Collecting banana diversity in eastern Indonesia

Major diseases, including Fusarium wilt tropical race 4, threaten banana production systems worldwide. New sources of genetic resistance are considered necessary in the fight against such diseases. The triangular region of Indonesia taking in Sulawesi, the Maluku Islands and Lesser Sunda Islands was prioritized by the Global Musa Genetic Resources Network, MusaNet for exploration and collecting. It is just east of the Wallace Line, which is recognized as a transition zone for flora in southeast Asia, and had been little explored. Bioversity International funded a team of scientists from Indonesia and Australia to make collecting missions in the triangle in October 2012 and February 2013. Suckers and seeds of 35 promising new accessions were collected. About 90% of these are either wild species or diploid cultivars of more direct use to breeding programs. These were morphologically characterized during the collecting missions and included a set of photographs recommended by Bioversitys Taxonomic Advisory Group. Cigar leaf samples were also collected and sent as fresh samples to the International Banana Genotyping Centre in the Czech Republic. Ploidy and DNA (SSR) genotyping determinations from these samples have been invaluable in quickly interpreting and better appreciating what has been discovered. The new accessions have been grown on at Solok field collection, West Sumatra and will be made available by Indonesia to the international community, including breeding programs, for evaluation and utilization. Information on wild Eumusa prompts a rethinking of the phytogeography of Musa acuminata. The variation within the Australimusa species M. lolodensis highlights the need for broader study of this Musa section. French Plantain-like edible AAs and prospects for the generation of African plantains in the region were identified. The mission indicated existence of local edible ABs in eastern Indonesia in association with balbisiana hybrids origins in the region. Further explorations in the region should add to Musa diversity knowledge.

A Short History of Cultural Studies (Taiwanese edition)

This is the first volume to capture the essence of the burgeoning field of cultural studies in a concise and accessible manner. Other books have explored the British and North American traditions, but this is the first guide to the ideas, purposes and controversies that have shaped the subject. The author sheds new light on neglected pioneers and a clear route map through the terrain. He provides lively critical narratives on a dazzling array of key figures including, Arnold, Barrell, Bennett, Carey, Fiske, Foucault, Grossberg, Hall, Hawkes, hooks, Hoggart, Leadbeater, Lissistzky, Malevich, Marx, McLuhan, McRobbie, D Miller, T Miller, Morris, Quiller-Couch, Ross, Shaw, Urry, Williams, Wilson, Wolfe and Woolf. Hartley also examines a host of central themes in the subject including literary and political writing, publishing, civic humanism, political economy and Marxism, sociology, feminism, anthropology and the pedagogy of cultural studies.

Marketplace forces and the history of retailing : The cycle of control

This paper traces the history of store (retailer-controlled) and national (manufacture controlled)brands; identifies the key historical characteristics of the past 200 years of marketing history;describes the four main time periods of U.S. retail marketing (1800 - 2000); and comments on the most likely developments within the current phases of brand marketing. Will the future focus on technology and new forms of communications? The Internet exemplifies an unconventional retailing environment, with etailer numbers growing rapidly. The central proposition of this paper is that a "cycle of control" - a pattern of marketing developments within the history of retailing and national marketing communications - Can indicate the success of marketing strategies in the future.

Media Studies: "Media, History and Society", and "Thinking Popular Culture".

“When cultural life is re-defined as a perpetual round of entertainments, when serious public conversation becomes a form of baby talk, when, in short, a people become an audience and their public business a vaudeville act, then a nation finds itself at risk.” (Postman) The dire tones of Postman quoted in Janet Cramer’s Media, History, Society: A Cultural History of US Media introduce one view that she canvasses, in the debate of the moment, as to where popular culture is heading in the digital age. This is canvassed, less systematically, in Thinking Popular Culture: War Terrorism and Writing by Tara Brabazon, who for example refers to concerns about a “crisis of critical language” that is bothering professionals—journalists and academics or elsewhere—and deplores the advent of the Internet, as a “flattening of expertise in digital environments”.

Journalism, History and the Politics of Popular Culture

I argue that a divergence between popular culture as “object” and “subject” of journalism emerged during the nineteenth century in Britain. It accounts not only for different practices of journalism, but also for differences in the study of journalism, as manifested in journalism studies and cultural studies respectively. The chapter offers an historical account to show that popular culture was the source of the first mass circulation journalism, via the pauper press, but that it was later incorporated into the mechanisms of modern government for a very different purpose, the theorist of which was Walter Bagehot. Journalism’s polarity was reversed – it turned from “subjective” to “objective.” The paper concludes with a discussion of YouTube and the resurgence of self-made representation, using the resources of popular culture, in current election campaigns. Are we witnessing a further reversal of polarity, where popular culture and self-representation once again becomes the “subject” of journalism?

My media studies : the history and future of ideas

In the context of a multi-paper special issue of TVNM on the future of media studies, this paper traces the tradition of ‘active audience’ theory in TV scholarship, arguing that it has much to offer in the study of new digital media, especially an approach to user-created content and dynamics of change. The paper argues for a ‘cultural science’ approach to ‘active audiences’ in order to analyse and understand how non-professionals and consumers contribute to the growth of knowledge in complex open media systems.