, there has been an arguable shift toward engagement with mainstream issues and politics in recent years (and away from mysticism). Recent themes are really re-appropriations of mainstream discourses; hence they are “agonistic” readings (Mouffe). Take for example the VoterDrive Bus, an early example of political talk at BM that engaged with mainstream politics. The driver was seven-time BM veteran Corey Mervis (also known as “Misty Mocracy”) (“Jack Rabbit Speaks”). Beginning on 22 July 2004, the VoterDrive Bus wrote the word VOTE in script across the continental United States in the months before the election, stopping in the Black Rock City (BRC) for one week during the BM festival. Four years later the theme “American Dream” would reflect this countercultural re-appropriation of mainstream political themes in the final months leading up to the 2008 Presidential election. In that year, “the Man,” a massive wooden effigy that burns on the last night of the event, stood atop a platform of windows, each inscribed with the flag of a different country. “American Dream” was as politically as it was poetically inspired. Note the agonistic appeal: “This year's art theme is about patriotism—not that kind which freights the nation state with the collective weight of ego, but a patriotism that is based upon a love of country and culture. Leave ideology at home…Ask yourself, instead…What can postmodern America, this stumbling, roused, half-conscious giant, yet give to the world?” (“2008 Art Theme: American Dream”). BM has arguably retained its countercultural authenticity despite engagement with mainstream political themes by virtue of such agonistic appeals to “American Dream”, and to “Green Man” which promoted environmental awareness, and which after all started out in the counterculture. I attended BM twice in 2006 and 2007 with “The Zombie Hotel”, one among a thousand camps in the BRC, Nevada (oddly, there were numerous zombie-themed camps). The last year I attended, the festival seemed to have come of age, and 2007 was the first in its history that BM invited corporate presence in the form of green energy companies (and informational kiosks, courtesy of Google) (Taylor). Midway through the week, as I stumbled through the haphazard common area that was The Zombie Hotel hiding from the infernal heat of the desert sun, two twin fighter jets, their paths intertwining, disturbed the sanctity of the clear, blue afternoon sky followed by a collective roar from the city. One can imagine my dismay at rumours that the fighter jets—which I had initially assumed to be some sort of military reconnaissance—were in fact hired by the BM Organizational Committee to trace the event’s symbol in the sky. Speculation would later abound on Tribe.net (“What was up with the fighter jets?”). What had BM become after all? Figure 1: Misty Mocracy & the VoterDrive Bus. Photo: Erick Leskinen (2004). Reproduced with permission. “Radical Self-Reliance”, Neoliberalism and the “New Individualism” Despite overlap with elements of counterculture, there is something quite normative about BM from the standpoint of ideology, and thus “mainstream” in the sense of favouring values associated with what Roszak calls “industrial society”, namely consumption and capitalist labor relations. To understand this, let us examine “The Ten Principles of BM”. These include: Radical Inclusion, Gifting, Decommodification, Radical Self-Reliance, Radical Self-Expression, Communal Effort, Civic Responsibility, Leaving No Trace, Participation and Immediacy (“Ten Principles of Burning Man”). These categories speak to BM’s strong connection to the counterculture. For example, “Decommodification” is a rejection of consumerism in favour of a culture of giving; “Immediacy” rejects mediation, and “Participation” stresses transformative change. Many of these categories also evoke political agonism, for example “Radical Inclusion” requires that “anyone may be a part of Burning Man”, and “Radical Self-Expression”, which suggests that no one other than the gift-giver can determine the content of the message. Finally, there are categories that also engage with concepts associated with traditional civil society and democracy, such as “Civic Responsibility”, which refers to the “public welfare”, “Participation”, and “Communal Effort.” Though at first it may seem to connect with countercultural values, upon closer inspection “Radical Self-Reliance” aligns BM with the larger socioeconomic zeitgeist under late-capitalism, subverting its message of “Decommodification.” Here is what it says: “Burning Man encourages the individual to discover, exercise and rely on his or her inner resources.” That message is transformative, even mystical, but it aligns well with a neoliberal ideology and uncertain labor relations under late capitalism. Indeed, Elliot and Lemert explore the psychological impact of a “new individualism”, setting the self in opposition to the incoming forces of globalisation. They address the question of how individuals respond to globalisation, perhaps pathologically. Elliot and Lemert clarify the socio-psychological ramifications of economic fragmentation. They envision this as inextricably caught up with the erosion of personal identity and the necessity to please “self-absorbed others” in a multiplicity of incommensurate realities (20, 21). Individuals are not merely atomised socially but fragmented psychologically, while at the macroscopic level privatisation of the economy spawns this colonisation of the personal Lifeworld, as social things move into the realm of individualised dilemmas (42). It is interesting to note how BM’s principles (in particular “Radical Self-Reliance”) evoke this fracturing of identity as identities and realities multiply in the BRC. Furthermore, the spectre of neoliberal labour conditions on “the Playa” kicks down the door for consumer culture’s entrée. Consumer society “technicises” the project of the self as a series of problems having consumer solutions with reference to expert advice (Slater 86), BM provides that solution in the form of a transformative experience through “Participation”, and acolytes of the BM festival can be said to be deeply invested in the “experience economy” (Pine & Gilmore): “We believe that transformative change, whether in the individual or in society, can occur only through the medium of deeply personal participation” (“Ten Principles”). Yet, while BM rejects consumption as part of “Decommodification”, the event has become something of a playground for new technological elites (with a taste for pink fur and glow tape rather than wine and cheese) with some camps charging as much as US $25,000 in fees per person for the week (most charge $300) (Bilton). BM is gentrifying, or as veteran attendee Tyler Hanson put it, “Burning Man is no longer a counterculture revolution. It’s now become a mirror of society” (quoted in Bilton). Neoliberalism and “new individualism” are all around at BM, and a reading of space and spectacle in the Uchronian structure reveals this encoding. Figure 2: “Message Out of the Future by Night” (also known as “the Belgian Waffle). Photo: Laurent Chavanne (2006). Reproduced with permission. “Long Gone Hippies” Republican tax reformist Grover Norquist made his way to BM for the first time this year, joining the tech elites. He subsequently proclaimed that America had a lot to learn from BM: “The story of Burning Man is one of radical self-reliance” (Norquist). As the population of the BRC surges toward seventy thousand, it may be difficult to call BM a countercultural event any longer. Given parallels between the BM ethos and neoliberal market relations and a “new individualism”, it is hard to deny that BM is deeply intertwined with counterposing forces of globalisation. However, if you ask the participants (and Norquist) they will have a different story: After you buy your ticket to Burning Man to help pay for the infrastructure, and after you pay for your own transportation, food and water, and if you optionally decide to pay to join a camp that provides some services THEN you never have to take your wallet out while at Burning Man. Folks share food, massages, alcohol, swimming pools, trampolines, many experiences. The expenses that occur prior to the festival are very reasonable and it is wonderful to walk around free from shopping or purchasing. Pockets are unnecessary. So are clothes. (Alex & Allyson Grey) Consumerism is a means to an end in an environment where the meanings of civic participation and “giving back” to the counterculture take many forms. Moreover, Thornton argued that the varied definitions of what is “mainstream” among subcultures point more to a complex and multifaceted landscape of subculture than to any coherent agreement as to what “mainstream” actually means (101), and so perhaps our entire discussion of the counterculture/mainstream binary is moot. Perhaps there is something yet to be salvaged in the spaces of participation at BM, some agonistic activity to be harnessed. The fluid spaces of the desert are the loci of community action. Jan Kriekels, founder of the Uchronia Community, holds out some hope. The Belgian based art collective hauled 150 kilometres of lumber to the BRC in the summer of 2006 to construct a freestanding, cavernous structure with a floor space of 60 by 30 metres at its center and a height of 15 metres (they promised a reforestation of the equivalent amount of trees) (Figure 1). “Don’t mistake us for long gone hippies in the desert”, wrote Kriekels in Message Out of the Future: Uchronia Community, “we are trying to build a bridge between materialism and spiritualism” (102). The Uchronians announced themselves as not only desert nomads but nomads in time (“U” signifying “nothing” and “chronos” or “time”), their time-traveller personas designed to subvert commodification, their mysterious structure (nicknamed the “Belgian Waffle” by the burners, a painful misnomer in the eyes of the Uchronians) evoking a sense of timelessness. I remember standing within that “cathedral-like” (60) structure and feeling exhilarated and lonely and cold all at once for the chill of the desert at night, and later, much later, away from the Playa in conversations with a friend we recalled Guy Debord’s “Thesis 30”: “The spectator feels at home nowhere, for the spectacle is everywhere.” The message of the Uchronians provokes a comparison with Virilio’s conceptualisations of “world time” and “simultaneity” that emerge from globalisation and digital technologies (13), part of the rise of a “globalitarianism” (15)—“world time (‘live’) takes over from the ancient, immemorial supremacy of the local time of regions” (113). A fragmented sense of time, after all, accompanies unstable labour conditions in the 21st century. Still, I hold out hope for the “resistance” inherent in counterculture as it fosters humanity’s “bothersomely unfulfilled potentialities” (Roszak, Making 16). I wonder in closing if I have damaged the trust of burners in attempting to write about what is a transcendent experience for many. It may be argued that the space of the BRC is not merely a spectacle—rather, it contains the urban “forests of gestures” (de Certeau 102). These are the secret perambulations—physical and mental—at risk of betrayal. References An Inconvenient Truth. Dir. Davis Guggenheim. Perf. Al Gore. Paramount Pictures, 2006. Bilton, Nick. “At Burning Man, the Tech Elite One-Up One Another.” The New York Times: Fashion & Style, 20 Aug. 2014. 10 Oct. 2014 ‹http://www.nytimes.com/2014/08/21/fashion/at-burning-man-the-tech-elite-one-up-one-another.html› “Burning Man Timeline.” Burningman. 10 Oct. 2014 ‹http://burningman.org/timeline/›. “Burning Man Transitions to Non-Profit Organization.” Burningman 3 Mar. 2014. 10 Oct. 2014 ‹http://blog.burningman.com/2014/03/news/burning-man-transitions-to-non-profit-organization/›. De Bord, Guy. The Society of the Spectacle. New York: Zone, 1994. De Certeau, Michel. The Practice of Everyday Life. Berkeley, Calif.: U of California P, 1984. Dust & Illusions: 30 Years of History of Burning Man. Dir. Oliver Bonin. Perf. Jerry James, Larry Harvey, John Law. Imagine, 2009. Elliot, Anthony, and Charles Lemert. The New Individualism. New York: Routledge, 2006. Grey, Alex, and Alyson Grey. “Ticket 4066, Burning Man Study.” Message to the author. 30 Nov. 2007. E-mail. Griffith, Martin. “Burning Man Draws 66,000 People to the Nevada Desert.” The Huffington Post 2 Sep. 2014. 10 Oct. 2014 ‹http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/09/02/burning-man-2014_n_5751648.html›. Hebdige, Dick. Subculture: The Meaning of Style. New York: Methuen, 1979. “Jack Rabbit Speaks.” JRS 8.32 (2004). 10 Oct. 2014 ‹http://www.burningman.com/blackrockcity_yearround/jrs/vol08/jrs_v08_i32.html›. Kriekels, Jan. Message Out of the Future: Uchronia Community. 2006. 10 Oct. 2014 ‹http://issuu.com/harmenvdw/docs/uchronia-book-low#›. “Media Myths.” Burningman. 6 Nov. 2014 ‹http://www.burningman.com/press/myths.html›. Miller, Timothy. The Hippies and American Values. Knoxville: U of Tennessee P, 1999. Mouffe, Chantal. On the Political. London: Routledge, 2005. Norquist, Grover. “My First Burning Man: Confessions of a Conservative from Washington.” The Guardian 2 Sep. 2014. 10 Oct. 2014 ‹http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/sep/02/my-first-burning-man-grover-norquist›. Pine, B. Joseph, and James H. Gilmore. The Experience Economy. Boston: Harvard Business School P, 1999. Rojek, Chris. "Leaderless Organization, World Historical Events and Their Contradictions: The ‘Burning Man’ City Case.” Cultural Sociology 8.3 (2014): 351–364. Roszak, Theodore. The Making of a Counter Culture. Oakiland, Calif.: U of California P, 1995 [1968]. Roszak, Theodore. Where the Wasteland Ends. Charlottesville, Va.: U of Virginia P, 1972. Severo, Richard. “William S. Burroughs Dies at 83.” New York Times 3 Aug. 1997. 6 Nov. 2014 ‹http://www.nytimes.com/1997/08/03/nyregion/william-s-burroughs-dies-at-83-member-of-the-beat-generation-wrote-naked-lunch.html›. Slater, Don. Consumer Culture and Modernity. Cambridge, U.K.: Polity, 1997. Taylor, Chris. “Burning Man Grows Up.” CNN: Money. 10 Oct. 2014 ‹http://money.cnn.com/magazines/business2/business2_archive/2007/07/01/100117064›. “Ten Principles of Burning Man.” Burningman. 10 Oct. 2014 ‹http://burningman.org/culture/philosophical-center/10-principles/›. Thornton, Sarah. Club Cultures: Music, Media and Subcultural Capital. Hanover, NH: Wesleyan UP, 1996. Virilio, Paul. The Information Bomb. London: Verso, 2000. “What Was Up with the Fighter Jets?” Tribe 7 Sep. 2007. 10 Oct. 2014 ‹http://bm.tribe.net/thread/84f762e0-2160-4e6e-b5af-1e35ce81a1b7›. “2008 Art Theme: American Dream.” Tribe 3 Sep. 2007. 10 Oct. 2014 ‹http://bm.tribe.net/thread/60b9b69c-001a-401f-b69f-25e9bdef95ce›.
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50

Brien, Donna Lee. "Demon Monsters or Misunderstood Casualties?" M/C Journal 24, no. 5 (October 5, 2021). http://dx.doi.org/10.5204/mcj.2845.

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Abstract:
Over the past century, many books for general readers have styled sharks as “monsters of the deep” (Steele). In recent decades, however, at least some writers have also turned to representing how sharks are seriously threatened by human activities. At a time when media coverage of shark sightings seems ever increasing in Australia, scholarship has begun to consider people’s attitudes to sharks and how these are formed, investigating the representation of sharks (Peschak; Ostrovski et al.) in films (Le Busque and Litchfield; Neff; Schwanebeck), newspaper reports (Muter et al.), and social media (Le Busque et al., “An Analysis”). My own research into representations of surfing and sharks in Australian writing (Brien) has, however, revealed that, although reporting of shark sightings and human-shark interactions are prominent in the news, and sharks function as vivid and commanding images and metaphors in art and writing (Ellis; Westbrook et al.), little scholarship has investigated their representation in Australian books published for a general readership. While recognising representations of sharks in other book-length narrative forms in Australia, including Australian fiction, poetry, and film (Ryan and Ellison), this enquiry is focussed on non-fiction books for general readers, to provide an initial review. Sampling holdings of non-fiction books in the National Library of Australia, crosschecked with Google Books, in early 2021, this investigation identified 50 Australian books for general readers that are principally about sharks, or that feature attitudes to them, published from 1911 to 2021. Although not seeking to capture all Australian non-fiction books for general readers that feature sharks, the sampling attempted to locate a wide range of representations and genres across the time frame from the earliest identified text until the time of the survey. The books located include works of natural and popular history, travel writing, memoir, biography, humour, and other long-form non-fiction for adult and younger readers, including hybrid works. A thematic analysis (Guest et al.) of the representation of sharks in these texts identified five themes that moved from understanding sharks as fishes to seeing them as monsters, then prey, and finally to endangered species needing conservation. Many books contained more than one theme, and not all examples identified have been quoted in the discussion of the themes below. Sharks as Part of the Natural Environment Drawing on oral histories passed through generations, two memoirs (Bradley et al.; Fossa) narrate Indigenous stories in which sharks play a central role. These reveal that sharks are part of both the world and a wider cosmology for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people (Clua and Guiart). In these representations, sharks are integrated with, and integral to, Indigenous life, with one writer suggesting they are “creator beings, ancestors, totems. Their lifecycles reflect the seasons, the landscape and sea country. They are seen in the movement of the stars” (Allam). A series of natural history narratives focus on zoological studies of Australian sharks, describing shark species and their anatomy and physiology, as well as discussing shark genetics, behaviour, habitats, and distribution. A foundational and relatively early Australian example is Gilbert P. Whitley’s The Fishes of Australia: The Sharks, Rays, Devil-fish, and Other Primitive Fishes of Australia and New Zealand, published in 1940. Ichthyologist at the Australian Museum in Sydney from the early 1920s to 1964, Whitley authored several books which furthered scientific thought on sharks. Four editions of his Australian Sharks were published between 1983 and 1991 in English, and the book is still held in many libraries and other collections worldwide. In this text, Whitley described a wide variety of sharks, noting shared as well as individual features. Beautiful drawings contribute information on shape, colouring, markings, and other recognisable features to assist with correct identification. Although a scientist and a Fellow and then President of the Royal Zoological Society of New South Wales, Whitley recognised it was important to communicate with general readers and his books are accessible, the prose crisp and clear. Books published after this text (Aiken; Ayling; Last and Stevens; Tricas and Carwardine) share Whitley’s regard for the diversity of sharks as well as his desire to educate a general readership. By 2002, the CSIRO’s Field Guide to Australian Sharks & Rays (Daley et al.) also featured numerous striking photographs of these creatures. Titles such as Australia’s Amazing Sharks (Australian Geographic) emphasise sharks’ unique qualities, including their agility and speed in the water, sensitive sight and smell, and ability to detect changes in water pressure around them, heal rapidly, and replace their teeth. These books also emphasise the central role that sharks play in the marine ecosystem. There are also such field guides to sharks in specific parts of Australia (Allen). This attention to disseminating accurate zoological information about sharks is also evident in books written for younger readers including very young children (Berkes; Kear; Parker and Parker). In these and other similar books, sharks are imaged as a central and vital component of the ocean environment, and the narratives focus on their features and qualities as wondrous rather than monstrous. Sharks as Predatory Monsters A number of books for general readers do, however, image sharks as monsters. In 1911, in his travel narrative Peeps at Many Lands: Australia, Frank Fox describes sharks as “the most dangerous foes of man in Australia” (23) and many books have reinforced this view over the following century. This can be seen in titles that refer to sharks as dangerous predatory killers (Fox and Ruhen; Goadby; Reid; Riley; Sharpe; Taylor and Taylor). The covers of a large proportion of such books feature sharks emerging from the water, jaws wide open in explicit homage to the imaging of the monster shark in the film Jaws (Spielberg). Shark!: Killer Tales from the Dangerous Depths (Reid) is characteristic of books that portray encounters with sharks as terrifying and dramatic, using emotive language and stories that describe sharks as “the world’s most feared sea creature” (47) because they are such “highly efficient killing machines” (iv, see also 127, 129). This representation of sharks is also common in several books for younger readers (Moriarty; Rohr). Although the risk of being injured by an unprovoked shark is extremely low (Chapman; Fletcher et al.), fear of sharks is prevalent and real (Le Busque et al., “People’s Fear”) and described in a number of these texts. Several of the memoirs located describe surfers’ fear of sharks (Muirhead; Orgias), as do those of swimmers, divers, and other frequent users of the sea (Denness; de Gelder; McAloon), even if the author has never encountered a shark in the wild. In these texts, this fear of sharks is often traced to viewing Jaws, and especially to how the film’s huge, bloodthirsty great white shark persistently and determinedly attacks its human hunters. Pioneer Australian shark expert Valerie Taylor describes such great white sharks as “very big, powerful … and amazingly beautiful” but accurately notes that “revenge is not part of their thought process” (Kindle version). Two books explicitly seek to map and explain Australians’ fear of sharks. In Sharks: A History of Fear in Australia, Callum Denness charts this fear across time, beginning with his own “shark story”: a panicked, terror-filled evacuation from the sea, following the sighting of a shadow which turned out not to be a shark. Blake Chapman’s Shark Attacks: Myths, Misunderstandings and Human Fears explains commonly held fearful perceptions of sharks. Acknowledging that sharks are a “highly emotive topic”, the author of this text does not deny “the terror [that] they invoke in our psyche” but makes a case that this is “only a minor characteristic of what makes them such intriguing animals” (ix). In Death by Coconut: 50 Things More Dangerous than a Shark and Why You Shouldn’t Be Afraid of the Ocean, Ruby Ashby Orr utilises humour to educate younger readers about the real risk humans face from sharks and, as per the book’s title, why they should not be feared, listing champagne corks and falling coconuts among the many everyday activities more likely to lead to injury and death in Australia than encountering a shark. Taylor goes further in her memoir – not only describing her wonder at swimming with these creatures, but also her calm acceptance of the possibility of being injured by a shark: "if we are to be bitten, then we are to be bitten … . One must choose a life of adventure, and of mystery and discovery, but with that choice, one must also choose the attendant risks" (2019: Kindle version). Such an attitude is very rare in the books located, with even some of the most positive about these sea creatures still quite sensibly fearful of potentially dangerous encounters with them. Sharks as Prey There is a long history of sharks being fished in Australia (Clark). The killing of sharks for sport is detailed in An American Angler in Australia, which describes popular adventure writer Zane Grey’s visit to Australia and New Zealand in the 1930s to fish ‘big game’. This text includes many bloody accounts of killing sharks, which are justified with explanations about how sharks are dangerous. It is also illustrated with gruesome pictures of dead sharks. Australian fisher Alf Dean’s biography describes him as the “World’s Greatest Shark Hunter” (Thiele), this text similarly illustrated with photographs of some of the gigantic sharks he caught and killed in the second half of the twentieth century. Apart from being killed during pleasure and sport fishing, sharks are also hunted by spearfishers. Valerie Taylor and her late husband, Ron Taylor, are well known in Australia and internationally as shark experts, but they began their careers as spearfishers and shark hunters (Taylor, Ron Taylor’s), with the documentary Shark Hunters gruesomely detailing their killing of many sharks. The couple have produced several books that recount their close encounters with sharks (Taylor; Taylor, Taylor and Goadby; Taylor and Taylor), charting their movement from killers to conservationists as they learned more about the ocean and its inhabitants. Now a passionate campaigner against the past butchery she participated in, Taylor’s memoir describes her shift to a more respectful relationship with sharks, driven by her desire to understand and protect them. In Australia, the culling of sharks is supposedly carried out to ensure human safety in the ocean, although this practice has long been questioned. In 1983, for instance, Whitley noted the “indiscriminate” killing of grey nurse sharks, despite this species largely being very docile and of little threat to people (Australian Sharks, 10). This is repeated by Tony Ayling twenty-five years later who adds the information that the generally harmless grey nurse sharks have been killed to the point of extinction, as it was wrongly believed they preyed on surfers and swimmers. Shark researcher and conservationist Riley Elliott, author of Shark Man: One Kiwi Man’s Mission to Save Our Most Feared and Misunderstood Predator (2014), includes an extremely critical chapter on Western Australian shark ‘management’ through culling, summing up the problems associated with this approach: it seems to me that this cull involved no science or logic, just waste and politics. It’s sickening that the people behind this cull were the Fisheries department, which prior to this was the very department responsible for setting up the world’s best acoustic tagging system for sharks. (Kindle version, Chapter 7) Describing sharks as “misunderstood creatures”, Orr is also clear in her opposition to killing sharks to ‘protect’ swimmers noting that “each year only around 10 people are killed in shark attacks worldwide, while around 73 million sharks are killed by humans”. She adds the question and answer, “sounds unfair? Of course it is, but when an attack is all over the news and the people are baying for shark blood, it’s easy to lose perspective. But culling them? Seriously?” (back cover). The condemnation of culling is also evident in David Brooks’s recent essay on the topic in his collection of essays about animal welfare, conservation and the relationship between humans and other species, Animal Dreams. This disapproval is also evident in narratives by those who have been injured by sharks. Navy diver Paul de Gelder and surfer Glen Orgias were both bitten by sharks in Sydney in 2009 and both their memoirs detail their fear of sharks and the pain they suffered from these interactions and their lengthy recoveries. However, despite their undoubted suffering – both men lost limbs due to these encounters – they also attest to their ongoing respect for these creatures and specify a shared desire not to see them culled. Orgias, instead, charts the life story of the shark who bit him alongside his own story in his memoir, musing at the end of the book, not about himself or his injury, but about the fate of the shark he had encountered: great whites are portrayed … as pathological creatures, and as malevolent. That’s rubbish … they are graceful, mighty beasts. I respect them, and fear them … [but] the thought of them fighting, dying, in a net upsets me. I hope this great white shark doesn’t end up like that. (271–271) Several of the more recent books identified in this study acknowledge that, despite growing understanding of sharks, the popular press and many policy makers continue to advocate for shark culls, these calls especially vocal after a shark-related human death or injury (Peppin-Neff). The damage to shark species involved caused by their killing – either directly by fishing, spearing, finning, or otherwise hunting them, or inadvertently as they become caught in nets or affected by human pollution of the ocean – is discussed in many of the more recent books identified in this study. Sharks as Endangered Alongside fishing, finning, and hunting, human actions and their effects such as beach netting, pollution and habitat change are killing many sharks, to the point where many shark species are threatened. Several recent books follow Orr in noting that an estimated 100 million sharks are now killed annually across the globe and that this, as well as changes to their habitats, are driving many shark species to the status of vulnerable, threatened or towards extinction (Dulvy et al.). This is detailed in texts about biodiversity and climate change in Australia (Steffen et al.) as well as in many of the zoologically focussed books discussed above under the theme of “Sharks as part of the natural environment”. The CSIRO’s Field Guide to Australian Sharks & Rays (Daley et al.), for example, emphasises not only that several shark species are under threat (and protected) (8–9) but also that sharks are, as individuals, themselves very fragile creatures. Their skeletons are made from flexible, soft cartilage rather than bone, meaning that although they are “often thought of as being incredibly tough; in reality, they need to be handled carefully to maximise their chance of survival following capture” (9). Material on this theme is included in books for younger readers on Australia’s endangered animals (Bourke; Roc and Hawke). Shark Conservation By 1991, shark conservation in Australia and overseas was a topic of serious discussion in Sydney, with an international workshop on the subject held at Taronga Zoo and the proceedings published (Pepperell et al.). Since then, the movement to protect sharks has grown, with marine scientists, high-profile figures and other writers promoting shark conservation, especially through attempts to educate the general public about sharks. De Gelder’s memoir, for instance, describes how he now champions sharks, promoting shark conservation in his work as a public speaker. Peter Benchley, who (with Carl Gottlieb) recast his novel Jaws for the film’s screenplay, later attested to regretting his portrayal of sharks as aggressive and became a prominent spokesperson for shark conservation. In explaining his change of heart, he stated that when he wrote the novel, he was reflecting the general belief that sharks would both seek out human prey and attack boats, but he later discovered this to be untrue (Benchley, “Without Malice”). Many recent books about sharks for younger readers convey a conservation message, underscoring how, instead of fearing or killing sharks, or doing nothing, humans need to actively assist these vulnerable creatures to survive. In the children’s book series featuring Bindi Irwin and her “wildlife adventures”, there is a volume where Bindi and a friend are on a diving holiday when they find a dead shark whose fin has been removed. The book not only describes how shark finning is illegal, but also how Bindi and friend are “determined to bring the culprits to justice” (Browne). This narrative, like the other books in this series, has a dual focus; highlighting the beauty of wildlife and its value, but also how the creatures described need protection and assistance. Concluding Discussion This study was prompted by the understanding that the Earth is currently in the epoch known as the Anthropocene, a time in which humans have significantly altered, and continue to alter, the Earth by our activities (Myers), resulting in numerous species becoming threatened, endangered, or extinct. It acknowledges the pressing need for not only natural science research on these actions and their effects, but also for such scientists to publish their findings in more accessible ways (see, Paulin and Green). It specifically responds to demands for scholarship outside the relevant areas of science and conservation to encourage widespread thinking and action (Mascia et al.; Bennett et al.). As understanding public perceptions and overcoming widely held fear of sharks can facilitate their conservation (Panoch and Pearson), the way sharks are imaged is integral to their survival. The five themes identified in this study reveal vastly different ways of viewing and writing about sharks. These range from seeing sharks as nothing more than large fishes to be killed for pleasure, to viewing them as terrifying monsters, to finally understanding that they are amazing creatures who play an important role in the world’s environment and are in urgent need of conservation. This range of representation is important, for if sharks are understood as demon monsters which hunt humans, then it is much more ‘reasonable’ to not care about their future than if they are understood to be fascinating and fragile creatures suffering from their interactions with humans and our effect on the environment. Further research could conduct a textual analysis of these books. In this context, it is interesting to note that, although in 1949 C. Bede Maxwell suggested describing human deaths and injuries from sharks as “accidents” (182) and in 2013 Christopher Neff and Robert Hueter proposed using “sightings, encounters, bites, and the rare cases of fatal bites” (70) to accurately represent “the true risk posed by sharks” to humans (70), the majority of the books in this study, like mass media reports, continue to use the ubiquitous and more dramatic terminology of “shark attack”. The books identified in this analysis could also be compared with international texts to reveal and investigate global similarities and differences. While the focus of this discussion has been on non-fiction texts, a companion analysis of representation of sharks in Australian fiction, poetry, films, and other narratives could also be undertaken, in the hope that such investigations contribute to more nuanced understandings of these majestic sea creatures. 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Death by Coconut: 50 Things More Dangerous than a Shark and Why You Shouldn’t Be Afraid of the Ocean. Affirm Press, 2015. Ostrovski, Raquel Lubambo, Guilherme Martins Violante, Mariana Reis de Brito, Jean Louis Valentin, and Marcelo Vianna. “The Media Paradox: Influence on Human Shark Perceptions and Potential Conservation Impacts.” Ethnobiology and Conservation 10.12 (2021): 1–15. Panoch, Rainera, and Elissa L. Pearson. “Humans and Sharks: Changing Public Perceptions and Overcoming Fear to Facilitate Shark Conservation.” Society & Animals 25.1 (2017): 57–76 Parker Steve, and Jane Parker. The Encyclopedia of Sharks. Universal International, 1999. Paulin, Mike, and David Green. “Mostly Harmless: Sharks We Have Met.” Junctures 19 (2018): 117–122. Pepin-Neff, Christopher L. Flaws: Shark Bites and Emotional Public Policymaking. Palgrave Macmilliam, 2019. Pepperell, Julian, John West, and Peter Woon, eds. 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