Journal articles: 'Boston National Opera Company' – Grafiati (2024)

Abstract:

The collaborative “antiopera” El gallo: Ópera para actores (The co*ck: An Opera for Actors), which was produced from 2007 to 2009 by Mexican theatre company Teatro de Ciertos Habitantes (hereafter referred to as Ciertos Habitantes) and British composer Paul Alan Barker, toured for three years to dozens of venues in Mexico and abroad, garnering numerous awards and accruing more than a hundred performances. Performed in speech/song gibberish, El gallo mingles physical theatre and butoh techniques. The piece chronicles the making of an opera, from auditions through rehearsals and performance, alongside the emotional, physical, and vocal breakdowns of the five main characters and their beleaguered director. El gallo enacts an allegory of conflict-ridden community formation through the device of a play within a play.

Abstract:

In 1944 with Nazi Germany just months from defeat, a curious and now little-known book was published in Regensburg: a collection of essays and biographies that strove to define the contemporary state of opera. Titled Die deutsche Oper der Gegenwart (German Opera of the Present Day), this substantial and lavishly produced volume documents the aesthetics of opera during the Third Reich through its profiles of sixty-two composers, more than 250 design drawings and photographs, prose essays on drama and staging, and an extensive works list. The National Socialist alignment of the book’s primary author (the theater historian Carl Niessen) and publishing company (Gustav Bosse Verlag) contextualizes the volume’s problematic scholarly priorities. Niessen interleaved explanations and endorsem*nts of viable manifestations of contemporary German opera with anti-Semitic rhetoric and venomous critiques of rival aesthetic views. The book’s time-capsule version of the “state of the art” also includes evidence that contradicts postwar claims by composers, such as Winfried Zillig, who later recast themselves as persecuted modernists but whose statements within the volume demonstrate their complicity. Pamela Potter has recommended that musicologists address the longstanding historiographical problem of defining “Nazi Music” by paying detailed attention to particularities. Analyzing the form, contents, and rhetoric of a single printed object permits insights into the definition, valuation, and canonization of contemporary opera near the end of the Third Reich.

Abstract:

During the 1860s, Zagreb did not have a steady operatic ensemble, although its preparatory stage was already in existence within the drama department of the National Theatre, when – from 1863 – operettas were performed by a small theatre orchestra. However, the National Theatre as an institution exist from 1861 on, and the theatre building, erected in 1834 and owned by the City Municipality from 1852 on, was continuously housing opera companies from abroad, mostly from within the Habsburg and later (since 1867) Austro-Hungarian Empire, coming prevailingly from its Italian provinces. The article offers a brief outline of the theatre organisation as well as an overview of various foreign companies, coming from Hungarian, Austrian and Italian towns, their repertoires (mostly Italian, with sporadically German and Hungarian pieces) and their reception as reflected in Zagreb’s German and Croatian press. It also points at the importance of local music education and of Croatian pieces that were produced in Zagreb during that period, following the advancement of national strivings that finally led to the foundation of the permanent opera company in 1870.

Abstract:

The career of the English dancer, choreographer, teacher and dance writer, Penelope Spencer (1901–93), primarily spanned the twenty-year period between the First and Second World Wars (1919–39). Spencer's versatile dance training and career encompassed diverse British theatre genres of the period, including ballet, drama, mime, modern dance, musical comedy, opera, pantomime and revue. It was common practice during the inter-war period for English dancers to disguise their British origins by ‘Russianising’ their names. Spencer, however, maintained her English name throughout her career. She practised consecutively both as a freelance artiste and also under the auspices of important cultural institutions, including the British National Opera Company [BNOC], the Camargo Society, the Cremorne Company, the Dancer's Circle Dinners, the Glastonbury Festival, the Imperial Society for Teachers of Dancing [ISTD], the League of Arts, the London Opera Syndicate Limited, the Margaret Morris Movement, the One Hundred Club, the Royal Academy of Dancing [RAD], the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art [RADA], the Royal College of Music [RCM], and the Sunshine Matinées. Spencer's significant contribution to British theatre dance and wider cultural heritage, is largely forgotten. Since no major study of her work has been published, 1 and because not one of her creations survives in performance, the importance of her wide-ranging, and often pioneering achievements, is not fully recognised.

Abstract:

AbstractTwo King's Bench lawsuits in The National Archives of the UK contain new information about the activities of castrati working in mid-eighteenth-century London. Monticelli v. Sackville (1748) confirms Horace Walpole's testimony that singers employed by the Earl of Middlesex's opera company received enormous salaries. Manfredini v. Geminiani (1751) preserves details of a contract of employment between singer and impresario that went disastrously wrong for both parties. An account of the London careers of the main protagonists is supplied to contextualise the new information.

Abstract:

First-Class Evening Entertainments was the title given to a variety programme presented at Hoxton Hall in East London when it first opened in 1863. In 2000 Nicholas Till and Kandis Cook were commissioned by Hoxton Hall and the English National Opera Studio to make a new music theatre piece for the Hall, which led to an investigation of the content and context of the original programme. In the following article Nicholas Till offers a reading of the 1863 programme as an example of the mid-Victorian project to exercise social control over the urban working classes. Nicholas Till is Senior Lecturer in Theatre at Wimbledon School of Art, and co-artistic director of the experimental music theatre company Post-Operative Productions. He is the author of Mozart and the Enlightenment: Truth, Virtue, and Beauty in Mozart's Operas (Faber, 1992), and is currently editing The Cambridge Companion to Opera.

Abstract:

, also known as classical Chinese opera or sung drama, had been the major entertainment in the traditional Chinese society. In Taiwan, Beijing opera as ‘National Drama’ had long enjoyed resources far more than other xiqu genres. However, with the rapid transformation of socioeconomic structure, xiqu experienced drastic decline in audience in the face of Western culture. The call for a “modernized” xiqu became imperative. Under such circ*mstances, the Contemporary Legend Theater company (CLT) came to the fore. It was founded by a Beijing opera practitioner Wu and his wife Lin, a modern dancer. The debut Kingdom of Desire in 1986, adapted from Macbeth, stirred great excitement in Taipei, and later the play toured around the world. While displaying the legacy of xiqu performance, the couple aimed to go beyond the boundary of Beijing opera and search for a new genre that can reach a wider audience. Their subsequent productions are also adaptations of Western canonical plays, such as Medea, the Oresteia and King Lear. While the marketing strategy of the CLT often stresses jingles such as “When the East meets the West,” intercultural performance as such reveals a double consciousness of the performers, who see themselves through the eyes of the (Western) others. The paper attempts to discuss the meaning of Shakespeare in the CLT’s intercultural adaptations and further examine the politics hidden behind this phenomenon of intercultural adaptation in Taiwan. I explore if such seemingly self-orientalizing adaptation contains resistance to globalization.

Abstract:

Maintaining and nurturing an ensemble theatre have been Anne Bogart’s foremost concerns in these past near-thirty years since she and Tadashi Suzuki founded the Saratoga International Theatre Institute (SITI) in 1992. Suzuki had established the Suzuki Company of Toga (SCOT) in 1976, making a secluded mountainous landscape of Japan its home to this day. Bogart’s venture in the United States, although inspired by Suzuki’s model of a production-based troupe of high artistic standards that, at the same time, developed its unique training methods, by no means merely duplicates its predecessor. In this Covid Conversation, Bogart briefly maps a segment of SITI’s history, reflecting on the company’s inter-arts endeavours with differing dance idioms and its engagement with Greek tragedy. She discusses the effects of the Covid pandemic on her troupe, also interrupting its performances of The Bacchae at the Guthrie Theatre in Minneapolis. Her most recent opera production, Tristan and Isolde, was closed for the same reason at the Croatian National Theatre – a key work in her portfolio of nineteenth-century grand opera as well as contemporary avant-garde opera. An acclaimed theatre director, Anne Bogart runs and teaches the Graduate Directing Programme at Columbia University in New York. At the SITI summer school in Saratoga, she and the company have workshopped the Viewpoints method that she has elaborated from Mary Overlie’s six principles for theatre and dance training. Bogart’s international workshops have further developed her method. She is the author of A Director Prepares (Routledge, 2001) and of many influential books that include (with Tina Landau) The Viewpoints Book (Theatre Communications Group, 2004). The Art of Resonance is forthcoming (2021, Bloomsbury). Maria Shevtsova is the Editor of New Theatre Quarterly whose most recent book is Rediscovering Stanislavsky (Cambridge University Press, 2020). The following conversation took place on 27 August 2020, was transcribed by Kunsang Kelden, and was edited by Maria Shevtsova. It is followed by a short coda announcing the transition of SITI into a resource centre.

Abstract:

The House of Bernarda Alba was the first play of Federico Garcia Lorca that was staged by a Hungarian company in 1955. Hungarian directors followed with close attention the dramas of the Andalusian playwright and two years later, in 1957, the Hungarian National Theater included on its program another play of Lorca, Blood Wedding, written in 1933. Since then, the popularity of this drama on Hungarian stages has not diminished at all, it also inspired dance and opera adaptations. Recently, in the 2013-2014 season, Magyar Színház theater has also staged this play. The aim of this paper, which has been inspired by the aforementioned premiere, is to offer an overview of the Hungarian reception of Blood Wedding, highlighting some important productions of the past six decades.

Abstract:

In 1830, a new theater building was opened in the Olomouc Upper square. The stable theatrical life enriched enormously the cultural life of the city and encouraged the development of publishing activities in the field of music journalism and publishing. The public debates on the artistic value of theater performances, on abilities of particular artists and on other subjects gained new quality after the 1860 October diploma because Czechs living in and around the traditional German town put pressure on theater directors and demanded Czech plays on the stage. The fights for the national repertoire on the stage of the Olomouc Provincial Theater are demonstrated in this essay in two contrary ways: at first, the introduction of Czech dramas into the German scene during the 1860s is discussed, then the intensive promotion of German operas during the 1880s and 1890s when internationally played Slavonic operas were performed in all theaters. The director Carl König (1862–1868) offered a contract to many artists who were able to speak both German and Czech, so he could open an independent subscription for the Czech public. The relatively tolerant atmosphere allowed König’s company to give performances in both languages and connect the Olomouc theatrical life to the Prague Provisional Theater. However, Czech nationalism was getting stronger during the 1870s and provoked competitive and unfriendly reactions on German side. The arguments for refusal of Smetana’s and Tchaikovsky’s operas by the directors of the Olomouc theaters are discussed on the basis of archival sources as well as articles published in contemporary periodicals.

Abstract:

Judith Weir (b.1954) is one of Britain's leading composers. Her three full-length operas (A Night at the Chinese Opera, The Vanishing Bridegroom and Blond Eckbert) have been widely performed in Britain and abroad. Since the 1990s she has had a fruitful association with the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra and its sister group, the Birmingham Contemporary Music Group (BCMG). Weir's theatre work includes collaborations with the Royal National Theatre and the Royal Shakespeare Company. Her interest in community music projects included an innovative spell of six years as the Artistic Director of the Spitalfields Festival in London. Recent works include the orchestral piece The Welcome Arrival of Rain for the Minnesota Orchestra, heard at the Proms in 2002, and the ensemble work The Tiger Under the Table for the London Sinfonietta.

Abstract:

As brochures for the January 1996 Sydney Festival blare out ‘Feel the Beat. Feel the Heat!’ to draw the crowds of summering Sydney folk to performances of the National Dance Company of Guinea (already appropriated and stamped with approval by reviewers in San Francisco and London, who are quoted on the same flyer), the chairman and former artistic director of Playbox Theatre in Melbourne, Carrillo Gartner, worries about the strength of popular Australian opposition to Australia's expanding links with Asia. In an article on the holding of the 14th annual Federation for Asian Cultural Promotion in Melbourne, Gartner fears that ‘there are people in this community […] thinking that […] it is the demise of all they believe in their British heritage’. The focus of the article, though, is not the promotion of Asian culture but how to overcome Asian indifference to Australia and the problem of bringing Australian artists to the notice of Asian impresarios and audiences. Australian cultural cringe wins out over Australian Asia-literate political correctness. In another corner of the continent the director and playwright Peter Copeman has been attempting to replace ‘the Euro-American hand-me-downs and imitations’ of mainstream Australian theatre with a theatre project which explores ‘attitudes of the dominant Anglo-Celtic and the Vietnamese minority cultures towards each other, using the intercultural dialectic as the basis of dramatic conflict’.

Abstract:

The Washington University Libraries Film and Media Archive has received a grant from the National Film Preservation Foundation to preserve Code Blue, a 1972 recruitment film aimed at bringing minorities into the medical profession. Code Blue is one of the earliest existing films created by Henry Hampton’s Boston-based documentary company Blackside Inc., which produced the Emmy Award-winning civil rights series Eyes on the Prize. Blackside became the largest African American-owned film production company of its time and was home to many filmmakers from diverse backgrounds, including African Americans, immigrants, and women. The 27-minute documentary includes footage from an emergency room in Harlem, a tour through areas of Nashville with a doctor who did outreach to poor families, and discussions with young men and women from different backgrounds who could explain the value of medical education. Code Blue helped to bring new talent into the medical field and was used in hundreds of high schools and medical training curricula nationwide for more than 20 years. The film won a CINE Golden Eagle Award and was seen around the world, including at film festivals as far away as Venice’s Festival dei Popoli.

Abstract:

Jane Jeffrie Seley is a diabetes nurse practitioner at New York Presbyterian—Weill Cornell Medical Center, New York City. She is a contributing editor and the column coordinator for Diabetes Under Control in the American Journal of Nursing. Katie Weinger is an investigator in behavioral and mental health research, director of the Center of Innovation in Diabetes Education and of the Office of Research Fellow Affairs at Joslin Diabetes Center, and an assistant professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School, all in Boston. She has received a grant from the National Institutes of Health (NIDDK60115) to study breaking down barriers to diabetes self-care. Contact author: Jane Jeffrie Seley, diabetesnp@gmail.com. Seley serves on the advisory boards of Abbott Diabetes Care, Amylin Pharmaceuticals, Sanofi-Aventis Pharmaceuticals, Pfizer Pharmaceuticals, Roche Diagnostics, Bayer Diabetes Care, Novo Nordisk Pharmaceuticals, and GlaxoSmithKline Pharmaceuticals, several of which provided funding for the project discussed in this article. The authors have no other significant ties, financial or otherwise, to any company that might have an interest in the publication of this educational activity.

Abstract:

The study of “Digital Eco-system Development Proved Its Sustainable Success under the Technology & Covid-19 Disruption: Asia’s Silicon Valley (Singapore) & Global ICT Power House (South Korea) ” has its objectives under the context of COVID-19 pandemic and technology disruption as follow; 1)to study the scenario of digital eco-system development of Singapore and South Korea; 2) to study the government’s policy of Singapore and South Korea in its digital eco-system development; and 3) to propose the best Practices of digital eco-system development of Singapore and South Korea for further development in other countries. The qualitative research with document study and e-interview among 25 key informants from all of the relevant stakeholders: the policy, the private sector, and the marginal workers. Narrative description was used. Findings found Best Practices of digital eco-system development from both countries which aligned with most of the findings such as the Boston Consulting Group (2020) and others could be applied in other countries as follow; 1) The strong leadership and concrete and achievable vision from top management of both countries. Holistic, inclusive and sustainable development is the dominant flagship of both countries : The Skill Future of Singapore, and the Digital New Deal of South Korea; 2) The Partnership model with integrated strategy under the Win& Win Principle with clear innovation goals at all levels: “the Skills Future of Singapore” from Engineer Good Program to the last mile people in the Touch Community Services; and the 1) the Meister High schools 2) the Digital Upskill by each own company; 3) the Tax Credit, Tax Incentive measures; 4) the Training Levy Grant system; and 5) the SME Training Consortiums of South Korea. 3)The broad perspective and agile way of working. According to a study by Boston Consulting Group, effective 'Agile leadership' was found to have an impact on all the successful digital transformation projects. Leaders must manage change with a broader mindset and apply agile behavior broadly across the eco-system: Asia’s Silicon Valley” with its fully back up mission of “A Smart Nation”; and the “Korean New Deal” with its futuristic of digital eco-system as its national eco-system composed of its main Digital New Deal composed of the Green New Deal and the Human New Deal overarching social safety net, climate change and economic growth under the sustainable and inclusive development.

Abstract:

Background: Bruton tyrosine kinase (BTK) inhibitors are effective treatments for B-cell malignancies, but an increased incidence of cardiovascular (CV) toxicities has been observed with ibrutinib. Acalabrutinib (acala) is a next-generation, potent, highly selective, covalent BTK inhibitor approved for chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL)/small lymphocytic lymphoma and mantle cell lymphoma. The objective of this analysis was to characterize CV adverse events (AEs) in patients (pts) with CLL who received acala monotherapy. Methods: Data from pts with CLL in 4 studies (ACE-CL-001 [NCT02029443]; ACE-CL-007 [ELEVATE-TN, NCT02475681]; ACE-CL-309 [ASCEND, NCT02970318]; 15-H-0016 [NCT02337829]) were pooled. Cutoff dates ranged from December 2018 to February 2019. Pts who received ≥1 dose of acala monotherapy were included. For pts who crossed over from control arms to acala, only AEs recorded after crossover were included. Acala was given orally at total daily doses of 100 mg to 400 mg, later switched to 100 mg twice daily, and continued until disease progression (PD) or toxicity. Cardiac AEs and hypertension (htn) were examined. Results: 762 pts were included (treatment-naïve: n=352 [46%]; relapsed/refractory: n=410 [54%]; median age: 67 years [range: 32-89]; Eastern Cooperative Oncology Group performance status ≤1: 93%; median acala exposure: 24.9 mo [range: 0-58.5]; median follow-up: 25.9 mo [range: 0-58.5]). A total of 199 cardiac AEs of any grade (irrespective of treatment relationship) were reported in 129 pts (17%). Cardiac AEs led to treatment discontinuation in 7 pts (0.9%). The most frequent cardiac AEs reported in ≥2% of pts were atrial fibrillation (afib: n=34; 4%; afib/flutter: n=38; 5%), palpitations (n=23; 3%), and tachycardia (n=17; 2%). The median time to afib/flutter onset was 521 days (range: 8-1280). Overall, 91% (117/129) of pts with vs 79% (503/633) without cardiac AEs had ≥1 CV risk factor before acala initiation. The most prevalent CV risk factors (≥20%) among the 129 pts with cardiac AEs were htn (n=86; 67%), hyperlipidemia (n=38; 29%), and arrhythmias (n=29; 22% [afib: n=16; 12%]). Htn AEs were reported in 9% (67/762) of pts, among whom 46 (69%) had pre-existing htn and 18 (27%) had htn risk factors. The median time to htn onset was 197 days (range: 2-1345). Thirty-seven pts (4%) had 51 grade ≥3 cardiac AEs (grade 3: n=37; grade 4: n=12; grade 5: n=2). Grade ≥3 cardiac AEs of interest included afib (n=10; 1.3%), complete atrioventricular (AV) block (n=2; 0.3%), acute coronary syndrome (n=1; 0.1%), atrial flutter (n=1; 0.1%), second degree AV block (n=1; 0.1%), and ventricular fibrillation (n=1; 0.1%). Two patients experienced grade 5 AEs (cardiac failure congestive [n=1], acute myocardial infarction [n=1]). Among the 37 pts with grade ≥3 AEs, 18 (49%) were continuing acala at data cutoff; 6 (16%) had discontinued due to the grade ≥3 cardiac AEs, 4 (11%) to other AEs, 5 (14%) to PD, 3 (8%) to death, and 1 (3%) to other reasons. Among the 51 grade ≥3 cardiac AEs, 16 (31%) led to dose delay and 36 (71%) were managed with concomitant medications. Most events (43/51 [84%]) resolved (dose delay: n=15; drug withdrawal: n=4; no dose change: n=24). Cardiac AEs occurring in the first 6 mo on acala were assessed based on a predominance of AEs (afib) during this time period with ibrutinib (Brown JR, et al, Haematologica. 2017;102:1796). Overall, 48% of pts with any-grade cardiac AEs experienced them in the first 6 mo on acala. Thirteen grade ≥3 cardiac AEs (25% of total) were observed in 9 pts in the first 6 mo (Table); all but 1 AE (grade 4 cardiac tamponade resulting in hospitalization) were managed with concomitant medications. Two of the 13 AEs resulted in treatment discontinuation (Table). Conclusions: At a median exposure of 24.9 mo, cardiac AEs occurred infrequently in pts with CLL treated with acala monotherapy; only 0.9% discontinued treatment due to cardiac AEs. Among grade ≥3 cardiac AEs, 25% were reported during the first 6 mo on treatment. Most pts with cardiac AEs had pre-existing risk factors that may have contributed to their development. The incidence of afib with acala (4%) was comparable to that of the general CLL population (6.1%; Shanafelt TD, et al. Leuk Lymphoma. 2017;58:1630). These data suggest a low risk of cardiac AEs with acala treatment in pts with CLL. The safety of acala vs ibrutinib in pts with high-risk CLL will be investigated in the phase 3, randomized ACE-CL-006 trial (NCT02477696). Disclosures Brown: Janssen, Teva: Speakers Bureau; Abbvie, Acerta, AstraZeneca, Beigene, Invectys, Juno/Celgene, Kite, Morphosys, Novartis, Octapharma, Pharmacyclics, Sunesis, TG Therapeutics, Verastem: Consultancy; Gilead, Loxo, Sun, Verastem: Research Funding. Byrd:Acerta Pharma: Research Funding; Syndax: Research Funding; Leukemia and Lymphoma Society: Other; Trillium: Research Funding; Kartos Therapeutics: Research Funding; Vincera: Research Funding; Novartis: Research Funding; Janssen: Consultancy; Pharmacyclics LLC, an AbbVie Company, Gilead, TG Therapeutics, BeiGene: Research Funding; Pharmacyclics LLC, an AbbVie Company, Gilead, TG Therapeutics, Novartis, Janssen: Speakers Bureau; Pharmacyclics LLC, an AbbVie Company, Janssen, Novartis, Gilead, TG Therapeutics: Other. Ghia:Adaptive, Dynamo: Consultancy, Honoraria; Novartis: Research Funding; Acerta/AstraZeneca: Consultancy, Honoraria; ArQule: Consultancy, Honoraria; Gilead: Consultancy, Honoraria, Research Funding; BeiGene: Consultancy, Honoraria; Janssen: Consultancy, Honoraria, Other: TRAVEL, ACCOMMODATIONS, EXPENSES (paid by any for-profit health care company), Research Funding; Celgene/Juno: Consultancy, Honoraria; Lilly: Consultancy, Honoraria; MEI: Consultancy, Honoraria; Sunesis: Consultancy, Honoraria, Research Funding; AbbVie: Consultancy, Honoraria, Other: TRAVEL, ACCOMMODATIONS, EXPENSES (paid by any for-profit health care company), Research Funding. Sharman:TG Therapeutics: Consultancy, Research Funding; AbbVie: Consultancy, Research Funding; Pfizer: Consultancy, Research Funding; Pharmacyclics: Consultancy, Research Funding; AstraZeneca: Consultancy, Research Funding; Genentech: Consultancy, Research Funding; Acerta: Consultancy, Research Funding; Roche: Consultancy, Research Funding; Celgene: Consultancy, Research Funding; Bristol Meyers Squibb: Consultancy, Research Funding; BeiGene: Research Funding. Hillmen:F. Hoffmann-La Roche: Honoraria, Research Funding; Astra Zeneca: Honoraria; Janssen: Honoraria, Membership on an entity's Board of Directors or advisory committees, Other: TRAVEL, ACCOMMODATIONS, EXPENSES (paid by any for-profit health care company), Research Funding, Speakers Bureau; AbbVie: Honoraria, Membership on an entity's Board of Directors or advisory committees, Other: TRAVEL, ACCOMMODATIONS, EXPENSES (paid by any for-profit health care company), Research Funding, Speakers Bureau; Pharmacyclics: Research Funding; Gilead: Research Funding. Stephens:MingSight: Research Funding; Acerta: Research Funding; Karyopharm: Consultancy, Research Funding; Gilead: Research Funding; Arqule: Research Funding; Pharmacyclics: Consultancy; Verastem: Research Funding; Beigene: Consultancy; Juno: Research Funding; Innate: Consultancy; Janssen: Consultancy. Sun:VERASTEM, GENMAB: Research Funding. Jurczak:Janssen, MeiPharma, Merck, Pharmacyclics, Roche, Tekeda, TG Therapeutics: Research Funding; Maria Sklodowska-Curie National Research Institute of Oncology: Consultancy, Current Employment; Jagiellonian University: Ended employment in the past 24 months, Research Funding. Patel:AstraZeneca: Current Employment, Current equity holder in publicly-traded company. Baek:Acerta Pharma: Current Employment. Lezhava:Astra Zeneca: Current Employment; Melinta Therapeutics Inc: Ended employment in the past 24 months. Kuptsova-Clarkson:AstraZeneca: Current Employment. Moslehi:AstraZeneca, Janssen, BMS, Boston Biomedical, Immunocure, Myovant, Boston Biomedical, Deciphera: Consultancy. Furman:Acerta: Consultancy; Abbvie: Consultancy; Verastem: Consultancy; Sunesis: Consultancy; Pharmacyclics: Consultancy; Oncotarget: Consultancy; Loxo Oncology: Consultancy; Janssen: Consultancy, Speakers Bureau; Incyte: Consultancy; TG Therapeutics: Consultancy, Research Funding; AstraZeneca: Consultancy, Research Funding; Beigene: Consultancy; Genentech: Consultancy.

Abstract:

The Dance Collection at Arts Centre Melbourne traces the history of dance in Australia from the late nineteenth century to today. The collection encompasses the work of many of Australia's major dance companies and individual performers whilst spanning a range of genres, from contemporary dance and ballet, to theatrical, modern, folk and social dance styles. The Dance Collection is part of the broader Australian Performing Arts Collection, which covers the five key areas of circus, dance, opera, music and theatre. In my overview of Arts Centre Melbourne's (ACM) Dance Collection, I will outline how the collection has grown and highlight the strengths and weaknesses associated with different methods of collecting. I will also identify major gaps in the archive and how we aim to fill these gaps and create a well-balanced and dynamic view of Australian dance history. Material relating to international touring artists and companies including Lola Montez, Adeline Genée, Anna Pavlova and the Ballet Russes de Monte Carlo provide an understanding of how early trends in dance performance have influenced our own traditions. Scrapbooks, photographs and items of costume provide glimpses into performances of some of the world's most famous dance performers and productions. As many of these scrapbooks were compiled by enthusiastic and appreciative audience members, they also record the emerging audience for dance, which placed Australia firmly on the touring schedule of many international performers in the early decades of the 20th century. The personal stories and early ambitions that led to the formation of our national companies are captured in collections relating to the history of the Borovansky Ballet, Ballet Guild, Bodenwieser Ballet, and the National Theatre Ballet. Costume and design are a predominant strength of these collections. Through them, we discover and appreciate the colour, texture and creative industry behind pivotal works that were among the first to explore Australian narratives through dance. These collections also tell stories of migration and reveal the diverse cultural roots that have helped shape the training of Australian dancers, choreographers and designers in both classical and contemporary dance styles. The development of an Australian repertoire and the role this has played in the growth of our dance culture is particularly well documented in collections assembled collaboratively with companies such as The Australian Ballet, Sydney Dance Company, and Chunky Move. These companies are at the forefront of dance in Australia and as they evolve and mature under respective artistic directors, we work closely with them to capture each era and the body of work that best illustrates their output through costumes, designs, photographs, programmes, posters and flyers. The stories that link these large, professional companies to a thriving local, contemporary dance community of small to medium professional artists here in Melbourne will also be told. In order to develop a well-balanced and dynamic view of Australian dance history, we are building the archive through meaningful collecting relationships with contemporary choreographers, dancers, designers, costume makers and audiences. I will conclude my overview with a discussion of the challenges of active collecting with limited physical storage and digital space and the difficulties we face when making this archive accessible through exhibitions and online in a dynamic, immersive and theatrical way.

Abstract:

Mark Veniaminovich Karminskyi (1930–1995) is a composer who, already during his lifetime, was appreciated by his contemporaries as the brightest figure in musical art, in particular, musical theater. Well-known in the country and his native Kharkiv, he was also the constant reader of the Kharkiv ‘K. Stanislavskyi’ Music and Theater Library for many years, taking part in many events that took place within its walls. An excellent lecturer and interlocutor, benevolent and affable person, he found an attentive audience and ardent admirers of his musical talent among the library’s readers and stuff. Perhaps, this is why M. Karminskyi chose the Library as the main curator of his archive. What is better than studying the artist’s personal archive to give an idea of his personality, creative methods and worldview? Even a cursory glance at the collection of documents classified on the shelves of the archive, illustrating particular biographical episodes, helps the researcher to form a holistic impression of the artist’s creative personality, as well as to orient, if necessary, for further more depth studying of his heritage. The purpose of this article is a brief review of the general content of the archival fund of M. V. Karminskyi, with the materials of which the author had the honor to conduct research and bibliographic work, as of a documentary sources base for future research of the composer’s work and the history of the musical culture of Kharkiv in 1950–2000 years. Statement of the main positions of the publication. The composer began to transfer his archive to the library during his lifetime: he arranged folders with manuscripts, gave explanations about the time of writing and purpose of individual works. It was this archive that was the first to get into the library as a full-fledged array of documents about the life of a creative person. The condition for its transfer was the possibility of unimpeded viewing of the archive and its copying for the purpose of training and concert performance of the composer’s works. The full description of M. Karminskyi’s archive was completed in 1996, but the fund was supplemented several times thanks to new materials that came to the archival collection after its formation. It contains a variety of documents, including musical manuscripts, newspaper clippings, photographic documents, sound recordings on various media, posters, booklets, programs, manuscripts by other authors related to the activities of the composer. Thus, for the theater – opera, drama – the composer has been actively working since a young age. He wrote music for performances of Kharkiv theaters – Puppet Theater, Young Audience Theater, Ukrainian Drama Theater named after Taras Shevchenko, Jewish Theater, even for student amateur theaters. Four operas by M. Karminskyi, among them – “Ten days that shook the world”, “Irkutsk story” – were successfully staged in many theaters in Ukraine, Russia, the Czech Republic and Germany. Particular attention was drawn to the opera “Ten Days That Shook the World” based on John Reed’s book about the events in Petrograd in 1917, which was published as the separate piano reduction and received a large number of reviews in periodicals. The typewritten copies of reviews by famous Ukrainian musicologists K. Heivandova and I. Zolotovytska have been preserved in the archive. The collection of the archive also includes the published piano score of the opera “Irkutsk story”, the known “Waltz” from which served as a call sign of the Kharkiv Regional Radio for many years. One of the most interesting manuscripts of the archive is the music for the unfinished ballet “Rembrandt” on the libretto by V. Dubrovskyi. The musical “Robin Hood”, which was performed not only in Kharkiv, but also in Moscow, brought the composer national fame. The sound recording of the Moscow play was distributed thanks to the release of gramophone records created with the participation of stars of Soviet stage – the singers Joseph Kobzon, Lev Leshchenko, Valentina Tolkunova and the famous actor Eugene Leonov. The popularity of this musical was phenomenal; excerpts from it were performed even in children’s music schools, as evidenced by the archival documents. During the composer’s life and after his death, his vocal and choral works, works for various instruments were mostly published. The array of these musical editions and manuscripts of M. Karminskyi is arranged in the archive by musical genres. These are piano pieces and other instrumental works, among them is one of the most popular opuses of the composer – “Jewish Prayer” for solo violin (the first performer – Honored Artist of Ukraine Hryhoriy Kuperman). Number a large of publications about the life and career of M. Karminskyi published in books and periodicals are collected, among them are K. Heivandova’s book (1981) “Mark Karminskyi”, the brief collection of memoirs about the composer (compiler – H. Hansburg, 2000) and the congregation of booklets of various festivals and competitions, for example, the booklets of the International Music Festival “Kharkiv Assemblies”, in which the composer has participated since the day of their founding. The booklet of the M. Karminskyi Choral Music Festival testifies to a unique phenomenon in the musical life of the city: never before or since has such a large-scale event dedicated to the work of a single person taken place attracting so many choirs from all Ukraine. A separate array of documents is the photo archive, which includes 136 portraits, photos from various events; 41 of them were donated by a famous Kharkiv photographer Yu. L. Shcherbinin. The audio-video archive of M. V. Karminskyi consists of records of his works, released by the company “Melody”: staging of performances “Robin Hood”, “There are musketeers!” (based on the play by M. Svetlov “20 years later”), various songs, video and tape cassettes with recordings of concerts. Other interesting documents have been preserved, for example, a typewritten script for the Kharkiv TV program about M. Karminskyi with his own participation or the library form, which can be used to trace his preferences as a reader. M. Karminskyi also compiled reviews of publications on the performance of his works and short bibliographic descriptions of their print editions. Conclusions. M. Karminskyi’s personal archive founded by him own in Kharkiv ‘K. S. Stanislavskyi’ Music and Theater Library has been functioning as an independent library fund since 1996 and today it is an unique comprehensive ordered collection, which is freely available and stores documents of various types: music publications and manuscripts, newspaper and magazine fragments, announces, photos, sound and video documents. M. Karminskyi’s archival fund is used as a documentary source for scientific researches (the Candidate’s dissertations of art critics Yu. Ivanova (2001) and E. Kushchova (2004) were defended using the materials of the archive) and as a basic congregation of works by the composer for their performance. The use of digital technologies is part of the necessary modern perspective of the fund’s development, the value of which as a primary source of historical and cultural information only grows over time.

Abstract:

Shell Selling Onshore Egypt Assets Shell Egypt and one of its affiliates have signed an agreement with a consortium made up of subsidiaries of Cheiron Petroleum Corporation and Cairn Energy PLC to sell its upstream assets in Egypt’s Western Desert for a base consideration of $646 million. Additional payments of up to $280 million between 2021 and 2024 will be made contingent on the oil price and the results of further exploration. The transaction is subject to government and regulatory approvals and is expected to complete in the second half of 2021. The package of assets comprises Shell Egypt’s interest in 13 onshore concessions and the company’s share in Badr El-Din Petroleum Company. Shell will shift its exploration focus in Egypt offshore, which includes seven new blocks in the Nile Delta, West Mediterranean, and Red Sea. Chevron Begins Production From Sarta-2 Well in Iraq Chevron has started production from the Sarta-2 well at the Sarta field in the Kurdistan region of Iraq, partner Genel Energy said. Gross field production now stands at more than 10,000 B/D. Sarta production is expected to increase from the existing two producing wells as facility optimization continues after production startup. A fresh appraisal drilling campaign is scheduled to begin soon, with the Sarta-5 and Sarta-6 wells set to be drilled back-to-back. Chevron is operator of the Sarta production-sharing contract (50%) with partners Genel Energy (30%) and the Kurdistan Regional Government (20%). Colombia Eyes Licensing Round Results in November Colombia is expected to soon reveal the schedule for its 2021 licensing round offering 32 blocks for oil and gas exploration, with results expected in November. In 2020, the nation awarded three areas to Canada-based companies Parex Resources and Canocol Energy despite the double-whammy of crashing crude demand and a global pandemic. With oil prices on the mend and an aggressive vaccine dissemination program, Colombia is hopeful that interest in its oil and gas acreage returns to pre-pandemic levels. The National Hydrocarbon Agency (ANH) expects to award at least half of the available tracts, which are part of more than 500 areas identified by the ANH in the country and include mature fields, emerging basins, and bordering areas. Exploration in Colombia fell dramatically in 2020 with only 18 wildcats drilled vs. the 45 planned, with most of the expected investment deferred to 2021-2022. While the country has allowed pilot projects testing for unconventional oil, there currently is a ban on fracking operations in the country. Israel Begins Prep Work for Fourth Offshore Round Israel’s Ministry of Energy has announced plans to launch the fourth offshore bidding round (OBR 4) for exploration licenses in the country’s exclusive economic zone soon. OBR 4 is part of a multiyear program to encourage the exploration and development of Israel’s natural resources to provide low-cost, environmentally friendly energy to Israel’s consumers and businesses and to develop markets for Israeli natural gas beyond its borders. As in OBR 2, the Ministry is planning to offer several zones to qualified companies, with each zone comprising approximately four licenses having a total area of up to 1600 sq km. Around 25 exploration licenses (blocks) have been mapped and will be grouped into six clusters. The exact dates of the stages of the bid round and grouping of the licenses in clusters will be determined later. No decision has yet been made on the winner of the license for natural gas and oil exploration in Block 72 in the third competitive bid round carried out in 2020. The Ministry will announce the formal commencement of OBR 4 and its delineation in the near future and provide detailed information on its website www.energy-sea.energy.gov.il at that time. Exxon Drills Dud at Bulletwood Offshore Guyana Exxon encountered noncommercial hydrocarbons with a test of its Bulletwood prospect in the Canje Block in the Guyana-Suriname basin. The well, located in 2846 m of water, was drilled to its planned target depth of 6690 m using drillship Stena Carron. Data collection from the Bulletwood-1 well confirms the presence of the Guyana-Suriname petroleum system and the potential prospectivity of the Canje Block, said partner Westmount Energy. Bulletwood-1 was the first of three scheduled wells to be drilled on the block in 2021. Wells Jabillo-1 and Sapote-1 are expected to spud over the coming months. Exxon operates the Canje Block via its Esso Exploration and Production Guyana unit, which has a 35% stake. Total has 35%, JHI 17.5%, and Mid-Atlantic Oil & Gas 12.5. Westmount holds a 7.7% stake in JHI. While the well results were disappointing, Exxon’s success rate in the area is still around 80% from 18 wells and expects its production from the region to reach 750,000 B/D by 2026. Neptune Earmarks $150 Million for Exploration and Appraisal in 2021 UK-based independent Neptune Energy said its exploration and appraisal spend for 2021 will remain flat at around $150 million. The company said it had up to 11 wells planned for the year including followup wells at the Dugong and Maha discoveries as well as a wild-cat at Dugong Tail. Dugong was discovered in the Norwegian portion of the North Sea in 2020. Neptune believes the prospect holds between 40–120 million BOE. Dugong is located 158 km west of Florø, Norway, at a water depth of 330 m, and is close to existing production facilities. The Dugong prospect comprises two reservoirs that lies at a depth between 3250–3500 m. The Maha discovery offshore East Kalimantan is estimated to hold gas resources in excess of 600 Bcf. In 2019, Neptune and its partners, Eni (operator) and Pertamina, were awarded the West Ganal production-sharing contract that holds the Maya find. An exploration well targeting the Dugong Tail prospect, adjacent to the south of the Dugong find, is slated for the third quarter of this year and will be drilled using Odjfell semisubmersible Deepsea Yantai. Interest Wanes in Norway’s Arctic Frontier Seven companies applied for new acreage in the Barents Sea in Norway’s latest licensing round, down from 26 in a similar round in 2013. The government had offered 125 new blocks in eight frontier regions of the Barents. More than 60% of the undiscovered hydrocarbons offshore Norway are in the Barents frontier, according to the nation’s petroleum directorate. However, appetites for frontier drilling have diminished as oil prices weakened and recent results from the region have disappointed. Companies that applied for the new acreage round were Norske Shell, Equinor, Idemitsu Petroleum Norge, Ineos E&P Norge, Lundin Norway, OMV Norge, and Var Energi. Oman Transfers Ownership of Massive Block 6 The government of Oman has transferred its stake in one of the Middle East’s largest oil blocks to a newly established firm. By royal decree, the new, state-controlled Energy Development Oman (EDO) will hold the country’s 60% stake in Block 6. The stake was moved from Petroleum Development Oman (PDO), another government-run company. Oman, which is struggling under a soaring budget deficit, is looking to finance its spending by leveraging its energy assets. Block 6 has a production capacity of 650,000 BOED. Shell holds 34% in the block, while Total holds the remaining 4%. The government appointed Haifa Al Khaifi as head of EDO in January. She joined from PDO and is also chairwoman of the Saudi Arabian unit of State Street Corp., the Boston-based custodian and money manager. EDO will also be able to invest abroad and deal in renewable-energy products.

Abstract:

The article deals with the notion of manipulation in advertising slogans of fast food restaurants. It focuses on techniques and means of language influence on the recipient. The article shows results of the study of 239 advertising slogans of fast food restaurants in English-speaking countries (a total number of 104 companies). Different language patterns which are used in advertising slogans and aimed at persuasion of customers on the subconscious level, are defined and analyzed; among them the most numerous are language patterns which create statements with distortions, deletions, and generalizations manifesting themselves in a variety of forms. The research also describes manipulative language patterns specifically related to advertising, such as unique selling proposition or life values. The article also shows quantitative proportions of the use of each pattern, as well as patterns used by the most successful and less successful restaurants. The most frequent of the manipulative language patterns are lost performatives, mind reading, and comparisons. The techniques of life values, mind reading, and antithesis are more common in advertising slogans of top restaurants compared to less popular ones. Individual slogans frequently manifest the use of more than one linguistic pattern of manipulation. References Alder, H. (2002). Handbook of NLP: A Manual for Professional Communicators. New York: Routledge Bandler, R, Grinder, J. (1975). The Structure of Magic (1st edition). USA: Science & Behavior Books. Burton, K., Ready, R. (2010). Neuro-linguistic Programming for Dummies. West Sussex: Wiley Ciotti, G. 5 Ways to Develop a Unique Selling Proposition Convince&Convert. Dec. 2013. Retrieved from http://www.convinceandconvert.com/digital-marketing/5-ways-to-develop-a-unique-selling-proposition/ Colbert, B. (2012). From Ordinary to Extraordinary – How to Live An Exceptional Life. Ireland: Gill Danciu, V. (2014). Manipulative marketing: persuasion and manipulation of the consumer through advertising. Theoretical and Applied Economics, 9(2), 19-34. Гесюк Ю. Застосування нейролінгвістичного програмування в рекламі. Медіапростір. 2014, № 5. С. 122-126. Горин С. НЛП: Техники россыпью. //Метафора экспромтом. Под ред. Н. Либман. М.: КСП+, 2004. С. 269-268. Каліщук Д. Психолінгвістичні прийоми мовленнєвого маніпулювання у політичному дискурсі «Гра у простонародність» // Вісник Харківського національного університету імені В.Н. Каразіна. 2012. Вып. 1022, № 71. С. 59-63. Кутуза Н. Маніпулятивні прийоми в рекламному та політичному дискурсах: лінгвістичні аспекти // Науковий вісник Херсонського державного університету. 2006. № 3. С. 285-288. Lapšanská, J. (2006). The language of advertising with the concentration on the linguistic means and the analysis of advertising slogans. Diploma thesis, Bratislava: Comenius University in Bratislava, Faculty of Education. Romanenko, E. (2014). Linguistic analysis of on-line advertising in English. Bachelor thesis, Prague: Charles University in Prague, Faculty of education. Vaknin, S. (2008). The Big Book of NLP Techniques. Charleston: BookSurge. References (translated and transliterated) Hesiuk, Y. (2014). Zastosuvannia neirolinhvistychnoho prohramuvannia v reklami [The usage of neurolinguistic programming in advertising]. Mediaprostir, 5, 122-126. Horyn, S. (2004). NLP: Tehnyky rossypiu. [Writing techniques]. In: Metafora Expromtom, (pp. 269-268). N. Libman (ed). Moscow: KSP+. Kalischuk, D. (2012). Psykholinhvistychni pryiomy movlennievoho manipuliuvannia u politychnomu dyskursi. “Hra u prostonarodnist” [Psycholinguistic Techniques of Speech Manipulation in Political Discourse. “Plain Folks”]. Journal of V.N.Karazin National University of Kharkiv, 1022(71), 59-63. Kutuza, N. (2006). Manipuliatyvni pryiomy v reklamnomu ta politychnomu dyskursakh: linhvistychni aspekty [Manipulative techniques in advertisem*nt and political discourse]. Informational-Methodical Journal of Kherson State University, 3, 285-288. Sources Advertising. 2017. In Business dictionary.com. Retrieved November 9, 2017, from http://www.businessdictionary.com/definition/advertising.html Advertising. 2017. In Cambridge dictionary. com. Retrieved November 9, 2017, from https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/advertising Advertising. 2017. In Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English. Retrieved November 9, 2017, from https://www.ldoceonline.com/dictionary/advertising Burger King Slogans. (2017). Retrieved September 09, 2017, from http://www.thinkslogans.com/ company/burger-king/ Eagle Boys Pizza Seeks Expansion In India. (2013, August 26). Retrieved September 10, 2017, from https://news.franchiseindia.com/Eagle-Boys-Pizza-seeks-expansion-in-India-2017 Eat Good And Feel Good. (2016, June 21). Retrieved September 09, 2017, from http://www.eatwithhop. com/2016/06/eat-good-and-feel-good-extreme-pita.html Famous restaurant slogans and taglines. (2017). Retrieved August 09, 2017, from http://sloganshub.org/restaurants-slogans/ Fast Food Slogans List A – F. (2017). Retrieved July 23, 2017, from http://www.ffood. net/fast_food_slogans.htm Fast food slogans. (2017). Retrieved September 01, 2017, from http://www.textart.ru/advertising/ slogans/fast-food.html Fish and chips slogans. (2017). Retrieved June 12, 2017, from http://www.textart.ru/advertising/ slogans/fish-and-chips.html Five Guys Prices. (2017, May 20). Retreived June 20, 2017, from https://fastfoodinusa.com/five-guys-prices/ Hunt, Kristin. “10 things you didn't know about steak 'n shake” Thrillist. May, 2014. Retrieved July 10, 2017 from https://www.thrillist.com/eat/nation/a-brief-history-of-steak-n-shake Manipulation. 2017. In Dictionary.com. Retrieved November 9, 2017, from http://www.dictionary. com/browse/manipulation?s=t Manipulation. 2017. In Oxford Learner’s Dictionary. Retrieved November 9, 2017, from https://www.oxfordlearnersdictionaries.com/definition/english/manipulation?q=manipulation Papa Murphy's Cowboy Pizza TV Commercial, 'Love at 425 Degrees. (2013). Retrieved August 09, 2017, from https://www.ispot.tv/ad/7d6y/papa-murphys-cowboy-pizza-love-at-425-degrees Perrotte, Ashley. “America’ dinner is always open”. Prezi. Oct, 2015. Retrieved July 20, 2017, from https://prezi.com/vn99xnq6may_/americas-diner-is-always-open/ Pizza Hut. (2017). Retrieved August 11, 2017, from http://www.bestslogans.com/v/237117/makin-it-great-again-and-again-pizza-hut/ Pret a manager. (2017). Retrieved June 09, 2017, from https://www.pinterest.com/pin/ 535013630709601320/ Rella, E. “We're lovin' it: McDonald's slogans over the last five decades” Finance. Mar. 2016. Retrieved June 09, 2017, from https://www.aol.com/article/2016/03/01/were-lovin-it-mcdonalds-slogans-over-the-last-five-decades/21320937/ https://genius.com/Fast-food-slogans-annotated Restaurant Slogans. (2017). Retrieved August 09, 2017, from http://www.advergize.com/slogans-list/restaurant-slogans/ Restaurants. (2013, March 03). Retrieved June 03, 2017, from . http://www.morrisanderson.com/ resource-center/entry/Chains-last-links-Nostalgia-helps-keep-once-thriving-restaurant-franchises-/ Sarodh, Waiz. “Krispy Kreme: Slogans & Humble Beginnings” Advergize Empowering Marketing, Mar. 2017. Retrieved August 09, 2017, from http://www.advergize.com/ advertising/krispy-kreme-slogans-and-humble-beginnings/ Smaktakula. “Commercials We Do Not Like: Bad Andy” Promethean Times. Feb. 2011. Retrieved September 22, 2017, from https://prometheantimes.com/2011/02/22/commercials-we-do-not-like-badandy/ Smith, Nelson. “Boston Pizza: Sink Your Teeth into This Delicious 6% Yield” Baystreet, May. 2017. Retrieved October 10, 2017, from http://www.baystreet.ca/dividends/159/Boston-Pizza-Sink-Your-Teeth-into-This-Delicious-6-Yield Subway. (2017). Retrieved June 10, 2017, from http://slogans.wikia.com/wiki/Subway 10+ Wendy’s Slogans Today, and Over the Years. (2017, June 8). Retrieved August 21, 2017, from http://www.advergize.com/advertising/10-wendys-slogans-today-years/ Wang, Eric. “McDonald's Slogans”. Flickr. Nov. 2006. Retrieved November 01, 2017, from https://www.flickr.com/photos/99353402@N00/300852871/

Abstract:

Background: Allogeneic hematopoietic cell transplant (HCT) is a potentially curative approach for eligible patients with acute myeloid leukemia (AML). The 5-year overall survival (OS) for AML patients (pts) following HCT is approximately 40-50%. However, data regarding outcomes for pts with certain molecular subtypes of AML are lacking. Of particular interest are post-HCT outcomes of pts with targetable mutations such as FLT3, IDH1, or IDH2, given the potential role of maintenance targeted therapy in the post-HCT setting. We conducted a retrospective, multi-institutional study describing outcomes for IDH1- or IDH2-mutated AML pts following HCT. Methods: We performed retrospective data collection, using institutional databases, at three academic sites (Massachusetts General Hospital, Dana Farber Cancer Institute, and Ohio State University). We identified pts >18 years of age with a diagnosis of IDH1- or IDH2-mutated AML who underwent allogeneic HCT from 2010 to 2019. Data collected included pt age, sex, mutational and cytogenetic profile, treatment received prior to HCT, marrow response prior to HCT, stem cell source, HCT conditioning regimen, graft-versus-host disease (GVHD) prophylaxis, and time of relapse, death, or last known follow-up. IDH mutational status was assessed using next generation sequencing prior to HCT. Time to event endpoints are analyzed using the Kaplan Meier method for OS and progression-free survival (PFS), or the Gray method in a competing risk setting for time to relapse and non-relapse mortality (NRM). Proportional hazard cox models and competing risk regression models were used to test difference between groups while adjusting for other covariates. Results: In total, 117 pts with IDH1- or IDH2-mutated AML who received allogeneic HCT were identified. An IDH1 mutation was identified in 35 patients (pts) while an IDH2 mutation was found in 81 pts (Table 1). One pt had both IDH1 and IDH2 mutations and he was not included in subsequent univariate and multivariate analyses. The most commonly co-occurring mutations among all patients were DNMT3A (35%), NPM1 (32%), FLT3-ITD (14%), ASXL1 (10%), and TP53 (3%). 50 pts (43%) were >65 years old (range 27-74), and 60 (51%) were male. 12 pts (10%) had favorable-risk, 70 pts (60%) had intermediate-risk, and 21 pts (18%) had adverse-risk AML by ELN cytogenetic criteria; data were unavailable for 14 patients (12%). 112 pts (96%) achieved CR/CRi prior to HCT. 76 pts (65%) received reduced intensity and 40 (34%) underwent myeloablative conditioning (Table 1); data were unavailable for 1 patient (0.9%). 36 pts (31%) received an IDH inhibitor before HCT and 3 (2.6%) received an IDH inhibitor as maintenance therapy after HCT. Following HCT, 18 pts (15%) experienced grade 2-4 acute GVHD and 44 (38%) experienced chronic GVHD requiring systemic treatment. With a median follow-up of 23 months for surviving pts, the 1-year PFS and OS for the IDH1-mutated cohort was 74% (95% CI 55%-85%) and 76% (95% CI 58%-87%), respectively, and the 2-year PFS and OS was 55% (95% CI 35%-71%) and 73% (95% CI 55%-85%), respectively (Figure 1). With a median follow-up of 26 months for surviving pts, the 1-year PFS and OS for the IDH2-mutated cohort was 58% (95% CI 47%-68%) and 72% (95% CI 61%-81%), respectively, and the 2-year PFS and OS was 52% (95% CI 40%-63%) and 60% (95% CI 48%-70%), respectively (Figure 1). The 2-year cumulative incidence of relapse and NRM was 36.1% (95% CI 19.0%-53.6%) and 9.1% (95% CI 2.2%-22.0%), respectively, for the IDH1-mutated cohort, and 29.8% (95% CI 19.9%-40.4%) and 18.0% (95% CI 10.3%-27.3%), respectively, for the IDH2-mutated cohort. On multivariate analysis of OS, there was no statistically significant association with older age, higher-risk disease, absence of pre-HCT CR/CRi, use of reduced intensity conditioning, or IDH mutation. Conclusion: This is the first multi-institutional retrospective study to characterize outcomes of IDH1- or IDH2-mutated AML patients undergoing allogeneic HCT. We report important benchmarks of relapse, disease-free, and overall survival that will inform interpretation of ongoing and future clinical trials investigating the benefit of maintenance IDH1 and IDH2 inhibitor therapy in the post-HCT setting. Disclosures Eisfeld: Karyopharm: Current Employment, Current equity holder in publicly-traded company; Vigeo Therapeutics: Consultancy. Mims:Novartis: Speakers Bureau; Agios: Consultancy; Leukemia and Lymphoma Society: Other: Senior Medical Director for Beat AML Study; Abbvie: Membership on an entity's Board of Directors or advisory committees; Kura Oncology: Membership on an entity's Board of Directors or advisory committees; Jazz Pharmaceuticals: Other: Data Safety Monitoring Board; Syndax Pharmaceuticals: Membership on an entity's Board of Directors or advisory committees. Jones:Pharmacyclics LLC, an AbbVie Company: Patents & Royalties: and other intellectual property, Research Funding. Cutler:Incyte: Consultancy, Membership on an entity's Board of Directors or advisory committees; Kadmon: Consultancy, Membership on an entity's Board of Directors or advisory committees; Jazz: Consultancy, Membership on an entity's Board of Directors or advisory committees; Medsenic: Consultancy, Membership on an entity's Board of Directors or advisory committees; Generon: Consultancy, Membership on an entity's Board of Directors or advisory committees; Mesoblast: Consultancy, Membership on an entity's Board of Directors or advisory committees. Koreth:Amgen: Consultancy; Moderna Therapeutics: Consultancy; Biolojic Design Inc: Consultancy; EMD Serono: Consultancy; Equillium: Consultancy; Clinigen: Other; Miltenyi: Other: Research Support; BMS: Other: Research Support; Cugene: Membership on an entity's Board of Directors or advisory committees; Therakos: Membership on an entity's Board of Directors or advisory committees; Regeneron: Other: Research Support. Defilipp:Incyte: Research Funding; Regimmune: Research Funding; Syndax Pharmaceuticals: Consultancy. Soiffer:Celgene: Membership on an entity's Board of Directors or advisory committees; Rheos Therapeutics: Consultancy; Juno: Membership on an entity's Board of Directors or advisory committees; alexion: Consultancy; Be the Match/ National Marrow Donor Program: Membership on an entity's Board of Directors or advisory committees; Gilead: Consultancy; Cugene: Consultancy; Precision Bioscience: Consultancy; Kiadis: Membership on an entity's Board of Directors or advisory committees; VOR Biopharma: Consultancy; Mana Therapeutics: Consultancy; Novartis: Consultancy. Chen:AbbVie: Other: Data and Safety Monitoring Board Member; Equillium: Other: Data and Safety Monitoring Board Member; Takeda: Consultancy; Incyte Corporation: Consultancy; Magenta: Consultancy; Kiadis: Consultancy; Actinium: Other: Data and Safety Monitoring Board Member. Fathi:PTC Therapeutics: Consultancy; Daiichi Sankyo: Consultancy; Abbvie: Consultancy; Takeda: Consultancy, Research Funding; Trillium: Consultancy; Forty Seven: Consultancy; Novartis: Consultancy; Amphivena: Consultancy; Astellas: Consultancy; BMS/Celgene: Consultancy, Research Funding; Kite: Consultancy; Trovagene: Consultancy; Boston Biomedical: Consultancy; Kura Oncology: Consultancy; Blueprint: Consultancy; Jazz: Consultancy; Pfizer: Consultancy; Newlink Genetics: Consultancy; Agios: Consultancy, Research Funding; Seattle Genetics: Consultancy, Research Funding; Amgen: Consultancy.

Abstract:

Michael B. Katz. Reconstructing American Education. Cambridge and London: Harvard University Press, 1987. Pp. viii, 212. Cloth, $22.50; E. D. Hirsch, Jr. Cultural Literacy: What Every American Needs to Know. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1987. Pp. xvii, 251. Cloth, $16.45; Diana Ravitch and Chester E. Finn, Jr. What Do Our 17-Year-Olds Know? A Report on the First National Assessment of History and Literature. New York: Harper & Row, 1987. Pp. ix, 293. Cloth, $15.95. Review by Richard A. Diem of The University of Texas at San Antonio. Henry J. Steffens and Mary Jane Dickerson. Writer's Guide: History. Lexington, Massachusetts, and Toronto: D. C. Heath and Company, 1987. Pp. x, 211. Paper, $6.95. Review by William G. Wraga of Bernards Township Public Schools, Basking Ridge, New Jersey. J. Kelley Sowards, ed. Makers of the Western Tradition: Portraits from History. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1987. Fourth edition. Vol: 1: Pp. ix, 306. Paper, $12.70. Vol. 2: Pp. ix, 325. Paper, $12.70. Review by Robert B. Luehrs of Fort Hays State University. John L. Beatty and Oliver A. Johnson, eds. Heritage of Western Civilization. Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1987. Sixth Edition. Volume I: Pp. xi, 465. Paper, $16.00; Volume II: pp. xi, 404. Paper, $16.00. Review by Dav Levinson of Thayer Academy, Braintree, Massachusetts. Lynn H. Nelson, ed. The Human Perspective: Readings in World Civilization. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1987. Vol. I: The Ancient World to the Early Modern Era. Pp. viii, 328. Paper, $10.50. Vol. II: The Modern World Through the Twentieth Century. Pp, x, 386. Paper, 10.50. Review by Gerald H. Davis of Georgia State University. Gerald N. Grob and George Attan Billias, eds. Interpretations of American History: Patterns and Perspectives. New York: The Free Press, 1987. Fifth Edition. Volume I: Pp. xi, 499. Paper, $20.00: Volume II: Pp. ix, 502. Paper, $20.00. Review by Larry Madaras of Howard Community College. Eugene Kuzirian and Larry Madaras, eds. Taking Sides: Clashing Views on Controversial Issues in American History. -- Volume II: Reconstruction to the Present. Guilford, Connecticut: The Dushkin Publishing Groups, Inc., 1987. Pp. xii, 384. Paper, $9.50. Review by James F. Adomanis of Anne Arundel County Public Schools, Annapolis, Maryland. Joann P. Krieg, ed. To Know the Place: Teaching Local History. Hempstead, New York: Hofstra University Long Island Studies Institute, 1986. Pp. 30. Paper, $4.95. Review by Marilyn E. Weigold of Pace University. Roger Lane. Roots of Violence in Black Philadelphia, 1860-1900. Cambridge, Massachusetts, and London: Harvard University Press, 1986. Pp. 213. Cloth, $25.00. Review by Ronald E. Butchart of SUNY College at Cortland. Pete Daniel. Breaking the Land: The Transformation of Cotton, Tobacco, and Rice Cultures since 1880. Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1985. Pp. xvi, 352. Paper, $22.50. Review by Thomas S. Isern of Emporia State University. Norman L. Rosenberg and Emily S. Rosenberg. In Our Times: America Since World War II. Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Prentice-Hall, 1987. Third edition. Pp. xi, 316. Paper, $20.00; William H. Chafe and Harvard Sitkoff, eds. A History of Our Time: Readings on Postwar America. New York: Oxford University Press, 1987. Second edition. Pp. xiii, 453. Paper, $12.95. Review by Monroe Billington of New Mexico State University. Frank W. Porter III, ed. Strategies for Survival: American Indians in the Eastern United States. New York, Westport, Connecticut, and London: Greenwood Press, 1986. Pp. xvi, 232. Cloth, $35.00. Review by Richard Robertson of St. Charles County Community College. Kevin Sharpe, ed. Faction & Parliament: Essays on Early Stuart History. London and New York: Methuen, 1985. Pp. xvii, 292. Paper, $13.95; Derek Hirst. Authority and Conflict: England, 1603-1658. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1986. Pp. viii, 390. Cloth, $35.00. Review by K. Gird Romer of Kennesaw College. N. F. R. Crafts. British Economic Growth During the Industrial Revolution. New York: Oxford University Press, 1985. Pp. 193. Paper, $11.95; Maxine Berg. The Age of Manufactures, 1700-1820. New York: Oxford University Press, 1985. Pp. 378. Paper, $10.95. Review by C. Ashley Ellefson of SUNY College at Cortland. J. M. Thompson. The French Revolution. New York: Basil Blackwell, 1985 reissue. Pp. xvi, 544. Cloth, $45.00; Paper, $12.95. Review by W. Benjamin Kennedy of West Georgia College. J. P. T. Bury. France, 1814-1940. London and New York: Methuen, 1985. Fifth edition. Pp. viii, 288. Paper, $13.95; Roger Magraw. France, 1815-1914: The Bourgeois Century. New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1985. Pp. 375. Cloth, $24.95; Paper, $9.95; D. M.G. Sutherland. France, 1789-1815: Revolution and Counterrevolution. New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986. Pp. 242. Cloth, $32.50; Paper, $12.95. Review by Fred R. van Hartesveldt of Fort Valley State College. Woodford McClellan. Russia: A History of the Soviet Period. Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Prentice-Hall, 1986. Pp. xi, 387. Paper, $23.95. Review by Pasquale E. Micciche of Fitchburg State College. Ranbir Vohra. China's Path to Modernization: A Historical Review from 1800 to the Present. Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Prentice-Hall, 1987. Pp. xiii, 302. Paper, $22.95. Reivew by Steven A. Leibo of Russell Sage College. John King Fairbank. China Watch. Cambridge and London: Harvard University Press, 1987. Pp. viii, Cloth, $20.00. Review by Darlene E. Fisher of New Trier Township High School, Winnetka, Illinois. Ronald Takaki, ed. From Different Shores: Perspectives on Race and Ethnicity in America. New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1987. Pp. 253. Paper, $13.95. Review by Robert C. Sims of Boise State University.

Abstract:

En este artículo se presenta el Enfoque de los Itinerarios de Enseñanza de las Matemáticas, un enfoque que trata de ser respetuoso con las necesidades reales de los estudiantes para aprender matemáticas. En la primera parte se presenta la fundamentación del enfoque, que se sustenta en tres pilares interrelacionados: la perspectiva sociocultural del aprendizaje humano, el modelo de formación realista-reflexivo y la educación matemática realista; en la segunda parte se describe el enfoque, que se refiere a una secuencia de enseñanza intencionada que contempla tres niveles: 1) enseñanza en contextos informales (el entorno inmediato, los materiales manipulativos y los juegos); 2) enseñanza en contextos intermedios (recursos literarios y tecnológicos), y 3) enseñanza en contextos formales (recursos gráficos); finalmente, en la tercera parte se ejemplifica dicho enfoque con un itinerario de enseñanza del álgebra temprana para estudiantes de 3 a 12 años. Se concluye que la implementación de este enfoque requiere un amplio dominio de conocimientos didáctico-disciplinares, lo que implica un esfuerzo importante por parte de todos los agentes implicados en la formación del profesorado para que así, todo aquel profesional preocupado por mejorar su práctica docente y adaptarla a las exigencias del siglo XXI, pueda tener acceso a estos conocimientos. Referencias Alsina, Á. (2004). Barrinem? Matemàtiques amb jocs i problemes. Lògica 3. Cataluña: Edicions l'Àlber, S.L. Alsina, Á. (2010). La “pirámide de la educación matemática”, una herramienta para ayudar a desarrollar la competencia matemática. Aula de Innovación Educativa, 189, 12-16. Recuperado desde https://dugi-doc.udg.edu//bitstream/handle/10256/9481/PiramideEducacion.pdf Alsina, Á. (2018). Seis lecciones de educación matemática en tiempos de cambio: itinerarios didácticos para aprender más y mejor. Padres y Maestros, 376, 13-20. Alsina, Á. (2019a). La educación matemática infantil en España: ¿qué falta por hacer? Números. Revista de Didáctica de las Matemáticas, 100, 85-108. Recuperado desde http://www.sinewton.org/numeros/numeros/80/Volumen_80.pdf Alsina, Á. (2019b). Hacia una formación transformadora de futuros maestros de matemáticas: avances de investigación desde el modelo realista-reflexivo. Uni-pluriversidad, 19(2), 60-79. https://doi.org/10.17533/udea.unipluri.19.2.05 Alsina, Á. (2019c). Itinerarios didácticos para la enseñanza de las matemáticas (6-12 años). Barcelona: Editorial Graó. Alsina, Á. (2019d). Del razonamiento lógico-matemático al álgebra temprana en Educación Infantil. Edma 0-6: Educación Matemática en la Infancia, 8(1), 1-19. Recuperado desde https://www.edma0-6.es/index.php/edma0-6/article/view/70 Alsina, Á., y Domingo, M. (2010). Idoneidad didáctica de un protocolo sociocultural de enseñanza y aprendizaje de las matemáticas. Revista Latinoamericana de Investigación en Matemática Educativa, 13(1), 7-32. Recuperado desde http://www.scielo.org.mx/scielo.php?script=sci_arttext&pid=S1665-24362010000100002&lng=es&tlng=es. Alsina, Á., Novo, M. L., y Moreno, A. (2016). Redescubriendo el entorno con ojos matemáticos: Aprendizaje realista de la geometría en Educación Infantil. Edma 0-6: Educación Matemática en la Infancia, 5(1), 1-20. Recuperado desde http://funes.uniandes.edu.co/8423/ Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority. (2015). The Australian Curriculum: Mathematics. Recuperado desde http://v7-5.australiancurriculum.edu.au/Curriculum/Overview Azcarate, P., y Serradó, A. (2006). Tendencias didácticas en los libros de texto de matemáticas para la ESO. Revista de Educación, 340, 341-378. http://hdl.handle.net/11162/68967 Cardet, N. (2009). Els cigrons i la matemàtica. Suplement Guixdos, 156, 1-15. De Corte, E., Greer, B., y Verschaffel, L. (1996): Mathematics Teaching and Learning. En D. Berliner, y C. Calfee (Eds.), Handbook of Educational Psychology (pp. 491-549). Nueva York: Simon & Schuster Macmillan. Esteve, O., y Alsina, Á. (2010). Hacia el desarrollo de la competencia profesional del profesorado. En O. Esteve, K. Melief, y Á. Alsina (Eds.), Creando mi profesión. Una propuesta para el desarrollo profesional del profesorado (pp. 7-18). Barcelona: Editorial Octaedro. Fauzan, A., Plomp, T., y Slettenhaar, D. (2002). Traditional mathematics education vs. realistic mathematics education: Hoping for Changes. En Proceedings of the 3rd International Mathematics Education and Society Conference (pp. 1‐4). Copenhagen: Centre for Research in Learning Mathematics. Freudenthal, H. (1991). Revisiting mathematics education. Dordrectht: Kluwer Academic Publishers. Gómez, B. (2001). La justificación de la regla de los signos en los libros de texto: ¿por qué menos por menos es más? En P. Gómez, y L. Rico (Eds.), Iniciación a la investigación en didáctica de la matemática. Homenaje al profesor Mauricio Castro (pp. 257-275). Granada: Editorial Universidad de Granada. Hargreaves, A., Earl, L., Moore, S., y Manning, S. (2001). Aprender a cambiar. La enseñanza más allá de las materias y los niveles. Barcelona: Editorial Octaedro. Heuvel‐Panhuizen, M. (2002). Realistic mathematics education as work in progress. En F. L. Lin (Ed.), Common sense in mathematics education. Proceedings of 2001 The Netherlands and Taiwan Conference on Mathematics Education (pp. 1‐43). Taiwan: National Taiwan Normal University. Ivic, I. (1994). Lev Semionovick Vygotsky (1896-1934). Perspectivas: Revista Internacional de Educación Comparada, 34 (3-4), 773-799. Recuperado desde http://www.ibe.unesco.org/es/recursos/perspectivas-revista-trimestral-de-educaci%C3%B3n-comparada Korthagen, F. A. (2001). Linking practice and theory. The pedagogy of realistic teacher education. Londres: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Lerman, S. (2000). The social turn in mathematics education research. En J. Boaler (Ed.), Multiple perspectives on mathematics teaching and learning (pp. 19-44), Westport, CT: Ablex. Lerman, S. (2001). The function of discourse in teaching and learning mathematics: a research perspective. Educational Studies in Mathematics, 46(1-3), 87-113. https://doi.org/10.1007/0-306-48085-9_3 Llinares, S. (2008). Agendas de investigación en Educación Matemática en España. Una aproximación desde “ISI-web of knowledge” y ERIH. En R. Luengo, B. Gómez, M. Camacho, y L. J. Blanco (Eds.), Investigación en Educación Matemática XII (pp. 25-54). Badajoz: SEIEM. Melief, K., Tigchelaar, A., y Korthagen, K. (2010). Aprender de la práctica. En O. Esteve, K. Melief, y Á. Alsina (Eds.), Creando mi profesión. Una propuesta para el desarrollo profesional del profesorado (pp. 19-38). Barcelona: Octaedro. National Council of Teachers of Mathematics. (2000). Principles and Standards for School Mathematics. Reston, VA: Autor. National Council of Teachers of Mathematics. (2006). Curriculum Focal Points for Prekindergarten through Grade 8 Mathematics: a quest for coherence. Reston, V.A.: Autor. Ministry of Education of New Zealand (2017). Te Whāriki: Early Childhood Curriculum. Wellington: Autor. Ministry of Education of Singapore. (2013). Nurturing Early Learners: A Curriculum for Kindergartens in Singapore: Numeracy: Volume 6. Singapore: Autor. Olmos, G., y Alsina, Á. (2010). El uso de cuadernos de actividades para aprender matemáticas en educación infantil. Aula de Infantil, 53, 38-41. Schmittau, J. (2004). Vygostkian theory and mathematics education: Resolving the conceptual-procedural dichotomy. European Journal of Psychology of Education, 29(1), 19-43. Stacey, K., y Chick, H. (2004). Solving the problem with algebra. En K. Stacey, H. Chick, y M. Kendal (Eds.), The Future of Teaching and Learning of Algebra. The 12th ICMI Study (pp. 1-20). Boston: Kluwer. Tigchelaar, A., Melief, K., Van Rijswijk, M., y Korthagen, K. (2010). Elementos de una posible estructura del aprendizaje realista en la formación inicial y permanente del profesorado. En O. Esteve, K. Melief, y Á. Alsina (Eds.), Creando mi profesión. Una propuesta para el desarrollo profesional del profesorado (pp. 39-64). Barcelona: Octaedro. Torra, M. (2012). Patrones matemáticos en los cuentos. Cuadernos de Pedagogía, 421, 56-58. Recuperado desde http://www.cuadernosdepedagogia.com/content/Inicio.aspx Treffers, A. (1987). Three Dimensions. A Model of Goal and Theory Description in Mathematics Instruction - The Wiskobas Project. Dordrecht: Reidel Publishing Company. Vásquez, C., y Alsina, Á. (2015). Un modelo para el análisis de objetos matemáticos en libros de texto chilenos: situaciones problemáticas, lenguaje y conceptos sobre probabilidad. Profesorado, Revista de currículum y formación del profesorado, 19(2), 441-462. Recuperado desde https://dialnet.unirioja.es/servlet/articulo?codigo=5294556 Vásquez, C., y Alsina, Á. (2017). Proposiciones, procedimientos y argumentos sobre probabilidad en libros de texto chilenos de educación primaria. Profesorado, Revista de currículum y formación del profesorado, 21(1), 433-457. Recuperado desde https://www.redalyc.org/pdf/567/56750681022.pdf Vygotsky, L. S. (1978). Mind in society. The development of higher psychological processes. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Wertsch, J. V. (1985). Vygotsky y la formación social de la mente. Barcelona: Paidós. Wertsch, J. V. (1991). Voces de la mente. Un enfoque sociocultural para el estudio de la acción mediada. Madrid: Aprendizaje Visor. Financiamiento: FEDER/Ministerio de Ciencia, Innovación y Universidades de España. Agencia Estatal de Investigación Proyecto EDU2017-84979-R

Abstract:

Cultural sociologists (Bourdieu; DiMaggio, “Cultural Capital”, “Classification”; Gans; Lamont & Foumier; Halle; Erickson) wrote about high culture and popular culture in an attempt to explain the growing social and economic inequalities, to find consensus on culture hierarchies, and to analyze cultural complexities. Halle states that this categorisation of culture into “high culture” and “popular culture” underlined most of the debate on culture in the last fifty years. Gans contends that both high culture and popular culture are stereotypes, public forms of culture or taste cultures, each sharing “common aesthetic values and standards of tastes” (8). However, this article is not concerned with these categorisations, or macro analysis. Rather, it is a reflection piece that inquires if opera, which is usually considered high culture, has become more equal to popular culture, and why some directors change the time and place of opera plots, whereas others will stay true to the original setting of the story. I do not consider these productions “adaptations,” but “post-modern morphologies,” and I will refer to this later in the paper. In other words, the paper is seeking to explain a social phenomenon and explore the underlying motives by quoting interviews with directors. The word ‘opera’ is defined in Elson’s Music Dictionary as: “a form of musical composition evolved shortly before 1600, by some enthusiastic Florentine amateurs who sought to bring back the Greek plays to the modern stage” (189). Hence, it was an experimentation to revive Greek music and drama believed to be the ideal way to express emotions (Grout 186). It is difficult to pinpoint the exact moment when stage directors started changing the time and place of the original settings of operas. The practice became more common after World War II, and Peter Brook’s Covent Garden productions of Boris Godunov (1948) and Salome (1949) are considered the prototypes of this practice (Sutcliffe 19-20). Richard Wagner’s grandsons, the brothers Wieland and Wolfgang Wagner are cited in the music literature as using technology and modern innovations in staging and design beginning in the early 1950s. Brief Background into the History of Opera Grout contends that opera began as an attempt to heighten the dramatic expression of language by intensifying the natural accents of speech through melody supported by simple harmony. In the late 1590s, the Italian composer Jacopo Peri wrote what is considered to be the first opera, but most of it has been lost. The first surviving complete opera is Euridice, a version of the Orpheus myth that Peri and Giulio Caccini jointly set to music in 1600. The first composer to understand the possibilities inherent in this new musical form was Claudio Monteverdi, who in 1607 wrote Orfeo. Although it was based on the same story as Euridice, it was expanded to a full five acts. Early opera was meant for small, private audiences, usually at court; hence it began as an elitist genre. After thirty years of being private, in 1637, opera went public with the opening of the first public opera house, Teatro di San Cassiano, in Venice, and the genre quickly became popular. Indeed, Monteverdi wrote his last two operas, Il ritorno d’Ulisse in patria and L’incoronazione di Poppea for the Venetian public, thereby leading the transition from the Italian courts to the ‘public’. Both operas are still performed today. Poppea was the first opera to be based on a historical rather than a mythological or allegorical subject. Sutcliffe argues that opera became popular because it was a new mixture of means: new words, new music, new methods of performance. He states, “operatic fashion through history may be a desire for novelty, new formulas displacing old” (65). By the end of the 17th century, Venice alone had ten opera houses that had produced more than 350 operas. Wealthy families purchased season boxes, but inexpensive tickets made the genre available to persons of lesser means. The genre spread quickly, and various styles of opera developed. In Naples, for example, music rather than the libretto dominated opera. The genre spread to Germany and France, each developing the genre to suit the demands of its audiences. For example, ballet became an essential component of French opera. Eventually, “opera became the profligate art as large casts and lavish settings made it the most expensive public entertainment. It was the only art that without embarrassment called itself ‘grand’” (Boorstin 467). Contemporary Opera Productions Opera continues to be popular. According to a 2002 report released by the National Endowment for the Arts, 6.6 million adults attended at least one live opera performance in 2002, and 37.6 million experienced opera on television, video, radio, audio recording or via the Internet. Some think that it is a dying art form, while others think to the contrary, that it is a living art form because of its complexity and “ability to probe deeper into the human experience than any other art form” (Berger 3). Some directors change the setting of operas with perhaps the most famous contemporary proponent of this approach being Peter Sellars, who made drastic changes to three of Mozart’s most famous operas. Le Nozze di Figaro, originally set in 18th-century Seville, was set by Sellars in a luxury apartment in the Trump Tower in New York City; Sellars set Don Giovanni in contemporary Spanish Harlem rather than 17th century Seville; and for Cosi Fan Tutte, Sellars chose a diner on Cape Cod rather than 18th century Naples. As one of the more than six million Americans who attend live opera each year, I have experienced several updated productions, which made me reflect on the convergence or cross-over between high culture and popular culture. In 2000, I attended a production of Don Giovanni at the Estates Theatre in Prague, the very theatre where Mozart conducted the world premiere in 1787. In this production, Don Giovanni was a fashion designer known as “Don G” and drove a BMW. During the 1999-2000 season, Los Angeles Opera engaged film director Bruce Beresford to direct Verdi’s Rigoletto. Beresford updated the original setting of 16th century Mantua to 20th century Hollywood. The lead tenor, rather than being the Duke of Mantua, was a Hollywood agent known as “Duke Mantua.” In the first act, just before Marullo announces to the Duke’s guests that the jester Rigoletto has taken a mistress, he gets the news via his cell phone. Director Ian Judge set the 2004 production of Le Nozze di Figaro in the 1950s. In one of the opening productions of the 2006-07 LA opera season, Vincent Patterson also chose the 1950s for Massenet’s Manon rather than France in the 1720s. This allowed the title character to appear in the fourth act dressed as Marilyn Monroe. Excerpts from the dress rehearsal can be seen on YouTube. Most recently, I attended a production of Ariane et Barbe-Bleu at the Paris Opera. The original setting of the Maeterlinck play is in Duke Bluebeard’s castle, but the time period is unclear. However, it is doubtful that the 1907 opera based on an 1899 play was meant to be set in what appeared to be a mental institution equipped with surveillance cameras whose screens were visible to the audience. The critical and audience consensus seemed to be that the opera was a musical success but a failure as a production. James Shore summed up the audience reaction: “the production team was vociferously booed and jeered by much of the house, and the enthusiastic applause that had greeted the singers and conductor, immediately went nearly silent when they came on stage”. It seems to me that a new class-related taste has emerged; the opera genre has shot out a subdivision which I shall call “post-modern morphologies,” that may appeal to a larger pool of people. Hence, class, age, gender, and race are becoming more important factors in conceptualising opera productions today than in the past. I do not consider these productions as new adaptations because the libretto and the music are originals. What changes is the fact that both text and sound are taken to a higher dimension by adding iconographic images that stimulate people’s brains. When asked in an interview why he often changes the setting of an opera, Ian Judge commented, “I try to find the best world for the story and characters to operate in, and I think you have to find a balance between the period the author set it in, the period he conceived it in and the nature of theatre and audiences at that time, and the world we live in.” Hence, the world today is complex, interconnected, borderless and timeless because of advanced technologies, and updated opera productions play with symbols that offer multiple meanings that reflect the world we live in. It may be that television and film have influenced opera production. Character tenor Graham Clark recently observed in an interview, “Now the situation has changed enormously. Television and film have made a lot of things totally accessible which they were not before and in an entirely different perception.” Director Ian Judge believes that television and film have affected audience expectations in opera. “I think audiences who are brought up on television, which is bad acting, and movies, which is not that good acting, perhaps require more of opera than stand and deliver, and I have never really been happy with someone who just stands and sings.” Sociologist Wendy Griswold states that culture reflects social reality and the meaning of a particular cultural object (such as opera), originates “in the social structures and social patterns it reflects” (22). Screens of various technologies are embedded in our lives and normalised as extensions of our bodies. In those opera productions in which directors change the time and place of opera plots, use technology, and are less concerned with what the composer or librettist intended (which we can only guess), the iconographic images create multi valances, textuality similar to Mikhail Bakhtin’s notion of multiplicity of voices. Hence, a plurality of meanings. Plàcido Domingo, the Eli and Edyth Broad General Director of Los Angeles Opera, seeks to take advantage of the company’s proximity to the film industry. This is evidenced by his having engaged Bruce Beresford to direct Rigoletto and William Friedkin to direct Ariadne auf Naxos, Duke Bluebeard’s Castle and Gianni Schicchi. Perhaps the most daring example of Domingo’s approach was convincing Garry Marshall, creator of the television sitcom Happy Days and who directed the films Pretty Woman and The Princess Diaries, to direct Jacques Offenbach’s The Grand duch*ess of Gerolstein to open the company’s 20th anniversary season. When asked how Domingo convinced him to direct an opera for the first time, Marshall responded, “he was insistent that one, people think that opera is pretty elitist, and he knew without insulting me that I was not one of the elitists; two, he said that you gotta make a funny opera; we need more comedy in the operetta and opera world.” Marshall rewrote most of the dialogue and performed it in English, but left the “songs” untouched and in the original French. He also developed numerous sight gags and added characters including a dog named Morrie and the composer Jacques Offenbach himself. Did it work? Christie Grimstad wrote, “if you want an evening filled with witty music, kaleidoscopic colors and hilariously good singing, seek out The Grand duch*ess. You will not be disappointed.” The FanFaire Website commented on Domingo’s approach of using television and film directors to direct opera: You’ve got to hand it to Plàcido Domingo for having the vision to draw on Hollywood’s vast pool of directorial talent. Certainly something can be gained from the cross-fertilization that could ensue from this sort of interaction between opera and the movies, two forms of entertainment (elitist and perennially struggling for funds vs. popular and, it seems, eternally rich) that in Los Angeles have traditionally lived separate lives on opposite sides of the tracks. A wider audience, for example, never a problem for the movies, can only mean good news for the future of opera. So, did the Marshall Plan work? Purists of course will always want their operas and operettas ‘pure and unadulterated’. But with an audience that seemed to have as much fun as the stellar cast on stage, it sure did. Critic Alan Rich disagrees, calling Marshall “a representative from an alien industry taking on an artistic product, not to create something innovative and interesting, but merely to insult.” Nevertheless, the combination of Hollywood and opera seems to work. The Los Angeles Opera reported that the 2005-2006 season was its best ever: “ticket revenues from the season, which ended in June, exceeded projected figures by nearly US$900,000. Seasonal attendance at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion stood at more than 86% of the house’s capacity, the largest percentage in the opera’s history.” Domingo continues with the Hollywood connection in the upcoming 2008-2009 season. He has reengaged William Friedkin to direct two of Puccini’s three operas titled collectively as Il Trittico. Friedkin will direct the two tragedies, Il Tabarro and Suor Angelica. Although Friedkin has already directed a production of the third opera in Il Trittico for Los Angeles, the comedy Gianni Schicchi, Domingo convinced Woody Allen to make his operatic directorial debut with this work. This can be viewed as another example of the desire to make opera and popular culture more equal. However, some, like Alan Rich, may see this attempt as merely insulting rather than interesting and innovative. With a top ticket price in Los Angeles of US$238 per seat, opera seems to continue to be elitist. Berger (2005) concurs with this idea and gives his rationale for elitism: there are rich people who support and attend the opera; it is an imported art from Europe that causes some marginalisation; opera is not associated with something being ‘moral,’ a concept engrained in American culture; it is expensive to produce and usually funded by kings, corporations, rich people; and the opera singers are rare –usually one in a million who will have the vocal quality to sing opera arias. Furthermore, Nicholas Kenyon commented in the early 1990s: “there is suspicion that audiences are now paying more and more money for their seats to see more and more money spent on stage” (Kenyon 3). Still, Garry Marshall commented that the budget for The Grand duch*ess was US$2 million, while his budget for Runaway Bride was US$72 million. Kenyon warns, “Such popularity for opera may be illusory. The enjoyment of one striking aria does not guarantee the survival of an art form long regarded as over-elitist, over-recondite, and over-priced” (Kenyon 3). A recent development is the Metropolitan Opera’s decision to simulcast live opera performances from the Met stage to various cinemas around the world. These HD transmissions began with the 2006-2007 season when six performances were broadcast. In the 2007-2008 season, the schedule has expanded to eight live Saturday matinee broadcasts plus eight recorded encores broadcast the following day. According to The Los Angeles Times, “the Met’s experiment of merging film with live performance has created a new art form” (Aslup). Whether or not this is a “new art form,” it certainly makes world-class live opera available to countless persons who cannot travel to New York and pay the price for tickets, when they are available. In the US alone, more than 350 cinemas screen these live HD broadcasts from the Met. Top ticket price for these performances at the Met is US$375, while the lowest price is US$27 for seats with only a partial view. Top price for the HD transmissions in participating cinemas is US$22. This experiment with live simulcasts makes opera more affordable and may increase its popularity; combined with updated stagings, opera can engage a much larger audience and hope for even a mass consumption. Is opera moving closer and closer to popular culture? There still seems to be an aura of elitism and snobbery about opera. However, Plàcido Domingo’s attempt to join opera with Hollywood is meant to break the barriers between high and popular culture. The practice of updating opera settings is not confined to Los Angeles. As mentioned earlier, the idea can be traced to post World War II England, and is quite common in Europe. Examples include Erich Wonder’s approach to Wagner’s Ring, making Valhalla, the mythological home of the gods and typically a mountaintop, into the spaceship Valhalla, as well as my own experience with Don Giovanni in Prague and Ariane et Barbe-Bleu in Paris. Indeed, Sutcliffe maintains, “Great classics in all branches of the arts are repeatedly being repackaged for a consumerist world that is increasingly and neurotically self-obsessed” (61). Although new operas are being written and performed, most contemporary performances are of operas by Verdi, Mozart, and Puccini (www.operabase.com). This means that audiences see the same works repeated many times, but in different interpretations. Perhaps this is why Sutcliffe contends, “since the 1970s it is the actual productions that have had the novelty value grabbed by the headlines. Singing no longer predominates” (Sutcliffe 57). If then, as Sutcliffe argues, “operatic fashion through history may be a desire for novelty, new formulas displacing old” (Sutcliffe 65), then the contemporary practice of changing the original settings is simply the latest “new formula” that is replacing the old ones. If there are no new words or new music, then what remains are new methods of performance, hence the practice of changing time and place. Opera is a complex art form that has evolved over the past 400 years and continues to evolve, but will it survive? The underlining motives for directors changing the time and place of opera performances are at least three: for aesthetic/artistic purposes, financial purposes, and to reach an audience from many cultures, who speak different languages, and who have varied tastes. These three reasons are interrelated. In 1996, Sutcliffe wrote that there has been one constant in all the arguments about opera productions during the preceding two decades: “the producer’s wish to relate the works being staged to contemporary circ*mstances and passions.” Although that sounds like a purely aesthetic reason, making opera relevant to new, multicultural audiences and thereby increasing the bottom line seems very much a part of that aesthetic. It is as true today as it was when Sutcliffe made the observation twelve years ago (60-61). My own speculation is that opera needs to attract various audiences, and it can only do so by appealing to popular culture and engaging new forms of media and technology. Erickson concludes that the number of upper status people who are exclusively faithful to fine arts is declining; high status people consume a variety of culture while the lower status people are limited to what they like. Research in North America, Europe, and Australia, states Erickson, attest to these trends. My answer to the question can stage directors make opera and popular culture “equal” is yes, and they can do it successfully. Perhaps Stanley Sharpless summed it up best: After his Eden triumph, When the Devil played his ace, He wondered what he could do next To irk the human race, So he invented Opera, With many a fiendish grin, To mystify the lowbrows, And take the highbrows in. References The Grand duch*ess. 2005. 3 Feb. 2008 < http://www.ffaire.com/duch*ess/index.htm >.Aslup, Glenn. “Puccini’s La Boheme: A Live HD Broadcast from the Met.” Central City Blog Opera 7 Apr. 2008. 24 Apr. 2008 < http://www.centralcityopera.org/blog/2008/04/07/puccini%E2%80%99s- la-boheme-a-live-hd-broadcast-from-the-met/ >.Berger, William. Puccini without Excuses. New York: Vintage, 2005.Boorstin, Daniel. The Creators: A History of Heroes of the Imagination. New York: Random House, 1992.Bourdieu, Pierre. Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgment of Taste. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1984.Clark, Graham. “Interview with Graham Clark.” The KCSN Opera House, 88.5 FM. 11 Aug. 2006.DiMaggio, Paul. “Cultural Capital and School Success.” American Sociological Review 47 (1982): 189-201.DiMaggio, Paul. “Classification in Art.”_ American Sociological Review_ 52 (1987): 440-55.Elson, C. Louis. “Opera.” Elson’s Music Dictionary. Boston: Oliver Ditson, 1905.Erickson, H. Bonnie. “The Crisis in Culture and Inequality.” In W. Ivey and S. J. Tepper, eds. Engaging Art: The Next Great Transformation of America’s Cultural Life. New York: Routledge, 2007.Fanfaire.com. “At Its 20th Anniversary Celebration, the Los Angeles Opera Had a Ball with The Grand duch*ess.” 24 Apr. 2008 < http://www.fanfaire.com/duch*ess/index.htm >.Gans, J. Herbert. Popular Culture and High Culture: An Analysis and Evaluation of Taste. New York: Basic Books, 1977.Grimstad, Christie. Concerto Net.com. 2005. 12 Jan. 2008 < http://www.concertonet.com/scripts/review.php?ID_review=3091 >.Grisworld, Wendy. Cultures and Societies in a Changing World. Thousand Oaks, CA: Pine Forge Press, 1994.Grout, D. Jay. A History of Western Music. Shorter ed. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, Inc, 1964.Halle, David. “High and Low Culture.” The Blackwell Encyclopedia of Sociology. London: Blackwell, 2006.Judge, Ian. “Interview with Ian Judge.” The KCSN Opera House, 88.5 FM. 22 Mar. 2006.Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary. 2001. 19 Nov. 2006 < http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?search=opera&searchmode=none >.Kenyon, Nicholas. “Introduction.” In A. Holden, N. Kenyon and S. Walsh, eds. The Viking Opera Guide. New York: Penguin, 1993.Lamont, Michele, and Marcel Fournier. Cultivating Differences: Symbolic Boundaries and the Making of Inequality. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1992.Lord, M.G. “Shlemiel! Shlemozzle! And Cue the Soprano.” The New York Times 4 Sep. 2005.Los Angeles Opera. “LA Opera General Director Placido Domingo Announces Results of Record-Breaking 20th Anniversary Season.” News release. 2006.Marshall, Garry. “Interview with Garry Marshall.” The KCSN Opera House, 88.5 FM. 31 Aug. 2005.National Endowment for the Arts. 2002 Survey of Public Participation in the Arts. Research Division Report #45. 5 Feb. 2008 < http://www.nea.gov/pub/NEASurvey2004.pdf >.NCM Fanthom. “The Metropolitan Opera HD Live.” 2 Feb. 2008 < http://fathomevents.com/details.aspx?seriesid=622&gclid= CLa59NGuspECFQU6awodjiOafA >.Opera Today. James Sobre: Ariane et Barbe-Bleue and Capriccio in Paris – Name This Stage Piece If You Can. 5 Feb. 2008 < http://www.operatoday.com/content/2007/09/ariane_et_barbe_1.php >.Rich, Alan. “High Notes, and Low.” LA Weekly 15 Sep. 2005. 6 May 2008 < http://www.laweekly.com/stage/a-lot-of-night-music/high-notes-and-low/8160/ >.Sharpless, Stanley. “A Song against Opera.” In E. O. Parrott, ed. How to Be Tremendously Tuned in to Opera. New York: Penguin, 1990.Shore, James. Opera Today. 2007. 4 Feb. 2008 < http://www.operatoday.com/content/2007/09/ariane_et_barbe_1.php >.Sutcliffe, Tom. Believing in Opera. Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton UP, 1996.YouTube. “Manon Sex and the Opera.” 24 Apr. 2008 < http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YiBQhr2Sy0k >.

Abstract:

Adrienne Simpson's recent seminar at the Stout Centre on the Simonsen Opera Company gave striking evidence of the popularity of opera in 19th-century New Zealand, not only in cities but in the many small towns which the travelling companies included in their schedules. Today, opera is the cinderella of the arts, rebuilding in regional form after the fateful decision of the QEII to withdraw national funding from the New Zealand Opera Company and its successor, the New Zealand National Opera. In this interview, J.M. Thomson asks Adrienne Simpson why opera is such a potent force in a country where, in the view of today's policy makers, it is often considered irrelevant to cultural aspirations. In other words, how meaningful is opera to present-day New Zealand?

Abstract:

Since the disbanding of the last national company, opera in New Zealand has been underfunded and virtually relegated to the sidelines as an artistic activity. But, as Lindis Taylor, editor of Opera News, points out, regional opera has now acquired a new strength and vitality. In the light of a forthcoming review by the QEII Arts Council of their opera policy, he gives here a succinct background to these discussions.

Abstract:

The following topics are under this section: Boston-based Singapore start-up gains FDA approval for AI-powered analytics engine for physiological monitoring Singapore’s first private co-working laboratory and office space Research partnership between Bayer and RIKEN innovation to boost drug discovery opportunities Digital healthcare company concludes initial round of training for licensed doctors to practice telemedicine in Southeast Asia. Australia’s largest start-up accelerator becomes Singapore’s first HealthTech accelerator Gilead Sciences, Inc. announces Biktarvy® is now available via the National Health Insurance scheme in Taiwan Actinogen Medical demonstrates novel approach to treating cognitive impairment Singapore-based MedTech company announced as winner of 2019 Asia Pacific Showcase Competition at The MedTech Forum Three-dimensional model of blood vessel “on-a-chip”

Abstract:

Greetings Everyone,The news for this new year’s issue consists mainly of a list of a major children’s literature awards that have been announced, as well as a few upcoming conferences.AWARDS2017 ALSC (Association for Library Service to Children) Book and Media Award WinnersJohn Newberry MedalThe Girl Who Drank the Moon Written by Kelly Barnhill and published by Algonquin Young Readers, an imprint of Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill, a division of Workman PublishingNewberry Honour BooksFreedom Over Me: Eleven Slaves, Their Lives and Dreams Brought to Life by Ashley Bryan written and illustrated by Ashley Bryan and published by Atheneum Books for Young Readers, an imprint of Simon & Schuster Children's Publishing DivisionThe Inquisitor’s Tale: Or, The Three Magical Children and Their Holy Dog written by Adam Gidwitz, illustrated by Hatem Aly and published by Dutton Children's Books, Penguin Young Readers Group, an imprint of Penguin Random House LLCWolf Hollow written by Lauren Wolk and published by Dutton Children's Books, Penguin Young Readers Group, an imprint of Penguin Random House LLCRandolph Caldecott MedalRadiant Child: The Story of Young Artist Jean-Michel Basquiat illustrated by Javaka Steptoe, written by Javaka Steptoe and published by Little, Brown and Company, a division of Hachette Book Group, Inc.Caldecot Honour BooksDu Iz Tak? illustrated and written by Carson Ellis, and published by Candlewick PressFreedom in Congo Square illustrated by R. Gregory Christie, written by Carole Boston Weatherford and published by Little Bee Books, an imprint of Bonnier Publishing GroupLeave Me Alone! illustrated and written by Vera Brosgol and published by Roaring Brook Press, a division of Holtzbrinck Publishing Holdings Limited PartnershipThey All Saw a Cat illustrated and written by Brendan Wenzel and published by Chronicle Books LLCLaura Ingalls Wilder AwardNikki Grimes -- Her award-winning works include “Bronx Masquerade,” recipient of the Coretta Scott King Author Award in 2003, and “Words with Wings,” the recipient of a Coretta Scott King Author Honor in 2014. Grimes is also the recipient of the Virginia Hamilton Literary Award in 2016 and the NCTE (National Council of Teachers of English) Award for Excellence in Poetry for Children in 2006.2018 May Hill Arbuthnot Honor AwardNaomi Shihab Nye will deliver the 2018 May Hill Arbuthnot Honor Lecture.Mildred L. Batchelder AwardCry, Heart, But Never Break - Originally published in Danish in 2001 as “Græd blot hjerte,” the book was written by Glenn Ringtved, illustrated by Charolotte Pardi, translated by Robert Moulthrop and published by Enchanted Lion Books.Batchelder Honour BooksAs Time Went By published by NorthSouth Books, Inc., written and illustrated by José Sanabria and translated from the German by Audrey HallOver the Ocean published by Chronicle Books LLC, written and illustrated by Taro Gomi and translated from the Japanese by Taylor NormanPura Belpre (Author) AwardJuana & Lucas written by Juana Medina, is the Pura Belpré Author Award winner. The book is illustrated by Juana Medina and published by Candlewick PressPura Belpre (Illustrator) AwardLowriders to the Center of the Earth illustrated by Raúl Gonzalez, written by Cathy Camper and published by Chronicle Books LLCAndrew Carnegie MedalRyan Swenar Dreamscape Media, LLC, producer of “Drum Dream Girl: How One Girl’s Courage Changed Music”Theodor Seuss Geisel AwardWe Are Growing: A Mo Willems’ Elephant & Piggie Like Reading! Book written by Laurie Keller. The book is published by Hyperion Books for Children, an imprint of Disney Book GroupRobert F. Sibert Informational Book MedalMarch: Book Three written by John Lewis and Andrew Aydin and illustrated by Nate Powell, published by Top Shelf Productions, an imprint of IDW Publishing, a division of Idea and Design Works LLC Stonewall Book Awards - ALA Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, and Transgender Round Table (GLBTRT)Mike Morgan & Larry Romans Children’s & Young Adult Literature AwardIf I Was Your Girl written by Meredith Russo and published by Flatiron BooksMagnus Chase and the Gods of Asgard: The Hammer of Thor written by Rick Riordan and published by Disney Hyperion, an imprint of Disney Book GroupHonor BooksPride: Celebrating Diversity & Community written by Robin Stevenson and published by Orca Book PublishersUnbecoming written by Jenny Downham and published by Scholastic Inc. by arrangement with David Fickling BooksWhen the Moon Was Ours written by Anna-Marie McLemore and published by Thomas Dunne Books, an imprint of St. Martin’s Press2017 Children’s Literature Association Phoenix AwardsPhoenix Award 2017Wish Me Luck by James Heneghan Farrar Straus Giroux, 1997Phoenix Honor Books 2017Seedfolks by Paul Fleischman HarperCollins, 1997Habibi by Naomi Shihab Nye Simon & Schuster, 19972017 Phoenix Picture Book AwardTell Me a Season by Mary McKenna Siddals & Petra Mathers Clarion Books, 1997One Grain of Rice: A Mathematical Tale by Demi Scholastic, 1997 CONFERENCESMarchSerendipity 2017: From Beginning to End (Life, Death, and Everything In Between) The Vancouver Children’s Literature Roundtable Mar. 4, 2017 | 8am to 3:30 pm | UBC Ike Barber LibraryJuneChildren’s Literature Association ConferenceHosted by the University of South Florida June 22-24, 2017 Tampa, FL Hilton Tampa Downtown Hotel Conference Theme: Imagined FuturesJulyInternational Research Society for Children’s Literature (IRSCL) Congress 2017 – Toronto July 29 - August 2, 2017 Keele Campus, York University The Congress theme is “Possible & Impossible Children: Intersections of Children’s Literature & Childhood Studies." That is all for this issue. Best wishes!Hanne Pearce, Communication Editor

Abstract:

The purpose of this study was to explore Vietnamese educators’ perspectives regarding the feasibility of implementing a U.S. Regional Accreditation standard (“Institutional Effectiveness”) in the current Vietnamese higher education accreditation standards. An Institutional Effectiveness (IE) Process (Strategic Planning-Planning and Assessment- Operational Planning) and Assessment Cycle (Program Learning Outcomes-Curriculum Map-Assessment Methods-Data Collection-Actions for Improvement) served as the conceptual framework for this study. The qualitative research design involved interviews with seven Vietnamese educators who work in centers for accreditation and offices of quality assurance in Vietnamese universities. Findings indicated that all participants supported the implementation of an IE standard and Assessment Cycle in Vietnamese higher education accreditation. Findings also stated that currently the IE Process and Assessment Cycle are not fully implemented in Vietnam higher education accreditation. The Vietnamese higher education institutions (HEIs) did not have a supportive culture of strategic planning due to centralized management by the Ministry of Education and Training (MOET). Moreover, most universities were only familiar with the first two steps in the Assessment Cycle. Based on the research findings, recommendations for the implementation of IE process and Assessment Cycle are made for MOET, Centers for Accreditation and Vietnamese HEIs. Keywords Vietnamese Higher Education Accreditation, Institutional Effectiveness, U.S. Regional Accreditation, outcome assessment, accountability and transparency References [1] Hayden M & Lam Q T (2010). Vietnam’s higher Education System. Reforming higher education in Vietnam: Challenges and Priorities. 15-31.[2] Pham, Duy. (2014). Vietnam: New legislation and future possibilities. International Higher Education. 74. 27-28.[3] Nguyen, Kim. D, Oliver, D.E., & Priddy, L.E. (2009). Criteria for accreditation in Vietnam's higher education: Focus on input or outcome? Quality in Higher Education. 15 (1). 123-134.[4] Nguyen, Thi Khanh Trinh (2013). The strengths of Vietnam Higher Education accreditation standards. Conference proceeding on Quality assurance standards for higher education in Vietnam: Implementation issues and solutions. 48-56[5] Nguyen, Huu Cuong, Evers, C & Marshall, C (2017). Accreditation of Viet Nam’s Higher Education: Achievements and Challenges after a Dozen Years of Development. Quality Assurance in Education. 25 (4), 475-488. [6] Center of Educational Accreditation (2014). [The establishment of center of accreditation in VNU-HCM]. Retrieved from http://cea.vnuhcm.edu.vn/quyet-dinh-thanh-lap-trung-tam-kdclgd-dhqg-hcm_p1_1-1_2-1_3-617_4-76_9-2_11-10_12-1_13-11.html[7] Nguyen, Duc Chinh. (2013). The Vietnamese set of quality assurance standards for higher education: Issues and Solutions. Conference proceeding on Quality assurance standards for higher education in Vietnam: Implementation issues and solutions. 91-97. [8] Do, Huong Lan (2013). Mot so de xuat nham hoan thien cac tieu chuan danh gia chat luong giao duc cua truong Dai Hoc Viet Nam tren co so nghien cuu so sanh bo tieu chuan danh gia cua Viet Nam va Lien Bang Nga. Conference proceeding on Quality assurance standards for higher education in Vietnam: Implementation issues and solutions. MOET project. Code: B2012-08-12], 165-178[9] Le, Duc Ngoc & Sai, Cong Hong (2013). Assessing the inappropriateness of the set of quality assurance standards for higher education in Vietnam and the reasons. Conference proceeding on Quality assurance standards for higher education in Vietnam: Implementation issues and solutions. 143-157. [10] Vo, Sy Manh (2013). Some shortcomings in the Vietnam set of quality assurance standards. Conference proceeding on Quality assurance standards for higher education in Vietnam: Implementation issues and solutions. 158-164.[11] Suskie, L. (2009). Assessing student learning. A common sense guide (2nd Ed.). Jossey-Bass: A Wiley Imprint. [12] Eaton, J. (2007). Institutions, accreditors, and the federal government, redefining their “appropriate relationship.” Change, 39(5), 16-23.[13] Suskie, L. (2015). Five dimensions of quality: A common sense guide to accreditation and accountability. Jossey-Bass: A Wiley Brand [14] Gaston, P.L. (2014). Higher education accreditation: How it’s changing, why it must. Sterling, VA: Stylus.[15] Banta, T. W. (2004). Hallmarks of effective outcomes assessment. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.[16] Anderson, H. M., Moore, D. L., Anaya, G., & Bird, E. (2005). Student learning outcomes assessment: A component of program assessment. American Journal of Pharmaceutical Education, 69(2), 256-268[17] Ewell, P. T. (2009, November). Assessment, accountability, and improvement: Revisiting the tension (NILOA Occasional Paper No.1). Urbana, IL: University of Illinois and Indiana University, National Institute for Learning Outcomes Assessment.[18] Prochnow, M. E. (2011). On reaching proficiency: A case study of outcomes assessment success at a California community college. (Dissertations). California State University, Fresno. (Order No. 3473418). Retrieved from http://search.proquest.com/docview/895096456?accountid=7098. (895096456). [19] Hoefer, M.T. (2015, July). The ABCs of institutional effectiveness. Pre-conference workshop at SACSCOC Summer Institute, Orlando, Florida. [20] Allen, M (2004). Assessing academic programs in higher education. Bolton, MA: Anker Publishing Company, INC.[21] Glesne, C. (2011). Becoming qualitative researchers: An Introduction (4th Ed.). Boston, MA: Allyn & Bacon[22] Merriam, S (1998). Qualitative research and case study applications in education. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass Publications.[23] Grbich, C. (2013). Qualitative data analysis an introduction. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications VNU-HN- College of Economics, 2017[24] Middaugh, M. F. (2007). Creating a culture of evidence: Academic accountability at the institutional level. New Directions for Higher Education, (140), 15-28. doi:10.1002/he.277[25] Voluntary System of Accountability (VSA). About the VSA. Retrieved from http://www.voluntarysystem.org/[26] Silver, K. (2018). Getting Started with Strategic Planning. HLC Annual Conference. Chicago, Illinois. Retrieved at http://download.hlcommission.org/annualconference/2018/AC18_ProgramBook_INF.pdf[27] Powell, B. and Tedder, W. (2018). Linking Assessment, Planning and Budgeting for Resource Allocation Decisions. HLC Annual Conference. Chicago, Illinois. Retrieved at http://download.hlcommission.org/annualconference/2018/AC18_ProgramBook_INF.pdf

Abstract:

Introduction Nun habe ich Euch genug geschrieben, diesen Brief wenn sei [sic] lesen würden, dann würde ich den Genickschuß bekommen.Now I have written you enough, this letter if they would read it, I would get the neck shot. (M., all translations from German sources and quotations by the author) When the German soldier Otto M. wrote these lines from Russia to his family on 3 September 1943 during the Second World War, he knew that his war letter would not be subject to the National Socialist censorship apparatus. The letter contains, inter alia, detailed information about the course of the war on the front, troop locations, and warnings about the Nazi regime. M., as he wrote in the letter, smuggled it past the censorship via a “comrade”. As a German soldier, M. was a member of the Volksgemeinschaft—a National Socialist concept that drew a “racist and anti-Semitic borderline” (Wildt 48)—and was thus not socially excluded due to his status. Nevertheless, in the sentence quoted above, M. anticipates possible future consequences of his deviant actions, which would be carried out by “them”—potentially leading to his violent death. This article investigates how social and societal exclusion is brought forth by everyday media practices such as writing letters. After an introduction to the thesis under discussion, I will briefly outline the linguistic research on National Socialism that underlies the approach presented. In the second section, the key concepts of agency and dispositif applied in this work are discussed. This is followed by two sections in which infrastructural and interactional practices of exclusion are analysed. The article closes with some concluding remarks. During the Second World War, Wehrmacht soldiers and their relatives could not write and receive letters that were not potentially subject to controls. Therefore, the blunt openness with which M. anticipated the brutal sanctions of behavioural deviations in the correspondence quoted above was an exception in the everyday practice of war letter communication. This article will thus pursue the following thesis: private communication in war letters was subject to specific discourse conditions under National Socialism, and this brought forth excluding agency, which has two intertwined readings. Firstly, “excluding” is to be understood as an attribute of “agency” in the sense of an acting entity that either is included and potentially excludes or is excluded due to its ascribed agency. For example, German soldiers who actively participated in patriotic service were included in the Volksgemeinschaft. By contrast, Jews or Communists, to name but a few groups that, from the perspective of racist Nazi ideology, did not contribute to the community, were excluded from it. Such excluding agencies are based on specific practices of dispositional arrangement, which I refer to as infrastructural exclusion of agency. Secondly, excluding agency describes a linguistic practice that developed under National Socialism and has an equally stabilising effect on it. Excluding agency means that agents, and hence protagonists, are excluded by means of linguistic mitigation and omission. This second reading emphasises practices of linguistic construction of agency in interaction, which is described as interactional exclusion of agency. In either sense, exclusion is inextricably tied to the notion of agency, which is illustrated in this article by using data from field post letters of the Second World War. Social exclusion, along with its most extreme manifestations under fascism, is both legitimised and carried out predominantly through discursive practices. This includes for the public domain, on the one hand, executive language use such as in laws, decrees, orders, court hearings, and verdicts, and on the other hand, texts such as ideological writings, speeches, radio addresses, folk literature, etc. Linguistic research on National Socialism and its mechanisms of inclusion and exclusion has long focussed on the power of a regulated public use of language that seemed to be shaped by a few protagonists, most notably Hitler and Goebbels (Schlosser; Scholl). More recent works, however, are increasingly devoted to the differentiation of heterogeneous communities of practice, which were primarily established through discursive practices and are manifested accordingly in texts of that time (Horan, Practice). Contrary to a justifiably criticised “exculpation of the speakers” (Sauer 975) by linguistic research, which focusses on language but not on situated, interactional language use, such a perspective is increasingly interested in “discourse in National Socialism, with a particular emphasis on language use in context as a shared, communicative phenomenon” (Horan, Letter 45). To understand the phenomenon of social and societal exclusion, which was constitutive for National Socialism, it is also necessary to analyse those discursive practices of inclusion and exclusion through which the speakers co-constitute everyday life. I will do this by relating the discourse conditions, based on Foucault’s concept of dispositif (Confessions 194), to the agency of the correspondents of war letters, i.e. field post letters. On Agency and Dispositif Agency and dispositif are key concepts for the analysis of social exclusion, because they can be applied to analyse the situated practices of exclusion both in terms of the different capacities for action of various agents, i.e. acting entities, and the inevitably asymmetrical arrangement within which actions are performed. Let me first, very briefly, outline some linguistic conceptions of agency. While Ahearn states that “agency refers to the socioculturally mediated capacity to act” (28) and thus conceives agency as a potential, Duranti understands agency “as the property of those entities (i) that have some degree of control over their own behavior, (ii) whose actions in the world affect other entities’ (and sometimes their own), and (iii) whose actions are the object of evaluation (e.g. in terms of their responsibility for a given outcome)” (453). Deppermann considers agency to be a means of social and situational positioning: “‘agency’ is to capture properties of the subject as agent, that is, its role with respect to the events in which it is involved” (429–30). This is done by linguistic attribution. Following Duranti, this analysis is based on the understanding that agency is established by the ascription of action to an entity which is thereby made or considered accountable for the action. This allows a practice-theoretical reference to Garfinkel’s concept of accountability and identifies agentive practices as “visibly-rational-and-reportable-for-all-practical purposes” (7). The writing of letters in wartime is one such reflexive discursive practice through which agents constitute social reality by means of ascribing agency. The concept of semantic roles (Fillmore; von Polenz), offers another, distinctly linguistic access to agency. By semantic roles, agency in situated interaction is established syntactically and semantically. Put simply, a distinction is made between an Agent, as someone who performs an action, and a Patient, as someone to whom an action occurs (von Polenz 170; semantic roles such as Agent, Patient, Experiencer, etc. are capitalised by convention). Using linguistic data from war letters, this concept is discussed in more detail below. In the following, “field post” is considered as dispositif, by which Foucault means a thoroughly heterogeneous ensemble consisting of discourses, institutions, architectural forms, regulatory decisions, laws, administrative measures, scientific statements, philosophical, moral and philanthropic propositions – in short, the said as much as the unsaid. Such are the elements of the apparatus [dispositif]. The apparatus [dispositif] itself is the system of relations that can be established between these elements. (Foucault, Confessions 194) The English translation of the French “dispositif” as “apparatus” encourages an understanding of dispositif as a rather rigid structure. In contrast, the field post service of the Second World War will be used here to show how such dispositifs enable practices of exclusion or restrict access to practices of inclusion, while these characteristics themselves are in turn established by practices or, as Foucault calls them, procedures (Foucault, Discourse). An important and potentially enlightening notion related to dispositif is that of agencement, which in turn is borrowed from Deleuze and Guattari and was further developed in particular in actor-network theory (Çalışkan and Callon; Gherardi). What Çalışkan and Callon state about markets serves as a general description of agencement, which can be defined as an “arrangement of heterogeneous constituents that deploys the following: rules and conventions; technical devices; metrological systems; logistical infrastructures; texts, discourses and narratives …; technical and scientific knowledge (including social scientific methods), as well as the competencies and skills embodied in living beings” (3). This resembles Foucault’s concept of dispositif (Foucault, Confessions; see above), which “denotes a heterogeneous ensemble of discursive and nondiscursive elements with neither an originary subject not [sic] a determinant causality” (Coté 384). Considered morphosemantically, agencement expresses an important interrelation: in that it is derived from both the French agencer (to construct; to arrange) and agence (agency; cf. Hardie and MacKenzie 58) and is concretised and nominalised by the suffix -ment, agencement elegantly integrates structure and action according to Giddens’s ‘duality of structure’. While this tying aspect certainly contributes to a better understanding of dispositional arrangements and should therefore be considered, agencement, as applied in actor-network theory, emphasises above all “the fact that agencies and arrangements are not separate” (Çalışkan and Callon) and is, moreover, often employed to ascribe agency to material objects, things, media, etc. This approach has proven to be very fruitful for analyses of socio-technical arrangements in actor-network theory and practice theory (Çalışkan and Callon; Gherardi). However, within the presented discourse-oriented study on letter writing and field post in National Socialism, a clear analytical differentiation between agency and arrangement, precisely in order to point out their interrelation, is essential to analyse practices of exclusion. This is why I prefer dispositif to agencement as the analytical concept here. Infrastructural Exclusion of Agency in Field Post Letters In the Second World War, writing letters between the “homeland” and the “frontline” was a fundamental everyday media practice with an estimated total of 30 to 40 billion letters in Germany (Kilian 97). War letters were known as field post (Feldpost), which was processed by the field post service. The dispositif “field post” was, in opposition to the traditional postal service, subject to specific conditions regarding charges, transport, and above all censorship. No transportation costs arose for field post letters up to a weight of 250 grams. Letters could only be sent by or to soldiers with a field post number that encoded the addresses of the field post offices. Only soldiers who were deployed outside the Reich’s borders received a field post number (Kilian 114). Thus, the soldiers were socially included as interactants due to their military status. The entire organisation of the field post was geared towards enabling members of the Volksgemeinschaft to communicatively shape, maintain, and continue their social relationships during the war (Bergerson et al.). Applying Foucault, the dispositif “field post” establishes selection and exclusion mechanisms in which “procedures of exclusion” (Discourse 52) become manifest, two of which are to be related to the field post: “exclusion from discourse” and “scarcity of speaking subjects” (Spitzmüller and Warnke 73). Firstly, “procedures of exclusion ensure that only certain statements can be made in discourse” (Spitzmüller and Warnke 73). This exclusion procedure ought to be implemented by controlling and, ultimately, censoring field post letters. Reviews were carried out by censorship offices (Feldpostprüfstellen), which were military units independent of the field post offices responsible for delivery. Censorship initially focussed on military information. However, “in the course of the war, censorship shifted from a control measure aimed at defence towards a political-ideological review” (Kilian 101). Critical remarks could be legally prosecuted and punished with prison, penitentiary, or death (Kilian 99). Hence, it is assumed that self-censorship played a role not only for public media, such as newspapers, but also for writing private letters (Dodd). As the introductory quotation from Otto M. shows, writers who spread undesirable information in their letters anticipated the harshest consequences. In this respect, randomised censorship—although only a very small proportion of the high volume of mail was actually opened by censors (Kilian)—established a permanent disposition of control that resulted in a potentially discourse-excluding social stratification of private communication. Secondly, the dispositif “field post” was inherently exclusive and excluding, as those who did not belong to the Volksgemeinschaft could not use the service and thus could not acquire agentive capacity. The “scarcity of speaking subjects” (Spitzmüller and Warnke 73) was achieved by restricting participation in the field post system to members of the Volksgemeinschaft. Since agency is based on the most basic prerequisite, namely the ability to act linguistically at all, the mere possibility of exercising agency was infrastructurally restricted by the field post system. Excluding people from “agency-through-language” means excluding them from an “agency of an existential sort” (Duranti 455), which is described here, regarding the field post system, as infrastructural exclusion of agency. Interactional Exclusion of Agency in Field Post Letters In this section, I will elaborate how agency is brought forth interactionally through linguistic means on the basis of data from a field post corpus that was compiled in the project “Linguistic Social History 1933 to 1945” (Kämper). The aim of the project is an actor-based description of discursive practices and patterns at the time of National Socialism, which takes into account the fact that society in the years 1933 to 1945 consisted of heterogeneous communities of practice (Horan, Practice). Letter communication is considered to be an interaction that is characterised by mediated indexicality, accountability, reflexivity, sequentiality, and reciprocity (Dang-Anh) and is performed as situated social practice (Barton and Hall). The corpus of field letters examined here provides access to the everyday communication of members of the ‘integrated society’, i.e. those who were neither high-ranking members of the Nazi apparatus nor exposed to the repressions of the fascist dictatorship. The corpus consists of about 3,500 letters and about 2.5 million tokens. The data were obtained by digitising letter editions using OCR scans and in cooperation with the field post archive of the Museum for Communication Berlin (cf. sources below). We combine qualitative and quantitative methods, the latter providing heuristic indicators for in-depth hermeneutical analysis (Felder; Teubert). We apply corpus linguistic methods such as keyword, collocation and concordance analysis to the digitised full texts in order to analyse the data intersubjectively by means of corpus-based hermeneutic discourse analysis (Dang-Anh and Scholl). However, the selected excerpts of the corpus do not comprise larger data sets or complete sequences, but isolated fragments. Nevertheless, they illustrate the linguistic (non-)constitution of agency and thus distinctively exemplify exclusionary practices in field post letter writing. From a linguistic point of view, the exclusion of actors from action is achieved syntactically and semantically by deagentivisation (Bernárdez; von Polenz 186), as will be shown below. The following lines were written by Albert N. to his sister Johanna S. and are dated 25 June 1941, shortly after the beginning of the German Wehrmacht’s military campaign in Russia (Russlandfeldzug) a few days earlier. Vor den russ. Gefangenen bekommt man einen Ekel, d.h. viele Gefangene werden nicht gemacht.One gets disgusted by the Russian prisoners, i.e. many prisoners are not made. (N.) In the first part of the utterance, “mitigation of agency” (Duranti 465) is carried out using the impersonal pronoun “man” (“one”) which does not specify its referent. Instead, by means of deagentivisation, the scope of the utterance is generalised to an indefinite in‑group of speakers, whereby the use of the impersonal pronoun implies that the proposition is valid or generally accepted. Moreover, the use of “one” generalises the emotional expression “disgust”, thus suggesting that the aversive emotion is a self-evident affect experienced by everyone who can be subsumed under “one”. In particular, this includes the author, who is implicitly displayed as primarily perceiving the emotion in question. This reveals a fundamental practice of inclusion and exclusion, the separating distinction between “us”/“we” and “them”/“the others” (Wodak). In terms of semantic roles, the inclusive and generalised formal Experiencer “one” is opposed to the Causative “Russian prisoner” in an exclusionary manner, implicitly indicating the prisoners as the cause of disgust. The subsequent utterance is introduced by “i.e.”, which marks the causal link between the two phrases. The wording “many prisoners are not made” strongly suggests that it refers to homicides, i.e. executions carried out at the beginning of the military campaign in Russia by German troops (Reddemann 222). The depiction of a quasi-universal disgust in the first part establishes a “negative characterization of the out-group” (Wodak 33) which, in the expressed causal relation with the second phrase, seems to morally legitimise or at least somehow justify the implied killings. The passive form entirely omits an acting entity. Here, deagentivisation obscures the agency of the perpetrators. However, this is not the only line between acting and non-acting entities the author draws. The omission of an agent, even the impersonal “one”, in the second part, and the fact that there is no talk of self-experienceable emotions, but war crimes are hinted at in a passive sentence, suggest the exclusion of oneself as a joint agent of the indicated actions. As further data from the corpus indicate, war crimes are usually not ascribed to the writer or his own unit as the agents but are usually attributed to “others” or not at all. Was Du von Juden schreibst, ist uns schon länger bekannt. Sie werden im Osten angesiedelt.What you write about Jews is already known to us for some time. They are being settled in the East. (G.) In this excerpt from a letter, which Ernst G. wrote to his wife on 22 February 1942, knowledge about the situation of the Jews in the war zone is discussed. The passage appears quite isolated with its cotext in the letter revolving around quite different, trivial, everyday topics. Apparently, G. refers in his utterance to an earlier letter from his wife, which has not been preserved and is therefore not part of the corpus. “Jews” are those about whom the two agents, the soldier and his wife, write, whereas “us” refers to the soldiers at the front. In the second part, agency is again obscured by deagentivisation. While “they” anaphorically refers to “Jews” as Patients, the agents of their alleged resettlement remain unnamed in this “agent-less passive construction” (Duranti 466). Jews are depicted here as objects being handled—without any agency of their own. The persecution of the Jews and the executions carried out on the Russian front (Reddemann 222), including those of Jews, are euphemistically played down here as “settlements”. “Trivialization” and “denial” are two common discursive practices of exclusion (Wodak 134) and emerge here, as interactional exclusion of agency, in one of their most severe manifestations. Conclusion Social and societal exclusion, as has been shown, are predominantly legitimised as well as constituted, maintained, and perpetuated by discursive practices. Field post letters can be analysed both in terms of the infrastructure—which is itself constituted by infrastructuring practices and is thus not rigid but dynamic—that underlies excluding letter-writing practices in times of war, and the extent to which linguistic excluding practices are performed in the letters. It has been shown that agency, which is established by the ascription of action to an entity, is a central concept for the analysis of practices of exclusion. While I propose the division into infrastructural and interactional exclusion of agency, it must be pointed out that this can only be an analytical distinction and both bundles of practices, that of infrastructuring and that of interacting, are intertwined and are to be thought of in relation to each other. Bringing together the two concepts of agency and dispositif, despite the fact that they are of quite different origins, allows an analysis of exclusionary practices, which I hope does justice to the relation of interaction and infrastructure. By definition, exclusion occurs against the background of an asymmetrical arrangement within which exclusionary practices are carried out. Thus, dispositif is understood as an arranged but flexible condition, wherein agency, as a discursively ascribed or infrastructurally arranged property, unfolds. Social and societal exclusion, which were constitutive for National Socialism, were accomplished not only in public media but also in field post letters. Writing letters was a fundamental everyday media practice and the field post was a central social medium during the National Socialist era. However, exclusion occurred on different infrastructural and interactional levels. As shown, it was possible to be excluded by agency, which means exclusion by societal status and role. People could linguistically perform an excluding agency by constituting a division between “us” and “them”. Also, specific discourses were excluded by the potential control and censorship of communication by the authorities, and those who did not suppress agency, for example by self-censoring, feared prosecution. Moreover, the purely linguistic practices of exclusion not only constituted or legitimised the occasionally fatal demarcations drawn under National Socialism, but also concealed and trivialised them. As discussed, it was the perpetrators whose agency was excluded in war letters, which led to a mitigation of their actions. In addition, social actors were depreciated and ostracised through deagentivisation, mitigation and omission of agency. In extreme cases of social exclusion, linguistic deagentivisation even prepared or resulted in the revocation of the right to exist of entire social groups. The German soldier Otto M. feared fatal punishment because he did not communicatively act according to the social stratification of the then regime towards a Volksgemeinschaft in a field post letter. This demonstrates how thin the line is between inclusion and exclusion in a fascist dictatorship. I hope to have shown that the notion of excluding agency can provide an approach to identifying and analytically understanding such inclusion and exclusion practices in everyday interactions in media as dispositional arrangements. However, more research needs to be done on the vast yet unresearched sources of everyday communication in the National Socialist era, in particular by applying digital means to discourse analysis (Dang-Anh and Scholl). Sources G., Ernst. “Field post letter: Ernst to his wife Irene. 22 Feb. 1942.” Sei tausendmal gegrüßt: Briefwechsel Irene und Ernst Guicking 1937–1945. Ed. Jürgen Kleindienst. Berlin: JKL Publikationen, 2001. Reihe Zeitgut Spezial 1. M., Otto. 3 Sep. 1943. 3.2002.7163. Museum for Communication, Berlin. Otto M. to his family. 16 Sep. 2020 <https://briefsammlung.de/feldpost-zweiter-weltkrieg/brief.html?action=detail&what=letter&id=1175>. N., Albert. “Field post letter: Albert N. to his sister Johanna S. 25 June 1941.” Zwischen Front und Heimat: Der Briefwechsel des münsterischen Ehepaares Agnes und Albert Neuhaus 1940–1944. Ed. Karl Reddemann. Münster: Regensberg, 1996. 222–23. References Ahearn, Laura M. “Agency and Language.” Handbook of Pragmatics. Eds. Jan-Ola Östman and Jef Verschueren. Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing Company, 2010. 28–48. Barton, David, and Nigel Hall. Letter Writing as a Social Practice. Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing Company, 2000. Bergerson, Andrew Stuart, Laura Fahnenbruck, and Christine Hartig. “Working on the Relationship.” Private Life and Privacy in Nazi Germany. Eds. Elizabeth Harvey et al. Vol. 65. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2019. 256–79. Bernárdez, Enrique. “A Partial Synergetic Model of Deagentivisation.” Journal of Quantitative Linguistics 4.1–3 (1997): 53–66. Çalışkan, Koray, and Michel Callon. “Economization, Part 2: A Research Programme for the Study of Markets.” Economy and Society 39.1 (2010): 1–32. Coté, Mark. “What Is a Media Dispositif? Compositions with Bifo.” Journal of Communication Inquiry 35.4 (2011): 378–86. Dang-Anh, Mark, and Stefan Scholl. “Digital Discourse Analysis of Language Use under National Socialism: Methodological Reflections and Applications.” Writing the Digital History of Nazi Germany. Eds. Frederike Buda and Julia Timpe. Boston, Berlin: De Gruyter, forthcoming. Dang-Anh, Mark. Protest twittern: Eine medienlinguistische Untersuchung von Straßenprotesten. Bielefeld: Transcript, 2019. Locating Media/Situierte Medien 22. 22 Sep. 2020 <https://doi.org/10.14361/9783839448366>. Deleuze, Gilles, and Félix Guattari. A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia. Trans. Brian Massumi. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1987. Deppermann, Arnulf. “Unpacking Parental Violence in Narratives: Agency, Guilt, and Pedagogy in Narratives about Traumatic Interpersonal Experiences.” Applied Linguistics 41.3 (2020): 428–51. Dodd, W.J. National Socialism and German Discourse. Cham: Springer International Publishing, 2018. Duranti, Alessandro. “Agency in Language.” A Companion to Linguistic Anthropology. Ed. Alessandro Duranti. Malden, Mass.: Blackwell, 2004. 451–73. Felder, Ekkehard. “Lexik und Grammatik der Agonalität in der linguistischen Diskursanalyse.” Diskurs – Interdisziplinär. Eds. Heidrun Kämper and Ingo H. Warnke. Berlin: De Gruyter, 2015. 87–121. Fillmore, Charles J. “The Case for Case.” Universals in Linguistic Theory. Eds. Emmon Bach and Robert T. Harms. London: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1968. 1–88. Foucault, Michel. “The Confessions of Flesh.” Power/Knowledge: Selected Interviews and Other Writings, 1972–1977. Ed. Michel Foucault. New York: Vintage Books, 1980. 194–228. ———. “The Order of Discourse.” Untying the Text: A Post-Structuralist Reader. Ed. Robert J.C. Young. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1981. 51–78. Garfinkel, Harold, ed. Studies in Ethnomethodology. Cambridge: Polity Press, 1967. Gherardi, Silvia. “To Start Practice Theorizing Anew: The Contribution of the Concepts of Agencement and Formativeness.” Organization 23.5 (2016): 680–98. Giddens, Anthony. Central Problems in Social Theory. London: Macmillan Education UK, 1979. Hardie, Iain, and Donald MacKenzie. “Assembling an Economic Actor: The Agencement of a Hedge Fund.” The Sociological Review 55.1 (2007): 57–80. Horan, Geraldine. “‘Er zog sich die ‚neue Sprache‘ des ‚Dritten Reiches‘ über wie ein Kleidungsstück‘: Communities of Practice and Performativity in National Socialist Discourse.” Linguistik online 30.1 (2007): 57–80. 22 Sep. 2020 <https://doi.org/10.13092/lo.30.549>. ———. “‘Lieber Guter Onkel Hitler’: A Linguistic Analysis of the Letter as a National Socialist Text-Type and a Re-Evaluation of the ‘Sprache im/des Nationalsozialismus’ Debate.” New Literary and Linguistic Perspectives on the German Language, National Socialism, and the Shoah. Eds. Peter Davies and Andrea Hammel. Rochester, NY: Camden House, 2014. 45–58. Kämper, Heidrun. “Sprachliche Sozialgeschichte 1933 bis 1945 – Ein Projektkonzept.” Sprachliche Sozialgeschichte des Nationalsozialismus. Eds. Heidrun Kämper and Britt-Marie Schuster. Bremen: Hempen Verlag, 2018. 9–25. Kilian, Katrin Anja. “Das Medium Feldpost als Gegenstand interdisziplinärer Forschung: Archivlage, Forschungsstand und Aufbereitung der Quelle aus dem Zweiten Weltkrieg.” Dissertation. Technische Universität Berlin, 2001. 22 Sep. 2020 <https://doi.org/10.14279/depositonce-322>. Reddemann, Karl, ed. Zwischen Front und Heimat: Der Briefwechsel des münsterischen Ehepaares Agnes und Albert Neuhaus 1940–1944. Münster: Regensberg, 1996. Sauer, Christoph. “1933–1945.” Handbuch Sprache und Politik: In 3 Bänden. Eds. Thomas Niehr, Jörg Kilian, and Martin Wengeler. Bremen: Hempen Verlag, 2017. 975–98. Schlosser, Horst Dieter. Sprache unterm Hakenkreuz: Eine andere Geschichte des Nationalsozialismus. Köln: Böhlau, 2013. Scholl, Stefan. “Für eine Sprach- und Kommunikationsgeschichte des Nationalsozialismus: Ein Programmatischer Forschungsüberblick.” Archiv für Sozialgeschichte 59 (2019): 409–44. Spitzmüller, Jürgen, and Ingo H. Warnke. Diskurslinguistik: Eine Einführung in Theorien und Methoden der transtextuellen Sprachanalyse. Berlin, New York: De Gruyter, 2011. Teubert, Wolfgang. “Corpus Linguistics: An Alternative.” sem*n 27 (2009): 1–25. Von Polenz, Peter. Deutsche Satzsemantik: Grundbegriffe des Zwischen-den-Zeilen-Lesens. Berlin: De Gruyter, 1985. Wildt, Michael. “Volksgemeinschaft: A Modern Perspective on National Socialist Society.” Visions of Community in Nazi Germany. Eds. Martina Steber and Bernhard Gotto. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2014. 43–59. Wodak, Ruth. “Discourse and Politics: The Rhetoric of Exclusion.” The Haider Phenomenon in Austria. Eds. Ruth Wodak and Anton Pelinka. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers, 2002. 33–60.

Abstract:

The term “coffee palace” was primarily used in Australia to describe the temperance hotels that were built in the last decades of the 19th century, although there are references to the term also being used to a lesser extent in the United Kingdom (Denby 174). Built in response to the worldwide temperance movement, which reached its pinnacle in the 1880s in Australia, coffee palaces were hotels that did not serve alcohol. This was a unique time in Australia’s architectural development as the economic boom fuelled by the gold rush in the 1850s, and the demand for ostentatious display that gathered momentum during the following years, afforded the use of richly ornamental High Victorian architecture and resulted in very majestic structures; hence the term “palace” (Freeland 121). The often multi-storied coffee palaces were found in every capital city as well as regional areas such as Geelong and Broken Hill, and locales as remote as Maria Island on the east coast of Tasmania. Presented as upholding family values and discouraging drunkenness, the coffee palaces were most popular in seaside resorts such as Barwon Heads in Victoria, where they catered to families. Coffee palaces were also constructed on a grand scale to provide accommodation for international and interstate visitors attending the international exhibitions held in Sydney (1879) and Melbourne (1880 and 1888). While the temperance movement lasted well over 100 years, the life of coffee palaces was relatively short-lived. Nevertheless, coffee palaces were very much part of Australia’s cultural landscape. In this article, I examine the rise and demise of coffee palaces associated with the temperance movement and argue that coffee palaces established in the name of abstinence were modelled on the coffee houses that spread throughout Europe and North America in the 17th and 18th centuries during the Enlightenment—a time when the human mind could be said to have been liberated from inebriation and the dogmatic state of ignorance. The Temperance Movement At a time when newspapers are full of lurid stories about binge-drinking and the alleged ill-effects of the liberalisation of licensing laws, as well as concerns over the growing trend of marketing easy-to-drink products (such as the so-called “alcopops”) to teenagers, it is difficult to think of a period when the total suppression of the alcohol trade was seriously debated in Australia. The cause of temperance has almost completely vanished from view, yet for well over a century—from 1830 to the outbreak of the Second World War—the control or even total abolition of the liquor trade was a major political issue—one that split the country, brought thousands onto the streets in demonstrations, and influenced the outcome of elections. Between 1911 and 1925 referenda to either limit or prohibit the sale of alcohol were held in most States. While moves to bring about abolition failed, Fitzgerald notes that almost one in three Australian voters expressed their support for prohibition of alcohol in their State (145). Today, the temperance movement’s platform has largely been forgotten, killed off by the practical example of the United States, where prohibition of the legal sale of alcohol served only to hand control of the liquor traffic to organised crime. Coffee Houses and the Enlightenment Although tea has long been considered the beverage of sobriety, it was coffee that came to be regarded as the very antithesis of alcohol. When the first coffee house opened in London in the early 1650s, customers were bewildered by this strange new drink from the Middle East—hot, bitter, and black as soot. But those who tried coffee were, reports Ellis, soon won over, and coffee houses were opened across London, Oxford, and Cambridge and, in the following decades, Europe and North America. Tea, equally exotic, entered the English market slightly later than coffee (in 1664), but was more expensive and remained a rarity long after coffee had become ubiquitous in London (Ellis 123-24). The impact of the introduction of coffee into Europe during the seventeenth century was particularly noticeable since the most common beverages of the time, even at breakfast, were weak “small beer” and wine. Both were safer to drink than water, which was liable to be contaminated. Coffee, like beer, was made using boiled water and, therefore, provided a new and safe alternative to alcoholic drinks. There was also the added benefit that those who drank coffee instead of alcohol began the day alert rather than mildly inebriated (Standage 135). It was also thought that coffee had a stimulating effect upon the “nervous system,” so much so that the French called coffee une boisson intellectuelle (an intellectual beverage), because of its stimulating effect on the brain (Muskett 71). In Oxford, the British called their coffee houses “penny universities,” a penny then being the price of a cup of coffee (Standage 158). Coffee houses were, moreover, more than places that sold coffee. Unlike other institutions of the period, rank and birth had no place (Ellis 59). The coffee house became the centre of urban life, creating a distinctive social culture by treating all customers as equals. Egalitarianism, however, did not extend to women—at least not in London. Around its egalitarian (but male) tables, merchants discussed and conducted business, writers and poets held discussions, scientists demonstrated experiments, and philosophers deliberated ideas and reforms. For the price of a cup (or “dish” as it was then known) of coffee, a man could read the latest pamphlets and newsletters, chat with other patrons, strike business deals, keep up with the latest political gossip, find out what other people thought of a new book, or take part in literary or philosophical discussions. Like today’s Internet, Twitter, and Facebook, Europe’s coffee houses functioned as an information network where ideas circulated and spread from coffee house to coffee house. In this way, drinking coffee in the coffee house became a metaphor for people getting together to share ideas in a sober environment, a concept that remains today. According to Standage, this information network fuelled the Enlightenment (133), prompting an explosion of creativity. Coffee houses provided an entirely new environment for political, financial, scientific, and literary change, as people gathered, discussed, and debated issues within their walls. Entrepreneurs and scientists teamed up to form companies to exploit new inventions and discoveries in manufacturing and mining, paving the way for the Industrial Revolution (Standage 163). The stock market and insurance companies also had their birth in the coffee house. As a result, coffee was seen to be the epitome of modernity and progress and, as such, was the ideal beverage for the Age of Reason. By the 19th century, however, the era of coffee houses had passed. Most of them had evolved into exclusive men’s clubs, each geared towards a certain segment of society. Tea was now more affordable and fashionable, and teahouses, which drew clientele from both sexes, began to grow in popularity. Tea, however, had always been Australia’s most popular non-alcoholic drink. Tea (and coffee) along with other alien plants had been part of the cargo unloaded onto Australian shores with the First Fleet in 1788. Coffee, mainly from Brazil and Jamaica, remained a constant import but was taxed more heavily than tea and was, therefore, more expensive. Furthermore, tea was much easier to make than coffee. To brew tea, all that is needed is to add boiling water, coffee, in contrast, required roasting, grinding and brewing. According to Symons, until the 1930s, Australians were the largest consumers of tea in the world (19). In spite of this, and as coffee, since its introduction into Europe, was regarded as the antidote to alcohol, the temperance movement established coffee palaces. In the early 1870s in Britain, the temperance movement had revived the coffee house to provide an alternative to the gin taverns that were so attractive to the working classes of the Industrial Age (Clarke 5). Unlike the earlier coffee house, this revived incarnation provided accommodation and was open to men, women and children. “Cheap and wholesome food,” was available as well as reading rooms supplied with newspapers and periodicals, and games and smoking rooms (Clarke 20). In Australia, coffee palaces did not seek the working classes, as clientele: at least in the cities they were largely for the nouveau riche. Coffee Palaces The discovery of gold in 1851 changed the direction of the Australian economy. An investment boom followed, with an influx of foreign funds and English banks lending freely to colonial speculators. By the 1880s, the manufacturing and construction sectors of the economy boomed and land prices were highly inflated. Governments shared in the wealth and ploughed money into urban infrastructure, particularly railways. Spurred on by these positive economic conditions and the newly extended inter-colonial rail network, international exhibitions were held in both Sydney and Melbourne. To celebrate modern technology and design in an industrial age, international exhibitions were phenomena that had spread throughout Europe and much of the world from the mid-19th century. According to Davison, exhibitions were “integral to the culture of nineteenth century industrialising societies” (158). In particular, these exhibitions provided the colonies with an opportunity to demonstrate to the world their economic power and achievements in the sciences, the arts and education, as well as to promote their commerce and industry. Massive purpose-built buildings were constructed to house the exhibition halls. In Sydney, the Garden Palace was erected in the Botanic Gardens for the 1879 Exhibition (it burnt down in 1882). In Melbourne, the Royal Exhibition Building, now a World Heritage site, was built in the Carlton Gardens for the 1880 Exhibition and extended for the 1888 Centennial Exhibition. Accommodation was required for the some one million interstate and international visitors who were to pass through the gates of the Garden Palace in Sydney. To meet this need, the temperance movement, keen to provide alternative accommodation to licensed hotels, backed the establishment of Sydney’s coffee palaces. The Sydney Coffee Palace Hotel Company was formed in 1878 to operate and manage a number of coffee palaces constructed during the 1870s. These were designed to compete with hotels by “offering all the ordinary advantages of those establishments without the allurements of the drink” (Murdoch). Coffee palaces were much more than ordinary hotels—they were often multi-purpose or mixed-use buildings that included a large number of rooms for accommodation as well as ballrooms and other leisure facilities to attract people away from pubs. As the Australian Town and Country Journal reveals, their services included the supply of affordable, wholesome food, either in the form of regular meals or occasional refreshments, cooked in kitchens fitted with the latest in culinary accoutrements. These “culinary temples” also provided smoking rooms, chess and billiard rooms, and rooms where people could read books, periodicals and all the local and national papers for free (121). Similar to the coffee houses of the Enlightenment, the coffee palaces brought businessmen, artists, writers, engineers, and scientists attending the exhibitions together to eat and drink (non-alcoholic), socialise and conduct business. The Johnson’s Temperance Coffee Palace located in York Street in Sydney produced a practical guide for potential investors and businessmen titled International Exhibition Visitors Pocket Guide to Sydney. It included information on the location of government departments, educational institutions, hospitals, charitable organisations, and embassies, as well as a list of the tariffs on goods from food to opium (1–17). Women, particularly the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union (WCTU) were a formidable force in the temperance movement (intemperance was generally regarded as a male problem and, more specifically, a husband problem). Murdoch argues, however, that much of the success of the push to establish coffee palaces was due to male politicians with business interests, such as the one-time Victorian premiere James Munro. Considered a stern, moral church-going leader, Munro expanded the temperance movement into a fanatical force with extraordinary power, which is perhaps why the temperance movement had its greatest following in Victoria (Murdoch). Several prestigious hotels were constructed to provide accommodation for visitors to the international exhibitions in Melbourne. Munro was responsible for building many of the city’s coffee palaces, including the Victoria (1880) and the Federal Coffee Palace (1888) in Collins Street. After establishing the Grand Coffee Palace Company, Munro took over the Grand Hotel (now the Windsor) in 1886. Munro expanded the hotel to accommodate some of the two million visitors who were to attend the Centenary Exhibition, renamed it the Grand Coffee Palace, and ceremoniously burnt its liquor licence at the official opening (Murdoch). By 1888 there were more than 50 coffee palaces in the city of Melbourne alone and Munro held thousands of shares in coffee palaces, including those in Geelong and Broken Hill. With its opening planned to commemorate the centenary of the founding of Australia and the 1888 International Exhibition, the construction of the Federal Coffee Palace, one of the largest hotels in Australia, was perhaps the greatest monument to the temperance movement. Designed in the French Renaissance style, the façade was embellished with statues, griffins and Venus in a chariot drawn by four seahorses. The building was crowned with an iron-framed domed tower. New passenger elevators—first demonstrated at the Sydney Exhibition—allowed the building to soar to seven storeys. According to the Federal Coffee Palace Visitor’s Guide, which was presented to every visitor, there were three lifts for passengers and others for luggage. Bedrooms were located on the top five floors, while the stately ground and first floors contained majestic dining, lounge, sitting, smoking, writing, and billiard rooms. There were electric service bells, gaslights, and kitchens “fitted with the most approved inventions for aiding proficients [sic] in the culinary arts,” while the luxury brand Pears soap was used in the lavatories and bathrooms (16–17). In 1891, a spectacular financial crash brought the economic boom to an abrupt end. The British economy was in crisis and to meet the predicament, English banks withdrew their funds in Australia. There was a wholesale collapse of building companies, mortgage banks and other financial institutions during 1891 and 1892 and much of the banking system was halted during 1893 (Attard). Meanwhile, however, while the eastern States were in the economic doldrums, gold was discovered in 1892 at Coolgardie and Kalgoorlie in Western Australia and, within two years, the west of the continent was transformed. As gold poured back to the capital city of Perth, the long dormant settlement hurriedly caught up and began to emulate the rest of Australia, including the construction of ornately detailed coffee palaces (Freeman 130). By 1904, Perth had 20 coffee palaces. When the No. 2 Coffee Palace opened in Pitt Street, Sydney, in 1880, the Australian Town and Country Journal reported that coffee palaces were “not only fashionable, but appear to have acquired a permanent footing in Sydney” (121). The coffee palace era, however, was relatively short-lived. Driven more by reformist and economic zeal than by good business sense, many were in financial trouble when the 1890’s Depression hit. Leading figures in the temperance movement were also involved in land speculation and building societies and when these schemes collapsed, many, including Munro, were financially ruined. Many of the palaces closed or were forced to apply for liquor licences in order to stay afloat. Others developed another life after the temperance movement’s influence waned and the coffee palace fad faded, and many were later demolished to make way for more modern buildings. The Federal was licensed in 1923 and traded as the Federal Hotel until its demolition in 1973. The Victoria, however, did not succumb to a liquor licence until 1967. The Sydney Coffee Palace in Woolloomooloo became the Sydney Eye Hospital and, more recently, smart apartments. Some fine examples still survive as reminders of Australia’s social and cultural heritage. The Windsor in Melbourne’s Spring Street and the Broken Hill Hotel, a massive three-story iconic pub in the outback now called simply “The Palace,” are some examples. Tea remained the beverage of choice in Australia until the 1950s when the lifting of government controls on the importation of coffee and the influence of American foodways coincided with the arrival of espresso-loving immigrants. As Australians were introduced to the espresso machine, the short black, the cappuccino, and the café latte and (reminiscent of the Enlightenment), the post-war malaise was shed in favour of the energy and vigour of modernist thought and creativity, fuelled in at least a small part by caffeine and the emergent café culture (Teffer). Although the temperance movement’s attempt to provide an alternative to the ubiquitous pubs failed, coffee has now outstripped the consumption of tea and today’s café culture ensures that wherever coffee is consumed, there is the possibility of a continuation of the Enlightenment’s lively discussions, exchange of news, and dissemination of ideas and information in a sober environment. References Attard, Bernard. “The Economic History of Australia from 1788: An Introduction.” EH.net Encyclopedia. 5 Feb. (2012) ‹http://eh.net/encyclopedia/article/attard.australia›. Blainey, Anna. “The Prohibition and Total Abstinence Movement in Australia 1880–1910.” Food, Power and Community: Essays in the History of Food and Drink. Ed. Robert Dare. Adelaide: Wakefield Press, 1999. 142–52. Boyce, Francis Bertie. “Shall I Vote for No License?” An address delivered at the Convention of the Parramatta Branch of New South Wales Alliance, 3 September 1906. 3rd ed. Parramatta: New South Wales Alliance, 1907. Clarke, James Freeman. Coffee Houses and Coffee Palaces in England. Boston: George H. Ellis, 1882. “Coffee Palace, No. 2.” Australian Town and Country Journal. 17 Jul. 1880: 121. Davison, Graeme. “Festivals of Nationhood: The International Exhibitions.” Australian Cultural History. Eds. S. L. Goldberg and F. B. Smith. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1989. 158–77. Denby, Elaine. Grand Hotels: Reality and Illusion. London: Reaktion Books, 2002. Ellis, Markman. The Coffee House: A Cultural History. London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2004. Federal Coffee Palace. The Federal Coffee Palace Visitors’ Guide to Melbourne, Its Suburbs, and Other Parts of the Colony of Victoria: Views of the Principal Public and Commercial Buildings in Melbourne, With a Bird’s Eye View of the City; and History of the Melbourne International Exhibition of 1880, etc. Melbourne: Federal Coffee House Company, 1888. Fitzgerald, Ross, and Trevor Jordan. Under the Influence: A History of Alcohol in Australia. Sydney: Harper Collins, 2009. Freeland, John. The Australian Pub. Melbourne: Sun Books, 1977. Johnson’s Temperance Coffee Palace. International Exhibition Visitors Pocket Guide to Sydney, Restaurant and Temperance Hotel. Sydney: Johnson’s Temperance Coffee Palace, 1879. Mitchell, Ann M. “Munro, James (1832–1908).” Australian Dictionary of Biography. Canberra: National Centre of Biography, Australian National U, 2006-12. 5 Feb. 2012 ‹http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/munro-james-4271/text6905›. Murdoch, Sally. “Coffee Palaces.” Encyclopaedia of Melbourne. Eds. Andrew Brown-May and Shurlee Swain. 5 Feb. 2012 ‹http://www.emelbourne.net.au/biogs/EM00371b.htm›. Muskett, Philip E. The Art of Living in Australia. New South Wales: Kangaroo Press, 1987. Standage, Tom. A History of the World in 6 Glasses. New York: Walker & Company, 2005. Sydney Coffee Palace Hotel Company Limited. Memorandum of Association of the Sydney Coffee Palace Hotel Company, Ltd. Sydney: Samuel Edward Lees, 1879. Symons, Michael. One Continuous Picnic: A Gastronomic History of Australia. Melbourne: Melbourne UP, 2007. Teffer, Nicola. Coffee Customs. Exhibition Catalogue. Sydney: Customs House, 2005.

Abstract:

AWARDSSome major international children’s literature awards have just been announced as I compile the news for this issue. Several of these have Canadian connections.2016 ALSC (Association for Library Service to Children) Book & Media Award WinnersJohn Newbery Medal"Last Stop on Market Street,” written by Matt de la Peña, illustrated by Christian Robinson and published by G. P. Putnam’s Sons, an imprint of Penguin Books (USA) LLC Newbery Honor Books"The War that Saved My Life," written by Kimberly Brubaker Bradley and published by Dial Books for Young Readers, an imprint of Penguin Books (USA) LLC“Roller Girl,” written and illustrated by Victoria Jamieson and published by Dial Books for Young Readers, an imprint of Penguin Books (USA) LLC“Echo,” written by Pam Muñoz Ryan and published by Scholastic Press, an imprint of Scholastic Inc.Randolph Caldecott Medal"Finding Winnie: The True Story of the World’s Most Famous Bear," illustrated by Sophie Blackall, written by Lindsay Mattick and published by Little, Brown and Company, a division of Hachette Book Group, Inc.Caldecott Honor Books"Trombone Shorty," illustrated by Bryan Collier, written by Troy Andrews and published by Abrams Books for Young Readers, an imprint of ABRAMS“Waiting,” illustrated and written by Kevin Henkes, published by Greenwillow Books, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers“Voice of Freedom Fannie Lou Hamer Spirit of the Civil Rights Movement,” illustrated by Ekua Holmes, written by Carole Boston Weatherford and published by Candlewick Press“Last Stop on Market Street,” illustrated by Christian Robinson, written by Matt de le Peña and published by G. P. Putnam’s Sons, an imprint of Penguin Books (USA) LLC Laura Ingalls Wilder AwardJerry Pinkney -- His award-winning works include “The Lion and the Mouse,” recipient of the Caldecott Award in 2010. In addition, Pinkney has received five Caldecott Honor Awards, five Coretta Scott King Illustrator Awards, and four Coretta Scott King Illustrator Honors. 2017 May Hill Arbuthnot Honor Lecture AwardJacqueline Woodson will deliver the 2017 May Hill Arbuthnot Honor Lecture. Woodson is the 2014 National Book Award winner for her New York Times bestselling memoir, “Brown Girl Dreaming.” Mildred L. Batchelder Award“The Wonderful Fluffy Little Squishy,” published by Enchanted Lion Books, written and illustrated by Beatrice Alemagna, and translated from the French by Claudia Zoe BedrickBatchelder Honor Books“Adam and Thomas,” published by Seven Stories Press, written by Aharon Appelfeld, iIllustrated by Philippe Dumas and translated from the Hebrew by Jeffrey M. Green“Grandma Lives in a Perfume Village,” published by NorthSouth Books, an imprint of Nordsüd Verlag AG, written by Fang Suzhen, iIllustrated by Sonja Danowski and translated from the Chinese by Huang Xiumin“Written and Drawn by Henrietta,” published by TOON Books, an imprint of RAW Junior, LLC and written, illustrated, and translated from the Spanish by Liniers.Pura Belpre (Author) Award“Enchanted Air: Two Cultures, Two Wings: A Memoir," written by Margarita Engle and published by Atheneum Books for Young Readers, an imprint of Simon & Schuster Children’s Publishing DivisionBelpre (Author) Honor Books"The Smoking Mirror," written by David Bowles and published by IFWG Publishing, Inc."Mango, Abuela, and Me," written by Meg Medina, illustrated by Angela Dominguez and published by Candlewick PressPura Belpre (Illustrator) Award"The Drum Dream Girl," illustrated by Rafael López, written by Margarita Engle and published by Houghton Mifflin HarcourtBelpre (Illustrator) Honor Books"My Tata’s Remedies = Los remedios de mi tata,” iIllustrated by Antonio Castro L., written by Roni Capin Rivera-Ashford and published by Cinco Puntos Press“Mango, Abuela, and Me,” illustrated by Angela Dominguez, written by Meg Medina and published by Candlewick Press“Funny Bones: Posada and His Day of the Dead Calaveras,” illustrated and written by Duncan Tonatiuh and published by Abrams Books for Young Readers, an imprint of ABRAMSAndrew Carnegie Medal "That Is NOT a Good Idea," produced by Weston Woods Studios, Inc.Theodor Seuss Geisel Award"Don’t Throw It to Mo!" written by David A. Adler, illustrated by Sam Ricks and published by Penguin Young Readers, and imprint of Penguin Group (USA), LLCGeisel Honor Books "A Pig, a Fox, and a Box," written and illustrated by Jonathan Fenske and published by Penguin Young Readers, an Imprint of Penguin Group (USA) LLC"Supertruck," written and illustrated by Stephen Savage and published by A Neal Porter Book published by Roaring Brook Press, a division of Holtzbrinck Publishing Holdings Limited Partnership"Waiting," written and illustrated by Kevin Henkes and published by Greenwillow Books, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers.Odyssey Award"The War that Saved My Life," produced by Listening Library, an imprint of the Penguin Random House Audio Publishing Group, written by Kimberly Brubaker Bradley and narrated by Jayne EntwistleOdyssey Honor Audiobook"Echo," produced by Scholastic Audio / Paul R. Gagne, written by Pam Munoz Ryan and narrated by Mark Bramhall, David De Vries, MacLeod Andrews and Rebecca SolerRobert F. Sibert Informational Book Medal"Funny Bones: Posada and His Day of the Dead Calaveras,” written and illustrated by Duncan Tonatiuh and published by Abrams Books for Young Readers, an imprint of ABRAMSSibert Honor Books"Drowned City: Hurricane Katrina and New Orleans," written and illustrated by Don Brown and published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt"The Boys Who Challenged Hitler: Knud Pedersen and the Churchill Club," by Phillip Hoose and published by Farrar Straus Giroux Books for Young Readers"Turning 15 on the Road to Freedom: My Story of the 1965 Selma Voting Rights March," written by Lynda Blackmon Lowery as told to Elspeth Leaco*ck and Susan Buckley, illustrated by PJ Loughran and published by Dial Books, an imprint of Penguin Group (USA) LLC"Voice of Freedom: Fannie Lou Hamer, Spirit of the Civil Rights Movement," written by Carole Boston Weatherford, illustrated by Ekua Holmes and published by Candlewick PressCONFERENCES & EVENTSThis 2016 is shaping up to be a busy year for those of us involved with Canadian children’s literature. To tantalize your appetite (and encourage you to get involved) here are some highlights:January:Vancouver Children’s Literature Roundtable event: A Celebration of BC’s Award Children’s Authors and Illustrators with special guests Rachel Hartman and the Children’s Literature Roundtables of Canada 2015 Information Book Award winners Margriet Ruurs & Katherine Gibson, January 27, 2016, 7 – 9 pm. Creekside Community Centre, 1 Athletes Way, Vancouver. Free to members and students.April:Wordpower programs from the Young Alberta Book Society feature teams of Albertan children’s literary artists touring to schools in rural areas. Thanks to the generous sponsorship of Cenovus Energy, schools unable to book artist visits due to prohibitive travel costs are able to participate.April 4-8: Wordpower South will send 8 artist teams to communities roughly between Drumheller and Medicine Hat. Artists include Karen Bass, Lorna Shultz-Nicholson, Bethany Ellis, Marty Chan, Mary Hays, Sigmund Brouwer, Carolyn Fisher, Natasha DeenApril 25-29: Wordpower North will have a team of 8 artists traveling among communities in north-eastern Alberta such as Fort MacKay, Conklin, Wabasca, Lac La Biche, Cold Lake, and Bonnyville. The artists include Kathy Jessup, Lois Donovan, Deborah Miller, David Poulsen, Gail de Vos, Karen Spafford-Fitz, Hazel Hutchins, Georgia Graham May: COMICS AND CONTEMPORARY LITERACY: May 2, 2016; 8:30am - 4:30pm at the Rozsa Centre, University of Calgary. This is a one day conference featuring presentations and a workshop by leading authors, scholars, and illustrators from the world of comics and graphic novels. This conference is the 5th in the annual 'Linguistic Diversity and Language Policy' series sponsored by the Chair, English as an Additional Language, Werklund School of Education, University of Calgary. Tom Ricento is the current Chair-holder. The conference is free and lunch is provided. Seating is limited, so register early. The four presenters are:Jillian Tamaki, illustrator for This One Summer, and winner of the Governor General's Award for children's illustration.Richard van Camp, best-selling author of The Lesser Blessed and Three Feathers, and member of the Dogrib Nation.Dr. Nick Sousanis, post-doctoral scholar, teacher and creator of the philosophical comic Unflattening.Dr. Bart Beaty, University of Calgary professor, acclaimed comics scholar and author of Comics vs. Art TD Canadian Children’s Book Week 2016. In 2016, the Canadian Children's Book Centre celebrates 40 years of bringing great Canadian children's books to young readers across the country and the annual TD Canadian Children’s Book Week will be occurring this May across Canada. The theme this year is the celebration of these 40 years of great books written, illustrated and published in Canada as well as stories that have been told over the years. The 2016 tour of storytellers, authors and illustrators and their area of travel are as follows:Alberta: Bob Graham, storyteller; Kate Jaimet, authorBritish Columbia (Interior region) Lisa Dalrymple, author; (Lower Mainland region) Graham Ross, illustrator; (Vancouver Island region) Wesley King, author; (Northern region, Rebecca Bender, author & illustrator.Manitoba: Angela Misri, author; Allison Van Diepen, authorNew Brunswick: Mary Ann Lippiatt, storytellerNewfoundland: Maureen Fergus, authorLabrador: Sharon Jennings, authorNorthwest Territories: Geneviève Després, illustratorNova Scotia: Judith Graves, authorNunavut: Gabrielle Grimard, illustratorOntario: Karen Autio, author; Marty Chan, author; Danika Dinsmore, author; Kallie George, author; Doretta Groenendyk, author & illustrator; Alison Hughes, author; Margriet Ruurs, author.Prince Edward Island: Wallace Edwards, author & illustratorQuebec (English-language tour): LM Falcone, author; Simon Rose, author; Kean Soo, author & illustrator; Robin Stevenson, author; and Tiffany Stone, author/poet.Saskatchewan: (Saskatoon and northern area) Donna Dudinsky, storyteller; (Moose Jaw/Regina and southern area) Sarah Ellis, authorYukon: Vicki Grant, author-----Gail de Vos is an adjunct professor who teaches courses on Canadian children's literature, young adult literature, and comic books & graphic novels at the School of Library and Information Studies (SLIS) at the University of Alberta. She is the author of nine books on storytelling and folklore. Gail is also a professional storyteller who has taught the storytelling course at SLIS for over two decades.

Abstract:

Photograph by Gonzalo Echeverria (2010)Declaring War Soon after Al Qaeda’s terrorist attacks on 11 September 2001, the Bush Administration described its new grand strategy: the “Global War on Terror”. This underpinned the subsequent counter-insurgency in Afghanistan and the United States invasion of Iraq in March 2003. Media pundits quickly applied the Global War on Terror label to the Madrid, Bali and London bombings, to convey how Al Qaeda’s terrorism had gone transnational. Meanwhile, international relations scholars debated the extent to which September 11 had changed the international system (Brenner; Mann 303). American intellectuals adopted several variations of the Global War on Terror in what initially felt like a transitional period of US foreign policy (Burns). Walter Laqueur suggested Al Qaeda was engaged in a “cosmological” and perpetual war. Paul Berman likened Al Qaeda and militant Islam to the past ideological battles against communism and fascism (Heilbrunn 248). In a widely cited article, neoconservative thinker Norman Podhoretz suggested the United States faced “World War IV”, which had three interlocking drivers: Al Qaeda and trans-national terrorism; political Islam as the West’s existential enemy; and nuclear proliferation to ‘rogue’ countries and non-state actors (Friedman 3). Podhoretz’s tone reflected a revival of his earlier Cold War politics and critique of the New Left (Friedman 148-149; Halper and Clarke 56; Heilbrunn 210). These stances attracted widespread support. For instance, the United States Marine Corp recalibrated its mission to fight a long war against “World War IV-like” enemies. Yet these stances left the United States unprepared as the combat situations in Afghanistan and Iraq worsened (Ricks; Ferguson; Filkins). Neoconservative ideals for Iraq “regime change” to transform the Middle East failed to deal with other security problems such as Pakistan’s Musharraf regime (Dorrien 110; Halper and Clarke 210-211; Friedman 121, 223; Heilbrunn 252). The Manichean and open-ended framing became a self-fulfilling prophecy for insurgents, jihadists, and militias. The Bush Administration quietly abandoned the Global War on Terror in July 2005. Widespread support had given way to policymaker doubt. Why did so many intellectuals and strategists embrace the Global War on Terror as the best possible “grand strategy” perspective of a post-September 11 world? Why was there so little doubt of this worldview? This is a debate with roots as old as the Sceptics versus the Sophists. Explanations usually focus on the Bush Administration’s “Vulcans” war cabinet: Vice President Dick Cheney, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfield, and National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice, who later became Secretary of State (Mann xv-xvi). The “Vulcans” were named after the Roman god Vulcan because Rice’s hometown Birmingham, Alabama, had “a mammoth fifty-six foot statue . . . [in] homage to the city’s steel industry” (Mann x) and the name stuck. Alternatively, explanations focus on how neoconservative thinkers shaped the intellectual climate after September 11, in a receptive media climate. Biographers suggest that “neoconservatism had become an echo chamber” (Heilbrunn 242) with its own media outlets, pundits, and think-tanks such as the American Enterprise Institute and Project for a New America. Neoconservatism briefly flourished in Washington DC until Iraq’s sectarian violence discredited the “Vulcans” and neoconservative strategists like Paul Wolfowitz (Friedman; Ferguson). The neoconservatives' combination of September 11’s aftermath with strongly argued historical analogies was initially convincing. They conferred with scholars such as Bernard Lewis, Samuel P. Huntington and Victor Davis Hanson to construct classicist historical narratives and to explain cultural differences. However, the history of the decade after September 11 also contains mis-steps and mistakes which make it a series of contingent decisions (Ferguson; Bergen). One way to analyse these contingent decisions is to pose “what if?” counterfactuals, or feasible alternatives to historical events (Lebow). For instance, what if September 11 had been a chemical and biological weapons attack? (Mann 317). Appendix 1 includes a range of alternative possibilities and “minimal rewrites” or slight variations on the historical events which occurred. Collectively, these counterfactuals suggest the role of agency, chance, luck, and the juxtaposition of better and worse outcomes. They pose challenges to the classicist interpretation adopted soon after September 11 to justify “World War IV” (Podhoretz). A ‘Two-Track’ Process for ‘World War IV’ After the September 11 attacks, I think an overlapping two-track process occurred with the “Vulcans” cabinet, neoconservative advisers, and two “echo chambers”: neoconservative think-tanks and the post-September 11 media. Crucially, Bush’s “Vulcans” war cabinet succeeded in gaining civilian control of the United States war decision process. Although successful in initiating the 2003 Iraq War this civilian control created a deeper crisis in US civil-military relations (Stevenson; Morgan). The “Vulcans” relied on “politicised” intelligence such as a United Kingdom intelligence report on Iraq’s weapons development program. The report enabled “a climate of undifferentiated fear to arise” because its public version did not distinguish between chemical, biological, radiological or nuclear weapons (Halper and Clarke, 210). The cautious 2003 National Intelligence Estimates (NIE) report on Iraq was only released in a strongly edited form. For instance, the US Department of Energy had expressed doubts about claims that Iraq had approached Niger for uranium, and was using aluminium tubes for biological and chemical weapons development. Meanwhile, the post-September 11 media had become a second “echo chamber” (Halper and Clarke 194-196) which amplified neoconservative arguments. Berman, Laqueur, Podhoretz and others who framed the intellectual climate were “risk entrepreneurs” (Mueller 41-43) that supported the “World War IV” vision. The media also engaged in aggressive “flak” campaigns (Herman and Chomsky 26-28; Mueller 39-42) designed to limit debate and to stress foreign policy stances and themes which supported the Bush Administration. When former Central Intelligence Agency director James Woolsey’s claimed that Al Qaeda had close connections to Iraqi intelligence, this was promoted in several books, including Michael Ledeen’s War Against The Terror Masters, Stephen Hayes’ The Connection, and Laurie Mylroie’s Bush v. The Beltway; and in partisan media such as Fox News, NewsMax, and The Weekly Standard who each attacked the US State Department and the CIA (Dorrien 183; Hayes; Ledeen; Mylroie; Heilbrunn 237, 243-244; Mann 310). This was the media “echo chamber” at work. The group Accuracy in Media also campaigned successfully to ensure that US cable providers did not give Al Jazeera English access to US audiences (Barker). Cosmopolitan ideals seemed incompatible with what the “flak” groups desired. The two-track process converged on two now infamous speeches. US President Bush’s State of the Union Address on 29 January 2002, and US Secretary of State Colin Powell’s presentation to the United Nations on 5 February 2003. Bush’s speech included a line from neoconservative David Frumm about North Korea, Iraq and Iran as an “Axis of Evil” (Dorrien 158; Halper and Clarke 139-140; Mann 242, 317-321). Powell’s presentation to the United Nations included now-debunked threat assessments. In fact, Powell had altered the speech’s original draft by I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby, who was Cheney’s chief of staff (Dorrien 183-184). Powell claimed that Iraq had mobile biological weapons facilities, linked to Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. However, the International Atomic Energy Agency’s (IAEA) Mohamed El-Baradei, the Defense Intelligence Agency, the State Department, and the Institute for Science and International Security all strongly doubted this claim, as did international observers (Dorrien 184; Halper and Clarke 212-213; Mann 353-354). Yet this information was suppressed: attacked by “flak” or given little visible media coverage. Powell’s agenda included trying to rebuild an international coalition and to head off weather changes that would affect military operations in the Middle East (Mann 351). Both speeches used politicised variants of “weapons of mass destruction”, taken from the counterterrorism literature (Stern; Laqueur). Bush’s speech created an inflated geopolitical threat whilst Powell relied on flawed intelligence and scientific visuals to communicate a non-existent threat (Vogel). However, they had the intended effect on decision makers. US Under-Secretary of Defense, the neoconservative Paul Wolfowitz, later revealed to Vanity Fair that “weapons of mass destruction” was selected as an issue that all potential stakeholders could agree on (Wilkie 69). Perhaps the only remaining outlet was satire: Armando Iannucci’s 2009 film In The Loop parodied the diplomatic politics surrounding Powell’s speech and the civil-military tensions on the Iraq War’s eve. In the short term the two track process worked in heading off doubt. The “Vulcans” blocked important information on pre-war Iraq intelligence from reaching the media and the general public (Prados). Alternatively, they ignored area specialists and other experts, such as when Coalition Provisional Authority’s L. Paul Bremer ignored the US State Department’s fifteen volume ‘Future of Iraq’ project (Ferguson). Public “flak” and “risk entrepreneurs” mobilised a range of motivations from grief and revenge to historical memory and identity politics. This combination of private and public processes meant that although doubts were expressed, they could be contained through the dual echo chambers of neoconservative policymaking and the post-September 11 media. These factors enabled the “Vulcans” to proceed with their “regime change” plans despite strong public opposition from anti-war protestors. Expressing DoubtsMany experts and institutions expressed doubt about specific claims the Bush Administration made to support the 2003 Iraq War. This doubt came from three different and sometimes overlapping groups. Subject matter experts such as the IAEA’s Mohamed El-Baradei and weapons development scientists countered the UK intelligence report and Powell’s UN speech. However, they did not get the media coverage warranted due to “flak” and “echo chamber” dynamics. Others could challenge misleading historical analogies between insurgent Iraq and Nazi Germany, and yet not change the broader outcomes (Benjamin). Independent journalists one group who gained new information during the 1990-91 Gulf War: some entered Iraq from Kuwait and documented a more humanitarian side of the war to journalists embedded with US military units (Uyarra). Finally, there were dissenters from bureaucratic and institutional processes. In some cases, all three overlapped. In their separate analyses of the post-September 11 debate on intelligence “failure”, Zegart and Jervis point to a range of analytic misperceptions and institutional problems. However, the intelligence community is separated from policymakers such as the “Vulcans”. Compartmentalisation due to the “need to know” principle also means that doubting analysts can be blocked from releasing information. Andrew Wilkie discovered this when he resigned from Australia’s Office for National Assessments (ONA) as a transnational issues analyst. Wilkie questioned the pre-war assessments in Powell’s United Nations speech that were used to justify the 2003 Iraq War. Wilkie was then attacked publicly by Australian Prime Minister John Howard. This overshadowed a more important fact: both Howard and Wilkie knew that due to Australian legislation, Wilkie could not publicly comment on ONA intelligence, despite the invitation to do so. This barrier also prevented other intelligence analysts from responding to the “Vulcans”, and to “flak” and “echo chamber” dynamics in the media and neoconservative think-tanks. Many analysts knew that the excerpts released from the 2003 NIE on Iraq was highly edited (Prados). For example, Australian agencies such as the ONA, the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, and the Department of Defence knew this (Wilkie 98). However, analysts are trained not to interfere with policymakers, even when there are significant civil-military irregularities. Military officials who spoke out about pre-war planning against the “Vulcans” and their neoconservative supporters were silenced (Ricks; Ferguson). Greenlight Capital’s hedge fund manager David Einhorn illustrates in a different context what might happen if analysts did comment. Einhorn gave a speech to the Ira Sohn Conference on 15 May 2002 debunking the management of Allied Capital. Einhorn’s “short-selling” led to retaliation from Allied Capital, a Securities and Exchange Commission investigation, and growing evidence of potential fraud. If analysts adopted Einhorn’s tactics—combining rigorous analysis with targeted, public denunciation that is widely reported—then this may have short-circuited the “flak” and “echo chamber” effects prior to the 2003 Iraq War. The intelligence community usually tries to pre-empt such outcomes via contestation exercises and similar processes. This was the goal of the 2003 NIE on Iraq, despite the fact that the US Department of Energy which had the expertise was overruled by other agencies who expressed opinions not necessarily based on rigorous scientific and technical analysis (Prados; Vogel). In counterterrorism circles, similar disinformation arose about Aum Shinrikyo’s biological weapons research after its sarin gas attack on Tokyo’s subway system on 20 March 1995 (Leitenberg). Disinformation also arose regarding nuclear weapons proliferation to non-state actors in the 1990s (Stern). Interestingly, several of the “Vulcans” and neoconservatives had been involved in an earlier controversial contestation exercise: Team B in 1976. The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) assembled three Team B groups in order to evaluate and forecast Soviet military capabilities. One group headed by historian Richard Pipes gave highly “alarmist” forecasts and then attacked a CIA NIE about the Soviets (Dorrien 50-56; Mueller 81). The neoconservatives adopted these same tactics to reframe the 2003 NIE from its position of caution, expressed by several intelligence agencies and experts, to belief that Iraq possessed a current, covert program to develop weapons of mass destruction (Prados). Alternatively, information may be leaked to the media to express doubt. “Non-attributable” background interviews to establishment journalists like Seymour Hersh and Bob Woodward achieved this. Wikileaks publisher Julian Assange has recently achieved notoriety due to US diplomatic cables from the SIPRNet network released from 28 November 2010 onwards. Supporters have favourably compared Assange to Daniel Ellsberg, the RAND researcher who leaked the Pentagon Papers (Ellsberg; Ehrlich and Goldsmith). Whilst Elsberg succeeded because a network of US national papers continued to print excerpts from the Pentagon Papers despite lawsuit threats, Assange relied in part on favourable coverage from the UK’s Guardian newspaper. However, suspected sources such as US Army soldier Bradley Manning are not protected whilst media outlets are relatively free to publish their scoops (Walt, ‘Woodward’). Assange’s publication of SIPRNet’s diplomatic cables will also likely mean greater restrictions on diplomatic and military intelligence (Walt, ‘Don’t Write’). Beyond ‘Doubt’ Iraq’s worsening security discredited many of the factors that had given the neoconservatives credibility. The post-September 11 media became increasingly more critical of the US military in Iraq (Ferguson) and cautious about the “echo chamber” of think-tanks and media outlets. Internet sites for Al Jazeera English, Al-Arabiya and other networks have enabled people to bypass “flak” and directly access these different viewpoints. Most damagingly, the non-discovery of Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction discredited both the 2003 NIE on Iraq and Colin Powell’s United Nations presentation (Wilkie 104). Likewise, “risk entrepreneurs” who foresaw “World War IV” in 2002 and 2003 have now distanced themselves from these apocalyptic forecasts due to a series of mis-steps and mistakes by the Bush Administration and Al Qaeda’s over-calculation (Bergen). The emergence of sites such as Wikileaks, and networks like Al Jazeera English and Al-Arabiya, are a response to the politics of the past decade. They attempt to short-circuit past “echo chambers” through providing access to different sources and leaked data. The Global War on Terror framed the Bush Administration’s response to September 11 as a war (Kirk; Mueller 59). Whilst this prematurely closed off other possibilities, it has also unleashed a series of dynamics which have undermined the neoconservative agenda. The “classicist” history and historical analogies constructed to justify the “World War IV” scenario are just one of several potential frameworks. “Flak” organisations and media “echo chambers” are now challenged by well-financed and strategic alternatives such as Al Jazeera English and Al-Arabiya. Doubt is one defence against “risk entrepreneurs” who seek to promote a particular idea: doubt guards against uncritical adoption. Perhaps the enduring lesson of the post-September 11 debates, though, is that doubt alone is not enough. What is needed are individuals and institutions that understand the strategies which the neoconservatives and others have used, and who also have the soft power skills during crises to influence critical decision-makers to choose alternatives. Appendix 1: Counterfactuals Richard Ned Lebow uses “what if?” counterfactuals to examine alternative possibilities and “minimal rewrites” or slight variations on the historical events that occurred. The following counterfactuals suggest that the Bush Administration’s Global War on Terror could have evolved very differently . . . or not occurred at all. Fact: The 2003 Iraq War and 2001 Afghanistan counterinsurgency shaped the Bush Administration’s post-September 11 grand strategy. Counterfactual #1: Al Gore decisively wins the 2000 U.S. election. Bush v. Gore never occurs. After the September 11 attacks, Gore focuses on international alliance-building and gains widespread diplomatic support rather than a neoconservative agenda. He authorises Special Operations Forces in Afghanistan and works closely with the Musharraf regime in Pakistan to target Al Qaeda’s muhajideen. He ‘contains’ Saddam Hussein’s Iraq through measurement and signature, technical intelligence, and more stringent monitoring by the International Atomic Energy Agency. Minimal Rewrite: United 93 crashes in Washington DC, killing senior members of the Gore Administration. Fact: U.S. Special Operations Forces failed to kill Osama bin Laden in late November and early December 2001 at Tora Bora. Counterfactual #2: U.S. Special Operations Forces kill Osama bin Laden in early December 2001 during skirmishes at Tora Bora. Ayman al-Zawahiri is critically wounded, captured, and imprisoned. The rest of Al Qaeda is scattered. Minimal Rewrite: Osama bin Laden’s death turns him into a self-mythologised hero for decades. Fact: The UK Blair Government supplied a 50-page intelligence dossier on Iraq’s weapons development program which the Bush Administration used to support its pre-war planning. Counterfactual #3: Rogue intelligence analysts debunk the UK Blair Government’s claims through a series of ‘targeted’ leaks to establishment news sources. Minimal Rewrite: The 50-page intelligence dossier is later discovered to be correct about Iraq’s weapons development program. Fact: The Bush Administration used the 2003 National Intelligence Estimate to “build its case” for “regime change” in Saddam Hussein’s Iraq. Counterfactual #4: A joint investigation by The New York Times and The Washington Post rebuts U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell’s speech to the United National Security Council, delivered on 5 February 2003. Minimal Rewrite: The Central Intelligence Agency’s whitepaper “Iraq’s Weapons of Mass Destruction Programs” (October 2002) more accurately reflects the 2003 NIE’s cautious assessments. Fact: The Bush Administration relied on Ahmed Chalabi for its postwar estimates about Iraq’s reconstruction. Counterfactual #5: The Bush Administration ignores Chalabi’s advice and relies instead on the U.S. State Department’s 15 volume report “The Future of Iraq”. Minimal Rewrite: The Coalition Provisional Authority appoints Ahmed Chalabi to head an interim Iraqi government. Fact: L. Paul Bremer signed orders to disband Iraq’s Army and to De-Ba’athify Iraq’s new government. Counterfactual #6: Bremer keeps Iraq’s Army intact and uses it to impose security in Baghdad to prevent looting and to thwart insurgents. Rather than a De-Ba’athification policy, Bremer uses former Baath Party members to gather situational intelligence. Minimal Rewrite: Iraq’s Army refuses to disband and the De-Ba’athification policy uncovers several conspiracies to undermine the Coalition Provisional Authority. AcknowledgmentsThanks to Stephen McGrail for advice on science and technology analysis.References Barker, Greg. “War of Ideas”. PBS Frontline. Boston, MA: 2007. ‹http://www.pbs.org/frontlineworld/stories/newswar/video1.html› Benjamin, Daniel. “Condi’s Phony History.” Slate 29 Aug. 2003. ‹http://www.slate.com/id/2087768/pagenum/all/›. Bergen, Peter L. The Longest War: The Enduring Conflict between America and Al Qaeda. New York: The Free Press, 2011. Berman, Paul. Terror and Liberalism. W.W. Norton & Company: New York, 2003. Brenner, William J. “In Search of Monsters: Realism and Progress in International Relations Theory after September 11.” Security Studies 15.3 (2006): 496-528. Burns, Alex. “The Worldflash of a Coming Future.” M/C Journal 6.2 (April 2003). ‹http://journal.media-culture.org.au/0304/08-worldflash.php›. Dorrien, Gary. Imperial Designs: Neoconservatism and the New Pax Americana. New York: Routledge, 2004. Ehrlich, Judith, and Goldsmith, Rick. The Most Dangerous Man in America: Daniel Ellsberg and the Pentagon Papers. Berkley CA: Kovno Communications, 2009. Einhorn, David. Fooling Some of the People All of the Time: A Long Short (and Now Complete) Story. Hoboken NJ: John Wiley & Sons, 2010. Ellison, Sarah. “The Man Who Spilled The Secrets.” Vanity Fair (Feb. 2011). ‹http://www.vanityfair.com/politics/features/2011/02/the-guardian-201102›. Ellsberg, Daniel. Secrets: A Memoir of Vietnam and the Pentagon Papers. New York: Viking, 2002. Ferguson, Charles. No End in Sight, New York: Representational Pictures, 2007. Filkins, Dexter. The Forever War. New York: Vintage Books, 2008. Friedman, Murray. The Neoconservative Revolution: Jewish Intellectuals and the Shaping of Public Policy. New York: Cambridge UP, 2005. Halper, Stefan, and Jonathan Clarke. America Alone: The Neo-Conservatives and the Global Order. New York: Cambridge UP, 2004. Hayes, Stephen F. The Connection: How Al Qaeda’s Collaboration with Saddam Hussein Has Endangered America. New York: HarperCollins, 2004. Heilbrunn, Jacob. They Knew They Were Right: The Rise of the Neocons. New York: Doubleday, 2008. Herman, Edward S., and Noam Chomsky. Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media. Rev. ed. New York: Pantheon Books, 2002. Iannucci, Armando. In The Loop. London: BBC Films, 2009. Jervis, Robert. Why Intelligence Fails: Lessons from the Iranian Revolution and the Iraq War. Ithaca NY: Cornell UP, 2010. Kirk, Michael. “The War behind Closed Doors.” PBS Frontline. Boston, MA: 2003. ‹http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/iraq/›. Laqueur, Walter. No End to War: Terrorism in the Twenty-First Century. New York: Continuum, 2003. Lebow, Richard Ned. Forbidden Fruit: Counterfactuals and International Relations. Princeton NJ: Princeton UP, 2010. Ledeen, Michael. The War against The Terror Masters. New York: St. Martin’s Griffin, 2003. Leitenberg, Milton. “Aum Shinrikyo's Efforts to Produce Biological Weapons: A Case Study in the Serial Propagation of Misinformation.” Terrorism and Political Violence 11.4 (1999): 149-158. Mann, James. Rise of the Vulcans: The History of Bush’s War Cabinet. New York: Viking Penguin, 2004. Morgan, Matthew J. The American Military after 9/11: Society, State, and Empire. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008. Mueller, John. Overblown: How Politicians and the Terrorism Industry Inflate National Security Threats, and Why We Believe Them. New York: The Free Press, 2009. Mylroie, Laurie. Bush v The Beltway: The Inside Battle over War in Iraq. New York: Regan Books, 2003. Nutt, Paul C. Why Decisions Fail. San Francisco: Berrett-Koelher, 2002. Podhoretz, Norman. “How to Win World War IV”. Commentary 113.2 (2002): 19-29. Prados, John. Hoodwinked: The Documents That Reveal How Bush Sold Us a War. New York: The New Press, 2004. Ricks, Thomas. Fiasco: The American Military Adventure in Iraq. New York: The Penguin Press, 2006. Stern, Jessica. The Ultimate Terrorists. Boston, MA: Harvard UP, 2001. Stevenson, Charles A. Warriors and Politicians: US Civil-Military Relations under Stress. New York: Routledge, 2006. Walt, Stephen M. “Should Bob Woodward Be Arrested?” Foreign Policy 10 Dec. 2010. ‹http://walt.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2010/12/10/more_wikileaks_double_standards›. Walt, Stephen M. “‘Don’t Write If You Can Talk...’: The Latest from WikiLeaks.” Foreign Policy 29 Nov. 2010. ‹http://walt.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2010/11/29/dont_write_if_you_can_talk_the_latest_from_wikileaks›. Wilkie, Andrew. Axis of Deceit. Melbourne: Black Ink Books, 2003. Uyarra, Esteban Manzanares. “War Feels like War”. London: BBC, 2003. Vogel, Kathleen M. “Iraqi Winnebagos™ of Death: Imagined and Realized Futures of US Bioweapons Threat Assessments.” Science and Public Policy 35.8 (2008): 561–573. Zegart, Amy. Spying Blind: The CIA, the FBI and the Origins of 9/11. Princeton NJ: Princeton UP, 2007.

Abstract:

Introduction It appears that graffiti has begun to clean up its act. Escalating numbers of mature graffiti writers feel the removal of their graffiti has robbed them of a history, and are turning to legal projects in an effort to restore it. Phibs has declared the graffiti underground “limited” and Kano claims its illegal aspect no longer inspires him (Hamilton, 73). A sign of the times was the exhibition Sake of Name: Australian Graffiti Now which opened at the Wharf 2 Theatre in January 2001. The exhibition was commissioned by the Sydney Theatre Company and comprised twenty-two pieces painted by graffiti writers from around Australia. Keen to present a respectable image, writers rejected the original title of Bomb the Wharf, as they felt it focused on the negative aspects of the culture (Andrews, 2). Premier Bob Carr opened the exhibition with the declaration that there is a difference between “graffiti art” and “graffiti vandalism”. The Premier’s stance struck a discordant note with Tony Stevens, a twenty-three-year veteran graffiti cleaner. Described by the Sydney Morning Herald as an “urban art critic by default,” Stevens could see no distinction between graffiti art and vandalism (Leys, 1). Furthermore, he expressed his disappointment that the pieces had “no sense of individuality … it could be graffiti from any American city” (Stevens, 1). As far as Stevens could see, Australian graffiti expressed nothing of its Australian context; it simply mimicked that of America. Sydney Theatre Company director Benedict Andrews responded with a venomous attack on Stevens. Andrews accused the cleaner of being blinded by prejudice (1), and felt that years of cleaning texta tags from railway corridors could not have possibly qualified Stevens as an art critic (3). “The artists in this exhibition are not misfits,” Andrews wrote (2). “They are serious artists in dialogue with their culture and the landscapes in which they live” (2). He went on to hail the strength and diversity of the Australian graffiti scene: “it is a vital and agile international culture and in Australia has evolved in specific ways” (1). The altercation between Stevens and Andrews pointed to one of the debates concerning Australian graffiti: whether it is unique or simply imitative of the American form. Hinged on the assessment of graffiti as vandalism is the view that graffiti is dirty, a disease. Proponents of this view consider graffiti to be an undifferentiated global phenomenon. Others conceive of graffiti as art, and as such argue that it is expressive of local experiences. Graffiti writers maintain that graffiti is expressive of local experiences and they describe it in terms of regional styles and aesthetics. This article maps the transformation of hip hop graffiti as it has been disseminated throughout the world. It registers the distinctiveness of graffiti in Australia and argues that graffiti is not a globally hom*ogenous form, but one which develops in a locally specific manner. Writing and Replicating: Hip Hop Graffiti and Cultural Imperialism Contemporary graffiti subcultures are strongly identified with large American cities. Originating in the black neighbourhood cultures of Philadelphia and New York City in the late 1960s and early 1970s, hip hop graffiti emerged as part of a larger, homegrown, alternative youth culture (“Urban Graffiti”, 77). Before the end of the 1970s, the aesthetic codes and stylised images of hip hop graffiti began to disseminate to major cities across America and throughout the globe. Its transmission was facilitated by: the production and export of films such as Style Wars (Silver and Chalfant, 1983) and Wild Style (Ahearn, 1983); the covers of rap albums; graffiti magazines; art dealers; and style manuals such as Subway Art (Cooper and Chalfant) and Spraycan Art (Chalfant and Prigroff). Graffiti migrated to Australian shores during the early 1980s, gaining influence through the appearance of these seminal works, which are credited by many as having inspired them to pick up a can of spraypaint. During its larval stages, the subcultural codes of graffiti invented by American writers were reiterated in an Australian context. Australian graffiti writers poached the vocabulary and rhetoric invented by their American counterparts. Writers spoke of “getting up”, “getting fame” and their “crew”, classifying their work as “tags”, “pieces”, or “throw ups”. They utilised the same bubble letters, and later, the incomprehensible “wildstyle” originally devised by American writers. It was not long, however, before Australian writers were making their own innovations and developing a unique style. Despite this, there is still widespread conviction in the view that Australian graffiti is a replica of an American cultural form. This view is supported at a theoretical level by the concept of cultural imperialism. It is generally understood, at a basic level, to be the diffusion of a foreign culture at the expense of a local culture. The concept has been usefully clarified by John Tomlinson. Since there are various orders of power involved in allegations of cultural imperialism, Tomlinson attempts to resist some implicit “master narrative” of the term, accounting for cultural imperialism in a multidimensional fashion (20). He outlines five possible versions, which inflect cultural imperialism to mean cultural domination; a discourse of nationality; media imperialism; global capital; and modernity (19-28). The idea that Australian graffiti replicates American graffiti draws particularly on the first two versions—that of cultural imperialism as cultural domination, and the discourse of nationality. Both these approaches focus on the processes involved in cultural imperialism—“the invasion of an indigenous culture by a foreign one” (Tomlinson, 23). Many people I spoke to about graffiti saw it as evidence of foreign, particularly American, domination and influence over Australian culture. They expressed concern that the appearance of graffiti would signal an influx of “American” problems: gang activity, escalating violence and social disorder. Cultural imperialism as a discourse of nationality hinges on the concepts of “belonging” and “indigenous culture”. In a conference organised by the Graffiti Program of the Government of Western Australia, Senator Ian Campbell argued that graffiti had no place in Australia. He felt that, “there should be little need for social comment through the vandalism of other’s property. Perhaps in nations where … freedoms are not recognised … but not in Australia” (6). Tomlinson argues that the conceptions of cultural imperialism as both cultural domination and as a discourse of nationality are popular because of their highly ambiguous (and thus accommodating) nature (19, 23). However, both notions are problematic. Tomlinson immediately dismisses the notion of cultural imperialism as cultural domination, arguing that one should aim for specificity. “Imperialism” and “domination” are rather general notions, and as such both have sufficient conceptual breadth and ambiguity to accommodate most uses to which they might be put (19). Cultural imperialism as a discourse of nationality is similarly problematic, relying on the precise definitions of a series of terms—such as belonging, and indigenous culture—which have multiple inflections (24). Cultural imperialism has often been tracked as a process of hom*ogenisation. Conceiving of cultural imperialism as hom*ogenisation is particularly pertinent to the argument for the global hom*ogeneity of graffiti. Cultural hom*ogenisation makes “everywhere seem more or less the same,” assuming a global uniformity which is inherently Western, and in extreme cases, American (6). The implications of “Americanisation” are relevant to the attitudes of Australian graffiti writers. On the Blitzkrieg Bulletin Board—an internet board for Australian graffiti writers—I found evidence of a range of responses to “Americanisation” in Australian graffiti. One of the writers had posted: “you shouldn’t even be doing graff if you are a toy little kid, buying export paint and painting legal walls during the day … f*** all y’all nigg*z!” s3 replied, “I do know that modern graffiti originated in America but … token are you American? Why do you want to talk like an American gangsta rapper?” The global currency of graffiti is one in which local originality and distinctiveness are highly prized. It is a source of shame for a writer to “bite”. Many of the writers I spoke to became irate when I suggested that Australian styles “bit” those of America. It seems inconsistent that Australian graffiti writers would reproduce American graffiti, if they do not even tolerate Australian writers using the word “nigg*”. Like the argument that Australian graffiti replicates that of America, the concept of cultural imperialism is problematic. By the 1970s the concept was beginning to come apart at the seams, its “artificial coherence” exposed when subjected to a range of applications (Tomlinson, 8). Although the idea of cultural imperialism has been discredited and somewhat abandoned at the level of theory, the concept nonetheless continues to guide attitudes towards graffiti. Jeff Ferrell has argued that the interplay of cultural resources involved in worldwide graffiti directly locates it inside issues of cultural imperialism (“Review of Moscow Graffiti”, paragraph 5). Stylistic and subcultural consistencies are mobilised to substantiate assertions of the operation of cultural imperialism in the global form of graffiti. This serves to render it globally hom*ogeneous. While many graffiti writers would concede that graffiti maintains certain global elements, few would agree that this is indicative of a global hom*ogeneity of form. As part of the hip hop component of their website, Triple J conducted an investigation into graffiti. It found that “the graffiti aesthetic developed in New York has been modified with individual characteristics … and has transformed into a unique Australian style” (“Old Skool”, paragraph 6). Veteran writers Umph, Exit, Phibs and Dmote agree. Perth writer Zenith claims, “we came up with styles from the US back in the day and it has grown into something quite unique” (personal communication). Exit declares, “every city has its own particular style. Graffiti from Australia can easily be distinguished by graffiti artists. Australia has its own particular style” (1). Umph agrees: “to us writers, the differences are obvious” (2). Although some continue to perceive Australian graffiti as replicating that of America, it appears that this is no longer the case. Evidence has emerged that Australian graffiti has evolved into a unique and localised form, which no longer imitates that of America. “Going Over” Cultural Imperialism: Hip Hop Graffiti and Processes of Globalisation The argument that graffiti has developed local inflections has lately garnered increasing support due to new theories of global cultural interaction and exchange. The modern era has been characterised by the increasing circulation of goods, capital, knowledge, information, people, images, ideologies, technologies and practices across national borders and territorial boundaries (Appadurai, 230; Scholte, 10). Academic discussion of these developments has converged in recent years around the concept of “globalisation”. While cultural imperialism describes these movements as the diffusion of a foreign culture at the expense of a local one, globalisation interprets these profound changes as evidence of “a global ecumene of persistent cultural interaction and exchange” (Hannerz, 107). In such a view, the globe is not characterised by domination and hom*ogenisation (as with cultural imperialism), but more in terms of exchange and heterogeneity. Recent studies acknowledge that globalisation is complex and multidimensional (Giddens, 30; Kalb, 1), even a process of paradoxes (Findlay, 30). Globalisation is frequently described in terms of contradictory processes—universalisation vs. particularisation, hom*ogenisation vs. differentiation, integration vs. fragmentation. Another of these dialectical tendencies is that of localisation. Kloos defines localisation as representing “the rise of localised, culturally defined identities … localisation stresses sociocultural specificity, in a limited space” (281). While localisation initially appears to stand in opposition to globalisation, the concepts are actually involved in a dialectical process (Giddens, 64). The relationship between localisation and globalisation has been formulated as follows: “Processes of globalisation trigger identity movements leading to the creation of localised, cultural-specific, identities” (Kloos, 282). The development of localisation is particularly pertinent to this study of graffiti. The concept allows for local diversity and has led to the understanding that global cultural phenomena are involved in a process of exchange. Work around globalisation lends credence to the argument that, as graffiti has disseminated throughout the globe, it has mutated to the specific locale within which it exists. Graffiti has always been locally specific: from the early stages which witnessed writers such as Julio 204, Fran 207 and Joe 136 (the numbers referred to their street), to the more recent practice of suffixing tag names with the name of a writers’ crew and their area code. The tendency to include area codes has been largely abandoned in Australia as the law has responded to graffiti with increasing vigilance, but evolutions in graffiti have pointed towards the development of regionally specific styles which writers have come to recognise. Thus, graffiti cannot be thought of as a globally hom*ogenous form, nor can it be said that Australian graffiti replicates that of America. As hip hop has circulated throughout the globe it has appeared to adopt local inflections, having adapted into something quite locally distinctive. In a sense hip hop has been “translated” to particular circ*mstances. It is now appropriate to consider Australian hip hop and graffiti as a translation of a global cultural phenomenon. A useful reference in this regard is Yuri Lotman, who designates dialogue as the elementary mechanism of translation (143). He suggests that participants involved in a dialogue alternate between a position of “transmission” and “reception” (144). Hence cultural developments are cyclical, and relationships between units—which may range from genres to national cultures—pass through periods of “transmission” and “reception” (144). Lotman proposes that the relationship between structures follows a pattern: at first, a structure will appear in decline, static, unoriginal. He records these “intermissions” as “pauses in dialogue”, during which the structure absorbs influences from the outside (144). When saturation reaches a certain limit, the structure begins producing its own texts as its “passive state changes to a state of alertness” (145). This is a useful way of comprehending Australian hip hop culture. It appears that the Australian hip hop scene has left behind its period of “reception” and is now witnessing one of “transmission” in which it is producing uniquely Australian flavours and styles. Of the contemporary graffiti I have observed, it appears that Australian writing is truly distinctive. Australian writers may have initially poached the subcultural codes developed by their American counterparts, however Australia has evolved to be truly unique where it counts—in graffiti styles. Distinctive graffiti styles can be witnessed, not only between different continents, but also within geographic locations. American graffiti registers a variety of locally specific forms. New York remains devoted to the letter, while graffiti on the west coast of America is renowned for its gang writing. American lettering styles tend to develop existing styles. New York wildstyle is easily recognised, and differs from letters in the Bay Area and San Francisco, which feature arrows inside the letters. While American graffiti is by and large concerned with letters, Australia has gained some repute for its exploration of characters. Like American writers, Australians employ characters poached from popular culture, but for the most part Australian writers employ characters and figures that they have invented themselves, often poaching elements from a wide variety of sources and utilising a wide variety of styles. Marine imagery, not usually employed in American graffiti, recurs in Australian pieces. Kikinit in the Park, a youth festival held in Fremantle in March 2001, featured a live urban art display by Bugszy Snaps, who combined oceanic and graffiti iconography, fusing sea creatures with spraypaint cans. Phibs also “uses images from the sea a lot” (Hamilton, 73), having grown up at the beach. In spite of this focus on the development of characters and images, Australia has not neglected the letter. While initially Australian graffiti artists imitated the styles developed in America, Australian lettering has evolved into something exceptional. Some writers have continued to employ bubble letters and wildstyle, and Australia has kept up with modifications in wildstyle that has seen it move towards 3D. Australia has cultivated this form of traditional wildstyle, elevating it to new heights. Sometimes it is combined with other styles; other times it appears as controlled wildstyle—set around a framework of some sort. In other instances, Australia has charted new territory with the letter, developing styles that are completely individual. Australian writing also blends a variety of lettering and graphic styles, combining letters and figures in new and exciting ways. Australian graffiti often fuses letters with images. This is relatively rare in American graffiti, which tends to focus on lettering and, on the whole, utilises characters to less effect than Australian graffiti. Conclusion Graffiti is not a globally hom*ogeneous form, but one which has developed in locally specific and distinctive ways. As hip hop graffiti has circulated throughout the globe it has been translated between various sites and developed local inflections. In order to visualise graffiti in this manner, it is necessary to recognise theories of cultural imperialism as guiding the widespread belief that graffiti is a globally hom*ogeneous form. I have refuted this view and the worth of cultural imperialism in directing attitudes towards graffiti, as there is a valid foundation for considering the local distinctiveness of Australian graffiti. By engaging critically with literature around globalisation, I have established a theoretical base for the argument that graffiti is locally specific. Envisaging the global form of hip hop graffiti as translated between various sites and having developed in locally specific ways has exposed the study of graffiti outside of the United States. Current writings on cultural studies and graffiti are dominated by the American academy, taking the United States as its centre. In rectifying this imbalance, I stress the need to recognise the distinctiveness of other cultures and geographic locations, even if they appear to be similar. While writers across Australia argue that their locations produce original styles, few have been willing to expound on how their scene is “fresh”. One writer I spoke with was an exception. Zenith explained that: “the way we are original is that our style has developed for so long, fermented if you will, because of Perth being so damned isolated” (personal communication). He went on to say: “I also happen to feel that we’re losing the originality every second of every day, for a number of reasons … with web sites, videos, magazines, and all this type of graffito affiliated stuff” (personal communication). Hip hop graffiti culture is one in which communication and exchange is of central concern. The circulation of this “graffito affiliated stuff”—websites, graffiti magazines, videos, books—as well as the fact that aerosol artists frequently travel to other cities and countries to write, demonstrates that this is a culture which, although largely identified with America, is also global in reach. This global interaction and exchange is increasingly characterised by a complex relationship which involves imitation and adaptation. Glossary Bite To copy another graffiti writer’s style Crew Organised group of graffiti writers Getting up Successful graffiti endeavour; to graffiti Going over To graffiti over another’s graffiti Piece The most sophisticated kind of graffiti, which includes characters, words and phrases Tag A stylised version of a signature; the most basic form of graffiti Throw up Two-dimensional version of a tag Wildstyle Style of graffiti characterised by interlocking letters and arrows Writer Graffiti artist; one who does graffiti References Andrews, Benedict. “If a Cleaner Can Review Graffiti Art, Then …” Sydney Morning Herald 15 Jan. 2001. 15 August 2001 http://www.smh.com.au/news/0101/15/features/features8.html>. Appadurai, Arjun. “Globalization and the Research Imagination.” International Social Science Journal 51.2 (1999): 229-38. Campbell, Ian. “The National Perspective.” Dealing with Graffiti. Ed. Graffiti Program, Government of Western Australia: Perth, 1997: 6-7. Chalfant, Henry, and James Prigroff. Spraycan Art. London: Thames & Hudson, 1987. Cooper, Martha, and Henry Chalfant. Subway Art. London: Thames & Hudson, 1984. “Exit”. n.d. [1998]. 18 Jul. 2001 http://loud.net.au/projects/digit/garry/exit.htm>. Ferrell, Jeff. “Review of Moscow Graffiti: Language and Subculture.” Social Justice 20.3-4 (1993): 188 (15). ———. “Urban Graffiti: Crime, Control, and Resistance.” Youth and Society 27 (1995-6): 73-87. Findlay, Mark. The Globalization of Crime: Understanding Transitional Relationships in Context. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1999. Giddens, Anthony. Runaway World: How Globalization Is Reshaping our Lives. New York: Routledge, 2000. Hamilton, Kate. “Can in Hand.” Rolling Stone 590 (2001): 72-5. Hannerz, Ulf. “Scenarios for Peripheral Cultures.” Culture, Globalization and the World-System: Contemporary Conditions for the Representation of Identity. Ed. Anthony D. King. Houndmills: Macmillan, 1991. 107-28. Kalb, Don. “Localizing Flows: Power, Paths, Institutions, and Networks.” The Ends of Globalization: Bringing Society Back In. Ed. Don Kalb. Boston: Rowman and Littlefield Publishers, 2000. 1-29. Kloos, Peter. “The Dialectics of Globalization and Localization.” The Ends of Globalization: Bringing Society Back In. Ed. Don Kalb. Boston: Rowman and Littlefield, 2000. 281-97. Leys, Nick. “Graffiti Removalist Gives Art Installation a Spray.” Sydney Morning Herald 9 January 2001. 9 Jan. 2001. http://www.smh.com.au/news/0101/09/national/national15.html>. Lotman, Yuri. The Universe of the Mind: A Semiotic Theory of Culture. Bloomington, IN: Indiana UP, 1990. “Old Skool.” Triple J. 2001. 18 Jul. 2001 http://www.abc.net.au/triplej/arts/graff/oldskool/default.htm>. s3. “Name & Email Supplied.” Online posting. 9 May 2004. Blitzkrieg Bulletin Board. 20 July 2001 http://network54.com/Forum>. Scholte, Jan Aarte. “Globalisation: Prospects For a Paradigm Shift.” Politics and Globalisation: Knowledge, Ethics and Agency. Ed. Martin Shaw. London: Routledge, 1999. 9-22. Stevens, Tony. “It’s Vandalism, It’s Illegal and It Causes Anguish and Frustration.” Sydney Morning Herald 5 Feb. 2001. 4 Mar. 2001 http://www.smh.com.au/news/0102/05/features/features10.html>. Style Wars. Dir. Tony Silver and Henry Chalfant. 1983. DVD. Passion River, 2005. Token. “F*** You Little Kids!” Online posting. 5 May 2000. Blitzkrieg Bulletin Board. 20 Jul. 2001 http://network54.com/Forum>. Tomlinson, John. Cultural Imperialism: A Critical Introduction. London: Pinter Publishers, 1991. Umph. n.d. [1998]. 18 Jul. 2001. http://loud.net.au/projects/digit/garry/umph.htm>. Wild Style. Dir. Charlie Ahearn. 1983. DVD. Rhino Theatrical, 2002. Citation reference for this article MLA Style Lombard, Kara-Jane. "“To Us Writers, the Differences Are Obvious”: The Adaptation of Hip Hop Graffiti to an Australian Context." M/C Journal 10.2 (2007). echo date('d M. Y'); ?> <http://journal.media-culture.org.au/0705/05-lombard.php>. APA Style Lombard, K. (May 2007) "“To Us Writers, the Differences Are Obvious”: The Adaptation of Hip Hop Graffiti to an Australian Context," M/C Journal, 10(2). Retrieved echo date('d M. Y'); ?> from <http://journal.media-culture.org.au/0705/05-lombard.php>.

Abstract:

In the 1980s, an extremely successful Nescafé Gold Blend coffee advertising campaign dared to posit, albeit subliminally, that a love relationship was inextricably linked to coffee. Over several years, an on-again off-again love affair appeared to unfold onscreen; its ups and downs narrated over shared cups of coffee. Although the association between the relationship and Gold Blend was loose at best, no direct link was required (O’Donohoe 62). The campaign’s success was its reprisal of the cultural myth prevalent in the West that coffee and love, coffee and relationships, indeed coffee and intimacy, are companionate items. And, the more stable lover, it would seem, is available on the supermarket shelf. Meeting for coffee, inviting a potential lover in for a late-night cup of coffee, or scheduling a business meeting in an espresso bar are clichés that refer to coffee consumption but have little to do with the actual product. After all, many a tea-drinker will invite friends or acquaintances “for coffee.” This is neatly acknowledged in a short romantic scene in the lauded feature film Good Will Hunting (1997) in which a potential lover’s suggestion of meeting for coffee is responded to smartly by the “genius” protagonist Will, “Maybe we could just get together and eat a bunch of caramels. [...] When you think about it, it’s just as arbitrary as drinking coffee.” It was a date, regardless. Many in the coffee industry will argue that coffee—rather than tea, or caramel—is legendary for its intrinsic capacity to foster and ignite new relationships and ideas. Coffee houses are repeatedly cited as the heady location for the beginnings of institutions from major insurance business Lloyd’s of London to the Boston Tea Party, J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter series of novels, and even Western Australian indie band Eskimo Joe. This narrative images the coffee house and café as a setting that supports ingenuity, success, and passion. It is tempting to suggest that something intrinsic in coffee renders it a Western social lubricant, economic powerhouse, and, perhaps, spiritual prosthesis. This paper will, however, argue that the social and cultural production of “coffee” cannot be dissociated from feeling. Feelings of care, love, inspiration, and desire constellate around “coffee” in a discourse of warm, fuzzy affect. I suggest that this blooming of affect is not superfluous but, instead, central to the way in which coffee is produced, represented and consumed in Western mass culture. By exploring the currently fashionable practice of “direct trade” between roasters and coffee growers as represented on the Websites of select Western roasting companies, the repetition of this discourse is abundantly clear. Here, the good feelings associated with cross-cultural friendship are figured as the condition and reward for the production of high quality coffee beans. Money, it seems, does not buy happiness—but good quality coffee can. Good (Colonial) Feelings Before exploring the discursive representation of friendship and good feeling among the global coffee community with regard to direct trade, it is important to account for the importance of feeling as a narrative strategy with political affects and effects. In her discussion of “happy objects,” cultural theorist of emotion Sara Ahmed argues that specific objects are associated with feelings of happiness. She gives the telling example of coffee as an object intimately tied with happy feeling within the family. So you make coffee for the family, and you know “just“ how much sugar to put in this cup and that. Failure to know this “just“ is often felt as a failure of care. Even if we do not experience the same objects as being pleasurable, sharing the family means sharing happy objects, both in the sense of sharing knowledge (of what makes others happy) and also in the sense of distributing the objects in the right way (Ahmed, Promise 47). This idea is derived from Ahmed’s careful consideration of affective economies. She suggests emotions neither belong to, or are manufactured by, discrete individuals. Rather, emotions are formed through social exchange. Relieved of imagining the individual as the author of affect, we can consider the ways in which affect circulates as a product in a broad, vitalising economy of feeling (Ahmed, Affective 121). In the example above, feelings of care and intimacy attached to coffee-making produce the happy family, or more precisely, the fleeting instant of the family-as-happy. The condition of this good feeling is not attributable to the coffee as product nor the family as fundamentally happy but rather the rippling of happy feeling through sharing of the object deemed happy. A little too much sugar and happiness is thwarted, affect wanes; the coffee is now bad(-feeling). If we return briefly to the Nescafé Gold Blend campaign and, indeed, Good Will Hunting, we can postulate following Ahmed that the coffee functions as a love object. Proximity to coffee is identified by its apparent causation of love-effects. In this sense, “doing coffee” means making a fleeting cultural space for feeling love, or feeling good. But what happens when we turn from the good feeling of consumption to the complex question of coffee production and trade? How might good feeling attach to the process of procuring coffee beans? In this case, the way in which good feeling seems to “stick to” coffee in mass culture needs to be augmented with consideration of its status as a global commodity traded across sociopolitical, economic, cultural and national borders. Links between coffee and colonialism are long established. From the Dutch East India Company to the feverish enthusiasm to purchase mass plantations by multinational corporations, coffee, colonialism and practices of slavery and indentured labour are intertwined (Lyons 18-19). As a globally traded commodity across a range of political regimes and national borders, tracing the postcolonial and neocolonial relations between multinational companies, small upscale boutique roasters, plantation owners, coffee bean co-ops, regulatory bodies, and workers is complex at best. In what may appear a tangential approach, it is nonetheless instructive to consider that colonial relations are constituted through affective components that support and fuel economic and political exchange (Stoler, Haunted). Again, Ahmed offers a useful context for the relationship between the imperative toward happiness and colonial representation. The civilizing mission can be redescribed as a happiness mission. For happiness to become a mission, the colonized other must be first deemed unhappy. The imperial archive can be described as an archive of unhappiness. Colonial knowledges constitute the other as not only an object of knowledge, a truth to be discovered, but as being unhappy, as lacking the qualities or attributes required for a happier state of existence (Ahmed, Promise 125). The colonising aspect of the relations Ahmed describes includes the “mission” to construct Others as unhappy. Understood as happiness detractors, colonial Others become objects that threaten the radiant appeal of happiness as part of an imperial moral economy. Hence, it is the happiness of the colonisers that is secured through the disavowal of the feelings of Others. Moreover, by documenting colonial unhappiness, colonising forces justify the sanctity of happiness-making through violence. As Ann Stoler affirms, “Colonial states had a strong interest in affective knowledge and a sophisticated understanding of affective politics” (Carnal 142). Colonising discourses, then, are inextricably linked to regimes of sense and feeling. Stoler also writes that European-ness was established through cultivation of an inner sense of self-worth associated with ethics, individuality and autonomy (Haunted 157). The development of a sense of belonging to Europe was hence executed through feeling good in both moral and affective senses of the word. Although Stoler argues her case in terms of the affective politics of colonial sexualities and desire, her work is highly instructive for its argument that emotion is crucial to structures of power in colonial regimes. Bringing Stoler’s work into closer proximity with Ahmed’s postulation of State happiness and its objects, I am now going to suggest that coffee is a palimpsestic cultural site at which to explore the ways in which the politics of good feeling obscure discomforting and complex questions of power, exploitation, and disadvantage in global economies of coffee production and consumption. Direct Trade In the so-called “third wave” specialty coffee market that is enjoying robust growth in Australia, America, and Europe, “direct trade” across the globe between roasters and plantation owners is consistently represented as friendly and intimate despite vast distances and cultural difference. The “third wave” is a descriptor that, as John Manzo describes in his sociological exploration of coffee connoisseurship in privileged Western online and urban fora, refers to coffee enthusiasts interested in brewing devices beyond high-end espresso machines such as the cold drip, siphon, or pour-over. Jillian Adams writes further that third wavers: Appreciate the flavour nuances of single estate coffee; that is coffee that is sourced from single estates, farms, or villages in coffee growing regions. When processed carefully, it will have a distinctive flavour and taste profile that reflects the region and the culture of the coffee production (2). This focus on single estate or “single origin” coffee refers to beans procured from sections of estates and plantations called micro-lots, which are harvested and processed in a controlled manner.The third wave trend toward single origin coffees coincides with the advent of direct trade. Direct trade refers to the growing practice of bypassing “middlemen” to source coffee beans from plantations without appeal to or restriction by regulatory bodies. Rather, as I will show below, relationships and partnerships between growers and importers are imagined as sites of goodwill and good feeling. This focus on interpersonal relationships and friendships cannot be disarticulated from the broader cross-cultural context at stake. The relationships associated with direct trade invariably take place across borders that are also marked by economic, cultural and political differences in which privileged Western buyers engage with non-Western growers on low incomes. Drawing from Ahmed’s concern that the politics of good feeling is tied to colonial nostalgia, it is compelling to suggest that direct trade is haunted by discourses of colonisation. At this point of intersection, I suggest that Western mass cultural associations of coffee with ease, intimacy and pure intentions invite consumers to join a neocolonial saga through partaking in imagined communities of global coffee friends. Particularly popular in Australia and America, direct trade is espoused by key third wave coffee roasters in Melbourne, Portland and Seattle. Melbourne Coffee Merchants are perhaps the most well-known importers of directly traded green bean in Australia. On their Web page they describe the importance of sharing good feelings about high quality coffee: “We aim to share, educate, and inspire, and get people as excited about quality coffee as we are.” A further page describing the Merchants’s mission explains, “Growers are treated as partners in the mission to get the worlds [sic] finest beans into the hands of discerning customers.” The quality of excitement that circulates through the procuring of green beans is related to the deemed partnership between Merchants and the growers. That is, it is not the fact of the apparent partnership or its banality that is important, but the treating of growers as partners that signifies Merchants’s mission to generate good feeling. This is a slight but crucial distinction. Treating the growers as partners participates in an affective economy of excitement and inspiration—how the growers feel is, presumably, in want of such partnership.Not dissimilarly, Five Senses Coffee, boutique roasters in Melbourne and Perth, offer an emotional bonus with the purchase of directly traded coffees. “So go on, select one of our Direct Trade products and bask in the warm glow you get knowing that the farmer who grew the beans that you’re enjoying is reaping the rewards too!” The rewards that the growers are deemed to be receiving are briefly explained in blog posts on the Five Senses news Web page. I am not suggesting that these friendships and projects are not legitimate. Rather, the willingness of Five Senses to negotiate rates with growers and provide the community with an English teacher, for example, fuels an economy of Westerners’s good feelings and implies conventional trading produces unhappiness. This obscures grounds for concern that the provision of an English teacher might indeed serve the interests of colonising discourses. Perhaps a useful entry point into this narrative form is founded in the recently self-published book Coffee Trails by Toby Smith, founder of boutique Australian roaster Toby’s Estate. The book is described on the Toby’s Estate Web page as follows:Filled with personal anecdotes and illustrating his relationships developed over years of visiting the farmers to source his coffee beans, Smith’s commentary of his travels, including a brush with Jamaican customs officials and a trip to a notoriously dangerous Ethiopian market, paints an authentic picture of the colourful countries that produce the second most traded product in the world. [...] Coffee Trails has been Smith’s labour of love over the past two years and the end product is a wonderfully personal account of a man fulfilling his lifelong dream and following his passion across the world. Again, the language of “passion” and “love” registers direct trade coffee as a happy object. Furthermore, despite the fact that coffee is also grown in Australia, the countries that are most vivid in the epic imagination are those associated with “exotic” locations such as Ethiopia and Jamaica. This is arguably registered through the sense that these locations were where Smith encountered danger. Having embarked on a version of the quintessential hero’s journey, Smith can be seen as devoted to, and inspired by, his love-object. His brushes with uncivilised authorities and locations carry the undertones of a colonial imaginary, in which it can be argued Smith’s Western-ness is established and secured as goodwill-invoking. After all, he locates and develops relationships with farmers and buys their coffee which, following the logic of happy objects, disperses and shares good feelings.Gloria Jean’s Coffees, which occupies a similar market position in Australia to the multinational “specialty” coffee company Starbucks (Lyons), also participates in the dispersal of coffee as a happy object despite its mass scale of production and lack of direct trade capability (not unexpectedly, Starbucks hosts a Relationships campaign aimed at supporting humanitarian initiatives and communities). Gloria Jean’s campaign With Heart allocates resources to humanitarian activities in local Australian communities and worldwide in coffee-growing regions. Their Web page states: “With Heart is woven throughout Gloria Jeans Coffee houses and operations by the active participation of Franchise Partners, support office and team members and championed across Australia, by our With Heart Ambassadors.“ The associative message is clear: Gloria Jean’s Coffees is a company indissociable from “heart,” or perhaps loving care, for community.By purchasing coffee, Gloria Jean’s customers can be seen to be supporting heartening community projects, and are perhaps unwittingly working as ambassadors for the affective economy in which proximity to the happy object—the heart-centred coffee company—indicates the procurement of happiness for someone, somewhere. The sale of good feeling enables specialty coffee companies such as Gloria Jean’s to bypass market opportunities associated with Fair Trade regulatory provisions, which, as Carl Obermiller et al. find in their study of Fair Trade buying patterns, also profit from consumers’ purchase of good feeling associated with ethically-produced objects. Instead, assuring consumers of its heart-centredness, Gloria Jean’s Coffees is represented as an embodiment not of fairness but kindness, and perhaps love, for others. The iconography and history of direct trade coffee is most closely linked to Intelligentsia Coffee of Chicago in the USA. Intelligentsia describes its third wave roasting and training business as the first to engage in direct trade in 2003. Its Web page includes an image of an airplane to which the following pop-up is linked: “Our focus is not just identifying quality coffee, but developing and rewarding it. To do this means preserving and developing strong relationships despite the considerable distance. At any given time, there is at least one Intelligentsia buyer at origin.” This text raises the question of what constitutes quality coffee. It would appear that “quality coffee” is knowledge that Intelligentsia owns, and which is rewarded financially when replicated to the satisfaction of Intelligentsia. The strength of the relationships in this interaction is closely linked to the meeting of clear conditions and expectations. Indeed, we are reassured that “at any time” an Intelligentsia buyer is applying these conditions to the product. Quality, then, is at least in part achieved by Intelligentsia through its commitment to travelling long distances to oversee the activities and practices of growers. This paternalistic structure is figured in terms of “strong relationships” rather than, perhaps, a rigorous and shrewd business model (which is assumedly the province of mass-market Others).Amid numerous examples found in even a cursory search on the Web, the overwhelming message of direct trade is of good feeling through care. Long term relationships, imagined as virtuous despite the opacity of the negotiation procedure in most cases, narrates the conviction that relationship in and of itself is a good in what might be called the colonial redramatisation staked by an affective coffee economy. Conclusion: Mourning CoffeeIn a paper on happiness, it might appear out of place to reference grief. Yet Jacques Derrida’s explication of friendship in his rousing collection The Work of Mourning is instructive. He writes that death is accommodated and acknowledged “in the undeniable anticipation of mourning that constitutes friendship” (159). Derrida maintains close attention to the productivity and intensity of Otherness in mourning. Thus, friendship is structurally dependent on impending loss, and it follows that there can be no loss without recognising the Otherness of the other, as it were. Given indifference to difference and, hence, loss, it is possible to interpret the friendships affirmed within direct trade practices as supported by a kind of mania. The exuberant dispersal of good feeling through directly traded coffee is narrated by emotional journeys to the primordial beginnings of the happy-making object. That is, fixation upon the object’s brief survival in “primitive” circ*mstances before its perfect demise in the cup of discerning Western clientele suggests a process of purification through colonising Western knowledges and care. If I may risk a misappropriation of Sara Ahmed’s words; so you make the trip to origin, and you know “just” what to pay for this bean and that. Failure to know this “just” is often felt as a failure of care. But, for whom?References Adams, Jillian. “Thoroughly Modern Coffee.” TEXT Rewriting the Menu: The Cultural Dynamics of Contemporary Food Choices. Eds. Adele Wessell and Donna Lee Brien. TEXT Special Issue 9 (2010). 27 Feb. 2012 ‹http://www.textjournal.com.au/speciss/issue9/content.htm›. Ahmed, Sara. “Affective Economies.” Social Text 79 22.2 (2004): 117-39 . -----. “The Politics of Good Feeling.” Australian Critical Race and Whiteness Studies Association E-Journal 5.1 (2008): 1-18. -----. The Promise of Happiness. Durham: Duke UP, 2010. Derrida, Jacques. The Work of Mourning. Eds. Pascale-Anne Brault and Michael Naas. Chicago; London: U Chicago P, 2003. Five Senses Coffee. “Coffee Affiliations.” 27 Feb. 2012 ‹http://www.fivesenses.com.au/coffee/affiliations/direct-trade›. Gloria Jean’s Coffees. “With Heart.” 27 Feb. 2012 ‹http://www.gloriajeanscoffees.com/au/Humanitarian/AboutUs.aspx›. Good Will Hunting. Dir. Gus Van Sant. Miramax, 1997. Intelligentsia Coffee. “Direct Trade.” 28 Feb. 2012 ‹http://directtradecoffee.com/›. Lyons, James. “Think Seattle, Act Globally: Specialty Coffee, Commodity Biographies and the Promotion of Place.” Cultural Studies 19.1 (2005): 14-34. Manzo, John. “Coffee, Connoisseurship, and an Ethnomethodologically-Informed Sociology of Taste.” Human Studies 33 (2010): 141-55. Melbourne Coffee Merchants. “About Us.” 27 Feb. 2012 ‹http://melbournecoffeemerchants.com.au/about.asp›. Obermiller, Carl, Chauncy Burke, Erin Tablott and Gareth P. Green. “’Taste Great or More Fulfilling’: The Effect of Brand Reputation on Consumer Social Responsibility Advertising for Fair Trade Coffee.” Corporate Reputation Review 12.2 (2009): 159-76. O’Donohoe, Stephanie. “Advertising Uses and Gratifications.” European Journal of Marketing 28.8/9 (1993): 52-75. Smith, Toby. Coffee Trails: A Social and Environment Journey with Toby’s Estate. Sydney: Toby Smith, 2011. Stoler, Ann Laura. Carnal Knowledge and Imperial Power: Race and the Intimate in Colonial Rule. California: U California P, 2002. -----. Haunted by Empire: Geographies of Intimacy in North American History. Durham: Duke UP, 2006. Toby’s Estate. “Toby Smith’s Coffee Trails.” 27 Feb 2012 ‹http://www.tobysestate.com.au/index.php/toby-smith-book-coffee-trails.html›.

Abstract:

Let’s begin with the paradox of disavowal. On the one hand, we all “know” that television is hypnotic. On the other hand, we tend to imagine that we each – perhaps alone – remain impervious to the blandishments it murmurs as we watch it, often without being fully aware we are doing so. One of the many things contributing to the invention of television, according to Stefan Andriopoulos, was “spiritualist research into the psychic television of somnambulist mediums” (618). His archaeology of the technological medium of television uncovers a reciprocal relation (or “circular causality”) between the new technology and contemporary cultural discourses such that “while spiritualism serves as a necessary (but not sufficient) condition for the invention of electrical television, the emerging technology simultaneously fulfils the very same function for spiritualist research on psychic telesight” (618). Television and the occult seem to be inextricably linked from the outset, so that perhaps the claims of some schizophrenics: that television addresses them personally and importunes them with suggestions, are not so outlandish as one might at first think. Nor, perhaps, are they merely a delusion able to be safely located in the pathology of the other. In fact it could be argued, as Laurent Gerbereau does, that television, as distinct from film with its historical imbrication of crowds with the image, aims to create the illusion of intimacy, as if the viewer were the only person watching and were being addressed directly by the medium. With two exceptions, the illusion of direct contact is sustained by the exclusion of crowds from the image. The first is major sporting events, which people gather to watch on large screens or in bars (which Gerbereau notes) and where, I think, the experience of the crowd requires amplification of itself, or parts of itself, by the large screen images. The second is the more recent advent of reality TV in which contestants’ fates are arbitrated by a public of voting viewers. This illusion of direct contact is facilitated by the fact that viewing actually does take place more and more in individual isolation as the number of TV sets in households multiplies. And it is true in spite of the growth in what Anna McCarthy has called “ambient television”, the television of waiting rooms, airport terminals and bars, which enables us to be alone with the illusion of company, without the demands that being in company might potentially make. Television can be understood as a form of refuge from the crowd. Like the crowd, it offers anonymity and the voyeuristic pleasures of seeing without being seen. But it requires no special skill (for example, of negotiating movement in a crowd) and it seems, on the face of things, to obviate the risk that individuals will themselves become objects of observation. (This, however, is an illusion, given the array of practices, like data-mining, that aim to make new segments of the market visible.) It also enables avoidance of physical contact with others – the risks of being bumped and jostled that so preoccupied many of the early commentators on modernity. New mobile technologies extend the televisual illusion of direct address. You can receive confidences from a friend on the mobile phone, but you can also receive a lot of spam which addresses “you” in an equally intimate mode. You are, of course, not yourself under these conditions, but potentially a member of a consuming public, as the availability of many visual subscription services for 3G phones, including televisually-derived ones like one-minute soap episodes, makes clear. Television cathects (in Virginia Nightingale’s suggestive psychoanalytically-inflected usage) aspects of the human in order to function, and I have argued elsewhere that what it primarily cathects is human affect (Gibbs). We could think of this investment of media in the human body in a number of different ways: in the terms suggested by Mark Seltzer when he writes of the “miscegenation” of bodies and machines, of nature and culture; or we could adapt Eugene Hacker’s term “biomediation”; or again Bolter and Grusin’s concept of “remediation”, which have the advantage of moving beyond earlier models of the cyborg (such as Donna Haraway’s), in the way they describe how media repurposes the human (Angel and Gibbs). Here I want to focus on the media’s capture of human attention. This returns me to the question of television as a hypnotic medium. But on the way there we need to take one short detour. This involves Julian Jaynes’s remarkable book The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind published in 1976 and only since the late nineties beginning to be rescued by its uptake by the likes of Daniel Dennett and Antonio Damasio from its early reception as an intriguing but highly eccentric text. The book proposes taking literally the fact that in The Iliad the gods speak directly to the characters, admonishing them to perform certain acts. In this way, the voices of the gods seem to replace the kind of psychic interiority with which we are familiar. Jaynes argues that people once did actually hallucinate these voices and visions. Consciousness comes into being relatively recently in human history as these voices are internalised and recognised as the formation of the intentions of an “analogue I” – a process Jaynes suggests may have happened quite suddenly, and which involves the forging of closer relations between the two hemispheres of the brain. What drives this is the need for the more diffuse kinds of control enabled by relative individual autonomy, as social organisations become larger and their purposes more complex. Jaynes views some forms of consciousness (those which, like hypnosis, the creation of imaginary friends in childhood, religious ecstasy, or, arguably, creative states, involve a degree of dissociation) as atavistic vestiges of the bicameral state. While he insists that the hypnotic state is quite distinct from everyday experiences, such as being so lost in television that you don’t hear someone talking to you, other writers on hypnosis take the contrary view. So does Dennett, who wants to argue that the voices of the gods needn’t have been actually hallucinated in quite the way Jaynes suggests. He proposes that advertising jingles that get “on the brain”, and any admonitions that have a superegoic force, may also be contemporary forms of the voices of the gods. So we arrive, again, from a quite different avenue of approach, at the idea of television as a hypnotic medium, one that conscripts a human capacity for dissociation. It is perhaps worth noting at this point that, while we tend to associate dissociation with dysfunction, with splitting (in the psychoanalytic sense) and trauma, Jaynes sees it in far more positive terms – at least when it is accompanied by certain kinds of voices. He characterises hypnosis, for example, as a “supererogatory enabler” (379) militated against by consciousness which, to save us from our impulses, creates around us “a buzzing cloud of whys and wherefores”, so that “we know too much to command ourselves very far” [into the kinds of superhuman feats made possible with the assistance of the gods] (402). Most writers on hypnosis speak of the necessity for inducing the hypnotic state, and I want to suggest that televisual “flow” performs this function continuously, even though, as Jane Feuer and Margaret Morse respectively have suggested, television is designed for intermittent spectatorship and is often actually watched in states of distraction. While the interactivity of the internet and the mobile phone militate against this, they do not altogether vitiate it, especially as video and animation are increasingly appearing on these media. The screen has ways of getting your attention by activating the orienting reflexes with sudden noises, changes of scene, cuts, edits, zooms and pans. These reflexes form the basis of what Silvan Tomkins calls the surprise-startle affect which alerts us to a new state of affairs, and technologies of the screen constantly reactivate them (Kubey and Csikszentmihalyi). No wonder, given the need for surprise, that sensationalism is such a well-used technique. While some writers (like S. Elizabeth Bird) link this to the production of “human interest” which creates a focus for everyday talk about news and current affairs that might otherwise be unengaging, I want to focus on the less rational aspects of sensationalism. Televisual sensationalism, which has its origins in the gothic, includes the supernatural, though this may appear as frequently in the guise of laughter as in horror, even if this laughter is sometimes uneasy or ambivalent. Hypnotism as entertainment might also qualify as sensationalism in this sense. A quick survey of Websites about hypnosis on television reveals that stage hypnosis appeared on American television as least as early as 1949, when, for 10 minutes after the CBS evening news on Friday nights, Dr Franz Polgar would demonstrate his hypnotic technique on members of the audience. It has featured as a frequent trope in mystery and suspense genres from at least as early as 1959, and in sitcoms, drama series, comedy sketches and documentaries since at least 1953. If on one level we might interpret this as television simply making use of what has been – and to some extent continues to be – popular as live entertainment, at another we might view it as television’s mise-en-abyme: the presentation of its own communicational models and anti-models for the reception of commands by voices. It’s ironic, then, that the BBC Editorial Guidelines treat hypnotism as a special kind of program rather than a feature of the medium and – in conformity with the Hypnotism Act 1952 – require that demonstrations of public hypnotism be licensed and authorised by a “senior editorial figure”. And the guideline on “Images of Very Brief Duration” (which follows the wording of the Agreement associated with the BBC’s Charter) states that programs should not “include any technical device which, by using images of very brief duration or by any other means, exploits the possibility of conveying a message to, or otherwise influencing the minds of, persons watching or listening to the programmes without their being aware, or fully aware, of what has occurred”. Finally, though, if psychoanalysis is, as Borch-Jacobsen suggests, one more chapter in the history of trance (in spite of its apparent rejection of techniques of suggestion as it attempts to establish its scientific and therapeutic credentials), then perhaps screen-based technologies should be taken seriously as another. What this might suggest about the constitution of belief requires further investigation – especially under conditions in which the pervasiveness of media and its potentially addictive qualities efface the boundary that usually demarcates the time and place of trance as ritual. Such an investigation may just possibly have some bearing on paradoxes such as the one Lyn Spigel identifies in relation to her observation that while the scripting of the “grand narratives of national unity that sprang up after 9/11 were for many people more performative than sincere”, Americans were nevertheless compelled to perform belief in these myths (or be qualified somehow as a bad American) and, further, may have ended by believing their own performances. References Andriopoulis, Stefan. “Psychic Television.” Critical Inquiry 31.3 (2005): 618-38. Angel, Maria, and Anna Gibbs. “Media, Affect and the Face: Biomediation and the Political Scene.” Forthcoming in Southern Review: Communication, Politics and Culture Special Issue 38.3 (2005). Bird, S. Elizabeth. “News We Can Use: An Audience Perspective on the Tabloidisation of News in the United States.” In Virginia Nightingale and Karen Ross, eds., Critical Readings: Media and Audiences. Maidenhead: Open UP, 2003. 65-86. Bolter, Jay David, and Richard Grusin. Remediation. Cambridge Mass., MIT P, 1999. Borch-Jacobsen, Mikkel. The Emotional Tie. Stanford, CA: Stanford UP, 1992. Feuer, Jane. “The Concept of Live Television: Ontology as Ideology.” In Regarding Television: Critical Approaches – An Anthology. 1983. Gerbereau, Laurent. “Samples or Symbols? The Role of Crowds and the Public on Television.” L’image 1 (1995): 97-123. Gibbs, Anna. “Disaffected.” Continuum: Journal of Media and Cultural Studies 16.3 (2002): 335-41. Jaynes, Julian. The Origins of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1976. Kubey, Richard, and Mihalyi Csikszentmihalyi. “Television Addiction.” http://flatrock.org.nz/topics/drugs/television_addiction.htm>. McCarthy, Anna. Ambient Television: Visual Culture and Public Space. Durham: Duke UP, 2001. Morse, Margaret. “An Ontology of Everyday Distraction: The Freeway, The Mall and Television.” In Patricia Mellencamp, ed., Logics of Television. Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana UP, 1990. 193-221. Nightingale, Virginia. “Are Media Cyborgs?” In Angel Gordo-Lopez and Ian Parker, eds., Cyberpsychology. London: Macmillan, 1999. Selzer, Mark. Bodies and Machines. New York and London: Routledge, 1992. Tomkins, Silvan S. Affect, Imagery, Consciousness. New York: Springer, 1962. Spigel, Lyn. “Entertainment Wars: Television Culture after 9/11.” American Quarterly 56.2 (2004): 235-70. Thacker, Eugene. “What Is Biomedia.” Configurations 11 (2003): 47-79. Citation reference for this article MLA Style Gibbs, Anna. "In Thrall: Affect Contagion and the Bio-Energetics of Media." M/C Journal 8.6 (2005). echo date('d M. Y'); ?> <http://journal.media-culture.org.au/0512/10-gibbs.php>. APA Style Gibbs, A. (Dec. 2005) "In Thrall: Affect Contagion and the Bio-Energetics of Media," M/C Journal, 8(6). Retrieved echo date('d M. Y'); ?> from <http://journal.media-culture.org.au/0512/10-gibbs.php>.

Abstract:

Introduction Ireland did not have a tradition of printed cookbooks prior to the 20th century. As a consequence, Irish culinary manuscripts from before this period are an important primary source for historians. This paper makes the case that the manuscripts are a unique way of accessing voices that have quotidian concerns seldom heard above the dominant narratives of conquest, colonisation and famine (Higgins; Dawson). Three manuscripts are examined to see how they contribute to an understanding of Irish social and culinary history. The Irish banking crisis of 2008 is a reminder that comments such as the one in the title of this paper may be more then a casual remark, indicating rather an underlying anxiety. Equally important is the evidence in the manuscripts that Ireland had a domestic culinary tradition sited within the culinary traditions of the British Isles. The terms “vernacular”, representing localised needs and traditions, and “polite”, representing stylistic features incorporated for aesthetic reasons, are more usually applied in the architectural world. As terms, they reflect in a politically neutral way the culinary divide witnessed in the manuscripts under discussion here. Two of the three manuscripts are anonymous, but all are written from the perspective of a well-provisioned house. The class background is elite and as such these manuscripts are not representative of the vernacular, which in culinary terms is likely to be a tradition recorded orally (Gold). The first manuscript (NLI, Tervoe) and second manuscript (NLI, Limerick) show the levels of impact of French culinary influence through their recipes for “cullis”. The Limerick manuscript also opens the discussion to wider social concerns. The third manuscript (NLI, Baker) is unusual in that the author, Mrs. Baker, goes to great lengths to record the provenance of the recipes and as such the collection affords a glimpse into the private “polite” world of the landed gentry in Ireland with its multiplicity of familial and societal connections. Cookbooks and Cuisine in Ireland in the 19th Century During the course of the 18th century, there were 136 new cookery book titles and 287 reprints published in Britain (Lehmann, Housewife 383). From the start of the 18th to the end of the 19th century only three cookbooks of Irish, or Anglo-Irish, authorship have been identified. The Lady’s Companion: or Accomplish’d Director In the whole Art of Cookery was published in 1767 by John Mitchell in Skinner-Row, under the pseudonym “Ceres,” while the Countess of Caledon’s Cheap Receipts and Hints on Cookery: Collected for Distribution Amongst the Irish Peasantry was printed in Armagh by J. M. Watters for private circulation in 1847. The modern sounding Dinners at Home, published in London in 1878 under the pseudonym “Short”, appears to be of Irish authorship, a review in The Irish Times describing it as being written by a “Dublin lady”, the inference being that she was known to the reviewer (Farmer). English Copyright Law was extended to Ireland in July 1801 after the Act of Union between Great Britain and Ireland in 1800 (Ferguson). Prior to this, many titles were pirated in Ireland, a cause of confusion alluded to by Lehmann when she comments regarding the Ceres book that it “does not appear to be simply a Dublin-printed edition of an English book” (Housewife 403). This attribution is based on the dedication in the preface: “To The Ladies of Dublin.” From her statement that she had a “great deal of experience in business of this kind”, one may conclude that Ceres had worked as a housekeeper or cook. Cheap Receipts and Hints on Cookery was the second of two books by Catherine Alexander, Countess of Caledon. While many commentators were offering advice to Irish people on how to alleviate their poverty, in Friendly Advice to Irish Mothers on Training their Children, Alexander was unusual in addressing her book specifically to its intended audience (Bourke). In this cookbook, the tone is of a practical didactic nature, the philosophy that of enablement. Given the paucity of printed material, manuscripts provide the main primary source regarding the existence of an indigenous culinary tradition. Attitudes regarding this tradition lie along the spectrum exemplified by the comments of an Irish journalist, Kevin Myers, and an eminent Irish historian, Louis Cullen. Myers describes Irish cuisine as a “travesty” and claims that the cuisine of “Old Ireland, in texture and in flavour, generally resembles the cinders after the suttee of a very large, but not very tasty widow”, Cullen makes the case that Irish cuisine is “one of the most interesting culinary traditions in Europe” (141). It is not proposed to investigate the ideological standpoints behind the various comments on Irish food. Indeed, the use of the term “Irish” in this context is fraught with difficulty and it should be noted that in the three manuscripts proposed here, the cuisine is that of the gentry class and representative of a particular stratum of society more accurately described as belonging to the Anglo-Irish tradition. It is also questionable how the authors of the three manuscripts discussed would have described themselves in terms of nationality. The anxiety surrounding this issue of identity is abating as scholarship has moved from viewing the cultural artifacts and buildings inherited from this class, not as symbols of an alien heritage, but rather as part of the narrative of a complex country (Rees). The antagonistic attitude towards this heritage could be seen as reaching its apogee in the late 1950s when the then Government minister, Kevin Boland, greeted the decision to demolish a row of Georgian houses in Dublin with jubilation, saying that they stood for everything that he despised, and describing the Georgian Society, who had campaigned for their preservation, as “the preserve of the idle rich and belted earls” (Foster 160). Mac Con Iomaire notes that there has been no comprehensive study of the history of Irish food, and the implications this has for opinions held, drawing attention to the lack of recognition that a “parallel Anglo-Irish cuisine existed among the Protestant elite” (43). To this must be added the observation that Myrtle Allen, the doyenne of the Irish culinary world, made when she observed that while we have an Irish identity in food, “we belong to a geographical and culinary group with Wales, England, and Scotland as all counties share their traditions with their next door neighbour” (1983). Three Irish Culinary Manuscripts The three manuscripts discussed here are held in the National Library of Ireland (NLI). The manuscript known as Tervoe has 402 folio pages with a 22-page index. The National Library purchased the manuscript at auction in December 2011. Although unattributed, it is believed to come from Tervoe House in County Limerick (O’Daly). Built in 1776 by Colonel W.T. Monsell (b.1754), the Monsell family lived there until 1951 (see, Fig. 1). The house was demolished in 1953 (Bence-Jones). William Monsell, 1st Lord Emly (1812–94) could be described as the most distinguished of the family. Raised in an atmosphere of devotion to the Union (with Great Britain), loyalty to the Church of Ireland, and adherence to the Tory Party, he converted in 1850 to the Roman Catholic religion, under the influence of Cardinal Newman and the Oxford Movement, changing his political allegiance from Tory to Whig. It is believed that this change took place as a result of the events surrounding the Great Irish Famine of 1845–50 (Potter). The Tervoe manuscript is catalogued as 18th century, and as the house was built in the last quarter of the century, it would be reasonable to surmise that its conception coincided with that period. It is a handsome volume with original green vellum binding, which has been conserved. Fig. 1. Tervoe House, home of the Monsell family. In terms of culinary prowess, the scope of the Tervoe manuscript is extensive. For the purpose of this discussion, one recipe is of particular interest. The recipe, To make a Cullis for Flesh Soups, instructs the reader to take the fat off four pounds of the best beef, roast the beef, pound it to a paste with crusts of bread and the carcasses of partridges or other fowl “that you have by you” (NLI, Tervoe). This mixture should then be moistened with best gravy, and strong broth, and seasoned with pepper, thyme, cloves, and lemon, then sieved for use with the soup. In 1747 Hannah Glasse published The Art of Cookery, Made Plain and Easy. The 1983 facsimile edition explains the term “cullis” as an Anglicisation of the French word coulis, “a preparation for thickening soups and stews” (182). The coulis was one of the essential components of the nouvelle cuisine of the 18th century. This movement sought to separate itself from “the conspicuous consumption of profusion” to one where the impression created was one of refinement and elegance (Lehmann, Housewife 210). Reactions in England to this French culinary innovation were strong, if not strident. Glasse derides French “tricks”, along with French cooks, and the coulis was singled out for particular opprobrium. In reality, Glasse bestrides both sides of the divide by giving the much-hated recipe and commenting on it. She provides another example of this in her recipe for The French Way of Dressing Partridges to which she adds the comment: “this dish I do not recommend; for I think it an odd jumble of thrash, by that time the Cullis, the Essence of Ham, and all other Ingredients are reckoned, the Partridges will come to a fine penny; but such Receipts as this, is what you have in most Books of Cookery yet printed” (53). When Daniel Defoe in The Complete English Tradesman of 1726 criticised French tradesmen for spending so much on the facades of their shops that they were unable to offer their customers a varied stock within, we can see the antipathy spilling over into other creative fields (Craske). As a critical strategy, it is not dissimilar to Glasse when she comments “now compute the expense, and see if this dish cannot be dressed full as well without this expense” at the end of a recipe for the supposedly despised Cullis for all Sorts of Ragoo (53). Food had become part of the defining image of Britain as an aggressively Protestant culture in opposition to Catholic France (Lehmann Politics 75). The author of the Tervoe manuscript makes no comment about the dish other than “A Cullis is a mixture of things, strained off.” This is in marked contrast to the second manuscript (NLI, Limerick). The author of this anonymous manuscript, from which the title of this paper is taken, is considerably perplexed by the term cullis, despite the manuscript dating 1811 (Fig. 2). Of Limerick provenance also, but considerably more modest in binding and scope, the manuscript was added to for twenty years, entries terminating around 1831. The recipe for Beef Stake (sic) Pie is an exact transcription of a recipe in John Simpson’s A Complete System of Cookery, published in 1806, and reads Cut some beef steaks thin, butter a pan (or as Lord Buckingham’s cook, from whom these rects are taken, calls it a soutis pan, ? [sic] (what does he mean, is it a saucepan) [sic] sprinkle the pan with pepper and salt, shallots thyme and parsley, put the beef steaks in and the pan on the fire for a few minutes then put them to cool, when quite cold put them in the fire, scrape all the herbs in over the fire and ornament as you please, it will take an hour and half, when done take the top off and put in some coulis (what is that?) [sic]. Fig. 2. Beef Stake Pie (NLI, Limerick). Courtesy of the National Library of Ireland. Simpson was cook to Lord Buckingham for at least a year in 1796, and may indeed have travelled to Ireland with the Duke who had several connections there. A feature of this manuscript are the number of Cholera remedies that it contains, including the “Rect for the cholera sent by Dr Shanfer from Warsaw to the Brussels Government”. Cholera had reached Germany by 1830, and England by 1831. By March 1832, it had struck Belfast and Dublin, the following month being noted in Cork, in the south of the country. Lasting a year, the epidemic claimed 50,000 lives in Ireland (Fenning). On 29 April 1832, the diarist Amhlaoibh Ó Súilleabháin notes, “we had a meeting today to keep the cholera from Callan. May God help us” (De Bhaldraithe 132). By 18 June, the cholera is “wrecking destruction in Ennis, Limerick and Tullamore” (135) and on 26 November, “Seed being sown. The end of the month wet and windy. The cholera came to Callan at the beginning of the month. Twenty people went down with it and it left the town then” (139). This situation was obviously of great concern and this is registered in the manuscript. Another concern is that highlighted by the recommendation that “this receipt is as good as the bank. It has been obligingly given to Mrs Hawkesworth by the chief book keeper at the Bank of Ireland” (NLI, Limerick). The Bank of Ireland commenced business at St. Mary’s Abbey in Dublin in June 1783, having been established under the protection of the Irish Parliament as a chartered rather then a central bank. As such, it supplied a currency of solidity. The charter establishing the bank, however, contained a prohibitory clause preventing (until 1824 when it was repealed) more then six persons forming themselves into a company to carry on the business of banking. This led to the formation, especially outside Dublin, of many “small private banks whose failure was the cause of immense wretchedness to all classes of the population” (Gilbert 19). The collapse that caused the most distress was that of the Ffrench bank in 1814, founded eleven years previously by the family of Lord Ffrench, one of the leading Catholic peers, based in Connacht in the west of Ireland. The bank issued notes in exchange for Bank of Ireland notes. Loans from Irish banks were in the form of paper money which were essentially printed promises to pay the amount stated and these notes were used in ordinary transactions. So great was the confidence in the Ffrench bank that their notes were held by the public in preference to Bank of Ireland notes, most particularly in Connacht. On 27 June 1814, there was a run on the bank leading to collapse. The devastation spread through society, from business through tenant farmers to the great estates, and notably so in Galway. Lord Ffrench shot himself in despair (Tennison). Williams and Finn, founded in Kilkenny in 1805, entered bankruptcy proceedings in 1816, and the last private bank outside Dublin, Delacours in Mallow, failed in 1835 (Barrow). The issue of bank failure is commented on by writers of the period, notably so in Dickens, Thackery, and Gaskill, and Edgeworth in Ireland. Following on the Ffrench collapse, notes from the Bank of Ireland were accorded increased respect, reflected in the comment in this recipe. The receipt in question is one for making White Currant Wine, with the unusual addition of a slice of bacon suspended from the bunghole when the wine is turned, for the purpose of enriching it. The recipe was provided to “Mrs Hawkesworth by the chief book keeper of the bank” (NLI, Limerick). In 1812, a John Hawkesworth, agent to Lord CastleCoote, was living at Forest Lodge, Mountrath, County Laois (Ennis Chronicle). The Coote family, although settling in County Laois in the seventeenth century, had strong connections with Limerick through a descendent of the younger brother of the first Earl of Mountrath (Landed Estates). The last manuscript for discussion is the manuscript book of Mrs Abraham Whyte Baker of Ballytobin House, County Kilkenny, 1810 (NLI, Baker). Ballytobin, or more correctly Ballaghtobin, is a townland in the barony of Kells, four miles from the previously mentioned Callan. The land was confiscated from the Tobin family during the Cromwellian campaign in Ireland of 1649–52, and was reputedly purchased by a Captain Baker, to establish what became the estate of Ballaghtobin (Fig. 3) To this day, it is a functioning estate, remaining in the family, twice passing down through the female line. In its heyday, there were two acres of walled gardens from which the house would have drawn for its own provisions (Ballaghtobin). Fig. 3. Ballaghtobin 2013. At the time of writing the manuscript, Mrs. Sophia Baker was widowed and living at Ballaghtobin with her son and daughter-in-law, Charity who was “no beauty, but tall, slight” (Herbert 414). On the succession of her husband to the estate, Charity became mistress of Ballaghtobin, leaving Sophia with time on what were her obviously very capable hands (Nevin). Sophia Baker was the daughter of Sir John Blunden of Castle Blunden and Lucinda Cuffe, daughter of the first Baron Desart. Sophia was also first cousin of the diarist Dorothea Herbert, whose mother was Lucinda’s sister, Martha. Sophia Baker and Dorothea Herbert have left for posterity a record of life in the landed gentry class in rural Georgian Ireland, Dorothea describing Mrs. Baker as “full of life and spirits” (Herbert 70). Their close relationship allows the two manuscripts to converse with each other in a unique way. Mrs. Baker’s detailing of the provenance of her recipes goes beyond the norm, so that what she has left us is not just a remarkable work of culinary history but also a palimpsest of her family and social circle. Among the people she references are: “my grandmother”; Dorothea Beresford, half sister to the Earl of Tyrone, who lived in the nearby Curraghmore House; Lady Tyrone; and Aunt Howth, the sister of Dorothea Beresford, married to William St Lawrence, Lord Howth, and described by Johnathan Swift as “his blue eyed nymph” (195). Other attributions include Lady Anne Fitzgerald, wife of Maurice Fitzgerald, 16th knight of Kerry, Sir William Parsons, Major Labilen, and a Mrs. Beaufort (Fig. 4). Fig. 4. Mrs. Beauforts Rect. (NLI, Baker). Courtesy of the National Library of Ireland. That this Mrs. Beaufort was the wife of Daniel Augustus Beaufort, mother of the hydrographer Sir Francis Beaufort, may be deduced from the succeeding recipe supplied by a Mrs. Waller. Mrs. Beaufort’s maiden name was Waller. Fanny Beaufort, the elder sister of Sir Francis, was Richard Edgeworth’s fourth wife and close friend and confidante of his daughter Maria, the novelist. There are also entries for “Miss Herbert” and “Aunt Herbert.” While the Baker manuscript is of interest for the fact that it intersects the worlds of the novelist Maria Edgeworth and the diarist Dorothea Herbert, and for the societal references that it documents, it is also a fine collection of recipes that date back to the mid-18th century. An example of this is a recipe for Sligo pickled salmon that Mrs. Baker, nee Blunden, refers to in an index that she gives to a second volume. Unfortunately this second volume is not known to be extant. This recipe features in a Blunden family manuscript of 1760 as referred to in Anelecta Hibernica (McLysaght). The recipe has also appeared in Cookery and Cures of Old Kilkenny (St. Canices’s 24). Unlike the Tervoe and Limerick manuscripts, Mrs. Baker is unconcerned with recipes for “cullis”. Conclusion The three manuscripts that have been examined here are from the period before the famine of 1845–50, known as An Gorta Mór, translated as “the big hunger”. The famine preceding this, Bliain an Áir (the year of carnage) in 1740–1 was caused by extremely cold and rainy weather that wiped out the harvest (Ó Gráda 15). This earlier famine, almost forgotten today, was more severe than the subsequent one, causing the death of an eight of the population of the island over one and a half years (McBride). These manuscripts are written in living memory of both events. Within the world that they inhabit, it may appear there is little said about hunger or social conditions beyond the walls of their estates. Subjected to closer analysis, however, it is evident that they are loquacious in their own unique way, and make an important contribution to the narrative of cookbooks. Through the three manuscripts discussed here, we find evidence of the culinary hegemony of France and how practitioners in Ireland commented on this in comparatively neutral fashion. An awareness of cholera and bank collapses have been communicated in a singular fashion, while a conversation between diarist and culinary networker has allowed a glimpse into the world of the landed gentry in Ireland during the Georgian period. References Allen, M. “Statement by Myrtle Allen at the opening of Ballymaloe Cookery School.” 14 Nov. 1983. Ballaghtobin. “The Grounds”. nd. 13 Mar. 2013. ‹http://www.ballaghtobin.com/gardens.html›. Barrow, G.L. “Some Dublin Private Banks.” Dublin Historical Record 25.2 (1972): 38–53. Bence-Jones, M. A Guide to Irish Country Houses. London: Constable, 1988. Bourke, A. Ed. Field Day Anthology of Irish Writing Vol V. Cork: Cork UP, 2002. Craske, M. “Design and the Competitive Spirit in Early and Mid 18th Century England”, Journal of Design History 12.3 (1999): 187–216. Cullen, L. The Emergence of Modern Ireland. London: Batsford, 1981. Dawson, Graham. “Trauma, Memory, Politics. The Irish Troubles.” Trauma: Life Stories of Survivors. Ed. Kim Lacy Rogers, Selma Leydesdorff and Graham Dawson. New Jersey: Transaction P, 2004. De Bhaldraithe,T. Ed. Cín Lae Amhlaoibh. Cork: Mercier P, 1979. Ennis Chronicle. 12–23 Feb 1812. 10 Feb. 2013 ‹http://astheywere.blogspot.ie/2012/12/ennis-chronicle-1812-feb-23-feb-12.html› Farmar, A. E-mail correspondence between Farmar and Dr M. Mac Con Iomaire, 26 Jan. 2011. Fenning, H. “The Cholera Epidemic in Ireland 1832–3: Priests, Ministers, Doctors”. Archivium Hibernicum 57 (2003): 77–125. Ferguson, F. “The Industrialisation of Irish Book Production 1790-1900.” The Oxford History of the Irish Book, Vol. IV The Irish Book in English 1800-1891. Ed. J. Murphy. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2011. Foster, R.F. Luck and the Irish: A Brief History of Change from 1970. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2008. Gilbert, James William. The History of Banking in Ireland. London: Longman, Rees, Orme, Brown, Green, and Longman, 1836. Glasse, Hannah. The Art of Cookery Made Plain and Easy by a Lady: Facsimile Edition. Devon: Prospect, 1983. Gold, C. Danish Cookbooks. Seattle: U of Washington P, 2007. Herbert, D. Retrospections of an Outcast or the Life of Dorothea Herbert. London: Gerald Howe, 1929. Higgins, Michael D. “Remarks by President Michael D. Higgins reflecting on the Gorta Mór: the Great famine of Ireland.” Famine Commemoration, Boston, 12 May 2012. 18 Feb. 2013 ‹http://www.president.ie/speeches/ › Landed Estates Database, National University of Galway, Moore Institute for Research, 10 Feb. 2013 ‹http://landedestates.nuigalway.ie/LandedEstates/jsp/family-show.jsp?id=633.› Lehmann, G. The British Housewife: Cookery books, cooking and society in eighteenth-century Britain. Totnes: Prospect, 1993. ---. “Politics in the Kitchen.” 18th Century Life 23.2 (1999): 71–83. Mac Con Iomaire, M. “The Emergence, Development and Influence of French Haute Cuisine on Public Dining in Dublin Restaurants 1900-2000: An Oral History”. Vol. 2. PhD thesis. Dublin Institute of Technology. 2009. 8 Mar. 2013 ‹http://arrow.dit.ie/tourdoc/12›. McBride, Ian. Eighteenth Century Ireland: The Isle of Slaves. Dublin: Gill and Macmillan, 2009. McLysaght, E.A. Anelecta Hibernica 15. Dublin: Irish Manuscripts Commission, 1944. Myers, K. “Dinner is served ... But in Our Culinary Dessert it may be Korean.” The Irish Independent 30 Jun. 2006. Nevin, M. “A County Kilkenny Georgian Household Notebook.” Journal of the Royal Society of Antiquaries of Ireland 109 (1979): 5–18. (NLI) National Library of Ireland. Baker. 19th century manuscript. MS 34,952. ---. Limerick. 19th century manuscript. MS 42,105. ---. Tervoe. 18th century manuscript. MS 42,134. Ó Gráda, C. Famine: A Short History. New Jersey: Princeton UP, 2009. O’Daly, C. E-mail correspondence between Colette O’Daly, Assistant Keeper, Dept. of Manuscripts, National Library of Ireland and Dorothy Cashman. 8 Dec. 2011. Potter, M. William Monsell of Tervoe 1812-1894. Dublin: Irish Academic P, 2009. Rees, Catherine. “Irish Anxiety, Identity and Narrative in the Plays of McDonagh and Jones.” Redefinitions of Irish Identity: A Postnationalist Approach. Eds. Irene Gilsenan Nordin and Carmen Zamorano Llena. Bern: Peter Lang, 2010. St. Canice’s. Cookery and Cures of Old Kilkenny. Kilkenny: Boethius P, 1983. Swift, J. The Works of the Rev Dr J Swift Vol. XIX Dublin: Faulkner, 1772. 8 Feb. 2013. ‹http://www.google.ie/search?tbm=bks&hl=en&q=works+of+jonathan+swift+Vol+XIX+&btnG=› Tennison, C.M. “The Old Dublin Bankers.” Journal of the Cork Historical and Archeological Society 1.2 (1895): 36–9.

Abstract:

Image 1: View from Geodha Sgoilt towards the sea stacks, Uig, Isle of Lewis. Image credit: George Jaramillo.IntroductionOver the cliffs of Mangerstadh on the west coast of the Isle of Lewis, is a small plot of land called Geodha Sgoilt that overlooks the North Atlantic Ocean (Image 1). On the site is a small dirt gravel road and the remnants of a World War II listening station. Below, sea stacks rise from the waters, orange and green cliff sides stand in defiance to the crashing waves. An older gentleman began to tell me of what he believed could be located here on the site. A place where visitors could learn of the wonders of St Kilda that contained all types of new storytelling technologies to inspire them. He pointed above the ruined buildings, mentioning that a new road for the visitors’ vehicles and coaches would be built. With his explanations, you could almost imagine such a place on these cliffs. Yet, before that new idea could even be built, this gentleman and his group of locals and incomers had to convince themselves and others that this new heritage centre was something desired, necessary and inevitable in the development of the Western Isles.This article explores the developing relationships that come about through design innovation with community organisations. This was done through a partnership between an academic institution and a non-profit heritage community group as part of growing study in how higher education design research can play an active partner in community group development. It argues for the use of design thinking and innovation in improving strategy and organisational processes within non-profit organisations. In this case, it looks at what role it can play in building and enabling organisational confidence in its mission, as well as, building “beyond the museum”. The new approach to this unique relationship casts new light towards working with complexities and strategies rather than trying to resolve issues from the outset of a project. These enabling relationships are divided into three sections of this paper: First it explores the context of the island community group and “building” heritage, followed by a brief history of St Kilda and its current status, and designation as a World Heritage site. Second, it seeks the value of developing strategy and the introduction of the Institute of Design Innovation (INDI). This is followed by a discussion of the six-month relationship and work that was done that elucidates various methods used and ending with its outcomes. The third section reflects upon the impacts at the relationship building between the two groups with some final thoughts on the partnership, where it can lead, and how this can represent new ways of working together within community groups. Building HeritageCurrent community research in Scotland has shown struggles in understanding issues within community capability and development (Barker 11; Cave 20; Jacuniak-Suda, and Mose 23) though most focus on the land tenure and energy (McMorran 21) and not heritage groups. The need to maintain “resilient” (Steiner 17) communities has shown that economic resilience is of primary importance for these rural communities. Heritage as economic regenerator has had a long history in the United Kingdom. Some of these like the regeneration of Wirksworth in the Peak District (Gordon 20) have had great economic results with populations growing, as well as, development in the arts and design. These changes, though positive, have also adversely impacted the local community by estranging and forcing lower income townspeople to move away due to higher property values and lack of work. Furthermore, current trends in heritage tourism have managed to turn many rural regions into places of historic consumption (Ronström 7) termed “heritagisation” (Edensor 35). There is thus a need for critical reflection within a variety of heritage organisations with the increase in heritage tourism.In particular, existing island heritage organisations face a variety of issues that they focus too much on the artefactual or are too focused to strive for anything beyond the remit of their particular heritage (Jacuniak-Suda, and Mose 33; Ronström 4). Though many factors including funding, space, volunteerism and community capability affect the way these groups function they have commonalities that include organisational methods, volunteer fatigue, and limited interest from community groups. It is within this context that the communities of the Outer Hebrides. Currently, projects within the Highlands and islands focus on particular “grassroots” development (Cave 26; Robertson 994) searching for innovative ways to attract, maintain, and sustain healthy levels of heritage and development—one such group is Ionad Hiort. Ionad Hiort Ionad Hiort is a community non-profit organisation founded in 2010 to assist in the development of a new type of heritage centre in the community of Uig on the Isle of Lewis (“Proposal-Ionad Hiort”). As stated in their website, the group strives to develop a centre on the history and contemporary views of St Kilda, as well as, encouraging a much-needed year-round economic impetus for the region. The development of the group and the idea of a heritage centre came about through the creation of the St Kilda Opera, a £1.5 million, five-country project held in 2007, led by Scotland’s Gaelic Arts agency, Proiseact nan Ealan (Mckenzie). This opera, inspired by the cliffs, people, and history of St Kilda used creative techniques to unite five countries in a live performance with cliff aerobatics and Gaelic singing to present the island narrative. From this initial interest, a commission from the Western Isles council (2010), developed by suggestions and commentary from earlier reports (Jura Report 2009; Rebanks 2009) encouraged a fiercely contentious competition, which saw Ionad Hiort receive the right to develop a remote-access heritage centre about the St Kilda archipelago (Maclean). In 2013, the group received a plot of land from the local laird for the establishment of the centre (Urquhart) thereby bringing it closer to its goal of a heritage centre, but before moving onto this notion of remote-heritage, a brief history is needed on the archipelago. Image 2: Location map of Mangerstadh on the Isle of Lewis and St Kilda to the west, with inset of Scotland. Image credit: © Crown Copyright and Database Right (2017). Ordnance Survey (Digimap Licence).St KildaSt Kilda is an archipelago about 80 kilometres off the coast of the Outer Hebrides in the North Atlantic (Image 2). Over 2000 years of habitation show an entanglement between humans and nature including harsh weather, limited resources, but a tenacity and growth to develop a way of living upon a small section of land in the middle of the Atlantic. St Kilda has maintained a tenuous relationship between the sea, the cliffs and the people who have lived within its territory (Geddes, and Gannon 18). Over a period of three centuries beginning in the eighteenth century an outside influence on the island begin to play a major role, with the loss of a large portion of its small (180) population. This population would later decrease to 100 and finally to 34 in 1930, when it was decided to evacuate the final members of the village in what could best be called a forced eviction.Since the evacuation, the island has maintained an important military presence as a listening station during the Second World War and in its modern form a radar station as part of the Hebridean Artillery (Rocket) Range (Geddes 14). The islands in the last thirty years have seen an increase in tourism with the ownership of the island by the National Trust of Scotland. The UNESCO World Heritage Organisation (UNESCO), who designated St Kilda in 1986 and 2004 as having outstanding universal value, has seen its role evolve from not just protecting (or conserving) world heritage sites, but to strategically understand sustainable tourism of its sites (“St Kilda”). In 2012, UNESCO selected St Kilda as a case study for remote access heritage conservation and interpretation (Hebrides News Today; UNESCO 15). This was partly due to the efforts of 3D laser scanning of the islands by a collaboration between The Glasgow School of Art and Historic Environment Scotland called the Centre for Digital Documentation and Visualisation (CDDV) in 2009.The idea of a remote access heritage is an important aspect as to what Ionad Hiort could do with creating a centre at their site away from St Kilda. Remote access heritage is useful in allowing for sites and monuments to be conserved and monitored “from afar”. It allows for 3D visualisations of sites and provides new creative engagements with a variety of different places (Remondino, and Rizzi 86), however, Ionad Hiort was not yet at a point to even imagine how to use the remote access technology. They first needed a strategy and direction, as after many years of moving towards recognition of proposing the centre at their site in Uig, they had lost a bit of that initial drive. This is where INDI was asked to assist by the Highlands and Islands Enterprise, the regional development organisation for most of rural Scotland. Building ConfidenceINDI is a research institute at The Glasgow School of Art. It is a distributed, creative collective of researchers, lecturers and students specialising in design innovation, where design innovation means enabling creative capabilities within communities, groups and individuals. Together, they address complex issues through new design practices and bespoke community engagement to co-produce “preferable futures” (Henchley 25). Preferable futures are a type of future casting that seeks to strive not just for the probable or possible future of a place or idea, but for the most preferred and collectively reached option for a society (McAra-McWilliam 9). INDI researches the design processes that are needed to co-create contexts in which people can flourish: at work, in organisations and businesses, as well as, in public services and government. The task of innovation as an interactive process is an example of the design process. Innovation is defined as “a co-creation process within social and technological networks in which actors integrate their resources to create mutual value” (Russo‐Spena, and Mele 528). Therefore, innovation works outside of standard consultancy practices; rather it engenders a sense of mutual co-created practices that strive to resolve particular problems. Examples include the work that has looked at creating cultures of innovation within small and medium-sized enterprises (Lockwood 4) where the design process was used to alter organisational support (Image 3). These enterprises tend to emulate larger firms and corporations and though useful in places where economies of scale are present, smaller business need adaptable, resilient and integrated networks of innovation within their organisational models. In this way, innovation functioned as a catalyst for altering the existing organisational methods. These innovations are thus a useful alternative to existing means of approaching problems and building resilience within any organisation. Therefore, these ideas of innovation could be transferred and play a role in enabling new ways of approaching non-profit organisational structures, particularly those within heritage. Image 3: Design Council Double Diamond model of the design process. Image credit: Lockwood.Developing the WorkIonad Hiort with INDI’s assistance has worked together to develop a heritage centre that tries to towards a new definition of heritage and identity through this island centre. Much of this work has been done through local community investigations revolving around workshops and one-on-one talks where narratives and ideas are held in “negative capability” (McAra-McWilliam 2) to seek many alternatives that would be able to work for the community. The initial aims of the partnership were to assist the Uig community realise the potential of the St Kilda Centre. Primarily, it would assist in enabling the capabilities of two themes. The first would be, strategy, for Ionad Hiort’s existing multi-page mission brief. The second would be storytelling the narrative of St Kilda as a complex and entangled, however, its common views are limited to the ‘fall from grace’ or ‘noble savage’ story (Macdonald 168). Over the course of six months, the relationship involved two workshops and three site visits of varying degrees of interaction. An initial gathering had InDI staff meet members of Ionad Hiort to introduce members to each other. Afterwards, INDI ran two workshops over two months in Uig to understand, reflect and challenge Ionad Hiort’s focus on what the group desired. The first workshop focused on the group’s strategy statement. In a relaxed and facilitated space in the Uig Community Hall, the groups used pens, markers, and self-adhesive notes to engage in an open dialogue about the group’s desires. This session included reflecting on what their heritage centre could look like, as well as what their strategy needed to get there. These resulted in a series of drawings of their ‘preferred’ centre, with some ideas showing a centre sitting over the edge of the cliffs or one that had the centre be an integral component of the community. In discussing that session, one of members of the group recalled:I remember his [one of INDI’s staff] interrogation of the project was actually pretty – initially – fairly brutal, right? The first formal session we had talking about strategy and so on. To the extent that I think it would be fair to say he pissed everybody off, right? So much so that he actually prompted us to come back with some fairly hard hitting ripostes, which, after a moment’s silence he then said, ‘That’s it, you’ve convinced me’, and at that point we kind of realised that that’s what he’d been trying to do; he’d been trying to really push us to go further in our articulation of what we were doing and … why we were doing it in this particular way than we had done before. (Participant A, 2016).The group through this session found out that their strategy could be refined into a short mission statement giving a clear focus as to what they wanted and how they wanted to go about doing it. In the end, drawings, charts, stories (Image 4) were drawn to reflect on what the community had discussed. These artefacts became a key role-player in the following months of the development of the group. Image 4: View of group working through their strategy workshop session. Image credit: Fergus Fullarton-Pegg (2014). The second set of workshops and visits involved informal discussion with individual members of the group and community. This included a visit to St Kilda with members from INDI, Ionad Hiort and the Digital Design Studio, which allowed for everyone to understand the immensity of the project and its significance to World Heritage values. The initial aims thus evolved into understanding the context of self-governance for distributed communities and how to develop the infrastructure of development. As discussed earlier, existing development processes are useful, though limited to only particular types of projects, and as exemplified in the Highlands and Islands Enterprise and Western Isles Council commission, it tends to put communities against each other for limited pots of money. This existing system can be innovated upon by becoming creative liaisons, sharing and co-creating from existing studies to help develop more effective processes for the future of Ionad Hiort and their ‘preferable future’. Building RelationshipsWhat the relationship with GSA has done, as a dialogue with the team of people that have been involved, has been to consolidate and clarify our own thinking and to get us to question our own thinking across several different aspects of the whole project. (Participant A, 2016)As the quote states, the main notion of using design thinking has allowed Ionad Hiort to question their thinking and challenge preconceptions of what a “heritage centre” is, by being a critical sounding board that is different from what is provided by consultants and other stakeholders. Prior to meeting INDI, Ionad Hiort may have been able to reach their goal of a strategy, however, it would have taken a few more years. The work, which involved structured and unstructured workshops, meetings, planning events, and gatherings, gave them a structured focus to move ahead with their prospectus planning and bidding. INDI enabled the compression and focus of their strategy making and mission strategy statement over the course of six months into a one-page statement that gave direction to the group and provided the impetus for the development of the prospectus briefs. Furthermore, INDI contributed a sense of contemporary content to the historic story, as well as, enable the community to see that this centre would not just become another gallery with café. The most important outcome has been an effective measure in building relationships in the Outer Hebrides, which shows the changing roles between academic and third sector partnerships. Two key points can be deemed from these developing relationships: The first has been to build a research infrastructure in and across the region that engages with local communities about working with the GSA, including groups in North Uist, Barra and South Uist. Of note is a comment made by one of the participants saying: “It’s exciting now, there’s a buzz about it and getting you [INDI] involved, adding a dimension—we’ve got people who have got an artistic bent here but I think your enthusiasm, your skills, very much complement what we’ve got here.” (Participant B, 2016). Second, the academic/non-profit partnership has encouraged younger people to work and study in the area through a developing programme of student research activity. This includes placing taught masters students with local community members on the South Uist, as well as, PhD research being done on Stornoway. These two outcomes then have given rise to interest in not only how heritage is re-developed in a community, but also, encourages future interest, by staff and students to continue the debate and fashion further developments in the region (GSAmediacentre). Today, the cliffs of Mangerstadh continue to receive the pounding of waves, the blowing wind and the ever-present rain on its rocky granite surface. The iterative stages of work that the two groups have done showcase the way that simple actions can carve, change and evolve into innovative outcomes. The research outcomes show that through this new approach to working with communities we move beyond the consultant and towards an ability of generating a preferable future for the community. In this way, the work that has been created together showcases a case study for further island community development. We do not know what the future holds for the group, but with continued support and maintaining an open mind to creative opportunities we will see that the community will develop a space that moves “beyond the museum”. AcknowledgementsThe author would like to thank Ionad Hiort and all the residents of Uig on the Isle of Lewis for their assistance and participation in this partnership. For more information on their work please visit http://www.ionadhiort.org/. The author also thanks the Highlands and Islands Enterprise for financial support in the research and development of the project. Finally, the author thanks the two reviewers who provided critical commentary and critiques to improve this paper. ReferencesBarker, Adam. “Capacity Building for Sustainability: Towards Community Development in Coastal Scotland.” Journal of Environmental Management 75.1 (2005): 11-19. Canavan, Brendan. “Tourism Culture: Nexus, Characteristics, Context and Sustainability.” Tourism Management 53 (2016): 229-43. ———. “The Extent and Role of Domestic Tourism in a Small Island: The Case of the Isle of Man.” Journal of Travel Research 52.3 (2012): 340-52. Cape, Ruth. Exploring Growth and Empowerment of Communities in the Western Isles. Stornoway, 2013. Bullen, Elizabeth, Simon Robb, and Jane Kenway. “‘Creative Destruction’: Knowledge Economy Policy and the Future of the Arts and Humanities in the Academy.” Journal of Education Policy 19.1 (2004): 3–22. Brown, Tim, and Jocelyn Wyatt. “Design Thinking for Social Innovation.” Stanford Social Innovation Review Winter (2010): 30-35. <https://ssir.org/articles/entry/design_thinking_for_social_innovation>.Briscoe, Gerard, and Mark Plumbley. Creating Cultures of Innovation: The Digital Creative Industries. <https://qmro.qmul.ac.uk/xmlui/bitstream/handle/123456789/11403/Creating%20Cultures%20of%20Innovation.pdf?sequence=7>.Edensor, Tim. Industrial Ruins: Spaces, Aesthetics, and Materiality. Oxford: Berg, 2005. Geddes, George. The Magazine and Gun Emplacement, St Kilda A Conservation Statement. Edinburgh, 2008. Geddes, George, and Angela Gannon. St Kilda: The Last and Outmost Isle. Edinburgh: Royal Commission on the Ancient & Historical Monuments of Scotland, 2015. Gordon, Michel, and Arthur Percival. The Wirksworth Story: New Life for An Old Town. Wirksworth: Civic Trust, 1984. GSAmediacentre. “The Glasgow School of Art Contributes to St Kilda Centre Symposium in Stornoway.” GSA Media Centre, The Glasgow School of Art, 17 Aug. 2016. 6 Apr. 2017 <www.gsapress.blogspot.co.uk/2016/08/the-glasgow-school-of-art-contributes.html>.Henchley, Norman. "Making Sense of Future Studies." Alternatives 7.2 (1978): 24-28. Jacuniak-Suda, Marta, and Ingo Mose. “Social Enterprises in the Western Isles (Scotland) – Drivers of Sustainable Rural Development ?” Europa Regional 19.2011.2 (2014): 23-40. Lockwood, Joseph, Madeline Smith, and Irene McAra-McWilliam. “Work-Well: Creating a Culture of Innovation through Design.” International Design Management Research Conference, Boston, 2012. 1-11. McAra-McWilliam, Irene. “Impossible Things? Negative Capability and the Creative Imagination.” Creativity or Conformity Conference, Cardiff, 2007. 1-8. <https://www.academia.edu/1246770/Impossible_things_Negative_Capability>.McKenzie, Steven. "Opera Celebrates St Kilda History." BBC News 23 Jun. 2007. 6 Apr. 2017 <http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/scotland/highlands_and_islands/6763371.stm>.McMorran, Rob, and Alister Scott. “Community Landownership: Rediscovering the Road to Sustainability.” Lairds: Scottish Perspectives on Upland Management (2013): 20-31. Maclean, Diane. “Bitter Strife over St Kilda Visitor Centre.” The Caledonian Mercury 29 Jan. 2010. 6 Apr. 2017 <http://www.caledonianmercury.com/2010/01/29/bitter-strife-over-st-kilda-visitor-centre/001383>.News Editor. “Double Boost for St Kilda Project.” Hebrides News Today 20 Nov. 2013. 6 Apr. 2017 <www.hebridestoday.com/2013/11/double-boost-for-st-kilda-project/>.Portschy, Szabolcs. “Design Partnerships between Community-Engaged Architecture and Academic Education Programs.” Pollack Periodica 10.1 (2015): 173-180.“Proposal – Ionad Hiort.” Ionad Hiort. 6 Apr. 2017 <http://www.ionadhiort.org/the-proposal>. Rebanks, James. “World Heritage Status: Is There Opportunity for Economic Gain? Research and Analysis of the Socio-Economic Impact Potential of UNESCO World Heritage Site Status.” 2009. <http://icomos.fa.utl.pt/documentos/2009/WHSTheEconomicGainFinalReport.pdf>.Robertson, Iain James McPherson. “Hardscrabble Heritage: The Ruined Blackhouse and Crofting Landscape as Heritage from Below.” Landscape Research 40.8 (2015): 993–1009. Ronström, Owe. “Heritage Production in the Island of Gotland.” The International Journal of Research into Island Cultures 2.2 (2008): 1-18. Russo‐Spena, Tiziana, and Cristina Mele. “‘Five Co‐s’ in Innovating: A Practice‐Based View.” Ed. Evert Gummesson. Journal of Service Management 23.4 (2012): 527-53. “St Kilda.” World Heritage Centre. UNESCO. 6 Apr. 2017 <www.whc.unesco.org/en/list/387/>.Steiner, Artur, and Marianna Markantoni. “Unpacking Community Resilience through Capacity for Change.” Community Development Journal 49.3 (2014): 407-25.Shortall, S. “Rural Development in Practice: Issues Arising in Scotland and Northern Ireland.” Community Development Journal 36.2 (2001): 122-33. UNESCO. Using Remote Access Technologies: Lessons Learnt from the Remote Access to World Heritage Sites – St Kilda to Uluru Conference. London, 2012. Urquhart, Frank. “St Kilda Visitor Centre in Hebrides Step Closer.” People Places, The Scotsman 20 Nov. 2013. 6 Apr. 2017 <www.scotsman.com/heritage/people-places/st-kilda-visitor-centre-in-hebrides-step-closer-1-3195287>. Watson, Amy. “Plans for St Kilda Centre at Remote World Heritage Site.” People Places, The Scotsman 16 Aug. 2016. 6 Apr. 2017 <www.scotsman.com/heritage/people-places/plans-for-st-kilda-centre-at-remote-world-heritage-site-1-4204606>.

Abstract:

SuicideGirls.com In September 2001 two entrepreneurs Missy (coal-black Betty Page bangs and numerous tattoos) and Sean launched SuicideGirls.com. With their backgrounds in graphic design, programming and photography, they came up with the idea of launching an alternative adult site that started out as “a kind of an art project” — it grew out of an interest in Bunny Yeager’s pinup photos, where the control and attitude of the sexy women were emphasized, only now it was about pierced and tattooed females. Missy describes the portrayal of women on the site in the following words: The site is about the girls being in control and being in charge of how they’re portrayed. It’s also proof that sexuality and beauty aren’t mutually exclusive of intelligence, and we wanted to showcase all of the girls, but leave people guessing a little bit. There’s no need to go full-blown p*rno. SuicideGirls.com is an adult community that offers a mix of eroticism, creativity, personality and intelligence. SuicideGirls is about so-called empowered eroticism; it provides a site where girls outside of mainstream culture can express their individual style through soft erotic images, and web logs. Every week the site introduces new SuicideGirls, every day new pictures are added; a full national calendar of events is frequently updated and is searchable by location, date or keyword — members can be looked up by name, age, location or keywords; the site also features a magazine section with original fiction, articles and interviews with celebrities. What makes this site especially interesting is that each SuicideGirl has her own page featuring a pertinent profile with personal information such as age, stats, body mods, favorite books, music, sex positions, and current crushes. She can also put up pictures and video materials — including a web cam — of herself, express her thoughts and share her daily experiences in a blog, comment on other blogs and message boards, chat in designated chat rooms, and organize online and offline events. Kate78, Texan-born, is a regular blogger. She writes about her studies in Kansas City, a city she has come to hate after she learned that her car insurance could only be renewed in Texas. She describes herself as a “punk rock chick” — illustrated by pictures that show her with long spiky hair; she has got her nose pierced and her many tattoos — and a “suicidegirl”. There are plenty of blogs — e.g. LiveJournal, Blogspot, Punklog — where girls write about wanting to become a SuicideGirl. The girls are mainly motivated by a wish to share their bodily art paralleled by a sense of being in control over their image and admirers (they keep control over the photo sets and shoots). SuicideGirls.com is foremost an online community and therefore girls from all over the world can potentially become a SuicideGirl, as long as they have access to the Internet in order to publish to their personal page. These girls are in charge of their own online presentation, supported by a lively community where both women and men interact by reading and posting to the girls and each other’s blogs. In addition, members of the site can also post local events to the SuicideGirl calendar or the message boards, comment on pictures, and even hook up with one another. With the ability for members to create their own page, with their own profile picture and personal information, members can search for one another based on location, age, sex and personal preferences. Indeed, not only the SuicideGirls themselves have online pages to fill: subscribers to SuicideGirls.com have similar ‘privileges’, with the exception that they have to pay a small fee of $4 per month — though they can never refer to themselves as SuicideGirl: anyone entering the site has to log in as either ‘SuicideGirl’ or ‘Member’. Thus, SuicideGirls.com mixes a DIY attitude with alternative culture — especially Gothic, Punk and Emo — resulting in an appealing grassroots approach to sexuality that is of interest to both women and men. At the same time, the public identity of a SuicideGirl is constructed within a particular textual context dependent on commercial drivers. Through attracting fans on the basis of her “autonomous” self-representation — Goth fans, for instance — she brings in customers, raising questions about the tensions between “grassroots” self-representation and corporate branding. Collaborative Eroticism as Business Model We should document the interactions that occur among media consumers, between media consumers and media texts and between media consumers and media producers. The new participatory culture is taking shape at the intersection between three trends: 1) new tools and technologies enable consumers to archive, annotate, appropriate and re-circulate media content; 2) a range of subcultures promote do-it-yourself (DIY) media production, a discourse that shapes how consumers have deployed those technologies; and 3) economic trends favoring the horizontally integrated media conglomerates encourage the flow of images, ideas and narratives across multiple media channels and demand more active modes of spectatorship” (Jenkins 157). Traditionally the organization of economic production is based on the idea that individuals order their productive activities either on managerial hierarchies, or on production that is based on market prices (Benkler). Peer production represents a new mode of organizing that is not based on relations of dependence (managerial hierarchies) nor relations of independence (markets) rather peer production involves relations of interdependence. Peer production is a heterarchy characterized by relations of minimal hierarchy and by organizational heterogeneity (Stark). While traditionally structured organizations attempt to maximize internal order and control by enforcing a hierarchical system and establishing standards and clear lines of authority (Powell), heterarchies exist through permitting and even fostering a diversity of organizational logics and minimizing conformity (Chan). With the introduction of Mosaic and the Pentium chip in the mid-1990s the notion of the organization of production profoundly changed. The Internet could be used for more than looking up information or sending email. Instead, it offers a structure where participants are not organized by managerial hierarchies nor governed by price signals rather where people formed networks to collaborate in open source software projects or effectively constructing ‘user-created search engines’ for the exchange of e.g., music files, games (KaZaA, Gnutella), news and chat. While the present moment is marked by a legal standoff between robust communities of users (cultural co-producers) and the established media industry (particularly the music and film industry), some elements of the corporate media world have taken a different approach, embracing the new technological use rather than attempting to outlaw it. These corporations have found their way to online participatory networks and are attempting to use them for their own good. For instance, companies like Coca-Cola, BMW, and Apple offer online spaces – often in the form of thinly veiled advertisem*nts (‘advertainment’) – where people can play games, watch movies, share files and the like in order to create or promote a company’s product, service or brand. They crucially rely upon blurring the boundaries between production, distribution and consumption, encouraging the target audience to work for them. Whether by playing games with embedded advertising, or inadvertently sending marketing information back to advertisers, or simply by passing advertising texts within one’s circle of friends, the target audience and the larger dynamic of participatory networks are ‘used’ by corporations to achieve their ends. SuicideGirls.com is a good example example of this emerging mode of (commons-based) peer production in a digitally networked environment – i.e. groups of individuals who participate in online shared spaces driven by diverse motivations, and serving corporate as well as community needs. The SuicideGirls’ blogs are the shared currency that binds SuicideGirls.com and its erotic consumers together as a “community”: SuicideGirls.com taps into online communities by enabling collaborative eroticism. Moving beyond adult entertainment, this trend of using blogs for commercial purposes raises interesting questions regarding, on the one hand, the cultural status of online blogging from a commercial perspective, e.g., how should we consider the cultural status of artifacts such as blogs that have commerce at the core of their identity: Can we speak of a displacement of aesthetic experience by the branding experience, or might these two experiences be seen as part of a continuum?; and, on the other hand, regarding participatory culture in a commercially mediated environment: e.g., What is the status of b2c, c2c, and p2p in a commercially structured network; What are the implications for user appropriation? The answers to these questions among others studied by various academic disciplines may contribute to the building of a framework for examining the consequences of this strategic shift towards relating to, reaching out to and linking online customers in a commercial web (b)log. Acknowledgement Anja Rau, thank you for your feedback. References Banerjee, A. “A Simple Model of Herd Behavior.” Quarterly Journal of Economics 1992: 797-817. Barabási, A. L. Linked: The New Science of Networks. Cambridge, MA: Perseus Publishing, 2002. Benkler, Y. “Coase’s Penguin, or, Linux and The Nature of the Firm.” Yale Law Journal, Winter v.04.3 2002-03. http://personal.uncc.edu/alblanch/SOVC.pdf. http://www.dcs.napier.ac.uk/~mm/socbytes/feb2002_i/9.html Castells, M. The Rise of the Network Society. Oxford: Blackwell, 2000. Castells, M. The Internet Galaxy: Reflections on the Internet, Business and Society. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001. Chan, A. Collaborative News Networks: Distributed Editing, Collective Action, and the Construction of Online News on Slashdot.org. Thesis M.Sc. at MIT’s Comparative Media Studies, 2002). http://www.marketing.unsw.edu.au/HTML/mktresearch/workingpapers/Cowley_Rossiter02_6.pdf http://www.xdreze.org/vitae1.pfd Du Gay, P.& Pryke, M. Cultural Economy. London: Sage Publications, 2002. Dyer, R., Stars (Revised). London: British Film Institute, 1998. Hagel, J. & Armstrong, A. Net Gain: Expanding Markets Through Virtual Communities. USA: McKinsey & Company, Inc., 1997.; Hebditch, D. and Anning, N. p*rn Gold: Inside the p*rnography Business. London: Faber & Faber, 1988. Jenkins, H. “Interactive audiences?” In Harries, D., ed. The New Media Book. London: British Film Institute, 2002. Kottler, P. Marketing Management: The Millennium Edition. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall, 2000. Mayzlin, D. Promotional Chat on the Internet. PhD dissertation, MIT, Sloan School of Management, 2001. Oram, A. Peer-To-Peer: Harnessing the Power of Disruptive Technologies. Sebastopol: O’Reilly & Associates, 2001. O’Toole, L. p*rnocopia: p*rn, Sex, Technology and Desire. London: Serpent’s Tail, 1998. Pine, J. and Gilmore, J. The Experience Economy: Work is Theatre & Every Business a Stage. Boston: Harvard Business School Press, 1999. Powell, W. “Neither Market nor Hierarchy: Network Forms of Organization.” Research in Organizational Behavior, 12, 1990: 295-336. Schmitt, B. & Simonson, A. Marketing Aesthetics: The Strategic Management of Brands, Identity, and Image. New York: The Free Press, 1997. Slater, D. Consumer Culture and Modernity. Cambridge: Polity Press, 1997.Slater, D. and Tonkiss, F. Market Society: Markets and Modern Social Theory. Cambridge: Polity Press, 2001. http://www.stanford.edu/~woodyp/papers/capitalist_firm.pdf Stone, A. R. The War of Desire and Technology at the Close of the Mechanical Age. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1996. Sunstein C. Behavioral Law and Economics. Cambridge University Press, 2000. Thompson, J.B. The Media and Modernity: A Social Theory of the Media. Cambridge: Polity Press, 1995. Watts, D. and Strogatz, S. “Collective Dynamics of ‘Small-World’ Networks.” Nature, 393, 1998: 440-442. Williams, L. Hard Core: Power, Pleasure and the ‘Frenzy of the Visible’. London: Pandora Press, 1990. MLA Style Van der Graf, Shenja. "Blogging Business: SuicideGirls.com." M/C Journal 7.4 (2004). 10 October 2004 <http://www.media-culture.org.au/0410/07_suicide.php>. APA Style Van der Graf, S. (2004 Oct 11). Blogging Business: SuicideGirls.com, M/C Journal, 7(4). Retrieved Oct 10 2004 from <http://www.media-culture.org.au/0410/07_suicide.php>

Abstract:

Gunther Kress and Theo van Leeuwen argue that in “contemporary Western visualization central composition is relatively uncommon” (Reading Images 203). In fact, “most compositions polarise elements as Given and New and/or Ideal and Real” (Reading Images 203). This is the regular situation on the front pages of Australia’s national and capital city dailies; but not on May 28. Rather than the favoured front page structures of left (Given) and right (New) and/or top (Ideal) and bottom (Real), on this morning the layouts in the newspapers centralised the Schapelle Corby judgment. While this is not unprecedented, it is the type of coverage usually kept for major issues such as 9/11 or the Bali Bombing. Even the recent release of Douglas Wood, which was arguably as, if not more, important for the Australian public in terms of the issues it raised about Australia’s involvement in the war in Iraq, did not receive the same type of treatment. Although further study needs to be undertaken, I believe this centralising of issues, that is the running of one story only, on front pages is a growing trend, particularly among the tabloids. The effect of this centralising layout structure is to reduce the news choice for the reader on front pages that they would normally approach with an attitude of scanning and selecting. While this approach could still be taken across the whole paper, the front-page choices are minimised. This essay will examine the coverage of the Corby verdict in the tabloids The Daily Telegraph, the Herald Sun, The Advertiser, The Mercury, and The West Australian, because it is here that the greatest impact of centralisation on the encoded reading paths can be found. Although the broadsheets The Australian, The Sydney Morning Herald, The Age, The Courier-Mail, and The Canberra Times also centralised the issue, there is not room here to cover them in detail. May 28 was the peak of the media frenzy in the Corby coverage, or at least one of the peaks. As the story is ongoing—turning into something of a soap opera in its call to readers and television news viewers to tune in and see the latest bizarre development, such as the chief lawyer admitting he’s a crook—it could peak again, particularly if on appeal a heavier sentence is handed down. On May 28, the focus moved from Corby’s guilt or innocence to the horror of the twenty-year sentence. In each category—broadsheet and tabloid—the layouts were remarkably similar. At a glance, three of the tabloids are so similar that side-by-side on a newsstand they could have been mistaken for the same. Apart from the fact that Corby’s beauty gave her cultural salience, it is not clear why the Australian media was so taken with her story in the first instance when there are and have been many Australians on drug charges in Asia. My interest here is not so much why or how she became news—that’s an issue for another time—but that once she had captured the attention of the Australian print media, how did they visually treat the material and what are the implications of that treatment. I will argue that the treatment elevated her story, giving it the same weight as the war on terror coverage since 9/11. One of the first elements that draws the eye on any newspaper page is the photograph. Tim Harrower suggests photographs “give a page motion and emotion” (28), arguing however that it is the headline “that leaps out, that grabs you” (37). In reality, it is most likely a combination of both that draws a reader’s attention. Both encode the importance of a story with a dominating photograph or a large headline signalling a story’s significance. The varying size of headlines and photographs and their placement signal the page designer’s order of importance. Six of the ten major Australian newspapers chose the same photograph for their front pages on May 28: a picture of Corby with her head held in her left hand and a look of despair on her face. Four of them—The Daily Telegraph, The Mercury, The Advertiser, and the Herald Sun—used the full photograph, while it was heavily cropped into a horizontal picture on the front pages of The West Australian and The Age. The Australian’s choice was similar but the photograph was taken from a slightly different angle. Only one of these newspapers, The West Australian, acknowledged that Corby did not just hang her head in her hand in despair but rather was slapping her head and sobbing as the verdict was read. The television footage gives a different impression of this moment than the still photograph run in the newspapers. The Sydney Morning Herald and The Courier-Mail, in contrast, chose a photograph of Corby struggling with the courtroom police. The Sydney Morning Herald more closely cropped their version so that the emphasis is on Corby. More of the struggle is depicted in The Courier-Mail. The only newspaper making a substantially different choice was The Canberra Times. In this publication, the central vertical photograph was a close up of Corby with tears in her eyes. Her mien is more composed than in the photographs on the other front pages. The source for the photographs, with the exception of The Australian’s choice from Associated Press, was Reuters. Given that the event was in Indonesia and in a crowded courtroom, the array of photographs may have been limited. Of interest was the use of the photograph. The Daily Telegraph, The Mercury, and the Herald Sun ran it full-page, like a poster shot, with the mastheads and headlines over the top. In contrast, The Advertiser maintained a white background for their masthead with the photograph underneath enclosed in a heavy frame and the headlines imposed on top. The other newspapers ran the photograph to the edge of the page without an added frame. The Advertiser, The Mercury, and the Herald Sun chose to forgo their normal front-page teasers. This restricted the scan and select for the reader. Normally readers would have at least two stories, sometimes three, as well as two to three teasers or pointers (usually across the top of the page under the masthead) to scan and select their reading matter. On May 28, however, Corby was centralised with a similar reading path encoded for each of these newspapers. The photograph is the most salient element and the eye moves from this to the main headline at the bottom of the page. As the masthead is known and familiar, unless the reader is selecting the newspaper from a newsstand rather than picking it up from their front yard, it is likely they would only subconsciously register it. These layouts, with a reading path from photograph to headlines down the page, are closer to linear in design, than the normal non-linear format and more interactive front pages. Therefore, the coding is for reading “left to right and from top to bottom, line by line” (Kress and van Leeuwen 218). Newspapers are not normally read in a linear way, but “selectively and partially . . . Their composition sets up particular hierarchies of the movement of the hypothetical reader within and across their different elements. Such reading paths begin with the most salient element, from there move to the next most salient element and so on.” (218) There is also sameness in the headlines and their implications. The Mercury, the most unadorned of the layouts, has “20 Years” in block capitals with a subhead and pointer reading “Corby’s Nightmare Sentence, pages 2-6”. The implication is clear, Corby’s sentence is 20 years in jail and it is pronounced a “nightmare”. The Herald Sun also chose “20 Years” with a subheading of “Shock and tears over jail sentence”. Consolidating this notion of “shock and tears” were three smaller photographs across the bottom of the page depicting crying and sobbing women. No male sympathy was depicted, thus tapping into and reinforcing Australian cultural stereotypes that it is the Australian women rather than the men who cry. The Advertiser’s main headline declared “20 Years in Hell”. Beside this was a smaller underlined headline and pointer “Guilty Corby, sent to jail, Australians react in anger Pages 8-15”. There are slight distinctions in these three pages but essentially the encoded reading path and message is the same. That is not to say that some people may read the pages in a different order. As Kress and van Leeuwen argue “newspaper pages can be read in more than one way” (“Front Page” 205), however, the choice on these pages is limited. The Daily Telegraph uses headlines with different emphasis and includes text from the main story imposed over the photograph. Pointers square-off the pages at the bottom. A kicker head at the top of the page, below the masthead, and set against a photograph of Abu Bakir Bashir, declares: “This terrorist planned the murder of 88 Australians and got two years. Yesterday Schapelle Corby got 20”. This comparison does not appear on the already examined pages. Towards the bottom of the page, the main headline set over two lines reads “Nation’s Fury”. To the right of the “Nation” is a smaller headline, which says “20 years in hell and prosecutor’s still demand life”. The story begins beside the second line “Fury”. The message on this page is more strident than the others and was analysed by the ABC TV show Media Watch on May 30. Media Watch declared the “spin on the verdict” used by The Daily Telegraph as “truly a disgrace”. The criticism was made because Bashir was not convicted in court of masterminding the bombing therefore the word “planned” is problematic and misleading. As the Media Watch report points out, the three Indonesians convicted of masterminding the bombing are on death row and will face the firing squad. The final tabloid, The West Australian, presented a similar message to The Daily Telegraph with a headline of “Bomb plotter: 2½ years / Dope smuggler: 20 years”. The visual impact of this page, however, is not as striking as the other pages. The visual designs of The Advertiser, The Daily Telegraph, The Mercury, and the Herald Sun make it immediately clear that the Corby verdict is the central issue in the news and that all other stories are so marginal they are off the page. In contrast, The West Australian ran its normal teasers just below the masthead, offering four choices for the reader as well as weather and home delivery details at the bottom. The heavily cropped central photograph of Corby leaves in only her wrist and central facial features; it is not even immediately apparent that the photograph is of Corby. The story runs in an L-shape around it. Although Corby is central, the reading path is not as clear. The reader’s eye will most likely be drawn from photograph to caption and to headline or headline, photograph, caption. Whatever the path, the story text is always read last, that is, if the reader chooses this story at all (Kress and van Leeuwen, “Front Pages” 205). The story opens by announcing that Corby’s lawyers want the Australian authorities to “launch an investigation” into the case and Foreign Affairs Minister Alexander Downer has offered the help of two Australian QCs in preparing an appeal. This introduction does not support the headline. The comparison with Bashir comes in paragraph three. While Corby still has salience, the inclusion of teasers on the front of The West Australian brings back the choice for the reader, albeit in a small way. Kress and van Leeuwen argue that newspapers “are the first point of ‘address’ for the readers” presenting “the most significant events and issues of the day for the paper and its readers” (“Front Page” 229). In the Corby coverage on May 28, the newspapers presented the court verdict as the most important of all stories on offer and her image became the most salient element, the “nucleus” of the front pages. All newspapers make choices for their readers in their capacity as gatekeepers (see David Manning White and Glen Bleske), but not, I would argue, to the extent that it appeared in the Corby case. A centralising approach to news can be understood with stories such as 9/11 or the Bali Bombing but does one woman’s plight over drug charges in Bali truly deserve such coverage? As a single event maybe not, but the Corby verdict again raised the issue of Australia’s uneasiness about the laws and culture of its Asian neighbours, feelings amplified in the wake of the Bali Bombing. The rhetoric used in the front pages of The Daily Telegraph and The West Australian clearly state this when they compare Corby’s sentence to Bashir’s. They demonstrate a paranoia about the treatment of “our girl” in a foreign judicial system which appears to deal more leniently with terrorists. Thus, one girl’s story is transformed into part of a much larger issue, a fact reinforced through the visual treatment of the material. There remain some questions. What does it say about the newspaper’s attitude to their readers when they centralise issues so strongly that reader choice is removed? Is this part of the “dumbing down” of the Australian media, where news organisations move towards more clearly dictating views to their reading public? Is it attributable to media ownership, after all four of these tabloids belong to News Corporation? These questions and others about the trend towards the centralising of issues are for a bigger study. For now, we watch to see how much longer Corby remains in the nucleus of the news and for further indication of a growing trend towards centralising issues. References Bleske, Glen K. “Mrs Gates Takes Over: An Updated Version of a 1949 Case Study.” Social Meanings of News. Ed. Dan Berkowitz. Thousand Oaks: Sage Publications, 1997. Harrower, Tim. The Newspaper Designer’s Handbook. Boston: McGraw-Hill, 1998. Kress, Gunther, and Theo van Leeuwen. Reading Images: The Grammar of Visual Design. London and New York: Routledge, 1996. Kress, Gunther, and Theo van Leeuwen. “Front Page: (The Critical) Analysis of Newspaper Layout.” Approaches to Media Discourse. Ed. Allan Bell and Peter Garrett. Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, 2003. Media Watch. May 30, 2005. http://www.abc.net.au/mediawatch/transcripts/s1380398.htm>. Sellers, Leslie. The Simple Subs Book. Oxford: Permagon Press, 1968. White, David Manning. “The ‘Gate Keeper’: A Case Study in the Selection of News.” Social Meanings of News. Ed. Dan Berkowitz. Thousand Oaks: Sage Publications, 1997. Citation reference for this article MLA Style Delaney, Elizabeth. "Scanning the Front Pages: The Schapelle Corby Judgment." M/C Journal 8.4 (2005). echo date('d M. Y'); ?> <http://journal.media-culture.org.au/0508/08-delaney.php>. APA Style Delaney, E. (Aug. 2005) "Scanning the Front Pages: The Schapelle Corby Judgment," M/C Journal, 8(4). Retrieved echo date('d M. Y'); ?> from <http://journal.media-culture.org.au/0508/08-delaney.php>.

Abstract:

IntroductionUtopian and forward looking in tenor, official narratives of urban renewal and development implicitly promote normative ideals of progress and necessary civic improvement. Yet an underlying condition of such renewal is frequently the very opposite of building: the demolition of existing urban fabric. Taking as its starting point the large-scale demolition of buildings proposed for the NSW Government’s Sydney Metro rail project, this article interrogates the role of literary treatments of demolition in mediating complex, and often contradictory, responses to transformations of the built environment. Case studies are drawn from literary texts in which demolition and infrastructure development are key preoccupations, notably Louis Aragon’s 1926 Surrealist document of a threatened Parisian arcade, Paris Peasant, and the non-fiction accounts of the redevelopment of London’s East End by British writer Iain Sinclair. Sydney UnbuiltPresently, Australia’s biggest public transport project according to the NSW Government website, the Sydney Metro is set to revolutionise Sydney’s rail future with more than 30 metro stations and a fleet of fully-automated driverless trains. Its impetus extends at least as far back as the Liberal-National Coalition’s landslide win at the 2011 New South Wales state election when Barry O’Farrell, then party leader, declared “NSW has to be rebuilt” (qtd in Aston). Infrastructure upgrades became one of the Coalition’s key priorities upon forming government. Following a second Coalition win at the 2015 election, the state of NSW, or the city of Sydney more accurately, remains today deep amidst widespread building works with an unprecedented number of infrastructure, development and urban renewal projects simultaneously underway.From an historical perspective, Sydney is certainly no stranger to demolition. This was in evidence in Demolished Sydney, an exhibition at the Museum of Sydney that captured the zeitgeist of 2016 with its historical survey of Sydney’s demolished architecture. As the exhibition media release pointed out: “Since 1788 Sydney has been built, unbuilt and rebuilt as it has grown from Georgian town to Victorian city to the global urban centre it is today” (Museum of Sydney). What this evolutionist narrative glosses over, however, is the extent to which the impact of Sydney’s significant reinventions of itself through large-scale redevelopment are often not properly registered until well after such changes have taken place. With the imminent commencement of Sydney Metro Stage 2 CBD works, the city similarly stands to lose a number of buildings that embody the civic urban ideals of an earlier era, the effects of which are unlikely to be fully appreciated until the project’s post-demolition phase. The revelation, over the past year, of the full extent of demolition required to build Sydney Metro casts a spotlight on the project and raises questions about its likely impact in reconfiguring the character of Sydney’s inner city. An Environmental Impact Statement Summary (EISS) released by the NSW Government in May 2016 confirms that 79 buildings in the CBD and surrounding suburbs are slated for demolition as part of station development plans for the Stage 2 Chatswood to Sydenham line (Transport for NSW). Initial assurances were that the large majority of acquisitions would be commercial buildings. Yet, the mix also comprises some locally-heritage listed structures including, most notably, 7 Elizabeth Street Sydney (Image 1), a residential apartment tower of 54 studio flats located at the top end of the Sydney central business district.Image 1: 7 Elizabeth Street Sydney apartment towers (middle). Architect: Emil Sodersten. Image credit: Ella Mudie.As the sole surviving block of CBD flats constructed during the 1930s, 7 Elizabeth Street had been identified by the Australian Institute of Architects as an example of historically significant twentieth-century residential architecture. Furthermore, the modernist block is aesthetically significant as the work of prominent Art Deco architect Emil Sodersten (1899-1961) and interior designer Marion Hall Best (1905-1988). Disregarding recommendations that the building should be retained and conserved, Transport for NSW compulsorily acquired the block, evicting residents in late 2016 from one of the few remaining sources of affordable housing in the inner-city. Meanwhile, a few blocks down at 302 Pitt Street the more than century-old Druids House (Image 2) is also set to be demolished for the Metro development. Prior to purchase by Transport for NSW, the property had been slated for a state-of-the-art adaptive reuse as a boutique hotel which would have preserved the building’s façade and windows. In North Sydney, a locally heritage listed shopfront at 187 Miller Street, one of the few examples of the Victorian Italianate style remaining on the street, faces a similar fate. Image 2. Druids House, 302 Pitt Street Sydney. Image credit: Ella Mudie.Beyond the bureaucratic accounting of the numbers and locations of demolitions outlined in the NSW Government’s EISS, this survey of disappearing structures highlights to what extent, large-scale transport infrastructure projects like Sydney Metro, can reshape what the Situationists termed the “psychogeography” of a city; the critical manner in which places and environments affect our emotions and behaviour. With their tendency to erase traces of the city’s past and to smooth over its textures, those variegations in the urban fabric that emerge from the interrelationship of the built environment with the lived experience of a space, the changes wrought by infrastructure and development thus manifest a certain anguish of urban dynamism that is connected to broader anxieties over modernity’s “speed of change and the ever-changing horizons of time and space” (Huyssen 23). Indeed, just as startling as the disappearance of older and more idiosyncratic structures is the demolition of newer building stock which, in the case of Sydney Metro, includes the slated demolition of a well-maintained 22-storey commercial office tower at 39 Martin Place (Image 3). Completed in just 1972, the fact that the lifespan of this tower will amount to less than fifty years points to the rapid obsolescence, and sheer disposability, of commercial building stock in the twenty first-century. It is also indicative of the drive towards destruction that operates within the project of modernism itself. Pondering the relationship of modernist architecture to time, Guiliana Bruno asks: can we really speak of a modernist ruin? Unlike the porous, permeable stone of ancient building, the material of modernism does not ‘ruin.’ Concrete does not decay. It does not slowly erode and corrode, fade out or fade away. It cannot monumentally disintegrate. In some way, modernist architecture does not absorb the passing of time. Adverse to deterioration, it does not age easily, gracefully or elegantly. (80)In its resistance to organic ruination, Bruno’s comment thus implies it is demolition that will be the fate of the large majority of the urban building stock of the twentieth century and beyond. In this way, Sydney Metro is symptomatic of far broader cycles of replenishment and renewal at play in cities around the world, bringing to the fore timely questions about demolition and modernity, the conflict between economic development and the civic good, and social justice concerns over the public’s right to the city. Image 3: 39 Martin Place Sydney. Image credit: Ella Mudie.In the second part of this article, I turn to literary treatments of demolition in order to consider what role the writer might play in giving expression to some of the conflicts and tensions, as exemplified by Sydney Metro, that manifest in ‘unbuilding’ the city. How might literature, I ask, be uniquely placed to mobilise critique? And to what extent does the writer—as both a detached observer and engaged participant in the city—occupy an ambivalent stance especially sensitive to the inherent contradictions and paradoxes of the built environment’s relationship to modernity?Iain Sinclair: Calling Time on the Grand Projects For more than two decades, British author Iain Sinclair has been mapping the shifting terrain of London and its edgelands across a spectrum of experimental fiction and non-fiction works. In addition to the thematic attention paid to neoliberal capitalist processes of urban renewal and their tendency to implode established ties between place, memory and identity, Sinclair’s hybrid documentary-novels are especially pertinent to the analysis of “writing demolition” for their distinct writerly approach. Two recent texts, Ghost Milk: Calling Time on the Grand Project (2011) and London Overground: A Day’s Walk around the Ginger Line (2015), highlight an intensification of interest on Sinclair’s part in the growing influence exerted by global finance, hyper consumerism and security fears on the reterritorialisation of the English capital. Written in the lead up to the 2012 London Olympics, Ghost Milk is Sinclair’s scathing indictment of the corporate greed that fuelled the large-scale redevelopment of Stratford and its surrounds ahead of the Games. It is an angry and vocal response to urban transformation, a sustained polemic intensified by the author’s local perspective. A long-term resident of East London, in the 1970s Sinclair worked as a labourer at Chobham Farm and thus feels a personal assault in how Stratford “abdicated its fixed identity and willingly prostituted itself as a backdrop for experimental malls, rail hubs and computer generated Olympic parks” (28). For Sinclair, the bulldozing of the Stratford and Hackney boroughs was performed in the name of a so-called civic legacy beyond the Olympic spectacle that failed to culminate in anything more than a “long march towards a theme park without a theme” (11), a site emblematic of the bland shopping mall architecture of what Sinclair derisorily terms “the GP [Grand Project] era” (125).As a literary treatment of demolition Ghost Milk is particularly concerned with the compromised role of language in urban planning rhetoric. The redevelopment required for the Olympics is backed by a “fraudulent narrative” (99), says Sinclair, a conspiratorial co-optation of language made to bend in the service of urban gentrification. “In many ways,” he writes, “the essential literature of the GP era is the proposal, the bullet-point pitch, the perversion of natural language into weasel forms of not-saying” (125). This impoverishment and simplification of language, Sinclair argues, weakens the critical thinking required to recognise the propagandising tendencies underlying so many urban renewal programs.The author’s vocal admonishment of the London Olympics did not go unnoticed. In 2008 a reading from his forthcoming book Hackney, That Rose-Red Empire (2009), at a local library was cancelled out of fear of providing a public platform for his negative views. In Ghost Milk Sinclair reflects upon the treatment of his not yet published docu-novel as “found guilty, with no right of reply, of being political but somehow outside politics” (115). Confronted with the type of large-scale change that underpins such projects as the Olympic Games, or the Sydney Metro closer to home, Sinclair’s predicament points to the ambiguous position of influence occupied by writers. On the one hand, influence is limited in so far as authors play no formal part in the political process. Yet, when outspoken critique resonates words can become suddenly powerful, radically undermining the authority of slick environmental impact statements and sanctioned public consultation findings. In a more poetic sense, Sinclair’s texts are further influential for the way in which they offer a subjective mythologising of the city as a counterpoint to the banal narratives of bureaucratised urbanism. This is especially apparent in London Overground: A Day’s Walk around the Ginger Line (2015), in which Sinclair recounts a single-day street-level pedestrian exploration of the 35-mile and 33-station circuit of the new London Overground railway line. Surveying with disapproval the “new bridges, artisan bakeries, blue-bike racks and coffee shops” (20) that have sprung up along the route of the elevated railway, the initial gambit of the text appears to be to critique the London Overground as a “device for boosting property values” (23). Rail zone as “generator for investment” (31), and driver of the political emasculation of suburbs like Hackney and Shoreditch. Yet as the text develops the narrator appears increasingly drawn to the curious manner in which the Overground line performs an “accidental re-mapping of London” (24). He drifts, then, in search of: a site in which to confront one’s shadow. In a degraded form, this was the ambition behind our orbital tramp. To be attentive to the voices; to walk beside our shadow selves. To reverse the polarity of incomprehensible public schemes, the secret motors of capital defended and promoted by professionally mendacious politicians capable of justifying anything. (London Overground 127)Summoning the oneiric qualities of the railway and its inclination to dreaming and reverie, Sinclair reimagines it as divine oracle, a “ladder of initiation” (47) bisecting resonant zones animated by traces of the visionary artists and novelists whose sensitivity to place have shaped the perception of the London boroughs in the urban imaginary. It is in this manner that Sinclair’s walks generate “an oppositional perspective against the grand projects of centralized planning and management of space” (Weston 261). In a kind of poetic re-enchantment of urban space, texts like Ghost Milk and London Overground shatter the thin veneer of present-day capitalist urbanism challenging the reader to conceive of alternative visions of the city as heterogeneous and imbued with deep historical time.Louis Aragon: Demolition and ModernityWhile London Overground was composed after the construction of the new railway circuit, the pre-demolition phase of a project is, by comparison, a threshold moment. Literary responses to impending demolition are thus shaped in an unstable context as the landscape of a city becomes subject to unpredictable changes that can unfold at a very swift pace. Declan Tan suggests that the writing of Ghost Milk in the lead up to the London Olympics marks Sinclair’s disapproval as “futile, Ghost Milk is knowingly written as a documentary of near-history, an archival treatment of 2012 now, before it happens.” Yet, paradoxically it is the very futility of Sinclair’s project that intensifies the urgency to record, sharpening his polemic. This notion of writing a “documentary of near-history” also suggests a certain breach in time, which in the case of Louis Aragon’s Paris Peasant is mined for its revolutionary energies.First published in book form in 1926, Paris Peasant is an experimental Surrealist novel comprising four collage-like fragments including Aragon’s famous panegyric on the Passage de l’Opéra, a nineteenth-century Parisian arcade slated for demolition to make way for a new access road to the Boulevard Haussmann. Reading the text in the present era of Sydney Metro works, the predicament of the disappearing Opera Arcade resonates with the fate of the threatened Art Deco tower at 7 Elizabeth Street, soon to be razed to build a new metro station. Critical of the media’s overall neglect of the redevelopment, Aragon’s text pays sympathetic attention to the plight of the arcade’s business owners, railing against the injustices of their imminent eviction whilst mourning the disappearance of one of the last vestiges of the more organic configuration of the city that preceded the Haussmann renovation of Paris:the great American passion for city planning, imported into Paris by a prefect of police during the Second Empire and now being applied to the task of redrawing the map of our capital in straight lines, will soon spell the doom of these human aquariums. (Aragon 14)In light of these concerns it is tempting to cast Paris Peasant as a classic anti-development polemic. However, closer interrogation of the narrator’s ambivalent stance points to a more complicated attitude towards urban renewal. For, as he casts a forensic eye across the arcade’s shops it becomes apparent that these threatened sites hold a certain lure of attraction for the Surrealist author. The explanatory genre of the guide-book is subverted in a highly imaginative inventory of the arcade interiors. Touring its baths, brothels and hair salon, shoe shine parlour, run-down theatre, and the Café Certa—meeting place of the Surrealists—the narrator’s perambulation provides a launching point for intoxicated reveries and effervescent flights of fancy. Finally, the narrator concedes: “I would never have thought of myself as an observer. I like to let the winds and the rain blow through me: chance is my only experience, hazard my sole experiment” (88). Neither a journalist nor an historian, Paris Peasant’s narrator is not concerned merely to document the Opera Arcade for posterity. Rather, his interest in the site resides in its liminal state. On the cusp of being transformed into something else, the ontological instability of the arcade provides a dramatic illustration of the myth of architecture’s permanency. Aragon’s novel is concerned then, Abigail Susik notes, with the “insatiable momentum of progress,” and how it “renders all the more visible what could be called the radical remainders of modernity: the recently ruined, lately depleted, presently-passé entities that, for better and for worse, multiply and accumulate in the wake of accelerated production and consumption in industrial society” (34). Drawing comparison with Walter Benjamin’s sprawling Arcades Project, a kaleidoscopic critique of commodity culture, Paris Vaclav similarly characterises Paris Peasant as manifesting a distinct form of “political affect: one of melancholy for the destruction of the arcades yet also of a decidedly non-conservative devotion to aesthetic innovation” (24).Sensitive to the contradictory nature of progress under late capitalist modernity, Paris Peasant thus recognises destruction as an underlying condition of change and innovation as was typical of avant-garde texts of the early twentieth century. Yet Aragon resists fatalism in his simultaneous alertness to the radical potential of the marvellous in the everyday, searching for the fault lines in ordinary reality beneath which poetic re-enchantment challenges the status quo of modern life. In this way, Aragon’s experimental novel sketches the textures and psychogeographies of the city, tracing its detours and shifts in ambience, the relationship of architecture to dreams, memory and fantasy; those composite layers of a city that official documents and masterplans rarely ascribe value to and which literary authors are uniquely placed to capture in their writings on cities. ConclusionUnable to respond within the swift publication timeframes of journalistic articles, the novelist is admittedly not well-placed to halt the demolition of buildings. In this article, I have sought to argue that the power and agency of the literary response resides, rather, in its long view and the subjective perspective of the author. At the time of writing, Sydney Metro is poised to involve a scale of demolition that has not been seen in Sydney for several decades and which will transform the city in a manner that, to date, has largely passed uncritiqued. The works of Iain Sinclair and Louis Aragon’s Paris Peasant point to the capacity of literary texts to deconstruct those broader forces that increasingly reshape the city without proper consideration; exposing the seductive ideology of urban renewal and the false promises of grand projects that transform multifaceted cityscapes into hom*ogenous non-places. The literary text thus makes visible what is easily missed in the experience of everyday life, forcing us to consider the losses that haunt every gain in the building and rebuilding of the city.ReferencesAragon, Louis. Paris Peasant. Trans. Simon Taylor Watson. Boston: Exact Change, 1994. Aston, Heath. “We’ll Govern for All.” Sydney Morning Herald 27 Mar. 2011. 23 Feb. 2017 <http://www.smh.com.au/nsw/state-election-2011/well-govern-for-all-20110326-1cbbf.html>. Bruno, Guiliana. “Modernist Ruins, Filmic Archaeologies.” Ruins. Ed. Brian Dillon. London: Whitechapel Gallery, 2011. 76-81.Huyssen, Andreas. Present Pasts: Urban Palimpsests and the Politics of Memory. Stanford: Stanford UP, 2003.Museum of Sydney. Demolished Sydney Media Release. Sydney: Sydney Living Museums 20 Oct. 2016. 25 Feb. 2017 <http://sydneylivingmuseums.com.au/2016/12/05/new-exhibition-demolished-sydney>.Paris, Vaclav. “Uncreative Influence: Louis Aragon’s Paysan de Paris and Walter Benjamin’s Passagen-Werk.” Journal of Modern Literature 37.1 (Autumn 2013): 21-39.Sinclair, Iain. Ghost Milk: Calling Time on the Grand Project. London: Penguin, 2012. ———. Hackney, That Rose Red Empire. London: Hamish Hamilton, 2009.———. London Overground: A Day’s Walk around the Ginger Line. London: Hamish Hamilton, 2015.Susik, Abigail. “Paris 1924: Aragon, Le Corbusier, and the Question of the Outmoded.” Wreck: Graduate Journal of Art History, Visual Art, and Theory 2.2 (2008): 29-44.Tan, Declan. “Review of Ghost Milk: Calling Time on the Grand Project by Iain Sinclair.” Huffington Post 15 Dec. 2011; updated 14 Feb. 2012. 21 Feb 2017 <http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/declan-tan/ghost-milk-ian-sinclair-review_b_1145692.html>. Transport for NSW, Chatswood to Sydenham: Environmental Impact Statement Summary. 25 Mar. 2017 <http://www.sydneymetro.info>. Sydney: NSW Government, May-June 2016.Weston, David. “Against the Grand Project: Iain Sinclair’s Local London.” Contemporary Literature 56.2 (Summer 2015): 255-79.

Abstract:

The habitual passenger cannot grasp the folly of traffic based overwhelmingly on transport. His inherited perceptions of space and time and of personal pace have been industrially deformed. He has lost the power to conceive of himself outside the passenger role (Illich 25).The most basic definition of Stillness refers to a state of being in the absence of both motion and disturbance. Some might say it is anti-American. Stillness denies the democratic freedom of mobility in a social system where, as Ivan Illich writes in Energy and Equity, people “believe that political power grows out of the capacity of a transportation system, and in its absence is the result of access to the television screen” (26). In America, it isn’t too far of a stretch to say that most are quite used to being interpolated as some sort of subject of the screen, be it the windshield or the flat screen. Whether in transport or tele-vision, life is full of traffic and flickering images. In the best of times there is a choice between being citizen-audience member or citizen-passenger. A full day might include both.But during the summer of 2008 things seemed to change. The citizen-passenger was left beached, not in some sandy paradise but in their backyard. In this state of SIMBY (stuck in my backyard), the citizen-passenger experienced the energy crisis first hand. Middle class suburbanites were forced to come to terms with a new disturbance due to rising fuel prices: unattainable motion. Domestic travel had been exchanged for domestication. The citizen-passenger was rendered what Paul Virilio might call, “a voyager without a voyage, this passenger without a passage, the ultimate stranger, and renegade to himself” (Crepuscular 131). The threat to capitalism posed by this unattainable motion was quickly thwarted by America’s 'big box' stores, hotel chains, and news networks. What might have become a culturally transformative politics of attainable stillness was hijacked instead by The Great American Staycation. The Staycation is a neologism that refers to the activity of making a vacation out of staying at home. But the Staycation is more than a passing phrase; it is a complex cultural phenomenon that targeted middle class homes during the summer of 2008. A major constraint to a happy Staycation was the uncomfortable fact that the middle class home was not really a desirable destination as it stood. The family home would have to undergo a series of changes, one being the initiation of a set of time management strategies; and the second, the adoption of new objects for consumption. Good Morning America first featured the Staycation as a helpful parenting strategy for what was expected to be a long and arduous summer. GMA defined the parameters of the Staycation with four golden rules in May of 2008:Schedule start and end dates. Otherwise, it runs the risk of feeling just like another string of nights in front of the tube. Take Staycation photos or videos, just as you would if you went away from home on your vacation. Declare a 'choratorium.' That means no chores! Don't make the bed, vacuum, clean out the closets, pull weeds, or nothing, Pack that time with activities. (Leamy)Not only did GMA continue with the theme throughout the summer but the other networks also weighed in. Expert knowledge was doled out and therapeutic interventions were made to make people feel better about staying at home. Online travel companies such as expedia.com and tripadvisor.com, estimated that 60% of regular vacation takers would be staying home. With the rise and fall of gas prices, came the rise of fall of the Staycation.The emergence of the Staycation occurred precisely at a time when American citizens were confronted with the reality that their mobility and localities, including their relationship to domestic space, were structurally bound to larger geopolitical forces. The Staycation was an invention deployed by various interlocutors most threatened by the political possibilities inherent in stillness. The family home was catapulted into the circuits of production, consumption, and exchange. Big TV and Big Box stores furthered individual’s unease towards having to stay at home by discursively constructing the gas prices as an impediment to a happy domestic life and an affront to the American born right to be mobile. What was reinforced was that Americans ideally should be moving, but could not. Yet, at the same time it was rather un-American not to travel. The Staycation was couched in a powerful rhetoric of one’s moral duty to the nation while playing off of middle class anxieties and senses of privilege regarding the right to be mobile and the freedom to consume. The Staycation satiates all of these tensions by insisting that the home can become a somewhere else. Between spring and autumn of 2008, lifestyle experts, representatives from major retailers, and avid Staycationers filled morning slots on ABC, NBC, FOX, CBS, and CNN with Staycation tips. CNN highlighted the Staycation as a “1st Issue” in their Weekend Report on 12 June 2008 (Alban). This lead story centred on a father in South Windsor, Connecticut “who took the money he would normally spend on vacations and created a permanent Staycation residence.” The palatial home was fitted with a basketball court, swimming pool, hot tub, gardening area, and volleyball court. In the same week (and for those without several acres) CBS’s Early Show featured the editor of behindthebuy.com, a company that specialises in informing the “time starved consumer” about new commodities. The lifestyle consultant previewed the newest and most necessary items “so you could get away without leaving home.” Key essentials included a “family-sized” tent replete with an air conditioning unit, a projector TV screen amenable to the outdoors, a high-end snow-cone maker, a small beer keg, a mini-golf kit, and a fast-setting swimming pool that attaches to any garden hose. The segment also extolled the virtues of the Staycation even when gas prices might not be so high, “you have this stuff forever, if you go on vacation all you have are the pictures.” Here, the value of the consumer products outweighs the value of erstwhile experiences that would have to be left to mere recollection.Throughout the summer ABC News’ homepage included links to specific products and profiled hotels, such as Hiltons and Holiday Inns, where families could at least get a few miles away from home (Leamy). USA Today, in an article about retailers and the Staycation, reported that Wal-Mart would be “rolling back prices on everything from mosquito repellent to portable DVD players to baked beans and barbecue sauce”. Target and Kohl’s were celebrated for offering discounts on patio furniture, grills, scented candles, air fresheners and other products to make middle class homes ‘staycationable’. A Lexis Nexis count revealed over 200 news stories in various North American sources, including the New York Times, Financial Times, Investors Guide, the Christian Science Monitor, and various local Consumer Credit Counselling Guides. Staying home was not necessarily an inexpensive option. USA Today reported brand new grills, grilling meats, patio furniture and other accoutrements were still going to cost six percent more than the previous year (24 May 2008). While it was suggested that the Staycation was a cost-saving option, it is clear Staycations were for the well-enough off and would likely cost more or as much as an actual vacation. To put this in context with US vacation policies and practices, a recent report by the Center for Economic and Policy Research called No-Vacation Nation found that the US is the only advanced economy in the world that does not guarantee its workers paid vacation (Ray and Schmidt 3). Subsequently, without government standards 25% of Americans have neither paid vacation nor paid holidays. The Staycation was not for the working poor who were having difficulty even getting to work in the first place, nor were they for the unemployed, recently job-less, or the foreclosed. No, the Staycationers were middle class suburbanites who had backyards and enough acreage for swimming pools and tents. These were people who were going to be ‘stuck’ at home for the first time and a new grill could make that palatable. The Staycation would be exciting enough to include in their vacation history repertoire.All of the families profiled on the major networks were white Americans and in most cases nuclear families. For them, unattainable motion is an affront to the privilege of their white middle class mobility which is usually easy and unencumbered, in comparison to raced mobilities. Doreen Massey’s theory of “power geometry” which argues that different people have differential and inequitable relationships to mobility is relevant here. The lack of racial representation in Staycation stories reinforces the reality that has already been well documented in the works of bell hooks in Black Looks: Race and Representation, Lynn Spigel in Welcome to the Dreamhouse: Popular Media and Postwar Suburbs, and Jeremy Packer in Mobility without Mayhem: Safety, Cars and Citizenship. All of these critical works suggest that taking easily to the great open road is not the experience of all Americans. Freedom of mobility is in fact a great American fiction.The proprietors for the Great American Staycation were finding all sorts of dark corners in the American psyche to extol the virtues of staying at home. The Staycation capitalised on latent xenophobic tendencies of the insular family. Encountering cultural difference along the way could become taxing and an impediment to the fully deserved relaxation that is the stuff of dream vacations. CNN.com ran an article soon after their Weekend Report mentioned above quoting a life coach who argued Staycations were more fitting for many Americans because the “strangeness of different cultures or languages, figuring out foreign currencies or worrying about lost luggage can take a toll” (12 June 2008). The Staycation sustains a culture of insularity, consumption, distraction, and fear, but in doing so serves the national economic interests quite well. Stay at home, shop, grill, watch TV and movies, these were the economic directives programmed by mass media and retail giants. As such it was a cultural phenomenon commensurable to the mundane everyday life of the suburbs.The popular version of the Staycation is a highly managed and purified event that reflects the resort style/compound tourism of ‘Club Meds’ and cruise ships. The Staycation as a new form of domestication bears a significant resemblance to the contemporary spatial formations that Marc Augé refers to as non-places – contemporary forms of hom*ogeneous architecture that are scattered across disparate locales. The nuclear family home becomes another point of transfer in the global circulation of capital, information, and goods. The chain hotels and big box stores that are invested in the Staycation are touted as part of the local economy but instead devalue the local by making it harder for independent restaurants, grocers, farmers’ markets and bed and breakfasts to thrive. In this regard the Staycation excludes the local economy and the community. It includes backyards not balconies, hot-dogs not ‘other’ types of food, and Wal-Mart rather than then a local café or deli. Playing on the American democratic ideals of freedom of mobility and activating one’s identity as a consumer left little room to re-think how life in constant motion (moving capital, moving people, moving information, and moving goods) was partially responsible for the energy crisis in the first place. Instead, staying at home became a way for the American citizen to support the floundering economy while waiting for gas prices to go back down. And, one wouldn’t have to look that much further to see that the Staycation slips discursively into a renewed mission for a just cause – the environment. For example, ABC launched at the end of the summer a ruse of a national holiday, “National Stay at Home Week” with the tag line: “With gas prices so high, the economy taking a nosedive and global warming, it's just better to stay in and enjoy great ABC TV.” It comes as no shock that none of the major networks covered this as an environmental issue or an important moment for transformation. In fact, the air conditioning units in backyard tents attest to quite the opposite. Instead, the overwhelming sense was of a nation waiting at home for it all to be over. Soon real life would resume and everyone could get moving again. The economic slowdown and the energy crisis are examples of the breakdown and failure of capitalism. In a sense, a potential opened up in this breakdown for Stillness to become an alternative to life in constant and unrequited motion. That is, for the practice of non-movement and non-circulation to take on new political and cultural forms especially in the sprawling suburbs where the car moves individuals between the trifecta of home, box store, and work. The economic crisis is also a temporary stoppage of the flows. If the individual couldn’t move, global corporate capital would find a way to set the house in motion, to reinsert it back into the machinery that is now almost fully equated with freedom.The reinvention of the home into a campground or drive-in theatre makes the house a moving entity, an inverted mobile home that is both sedentary and in motion. Paul Virilio’s concept of “polar inertia” is important here. He argues, since the advent of transportation individuals live in a state of “resident polar inertia” wherein “people don’t move, even when they’re in a high speed train. They don’t move when they travel in their jet. They are residents in absolute motion” (Crepuscular 71). Lynn Spigel has written extensively about these dynamics, including the home as mobile home, in Make Room for TV and Welcome to the Dreamhouse. She examines how the introduction of the television into domestic space is worked through the tension between the private space of the home and the public world outside. Spigel refers to the dual emergence of portable television and mobile homes. Her work shows how domestic space is constantly imagined and longed for “as a vehicle of transport through which they (families) could imaginatively travel to an illicit place of passion while remaining in the safe space of the family home” (Welcome 60-61). But similarly to what Virilio has inferred Spigel points out that these mobile homes stayed parked and the portable TVs were often stationary as well. The Staycation exists as an addendum to what Spigel captures about the relationship between domestic space and the television set. It provides another example of advertisers’ attempts to play off the suburban tension between domestic space and the world “out there.” The Staycation exacerbates the role of the domestic space as a site of production, distribution, and consumption. The gendered dynamics of the Staycation include redecorating possibilities targeted at women and the backyard beer and grill culture aimed at men. In fact, ‘Mom’ might suffer the most during a Staycation, but that is another topic. The point is the whole family can get involved in a way that sustains the configurations of power but with an element of novelty.The Staycation is both a cultural phenomenon that feeds off the cultural anxieties of the middle class and an economic directive. It has been constructed to maintain movement at a time when the crisis of capital contains seeds for an alternative, for Stillness to become politically and culturally transformative. But life feels dull when the passenger is stuck and the virtues of Stillness are quite difficult to locate in this cultural context. As Illich argues, “the passenger who agrees to live in a world monopolised by transport becomes a harassed, overburdened consumer of distances whose shape and length he can no longer control” (45). When the passenger is the mode of identification, immobility becomes unbearable. In this context a form of “still mobility” such as the Staycation might be satisfying enough. ConclusionThe still citizen is a threatening figure for capital. In Politics of the Very Worst Virilio argues at the heart of capitalism is a state of permanent mobility, a condition to which polar inertia attests. The Staycation fits completely within this context of this form of mobile immobility. The flow needs to keep flowing. When people are stationary, still, and calm the market suffers. It has often been argued that the advertising industries construct dissatisfaction while also marginally eliminating it through the promises of various products, yet ultimately leaving the individual in a constant state of almost satisfied but never really. The fact that the Staycation is a mode of waiting attests to this complacent dissatisfaction.The subjective and experiential dimensions of living in a capitalist society are experienced through one’s relationship to time and staying on the right path. The economic slowdown and the energy crisis are also crises in pace, energy, and time. The mobility and tempo, the pace and path that capital relies on, has become unhinged and vulnerable to a resistant re-shaping. The Staycation re-sets the tempo of suburbia to meet the new needs of an economic slowdown and financial crisis. Following the directive to staycate is not necessarily a new form of false consciousness, but an intensified technological and economic mode of subjection that depends on already established cultural anxieties. But what makes the Staycation unique and worthy of consideration is that capitalists and other disciplinary institutions of power, in this case big media, construct new and innovative ways to control people’s time and regulate their movement in space. The Staycation is a particular re-territorialisation of the temporal and spatial dimensions of home, work, and leisure. In sum, Staycation and the staging of National Stay at Home Week reveals a systemic mobilising and control of a population’s pace and path. As Bernard Stiegler writes in Technics and Time: “Deceleration remains a figure of speed, just as immobility is a figure of movement” (133). These processes are inexorably tied to one another. Thinking back to the opening quote from Illich, we could ask how we might stop imagining ourselves as passengers – ushered along, falling in line, or complacently floating past. To be still in the flows could be a form of ultimate resistance. In fact, Stillness has the possibility of becoming an autonomous practice of refusal. It is after all this threatening potentiality that created the frenzied invention of the Staycation in the first place. To end where I began, Illich states that “the habitual passenger must adopt a new set of beliefs and expectations if he is to feel secure in the strange world” (25-26). The horizon of political possibility is uniformly limited for the passenger. Whether people actually did follow these directives during the summer of 2008 is hard to determine. The point is that the energy crisis and economic slowdown offered a potential to vacate capital’s premises, both its pace and path. But corporate capital is doing its best to make sure that people wait, staycate, and see it through. The Staycation is not just about staying at home for vacation. It is about staying within reach, being accounted for, at a time when departing global corporate capital seems to be the best option. ReferencesAlban, Debra. “Staycations: Alternative to Pricey, Stressful Travel.” CNN News 12 June 2008. 6 Mar. 2009 ‹http://edition.cnn.com/2008/LIVING/worklife/06/12/balance.staycation/index.html›.Augé, Marc. Non-Places: Introduction to an Anthropology of Supermodernity. Verso, London, 1995.hooks, bell. Black Looks: Race and Representation. Boston: South End Press, 1992.Illich, Ivan. Energy and Equity. New York: Perennial Library, 1974.Leamy, Elisabeth. “Tips for Planning a Great 'Staycation'.” ABC News 23 May 2008. 6 Mar. 2009 ‹http://abcnews.go.com/GMA/Parenting/story?id=4919211›.Massey, Doreen. Space, Place, and Gender. Minneapolis: Minnesota U P, 1994.Packer, Jeremy. Mobility without Mayhem: Safety, Cars, and Citizenship. Durham, NC: Duke U P, 2008.Ray, Rebecca and John Schmitt. No-Vacation Nation. Washington, D.C.: Center for Economic and Policy Research, May 2007.Spigel, Lynn. Make Room for TV: Television and the Family Ideal in Postwar America. Chicago: Chicago U P, 1992.———. Welcome to the Dreamhouse: Popular Media and Postwar Suburbs. Durham, NC: Duke U P, 2001.Stiegler, Bernard. Technics and Time 2: Disorientation. Trans. Stephen Barker. California: Stanford University Press, 2009.USA Today. “Retailers Promote 'Staycation' Sales.” 24 May 2008. 6 Mar. 2009 ‹http://www.usatoday.com/money/industries/retail/2008-05-24-staycations_N.htm›.Virilio, Paul. Speed and Politics. Trans. Mark Polizzotti. New York: Semiotext(e), 1986.———. In James der Derian, ed. The Virilio Reader. Malden, Mass.: Blackwell, 1998.———. Politics of the Very Worst. New York: Semiotext(e), 1999.———. Crepuscular Dawn. New York: Semiotext(e), 2002.

Abstract:

Introduction Eating is one of the most quintessential activities of human life. Because of this primacy, eating is, as food anthropologist Sidney Mintz has observed, “not merely a biological activity, but a vibrantly cultural activity as well” (48). This article posits that the current awareness of climate change in the Western world is animating such cultural activity as the Slow Food movement and is, as a result, stimulating what could be seen as an evolutionary change in popular foodways. Moreover, this paper suggests that, in line with modelling provided by the Slow Food example, an increased awareness of the connections of climate change to the social injustices of food production might better drive social change in such areas. This discussion begins by proposing that contemporary foodways—defined as “not only what is eaten by a particular group of people but also the variety of customs, beliefs and practices surrounding the production, preparation and presentation of food” (Davey 182)—are changing in the West in relation to current concerns about climate change. Such modification has a long history. Since long before the inception of modern hom*o sapiens, natural climate change has been a crucial element driving hominidae evolution, both biologically and culturally in terms of social organisation and behaviours. Macroevolutionary theory suggests evolution can dramatically accelerate in response to rapid shifts in an organism’s environment, followed by slow to long periods of stasis once a new level of sustainability has been achieved (Gould and Eldredge). There is evidence that ancient climate change has also dramatically affected the rate and course of cultural evolution. Recent work suggests that the end of the last ice age drove the cultural innovation of animal and plant domestication in the Middle East (Zeder), not only due to warmer temperatures and increased rainfall, but also to a higher level of atmospheric carbon dioxide which made agriculture increasingly viable (McCorriston and Hole, cited in Zeder). Megadroughts during the Paleolithic might well have been stimulating factors behind the migration of hominid populations out of Africa and across Asia (Scholz et al). Thus, it is hardly surprising that modern anthropogenically induced global warming—in all its’ climate altering manifestations—may be driving a new wave of cultural change and even evolution in the West as we seek a sustainable homeostatic equilibrium with the environment of the future. In 1962, Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring exposed some of the threats that modern industrial agriculture poses to environmental sustainability. This prompted a public debate from which the modern environmental movement arose and, with it, an expanding awareness and attendant anxiety about the safety and nutritional quality of contemporary foods, especially those that are grown with chemical pesticides and fertilizers and/or are highly processed. This environmental consciousness led to some modification in eating habits, manifest by some embracing wholefood and vegetarian dietary regimes (or elements of them). Most recently, a widespread awareness of climate change has forced rapid change in contemporary Western foodways, while in other climate related areas of socio-political and economic significance such as energy production and usage, there is little evidence of real acceleration of change. Ongoing research into the effects of this expanding environmental consciousness continues in various disciplinary contexts such as geography (Eshel and Martin) and health (McMichael et al). In food studies, Vileisis has proposed that the 1970s environmental movement’s challenge to the polluting practices of industrial agri-food production, concurrent with the women’s movement (asserting women’s right to know about everything, including food production), has led to both cooks and eaters becoming increasingly knowledgeable about the links between agricultural production and consumer and environmental health, as well as the various social justice issues involved. As a direct result of such awareness, alternatives to the industrialised, global food system are now emerging (Kloppenberg et al.). The Slow Food (R)evolution The tenets of the Slow Food movement, now some two decades old, are today synergetic with the growing consternation about climate change. In 1983, Carlo Petrini formed the Italian non-profit food and wine association Arcigola and, in 1986, founded Slow Food as a response to the opening of a McDonalds in Rome. From these humble beginnings, which were then unashamedly positing a return to the food systems of the past, Slow Food has grown into a global organisation that has much more future focused objectives animating its challenges to the socio-cultural and environmental costs of industrial food. Slow Food does have some elements that could be classed as reactionary and, therefore, the opposite of evolutionary. In response to the increasing hom*ogenisation of culinary habits around the world, for instance, Slow Food’s Foundation for Biodiversity has established the Ark of Taste, which expands upon the idea of a seed bank to preserve not only varieties of food but also local and artisanal culinary traditions. In this, the Ark aims to save foods and food products “threatened by industrial standardization, hygiene laws, the regulations of large-scale distribution and environmental damage” (SFFB). Slow Food International’s overarching goals and activities, however, extend far beyond the preservation of past foodways, extending to the sponsoring of events and activities that are attempting to create new cuisine narratives for contemporary consumers who have an appetite for such innovation. Such events as the Salone del Gusto (Salon of Taste) and Terra Madre (Mother Earth) held in Turin every two years, for example, while celebrating culinary traditions, also focus on contemporary artisanal foods and sustainable food production processes that incorporate the most current of agricultural knowledge and new technologies into this production. Attendees at these events are also driven by both an interest in tradition, and their own very current concerns with health, personal satisfaction and environmental sustainability, to change their consumer behavior through an expanded self-awareness of the consequences of their individual lifestyle choices. Such events have, in turn, inspired such events in other locations, moving Slow Food from local to global relevance, and affecting the intellectual evolution of foodway cultures far beyond its headquarters in Bra in Northern Italy. This includes in the developing world, where millions of farmers continue to follow many traditional agricultural practices by necessity. Slow Food Movement’s forward-looking values are codified in the International Commission on the Future of Food and Agriculture 2006 publication, Manifesto on the Future of Food. This calls for changes to the World Trade Organisation’s rules that promote the globalisation of agri-food production as a direct response to the “climate change [which] threatens to undermine the entire natural basis of ecologically benign agriculture and food preparation, bringing the likelihood of catastrophic outcomes in the near future” (ICFFA 8). It does not call, however, for a complete return to past methods. To further such foodway awareness and evolution, Petrini founded the University of Gastronomic Sciences at Slow Food’s headquarters in 2004. The university offers programs that are analogous with the Slow Food’s overall aim of forging sustainable partnerships between the best of old and new practice: to, in the organisation’s own words, “maintain an organic relationship between gastronomy and agricultural science” (UNISG). In 2004, Slow Food had over sixty thousand members in forty-five countries (Paxson 15), with major events now held each year in many of these countries and membership continuing to grow apace. One of the frequently cited successes of the Slow Food movement is in relation to the tomato. Until recently, supermarkets stocked only a few mass-produced hybrids. These cultivars were bred for their disease resistance, ease of handling, tolerance to artificial ripening techniques, and display consistency, rather than any culinary values such as taste, aroma, texture or variety. In contrast, the vine ripened, ‘farmer’s market’ tomato has become the symbol of an “eco-gastronomically” sustainable, local and humanistic system of food production (Jordan) which melds the best of the past practice with the most up-to-date knowledge regarding such farming matters as water conservation. Although the term ‘heirloom’ is widely used in relation to these tomatoes, there is a distinctively contemporary edge to the way they are produced and consumed (Jordan), and they are, along with other organic and local produce, increasingly available in even the largest supermarket chains. Instead of a wholesale embrace of the past, it is the connection to, and the maintenance of that connection with, the processes of production and, hence, to the environment as a whole, which is the animating premise of the Slow Food movement. ‘Slow’ thus creates a gestalt in which individuals integrate their lifestyles with all levels of the food production cycle and, hence to the environment and, importantly, the inherently related social justice issues. ‘Slow’ approaches emphasise how the accelerated pace of contemporary life has weakened these connections, while offering a path to the restoration of a sense of connectivity to the full cycle of life and its relation to place, nature and climate. In this, the Slow path demands that every consumer takes responsibility for all components of his/her existence—a responsibility that includes becoming cognisant of the full story behind each of the products that are consumed in that life. The Slow movement is not, however, a regime of abstention or self-denial. Instead, the changes in lifestyle necessary to support responsible sustainability, and the sensual and aesthetic pleasure inherent in such a lifestyle, exist in a mutually reinforcing relationship (Pietrykowski 2004). This positive feedback loop enhances the potential for promoting real and long-term evolution in social and cultural behaviour. Indeed, the Slow zeitgeist now informs many areas of contemporary culture, with Slow Travel, Homes, Design, Management, Leadership and Education, and even Slow Email, Exercise, Shopping and Sex attracting adherents. Mainstreaming Concern with Ethical Food Production The role of the media in “forming our consciousness—what we think, how we think, and what we think about” (Cunningham and Turner 12)—is self-evident. It is, therefore, revealing in relation to the above outlined changes that even the most functional cookbooks and cookery magazines (those dedicated to practical information such as recipes and instructional technique) in Western countries such as the USA, UK and Australian are increasingly reflecting and promoting an awareness of ethical food production as part of this cultural change in food habits. While such texts have largely been considered as useful but socio-politically relatively banal publications, they are beginning to be recognised as a valid source of historical and cultural information (Nussel). Cookbooks and cookery magazines commonly include discussion of a surprising range of issues around food production and consumption including sustainable and ethical agricultural methods, biodiversity, genetic modification and food miles. In this context, they indicate how rapidly the recent evolution of foodways has been absorbed into mainstream practice. Much of such food related media content is, at the same time, closely identified with celebrity mass marketing and embodied in the television chef with his or her range of branded products including their syndicated articles and cookbooks. This commercial symbiosis makes each such cuisine-related article in a food or women’s magazine or cookbook, in essence, an advertorial for a celebrity chef and their named products. Yet, at the same time, a number of these mass media food celebrities are raising public discussion that is leading to consequent action around important issues linked to climate change, social justice and the environment. An example is Jamie Oliver’s efforts to influence public behaviour and government policy, a number of which have gained considerable traction. Oliver’s 2004 exposure of the poor quality of school lunches in Britain (see Jamie’s School Dinners), for instance, caused public outrage and pressured the British government to commit considerable extra funding to these programs. A recent study by Essex University has, moreover, found that the academic performance of 11-year-old pupils eating Oliver’s meals improved, while absenteeism fell by 15 per cent (Khan). Oliver’s exposé of the conditions of battery raised hens in 2007 and 2008 (see Fowl Dinners) resulted in increased sales of free-range poultry, decreased sales of factory-farmed chickens across the UK, and complaints that free-range chicken sales were limited by supply. Oliver encouraged viewers to lobby their local councils, and as a result, a number banned battery hen eggs from schools, care homes, town halls and workplace cafeterias (see, for example, LDP). The popular penetration of these ideas needs to be understood in a historical context where industrialised poultry farming has been an issue in Britain since at least 1848 when it was one of the contributing factors to the establishment of the RSPCA (Freeman). A century after Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle (published in 1906) exposed the realities of the slaughterhouse, and several decades since Peter Singer’s landmark Animal Liberation (1975) and Tom Regan’s The Case for Animal Rights (1983) posited the immorality of the mistreatment of animals in food production, it could be suggested that Al Gore’s film An Inconvenient Truth (released in 2006) added considerably to the recent concern regarding the ethics of industrial agriculture. Consciousness-raising bestselling books such as Jim Mason and Peter Singer’s The Ethics of What We Eat and Michael Pollan’s The Omnivore’s Dilemma (both published in 2006), do indeed ‘close the loop’ in this way in their discussions, by concluding that intensive food production methods used since the 1950s are not only inhumane and damage public health, but are also damaging an environment under pressure from climate change. In comparison, the use of forced labour and human trafficking in food production has attracted far less mainstream media, celebrity or public attention. It could be posited that this is, in part, because no direct relationship to the environment and climate change and, therefore, direct link to our own existence in the West, has been popularised. Kevin Bales, who has been described as a modern abolitionist, estimates that there are currently more than 27 million people living in conditions of slavery and exploitation against their wills—twice as many as during the 350-year long trans-Atlantic slave trade. Bales also chillingly reveals that, worldwide, the number of slaves is increasing, with contemporary individuals so inexpensive to purchase in relation to the value of their production that they are disposable once the slaveholder has used them. Alongside sex slavery, many other prevalent examples of contemporary slavery are concerned with food production (Weissbrodt et al; Miers). Bales and Soodalter, for example, describe how across Asia and Africa, adults and children are enslaved to catch and process fish and shellfish for both human consumption and cat food. Other campaigners have similarly exposed how the cocoa in chocolate is largely produced by child slave labour on the Ivory Coast (Chalke; Off), and how considerable amounts of exported sugar, cereals and other crops are slave-produced in certain countries. In 2003, some 32 per cent of US shoppers identified themselves as LOHAS “lifestyles of health and sustainability” consumers, who were, they said, willing to spend more for products that reflected not only ecological, but also social justice responsibility (McLaughlin). Research also confirms that “the pursuit of social objectives … can in fact furnish an organization with the competitive resources to develop effective marketing strategies”, with Doherty and Meehan showing how “social and ethical credibility” are now viable bases of differentiation and competitive positioning in mainstream consumer markets (311, 303). In line with this recognition, Fair Trade Certified goods are now available in British, European, US and, to a lesser extent, Australian supermarkets, and a number of global chains including Dunkin’ Donuts, McDonalds, Starbucks and Virgin airlines utilise Fair Trade coffee and teas in all, or parts of, their operations. Fair Trade Certification indicates that farmers receive a higher than commodity price for their products, workers have the right to organise, men and women receive equal wages, and no child labour is utilised in the production process (McLaughlin). Yet, despite some Western consumers reporting such issues having an impact upon their purchasing decisions, social justice has not become a significant issue of concern for most. The popular cookery publications discussed above devote little space to Fair Trade product marketing, much of which is confined to supermarket-produced adverzines promoting the Fair Trade products they stock, and international celebrity chefs have yet to focus attention on this issue. In Australia, discussion of contemporary slavery in the press is sparse, having surfaced in 2000-2001, prompted by UNICEF campaigns against child labour, and in 2007 and 2008 with the visit of a series of high profile anti-slavery campaigners (including Bales) to the region. The public awareness of food produced by forced labour and the troubling issue of human enslavement in general is still far below the level that climate change and ecological issues have achieved thus far in driving foodway evolution. This may change, however, if a ‘Slow’-inflected connection can be made between Western lifestyles and the plight of peoples hidden from our daily existence, but contributing daily to them. Concluding Remarks At this time of accelerating techno-cultural evolution, due in part to the pressures of climate change, it is the creative potential that human conscious awareness brings to bear on these challenges that is most valuable. Today, as in the caves at Lascaux, humanity is evolving new images and narratives to provide rational solutions to emergent challenges. As an example of this, new foodways and ways of thinking about them are beginning to evolve in response to the perceived problems of climate change. The current conscious transformation of food habits by some in the West might be, therefore, in James Lovelock’s terms, a moment of “revolutionary punctuation” (178), whereby rapid cultural adaption is being induced by the growing public awareness of impending crisis. It remains to be seen whether other urgent human problems can be similarly and creatively embraced, and whether this trend can spread to offer global solutions to them. References An Inconvenient Truth. Dir. Davis Guggenheim. Lawrence Bender Productions, 2006. Bales, Kevin. Disposable People: New Slavery in the Global Economy. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2004 (first published 1999). Bales, Kevin, and Ron Soodalter. The Slave Next Door: Human Trafficking and Slavery in America Today. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2009. Carson, Rachel. Silent Spring. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1962. Chalke, Steve. “Unfinished Business: The Sinister Story behind Chocolate.” The Age 18 Sep. 2007: 11. Cunningham, Stuart, and Graeme Turner. The Media and Communications in Australia Today. Crows Nest: Allen & Unwin, 2002. Davey, Gwenda Beed. “Foodways.” The Oxford Companion to Australian Folklore. Ed. Gwenda Beed Davey, and Graham Seal. Melbourne: Oxford University Press, 1993. 182–85. Doherty, Bob, and John Meehan. “Competing on Social Resources: The Case of the Day Chocolate Company in the UK Confectionery Sector.” Journal of Strategic Marketing 14.4 (2006): 299–313. Eshel, Gidon, and Pamela A. Martin. “Diet, Energy, and Global Warming.” Earth Interactions 10, paper 9 (2006): 1–17. Fowl Dinners. Exec. Prod. Nick Curwin and Zoe Collins. Dragonfly Film and Television Productions and Fresh One Productions, 2008. Freeman, Sarah. Mutton and Oysters: The Victorians and Their Food. London: Gollancz, 1989. Gould, S. J., and N. Eldredge. “Punctuated Equilibrium Comes of Age.” Nature 366 (1993): 223–27. (ICFFA) International Commission on the Future of Food and Agriculture. Manifesto on the Future of Food. Florence, Italy: Agenzia Regionale per lo Sviluppo e l’Innovazione nel Settore Agricolo Forestale and Regione Toscana, 2006. Jamie’s School Dinners. Dir. Guy Gilbert. Fresh One Productions, 2005. Jordan, Jennifer A. “The Heirloom Tomato as Cultural Object: Investigating Taste and Space.” Sociologia Ruralis 47.1 (2007): 20-41. Khan, Urmee. “Jamie Oliver’s School Dinners Improve Exam Results, Report Finds.” Telegraph 1 Feb. 2009. 24 Aug. 2009 < http://www.telegraph.co.uk/education/educationnews/4423132/Jamie-Olivers-school-dinners-improve-exam-results-report-finds.html >. Kloppenberg, Jack, Jr, Sharon Lezberg, Kathryn de Master, G. W. Stevenson, and John Henrickson. ‘Tasting Food, Tasting Sustainability: Defining the Attributes of an Alternative Food System with Competent, Ordinary People.” Human Organisation 59.2 (Jul. 2000): 177–86. (LDP) Liverpool Daily Post. “Battery Farm Eggs Banned from Schools and Care Homes.” Liverpool Daily Post 12 Jan. 2008. 24 Aug. 2009 < http://www.liverpooldailypost.co.uk/liverpool-news/regional-news/2008/01/12/battery-farm-eggs-banned-from-schools-and-care-homes-64375-20342259 >. Lovelock, James. The Ages of Gaia: A Biography of Our Living Earth. New York: Bantam, 1990 (first published 1988). Mason, Jim, and Peter Singer. The Ethics of What We Eat. Melbourne: Text Publishing, 2006. McLaughlin, Katy. “Is Your Grocery List Politically Correct? Food World’s New Buzzword Is ‘Sustainable’ Products.” The Wall Street Journal 17 Feb. 2004. 29 Aug. 2009 < http://www.globalexchange.org/campaigns/fairtrade/coffee/1732.html >. McMichael, Anthony J, John W Powles, Colin D Butler, and Ricardo Uauy. “Food, Livestock Production, Energy, Climate Change, and Health.” The Lancet 370 (6 Oct. 2007): 1253–63. Miers, Suzanne. “Contemporary Slavery”. A Historical Guide to World Slavery. Ed. Seymour Drescher, and Stanley L. Engerman. New York: Oxford University Press, 1998. Mintz, Sidney W. Tasting Food, Tasting Freedom: Excursions into Eating, Culture, and the Past. Boston: Beacon Press, 1994. Nussel, Jill. “Heating Up the Sources: Using Community Cookbooks in Historical Inquiry.” History Compass 4/5 (2006): 956–61. Off, Carol. Bitter Chocolate: Investigating the Dark Side of the World's Most Seductive Sweet. St Lucia: U of Queensland P, 2008. Paxson, Heather. “Slow Food in a Fat Society: Satisfying Ethical Appetites.” Gastronomica: The Journal of Food and Culture 5.1 (2005): 14–18. Pietrykowski, Bruce. “You Are What You Eat: The Social Economy of the Slow Food Movement.” Review of Social Economy 62:3 (2004): 307–21. Pollan, Michael. The Omnivore’s Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals. New York: The Penguin Press, 2006. Regan, Tom. The Case for Animal Rights. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1983. Scholz, Christopher A., Thomas C. Johnson, Andrew S. Cohen, John W. King, John A. Peck, Jonathan T. Overpeck, Michael R. Talbot, Erik T. Brown, Leonard Kalindekafe, Philip Y. O. Amoako, Robert P. Lyons, Timothy M. Shanahan, Isla S. Castañeda, Clifford W. Heil, Steven L. Forman, Lanny R. McHargue, Kristina R. Beuning, Jeanette Gomez, and James Pierson. “East African Megadroughts between 135 and 75 Thousand Years Ago and Bearing on Early-modern Human Origins.” PNAS: Proceedings of the National Academy of the Sciences of the United States of America 104.42 (16 Oct. 2007): 16416–21. Sinclair, Upton. The Jungle. New York: Doubleday, Jabber & Company, 1906. Singer, Peter. Animal Liberation. New York: HarperCollins, 1975. (SFFB) Slow Food Foundation for Biodiversity. “Ark of Taste.” 2009. 24 Aug. 2009 < http://www.fondazioneslowfood.it/eng/arca/lista.lasso >. (UNISG) University of Gastronomic Sciences. “Who We Are.” 2009. 24 Aug. 2009 < http://www.unisg.it/eng/chisiamo.php >. Vileisis, Ann. Kitchen Literacy: How We Lost Knowledge of Where Food Comes From and Why We Need to Get It Back. Washington: Island Press/Shearwater Books, 2008. Weissbrodt, David, and Anti-Slavery International. Abolishing Slavery and its Contemporary Forms. New York and Geneva: Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, United Nations, 2002. Zeder, Melinda A. “The Neolithic Macro-(R)evolution: Macroevolutionary Theory and the Study of Culture Change.” Journal of Archaeological Research 17 (2009): 1–63.

Abstract:

“Journalists have to begin a new type of journalism, sometimes being the guide on the side of the civic conversation as well as the filter and gatekeeper.” (Kolodzy 218) “In many respects, citizen journalism is simply public journalism removed from the journalism profession.” (Barlow 181) 1. Citizen Journalism — The Latest Innovation? New Media theorists such as Dan Gillmor, Henry Jenkins, Jay Rosen and Jeff Howe have recently touted Citizen Journalism (CJ) as the latest innovation in 21st century journalism. “Participatory journalism” and “user-driven journalism” are other terms to describe CJ, which its proponents argue is a disruptive innovation (Christensen) to the agenda-setting media institutions, news values and “objective” reportage. In this essay I offer a “contrarian” view, informed by two perspectives: (1) a three-stage model of theory-building (Carlile & Christensen) to evaluate the claims made about CJ; and (2) self-reflexive research insights (Etherington) from editing the US-based news site Disinformation between November 1999 and February 2008. New media theories can potentially create “cognitive dissonance” (Festinger) when their explanations of CJ practices are compared with what actually happens (Feyerabend). First I summarise Carlile & Christensen’s model and the dangers of “bad theory” (Ghoshal). Next I consider several problems in new media theories about CJ: the notion of ‘citizen’, new media populism, parallels in event-driven and civic journalism, and mergers and acquisitions. Two ‘self-reflexive’ issues are considered: ‘pro-ams’ or ‘professional amateurs’ as a challenge to professional journalists, and CJ’s deployment in new media operations and production environments. Finally, some exploratory questions are offered for future researchers. 2. An Evaluative Framework for New Media Theories on Citizen Journalism Paul Carlile and Clayton M. Christensen’s model offers one framework with which to evaluate new media theories on CJ. This framework is used below to highlight select issues and gaps in CJ’s current frameworks and theories. Carlile & Christensen suggest that robust theory-building emerges via three stages: Descriptive, Categorisation and Normative (Carlile & Christensen). There are three sub-stages in Descriptive theory-building; namely, the observation of phenomena, inductive classification into schemas and taxonomies, and correlative relationships to develop models (Carlile & Christensen 2-5). Once causation is established, Normative theory evolves through deductive logic which is subject to Kuhnian paradigm shifts and Popperian falsifiability (Carlile & Christensen 6). Its proponents situate CJ as a Categorisation or new journalism agenda that poses a Normative challenged and Kuhnian paradigm shift to traditional journalism. Existing CJ theories jump from the Descriptive phase of observations like “smart mobs” in Japanese youth subcultures (Rheingold) to make broad claims for Categorisation such as that IndyMedia, blogs and wiki publishing systems as new media alternatives to traditional media. CJ theories then underpin normative beliefs, values and worldviews. Correlative relationships are also used to differentiate CJ from the demand side of microeconomic analysis, from the top-down editorial models of traditional media outlets, and to adopt a vanguard stance. To support this, CJ proponents cite research on emergent collective behaviour such as the “wisdom of crowds” hypothesis (Surowiecki) or peer-to-peer network “swarms” (Pesce) to provide scientific justification for their Normative theories. However, further evaluative research is needed for three reasons: the emergent collective behaviour hypothesis may not actually inform CJ practices, existing theories may have “correlation not cause” errors, and the link may be due to citation network effects between CJ theorists. Collectively, this research base also frames CJ as an “ought to” Categorisation and then proceeds to Normative theory-building (Carlile & Christensen 7). However, I argue below that this Categorisation may be premature: its observations and correlative relationships might reinforce a ‘weak’ Normative theory with limited generalisation. CJ proponents seem to imply that it can be applied anywhere and under any condition—a “statement of causality” that almost makes it a fad (Carlile & Christensen 8). CJ that relies on Classification and Normative claims will be problematic without a strong grounding in Descriptive observation. To understand what’s potentially at stake for CJ’s future consider the consider the parallel debate about curricula renewal for the Masters of Business Administration in the wake of high-profile corporate collapses such as Enron, Worldcom, HIH and OneTel. The MBA evolved as a sociological and institutional construct to justify management as a profession that is codified, differentiated and has entry barriers (Khurana). This process might partly explain the pushback that some media professionals have to CJ as one alternative. MBA programs faced criticism if they had student cohorts with little business know-how or experiential learning (Mintzberg). Enron’s collapse illustrated the ethical dilemmas and unintended consequences that occurred when “bad theories” were implemented (Ghoshal). Professional journalists are aware of this: MBA-educated managers challenged the “craft” tradition in the early 1980s (Underwood). This meant that journalism’s ‘self-image’ (Morgan; Smith) is intertwined with managerial anxieties about media conglomerates in highly competitive markets. Ironically, as noted below, Citizen Journalists who adopt a vanguard position vis-a-vis media professionals step into a more complex game with other players. However, current theories have a naïve idealism about CJ’s promise of normative social change in the face of Machiavellian agency in business, the media and politics. 3. Citizen Who? Who is the “citizen” in CJ? What is their self-awareness as a political agent? CJ proponents who use the ‘self-image’ of ‘citizen’ draw on observations from the participatory vision of open source software, peer-to-peer networks, and case studies such as Howard Dean’s 2004 bid for the Democrat Party nominee in the US Presidential election campaign (Trippi). Recent theorists note Alexander Hamilton’s tradition of civic activism (Barlow 178) which links contemporary bloggers with the Federalist Papers and early newspaper pamphlets. One unsurfaced assumption in these observations and correlations is that most bloggers will adopt a coherent political philosophy as informed citizens: a variation on Lockean utilitarianism, Rawlsian liberalism or Nader consumer activism. To date there is little discussion about how political philosophy could deepen CJ’s ‘self-image’: how to critically evaluate sources, audit and investigation processes, or strategies to deal with elites, deterrence and power. For example, although bloggers kept Valerie Plame’s ‘outing’ as a covert intelligence operative highly visible in the issues-attention cycle, it was agenda-setting media like The New York Times who the Bush Administration targeted to silence (Pearlstine). To be viable, CJ needs to evolve beyond a new media populism, perhaps into a constructivist model of agency, norms and social change (Finnemore). 4. Citizen Journalism as New Media Populism Several “precursor trends” foreshadowed CJ notably the mid-1990s interest in “cool-hunting” by new media analysts and subculture marketeers (Gibson; Gladwell). Whilst this audience focus waned with the 1995-2000 dotcom bubble it resurfaced in CJ and publisher Tim O’Reilly’s Web 2.0 vision. Thus, CJ might be viewed as new media populism that has flourished with the Web 2.0 boom. Yet if the boom becomes a macroeconomic bubble (Gross; Spar) then CJ could be written off as a “silver bullet” that ultimately failed to deliver on its promises (Brooks, Jr.). The reputations of uncritical proponents who adopted a “true believer” stance would also be damaged (Hoffer). This risk is evident if CJ is compared with a parallel trend that shares its audience focus and populist view: day traders and technical analysts who speculate on financial markets. This parallel trend provides an alternative discipline in which the populism surfaced in an earlier form (Carlile & Christensen 12). Fidelity’s Peter Lynch argues that stock pickers can use their Main Street knowledge to beat Wall Street by exploiting information asymmetries (Lynch & Rothchild). Yet Lynch’s examples came from the mid-1970s to early 1980s when indexed mutual fund strategies worked, before deregulation and macroeconomic volatility. A change in the Web 2.0 boom might similarly trigger a reconsideration of Citizen Journalism. Hedge fund maven Victor Niederhoffer contends that investors who rely on technical analysis are practicing a Comtean religion (Niederhoffer & Kenner 72-74) instead of Efficient Market Hypothesis traders who use statistical arbitrage to deal with ‘random walks’ or Behavioural Finance experts who build on Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman’s Prospect Theory (Kahneman & Tversky). Niederhoffer’s deeper point is that technical analysts’ belief that the “trend is your friend” is no match for the other schools, despite a mini-publishing industry and computer trading systems. There are also ontological and epistemological differences between the schools. Similarly, CJ proponents who adopt a ‘Professional Amateur’ or ‘Pro-Am’ stance (Leadbeater & Miller) may face a similar gulf when making comparisons with professional journalists and the production environments in media organisations. CJ also thrives as new media populism because of institutional vested interests. When media conglomerates cut back on cadetships and internships CJ might fill the market demand as one alternative. New media programs at New York University and others can use CJ to differentiate themselves from “hyperlocal” competitors (Christensen; Slywotzky; Christensen, Curtis & Horn). This transforms CJ from new media populism to new media institution. 5. Parallels: Event-driven & Civic Journalism For new media programs, CJ builds on two earlier traditions: the Event-driven journalism of crises like the 1991 Gulf War (Wark) and the Civic Journalism school that emerged in the 1960s social upheavals. Civic Journalism’s awareness of minorities and social issues provides the character ethic and political philosophy for many Citizen Journalists. Jay Rosen and others suggest that CJ is the next-generation heir to Civic Journalism, tracing a thread from the 1968 Chicago Democratic Convention to IndyMedia’s coverage of the 1999 “Battle in Seattle” (Rosen). Rosen’s observation could yield an interesting historiography or genealogy. Events such as the Southeast Asian tsunami on 26 December 2004 or Al Qaeda’s London bombings on 7 July 2005 are cited as examples of CJ as event-driven journalism and “pro-am collaboration” (Kolodzy 229-230). Having covered these events and Al Qaeda’s attacks on 11th September 2001, I have a slightly different view: this was more a variation on “first responder” status and handicam video footage that journalists have sourced for the past three decades when covering major disasters. This different view means that the “salience of categories” used to justify CJ and “pro-am collaboration” these events does not completely hold. Furthermore, when Citizen Journalism proponents tout Flickr and Wikipedia as models of real-time media they are building on a broader phenomenon that includes CNN’s Gulf War coverage and Bloomberg’s dominance of financial news (Loomis). 6. The Mergers & Acquisitions Scenario CJ proponents often express anxieties about the resilience of their outlets in the face of predatory venture capital firms who initiate Mergers & Acquisitions (M&A) activities. Ironically, these venture capital firms have core competencies and expertise in the event-driven infrastructure and real-time media that CJ aspires to. Sequoia Capital and other venture capital firms have evaluative frameworks that likely surpass Carlile & Christensen in sophistication, and they exploit parallels, information asymmetries and market populism. Furthermore, although venture capital firms such as Union Street Ventures have funded Web 2.0 firms, they are absent from the explanations of some theorists, whose examples of Citizen Journalism and Web 2.0 success may be the result of survivorship bias. Thus, the venture capital market remains an untapped data source for researchers who want to evaluate the impact of CJ outlets and institutions. The M&A scenario further problematises CJ in several ways. First, CJ is framed as “oppositional” to traditional media, yet this may be used as a stratagem in a game theory framework with multiple stakeholders. Drexel Burnham Lambert’s financier Michael Milken used market populism to sell ‘high-yield’ or ‘junk’ bonds to investors whilst disrupting the Wall Street establishment in the late 1980s (Curtis) and CJ could fulfil a similar tactical purpose. Second, the M&A goal of some Web 2.0 firms could undermine the participatory goals of a site’s community if post-merger integration fails. Jason Calacanis’s sale of Weblogs, Inc to America Online in 2005 and MSNBC’s acquisition of Newsvine on 5 October 2007 (Newsvine) might be success stories. However, this raises issues of digital “property rights” if you contribute to a community that is then sold in an M&A transaction—an outcome closer to business process outsourcing. Third, media “buzz” can create an unrealistic vision when a CJ site fails to grow beyond its start-up phase. Backfence.com’s demise as a “hyperlocal” initiative (Caverly) is one cautionary event that recalls the 2000 dotcom crash. The M&A scenarios outlined above are market dystopias for CJ purists. The major lesson for CJ proponents is to include other market players in hypotheses about causation and correlation factors. 7. ‘Pro-Ams’ & Professional Journalism’s Crisis CJ emerged during a period when Professional Journalism faced a major crisis of ‘self-image’. The Demos report The Pro-Am Revolution (Leadbeater & Miller) popularised the notion of ‘professional amateurs’ which some CJ theorists adopt to strengthen their categorisation. In turn, this triggers a response from cultural theorists who fear bloggers are new media’s barbarians (Keen). I concede Leadbeater and Miller have identified an important category. However, how some CJ theorists then generalise from ‘Pro-Ams’ illustrates the danger of ‘weak’ theory referred to above. Leadbeater and Miller’s categorisation does not really include a counter-view on the strengths of professionals, as illustrated in humanistic consulting (Block), professional service firms (Maister; Maister, Green & Galford), and software development (McConnell). The signs of professionalism these authors mention include a commitment to learning and communal verification, mastery of a discipline and domain application, awareness of methodology creation, participation in mentoring, and cultivation of ethical awareness. Two key differences are discernment and quality of attention, as illustrated in how the legendary Hollywood film editor Walter Murch used Apple’s Final Cut Pro software to edit the 2003 film Cold Mountain (Koppelman). ‘Pro-Ams’ might not aspire to these criteria but Citizen Journalists shouldn’t throw out these standards, either. Doing so would be making the same mistake of overconfidence that technical analysts make against statistical arbitrageurs. Key processes—fact-checking, sub-editing and editorial decision-making—are invisible to the end-user, even if traceable in a blog or wiki publishing system, because of the judgments involved. One post-mortem insight from Assignment Zero was that these processes were vital to create the climate of authenticity and trust to sustain a Citizen Journalist community (Howe). CJ’s trouble with “objectivity” might also overlook some complexities, including the similarity of many bloggers to “noise traders” in financial markets and to op-ed columnists. Methodologies and reportage practices have evolved to deal with the objections that CJ proponents raise, from New Journalism’s radical subjectivity and creative non-fiction techniques (Wolfe & Johnson) to Precision Journalism that used descriptive statistics (Meyer). Finally, journalism frameworks could be updated with current research on how phenomenological awareness shapes our judgments and perceptions (Thompson). 8. Strategic Execution For me, one of CJ’s major weaknesses as a new media theory is its lack of “rich description” (Geertz) about the strategic execution of projects. As Disinfo.com site editor I encountered situations ranging from ‘denial of service’ attacks and spam to site migration, publishing systems that go offline, and ensuring an editorial consistency. Yet the messiness of these processes is missing from CJ theories and accounts. Theories that included this detail as “second-order interactions” (Carlile & Christensen 13) would offer a richer view of CJ. Many CJ and Web 2.0 projects fall into the categories of mini-projects, demonstration prototypes and start-ups, even when using a programming language such as Ajax or Ruby on Rails. Whilst the “bootstrap” process is a benefit, more longitudinal analysis and testing needs to occur, to ensure these projects are scalable and sustainable. For example, South Korea’s OhmyNews is cited as an exemplar that started with “727 citizen reporters and 4 editors” and now has “38,000 citizen reporters” and “a dozen editors” (Kolodzy 231). How does OhmyNews’s mix of hard and soft news change over time? Or, how does OhmyNews deal with a complex issue that might require major resources, such as security negotiations between North and South Korea? Such examples could do with further research. We need to go beyond “the vision thing” and look at the messiness of execution for deeper observations and counterintuitive correlations, to build new descriptive theories. 9. Future Research This essay argues that CJ needs re-evaluation. Its immediate legacy might be to splinter ‘journalism’ into micro-trends: Washington University’s Steve Boriss proclaims “citizen journalism is dead. Expert journalism is the future.” (Boriss; Mensching). The half-lives of such micro-trends demand new categorisations, which in turn prematurely feeds the theory-building cycle. Instead, future researchers could reinvigorate 21st century journalism if they ask deeper questions and return to the observation stage of building descriptive theories. In closing, below are some possible questions that future researchers might explore: Where are the “rich descriptions” of journalistic experience—“citizen”, “convergent”, “digital”, “Pro-Am” or otherwise in new media? How could practice-based approaches inform this research instead of relying on espoused theories-in-use? What new methodologies could be developed for CJ implementation? What role can the “heroic” individual reporter or editor have in “the swarm”? Do the claims about OhmyNews and other sites stand up to longitudinal observation? Are the theories used to justify Citizen Journalism’s normative stance (Rheingold; Surowiecki; Pesce) truly robust generalisations for strategic execution or do they reflect the biases of their creators? How could developers tap the conceptual dimensions of information technology innovation (Shasha) to create the next Facebook, MySpace or Wikipedia? References Argyris, Chris, and Donald Schon. Theory in Practice. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass Publishers, 1976. Barlow, Aaron. The Rise of the Blogosphere. Westport, CN: Praeger Publishers, 2007. Block, Peter. Flawless Consulting. 2nd ed. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass/Pfeiffer, 2000. Boriss, Steve. “Citizen Journalism Is Dead. Expert Journalism Is the Future.” The Future of News. 28 Nov. 2007. 20 Feb. 2008 http://thefutureofnews.com/2007/11/28/citizen-journalism-is-dead- expert-journalism-is-the-future/>. Brooks, Jr., Frederick P. The Mythical Man-Month: Essays on Software Engineering. Rev. ed. Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley Publishing Company, 1995. Campbell, Vincent. Information Age Journalism: Journalism in an International Context. New York: Arnold, 2004. Carlile, Paul R., and Clayton M. Christensen. “The Cycles of Building Theory in Management Research.” Innosight working paper draft 6. 6 Jan. 2005. 19 Feb. 2008 http://www.innosight.com/documents/Theory%20Building.pdf>. Caverly, Doug. “Hyperlocal News Site Takes A Hit.” WebProNews.com 6 July 2007. 19 Feb. 2008 http://www.webpronews.com/topnews/2007/07/06/hyperlocal-news- sites-take-a-hit>. Chenoweth, Neil. Virtual Murdoch: Reality Wars on the Information Superhighway. Sydney: Random House Australia, 2001. Christensen, Clayton M. The Innovator’s Dilemma: When New Technologies Cause Great Firms to Fail. Boston, MA: Harvard Business School Press, 1997. Christensen, Clayton M., Curtis Johnson, and Michael Horn. Disrupting Class: How Disruptive Innovation Will Change the Way the World Learns. New York: McGraw-Hill, 2008. Curtis, Adam. The Mayfair Set. London: British Broadcasting Corporation, 1999. Etherington, Kim. Becoming a Reflexive Researcher: Using Ourselves in Research. London: Jessica Kingsley Publishers, 2004. Festinger, Leon. A Theory of Cognitive Dissonance. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1962. Feyerabend, Paul. Against Method. 3rd ed. London: Verso, 1993. Finnemore, Martha. National Interests in International Society. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1996. Geertz, Clifford. The Interpretation of Cultures. New York: Basic Books, 1973. Ghoshal, Sumantra. “Bad Management Theories Are Destroying Good Management Practices.” Academy of Management Learning & Education 4.1 (2005): 75-91. Gibson, William. Pattern Recognition. London: Viking, 2003. Gladwell, Malcolm. “The Cool-Hunt.” The New Yorker Magazine 17 March 1997. 20 Feb. 2008 http://www.gladwell.com/1997/1997_03_17_a_cool.htm>. Gross, Daniel. Pop! Why Bubbles Are Great for the Economy. New York: Collins, 2007. Hoffer, Eric. The True Believer. New York: Harper, 1951. Howe, Jeff. “Did Assignment Zero Fail? A Look Back, and Lessons Learned.” Wired News 16 July 2007. 19 Feb. 2008 http://www.wired.com/techbiz/media/news/2007/07/assignment_ zero_final?currentPage=all>. Kahneman, Daniel, and Amos Tversky. Choices, Values and Frames. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2000. Keen, Andrew. The Cult of the Amateur. New York: Doubleday Currency, 2007. Khurana, Rakesh. From Higher Aims to Hired Hands. Princeton, NJ: Princeton UP, 2007. Kolodzy, Janet. Convergence Journalism: Writing and Reporting across the News Media. Oxford: Rowman & Littlefield, 2006. Koppelman, Charles. Behind the Seen: How Walter Murch Edited Cold Mountain Using Apple’s Final Cut Pro and What This Means for Cinema. Upper Saddle River, NJ: New Rider, 2004. Leadbeater, Charles, and Paul Miller. “The Pro-Am Revolution”. London: Demos, 24 Nov. 2004. 19 Feb. 2008 http://www.demos.co.uk/publications/proameconomy>. Loomis, Carol J. “Bloomberg’s Money Machine.” Fortune 5 April 2007. 20 Feb. 2008 http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/fortune_archive/2007/04/16/ 8404302/index.htm>. Lynch, Peter, and John Rothchild. Beating the Street. Rev. ed. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1994. Maister, David. True Professionalism. New York: The Free Press, 1997. Maister, David, Charles H. Green, and Robert M. Galford. The Trusted Advisor. New York: The Free Press, 2004. Mensching, Leah McBride. “Citizen Journalism on Its Way Out?” SFN Blog, 30 Nov. 2007. 20 Feb. 2008 http://www.sfnblog.com/index.php/2007/11/30/940-citizen-journalism- on-its-way-out>. Meyer, Philip. Precision Journalism. 4th ed. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2002. McConnell, Steve. Professional Software Development. Boston, MA: Addison-Wesley, 2004. Mintzberg, Henry. Managers Not MBAs. San Francisco, CA: Berrett-Koehler, 2004. Morgan, Gareth. Images of Organisation. Rev. ed. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 2006. Newsvine. “Msnbc.com Acquires Newsvine.” 7 Oct. 2007. 20 Feb. 2008 http://blog.newsvine.com/_news/2007/10/07/1008889-msnbccom- acquires-newsvine>. Niederhoffer, Victor, and Laurel Kenner. Practical Speculation. New York: John Wiley & Sons, 2003. Pearlstine, Norman. Off the Record: The Press, the Government, and the War over Anonymous Sources. New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2007. Pesce, Mark D. “Mob Rules (The Law of Fives).” The Human Network 28 Sep. 2007. 20 Feb. 2008 http://blog.futurestreetconsulting.com/?p=39>. Rheingold, Howard. Smart Mobs: The Next Social Revolution. Cambridge MA: Basic Books, 2002. Rosen, Jay. What Are Journalists For? Princeton NJ: Yale UP, 2001. Shasha, Dennis Elliott. Out of Their Minds: The Lives and Discoveries of 15 Great Computer Scientists. New York: Copernicus, 1995. Slywotzky, Adrian. Value Migration: How to Think Several Moves Ahead of the Competition. Boston, MA: Harvard Business School Press, 1996. Smith, Steve. “The Self-Image of a Discipline: The Genealogy of International Relations Theory.” Eds. Steve Smith and Ken Booth. International Relations Theory Today. Cambridge, UK: Polity Press, 1995. 1-37. Spar, Debora L. Ruling the Waves: Cycles of Discovery, Chaos and Wealth from the Compass to the Internet. New York: Harcourt, 2001. Surowiecki, James. The Wisdom of Crowds. New York: Doubleday, 2004. Thompson, Evan. Mind in Life: Biology, Phenomenology, and the Sciences of Mind. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press, 2007. Trippi, Joe. The Revolution Will Not Be Televised. New York: ReganBooks, 2004. Underwood, Doug. When MBA’s Rule the Newsroom. New York: Columbia University Press, 1993. Wark, McKenzie. Virtual Geography: Living with Global Media Events. Bloomington IN: Indiana UP, 1994. Wolfe, Tom, and E.W. Johnson. The New Journalism. New York: Harper & Row, 1973. Citation reference for this article MLA Style Burns, Alex. "Select Issues with New Media Theories of Citizen Journalism." M/C Journal 10.6/11.1 (2008). echo date('d M. Y'); ?> <http://journal.media-culture.org.au/0804/10-burns.php>. APA Style Burns, A. (Apr. 2008) "Select Issues with New Media Theories of Citizen Journalism," M/C Journal, 10(6)/11(1). Retrieved echo date('d M. Y'); ?> from <http://journal.media-culture.org.au/0804/10-burns.php>.

Abstract:

“Journalists have to begin a new type of journalism, sometimes being the guide on the side of the civic conversation as well as the filter and gatekeeper.” (Kolodzy 218) “In many respects, citizen journalism is simply public journalism removed from the journalism profession.” (Barlow 181) 1. Citizen Journalism — The Latest Innovation? New Media theorists such as Dan Gillmor, Henry Jenkins, Jay Rosen and Jeff Howe have recently touted Citizen Journalism (CJ) as the latest innovation in 21st century journalism. “Participatory journalism” and “user-driven journalism” are other terms to describe CJ, which its proponents argue is a disruptive innovation (Christensen) to the agenda-setting media institutions, news values and “objective” reportage. In this essay I offer a “contrarian” view, informed by two perspectives: (1) a three-stage model of theory-building (Carlile & Christensen) to evaluate the claims made about CJ; and (2) self-reflexive research insights (Etherington) from editing the US-based news site Disinformation between November 1999 and February 2008. New media theories can potentially create “cognitive dissonance” (Festinger) when their explanations of CJ practices are compared with what actually happens (Feyerabend). First I summarise Carlile & Christensen’s model and the dangers of “bad theory” (Ghoshal). Next I consider several problems in new media theories about CJ: the notion of ‘citizen’, new media populism, parallels in event-driven and civic journalism, and mergers and acquisitions. Two ‘self-reflexive’ issues are considered: ‘pro-ams’ or ‘professional amateurs’ as a challenge to professional journalists, and CJ’s deployment in new media operations and production environments. Finally, some exploratory questions are offered for future researchers. 2. An Evaluative Framework for New Media Theories on Citizen Journalism Paul Carlile and Clayton M. Christensen’s model offers one framework with which to evaluate new media theories on CJ. This framework is used below to highlight select issues and gaps in CJ’s current frameworks and theories. Carlile & Christensen suggest that robust theory-building emerges via three stages: Descriptive, Categorisation and Normative (Carlile & Christensen). There are three sub-stages in Descriptive theory-building; namely, the observation of phenomena, inductive classification into schemas and taxonomies, and correlative relationships to develop models (Carlile & Christensen 2-5). Once causation is established, Normative theory evolves through deductive logic which is subject to Kuhnian paradigm shifts and Popperian falsifiability (Carlile & Christensen 6). Its proponents situate CJ as a Categorisation or new journalism agenda that poses a Normative challenged and Kuhnian paradigm shift to traditional journalism. Existing CJ theories jump from the Descriptive phase of observations like “smart mobs” in Japanese youth subcultures (Rheingold) to make broad claims for Categorisation such as that IndyMedia, blogs and wiki publishing systems as new media alternatives to traditional media. CJ theories then underpin normative beliefs, values and worldviews. Correlative relationships are also used to differentiate CJ from the demand side of microeconomic analysis, from the top-down editorial models of traditional media outlets, and to adopt a vanguard stance. To support this, CJ proponents cite research on emergent collective behaviour such as the “wisdom of crowds” hypothesis (Surowiecki) or peer-to-peer network “swarms” (Pesce) to provide scientific justification for their Normative theories. However, further evaluative research is needed for three reasons: the emergent collective behaviour hypothesis may not actually inform CJ practices, existing theories may have “correlation not cause” errors, and the link may be due to citation network effects between CJ theorists. Collectively, this research base also frames CJ as an “ought to” Categorisation and then proceeds to Normative theory-building (Carlile & Christensen 7). However, I argue below that this Categorisation may be premature: its observations and correlative relationships might reinforce a ‘weak’ Normative theory with limited generalisation. CJ proponents seem to imply that it can be applied anywhere and under any condition—a “statement of causality” that almost makes it a fad (Carlile & Christensen 8). CJ that relies on Classification and Normative claims will be problematic without a strong grounding in Descriptive observation. To understand what’s potentially at stake for CJ’s future consider the consider the parallel debate about curricula renewal for the Masters of Business Administration in the wake of high-profile corporate collapses such as Enron, Worldcom, HIH and OneTel. The MBA evolved as a sociological and institutional construct to justify management as a profession that is codified, differentiated and has entry barriers (Khurana). This process might partly explain the pushback that some media professionals have to CJ as one alternative. MBA programs faced criticism if they had student cohorts with little business know-how or experiential learning (Mintzberg). Enron’s collapse illustrated the ethical dilemmas and unintended consequences that occurred when “bad theories” were implemented (Ghoshal). Professional journalists are aware of this: MBA-educated managers challenged the “craft” tradition in the early 1980s (Underwood). This meant that journalism’s ‘self-image’ (Morgan; Smith) is intertwined with managerial anxieties about media conglomerates in highly competitive markets. Ironically, as noted below, Citizen Journalists who adopt a vanguard position vis-a-vis media professionals step into a more complex game with other players. However, current theories have a naïve idealism about CJ’s promise of normative social change in the face of Machiavellian agency in business, the media and politics. 3. Citizen Who? Who is the “citizen” in CJ? What is their self-awareness as a political agent? CJ proponents who use the ‘self-image’ of ‘citizen’ draw on observations from the participatory vision of open source software, peer-to-peer networks, and case studies such as Howard Dean’s 2004 bid for the Democrat Party nominee in the US Presidential election campaign (Trippi). Recent theorists note Alexander Hamilton’s tradition of civic activism (Barlow 178) which links contemporary bloggers with the Federalist Papers and early newspaper pamphlets. One unsurfaced assumption in these observations and correlations is that most bloggers will adopt a coherent political philosophy as informed citizens: a variation on Lockean utilitarianism, Rawlsian liberalism or Nader consumer activism. To date there is little discussion about how political philosophy could deepen CJ’s ‘self-image’: how to critically evaluate sources, audit and investigation processes, or strategies to deal with elites, deterrence and power. For example, although bloggers kept Valerie Plame’s ‘outing’ as a covert intelligence operative highly visible in the issues-attention cycle, it was agenda-setting media like The New York Times who the Bush Administration targeted to silence (Pearlstine). To be viable, CJ needs to evolve beyond a new media populism, perhaps into a constructivist model of agency, norms and social change (Finnemore). 4. Citizen Journalism as New Media Populism Several “precursor trends” foreshadowed CJ notably the mid-1990s interest in “cool-hunting” by new media analysts and subculture marketeers (Gibson; Gladwell). Whilst this audience focus waned with the 1995-2000 dotcom bubble it resurfaced in CJ and publisher Tim O’Reilly’s Web 2.0 vision. Thus, CJ might be viewed as new media populism that has flourished with the Web 2.0 boom. Yet if the boom becomes a macroeconomic bubble (Gross; Spar) then CJ could be written off as a “silver bullet” that ultimately failed to deliver on its promises (Brooks, Jr.). The reputations of uncritical proponents who adopted a “true believer” stance would also be damaged (Hoffer). This risk is evident if CJ is compared with a parallel trend that shares its audience focus and populist view: day traders and technical analysts who speculate on financial markets. This parallel trend provides an alternative discipline in which the populism surfaced in an earlier form (Carlile & Christensen 12). Fidelity’s Peter Lynch argues that stock pickers can use their Main Street knowledge to beat Wall Street by exploiting information asymmetries (Lynch & Rothchild). Yet Lynch’s examples came from the mid-1970s to early 1980s when indexed mutual fund strategies worked, before deregulation and macroeconomic volatility. A change in the Web 2.0 boom might similarly trigger a reconsideration of Citizen Journalism. Hedge fund maven Victor Niederhoffer contends that investors who rely on technical analysis are practicing a Comtean religion (Niederhoffer & Kenner 72-74) instead of Efficient Market Hypothesis traders who use statistical arbitrage to deal with ‘random walks’ or Behavioural Finance experts who build on Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman’s Prospect Theory (Kahneman & Tversky). Niederhoffer’s deeper point is that technical analysts’ belief that the “trend is your friend” is no match for the other schools, despite a mini-publishing industry and computer trading systems. There are also ontological and epistemological differences between the schools. Similarly, CJ proponents who adopt a ‘Professional Amateur’ or ‘Pro-Am’ stance (Leadbeater & Miller) may face a similar gulf when making comparisons with professional journalists and the production environments in media organisations. CJ also thrives as new media populism because of institutional vested interests. When media conglomerates cut back on cadetships and internships CJ might fill the market demand as one alternative. New media programs at New York University and others can use CJ to differentiate themselves from “hyperlocal” competitors (Christensen; Slywotzky; Christensen, Curtis & Horn). This transforms CJ from new media populism to new media institution. 5. Parallels: Event-driven & Civic Journalism For new media programs, CJ builds on two earlier traditions: the Event-driven journalism of crises like the 1991 Gulf War (Wark) and the Civic Journalism school that emerged in the 1960s social upheavals. Civic Journalism’s awareness of minorities and social issues provides the character ethic and political philosophy for many Citizen Journalists. Jay Rosen and others suggest that CJ is the next-generation heir to Civic Journalism, tracing a thread from the 1968 Chicago Democratic Convention to IndyMedia’s coverage of the 1999 “Battle in Seattle” (Rosen). Rosen’s observation could yield an interesting historiography or genealogy. Events such as the Southeast Asian tsunami on 26 December 2004 or Al Qaeda’s London bombings on 7 July 2005 are cited as examples of CJ as event-driven journalism and “pro-am collaboration” (Kolodzy 229-230). Having covered these events and Al Qaeda’s attacks on 11th September 2001, I have a slightly different view: this was more a variation on “first responder” status and handicam video footage that journalists have sourced for the past three decades when covering major disasters. This different view means that the “salience of categories” used to justify CJ and “pro-am collaboration” these events does not completely hold. Furthermore, when Citizen Journalism proponents tout Flickr and Wikipedia as models of real-time media they are building on a broader phenomenon that includes CNN’s Gulf War coverage and Bloomberg’s dominance of financial news (Loomis). 6. The Mergers & Acquisitions Scenario CJ proponents often express anxieties about the resilience of their outlets in the face of predatory venture capital firms who initiate Mergers & Acquisitions (M&A) activities. Ironically, these venture capital firms have core competencies and expertise in the event-driven infrastructure and real-time media that CJ aspires to. Sequoia Capital and other venture capital firms have evaluative frameworks that likely surpass Carlile & Christensen in sophistication, and they exploit parallels, information asymmetries and market populism. Furthermore, although venture capital firms such as Union Street Ventures have funded Web 2.0 firms, they are absent from the explanations of some theorists, whose examples of Citizen Journalism and Web 2.0 success may be the result of survivorship bias. Thus, the venture capital market remains an untapped data source for researchers who want to evaluate the impact of CJ outlets and institutions. The M&A scenario further problematises CJ in several ways. First, CJ is framed as “oppositional” to traditional media, yet this may be used as a stratagem in a game theory framework with multiple stakeholders. Drexel Burnham Lambert’s financier Michael Milken used market populism to sell ‘high-yield’ or ‘junk’ bonds to investors whilst disrupting the Wall Street establishment in the late 1980s (Curtis) and CJ could fulfil a similar tactical purpose. Second, the M&A goal of some Web 2.0 firms could undermine the participatory goals of a site’s community if post-merger integration fails. Jason Calacanis’s sale of Weblogs, Inc to America Online in 2005 and MSNBC’s acquisition of Newsvine on 5 October 2007 (Newsvine) might be success stories. However, this raises issues of digital “property rights” if you contribute to a community that is then sold in an M&A transaction—an outcome closer to business process outsourcing. Third, media “buzz” can create an unrealistic vision when a CJ site fails to grow beyond its start-up phase. Backfence.com’s demise as a “hyperlocal” initiative (Caverly) is one cautionary event that recalls the 2000 dotcom crash. The M&A scenarios outlined above are market dystopias for CJ purists. The major lesson for CJ proponents is to include other market players in hypotheses about causation and correlation factors. 7. ‘Pro-Ams’ & Professional Journalism’s Crisis CJ emerged during a period when Professional Journalism faced a major crisis of ‘self-image’. The Demos report The Pro-Am Revolution (Leadbeater & Miller) popularised the notion of ‘professional amateurs’ which some CJ theorists adopt to strengthen their categorisation. In turn, this triggers a response from cultural theorists who fear bloggers are new media’s barbarians (Keen). I concede Leadbeater and Miller have identified an important category. However, how some CJ theorists then generalise from ‘Pro-Ams’ illustrates the danger of ‘weak’ theory referred to above. Leadbeater and Miller’s categorisation does not really include a counter-view on the strengths of professionals, as illustrated in humanistic consulting (Block), professional service firms (Maister; Maister, Green & Galford), and software development (McConnell). The signs of professionalism these authors mention include a commitment to learning and communal verification, mastery of a discipline and domain application, awareness of methodology creation, participation in mentoring, and cultivation of ethical awareness. Two key differences are discernment and quality of attention, as illustrated in how the legendary Hollywood film editor Walter Murch used Apple’s Final Cut Pro software to edit the 2003 film Cold Mountain (Koppelman). ‘Pro-Ams’ might not aspire to these criteria but Citizen Journalists shouldn’t throw out these standards, either. Doing so would be making the same mistake of overconfidence that technical analysts make against statistical arbitrageurs. Key processes—fact-checking, sub-editing and editorial decision-making—are invisible to the end-user, even if traceable in a blog or wiki publishing system, because of the judgments involved. One post-mortem insight from Assignment Zero was that these processes were vital to create the climate of authenticity and trust to sustain a Citizen Journalist community (Howe). CJ’s trouble with “objectivity” might also overlook some complexities, including the similarity of many bloggers to “noise traders” in financial markets and to op-ed columnists. Methodologies and reportage practices have evolved to deal with the objections that CJ proponents raise, from New Journalism’s radical subjectivity and creative non-fiction techniques (Wolfe & Johnson) to Precision Journalism that used descriptive statistics (Meyer). Finally, journalism frameworks could be updated with current research on how phenomenological awareness shapes our judgments and perceptions (Thompson). 8. Strategic Execution For me, one of CJ’s major weaknesses as a new media theory is its lack of “rich description” (Geertz) about the strategic execution of projects. As Disinfo.com site editor I encountered situations ranging from ‘denial of service’ attacks and spam to site migration, publishing systems that go offline, and ensuring an editorial consistency. Yet the messiness of these processes is missing from CJ theories and accounts. Theories that included this detail as “second-order interactions” (Carlile & Christensen 13) would offer a richer view of CJ. Many CJ and Web 2.0 projects fall into the categories of mini-projects, demonstration prototypes and start-ups, even when using a programming language such as Ajax or Ruby on Rails. Whilst the “bootstrap” process is a benefit, more longitudinal analysis and testing needs to occur, to ensure these projects are scalable and sustainable. For example, South Korea’s OhmyNews is cited as an exemplar that started with “727 citizen reporters and 4 editors” and now has “38,000 citizen reporters” and “a dozen editors” (Kolodzy 231). How does OhmyNews’s mix of hard and soft news change over time? Or, how does OhmyNews deal with a complex issue that might require major resources, such as security negotiations between North and South Korea? Such examples could do with further research. We need to go beyond “the vision thing” and look at the messiness of execution for deeper observations and counterintuitive correlations, to build new descriptive theories. 9. Future Research This essay argues that CJ needs re-evaluation. Its immediate legacy might be to splinter ‘journalism’ into micro-trends: Washington University’s Steve Boriss proclaims “citizen journalism is dead. Expert journalism is the future.” (Boriss; Mensching). The half-lives of such micro-trends demand new categorisations, which in turn prematurely feeds the theory-building cycle. Instead, future researchers could reinvigorate 21st century journalism if they ask deeper questions and return to the observation stage of building descriptive theories. In closing, below are some possible questions that future researchers might explore: Where are the “rich descriptions” of journalistic experience—“citizen”, “convergent”, “digital”, “Pro-Am” or otherwise in new media?How could practice-based approaches inform this research instead of relying on espoused theories-in-use?What new methodologies could be developed for CJ implementation?What role can the “heroic” individual reporter or editor have in “the swarm”?Do the claims about OhmyNews and other sites stand up to longitudinal observation?Are the theories used to justify Citizen Journalism’s normative stance (Rheingold; Surowiecki; Pesce) truly robust generalisations for strategic execution or do they reflect the biases of their creators?How could developers tap the conceptual dimensions of information technology innovation (Shasha) to create the next Facebook, MySpace or Wikipedia? References Argyris, Chris, and Donald Schon. Theory in Practice. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass Publishers, 1976. Barlow, Aaron. The Rise of the Blogosphere. Westport, CN: Praeger Publishers, 2007. Block, Peter. Flawless Consulting. 2nd ed. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass/Pfeiffer, 2000. Boriss, Steve. “Citizen Journalism Is Dead. Expert Journalism Is the Future.” The Future of News. 28 Nov. 2007. 20 Feb. 2008 < http://thefutureofnews.com/2007/11/28/citizen-journalism-is-dead- expert-journalism-is-the-future/ >. Brooks, Jr., Frederick P. The Mythical Man-Month: Essays on Software Engineering. Rev. ed. Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley Publishing Company, 1995. Campbell, Vincent. Information Age Journalism: Journalism in an International Context. New York: Arnold, 2004. Carlile, Paul R., and Clayton M. Christensen. “The Cycles of Building Theory in Management Research.” Innosight working paper draft 6. 6 Jan. 2005. 19 Feb. 2008 < http://www.innosight.com/documents/Theory%20Building.pdf >. Caverly, Doug. “Hyperlocal News Site Takes A Hit.” WebProNews.com 6 July 2007. 19 Feb. 2008 < http://www.webpronews.com/topnews/2007/07/06/hyperlocal-news- sites-take-a-hit >. Chenoweth, Neil. Virtual Murdoch: Reality Wars on the Information Superhighway. Sydney: Random House Australia, 2001. Christensen, Clayton M. The Innovator’s Dilemma: When New Technologies Cause Great Firms to Fail. Boston, MA: Harvard Business School Press, 1997. Christensen, Clayton M., Curtis Johnson, and Michael Horn. Disrupting Class: How Disruptive Innovation Will Change the Way the World Learns. New York: McGraw-Hill, 2008. Curtis, Adam. The Mayfair Set. London: British Broadcasting Corporation, 1999. Etherington, Kim. Becoming a Reflexive Researcher: Using Ourselves in Research. London: Jessica Kingsley Publishers, 2004. Festinger, Leon. A Theory of Cognitive Dissonance. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1962. Feyerabend, Paul. Against Method. 3rd ed. London: Verso, 1993. Finnemore, Martha. National Interests in International Society. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1996. Geertz, Clifford. The Interpretation of Cultures. New York: Basic Books, 1973. Ghoshal, Sumantra. “Bad Management Theories Are Destroying Good Management Practices.” Academy of Management Learning & Education 4.1 (2005): 75-91. Gibson, William. Pattern Recognition. London: Viking, 2003. Gladwell, Malcolm. “The Cool-Hunt.” The New Yorker Magazine 17 March 1997. 20 Feb. 2008 < http://www.gladwell.com/1997/1997_03_17_a_cool.htm >. Gross, Daniel. Pop! Why Bubbles Are Great for the Economy. New York: Collins, 2007. Hoffer, Eric. The True Believer. New York: Harper, 1951. Howe, Jeff. “Did Assignment Zero Fail? A Look Back, and Lessons Learned.” Wired News 16 July 2007. 19 Feb. 2008 < http://www.wired.com/techbiz/media/news/2007/07/assignment_ zero_final?currentPage=all >. Kahneman, Daniel, and Amos Tversky. Choices, Values and Frames. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2000. Keen, Andrew. The Cult of the Amateur. New York: Doubleday Currency, 2007. Khurana, Rakesh. From Higher Aims to Hired Hands. Princeton, NJ: Princeton UP, 2007. Kolodzy, Janet. Convergence Journalism: Writing and Reporting across the News Media. Oxford: Rowman & Littlefield, 2006. Koppelman, Charles. Behind the Seen: How Walter Murch Edited Cold Mountain Using Apple’s Final Cut Pro and What This Means for Cinema. Upper Saddle River, NJ: New Rider, 2004. Leadbeater, Charles, and Paul Miller. “The Pro-Am Revolution”. London: Demos, 24 Nov. 2004. 19 Feb. 2008 < http://www.demos.co.uk/publications/proameconomy >. Loomis, Carol J. “Bloomberg’s Money Machine.” Fortune 5 April 2007. 20 Feb. 2008 < http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/fortune_archive/2007/04/16/ 8404302/index.htm >. Lynch, Peter, and John Rothchild. Beating the Street. Rev. ed. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1994. Maister, David. True Professionalism. New York: The Free Press, 1997. Maister, David, Charles H. Green, and Robert M. Galford. The Trusted Advisor. New York: The Free Press, 2004. Mensching, Leah McBride. “Citizen Journalism on Its Way Out?” SFN Blog, 30 Nov. 2007. 20 Feb. 2008 < http://www.sfnblog.com/index.php/2007/11/30/940-citizen-journalism- on-its-way-out >. Meyer, Philip. Precision Journalism. 4th ed. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2002. McConnell, Steve. Professional Software Development. Boston, MA: Addison-Wesley, 2004. Mintzberg, Henry. Managers Not MBAs. San Francisco, CA: Berrett-Koehler, 2004. Morgan, Gareth. Images of Organisation. Rev. ed. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 2006. Newsvine. “Msnbc.com Acquires Newsvine.” 7 Oct. 2007. 20 Feb. 2008 < http://blog.newsvine.com/_news/2007/10/07/1008889-msnbccom- acquires-newsvine >. Niederhoffer, Victor, and Laurel Kenner. Practical Speculation. New York: John Wiley & Sons, 2003. Pearlstine, Norman. Off the Record: The Press, the Government, and the War over Anonymous Sources. New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2007. Pesce, Mark D. “Mob Rules (The Law of Fives).” The Human Network 28 Sep. 2007. 20 Feb. 2008 < http://blog.futurestreetconsulting.com/?p=39 >. Rheingold, Howard. Smart Mobs: The Next Social Revolution. Cambridge MA: Basic Books, 2002. Rosen, Jay. What Are Journalists For? Princeton NJ: Yale UP, 2001. Shasha, Dennis Elliott. Out of Their Minds: The Lives and Discoveries of 15 Great Computer Scientists. New York: Copernicus, 1995. Slywotzky, Adrian. Value Migration: How to Think Several Moves Ahead of the Competition. Boston, MA: Harvard Business School Press, 1996. Smith, Steve. “The Self-Image of a Discipline: The Genealogy of International Relations Theory.” Eds. Steve Smith and Ken Booth. International Relations Theory Today. Cambridge, UK: Polity Press, 1995. 1-37. Spar, Debora L. Ruling the Waves: Cycles of Discovery, Chaos and Wealth from the Compass to the Internet. New York: Harcourt, 2001. Surowiecki, James. The Wisdom of Crowds. New York: Doubleday, 2004. Thompson, Evan. Mind in Life: Biology, Phenomenology, and the Sciences of Mind. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press, 2007. Trippi, Joe. The Revolution Will Not Be Televised. New York: ReganBooks, 2004. Underwood, Doug. When MBA’s Rule the Newsroom. New York: Columbia University Press, 1993. Wark, McKenzie. Virtual Geography: Living with Global Media Events. Bloomington IN: Indiana UP, 1994. Wolfe, Tom, and E.W. Johnson. The New Journalism. New York: Harper & Row, 1973.

Abstract:

Many films of the Australian New Wave (or Australian film renaissance) of the 1970s and 1980s can be defined as gothic, especially following Jonathan Rayner’s suggestion that “Instead of a genre, Australian Gothic represents a mode, a stance and an atmosphere, after the fashion of American Film Noir, with the appellation suggesting the inclusion of horrific and fantastic materials comparable to those of Gothic literature” (25). The American comparison is revealing. The 400 or so film productions of the Australian New Wave emerged, not in a vacuum, but in an increasingly connected and inter-mixed international space (Godden). Putatively discrete national cinemas weave in and out of each other on many levels. One such level concerns the reception critics give to films. This article will drill down to the level of the reception of two examples of Australian gothic film-making by two well-known American critics. Rayner’s comparison of Australian gothic with American film noir is useful; however, it begs the question of how American critics such as Pauline Kael and Andrew Sarris influentially shaped the reception of Australian gothic in America and in other locations (such as Australia itself) where their reviews found an audience either at the time or afterwards. The significance of the present article rests on the fact that, as William McClain observes, following in Rick Altman’s footsteps, “critics form one of the key material institutions that support generic formations” (54). This article nurtures the suggestion that knowing how Australian gothic cinema was shaped, in its infancy, in the increasingly important American market (a market of both commerce and ideas) might usefully inform revisionist studies of Australian cinema as a national mode. A more nuanced, globally informed representation of the origins and development of Australian gothic cinema emerges at this juncture, particularly given that American film reviewing in the 1970s and 1980s more closely resembled what might today be called film criticism or even film theory. The length of individual reviews back then, the more specialized vocabulary used, and above all the tendency for critics to assume more knowledge of film history than could safely be assumed in 2014—all this shows up the contrast with today. As Christos Tsiolkas notes, “in our age… film reviewing has been reduced to a thumbs-up or a thumbs-down” (56)! The 1970s and 1980s is largely pre-Internet, and critical voices such as Kael and Sarris dominated in print. The American reviews of Australian gothic films demonstrate how a different consciousness suffuses Kael’s and Sarris’s engagements with “Antipodean” (broadly Australian and New Zealand) cinema. Rayner’s locally specific definition of Australian gothic is distorted in their interpretations of examples of the genre. It will be argued that this is symptomatic of a particular blindspot, related to the politics and art of place, in the American reception of Wake in Fright (initially called Outback in America), directed by the Canadian Ted Kotcheff (1971) and The Year of Living Dangerously, directed by Peter Weir (1982). Space and argument considerations force this article to focus on the reviews of these films, engaging less in analysis of the films themselves. Suffice to say that they all fit broadly within Rayner’s definition of Australian gothic cinema. As Rayner states, three thematic concerns which permeate all the films related to the Gothic sensibility provide links across the distinctions of era, environment and character. They are: a questioning of established authority; a disillusionment with the social reality that that authority maintains; and the protagonist’s search for a valid and tenable identity once the true nature of the human environment has been revealed. (25) “The true nature of the human environment….” Here is the element upon which the American reviews of the Australian gothic founder. Explicitly in many films of this mode, and implicitly in nearly all of them, is the “human environment” of the Australian landscape, which operates less as a backdrop and more as a participating element, even a character, in the drama, saturating the mise-en-scène. In “Out of Place: Reading (Post) Colonial Landscapes as Gothic Space in Jane Campion’s Films,” Eva Rueschmann quotes Ross Gibson’s thesis from South of the West: Postcolonialism and the Narrative Construction of Australia that By featuring the land so emphatically… [Australian] films stake out something more significant than decorative pictorialism. Knowingly or unknowingly, they are all engaging with the dominant mythology of white Australia. They are all partaking of the landscape tradition which, for two hundred years, has been used by white Australians to promote a sense of the significance of European society in the “Antipodes”. (Rueschmann) The “emphatic” nature of the land in films like Wake in Fright, Mad Max 2 and Picnic at Hanging Rock actively contributes to the “atmosphere” of Australian gothic cinema (Rayner 25). This atmosphere floats across Australian film and literature. Many of the films mentioned in this article are adaptations from books, and Rayner himself stresses the similarity between Australian gothic and gothic literature (25). Significantly, the atmosphere of Australian gothic also floats across the fuzzy boundary between the gothic and road movies or road literature. Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior is obviously a road movie as well as a gothic text; so is Wake in Fright in its way; even Picnic at Hanging Rock contains elements of the road movie in all that travelling to and from the rock. Roads, then, are significant for Australian gothic cinema, for the road traverses the Australian (gothic) landscape and, in the opportunity it provides for moving through it at speed, tantalizes with the (unfulfillable) promise of an escape from its gothic horror. Australian roads are familiar, part of White European culture referencing the geometric precision of Roman roads. The Australian outback, by contrast, is unfamiliar, uncanny. Veined with roads, the outback invites the taming by “the landscape tradition” that it simultaneously rejects (Rueschmann). In the opening 360° pan of Wake in Fright the land frightens with its immensity and intensity, even as the camera displays the land’s “conquering” agent: not a road, but the road’s surrogate—a railway line. Thus, the land introduces the uncanny into Australian gothic cinema. In Freudian terms, the uncanny is that unsettling combination of the familiar and the unfamiliar. R. Gray calls it “the class of frightening things that leads us back to what is known and familiar” (Gray). The “frightening” land is the very condition of the “comforting” road; no roads without a space for roads, and places for them to go. In her introduction to The Penguin Book of the Road, Delia Falconer similarly sutures the land to the uncanny, linking both of these with the first peoples of the Australian land: "Of course there is another 'poetry of the earth' whispering from the edges of our roads that gives so many of our road stories an extra charge, and that is the history of Aboriginal presence in this land. Thousands of years of paths and tribal boundaries also account for the uncanny sense of being haunted that dogs our travellers on their journeys (xvii). White Australia, as the local saying goes, has a black past, played out across the land. The film The Proposition instances this, with its gothic portrayal of the uncanny encroachments of the Australian “wilderness” into the domain of “civilization”. Furthermore, “our” overweening literal and metaphoric investment in the traditional quarter-acre block, not to mention in our roads, shows that “we” haven’t reconciled either with the land of Australia or with its original inhabitants: the Aboriginal peoples. Little wonder that Kael and Sarris couldn’t do so, as White Americans writing some forty years ago, and at such a huge geographic remove from Australia. As will be seen, the failure of these American film critics to comprehend the Australian landscape comes out—as both a “critical reaction” and a “reactive compensation”—in two, interwoven strands of their interpretations of Australian New Wave gothic cinema. A repulsion from, and an attraction to, the unrecognized uncanny is evidenced. The first strand is constituted in the markedly anthropological aspect to the film reviews: anthropological elements of the text itself are either disproportionately magnified or longed for. Here, “anthropological” includes the sociological and the historical. Secondly, Kael and Sarris use the films they review from Australian gothic cinema as sites upon which to trial answers to the old and persistent question of how the very categories of art and politics relate. Initially sucked out of the reviews (strand one), politics and art thus rush back in (strand two). In other words, the American failure to engage deeply with the land triggers an initial reading of films like Wake in Fright less as films per se and more as primary texts or one-to-one documentations of Australia. Australia presents for anthropological, even scientific atomization, rather than as a place in active, creative and complex relationship with its rendering in mise-en-scène. Simultaneously though, the absence of the land nags—eats away at the edges of critical thinking—and re-emerges (like a Freudian return of the repressed) in an attempt by the American critics to exploit their film subjects as an opportunity for working out how politics and art (here cinema) relate. The “un-seen” land creates a mis-reading amongst the American critics (strand one), only to force a compensatory, if somewhat blindsided, re-reading (strand two). For after all, in this critical “over-looking” of the land, and thus of the (ongoing) Aboriginal existence in and with the land, it is politics and art that is most at stake. How peoples (indigenous, settler or hybrid peoples) are connected to and through the land has perhaps always been Australia’s principal political and artistic question. How do the American reviews speak to this question? Sarris did not review Wake in Fright. Kael reviewed it, primarily, as a text at the intersection of fiction and documentary, ultimately privileging the latter. Throughout, her critical coordinates are American and, to a degree, literary. Noting the “stale whiff of Conrad” she also cites Outback’s “additional interest” in its similarity with “recent American movies [about] American racism and capitalist exploitation and the Vietnam war” (415). But her most pointed intervention comes in the assertion that there is “enough narrative to hold the social material together,” as if this were all narrative were good for: scaffolding for sociology (416). Art and culture are left out. Even as Kael mentions the “treatment of the Aborigines,” she misses the Aboriginal cultural moment of the opening shot of the land; this terrain, she writes, is “without a trace of culture” (416). Then, after critiquing what she sees as the unconvincing lesson of the schoolteacher’s moral demise, comes this: “But a more serious problem is that (despite the banal photography) the semi-documentary aspects of the film are so much more vivid and authentic and original than the factitious Conradian hero that we want to see more of that material—we want to learn more” (416-417). Further on, in this final paragraph, Kael notes that, while “there have been other Australian films, so it’s not all new” the director and scriptwriter “have seen the life in a more objective way, almost as if they were cultural anthropologists…. Maybe Kotcheff didn’t dare to expand this vision at the expense of the plot line, but he got onto something bigger than the plot” (417). Kael’s “error”, as it were, is to over-look how the land itself stretches the space of the film, beyond plot, to occupy the same space as her so-called “something bigger”, which itself is filled out by the uncanniness of the land as the intersections of both indigenous and settler (road-based) cultures and their representations in art (417). The “banal photography” might be better read as the film’s inhabitation of these artistic/cultural intersections (416). Kael’s Wake in Fright piece illustrates the first strand of the American reviews of Australian gothic cinema. Missing the land’s uncanniness effectively distributes throughout the review an elision of culture and art, and a reactive engagement with the broadly anthropological elements of Kotcheff’s film. Reviews of The Year of Living Dangerously by Kael and Sarris also illustrate the first strand of the American-Australian reviewing nexus, with the addition, also by each critic, of the second strand: the attempt to reconnect and revitalize the categories of politics and art. As with Wake in Fright, Kael introduces an anthropological gambit into Weir’s film, privileging its documentary elements over its qualities as fiction (strand one). “To a degree,” she writes, “Weir is the victim of his own skill at creating the illusion of authentic Third World misery, rioting, and chaos” (454). By comparison with “earlier, studio-set films” (like Casablanca [452]), where such “backgrounds (with their picturesque natives) were perfectly acceptable as backdrops…. Here… it’s a little obscene” (454). Kael continues: “Documentaries, TV coverage, print journalism, and modern history itself have changed audiences’ responses, and when fake dilemmas about ‘involvement’ are cooked up for the hero they’re an embarrassment” (454-455). Film is pushed to cater to anthropology besides art. Mirroring Kael’s strand-one response, Sarris puts a lot of pressure on Weir’s film to “perform” anthropologically—as well as, even instead of, artistically. The “movie”, he complains “could have been enjoyed thoroughly as a rousingly old-fashioned Hollywood big-star entertainment were it not for the disturbing vistas of somnolent poverty on view in the Philippines, the location in which Indonesian poverty in 1965 was simulated” (59). Indeed, the intrusive reality of poverty elicits from Sarris something very similar to Kael’s charge of the “obscenity of the backdrop” (454): We cannot go back to Manderley in our movie romances. That much is certain. We must go forward into the real world, but in the process, we should be careful not to dwarf our heroes and heroines with the cosmic futility of it all. They must be capable of acting on the stage of history, and by acting, make a difference in our moral perception of life on this planet. (59) Sarris places an extreme, even outrageous, strand-one demand on Weir’s film to re-purpose its fiction (what Kael calls “romantic melodrama” [454]) to elicit the categories of history and anthropology—that last phrase, “life on this planet”, sounds like David Attenborough speaking! More so, anthropological atomization is matched swiftly to a strand-two demand, for this passage also anticipates the rapprochement of politics and art, whereby art rises to the level of politics, requiring movie “heroes and heroines” to make a “moral difference” on a historical if not on a “cosmic” level (59). It is precisely in this, however, that Weir’s film falls down for Sarris. “The peculiar hollowness that the more perceptive reviewers have noted in The Year of Living Dangerously arises from the discrepancy between the thrilling charisma of the stars and the antiheroic irrelevance of the characters they play to the world around them” (59). Sarris’s spatialized phrase here (“peculiar hollowness”) recalls Kael’s observation that Wake in Fright contains “something bigger than the plot” (417). In each case, the description is doubling, dis-locating—uncanny. Echoing the title of Eva Rueschmann’s article, both films, like the Australian landscape itself, are “out of place” in their interpretation by these American critics. What, really, does Sarris’s “peculiar hollowness” originate in (59)? In what “discrepancy” (59)? There is a small but, in the context of this article, telling error in Sarris’s review of Weir’s film. Kael, correctly, notes that “the Indonesian settings had to be faked (in the Philippines and Australia)” (inserted emphasis) (452). Sarris mentions only the Philippines. From little things big things grow. Similar to how Kael overlooks the uncanny in Wake in Fright’s mise-en-scène, Sarris “sees” a “peculiar hollowness” where the land would otherwise be. Otherwise, that is, in the perspective of a cinema (Kotcheff’s, Weir’s) that comprehends “the true nature of the [Australian, gothic] human environment” (Rayner 25). Of course, it is not primarily a matter of how much footage Weir shot in Australia. It is the nature of the cinematography that matters most. For his part, Sarris damns it as “pretentiously picturesque” (59). Kael, meanwhile, gets closer perhaps to the ethics of the uncanny cinematography of The Year of Living Dangerously in her description of “intimations, fragments, hints and portents… on a very wide screen” (451). Even so, it will be remembered, she does call the “backgrounds… obscene” (454). Kael and Sarris see less than they “see”. Again like Sarris, Kael goes looking in Weir’s film for a strand-two rapprochement of politics and art, as evidenced by the line “The movie displays left-wing attitudes, but it shows no particular interest in politics” (453). It does though, only Kael is blind to it because she is blind to the land and, equally, to the political circ*mstances of the people of the land. Kael likely never realized the “discrepancy” in her critique of The Year of Living Dangerously’s Billy Kwan as “the same sort of in-on-the-mysteries-of-the-cosmos character that the aborigine actor Gulpilil played in Weir’s 1977 The Last Wave” (455). All this, she concludes, “might be boiled down to the mysticism of L.A.: ‘Go with the flow’” (455)! Grouping characters and places together like this, under the banner of L.A. mysticism, brutally erases the variations across different, uncanny, gothic, post-colonial landscapes. It is precisely here that politics and art do meet, in Weir’s film (and Kotcheff’s): in the artistic representation of the land as an index of the political relations of indigenous, settler and hybrid communities. (And not down the rabbit hole of the “specifics” of politics that Kael claims to want [453]). The American critics considered in this article are not in “bad faith” or a-political. Sarris produced a perceptive, left-leaning study entitled Politics and Cinema, and many of Kael’s reviews, along with essays like “Saddle Sore: El Dorado, The War Wagon, The Way West,” contain sophisticated, liberalist analyses of the political circ*mstances of Native Americans. The crucial point is that, as “critics form[ing] one of the key material institutions that support generic formations,” Sarris and Kael impacted majorly on the development of Australian gothic cinema, in the American context—impacted especially, one could say, on the (mis-)understanding of the land-based, uncanny politics of this mode in its Australian setting (McClain 54). Kael’s and Sarris’s reviews of My Brilliant Career, along with Judith Maslin’s review, contain traits similar to those considered in depth in the reviews studied above. Future research might usefully study this significant impact more closely, weaving in an awareness of the developing dynamics of global film productions and co-productions since the 1970s, and thereby focusing on Australian gothic as international cinema. Was, for example, the political impact of later films like The Proposition influenced, even marginally, by the (mis-)readings of Sarris and Kael? In conclusion here, it suffices to note that, even as the American reviewers reduced Australian cinema art to “blank” documentary or “neutral” anthropology, nevertheless they evidenced, in their strand-two responses, the power of the land (as presented in the cinematography and mise-en-scène) to call out—across an increasingly globalized domain of cinematic reception—for the fundamental importance of the connection between politics and art. Forging this connection, in which all lands and the peoples of all lands are implicated, should be, perhaps, the primary and ongoing concern of national and global cinemas of the uncanny, gothic mode, or perhaps even any mode. References Casablanca. Dir. Michael Curtiz. Warner Bros, 1942. Falconer, Delia. “Introduction.” The Penguin Book of the Road. Ed. Delia Falconer. Melbourne: Viking-Penguin Books, 2008. xi-xxvi. Gibson, Ross. South of the West: Postcolonialism and the Narrative Construction of Australia. Bloomington, Indiana: Indiana University Press, 1992. Godden, Matt. “An Essay on Australian New Wave Cinema.” 9 Jan. 2013. 18 Aug. 2014 ‹http://www.golgotha.com.au/2013/01/09/an-essay-on-australian-new-wave-cinema/›. Gray, R. “Freud, ‘The Uncanny.’” 15 Nov. 2013. 18 Aug. 2014 ‹http://courses.washington.edu/freudlit/Uncanny.Notes.html›. Kael, Pauline. “Australians.” Review of My Brilliant Career. 15 Sep. 1980. Taking It All In. London: Marion Boyars, 1986. 54-62. Kael, Pauline. “Literary Echoes—Muffled.” Review of Outback [Wake in Fright]. 4 March 1972. Deeper into Movies. Boston: Atlantic Monthly Press-Little, Brown and Company, 1973. 413-419. Kael, Pauline. “Saddle Sore: El Dorado, The War Wagon, The Way West.” Kiss Kiss Bang Bang. London: Arrow Books, 1987. 38-46. Kael, Pauline. “Torrid Zone.” Review of The Year of Living Dangerously. 21 Feb. 1983. Taking It All In. London: Marion Boyars, 1986. 451-456. Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior. Dir. George Miller. Warner Bros, 1981. Maslin, Janet. “Film: Australian ‘Brilliant Career’ by Gillian Armstrong.” Review of My Brilliant Career. New York Times (6 Oct. 1979.): np. McClain, William. “Western, Go Home! Sergio Leone and the ‘Death of the Western’ in American Film Criticism.” Journal of Film and Video 62.1-2 (Spring/Summer 2010): 52-66. My Brilliant Career. Dir. Gillian Armstrong. Peace Arch, 1979. Picnic at Hanging Rock. Dir. Peter Weir. Picnic Productions, 1975. Rayner, Jonathan. Contemporary Australian Cinema: An Introduction. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2000. Rueschmann, Eva. “Out of Place: Reading (Post) Colonial Landscapes as Gothic Space in Jane Campion’s Films.” Post Script (22 Dec. 2005). 18 Aug. 2014 ‹http://www.thefreelibrary.com/Out+of+place%3A+reading+%28post%29+colonial+landscapes+as+Gothic+space+in...-a0172169169›. Sarris, Andrew. “Films in Focus.” Review of My Brilliant Career. Village Voice (4 Feb. 1980): np. Sarris, Andrew. “Films in Focus: Journalistic Ethics in Java.” Review of The Year of Living Dangerously. Village Voice 28 (1 Feb. 1983): 59. Sarris, Andrew. “Liberation, Australian Style.” Review of My Brilliant Career. Village Voice (15 Oct. 1979): np. Sarris, Andrew. Politics and Cinema. New York: Columbia University Press, 1978. The Last Wave. Dir. Peter Weir. Ayer Productions, 1977. The Proposition. Dir. John Hillcoat. First Look Pictures, 2005. The Year of Living Dangerously. Dir. Peter Weir. MGM, 1982. Tsiolkas, Christos. “Citizen Kael.” Review of Pauline Kael: A Life in the Dark by Brian Kellow. The Monthly (Feb. 2012): 54-56. Wake in Fright. Dir. Ted Kotcheff. United Artists, 1971.

Abstract:

Introduction Lillian Ng was born in Singapore and lived in Hong Kong and the United Kingdom before migrating to Australia with her daughter and Ah Mah Yin Jie (“Ah Mahs are a special group of people who took a vow to remain unmarried … [so they] could stick together as a group and make a living together” (Yu 118)). Ng studied classical Chinese at home, then went to an English school and later on studied Medicine. Her first book, Silver Sister (1994), was short-listed for the inaugural Angus & Robertson/Bookworld Prize in 1993 and won the Human Rights Award in 1995. Ng defines herself as a “Chinese living in Australia” (Yu 115). Food, flesh and meat are recurrent topics in Lillian Ng´s second novel Swallowing Clouds, published in 1997. These topics are related to desire and can be used as a synecdoche (a metaphor that describes part/whole relations) of the human body: food is needed to survive and pleasure can be obtained from other people´s bodies. This paper focuses on one type of meat and animal, pork and the pig, and on the relation between the two main characters, Syn and Zhu Zhiyee. Syn, the main character in the novel, is a Shanghainese student studying English in Sydney who becomes stranded after the Tiananmen Square massacre of June 1989. As she stops receiving money from her mother and fears repression if she goes back to China, she begins to work in a Chinese butcher shop, owned by Zhu Zhiyee, which brings her English lessons to a standstill. Syn and Zhu Zhiyee soon begin a two-year love affair, despite the fact that Zhu Zhiyee is married to KarLeng and has three daughters. The novel is structured as a prologue and four days, each of which has a different setting and temporal location. The prologue introduces the story of an adulterous woman who was punished to be drowned in a pig´s basket in the HuanPu River in the summer of 1918. As learnt later on, Syn is the reincarnation of this woman, whose purpose in life is to take revenge on men by taking their money. The four days, from the 4th to the 7th of June 1994, mark the duration of a trip to Beijing and Shanghai that Syn takes as member of an Australian expedition in order to visit her mother with the security of an Australian passport. During these four days, the reader learns about different Chinese landmarks, such as the Forbidden City, the Great Wall, the Ming Tomb and the Summer Palace, as well as some cultural events, such as a Chinese opera and eating typical foods like Peking duck. However, the bulk of the plot of the book deals with the sexual relationship, erotic games and fantasies of Syn and Zhu Zhiyee in the period between 1989 and 1992, as well as Syn´s final revenge in January 1993. Pigs The fact that Zhu Zhiyee is a butcher allows Lillian Ng to include references to pigs and pork throughout the novel. Some of them refer to the everyday work of a butcher shop, as the following examples illustrate: “Come in and help me with the carcass,” he [Zhu Zhiyee] pointed to a small suckling pig hung on a peg. Syn hesitated, not knowing how to handle the situation. “Take the whole pig with the peg,” he commanded (11).Under dazzling fluorescent tubes and bright spotlights, trays of red meat, pork chops and lamb cutlets sparkled like jewels … The trays edged with red cellophane frills and green underlay breathed vitality and colour into the slabs of pork ribs and fillets (15).Buckets of pig´s blood with a skim of froth took their place on the floor; gelled ones, like sliced cubes of large agate, sat in tin trays labelled in Chinese. More discreetly hidden were the gonads and penises of goats, bulls and pigs. (16)These examples are representative of Syn and Zhu Zhiyee´s relationship. The first quotation deals with their interaction: most of the time Zhu Zhiyee orders Syn how to act, either in the shop or in bed. The second extract describes the meat’s “vitality” and this is the quality of Syn's skin that mesmerised Zhu when he met her: “he was excited, electrified by the sight of her unblemished, translucent skin, unlined, smooth as silk. The glow of the warmth of human skin” (13). Moreover, the lights seem to completely illuminate the pieces of meat and this is the way Zhu Zhiyee leers at Syn´s body, as it can be read in the following extract: “he turned again to fix his gaze on Syn, which pierced and penetrated her head, her brain, eyes, permeated her whole body, seeped into her secret places and crevices” (14). The third excerpt introduces the sexual organs of some of the animals, which are sold to some customers for a high price. Meat is also sexualised by Zhu Zhiyee´s actions, such as his pinching the bottoms of chickens and comparing them with “sacrificial virgins”: “chickens, shamelessly stripped and trussed, hung by their necks, naked in their pimply white skin, seemed like sacrificial virgins. Syn often caught Zhu pinching their fleshy bottoms, while wrapping and serving them to the housewives” (15-16). Zhu also makes comments relating food with sex while he is having lunch next to Syn, which could be considered sexual harassment. All these extracts exemplify the relationship between Syn and Zhu Zhiyee: the orders, the looks and the implicit sexuality in the quotidian activities in the butcher´s shop. There are also a range of other expressions that include similes with the word `pig´ in Ng´s novel. One of the most recurrent is comparing the left arm and hand of Zhu Zhiyee´s mother with a “pig´s trotter”. Zhu Zhiyee´s mother is known as ZhuMa and Syn is very fond of her, as ZhuMa accepts her and likes her more than her own daughter-in-law. The comparison of ZhuMa´s arm and hand with a trotter may be explained by the fact that ZhuMa´s arm is swollen but also by the loving representation of pigs in Chinese culture. As Seung-Og Kim explains in his article “Burials, Pigs, and Political Prestige in Neolithic China”: In both Melanesia and Asia, pigs are viewed as a symbolic representation of human beings (Allen 1976: 42; Healey 1985; Rappaport 1967: 58; Roscoe 1989: 223-26). Piglets are treated as pets and receive a great deal of loving attention, and they in turn express affection for their human “parents.” They also share some physiological features with human beings, being omnivorous and highly reproductive (though humans do not usually have multiple litters) and similar internal anatomy (Roscoe 1989: 225). In short, pigs not only have a symbiotic relationship with humans biologically but also are of great importance symbolically (121). Consequently, pigs are held in high esteem, taken care of and loved. Therefore, comparing a part of a human´s body, such as an arm or a hand, for example, to a part of a pig´s body such as a pig´s trotter is not negative, but has positive connotations. Some descriptions of ZhuMa´s arm and hand can be read in the following excerpts: “As ZhuMa handed her the plate of cookies Syn saw her left arm, swollen like a pig´s trotter” (97); “Syn was horrified, and yet somewhat intrigued by this woman without a breast, with a pig´s trotter arm and a tummy like a chessboard” (99), “mimicking the act of writing with her pig-trotter hand” (99), and ZhuMa was praising the excellence of the opera, the singing, acting, the costumes, and the elaborate props, waving excitedly with her pig trotter arm and pointing with her stubby fingers while she talked. (170) Moreover, the expression “pig´s trotters” is also used as an example of the erotic fetishism with bound feet, as it can be seen in the following passage, which will be discussed below: I [Zhu Zhiyee] adore feet which are slender… they seem so soft, like pig´s trotters, so cute and loving, they play tricks on your mind. Imagine feeling them in bed under your blankets—soft cottonwool lumps, plump and cuddly, makes you want to stroke them like your lover´s hands … this was how the bound feet appealed to men, the erotic sensation when balanced on shoulders, clutched in palms, strung to the seat of a garden swing … no matter how ugly a woman is, her tiny elegant feet would win her many admirers (224).Besides writing about pigs and pork as part of the daily work of the butcher shop and using the expression “pig´s trotter”, “pig” is also linked to money in two sentences in the book. On the one hand, it is used to calculate a price and draw attention to the large amount it represents: “The blouse was very expensive—three hundred dollars, the total takings from selling a pig. Two pigs if he purchased two blouses” (197). On the other, it works as an adjective in the expression “piggy-bank”, the money box in the form of a pig, an animal that represents abundance and happiness in the Chinese culture: “She borrowed money from her neighbours, who emptied pieces of silver from their piggy-banks, their life savings”(54). Finally, the most frequent porcine expression in Ng´s Swallowing Clouds makes reference to being drowned in a pig´s basket, which represents 19 of the 33 references to pigs or pork that appear in the novel. The first three references appear in the prologue (ix, x, xii), where the reader learns the story of the last woman who was killed by drowning in a pig´s basket as a punishment for her adultery. After this, two references recount a soothsayer´s explanation to Syn about her nightmares and the fact that she is the reincarnation of that lady (67, 155); three references are made by Syn when she explains this story to Zhu Zhiyee and to her companion on the trip to Beijing and Shanghai (28, 154, 248); one refers to a feeling Syn has during sexual intercourse with Zhu Zhiyee (94); and one when the pig basket is compared to a cricket box, a wicker or wooden box used to carry or keep crickets in a house and listen to them singing (73). Furthermore, Syn reflects on the fact of drowning (65, 114, 115, 171, 172, 173, 197, 296) and compares her previous death with that of Concubine Pearl, the favourite of Emperor Guanxu, who was killed by order of his aunt, the Empress Dowager Cixi (76-77). The punishment of drowning in a pig´s basket can thus be understood as retribution for a transgression: a woman having an extra-marital relationship, going against the establishment and the boundaries of the authorised. Both the woman who is drowned in a pig´s basket in 1918 and Syn have extra-marital affairs and break society’s rules. However, the consequences are different: the concubine dies and Syn, her reincarnation, takes revenge. Desire, Transgression and Eroticism Xavier Pons writes about desire, repression, freedom and transgression in his book Messengers of Eros: Representations of Sex in Australian Writing (2009). In this text, he explains that desire can be understood as a positive or as a negative feeling. On the one hand, by experiencing desire, a person feels alive and has joy de vivre, and if that person is desired in return, then, the feelings of being accepted and happiness are also involved (13). On the other hand, desire is often repressed, as it may be considered evil, anarchic, an enemy of reason and an alienation from consciousness (14). According to Pons: Sometimes repression, in the form of censorship, comes from the outside—from society at large, or from particular social groups—because of desire´s subversive nature, because it is a force which, given a free rein, would threaten the higher purpose which a given society assigns to other (and usually ideological) forces … Repression may also come from the inside, via the internalization of censorship … desire is sometimes feared by the individual as a force alien to his/her true self which would leave him/her vulnerable to rejection or domination, and would result in loss of freedom (14).Consequently, when talking about sexual desire, the two main concepts to be dealt with are freedom and transgression. As Pons makes clear, “the desiring subject can be taken advantage of, manipulated like a puppet [as h]is or her freedom is in this sense limited by the experience of desire” (15). While some practices may be considered abusive, such as bondage or sado-masochism, they may be deliberately and freely chosen by the partners involved. In this case, these practices represent “an encounter between equals: dominance is no more than make-believe, and a certain amount of freedom (as much as is compatible with giving oneself up to one´s fantasies) is maintained throughout” (24). Consequently, the perception of freedom changes with each person and situation. What is transgressive depends on the norms in every culture and, as these evolve, so do the forms of transgression (Pons 43). Examples of transgressions can be: firstly, the separation of sex from love, adultery or female and male hom*osexuality, which happen with the free will of the partners; or, secondly, paedophilia, incest or bestial*ty, which imply abuse. Going against society’s norms involves taking risks, such as being discovered and exiled from society or feeling isolated as a result of a feeling of difference. As the norms change according to culture, time and person, an individual may transgress the rules and feel liberated, but later on do the same thing and feel alienated. As Pons declares, “transgressing the rules does not always lead to liberation or happiness—transgression can turn into a trap and turn out to be simply another kind of alienation” (46). In Swallowing Clouds, Zhu Zhiyee transgresses the social norms of his time by having an affair with Syn: firstly, because it is extra-marital, he and his wife, KarLeng, are Catholic and fidelity is one of the promises made when getting married; and, secondly, because he is Syn´s boss and his comments and ways of flirting with her could be considered sexual harassment. For two years, the affair is an escape from Zhu Zhiyee´s daily worries and stress and a liberation and fulfillment of his sexual desires. However, he introduces Syn to his mother and his sisters, who accept her and like her more than his wife. He feels trapped, though, when KarLeng guesses and threatens him with divorce. He cannot accept this as it would mean loss of face in their neighbourhood and society, and so he decides to abandon Syn. Syn´s transgression becomes a trap for her as Zhu, his mother and his sisters have become her only connection with the outside world in Australia and this alienates her from both the country she lives in and the people she knows. However, Syn´s transgression also turns into a trap for Zhu Zhiyee because she will not sign the documents to give him the house back and every month she sends proof of their affair to KarLeng in order to cause disruption in their household. This exposure could be compared with the humiliation suffered by the concubine when she was paraded in a pig´s basket before she was drowned in the HuangPu River. Furthermore, the reader does not know whether KarLeng finally divorces Zhu Zhiyee, which would be his drowning and loss of face and dishonour in front of society, but can imagine the humiliation, shame and disgrace KarLeng makes him feel every month. Pons also depicts eroticism as a form of transgression. In fact, erotic relations are a power game, and seduction can be a very effective weapon. As such, women can use seduction to obtain power and threaten the patriarchal order, which imposes on them patterns of behaviour, language and codes to follow. However, men also use seduction to get their own benefits, especially in political and social contexts. “Power has often been described as the ultimate aphrodisiac” (Pons 32) and this can be seen in many of the sexual games between Syn and Zhu Zhiyee in Swallowing Clouds, where Zhu Zhiyee is the active partner and Syn becomes little more than an object that gives pleasure. A clear reference to erotic fetishism is embedded in the above-mentioned quote on bound feet, which are compared to pig´s trotters. In fact, bound feet were so important in China in the millennia between the Song Dynasty (960-1276) and the early 20th century that “it was impossible to find a husband” (Holman) without them: “As women’s bound feet and shoes became the essence of feminine beauty, a fanatical aesthetic and sexual mystique developed around them. The bound foot was understood to be the most intimate and erotic part of the female anatomy, and wives, consorts and prostitutes were chosen solely on the size and shape of their feet” (Holman). Bound feet are associated in Ng’s novel with pig´s trotters and are described as “cute and loving … soft cottonwool lumps, plump and cuddly, [that] makes you want to stroke them like your lover´s hands” (224). This approach towards bound feet and, by extension, towards pig´s trotters, can be related to the fond feelings Melanesian and Asian cultures have towards piglets, which “are treated as pets and receive a great deal of loving attention” (Kim 121). Consequently, the bound feet can be considered a synecdoche for the fond feelings piglets inspire. Food and Sex The fact that Zhu Zhiyee is a butcher and works with different types of meat, including pork, that he chops it, sells it and gives cooking advice, is not gratuitous in the novel. He is used to being in close proximity to meat and death and seeing Syn’s pale skin through which he can trace her veins excites him. Her flesh is alive and represents, therefore, the opposite of meat. He wants to seduce her, which is human hunting, and he wants to study her, to enjoy her body, which can be compared to animals looking at their prey and deciding where to start eating from. Zhu´s desire for Syn seems destructive and dangerous. In the novel, bodies have a price: dead animals are paid for and eaten and their role is the satiation of human hunger. But humans, who are also animals, have a price as well: flesh is paid for, in the form of prostitution or being a mistress, and its aim is satiation of human sex. Generally speaking, sex in the novel is compared to food either in a direct or an indirect way, and making love is constantly compared to cooking, the preparation of food and eating (as in Pons 303). Many passages in Swallowing Clouds have cannibalistic connotations, all of these being used as metaphors for Zhu Zhiyee’s desire for Syn. As mentioned before, desire can be positive (as it makes a person feel alive) or negative (as a form of internal or social censorship). For Zhu Zhiyee, desire is positive and similar to a drug he is addicted to. For example, when Zhu and Syn make delivery rounds in an old Mazda van, he plays the recordings he made the previous night when they were having sex and tries to guess when each moan happened. Sex and Literature Pons explains that “to write about sex … is to address a host of issues—social, psychological and literary—which together pretty much define a culture” (6). Lillian Ng´s Swallowing Clouds addresses a series of issues. The first of these could be termed ‘the social’: Syn´s situation after the Tiananmen Massacre; her adulterous relationship with her boss and being treated and considered his mistress; the rapes in Inner Mongolia; different reasons for having an abortion; various forms of abuse, even by a mother of her mentally handicapped daughter; the loss of face; betrayal; and revenge. The second issue is the ‘psychological’, with the power relations and strategies used between different characters, psychological abuse, physical abuse, humiliation, and dependency. The third is the ‘literary’, as when the constant use of metaphors with Chinese cultural references becomes farcical, as Tseen Khoo notes in her article “Selling Sexotica” (2000: 164). Khoo explains that, “in the push for Swallowing Clouds to be many types of novels at once: [that is, erotica, touristic narrative and popular], it fails to be any one particularly successfully” (171). Swallowing Clouds is disturbing, full of stereotypes, and with repeated metaphors, and does not have a clear readership and, as Khoo states: “The explicit and implicit strategies behind the novel embody the enduring perceptions of what exotic, multicultural writing involves—sensationalism, voyeuristic pleasures, and a seemingly deliberate lack of rooted-ness in the Australian socioscape (172). Furthermore, Swallowing Clouds has also been defined as “oriental grunge, mostly because of the progression throughout the narrative from one gritty, exoticised sexual encounter to another” (Khoo 169-70).Other novels which have been described as “grunge” are Edward Berridge´s Lives of the Saints (1995), Justine Ettler´s The River Ophelia (1995), Linda Jaivin´s Eat Me (1995), Andrew McGahan´s Praise (1992) and 1988 (1995), Claire Mendes´ Drift Street (1995) or Christos Tsiolkas´ Loaded (1995) (Michael C). The word “grunge” has clear connotations with “dirtiness”—a further use of pig, but one that is not common in the novel. The vocabulary used during the sexual intercourse and games between Syn and Zhu Zhiyee is, however, coarse, and “the association of sex with coarseness is extremely common” (Pons 344). Pons states that “writing about sex is an attempt to overcome [the barriers of being ashamed of some human bodily functions], regarded as unnecessarily constrictive, and this is what makes it by nature transgressive, controversial” (344-45). Ng´s use of vocabulary in this novel is definitely controversial, indeed, so much so that it has been defined as banal or even farcical (Khoo 169-70).ConclusionThis paper has analysed the use of the words and expressions: “pig”, “pork” and “drowning in a pig’s basket” in Lillian Ng´s Swallowing Clouds. Moreover, the punishment of drowning in a pig’s basket has served as a means to study the topics of desire, transgression and eroticism, in relation to an analysis of the characters of Syn and Zhu Zhiyee, and their relationship. This discussion of various terminology relating to “pig” has also led to the study of the relationship between food and sex, and sex and literature, in this novel. Consequently, this paper has analysed the use of the term “pig” and has used it as a springboard for the analysis of some aspects of the novel together with different theoretical definitions and concepts. Acknowledgements A version of this paper was given at the International Congress Food for Thought, hosted by the Australian Studies Centre at the University of Barcelona in February 2010. References Allen, Bryan J. Information Flow and Innovation Diffusion in the East Sepic District, Papua New Guinea. PhD diss. Australian National University, Australia. 1976. Berridge, Edward. Lives of the Saints. St Lucia: U of Queensland P, 1995. C., Michael. “Toward a sound theory of Australian Grunge fiction.” [Weblog entry] Eurhythmania. 5 Mar. 2008. 4 Oct. 2010 http://eurhythmania.blogspot.com/2008/03/toward-sound-theory-of-australian.html. Ettler, Justine. The River Ophelia. Sydney: Picador, 1995. Healey, Christopher J. “Pigs, Cassowaries, and the Gift of the Flesh: A Symbolic Triad in Maring Cosmology.” Ethnology 24 (1985): 153-65. Holman, Jeanine. “Bound Feet.” Bound Feet: The History of a Curious, Erotic Custom. Ed. Joseph Rupp 2010. 11 Aug. 2010. http://www.josephrupp.com/history.html. Jaivin, Linda. Eat Me. Melbourne: The Text Publishing Company, 1995. Khoo, Tseen. “Selling Sexotica: Oriental Grunge and Suburbia in Lillian Ngs’ Swallowing Clouds.” Diaspora: Negotiating Asian-Australian. Ed. Helen Gilbert, Tseen Khoo, and Jaqueline Lo. St Lucia: U of Queensland P, 2000. 164-72. Khoo, Tseen; Danau Tanu, and Tien. "Re: Of pigs and porks” 5-9 Aug. 1997. Asian- Australian Discussion List Digest numbers 1447-1450. Apr. 2010 . Kim, Seung-Og. “Burials, Pigs, and Political Prestige in Neolithic China.” Current Anthopology 35.2 (Apr. 1994): 119-141. McGahan, Andrew. Praise. Sydney: Allen & Unwin, 1992. McGahan, Andrew. 1988. Sydney: Allen & Unwin, 1995. Mendes, Clare. Drift Street. Pymble: HarperCollins, 1995. Ng, Lillian. Swallowing Clouds. Ringwood: Penguin Books Australia,1997. Pons, Xavier. Messengers of Eros. Representations of Sex in Australian Writing. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2009. Rappaport, Roy. Pigs for the Ancestors. New Have: Yale UP, 1967. Roscoe, Paul B. “The Pig and the Long Yam: The Expansion of the Sepik Cultural Complex”. Ethnology 28 (1989): 219-31. Tsiolkas, Christos. Loaded. Sydney: Vintage, 1995. Yu, Ouyang. “An Interview with Lillian Ng.” Otherland Literary Journal 7, Bastard Moon. Essays on Chinese-Australian Writing (July 2001): 111-24.