Filling historical data gaps to foster solutions in marine conservation

Ecological data sets rarely extend back more than a few decades, limiting our understanding of environmental change and its drivers. Marine historical ecology has played a critical role in filling these data gaps by illuminating the magnitude and rate of ongoing changes in marine ecosystems. Yet despite a growing body of knowledge, historical insights are rarely explicitly incorporated in mainstream conservation and management efforts. Failing to consider historical change can have major implications for conservation, such as the ratcheting down of expectations of ecosystem quality over time, leading to less ambitious targets for recovery or restoration. We discuss several unconventional sources used by historical ecologists to fill data gaps - including menus, newspaper articles, cookbooks, museum collections, artwork, benthic sediment cores - and novel techniques for their analysis. We specify opportunities for the integration of historical data into conservation and management, and highlight the important role that these data can play in filling conservation data gaps and motivating conservation actions. As historical marine ecology research continues to grow as a multidisciplinary enterprise, great opportunities remain to foster direct linkages to conservation and improve the outlook for marine ecosystems.

Knowledge society and participation: complexities of occupational orientation

The chapter postulates that socialization theory applies equally to Industrial Society and the Information Society. The discussion brings to the fore complexities of de-occupationalization. The chapter provides discussion on the basic concepts of biographical occupational choices from a historical perspective, and addresses concepts of socialization and biographical occupational choices for adolescent years. Based on these concepts a critical analysis of the Knowledge Society is provided. The chapter subsequently addresses legitimation of the concept of biographical occupational choice from a Knowledge Society perspective.

‘“Glossary Islands” as sites of the “Abroad” in post-colonial literature: towards a new methodology for language and knowledge relations in Keri Hulme’s The Bone People and Melissa Lucashenko’s Mullumbimby.’

The publication of Melissa Lucashenko’s Mullumbimby in 2013 drew attention once more to the issue of how post-colonial scholars might best engage with English-language literary texts also containing a glossary of Indigenous words. This issue emerged first with the publication of Keri Hulme’s The Bone People in 1984. This article argues that, to date, scholars like Simon During and Eve Vincent have perpetuated a binary either/or approach to the interpretation of these glossaries. The result of this approach has been that either the pre-colonial Indigenous language or the colonial/post-colonizing English language has been privileged as the locus of linguistic power in the text. One problem with this approach is that it does not adequately represent the complex historical, cultural and political circumstances of post-colonial and multi-cultural nations like Australia (setting of Mullumbimby) and New Zealand (setting of The Bone People) as these link to matters of language. Another problem is that this binary approach restrains a close reading of the differences between different types of such glossaries, and of the nuanced relationship of a glossary to the text it accompanies. In place of this approach, this article proposes a new methodology that works with Elizabeth M. DeLoughrey’s notion of “tidalectics” as a way of reading island literatures. The neologism “glossary islands” allows another way into considering the function of glossaries in islandic literary texts like Lucashenko’s and Hulme’s. The post-colonial connection between islands and glossaries lies in the fact that they are each an intensified site of knowledge.

ICES meets marine historical ecology: placing the history of fish and fisheries in current policy context

As a discipline, marine historical ecology (MHE) has contributed significantly to our understanding of the past state of the marine environment when levels of human impact were often very different from those today.What is less widely known is that insights from MHE have made headway into being applied within the context of present-day and long-term management and policy. This study draws attention to the applied value of MHE. We demonstrate that a broad knowledge base exists with potential for management application and advice, including the development of baselines and reference levels.Using a number of case studies from around the world,we showcase the value of historical ecology in understanding change and emphasize how it either has already informed management or has the potential to do so soon.We discuss these case studies in a context of the science–policy interface around six themes that are frequently targeted by current marine and maritime policies: climate change, biodiversity conservation, ecosystem structure, habitat integrity, food security, and human governance.We encourage science–policy bodies to actively engage with contributions from MHE, as well informed policy decisions need to be framed within the context of historical reference points and past resource or ecosystem changes.

Positioning research and new knowledge systems

Debates into the positioning of research and aligning them with new knowledge systems has received mixed reactions. Many argue that research needs to follow discrete silos of disciplinary knowledge where knowledge needs to remain within a particular and defined construct. However, in the global world that we now embrace, there is a burgeoning of new knowledge systems that have disrupted ‘traditional’ processes of carrying out research and foregrounded the encompassing of new knowledge systems that follow research pathways and methodologies that are all encompassing of the multifaceted educational and social systems that embrace specific postcolonial and indigenous societies. Much of this corollary has stemmed from historical and political factors that have seen the rise of some disciplines of knowledge and the non-awareness’s and non-recognition of others. This paper articulates from an auto-ethnographic perspective the discussion surrounding the positioning of research, new knowledge systems and interdisciplinary learning in the areas of International and Aboriginal students. Focusing on postcolonial theory and Aboriginal approaches to research, the author foregrounds the tensions of historiography, hybridity, subjectivities, collaborative sharing and voice through what she terms a ‘strands of knowledge’ approach in these two areas. In the process, the author conceptualises two definitions. These are: intra-paradigm shifts and the irreducibility of the ethics of research and discusses how they are integral concepts when researching in or around particular cultural communities and groups.