Academic literature on the topic 'United Farmers League'

“Garihmato—Look after, to Care for” Melaleuca Alternifolia, commonly called Tea Tree, only grows naturally in the lands of the Bundjalung people from north coast New South Wales. The particular medicinal properties of the Tea Tree have been used for thousands of years, and the Tree and its effects on land, water, and people form part of Bundjalung oral histories and spiritual governance. This article explores media about Tea Tree from the 1990s to 2020s in print media through agricultural media and magazines, as well as online media through TikTok. This combination highlights the generational positionality between the authors as Mother/Daughter and as different consumers of media, with Kath mainly consuming print and Phoebe consuming online. It also utilises a synergy through timing, with the 1990s being when Kath was in her 20s and the 2020s being Phoebe’s time in her 20s. Through analysing the tropes and messaging surrounding Tea Tree, we as Bundjalung women unearth the continued colonisation and exploitation of First Nations knowledges by the health and wellbeing sector – from the mainstream pharmaceutical industry to alternative wellbeing to user-generated travel content. This article considers these areas. Ultimately, acknowledgements of Indigenous land or origins of knowledge are not enough. We call for a structural reaffirmation and recontextualisation of First Nations’ ancestral medicines. Cultural Positioning Our family has an audio recording of our Githabal ancestor Granny Dorothy (Williams) Webb being interviewed by Terry Crowley, a linguist who was recording the Bundjalung language in the 1970s. This recording of Granny forms part of the body of language resources published in the Crowley’s The Middle Clarence Dialects of Bandjalang. In one section of the recording, Crowley quizzes Granny on the names for different trees. When he asks about Tea Tree, Granny quickly responds “bulam” (also sometimes spelt “bulihm”) and then attempts to begin a story on how the bark “bulam-ga” was used for shelters. Crowley abruptly stops her reminiscence as he has no interest in the ethnographic detail, just the linguistic material. Had he allowed her to speak further, he would have known that Granny had much more to say on Tea Tree. Some parts of her knowledge would have not been spoken to him, however, as Tea Tree, in particular Ti Tree Lake, formed a part of her women’s knowledge. As Granny’s female descendants, we operationalise our cultural connection to Bulam/Tea Tree in this article while being mindful and respectful of the importance of keeping certain knowledge within our female genealogy. We remain faithful to Granny’s language and to her teachings which we are privileged to know through oral history from her daughters Gertie and Esther Webb and her granddaughter Julianne Butler. The Context of ‘Wellbeing’ The World Health Organisation states in its Constitution that “health is a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity” (WHO). While noting that this definition is a significant improvement on exclusively bio-medical definitions, we argue that there is still room for a further expansion. In critiquing the WHO definition, Sartorius (662) notes a third dimension of health, which is “a state of balance, an equilibrium that an individual has established within himself and between himself and his social and physical environment”. The inclusion of the environment resonates more deeply with many Aboriginal philosophies but remains problematic due to its individualistic nature, removed from culture, community, and Connection to Country. Through industry research, understandings of ‘wellness’ from the ‘health and wellbeing’ sector at large appear to remain fluid to consumer demands. In a 2021 report, “Wellness in 2030”, research shows that “consumers are spending more on wellness than they ever have before. Wellness is now a $1.5 trillion market globally” (Chopra et al.). Rather than provide a definition of what ‘wellness’ means, the report focusses on six ‘wellness categories’ as identified by consumers: health, fitness, nutrition, appearance, sleep, and mindfulness. From this we can understand that the ‘health and wellness’ industry might not promote a secure philosophy of wellness because, as inherently capitalist enterprises, they want to be responsive to social trends in order to secure profit. For Aboriginal peoples, our understanding of wellbeing is much more concrete. Culture is inextricably connected to Country, and the guardianship of that relationship is a foundation for life and a key indicator of wellbeing (Grieves 2; Oliver 1). Put simply, “if the land is sick, you are sick” (Kenyon). Conversely, the belief that “if you look after the country, the country will look after you” (Weir et al.) has framed a multi-generational cultural governance grounded in The Dreaming. Therefore, this article proceeds on an understanding of wellbeing beyond the limitation of mainstream definitions – we understand wellbeing as being place-based, enculturated, and grounded in action not aspiration. Our case study on the wellbeing representations in media promoting Tea Tree in various forms such as oils and immersive experience speak to this framing. Bulam (Melaleuca Alternifolia) Many Australians are familiar with Tea Tree but are unaware that one particular variant, Melaleuca Alternifolia, only grows naturally within the lands of the Bundjalung people. In addition to continuing oral histories, it was noted in various journals in the early colonial period that Bundjalung people used Bulam (Tea Tree) for a range of uses – to cover shelter, to line the coolamons which held jarjum (children), and for a range of medicinal purposes for its antiseptic, antibacterial, and antifungal properties. Bulam could also be used as a diluted drink, or as a crushed oil rubbed on wounds, with the added advantage of also repelling insects (Murray 693). Additionally, Tea Tree occupies a revered place in Bundjalung beliefs and practices through its transformation of Country. We contend that the phrase “Country makes us healthy” is not a metaphor but a deeply held cultural norm with spiritual and physical attributes. In regard to Bulam/Tea Tree, it is important to acknowledge that there are bodies of water in Bundjalung Country which are ringed by Tea Tree, in particular Ti Tree Lake. The healing properties of the water are enhanced by the infusion from leaves into the water, giving it antibacterial properties; these waters are seen as Women’s sites and are particularly important as birthing places. It is contended that the name Tea Tree comes from the recording of Captain James Cook’s 1770 mapping of the Australian eastern coastline. Coming ashore, Cook and his party witnessed Bundjalung people making a ‘tea coloured’ drink from the leaves of the tree. A number of sailors also used the leaves for tea (Drury 11). Neither the sailors, nor Joseph Banks who collected samples, were aware of the potential health benefits of the Tea Tree. Some early colonists in the north coast region did use the leaves medicinally but it was widely unknown amongst non-Indigenous people until the twentieth century (Drury 19). It was not until the 1920s that Tea Tree was produced and marketed by Arthur Penfold, an Australian chemist. Marketed as an oil, it is claimed that soldiers during World War II were given Tea Tree oil for use in the trenches (Australian Tea Tree Industry Association). However, with the advent of antibiotics, Tea Tree fell out of favour as a remedy, but recent interest, from both pharmaceutical and alternative medicine sectors, has seen a steady growth in production and promotion of Tea Tree for viable wound care globally (Jones). Unpacking Ethnocentrism, ‘Common Sense’, and Settler-Colonial Extractivism Australia has since developed a flourishing market for ‘herbal remedies’ which is dominated by Western and Chinese medicinal products. While Indigenous Medicines are experiencing growing popularity, they have traditionally held a very small market share (Wohlmuth et al.). Interestingly, while some Indigenous medicines have been used to develop Indigenous-owned micro-economies (Oliver), Tea Tree products have predominantly been distributed by non-Indigenous people. This is problematic because it removes the product from its broader cultural context and does not recognise Indigenous Intellectual and Cultural Property Rights. In fact, the marketing of Tea Tree oil in some contexts displays a distinct ethnocentrism. We understand ‘ethnocentrism’ to refer to individual and systemically entrenched beliefs in the perceived ‘rightness’ of the perspectives and processes of a person’s own group. Ethnocentrism also identifies that this belief in the ‘rightness’ of their own community acts alongside an aversion and disdain for ‘outsiders’ and their ways. This belief often enforces loyalty along ethnic lines in order to consolidate power, wealth, and resources in order to deprive the ‘outsider’. Notions of ethnocentrism have been present in the Australian social, cultural, and political consciousness for centuries (Cole) Another idea to consider with Australian ethnocentrism is theorist Antonio Gramsci’s concept of ‘common sense’. He argues that, while individuals of a social group may hold its conception of the world, the same group may repeat rhetoric that is not their own due to the ideas' prevalence in ‘normal times’. This is when the repetition of ‘common sense’ understandings becomes “not independent and autonomous, but submissive and subordinate” (Gramsci). Many of the media representations we unpack later in this article can be understood as repetitions of settler-colonial ‘common sense’ which reinforce and value the supposed ‘supremacy’ of white non-Indigenous understandings while trivialising or disregarding First Nations ways. Consequently, this brings the issue of ethnocentrism beyond individual acts to highlight the extractive nature of settler-colonial nations, which premise themselves on the ‘elimination of the native’ and our ways of being, knowing, and doing (Kauanui). This elimination does not have to be purely genocidal but also includes the appropriation and assimilation of First Nations people, resources, and knowledge. Mississauga Nishnaabeg writer Leanne Simpson from northern Turtle Island (Canada) argues that extraction and assimilation go together. Colonialism has always extracted the indigenous … every part of our culture that is seemingly useful to the extractivist mindset gets extracted … and assimilated into the culture of the settlers without regard for the people and the knowledge that created it. (Klein) In our analysis of media representations below, we will see many examples of what this section seeks to explain. Media will trivialise or dismiss First Nations people and knowledge through extraction, appropriation, and assimilation of our resources into their own ethnocentric understandings. Tea Tree Oil Use in ‘Australia’, 1990s-2020s In the 1990s, as Tea Tree oil began to expand in the market, the Australian Financial Review published an article entitled “Bringing Tea-Tree Oil Out of the Swamp” (Brown). The article’s provocative introduction asserted: the world's first big plantation producer of tea-tree oil discovered early that its product's folksy image was not easy to shed. Decades of labelling as a bush remedy was a disadvantage when the product was eventually promoted as scientifically proven medicine. However, the company has succeeded in convincing consumers that the native product is a quality one, and the result has been the birth of a new industry. In deconstructing these assertions through a Bundjalung lens we have much to say! Firstly, it is a peculiarly Western lens which denigrates swampland. The late anthropologist Deborah Bird Rose (1996) gave voice to many of the Aboriginal perspectives which she had heard, contending that ‘wilderness’ is a construction of the West. For Aboriginal people, swamp is still sacred: it is the home of the Tea Tree and is not perceived as lesser, but rather as an interdependent element of the broader landscape, of the health of waterways, teeming with food and medicines. Secondly, we note the usage of “folksy image” and “bush remedy” as hurdles to be overcome. Given that both of these, particularly ‘bush medicines’, are coded to Aboriginality, this presents another layer of disconnection of the emplaced and enculturated nature of Tea Tree. In fact, later studies have shown that there is strong uptake and identification with traditional medicines exactly from that basis. For instance, interviewees from clinics distributing traditional remedies recall, “blackfellas and whitefellas come and tell us, ‘I’m feeling better from your bush medicine, can I get some more?’” (Oliver). Additionally, if we consider the global market, the WHO estimates that “60% of the world’s population relies on herbal medicine and about 80% of the population in developing countries depends almost totally on it for their primary health care needs” (Khan). Therefore, we contend that the ‘disadvantage’ is in targeting the ethnocentric Western market, which is masked by an apparent global outlook. This year, in “Three Tales from Tea Tree Farmers”, an article published in The Farmer Magazine, the developing ‘Australian’ Tea Tree industry is foregrounded in the by-line with “First Nations people have understood the value of Australian tea tree oil for thousands of years” (Hadgraft). This is particularly ironic given the content of the article itself: white face after white face come through the editorial shots of farmers with their crop, and not another whisper of the Aboriginal people and knowledges the article leads with. In this and other business-focussed articles, the Tea Tree narrative transcends its literal grounding. In contrast, a range of alternative medicine commentators do acknowledge the centrality of Bundjalung culture to Tea Tree’s curative potential, but place Aboriginal knowledges in a liminal space – a kind of choose-your-own-adventure – which samples across belief systems and practices to create a hybrid model which weakens Aboriginal cultural authority. We note that these erasures and slippages are not necessarily made from malice, but nevertheless constitute a problematic narrative through an Aboriginal lens. For example, Madelaine West, in “The Only Way to Create a Kinder World Together”, lauds the Tea Tree-infused lake waters in the Bundjalung nation as a kind of New Age transformative landscape. She comments: since time immemorial, these lakes have been a sacred Indigenous birthing place and meeting ground of the First Nation tribes of the Arakwal-Bundjalung people. Historically a ‘girls only’-type affair, many Indigenous men still observe this practice. It should be noted here that ‘girls only’ seems to hearken to the literary tradition of girls' adventure fiction – the self-sufficient tomboy who challenges gender norms. While this trope has, and can, continue to serve to empower young women, there has often been a racialised element to this narrative (McRobbie and McCabe 1981). In the context of Tea Tree, it is salient to note that Women’s Business transcends the girls-only trope as the framing of spiritual authority with severe consequences for those men who transgress this element of lore (Bird-Rose 36-8). Thus West’s contention of the personified Lake sits in direct contravention to her stated position that “it is not for me to interpret nor appropriate the culture of the traditional custodians of this region”. The warm, soothing waters of these lakes offer up their healing properties to one and all ... they don't discriminate along lines of colour, creed, residence or orientation. They just hold you in their fluid, forgiving embrace, wash you clean, heal your hurts and soothe your soul. (West) We note that there is no problem in personifying the body of water as this directly correlates to international movements to the legal personhood of waterways, such as the Whanganui River in Aotearoa (New Zealand), or recognition as a living entity such as the Yarra River in Victoria. What should be noted, however, is that within the context of international instruments like the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples and various national and state policies, First Nations people (in particular Traditional Owners) are central to the representation of engagement with water (Pelizzon et al.). In this context it would include a culturally mediated guardianship on who may bathe in the waters, which speaks to a respect for cultural traditions and consultation for permission to use the waters. There is an ongoing tension for First Nations people attempting to negotiate this preferred power-sharing with local, state, and national governments while their Country continues to be desecrated by ignorant and selfish visitors. Despite lack of support from the state, First Nations peoples regularly attempt to exert their own environmental governance and authority over sacred sites on their Country, with one way being through the use of signs informing guests of the nature of the area. Similar to our special lakes in Bundjalung Country, Kuku Yalanji people from the Daintree have the Blue Hole Pool, which is a healing and birthing place reserved for women’s business. Kuku Yalanji Traditional Owners have struggled for years to protect this site, as non-Indigenous people have decided to make the pool a regular swimming spot. Multiple erected signs are constantly dismissed and a boom gate installed to stop vehicles has been broken multiple times by disgruntled visitors. (Hollis) Protecting these lakes has hit another obstacle with the rise of #traveltok in the 2020s, a subsection of media on the user-generated short form video-sharing app TikTok dedicated to sharing the best spots to travel. All someone has to search for is ‘swimming hole daintree’, and videos show overwhelmingly non-Indigenous tourists (of all genders) sharing their travels to the Blue Hole Pool. One video shows a girl with her friends trespassing past the aforementioned boom gate (TikTok a), and another video shows a young man filming himself in the sacred women’s pool with the caption “Add this to your bucket list in Queensland!” (TikTok b). Ironically, a number of commenters note that he would have had to ignore numerous signs warning him to not swim. However, the video still garnered 2,200 likes, and over 700 people have saved the video. A similar search for ‘Ti Tree Lake’ reveals comparable content. The first video belongs to a young woman, Rhiannon, presumably in her early 20s, who declares in a voiceover that “this is one of the best places to swim in Australia”, before listing off the health and wellbeing benefits of the Tea Tree-infused lake (TikTok c). While she acknowledges in the second half of the video that the lake is “valued” by Indigenous women after birth, she fails to name Bundjalung people for her audience of 508,000 views, and instead closes her content on how nice her hair felt afterwards. Through this type of media content creation, a young white woman has assumed the right to promote one of Bundjalung Nation’s most significant sites. Another video nearby in the search list shows a young man bathing in our women’s lake (TikTok d). West and Rhiannon are certainly not alone in their shaping of the lake as a natural healing place through a lens of wellbeing language. A letter to the editor complaining of men using the lake took a far different approach to a gender prohibition, adding dismay that the lake was being used by men seeking random sexual hook-ups. In speaking of the significance of the Country, the author writes, “once upon a time it was an Aboriginal birthing ground. Yeah fellas, a sacred women’s area”. Ironically the concern of what had been ‘lost’ was also framed through a nostalgic appreciation where 20 years ago I used to come here with my girlfriends and we would swim in the tea-tree lake, dive deep to retrieve the mineral rich mud from the bottom and lie in the sun until it had dried. It was the ultimate day spa. (Leonard) While noting this conversational tone, there is nevertheless a deep disjuncture between a sacred women's area and a day spa. We argue that the significance of Tea Tree lakes is not open to appropriation through reinterpretation, not through a female empowerment and revitalisation agenda nor a neo-spiritual agenda which arose in the 2015 media discussion on a non-Aboriginal Victorian couple’s decision to give birth in Taylors Lake, reported by the Byron Shire News. In the paper’s next weekly edition, they gave voice to Arakwal custodians who commented: Taylors Lake or Ti Tree Lake is the most significant Aboriginal women's site in the Byron Shire … . The lake belongs to all Bundjalung women and holds deep spiritual significance to us, and our men never go there out of respect … . This woman speaks about her respect for Aboriginal culture but did not ask our permission. We were horrified when we saw the picture in the paper of this man in the sacred women's lake. (Kay cited in C222morrow) This last example particularly exemplifies the attempted ‘elimination’ of First Peoples through the attempted appropriation and assimilation of Indigenous practice. This absorption of the practice of bathing in these lakes into non-Indigenous practices attempts to displace Indigenous peoples from our Country, our sacred sites, and our knowledge. Through the re-framing of these places as ‘wellness’ tools or feminist liberation, we are experiencing the continued colonisation of our special places, which are our birthright as encultured female members of First Nations groups. Calls to Action There is a trend in academic literature which provides the scope of problems which plague Indigenous peoples. Our article concludes not with a restatement of the issues, but with a series of Calls to Action. Every day that we do not empower Traditional Owners in the management of their own Country is another day that sites such as Ti Tree Lake are desecrated and culturally significant plants like bulam are exploited. This requires individual and broader systemic change: Non-Indigenous peoples seeking healing and enlightenment from Country must be mindful that they are guests in those spaces. Wilfully ignoring Indigenous protocols or seeing protocols as a “pick and mix” option devalues Country. Social media guidelines for platforms such as TikTok must include avenues to flag or remove or add warnings for culturally insensitive content. This requires ongoing collaboration with First Nations people to further refine what content breaches these guidelines. Content creators must also adapt to community feedback. There must be legal recognition of Indigenous Cultural and Intellectual Property (ICIP) regarding First Nations’ knowledge of Country. First Nations people must be empowered to economically benefit from their knowledge as business owners and entrepreneurs utilising their individual, familial, and communal knowledge. Local, state, and national governments must empower Traditional Ecological Governance systems. Acknowledgement is not enough, sovereignty and land back. #notyourdamndayspa. References Australian Tea Tree Oil Industry Association. “About Australian Tea Tree Oil.” 10 June 2023 <https://teatree.org.au/teatree_about.php>. Bird-Rose, Deborah. Nourishing Terrains: Australian Aboriginal Views of Landscape and Wilderness. Australian Heritage Commission, 1996. Brown, Jamie. “Bringing Tea-Tree Oil Out of the Swamp.” Financial Review 17 Apr. 1994. <https://www.afr.com/companies/bringing-tea-tree-oil-out-of-the-swamp-19940117-kate3>. C222morrow. “Arakwal Condemn Birth Plans for Women’s Lake.” 19 Feb. 2015. <https://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/news/nsw/byron-shire/arakwal-condemn-birth-plans-for-womens-lake/news-story/2ff9913bd37ce6a3cb3fa1edb45af0f4>. Chopra, Manish, et al. “Wellness in 2030.” 22 July 2021 <https://www.mckinsey.com/industries/consumer-packaged-goods/our-insights/wellness-in-2030>. Cole, Douglas. “‘The Crimson Thread of Kinship’: Ethnic Ideas in Australia, 1870–1914.” Historical Studies 14.56 (1971): 511-525. Crowley, Terry. The Middle Clarence Dialects of Bandjalang. Australian Institute of Aboriginal Studies, 1978. Drury, Susan. Tea Tree Oil: A Medicine Kit in a Bottle. Unity Press, 1996. Gramsci, Antonio. Selections from the Prison Notebooks. 6th ed. London: Wishart, 1980. Grieves, Vicki. Aboriginal Spirituality: Aboriginal Philosophy, the Basis of Aboriginal Social and Emotional Wellbeing. Cooperative Research Centre for Aboriginal Health, 2009. Hadgraft, Bev. “Three Tales from Tea Tree Farmers.” The Farmer 13 Feb. 2023. <https://thefarmermagazine.com.au/tea-tree-tales/>. Hollis, Hannah. “Ignoring 'No Entry' Signs at Women's Sacred Site Has Consequences, Says Custodian.” SBS 31 Mar. 2016 .<https://www.sbs.com.au/nitv/article/ignoring-no-entry-signs-at-womens-sacred-site-has-consequences-says-custodian/2pvigi9gx>. Jones, Greg. “Indigenous Medicine – A Fusion of Ritual and Remedy.” The Conversation 5 Dec. 2014. <https://theconversation.com/indigenous-medicine-a-fusion-of-ritual-and-remedy-33142>. Kahn, Mohd S.A., and Iqbal Ahmed. “Herbal Medicine: Current Trends and Future Prospects.” New Look to Phytomedicine. Academic Press, 2019. Kauanui, J. Kēhaulani. “‘A Structure, Not an Event’: Settler Colonialism and Enduring Indigeneity.” Emergent Critical Analytics for Alternative Humanities, 2016. <https://csalateral.org/issue/5-1/forum-alt-humanities-settler-colonialism-enduring-indigeneity-kauanui/>. Keyon, Georgia. “‘If the land is sick, you are sick’: An Aboriginal Approach to Mental Health in Times of Drought.” 8 Jun. 2023 <https://scroll.in/pulse/921558/if-the-land-is-sick-you-are-sick-an-aboriginal-approach-to-mental-health-in-times-of-drought>. Klein, Naomi. “Dancing the World into Being: A Conversation with Idle No More’s Leanne Simpson.” Yes Magazine 6 Mar. 2013. <https://www.yesmagazine.org/social-justice/2013/03/06/dancing-the-world-into-being-a-conversation-with-idle-no-more-leanne-simpson>. Leonard, Ali. “Stop Shagging at the Tea-Tree Lake.” 20 May 2023 <https://www.echo.net.au/2018/01/stop-shagging-tea-tree-lake/>. McRobbie, Angela, and Trisha McCabe. Feminism for Girls: An Adventure Story. Routledge, 2013. Murray, Michael. “Melaleuca Alternifolia (Tea Tree).” Textbook of Natural Medicine. 5th ed. 2020. Oliver, Stefani. “The Role of Traditional Medicine Practice in Primary Health Care within Aboriginal Australia: A Review of the Literature.” Journal of Ethnobiology and Ethnomedicine 9.46 (2013). Pelizzon, Alessandro, Erin O’Donnell, and Anne Poelina. “Australia’s Rivers are Ancestral Beings.” 29 May 2023 <https://pursuit.unimelb.edu.au/articles/australia-s-rivers-are-ancestral-beings>. Sartorius, Norman. “The Meanings of Health and Its Promotion.” Croatian Medical Journal 47 (2006): 662-64. Tik Tok a. 30 May 2023 <https://vt.tiktok.com/ZSLMykWMF/>. Tik Tok b. 30 May 2023 <https://vt.tiktok.com/ZSLMyqr4a/>. Tik Tok c. 30 May 2023 <https://vt.tiktok.com/ZSLMf29Vm/>. Tik Tok d. 30 May 2023 <https://vt.tiktok.com/ZSLMfmSGN/>. Weir, Jessica, and Kara Youngtob. The Benefits Associated with Caring for Country. AIATSIS, 2009. West, Madelaine. “The Only Way to Create a Kinder World Together.” 20 May 2023 <https://honey.nine.com.au/latest/ti-tree-lakes-madeleine-west/945298a0-15cb-4831-a269-6ed431b81b31>. Wohlmuth, Hans, Chris Oliver, and Pradeep Nathan. “A Review of the Status of Western Herbal Medicine in Australia.” Journal of Herbal Pharmacotherapy 2.2 (2002): 33-46. WHO. “Constitution.” 6 June 2023 <https://www.who.int/about/governance/constitution>.

Diaspora This article looks at diaspora through the transformations of an established public service broadcaster, the BBC World Service, by considering some of the findings of the AHRC-funded Tuning In: Contact Zones at the BBC World Service, which is part of the Diasporas, Migration and Identities program. Tuning In has six themes, each of which focuses upon the role of the BBC WS: The Politics of Translation, Diasporic Nationhood, Religious Transnationalism, Sport across Diasporas, Migrating Music and Drama for Development. The World Service, which was until 2011 funded by the Foreign Office, was set up to cater for the British diaspora and had the specific remit of transmitting ideas about Britishness to its audiences overseas. Tuning In demonstrates interrelationships between the global and the local in the diasporic contact zone of the BBC World Service, which has provided a mediated home for the worldwide British diaspora since its inception in 1932. The local and the global have merged, elided, and separated at different times and in different spaces in the changing story of the BBC (Briggs). The BBC WS is both local and global with activities that present Britishness both at home and abroad. The service has, however, come a long way since its early days as the Empire Service. Audiences for the World Service’s 31 foreign language services, radio, television, and Internet facilities include substantive non-British/English-speaking constituencies, rendering it a contact zone for the exploration of ideas and political opportunities on a truly transnational scale. This heterogeneous body of exilic, refugee intellectuals, writers, and artists now operates alongside an ongoing expression of Britishness in all its diverse reconfiguration. This includes the residual voice of empire and its patriarchal paternalism, the embrace of more recent expressions of neoliberalism as well as traditional values of impartiality and objectivism and, in the case of the arts, elements of bohemianism and creative innovation. The World Service might have begun as a communication system for the British ex-pat diaspora, but its role has changed along with the changing relationship between Britain and its colonial past. In the terrain of sport, for example, cricket, the “game of empire,” has shifted from Britain to the Indian subcontinent (Guha) with the rise of “Twenty 20” and the Indian Premier League (IPL); summed up in Ashis Nandy’s claim that “cricket is an Indian game accidentally discovered by the English” (Nandy viii). English county cricket dominated the airways of the World Service well into the latter half of the twentieth century, but the audiences of the service have demanded a response to social and cultural change and the service has responded. Sport can thus be seen to have offered a democratic space in which new diasporic relations can be forged as well as one in which colonial and patriarchal values are maintained. The BBC WS today is part of a network through which non-British diasporic peoples can reconnect with their home countries via the service, as well as an online forum for debate across the globe. In many regions of the world, it continues to be the single most trusted source of information at times of crisis and disaster because of its traditions of impartiality and objectivity, even though (as noted in the article on Al-Jazeera in this special issue) this view is hotly contested. The principles of objectivity and impartiality are central to the BBC WS, which may seem paradoxical since it is funded by the Commonwealth and Foreign office, and its origins lie in empire and colonial discourse. Archive material researched by our project demonstrates the specifically ideological role of what was first called the Empire Service. The language of empire was deployed in this early programming, and there is an explicit expression of an ideological purpose (Hill). For example, at the Imperial Conference in 1930, the service was supported in terms of its political powers of “strengthening ties” between parts of the empire. This view comes from a speech by John Reith, the BBC’s first Director General, which was broadcast when the service opened. In this speech, broadcasting is identified as having come to involve a “connecting and co-ordinating link between the scattered parts of the British Empire” (Reith). Local British values are transmitted across the globe. Through the service, empire and nation are reinstated through the routine broadcasting of cyclical events, the importance of which Scannell and Cardiff describe as follows: Nothing so well illustrates the noiseless manner in which the BBC became perhaps the central agent of national culture as its cyclical role; the cyclical production year in year out, of an orderly, regular progression of festivities, rituals and celebrations—major and minor, civic and sacred—that mark the unfolding of the broadcast year. (278; italics in the original) State occasions and big moments, including those directly concerned with governance and affairs of state, and those which focused upon sport and religion, were a big part in these “noiseless” cycles, and became key elements in the making of Britishness across the globe. The BBC is “noiseless” because the timetable is assumed and taken for granted as not only what is but what should be. However, the BBC WS has been and has had to be responsive to major shifts in global and local—and, indeed, glocal—power geometries that have led to spatial transformations, notably in the reconfiguration of the service in the era of postcolonialism. Some of these massive changes have involved the large-scale movement of people and a concomitant rethinking of diaspora as a concept. Empire, like nation, operates as an “imagined community,” too big to be grasped by individuals (Anderson), as well as a material actuality. The dynamics of identification are rarely linear and there are inconsistencies and disruptions: even when the voice is officially that of empire, the practice of the World Service is much more diverse, nuanced, and dialogical. The BBC WS challenges boundaries through the connectivities of communication and through different ways of belonging and, similarly, through a problematisation of concepts like attachment and detachment; this is most notable in the way in which programming has adapted to new diasporic audiences and in the reworkings of spatiality in the shift from empire to diversity via multiculturalism. There are tensions between diaspora and multiculturalism that are apparent in a discussion of broadcasting and communication networks. Diaspora has been distinguished by mobility and hybridity (Clifford, Hall, Bhaba, Gilroy) and it has been argued that the adjectival use of diasporic offers more opportunity for fluidity and transformation (Clifford). The concept of diaspora, as it has been used to explain the fluidity and mobility of diasporic identifications, can challenge more stabilised, “classic” understandings of diaspora (Chivallon). A hybrid version of diaspora might sit uneasily with a strong sense of belonging and with the idea that the broadcast media offer a multicultural space in which each voice can be heard and a wide range of cultures are present. Tuning In engaged with ways of rethinking the BBC’s relationship to diaspora in the twenty-first century in a number of ways: for example, in the intersection of discursive regimes of representation; in the status of public service broadcasting; vis-à-vis the consequences of diverse diasporic audiences; through the role of cultural intermediaries such as journalists and writers; and via global economic and political materialities (Gillespie, Webb and Baumann). Tuning In thus provided a multi-themed and methodologically diverse exploration of how the BBC WS is itself a series of spaces which are constitutive of the transformation of diasporic identifications. Exploring the part played by the BBC WS in changing and continuing social flows and networks involves, first, reconfiguring what is understood by transnationalism, diaspora, and postcolonial relationalities: in particular, attending to how these transform as well as sometimes reinstate colonial and patriarchal discourses and practices, thus bringing together different dimensions of the local and the global. Tuning In ranges across different fields, embracing cultural, social, and political areas of experience as represented in broadcasting coverage. These fields illustrate the educative role of the BBC and the World Service that is also linked to its particular version of impartiality; just as The Archers was set up to provide information and guidance through a narrative of everyday life to rural communities and farmers after the Second World War, so the Afghan version plays an “edutainment” role (Skuse) where entertainment also serves an educational, public service information role. Indeed, the use of soap opera genre such as The Archers as a vehicle for humanitarian and health information has been very successful over the past decade, with the “edutainment” genre becoming a feature of the World Service’s broadcasting in places such as Rwanda, Somalia, Nigeria, India, Nepal, Burma, Afghanistan, and Cambodia. In a genre that has been promoted by the World Service Trust, the charitable arm of the BBC WS uses drama formats to build transnational production relationships with media professionals and to strengthen creative capacities to undertake behaviour change through communication work. Such programming, which is in the tradition of the BBC WS, draws upon the service’s expertise and exhibits both an ideological commitment to progressive social intervention and a paternalist approach drawing upon colonialist legacies. Nowadays, however, the BBC WS can be considered a diasporic contact zone, providing sites of transnational intra-diasporic contact as well as cross-cultural encounters, spaces for cross-diasporic creativity and representation, and a forum for cross-cultural dialogue and potentially cosmopolitan translations (Pratt, Clifford). These activities are, however, still marked by historically forged asymmetric power relations, notably of colonialism, imperialism, and globalisation, as well as still being dominated by hegemonic masculinity in many parts of the service, which thus represent sites of contestation, conflict, and transgression. Conversely, diasporic identities are themselves co-shaped by media representations (Sreberny). The diasporic contact zone is a relational space in which diasporic identities are made and remade and contested. Tuning In employed a diverse range of methods to analyse the part played by the BBC WS in changing and continuing social and cultural flows, networks, and reconfigurations of transnationalisms and diaspora, as well as reinstating colonial, patriarchal practices. The research deconstructed some assumptions and conditions of class-based elitism, colonialism, and patriarchy through a range of strategies. Texts are, of course, central to this work, with the BBC Archives at Caversham (near Reading) representing the starting point for many researchers. The archive is a rich source of material for researchers which carries a vast range of data including fragile memos written on scraps of paper: a very local source of global communications. Other textual material occupies the less locatable cyberspace, for example in the case of Have Your Say exchanges on the Web. People also featured in the project, through the media, in cyberspace, and physical encounters, all of which demonstrate the diverse modes of connection that have been established. Researchers worked with the BBC WS in a variety of ways, not only through interviews and ethnographic approaches, such as participant observation and witness seminars, but also through exchanges between the service, its practitioners, and the researchers (for example, through broadcasts where the project provided the content and the ideas and researchers have been part of programs that have gone out on the BBC WS (Goldblatt, Webb), bringing together people who work for the BBC and Tuning In researchers). On this point, it should be remembered that Bush House is, itself, a diasporic space which, from its geographical location in the Strand in London, has brought together diasporic people from around the globe to establish international communication networks, and has thus become the focus and locus of some of our research. What we have understood by the term “diasporic space” in this context includes both the materialities of architecture and cyberspace which is the site of digital diasporas (Anderssen) and, indeed, the virtual exchanges featured on “Have Your Say,” the online feedback site (Tuning In). Living the Glocal The BBC WS offers a mode of communication and a series of networks that are spatially located both in the UK, through the material presence of Bush House, and abroad, through the diasporic communities constituting contemporary audiences. The service may have been set up to provide news and entertainment for the British diaspora abroad, but the transformation of the UK into a multi-ethnic society “at home,” alongside its commitment to, and the servicing of, no less than 32 countries abroad, demonstrates a new mission and a new balance of power. Different diasporic communities, such as multi-ethnic Londoners, and local and British Muslims in the north of England, demonstrate the dynamics and ambivalences of what is meant by “diaspora” today. For example, the BBC and the WS play an ambiguous role in the lives of UK Muslim communities with Pakistani connections, where consumers of the international news can feel that the BBC is complicit in the conflation of Muslims with terrorists. Engaging Diaspora Audiences demonstrated the diversity of audience reception in a climate of marginalisation, often bordering on moral panic, and showed how diasporic audiences often use Al-Jazeera or Pakistani and Urdu channels, which are seen to take up more sympathetic political positions. It seems, however, that more egalitarian conversations are becoming possible through the channels of the WS. The participation of local people in the BBC WS global project is seen, for example, as in the popular “Witness Seminars” that have both a current focus and one that is projected into the future, as in the case of the “2012 Generation” (that is, the young people who come of age in 2012, the year of the London Olympics). The Witness Seminars demonstrate the recuperation of past political and social events such as “Bangladesh in 1971” (Tuning In), “The Cold War seminar” (Tuning In) and “Diasporic Nationhood” (the cultural movements reiterated and recovered in the “Literary Lives” project (Gillespie, Baumann and Zinik). Indeed, the WS’s current focus on the “2012 Generation,” including an event in which 27 young people (each of whom speaks one of the WS languages) were invited to an open day at Bush House in 2009, vividly illustrates how things have changed. Whereas in 1948 (the last occasion when the Olympic Games were held in London), the world came to London, it is arguable that, in 2012, in contemporary multi-ethnic Britain, the world is already here (Webb). This enterprise has the advantage of giving voice to the present rather than filtering the present through the legacies of colonialism that remain a problem for the Witness Seminars more generally. The democratising possibilities of sport, as well as the restrictions of its globalising elements, are well represented by Tuning In (Woodward). Sport has, of course become more globalised, especially through the development of Internet and satellite technologies (Giulianotti) but it retains powerful local affiliations and identifications. At all levels and in diverse places, there are strong attachments to local and national teams that are constitutive of communities, including diasporic and multi-ethnic communities. Sport is both typical and distinctive of the BBC World Service; something that is part of a wider picture but also an area of experience with a life of its own. Our “Sport across Diasporas” project has thus explored some of the routes the World Service has travelled in its engagement with sport in order to provide some understanding of the legacy of empire and patriarchy, as well as engaging with the multiplicities of change in the reconstruction of Britishness. Here, it is important to recognise that what began as “BBC Sport” evolved into “World Service Sport.” Coverage of the world’s biggest sporting events was established through the 1930s to the 1960s in the development of the BBC WS. However, it is not only the global dimensions of sporting events that have been assumed; so too are national identifications. There is no question that the superiority of British/English sport is naturalised through its dominance of the BBC WS airways, but the possibilities of reinterpretation and re-accommodation have also been made possible. There has, indeed, been a changing place of sport in the BBC WS, which can only be understood with reference to wider changes in the relationship between broadcasting and sport, and demonstrates the powerful synchronies between social, political, technological, economic, and cultural factors, notably those that make up the media–sport–commerce nexus that drives so much of the trajectory of contemporary sport. Diasporic audiences shape the schedule as much as what is broadcast. There is no single voice of the BBC in sport. The BBC archive demonstrates a variety of narratives through the development and transformation of the World Service’s sports broadcasting. There are, however, silences: notably those involving women. Sport is still a patriarchal field. However, the imperial genealogies of sport are inextricably entwined with the social, political, and cultural changes taking place in the wider world. There is no detectable linear narrative but rather a series of tensions and contradictions that are reflected and reconfigured in the texts in which deliberations are made. In sport broadcasting, the relationship of the BBC WS with its listeners is, in many instances, genuinely dialogic: for example, through “Have Your Say” websites and internet forums, and some of the actors in these dialogic exchanges are the broadcasters themselves. The history of the BBC and the World Service is one which manifests a degree of autonomy and some spontaneity on the part of journalists and broadcasters. For example, in the case of the BBC WS African sports program, Fast Track (2009), many of the broadcasters interviewed report being able to cover material not technically within their brief; news journalists are able to engage with sporting events and sports journalists have covered social and political news (Woodward). Sometimes this is a matter of taking the initiative or simply of being in the right place at the right time, although this affords an agency to journalists which is increasingly unlikely in the twenty-first century. The Politics of Translation: Words and Music The World Service has played a key role as a cultural broker in the political arena through what could be construed as “educational broadcasting” via the wider terrain of the arts: for example, literature, drama, poetry, and music. Over the years, Bush House has been a home-from-home for poets: internationalists, translators from classical and modern languages, and bohemians; a constituency that, for all its cosmopolitanism, was predominantly white and male in the early days. For example, in the 1930s and 1940s, Louis MacNeice was commissioning editor and surrounded by a friendship network of salaried poets, such as W. H. Auden, Dylan Thomas, C. Day Lewis, and Stephen Spender, who wrote and performed their work for the WS. The foreign language departments of the BBC WS, meanwhile, hired émigrés and exiles from their countries’ educated elites to do similar work. The biannual, book-format journal Modern Poetry in Translation (MPT), which was founded in 1965 by Daniel Weissbort and Ted Hughes, included a dedication in Weissbort’s final issue (MPT 22, 2003) to “Poets at Bush House.” This volume amounts to a celebration of the BBC WS and its creative culture, which extended beyond the confines of broadcasting spaces. The reminiscences in “Poets at Bush House” suggest an institutional culture of informal connections and a fluidity of local exchanges that is resonant of the fluidity of the flows and networks of diaspora (Cheesman). Music, too, has distinctive characteristics that mark out this terrain on the broadcast schedule and in the culture of the BBC WS. Music is differentiated from language-centred genres, making it a particularly powerful medium of cross-cultural exchange. Music is portable and yet is marked by a cultural rootedness that may impede translation and interpretation. Music also carries ambiguities as a marker of status across borders, and it combines aesthetic intensity and diffuseness. The Migrating Music project demonstrated BBC WS mediation of music and identity flows (Toynbee). In the production and scheduling notes, issues of migration and diaspora are often addressed directly in the programming of music, while the movement of peoples is a leitmotif in all programs in which music is played and discussed. Music genres are mobile, diasporic, and can be constitutive of Paul Gilroy’s “Black Atlantic” (Gilroy), which foregrounds the itinerary of West African music to the Caribbean via the Middle Passage, cross-fertilising with European traditions in the Americas to produce blues and other hybrid forms, and the journey of these forms to Europe. The Migrating Music project focused upon the role of the BBC WS as narrator of the Black Atlantic story and of South Asian cross-over music, from bhangra to filmi, which can be situated among the South Asian diaspora in east and south Africa as well as the Caribbean where they now interact with reggae, calypso, Rapso, and Popso. The transversal flows of music and lyrics encompasses the lived experience of the different diasporas that are accommodated in the BBC WS schedules: for example, they keep alive the connection between the Irish “at home” and in the diaspora through programs featuring traditional music, further demonstrating the interconnections between local and global attachments as well as points of disconnection and contradiction. Textual analysis—including discourse analysis of presenters’ speech, program trailers and dialogue and the BBC’s own construction of “world music”—has revealed that the BBC WS itself performs a constitutive role in keeping alive these traditions. Music, too, has a range of emotional affects which are manifest in the semiotic analyses that have been conducted of recordings and performances. Further, the creative personnel who are involved in music programming, including musicians, play their own role in this ongoing process of musical migration. Once again, the networks of people involved as practitioners become central to the processes and systems through which diasporic audiences are re-produced and engaged. Conclusion The BBC WS can claim to be a global and local cultural intermediary not only because the service was set up to engage with the British diaspora in an international context but because the service, today, is demonstrably a voice that is continually negotiating multi-ethnic audiences both in the UK and across the world. At best, the World Service is a dynamic facilitator of conversations within and across diasporas: ideas are relocated, translated, and travel in different directions. The “local” of a British broadcasting service, established to promote British values across the globe, has been transformed, both through its engagements with an increasingly diverse set of diasporic audiences and through the transformations in how diasporas themselves self-define and operate. On the BBC WS, demographic, social, and cultural changes mean that the global is now to be found in the local of the UK and any simplistic separation of local and global is no longer tenable. The educative role once adopted by the BBC, and then the World Service, nevertheless still persists in other contexts (“from Ambridge to Afghanistan”), and clearly the WS still treads a dangerous path between the paternalism and patriarchy of its colonial past and its responsiveness to change. In spite of competition from television, satellite, and Internet technologies which challenge the BBC’s former hegemony, the BBC World Service continues to be a dynamic space for (re)creating and (re)instating diasporic audiences: audiences, texts, and broadcasters intersect with social, economic, political, and cultural forces. The monologic “voice of empire” has been countered and translated into the language of diversity and while, at times, the relationship between continuity and change may be seen to exist in awkward tension, it is clear that the Corporation is adapting to the needs of its twenty-first century audience. ReferencesAnderson, Benedict. Imagined Communities, Reflections of the Origin and Spread of Nationalism. London: Verso, 1983. Anderssen, Matilda. “Digital Diasporas.” 2010. 30 Nov. 2010 ‹http://www8.open.ac.uk/researchprojects/diasporas/cross-research/digital-diasporas›. Bhabha, Homi. The Location of Culture. London: Routledge, 1994. Briggs, Asa. A History of Broadcasting in the United Kingdom, Volume II: The Golden Age of Wireless. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1995. Cheesman, Tom. “Poetries On and Off Air.” 2010. 30 Nov. 2010 ‹http://www8.open.ac.uk/researchprojects/diasporas/cross-research/bush-house-cultures›. Chivallon, Christine. “Beyond Gilroy’s Black Atlantic: The Experience of the African Diaspora.” Diaspora 11.3 (2002): 359–82. Clifford, James. Routes: Travel and Translation in the Late Twentieth Century. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1997. Fast Track. BBC, 2009. 30 Nov. 2010 ‹http://www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/sport/2009/03/000000_fast_track.shtml›. Gillespie, Marie, Alban Webb, and Gerd Baumann (eds.). “The BBC World Service 1932–2007: Broadcasting Britishness Abroad.” Special Issue. The Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television 28.4 (Oct. 2008). Gillespie, Marie, Gerd Baumann, and Zinovy Zinik. “Poets at Bush House.” 2010. 30 Nov. 2010 ‹http://www8.open.ac.uk/researchprojects/diasporas/about›. Gilroy, Paul. Black Atlantic. MA: Harvard UP, 1993. Giulianotti, Richard. Sport: A Critical Sociology. Cambridge: Polity, 2005. Goldblatt, David. “The Cricket Revolution.” 2009. 30 Nov. 2010 ‹http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p0036ww9›. Guha, Ramachandra. A Corner of a Foreign Field: The Indian History of an English Game. London: Picador, 2002. Hall, Stuart. “Cultural Identity and Diaspora.” Identity: Community, Culture, Difference. Ed. Jonathan Rutherford. London: Lawrence and Wishart, 1990, 223–37. Hill, Andrew. “The BBC Empire Service: The Voice, the Discourse of the Master and Ventriloquism.” South Asian Diaspora 2.1 (2010): 25–38. Hollis, Robert, Norma Rinsler, and Daniel Weissbort. “Poets at Bush House: The BBC World Service.” Modern Poetry in Translation 22 (2003). Nandy, Ashis. The Tao of Cricket: On Games of Destiny and the Destiny of Games. New Delhi: Oxford UP, 1989. Pratt, Mary Louise. Imperial Eyes: Travel Writing and Transculturation. London: Routledge, 1992. Reith, John. “Opening of the Empire Service.” In “Empire Service Policy 1932-1933”, E4/6: 19 Dec. 1932. 30 Nov. 2010 ‹http://www.open.ac.uk/socialsciences/diasporas/research.htm›. Scannell, Paddy, and David Cardiff. A Social History of British Broadcasting, 1922-1938. Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1991. Skuse, Andrew. “Drama for Development.” 2010. 30 Nov. 2010 ‹http://www8.open.ac.uk/researchprojects/diasporas/core-research/drama-for-development›. Sreberny, Annabelle. “The BBC World Service and the Greater Middle East: Comparisons, Contrasts, Conflicts.” Guest ed. Annabelle Sreberny, Marie Gillespie, Gerd Baumann. Middle East Journal of Culture and Communication 3.2 (2010). Toynbee, Jason. “Migrating Music.” 2010. 30 Nov. 2010 ‹http://www8.open.ac.uk/researchprojects/diasporas/core-research/migrating-music›. Tuning In. 30 Nov. 2010 ‹http://www.open.ac.uk/socialsciences/diasporas/index.htm›. Webb, Alban. “Cold War Diplomacy.” 2010. 30 Nov. 2010 ‹http://www8.open.ac.uk/researchprojects/diasporas/projects/cold-war-politics-and-bbc-world-service›. Woodward, Kath. Embodied Sporting Practices. Regulating and Regulatory Bodies. Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, 2009.

This chapter examines the origins of the Red Scare of 1919–1920, with particular emphasis on the role of the United States's entry into the First World War. The effort required to bring a reluctant nation into the war and quash dissenting voices brought the federal government into the business of systematic rather than ad hoc industrial and political repression. The civil liberties of citizens who protested either the commitment to war or its effects were suppressed. The place of nativism and antiradicalism in American politics and society became elevated. More importantly, the experience of war set political precedents that helped to spawn a new movement devoted to promoting the cause of anticommunism in American life. The chapter first considers how US participation in the First World War contributed to the emergence of “modern” anticommunism before discussing the role of the American Protective League in the repression efforts during the war. It also explores the business of loyalty, cultural repression, farmers' collectives and minor political parties, silencing dissent, and the campaign against industrial unions during the war.

Abstract If a shared set of ideas regulated the external limits of women’s labor force participation, individual household needs influenced the shifting labor market in any particular area or time. A variety of factors pulled and pushed women into the work force, and individual women manipulated and structured their lives in direct response to their own reference groups as well as in dim recognition of a larger social ideology. Applied to the period up to the Civil War, a phrase like “women in the labor force” conjures up a reasonably homogenous group. Although appropriate nods must be given to incoming Irish, French Canadian and German immigrants, the phrase reflects a wage-earning population that consisted primarily of young women of Anglo-Saxon descent, largely located in New England. After the Civil War, no mere acknowledgment of diversity will do. Ethnic and racial distinctions are at the heart of the industrial labor force. Before the Civil War, women divided themselves into those who did and those who did not leave their homes to engage in wage labor. After the war, daughters of impoverished southern farmers took their places in the urban labor force, as did black women.

Abstract It is a rare occasion when the president of the United States becomes invisible, but John Adams virtually disappeared after mid-December, when the National Intelligencer broke the news of his defeat. With eighty days remaining in his term, and power slipping from his hands, Adams was shunned by many within his party. The remainder of his vanishing act was his own doing, as he sequestered himself within the President’s House. Immobilized by what he called the “shower of ennui” that accompanied his shattering loss, and racked with grief over his late son and guilt over his own behavior toward him, Adams had almost lost interest in the presidency. He wished to see only those who were truly close to him, and he confided to nearly all with whom he spoke that he was desperately eager to leave for home. He took a daily walk along Penn-sylvania Avenue, if the weather permitted, and he and Abigail worshiped on Sunday mornings at the Anglican services in the House of Representatives chamber. Otherwise he remained out of sight, counting the days, as he put it, until he became “a farmer. John of Stony field and nothing more (I hope nothing less) for the rest of my life.” Above all, he said, he looked forward to escaping “all intrigues, and . . . all the great and little [political] passions that agitate the world.”

Imagine, if you will, that, on the same day, all migrants and immigrants decide to return to their countries of origin. The Filipina nanny would pack her bags and leave the family in Singapore whose children she has been raising. The suburban couple in San Diego would be without their Mexican gardener who worked for less than five dollars an hour. Italian farmers would find the fruit rotting on their trees because their cheap migrant workers left the orchard. New York’s manufacturing sector would collapse because a large portion of the workforce is absent. Worse, Wall Street would be closed because cleaners, security guards, office staff, and taxi drivers are unavailable. Many sectors of the economy in industrialized countries would come to an immediate standstill. The rest of the economy would follow within days, if not hours. Although not your typical doomsday scenario, this hypothetical example illustrates that our economy depends on the labor of often “invisible” international migrants. Labor Movement pursues the idea that the international movement of people lies at the heart of regulating today’s economies, or more precisely, labor markets. “If you build it, they will come,” the saying goes. Industrialized countries have built powerful economies that depend on a disciplined labor force. They have become a magnet for international migrants willing to satisfy this demand for labor. However, the stream of migration to the industrialized world is relatively unaffected by cyclical fluctuations in national labor markets. In the United States, for example, immigration streams steadily persist, independent of the condition of the economy and whether labor is in general demand or not (Camarota 2003). Despite increasing evidence of the autonomy of immigration flows relative to market conditions, the view that economic processes produce international migration continues to dominate public and academic debate. Critics, however, have questioned whether migration is indeed as market-driven as the dominating narrative suggests. Michael Piore (1979: 8), for example, states, “Income is not the critical analytical variable” in explaining international migration patterns. A less common view turns the conventional relationship between economic processes and migration on its head.

Everyone lives with risk, every day. In the United States, more than 100,000 persons die from accidents every year, nearly half of them on the country’s roads. Worldwide, an average of more than 5000 coal miners perish underground annually, a toll often forgotten by those who oppose nuclear power generation on grounds of safety. From insect bites to poisoned foods and from smoking to travel, risk is unavoidable. Certain risks can be mitigated through behavior (not smoking, wearing seatbelts), but others are routinely accepted as inescapable. A half century ago, long before hijackings and airport security programs, the number of airline travelers continued to increase robustly even as airplanes crashed with considerable frequency. Today, few drivers or passengers are deterred by the carnage on the world’s roads, aware of it though they may be. Risk is part of life. Risk, however, also is a matter of abode, of location. Who, after experiencing or witnessing on television the impact of a hurricane, a tornado, an earthquake, a volcanic eruption, a flood, a blizzard, or some other extreme natural event, has not asked the question: “Where in the world might be a relatively safe place to live?” Geographers, some of whom have made the study of natural hazards and their uneven distribution a research priority, don’t have a simple answer. But on one point they leave no doubt: people, whether individually or in aggregate, subject themselves to known environmental dangers even if they have the wherewithal to avoid them. Many Americans build their retirement or second homes on flood-prone barrier islands along coastlines vulnerable to hurricanes. The Dutch, who have for many years been emigrating from the Netherlands in substantial numbers, are leaving for reasons other than the fact that two-thirds of their country lies below sea level. From Indonesia to Mexico, farmers living on the fertile slopes of active volcanoes not only stay where they are, but often resist even temporary relocation when volcanic activity resumes. From Tokyo to Tehran, people continue to cluster in cities with histories of devastating earthquakes and known to be situated in perilous fault zones. Fatalism is a cross-cultural human trait.

A 30′ × 60′ greenhouse is being installed on the Western Kentucky University Agriculture Department campus farm that will be heated during winter by energy captured during the decomposition of leaves into compost. The bio-generated heat collection and distribution system was designed, and is currently being built and tested by undergraduate mechanical engineering students at WKU. Currently, the WKU Agriculture Department takes all leaves collected by the city of Bowling Green, processing and selling the resulting compost. While the leaves are composting, a temperature of over 150 °F is reached in the center of the leave piles. Student teams have designed and are installing a water piping system below the leaves to capture the waste heat and deliver the water to a root-zone heating system in the greenhouse. The design also includes a subsurface storage tank and auxiliary heating system to extend the capacity of the heating system. It is intended that WKU Agriculture will be able to operate the greenhouse for educational purposes throughout the year, and also provide the design to regional farmers who currently have greenhouses but cannot afford to heat them during Kentucky winters. This paper will detail the design of the heat collection system below the composting leaves, including sizing calculations and experimental verification, to permit uninterrupted composting activities. The root-zone heating system design will also be covered, including sizing calculations of the piping installation within sand beds in the greenhouse. The overall system control, energy storage and supplemental heating will also be discussed. The goal of the project has been to evaluate the feasibility of a cost-effective agricultural heating system for use in moderate climates throughout the United States.

In the last two years, the United States has reversed the post-World War II trend toward the lowering of trade barriers and a commitment towards multilateral free trade. Citing a need to “level the playing field” and hold trading partners accountable to their commitments, the current Administration has moved towards a more protectionist and perhaps mercantilist position vis-à-vis trade policy. One of the Administration’s first actions in this regard was the decision to leave the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) agreement, followed thereafter by raising tariffs on steel and aluminum imports. The Administration’s actions on trade are likely to have significant implications for U.S. farmers as these actions target three of the largest markets for U.S. agricultural exports – Canada, China and Mexico – accounting for some 44%, and representing an average of $63 billion, of U.S. agricultural exports 2013 to 2015. <em>Commissioned by the <a href="https://www.farmfoundation.org/">Farm Foundation</a></em> <strong><a href="https://www.farmfoundation.org/forums/2019-farm-foundation-forums/u-s-and-canadian-perspectives-on-trans-pacific-trade/">Farm Foundation Forum</a></strong> (March 4, 2019) <ul> <li><a href="https://soundcloud.com/user-254829763/us-canadian-perspectives-on-trans-pacific-trade">Forum audio</a></li> <li><a href="https://www.farmfoundation.org/trade/">Food and Agricultural Trade Resource Center</a></li> </ul> <strong><a href="https://www.farmfoundation.org/forums/2018-farm-foundation-forums/oct-31-2018-farm-foundation-forum/">Farm Foundation Forum</a></strong> (October 31, 2018) <ul> <li><a href="https://brianallmerradionetwork.wordpress.com/2018/10/31/10-31-18-a-closer-look-at-the-purdue-universitys-global-trade-analysis-project-regarding-usmca-with-purdue-ag-economist-dominique-y-van-der-mensbrugghe-ph-d/">van der Mensbrugghe Interview</a></li> </ul>