The Road to Reengagement and Beyond

The Shanghai Communiqué, a pathbreaking accord signed by U.S. President Richard Nixon and Chinese Premier Zhou Enlai on February 28, 1972, marks a defining moment in the history of both the United States and the People’s Republic of China;50 years on, its significance endures.     

Friendship and Domestic Service: the letters of Eliza Oldham,general maid (c.1820–1892)

Eliza Oldham (c.1820–92) worked as a general maid in Rochdale and Halifax from the 1840s to the 1870s. A set of her letters to a wealthy relation of two of her employers, Helen Priestman Bright Clark (1840–1927), has been preserved, indicating their close friendship. This article asks what kind of friendship was possible in such a socially and economically unequal relationship, and what it might tell us about class identities and class contest. It locates the basis of this friendship in the emotional labour involved in domestic service, alongside the complex intersection of work, family and community life with larger arenas of radical and gender politics.     

The Menzies Government,the American Alliance and the Cuban Missile Crisis

This paper questions the traditional view of the Australian‐American relationship: that Australian dependency entailed unequivocal support for American foreign policy. It uses a particular Cold War event — the Cuban Missile Crisis — to examine the extent to which the reaction of the Australian government conformed to the general perception of immediate and absolute endorsement of the Kennedy administration's position. The paper will argue that the actual response of the Menzies government, as distinct from its public pronouncements, was constrained rather than unconditional, considered rather than reflexive, and shaped by strategic calculations of Australian interests.     

Responding to retributivists: a restorative justice rejoinder to the big three Desert theories

Retributive theories of legal punishment fail to justify the imprisonment of convicted offenders. There are three prominent retributive theories that attempt this: Fair Play theory, Moral Communication theory, and Intuitive Desert theory. Fair Play retributivists seek to imprison offenders in order to re-balance the distribution of benefits and burdens, which is upset by criminal offences. Moral Communication retributivists seek to imprison offenders as a means of communicating society’s condemnation of criminality. Intuitive Desert retributivists seek to imprison offenders because it is a deserved response to wrongdoing (the supporting evidence is our intuitive reactions to criminality). These theories are critiqued and attention is drawn to the superiority of certain restorative justice values and practices.     

The Accuracy of Auditors' and Layered Voice Analysis (LVA) Operators' Judgments of Truth and Deception During Police Questioning*

The purpose of this study was to determine if auditors could identify truthful and deceptive persons in a sample (n = 74) of audio recordings used to assess the effectiveness of layered voice analysis (LVA). The LVA employs an automated algorithm to detect deception, but it was not effective here. There were 31 truthful and 43 deceptive persons in the sample and two LVA operators averaged 48% correct decisions on truth‐tellers and 25% on deceivers. Subsequent to the LVA analysis the recordings were audited by three interviewers, each independently rendering a decision of truthful or deceptive and indicating their confidence. Auditors' judgments averaged 68% correct decisions on truth‐tellers and 71% on deceivers. Auditors' detection rates, generally, exceeded chance and there was significantly (p < 0.05) greater confidence on correct than incorrect judgments of deceivers but not on truth‐tellers. These results suggest that the success reported for LVA analysis may be due to operator's judgment.     

Governing austerity in the United Kingdom: anticipatory fiscal consolidation as a variety of austerity governance

This paper analyses the logic underpinning austerity governance in the United Kingdom. Taking the UK’s relative fiscal and monetary policy autonomy as a starting point, the paper unpacks and analyses how the United Kingdom has charted a successful course between the imperatives of social stability and market credibility. At the heart of this ‘success’ is a fundamentally anticipatory governing logic. Fiscal consolidation was justified and enacted as a pre-emptive and preventative intervention in order to anticipate an indebted and thus disciplined future. Contrary to conventional wisdom, then, UK austerity is not necessarily geared only towards swingeing spending cuts, because the direction of travel towards an imagined debt- and deficit-free future is just as important as reaching the destination itself under the logic of anticipatory fiscal consolidation.     

Autopsy Reenactment – A Useful Technique in the Evaluation of Adhesive Tape Asphyxia

A 19‐year‐old woman was found dead with her face and head wrapped in plastic adhesive tape in a cupboard beside an opened helium cylinder. Despite the alleged presence of a suicide message on a social networking website, the unusual circumstances raised the possibility at the time of autopsy of either accidental death from sexual asphyxia or homicide. A carefully monitored reenactment demonstrated, however, that the type of commercial adhesive tape that had been used did not cause complete airway obstruction and that it was possible to wrap a considerable length of tape around the head and neck with the breath held. All of the features at autopsy were, therefore, compatible with self‐infliction. Asphyxial death was attributed to the combined effects of smothering from tape and anoxia from helium, an extremely rare combination in young females.