Another Form of Aboriginal Exemption — Employment as Protection Against Removal

The Queensland Aboriginals Protection and Restriction of the Sale of Opium Act 1897, which introduced the system of exemption certificates, also initiated another form of “exemption” — one based on employment. The Act permitted “lawfully employed” Aboriginal people to be “excepted” from forcible removal to reserves. Those placed on an Aboriginal reserve faced a restrictive life of disconnection from Country, kin networks, and traditional practices and way of life. Many Aboriginal people found employment in the pastoral industry and thus avoided the Act's provision of removal to a reserve. This paper interrogates government records and reports to provide an understanding of the development and implementation of this legislation and the racial ideologies underpinning it. The 1898 diary of a Queensland pastoralist who employed Aboriginal men on his station is also examined to obtain an understanding of the roles, experiences, and position of Aboriginal people in the pastoral industry during this period. These findings reveal that despite hardships faced in the pastoral industry, Aboriginal people found advantages in this form of employment. Through their highly sought-after pastoral skills and expertise, and strategic engagement with Europeans, Aboriginal people excelled in the pastoral industry, and many achieved significant levels of freedom and success.     

In response to Paul Stange's “deconstruction as disempowerment: New orientalisms of Java”

Abstract

The gist of Stange's argument is that Javanists, including myself, have done a disservice to both scholarship and our Javanese informants by failing to pay as much attention as we should to the mystical stream in Javanese culture. Stange criticizes us for reading into statements about mysticism such issues as language ideology, status, and power, rather than taking those statements at their face value. According to Stange, it is not necessary to be a practicing mystic to appreciate Javanese mysticism and its pervasive role in Javanese culture—it suffices to acknowledge the importance of these topics and record mystical Javanese commentary with due respect for its sophistication and authority. Yet were we truly open to what others can reveal to us, Stange goes on to suggest, we would entertain the possibility that mysticism might teach us something important about ourselves and offers us an escape from postmodernist nihilism.     

Japan as an Active Agent for Global Norms: The Political Dynamism Behind the Acceptance and Promotion of “Human Security”

Japan has shaped a distinct human security policy based on evolving policy preferences of successive domestic political leaders and the gradual assimilation of external norms into its own foreign policy. Independent experts have played a particularly significant role in advising Japanese policy elites on how human security could be used by Japan to become an “intellectual leader” within the United Nations and other relevant institutions. This article explores those processes that occurred in the early phase of norm acceptance on the part of key Japanese policy actors and change agents in Japan from the late 1990s through 2003. It argues that human security has served as an effective approach for Japan to establish itself as a more independent foreign policy actor in contemporary international politics.     

Assessing “Global Lithuania”: the strengths and weaknesses of Lithuanian diaspora engagement strategy

Diasporas participate in the home country’s development through remittances, philanthropy, knowledge transfer, investment, and political engagement. Based on the theoretical perspective of network governance, this paper argues that governments can enhance diaspora contributions by offering incentives to engage with the homeland. The paper then applies this perspective to assess the effectiveness of Lithuania’s diaspora engagement policy. Based on successful strategies adopted by other countries, the paper makes recommendations on how to strengthen the incentives for the diaspora to participate in Lithuania’s political, social, economic, and cultural life, and on how to create a better environment for the diaspora’s contributions.     

Migration and the Global Crisis: New Prospects for Return? The Case of Ecuadorians in Europe

This article explores the impact of the current recession on Ecuadorian labour migration to Europe. Several factors affect the evolution of this migration system: receiving countries' policies, the labour market demand (and its deterioration) and the scope for the self‐maintenance of migrants' social networks. We especially focus on a relatively less studied issue: emigrant policies, symbolised, in Ecuador, by a pervasive emphasis on migrant return, somewhat echoed even in Spain, as a destination country. Still, a massive return scenario is implausible in the light of migrants' family stabilisation abroad, and of the uncertain prospects for development in their motherland. Even during a worldwide recession, the ‘hidden agendas' in migration policies, along with the distinct time‐scale and the self‐feeding potential of a long‐distance migration system, should be critically appreciated.     

Technology and Empire: A Colonial Narrative of the Construction of the Tonkin–Yunnan Railway

ABSTRACT

The Tonkin–Yunnan railway constituted a significant piece of transport infrastructure of the French colonial empire in Asia. The 848-kilometer railroad was a technical achievement that took ten years to complete (1900–1910) at the cost of thousands of lives. Albert Marie, a young French engineer, worked on the construction of the Chinese section of the railway over a three-year period, from August 1904 to May 1907. Through the letters he sent to his family and the photographs he took during his assignment, vignettes of everyday life in the expatriate community and the local population, as well as of the daunting work on the construction sites in a hostile physical environment, are narrated in a very candid manner. The hardworking, ambitious, and (at times) bewildered engineer, like many of his contemporary fellow countrymen, was hopeful about French rule in parts of mainland Southeast Asia and southwestern China in the early twentieth century. Technology, in particular, was believed to be the instrument of civilization and modernity that would drive France's imperial expansion in the region and elsewhere; in 1907, Albert Marie left Yunnan to work on another daunting colonial railroad project, the Constantinople–Baghdad line.     

Russia in the Post-Western World: The End of the Normalization Paradigm?

If the relative decline of the West and the great power shift defined as "the rise of the rest" are approaching, there are important implications for Russia's foreign policy. Drawing on the work of Russian and Western commentators, this article offers a preliminary assessment of the post-Western world's implications for Russia and its foreign policy. The challenge of the emerging post-Western world and the manifestations of the West's declining hard and soft power dimensions are described; several schools of Russian thought on current international conditions and Russia's own domestic capabilities are identified and analyzed; and Russia's potential to act as a post-Western great power is assessed.     

The New Geo-Economics of a “Rising” India: State Transformation and the Recasting of Foreign Policy

With a focus on India, and drawing on critical scholarship on geo-politics and geo-economics and “relational” state theories, this article examines the ways in which ideational and material processes of state transformation have shaped India’s international engagement in different periods. Prior to 1991, geo-political social forms linked to a national developmentalist state project shaped India’s engagement with global and regional multilateralism and the nature of this engagement fluctuated according to shifts in the legitimacy and viability of this state project. The erosion of the developmentalist state project from the 1970s laid the path for a deeper shift in the national social order in the 1990s with the recasting of statehood wherein India’s future was thought to be best secured through policies of economic openness, growth and competitiveness. This shift in India’s state project has given rise to new forms of global and regional engagement that are distinct to older forms of international engagement and reflect and further processes of state transformation in India. This is illustrated through a case study on energy policy.     

“Government by Inspection”: Australian Rule in the “Forgotten West” of the Territory of Papua and New Guinea, 1960–73

Australian rule in the Territory of Papua and New Guinea (TPNG) was conducted in large part by a system of patrol officers, the “kiaps”. This article examines rule-by-kiap in the two remote, westernmost districts of the late-Territory (Western and West Sepik) between 1960 and 1973, drawing upon archival sources and interviews with former officers. Australian colonial rule in these districts should be understood as “government by inspection”. The extension of infrastructures of access and the conduct of the census were dominant preoccupations of the Administration, and demonstrations of force were routine. Rule-by-kiap was characteristic of much of TPNG across the years of Australian rule but persisted later in these remote districts, due to their late consolidation under the control of the colonial state. Accordingly, longstanding preoccupations such as the census became linked to new imperatives, such as the conduct of elections.     

Portrait of the Accused as a Young Man: New Zealand’s Harsh Treatment of Young People who Commit Serious Crimes

Abstract

This article argues that although New Zealand’s unique youth justice system generally considers the whole picture of a young offender and responds holistically to the offending, in the case of those accused of serious crimes, the system draws a limited picture that depicts the young offender as a ‘young adult’. These young people are sentenced in adult courts, where their youth, inexperience and potential for rehabilitation are far less influential than they are in a youth court. The result is harsh treatment of some extremely vulnerable young people, which breaches New Zealand’s international obligations. That harsh treatment is particularly problematic, given its hugely disproportionate effect on Māori youth.     

The Commonwealth of Nations and the EU after the ‘Global’ Crisis: Rethinking Post-2015 ‘Global’ Development?

Abstract

The continuing ‘global’ crisis has accelerated divergences between regions, especially between the ‘rising’ global South, the European Union (EU) of the PIIGS (Portugal, Ireland, Italy, Greece and Spain) and Cyprus, which belongs to both the Commonwealth and the EU. This article studies the emerging ‘vertical’ divergences between the EU and the global South, especially around the so-called Economic Partnership Agreements, and the parallel ‘horizontal’ divergences among Anglophone, Francophone (the Organisation Internationale de la Francophonie) and Lusophone (the Comunidade dos Países de Língua Portuguesa) Commonwealths, with their inheritance of emulation and competition. It focuses on the possibilities of enhanced human/citizen security to propose an analysis that challenges established perspectives and points towards prospects for Commonwealth ‘schools’ of international relations/development.     

The Second World War as a turning point in Arab–Jewish relations: the case of Jaffa and Tel Aviv

One of the gravest outcomes of the period of the Arab revolt was the heavy economic damage caused to the Arab community. Jaffa, which suffered greatly in the years 1936–1939, sought to rebuild and restore the city to its status as a leading economic center in Palestine. This need intensified still more with the outbreak of the Second World War. Hence, it was in Jaffa's evident interest to bring about an improvement in relations with Tel Aviv and with Jews generally. Problems regarding the proper management of economic life in wartime exercised the Jewish settlement also; therefore, Jewish–Arab cooperation steadily grew in this period. The article gauges the measure of this cooperation and the nature of the ties that consolidated between Arabs and Jews during the war. The situation of Jaffa and Tel Aviv serves as a test case well exemplifying the force of the subsequent change in relations between Jews and Arabs in Palestine.     

The Palestinian Issue as Constructed in Jordanian School Textbooks, 1964–94: Changes in the National Narrative

This article will discuss the school textbooks in history and civic in the elementary and secondary schools of Jordan between 1964 and 1994 and will show that the changes in the narrative manifested in the school textbooks in the course of these years were influenced by the political, ideological and national needs of Jordanian regime in this period and especially in the light of the Palestinian component in the Jordanian society that presented not only a national-ideological, but also a physical and existential challenge to the integrity of the kingdom. The article will show how, in view of the developments in the Palestinian arena, the school textbooks reflect an attempt on part of the Jordanian regime to forge a national Arab and Jordanian-Palestinian identity up to the end of the 1960s whereas since the beginning of the 1970s, the emphasis is placed on a separate Jordanian territorial identity.     

The Beast in the Machine: Modernity,Aviation and the Legacies of Colonialism in Roger McDonald’s Slipstream

The expectation that a novel about a celebrity aviator will romanticise flight and glorify the pilot is a product of the mythologisation of aviation, which this essay understands is a response to the threat of technology and the alienating conditions of modernity. Roger McDonald’s novel Slipstream refuses to reproduce this mythology, expressing a literary aspiration to use the form of the modern novel to explore the entanglement of the subject under the conditions of postcolonial modernity. My argument will develop through three parts. The first section will explore the mythologisation of aviation as a symptom of modernity. The second will examine the ways in which the novel uses its modernist form to call into question the celebrity of the aviator and the spectacle of flight. This part of my argument is indebted to the critique by German philosopher Martin Heidegger of the technological mode of Being. Finally, I take up the postcolonial implications of the Heideggerian critique in a country in which many of modernism’s standard antidotes to the problems of its century are compromised by the legacies of colonialism.     

“The Symbol of Our Nation”: The Slouch Hat,the First World War,and Australian Identity

Australian scholars are now familiar with the tropes of the Anzac legend. This narrative describes the realisation of an Australian masculine identity, whose characteristics were forged on the Australian frontier and validated through the ordeal of battle. Though many writers contributed to this narrative, C.E.W. Bean, the official historian of the Australian Imperial Force during the First World War, is most closely associated with the popularisation of this myth, which fused frontier and martial masculinity into a national archetype.

This article will examine the role of the slouch hat as a material and visual device that helped communicate the Anzac legend. While most of the scholarship that examines the construction of this narrative focuses on its articulation in prose, this narrative was also popularised through other media. Artists drew symbols of the frontier into their paintings while museum directors arranged their artefacts to support this narrative. This article will argue that the slouch hat provided an essential visual device to connect the narratives of frontier and martial masculinity through the image of the Australian soldier.     

The EU against the New Normal: Avoiding the Banalization of the Israeli‒Palestinian Dispute

This article assesses the European Union (EU)’s engagement with the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and highlights the unintended consequences of the policies pursued by Brussels on this matter. While stressing that Palestinians and Israelis interested in peace face the danger of the banalization of the conflict, the article argues that the current status quo is unacceptable and unstainable in the long run, and this demands new policies from the actors involved with the conflict or its resolution. The EU policies’ overall rationale must be to treat the Israeli?Palestinian dispute as a normal, non-exceptional conflict, in which economic and legal tools can be employed to create new legal facts on the ground. An alternative EU approach to the conflict must recognize the insufficiency of recent initiatives and should be built upon two pillars: the legalization of the main contending issues and the empowerment of the civil society actors and initiatives that foster dialogue between Palestinians and Israelis.