Intractable differences : artistic research and the problem of practice

The purpose of this paper is to analyse the complex nature of practice within Artistic research. This will be done by considering practice through the lens of Bourdieu’s conceptualisation of practice. The focus of the paper is on developing an understanding of practice-led approaches to research and how these are framed by what Coessens et al. (2009) call the artistic turn in research. The paper begins with a brief introduction to the nature of practice and then continues on to discuss the broader field of artistic research, describing the environment which has shaped its evolution and foregrounding several of its key dispositions. The paper aims to not simply describe existing methodology but to rethink what is meant by artistic research and practice-led strategies.

Michel Foucault : the unconscious of history and culture

Michel Foucault: The unconscious of history and culture The French thinker, Michel Foucault (1926–84), is noted for his extensive and controversial forays into the historical disciplines. When his work first began to circulate in the 1950s and 1960s, historians did not quite know what to make of it and philosophers resented the appearance of what they saw as the importation of the tedium of concrete events into the pure untainted realm of ideas. If these responses to his work remain alive and well decades after Foucault's death, the uptake of his work has become far more complex. To restrict ourselves to the discipline of history here: if one very visible and vocal camp of historians remains deeply ambivalent about his work, this merely disguises the fact that a far larger contingent of historians of all kinds – not just those located in history departments – use his ideas quite unremarkably ...

Triple Helix: Film Noir, Neo Noir and Los Angeles – imagining history and remembering the future in the most contemporary city

Modern and Postmodern Los Angeles is examined through the lens of film noir and neo noir. The unique relationship between the city of Los Angeles and cinema is discussed in terms of a historiography emphasizing the role played by these defining film styles and genres. The research draws and extends on the work conducted by Edward Dimendberg, Paula Rabinowitz and Mike Davis, and urban theory approaches associated with the Los Angeles School of Urbanism.

Timing, origin and emplacement dynamics of mass flows offshore of SE Montserrat in the last 110 ka : implications for landslide and tsunami hazards, eruption history, and volcanic island evolution

Mass flows on volcanic islands generated by volcanic lava dome collapse and by larger-volume flank collapse can be highly dangerous locally and may generate tsunamis that threaten a wider area. It is therefore important to understand their frequency, emplacement dynamics, and relationship to volcanic eruption cycles. The best record of mass flow on volcanic islands may be found offshore, where most material is deposited and where intervening hemipelagic sediment aids dating. Here we analyze what is arguably the most comprehensive sediment core data set collected offshore from a volcanic island. The cores are located southeast of Montserrat, on which the Soufriere Hills volcano has been erupting since 1995. The cores provide a record of mass flow events during the last 110 thousand years. Older mass flow deposits differ significantly from those generated by the repeated lava dome collapses observed since 1995. The oldest mass flow deposit originated through collapse of the basaltic South Soufriere Hills at 103-110 ka, some 20-30 ka after eruptions formed this volcanic center. A ∼1.8 km3 blocky debris avalanche deposit that extends from a chute in the island shelf records a particularly deep-seated failure. It likely formed from a collapse of almost equal amounts of volcanic edifice and coeval carbonate shelf, emplacing a mixed bioclastic-andesitic turbidite in a complex series of stages. This study illustrates how volcanic island growth and collapse involved extensive, large-volume submarine mass flows with highly variable composition. Runout turbidites indicate that mass flows are emplaced either in multiple stages or as single events.

Review: "Planning Asian cities : risks and resilience" edited by Stephen Hamnett and Dean Forbes, Planning, History and Environment Series, London, Routledge, 2011

Since the beginning of the agricultural revolution, cities have always been the cradle of civilisation, innovation and productivity, particularly as a result of the recent change factors affecting their (trans)formation, such as globalisation, the knowledge economy, technological advancements, climate change and so on. While in some parts of the world, cities are rapidly growing, in other parts, cities are shrinking, and their populations are aging. Even under the current pressure of constantly changing global conditions, the role of cities in influencing and partially shaping local, regional, national, supranational and even global level economy, society, environment and governance is undeniable. Global changes, while providing opportunities for cities and their administrations to reform and revisit existing planning and development processes and mechanisms, at the same time, challenge them by dealing with everincreasing risks and establishing resilience. At present, more than half of the world’s population...

Investigating early childhood education for sustainability : insights from history and literature

Seemingly straightforward tasks often have a way of becoming complex. This was the case for our guest editorial team charged with creating Early Childhood Australia’s Best of Sustainability publication drawn from the the Australasian Journal of Early Childhood and Every Child. The complexities we encountered ranged from the varied terminologies and understandings of constructs such as education for sustainable development, environmental education and education for sustainability, through to the fundamental lack of published research on which to draw as the basis for a special issue. It is timely to explore these complexities as we face the global challenges of The Critical Decade (DCCEE, 2011) including rising sea levels, extreme weather events and food security. At a local level, the early childhood field in Australia is seeking to interpret sustainability with systemic support from the National Quality Standards(NQS) (ACECQA, 2011), while elsewhere environmental/sustainability education is encouraged through national curricula documents (for example, Singapore Ministry of Education, 2008; Swedish National Agency for Education,2010; Ministry of Education of Korea, 2011). Both The Critical Decade and the NQS provide imperatives to drive early childhood education’s engagement with sustainability. In other words, sustainability in early childhood education is no longer optional, but essential (Elliott, 2010). While some twenty years of advocacy has led to this somewhat subdued celebratory position, in this publication we do recognise the historical contexts that have led to early childhood education for sustainability (ECEfS), as we (Elliott & Davis) phrase it, becoming almost ‘mainstream not marginal’ (Davis, 1999)— a stitching together of the isolated ‘patches of green’, first identified a decade ago by Elliott (NSW EPA, 2003). Here we weave together, through these articles, a story of the evolving history of ECEfS from our particular perspective. In so doing, we also acknowledge that there are other perspectives or ‘paths’ for this field as identified by Edwards and Cutter-McKenzie in their concluding paper to this compilation.

Hyperlinking history and illegitimate imagination : the historiographic metafictional E-novel

‘Historiographic Metafiction’ (HM) is a literary term first coined by creative writing academic Linda Hutcheon in 1988, and which refers to the postmodern practice of a fiction author inserting imagined--or illegitimate--characters into narratives that are intended to be received as authentic and historically accurate, that is, ostensibly legitimate. Such adventurous and bold authorial strategies frequently result in “novels which are both intensely self-reflexive and yet paradoxically also lay claim to historical events and personages” (Hutcheon, A Poetics 5). They can be so entertaining and engaging that the overtly intertextual, explicitly inventive work of biographical HM can even change the “hegemonic discourse of history” (Nunning 353) for, as Philippa Gregory, the author of HM novel The Other Boleyn Girl (2001), has said regarding this genre of creative writing: “Fiction is about imagined feelings and thoughts. History depends on the outer life. The novel is always about the inner life. Fiction can sometimes do more than history. It can fill the gaps” (University of Sussex). In a way, this article will be filling one of the gaps regarding HM...

In Perpetual Motion: Theories of Power, Educational History, and the Child

"In Perpetual Motion is an "historical choreography" of power, pedagogy, and the child from the 1600s to the early 1900s. It breaks new ground by historicizing the analytics of power and motion that have interpenetrated renditions of the young. Through a detailed examination of the works of John Locke, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Johann Herbart, and G. Stanley Hall, this book maps the discursive shifts through which the child was given a unique nature, inscribed in relation to reason, imbued with an effectible interiority, and subjected to theories of power and motion. The book illustrates how developmentalist visions took hold in U.S. public school debates. It documents how particular theories of power became submerged and taken for granted as essences inside the human subject. In Perpetual Motion studiously challenges views of power as in or of the gaze, tracing how different analytics of power have been used to theorize what gazing could notice."--BOOK JACKET.

The Link Between Medicaid and the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA): Recent History and Current Issues

[From Summary] As a condition of accepting funds under IDEA, public schools must provide special education and related services necessary for children with disabilities to benefit from a public education. Generally, states can finance only a portion of these costs with federal IDEA funds. Medicaid, the federal-state program that finances medical and health services for the poor, can cover IDEA required health-related services for enrolled children as well as related administrative activities (e.g., outreach for Medicaid enrollment purposes, medical care coordination/monitoring). However, the link between IDEA and Medicaid has not been seamless. Despite written federal guidance, schools have a difficult time meeting the myriad complex reimbursement rules applicable to all Medicaid participating providers. According to federal investigations and congressional hearings, Medicaid payments to schools have sometimes been improper. The President’s FY2007 budget proposal would prohibit federal Medicaid reimbursement for IDEA-related school-based administration and transportation costs. This report will be updated.

Life history and host range of Alagoasa extrema (Coleoptera: Chrysomelidae: Alticinae), a potential biological control agent of Lantana spp. (Verbenaceae) in Australia

The life history and host range of the lantana beetle, Alagoasa extrema, a potential biocontrol agent for Lantana spp. were investigated in a quarantine unit at the Alan Fletcher Research Station, Brisbane, Australia. Adults feed on leaves and females lay batches of about 17 eggs on the soil surface around the stems of plants. The eggs take 16 days to hatch and newly emerged larvae move up the stem to feed on young leaves. Larvae feed for about 23 days and there are three instars. There is a prepupal non-feeding stage that lasts about 12 days and the pupal stage, which occurs in a cocoon in the soil, lasts 16 days. Teneral adults remain in the cocoon for 3 days to harden prior to emergence. Males live for about 151 days while females live for about 127 days. The pre-oviposition period is 19 days. In no-choice larval feeding trials, nine plant species, representing three families, supported development to adult. Three species, Aloysia triphylla, Citharexylum spinosum and Pandorea pandorana were able to support at least two successive generations. These results confirm those reported in South Africa and suggest that A. extrema is not sufficiently specific for release in Australia. Furthermore, it is not recommended for release in any other country which is considering biological control of lantana.

Traces from elsewhere: Nomadism, artistic identity and contemporary dance in Ireland

This keynote presentation explores the connections between nomadism and artistic identity formation by interrogating the creativity that migration elicits and the narratives that surround it. It is further situated in the complex role that emigration has in Irish culture questioning whether contemporary dance in particular is emblematic of this socio-cultural phenomenon. These questions are anchored through descriptions of a creative project currently underway that draws together artists from Ireland and Australia to explore how we manage absence and presence in a globalized yet increasingly virtual world.

Human genetic variation in the Baltic Sea region: Features of population history and natural selection

In this thesis, the genetic variation of human populations from the Baltic Sea region was studied in order to elucidate population history as well as evolutionary adaptation in this region. The study provided novel understanding of how the complex population level processes of migration, genetic drift, and natural selection have shaped genetic variation in North European populations. Results from genome-wide, mitochondrial DNA and Y-chromosomal analyses suggested that the genetic background of the populations of the Baltic Sea region lies predominantly in Continental Europe, which is consistent with earlier studies and archaeological evidence. The late settlement of Fennoscandia after the Ice Age and the subsequent small population size have led to pronounced genetic drift, especially in Finland and Karelia but also in Sweden, evident especially in genome-wide and Y-chromosomal analyses. Consequently, these populations show striking genetic differentiation, as opposed to much more homogeneous pattern of variation in Central European populations. Additionally, the eastern side of the Baltic Sea was observed to have experienced eastern influence in the genome-wide data as well as in mitochondrial DNA and Y-chromosomal variation – consistent with linguistic connections. However, Slavic influence in the Baltic Sea populations appears minor on genetic level. While the genetic diversity of the Finnish population overall was low, genome-wide and Y-chromosomal results showed pronounced regional differences. The genetic distance between Western and Eastern Finland was larger than for many geographically distant population pairs, and provinces also showed genetic differences. This is probably mainly due to the late settlement of Eastern Finland and local isolation, although differences in ancestral migration waves may contribute to this, too. In contrast, mitochondrial DNA and Y-chromosomal analyses of the contemporary Swedish population revealed a much less pronounced population structure and a fusion of the traces of ancient admixture, genetic drift, and recent immigration. Genome-wide datasets also provide a resource for studying the adaptive evolution of human populations. This study revealed tens of loci with strong signs of recent positive selection in Northern Europe. These results provide interesting targets for future research on evolutionary adaptation, and may be important for understanding the background of disease-causing variants in human populations.