Proceedings of the Interior Space in Other Places : An IDEA [Interior Design/Interior Architecture Educators Association] Symposium [Edited Volume of Proceedings]

Conference curatorial outline The focus of this symposium was to question whether interior design is changing relative to local conditions, and the effect globalization has on the performance of regional, particularly Southern hemisphere identities. The intention being to understand how theory and practice is transposed to ‘distant lands’, and how ideas shift from one place to another. To this extent the symposium invited papers on the export, translation and adoption of theories and practices of interior design to differing climates, cultures, and landscapes. This process, sometimes referred to as a shift from ‘the centre to the margins’, seeks new perspectives on the adoption of European and US design ideas abroad, as well as their return to their place of origin. Papers were invited from a range of perspectives including the export of ideas/attitudes to interior spaces, history of interior spaces abroad, and the adoption of ideas/processes to new conditions. Paralleling this trafficking of ideas are broader observations about interior space that emerge through specificity of place. These include new and emerging directions and differences in our understanding of interiority; both real and virtual, and an ever-changing relationship to city, suburb and country. Keeping within the Symposium theme the intention was to examine other places, particularly on the margins of the discipline’s domain. Semantic slippage aside, there are a range of approaches that engage outside events and practices enabling a transdisciplinary practice that draws from other philosophical and theoretical frameworks. Moreover as the field expands and new territories are opened up, the virtual worlds of computer gaming, animations, and interactive environments, both rely on and produce new forms of expression. This raises questions about the extent such spaces adopt or translate existing theory and practice, that is the transposition from one area to another and their return to the discipline.

Contract Law Case Book [2nd ed.]

This case book contains the essential sections of the most significant cases in Australian contract law. Ready access to this collection of cases enables students to experience the law through the judges’ own words, and to develop the skills of interpreting and analysing cases in order to refine their understanding of the law. Excerpts from important statutes and writings are also included.

Sale of Businesses in Australia (2nd ed.)

The greater volume of businesses sold in Australia each year are small to medium enterprises. The administration of business contracts presents far different challenges than, for example, contracts for the sale of goods alone or contracts for the sale of land. The subject matter comprises both real and personal, and tangible and intangible property. Other considerations that do not affect those other commonplace contracts include dealing with employees who are both remaining and departing, taking account of restraints of trade, and the phenomena of the passing of property being different in respect of different forms of property being transferred in the same contract. In keeping with the format of the previous edition, the book is written with the busy practitioner in mind. It deals with the formation of business contracts, all aspects of disclosure both contractual and statutory, the role of agents, and detailed consideration of the different types of subject matter of small business contracts including, the lease of the premises, intellectual property, goodwill, licences, book debts and plant and equipment. It has up to date treatment of income tax implications of the sale and the impact of the latest Commonwealth legislation on dealing with employees of a business on sale. Consistent with the last edition, the book has chapters on time of the essence and completion, personal securities, restraint of trade clauses, special conditions and remedies for breach by both parties and misleading or deceptive conduct by the seller. In relation to personal securities, whilst the current State and Territory based law on Bills of Sale and other Chattel Securities has been the subject of commentary, the proposed national reform agenda has also been commented upon although that legislation is not due until May 2010 at the earliest

The Cambridge companion to creative writing [Edited book]

Creative writing has become a highly professionalised academic discipline, with popular courses and prestigious degree programmes worldwide. This book is a must for all students and teachers of creative writing, indeed for anyone who aspires to be a published writer. It engages with a complex art in an accessible manner, addressing concepts important to the rapidly growing field of creative writing, while maintaining a strong craft emphasis, analysing exemplary models of writing and providing related writing exercises. Written by professional writers and teachers of writing, the chapters deal with specific genres or forms – ranging from the novel to new media – or with significant topics that explore the cutting edge state of creative writing internationally (including creative writing and science, contemporary publishing and new workshop approaches).

Book review : Olivier Corten, The Law Against War

Olivier Corten’s The Law Against War is a comprehensive, meticulously-researched study of contemporary international law governing the use of armed force in international relations. As a translated and updated version of a 2008 book published in French, it offers valuable insights into the positivist methodology that underpins much of the European scholarship of international law. Corten undertakes a rigorous analysis of state practice from 1945 onwards, with a view to clarifying the current meaning and scope of international law’s prohibition on the use of force. His central argument is that the majority of states remain attached to a strict interpretation of this rule. For Corten, state practice indicates that the doctrines of anticipatory self-defence, pre-emptive force and humanitarian intervention have no basis in contemporary international law. His overall position accords with a traditional, restrictive view of the circumstances in which states are permitted to use force...

Book Review : "The Psychology of Eating : From Healthy to Disordered Behaviour"

WHEN JANE Ogden embarked on writing a book about the psychology of eating I wonder whether she realized the enormity of the task given the breadth of research literature in this field. Through a series of 12 closely related chapters on eating, health, food choice, dieting, obesity, body image, eating disorders and others, an extensive range of areas of the psychology of eating is covered. As well as these areas, included within each chapter is a discussion of the significance of historical, cultural, social and familial factors, theoretical approaches and empirical data in the understanding of the multifaceted problems related to eating. At the end of each chapter there is a box entitled ‘Towards an integrated model of diet’ that links the content with that of the following chapters...

Book review : Reply to Holmes’s review of the "Social Construction of Anorexia Nervosa"

It is always difficult to know what reviewers such as Colin Holmes (2001) want from a book. While he knows something of the claims that Gull was thought by some to be Jack the Ripper – an historical digression deliberately omitted from the book – Holmes has, it would seem, little understanding of the practice implications of Foucauldian analysis...

Book review: "Ideologies of Breast Cancer : Feminist Perspectives" Edited by Laura K. Potts. New York: St. Martin’s Press

Laura K. Potts’s edited collection of research on the meanings of breast cancer includes authors from the United Kingdom, the United States, and Canada whose perspectives draw on literary criticism, sociology, psychology, and cultural studies among others. The research employs various methodological approaches—for example, media analysis (Saywell et al.), autobiographical narratives (Potts), and analysis of social activism (Fishman)—to elucidate the multiple dimensions and diversity of breast cancer experiences. The first of two parts, “Meanings of Breast Cancer,” presents the problematical relationship between biomedicine and women’s constructions of breast cancer knowledge, the sexualized and maternalized breast in the print media about breast cancer, environmental risks to women’s health in the Bay Area of San Francisco, and women’s narratives of breast cancer and situating the self. In part 2, “Discourses of Risk and Breast Cancer,” examination of the discourses of prevention and risks to health are taken up in relation to breast cancer screening, the problem of prophylactic mastectomy for hereditary breast cancer, and environmental activism...

Book review: "Qualitative Health Psychology. Theories and Methods" Michael Murray and Kerry Chamberlain (Eds.)

Qualitative Health Psychology aims to contribute to the debate about the nature of psychology and of science through ‘an examination of the role of qualitative research within health psychology’ (p. 3). The editors, in bringing together contributors from the UK, Ireland, Canada, Brazil, New Zealand and Australia, have compiled a text that reflects different uses of qualitative health research in diverse social and cultural contexts. Structured into three parts, the book encompasses key theoretical and methodological issues in qualitative research in its attempt to encourage broad epistemological debate within health psychology.

Book review: Leaky Bodies and Boundaries. Feminism, Post-modernism and (Bio)ethics. Shildrick, M. (1997)

This thoughtful book is a much needed contribution to feminist ethics that is brimming with detailed and insightful analyses of the positioning of women in contemporary health care and particularly in relation to new reproductive technologies (NRTs). The clearly written and structured chapters provide accessible points to modern ethics, post-modernism, and feminist ethics. Margrit Shildrick takes on these areas with authority and vigour, building an argument for women to enter the relations of reproduction on terms more expressive of feminine desire...

Book Review : Criminological and Legal Consequences of Climate Change. Edited by Stephen Farrell, Tawhida Ahmed and Duncan French (Oxford : Hart Publishing, 272 pp.)

The book addresses a number of pressing social and environmental issues of global concern. It takes the reader on a socio-legal journal of climate change and explores a range of challenging and complex topics including renewable energies, emissions reduction, carbon trading, deforestation, migration and corporate governance.

[Book Review] Urban Maps : Instruments of Narrative and Interpretation in the City by Richard Brook and Nick Dunn, Ashgate, Farham, United Kingdom, 2011, 250pp. ISBN 978-0-754676-5-77.

Urban maps discusses new ways and tools to read and navigate the contemporary city. Each chapter investigates a possible approach to unravel the complexity of contemporary urban forms. Each tool is first defined, introducing its philosophical background, and is then discussed with case studies, showing its relevance for the navigation of the built environment. Urbanism classics such as the work of Lynch, Jacobs, Venuti and Scott-Brown, Lefebrve and Walter Benjamin are fundamental in setting the framework of the volume. In the introduction cities and mapping are first discussed, the former are illustrated as ‘a composite of invisible networks devoid of landmarks and overrun by nodes’ (p. 3), and ‘a series of unbounded spaces where mass production and mass consumption reproduce a standardised quasi-global culture’ (p. 6).

Supporting children's language and literacy skills : the effectiveness of shared book reading intervention strategies with parents

Parents are encouraged to read with their children from an early age because shared book reading helps children to develop their language and early literacy skills. A pragmatic Randomised Controlled Trial (RCT) research design was adopted to investigate the influence of two forms of a shared reading intervention (Dialogic Reading and Dialogic Reading with the addition of Print Referencing) on children’s language and literacy skills. Dialogic reading is a validated shared reading intervention that has been shown to improve children’s oral language skills prior to formal schooling (Whitehurst & Lonigan, 1998). Print referencing is another form of shared reading intervention that has the potential to have effects on children’s print knowledge as they begin school (Justice & Ezell, 2002). However, training parents to use print referencing strategies at home has not been researched extensively although research findings indicate its effectiveness when used by teachers in the early years of school. Eighty parents of Preparatory year children from three Catholic schools in low income areas in the outer suburbs of a metropolitan city were trained to deliver specific shared reading strategies in an eight-week home intervention. Parents read eight books to their children across the period of the intervention. Each book was requested to be read at least three times a week. There were 42 boys and 38 girls ranging in age from 4.92 years to 6.25 years (M=5.53, SD=0.33) in the sample. The families were randomly assigned to three groups: Dialogic Reading (DR); Dialogic Reading with the addition of Print Referencing (DR + PR); and a Control group. Six measures were used to assess children’s language skills at pre and post, and follow-up (three months after the intervention). These measures assessed oral language (receptive and expressive vocabulary), phonological awareness skills (rhyme, word completion), alphabet knowledge, and concepts about print. Results of the intervention showed that there were significant differences from pre to post between the two intervention groups and the control group on three measures: expressive vocabulary, rhyme, and concepts about print. The shared reading strategies delivered by parents of the dialogic reading, and dialogic reading with the addition of print referencing, showed promising results to develop children’s oral language skills in terms of expressive vocabulary and rhyme, as well as understanding of the concepts about print. At follow-up, when the children entered Year 1, the two intervention groups (DR and DR + PR) group had significantly maintained their knowledge of concepts about prints when compared with the control group. Overall, the findings from this intervention study did not show that dialogic reading with the addition of print referencing had stronger effects on children’s early literacy skills than dialogic reading alone. The research also explored if pre-existing family factors impacted on the outcomes of the intervention from pre to post. The relationships between maternal education and home reading practices prior to intervention and child outcomes at post were considered. However, there were no significant effects of maternal education and home literacy activities on child outcomes at post. Additionally, there were no significant effects for the level of compliance of parents with the intervention program in terms of regular weekly reading to children during the intervention period on child outcomes at post. These non-significant findings are attributed to the lack of variability in the recruited sample. Parents participating in the intervention had high levels of education, although they were recruited from schools in low socio-economic areas; parents were already highly engaged in home literacy activities at recruitment; and the parents were highly compliant in reading regularly to their child during the intervention. Findings of the current study did show that training in shared reading strategies enhanced children’s early language and literacy skills. Both dialogic reading and dialogic reading with the addition of print referencing improved children’s expressive vocabulary, rhyme, and concepts about print at post intervention. Further research is needed to identify how, and if, print referencing strategies used by parents at home can be effective over and above the use of dialogic reading strategies. In this research, limitations of sample size and the nature of the intervention to use print referencing strategies at home may have restricted the opportunities for this research study to find more effects on children’s emergent literacy skills or for the effectiveness of combining dialogic reading with print referencing strategies. However, these results did indicate that there was value in teaching parents to implement shared reading strategies at home in order to improve early literacy skills as children begin formal schooling.

Board monitoring and judgement as processes of sensemaking

When organizational scandals occur, the common refrain among commentators is: 'Where was the board in all this?' 'How could the directors not have known what was going on?''Why didn't the board intervene?' The scandals demonstrate that board monitoring or oganizational performance is a matter of great importance. By monitoring, we mean the act of keeping the organization under review. In many English-speaking countries, directors have a legal duty of care, which includes duties to monitor the performance of their organizations (Hopt and von Hippel 2010). However, statutory law typically merely states the duty, while providing little guidance on how that duty can be met.

Book Review [White Bound: Nationalists, Antiracists, and the Shared Meanings of Race, by MW Hughey]

Dr Kathy A. Mills provides a critical synthesis and review of the new book by Matthew W. Hughey entitle: White Bound: Nationalists, Antiractists, and the Shared Meanings of Race, published by Standford University Press in 2012. A sample of Dr Mills' review reads: "The author positions race squarely at the center to challenge the shared assumptions of white supremacist logic on both sides of the debate. The clever thesis blurs the boundaries between “good whites” and “bad whites”, rendering the white reader intellectually stimulated, but existentially unchanged – White Bound – as the author ponders: “Perhaps we have met the enemy, and he [it] is us” (p.193)...The unanswered question that remains is: How do we resist the various “shades” of white supremacy to pursue counter-hegemonic practices?"