Law Commons^™

Strategies For Dissenting Scientists, Brian Martin

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

Those who challenge conventional views or vested interests in science are likely to encounter difficulties. A scientific dissenter should first of all realize that science is a system of power as well as knowledge, in which interest groups play a key role and insiders have an extra advantage. Dissenters are likely to be ignored or dismissed. If they gain some recognition or outside support, they may be attacked. In the face of such obstacles, there are several strategies, including mimicking science, aiming at lower status outlets, enlisting patrons, seeking a different audience, exposing suppression of dissent, and building a social …

Technology In Different Worlds, Brian Martin

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

Insight into the relation between technology and society can be obtained by imagining that the world is organised differently and then determining how technology would be different. This approach is illustrated by discussion of three alternative worlds: one in which defence is carried out by nonviolent methods, one in which there is no intellectual property, and one in which workers control decisions about their work.

Debating Point' Political Refutation Of A Scientific Theory: The Case Of Polio Vaccines And The Origin Of Aids, Brian Martin

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

The theory that AIDS developed from contaminated polio vaccines used in Africa in the 1950s has never been properly investigated. Legal action and editorial decisions mean that the published record gives the misleading impression that the theory has been refuted.

Non-Conceptual Content And Objectivity, Daniel Hutto

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

In recent times the question of whether or not there is such a thing as nonconceptual content has been the object of much serious attention. For analytical philosophers, the locus classicus of the view that there is such a phenomena is to be found in Evans remarks about perceptual experience in Varieties of Reference. He famously wrote:

In general, we may regard a perceptual experience as an informational state of the subject: it has a certain content -- the world is represented a certain way -- and hence it permits of a non-derivative classification as true or false. For an …

Self And World, Daniel Hutto

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

Self and World is an attempt to provide and assess arguments for materialism about self-consciousness. This is not an ontological thesis, rather it is the claim that in some sense ‘‘self-consciousness requires awareness of oneself qua subject as shaped, located and solid’’ (p. 117). Importantly, the qualifying ‘some sense’ leaves room for unpacking in terms of a conception of oneself as a physical object or merely an intuitive awareness of oneself as such. Taking note of this crucial distinction, which he uses to good effect, Cassam’s book makes a sober, sustained case for this thesis by relying on three complementary …

Desire, Mateship And The 'National Type': Vance Palmer's Legend For Sanderson, Antonio Simoes Da Silva

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

If we are to believe his critics Vance Palmer's Legend for Sanderson was not his most successful novel. Indeed Vivian Smith, one of Palmer's most perceptive, persistent and patient critics, has gone so far as to suggest that it 'is a tired book'. lt is also generally left out of discussions of Palmer's work in literary histories of Australian writing. Thus it is, for example, the only one of Palmer's major works not discussed by Ken Goodwin in his A History of Australian Literature. And, although they mention it, neither Peter Pierce in 'Literary Forms in Australian Literature' nor …

Thinking Through New, Philip Marshall

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

A friend of mine once tried to capture the feeling that one gets from a new thing. He decided that there was no word to describe the sensation of having an unblemished eraser when you were in primary school, but nevertheless it produced a kind of fascinating awe in the apparent perfection of the new. A similar feeling captures the new car owner in smelling the interior's recently minted plastic. Used car dealers would doubtless love to bottle that smell because it produces the momentary pleasure of new ownership. And I am sure there are certain people who are addicted …

Confession And Identity, Philip Marshall

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

It seems an appropriate time for confessions. Clinton, in what could be described as an "incremental" confession, has made his admission of "inappropriate" intimate relations with Monica Lewinsky not only a running media event, but also a semantic debate about how far one goes before one is both lying and having sex.

Confession is, at its base, a revelation of the self. It is marking one's boundaries of identity, particularly in how that identity is publicly displayed. Confession also implies that there are hidden elements of the self that are not normally revealed, but that some shift has occurred, some …

Playing Backwards: Anticipatory Memories In The Antipodes, Philip Marshall

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

When I first relocated to Australia, there was a clear three month delay for cultural products coming from North America to arrive. It was the era of Jurassic Park and for those three months I had a high level of what Bourdieu originally called "cultural capital" amongst a certain age group who were anticipating the breakthrough computer-generated images of the flocking dinosaurs and the menacing intelligence of the raptors. At that time, there was no basketball team named after a dinosaur (Toronto Raptors) and only the first season of an ice-hockey team named after a movie (Anaheim Mighty Ducks). It …

The Threat Of Computer Crime: Identifying The Problem And Formulating A Response At Force Level., Andy Bliss, Clive Harfield

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

Computers impact on many aspects of daily life and increasingly are utilized in a wide range of criminal activities. They facilitate actions which might come to be considered criminal but which, as yet, are not illegal and they have affected the nature of victimization. Inevitably police forces are having to come to terms with this new phenomenon. This article presents research undertaken by Sussex Police in identifying the extent of the potential problem (elsewhere previous studies have focused on the nature of the problem) and in formulating a response. The work was undertaken by a Computer Crime Working Group of …

Multilateral Investment Guarantee Agency: A Critical Appreciation Of Its Guarantee Service, S M. Solaiman

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

Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) in developing countries alarmingly decreased during the first half of the 1980s. Gross FDI declined during this period from $13 billion to $9 billion in 1986.1 However, there are strong indications that viable investment opportunities exist in those countries but investors tend to avoid these opportunities because of concern about risks which are primarily non-commercial and political in nature. In such a situation Multilateral Investment Guarantee Agency (MIGA), fifth affiliate to the World Bank Group, has been established as the first international guarantor of FDI. It is an autonomous international organisation with 'full judicial personality' under …

Fisheries Subsidies, The Wto And The Pacific Island Tuna Fisheries, Roman Grynberg, Ben M. Tsamenyi

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

Focuses on fisheries trade, regulated under the "Agreement on Subsidies and Countervailing Measures" outside the World Trade Organization agreement. Suggests much stricter discipline is needed for the sector, led by the environmental interest, the USA and New Zealand. Relates fish stock depletion to subsides, which are not quantifiable, in order to create a free market and efficient producers. Points out that technology and high incomes created the fish stock depletion, so subsidies are irrelevant; while all World Trade Organization members subsidize fisheries, none can be found to attack it. Proposes new World Trade Organization disciplines for licensing, training and compensating …

Voyaging In, Out And Down Under: A Discussion Of Elizabeth Jolley’S ‘Vera Wright Trilogy’, Dorothy L. Jones

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

Journeys are a recurrent feature of My Father's Moon (1989), Cabin Fever (1990) and The Georges' Wife (1993). Protagonist Vera Wright travels continually by train, bus and bicycle. She voyages half across the world from Britain to Australia and flies from Australia to New York. On foot, she treads a maze of suburban streets, wheeling young children in England and pushing her husband's wheelchair in Australia. Such journeying corresponds both to Vera's progress through life as a social being and her inward development.

Cultivating Empire: The Gardens Women Write, Dorothy L. Jones

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

Western culture invests gardens with powerful, if ambivalent symbolism. They invite us to commune with nature while delighting in how human hands have guided and controlled it. The Old Testament locates the origin of human life in a garden which simultaneously represents paradise and paradise lost. Paradise, whether on earth or in heaven, is, in Christian tradition, frequently represented as a walled garden with hardship and evil fenced out. But this is a double-sided image invoking both sexual wantonness and chastity, for gardens are also associated with the beauty and desirability of the female body. Because Eve's seductiveness was held …

The Floating Web, Dorothy L. Jones

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

For centuries now, textiles and the skills required in their creation- spinning, weaving, embroidery, sewing, quilting-have been considered to be women's work, occupying them indoors while men engaged in more serious activities like warfare. In Homer's Iliad, Andromache, wife to the Trojan prince, Hector, begs him not to risk his life in battle, leaving her widowed and his son an orphan, only to have him send her home:

Putting Down Roots: Colony As Plantation, Paul Sharrad

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

Most references to the Banyan tree (ficus bengaliensis) cite the huge specimen in the Calcutta Botanical Gardens (e.g. Britannica 137). This mix of botany as a sign of indigenous identity (rootedness) and western science (Linnean taxonomy) with urban civic space (Botanical Garden) constructed during the colonial era takes on other discursive appurtenances. The rootedness of trees also jostles with travel, nature with trade. The great-rooted fig apparently got its English name from being encountered first in Persia as a place where Indian merchants (banias) met to do business. Apart from this diasporic aspect, though, in India, the tree is frequently …

Gardening In The Tropics: A Horticultural Guide To Carribbean Politics And Poetics, With Special Reference To The Poetry Of Olive Senior, Anne Collett

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

"Economic Botany" of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries was an enormously effective colonizing force, whose power I would suggest, lay in the de-personalizing nature of its discourse and its nominative function. The botanical re-naming of plants indigenous to the new world had the effect of erasing all historical claim to ownership by disrupting the original relationship between nature and culture. A process of naming that laid claim to an objective and universalizing relationship between the "man of science" and his botanical specimen was an effective colonizing tool in which tropical plants were dispersed and displaced from their naturai and cultural …