Articles de revues sur le sujet « Tell Mardikh »

Aus drei wichtigen Fundorten des Vorderen Orients, Kültepe (Kaniş), Tell Mardikh (Ebla) und Gebail (Byblos) kennen wir ein Kultgefaess, das wegen seiner ausserordentlichen Form besonderes Interesse erweckt. Darunter nimmt das Kültepe- Beispiel eine besondere Stellung ein, da man dort dieses Gefaess am besten erkennen kann.

The paper presents the restoration activities carried out at Tell Mardikh-Ebla (Syria) by the Italian Archaeological Expedition to Syria of the Sapienza University of Rome. In particular, the study focuses on the operations to preserve the mudbrick structures that have specifically suffered from erosion by rain wind which has caused the collapse of sections of walls. The programme of restoration at Ebla sought to clarify and outline a plan of excavated structures with swift, non-invasive, and reversible interventions and reconstructions. The protection of mudbrick buildings is indeed a challenge for archaeologists working in the Near East: mudbricks are extremely fragile both during the excavation and even more so after they have been excavated. Starting from the results at Ebla, the issue of preserving mudbrick structures is far from being completely solved; the lack of any archaeological research at Ebla, because of the political crisis in Syria, heavily affected the site and the restored buildings that have been seriously damaged by illicit digging and the occupation of the archaeological areas. New techniques and solutions are needed to improve the quality of maintenance and the protection of such a fragile heritage.

The discoveries of the 2004-2008 excavations at Tell Mardikh, ancient Ebla, in north-western Syria, and the following processing of the archaeological record have allowed for a re-examination the site’s trajectory between Early Bronze IVB and Middle Bronze I. Not only it was possible to gain a clearer picture of the site’s trajectory during Early Bronze IVB, the phase following the demise of Ebla’s Early Bronze IVA kingdom, but also to re-investigate how the site transitioned from the Early to the Middle Bronze Age at a deeper chronological scale, which was hampered before by the lack of sufficient stratified data. Moving from these insights, this paper offers a summary of the state of research on Ebla between the Early and the Middle Bronze Ages and proposes some ideas concerning this critical nexus in the site’s development. Moreover, unpublished stratified ceramic data are presented and examined that might allow current synchronisms between Ebla, the Middle Euphrates, and the Syrian Jazirah between the late 3rd and the early 2nd millennium BC to be re-considered, and to shed light on the site’s participation and role in region-wide processes that were taking place between the 3rd and the 2nd millennium BC. This way, this crucial connection in the developmental trajectory of Ebla and in the study of ancient Syria will be re-analysed offering insights into archaeology, chronology, and history.

Önasya için önem taşıyan merkezlerden olan, Kültepe (Kaniş), Tell Mardik (Ebla) ve Cebail'de (Biblos) açığa çıkartılan buluntular arasında, bereketle ilgili olduğu tartışmasız, bir kült kabının üzerinde durmak istiyorum. Bu kap bir kadının belinden dizine / ayaklarına (belden aşağısına) kadar olan vücut parçası biçimindedir. Kültepe ve Tell Mardik örnekleri bu kabın sanat eserlerinde nasıl tasvir edildiğini gösterir.

Cet article examine sous quelle forme les Cadiens, au XXIe siècle, perpétuent la tradition du Courir du Mardi gras dans une perspective de développement durable de leur patrimoine, à travers l’étude de cas du Courir de Faquetaigue. Après avoir exposé la tradition du Mardi gras chez les Cadiens, nous abordons la mise en contexte du Courir de Faquetaigue, qui s’écarte du caractère touristique et commercial tel qu’observé lors d’autres Mardi gras de la Louisiane. Au moyen d’une observation participante et d’entrevues semi-dirigées avec des participants, nous en analysons les aspects spécifiques : le défi du poteau, qui évoque la tradition des jeux et des travaux communautaires, l’hommage à Dennis McGee, musicien pionnier de la culture louisianaise, et l’idée de communauté telle que définie par les participants. Il ressort de cette analyse que ce n’est pas tant son caractère géographique local qui définit, aux yeux des participants, ce Courir de Faquetaigue, mais plutôt « l’esprit » du lieu, et les gens avec qui ils le réalisent. Ces acteurs montrent qu’ils font évoluer consciemment cette tradition en faisant en sorte qu’elle s’inscrive dans un esprit de continuité.

The combination of puppetry and theater creates an alternative offering a new style of treatment in the form of contemporary theater called “Pakeliran Sampakan”. Pakeliran sampakan carries the mission of modernizing traditional art with the hope of being able to answer the public's saturation regarding spectacle that smells Indonesian culture, especially wayang kulit with the target market the young people. “Sang Panggung” is an adaptation of a story from “Nyi Panggung” written by Eko Tunas which tells about the life behind the scenes of the group of tobong Ketoprak Eka Mardhika. The results of the work represent the form of performances by the tobong ketoprak artists, with the story "Sang Panggung". Like the marginalized who are alienated because of their deposed honour by the outside culture, it needs an action by doing 'transmigration'. It doesn’t only mean moving from one island to another but also a change in the human mindset to be renewed towards the sophisticated technology of mass media, in order that traditional arts can always involve in the international competitions.

The purpose of this study describes the use of language variations found in the novel Bumi Manusia by Pramoedya Ananta Toer. The approach used in this study is a qualitative approach and the method used is a content analysis method that aims to provide an objective picture of language variations in accordance with the data contained in the novel Bumi Manusia by Pramoedya Ananta Toer. The data used in this study are written data in the form of novel texts containing language variations in the novel Bumi Manusia by Pramoedya Ananta Toer published by Mardi Yuana Printing Graphic Printing in 2015. Based on the analysis, there are variations in language in the novel Bumi Manusia by Pramoedya Ananta Toer namely: Dutch, Japanese, Javanese and English. In the novel Bumi Manusia, Dutch is a variation of language that dominates from other languages ​​because in this novel it is told that there was a Dutchman in the Dutch East Indies. In the novel Bumi Manusia, Japanese is not very visible because Japanese is only a distraction in just one part. Javanese language can be said as a variation of language that dominates the two because in this novel tells the life of a genuine Javanese who falls in love with a Netherland. Same thing with the Javanese language in the novel Bumi Manusia, English is no less in existence with other language variations found in this novel. The significance of the study is to give useful information about the language variation and useful contribution for linguistic and education

As the field of LIS education changes—re-engineering standard practices to become viable in a rapidly changing educational environment—LIS textbooks must change with the times. Students need to learn both the practicalities of librarianship and the history, ethics, and pedagogies of their chosen career. It’s increasingly important for textbook authors to be innovative thinkers while still being deeply grounded in the area of their expertise. Textbooks are changing along with the field—professors require that books include the importance of diversity, equity, inclusion, and access. Students may read a big foundations textbook or a number of smaller texts more specific to a particular track. Student demographics and interests are changing with the times, and textbooks need to keep up. So who writes these textbooks? You and your colleagues do. In this informative and entertaining discussion designed to introduce you to textbook authorship and publication, you’ll learn from a senior acquisitions editor and published authors how to propose, write, and market a textbook. Senior acquisitions editor Jessica Gribble will offer information about coming up with and refining an idea, writing a proposal, signing a contract, working with an editor, and the challenges and joys of writing the book. Coming up with and refining an idea: Professional development books do one of two things, and they’re two sides of the same coin. Either a librarian has found a way to meet a challenge, or they’ve had an exciting new idea for a program or service. Ideas for textbooks are different; in some ways they’re easier to come by, and in others they’re far more difficult. Many textbooks come about because a professor has started teaching a new course and has cobbled together some reading materials, but wishes there were a textbook. That professor is a great potential author. Of course, we’ll do some research together to learn if this class is being taught at other schools and if other professors would use a textbook. It can be more difficult to publish a textbook as an alternative to books that are already established in their courses, but sometimes it’s warranted. This is when we (the potential author and publisher) need to determine what’s missing or outdated in the current texts, what will make the new textbook different, and how we’ll let professors know about it. Writing a proposal: I’ll share our proposal document and some things to think about when proposing a textbook. What courses will use the book? How many schools are teaching that course? What will the table of contents look like? If the textbook is a revision, which parts will be updated? How will the author take pains to keep the textbook relevant in the 5 or so years between editions? Are there any new theories or practices that need to be included? How does it compare to the competition? How long should the book be? How long does it take to write a book? Signing a contract: Although most contracts are standard, what should potential authors understand? Areas for conversation include royalties, index preparation, the often-confusing “protection of the work from competing publications” clause, and registration of copyright vs. publication rights. Some important things aren’t included in the contract, like title and cover decisions. Working with an editor (from the editor’s perspective): I’m available to work with authors in many ways, depending on how they work best. I’ll talk about my role as a therapist of sorts (guilt/nudging/check-ins) and tell a funny story about an author encounter at a conference. I’ll describe what authors can expect from an acquisitions editor and what will happen later in the process, when the book is in production. Writing the book: Authors Marcia A. Mardis and Laura Saunders will share their experiences. Both have authored and edited books, and both have worked alone and with co-authors or co-editors. They’ll share the nitty-gritty of what it’s like to write a textbook, what makes it different from an article or professional development book, how to overcome writer’s block and fatigue, and how to use your published textbook as part of your professional development moving forward. They’ll talk about time management, collaboration tools, responding to changing community needs, new technologies, learning approaches, professional standards, strategies for engaging readers (students and faculty), ideas for formative feedback, managing multiple authors and drafts, and dealing with the “too much to cover” problem. Marketing the book: I’ll give a brief overview of our general marketing efforts, including catalogs, e-mail marketing, and conferences. In our question-and-answer session, we’ll encourage all participants to share their experiences with textbooks, both good and bad, and to ask questions about the publication process and the writing process. Our conversation will be open to discussion of the future of textbooks, open educational resources, and textbook affordability initiatives.

I'm better than Red. My son came home from his first day of school disgusted. 'Red! All they taught us was Red'. He'd expected to learn something new. Colour identification was for babies. The worst thing was that the teacher kept going on about it: they had to talk about red, eat red fruit, sing red songs, inflate red balloons, colour-in little red riding hood. And then Mrs B wrote the word Red on the blackboard with WHITE chalk. I thought it was an incredibly interesting semiotic exercise and was annoyingly positive about the experience he'd found so disappointing. Going on about the obvious is the business of cultural studies; thinking again about those qualities that seem most neutral or obvious. Colour - and RED especially - is not neutral. (L. F.) Cultural Studies has been informed by a strong tradition of emancipatory politics. Decolonisation and liberation movements have created a heightened awareness of the way that apparently obvious categories such as gender, sexuality, race, ethnicity, are never neutral, and have been historically linked with unequal power relations. Colours have become synonymous with certain styles and genres of photography, writing, film, video and art. Colour is at once literal, a property or quality of a thing, and figurative, standing in for more abstract qualities. What these various figurative uses of colour have in common is the way that they present colour as linked with perception, and as perception that is not neutral or objective, but value added that is, overlaid with cultural value. Sometimes 'to colour' is to add something that enhances. Film Noir has 'artistic' mise en scene to create a particular mood. In cinema, colour constitutes 'special effects'. is overdone. To 'show your colours', is to identify your bias. In this context 'colour' is used to imply a distortion of the objective truth: judgement can be "coloured", or we see things 'through rose coloured glasses'. Colourful is a doubtful adjective. It can suggest the popular of the people. Never have your art or architecture described such, unless you're a Warhol or Venturi. For sophistication and intellectual credibility, avoid wearing colour. A colourful region or district has a strong presence of simple folk, or is promoted as 'multicultural' - has street markets or a Mardi Gras. This figurative use of "colour" is closely related to the critical analysis of culture and media. Cultural and Media Studies have been concerned with the popular, with perception, with the 'value added'; with the way that perceptions are coloured, and cultural meanings are inscribed within everyday things. The question of colour is crucial, even obvious, within the visual arts and media. And yet perhaps because of this colour is rarely considered contentious in that context. This is an ideal place to begin then. The feature article, Christine Dauber's interview with artist John Catapan, addresses the uses of colour within visual media forms, and in particular, explores Catapan's preoccupation with the colour of the city at night. The interview draws our attention to the way that Catapan uses colour, not just as an aesthetic element, but as a medium through which he creates a different semiotic field, a 'submerged' world that is presented as something Other than that conveyed by conventional language and narrative. Naomi Stead writes about the significance of colour, or more accurately, the absence of colour, chromophobia, in modern architecture. Stead takes up the interesting relationship between architecture and the cultural significance of colour in the representation of indigenous cultures. Her analysis of the architecture of the National Museum of Australia encourages us to think of the intersections between colour in form and design, and colour of skin. Mark Mussari explores the cultural significance of colour through a discussion of Umberto Eco's work on chromatic perception and visuality. Christopher Kelen addresses colour in the context of Nationalism and cultural imperialism. His essay, which examines the very recent adoption of a National Anthem in Australia, highlights the difficulties faced by postcolonial countries trying to develop a sense of national pride that is not linked with the imperialist culture. In The colour of copyright Margaret McDonell comments on the another dilemma for post colonial countries, the appropriation of indigenous cultural material. Mabo offered a promise through its recognition of traditional law, but the expected flow-on has been impeded by the statutory nature of copyright law. Indigenous Intellectual Property Law has become an issue dealt with at the level of the United Nations, although this does not always serve to protect indigenous copyright from imported copied material. Andy Miller also explores questions of race and colour in 'Multiculturalism and Shades of Meaning in the New South Africa', reflecting in a most interesting and personal way on the spectrum of racial and social categories associated with colour. Karl Beckwith's essay explores the sub-cultural resonances of black and white in the Extreme Metal scene. His work highlights the significance of colour codes in sub-cultures. Finally, Felix Cheong gives us his take in a poem entitled "RED" "NELLIE NELLIE NELLIE NELLIE NELLIE NELLIE NELLIE I want you to come back, to shampoo my hair and make a pink cake and we can sit in the back and roll mealie pap in our hands see, I told you not to go in those marches and I told you, I told you what you guys don't understand, what you didn't see, is apartheid's for YOU. IT'S FOR YOUR GUYS FEELINGS, see, like we got separate washrooms cause you like to spit, and if we said, "Eww yucch, don't spit', it would hurt your feelings and we got separate movies, cause you like to talk back to movie stars and say 'amen' and 'that's the way' and stuff that drives us crazy so we might tell you to shut up and then you might cry…." From "Pink", Judith Thompson (1986): a monologue commissioned for the Arts Against Apartheid Benefit in Toronto. Citation reference for this article MLA Style Ferrier, Liz and Dauber, Christine. "Editorial" M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 5.3 (2002). [your date of access] < http://www.media-culture.org.au/0207/editorial.php>. Chicago Style Ferrier, Liz and Dauber, Christine, "Editorial" M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 5, no. 3 (2002), < http://www.media-culture.org.au/0207/editorial.php> ([your date of access]). APA Style Ferrier, Liz and Dauber, Christine. (2002) Editorial. M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 5(3). < http://www.media-culture.org.au/0207/editorial.php> ([your date of access]).

Introduction For some time now there has been a strong critical framework that identifies a significant shift in the politics of homosexuality in the Anglo-oriented West over the last fifteen to twenty years. In this article I draw on this framework to describe the current moment in the Australian cultural politics of homosexuality. I focus on the issue of same-sex marriage as a key indicator of the currently emerging era. I then turn to two Australian texts about marriage that were produced in “the period before” this time, with the aim of recovering what has been partially lost from current formations of GLBT politics and from available memories of the past. Critical Histories Lisa Duggan’s term “the new homonormativity” is the frame that has gained widest currency among writers who point to the incorporation of certain versions of homosexuality into the neo-liberal (U.S.) mainstream. She identifies a sexual politics that “does not contest dominant heteronormative assumptions and institutions, but upholds and sustains them, while promising the possibility of a demobilized gay constituency and a privatized, depoliticized gay culture anchored in domesticity and consumption” (50). More recently, writing of the period inaugurated by the so-called “war on terror” and following Duggan, Jasbir Puar has introduced the term “homonationalism” to refer to “a collusion between homosexuality and American nationalism that is generated both by national rhetorics of patriotic inclusion and by gay and queer subjects themselves” (39). Damien Riggs adds the claims of Indigenous peoples in ongoing colonial contexts to the ground from which contemporary GLBT political claims can be critiqued. He concludes that while “queer people” will need to continue to struggle for rights, it is likely that cultural intelligibility “as a subject of the nation” will be extended only to those “who are established through the language of the nation (i.e., one that is founded upon the denial of colonial violence)” (97). Most writers who follow these kinds of critical analyses refer to the discursive place of homosexual couples and families, specifically marriage. For Duggan it was the increasing focus on “full gay access to marriage and military service” that defined homonormativity (50). Puar allows for a diversity of meanings of same-sex marriage, but claims that for many it is “a demand for reinstatement of white privileges and rights—rights of property and inheritance in particular” (29; see also Riggs 66–70). Of course not all authors locate the political focus on same-sex marriage and its effects as a conservative affair. British scholar Jeffrey Weeks stresses what “we” have gained and celebrates the rise of the discourse of human rights in relation to sexuality. “The very ordinariness of recognized same-sex unions in a culture which until recently cast homosexuality into secret corners and dark whispers is surely the most extraordinary achievement of all” (198), he writes. Australian historian Graham Willett takes a similar approach in his assessment of recent Australian history. Noting the near achievement of “the legal equality agenda for gay people” (“Homos” 187), he notes that “the gay and lesbian movement went on reshaping Australian values and culture and society through the Howard years” (193). In his account it did this in spite of, and untainted by, the dominance of Howard's values and programs. The Howard period was “littered with episodes of insult and discrimination … [as the] government tried to stem the tide of gay, lesbian and transgender rights that had been flowing so strongly since 1969”, Willett writes (188). My own analysis of the Howard years acknowledges the significant progress made in law reform relating to same-sex couples and lesbian and gay parents but draws attention to its mutual constitution with the dominance of the white, patriarchal, neo-liberal and neo-conservative ideologies which dominated social and political life (2013 forthcoming). I argue that the costs of reform, fought for predominantly by white and middle class lesbians and gay men deploying homonormative discourses, included the creation of new identities—single lesbians and gays whose identity did not fit mainstream notions, non-monogamous couples and bad mothers—which were positioned on the illegitimate side of the newly enfranchised. Further the success of the reforms marginalised critical perspectives that are, for many, necessary tools for survival in socially conservative neoliberal times. Same-Sex Marriage in Australia The focus on same-sex marriage in the Australian context was initiated in April 2004 by then Prime Minister Howard. An election was looming and two same-sex couples were seeking recognition of their Canadian marriages through the courts. With little warning, Howard announced that he would amend the Federal Marriage Act to specify that marriage could only take place between a man and a woman. His amendment also prevented the recognition of same-sex marriages undertaken overseas. Legislation was rushed through the parliament in August of that year. In response, Australian Marriage Equality was formed in 2004 and remains at the centre of the GLBT movement. Since that time political rallies in support of marriage equality have been held regularly and the issue has become the key vehicle through which gay politics is understood. Australians across the board increasingly support same-sex marriage (over 60% in 2012) and a growing majority of gay and lesbian people would marry if they could (54% in 2010) (AME). Carol Johnson et al. note that while there are some critiques, most GLBT people see marriage “as a major equality issue” (Johnson, Maddison and Partridge 37). The degree to which Howard’s move changed the terrain of GLBT politics cannot be underestimated. The idea and practice of (non-legal) homosexual marriage in Australia is not new. And some individuals, publicly and privately, were calling for legal marriage for same-sex couples before 2004 (e.g. Baird, “Kerryn and Jackie”). But before 2004 legal marriage did not inspire great interest among GLBT people nor have great support among them. Only weeks before Howard’s announcement, Victorian legal academic and co-convenor of the Victorian Gay & Lesbian Rights Lobby Miranda Stewart concluded an article about same-sex relationship law reform in Victoria with a call to “begin the debate about gay marriage” (80, emphasis added). She noted that the growing number of Australian couples married overseas would influence thinking about marriage in Australia. She also asked “do we really want to be part of that ‘old edifice’ of marriage?” (80). Late in 2003 the co-convenors of the NSW Gay and Lesbian Rights Lobby declared that “many members of our community are not interested in marriage” and argued that there were more pressing, and more practical, issues for the Lobby to be focused on (Cerise and McGrory 5). In 2001 Jenni Millbank and Wayne Morgan, two leading legal academics and activists in the arena of same-sex relationship politics in Australia, wrote that “The notion of ‘same-sex marriage’ is quite alien to Australia” (Millbank and Morgan, 295). They pointed to the then legal recognition of heterosexual de facto relationships as the specific context in Australia, which meant that marriage was not viewed as "paradigmatic" (296). In 1998 a community consultation conducted by the Equal Opportunity Commission in Victoria found that “legalising marriage for same-sex couples did not enjoy broad based support from either the community at large or the gay and lesbian community” (Stewart 76). Alongside this general lack of interest in marriage, from the early-mid 1990s gay and lesbian rights groups in each state and territory began to think about, if not campaign for, law reform to give same-sex couples the same entitlements as heterosexual de facto couples. The eventual campaigns differed from state to state, and included moments of high profile public activity, but were in the main low key affairs that met with broadly sympathetic responses from state and territory ALP governments (Millbank). The previous reforms in every state that accorded heterosexual de facto couples near equality with married couples meant that gay and lesbian couples in Australia could gain most of the privileges available to heterosexual couples without having to encroach on the sacred territory (and federal domain) of marriage. In 2004 when Howard announced his marriage bill only South Australia had not reformed its law. Notwithstanding these reforms, there were matters relating to lesbian and gay parenting that remained in need of reform in nearly every jurisdiction. Further, Howard’s aggressive move in 2004 had been preceded by his dogged refusal to consider any federal legislation to remove discrimination. But in 2008 the new Rudd government enacted legislation to remove all discrimination against same-sex couples in federal law, with marriage and (ironically) the lack of anti-discrimination legislation on the grounds of sexuality the exceptions, and at the time of writing most states have made or will soon implement the reforms that give full lesbian and gay parenting rights. In his comprehensive account of gay politics from the 1950s onwards, published in 2000, Graham Willett does not mention marriage at all, and deals with the moves to recognise same-sex relationships in one sixteen line paragraph (Living 249). Willett’s book concludes with the decriminalisation of sex between men across every state of Australia. It was written just as the demand for relationship reform was becoming the central issue of GLBT politics. In this sense, the book marks the end of one era of homosexual politics and the beginning of the next which, after 2004, became organised around the desire for marriage. This understanding of the recent gay past has become common sense. In a recent article in the Adelaide gay paper blaze a young male journalist wrote of the time since the early 1970s that “the gay rights movement has shifted from the issue of decriminalising homosexuality nationwide to now lobbying for full equal rights for gay people” (Dunkin 3). While this (reductive and male-focused) characterisation is not the only one possible, I simply note that this view of past and future progress has wide currency. The shift of attention in this period to the demand for marriage is an intensification and narrowing of political focus in a period of almost universal turn by state and federal governments to neoliberalism and an uneven turn to neo-conservatism, directions which have detrimental effects on the lives of many people already marginalised by discourses of sexuality, race, class, gender, migration status, (dis)ability and so on. While the shift to the focus on marriage from 2004 might be understood as the logical final step in gaining equal status for gay and lesbian relationships (albeit one with little enthusiasm from the GLBT political communities before 2004), the initiation of this shift by Prime Minister Howard, with little preparatory debate in the LGBT political communities, meant that the issue emerged onto the Australian political agenda in terms defined by the (neo)conservative side of politics. Further, it is an example of identity politics which, as Lisa Duggan has observed in the US case, is “increasingly divorced from any critique of global capitalism” and settles for “a stripped-down equality, paradoxically imagined as compatible with persistent overall inequality” (xx). Brides before Marriage In the last part of this article I turn to two texts produced early in 1994—an activist document and an ephemeral performance during the Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras parade. If we point only to the end of the era of (de)criminalisation, then the year 1997, when the last state, Tasmania, decriminalised male homosex, marks the shift from one era of the regulation of homosexuality to another. But 1994 bore the seeds of the new era too. Of course attempts to identify a single year as the border between one era and the next are rhetorical devices. But some significant events in 1994 make it a year of note. The Australian films Priscilla: Queen of the Desert and The Sum of Us were both released in 1994, marking particular Australian contributions to the growing presence of gay and lesbian characters in Western popular culture (e.g. Hamer and Budge). 1994 was the UN International Year of the Family (IYF) and the Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras chose the theme “We are Family” and published endorsement from both Prime Minister Keating and the federal opposition leader John Hewson in their program. In 1994 the ACT became the first Australian jurisdiction to pass legislation that recognised the rights and entitlements of same-sex couples, albeit in a very limited and preliminary form (Millbank 29). The NSW Gay and Lesbian Rights Lobby's (GLRL) 1994 discussion paper, The Bride Wore Pink, can be pinpointed as the formal start to community-based activism for the legal recognition of same-sex relationships. It was a revision of an earlier version that had been the basis for discussion among (largely inner Sydney) gay and lesbian communities where there had been lively debate and dissent (Zetlein, Lesbian Bodies 48–57). The 1994 version recommended that the NSW government amend the existing definition of de facto in various pieces of legislation to include lesbian and gay relationships and close non-cohabiting interdependent relationships as well. This was judged to be politically feasible. In 1999 NSW became the first state to implement wide ranging reforms of this nature although these were narrower than called for by the GLRL, “including lesser number of Acts amended and narrower application and definition of the non-couple category” (Millbank 10). My concern here is not with the politics that preceded or followed the 1994 version of The Bride, but with the document itself. Notwithstanding its status for some as a document of limited political vision, The Bride bore clear traces of the feminist and liberationist thinking, the experiences of the AIDS crisis in Sydney, and the disagreements about relationships within lesbian and gay communities that characterised the milieu from which it emerged. Marriage was clearly rejected, for reasons of political impossibility but also in light of a list of criticisms of its implication in patriarchal hierarchies of relationship value (31–2). Feminist analysis of relationships was apparent throughout the consideration of pros and cons of different legislative options. Conflict and differences of opinion were evident. So was humour. The proliferation of lesbian and gay commitment ceremonies was listed as both a pro and a con of marriage. On the one hand "just think about the prezzies” (31); on the other, “what will you wear” (32). As well as recommending change to the definition of de facto, The Bride recommended the allocation of state funds to consider “the appropriateness or otherwise of bestowing entitlements on the basis of relationships,” “the focusing on monogamy, exclusivity and blood relations” and the need for broader definitions of “relationships” in state legislation (3). In a gesture towards a political agenda beyond narrowly defined lesbian and gay interests, The Bride also recommended that “the lesbian and gay community join together with other groups to lobby for the removal of the cohabitation rule in the Social Security Act 1991” (federal legislation) (34). This measure would mean that the payment of benefits and pensions would not be judged in the basis of a person’s relationship status. While these radical recommendations may not have been energetically pursued by the GLRL, their presence in The Bride records their currency at the time. The other text I wish to excavate from 1994 is the “flotilla of lesbian brides” in the 1994 Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras. These lesbians later appeared in the April 1994 issue of Sydney lesbian magazine Lesbians on the Loose, and they have a public afterlife in a photo by Sydney photographer C Moore Hardy held in the City of Sydney archives (City of Sydney). The group of between a dozen and twenty lesbians (it is hard to tell from the photos) was dressed in waist-to-ankle tulle skirts, white bras and white top hats. Many wore black boots. Unshaven underarm hair is clearly visible. Many wore long necklaces around their necks and the magazine photo makes clear that one bride has a black whip tucked into the band of her skirt. In an article about lesbians and legal recognition of their relationships published in 1995, Sarah Zetlein referred to the brides as “chicks in white satin” (“Chicks”). This chick was a figure that refused the binary distinction between being inside and outside the law, which Zetlein argued characterised thinking about the then emerging possibilities of the legal recognition of lesbian (and gay) relationships. Zetlein wrote that “the chick in white satin”: Represents a politics which moves beyond the concerns of one’s own identity and demands for inclusion to exclusion to a radical reconceptualisation of social relations. She de(con)structs and (re) constructs. … The chick in white satin’s resistance often lies in her exposure and manipulation of her regulation. It is not so much a matter of saying ‘no’ to marriage outright, or arguing only for a ‘piecemeal’ approach to legal relationship regulation, or lobbying for de facto inclusion as was recommended by The Bride Wore Pink, but perverting the understanding of what these legally-sanctioned sexual, social and economic relationships mean, hence undermining their shaky straight foundations.(“Chicks” 56–57) Looking back to 1994 from a time nearly twenty years later when (straight) lesbian brides are celebrated by GLBT culture, incorporated into the mainstream and constitute a market al.ready anticipated by “the wedding industrial complex” (Ingraham), the “flotilla of lesbian brides” can be read as a prescient queer negotiation of their time. It would be a mistake to read the brides only in terms of a nascent interest in legally endorsed same-sex marriage. In my own limited experience, some lesbians have always had a thing for dressing up in wedding garb—as brides or bridesmaids. The lesbian brides marching group gave expression to this desire in queer ways. The brides were not paired into couples. Zetlein writes that “the chick in white satin … [has] a veritable posse of her girlfriends with her (and they are all the brides)” (“Chicks” 63, original emphasis). Their costumes were recognisably bridal but also recognisably parodic and subverting; white but hardly innocent; the tulle and bras were feminine but the top hats were accessories conventionally worn by the groom and his men; the underarm hair a sign of feminist body politics. The whip signalled the lesbian underground sexual culture that flourished in Sydney in the early 1990s (O’Sullivan). The black boots were both lesbian street fashion and sensible shoes for marching! Conclusion It would be incorrect to say that GLBT politics and lesbian and gay couples who desire legal marriage in post-2004 Australia bear no trace of the history of ambivalence, critique and parody of marriage and weddings that have come before. The multiple voices in the 2011 collection of “Australian perspectives on same-sex marriage” (Marsh) put the lie to this claim. But in a climate where our radical pasts are repeatedly forgotten and lesbian and gay couples increasingly desire legal marriage, the political argument is hell-bent on inclusion in the mainstream. There seems to be little interest in a dance around the margins of inclusion/exclusion. I add my voice to the concern with the near exclusive focus on marriage and the terms on which it is sought. It is not a liberationist politics to which I have returned in recalling The Bride Wore Pink and the lesbian brides of the 1994 Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras, but rather an attention to the differences in the diverse collective histories of non-heterosexual politics. The examples I elaborate are hardly cases of radical difference. But even these instances might remind us that “we” have never been on a single road to equality: there may be incommensurable differences between “us” as much as commonalities. They also remind that desires for inclusion and recognition by the state should be leavened with a strong dose of laughter as well as with critical political analysis. References Australian Marriage Equality (AME). “Public Opinion Nationally.” 22 Oct. 2012. ‹http://www.australianmarriageequality.com/wp/who-supports-equality/a-majority-of-australians-support-marriage-equality/›. Baird, Barbara. “The Politics of Homosexuality in Howard's Australia.” Acts of Love and Lust: Sexuality in Australia from 1945-2010. Eds. Lisa Featherstone, Rebecca Jennings and Robert Reynolds. Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars Press, 2013 (forthcoming). —. “‘Kerryn and Jackie’: Thinking Historically about Lesbian Marriages.” Australian Historical Studies 126 (2005): 253–271. Butler, Judith. “Is Kinship Always Already Heterosexual?” Differences 13.1 (2002): 14–44. Cerise, Somali, and Rob McGrory. “Why Marriage Is Not a Priority.” Sydney Star Observer 28 Aug. 2003: 5. City of Sydney Archives [061\061352] (C. Moore Hardy Collection). ‹http://www.dictionaryofsydney.org//image/40440?zoom_highlight=c+moore+hardy›. Duggan Lisa. The Twilight of Equality?: Neoliberalism, Cultural politics, and the Attack on Democracy. Boston: Beacon Press, 2003. Dunkin, Alex. “Hunter to Speak at Dr Duncan Memorial.” blaze 290 (August 2012): 3. Hamer, Diane, and Belinda Budege, Eds. The Good Bad And The Gorgeous: Popular Culture's Romance With Lesbianism. London: Pandora, 1994. Ingraham, Chrys. White Weddings: Romancing Heterosexuality in Popular Culture, 2nd ed. New York: Routledge, 2008. Johnson, Carol, and Sarah Maddison, and Emma Partridge. “Australia: Parties, Federalism and Rights Agendas.” The Lesbian and Gay Movement and the State. Ed. Manon Tremblay, David Paternotte and Carol Johnson. Surrey: Ashgate, 2011. 27–42. Lesbian and Gay Legal Rights Service. The Bride Wore Pink, 2nd ed. Sydney: GLRL, 1994. Marsh, Victor, ed. Speak Now: Australian Perspectives on Same-Sex Marriage. Melbourne: Clouds of Mgaellan, 2011. Millbank Jenni, “Recognition of Lesbian and Gay Families in Australian Law—Part one: Couples.” Federal Law Review 34 (2006): 1–44Millbank, Jenni, and Wayne Morgan. “Let Them Eat Cake and Ice Cream: Wanting Something ‘More’ from the Relationship Recognition Menu.” Legal Recognition of Same-Sex Partnerships: A Study of National, European and International Law. Ed. Robert Wintermute and Mads Andenaes. Portland: Hart Publishing, 2001. 295–316. O'Sullivan Kimberley. “Dangerous Desire: Lesbianism as Sex or Politics.” Ed. Jill Julius Matthews. Sex in Public: Australian Sexual Cultures Sydney: Allen and Unwin, 1997. 120–23. Puar, Jasbir K. Terrorist Assemblages: Homonationalism in Queer Times. Durham: Duke UP, 2007 Stewart, Miranda, “It’s a Queer Thing: Campaigning for Equality and Social Justice for Lesbians and Gay Men”. Alternative Law Journal 29.2 (April 2004): 75–80. Walker, Kristen. “The Same-Sex Marriage Debate in Australia.” The International Journal of Human Rights 11.1–2 (2007): 109–130. Weeks, Jeffrey. The World We Have Won: The Remaking of Erotic and Intimate Life. Abindgdon: Routledge, 2007. Willett, Graham. Living Out Loud: A History of Gay and Lesbian Activism in Australia. Sydney: Allen & Unwin, 2000. Willett, Graham. “Howard and the Homos.” Social Movement Studies 9.2 (2010): 187–199. Zetlein, Sarah. Lesbian Bodies Before the Law: Intimate Relations and Regulatory Fictions. Honours Thesis, University of Adelaide, 1994. —. “Lesbian Bodies before the Law: Chicks in White Satin.” Australian Feminist Law Journal 5 (1995): 48–63.

Conurbation [f. CON- + L. urb- and urbs city + -ation] An aggregation of urban areas. (OED) Beyond the urban, further and lower even than the suburban, lies the con-urban. The conurban: with the urban, partaking of the urbane, lying against but also perhaps pushing against or being contra the urban. Conurbations stretch littorally from Australian cities, along coastlines to other cities, joining cities through the passage of previously outlying rural areas. Joining the dots between cities, towns, and villages. Providing corridors between the city and what lies outside. The conurban is an accretion, an aggregation, a piling up, or superfluity of the city: Greater London, for instance. It is the urban plus, filling the gaps between cities, as Los Angeles oozing urbanity does for the dry, desert areas abutting it (Davis 1990; Soja 1996). I wish to propose that the conurban imaginary is a different space from its suburban counterpart. The suburban has provided a binary opposition to what is not the city, what lies beneath its feet, outside its ken. Yet it is also what is greater than the urban, what exceeds it. In modernism, the city and its denizens define themselves outside what is arrayed around the centre, ringing it in concentric circles. In stark relief to the modernist lines of the skyscraper, contrasting with the central business district, central art galleries and museums, is to be found the masses in the suburbs. The suburban as a maligned yet enabling trope of modernism has been long revalued, in the art of Howard Arkeley, and in photography of suburban Gothic. It comes as no surprise to read a favourable newspaper article on the Liverpool Regional Art Gallery, in Sydney's Western Suburbs, with its exhibition on local chicken empires, Liverpool sheds, or gay and lesbians living on the city fringe. Nor to hear in the third way posturing of Australian Labor Party parliamentarian Mark Latham, the suburbs rhetorically wielded, like a Victa lawn mover, to cut down to size his chardonnay-set inner-city policy adversaries. The politics of suburbia subtends urban revisionism, reformism, revanchism, and recidivism. Yet there is another less exhausted, and perhaps exhaustible, way of playing the urban, of studying the metropolis, of punning on the city's proper name: the con-urban. World cities, as Saskia Sassen has taught us, have peculiar features: the juxtaposition of high finance and high technology alongside subaltern, feminized, informal economy (Sassen 1998). The Australian city proudly declared to be a world city is, of course, Sydney while a long way from the world's largest city by population, it is believed to be the largest in area. A recent newspaper article on Brisbane's real estate boom, drew comparisons with Sydney only to dismiss them, according to one quoted commentator, because as a world city, Sydney was sui generis in Australia, fairly requiring comparison with other world cities. One form of conurbanity, I would suggest, is the desire of other settled areas to be with the world city. Consider in this regard, the fate of Byron Bay a fate which lies very much in the balance. Byron Bay is sign that circulates in the field of the conurban. Craig MacGregor has claimed Byron as the first real urban culture outside an Australian city (MacGregor 1995). Local residents hope to keep the alternative cultural feel of Byron, but to provide it with a more buoyant economic outlook. The traditional pastoral, fishing, and whaling industries are well displaced by niche handicrafts, niche arts and craft, niche food and vegetables, a flourishing mind, body and spirit industry, and a booming film industry. Creative arts and cultural industries are blurring into creative industries. The Byron Bay area at the opening of the twenty-first century is attracting many people fugitive from the city who wish not to drop out exactly; rather to be contra wishes rather to be gently contrary marked as distinct from the city, enjoying a wonderful lifestyle, but able to persist with the civilizing values of an urban culture. The contemporary figure of Byron Bay, if such a hybrid chimera may be represented, wishes for a conurbanity. Citizens relocate from Melbourne, Canberra, and Sydney, seeking an alternative country and coastal lifestyle and, if at all possible, a city job (though without stress) (on internal migration in Australia see Kijas 2002): Hippies and hip rub shoulders as a sleepy town awakes (Still Wild About Byron, (Sydney Morning Herald, 1 January 2002). Forerunners of Byron's conurbanity leave, while others take their place: A sprawling $6.5 million Byron Bay mansion could be the ultimate piece of memorabilia for a wealthy fan of larrikin Australian actor Paul Hogan (Hoges to sell up at Byron Bay, Illawarra Mercury, 14 February 2002). The ABC series Seachange is one key text of conurbanity: Laura Gibson has something of a city job she can ply the tools of her trade as a magistrate while living in an idyllic rural location, a nice spot for a theme park of contemporary Australian manners and nostalgia for community (on Sea Change see Murphy 2002). Conurban designates a desire to have it both ways: cityscape and pastoral mode. Worth noting is that the Byron Shire has its own independent, vibrant media public sphere, as symbolized by the Byron Shire Echo founded in 1986, one of the great newspapers outside a capital city (Martin & Ellis 2002): <http://www.echo.net.au>. Yet the textual repository in city-based media of such exilic narratives is the supplement to the Saturday broadsheet papers. A case in point is journalist Ruth Ostrow, who lives in hills in the Byron Shire, and provides a weekly column in the Saturday Australian newspaper, its style gently evocative of just one degree of separation from a self-parody of New Age mores: Having permanently relocated to the hills behind Byron Bay from Sydney, it's interesting for me to watch friends who come up here on holiday over Christmas… (Ostrow 2002). The Sydney Morning Herald regards Byron Bay as another one of its Northern beaches, conceptually somewhere between Palm Beach and Pearl Beach, or should one say Pearl Bay. The Herald's fascination for Byron Bay real estate is coeval with its obsession with Sydney's rising prices: Byron Bay's hefty price tags haven't deterred beach-lovin' boomers (East Enders, Sydney Morning Herald 17 January 2002). The Australian is not immune from this either, evidence 'Boom Times in Byron', special advertising report, Weekend Australia, Saturday 2 March 2002. And plaudits from The Financial Review confirm it: Prices for seafront spots in the enclave on the NSW north coast are red hot (Smart Property, The Financial Review, 19 January 2002). Wacky North Coast customs are regularly covered by capital city press, the region functioning as a metonym for drugs. This is so with Nimbin especially, with regular coverage of the Nimbin Mardi Grass: Mardi Grass 2001, Nimbin's famous cannabis festival, began, as they say, in high spirits in perfect autumn weather on Saturday (Oh, how they danced a high old time was had by all at the Dope Pickers' Ball, Sydney Morning Herald, 7 May 2001). See too coverage of protests over sniffer dogs in Byron Bay in Easter 2001 showed (Peatling 2001). Byron's agony over its identity attracts wider audiences, as with its quest to differentiate itself from the ordinariness of Ballina as a typical Aussie seaside town (Buttrose 2000). There are national metropolitan audiences for Byron stories, readers who are familiar with the Shire's places and habits: Lismore-reared Emma Tom's 2002 piece on the politics of perving at King's beach north of Byron occasioned quite some debate from readers arguing the toss over whether wanking on the beach was perverse or par for the course: Public masturbation is a funny old thing. On one hand, it's ace that some blokes feel sexually liberated enough to slap the salami any old time… (Tom 2002). Brisbane, of course, has its own designs upon Byron, from across the state border. Brisbane has perhaps the best-known conurbation: its northern reaches bleed into the Sunshine Coast, while its southern ones salute the skyscrapers of Australia's fourth largest city, the Gold Coast (on Gold Coast and hinterland see Griffin 2002). And then the conburbating continues unabated, as settlement stretches across the state divide to the Tweed Coast, with its mimicking of Sanctuary Cove, down to the coastal towns of Ocean Shores, Brunswick Heads, Byron, and through to Ballina. Here another type of infrastructure is key: the road. Once the road has massively overcome the topography of rainforest and mountain, there will be freeway conditions from Byron to Brisbane, accelerating conurbanity. The caf is often the short-hand signifier of the urban, but in Byron Bay, it is film that gives the urban flavour. Byron Bay has its own International Film Festival (held in the near-by boutique town of Bangalow, itself conurban with Byron.), and a new triple screen complex in Byron: Up north, film buffs Geraldine Hilton and Pete Castaldi have been busy. Last month, the pair announced a joint venture with Dendy to build a three-screen cinema in the heart of Byron Bay, scheduled to open mid-2002. Meanwhile, Hilton and Castaldi have been busy organising the second Byron All Screen Celebration Film Festival (BASC), after last year's inaugural event drew 4000 visitors to more than 50 sessions, seminars and workshops. Set in Bangalow (10 minutes from Byron by car, less if you astral travel)… (Cape Crusaders, Sydney Morning Herald, 15 February 2002). The film industry is growing steadily, and claims to be the largest concentration of film-makers outside of an Australian capital city (Henkel 2000 & 2002). With its intimate relationship with the modern city, film in its Byron incarnation from high art to short video, from IMAX to multimedia may be seen as the harbinger of the conurban. If the case of Byron has something further to tell us about the transformation of the urban, we might consider the twenty-first century links between digital communications networks and conurbanity. It might be proposed that telecommunications networks make it very difficult to tell where the city starts and ends; as they interactively disperse information and entertainment formerly associated with the cultural institutions of the metropolis (though this digitization of urbanity is more complex than hyping the virtual suggest; see Graham & Marvin 1996). The bureau comes not just to the 'burbs, but to the backblocks as government offices are closed in country towns, to be replaced by online access. The cinema is distributed across computer networks, with video-on-demand soon to become a reality. Film as a cultural form in the process of being reconceived with broadband culture (Jacka 2001). Global movements of music flow as media through the North Coast, with dance music culture and the doof (Gibson 2002). Culture and identity becomes content for the information age (Castells 1996-1998; Cunningham & Hartley 2001; OECD 1998; Trotter 2001). On e-mail, no-one knows, as the conceit of internet theory goes, where you work or live; the proverbial refashioning of subjectivity by the internet affords a conurbanity all of its own, a city of bits wherever one resides (Mitchell 1995). To render the digital conurban possible, Byron dreams of broadband. In one of those bizarre yet recurring twists of Australian media policy, large Australian cities are replete with broadband infrastructure, even if by 2002 city-dwellers are not rushing to take up the services. Telstra's Foxtel and Optus's Optus Vision raced each other down streets of large Australian cities in the mid-1990s to lay fibre-coaxial cable to provide fast data (broadband) capacity. Cable modems and quick downloading of video, graphics, and large files have been a reality for some years. Now the Asymmetrical Digital Subscriber Line (ADSL) technology is allowing people in densely populated areas close to their telephone exchanges to also avail themselves of broadband Australia. In rural Australia, broadband has not been delivered to most areas, much to the frustration of the conurbanites. Byron Bay holds an important place in the history of the internet in Australia, because it was there that one of Australia's earliest and most important internet service providers, Pegasus Network, was established in the late 1980s. Yet Pegasus relocated to Brisbane in 1993, because of poor quality telecommunications networks (Peters 1998). As we rethink the urban in the shadow of modernity, we can no longer ignore or recuse ourselves from reflecting upon its para-urban modes. As we deconstruct the urban, showing how the formerly pejorative margins actually define the centre the suburban for instance being more citified than the grand arcades, plazas, piazzas, or malls; we may find that it is the conurban that provides the cultural imaginary for the urban of the present century. Work remains to be done on the specific modalities of the conurban. The conurban has distinct temporal and spatial coordinates: citizens of Sydney fled to Manly earlier in the twentieth century, as they do to Byron at the beginning of the twenty-first. With its resistance to the transnational commercialization and mass culture that Club Med, McDonalds, and tall buildings represent, and with its strict environment planning regulation which produce a litigious reaction (and an editorial rebuke from the Sydney Morning Herald [SMH 2002]), Byron recuperates the counter-cultural as counterpoint to the Gold Coast. Subtle differences may be discerned too between Byron and, say, Nimbin and Maleny (in Queensland), with the two latter communities promoting self-sufficient hippy community infused by new agricultural classes still connected to the city, but pushing the boundaries of conurbanity by more forceful rejection of the urban. Through such mapping we may discover the endless attenuation of the urban in front and beyond our very eyes; the virtual replication and invocation of the urban around the circuits of contemporary communications networks; the refiguring of the urban in popular and elite culture, along littoral lines of flight, further domesticating the country; the road movies of twenty-first century freeways; the perpetuation and worsening of inequality and democracy (Stilwell 1992) through the action of the conurban. Cities without bounds: is the conurban one of the faces of the postmetropolis (Soja 2000), the urban without end, with no possibility for or need of closure? My thinking on Byron Bay, and the Rainbow Region in which it is situated, has been shaped by a number of people with whom I had many conversations during my four years living there in 1998-2001. My friends in the School of Humanities, Media, and Cultural Studies, Southern Cross University, Lismore, provided focus for theorizing our ex-centric place, of whom I owe particular debts of gratitude to Baden Offord (Offord 2002), who commented upon this piece, and Helen Wilson (Wilson 2002). Thanks also to an anonymous referee for helpful comments. References Buttrose, L. (2000). Betray Byron at Your Peril. Sydney Morning Herald 7 September 2000. Castells, M. (1996-98). The Information Age. 3 vols. Blackwell, Oxford. Cunningham, S., & Hartley, J. (2001). Creative Industries from Blue Poles to Fat Pipes. Address to the National Humanities and Social Sciences Summit, National Museum of Canberra. July 2001. Davis, M. (1990). City of Quartz: Excavating the Future in Los Angeles. Verso, London. Gibson, C. (2002). Migration, Music and Social Relations on the NSW Far North Coast. Transformations, no. 2. <http://www.ahs.cqu.edu.au/transformation...>. Graham, S., and Marvin, S. (1996). Telecommunications and the City: Electronic Spaces, Urban Places. Routledge, London & New York. Griffin, Graham. (2002). Where Green Turns to Gold: Strip Cultivation and the Gold Coast Hinterland. Transformations, no. 2. <http://www.ahs.cqu.edu.au/transformation...> Henkel, C. (2002). Development of Audiovisual Industries in the Northern Rivers Region of NSW. Master thesis. Queensland University of Technology. . (2000). Imagining the Future: Strategies for the Development of 'Creative Industries' in the Northern Rivers Region of NSW. Northern Rivers Regional Development Board in association with the Northern Rivers Area Consultative Committee, Lismore, NSW. Jacka, M. (2001). Broadband Media in Australia Tales from the Frontier, Australian Film Commission, Sydney. Kijas, J. (2002). A place at the coast: Internal migration and the shift to the coastal-countryside. Transformations, no. 2. <http://www.ahs.cqu.edu.au/transformation...>. MacGregor, Craig. (1995). The Feral Signifier and the North Coast. In The Abundant Culture: Meaning And Significance in Everyday Australia, ed. Donald Horne & Jill Hooten. Allen and Unwin, Sydney. Martin, F., & Ellis, R. (2002). Dropping in, not out: the evolution of the alternative press in Byron Shire 1970-2001. Transformations, no. 2. <http://www.ahs.cqu.edu.au/transformation...>. Mitchell, W.J. (1995). City of Bits: Space, Place, and the Infobahn. MIT Press, Cambridge, Mass. Molnar, Helen. (1998). 'National Convergence or Localism?: Rural and Remote Communications.' Media International Australia 88: 5-9. Moyal, A. (1984). Clear Across Australia: A History of Telecommunications. Thomas Nelson, Melbourne. Murphy, P. (2002). Sea Change: Re-Inventing Rural and Regional Australia. Transformations, no. 2. <http://www.ahs.cqu.edu.au/transformation...>. Offord, B. (2002). Mapping the Rainbow Region: Fields of belonging and sites of confluence. Transformations, no. 2. <http://www.ahs.cqu.edu.au/transformation...>. Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). (1998). Content as a New Growth Industry: Working Party for the Information Economy. OECD, Paris. Ostrow, R. (2002). Joyous Days, Childish Ways. The Australian, 9 February. Peatling, S. (2001). Keep Off Our Grass: Byron stirs the pot over sniffer dogs. Sydney Morning Herald. 16 April. <http://www.smh.com.au/news/0104/14/natio...> Peters, I. (1998). Ian Peter's History of the Internet. Lecture at Southern Cross University, Lismore. CD-ROM. Produced by Christina Spurgeon. Faculty of Creative Industries, Queensland University of Technology, Brisbane. Productivity Commission. (2000). Broadcasting Inquiry: Final Report, Melbourne, Productivity Commission. Sassen, S. (1998). Globalisation and its Contents: Essays on the New Mobility of People and Money. New Press, New York. Soja, E. (2000). Postmetropolis: critical studies of cities and regions. Blackwell, Oxford. . (1996). Thirdspace: journeys to Los Angeles and other real-and-imagined places. Blackwell, Cambridge, Mass. Stilwell, F. (1992). Understanding Cities and Regions: Spatial Political Economy. Pluto Press, Sydney. Sydney Morning Herald (SMH). (2002). Byron Should Fix its own Money Mess. Editorial. 5 April. Tom, E. (2002). Flashing a Problem at Hand. The Weekend Australian, Saturday 12 January. Trotter, R. (2001). Regions, Regionalism and Cultural Development. Culture in Australia: Policies, Publics and Programs. Ed. Tony Bennett and David Carter. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge. 334-355. Wilson, H., ed. (2002). Fleeing the City. Special Issue of Transformations journal, no. 2. < http://www.ahs.cqu.edu.au/transformation...>. Links http://www.echo.net.au http://www.smh.com.au/news/0104/14/national/national3.html http://www.ahs.cqu.edu.au/transformations/journal/issue2/issue.htm Citation reference for this article MLA Style Goggin, Gerard. "Conurban" M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 5.2 (2002). [your date of access] < http://www.media-culture.org.au/0205/conurban.php>. Chicago Style Goggin, Gerard, "Conurban" M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 5, no. 2 (2002), < http://www.media-culture.org.au/0205/conurban.php> ([your date of access]). APA Style Goggin, Gerard. (2002) Conurban. M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 5(2). < http://www.media-culture.org.au/0205/conurban.php> ([your date of access]).

Prologue It's not what I am but what I do. Or is it? The relationship between doing and being is the theme of these three explorations of cultural "identity". The first is a search for the ways in which the Jewish preoccupation with eating, talking, and talking-about-eating, works to create, embody, enact, and/or produce Jewishness. Felicity provides an example of the formation of identities through one specific practice: "eating". Tracey questions the use of identity in a particular site: law. She replaces the notion of identity with something ostensibly different which is based on a collection of practices. The concept of a collection of practices is picked up by Reece as a way of doing something other than (the usual understanding of) "identity politics" with sexual subjectivities. If a conclusion can be taken away from these three related pieces, it would be that one can't help but fall into cultural or collective subject positions, regardless of the problematic of essentialised identities, but that these are derived from common (ordinary, everyday) cultural practices. It is the doing that gives rise to the being. These remain crucial sites of investigation. The Jew: Felicity It's nauseating really, the clamour to claim an identity: ethnicity is particularly fashionable. But then I can say that, because I'm ethnic, even if "impossibly" (as Jon Stratton puts it). Suddenly everyone is searching the attic; ethnicities which were once millstones have now become markers. I'm not so sure how much otherness I can claim, though. After all, where I grew up, in Bondi, being Jewish was de rigeur and consequently mundane. Removing myself made me different. It was only after leaving Bondi that I experienced anti-semitism. Living without Jews I have become very Jewish, if fraudulently. Certainly, I'm seen to be ethnic, and academia embraces means 'authentic'. But I have known "real" Jews, so I know myself to be "not them", and this still doesn't displace my suspicion of the concept of authenticity because, after all, I don't say "there is an authentic", I say "I'm not it". I eat ham on Saturday. My parents were not Holocaust survivors. I'm not married, let alone to a Jew. Even so, I have a mezzuzah on my door. It lives comfortably with my pantheism. My child is Jewish. I cook matzo balls that are fluffy everytime. Of course, we could say, it's "globalisation" and that "postmodern" blurring of boundaries that's behind it all. As we intermarry, eat each other's food and become more alike, we desperately search for ways of inscribing difference. Jewish food may not be as sexy as Thai, but it too has been appropriated. Just think of the bagel. Jewish food, the ways of eating it and the talk which goes on about it, and while eating it, are what have made me feel Jewish. I use Jewish food and foodways to introduce my child to the notion of being Jewish in an even more secular world than the one I inhabited as a child. I once asked my mother why she cut the claws off chicken wings before cooking them. -- Because we're Jewish, that's what we do. I have never forgotten; I always cut the claws off, even if I'm only making stock. I never even asked why again, and I don't think she could have told me anyway. Jewish foodways serve to make Jews conscious of their difference when performing the most mundane of everyday acts. We're talking about creating certain kinds of (perhaps "docile") bodies here, bodies whose every act reinscribes their cultural identity. Eating ham makes me feel Jewish because I shouldn't do it. When I do, I am not just anybody eating a ham sandwich; I am Jew eating ham -- it is an abomination and I know this even if I don't believe it. So what does it mean to be Jewish and how does it show? Are there any necessary and sufficient parameters of Jewishness (and I mean this in a cultural rather than a strictly religious sense)? Because there's "being Jewish" and there's "being recognised as being Jewish". I recently ran into a woman, an academic I'd met several times before, only this time I was wearing my Magen David. -- Oh! she said, you are Jewish, I thought so... . I am too, but it's not the sort of thing you ask somebody. We both laughed, then I said: -- Yes, but our mothers would! Jews recognise each other as such, when gentiles might not, and this is probably true of many groups linked by cultural practices. How does this happen, how do you learn to become Jewish? My answer is that it's all about food, and the ultimate expression of the importance of food to Jews is the Seder, an occasion when story and food combine in such a way that the meal tells a story, the story of Exodus. And just to give it a little extra cachet, that meal has also become a defining moment for Christianity. I employ the Seder as my vehicle for the exploration of Jewishness; as a metaphor for Jewish foodways. Passover is a lot like Christmas, because even the most secular of Jews will pay lip-service, even if it's just the purchase of a box of matzo. My mission appears to find out how it is that this preoccupation with eating, talking and talking-about-eating works to create Jewishness. The Lawyer: Tracey My colleagues speak here of "identities". Such a sexy tag. But describing myself as "a lawyer" doesn't exactly feel too sexy. It feels a little fraudulent as well, since I do law but I don't practice law in the conventional sense. I don't own a briefcase; playing dress-ups is donning my Spice Girls boots. If I were to wear a wig, it wouldn't be grey. And the closest I get to St Georges Terrace (aka "Law Suit Drive") is the Perth Myers store. So what is the marker of authenticity for these other identity groups, vis-à-vis my own? How is that I "do" law (probably as well as Reece does lesbian and Felicity does Jewish) and yet I'm not counted as lawyer? The difference might be the degree to which "identity" touches upon one's soul, one's sense of being. And while "doing law" might connect me to a fraternity of other people who do law in a variety of ways, it's not what I am when I wake up on a non-work morning. It's what I do, but it isn't what I am. Law may have a culture, but it isn't a culture. This isn't to say that studying law and taking on the professional mantle of law doesn't affect me outside of work. Clearly, to engage with any discipline, even on a purely "academic" level, I must establish that I can engage with it discursively. I'd have to consult with my learned friends on this one, but I submit that the flow between this particular work life and home life is not transparent to those who knew me BL (before law) and AL (after law). But it only touches my identity on the fringes. It's not centrally a part of my being. There might be radars that are alerted from Jew to Jew, or from lesbian to lesbian without a word being spoken. But take a lawyer out of the space of work and I doubt that you'd recognise her as one. No law-person-to-law-person "wink" or tilt of the head; no "I know what you do, so do I" sort of look. And yet clearly there are ways in which those doing law, whether through practising, studying or teaching, do form alliances and adopt markers of community, apart from the driving of quite posh cars (perhaps there's even a signature car for successful law people, a community of which I'm patently not a part). There are cultural associations. However, these aren't necessarily attached simply to law as a broad category. Instead, I think the attachments exist in the ways in which one engages with the law; they're loose groupings formed on the basis of what it is one wishes to achieve with and through that institution. This might be what permits a parallel between my "community" -- or whatever it is one wishes to call their social organisation -- and the communities (aka "identities") of my co-writers. That is, while my identity might not be constructed with a view to law-ing, I will at times come into play with others who read law, becoming part of a community of people who read law in a particular (for example, legalistic) fashion. At other times, I might do law in other ways with other people; for example with feminist lawyers, thereby becoming part of a different community. It's about the practices upon which we hang these relationships. It's what is done and for what purpose. Isn't this what one does when coming together with others under a single "identity", or when they form alliances within that identity grouping? In short, I might not have a sexy identity but, no doubt, I have something that looks like identity in the formation of communities of practices. I might not walk proud, but at different times, for different reasons, I belong -- and at other times, I don't. The Dyke: Reece Who are we and how does that relate to politics? Having spent a futile decade or more trying to get the answer right, many of us gave up and argued that the question was wrong. Insisting that it's 'our' party (organisation, collective, music festival, nightclub, Mardi Gras, Pride parade...) didn't help because the next round of questions always returned -- or at least threatened to -- to questions like: "Who do we mean when we say 'ours'?" "Who don't we mean?" "Who makes the guest list, and who gets to spend the evening in the 'bin' (repository of undesirables)?" Besides, "Who decides anyway?" Not having recourse to a "proper" answer -- the sort of answer one could give a quick press and pop on for any occasion -- one strategy has been to depend on a sort of tactical vagueness when drawing up the guest list. "Not straight" will do. But, given that straight is taken as "heteronormative" (the "two point two kids, one spouse, good suburb, lights on, no fantasy, pervert free" model in which sex/gender/sexuality are not only true, but line up, utterly), such a move makes for a potentially exhaustive list. So "queer" becomes the statistical norm. And who, except the Rev Fred and the WA Liberal government front bench, would elect to be seen dead in a yesterday category like "heteronormative"? A related, and much stronger version of this, is to argue that identity, as in identity politics, is neither possible nor desirable. The problem, it seems, is not the content of GLBTQ or whatever identity categories, but our understanding of identity per se. In some wild and woeful accounts, however, a lack of absolute identity slides into an absolute lack of identity (no essential identity, therefore, essentially, no identity), making any claim to an "us" necessarily futile. Post "identity politics" becomes "post-identity" politics. And even if identity were possible, the story goes, it is a regulatory regime. As such, it creates a "bin", an anathema to an anti-oppressive politic. If sexuality is fluid, mobile, partial, not reducible to the homo/heterodivide etc., then the most useful project would be to destabilise the regulatory regimes by which the logic of identity (and the bin) is held in place. These moves, simultaneously, mobilise an all-inclusive category (queer), retain specificities (G,L,B,T,Q) and undo the whole edifice (queer as critique of all "identity"). Another move is, of course, to avoid the mistake of slipping between "no absolute truth" and "absolutely no truth" and, instead, to ask how we go about making up what we do, including who we are, (à la Sedgwick, Halberstram, etc.), what purpose it serves, and for whom. My question then is how "same-sex" has been used, by what "communities of sign users", in the formation of which subject positions, and with what effects. Sometimes the "community of sign users" is the same as "queer community" ("queer community" may be an oxymoron in some quarters, but there are no signs of its immanent withdrawal from "community" circulation, regardless of contamination or logical impossibility). In other instances, the "community of sign users" is not so readily identified in terms of our existing identity markers (maybe we need Eve's nonce taxonomies?), like "pro- and anti-gay law reformists" for instance. And sometimes the subjectivities in question are marked "queerly" (G,L,B,T,Q, for example(s)). Others are not necessarily marked as "sexual" at all, yet are brought into being by and for their relation to queer (in the extended sense). The "Average West Australian", for instance, bears a very specific relation to "same-sex" when used by Peter Foss (W.A. Attorney-General) to argue for continuing legalised discrimination on the grounds of sexuality. Critiques of "identity politics" rightly focus on the nonsense that what we do, unproblematically, is who or what we are. Nevertheless, some sense of 'who or what', some sense of identity, remains crucial to the ways in which we (and they) negotiate the world, even if that identity, like the "Average West Australian", is not necessarily understood as such. Citation reference for this article MLA style: Felicity Newman, Tracey Summerfield & Reece Plunkett. "Three Cultures from the "Inside": or, A Jew, a Lawyer and a Dyke Go into This Bar..." M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 3.2 (2000). [your date of access] <http://www.api-network.com/mc/0005/country.php>. Chicago style: Felicity Newman, Tracey Summerfield & Reece Plunkett, "Three Cultures from the "Inside": or, A Jew, a Lawyer and a Dyke Go into This Bar...," M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 3, no. 2 (2000), <http://www.api-network.com/mc/0005/country.php> ([your date of access]). APA style: Felicity Newman, Tracey Summerfield & Reece Plunkett. (2000) Three cultures from the "inside": or, a jew, a lawyer and a dyke go into this bar... M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 3(2). <http://www.api-network.com/mc/0005/country.php> ([your date of access]).