The Authority of Influence : Women and Power in Burmese History

This book explores the relationship between gender and power in Burmese history from pre-colonial times to the present day and aims to identify the sources, nature and limitations of women’s power. The study takes as its starting point the apparent contradiction that, though Burmese women historically enjoyed relatively high social status and economic influence, for the most part they remained conspicuously absent from positions of authority in formal religious, social and political institutions. The book thus examines the concept of ‘family’ in Burmese political culture, and reveals how some women were able to gain political influence through their familial connections with powerful men, even while cultural models of ‘correct’ female behaviour prevented most women from attaining official positions of political authority. The study also considers how various influences – Buddhism, colonialism, nationalism, modernisation and militarism – shaped Burmese concepts of gender and power, with important implications for how women were able to exercise social, economic and political influence. The book explores how the effects of prolonged armed conflict, economic isolation and political oppression have constrained opportunities for women to attain power in contemporary Burma, and examines opportunities opened up by the pro-democracy movement and recent focus on women's issues and rights for women to exercise influence both inside Burma and in exile. Using an interdisciplinary approach that draws on feminist, anthropological and social science discourses, placing them within an historical framework, the author offers a broad understanding of how power is obtained and exercised in Burma in order to reassess historical representations of Burmese women and so provide a more comprehensive and inclusive understanding of power relations in historical and contemporary Burma.

WikiLeaks, journalism and the consequences of chaos

This article considers the impact of the WikiLeaks organisation in relation to debates around the defence of national security and free speech, global media citizenship and the emerging dynamics of the global public sphere. Building on the author’s previous work on political communication, journalism and ‘cultural chaos’, it explores the implications of WikiLeaks for emerging conceptions and definitions of journalism, and for the changing structure of media–politics power relations at the global level, against the background of three trends: democratisation, declining deference and digitalisation.

Tax evasion, inequality, and progressive taxes : a political economy perspective

The standard approach to tax compliance applies the economics-of-crime methodology pioneered by Becker (1968): in its first application, due to Allingham and Sandmo (1972) it models the behaviour of agents as a decision involving a choice of the extent of their income to report to tax authorities, given a certain institutional environment, represented by parameters such as the probability of detection and penalties in the event the agent is caught. While this basic framework yields important insights on tax compliance behavior, it has some critical limitations. Specifically, it indicates a level of compliance that is significantly below what is observed in the data. This thesis revisits the original framework with a view towards addressing this issue, and examining the political economy implications of tax evasion for progressivity in the tax structure. The approach followed involves building a macroeconomic, dynamic equilibrium model for the purpose of examining these issues, by using a step-wise model building procedure starting with some very simple variations of the basic Allingham and Sandmo construct, which are eventually integrated to a dynamic general equilibrium overlapping generations framework with heterogeneous agents. One of the variations involves incorporating the Allingham and Sandmo construct into a two-period model of a small open economy of the type originally attributed to Fisher (1930). A further variation of this simple construct involves allowing agents to initially decide whether to evade taxes or not. In the event they decide to evade, the agents then have to decide the extent of income or wealth they wish to under-report. We find that the ‘evade or not’ assumption has strikingly different and more realistic implications for the extent of evasion, and demonstrate that it is a more appropriate modeling strategy in the context of macroeconomic models, which are essentially dynamic in nature, and involve consumption smoothing across time and across various states of nature. Specifically, since deciding to undertake tax evasion impacts on the consumption smoothing ability of the agent by creating two states of nature in which the agent is ‘caught’ or ‘not caught’, there is a possibility that their utility under certainty, when they choose not to evade, is higher than the expected utility obtained when they choose to evade. Furthermore, the simple two-period model incorporating an ‘evade or not’ choice can be used to demonstrate some strikingly different political economy implications relative to its Allingham and Sandmo counterpart. In variations of the two models that allow for voting on the tax parameter, we find that agents typically choose to vote for a high degree of progressivity by choosing the highest available tax rate from the menu of choices available to them. There is, however, a small range of inequality levels for which agents in the ‘evade or not’ model vote for a relatively low value of the tax rate. The final steps in the model building procedure involve grafting the two-period models with a political economy choice into a dynamic overlapping generations setting with more general, non-linear tax schedules and a ‘cost-of evasion’ function that is increasing in the extent of evasion. Results based on numerical simulations of these models show further improvement in the model’s ability to match empirically plausible levels of tax evasion. In addition, the differences between the political economy implications of the ‘evade or not’ version of the model and its Allingham and Sandmo counterpart are now very striking; there is now a large range of values of the inequality parameter for which agents in the ‘evade or not’ model vote for a low degree of progressivity. This is because, in the ‘evade or not’ version of the model, low values of the tax rate encourages a large number of agents to choose the ‘not-evade’ option, so that the redistributive mechanism is more ‘efficient’ relative to the situations in which tax rates are high. Some further implications of the models of this thesis relate to whether variations in the level of inequality, and parameters such as the probability of detection and penalties for tax evasion matter for the political economy results. We find that (i) the political economy outcomes for the tax rate are quite insensitive to changes in inequality, and (ii) the voting outcomes change in non-monotonic ways in response to changes in the probability of detection and penalty rates. Specifically, the model suggests that changes in inequality should not matter, although the political outcome for the tax rate for a given level of inequality is conditional on whether there is a large or small or large extent of evasion in the economy. We conclude that further theoretical research into macroeconomic models of tax evasion is required to identify the structural relationships underpinning the link between inequality and redistribution in the presence of tax evasion. The models of this thesis provide a necessary first step in that direction.

Defining critical literacy

This article traces the lineage of critical literacy from Freire through critical pedagogies and discourse analysis. The author discusses the need for a contingent definition of critical literacy, as a situated and contextual response to political economies, institutional and cultural relations of power.

Disciplinary unfairness in Queensland public service legislation

A just system of discipline within an organisation requires four characteristics: a clear set of offences, proportionate punishments clearly linked to the offences, oversight and appeals from disciplinary decisions and independence from political masters. This paper examines Queensland public sector legislation and policy from 1863 to the present to demonstrate how well these four criteria are addressed. An analysis of the presence of these four characteristics in the Queensland context finds that the public sector legislation in Queensland is in breach of the guidelines that define a just and fair system in which disciplinary action is dispensed. We argue that creation of arbitrary powers to punish or dismiss staff is unjust if the legislation does not fully inform staff of what constitutes a breach of discipline, does not guarantee proportionate punishments to offences, and/or it allows the disciplinary process to be used as a tool to coerce staff to perform in a politicised or otherwise unethical manner. We conclude by making recommendations as to how this situation may be rectified.

Public relations and corporate social responsibility

This study analyses trends and patterns in public relations literature about Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) through a content analysis of articles published between 1998 and 2007. The current status of the literature suggests that public relations scholars have broadened their approach to CSR from one solely encompassing communication management, as proposed by Clark (2000), to one that incorporates the management function and relationship management components of contemporary public relations thinking. The findings of the literature review suggest that there are opportunities for social responsibility to be incorporated into public relations through a process approach, which would foster stronger links between organizations, stakeholders and society.

Political selection and the relative age effect

In this paper we present substantial evidence for the existence of a bias in the distribution of births of leading US politicians in favor of those that have been the oldest in their cohort at school. This “relative age effect” has been proven to influence performance at school and in sports,but evidence on its impact on people’s vocational success has been rare. We find a marked break in the density of birthdate of politicians using a maximum likelihood test and McCrary’s (2008) nonparametric test. We conjecture that being relatively old in a peer group may create long term advantages which can create a significant role in the ability to succeed in a highly competitive environment like the race for top political offices in the USA. The magnitude of the effect we estimate is larger than what most other studies on the relative age effect for a broader (adult) population find, but is in general in line with studies that look at populations in high-competition environments.

The legitimation and reproduction of discourse-practice gaps in work-life balance

Purpose - Critical scholarship on work-life balance (WLB) and its associated practices maintains that workplace flexibility is more than a quasi-functionalist response to contemporary problems faced by individuals, families or organisations. Beginning with Fleetwood’s contention that WLB discourses have become "detached" from their associated practices, this paper explores how workplace practices support or challenge dominant WLB discourses evident in socio-cultural, political and organisational sources. Design/methodology/approach - We analyse individual and group interview transcripts derived from 122 white-collar employees in two different organisational contexts (one public, one private) in the construction industry in Australia. Findings - Four major themes were identified in the data which illustrate discourse practice gaps. First, the demands facing this particular industry/ sector were framed as heightened and unique. Second, productivity was prioritised, dominating employees’ care-giving and lifestyle concerns. Third, employees’ caring responsibilities were communicated as personal and individual choices. Fourth, commitment and efficiency were judged on the basis of presence in the workplace. Research limitations/implications - Even in industries that have embraced WLB, workplace practices legitimate and reinforce the status quo, and maintain a gap between the promises of WLB and its potential to ameliorate conflict and assist workers to span the boundaries of paid work and other life domains. Originality/value - While the practices demonstrated in the research are focused on one industry, the study provides a critical analysis of how the contextually-influenced meaning of WLB is constructed, created and contested in these workplaces and the effects it produces.

The social mechanism of political deliberation and citizen participation in Guangdong China

Many studies have focused on why deliberative institutions should be established in order to develop Chinese people’s citizenry skills; however few focus on the social conditions and public sentiments that shape the development of deliberative mechanisms. Skills and awareness of citizenry is not only brought into being by deliberative institutions that are set up by the government, but evolve through interplays between technologies and social changes. As a test-bed for economic reform Guangdong is increasingly identified by translocality and hybrid culture. This is framed by identity conflict and unrests, much of which is due to soaring wealth polarisation, high volumes of population movement, cultural collisions and ongoing linguistic contestations. These unrests show the region’s transformation goes beyond the economic front. Profound changes are occurring at what anthropologists and philosophers call the changing social conciseness or moral landscape (Ci, 1994; Yan, 2010). The changing social moralities are a reflection of the awareness of individuals’ rights and responsibilities, and their interdependencies from dominant ideologies. This paper discusses Guangdong’s social and cultural characteristics, and questions how existing social conditions allow the staging of political deliberation by facilitating political engagement and the formation of public opinion. The paper will investigate the tragedy of Xiao Yueyue in Foshan, Guangdong, where ‘right’ and ‘responsibility’, ‘self’ and ‘other’ define the public sentiments of deliberation and participation.

All our relations

Summer preview of Sydney's 18th Biennale in 2012. Preview describes the general themes of the Biennale and refers to some of the major artists in the exhibition.

Child rearing Inc : On the perils of political paralysis Down Under

In his 2007 PESA keynote address, Paul Smeyers discussed the increasing regulation of child-rearing through government intervention and the generation of “experts,” citing particular examples from Europe where cases of childhood obesity and parental neglect have stirred public opinion and political debate. In his paper (this issue), Smeyers touches on a number of tensions before concluding that child rearing qualifies as a practice in which liberal governments should be reluctant to intervene. In response, I draw on recent experiences in Australia and argue that certain tragic events of late are the result of an ethical, moral and social vacuum in which these tensions coalesce. While I agree with Smeyers that governments should be reluctant to “intervene” in the private domain of the family, I argue that there is a difference between intervention and support. In concluding, I maintain that if certain Western liberal democracies did a more comprehensive job of supporting children and their families through active social investment in primary school education, then both families and schools would be better equipped to deal with the challenges they now face.

The political economy of food in schools : the case of Queensland State education

Food in schools is typically understood from a biomedical perspective. At practical, ideational and material levels, whether addressed pedagogically or bureaucratically, food in schools is generally considered from a natural sciences perspective. This perspective manifests as the bioenergetic principle of energy in versus energy out and appears in policy focused on issues such as obesity and physical activity. Despite the considerable literature on the sociology of food and eating, little is understood about food in schools from a sociological perspective. This oversight of one of the most fundamental requirements of the human condition--namely, food--should be of concern for educators. Investigating food through a political economy lens means understanding food in schools as part of broader economic, political, social and cultural conditions. Hence, a political economy of food and schooling is concerned with the formation of ideas about food relative to political, economic, and cultural ideologies in social practice. From a critical sociology study of food messages students receive in the primary school curriculum, this paper reports on some of the official food messages of an Australian state's education policy, as a case to highlight the current political economy of food in Australia. It examines the role of the corporate food industry in the formation of Australian food policy and how that policy created artefacts infused with competing messages. The paper highlights how food and nutrition policy moved from solely a health concern to incorporate an economic dimension and links that shift with the quality of food available in Queensland schools.

Critical discourse analysis and political economy of communication : understanding the new corporate order

This article uses critical discourse analysis to analyse material shifts in the political economy of communications. It examines texts of major corporations to describe four key changes in political economy: (1) the separation of ownership from control; (2) the separation of business from industry; (3) the separation of accountability from responsibility; and (4) the subjugation of ‘going concerns’ by overriding concerns. The authors argue that this amounts to a political economic shift from traditional concepts of ‘capitalism’ to a new ‘corporatism’ in which the relationships between public and private, state and individual interests have become redefined and obscured through new discourse strategies. They conclude that the present financial and regulatory ‘crisis’ cannot be adequately resolved without a new analytic framework for examining the relationships between corporation, discourse and political economy.

Australian copyright regimes and political economy of music

In this chapter I review the history of copyright in Australia through a singular and exemplary ruling of the Australian High Court made in 2012 and then relate that to the declining fortunes of Australian recorded music professionals. The case in point is Phonographic Performance Company [PPCA] of Australia Limited v Commonwealth of Australia [2012] HCA 8 (hereafter, HCA 8 2012). The case encapsulates the history of copyright law in Australia, with the judicial decision drawing substantive parts of its rationale from the Statute of Anne (8 Anne, c. 19, 1710), as well as copyright acts that regulated the Australian markets prior to 1968. More importantly the High Court decision serves to delineate some important political economic aspects of the recorded music professional in Australia and demonstrates Attali’s (1985) assertion that copyright is the mechanism through which composers are, by statute, literally excluded from capitalistic engagement as ‘productive labour’.

Panda diplomacy : The cutest part of China’s public diplomacy

Summary In late 2011 and early 2012, the People’s Republic of China drew on its most unique diplomatic tool: the giant panda. Although this phenomenon is widely covered by the global media, the practice of panda diplomacy is only barely discussed in diplomatic or international relations studies. This article uses the most recent revival of this diplomatic practice for a closer analysis and locates it as a special version of animal diplomacy within the frame of public diplomacy. It first argues that panda diplomacy is — besides all the efforts to promote and support animal conservation and biological research — a political undertaking, which is symbolically used by the Chinese government to win hearts and minds in selected foreign countries. Second, it highlights an important aspect of some Chinese public diplomacy initiatives, namely China’s ability to integrate international partners in its attempts to shape its global image.