Strategic significance of the island state of Sri Lanka

The study is focused on an analysis of the major diplomatic documents from the mid eighteenth century to the present as regards Sri Lanka, or Ceylon as it was known till 1972. The objectives of the study are to identify the issues underlying these diplomatic documents. These include the political and strategic factors and other subsidiary issues like trade and commerce relevant at the time these treaties, agreements, and proposed treaties were formulated. It is also a geopolitical study as it relates to Sri Lanka's geographical position in the Indian Ocean, and her possession of the Trincomalee Harbour on its east coast, which is one of the great natural harbours of the world. Over the centuries this harbour has had significant strategic value for naval deployments. The case study of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries studies the diplomatic documents against the political and strategic background for the French Revolution and actions of Napoleon, and the Anglo/French rivalry, spreading from Europe to North America and Asia. In the twentieth century the environment for studying the place of Sri Lanka in the Indian Ocean was created by the Russian Revolution, the failure to keep the peace of Versailles after World War I, the conflict and horrors of World War II which led to the disintegration of European colonial empires in Asia and Africa, and the tensions generated by the Cold War. A study of the documents would reveal that in international relations what matters is the ability of a party to promote its interests, and this depends on its power. This realist approach contrasts to the idealist approach where policies are based on moral and ethical principles. For the realist the states should follow to protect their interests and to survive. To achieve this is to strive for a ‘balance of power’. To do so is to form a favourable alliance system. As the documents examined cover a period from the mid-eighteenth century to the later part of the twentieth century, they reflect the changing technologies that have had an influence on naval and military matters. For example, this period witnessed great changes in technology of energy utilized to propel warships, from wind, to steam, to fuel and finally to nuclear power. These changes had an influence in determining strategic policies involving weapon systems and communications within a global and regional setting. The period covered was the beginning of the process described a ‘globalisation’. Its idea is not unique to this century; there were many attempts, in various times of history, to integrate societies within a global context. Viewed in this light, the Anglo-French rivalry of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries was the indication of a global naval strategy, in which Sri Lanka was a major factor in the Indian Ocean region. This process was associated with the phenomena called the ‘expansion of Europe’. It covered all the oceans of the world and in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries led to the founding of the largest maritime empire the world has ever seen: The British Empire. After World War I, the British naval strength (the basis of the British Empire) and her consequent position as a great power, was challenged by other powers like the United States of America and Japan. After World War II, the US Navy was supreme: and there was a close alliance between Britain and the USA. The strength of the US/British alliance was based on the navy and its bases, which were spread throughout the globe; to project power, and act as deterrence and balancing force. Sri Lanka, due to her strategic position, was a part of this evolving process, and was tied to a global strategy (with its regional connotations) from the eighteenth century to the present.

Phenomenological inquiry into the experience of web project managers

The advent of the Internet and the World Wide Web has been instrumental in bringing about the growth in the implementation of web-based information systems (WBIS). Such systems are designed with the aim of improving productivity, data accuracy, and the reduction of paperwork and administrative overheads. Moreover, unlike their conventional non-web-based predecessors, the WBIS are commonly aimed at users who are casual and untrained, geographically distributed and non-homogenous. The dissemination of WBIS necessitates additional infrastructure support in the form of a security system, workflow and transaction management, and web administration. WBIS are commonly developed using an evolutionary approach, whereby the version of the application, acquired from the vendor, is first deployed as a pilot, in order to gather feedback from the target users before the evolutionary cycles commence. While a number of web development methodologies have been proposed by existing research, there is a dearth of empirical evidence that elucidates the experiences of project initiators in pursuing the evolution of web services, a process that undoubtedly involves dealing with stakeholder issues. This research project presents a phenomenological investigation of the experiences of project managers with the implementation of web-based employee service systems (ESS), a domain that has witnessed a sharp growth in Australia in recent times. However, the project managers’ rich, multidimensional account of their experiences with the implementation of ESS revealed the social obstacles and fragility of intra-organizational relationships that demanded a cautious and tactful approach. Thus, the study provides a socio-organizational perspective to web projects in contrast to the functionalist paradigm of current web development methodologies. The research also confirms that consideration of the concerns of stakeholders by project managers is crucial to the successive cycles of ESS evolution. Project managers address stakeholder concerns by pursuing actions that are aimed at encouraging ESS usage, but at the same time, such actions can have consequences necessitating subsequent iterations of system enhancement and improvement. Finally, the research also discovered that despite the different socio-political climate prevalent in various organizations, in which ESS are being implemented, the experiences of project managers in dealing with stakeholder concerns can be captured and independently confirmed in terms of their perceived relevance and usefulness in problem-solving within the application domain.

Vigilant pleasure as autoethnography : the life of the tea mind as critical history

I examine tea as cultural practice by exploring how it is implicated in the formation of individual subjectivities and national identity. While using the experience of learning and consuming tea lore as a foreigner as my explicit point of entry, I analyse how tea transmission practices are represented in Japanese films. My readings of these films are supported by a survey of the historical applications of tea as part of a project of national invention. Against tea's self-representation as purely cultural, I draw attention to this ideological silencing of its economic and political effects by claiming that institutionalised tea pedagogy has been a major player in a nationally distinctive discourse of transience. My thesis argues that autoethnography can be used to bring into view the ideological foundations of various social practices organised around tea sites and texts. Once ideology is visible autoethnography may mediate the effects of dominant discourses by making a modest form of private resistance possible. As a performance of critical and effective history, I explore the limits of consciously resisting institutionalised power by reflecting on how discourses of tea and social theory intersect in my autoethnographic account of tea experiences. I begin by locating my subjectivity in tea. After outlining how tea is useful to me in psychological, domestic and professional contexts, I survey autoethnographic writing and critical forms of textual analysis. Given that traditions of textual analysis set limits to what can be comprehended, I note that considerations of the role of subjectivity are sometimes absent from several modes of textual analysis. I contend that more delicate forms of textual analysis are possible when multiple forms of subjectivity are explicitly addressed. Subjectivity is emphasised as I move between performances of being a cultural insider of tea subculture and an ethnic and linguistic outsider of daily life in Japan when I examine the connections linking tea anecdotes, film narratives, individual tales and national myths. From the position of tea culture insider and consumer of social theory I examine the relationship between national culture and individual subjectivity. I identify internal contradictions in tea transmission practices and consider how tea pedagogy and its cult of personality are addressed in tea films. The thesis concludes by considering the utility of identities in a global economy and comment on recent theories addressing the ethical self and social practices. It is on this basis that I claim the readings advanced in the earlier chapters map the pleasures and limits of employing autoethnography as a form of private resistance against the dominant discourses of tea, nation, and leisure.

Within and against performativity : discursive engagement in adult literacy and basic education

The field of adult literacy and basic education (ALBE) has undergone dramatic changes in recent years with the advent of labour market programs, accreditation, competency-based assessment and competitive tendering for program funds. Teachers' working conditions have deteriorated and their professional autonomy has been eroded. ALBE has been increasingly instrumentalised to fulfil the requirements of a marketised economy and conform to its norms. The beliefs and value systems which traditionally underpinned the work of ALBE teachers have been reframed according to the principle of 'performativity' and the demands of the 'performative State' (Lyotard, 1984: 46, Yeatman 1994: 110). The destabilisation of teachers' working lives can be understood as a manifestation of the 'postmodern condition' (Lyotard 1984; Harvey 1989): the collapse of the certainties and purposes of the past; the proliferation of technologies; the impermanence and intensification of work; the commodification of knowledge and curricula; and the dissolving of boundaries between disciplines and fields of knowledge. The critiques of the modernist grand narratives which underpin progressivist and critical approaches to adult literacy pedagogy have further undermined the traditional points of reference of ALBE teachers. In this thesis I examine how teachers are teaching, surviving, resisting, and 'living the contradictions' (Seddon 1994) in the context of struggles to comply with and resist the requirements of performativity. Following Foucault and a number of feminist poststructuralist authors, I have applied the notions of 'discursive engagement' and 'the politics of discourse' (Yeatman 1990a) as a way of theorising the interplay between imposed change and teachers' practice. I explore the discursive practices which take place at the interface between the 'new' policy discourses and older, naturalised discourses; how teachers are engaged by and are engaging with discourses of performativity; how teachers are discursively constructing adult literacy pedagogy; what new, hybrid discourses of 'good practice' are emerging; and the micropractices of resistance which teachers are enacting in their speech and in their practice. My purpose was to develop knowledge which would support the reflexivity of teachers; to enrich the theoretical languages that teachers could draw upon in trying to make sense of their situation; and to use those languages in speaking about the dilemmas of practice. I used participatory action research as a means of producing knowledge about teachers' practices, structured around their agency, and reflecting their standpoint (Harding 1993). I describe two separate action research projects in which teachers of ALBE participated. I reflect on both projects in the light of poststructuralist theory and consider them as instances of what Lather calls 'within/against research' (Lather 1989: 27). I analyse written and spoken texts produced in both projects which reflect teachers' responses to competency-based assessment and other features of the changing context. I use a method of discourse mapping to describe the discursive field and the teachers' discursive practices. Three main configurations of discourse are delineated: 'progressivism', 'professional teacher' and 'performativity'. The teachers mainly position themselves within a hybridising 'progressivist /professional teacher' discourse, as a discourse of resistance to 'performative' discourse. In adapting their pedagogies, the teachers are in some degree taking the language and world view of performativity into their own vocabularies and practices. The discursive picture I have mapped is complex and contradictory. On one hand, the 'progressivist /professional teacher' discourse appears to endure and to take strength from the articulation into it of elements of performative discourse, creating new possibilities for discursive transformation. On the other hand, there are signs that performative discourse is colonising and subsuming progressivist /professional teacher discourse. At times, both of these tendencies are apparent in the one text. Six micropractices of resistance are identified within the texts: 'rational critique', 'objectification', 'subversion', 'refusal', 'humour' and 'the affirmation of desire'. These reflect the teachers' agency in making discursive choices on the micro level of their every day practices. Through those micropractices, the teachers are engaging with and resisting the micropractices and meanings of performativity. I apply the same multi-layered method of analysis to an examination of discursive engagement in pedagogy by analysing a transcript of the teachers' discussion of critical incidents in their classrooms. Their classroom pedagogies are revealed as complex, situated and eclectic. They are combining and integrating their 'embodied' and their 'institutional' powers, both 'seducing' (McWilliam 1995) and 'regulating' (Gore 1993) as they teach. A strong ethical project is apparent in the teachers' sense of social responsibility, in their determination to adhere to valued traditions of previous times, and in their critical self-awareness of the ways in which they use their institutional and embodied powers in the classroom. Finally, l look back on the findings, and reflect on the possibilities of discursive engagement and the politics of discourse as a framework for more strategic practice in the current context. This research provides grounds for hope that, by becoming more self-conscious about how we engage discursively, we might become more strategic in our everyday professional practice. Not withstanding the constraints (evident in this study) which limit the strategic potential of the politics of discourse, there is space for teachers to become more reflexive in their professional, pedagogical and political praxis. Development of more deliberate, self-reflexive praxis might lead to a 'postmodern democratic polities' (Yeatman 1994: 112) which would challenge the performative state and the system of globalised capital which it serves. Short abstract Adult literacy and basic education (ALBE) teachers have experienced a period of dramatic policy change in recent years; in particular, the introduction of competency-based assessment and competitive tendering for program funds. 'Discourse politics' provides a way of theorising the interplay between policy-mediated institutional change and teachers' practice. The focus of this study is 'discursive engagement'; how teachers are engaged by and are engaging with discourses of performativity. Through two action research projects, texts were generated of teachers talking and writing about how they were responding to the challenges, and developing their pedagogies in the new policy environment. These texts have been analysed and several patterns of discursive engagement delineated, named and illustrated. The strategic potential of 'discourse polities' is explored in the light of the findings.

Women clinical nurses' constructions of collegiality : an ethnomethodological study

This research is about a shared journey of being together. It involved thirteen women nurses (including myself) in a process approach to working with data collected through audio transcriptions of conversations during group get-togethers, field notes and journalling over twelve months. The project was conducted in a large acute care metropolitan hospital where the ward staff interests lie in a practice history of the medical specialty of gynaecology and women's health. Prior to commencement ethical approval was gained from both the University and hospital ethics committees. Accessing the group was complicated by the political climate of the hospital, possibly exaggerated further by the health politics across the state of Victoria, at a time of major upheaval characterised by regionalism, rationalisation and debt servicing. In order to ascertain women clinical nurses' constructions of collegiality I adopted an ethnomethodological approach informed by a critical feminist lens to enable the participants to engage in a process of openly ideological inquiry, in critiquing and transforming practice. I felt the choice of methodology had to be consistent with my own ideological position to enable me to be myself (as much as I could) during the project. I wanted to work with women to illuminate the ways in which dominant ideologies had come to be apprehended, inscribed, embodied and/or resisted in the everyday intersubjective realities of participants. The research itself became a site of resistance as the group became aware of how and in what ways their lives had become distorted, while at the same time it collaboratively transformed their individual and collective practice understandings, enabling them to see the self and other anew. Set against the background of dominant discourses on collegiality, women's understandings of collegiality have remained a submerged discourse. Revealed in this work are complex inter-relationships that might be described by some as collegial!, but for others relations amongst these women depict alternative meanings in a rich picture of the fabric of ward life. The participants understand these relations through a connectedness that has empathy as its starting point. In keeping with my commitment to engage with these women I endeavoured to remain faithful to the dialogical approach to this inquiry. Moreover I have brought the voices of the women to the foreground, peeling away the rhizomatic interconnections in and between understandings. What this has meant in terms of the thesis is that the work has become artificially distanced for the purposes of academic requirements. Nevertheless it speaks to the understandings the participants have of their relationships; of the various locations of the visible and invisible voices; of the many landscapes and images, genealogies, subjectivities and multiple selves that inform the selves with(in) others and being-in-relation. Throughout the journey meanings are revealed, revisited and reconstructed. Many nuances comprise the subtexts illuminating the depths of various moral locations underpinning the ways these women engage with one another in practice. The process of the research weaves through multiple positions, conveying the centrality of shared goals, multiple identities, resistances and differences which contribute to a holding environment, a location in which women value one another in their being-in-relation and in which they stand separately yet together.

Enron's Dabhol power project in India

In the early nineties, Enron USA went to India to set up a $3 billion power plant at the express invitation of the then Indian government. The process and incidents associated with the setting up of the Dabhol Power Company are highly relevant, even in current times, for companies who intend to set up operations in India. The case is a good example of the strategic importance of ethical corporate decision-making and good stakeholder management practices as an inherent part of a company's culture. If a company lacks this understanding, then it is likely to experience stakeholder opposition and stakeholder management disasters that can ultimately have a serious impact on the company's success.

Client leadership capacity on international projects : exploring the client's complex decision-making environment through a critical cultural political economy lens

The global construction environment offers stakeholders a range of opportunities but is characterised by a high level of risks and uncertainty. Internationalisation is a relatively new field of research in the AEC sector and past research has largely focused on explaining the behaviour of the industry itself. To date there has been little research investigating the client's leadership role. Much effort has been placed on positioning clients towards overall industry performance improvement, however, with little emphasis on the client's capacity to undertake their role. Clients establish the decision-making environment through key early critical decisions including procurement strategy and team membership. To a large extent they establish a unique culture that project team members need to work within and make decisions, which is the social and cultural embedding of the economic activities on projects. This theoretical paper is positioned within a PhD study which undertakes a cultural political economy perspective to investigate the client's central role in setting the boundaries within which decisions affecting budgets, quality, design, project organisational structure and team membership throughout the project lifecycle come to be made. A conceptual model for client leadership on international projects is developed based upon two contextual indicators which seeks to describe and explain the economic decisions clients make, which are deeply embedded in social relationships, shared meanings and cultural norms and the associated power and influence clients have on the political economy of international design and construction practice. This paper also seeks to develop a research question for future empirical testing.

Rethinking political process in technological change : socio-technical configurations and frames

The political process perspective has done much to enhance our understanding of the organizational effects of technological change as a negotiated outcome reflecting the political and power dynamics of the adopting context. In so doing, we suggest, technology has been marginalized as an analytical category and the problem of change agency, although better understood, remains largely unresolved. This article addresses these issues through the articulation of the concepts of socio-technical configurations and technological frames and explores their utility in understanding change agency through an action research project. The project sought a novel form of 'socio-technology' transfer, taking ideas and concepts of 'human-centered' manufacturing embodied in team-based cellular manufacture from a European context into three firms in Australia.

Damming the flow: cultural barriers to perceived ‘procedural justice’ in Wonthaggi, Victoria

 Drier conditions in Australia have compelled governments to implement projects such as the desalination plant in the South Gippsland town of Wonthaggi. The desalination plant is still under construction, but South Gippsland is already host to wind turbines and marine protected areas, reflecting public pressure to develop renewable energy sources and conserve resources. However, all projects have been met with vocal opposition. Using the desalination project as a case study, this paper will address public concerns about a perceived lack of procedural justice in implementing such projects. Drawing on data from a pilot survey of 320 residents, we argue that procedural shortcomings of the project include inattention to past political disputes in the region and to the culturally entrenched sense of division between city and country. Attention to political and cultural histories is vital to the successful and ethical implementation of projects in regional areas.

Older women crafting ethical subjectivities in rural places

Over the last two years my colleagues and I conducted research conversations with older women living in rural Victoria about the meaning of craft in their lives. These conversations are the basis for our speculations on how women constitute ethical subjectivities through specific craft activities and through their engagement with Country Women Association (CWA) craft groups. The CWA is recognised as a ‘community of practice’ with local, regional, state, national and global networks, aiming to improve the lives of rural people. The focus of this paper, however, is on how ethical subjectivities by rural women are fashioned through specific involvements in craft activities and craft groups. I aim to elaborate on how Foucault’s later work on the ‘Care of the Self’ may open possibilities, even if limited, for understanding the complex ways women take up subject positions in interaction with historical, political, economic and social arrangements, and through engagement with specific institutions. For Foucault, ‘care of the self’ is an inherently social practice. Currently, modern power relations incite us to relate to our selves through self confessional and self-disciplining technologies. Could a differently constituted mode of self-care be drawn from the Ancient Greeks to offer us ideas for enacting personal and social transformations today?

Gadamer and political authority

The rehabilitation of the concept of authority is one of the more contentious positions advocated by Gadamer in Truth and Method (1960). Habermas in particular challenged the universality of Gadamer’s hermeneutic project by presenting this rehabilitation as a conservative legitimation of prevailing prejudices which truncates the role of critical reflection. Given that Gadamer’s primary focus is upon the ramifications of the Enlightenment dichotomy between reason and authority for historical hermeneutics, however, and that his examples are drawn primarily from educational domains, the extent to which his account of authority sustains a political interpretation is far from self-evident. In this article I argue that Gadamer’s account can nonetheless make at least two important contributions to contemporary philosophical debates on political authority. Following a brief exposition of Gadamer’s account of authority in Truth and Method, I examine his suggestion that the basis of legitimate political authority is to be found in the normative status of the right to be authoritative, rather than in the factual status of being in a position of authority. This account, I suggest, places in question the abstract dichotomy between theoretical and practical authority which informs much contemporary debate on political authority. I then demonstrate how Gadamer’s emphasis upon the historicity of tradition offers important insights for discussions of the relation between political authority and moral autonomy.

A Foucauldian and Deleuzian reading of autopoietic bisexual lives

This paper will locate the convergence of Foucault’s and ’Deleuze’s critico-political itinerary on the ethics of autopoiesis. It will re-evaluate the aims and objectives of Foucault’s ‘ethical turn’ in the later volumes of the history of sexuality project alongside Deleuzian ideas about the processes of becoming-other. Then, using primary research from a sociological study on bisexual lives, the paper will demonstrate the consonances of their respective theoretical insights about the potential of erotic ‘pleasure’ and ‘desire’ as a force of resistance. The aim of the analysis is twofold: firstly, to set the groundwork for further dialogical exchange between Deleuzian and Foucauldian thinking; and secondly, to highlight a lacuna in queer scholarship on bisexuality.

Ethical trust and social moral norms simulation : a bio-inspired agent-based modelling approach

The understanding of the micro-macro link is an urgent need in the study of social systems. The complex adaptive nature of social systems adds to the challenges of understanding social interactions and system feedback and presents substantial scope and potential for extending the frontiers of computer-based research tools such as simulations and agent-based technologies. In this project, we seek to understand key research questions concerning the interplay of ethical trust at the individual level and the development of collective social moral norms as representative sample of the bigger micro-macro link of social systems. We outline our computational model of ethical trust (CMET) informed by research findings from trust, machine ethics and neural science. Guided by the CMET architecture, we discuss key implementation ideas for the simulations of ethical trust and social moral norms.

Leadership in higher education : The normative project of the common good in conditions of globalization, Universiti Sains Malaysia (USM), and APEX in Malaysia

In this paper, the author discusses the reform agenda undertaken by UniversitiSains Malaysia (USM) to contextualise higher education reform within culturaland social theory. It is important to understand leadership in leading reformwithin a broader and more holistic fashion that takes into account localculture, politics and history. University Sains Malaysia is embarking on what isreferred to as the APEX agenda. The APEX strategy in Malaysia is an importantapproach towards achieving world-class status university institutions. The ApexUniversities will be the nation’s centres of academic distinction. Ensuring andbuilding upon the ethical authority that APEX gives USM, the challenge of leadership in USM is to engage in the forces of globalization and modernizationwhile at the same time take cognizance of the characteristics and demands ofMalaysian culture as central still to the successful mission of USM.

After Charlie: free speech and the political economy of communication

Three significant events at the start of 2015 have put freedom of speech firmly on the global agenda. The first was the carry-over from the December 2014 illegal entry to the Sony Corporation’s file servers by anonymous hackers, believed to be linked to the North Korean regime. The second was the horrible attack on journalists, editors, and cartoonists at the French satirical magazine, Charlie Hebdo on 7 January. The third was the election of leftwing anti-austerity party Syrzia in Greece on 25 January.While each event is different in scope and size, they are important to scholars of the political economy of communication because they all speak to ongoing debates about freedom of expression, freedom of speech and freedom of the press. I name each of these concepts separately because, despite popular confusion, they are not the same thing (Patching and Hirst, 2014) . Freedom of expression is the right to individual self-expression through any means; it is an inalienable human right. Freedom of speech refers to the right (and the physical ability) to utter political speech, to say what others wish to repress and to demand a voice with which to express a range of social and political thoughts. Freedom of the press is a very particular version of freedom of expression that is intimately bound with the political economy of speech and of the printing press. Freedom of the press is impossible without the press and, despite its theoretical availability to all of us, this principle is impossible to articulate without the material means (usually money) to actually deploy a printing press (or the electronic means of broadcasting and publishing).Freedom of expression is immutable; freedom of speech subject to legal, ethical and ideological restriction (for better, or worse) and freedom of the press is peculiar to bourgeois society in that it entails the freedom to own and operate a press, not the right to say or publish on a level playing field. Access to freedom of the press is determined in the marketplace and is subject to the unequal power relationships that such determination implies.It is fitting to start with the Charlie Hebdo massacre because the loss of 17 lives makes this the most chilling of the three events and demands that it be given prominence in any analysis. No lives have been lost yet because Sony’s computers were hacked and the election of Syriza has not (yet) led to mass deaths in Greece.