The Australian Experience of Municipal Amalgamation: Asking the Citizenry and Exploring the Implications

Debate over municipal amalgamations in Australian continues to dominate local government reform agendas, with the putative need to achieve economies of scale and scope consistently set against anti‐amalgamation arguments designed to preserve extant communities. Following from an examination of recent episodes of consolidation in Australia, this paper reports on citizens' attitudes to amalgamation garnered from a national survey of 2,006 individuals. We found that generally, citizens are ambivalent toward amalgamation, although attitudes were influenced by particular demographic characteristics and attitudes to representation, belonging, service delivery requirements and the costs thereof. The results suggest that, away from the local government sector itself, structural reform may not be the vexatious issue it is often portrayed as. The implications of this are explored here.     

When cinema borrows from stage: theatrical artifice through indexical explicitness in The Cook,the Thief,His Wife and Her Lover and Dogville

ABSTRACT

Framed within the debate on the different nature of theatrical and filmic communication, the study considers two avant-garde films by Greenaway, The Cook, the Thief, His Wife and Her Lover, and von Trier, Dogville, as examples of texts that travel from one medium to another and show closeness to the theatre. This is revealed not solely through the artificiality and the enclosure of the setting and the mise-en-scène, but also at the level of the discourse understood as the ensemble of images, music, gestures, and dialogue. The two films exhibit an unnaturalness unusual in cinema, a medium in which the editing realises a seemingly realistic representation of characters and events. The discussion focuses on how such a sensation of artificial non-realism is achieved in the films. It is argued that it derives from the marked explicit relation between the various levels of communication in the two films, the verbal and the visual, as well as between the dialogue contributions by the different participants in the narrative, characters, and narrator. The construct adopted for the analysis is indexicality, which is interpreted in a broad sense and that, as is discussed, contributes to the “monstrative” dimension of the films in terms of the explicitness of the communication.     

Four poems

S. Lewis, B. Keating, D. Russel: Inconclusive by Design: Waste, Fraud and Abuse in Federal Environmental Research, Environmental Health Network: Harvey, LA and National Toxics Campaign Fund: Boston, MA, May 1992.

Darrow Schecter: Radical Theories: Paths Beyond Marxism and Social Democracy. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1994.

Peter Freund and George Martin: The Ecology of the Automobile. New York: Black Rose Books, 1993.     

Integrating subjectivities of power and violence in peacebuilding analysis

Abstract

Over the last 20 years the local domain has gained widespread attention in the analysis of peacebuilding. While this debate has contributed to an important review of many assumptions underlying peacebuilding practice and analysis, the subjective domain of peacebuilding – how actors experience and make sense of these transformations – still needs to be more methodically explored. In particular, while different narratives of peace have been analysed in this literature, much more rarely has there been a systematic discussion linking peace with power and violence and the different understandings and experiences around these two concepts. In this article I argue that integrating violence and power more systematically in the local turn and exploring their subjective domain can greatly benefit this debate, including by contributing to the elaboration of conceptual and theoretical tools more aligned with Southern epistemologies.     

Industrial restructuring in CEE regions: determinants of regional growth in the accession and in the crisis period

After the fall of the Iron Curtain, intense processes of industrial reconversion occurred in Central and Eastern European (CEE) countries. Adopting a territorial perspective, the aim of this paper is to assess the impact of industrial restructuring on the economic growth of CEE regions, classified according to the typology of the industrial reconversion that occurred. Results point out that those areas able to reconvert their productive specialization to both new sectors and higher value functions achieved the best economic performance. These findings provide interesting insights on the past mechanisms of growth in CEE countries and they convey relevant policy implications for their future industrial strategies.     

Computer simulation of humanitarian scenarios: tools for training and field management in relief agencies

Computer simulation, a technology well advanced in military strategies and tactics, has been used for response to natural disasters. The authors argue that it should also be applied to the field of humanitarian action in armed conflict. Projected uses are: the management and planning of relief actions, public resource mobilization for humanitarian actions, and training personnel for violent work environments. How that can happen is shown with the example of a real relief management problem in the Sudan.

Simulation can be introduced in ways that are compatible with agencies’ needs, communication styles, and staff abilities. Several factors speak for it: many agencies routinely use computer applications that are flexible enough for simulation to be added seamlessly. Simulation will help agencies to add the power of analysis to the images that prompt humanitarian actions. And with violence and chaos continuing, simulation offers a technique around which to share expertise and training in new, networked partnerships.     

An exploratory study of dominance interactions among adolescent females at a summer camp

One bunk of eight 16- to 17-year old females was studied over a four-week camping session. Instances of dyadic dominance behaviors between group members were recorded in three settings. Although participants formed a cohesive group dominance structure that remained relatively stable throughout the camp session, the structure was not rigid or hierarchical. A new term, “cohesive dyarchy,” was coined to describe intracabin dominance relations. In contrast to many studies of adolescent females, popularity with boys and physical attractiveness were not found to be major predictors of dominance status. A variety of personality traits emphasizing interpersonal skills, athletic ability, and self-reported self-esteem predicted dominance status. Implications of these findings in terms of female adolescent development and future research are discussed.     

High Risk Behaviors Among Victims of Sibling Violence

Despite the fact that sibling abuse has been documented as the most common form of intrafamilial abuse, it has been largely overlooked. Using data from the 2007 Delaware Secondary School Student Survey (N = 8,122), this paper focuses on four objectives: to estimate prevalence of sibling abuse, examine the relationship between sibling violence and high risk behaviors such as substance use, delinquency and aggression, explore the interplay of sibling abuse and other forms of family violence in predicting high risk behaviors, and test theory. Results suggest that sibling violence occurs more frequently than other forms of child abuse. Results also confirm that sibling violence is significantly related to substance use, delinquency, and aggression. These effects remain significant after controlling for other forms of family violence. The data suggest support for feminist theory and social learning theory.