Law Commons^™

Unraveling The Blue Paradox: Incomplete Analysis Yields Incorrect Conclusions About Phoenix Islands Protected Area Closure, Quentin A. Hanich, Randi Rotjan, Transform Aqorau, Megan Bailey, Brooke M. Campbell, Noella Gray, Rebecca Gruby, John Hampton, Yoshitaka Ota, Hannah Parris, Chris Reid, Rashid Sumaila, Wilf Swartz

Faculty of Law, Humanities and the Arts - Papers (Archive)

In PNAS, McDermott et al. (1) analyze a 2014-2016 central Pacific fishing surge, focusing on the Phoenix Islands Protected Area (PIPA) inside the Kiribati exclusive economic zone (EEZ). The authors incorrectly attribute the surge to the anticipated industrial fishing closure of PIPA and describe the phenomenon as a blue paradox (i.e., an unintended negative consequence of a conservation policy). However, a broader analysis demonstrates that this surge was unrelated to the closure of PIPA and was due to a strong El Ni~no event that created a fishing surge across multiple EEZs and high seas, not just PIPA (2).

Unclear About Fairness, Australia's Major Parties Focus On Expediency, Gregory C. Melleuish

Faculty of Law, Humanities and the Arts - Papers (Archive)

Both of Australia’s major parties have variously used “fairness” to describe key policies and in their election pitches. Labor leader Bill Shorten emphasised the concept in Sunday’s first leaders’ debate, while Treasurer Scott Morrison said the superannuation changes announced in the May budget were done in the name of fairness.

Speaking With: Serial's Julie Snyder About Making Groundbreaking Podcasts, Siobhan A. Mchugh

Faculty of Law, Humanities and the Arts - Papers (Archive)

No abstract provided.

We Need To Talk About How We Talk About Climate Change, Sharon Beder

Faculty of Law, Humanities and the Arts - Papers (Archive)

How we talk about climate change has a lot to do with how we feel about it, and what we’re willing to do to act on it. Recent research from the US found that the terms “global warming” and “climate change” evoke different reactions: global warming is perceived as far more threatening.

While there is no similar research in Australia, over the past 25 years we’ve seen debate shift from the greenhouse effect to climate change to climate variability — with a corresponding decrease in action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

Global warming, the US research found, is more likely …

Introduction: Ways Of Knowing About Human Rights In Asia, Vera C. Mackie

Faculty of Law, Humanities and the Arts - Papers (Archive)

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) was adopted on 10 December 1948 by the United Nations General Assembly. We have thus seen 65 years of the international project of addressing human rights issues at a global level through the United Nations and associated organisations. Human rights occupy a paradoxical place in international politics. Human rights treaties address the most intimate issues of personal freedom, autonomy and self-determination, but the institutions developed for the promotion of human rights operate at a global level seemingly distanced from this intimate and individual scale. In human rights advocacy there is thus constant mediation …

Ethical And Legal Issues In Teaching About Japanese Popular Culture To Undergraduate Students In Australia, Mark J. Mclelland

Faculty of Law, Humanities and the Arts - Papers (Archive)

Interest in Japanese popular culture, particularly young people’s engagement with manga and animation, is widely acknowledged to be a driving factor in recruitment to undergraduate Japanese language and studies courses at universities around the world. Contemporary students live in a convergent media culture where they often occupy multiple roles as fans, students and ‘produsers’ of Japanese cultural content. Students’ easy access to and manipulation of Japanese cultural content through sites that offer ‘scanlation’ and ‘fansubbing’ services as well as sites that enable the production and dissemination of dōjin works raise a number of ethical and legal issues, not least infringement …

Fictionalism About Folk Psychology, Daniel Hutto

Faculty of Law, Humanities and the Arts - Papers (Archive)

This paper argues that fictionalism about folk psychology, FaF, is ill motivated in any domain. It is argued that there is no advantage in trying to vindicate folk psychology by treating the constructs of classical cognitivism--namely, subpersonal mental representations--as useful fictions in contrast to serious scientific posits or as serving as the basis for philosophical explanations. Both scientific and philosophical considerations point to the conclusion that subpersonal representations of the sort that classical cognitivism posits should be eliminated, not preserved, by our best science of mind. Yet there is no need to assume that folk psychological explanations are subpersonally based. …

Dolphin-Friendly Tuna: We're Worrying About The Wrong Species, Quentin Hanich

Faculty of Law, Humanities and the Arts - Papers (Archive)

Seafood is increasingly marketed as the clean, healthy choice for consumers – full of good oils and proteins and low in fat – with canned tuna a favourite cheap source of healthy protein. But science provides ever-worsening reports on the state of many fisheries, and their effect on marine ecosystems.

As international conservation negotiations flounder, consumers and industry are increasingly relying on eco-labelling to tell which seafood products come from sustainably managed fisheries. But there’s more to tuna than “dolphin-friendly”: what do these labels really tell us?

Cultural Politics: Who Cares About The Arts?, Marcus O'Donnell

Faculty of Law, Humanities and the Arts - Papers (Archive)

The fact that the arts haven’t starred in this election and its media coverage is perhaps no big surprise. But it sends a disturbing signal about the place of the arts in our public discourse.

When Arts Minister Tony Burke and shadow arts spokesperson George Brandis addressed an arts forum in Western Sydney last week it was one of the few moments when the arts got a focus in media reporting, but even then coverage was scant. A single story appeared in the Fairfax papers, The Australian followed up their debate story with a Brandis profile and this week the …

Which World, And Why Do We Worry About It?, Paul Sharrad

Faculty of Law, Humanities and the Arts - Papers (Archive)

The paper looks at various meanings of ‘World Literature’ (widely read books; great works of transcultural influence; a disciplinary structure and practice), assessing Australia’s place in each and what might underlie a wish to belong to any.

In particular, it locates the last focus of scholarly discussion in French and US sites and the drive to reform Comparative Literature studies, examining possible factors leading Australian universities to engage with such debates and possible effects on local practice.

The paper notes how Postcolonial literary studies called for this kind of reform of comparative literature and pushed towards a ‘world literature’ under …

Responding To Genocide: Australian Parliamentary Discussions About The Crisis In Darfur, Deborah Mayersen, Thomas Galloway

Faculty of Law, Humanities and the Arts - Papers (Archive)

‘Australia’s response [to the crisis in Darfur] has been slow, it has been hesitant, and, I regret to say, it has been inadequate’, remarked Shadow Minister for Foreign Affairs Kevin Rudd in February 2005 (House of Representatives Hansard: 47). Since 2003, genocide in Darfur has claimed more than 300,000 lives, with 2.6 million more displaced by the conflict (Degomme and Guha-Sapir 2010: 294-300; Reeves 2012). The international response to the crisis has been slow and lacklustre, and while the intensity of the conflict has fluctuated in the past nine years, the situation remains dire. The Australian government’s policy response to …

Great Big Hairy Bees! Regulating The European Bumblebee, 'Bombus Terrestris L'. What Does It Say About The Precautionary Principle?, Cameron Moore, Caroline Gross

Faculty of Law, Humanities and the Arts - Papers (Archive)

The previous Commonwealth Minister for the Environment, Mr Garrett, rejected a request to allow the importation of live bumblebees (Bombus terrestris L.) to mainland Australia. New South Wales and Victoria had already listed the introduction of bumblebees as, respectively, a key threatening process and a potentially threatening process. The Commonwealth, however, had previously declined an application to list the introduction of bumblebees as a key threatening process, although its Threatened Species Scientific Committee urged 'that extreme caution be shown in considering any proposal to introduce this species to the mainland.' The potential threat from bumblebees would appear to beg the …

Bullshit: An Australian Perspective, Or, What Can An Organisational Change Impact Statement Tell Us About Higher Education In Australia?, Katherine Bode, Leigh Dale

Faculty of Law, Humanities and the Arts - Papers (Archive)

In the last few years, a scholarly critique of current forms and directions of higher education has become increasingly prominent. This work, often but not exclusively focussed on the American and British systems, and on humanities disciplines, laments the transformation of the university into ‘a fast-food outlet that sells only those ideas that its managers believe will sell [and] treats its employees as if they were too devious or stupid to be trusted’ (Parker and Jary 335). Topics include the proliferation of courses and subject areas seen as profitable, particularly for overseas students;1 the commensurate diminution or dissolution of ‘unprofitable’ …

Speech Acts And Performances Of Scientific Citizenship: Examining How Scientists Talk About Therapeutic Cloning, Nicola J. Marks

Faculty of Law, Humanities and the Arts - Papers (Archive)

Scientists play an important role in framing public engagement with science. Their language can facilitate or impede particular interactions taking place with particular citizens: scientists’ “speech acts” can “perform” different types of “scientific citizenship”. This paper examines how scientists in Australia talked about therapeutic cloning during interviews and during the 2006 parliamentary debates on stem cell research. Some avoided complex labels, thereby facilitating public examination of this field. Others drew on language that only opens a space for publics to become educated, not to participate in a more meaningful way. Importantly, public utterances made by scientists here contrast with common …

Editorial: What We Talk About When We Talk About 'The Underground', Lucas Ihlein

Faculty of Law, Humanities and the Arts - Papers (Archive)

Editorial: In guest-editing this issue of Artlink, I have not been interested in unearthing the work of 'Australia's hottest young underground artists'. In time, they will unearth themselves, and they don't need my help. What I do want to talk about, and what some of the writers in this issue of Artlink tackle, are more literal under-ground phenomena: guerrilla gardening, mining and indigenous land claims, the digging of holes as a form of art, and ruminations on rubbish-filled ponds beneath city expressways. In other words, I'm interested in the underground as a relationship with (and under) the ground itself.

Talking About My Childhood: Tacky, Jonathan P. Cockburn

Faculty of Law, Humanities and the Arts - Papers (Archive)

The work by Jon Cockburn exhibited in the Wynne Competition at the AGNSW (1981-82) was entitled Talking About my Childhood: Tacky, and this relief sculpture explores the fragmentation of self that accompanies shifting meanings of place. The work takes its title from an instance in 1981 when Joan Brassil, Judith Blackall and Jon Cockburn went to the Australia Hotel, at the Rocks, for a few beers after completing respective projects in their shared studio space (Cumberland Street). Jon Cockburn got talking about his childhood in Papua New Guinea and Joan said: “Jon you have got to be where your soul …