How style came to matter : do we need to move beyond the politics of representation?

In response to the increasing difficulties facing museums that attempt to work within a pluralist framework as a strategy for representing cultural diversity, this essay argues for the need to move beyond a characterisation of museum work as either progressive or conservative, pluralist or consensual. Central to my arguments is an attempt to extend our understanding of possible narrative structures in museums by focusing on questions of style as much as of content. I do this by looking back at two case studies in which questions around the political intent of narrative structures were determined as much by the form of the exhibition as by its content. This focus enables are cognition that fragmentary narrative styles are not by definition associated with alack of strong narratives. Quite the contrary. An alternative approach to exhibition making might therefore lie in an approach that moves away from eclecticism but does so not by returning to progressive, chronological narratives but by privileging an understanding of 'shared experience'. I attempt to open up what I mean by this term towards the end of the essay.

Multiple visions or multiple aversions? Consumer representation, consultation and participation in maternity issues

This paper reviews the Commonwealth government's policy of 'purposeful reporting to consumers'. I argue that the notion of consumer participation is underdeveloped. Consumers' needs will not be fully met by confining consumer representation at the administrative level; that is, in assuming that consumer advocates may speak for other consumers of health care services. The partnership objective at the heart of 'purposeful reporting' may be addressed fully only when practitioners and providers recognise the reciprocal expertise of the consumer in defining their own health priorities. This would require a new model of knowledge, of ethics and of the clinical encounter. The problem is not one of information deficit but of contrasting views of knowledge.

Translating difference: questions of representation in cross-cultural research encounters

This paper addresses questions of cross-cultural communication and represen tation as they arose in a longitudinal research project which sought to learn about the lives and concerns of older women. It focuses on the translations and mistranslations that occurred in narrative workshops where Australian researchers, who did not speak Vietnamese, worked with Australian Vietnamese women aged 55-74 and a translator to produce video diaries of the older women's everyday life. A number of workshop interactions around storytelling are examined to document the complexities that can arise when communities meet and interact across cultures. The aim is to 'come clean' about the problems of trying to conduct research without a common language and to suggest just how difficult translations and representations of culture really are and how easily preconceptions and cultural positionings interfere with the process of communication that is actually occurring.

Loss, grief and representation: "Getting on with it"

This paper is concerned with the social, spiritual and expressive ways of dealing with the pain of grief over loss of objects, of relationships, of persons, of the self. Dominant twentieth century medical and clinical models have assumed that grief will be "resolved" when survivors reach the point where they can emotionally detach themselves from the dead person. Freudian psychoanalysis sees mourning as a process necessary for survival It enables the bereaved to grieve by "letting go" of and "breaking the attachment" to the lost person or object. By contrast, melancholia involves the refusal to let go, sometimes leading to pathological outcomes. The melancholic figure, in popular perception, is often identified as a romantic symbol of the connection between insanity and creative genius. This paper argues that there is an interim space between detachment and pathological immersion. Contrary to detachment being necessary for creative remodelling of the experience of death through art-making, our psychological preservation actually requires continuity, not detachment, and the construction of biographical narratives of all kinds is a fundamental mechanism for restoring a sense of meaning and place for the dead and lost in the ongoing trajectory of self-narrative.

Stakeholder representation on the boards of Australian initial public offerings

This paper analyses the board composition of Australian initial public offerings (IPOs) over the period 1994 to 1997. The recent management literature identifies a wide range of stakeholders beyond the traditional shareholders. Evan and Freeman, and Jones and Goldberg suggest that the importance of stakeholders should be reflected in board representation. Luoma and Goodstein provide evidence of increased stakeholder representation on the boards of American companies. This paper studies Australian IPOs and finds that this is not the case. This suggests that capital raising by new lists in the Australian equity market does not require stakeholder representation on the board.

Single transferable vote with Borda elimination: proportional representation, moderation, quasi-chaos and stability

Modifying single transferable vote (STV) by removing candidates according to their Borda scores creates a new vote counting system (STV-B) that is not quasi-chaotic, results in proportional representation, and promotes the election of moderate candidates. Dummett, M.A.E. [1997. Principles of Electoral Reform. Oxford University, New York] noted quasi-chaos in STV and proposed the “Quota/Borda system” (QBS) as a solution. STV-B and QBS retain proportional representation from STV, permit some influence on candidate selection to occur between voting blocks thereby promoting moderate results, and are much more stable than STV when subjected to small changes in voter preferences. Under STV-B, and not QBS, a minority that shares some preferences may elect a candidate even if the minority is not a solid coalition.

Look down, look up : Barbara Bolt's art beyond representation

I review the thinking of Barbara Bolt in her recent book, which is informed by Martin Heidegger’s theory of art. Bolt argues that it is in the flux of art practice, where the artist responds bodily, with hands and eyes, to the encounter with the materials of practice, that visual art produces real material effects. That is, through the praxical encounter, art does not merely represent, it performs radically. Bolt thus argues for a materialist ontology of the work of visual art. I examine what Bolt means by ‘real material effects’ and ‘radical performativity’.

In developing my own project on the poetic response to visual art, particularly portraiture, I have freely adapted Heidegger’s theory of art to propose that the poet responds to the visual encounter in a manner similar to that of Heidegger’s preserver, by restraining usual knowing and looking. In this way the poet facilitates the emergence from the work of visual art of truth about being and earth, as defined by Heidegger. In my forthcoming article ‘Ekphrasis and illumination of painting’, I argue that the poet, like the artist, restrains seeing-as and operates in a mode approximating mere seeing, as these terms are defined by Heidegger and Wittgenstein.

In the present article I propose to examine the role of looking down and looking up in non-representational art, and in particular Bolt’s ‘oil stain paintings’ exhibited in the Forty-five Downstairs gallery in Melbourne in conjunction with the launch of her book.

I propose to expose some blind spots in the thinking which underpins theories derived from Heidegger. I will examine the way ‘representation’ has been constructed in twentieth-century thought, and will argue that Heideggerian truth and Bolt’s ‘real material effects’ result from the privileging of perception over knowledge. I will examine, with particular reference to portraiture, Bolt’s assertion that the referent can be rehabilitated in Western thought and traced in ‘real material effects’. I will argue that ‘representation’ is an unstable process occurring within and outside signification, and that this very instability enables us to confidently predict that all art produces ‘real material effects’, or in other words, Heideggerian truth.

A self-representation analysis of the effects of individualist-collectivist interactions within organizations in individualistic cultures

Purpose – Increasingly, organizations in the Asia-Pacific region are recognizing the importance of cross-cultural management to the sustainability of their competitive edge. Although the literature is replete with cross-cultural studies of individualism and collectivism, little information is available on the factors that foster effective individualist–collectivist interaction (ICI) within organizations. This paper attempts to provide a theoretical description of individualists and collectivists at the individual
level of analysis, which offers specific testable hypotheses about the effect of self-representation on prejudice between individualists and collectivists (ICs).

Design/methodology/approach – In this paper, a theoretical model is presented in which intergroup prejudices and interpersonal prejudices mediate the effects of ICI and bicultural orientation toward cross-cultural experiences and, in which, the dissimilarity openness of the climate
moderates the level and outcome of prejudices flowing from ICI.

Findings – The model depicts that the outcomes of ICI are mediated by the intergroup prejudices of collectivists and the interpersonal prejudices of individualists, which are moderated by the extent of diversity-oriented HRM policies and practices and individuals’ orientation to cross-cultural experiences. When workforces become culturally diverse, organizations should modify HRM practices to enable the full use of the range of skills and talents available from the diversity, and to ensure affective and behavioral costs are minimized. As globalization and international competition will continue to increase, organizations including those in the Asia-Pacific region, should seriously reevaluate their HRM policies to adapt and take advantage of an increasingly culturally diverse workforce.

Originality/value – The model provides a useful basis upon which organization researchers and practitioners can base their respective agendas.

Authoring lives and the burden of representation

An examination of some the current practices and dilemmas of photojournalism, particularly with regard to the documenting of pain and of otherness. This is looked at in the context of the death of the photo essay and the relegation of the photojournalist to that of a hunter/gatherer. In support of my argument of a current crissi of photojournalism I draw on some of my own practical experience and I include some of my images and captions with this paper.

A pictorial representation of peristomal architecture

The terminology associated with the use of peristomes in the identification and classification of mosses is cumbersome and difficult to understand. This paper provides a pictorial explanation of peristomal architecture with its associated terminology, such as nematodontous and arthrodontous peristomes, and the division of the latter into diplolepideous and haplolepideous peristomes.

Picturing evaporation : learning science literacy through a particle representation

Evaporation is mostly taught in primary schools through a water cycle representation. This has its limitations in explaining mechanisms and local effects such as drops drying in a closed room, condensation on cold surfaces, or how we smell liquids. In this paper the authors describe a classroom sequence of activities for Grade 5 students that explored the use of a particle model in conjunction with a range of representational modes, to explain evaporation phenomena. In interviews the authors explored with students their visual and verbal accounts of particles, modelling a process of teacher-mediated negotiation of multiple representations. From the evidence, the authors argue that difficulties in understanding evaporation are inherently representational, and that by engaging with the multiple literacies of science teachers can support significant advances in conceptual learning.

Pharmaceutical companies' public relations and representation by internet

This paper is part of study of how the adoption of the Internet is affecting the traditional public relations practices of Australian pharmaceutical companies. It suggests that Australian pharmaceutical companies are behind both America and Europe, not only in their adoption of the Internet, but also in their application of Internet technologies for public relations. It also suggests that direct interpersonal communication remains the preferred option for Australian pharmaceutical companies to communicate and build relationships with doctors and pharmacists. The paper is the result of interviews with pharmacists and doctors and one pharmaceutical industry representative. It also involved a survey of pharmaceutical companies’ web sites.

Spatial information in histograms for shape representation

Histograms have been used for Shape Representation and Retrieval. In this paper, the traditional technique has been modified to capture additional information. We compare the performance of the proposed method with the traditional method by performing experiments on a database of shapes. The results show that the proposed enhancement to the histogram based method improves the effectiveness significantly.

Internal representation of movement in children with developmental coordination disorder : a mental rotation task

Recent studies show that children with developmental coordination disorder (DCD) have difficulties in generating an accurate visuospatial representation of an intended action, which are shown by deficits in motor imagery. This study sought to test this hypothesis further using a mental rotation paradigm. It was predicted that children with DCD would not conform to the typical pattern of responding when required to imagine movement of their limbs. Participants included 16 children with DCD and 18 control children; mean age for the DCD group was 10 years 4 months, and for controls 10 years. The task required children to judge the handedness of single-hand images that were presented at angles between 0° and 180° at 45° intervals in either direction. Results were broadly consistent with the hypothesis above. Responses of the control children conformed to the typical pattern of mental rotation: a moderate trade-off between response time and angle of rotation. The response pattern for the DCD group was less typical, with a small trade-off function. Response accuracy did not differ between groups. It was suggested that children with DCD, unlike controls, do not automatically enlist motor imagery when performing mental rotation, but rely on an alternative object-based strategy that preserves speed and accuracy. This occurs because these children manifest a reduced ability to make imagined transformations from an egocentric or first-person perspective.