bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Evidence That an Optical Tail in the Gulf of Mexico After Tropical Cyclone Isaac was the Result of Offshore Advection of Coastal Water
Authors: Kil Bumjun , Wiggert Jerry D. , Howden Stephan D.
Published: September 2014

AbstractThis study investigates the hypothesis of Acker's Web report in 2013 that an optical tail of high chlorophyll a, observed in the open Gulf of Mexico (GoM) approximately 2 weeks after tropical storm Isaac made landfall in coastal Louisiana, was due to advection of
outflowing Mississippi River related with the mesoscale eddy field in the open GoM. By using available in situ data and data from multiple satellites, strong evidence was found to support Acker's hypothesis. Drifting buoy, remotely sensed sea surface salinity, and surface geostrophic
current data were used to show that low-salinity water (LSW) was indeed associated with the optical tail. Remotely sensed colored dissolved organic matter indicated that the LSW was of coastal origin, and satellite-observed rain rate indicated that this LSW in the optical tail was not due
to local precipitation. The path of freshwater from the Mississippi River Delta to the region offshore in the optical tail was shown to be similar to a simulated trajectory estimated by surface geostrophic currents; likewise, the drifting buoys deployed near the shelf break offshore of the
Mississippi River Delta prior to the peak in discharge.
Nasie, volk, religie en die kerk as ellips van versoenende verskeidenheid
Authors: Van Wyk Tanya
Published: September 2014

Nation, ’ethnic people’ (das Volk), religion and the church as ellipse of reconciling diversity. This article examines the 19th and 20th century European context wherein religion was practiced. In a ‘Rip-Van-Winkle’ manner it is as if this context had no influence on the Afrikaans speaking church in South Africa. The isolation, that was the result of the apartheid ideology, lead to the Afrikaans speaking church in South Africa not internalising ecumenicity. It is argued that for the church to be able to take an active role in reconciling diversity and therefore contributing to social cohesion in South Africa, the church needs to transcend being a ‘nation’ church. This is possible by respecting culture and diversity, while recognising the priority of salvation in Christ. This is the ellipse of being church.
Accuracy of clinical stroke scores for distinguishing stroke subtypes in resource poor settings: A systematic review of diagnostic test accuracy
Authors: Mwita Clifford C. , Kajia Duncan , Gwer Samson , Etyang Anthony , Newton Charles R.
Published: September 2014

Background: Stroke is the second leading cause of death globally. Computerized tomography is used to distinguish between ischemic and hemorrhagic subtypes, but it is expensive and unavailable in low and middle income countries. Clinical stroke scores are proposed to differentiate between stroke subtypes but their reliability is unknown. Materials and Methods: We searched online databases for studies written in English and identified articles using predefined criteria. We considered studies in which the Siriraj, Guy’s Hospital, Besson and Greek stroke scores were compared to computerized tomography as the reference standard. We calculated the pooled sensitivity and specificity of the clinical stroke scores using a bivariate mixed effects binomial regression model. Results: In meta-analysis, sensitivity and specificity for the Siriraj stroke score, were 0.69 (95% CI 0.62-0.75) and 0.83 (95% CI 0.75-0.88) for ischemic stroke and 0.65 (95% CI 0.56-0.73) and 0.88 (95% CI 0.83-0.91) for hemorrhagic stroke. For the Guy’s hospital stroke score overall sensitivity and specificity were 0.70 (95% CI 0.53-0.83) and 0.79 (95% CI 0.68-0.87) for ischemic stroke and 0.54 (95% CI 0.42-0.66) and 0.89 (95% CI 0.83-0.94) for hemorrhagic stroke. Conclusions: Clinical stroke scores are not accurate enough for use in clinical or epidemiological settings. Computerized tomography is recommended for differentiating stroke subtypes. Larger studies using different patient populations are required for validation of clinical stroke scores.
Neurogenic vision loss: Causes and outcome. An experience from a tertiary center in Northern India
Authors: Verma Rajesh , Gupta Mani , Chaudhari Tejendra Sukdeo
Published: September 2014

Introduction: Vision loss can be a consequence of numerous disorders of eye and neural pathway conveying visual input to brain. A variety of conditions can affect visual pathway producing neurogenic vision loss. The presentation and course of vision loss depends on the site of involvement and underlying etiology. We conducted this unprecedented study to evaluate the characteristics and outcome of various diseases of the visual pathway. Materials and Methods: In this prospective cohort study, we evaluated 64 patients with neurogenic visual impairment. Ophthalmological causes were excluded in all of them. Their presentation, ophthalmological characteristics and investigation findings were recorded. These patients were followed up till 6 months. Results: Out of 69 patients evaluated, 5 were excluded as they had ophthalmological abnormalities. The remaining 64 cases (113 eyes) were enrolled. 54 cases were due to diseases of anterior visual pathway and rest 10 had cortical vision loss. The etiologic distribution is as follows: Isolated optic neuritis- 12 (19%), multiple sclerosis- 4 (6.3%), neuromyelitis optica- 5 (7.9%), tubercular meningitis- 15 (23.8%), non-arteritic ischemic optic neuropathy, ischemic optic neuropathy complicating cavernous sinus thrombosis, cryptococcal meningitis, malignant infiltration of optic nerve, Crouzon’s syndrome, calvarial thickening and traumatic occipital gliosis- 1 (1.6%) case each, idiopathic intracranial hypertension, pituitary adenoma, acute disseminated encephalomyelitis, posterior reversible leukoencephalopathy- 3 (4.8%) cases each, cortical venous thrombosis 5 (7.9%), subacute scleroing panencephalitis- 4 (6.3%) cases. Conclusions: The diseases of anterior visual pathway were much more common than cortical vision loss. A majority of our patients had severe impairment of vision at presentation.
Level of literacy and dementia: A secondary post-hoc analysis from North-West India
Authors: Raina Sunil Kumar , Chander Vishav , Kumar Dinesh , Raina Sujeet , Bhardwaj Ashok
Published: September 2014

Introduction: A relation between literacy and dementia has been studied in past and an association has been documented. This is in spite of some studies pointing to the contrary. The current study was aimed at investigating the influence of level of literacy on dementia in a sample stratified by geography (Migrant, Urban, Rural and Tribal areas of sub-Himalayan state of Himachal Pradesh, India). Materials and Methods: The study was based on post-hoc analysis of data obtained from a study conducted on elderly population (60 years and above) from selected geographical areas (Migrant, Urban, Rural and Tribal) of Himachal Pradesh state in North-west India. Results: Analysis of variance revealed an effect of education on cognitive scores [F = 2.823, P =0.01], however, post-hoc Tukey’s HSD test did not reveal any significant pairwise comparisons. Discussion: The possibility that education effects dementia needs further evaluation, more so in Indian context.
Study of cluster headache: A hospital-based study
Authors: Bhargava Amita , Pujar Guruprasad S. , Banakar Basavaraj F. , Kasundra Gaurav , Bhushan Bharat ,   Shubhakaran K
Published: September 2014

Introduction: Cluster headache (CH) is uncommon and most painful of all primary headaches, and continues to be managed suboptimally because of wrong diagnosis. It needs to be diagnosed correctly and specifically treated. There are few studies and none from this region on CH. Materials and Methods: To study the detailed clinical profile of CH patients and to compare them among both the genders. Study was conducted at Mahatma Gandhi hospital, Jodhpur (from January 2011to December 2013). Study comprises 30 CH patients diagnosed according to International Headache Society guidelines (ICHD-II). Routine investigations and MRI brain was done in all patients. All measurements were reported as mean < SD. Categorical variables were compared using the Chi-square test, and continuous variables were compared using Student’s t-test. SPSS for Windows, Version 16.0, was used for statistical analyses with the significance level set at P = 0.05. Results: M: F ratio was 9:1. Age at presentation was from 22-60 years (mean - 38 years). Latency before diagnosis was 3 months-12 years (mean - 3.5 years). All suffered from episodic CH and aura was found in none. Pain was strictly unilateral (right-19, left-11), predominantly over temporal region-18 (60%). Pain intensity was severe in 27 (90%) and moderate in 3 (10%). Pain quality was throbbing in 12 (40%). Peak intensity was reached in 5 minutes-30 minutes and attack duration varied from 30 minutes to 3 hours (mean - 2.45 hours). Among autonomic features, conjunctival injection-23 (76.6%) and lacrimation-25 (83.3%) were most common. Restlessness during episode was found in 80%. CH duration varied from 10 days to 12 weeks. Circadian periodicity for attacks was noted in 24 (80%). Conclusion: Results are consistent with other studies on many accounts, but is different from Western studies with respect to low frequency of family history, chronic CH, restlessness and aura preceeding the attack. Detailed elicitation of history is paramount as misdiagnosis is common.
M5 segment aneurysm presenting as “pure acute SDH”
Authors: Singla Navneet , Tripathi Manjul , Chhabra Rajesh
Published: September 2014

Spontaneous "pure acute subdural hematoma (SDH)" is arguably a rare condition. We report on a pregnant female patient presenting as spontaneous acute SDH without subarachnoid hemorrhage (SAH) due to rupture of distal (M5 segment) middle cerebral artery aneurysm. We hereby discuss the diagnostic dilemma of this rare condition, along with the need for watchful evaluation of acute SDH without preceding head injury presenting in emergency outpatient departments, especially when it is first encountered by a trainee resident.
Short Communication: Assessment of lemongrass oil supplementation in a dairy diet on in vitro ruminal fermentation characteristics using the rumen simulation technique
Authors: Nanon A. , Suksombat W. , Beauchemin K. A. , Yang W. Z.
Published: September 2014

Nanon, A., Suksombat, W., Beauchemin, K. A. and Yang, W. Z. 2014. Short Communication: Assessment of lemongrass oil supplementation in a dairy diet on in vitro ruminal fermentation characteristics using the rumen simulation technique. Can. J. Anim. Sci. 94: 731–736. A study using a rumen simulation technique (Rusitec) was conducted to investigate the effect of increasing lemongrass oil (LMO) supplementation on ruminal fermentation characteristics of a dairy cow diet. Increasing LMO from 0, to 100 to 200 mg kg−1 dry matter did not affect volatile fatty acid concentration, whereas LMO supplementation increased large and small peptide N and reduced ammonia N concentration. Adding 200 mg of LMO kg−1 dry matter also increased microbial N production. However, feed digestibility was not affected by LMO supplementation. These results suggest that the addition of LMO may inhibit deamination in the rumen.
A review of feeding supplementary nitrate to ruminant animals: nitrate toxicity, methane emissions, and production performance
Authors: Lee Chanhee , Beauchemin Karen A.
Published: September 2014

Lee, C. and Beauchemin, K. A. 2014. A review of feeding supplementary nitrate to ruminant animals: Nitrate toxicity, methane emissions, and production performance. Can. J. Anim. Sci. 94: 557–570. The purpose of this review is to discuss the risks and benefits of using supplementary nitrate to reduce enteric methane emissions in ruminants based on the results of a meta-analysis. The meta-analysis confirmed possible nitrate poisoning triggered by higher blood methemoglobin levels with increasing nitrate consumption of ruminants: methemoglobin (%)=41.3×nitrate [g kg−1body weight (BW) d−1]+1.2; R2=0.76, P<0.001. However, acclimatizing animals to nitrate reduced the toxicity of nitrate: methemoglobin (%)=4.2×nitrate (g kg−1BW d−1)+0.4, R2=0.76, P=0.002. Animals fed nitrate reduced enteric methane emissions in a dose-response manner: methane [g kg−1dry matter intake (DMI)]=−8.3×nitrate (g kg−1BW d−1)+15.2, R2=0.80, P<0.001. The reduction of enteric methane emissions due to supplementary nitrate was effective and consistent in both in vitro and in vivo studies and also persistent in several long-term studies. Dry matter intake and live weight gain (LWG) of cattle were not affected by nitrate: DMI change, R2=0.007, P=0.65; LWG change, R2=0.03, P=0.31. It is anticipated that supplementary nitrate as a substitute for urea may change urinary nitrogen composition in a manner that increases ammonia and nitrous oxide emissions from manure. Furthermore, supplementary nitrate may have various physiological roles in nitric oxide metabolism in ruminants. In conclusion, supplementary nitrate is a viable means of mitigating enteric methane emissions due to its consistent and persistent efficacy. Risk of toxicity can be lowered by gradual acclimation of animals to nitrate. However, lowered methane production may not re-direct additional metabolizable energy towards animal production.
A Gum-Tree Exile: Randolph Bedford in Italy
Authors: Sussex Lucy Jane
Published: September 2014

Randolph Bedford (1868–1941) was an Australian journalist, politician and novelist, a lifelong socialist despite making a small fortune from mining. He was among the ‘brain drain’ of Australians at the turn of last century, who hoped to emulate Melba’s success in England. Many of his contemporaries, such as Henry Lawson, experienced disillusion and poverty, and returned home. Bedford differed in his versatility, and also his profound rejection of the British Empire. He could not sell his novels initially, nor his speculations to British investors, but was able to put his mining experience to use in Italy. There he became one of the first Australians to fall in love with the country.

His attraction to Italy was partly aesthetic, its artistic glories, but also because it reinforced his sentimental Australian nationalism. He saw similarities in landscape, and also in climate. He wrote despatches back to the Bulletin called ‘Explorations in Civilization’, which became a book in 1916. The subtitle was ‘An Australian in Exile’, reversing the ‘Exiles We’, of the first settlers, with their nostalgia for Britain. In contrast, Bedford saw nothing good in London and the Empire. He disliked it upon first sight, and his irreverence and socialist sympathies had no place in the conservative British investment milieu.

Bedford would sell two novels in Britain, via Henry Lawson (whom he helped in London) and his literary agent J. B. Pinker. But he returned home, certain expatriate life was not for him, and devoted his energies to Australia. His real success was in Explorations in Civilization, superb travel-writing, perhaps his best work. It shows his love for his country being reinforced through the perceived similarities between it and Italy, a second homeland for him. He even paid its people his highest compliment: that they were his preferred settlers for Australia.
Australians Abroad: Narrative Paths and Divagations
Authors: De Nooy Juliana
Published: September 2014

Although commonly characterized as an immigrant nation, Australia has been shaped just as importantly by the overseas journeys of its people, and the liminal experiences thus provided have not only been self-defining and defining of the other, but at times nation-defining. This special issue proposes a multidisciplinary analysis of Australian travellers and expatriates past and present: the reasons for and destinations of their travel, its impact on their identity, the roles they play, their writings and reflections, their linguistic and intercultural competence.

Clusters of travellers to particular destinations give rise to narrative patterns which solidify into templates, the narrative equivalent of the beaten track. The essays that follow highlight both discursive grooves and off-piste accounts that challenge the patterns. In both cases, the emphasis in the essays is on the travellers’ active engagement in the experience and on their negotiation of existing discourses. For even those who follow the trail invest it with personal meanings.
So It Vanished: Art, Taboo and Shared Space in Contemporary Aotearoa New Zealand
Authors: Barrett Jonathan
Published: September 2014

In February 2012, The Dowse Art Museum in Lower Hutt, near Wellington, planned to host So It Vanishes, an exhibition by acclaimed Mexican artist Teresa Margolles, whose often shocking works seek to highlight how dispensable human life has become in the parts of Mexico riven by drugs wars. Margolles’s installation would have used infinitesimal amounts of morgue water in a bubble mixture dispensed into an empty, silent room in the same building that sacred Māori treasures are housed. The incorporation of water used to wash corpses in So It Vanishes, particularly in proximity to cultural treasures, would have been deeply offensive, indeed dangerous, for Māori people. Following objections, the exhibition was cancelled. This article analyses the cancellation of So It Vanishes and seeks to answer whether and how transgressive art and indigenous beliefs may be reconciled in contemporary Aotearoa New Zealand.
'After me fellow caïcaï you': Eating the Other/The Other Eating
Authors: Speedy Karin Elizabeth
Published: September 2014

When it comes to European descriptions of the Other, the act of cannibalism has long been synonymous, to the Western imagination at least, with primitivism. As such, it often operates as a boundary line between the savage and the civilised. The spectre of the Kanak “anthropophages” of New Caledonia and the New Hebrides (Vanuatu) is ever-present in the writings of Georges Baudoux, whose fascination with cannibalism reflects the 19th-century colonial preoccupation with racial hierarchies and the demonization of the indigenous Other. Indeed, in his Légendes canaques, Baudoux’s representations of Kanak cannibalism are typical of the colonial literary genre – overly bloodthirsty, sensationalised and designed to distance the “instictive savages” or “cannibal animals” from the “rational” (read “superior”) colonizers. While Baudoux does not abandon this discourse in other stories, it is interesting to see how it is nuanced in the case of the métis (Kanak-European) protagonist of Jean M’Baraï. This paper explores the representations of the Other eating, including eating the Other, in Baudoux’s work, focusing particularly on the actions/reactions/reflexivity of Jean M’Baraï. To what extent can we see this character as a vehicle for conflicting colonial discourses on the métis as either “deviant degenerate” or the “great hope” for the future “civilization” of the colonized “race”? And where does Baudoux place himself in this clash of ideologies?
(In)Edible Algeria: Transmitting Pied-Noir Nostalgia Through Food
Authors: Hubbell Amy L.
Published: September 2014

For those exiled from Algeria during and after the Algerian War for Independence (1954-1962), sustaining memories of the homeland has been a consuming pastime. Food has especially played a large part in reconnecting Algeria’s former French citizens, the Pieds-Noirs, to their past. Annual gatherings feature typical dishes such as couscous, merguez, méchoui, mouna, which like the Proustian madeleine, transport the Pieds-Noirs to a preceding time of wholeness and comfort, allowing them to experience, if only fleetingly, a sense of immortality. While food has a reparative quality for the community’s memory, it is also the site of rejection and pain for some. Marie Cardinal writes about food as a site of unity with the indigenous Algerian community and rejection from her colonial French family. Similarly, in the collective autobiography Quatre soeurs: Hier, en Algérie, aujourd’hui en France, Frédérique Boblin, Eve Calo, Nelly Collet and Fabienne Rozotte explain their shared eating disorders as tied to their expulsion from Algeria. This essay demonstrates that the Pieds-Noirs can eat to remember Algeria, but the Algeria they knew can also prove to be inedible.
Food and Crime Fiction: Two Complementary Approaches to the Vietnamese Past in Tran-Nhut's Les travers du docteur Porc
Authors: Do Tess
Published: September 2014

With a series of detective novels set in 17th century Dai-Viet that showcase the traditions, beliefs and customs of an exotic culture, in which the food and food habits of the Vietnamese people play a prominent role, Thanh-Van Tran-Nhut, an engineer-turned-novelist of Vietnamese origins, has carved a niche for herself in the popular crime fiction market in France. This paper focuses on the novel Les Travers du Docteur Porc, in which Doctor Porc, forensic investigator and gourmand extraordinaire, adopts the mantle of chief detective from Tran-Nhut’s usual protagonist, the loyal mandarin Tan. In this movement, we argue, the author has shaped two different but complementary approaches to her birth-country’s turbulent past that coalesce in the gargantuan figure of the (politically unencumbered) doctor and connoisseur of Vietnamese cuisine. Whereas the process of ‘solving the crime’ can be read as an attempt to seek answers and restore order in the wake of senseless bloodshed, it is food, we contend, that emerges, not only as a source of pleasure, succour and stability, but as a cultural heritage that war and upheaval failed to destroy.
2 Poems: An Accidental Ape, First Watch
Authors: Marsh Roderick
Published: September 2014

Roderick Marsh lives in Melbourne and occasionally moonlights as an ecological economist and management consultant. He also writes poetry—often in an apron.
Naked in the Gymnasium: Women as Agents of Social Change
Authors: Mikula Maja
Published: September 2014

Women have throughout history participated in and sometimes initiated rebellions to defend the welfare of their family, community, class and race or ethnic group. It appears that generations of women in a wide range of political and social movements, individual women resisting social injustice and at least three waves of conscious feminism(s) have not yet succeeded in defeating the popular stigma surrounding female activism. Women moving in the public arena still evoke the same negative images they have conjured for centuries, reflected in such derogatory appellations as ‘viragos,’ ‘witches,’ ‘femmes-hommes,’ or ‘hyenas in petty-coats’. This paper looks at social change from the perspective of its arguably most cogent, but nevertheless controversial, agents. It examines a range of recent theories concerning gender and social change, to affirm women’s revolutionary potential beyond the boundaries of political revolution.
Memoria y retorno del exilio republicano catalán (Memory and Return of the Catalan Republican Exile)
Authors: Pujadas Comas d'Argemir Roser
Published: September 2014

The end of the Spanish Civil War in 1939 meant that many republicans went into exile fleeing Francoism. In the case of intellectuals and writers from Catalunia, exile constituted the only means of ensuring the continuity of their culture, given the cultural and linguistic repression by the dictatorship. Much later than they had expected, some were able to return but, after so many years, return meant yet another rupture; it meant returning to a country no longer the one so often remembered and yearned for.

Such events, as is often the case in turbulent historical periods, generated a need to bear witness to the individual and collective experiences, which in literary terms translated into a considerable volume of testimonial works – which continue to be published – by those who suffered this war and exile. As we shall see, memory becomes a kind of con-suelo – comfort - countering the ruptures with a sense of coherence and continuity.

For one who has had to leave their country, the land of their birth becomes part of the past, so that in such cases to make present what is far, to remember, involves not only temporal but also spatial issues. When the exile (if such a thing is possible) returns, time inexorably has passed. But what happens with the space re-encountered? In the case of two testimonial texts written by two republicans on their return from exile in Mexico – Al cap de 26 anys (1972) by Avel-lí Artís-Gener and Viatge a l’esperanca (1973), by Artur Bladé Desumvila – we propose to analyse the pattern woven between memory, homeland and return by the experience of exile. We shall see how the return, intended to contrast the idealised country with that in which the exile finds him/herself again, gives rise to a series of reflections about homeland and memory as the foundations of the exile’s identity.
Michel Houellebecq and the International Sexual Economy
Authors: Morrey Douglas
Published: September 2014

This paper explores the notion of an ‘international sexual economy’ in the work of the French writer Michel Houellebecq, and particularly his latest novel, Plateforme (2001). Houellebecq suggests that, since westerners no longer have the time or the inclination to sleep with each other, and since those in the third world have nothing to sell but their bodies, the exchange of cash for sex on a truly international scale is likely to represent the most lucrative sector of the global economy in the coming century. Whilst acknowledging the objections to this idea, the paper shows how it is based in a serious analysis of global capitalism which has something in common with the theoretical work of Jean-François Lyotard, in terms of both the postmodern and the libidinal economies. The paper further suggests that the virulent anti-psychologism of Houellebecq’s often brutal worldview implies a (largely undeclared) kinship with Friedrich Nietzsche. Finally, it offers an analysis of the ironic narrative strategies in Plateforme that are interpreted as the consequence of trying to criticize the cultural economy without being able to position oneself outside it.
Capitalizing Asian Studies: Critical Scholarship and the Production of Knowledge in a Globalizing World
Authors: Oakes Tim
Published: September 2014

This paper explores the implications of the related trends of economic globalization and the corporatization of higher education in the United States for Asian area studies scholarship. It argues that the scales at which geographical knowledge is produced are increasingly in flux due to the shift in global political economy. Area studies scholarship is subsequently left scrambling to both understand this shift and make its knowledge production somehow relevant and valuable in an arena in which knowledge about Asia is being produced and diffused from an increasingly diverse array of sources. In response, the paper suggests that more attention to the production of scale is needed if area studies scholars are to comprehend the changing relationship between our categories of geographic knowledge and global political economy.
Typicals/Típicos
Authors: Vélez Silvia
Published: September 2014

Typicals is a series of 12 colour photographs digitally created from photojournalistic images from Colombia combined with "typical" craft textiles and text from guest writers. Typicals was first exhibited as photographs 50cm x 75cm in size, each with their own magnifying glass, at the Contemporary Art Space at Gorman House in Canberra, Australia, in 2000. It was then exhibited in "Feedback: Art Social Consciousness and Resistance" at Monash University Museum of Art in Melbourne, Australia, from March to May 2003. From May to June 2003 it was exhibited at the Museo de Arte de la Universidad Nacional de Colombia Santa Fé Bogotá, Colombia.

In its current manifestation the artwork has been adapted from the catalogue of the museum exhibitions. It is broken up into eight pieces corresponding to the contributions of the writers. The introduction by Sylvia Vélez is the PDF file accessible via a link below this abstract. The other seven PDF files are accessible via the 'Supplementary Files' section to the left of your screen. Please note that these files are around 4 megabytes each, so it may be difficult to access them from a dial-up connection.
The Twilight of the Public Intellectual: Germany
Authors: Lewis Alison M.
Published: September 2014

This essay focuses on the questions of whether German unification resulted in a wholesale retreat of intellectuals from politics and engagement with social issues, as the rhetoric of failure would indicate, or whether the key debates of the period can be read instead as a sign that Germany is on the road to becoming a more 'normal' European nation. Before returning to these issuesat the end of this paper I first provide a broad historical and theoretical context for my discussion of the role of the concerned intellectual in Germany, before offering an overview of the respective functions of literary intellectuals in both German states in the post-war period. I then address a series of key debates and discussions in 1989 and the early nineteen-nineties that were responsible for changing the forms of engagement in intellectual debates in post-unification German society. I argue that the 1990s and early years of the new millennium hastened the disappearance of the writer as a universal intellectual and focused attention on the writer as an individualist and a professional. Today's youngest generation of writer in Germany is a specialist intellectual who intervenes in political and social matters from time to time but who is not expected to take a moral-ethical stance on most issues of national and international concern. S/he is one who frequently writes about personal subjects, but may also occasionally, as witnessed after September 11, turn his or her pen to topics of global concern as in terrorism and Islam. More often than not, however, writers now leave the work of commenting on political affairs to writers of the older guard and to other 'senior' specialist intellectuals.
Transnational Trajectories and Cultural Identity: Lessons from the Chilean-Australian Experience
Authors: Collin Philippa
Published: September 2014

This paper raises questions about the development of cultural identity as it will transform and impact upon the process of regional integration in the Asia Pacific Rim, through a consideration of the post-national tendencies created by migrant populations, in this case the Chilean diasporic community. I am specifically interested in how nationalisms impact on regional integration projects and how a post-national reading of the region might be beneficial in developing strategies in regional integration.
Financial Liberalisation, Banking Crisis and the Debtors’ Movement in México
Authors: Marchini Geneviève
Published: September 2014

In the aftermath of the 1982 external debt crisis and in a very restrictive international environment, Mexico abandoned its inward-looking economic model and adopted a more open, export-led and market-oriented stance. Since 1988, the authorities have taken critical steps that induced an increasing level of internationalisation of the economy, and, in 1994, regional integration through the implementation of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). These reforms have led to important transformations in the country’s economic structure as well as in its trade patterns. On the social and political side, they have widened the income gaps between different social sectors and regions, and eroded support for the ruling party, the Partido Revolucionario Institucional (PRI, Institutional Revolutionary Party).

This paper seeks to understand the emergence of the Barzón movement in 1993-94 a few months after the emergence of the Zapatistas. Unlike the Chiapas rebels, the Barzón didn’t represent poor, indigenous, landless peasants, but rather, heavily indebted small and medium producers.

The paper is divided into five sections. The first reviews the main features of structural reforms in Mexico and their results, to explain the context in which the debtors’ organisation is rooted. The second and third parts of the paper show how financial opening and bank deregulation produced a growing indebtedness among rural producers, industrial SMEs and households, leading to the birth and first steps of the Barzón movement in 1993-94. The fourth section accounts for the explosion of the debtors’ movements since 1995, while the last deals with its successes and failures in defending its membership.
Son: Part One
Authors: Higgie Jennifer
Published: September 2014

It is 1842. Two Englishman set out on a Grand Tour of Europe and the Middle East. One is a young, gifted artist; the other a Gentleman. By the time they return to England, the artist has become a devotee of the Egyptian god Osiris. One night, after dining together in a small inn in Cobham, he violently murders his beloved father, believing him to be an imposter. Why?

Son is a novel inspired by the life of Richard Dadd, one of the greatest Victorian painters and inmate of Bethlem Hospital - more commonly known as Bedlam. Part Two of Son will be published in Portal vol. 2, no. 1, January 2005.
Editor's welcome, PORTAL, Vol. 1, No. 2, July 2004
Authors: Allatson Paul
Published: September 2014

Since the highly successful inauguration of PORTAL in January 2004, we have received many kind expressions of support from international studies practitioners in a range of fields, and from such places as Canada, Italy, Mexico, Nigeria, New Zealand, Spain, Trinidad, the U.K., and the U.S.A. Particularly gratifying have been the endorsements of the journal and its publishing aims by people involved in their own electronic publishing enterprises.

For their generous responses to PORTAL, the Editorial Committee would like to express its collective appreciation to the following people: Professor Jean-Marie Volet, of the University of Western Australia, and the guiding editor of the ground-breaking e-journal Mots Pluriels (www.arts.uwa.edu.au/MotsPluriels); and Francis Leo Collins, member of the Editorial Committee for the Graduate Journal of Asia Pacific Studies (GJAPS), based in Auckland, New Zealand. PORTAL's readers may be interested in the current call for papers from GJAPS (www.arts.auckland.ac.nz/gjaps), for a special issue on "Imagining the Asia-Pacific" (deadline October 31, 2004).

This issue of PORTAL contains essays that cover wide terrain: the Chilean diasporic community in Australia; the world of German intellectuals; contemporary Mexican socio-political movements; rural-urban migration in China; and transnational advocacy networks and election monitoring in the Philippines, Chile, Nicaragua and Mexico. In the cultural section of this issue, we are delighted to present a short story from the noted German Studies scholar Anthony Stephens, and the first half of a beautiful, deeply poetic and haunting novel entitled Son, from the London-based writer and art-critic Jennifer Higgie. The novel’s second and final part will appear in PORTAL vol. 2, no. 1, in January 2005.

On a different note, we would like to express our support for the inaugural Ubud Writers and Readers Festival, to be held in Ubud, Bali, from October 11 to 17, 2004. The Festival, which is attracting interest from writers across the world, maintains a website at: http://www.ubudwritersfestival.com/ Finally, I would like to remind readers that the next issue of PORTAL (vol. 2, no. 1, January 2005) will be a special issue devoted to "Exile and Social Transformation." I would also like to encourage international studies practitioners and cultural producers working anywhere in the world to submit material for future issues.

Paul Allatson, Chair, PORTAL Editorial Committee
Son: Part Two
Authors: Higgie Jennifer
Published: September 2014

It is 1842. Two Englishman set out on a Grand Tour of Europe and the Middle East. One is a young, gifted artist; the other a Gentleman. By the time they return to England, the artist has become a devotee of the Egyptian god Osiris. One night, after dining together in a small inn in Cobham, he violently murders his beloved father, believing him to be an imposter. Why?

Son is a novel inspired by the life of Richard Dadd, one of the greatest Victorian painters and inmate of Bethlem Hospital - more commonly known as Bedlam. Part one of Son was published in PORTAL vol. 1, no. 2, in July 2004. This is the second and concluding part of the novel.
The Endless Reading of Interpretation? Said, Auerbach, and the Exilic Will to Criticism
Authors: Siassi Guilan
Published: September 2014

In this paper I consider how Edward Said elaborates his concept of exile—as both a physical displacement and as a hermeneutical situation or mode of critical activity—in a transhistorical dialogue with Erich Auerbach. In his efforts to delineate the interrelation between cultural discourses and historical ‘regimes of knowledge,’ Said shows intellectual exile (which gives rise to secular criticism) to be the preliminary step in a concrete act of cultural recuperation: namely the re-appropriation and mobilization of texts, through an exilic will to interpretation and synthesis. Through a close examination of Auerbach’s ‘Philology and Weltliteratur’ and Said’s ‘Secular Criticism’ I compare the writers’ consciousness of their worldly socio-political situations, their humanistic goals, and their readings of cultural history—which they evaluate in the form of literary representations and interpretations of reality. Said locates agency in the exile’s liminal situation, his ‘unhomely’ un-belonging, which affords him a unique perspective and a certain mobility of critical thought. He believes that Auerbach, in his cultural alienation as a Jew exiled to Istanbul during World War II, adopted such a threshold position and could thus exercise precisely this exilic will to criticism as he wrote his magisterial Mimesis. Through a ‘worldly self-situating’ between inside and outside and a refusal of all binding filiations or affiliations that would limit his ability to move freely between the two spaces, the secular critic following the model of Auerbach, can mediate contrapuntally between dominant and minority culture, challenge authority, and indeed, redistribute cultural capital to produce ‘non-coercive knowledge in the interests of human freedom.’ Exilic readings thus become a tool and weapon of resistance, which simultaneously enable a critical recovery of one’s lost world and a reconstitution of the cultural mythos of ‘home,’ to impart historical, or at least aesthetic, coherence to the traumatic experience of loss.
Exile, Return and Restitution in the Czech Republic
Authors: Vadura Katharine A
Published: September 2014

The exile and return experiences in the Czech lands since 1918 have been various and have had significant implications for the people who live and once lived in that territory. The focus of this paper is on the Sudeten Germans a former minority of the Czech lands. The exile experience of this group has resulted in significant debate as to whether this form of exile as legislated banishment was expulsion or displacement, and whether they should have the right to return. In addition the question of guilt as a mechanism for invoking the forced transfer of a population has also raised the issue of recompense or restitution. Conceptual issues like nationalism, identity, belonging and the right to a homeland have played an important part in the attempts at the development of a stable state and also more recently reconciliation processes between the Czechs and Sudeten Germans.
Outcaste or Internal Exile? Ambiguous Bodies in the Making of Modern Japan
Authors: Amos Timothy D
Published: September 2014

Based on more orthodox interpretations of ‘exile’ such as those put forward by Edward Said, many similarities can be drawn between the ideas of exile- particularly the notion of internal exile - and the outcaste that we see in the form of the Dalit in India. In this paper, we will firstly analyse the conceptual linkages between ‘exile’, ‘outcast’, and ‘outcaste’, highlighting both points of interchangeableness and departure for these notions as they relate specifically to the late Tokugawa Japanese ‘outcaste’ groups known as eta and hinin who were officially liberated through the Emancipation Edict promulgated in 1871. Second, after a brief background discussion where we problematize the above notions through the lenses of time and space, we will examine the state/condition of being an outcaste in the late Tokugawa period, and consider how close this situation was to a state of exile. Third, we will examine a specific example of the act of re-inclusion of outcastes into their local community created by the 1871 Emancipation Edict that led to the creation of the ‘former outcaste’ or ‘new citizen’, and analyse to what extent this embodies the process of returning from exile. Lastly, the paper will conclude with a brief discussion of the extent to which a crossover between the terms ‘outcaste’ and ‘exile’ may be applicable in the Japanese context, as well as the positive aspects of attempting such a conceptual reconfiguration for historians and activists working on the Buraku problem.
Nostalgia, Shame and the Transplanted Cuban: "la cubana arrepentida"
Authors: Lorenzo Olga
Published: September 2014

Literature can illuminate and extend our understanding of the affect of shame. In this paper, I will use extracts from my fictional works, published and in progress, and other fictional work and poetry by Cuban and Cuban-American exile writers to illustrate some aspects of shaming in relation to the experience of being a Cuban-American migrant in the United States, particularly relative to the sense of exilic nostalgia for the lost homeland. I will also look at how shame is used by the minority culture to control, erode or slow the process of assimilation and to try to maintain the illusion of the superiority of the minority culture.
Acceptance: on 1956: Desire and the Unknowable
Authors: Hajdú Sue
Published: September 2014

1956: desire and the unknowable is my first response to my father's photographs of the Hungarian Uprising of October 1956. The paper emerges from my position as a member of the Hungarian diaspora, whereby my very existence and identity as a member of a diaspora owes itself to a historical event that I am unable to lay claim to. The work traces tensions created by multiple desires - in diasporic longing, in positivist history-making, and in the demands put on the photograph as unmediated historical evidence.

This paper is an adaptation from a chapter in my Masters dissertation - Little Histories. It opens with an outline of the context of production of the original images, as well my responses to these images. It then goes on to discuss issues that have had a significant impact on the creation of the work, whether arising from the original images or from critical theory. The overriding notion is that vernacular photographs can be used to contest and replace images and ideologies that have come to dominate our memories of the past, and that the past becomes meaningful through such acts of engagement.

1956: desire and the unknowable was first exhibited in a solo exhibition, Little Histories, at the Sydney College of the Arts in 2001. Later that year it was presented, together with 30 of my father’s original photographs, in a father-daughter collaborative exhibition at 62 Robertson, Brisbane. Between Ranke and the sublime: two approaches to Budapest 1956 presented opposing modernist and post-modern views about the ability of the photograph to provide knowledge of the past. The work was most recently shown again at a residency in CESTA, in the Czech Republic, as part of a site-specific installation. In the country where my father once walked I presented a selection of my father’s work at the Szabo Ervin Library, Budapest, in 2001.
Editor's welcome, PORTAL, Vol. 2, No. 2, July 2005
Authors: Allatson Paul
Published: September 2014

Welcome to the July 2005 issue of Portal, a special issue with the title ‘Strange Localities: Utopias, Intellectuals and Identities in the 21st Century,’ guest edited by Alistair Fox and Hilary Radner (both from the University of Otago, New Zealand), who convened an international colloquium on this theme in January 2004, and Murray Pratt (University of Technology Sydney, Australia). As Alistair Fox says in his introduction to the special issue, the twelve papers gathered under the ‘Strange Localities’ rubric provide rich insights into the ways by which ‘the contemporary utopian impulse is expressing itself, both in the search for utopia, and through the exposure of false utopias.’ With a broad geographical reach, and an equally broad critical gaze, the essays collected here shed new light on the critical, yet often ambivalent, role that identity politics play in myriad utopian projects, and also in such critical enterprises and epoch-defining processes as postcolonialism, postfeminism, postmodernism, transnationalism, multiculturalism, and economic and cultural globalization.

In addition to the papers collected in the special issue section, this issue of Portal includes a number of essays that, while not addressing the special issue theme, also have much to say about the nexus between contemporary identity debates, intellectual practice, and utopian imaginaries. We are also pleased to introduce in the Portal Cultural Works' section two short chronicle-like pieces by Moses Iten, a young Australian writer.

Paul Allatson, Chair, PORTAL Editorial Committee
Beauty in Bastardy: Breytenbach on Afrikaans and the Afrikaners
Authors: Kennelly Brian G.
Published: September 2014

The writings of Breyten Breytenbach nuance, extend, and complicate the ongoing debate over Afrikaner cultural identity. Breytenbach's choice of the supra-ethnic, supra-'national' term 'Afriqua'--in place of 'Afrikaner,' for example--better reflects the truly 'mongrel' nature of Afrikaans and the Afrikaners, their process of 'becoming,' their self-positioning towards history and the future in the Rainbow Nation that is the new South Africa.
Te Kauae Maro o Muri-ranga-whenua (The Jawbone of Muri-ranga-whenua)
Authors: Ka'ai Tania Marie
Published: September 2014

This article will illustrate how various tribal traditions are represented, and more importantly misrepresented, in the film. Furthermore, this article concentrates on the education and social status of young M?ori women, demonstrating how the patriarchy/feminism division operates very differently in the Ng?ti Porou tribe than it does either in the movie or in Eurocentric feminisms. A description of why a M?ori/P?keh? (a non-M?ori person of European ancestry) film production aiming at a global market intervenes on tribal cultural reproductions so as to transfigure the role of elders and girls, provides an account of various sites for tribal reproduction (from the local meting place to the globally popular movie) and their relative power.
Four Shades of Political Coalitions: Exploring the Possibilities for Powerful Political Coalitions Between Unions and Community Organisations
Authors: Tattersall Amanda
Published: September 2014

This paper aims to develop an analytical framework different types of political coalitions between unions and community organisations. It presents a four part framework that categorises different types of coalitions according to their form and power, and describes the possibilities and limitations of each.