International commercial law : principles and practices

International Commercial Law: Principles and practices considers the multifaceted nature of international commercial law and explains the rules, principles, policies and practices that comprise this area of law and the wide-ranging influences that shape it

The book provides an extensive analysis of the wider policy, moral, economic and political considerations underpinning international commercial law.
- It analyses and evaluates existing standards and practices, and suggests proposals for reform.
- It encourages readers to make informed judgments regarding the interpretation of relevant legal standards and to make predictions about how the law is likely to develop.

Response : A defensible and workable approach to the income tax treatment of financial instruments

It is a privilege to have the opportunity to respond to the comments on my monograph1 provided by Mark Gergen, Glenn May, and Gordon Longhouse. Their comments, which are inevitably coloured by their very different perspectives, reflect the considerable expertise that each one of them has in the area of the income taxation of financial instruments. Indeed, it is with some hesitation that I offer a response in defence of various portions of the analysis presented in my monograph in support of some pretty modest proposals in this extremely difficult area of income tax law. Although I spent considerable time exploring some necessary first principles and their implications for the design of a system for the income taxation of financial instruments, I made several concessions to certain practical constraints that led me to support, in some measure, the status quo reflected in certain of the existing literature, as well as the legislation in a select group of countries. On the assumption that many readers may be unfamiliar with the monograph, I propose to respond by outlining much of my analysis in the monograph and the proposals that are the logical outcome. Throughout the outline, I will highlight and respond to what I see as the important points of difference emphasized by Gergen, May, and Longhouse.

Subversion or socialization? Humor and carnival in Morris Gleitzman's texts

Like their counterparts elsewhere, Australian children favour humorous novels; comedic writers consistently dominate the preteen and early teen fiction market in Australia. Regardless of its popularity, however, in comparison to more serious writing, humorous literature has received little critical attention. Of the studies aimed at this area, most have tended to concentrate on the various stages of development in childrens preferences for humor, its strategies, forms and appeal, with very few examining the ideological assumptions informing particular texts. Yet, this article argues, humorous books are no less concerned with culture, value and meaning than any other kind of fiction for children. As Morris Gleitzmans texts illustrate, by highlighting the cultural processes involved in the construction of language and meaning, inviting readers to play with ideas about language, social roles and behaviors, and creating characters who act in ways which are oppositional to usual socializing expectations, humorous literature, especially in carnivalized forms, has the potential to problematize unquestioning acceptance of various ideological para-digms, values, social practices and rules.

Methodological considerations in the measurement of institutional and structural forms of HIV discrimination

The systematic measurement of HIV/AIDS-related discrimination is imperative within the current rhetoric that holds discrimination as one of the two ‘biggest' barriers to HIV/AIDS pandemic intervention. This paper provides a methodological critique of the UNAIDS (2000b) Protocol for the Identification of Discrimination against People Living with HIV (the Protocol) . Specifically, the paper focuses on the Protocol's capacity to accurately identify and measure institutional levels of HIV-related discrimination that allows data that are reliable and comparable across time and contexts. Conceptual issues including the Protocol's objective as an indicator versus a direct measure of discrimination and the role of the Protocol as a tool of research versus a tool of advocacy are explored. Design issues such as the operationalization of discrimination, appropriateness of indicator content, sampling and data collection strategies and issues of scoring are also evaluated. It is hoped that the matters outlined will provide readers with ways of critically reflecting and evaluating the findings of the research papers presented in this Special Issue, as well as pointing to ways of improving research design.

They went home: racialised spaces in contemporary picture books

This paper discusses Michel de Certeau’s theories of spatialised power and of resistance, especially his characterisation of what he describes as ‘tactics’ by which marginalised groups resist the strategies by which those in power gain and maintain control, in relation to a group of settler society picture books: Edna Tantjingu Williams, Eileen Wani Wingfield and Kunyi June-Anne McInerney’s Down the hole (2000); the Papunya School Book of Country and History (2001); Chiori Santiago and Judith Lowry’s Home to Medicine Mountain (1998); George Littlechild’s This Land Is My Land (1993); and Allen Say’s Home of the Brave (2002). These texts thematise colonial and assimilationist policies in Australia, Canada and the United States which required that racialised groups of children should be removed from their homes and families and placed in institutions. I argue that the first four of these texts position child readers both to understand the dislocation and pain caused by government policies such as those which enforced the removal of the Stolen Generation in Australia, and to appreciate the tactics of resistance by which children evaded or subverted institutional power. Home of the Brave deploys the symbolism of an adult’s journey into the past to show how strategies of repression serve to protect individuals and nations from shame and guilt, and demonstrates the transformative effects which result when the past is scrutinized.

Clinical research 5: quantitative data collection and analysis

This six-part research series is aimed at clinicians who wish to develop research skills, or who have a particular clinical problem that they think could be addressed through research. The series aims to provide insight into the decisions that researchers make in the course of their work, and to also provide a foundation for decisions that nurses may make in applying the findings of a study to practice in their own Unit or Department. The series emphasises the practical issues encountered when undertaking research in critical care settings; readers are encouraged to source research methodology textbooks for more detailed guidance on specific aspects of the research process.

A couple of points:

1. It is artificial to describe research as qualitative or quantitative. Studies often include both dimensions. However, for the purposes of this paper/series, this distinction is drawn for clarity of writing.

2. It is common practice for quantitative studies to refer to study ‘subjects’ and qualitative studies to refer to study ‘participants’. For ease of reading, the latter term will be used throughout this series.

Youth publications, generation Y and hopes for the future of newspapers

If readership projections are correct, newspapers in the United States will become niche players by 2010. That is, in about half a decade fewer than half of American adults will read a daily newspaper. This will produce major problems in attracting advertising, the lifeblood of the newspaper business. The biggest decline in readership has occurred among Generation Y - people born between 1977 and 1995. They do not read newspapers to the extent their parents did. They get their news elsewhere, mainly online. As part of a process to attract readers, many of America's major publishers launched a series of youth-focused newspapers in the 18 months to March 2004. The aim was to try to get the elusive 18-24-year-old demographic into the habit of daily reading, hoping that over time they would migrate to more traditional outlets. This paper explores the background to these youth-focused publications, describes the main players and issues involved, and provides a case study of a youth-focused pioneer, the Tribune Company s Red Eye, which is published in Chicago.

Local perceptions of sustainability indicators: issues of scale and implications for management

A key factor impacting upon sustainable development are the perceptions people hold of their local social, economic and ecological environment. These perceptions influence how communities fashion the local landscape and in turn help to condition the ways people adapt themselves to their local spatial realities. Implicit in these perceptions are indicators of sustainability that may or may not be integrated across the social, economic and ecological realms. Further, these local indicators may not accord with those adopted at the national or global scale. Accordingly, spatial scale presents a particular set of challenges in identifying appropriate indicators of sustainability. In the same way that aggregated changes at a local scale influence sustainability on a broad scale, national and global externalities profoundly affect perceptions relating to sustainable development at the finest of spatial scales.

This paper focuses on one aspect of the issue of scale in sustainable indicator selection: local perceptions of sustainability. In this paper we report on a survey of perceptions of sustainability conducted across thirty-two sub-catchments in three major catchments in south west Victoria. We sought to uncover what people within each sub-catchment perceived as socially, economically and ecologically sustainable. Responses were compared across sub-catchments to determine whether perceptions at the sub-catchment scale were shared across the region. The results indicate that perceptions of sustainability varied between sub-catchments, which means that perceptions relating to sustainability at the regional scale may mask local trends.

Finding a 'safe' place on the risk continuum: a case study of pregnancy and birthing in Lao PDR (Lao People's Democratic Republic)

This paper addresses two questions. Firstly: are the risk regimes faced, and perceived, by pregnant women in rural Lao PDR substantially different from those experienced by pregnant women in western societies? Secondly, if the Lao experiences and perceptions are different, can improvements in maternal health in Lao PDR be achieved without Laotians inheriting the risk regimes of late modernity experienced by many women in western societies? Secondary analysis is undertaken of data collected in 2005 for the evaluation of a pilot maternity waiting home in Bolikhan, Lao PDR. The results suggest significantly different risk perceptions and experiences between Lao and western communities, based on contrasting views of embodiment, identity construction and cosmologies. In the Lao rural communities studied, there is little evidence yet of 'risk society' despite the introduction of western technologies and practices to improve maternal mortality and morbidity. It is argued that 'risk society' can be avoided.

Reading scripture from a hermeneutic of rape

In order to construct a basis for reading the Bible from a hermeneutics of rape it is argued that this experience is endemic within religious com munities and defines how those who are affected experience and speak about God. Contemporary scholarship has recognized the important work done by communities of readers in constructing the meaning of texts. Those who have been affected by rape constitute an important interpretative community who will approach scriptural texts on the basis of their experience. While the personal experience of rape is dif ficult to articulate, and thus makes the construction of a hermeneutical position hard to describe, the social location of those affected by rape is more easily analysed. From an understanding of this social location it is possible to construct a hermeneutics of rape, both in relation to those scriptural texts in which rape imagery is explicit and also in regard to those in which abusive power is less evident but no less dangerous. The article concludes that while a shared social location does not generate unitary interpretations it nevertheless should be considered as a highly significant feature of the encounter between the reader and the text.

There's no place like home : unhomely moments in three postcolonial picture books

One of the principal strands of postcolonial theory and critical practice is the interrogation of received versions of colonial history. This paper investigates the extent to which three contemporary picture books, Gavin Bishop's The House that Jack Built, John Marsden and Shaun Tan's The Rabbits, and Thomas King and William Kent Monkman's A Coyote Columbus Story, mobilise postcolonial strategies in their representations of place. In particular, it focuses on how postcolonial textuality unsettles and transgresses notions of "homeliness" in narratives involving the displacement of colonised and colonising peoples. As the shifting power relations of colonialism render unhomely what has previously been homely (especially for colonised peoples), so they involve a contrary move in which unhomely spaces are changed into simulacra of lost or abandoned homes. Drawing upon Walter Benjamin's formulation of materialist historiography, Homi Bhabha describes what he terms 'the unhomely moment' as that in which personal and psychic histories intersect with the violent dislocations of colonialism. This paper will argue that such unhomely moments shape the visual and verbal narratives of The House that Jack Built, The Rabbits and A Coyote Columbus Story, all of which deal with the trauma which occurs when cultures previously geographically and psychically distant are brought into close contact with each other. Written to and for children who are citizens of postcolonial cultures, these texts disclose the unease which persists in contemporary societies where colonial histories are rehearsed and revisioned. However, the paper will argue that the three texts position readers in quite different ways; for instance, while the verbal text of The Rabbits constructs an implied author capable of speaking for the colonised and offering readers a very circumscribed subject position, Thomas King's narrative in A Coyote Columbus Story engages in a dialogic playfulness which allows readers to adopt a variety of reading positions. For each text, some key representations of unhomely moments will be considered, and the paper will explore the extent to which they construct forms of temporality which negotiate the space between history and its significances within crosscultural and intercultural formations.