Legal issues in carbon farming : biosequestration, carbon pricing, and carbon rights

This paper critically analyses the proposed Australian regulatory approach to the crediting of biological sequestration activities (biosequestration) under the Australian Carbon Farming Initiative and its interaction with State-based carbon rights, the national carbon-pricing mechanism, and the international Kyoto Protocol and carbon-trading markets. Norms and principles have been established by the Kyoto Protocol to guide the creation of additional, verifiable, and permanent credits from biosequestration activities. This paper examines the proposed arrangements under the Australian Carbon Farming Initiative and Carbon Pricing Mechanism to determine whether they are consistent with those international norms and standards. This paper identifies a number of anomalies associated with the legal treatment of additionality and permanence and issuance of carbon credits within the Australian schemes. In light of this, the paper considers the possible legal implications for the national and international transfer, surrender and use of these offset credits.

Female genital mutilation : legal, attitudinal and practical reform

Female genital mutilation (FGM) is a cultural practice common in many Islamic societies. It involves the deliberate, non-therapeutic physical modification of young girls’ genitalia. FGM can take several forms, ranging from less damaging incisions to actual removal of genitalia and narrowing or even closing of the vagina. While often thought to be required by religion, FGM both predates and has no basis in the Koran. Rather, it is a cultural tradition, motivated by a patriarchal social desire to control female bodies to ensure virginity at marriage (preserving family honour), and to prevent infidelity by limiting sexual desire. In the USA and Australia in 2010, peak medical bodies considered endorsing the medical administration of a ‘lesser’ form of FGM. The basis for this was pragmatic: it would be preferable to satisfy patients’ desire for FGM in medically-controlled conditions, rather than have these patients seek it, possibly in more severe forms, under less safe conditions. While arguments favouring medically-administered FGM were soon overcome, the prospect of endorsing FGM illuminated the issue in these two Western countries and beyond. This paper will review the nature of FGM, its physical and psychological health consequences, and Australian laws prohibiting FGM. Then, it will scan recent developments in Africa, where FGM has been made illegal by a growing number of nations and by the Protocol to the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights 2003 (the Maputo Protocol), but is still proving difficult to eradicate. Finally, based on arguments derived from theories of rights, health evidence, and the historical and religious contexts, this paper will ask whether an absolute human right against FGM can be developed.

The uses of satire : unorthodox news, cultural chaos and the interrogation of power

This article focuses on the satirical Australian show The Chaser’s War on Everything, and uses it to critically assess the potential political and social ramifications of what McNair (2006) has called ‘cultural chaos’. Drawing upon and analysing several examples from this particular program, alongside interviews with its production team and qualitative audience research, this article argues that this TV show’s engagement with politicians and political issues, in a way that departs from the conventions of traditional journalism, offers a significant opportunity for the interrogation of power. The program’s use of often bizarre and unexpected comedic confrontation allows it to present a perhaps more authentic image of political agents than is often cultivated in mainstream journalism. This suggests therefore that the shift from homogeneity to heterogeneity in the news media – which McNair (2006) sees as a key feature of cultural chaos – presents a significant challenge to those who wish to retain control over what the public sees and understands about the political world, and is a development which should be viewed in positive terms.

Athletes series

The researcher was invited to photograph athletes in the lead-up to the 2006 Commonwealth Games held in Melbourne. She photographed four indigenous athletes, to produce a series of four large-scale cotton rag prints, 1 meter x 1 meter, printed onto photorag paper from digital files. “My photographic practice can be described as both political and spiritual, in the sense that as an Aboriginal Indigenous artist I take stock of the rationalising effect of the technologies I use, and create work that evokes nature and spirit. My methods often involve re-photographing or digitally re-working landscape photographs and adding historical or cultural icons of significance. Working with Indigenous athletes has been an honour and a pleasure. I admire the athletes’ passion and dedication to their chosen sport, and above all their humility, which seems a trait somewhat in contrast to what it takes to attain the highest levels of achievement. Indigenous athletes are wonderful role models for all Australians, and in making creative work that places their luminary presence with the land, I am aligning sportspeople with a deep sense of nature and spirit.” – Leah King-Smith. These works were commissioned by the National Portrait Gallery for the exhibition FLASH: Australian Athletes in Focus. The exhibition was a significant element in Melbourne2006 Festival, the cultural festival of the Commonwealth Games. The exhibition was prominently reviewed in Portrait: Magazine of Australian and International Portraiture and was subsequently remounted at Old Parliament House, Canberra (15 July to 12 November, 2006). One image was used for the front cover of Art Monthly, (March 2006).

ICT for blended learning Queensland University of Technology, Australia

This report focuses on blended learning within the Queensland University of Technology (QUT) which is one of Australia’s largest public universities. Although the university in its current format was established in 1989, it contains several previous institutions that can be traced to the earliest forms of technical and teacher education in Queensland in the 19th century (Kyle et al., 1999). The focal point of the report is the experience of QUT’s Faculty of Education which was formed from the amalgamation of several teacher training colleges servicing pre-school and kindergarten, primary and secondary teacher education. While the broader university currently employs approximately 4,000 staff and has about 40,000 students, QUT’s Faculty of Education employs around 170 staff and has approximately 5,000 enrolled students. The Faculty of Education at QUT is the largest provider of pre-service teacher education in Australia and is one of the largest producers of educational research. A major theme of the Faculty of Education is its focus on education and research that provides teachers, schools and educational authorities with practical solutions to the multifaceted issues facing contemporary education.

Entertainment industries : entertainment as a cultural system

Entertainment Industries is the first book to map entertainment as a cultural system. Including work from world-renowned analysts such as Henry Jenkins and Jonathan Gray, this innovative collection explains what entertainment is and how it works. Entertainment is audience-centred culture. The Entertainment Industries are a uniquely interdisciplinary collection of evolving businesses that openly monitor evolving cultural trends and work within them. The producers of entertainment – central to that practice– are the new artists. They understand audiences and combine creative, business and legal skills in order to produce cultural products that cater to them. Entertainment Industries describes the characteristics of entertainment, the systems that produce it, and the role of producers and audiences in its development, as well as explaining the importance of this area of study, and how it might be better integrated into Universities.

'You're not fit to wear the shirt': towards a cultural sociology of the football shirt

The world of football is a matter of life and death for many of its fans, and has also attracted much sociological attention. Much of this scholarly work focuses on issues such as deviance, identity, globalisation and commodification (Elias and Dunning 1986; Giulianotti and Robertson 2009). More recently, there has been some evidence of a cultural approach to football and to the football shirt (Benzecry 2008). In this paper, we seek to develop this trend by examining the football shirt as a totem, and by understanding it as inserted into circuits of the sacred and the profane, and the authentic and the inauthentic. Through examples such as shirt throwing, badge kissing, shirt swapping and supporters‟ efforts to construct alternative, protest strips, we show that the football shirt is deeply embedded in narratives of authenticity, sacredness and profaneness. In doing so, we aim to represent football as a rich cultural practice, which involves secular rituals and performances.

Understanding learning and teaching : elementary teacher trainers in Papua New Guinea engaged in cultural authorship in the context of national educational reform

Over the last decade, Papua New Guinea (PNG) has pursued educational reform in elementary teacher education. Because elementary teachers and teacher education are central to the reform agenda, there is a need to gain empirical evidence about how PNG teacher trainers’ understandings about learning and teaching impact on their practice. The study uses cultural-authorship as a theoretical framework to investigate the nature of changes in understanding about learning and teaching for 18 teacher trainers as they progressed through a two-year Bachelor of Early Childhood upgrade course. It addresses the research question: What do elementary teacher trainers in PNG understanding about learning and teaching and how has this changed during their course? The focus on such understandings provides valuable insights into their professional identities at a critical time in PNG’s education reform agenda. Analysis of journal entries at the beginning and end of the course showed that, over time, teacher trainers described increasingly more complex ways of understanding learning and teaching. These views shifted from a focus on learning and teaching as transmission of ideas to one in which the critical role played by communities and families in educational processes and the teacher as a change agent became focal. This watershed finding demonstrates notable shifts in teacher trainers’ professional identities from trainers to community leaders in elementary education.

From critique to cultural recovery: critical futures studies and casual layered analysis

Critical futures studies is not about the careers of a few scholars, rather it is about projects that transcend the narrow boundaries of the self. This biographical monograph examines the life and work of Richard Slaughter and Sohail Inayatullah.

From cultural to creative industries : theory, industry, and policy implications

Across post-industrial societies worldwide, the creative industries are increasingly seen as a key economic driver. These industries - including fields as diverse as advertising, art, computer games, crafts, design, fashion, film, museums, music, performing arts, publishing, radio, theatre and TV - are built upon individual creativity and innovation and have the potential to create wealth and employment through the mechanism of intellectual property. Creative Industries: Critical Readings brings together the key writings - drawing on both journals and books - to present an authoritative and wide-ranging survey of this emerging field of study. The set is presented with an introduction and the writings are divided into four volumes, organized thematically: Volume 1: Concepts - focuses on the concept of creativity and the development of government and industry interest in creative industries; Volume 2: Economy - maps the role and function of creative industries in the economy at large; Volume 3: Organization - examines the ways in which creative institutions organize themselves; and Volume 4: Work - addresses issues of creative work, labour and careers This major reference work will be invaluable to scholars in economics, cultural studies, sociology, media studies and organization studies.

Literacies programs: Debates and demands in cultural context

An introduction to the "four resources" model of literacy, where coding, semantics, pragmatic and critical text work are viewed as necessary components for literacy in contemporary society.

Book review of Donald, S.H., & Gammack, J.G. 2007. Tourism and the Branded City : Film and Identity in the Pacific Rim. Aldershot : Ashgate.

In the decade since the destination branding literature emerged (see for example Pritchard & Morgan 1998, Dosen & Vransevic 1998), only a few books have been published. These are Morgan et al.’s (2002, 2004) edited volumes of international case studies and conceptual papers, and Baker’s (2007) practitioner perspective on branding small cities in the USA. This work by Stephanie Donald and John Gammack is the first research-based text related to destination branding, and is a welcome and timely addition to the field. In the foreword to the first issue of Place Branding and Public Policy, editor Simon Anholt (2004, p. 4) suggested “almost nobody agrees on what, exactly, branding means”, when he described place branding practice as akin to the Wild West. Indeed, this lack of theory was one of the motivators for the authors of this text. Tourism and the Branded City is part of Ashgate’s New Directions in Tourism Analysis series, edited by Dimitri Ioannides. The aim of the series is to address the gap in published theory underpinning the study of tourism, with a particular interest in non-business disciplines such as Sociology, Social Anthropology, Human and Social Geography, and Cultural Studies...

Philanthropic capacity to support Indigenous causes : the journey to improvement

The role of philanthropy in addressing Indigenous causes is still conceptually emerging in Australia despite many years of practice. This paper reports on a qualitative study with grantmakers and grantseekers to better understand the issues affecting the philanthropic grantmaking system for Indigenous causes in Australia. An attitudinal emphasis on human rights for politically, economically and socially disadvantaged groups and an impetus for structural change emerged that has yet to deliver real funding equity. The way forward is still largely focussed on ‘improving’ Indigenous community capacity in organisational governance systems. In contrast, this study points to strategic leverage points within philanthropic organisations which could be used to first assess and then develop policies, processes and their underlying attitudes which impact on cross-cultural work i.e. the ‘cultural competence ’ of philanthropic organisations. It is argued such an approach would support improved social justice practice in the sector and subsequently Indigenous outcomes.

China's new Creative Clusters : Governance, Human Capital and Investment

Recognising that creativity is a major driving force in the post-industrial economy, the Chinese government has recently established a range of "creative clusters" – industrial parks devoted to media industries, and arts districts – in order to promote the development of the creative industries. This book examines these new creative clusters, outlining their nature and purpose, and assessing their effectiveness. Drawing on case studies of a range of cluster models, and comparing them with international examples, the book demonstrates that creativity, both in China and internationally, is in fact a process of fitting new ideas to existing patterns, models and formats. It shows how large and exceptionally impressive creative clusters have been successfully established, but raises the important questions of whether profit or culture is the driving force, and of whether the bringing together of independent-minded, creative people, entrepreneurial businessmen, preferential policies and foreign investment may in time lead to unintended changes in social and political attitudes in China, including a weakening of state bureaucratic power. An important contribution to the existing literature on the subject, this book will be of great interest to scholars of urban studies, cultural geography, cultural economics and Asian studies.