Painful wrench for a European mind : land claims and representations of history and aboriginal tradition in the Darwin hinterland

The first longitudinal study of the way the statutory recognition of Aboriginal traditional rights to land has affected Aboriginal groups in the north western Northern Territory. An interdisciplinary approach is used drawing on methods from both history and anthropology.

Architecture - culture : connections, representations, interpretations and implications

The thesis proposes a theory of the "relevance" and "significance" of cultures to human beings and the world, and a methodology to measure these. It applies architecture (as a culture) as the generator of thought and as an experimental case. A case study applies the theory and methodology in practice and contains as its main material a history of ideas in contemporary architecture.

Beyond ‘good’ and ‘evil’: breaking down binary oppositions in holocaust representations of ‘privileged’ Jews

In 1986, Auschwitz survivor Primo Levi’s paradigmatic essay entitled ‘The Grey Zone’ highlighted the complex and sensitive issue of so-called ‘privileged’ Jews, an issue that remains at the margins of popular and academic discourse on the Holocaust. ‘Privileged’ Jews include those prisoners in the Nazi concentration camps and ghettos who held positions that gave them access to material and other benefits whilst compelling them to act in ways that have been judged both self-serving and harmful to fellow inmates. The unprecedented ethical dilemmas that confronted ‘privileged’ Jews may be viewed as exemplifying the ‘limit’ events or experiences that were characteristic of the Holocaust, situating them at the threshold of representation, understanding and judgement. Levi’s essay singles out history and film as particularly predisposed to a simplifying trend he identifies – the ‘Manichean tendency which shuns half-tints and complexities,’ and resorts to the black-and-white binary opposition(s) of ‘friend’ and ‘enemy,’‘good’ and ‘evil.’ In the case of ‘privileged’ Jews in particular, such binary oppositions would appear to be inadequate. Adopting an interdisciplinary approach that incorporates the fields of history, philosophy and literature, this paper analyses representations of ‘privileged’ Jews, particularly those prisoners of the Sonderkommandos who were forced to work in the crematoria. The paper demonstrates how easily the boundary Levi maps out for moral judgement can be crossed. It is shown that while Levi suggests judgement should be suspended when confronted with the experiences of victims in extremis, moral evaluations of ‘privileged’ Jews permeate discussions and representations of the Holocaust. When confronted with such emotionally and morally freighted issues, judgement may itself be seen as a ‘limit of representation.’

Jaisa Desh, Waisa Vesh? Exploratory notes on the representations of adivasis in popular Hindi cinema

This paper seeks to discuss specific examples of Adivasi representation in Indian cinema, particularly popular Hindi cinema or ‘Bollywood’ (as opposed to ‘art’ or ‘parallel’ cinema). This choice of popular Hindi cinema is an attempt to explore the ways in which it has distilled and codified the representations of ‘other’ groups for a mass audience. Popular Hindi films have an unmatched circulation and pre-eminence (Prasad, 1998) in India, making the impact of their representations important to consider. Commercial interests of popular Hindi films are paramount, their producers and directors are generally from the upper castes and classes of Indian society. In the push for commercial interests and popular storylines, adequate representations of Adivasis, and as scholars (Vasudev & Lenglet, 1983; Bagchi, 1996; Subramanyam, 1996; Gopalan, 2000; Vridi, 2003) have pointed out women and other social groups, remain stereotypical. Mainstream Hindi cinema, even in its post-colonial phase, has not provided images of various cultural groups in India which reflect their lived reality. It is this cinematic marginalisation and cultural stereotyping, which will be explored further. This paper is a preliminary exploration and will look at particular examples of representation in Hindi films, including Naagin (1954), Ajantrik (1957), Madhumati (1958), Yeh Gulistan Hamara (1972), Lal Salaam (2002), and Chak De! (2007). It is aimed that this exploration will provide a foundation for further research into representations in Hindi cinema and the wider discourses of power, politics and inequality in Indian society.

Weakest collective rationality and the Nash bargaining solution

We propose a new axiom, weakest collective rationality (WCR) which is weaker than both weak Pareto optimality (WPO) in Nash’s (Econometrica 18:155–162, 1950) original characterization and strong individual rationality (SIR) in Roth’s (Math Oper Res 2:64–65, 1977) characterization of the Nash bargaining solution. We then characterize the Nash solution by symmetry (SYM), scale invariance (SI), independence of irrelevant alternatives (IIA) and our weakest collective rationality (WCR) axiom.

Jaisa Desh, Waisa Vesh? Explorations on the representations of Adivasis in popular Hindi cinema

This article seeks to discuss specific examples of Adivasi representation in Indian cinema, particularly popular Hindi cinema (as opposed to ‘art’ or ‘parallel’ cinema), and the ways in which it has distilled and codified the representations of ‘other’ groups for a mass audience. Mainstream Hindi cinema, even in its postcolonial phase, has not provided images of Adivasis that reflect their reality. This ‘constructed reality’ of the cinema in which Adivasis exist remains the widespread (mis)understanding of their cultures. It is this cinematic marginalization and cultural stereotyping that will be explored further. This article is a preliminary exploration and will look at particular examples of representation in Hindi films, including Naagin [Female Cobra] (Nandlal Jaswantlal, 1954), Madhumati (Bimal Roy, 1958), Yeh Gulistan Hamara [This Flower Garden of Ours] (Atma Ram, 1972), Lal Salaam [Red Salute] (Gaganvihari Boratte, 2002) and Chak De! [Come On! India] (Shimit Amin, 2007). The aim is for this exploration to provide a foundation for further research into Adivasi representation and the wider discourses of power, politics and inequality in Indian society.

Scaling connectionist compositional representations

The Recursive Auto-Associative Memory (RAAM) has come to dominate connectionist investigations into representing compositional structure. Although an adequate model when dealing with limited data, the capacity of RAAM to scale-up to real-world tasks has been frequently questioned. RAAM networks are difficult to train (due to the moving target effect) and as such training times can be lengthy. Investigations into RAAM have produced many variants in an attempt to overcome such limitations. We outline how one such model ((S)RAAM) is able to quickly produce context-sensitive representations that may be used to aid a deterministic parsing process. By substituting a symbolic stack in an existing hybrid parser, we show that (S)RAAM is more than capable of encoding the real-world data sets employed. We conclude by suggesting that models such as (S)RAAM offer valuable insights into the features of connectionist compositional representations.

Embodied: representations of land and gender in the photography of Donna Bailey and Norman Lindsay

The catalogue essay explores the themes presented within the photographs of two artist's vision of landscape. The artists work that James McArdle analyses and explores are Donna Bailey and Norman Lindsay.

Learning through constructing representations in science : a framework of representational construction affordances

Compared with research on the role of student engagement with expert representations in learning science, investigation of the use and theoretical justification of student-generated representations to learn science is less common. In this paper, we present a framework that aims to integrate three perspectives to explain how and why representational construction supports learning in science. The first or semiotic perspective focuses on student use of particular features of symbolic and material tools to make meanings in science. The second or epistemic perspective focuses on how this representational construction relates to the broader picture of knowledge-building practices of inquiry in this disciplinary field, and the third or epistemological perspective focuses on how and what students can know through engaging in the challenge of representing causal accounts through these semiotic tools. We argue that each perspective entails productive constraints on students’ meaning-making as they construct and interpret their own representations. Our framework seeks to take into account the interplay of diverse cultural and cognitive resources students use in these meaning-making processes. We outline the basis for this framework before illustrating its explanatory value through a sequence of lessons on the topic of evaporation.