Arts Book Chapters

Israel's other terrorism challenge

Sandra M. Nasr — Sun, 20 Jan 2013 18:45:25 PST

The term 'terrorism' when used in conjunction with 'Israel' or 'Palestinians' has been used almost exclusively to describe suicide attacks against Israeli civilian and military targets. 'Terrorism' is, after all, an apt term for these actions. However, the identification of one form of terrorism does not negate the accuracy of its application to certain actions taken by and on behalf of governments. The emerging field of theory aimed at identifying and understanding state terrorism is an important and overdue contribution to the broader area of critical terrorism studies. This chapter offers empirical substance by way of a case study. During Israel's forty-year occupation of the West Bank there are a number of policies and practices enacted whose intent seems to be to produce fear and submission through the use of violence and threats for purposes of political coercion. Physical and psychological intimidation at checkpoints, arbitrary closures and curfews, harsh mobility restrictions, home demolitions, random detentions and the denial of a whole range of basic human rights contrive to keep Palestinians in a constant state of anxiety and trepidation.

Religion in the Policy Domains of International Financial Institutions

John Rees — Sun, 20 Jan 2013 18:30:40 PST

For the Handbook:

With eighty per cent of the world’s population professing religious faith, religious belief is a common human characteristic. The sacred texts of each of the world’s major religions exhort believers to live a righteous life, including responding to poverty and assisting those with less. This fascinating and unique Handbook highlights the value of incorporating religion into development studies literature and research. It argues that as religious identity is integral to a community’s culture, exclusion of religious consideration will limit successful development interventions and therefore it is necessary to conflate examination of religion and development to enhance efforts aimed at improving the lives of the poor.

That Bloody Myth of Venice Again! Noble Blood and Sanctity in Venice

Karen McCluskey — Thu, 15 Nov 2012 17:44:58 PST

Promoting the cults of local holy men and women was a very popular form of civic aggrandisement in Italy between the twelfth and eighteenth centuries. Quite simply, home-grown holy figures reflected the purity and piety of the cities which produced them, especially if they were descended from noble bloodlines. Civic registers and lists of domestic saints and their uncanonised counterparts, beati, all around the Italian peninsula, and indeed in Europe more broadly, are full of references to illustrious ‘blue-blood’ families. Likewise, in the Republic of Venice, the saintly repertoire as recorded by sixteenth to eighteenth-century hagiographers (writers of saints’ lives) exaggerates its inclusion of noble bloodlines in order to amplify the city’s self-professed identity as God’s favoured and most holy locale and to emphasise the role of the elite patrician class in achieving this rank. The paper analyses how Venetian hagiographers constructed a distinctive kind of holy figure for Venice which both reflected the city’s shifting external political concerns and conformed to its enduring Republican principles. When the Venetian identity needed bolstering, the saintly repertoire could easily be injected with noble and sanctified blood to underscore the primary contribution of the Venetian patrician class to the all-important civic identity.

Disorientation: The Case of Othello

Christopher Wortham — Thu, 25 Oct 2012 22:21:02 PDT

Introduction - 'This Earthly Stage'

Christopher Wortham — Thu, 25 Oct 2012 18:43:14 PDT

The thirteen essays collected in ‘This Earthly Stage’ explore intersections between the world as stage and the stage as world in late medieval and early modern England. The volume features studies of stages both familiar and unfamiliar, and worlds old and new - from the ritual performance of funerals for the fifteenth-century London elite to the electronic recreation of Shakespeare on the Internet. The essays engage with a variety of scholarly fields, including art and iconography, cultural and social history, digital humanities, literature, myth, philology, and philosophy. Most studies examine performative elements of Shakespeare’s works in relation to a representative selection of other plays from the dramatic genres in which he wrote, while they also analyse broader topics which traverse a number of plays, such as kingship and rites of civic performance in relation to stage drama. All of the essays consider the overarching issue of representation in late medieval and early modern English drama and culture through a range of theoretical approaches. This volume offers a valuable contribution to contemporary medieval and early modern scholarship, with a particular interest for those researching and teaching early modern English drama and culture. [Accessed from publisher's website: http://www.brepols.net/Pages/ShowProduct.aspx?prod_id=IS-9782503532264-1]

Meanings of the South: from the Mappaemundi to Shakespeare's Othello

Christopher Wortham — Thu, 25 Oct 2012 18:14:40 PDT

Terra Australis - the southern land - was one of the most widespread concepts in European geography from the sixteenth to the eighteenth centuries, although the notion of a land mass in the southern seas had been prevalent since classical antiquity. Despite this fact, there has been relatively little sustained scholarly work on European concepts of Terra Australis or the intellectual background to European voyages of discovery and exploration to Australia in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Through interdisciplinary scholarly contributions, ranging across history, the visual arts, literature and popular culture, this volume considers the continuities and discontinuities between the imagined space of Terra Australis and its subsequent manifestation. It will shed new light on familiar texts, people and events - such as the Dutch and French explorations of Australia, the Batavia shipwreck and the Baudin expedition - by setting them in unexpected contexts and alongside unfamiliar texts and people. The book will be of interest to, among others, intellectual and cultural historians, literary scholars, historians of cartography, the visual arts, women's and post-colonial studies. [Accessed from publisher's website: http://www.ashgate.com/isbn/9781409426059]

Indigenous Sustainability: Rights, Obligations, and a Collective Commitment to Country

Stephen Kinnane — Tue, 19 Jun 2012 20:26:03 PDT

Recent movements within sustainability have sought to integrate Indigenous relationships to natural resources as part of the sustainability paradigm. Australian Indigenous peoples, and Indigenous movements internationally, have also utilized the language of sustainability when promoting inherent Indigenous rights to land, aspirations of self-determination and obligations to ‘country’. However, in utilising sustainability as a field of negotiation, Indigenous participants generally speak of another dimension within this debate, an Indigenous approach to ‘country’ that is bound within Indigenous relationships to natural-cultural resources that cannot be divorced from cultural-spiritual relationships with our natural world.

"Really Existing" Scriptures: On the Use of Sacred Text in International Affairs

John Rees — Thu, 31 May 2012 20:34:30 PDT

This chapter draws on examples from the Abrahamic faiths and on the work of scholars in the fields of international relations, theology and philosophy to sketch some starting principles for thinking about how religious scripture can utilised in the construction of international affairs. A threefold argument is provided that scriptures “really exist” as a political resource, they contain a diversity of political ideas, and they can contribute constructively to open political discussion and the development of open political systems.

Originally published in the Journal of Faith and International Affairs Vol 2, No. 1 (Spring 2004) pp.17-26, this research by John Rees has now been included in Religion and Foreign Affairs: Essential Readings alongside contributions from scholars such as Peter Berger, Charles Taylor, Daniel Philpott, Scott Appleby, Scott Thomas, Jeffrey Haynes, Marc Gopin, Madeleine Albright, Katherine Marshall, Vali Nasr, Samuel Huntington and Robert Kagan.

Politics and Bare Life in Yvonne Vera’s The Stone Virgins

Deborah Pike — Thu, 10 May 2012 18:12:34 PDT

Deborah Pike examines the trials facing a writer in yet another troubled nation, this time modern Zimbabwe, in chapter thirteen, which presents a close reading of Yvonne Vera’s The Stone Virgins in terms of the work of the political philosopher Giorgio Agamben and the postcolonial theorist Achille Mbembe. Pike opens her analysis with two direct questions: “What is the relationship between politics and literature in [using Agamben’s term] a State of Exception? How can human beings whose lives are stripped of political rights, speak out?” Pike sketches the political circumstances of Zimbabwe under Robert Mugabe as a way of positioning her reading of The Stone Virgins, understanding it as a State of Exception wherein people live lives “stripped of political significance and civil rights”, a “bare life” that not only entails the denial of rights but also of subjectivity itself. She links this to Mbembe’s reading of sub-Saharan Africa, and to the question of “what it means to do violence to bare life”, to those without political identity, significance or agency. Questions such as these inform her interpretation of the extreme violence that saturates The Stone Virgins, a novel that tracks the history of Rhodesia-Zimbabwe from 1950 to 1986. Despite the often-monstrous action, Pike argues that it is a novel of hope, one that “seeks to ‘desilence’ the horrendous events of Zimbabwean history and in so doing, resist the master narratives of the Mugabe government”.

Blood History

Stephen Kinnane — Tue, 14 Feb 2012 20:53:17 PST

Life in the Valley

Fitzroy Crossing has been in the news again. Front-page newspaper images of women carryning slabs of VB home on pension day mirror the scenes outside the window of my donga in the centre of town. It's Big Pay day in Big Pay week.¹ More than this town's fair share of community members are gripped in the teeth of grog.

[Excerpt from publisher's website: http://catalogue.mup.com.au/978-0-522-85954-6.html]

Changing the lens: Indigenous perspectives on psychological literacy

Pat Dudgeon et al. — Sun, 06 Nov 2011 19:53:30 PST

An essential type of psychological literacy that is required in all psychology courses is an understanding of and ability to work with the many cultural groups that make up a given society. This understanding and competence should include principles of social justice and how social injustice develops and is maintained. Social justice is about developing societies that are based on principles of equality and that value the human rights and dignity of all peoples, irrespective of their cultural background. This is particularly pertinent for Indigenous peoples who continue to struggle for basic human rights.

Cicero’s Tenth and Eleventh Philippics: The Republican advance in the East

Martin Drum — Fri, 10 Jun 2011 00:13:29 PDT

This volume collects papers by a series of specialists in the field of Ciceronian studies who have set out to reconsider the historical impact of the Philippic speeches and their later significance in Roman culture.[Accessed from publisher's website: http://www.polygraphianz.com/CiceroPhilippics.html]

ISBN: 978 1 877332 56 2

Digital Art: Blowing Zen in the City

Melissa Milton-Smith — Fri, 01 Apr 2011 00:43:25 PDT

What pushes the boundaries of the aesthetic experience? Melissa D Milton-Smith examines the boundaries of “art” and “new media”.

ISBN: 9780230273467

Oversight Matters

Daniel Baldino — Mon, 30 Aug 2010 22:49:00 PDT

Intelligence has come to play an increasingly important role in the shaping of policy and policing action around the world. Democratic Oversight of Intelligence Services reflects upon democratic principles applicable to the intelligence sector and the proper oversight mechanisms to install accountability for organisations that operate under a cloak of secrecy. By its very nature, the collection of intelligence also raises a number of ethical and moral questions and appropriate reforms need to be researched, discussed and debated. Reliable and realistic democratic systems of oversight must deal with special executive powers, the requirements of secrecy, the relationship between processes and structures and other hot-potato national security issues. This book addresses the development of, and the challenges and impediments to, democratic oversight and review of the intelligence community in Australia, Japan, Canada, New Zealand, the United States and United Kingdom. The promotion of democratic oversight of the intelligence community has gained renewed significance in the aftermath of 9/11. Legal and administrative frameworks, executive prerogatives and power - and their potential abuses, operational work and analytical tradecraft, crisis management, human rights, state-sponsored detention and interrogation policy and the separation of powers are discussed. [National Library of Australia]

ISBN: 9781862877412

Watching the Watchmen

Daniel Baldino — Mon, 30 Aug 2010 22:40:11 PDT

Intelligence has come to play an increasingly important role in the shaping of policy and policing action around the world. Democratic Oversight of Intelligence Services reflects upon democratic principles applicable to the intelligence sector and the proper oversight mechanisms to install accountability for organisations that operate under a cloak of secrecy. By its very nature, the collection of intelligence also raises a number of ethical and moral questions and appropriate reforms need to be researched, discussed and debated. Reliable and realistic democratic systems of oversight must deal with special executive powers, the requirements of secrecy, the relationship between processes and structures and other hot-potato national security issues. This book addresses the development of, and the challenges and impediments to, democratic oversight and review of the intelligence community in Australia, Japan, Canada, New Zealand, the United States and United Kingdom. The promotion of democratic oversight of the intelligence community has gained renewed significance in the aftermath of 9/11. Legal and administrative frameworks, executive prerogatives and power - and their potential abuses, operational work and analytical tradecraft, crisis management, human rights, state-sponsored detention and interrogation policy and the separation of powers are discussed. [National Library of Australia]

ISBN: 9781862877412

"Horror Written On Their Skin": Joy Kogawa's Gothic Uncanny

Gerry Turcotte — Tue, 29 Jun 2010 22:03:23 PDT

This essay takes as its starting point Joy Kogawa's novel Obasan ([1981] 1985), which revolves around what Scott McFarlane has called "arguably the most documented instance of ethnic civil rights abuse in Canadian history", namely the internment of the Japanese Canadians during and after the Second World War and their subsequent dispossession and exile (1995b, 401). It also takes as one point of intersection the Japanese Canadian Redress Agreement - the decision of the Brian Mulroney government on 22 September 1988 to offer an apology and restitution to the Japanese Canadians for their suffering and unjust treatment.¹ More specifically, this reading is located in the way Sigmund Freud's analysis of "The 'Uncanny'" ([1919] 1965) - and a Gothic modality more widely - can be brought to bear on an understanding of these events.

ISBN: 9781554580545

Greek language and Culture in Australia

Anastasios M. Tamis — Thu, 03 Jun 2010 22:43:38 PDT

The Greek migration and settlement circle in Oceania comprised four important stages: the stage of exodus of approximately 300,000 Hellenes from their ancestral residences (1829-1974), the painful and agonizing stage of settlement in Australia and New Zealand during the pre- and post-WWlI period, the stage of their socioeconomic and cultural interaction during the years 1975-1995, and the stage of consolidation and citizenship that followed. During this period, Greek and Cypriot settlers arriving as migrants to Australia, were progessively transformed into citizens enhancing their social presence, consolidating their economic and cultural contribution, and overcoming the pre-War restrictive immigation policies and attitudes.

ISBN: 9789609929707

Greek Orthodoxy in Australia

Anastasios M. Tamis — Thu, 03 Jun 2010 20:28:02 PDT

More than three million Greek Orthodox people exited Hellas, during the last four hundred years, in an effort to fulfil their personal ambition to amass wealth or to survive as the consequence of a long period of foreign domination and financial constraints. They have settled almost in every single neighbourhoods of the world, thus forming the Hellenic Orthodox Diaspora. The term Diaspora was first used by Thucydides to describe the exile (dispersion) of the people of Aegina by the Athenians (Thucydides, Peloponnesian War, and II.27). Greek Orthodox, despite their temporary or permanent expatriation to foreign lands for any reason, continued to maintain cultural, political, economic or social relations with their country of ancestry and descent. During this period, Greek expatriation has been an intense phenomenon claiming more than 40% of the Greeks residing, at any given time, outside the national borders of Greece or Cyprus. In 2007, of the 17,000,000 Greeks, an estimated total of 5,000,000 are residing in 150 different countries of the world.

ISBN: 9780521864077

Greek Migration and Settlement in Oceania

Anastasios M. Tamis — Thu, 04 Mar 2010 17:28:54 PST

This Chapter on Oceania is divided into two parts - New Zealand and Australia.

Australia

Η Αυστραλία πρωτοκατοικήθηκε πριν 40.000 χρόνια από ανθρώπους που ήλθαν από τη νοτιανατολική Ασία με αυτοσχέδια κανώ και σχεδίες από μπαμπού. Ο πολιτισμός των πρώτων εποίκων (Αμπορίτζινις), παραμένει ο πλέον αρχαίος συνεχόμενος γνωστός πολιτισμός. Όταν το 1788 άρχισε η ευρωπαϊκή εγκατάσταση, ο αριθμός των ιθαγενών έφτανε περίπου τους 350.000. Ο Πρώτος Στόλος αποτελούνταν από 1000 Βρετανούς, 750 από τους οποίους ήταν κατάδικοι. Για τα πρώτα πενήντα χρόνια της Ευρωπαϊκής εγκατάστασης, οι Αμπορίτζινις και οι νησιώτες των Torres Strait Islandς αποτελούσαν το μεγαλύτερο μέρος του Αυστραλιανού πληθυσμού. Η μεταφορά καταδίκων στην Αυστραλία από τις κατάμεστες βρετανικές φυλακές της Glasgow, Liverpool, Manchester, Doublin και Birmingham (1788) συνεχίστηκε μέχρι και το 1852, όταν οι πρωτοπόροι Έλληνες αφίχθηκαν αναζητώντας την τύχη τους. Από το 1788 μέχρι το 1868, πάνω από 180.000 Βρετανοί και Ιρλανδοί κατάδικοι αφίχθηκαν στην Αυστραλία.

New Zealand

Αν και οι πρώτοι Έλληνες, τυχοδιώκτες και χρυσοθήρες, αρχίζουν να εμφανίζονται στη Νέα Ζηλανδία (ΝΖ) από το 1840, η ελληνική εποίκηση αρχίζει ουσιαστικά το 1873 με την εγκατάσταση του Ιθακήσιου Νικόλαου Μάντζαρη ή Φερνάντου. Ακολούθησε αλυσιδωτή μετανάστευση Ιθακησίων, Ζακυνθινών και Κεφαλονητών πρωτοπόρων, οι οποίοι άνοιξαν τα πρώτα εστιατόρια και ψαράδικα στο Wellington. Στα τέλη του 19ου αιώνα αρχίζει η μετανάστευση Ελλήνων από την ηπειρωτική Ελλάδα, κυρίως Ακαρνάνων, καθώς επίσης από την Κρήτη και τη Σάμο. Στην Απογραφή του 1874 καταγράφονται συνολικά 25 Έλληνες, από τους οποίους οι 12 εργάζονται ως χρυσωρύχοι της εταιρείας South West Gold Field στο Νότιο νησί.. Μετά το 1927, εξαιτίας των συνεπειών της παγκόσμιας οικονομικής κρίσης, ο αριθμός των Ελλήνων εποίκων που εγκαθίστανται στη ΝΖ μειώνεται, μέχρι και τα πρώτα μεταπολεμικά χρόνια.

Due to copyright restrictions the published version of this book chapter is unavailable for download.

The author's final version, in two parts, is available for download.

Greek Migration and Settlement in South America

Anastasios M. Tamis — Thu, 04 Mar 2010 17:19:41 PST

Η μετανάστευση 100.000 Ελλήνων στις χώρες της Νοτίου Αμερικής ήταν ουσιαστικά προπολεμικό φαινόμενο (1880-1940), με εξαίρεση την εποίκιση των Ελλήνων στη Βραζιλία που συντελέστηκε στην περίοδο 1952-1970. Την ελληνική αυτή εποίκιση διέκρινε μεγάλη κινητικότητα, σποραδική εγκατάσταση, ελλιπή κοινωνική διαδικτύωση και χαλαρή κοινοτική διάρθρωση. Οι πρώτες εγκαταστάσεις οργανώθηκαν σε λιμάνια, αφού κυρίως ναυτικοί και νησιώτες ήσαν στην πλειοψηφία τους οι πρωτοπόροι. Τα επαγγέλματα που άσκησαν ήσαν εποχικά, οι οργανώσεις που συνέπηξαν είχαν χαρακτήρα αλληλοβοηθητικό, οι συνθήκες διαβίωσης πρωτόγονες. Πλεόναζαν οι εργένηδες και τα γεροντοπαλήκαρα, συχνά ανέστιοι και ενδείς περιφέρονταν από πόλη σε πόλη για την εξασφάλιση εργασίας. Αργότερα (μετά το 1924) έστησαν τις πρώτες κοινότητες, ίδρυσαν εθνοτπικιά σωματεία, αναζήτησαν να θεραπεύσουν τις θρησκευτικές τους ανάγκες. Η εποίκιση των Ελλήνων υπήρξε άρρυθμη, αλυσιδωτή, και ανδροκεντρική. Στην πλειοψηφία τους ήσαν οικονομικοί μετανάστες και πρόσφυγες των δύσκολων μεσοπολεμικών καταστάσεων που συγκλόνισαν την Ελλάδα και τον ευρύτερο ιστορικό της χώρο.

Due to copyright restrictions the published version of this book chapter is unavailable. The author's final version is available for download.