“Critchley is Žižek” : in defence of critical political philosophy

In an ironically Žižekian manner, this paper argues that Simon Critchley and Slavoj Žižek's apparent political disagreement (ludic reformist versus strident revolutionary) conceal a common set of preconditions and presuppositions. These presuppositions can be summed by the slogan “the forgetting of political philosophy”, which more specifically means the forgetting of the difference between philosophy and political life, and the reflective need to find mediations between the two. Critchley's turn to humour honours the notion that politics is about the realm of appearances, while Žižek's frank avowal of the “diabolical evil” of the subject of the death drive makes patently clear the dangers posed by a “politics of Truth”.

Book reviews : China factors : political perspectives and economic interactions

According to Cheung, common challenges such as currency depreciation, share market volatility and export competition brought by the financial crisis helped to accelerate economic integration between Hong Kong, Taiwan and mainland China. According to Cheung, these mechanisms pull the island in a different direction - namely, the internationalisation of Taiwan.

Reconsidering institutional cosmopolitanism : global poverty and the importance of the state in international political theory

Cosmopolitan scholarship has been at the forefront of efforts to consider political structures capable of realising justice in a more robust manner than prevailing global governance arrangements. In particular, the arguments of Thomas Pogge have contributed significantly to scholarly thinking about global poverty and his scheme of 'institutional cosmopolitanism' aspires to institutionalise human rights in the structures of global governance. This essay critiques the capacity of Pogge's cosmopolitan approach to productively guide political action in relation to global poverty by questioning whether global institutions generated by human rights are sufficient to address global poverty. The argument in this essay is that a viable guide to political action which alleviates global poverty must also take account of the potential utility of the state. This essays draws upon republican ideas to contend that cosmopolitanism needs to encompass a robust account of local institutions such as the state.

'I am, by God, fit for high positions' : on the political role of women in al-Andalus

Narrating and explaining the fairly emancipated women in al-Andalus has been fraught with ambiguity for the approximately one century of scholarship on the subject. There has been much stereotyping depending upon the investigator's particular perspective. This paper clarifies the roles of Andalusian women in political relations from the Muslim Conquest in 711 through the fall of Granada in 1492. The interpretations used in historiography pit a traditionalist trend, in which continuity from the pre 1slamic past is stressed, against the anti-continuist trend, in which an Oriental culture of the Muslims added the distinctive features of Iberian character today. In order to evaluate the two historiographic approaches, the contributions of seven prominent women are presented and evaluated for their social contexts during the eight centuries of al-Andalus. Comparisons are then made to prominent women in other political contexts within the Arab world in order to evaluate the strength of the two competing historiographic perspectives.

Investigating health, economic and socio-political factors that need consideration when establishing Victorian Aboriginal land management projects

This article focuses on three Victorian Aboriginal¹ groups (Bangerang, Boonwurrung and Yorta Yorta) to explore elements that provide or discourage development of land management projects. Results from this small qualitative study show that a number of distinct health, socio-political and economic factors need to be considered when developing Aboriginal land management projects. This study indicates that a greater involvement in Aboriginal land management projects -- critical to Aboriginal peoples' health, economic and social structures - will only occur through increased community consultation, respect, training, consistency between all stakeholders involved, resources and the provision of employment opportunities. Further research is required to strengthen this evidence, allowing policy-makers to be progressive when developing land management projects for Aboriginal Victorian people as a health promoting tool.

Political patriotism

As evidenced by the reactions to Martha Nussbaum’s famous essay of 1996, patriotism is a contested notion in moral debate. This paper explores the suggestion made by Stephen Nathanson that patriotism might be understood as “love of one’s country”, and suggests that this phrase is misleading. It suggests that patriotism, like love, is not rational, and it fails to distinguish two kinds of object for that love: one’s cultural community and one’s political community. Accordingly, this phrase can lead to a kind of nationalism which involves chauvinism and militarism and that is, therefore, morally objectionable. The problem arises from ambiguities in the notion of “country” which is said to be the object of such love. Moreover, “love” is not the appropriate term for a relationship whose central psychological function is that of establishing an individual’s identity as a citizen. I suggest that the proper mode of attachment involved in patriotism is identification with one’s political community, and that the proper object of a patriot’s allegiance is the political community thought of without the emotional, nationalistic and moralistic connotations that often accompany the concept of community. The “political patriotism” that arises from such an attitude is sceptical of “the national interest” and does not accept that our moral responsibilities to others stop at national borders. In this way political patriotism is consistent with a cosmopolitan stance towards human rights and global justice.

Apprehending butterflies and flying beauties : bringing magical realism to ground

[No Abstract]

Career in writing : Judah Waten and the cultural politics of a literary career

This thesis examines the literary career of Judah Waten (1911-1985) in order to focus on a series of issues in Australian cultural history and theory. The concept of the career is theorised as a means of bringing together the textual and institutional dimensions of writing and being a writer in a specific cultural economy. The guiding question of the argument which re-emerges in different ways in each chapter is: in what ways was it possible to write and to be a writer in a given time and place? Waten's career as a Russian-born, Jewish, Australian nationalist, communist and realist writer across the middle years of this century is, for the purposes of the argument, at once usefully exemplary and usefully marginal in relation to the literary establishment. His texts provide the central focus for individual chapters; at the same time each chapter considers a specific historical moment and a specific set of issues for Australian cultural history, and is to this extent self-contained. Recent work in narrative theory, literary sociology and Australian literary and cultural studies is brought together to revise accepted readings of Waten's texts and career, and to address significant absences or problems in Australian cultural history. The sequence of issues shaping Waten's career in writing is argued in terms of the following conjunctions of theoretical and historical categories: proletarianism, modernity and theories of the avant-garde; the "e;migrant"e; writer and minority literatures; realism, political purpose and narrative self-situation; communism, nationalism and literary practice in the cold war; utopianism and the "e;literary witness"e; narrative of the Soviet Union; assimilationism, multicultural theory and the "e;non-Anglo-Celtic"e; writer; theories of autobiographical writing, and autobiography in Waten's career. The purpose of the thesis is not to discover a single key to Waten's writing across the oeuvre but rather to plot the specific occasions of this writing in the context of the structure of a career and the cultural institutions within which it was formed.

More than a mere story : social and political markers in Australian short fiction of the 1980's

This thesis is a literary history which argues that much of the short fiction published in Australia during the 1980s was deeply influenced by the rapid social and political changes during that decade. My argument concentrates on links between the short stones of the period and the socio/political environment into which they were written. The decade was marked by massive changes in technology, the workplace, and in all other areas of social life. In general terms, the ideology of the 'market' predominated over notions of small 'l' liberalism and the last vestiges of state intervention in the economy. The Australian short story benefited from the social 'experiments' of the 1970s in that its concerns became broader - encompassing the onslaught of feminism, the foregrounding of 'multicultural' concerns, and a move away from the bush into the city as a primary site for narratives. The decade was a rich period for the genre. Why was there a tolerance for a new diversity, in literary terms, when the social and political environment was turning to the right? This is a central question of the thesis. I argue that instead of the 'base' determining the 'superstructure' (i.e. culture) the superstructural changes were essential to the deconstruction of the social and political landscape. This thesis contends that a relationship always exists between the 'literary' and 'the social'. I argue, among other things, that many of the short fictions were influenced by 'postmodern' theory to the extent that they became a form of traumatic note-taking, which masked a late romanticism beneath a fear of the sovereign subject. The fear of 'closure' which insinuated itself into many of the texts, besides being a form of academic corrective, was also a flight from emotional candor. I argue that storytelling was, in many cases, the loser.

Creating the political will necessary for achieving multilateral disarmament : the need for a peace-industrial complex

This dissertation deals with the failure to end the central arms race and provides some alternative proposals. Chapters 1 and 2 look at the failure of governmental disarmament negotiations and the ineffectiveness of the non-governmental peace movement. Chapter 3 outlines the author's recommended comprehensive strategy for ending the arms race? both the need for the US to make a dramatic unilateral initiative to break the deadlock (Super GRIT) and a detailed disarmament treaty. The main problem, as argued by the author, is more one of political will and so it is necessary to find a way of creating the political will to stimulate the US to make that dramatic unilateral initiative. He calls for the creation of a Peace-Industrial Complex. The intellectual arguments for the potential basis of such a complex are to be found in the research done by the United Nations; this is examined throughout Part II (Chapters 4-7). Unfortunately very little attention has been paid by governments to this work. Part III (Chapters 8 and 9) deals in more detail with the recommended Peace-Industrial Complex. Chapter 8 looks at its possible creation and method of work. Chapter 9 suggests that the proposed complex creates a transcending vision: from ‘uclear winter’to ‘nuclear spring’.

Earthquake fatalities : the interaction of nature and political economy

To say that the level of fatalities resulting from an earthquake is inversely related to a country's per capita level of income is hardly novel. What makes our approach novel is that we relate fatalities to both per capita income and the level of inequality that exists within a country through their joint impact on the likelihood of collective action being taken to mitigate the destructive potential of quakes. We first develop a theoretical model which offers an explanation as to why, in some environments, different segments of society prove incapable of arriving at what all parties perceive to be an agreeable distribution of the burden of the necessary collective action, causing the relatively wealthy simply to self-insure against the disaster while leaving the relatively poor to its mercy. Following this, we test our theoretical model by evaluating 269 large earthquakes occurring worldwide, between 1960 and 2002, taking into account other factors that influence a quake's destructiveness such as its magnitude, depth and proximity to population centers. Using a Negative Binomial estimation strategy with both random and fixed estimators, we find strong evidence of the theoretical model's predictions. That is, while earthquakes themselves are natural phenomena beyond the reach of humankind, our collective inaction with respect to items like the creation and enforcement of building codes, failure to retrofit structures and to enact quake-sensitive zoning clearly plays a part in determining the actual toll that a given quake takes. And, it is through these and other examples of collective inaction that limited per capita income and inequality couple together with a given quake's natural destructive power in determining the actual fatalities resulting from a quake.