Disability, public space performance & spectatorship : Unconscious performers

Why would disabled people want to re-engage, re-enact and re-envisage the everyday encounters in public spaces and places that cast them as ugly, strange, stare-worthy? In Disability, Public Space Performance and Spectatorship: Unconscious Performers, Bree Hadley examines the performance practices of disabled artists in the US, UK, Europe and Australasia who do exactly this. Operating in a live or performance art paradigm, artists like James Cunningham (Australia), Noemi Lakmaier (UK/Austria), Alison Jones (UK), Aaron Williamson (UK), Katherine Araniello (UK), Bill Shannon (US), Back to Back Theatre (Australia), Rita Marcalo (UK), Liz Crow (UK) and Mat Fraser (UK) all use installation and public space performance practices to re-stage their disabled identities in risky, guerilla-style works that remind passersby of their own complicity in the daily social drama of disability. In doing so, they draw spectators' attention to their own role in constructing Western concepts of disability. This book investigates the way each of us can become unconscious performers in a daily social drama that positions disability people as figures of tragedy, stigma or pity, and the aesthetics, politics and ethics of performance practices that intervene very directly in this drama. It constructs a framework for understanding the way spectators are positioned in these practices, and how they contribute to public sphere debates about disability today.

Death on the front page : “Awesome things” and this thing called humanity

It has been called “the world’s worst recorded natural disaster,” and “the largest earthquake in 40 years,” galvanizing the largest global relief effort in history. For those of us involved in the discipline and/or the practice of communications, we realized that it presented a unique case study from a number of perspectives. Both the media and the public became so enraptured and enmeshed in the story of the tsunami of December 26, 2004, bringing to the fore a piece of geography and a peoples too rarely considered prior to the tragedy, that we felt compelled to examine the phenomenon. The overwhelming significance of this volume comes from its being a combination of both academic scholars and development practitioners in the field. Its poignancy becomes underscored from their wide-ranging perspectives, with 21 chapters representing some 14 different countries. Their realities provide not only credibility but also an unprecedented sensitivity to communication issues. Our approach here considers Tsunami 2004 from five communication perspectives: 1.) Interpersonal/ intercultural, 2.) Mass media, 3.) Telecommunications, 4.) Ethics, philanthropy, and development communication, and; 5.) Personal testimonies and observations. You will learn even more here about the theory and practice of disaster/crisis communication.

The Marrakesh Treaty could bring the world’s books to the blind

An estimated 285 million people worldwide are visually impaired. Some 90% of those live in developing nations, where less than 1% of the world’s books are available in a form they can read. In developed countries, the situation is only marginally better: only around 7% of the world’s books are accessible to print-disabled people. The right to read is part of our basic human rights. Access to the written word is crucial to allow people to fully participate in society. It’s important for education, political involvement, success in the workplace, scientific progress and, not least, creative play and leisure. Equal access to books and other cultural goods is also required by international law. The technology now exists to deliver books in accessible electronic forms to people much more cheaply than printing and shipping bulky braille copies or books on tape. Electronic books can be read with screen readers and refreshable braille devices, or printed into large print or braille if needed. Now that we have this technology, what’s been referred to as the global “book famine” is a preventable tragedy.

Vital role of journalism underlined

Book Review of 'Tragedy at Pike River Mine: How and why 29 men died', by Rebecca Macie. Wellington: AWA Press, 2013, 224 pp. ISBN 9781877551901

Qld flood inquest : ‘I could see his arms moving, he was trying to swim’

"Despite the 10 months of grieving for those lost in Queensland’s January floods, new evidence produced during the coronial inquest into the 22 deaths and three disappearances has revealed new shocks for the bereaved families. Brisbane Coroner’s Court yesterday was introduced to a series of high-tech Google Earth animations backed by funereal music, explaining the scope of the unfolding tragedy, which swept away husbands, wives, children and grandparents in less than three hours on the afternoon of January 10 this year. The court was also told of the extensive search for human remains, of 131 kilometres of creeks and rivers from Spring Bluff to Brisbane and hundreds of dams that were searched three times by police divers, 250 army personnel and 200 police."

Meta-regulation approach to raise social accountability In global supply firms

This Article proposes a meta-regulation approach to address the gap between the objectives, commitment, practice and outcome in the accountability practice of the global supply chain in the developing countries. The literatures on the accountability practice in the global supply chains typically focuses on the strategies for raising corporate social accountability standards in multinational buying firms and seldom focuses on this strategies in the outsourced firms in the developing countries. This article tries to fill this void by examining the situation in Bangladesh, the third largest RMG supply country in the world. It conceptualizes a meta-regulation approach with the aim of raising social accountability practice in this industry. It shows that this regulation approach is suitable to effectively raise this practice standard in a perspective where the non-legal drivers are meagrely low, global buying firms are highly profit driven and the governmental agencies are either inadequate or highly corrupt.

Cosmo, Cosmolino: Patent law and nanotechnology

Patent law has a significant instrumental and symbolic role in regulating nanotechnology. A 2011 report of the United States Federal Trade Commission noted that ‘the patent system plays a critical role in promoting innovation across industries from biotechnology to nanotechnology, and by entities from large corporations to independent inventors’. This chapter considers the much contested legal, ethical and social issues involved with regulating the patenting of nanotechnology. Section I considers the efforts of patent offices to classify nanotechnology and the empirical evidence about patent filing rates. Section II examines whether there is a ‘tragedy of the anticommons’ emerging in respect of nanotechnology. It contemplates access mechanisms – such as the defence of experimental use, patent pools, open innovation models and technology transfer. Section III explores ethical and social concerns associated with nanotechnology – in particular, issues about the impact upon human health and the environment.

IT pricing: Copyright law, consumer rights, and competition policy. A submission to the House of Representatives Standing Committee on Infrastructure and Communications Inquiry into IT Pricing

For a hundred years, since Federation, Australian consumers have suffered the indignity and the tragedy of price discrimination. From the time of imperial publishing networks, Australia has been suffered from cultural colonialism. In respect of pricing of copyright works, Australian consumers have been gouged; ripped-off; and exploited. Digital technologies have not necessarily brought an end to such price discrimination. Australian consumers have been locked out by technological protection measures; subject to surveillance, privacy intrusions and security breaches; locked into walled gardens by digital rights management systems; and geo-blocked.