Using morphometric and analytical techniques to characterize elephant ivory

There is a need to characterize Asian elephant ivory and compare with African ivory for controlling illegal trade and implementation of national and international laws. In this paper, we characterize ivory of Asian and African elephants using Schreger angle measurements, elemental analysis {X-ray fluorescence (XRF), inductively coupled plasma-atomic emission spectroscopy (ICP-AES), and inductively coupled plasma-mass spectroscopy (ICP-MS)} and isotopic analysis. We recorded Schreger angle characteristics of elephant ivory at three different zones in ivory samples of African (n=12) and Asian (n=28) elephants. The Schreger angle ranged from 32 degrees to 145 degrees and 30 degrees to 153 degrees in Asian and African ivory, respectively. Elemental analysis (for Asian and African ivory) by XRF, ICP-AES and ICP-MS provided preliminary data. We attempted to ascertain source of origin of Asian elephant ivory similarly as in African ivory based on isotopes of carbon, nitrogen and strontium. We determined isotopic ratios of carbon (n=31) and nitrogen (n=31) corresponding to diet and rainfall, respectively. Reference ivory samples from five areas within India were analyzed using collagen and powder sample and the latter was found more suitable for forensic analysis. During our preliminary analysis, the range of delta13C values (-13.6+/-0.15 per thousand and -25.6+/-0.15 per thousand) and delta15N values (10.2+/-0.15 per thousand and 3.5+/-0.15 per thousand) were noted.     

Speaking the Unspeakable,Naming the Unnameable: The Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse

ABSTRACT

The establishment of the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse followed years of lobbying by survivor groups, damning findings from previous inquiries, and increasing societal recognition of the often lifelong and intergenerational damage caused by child sexual abuse. Through extensive media coverage, the Royal Commission brought into public view the reality that the sexual abuse of children was widespread, and its recommendations are prompting organisational, policy, and legislative reform. This article explores the background to the Royal Commission, situating it within the history of previous inquiries and growing community outrage at the failure of institutions to adequately protect children and respond appropriately when abuse occurs. The article explores the ways in which the Royal Commission, more so than previous inquiries, brought child sexual abuse into public discourse. It also serves as an introduction to this special issue of the Journal of Australian Studies, which illustrates how the Royal Commission has fostered new scholarship across a range of disciplines as researchers engage with complex issues related to institutional child sexual abuse, its history, causes, impacts, and the important role of inquiries in confronting it.     

Environmental migration and conflict dynamics: focus on developing regions

The world's population is increasing by 90-100 million every year, and it may double during the next half-century, with most of the added population coming from developing countries. 700 million people are malnourished and 40,000 die of hunger and hunger-related diseases each day. Most of the developing countries are extremely dependent on their renewable resource base to sustain their economic activities. Therefore, environmental changes and the loss of resources has dire implications for developing countries. This includes loss of arable land and lack of water, which lead to decreased food production. An area of about 1.2 billion hectares (almost the size of China and India taken together) has endured modest to severe soil degradation since World War II because of human activity. Air pollution can also directly affect crop production, lowering crop, wheat, soybean, and peanut harvests in the US. Rapid climate change triggered by the greenhouse effect would also inflict disproportionately more suffering on developing countries. The rise in sea levels caused by climatic change may severely affect densely populated coastal areas in China, Egypt, and Bangladesh. The loss of living space and livelihood could lead to the migration of people as it has happened throughout human history. The definition of environmental migrants is controversial and the other terms used include environmental refugees, ecological refugees, and resource refugees. Economic migrants are those who move to economically affluent regions responding to both the push and pull factors. In contrast, environmental migrants are forced to move--as a result of the loss of livelihood and space--to the nearest possible location. The scarcity induced by environmental migration may lead to acute conflict at three levels in the developing society: state vs. state (large-scale trans-border migration may trigger armed conflicts); state vs. group (rapid urbanization); and group vs. group (nativism).     

The Martin Presence: Jean Martin and the Making of the Social Sciences in Australia

The Martin Presence: Jean Martin and the Making of the Social Sciences in Australia. By Peter Beilharz, Trevor Hogan and Sheila Shaver (Sydney: NewSouth Publishing, 2015), pp.xiv + 293. AU$39.99 (pb).     

Reviews

Nigel Swain, Hungary—The Rise and Fall of Feasible Socialism. London and New York: Verso, 1992, vii + 264 pp., £13.95 p/b.

Ágnes Horváth & Árpád Szakolczai, The Dissolution of Communist Power: The Case of Hungary. London and New York: Routledge, 1992, xviii + 254 pp., £40.00.

Lewis H. Siegelbaum, Soviet State and Society between Revolutions, 1918–1929. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992, xiii + 284 pp., £40.00 h/b, £13.95 p/b.

Gerald Segal‐ et al., Openness and Foreign Policy Reform in Communist Slates. London and New York: Routledge for The Royal Institute of International Affairs, 1992, x + 248 pp., £40.00.

Joan Barth Urban, ed., Moscow and the Global Left in the Gorbachev Era. New York: Cornell University Press, 1992, xii + 204 pp., $32.95 h/b, $14.25 p/b.

Donald Filtzer, Soviet Workers and De‐Stalinization: The Consolidation of the Modern System of Soviet Production Relations, 1953–1964. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992, xv+ 318 pp.

Stefan Hedlund, Private Agriculture in the Soviet Union, London: Routledge, 1990, xiv + 208, pp. £30.00.

Bruno Dallago. The Irregular Economy, Aldershot: Dartmouth Publishing Company, 1991, xxi + 202 pp., £29.50

Marie Lavigne, L'Europe de l'est: du plan au marché. Paris: Editions Libris, 1992, 191 pp., 89 francs.

Paul Calloway, Soviet and Western Psychiatry—a Comparative Study. Keighley, The Moor Press, 1992, xv + 266 pp., £22.95 h/b, £9.95 p/b.

David Wedgwood Benn, From Glasnost to Freedom of Speech. London: Pinter Publishers, 1992, vi + 106 pp., £22.50 h/b, £8.95 p/b.

Gail W. Lapidus & Victor Zaslavsky, eds, From Union to Commonwealth: Nationalism and Separatism in the Soviet Republics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992, vii + 127 pp., £25.00 h/b, £9.95 p/b.

Robert F. Miller, ed., The Development of Civil Society in Communist Systems. Sydney: Allen & Unwin, 1982, iv+ 188 pp., £10.95.

Geoffrey A. Hosking, ed., Church, Nation and State in Russia and Ukraine. London: Macmillan/School of Slavonic and East European Studies, 1991, xv + 357 pp., £45.00.

Richard Taylor & Ian Christie, eds, Inside the Film Factory: New Approaches to Russian and Soviet Cinema. London and New York: Routledge, 1991, xvii + 256 pp., £40.00.

Linda Edmundson, ed.. Women and Society in Russia and the Soviet Union, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992, ix + 233 pp., 35.00 h/b.

Chris Corrin, ed., Superwomen and the Double Burden. Women's Experience of Change in Central and Eastern Europe and the Former Soviet Union. London: Scarlet Press, 1992, 297 pp., no price.

Mary. Buckley, ed., Perestroika and Soviet Women. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992, xiii+ 183 pp., £30.00 h/b, £10.95 p/b.

Rajendra K. Jain, Germany, the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, 1949–1991. London: Sangam Books Limited, 1993, xv + 368 pp., £25.95.

Philip J. Bryson & Manfred Melzer, The End of the East German Economy: From Honecker to Reunification. London: Macmillan, 1991, xiii+ 148 pp. £40.00.

Liliana Saiu. The Great Powers and Rumania 1944–1946. A Study of the Early Cold War Era. East European Monographs, Boulder, CO: 1992, xiii + 290 pp., $42.00.     

Birth and death in a new land attitudes to infant death in colonial Australia

The goldrush colony of Victoria, Australia, was a favoured destination for aspirational emigrants from nineteenth-century Britain. Yet the persistence of high rates of infant mortality blighted the happiness of many first and second generation immigrant families alone in a new land. Drawing on birth, death and inquest records this paper interrogates the experience of infant death amongst the poorest families in the capital city popularly known as ‘Marvellous Melbourne’ during the second half of the nineteenth century. Although few infants died alone, the familial and community networks in which they were enmeshed were not always committed to their survival. While the paper argues that there was a hierarchy of value which determined the degree to which the death of a child would be welcomed or mourned, it also contests popular notions that evil baby farmers and unfeeling mothers were a major cause of infant death.     

Accumulation and authoritarianism on the pioneer frontier of Brazil

Rumour as a language of peasant politics in colonial Bihar has remained unexplored hitherto. Studies by Ranajit Guha and Shahid Amin are forceful but require further probing. Peasants deployed rumour as a device to articulate political aspirations and create public opinion when mass politics had yet to become a generalised affair. Such rumours often had religious sources and locations. Gandhi's idioms were successfully received by the masses owing to a field already prepared by rumour within which these ideas could take root and flourish. Arguably, the religious overtones and prophetic pronouncements of Gandhian mass politics borrowed heavily from an earlier polity that was based on rumour. A study of nineteenth century rumour is illuminating not only for the insight it provides into the manner in which politics was conducted then, but also for the indications it gives about politics of the future.     

Raising revenues: an introduction

Raising revenues, although necessary to budgets, has received relatively scant attention from students of public budgeting. This special issue focuses attention on that topic. The contributions to this special issue show the diverse ways in which raising revenues is important.