Journal articles on the topic 'Afghanistan. Agricultural extension work Afghanistan'

AbstractKitchen gardens may improve family food security and nutrition. While these gardens are the domain of women in Afghanistan, women face unique challenges accessing training and resources to maximize small-scale agricultural output. The University of Maryland's Women in Agriculture Project builds capacity among female extension educators to work with vulnerable women to implement and maintain kitchen gardens. Extension educators use experiential methods to teach vegetable gardening, apiculture, small-scale poultry production, post-harvest handling and processing, nutrition and marketing through workshops, demonstration gardens and farmer field schools. This paper explores contextual factors related to women's food security and agricultural opportunities, describes key project activities and approaches and discusses project success and challenges, sustainability and implications for future programs.

Access to credit is essential for sustainable agricultural development. This paper evaluates the impact of formal and informal agricultural credit, access to extension services, and different combinations of agricultural credit and extension services on the economic outcomes of farming households in Afghanistan. This study applies a quasi-experimental approach (propensity score matching) and inverse-probability-weighted regression adjustment (IPWRA) analysis. The data comes from a survey of 277 randomly selected farming households in the three districts of rural Afghanistan. The results show that having access to formal agricultural credit has a positive and differentiated impact on the farming costs and net revenue of farming households. However, the effects increase when a farming household has access to both formal credit and extension services. The results also reveal that credit constraints affect farming costs and net revenue. The study provides some practical implications for agricultural development policymakers. First, formal agricultural credit affects farm revenue in rural Afghanistan. Second, the impact of credit bundled with agricultural extension services on farm revenue is higher than the impact of the provision of each service separately. Therefore, a more sustainable agricultural credit arrangement should be supplemented by extension services for farmers in Afghanistan.

Adequate access to credit is necessary for the sustainable development of agriculture. This study uses a double hurdle model to investigate what affects farming households’ credit participation and amount, and a Probit model to find out credit constraints. For this purpose, the data from a survey of 292 farming households in Afghanistan was utilized. The study finds that households obtain credit for their agricultural activities from various formal and informal sources. The results of the double hurdle model reveal that the financial activities of the households were positively determined by crop diversity, education, number of adults in a household, size of land, and access to extension. Non-agricultural income decreases the likelihood of participation. The results of the analysis of credit constraints indicate that formal credit did not help small-scale and remoter farming households; however, these households relied on informal credit, especially when they faced income shock. Furthermore, religious belief increased the chances of avoiding formal credit but not informal credit. It is suggested that formal credit should be expanded to rural areas, especially to small-scale farming households. Policy makers should also consider increasing access to extension. Formal financial institutions should provide Sharia-compliant credit, which increases the confidence level of households in using formal credit in Afghanistan.

Since war started at the end of 2001, the economy was severely devasted in Afghanistan, especially for the agriculture sector. Maize is the third most important cereal crop in Afghanistan, but the productivity of maize has a declining trend which may be caused by low efficiency of maize farmers nowadays. This study examines the production efficiency of maize producers and its important factors with the cross-sectional data form a multi-stage sampling survey of 250 maize producers in Helmand province in 2019. With the adoption of stochastic production frontier (SPF) model and production cost function, the paper gets the estimations of the average technical efficiency (0.737), allocative efficiency (0.65) and economic efficiency (0.568). The inputs, including land, labor, seed, fertilizer and pesticide/weedicides, have significant impacts on maize production and most of the farms exhibit an increasing return to scales. In addition, Tobit regression was applied to identify the influential factors of the production efficiencies for maize producers and the results indicate that education, family size, farm size, farming experience, contact to extension services and access to credit have significantly influence on the efficiency level. Finally, the study suggests that government should take some initiatives, such as extending the agricultural extension service, ensuring supply of high quality seeds and sufficient fertilizer with affordable prices and economical provision of mobile internet facility in remote areas, which will enhance the productivity and efficiency of the farmers and ultimately boost up their economic welfare and livelihood.

Afghanistan is a net importer of wheat which is the staple food in the country. In order to improve the levels of food sufficiency, prevailing large yield gaps in wheat need to be reduced. This study assessed the reasons/factors influencing low wheat productivity and/or large yield gaps in different production systems in five major wheat-producing provinces in Afghanistan using a stochastic frontier production function model. The results indicated that the mean technical efficiency of wheat farmers was 0.67, and there was clear scope to improve wheat production by 33% in the short run with the same level of inputs. The potential yield gap could be reduced if adoption of good agricultural practices such as the use of improved wheat varieties with recommended seed rates was promoted through more effective transfer of technologies (training and extension) in the target provinces. Such efforts would help improve domestic wheat production and reduce dependency on wheat imports.

My work with displaced Kuchi nomads in Afghanistan has obliged me to give considerable reflection to the above insight. My experience revealed what I have come to consider unwarranted theoretical assumptions in the anthropological literature that flow naturally from notions about reason deeply ingrained in our cultural orientations and the vernacular forms that express it. I believe that evading the bounds of such assumptions may well require cultural and linguistic extensions that consider emotion every bit as important as thought, an extension that assumes the two as inextricably one.

The objective of this work is to determine the socio-economic importance of saffron production as an alternative to opium production in Afghanistan, and to determine if saffron production could influence farmers’ incomes. The primary data for the survey was obtained via direct interviews with farmers of 4 saffron leader districts in Herat, where 95% Saffron production was noted during 2016-2017. Factor analysis was used to determine the factors that influence saffron producers. Cluster analysis was used further, to separate farmer income groups. According to the first cluster, the most important factors affecting agricultural production were: negative climatic conditions while market instability was the second factor. Saffron producers’ annual average yield is 6.6 kg/ha in results that showed that if opium production is permitted, saffron farmers would produce opium due to the high revenue associated with opium production in Afghanistan.

Using a qualitative Delphi method, this study explored how the Pashtun community, living across the border of Afghanistan and Pakistan, perceives the role and significance of non-governmental organizations (NGOs). The study also examined deep-rooted causes of the resistance to NGO-based development and suggested best practice strategies. Analysis of the Delphi finding showed consensus that most NGOs are perceived with deep suspicions and fear among the Pashtun society. Most of these suspicions and elements of mistrust were echoed in terms of an extension of western imperialism, violations of local cultures, spreading immorality, corruption and lack of credibility, and transparency. We discuss the implications for social work practice.

After 20 years of neglect by international patrons, agriculture is now again in the headlines because high food prices are increasing food anxiety and poverty. In the coming years, it will be important to increase food productivity and production in developing countries, expressly in Sub-Saharan Africa and South Asian countries like Afghanistan with smallholders. This, however, wants finding viable solutions to a number of complex procedural, institutional, and policy issues, including land markets, research on seeds and inputs, agricultural extension, credit, rural organization, connection to markets, rural non-farm employment, trade policy and food price stabilization. This paper reviews what the economic poetry has to say on these topics. It debates in turn the role played by agriculture in the development course and the interactions between agriculture and other economic sectors, the determinants of the Green Revolt and the foundations of agricultural growth, issues of income diversification by farmers, approaches to rural growth, and issues of international trade policy and food security, which have been at the root of the crisis in agricultural commodity instability in recent years.

Abstract. This work describes geoserver-rest, an open-source python package that can manage the geospatial data in a geoserver which is helpful for uploading, editing, and deleting the raster/vector layers from various sources. It is also useful for generating the style/legend from the uploaded geospatial data. Thus, generated legend can be used for visualization of maps in the web-GIS platform. The package is successfully used to build the web-GIS portal for agricultural datasets of Afghanistan, which has around 6000 map layers. The main benefit that geoserver-rest provides to this project is the ability to upload the data to the geoserver and create the styles file dynamically. Thus, created style file are directly linked to the corresponding layer and provide the Web Mapping Service (WMS) standard and visualize in an interactive way.

Thailand’s near-total elimination of opium poppy cultivation is attributed to “alternative development” programming, which replaces illicit crops with licit ones. However, opium poppy cultivation was not drastically reduced because substitute crops earned the same income as opium: nothing can equal the price of opium to smallholder farmers, especially those without land tenure. Thailand’s reduction in poppy cultivation was achieved by the increased presence and surveillance capability of state security actors, who, year by year, were able to locate and destroy fields, and arrest cultivators, with increasing accuracy. This coercion was also accompanied by benefits to cultivators, including the provision of health and education services and the extension of roads; both stick and carrot constituted the encroachment of the Thai state. The provision of citizenship to hill tribe members also gave them a vested interest in the state, through their ability to hold land, access health care, education and work opportunities, amongst others. These initiatives did not occur without costs to hill tribe cultures for whom a symbiotic relationship with the land was and remains disrupted. These findings indicate that alternative development programming unlinked to broader state-building initiatives in Afghanistan, Myanmar and other opium poppy-producing areas will fail, because short-term, high-yield, high value, imperishable opium will remain the most logical choice for poor farmers, especially given the lack of a farmer’s vested interest in the state which compels them to reduce their income whilst offering them no other protections or services.

Afghanistan hosts the Hindu Kush, an extension of the Himalaya mountains that act as water sources for five major rivers flowing through Afghanistan. Most of these rivers provide promise for the construction of water dams and installment of micro hydropower plants (MHP). Although civil war and political strife continue to threaten the country for more than four decades, the Afghan government introduced strategic plans for the development of the country. In 2016 Afghanistan introduced the Afghanistan National Peace and Development (ANPD) Framework at Brussels de-signed to support Afghanistan’s progress towards achieving the SDGs (Sustainable Development Goals). This study discussed the 7th Goal (ensuring access to affordable, reliable, and sustainable energy for all) and 8th Goal (promoting sustained, inclusive and sustainable economic growth, full and productive employment and decent work for all) alignment in Afghanistan. The Afghan gov-ernment acknowledges its responsibility to provide electricity for all of its citizens, but this can only be achieved if the government can secure a reliable source of energy. Afghanistan’s mountainous terrain provides a challenge to build a central energy distribution system. Therefore this study looks for alternative solutions to the energy problems in Afghanistan and explores feasibility of micro-hydropower plant installations in remote areas. This study evaluated socio-economic im-pacts of micro-hydropower plants in the life of average residents. We focused on one example of a micro hydropower plant located in Parwan, conducted interviews with local residents, and gath-ered on-site data. The findings in this study can help policymakers to analyze the effects of devel-opment projects in the social and economic life of residents. It will encourage the government and hopefully the private sector to invest in decentralized energy options, while the country is facing an ever-growing energy demand.

Faces of war in the context of Marshall McLuhan's media theoryThe article shows how Marshall McLuhan’s media theory is used to analyze photographs taken with an iPhone. The reflections were inspired by the blog of the Canadian photographer Rita Leistner, who participated in the media project aimed at familiarizing American soldiers’ families and friends with everyday life of the military contingent in Afghanistan. Leistner, for the first time in her career, used a smartphone instead of professional photographic equipment. Her decision was motivated by the need to edit photographs easily and publish them quickly on the Internet. The result of her work was a blog, titled Looking for Marshall McLuhan in Afghanistan. To describe her photographs, Leistner uses selected concepts defined by McLuhan in the second half of the 20th century: probe, extension of man or figure-background dichotomy. In consequence, the technological face of war can be better understood by the viewers of the materials she prepared. Oblicza wojny w kontekście teorii mediów Marshalla McLuhanaW artykule przedstawiono sposób wykorzystania teorii mediów Marshalla McLuhana do analizy zdjęć wykonanych iPhone’em. Inspiracją do tych rozważań jest blog kanadyjskiej fotografki Rity Leistner, uczestniczki projektu medialnego, którego celem było zapoznanie rodzin i przyjaciół amerykańskich żołnierzy z codziennym życiem wojskowego kontyngentu w Afganistanie. Leistner, po raz pierwszy w karierze, używała smartfonu zamiast profesjonalnego sprzętu fotograficznego. Wynikało to z konieczności łatwego edytowania zdjęć i ich szybkiego umieszczania w internecie. Efektem tej pracy jest blog zatytułowany Looking for Marshall McLuhan in Afghanistan. Aby opisać swoje fotografie, Leistner użyła bowiem wybranych koncepcji sformułowanych przez kanadyjskiego myśliciela w drugiej połowie XX wieku: sondy, przedłużenia człowieka czy dychotomii figura/tło. Dzięki temu zabiegowi odbiorcy jej fotografii mogą lepiej zrozumieć technologiczny i medialny wymiar wojny.

This study investigated the impact of floods on the socio-economic status of livelihoods for the people of Afghanistan's Paktia province and the livelihoods of those who live there. The research team used both quantitative and qualitative approaches in their work. Discussions were held with key stakeholders at the provincial and community levels, as well as with randomly selected households, as part of the study. The information was gathered through the use of quantitative Household Questionnaires and qualitative Key Informant Interviews. People's socioeconomic livelihoods and critical aspects such as agriculture, health, education, housing, water and sanitation, and property were found to have been negatively impacted by floods according to the findings of the study. As a result, any negative impact on livelihood would result in lower household incomes and lower purchasing power for households. In Paktia, as in many other parts of Afghanistan, there has been extensive deforestation. In recent years, devastating floods have resulted as a result of this. The following are the most important recommendations made: Since communities have expressed a desire to relocate permanently to higher ground, the government and key stakeholders should engage them in the process of relocating permanently to higher ground. Their relocation should be accompanied by the provision of all necessary social amenities, such as schools, hospitals, infrastructure, water, and agricultural support, for a period of three (3) years to allow the households to settle in the new location. It should also be taken in the newly established settlement area. A deliberate policy should be implemented to compel communities, particularly in rural areas, to construct houses out of durable materials and away from flood-prone areas, which would be beneficial. Communities should be encouraged to expand the area under cultivation on upland land in order to improve food security and household income. Both non-

In this article, I present empirical evidence on the extent of crop diversification and assess its merits as a strategy for improving production efficiency in Afghanistan. The transformed Herfindahl–Harshman index is used to measure the scale and magnitude of crop diversification. I find a compelling evidence that diversifying production portfolios significantly improves production efficiencies. This finding is critical, given that the data show that nearly a third of the farm households do not diversify, achieving, on average, about 52% of potential revenues. The estimated efficiency scores reveal that, on average, the farm households in our analytical sample of over 7,000 households achieve 74% of potential revenue, with nearly 15% of households realizing less than 50% and about 23% between 50% and 70% of potential revenue. These results infer that there exist substantial inefficacies in agricultural production that can be eliminated by employing improved management practices without having to use additional inputs and production resources and rising cost of production. Our results are robust to potential endogeneity bias in crop diversification; I account for the endogeneity problem in the stochastic frontier analysis, by employing a recent estimation approach, using instrumental variable techniques. Mapping the spatial distribution of crop diversification index and estimated efficiency scores across the country revealed that districts with higher diversification levels correspond to higher efficiency indices. Aside from crop diversification, other socio-economic factors also have critical implications for efficiency; households with access to farm assets (such as land, cattle, oxen and tractor) and extension services appear to realize substantially higher production efficiencies. A direct policy recommendation that can be generated from the findings of this study is that crop diversification should be given more recognition by policymakers to enhance productivity and resilience in agriculture.

In Australia the “intimacy” of citizenship (Berlant 2), is often used to reinforce subscription to heteronormative romantic and familial structures. Because this framing promotes discourses of moral failure, recent political attention to sexuality and same-sex couples can be filtered through insights into coalitional affiliations. This paper uses contemporary shifts in Australian politics and culture to think through the concept of coalition, and in particular to analyse connections between sexuality and governmentality (or more specifically normative bias and same-sex relationships) in what I’m calling post-coalitional Australia. Against the unpredictability of changing parties and governments, allegiances and alliances, this paper suggests the continuing adherence to a heteronormatively arranged public sphere. After the current Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard deposed the previous leader, Kevin Rudd, she clung to power with the help of independents and the Greens, and clichés of a “rainbow coalition” and a “new paradigm” were invoked to describe the confused electorate and governmental configuration. Yet in 2007, a less confused Australia decisively threw out the Howard–led Liberal and National Party coalition government after eleven years, in favour of Rudd’s own rainbow coalition: a seemingly invigorated party focussed on gender equity, Indigenous Australians, multi-cultural visibility, workplace relations, Austral-Asian relations, humane refugee processing, the environment, and the rights and obligations of same-sex couples. A post-coalitional Australia invokes something akin to “aftermath culture” (Lambert and Simpson), referring not just to Rudd’s fall or Howard’s election loss, but to the broader shifting contexts within which most Australian citizens live, and within which they make sense of the terms “Australia” and “Australian”. Contemporary Australia is marked everywhere by cracks in coalitions and shifts in allegiances and belief systems – the Coalition of the Willing falling apart, the coalition government crushed by defeat, deposed leaders, and unlikely political shifts and (re)alignments in the face of a hung parliament and renewed pushes toward moral and cultural change. These breakdowns in allegiances are followed by swift symbolically charged manoeuvres. Gillard moved quickly to repair relations with mining companies damaged by Rudd’s plans for a mining tax and to water down frustration with the lack of a sustainable Emissions Trading Scheme. And one of the first things Kevin Rudd did as Prime Minister was to change the fittings and furnishings in the Prime Ministerial office, of which Wright observed that “Mr Howard is gone and Prime Minister Kevin Rudd has moved in, the Parliament House bureaucracy has ensured all signs of the old-style gentlemen's club… have been banished” (The Age, 5 Dec. 2007). Some of these signs were soon replaced by Ms. Gillard herself, who filled the office in turn with memorabilia from her beloved Footscray, an Australian Rules football team. In post-coalitional Australia the exile of the old Menzies’ desk and a pair of Chesterfield sofas works alongside the withdrawal of troops from Iraq and renewed pledges for military presence in Afghanistan, apologising to stolen generations of Indigenous Australians, the first female Governor General, deputy Prime Minister and then Prime Minister (the last two both Gillard), the repealing of disadvantageous workplace reform, a focus on climate change and global warming (with limited success as stated), a public, mandatory paid maternity leave scheme, changes to the processing and visas of refugees, and the amendments to more than one hundred laws that discriminate against same sex couples by the pre-Gillard, Rudd-led Labor government. The context for these changes was encapsulated in an announcement from Rudd, made in March 2008: Our core organising principle as a Government is equality of opportunity. And advancing people and their opportunities in life, we are a Government which prides itself on being blind to gender, blind to economic background, blind to social background, blind to race, blind to sexuality. (Rudd, “International”) Noting the political possibilities and the political convenience of blindness, this paper navigates the confusing context of post-coalitional Australia, whilst proffering an understanding of some of the cultural forces at work in this age of shifting and unstable alliances. I begin by interrogating the coalitional impulse post 9/11. I do this by connecting public coalitional shifts to the steady withdrawal of support for John Howard’s coalition, and movement away from George Bush’s Coalition of the Willing and the War on Terror. I then draw out a relationship between the rise and fall of such affiliations and recent shifts within government policy affecting same-sex couples, from former Prime Minister Howard’s amendments to The Marriage Act 1961 to the Rudd-Gillard administration’s attention to the discrimination in many Australian laws. Sexual Citizenship and Coalitions Rights and entitlements have always been constructed and managed in ways that live out understandings of biopower and social death (Foucault History; Discipline). The disciplining of bodies, identities and pleasures is so deeply entrenched in government and law that any non-normative claim to rights requires the negotiation of existing structures. Sexual citizenship destabilises the post-coalitional paradigm of Australian politics (one of “equal opportunity” and consensus) by foregrounding the normative biases that similarly transcend partisan politics. Sexual citizenship has been well excavated in critical work from Evans, Berlant, Weeks, Richardson, and Bell and Binnie’s The Sexual Citizen which argues that “many of the current modes of the political articulation of sexual citizenship are marked by compromise; this is inherent in the very notion itself… the twinning of rights with responsibilities in the logic of citizenship is another way of expressing compromise… Every entitlement is freighted with a duty” (2-3). This logic extends to political and economic contexts, where “natural” coalition refers primarily to parties, and in particular those “who have powerful shared interests… make highly valuable trades, or who, as a unit, can extract significant value from others without much risk of being split” (Lax and Sebinius 158). Though the term is always in some way politicised, it need not refer only to partisan, multiparty or multilateral configurations. The subscription to the norms (or normativity) of a certain familial, social, religious, ethnic, or leisure groups is clearly coalitional (as in a home or a front, a club or a team, a committee or a congregation). Although coalition is interrogated in political and social sciences, it is examined frequently in mathematical game theory and behavioural psychology. In the former, as in Axelrod’s The Evolution of Cooperation, it refers to people (or players) who collaborate to successfully pursue their own self-interests, often in the absence of central authority. In behavioural psychology the focus is on group formations and their attendant strategies, biases and discriminations. Experimental psychologists have found “categorizing individuals into two social groups predisposes humans to discriminate… against the outgroup in both allocation of resources and evaluation of conduct” (Kurzban, Tooby and Cosmides 15387). The actions of social organisation (and not unseen individual, supposedly innate impulses) reflect the cultural norms in coalitional attachments – evidenced by the relationship between resources and conduct that unquestioningly grants and protects the rights and entitlements of the larger, heteronormatively aligned “ingroup”. Terror Management Particular attention has been paid to coalitional formations and discriminatory practices in America and the West since September 11, 2001. Terror Management Theory or TMT (Greenberg, Pyszczynski and Solomon) has been the main framework used to explain the post-9/11 reassertion of large group identities along ideological, religious, ethnic and violently nationalistic lines. Psychologists have used “death-related stimuli” to explain coalitional mentalities within the recent contexts of globalised terror. The fear of death that results in discriminatory excesses is referred to as “mortality salience”, with respect to the highly visible aspects of terror that expose people to the possibility of their own death or suffering. Naverette and Fessler find “participants… asked to contemplate their own deaths exhibit increases in positive evaluations of people whose attitudes and values are similar to their own, and derogation of those holding dissimilar views” (299). It was within the climate of post 9/11 “mortality salience” that then Prime Minister John Howard set out to change The Marriage Act 1961 and the Family Law Act 1975. In 2004, the Government modified the Marriage Act to eliminate flexibility with respect to the definition of marriage. Agitation for gay marriage was not as noticeable in Australia as it was in the U.S where Bush publicly rejected it, and the UK where the Civil Union Act 2004 had just been passed. Following Bush, Howard’s “queer moral panic” seemed the perfect decoy for the increased scrutiny of Australia’s involvement in the Iraq war. Howard’s changes included outlawing adoption for same-sex couples, and no recognition for legal same-sex marriages performed in other countries. The centrepiece was the wording of The Marriage Amendment Act 2004, with marriage now defined as a union “between a man and a woman to the exclusion of all others”. The legislation was referred to by the Australian Greens Senator Bob Brown as “hateful”, “the marriage discrimination act” and the “straight Australia policy” (Commonwealth 26556). The Labor Party, in opposition, allowed the changes to pass (in spite of vocal protests from one member) by concluding the legal status of same-sex relations was in no way affected, seemingly missing (in addition to the obvious symbolic and physical discrimination) the equation of same-sex recognition with terror, terrorism and death. Non-normative sexual citizenship was deployed as yet another form of “mortality salience”, made explicit in Howard’s description of the changes as necessary in protecting the sanctity of the “bedrock institution” of marriage and, wait for it, “providing for the survival of the species” (Knight, 5 Aug. 2003). So two things seem to be happening here: the first is that when confronted with the possibility of their own death (either through terrorism or gay marriage) people value those who are most like them, joining to devalue those who aren’t; the second is that the worldview (the larger religious, political, social perspectives to which people subscribe) becomes protection from the potential death that terror/queerness represents. Coalition of the (Un)willing Yet, if contemporary coalitions are formed through fear of death or species survival, how, for example, might these explain the various forms of risk-taking behaviours exhibited within Western democracies targeted by such terrors? Navarette and Fessler (309) argue that “affiliation defences are triggered by a wider variety of threats” than “existential anxiety” and that worldviews are “in turn are reliant on ‘normative conformity’” (308) or “normative bias” for social benefits and social inclusions, because “a normative orientation” demonstrates allegiance to the ingroup (308-9). Coalitions are founded in conformity to particular sets of norms, values, codes or belief systems. They are responses to adaptive challenges, particularly since September 11, not simply to death but more broadly to change. In troubled times, coalitions restore a shared sense of predictability. In Howard’s case, he seemed to say, “the War in Iraq is tricky but we have a bigger (same-sex) threat to deal with right now. So trust me on both fronts”. Coalitional change as reflective of adaptive responses thus serves the critical location of subsequent shifts in public support. Before and since September 11 Australians were beginning to distinguish between moderation and extremism, between Christian fundamentalism and productive forms of nationalism. Howard’s unwavering commitment to the American-led war in Iraq saw Australia become a member of another coalition: the Coalition of the Willing, a post 1990s term used to describe militaristic or humanitarian interventions in certain parts of the world by groups of countries. Howard (in Pauly and Lansford 70) committed Australia to America’s fight but also to “civilization's fight… of all who believe in progress and pluralism, tolerance and freedom”. Although Bush claimed an international balance of power and influence within the coalition (94), some countries refused to participate, many quickly withdrew, and many who signed did not even have troops. In Australia, the war was never particularly popular. In 2003, forty-two legal experts found the war contravened International Law as well as United Nations and Geneva conventions (Sydney Morning Herald 26 Feb. 2003). After the immeasurable loss of Iraqi life, and as the bodies of young American soldiers (and the occasional non-American) began to pile up, the official term “coalition of the willing” was quietly abandoned by the White House in January of 2005, replaced by a “smaller roster of 28 countries with troops in Iraq” (ABC News Online 22 Jan. 2005). The coalition and its larger war on terror placed John Howard within the context of coalitional confusion, that when combined with the domestic effects of economic and social policy, proved politically fatal. The problem was the unclear constitution of available coalitional configurations. Howard’s continued support of Bush and the war in Iraq compounded with rising interest rates, industrial relations reform and a seriously uncool approach to the environment and social inclusion, to shift perceptions of him from father of the nation to dangerous, dithery and disconnected old man. Post-Coalitional Change In contrast, before being elected Kevin Rudd sought to reframe Australian coalitional relationships. In 2006, he positions the Australian-United States alliance outside of the notion of military action and Western territorial integrity. In Rudd-speak the Howard-Bush-Blair “coalition of the willing” becomes F. Scott Fitzgerald’s “willingness of the heart”. The term coalition was replaced by terms such as dialogue and affiliation (Rudd, “Friends”). Since the 2007 election, Rudd moved quickly to distance himself from the agenda of the coalition government that preceded him, proposing changes in the spirit of “blindness” toward marginality and sexuality. “Fix-it-all” Rudd as he was christened (Sydney Morning Herald 29 Sep. 2008) and his Labor government began to confront the legacies of colonial history, industrial relations, refugee detention and climate change – by apologising to Aboriginal people, timetabling the withdrawal from Iraq, abolishing the employee bargaining system Workchoices, giving instant visas and lessening detention time for refugees, and signing the Kyoto Protocol agreeing (at least in principle) to reduce green house gas emissions. As stated earlier, post-coalitional Australia is not simply talking about sudden change but an extension and a confusion of what has gone on before (so that the term resembles postcolonial, poststructural and postmodern because it carries the practices and effects of the original term within it). The post-coalitional is still coalitional to the extent that we must ask: what remains the same in the midst of such visible changes? An American focus in international affairs, a Christian platform for social policy, an absence of financial compensation for the Aboriginal Australians who received such an eloquent apology, the lack of coherent and productive outcomes in the areas of asylum and climate change, and an impenetrable resistance to the idea of same-sex marriage are just some of the ways in which these new governments continue on from the previous one. The Rudd-Gillard government’s dealings with gay law reform and gay marriage exemplify the post-coalitional condition. Emulating Christ’s relationship to “the marginalised and the oppressed”, and with Gillard at his side, Rudd understandings of the Christian Gospel as a “social gospel” (Rudd, “Faith”; see also Randell-Moon) to table changes to laws discriminating against gay couples – guaranteeing hospital visits, social security benefits and access to superannuation, resembling de-facto hetero relationships but modelled on the administering and registration of relationships, or on tax laws that speak primarily to relations of financial dependence – with particular reference to children. The changes are based on the report, Same Sex, Same Entitlements (HREOC) that argues for the social competence of queer folk, with respect to money, property and reproduction. They speak the language of an equitable economics; one that still leaves healthy and childless couples with limited recognition and advantage but increased financial obligation. Unable to marry in Australia, same-sex couples are no longer single for taxation purposes, but are now simultaneously subject to forms of tax/income auditing and governmental revenue collection should either same-sex partner require assistance from social security as if they were married. Heteronormative Coalition Queer citizens can quietly stake their economic claims and in most states discreetly sign their names on a register before becoming invisible again. Mardi Gras happens but once a year after all. On the topic of gay marriage Rudd and Gillard have deferred to past policy and to the immoveable nature of the law (and to Howard’s particular changes to marriage law). That same respect is not extended to laws passed by Howard on industrial relations or border control. In spite of finding no gospel references to Jesus the Nazarene “expressly preaching against homosexuality” (Rudd, “Faith”), and pre-election promises that territories could govern themselves with respect to same sex partnerships, the Rudd-Gillard government in 2008 pressured the ACT to reduce its proposed partnership legislation to that of a relationship register like the ones in Tasmania and Victoria, and explicitly demanded that there be absolutely no ceremony – no mimicking of the real deal, of the larger, heterosexual citizens’ “ingroup”. Likewise, with respect to the reintroduction of same-sex marriage legislation by Greens senator Sarah Hanson Young in September 2010, Gillard has so far refused a conscience vote on the issue and restated the “marriage is between a man and a woman” rhetoric of her predecessors (Topsfield, 30 Sep. 2010). At the same time, she has agreed to conscience votes on euthanasia and openly declared bi-partisan (with the federal opposition) support for the war in Afghanistan. We see now, from Howard to Rudd and now Gillard, that there are some coalitions that override political differences. As psychologists have noted, “if the social benefits of norm adherence are the ultimate cause of the individual’s subscription to worldviews, then the focus and salience of a given individual’s ideology can be expected to vary as a function of their need to ally themselves with relevant others” (Navarette and Fessler 307). Where Howard invoked the “Judaeo-Christian tradition”, Rudd chose to cite a “Christian ethical framework” (Rudd, “Faith”), that saw him and Gillard end up in exactly the same place: same sex relationships should be reduced to that of medical care or financial dependence; that a public ceremony marking relationship recognition somehow equates to “mimicking” the already performative and symbolic heterosexual institution of marriage and the associated romantic and familial arrangements. Conclusion Post-coalitional Australia refers to the state of confusion borne of a new politics of equality and change. The shift in Australia from conservative to mildly socialist government(s) is not as sudden as Howard’s 2007 federal loss or as short-lived as Gillard’s hung parliament might respectively suggest. Whilst allegiance shifts, political parties find support is reliant on persistence as much as it is on change – they decide how to buffer and bolster the same coalitions (ones that continue to privilege white settlement, Christian belief systems, heteronormative familial and symbolic practices), but also how to practice policy and social responsibility in a different way. Rudd’s and Gillard’s arguments against the mimicry of heterosexual symbolism and the ceremonial validation of same-sex partnerships imply there is one originary form of conduct and an associated sacred set of symbols reserved for that larger ingroup. Like Howard before them, these post-coalitional leaders fail to recognise, as Butler eloquently argues, “gay is to straight not as copy is to original, but as copy is to copy” (31). To make claims to status and entitlements that invoke the messiness of non-normative sex acts and romantic attachments necessarily requires the negotiation of heteronormative coalitional bias (and in some ways a reinforcement of this social power). As Bell and Binnie have rightly observed, “that’s what the hard choices facing the sexual citizen are: the push towards rights claims that make dissident sexualities fit into heterosexual culture, by demanding equality and recognition, versus the demand to reject settling for heteronormativity” (141). The new Australian political “blindness” toward discrimination produces positive outcomes whilst it explicitly reanimates the histories of oppression it seeks to redress. The New South Wales parliament recently voted to allow same-sex adoption with the proviso that concerned parties could choose not to adopt to gay couples. The Tasmanian government voted to recognise same-sex marriages and unions from outside Australia, in the absence of same-sex marriage beyond the current registration arrangements in its own state. In post-coalitional Australia the issue of same-sex partnership recognition pits parties and allegiances against each other and against themselves from within (inside Gillard’s “rainbow coalition” the Rainbow ALP group now unites gay people within the government’s own party). Gillard has hinted any new proposed legislation regarding same-sex marriage may not even come before parliament for debate, as it deals with real business. Perhaps the answer lies over the rainbow (coalition). As the saying goes, “there are none so blind as those that will not see”. References ABC News Online. “Whitehouse Scraps Coalition of the Willing List.” 22 Jan. 2005. 1 July 2007 ‹http://www.abc.net.au/news/newsitems/200501/s1286872.htm›. Axelrod, Robert. The Evolution of Cooperation. New York: Basic Books, 1984. 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