Journal articles on the topic 'Lesotho – Politics and government – 1966-'

The article acknowledges that Lesotho governance has been characterised by unstable democracy since its attainment of independence in 1966, which makes civil society and other democratic institutions unable to pursue their roles as expected. The proposed solution to overcome predicaments that Lesotho faces was to have active and vibrant democratic institutions such as civil societies, ombudsman, political parties, independent media, independent electoral commissions and the legislative, executive and judiciary. The article aims to bridge the gap by examining published literature and documentary review, which clearly elucidate how good governance can be achieved in a democratic country with the help of active democratic institutions. The article highlights the importance of active and vibrant civil society in governance and public policy. The article concludes by justifying that in deed the government of Lesotho should accept and allow participation of civil society so as to be able to realise its contribution and the important role played by it. Also, civil society in Lesotho must distance themselves from suspicions that they are political parties in disguise.

Abstract This paper provides a conceptual analysis of the dynamics of savings in Lesotho for the period 1960 to 2017. The study is motivated by the low and sometimes negative savings rate and the declining level of economic growth prevailing in Lesotho during the period from 1960 to 2017. The study analyses the behaviour of savings in Lesotho, using the savings trends for the country ever since it obtained independence in 1966. The study further examines the policies that the government of Lesotho has implemented in order to promote savings in the country. The government adopted a policy on rural savings and credit schemes as a means of promoting savings in Lesotho. The purpose of the policy is to improve access to credit for the rural population. The study has identified some challenges that impede savings mobilization in Lesotho. The major savings challenge in Lesotho is the lack of banking facilities in rural areas.

AbstractThe rhetoric of development served as a language for Sotho politicians from 1960–70 to debate the meanings of political participation. The relative paucity of aid in this period gave outsized importance to small projects run in rural villages, and stood in stark contrast to the period from the mid-1970s onwards when aid became an ‘anti-politics machine’ that worked to undermine national sovereignty. Examination of the democratic period in Lesotho from 1966–70 helps explain the process by which newly independent states gave up some of their recently won sovereignty, and how a turn to authoritarianism helped contribute to this process.

<p><em>The paper is based on a study undertaken in 2015 to 2017 that explored the micro-politics of schooling in Lesotho, with specific focusing on bullying. A qualitative research design was adopted to probe for in-depth information about bullying in schools. The methodology employed was the case study approach in two high schools in Roma Valley. The population of the study was all teachers and students in the two high schools in Roma valley, while the sample comprised six teachers and eight students, who were purposively selected.</em></p><p><em>The study found out that bullying exists not only during school activities, but even during after school activities that learners are involved in. It was also found that bullying has negative consequences to all parties; perpetrators, victims and bystanders. Findings further revealed that the minority members of the society like visually impaired people, physically challenged and students with poor background are more prone to bullying because most of them do not have power to counteract bullies. The study further found that newly arrived students are the ones who are mostly targeted by bullies under the pretext of being taught the culture of the school. The study also found that teachers view bullying as an act of power imbalance where a powerful person takes advantage of a less powerful or vulnerable person. The study also found that cyber bullying is the latest form of bullying which is more harmful than any other form of bullying. The study also found that bullying contributes to depression and low self-esteem, which can lead to poor school performance and suicidal tendencies amongst the victims and bystanders. </em></p><p><em>The study therefore recommends that Lesotho government should come up with a policy to eliminate bullying in schools and establish programmes directed at teaching learners attitudes, knowledge and skills which they can use to circumvent bullying.</em></p>

<p>Politics is a series of activities in society in a system that involves the process of determining and implementing a goal. In politics there is still a longing for order and peace. Politics is also used in exercising power. The tendency of power treats the dominance of the ruler in running his government. Poetry The work of Taufiq Ismail in a collection of tyrannical poems is a collection of protest poems. The poems were created in 1966. The poem can also be called a demonstration poem because in 1966 there was a student demonstration. At that time there was political turmoil that struck the country of Indonesia due to G 30 S / PKI. Students' opposition to political turmoil was colored by action taking to the streets. Students demonstrate against injustice. The year 1966 was a year of demonstration pioneered by students belonging to organizations opposed to arbitrary forms of government. They condemned the old order regime under the authority of Ir. Soekarno who has distorted a policy so that the people of Indonesia miserable.</p><p> </p><p><strong>Keywords</strong>: Children's Literature, Values of Islamic teachings, Characters</p>

Dominant development discourse holds that water scarcity reflects geophysical limitations, lack of infrastructure or lack of government provision. However, this paper outlines the ways in which scarcity can only be fully explained in the context of development, specifically, neoliberal economic policies and related notions of good governance. Water is Lesotho’s primary natural resource, yet many of its inhabitants remain severely water insecure. Presently, decentralization and Integrated Water Resource Management (IWRM) are embraced in Lesotho as a philosophy and method to engage varied stakeholders and to empower community members. Using a water committee in Qalo, Lesotho as a case study, this paper explores the micro-politics of water governance. As individuals contest who is responsible for managing water resources for the village—by aligning themselves with traditional chiefs, elected officials, or neither—they transform or reinforce specific hydro-social configurations. While decentralized resource management aims to increase equity and local ownership over resources, as well as moderate the authority of traditional chiefs, water access is instead impacted by conflicts over management responsibility for water resources. Drawing on theories of political ecology and governmentality to extend recent scholarship on IWRM, this paper re-centers the political in water governance by situating local tensions within national policies and development agendas and demonstrating how scarcity is hydro-social.

This paper reconstructs a sheep-dipping campaign in Lesotho, southern Africa to explore the historical dynamics between local social and political circumstances, ecological change and veterinary knowledge. African livestock owners and the British colonial government accelerated a biological transition from local breeds to non-native merino sheep in the early 1900s to produce wool. Wool-bearing sheep ushered in Psoroptes ovis, a parasitic mite that caused the skin condition called scab. Examining colonial Lesotho's anti-scab campaign from 1903 to 1933, its politics, ideas and procedures, improves our understanding of the past and present interplay between transnational science, farmers, governments and the non-human world. This case study of sheep-dipping and the wool industry that it bolstered shows, too, how people from across the social spectrum interacted within new regulatory communities under a colonial state. These communities, fraught with social cleavages of race and class, and geared towards capitalist production, coalesced during the anti-scab campaigns and formed the political, technical and ideological foundation on which subsequent development schemes were built. Chiefs, stockowners, herders, labourers and European veterinarians too participated in various ways in this process of producing and circulating knowledge, and transforming livestock practices and policies.

This study discusses the dynamics of Indonesian student movement in the New Order era between 1966 until 1998. It also analyses the responses of the authority to their movement and its impact. This research uses the qualitative method of literature review and interviews where the arguments are presented in descriptive analysis. Based on Antonio Gramsci’s concept of hegemony, this study has uncovered the hegemonic means utilized by the authority to undermine student movement. The description of how this social formation was defragmented, justified and then integrated into bureaucratic processes where their existence was then consented as a subordinated class. In reality, the student movement under the New Order government was closely related to the situation of socio-politics and character of the regime. Nevertheless, the Asian economic crisis jolted the revival of the student movement to its initial vibrant state which brought down Suharto’s regime in 1998. This study has proven that hegemonic process also has a shelf-life as the masses will eventually see through the regime’s political construction. This eventuality was due to external and internal factors such as development of information technology, the rise of cyber-power, international politics and the emergence of new ideas.

AbstractThis article focuses on the adaptation of the Red Classics – a collection of literary and cinematic works depicting the Communist armed struggle produced in the PRC between 1949 and 1966 – for contemporary Chinese television. Using the controversy over the remake of Tracks in the Snowy Forest (Linhai xueyuan 林海雪原) as a case study, it explores the complexity of restaging the Communist revolution in the post-Mao reform era. Competition in the media industry compels TV producers to re-package Communist history for fragmented contemporary audiences – those who are familiar with the original Red Classics as well as those who grew up in the reform era and who are far removed from the revolutionary legacy. Adaptation of the Red Classics is a sensitive issue. By focusing on the sexual desires and individual interests muted in the original Red Classics in order to cater for the tastes of younger viewers, the remakes offer alternative readings of history and have incurred government censorship. Opposition to the adaptations has also come from a distinct mnemonic community, the Red memory group, whose members came of age in either the 1960s or during the Cultural Revolution and who absorbed the Red Classics in their formative years. The interplay of state politics, collective memory and commercial imperatives ultimately makes the repackaging of the revolution for contemporary mass entertainment a multifaceted and highly contentious issue.

ON 21 MAY 1998, INDONESIA'S AUTHORITARIAN PRESIDENT SUHARTO, in power since 1966, abruptly resigned from office and was succeeded by his vice-president, Bacharuddin Jusuf (B. J.) Habibie. Though retired for decades, Suharto was an army general and relied heavily on the support of the armed forces to rule this vast archipelago, the world's fourth largest country. Habibie is a civilian with long government service as minister of research and industry. President Suharto, Habibie often claimed, taught him everything he knew about politics.

March Fong Eu (1922–2017) was a talented California politician who broke barriers as the first Asian American and first woman elected to serve as California’s secretary of state (1975–1994). Previously, she served on the Alameda County Board of Education (1956–1966) and was the first Asian American and one of few women in the California State Assembly at mid-century (1967–1974). Known for a 1969 toilet-smashing publicity stunt to call attention to her legislation establishing free public restrooms in California, Eu skirted many of the obstacles that mid-century women politicians faced by creating her own political networks, building personal relationships with colleagues, and gathering public attention on her own terms. The progressive Eu gained a foothold in California politics during a time of conservative control, yet she also served during a pivotal moment in the state’s history when women and people of color were advancing in California politics. She was ambitious but never reached the pinnacle of her political abilities. As such, Eu’s life and work highlight the momentum of mid- to late-twentieth-century political women leaders in California, but also point to the historical limits of political success for women at all levels of government.

March Fong Eu (1922–2017) was a talented California politician who broke barriers as the first Asian American and first woman elected to serve as California’s secretary of state (1975–1994). Previously, she served on the Alameda County Board of Education (1956–1966) and was the first Asian American and one of few women in the California State Assembly at mid-century (1967–1974). Known for a 1969 toilet-smashing publicity stunt to call attention to her legislation establishing free public restrooms in California, Eu skirted many of the obstacles that mid-century women politicians faced by creating her own political networks, building personal relationships with colleagues, and gathering public attention on her own terms. The progressive Eu gained a foothold in California politics during a time of conservative control, yet she also served during a pivotal moment in the state’s history when women and people of color were advancing in California politics. She was ambitious but never reached the pinnacle of her political abilities. As such, Eu’s life and work highlight the momentum of mid- to late-twentieth-century political women leaders in California, but also point to the historical limits of political success for women at all levels of government.

This article analyses a strategy of Nasyiatul Aisyiyah, a youth Muslim women organization, in developing its ideology and the importance of gender in the reign of New Order Indonesia (1966-1998). In the name of political stability, the New Order applied a tight political control towards mass-religious based organizations and tried to minimize their militancy by forming new women’s movement organizations such as Dharma Wanita and PKK that are easily controlled by the government. As an Islamic women organization, Nasyiatul Aisyiyah underwent the surveillance practiced by the government via those two bodies; however Nasyiatul Aisyiyah could constantly maintain its entity as an Islamic women organization. In the 1980s when the New Order Regime was predominantly in power, Nasyiatul Aisyiyah held negotiations and adapted to the governmental gender policy to assure the position and the interests of young women.

Since the upheaval of the Cultural Revolution decade (1966–1976), post-Mao China has witnessed a sustained period of unprecedented legal reform. Criminal prosecutions and citizen lawsuits against the government, because they pit individual litigants against the authoritarian Chinese state, are two politically significant areas of law. We examine and critically assess the sociolegal scholarship on criminal and administrative legal reform as it has developed over the past few decades, with special attention to shifts in the conventional wisdom regarding legal reform and political liberalism in China and elsewhere. Additionally, we offer both theoretical and empirical suggestions for enhancing the explanatory power of sociolegal research in China.

The politicization of the Indonesian bureaucracy in election is attracting great attention since it’s resulted in declining quality of democracy in this country. Although political change since 1998 has given greater strength to societal forces vis-à-vis the state, the fact is that the legacy of patronage network still exists. The politicization of the bureaucracy through the weakening of political parties and maintaining bureaucratic authoritarianism under the New Order government (1966-1998) was an important stimulus for this study. With the downfall of Soeharto’s New Order regime, the authoritarian nature of the bureaucratic system was not only exposed but also changed. These changes have put paid to questions about the involvement of political parties and the influence of societal forces in the formation of policy. The bureaucracy can no longer exist as it was in the New Order, and, in fact, has responded to societal needs by adjusting to the new political climate. In this context, Indonesian politics under the reformation era takes on a wider significance for one of the main results has been the emergence of bureaucratic pluralism – a more pluralistic political system that is more open to the influence of these societal forces. This study was conducted using literature review to understand theories and empirical experiences about the neutrality of the bureaucracy in both national elections and regional elections.

AbstractIn 1965 and 1966, the United States and Canada adopted single-payer models of government insurance for physician and hospital services – universal in Canada, but restricted to certain population groups in the US. At the time, the American and Canadian political economies of health care and landscapes of public opinion were remarkably similar, and the different policy designs must be understood as products of the distinctive macro-level politics of the day. Subsequently, however, the different scopes of single-payer coverage would drive the two systems in different directions. In Canada, the single-payer system became entrenched in popular support and in the nexus of interest it created between the medical profession and the state. In the US, Medicare became similarly entrenched in popular support, but did so as part of the larger multi-payer private insurance system. In the process universal single-payer coverage became politically iconic in Canada and taboo in the US.

Drawing on recorded and transcribed life history interviews conducted during the 1980s and 2000s, this article discusses the cinemagoing experiences of District Six residents in Cape Town from the 1920s to the 1960s, before the South African apartheid government began, from 1966, to demolish District Six. Cinemagoing was the chief leisure-time activity in District Six in these years, and when recollections of cinemagoing in the interviews are analysed as discourses of memory, three key themes emerge – cinema and place; cinema, culture, and identity; and films, film shows, and stars – with residents’ remembered experiences revealing the peculiarities of cinemagoing in this very particular locale. Cinema was so thoroughly intertwined with everyday life that residents might be regarded not so much as ‘going to’ the cinema as already being there. They were part of a global seam of filmgoers – ‘cinema citizens’ whilst in every other respect stripped of citizenship rights.

The Science Council of Canada (1966-1992) operated as an ‘arms-length’ agency providing science policy advice and recommendations to the federal government. The Council was always a voice for state interventionism. In the late 1970s, it turned to the politically sensitive issue of industrial policy and advocated a nationalistic, ‘transformative politics’ through its defense of technological sovereignty. An examination of its research and policy recommendations, and the controversies they excited, reveals that the Council’s struggle against new policy trends in its final years paralleled larger transitions in public perceptions of the role of government in Canadian society. Its 1992 dissolution symbolized Canada’s reorientation from a state-directed to a market-oriented approach to science and technology policy-making. This paper reviews the Council’s guiding philosophy and discusses its history within two larger contexts: the Canadian political debate over continentalism, and evolving conceptions of science, technology, and innovation, and the prospects for their management.

The study of the American Congress raises compelling issues for both teachers and students in the examination of three interrelated arenas of analysis: Congressional members, Congress as an institution, and the role of Congress in the American political system. Underlying my approach to teaching Congress is a strong emphasis on discussing the role Congress should play in our Madisonian policy process as well as the role of elected representatives in a representative democracy. In many ways, then, a course on Congress or Legislative Politics and Policy making allows the instructor and students to examine the broader operation of the American political system by looking over the shoulders of congressional members as well as Congress as an institution. In doing so, broad structural questions might be addressed: To what extent is a Madisonian framework of government relevant for confronting and solving the policy problems that we currently face and will likely face in the future? What role can (and should) Congress play in addressing issues, such as the deficit, energy and environmental problems, homelessness, education, and covert foreign policy operations? In confronting these questions, I have found that students seek the opportunity to place Congress in an historical context. In doing so, I ask students to examine the three times in this century when Congress has responded to sweeping presidential domestic policy initiatives, including FDR's New Deal (1933-1936), Lyndon Johnson's Great Society programs (1965-1966), and Ronald Reagan's first-term budget and tax cut initiatives (1981).

The politicization of the Indonesian bureaucracy in election is attracting great attention since it’s resulted in declining quality of democracy in this country. Although political change since 1998 has given greater strength to societal forces vis-à-vis the state, the fact is that the legacy of patronage network still exists. The politicization of the bureaucracy through the weakening of political parties and maintaining bureaucratic authoritarianism under the New Order government (1966-1998) was an important stimulus for this study. With the downfall of Soeharto’s New Order regime, the authoritarian nature of the bureaucratic system was not only exposed but also changed. These changes have put paid to questions about the involvement of political parties and the influence of societal forces in the formation of policy. The bureaucracy can no longer exist as it was in the New Order, and, in fact, has responded to societal needs by adjusting to the new political climate. In this context, Indonesian politics under the reformation era takes on a wider significance for one of the main results has been the emergence of bureaucratic pluralism – a more pluralistic political system that is more open to the influence of these societal forces. This study was conducted using literature review to understand theories and empirical experiences about the neutrality of the bureaucracy in both national elections and regional elections. This study showed that after 75 years of independence, Indonesia must continue to struggle to build a bureaucracy that is professional (effective and efficient) and politically neutral.

Indonesia is one of the countries that embraced democracy in system administration. Indonesia has proved it by holding presidential and vice presidential election directly. Besides the Indonesian people freely organizing meetings and talking freely to express opinions, criticism, or even overseeing the governance system. Freedom of religion is a manifestation of the democratic state.The dynamics of the Non-Governmental Organization (NGO) was born along with the birth of a new order of the early 1970s. The birth of this order to the economic development paradigm and focusing on economic growth, had an impact on short-term plans, medium and long-national development, which is implemented in the five year plan. NGO as a partner of government to accelerate the process of national development in all fields.This research will be directed to find out how YPKP activity as well as how the interaction / relationship dynamics YPKP with the Government. Murder Victims Research Foundation 1965/1966 (YPKP 65) is the organization's first victim in Indonesia fighting for the enforcement of human rights on Human Tragedy 1965/1966. YPKP 65 judging cases of crimes against humanity 1965/1966 has not been seriously considered in law and politics of the country. During the 12 years of reform, none of the political elite, both in Parliament and in the executive, even in the judiciary investigate cases in 1965.After analysis, it appears that YPKP 65 Pati Regency consolidate internally and externally by holding regular meetings so that the communication that exists among members of intertwined smoothly, as did the communications against similar organizations lainnya.YPKP 65 Pati regency using communication media / communication channels that are electronically for obtain information related to the organization's objectives. There was also the dynamics between YPKP with another NGO. Keywords: Role, Interest Groups, Dynamics.

The article examines the 1966–70 Labour government's decision to withdraw the right of entry from Asians with British passports who were driven out of Kenya by its ‘Africanization’ policies. It examines the decision within the context of three issues: first, the existence and status of a pledge, allegedly made by Macmillan's last Conservative government, that the Asians' right to enter the UK would be respected; second, a decline in both major parties' commitment to the Commonwealth; and, third, competing ideological strains within the Labour party. The article concentrates on the first of these issues, focusing on an as-yet-unresolved debate between Duncan Sandys and Iain Macleod, both Conservative Colonial Secretaries. Macleod argued that a solemn pledge had been given to the Asians, while Sandys and the Conservative party adamantly denied the claim. In the light of new archival evidence, the article argues that the Asians' exemption from immigration controls, which had been applied to the whole of the Commonwealth, did not result from an explicit commitment by the British government; it was rather the unintended result of the mechanism chosen to restrict Commonwealth immigration in 1962. It was a consequence, however, that was recognized by civil servants at the time of the passage of the Commonwealth Immigrants Act in 1962, and accepted by key figures in the British cabinet, including Duncan Sandys himself. The position taken by Sandys and the majority of the Conservative party in 1968 was, behind the safety of the Official Secrets Act, a betrayal of commitments made and pledges given only a few years earlier. The article concludes by suggesting that the Kenyan Asians' crisis represented both a shift, in the two parties, away from previous commitments to the Commonwealth and, in the Labour party, the triumph of James Callaghan's strand of Labour ideology – nationalist, anti-intellectual, indifferent to arguments about international law and obligation, and firmly in touch with the social conservatism of middle- and working-class England.

The purpose of the study is to review the long glorious history of student politics in Bangladesh under different regime and to illustrate the recent trends of student politics. The study includes two parts, first part is entirely based on a literature review and second portion includes a field survey. Twenty two literatures have been selected as a data set through searching Web of Science, SCOPUS and Google Scholar databases by using the relevant keywords for reviewing the past experiences of student politics. On the other hand, a field survey has been conducted using the unknown population sampling technique, where student’s perceptions toward present student politics have been explored. From the literature review, it is found that student politics in Bangladesh has a magnificent past history of fighting and greatest sacrifice for the national interest during all turning points of the country, including anti-British movement in 1940s, the language movement of 1948 to 1952, six point movement of 1966, mass upsurge of 1969, liberation war of 1971, and the falling of military dictator Ershad in 1990s. Unfortunately, the impression of this historic student politics have been transformed to the personal goal accomplishment after starting democratic forms of government in 1991, when student organizations are mostly found to be used as the political weapons of mainstream political parties. The results of field survey also complemented that the perception of present party backed student politics is mostly focused on personal agenda or their mother party’s political agenda rather than national or common interest of the students.

For the greater part of its existence as a sovereign state, Nigeria has witnessed more years of military than civilian rule. An excursion into this very important aspect of our national history must, of necessity, interrogate the circumstances and dramatis personae that led to the military’s intervention in national politics. One name that has never escaped the scrutiny in this effort is that of Major Chukwuma Kaduna Nzeogwu. Though a posthumous research, the intention of this paper is to attempt a reappraisal of the often ignored, misinterpreted and maligned intentions of the principal actors of the January 15, 1966 military coup d’etat, especially the role of Nzeogwu. In order to achieve this objective, the research made use of both primary and secondary sources of data. These were subjected to initial qualitative analysis. The research concludes that part of the reasons for the misinterpretation of Nzeogwu’s role is the need to justify the failure of the government of the First Republic to satisfy the basic human and material needs of Nigeria. In addition, it establishes the fact that subsequent political equations and configurations in Nigeria have evidently been to the benefit of those who have been at pains to justify the brutality that attended the January 1966 coup d’etat.

The contemporary Indian state is exemplified by contradictions. Its workings are marked by a simultaneous retreat and deepening of state power under neoliberalism as well as burgeoning governmentalities that both produce and police political dissent. Such framings of the state problematize received political wisdom on the relations between centre and margin, state and government, citizen and subject. Anthropological approaches to the state map out its complex organizational logics, which are further embedded in the exercise of power and violence. Drawing on such approaches, this article examines the 2012 Indian film Shanghai, directed by Dibakar Banerjee. Based on Greek author Vassilis Vassilikos’ 1966 novel Z, Shanghai represents the contemporary neoliberal Indian state’s workings in the fictitious periurban town of Bharatnagar, slated to become a world-class Special Economic Zone. However, when a left-wing activist opposing land acquisition is fatally injured in an ‘accident’, a state bureaucrat’s investigation unravels how the onward march of pragati (‘progress’) is undergirded by violence. Taking Shanghai as an example of ‘realist fiction’, I examine both representations and realities of the neoliberal Indian state using a thick and nuanced reading of the film’s narrative, cinematic details, context and characters, situating them in anthropological discussions on the state and its margins in contemporary India.

Ali Mazrui was born in 1933 in Mombasa, Kenya. Sent to England in 1955 for his secondary school education, he remained there until he earned hisB.A. (1960, politics and philosophy) with distinction from the University of Manchester. He received his M.A. (1961, government and politics) and Ph.D. (1966, philosophy) from Columbia and Oxford universities, respectively. In Africa, he taught political science at Uganda’s Makerere University College (1963-73), and then returned to the United States to teach at the University of Michigan (1974-91) and New York’s Binghamton University (1991-2014). An avatar of controversy, Mazrui was also legendary for the fertility of his mind. Nelson Mandela viewed him as “an outstanding educationist” 1 and Kofi Annan, former secretary-general of the United Nations, referred to him as “Africa’s gift to the world.”2 Salim Ahmed Salim, former secretary-general of the Organization of African Unity and prime minister of Tanzania wrote: Ali Mazrui provided [many of us] with the illuminating light to understand the reality we have been confronting. He armed us with the tools of engagement and inspired us with his eloquence, clarity of ideas while all the time maintaining the highest degree of humility, respect for fellow human beings, and an unflagging commitment to justice.

Nigeria is one of the fast developing nations of the third world, but has many obstacles to her political development. The military ruled Nigeria between 1966 to 1979 and 1984 to 1999. Military dominance in NigeriaPolitics has in no small measure impacted negatively on the political development of Nigeria. Therefore political development of Nigeria has been going at a snail speed not only due to frequent military incursion in government but also due to many other impediments which include ethnicity, incumbency politics, tenure elongation, godfatherism and poor political orientation . The paper which is theoretical and persuasive examined all these factors critically and recommended among other things that National Assembly should pass a law to make elective office a single tenure. The economy of Nigeria should be organized to make it more productive and also to devise a vision of society within which each person can reasonably perceive that equity and social justice are firmly on the national agenda. To eradicate ethnic politics in Nigeria efforts should be made towards equitable distribution of social, political and economic gains of the polity. Finally efforts should be made to enforce the section of the constitution that dwelt on the formation of political parties that are devoid of ethnicity.

Ever since J. H. Plumb published his Ford Lectures, The Growth of Political Stability in England, 1679-1725 (1966), the topic of political stability has gripped the attention of England’s early modern historians. In particular Plumb’s characterization of the politics of 1679-1722 as “The Rage of Party” was refined by Geoffrey Holmes, whose British Politics in the Age of Anne ushered in a variety of studies of political warfare in what has come to be known as The First Age of Party. These and succeeding works have elaborated and confirmed the existence of deep and severe differences between Whig and Tory partisans, differences renewing animosities extending back to the Civil Wars and generating a self-perpetuating struggle for power. The consequences of this “rage of party” for the formation and execution of policy were daunting. In particular party rage placed three important restrictions on the executive’s room for maneuver. By rendering all political alliances unstable, partisanship limited the ability of the governments of William and Anne to operate as combinations of the parties. Partisanship also put all government servants under the constant threat of defending their conduct from year to year. And partisanship dictated certain policy options while frustrating others.

Ali Mazrui was born in 1933 in Mombasa, Kenya. Sent to England in 1955 for his secondary school education, he remained there until he earned hisB.A. (1960, politics and philosophy) with distinction from the University of Manchester. He received his M.A. (1961, government and politics) and Ph.D. (1966, philosophy) from Columbia and Oxford universities, respectively. In Africa, he taught political science at Uganda’s Makerere University College (1963-73), and then returned to the United States to teach at the University of Michigan (1974-91) and New York’s Binghamton University (1991-2014). An avatar of controversy, Mazrui was also legendary for the fertility of his mind. Nelson Mandela viewed him as “an outstanding educationist” 1 and Kofi Annan, former secretary-general of the United Nations, referred to him as “Africa’s gift to the world.”2 Salim Ahmed Salim, former secretary-general of the Organization of African Unity and prime minister of Tanzania wrote: Ali Mazrui provided [many of us] with the illuminating light to understand the reality we have been confronting. He armed us with the tools of engagement and inspired us with his eloquence, clarity of ideas while all the time maintaining the highest degree of humility, respect for fellow human beings, and an unflagging commitment to justice.

O presente trabalho se propõe a analisar o modo como a Ditadura Civil-Militar Brasileira se consolidou através do meio futebolístico e como este passou a ser institucionalizado pela mesma. Desse modo, serão analisadas as relações políticas e publicitárias que aproximavam o futebol do governo ditador e os benefícios que trouxeram para a Ditadura, relações essas que, em conjunto com o chamado milagre econômico, foram fundamentais para a popularidade do ditador Emílio Garrastazu Médici. Tendo como base o documentário Memórias do Chumbo – Futebol nos Tempos do Condor (2012), produzido pela emissora ESPN Brasil, este retrata o modo como o futebol foi utilizado para propagar a imagem publicitária e o de firmamento das Ditaduras no Cone-Sul. O documentário tem como diretor o historiador e jornalista Lucio Castro e conta com a participação de nomes já consagrados na historiografia brasileira.Palavras-chave: Ditadura; Futebol; Política; Brasil. AbstractThe present work proposes to analyze the way the Brazilian Civil-Military Dictatorship was consolidated through the footballing environment and how this became institutionalized by it. In this way, the political and advertising relations that brought football closer to the dictator government and the benefits they brought to the Dictatorship will be analyzed, relations that, together with the so-called economic miracle, were fundamental to the popularity of dictator Emílio Garrastazu Médici. Based on the documentary Memórias do Chumbo - Futebol nas Tempos do Condor (2012), produced by the broadcaster ESPN Brasil, this portrays the way football was used to propagate the advertising image and the firmament of the Dictatorships in the Southern Cone. The documentary is directed by the historian and journalist Lucio Castro and includes the participation of names already consecrated in Brazilian historiography.Keyword: Dictatorship; Football; Politics; Brazil

Since independence Cameroon has been a hegemonic state, evidenced by the 1966 introduction of a single party, the Cameroon National Union (CNU), which was purportedly created to foster national integration. This focus on national integration led to a de-emphasis of all other issues such as fundamental human rights. And because a select elite assigned itself the task of imagining the form the nation would take, this process was naturally accompanied by a contraction of the political space. Because the national integration project had paid minimal dividends after more than two decades, Cameroonians refused to legitimize it. They had realized that it simply served as a ruse for the ruling class to convert the state into a patrimonial one. Hence, people sought to regain their voices and participation through the democratic process. Reluctantly, the state capitulated to demands for political pluralism, passing the so-called Liberal Laws of 1990. However, by allowing multiparty politics, the government ruptured the facade of cohesion of the ruling class, which resulted in elites becoming increasingly preoccupied with maintaining their power and losing interest in the national integration project.

AbstractDrawing principally upon a rich vein of previously unexploited business records, this paper analyses the experience of British firms in Indonesia between the achievement of independence and the beginnings of the Suharto regime. As in The Netherlands East Indies, British enterprises occupied a significant position in post-colonial Indonesia in plantations, oil extraction, shipping, banking, the import-export trade, and manufacturing. After the nationalization of Dutch businesses from the end of 1957, Britain emerged as the leading investing power in the archipelago alongside the United States. However, during Indonesia's Confrontation with British-backed Malaysia (1963–1966), most UK-owned companies in the islands were subject to a series of torrid (albeit temporary) takeovers by the trade unions and subsequently various government authorities. Most of these investments were returned to British ownership under Suharto after 1967. But, in surviving the Sukarno era, British firms had endured 15 years of increasing inconvenience and insecurity trapped in a power struggle within Indonesia's perplexing plural polity (and particularly between the Communist Party and the military). Indeed, the Konfrontasi takeovers themselves, varying in intensity from region to region and from firm to firm, were indicative of deep fissures within Indonesian administration and politics. The unpredictable and unsettled political economy of post-colonial Indonesia meant that the balance of advantage lay not with transnational enterprise but with the host state and society.

The Supreme Court is a judicial institution that has existed since the Indonesian state was formed in 1945. This institution was formed based on the mandate of the constitution in article 24 of the 1945 Constitution, namely "judicial power is exercised by a Supreme Court and other judicial bodies according to law". But in fact, in the course of Indonesia's national and state life from its independence in 1945 to 1998, the judicial power exercised by the Supreme Court was not free and independent, both institutionally and independently of its judges. The influence of the executive power held by the president on the judicial power exercised by the Supreme Court can actually be observed in the politics of regulating judicial power through laws by the executive and legislative bodies during the old order government (President Soakarno 1945-1966) and the new order (President Soeharto 1967-1998). The judicial power law that was formed has actually subordinated the judiciary under the power of the president. This is the result of efforts to form the state of Indonesia as a country based on kinship that does not adhere to a separation of powers (executive, legislative and judicial) as the trias politica concept put forward by John Locke and Montesquie. With the 1998 reforms which in turn succeeded in amending the 1945 Constitution in order to realize the Indonesian state as a democratic legal state, the judiciary has been strengthened as an institution that is truly free and independent from the influence of extra-judicial powers.

Recent historical studies on the organizations of German expellees and their influence on West German political culture highlight the insincere attitude and deception by the whole West German political establishment toward the expellee politicians and activists and their cause. One study in this field is Matthias Stickler's important book “Ostdeutsch heißt Gesamtdeutsch,” and a more recent one by Manfred Kittel, Vertreibung der Vertriebenen?, takes Stickler's thesis even further. It creates the impression that the expellee organizations, highly dependent on the government for financial and political support, had no option in this matter and were even helpless in that they had to accept the noncommittal rhetoric and the West German government's unwillingness to obligate West Germany for their cause. In this article, I probe this portrayal of the expellee politicians and activists as objects rather than subjects of German politics by inquiring into the political and public relations activities of the German Sudeten Council (Sudetendeutscher Rat) in the field of foreign policy during and around the tenure of Hans-Christoph Seebohm as the leader (Sprecher) of the German Sudeten Expellee Homeland Society (Landsmannschaft) (1959–1967). The Sudeten Council is a non-party association; one half of its members are elected by the federal assembly of the German Sudeten Landsmannschaft and the other half by the political parties of the Bundestag. As well as being a politician of the expellee organization, Hans-Christoph Seebohm pursued the longest political career in the German federal cabinet—seventeen years. He served as Minister of Transportation and Mail of the Federal Republic from 1949 to 1966 under Chancellors Konrad Adenauer and Ludwig Erhard. To date, no monographic work has been written about Seebohm.

In dit artikel wordt de rol geanalyseerd van kardinaal Suenens in de ontknoping van de kwestie ‘Leuven-Vlaams’. Zijn mandement van 13 mei 1966, dat ook door de andere Belgische bisschoppen werd ondertekend, leidde een halve eeuw geleden tot de splitsing van de Leuvense universiteit.Suenens’ beslissing in 1966 om de Franstalige afdeling in Leuven te handhaven, lokte groot verzet uit in Vlaanderen. Het kwam tot een revolte tegen het kerkelijk gezag, enerzijds omdat de katholieke Vlaamse opinie de autoritaire ‘verordening’ van de bisschoppen als autoritair klerikalisme verwierp, anderzijds omdat een permanente Franstalige aanwezigheid in Leuven in Vlaanderen gezien werd als een bedreiging van het Vlaamse karakter van Brabant. Dat was voor de Vlaamse beweging en politici ook daarom onaanvaardbaar, omdat pas in 1963 de taalgrens was vastgelegd met als bedoeling homogene taalgebieden te creëren, eentalig Nederlands in Vlaanderen, ééntalig Frans in Wallonië, en tweetalig in Brussel.Toen in januari 1968 de UCL blijkens haar expansieplan in Leuven wilde blijven, leidde dat tot een tweede revolte, die het hele Vlaamse land beroerde. Een eerste gevolg ervan was dat het eenheidsfront van de kerkelijke hiërarchie verloren ging en de Vlaamse en Waalse bisschoppen respectievelijk het standpunt van de eigen taalgemeenschap bijtraden. De facto liet vanaf toen het episcopaat de beslissing over Leuven over aan de politiek. Een tweede gevolg was dat de politieke partijen – te beginnen met de christendemocratische – uiteenvielen naar taalgroep, wat leidde tot de val van de regering, tot parlementsverkiezingen, en een nieuwe regering die de splitsing en overheveling van de UCL naar Louvain-la-Neuve realiseerde.De historische betekenis van Suenens’ optreden lag ten eerste op het niveau van de Kerk zelf, want door lijnrecht in te gaan tegen de verwachtingen in Vlaanderen betreffende een ééntalig Leuven, en door de autoritaire toon van het bisschoppelijk mandement, vernietigde het kerkelijk gezag zijn eigen autoriteit. Ten tweede versterkte dit optreden het Vlaams-nationalisme en de communautaire tegenstellingen in het land, zodat daarna staatshervormingen in federaliserende zin onvermijdelijk werden. Ten derde verschoof de focus van de Leuvense studentenbeweging van Vlaamsgezind verzet tegen de bisschoppelijke verklaring, naar antiklerikalisme en anti-autoritarisme, en daarna naar een globale nieuwlinkse maatschappijkritiek. Ze bleef na 1968 een decenniumlang de Leuvense studentenbeweging oriënteren.Al deze gevolgen waren tegengesteld aan wat Suenens had bedoeld met het mandement. Hij gaf daarom later toe zich te hebben vergist. Vier elementen helpen die vergissing te verklaren: het besloten Franstalig milieu waarin hij leefde; de normatieve verwachting die aan zijn rol van primaat aartsbisschop van België kleefde; de gedachte dat de eenheid van de ‘grootste katholieke universiteiten ter wereld’ een voorwaarde was voor haar internationale rol; en ten slotte ook persoonlijke elementen, zoals zijn elitaire levensloop en aristocratische persoonlijkheid. Ze droegen alle bij tot het politieke falen van de kerkvorst.__________ “A Wide Field for the Student Movement Lies Open.” On the Origin and Character of the Flemish Front Movement This article analyses Cardinal Suenens’ role in the conclusion of the issue ‘Leuven Vlaams’ [Leuven Flemish]. His directive of May 13, 1966 – also supported by the other Belgian bishops – ultimately resulted in the separation of the university in Leuven half a century ago.Suenens’ decision in 1966 to maintain a Francophone branch at the university in Leuven had sparked great opposition in Flanders. This would culminate into a revolt against the clerical authorities because, on the one hand, the Catholic Flemish opinion designated the bishops’ rigid ‘ordinance’ as authoritarian clericalism, and because, on the other hand, a permanent Francophone presence in Leuven was considered a threat to the Flemish character of the province of Brabant. Consequently, the Flemish movement and politicians deemed this unacceptable, and were further emboldened by the fact that as recently as 1963 the linguistic border had been consolidated, which was intended to create linguistically homogenous regions: monolingual in Flanders and Wallonia, and bilingual in Brussels.When in January 1968 the UCL’s expansion plans conveyed its intentions to remain in Leuven, it sparked a second revolt that swept the entire Flemish land. A first consequence was the dissolution of the ecclesiastical hierarchy’s unity, as Flemish and Walloon bishops supported their own linguistic communities’ stance, ultimately leading to the episcopate relinquishing the decision over Leuven to politics. A second consequence was that political parties – starting with the Christian-democrats – disbanded and realigned along the linguistic fault line, which led to the fall of the government, parliamentary elections and a new government that implemented the separation and subsequence transfer of the UCL to Louvain-la-Neuve.The historical relevance of Suenens’ demea-nour is first of all related to the Catholic Church itself. The stark clash with Flemish expectations regarding a unilingual university at Leuven, and the authoritarian tone of the bishop’s directive had led to the abrogation of his pre-eminence by the clerical authorities. Secondly, his conduct strengthened Flemish nationalism and the country’s communitarian cleavage, thereby rendering the subsequent state reforms to federalism inevitable. Finally, Suenens’ stance transformed the student movement in Leuven, entailing a shift from Flemish opposition to the bishop’s decree towards anti-clericalism and anti-authoritarianism. This would subsequently contribute to the emergence of a general New Left critical orientation, which influenced the student movements for over a decade following 1968.All these effects were the exact reverse of the directive’s intentions. That is why Suenens later admitted that he had made a mistake. Four elements help to explain that error: the closed Francophone milieu in which he lived; the normative expectations that were associated with his role as Belgian’s archbishop; the presumption that the unity of ‘the biggest Catholic university in the world’ was a prerequisite for its international stature; and finally his personality, including his elite upbringing and aristocratic personality. These all contributed to the prelate’s political downfall.

The current article fervently acknowledges the general agreement that Lesotho had never experienced a stable democracy ever since the ultimate attainment of political independence in 1966. Among other possible solutions proposed to the problem of Lesotho’s democratic instability, citizenship education dominates government documents and various works regarding the political discourse. Although there is this pervasive recognition of the needed political educational intervention, there is no explicit direction on how to properly introduce the envisaged citizenship education. The article valiantly attempts bridging this visible gap by carefully probing the published literature to propose the meaningful integration of citizenship education with religious education. The discussion was guided by the critical use of the post-secular theoretical framework. The article highlights that, coupled with post-Christianity, post-secular theory undoubtedly provided a workable framework for the meaningful integration of secular (political citizenship) and religious essences for the promotion of democratic stability in Lesotho. The article logically concludes by showing that the proposed integration of citizenship education in religious education is within acceptable philosophical modes of proper education.

This article investigates and assesses a peacekeeping mission of the Southern African Development Community (SADC) as it relates to a case study of South Africa’s intervention in the Lesotho conflict in 1998. The article bases its argument on the international relations paradigm of realism so as to refute South Africa’s claim that the SADC sanctioned the 1998 military intervention and that this armed intervention was aimed at promoting democracy and stability. Realists interpret world politics as a struggle for power and survival in an anarchic world. The aims of this article are to: determine the reasons for the said military intervention and the extent to which it was conducted on humanitarian grounds; investigate and assess the degree to which the intervention by South Africa was encouraged by national interests; determine the nature of the involvement of the SADC, African Union (AU) and the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) in the 1998 intervention; and explore the 2014/2015 mediation process and the challenges encountered. The study used qualitative techniques for data collection and analysis. The primary and secondary data were obtained from government and other publications and reports. The article argues that South Africa appears to have used the 1998 intervention and the mediation process in 2014/2015 to pursue its strategic and economic interests in the Kingdom of Lesotho, because it was not mandated or authorised by the UN, AU, and SADC to carry out these actions. The intervention was not a humanitarian peacekeeping mission to rescue Lesotho from a coup as claimed by South African officials. The intervention appears to have been inconsistent with the UN charter and the SADC treaty.

In the early twentieth century, Chinese science flourished, buoyed by the country’s active connections to the global scientific community. No country developed deeper ties to Chinese scientists than the United States (US) – until cooperation ceased after the establishment of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) in 1949. This article examines efforts by American scientists to rebuild a relationship with their Chinese colleagues and to reintegrate China into global science. It traces how a transnational American organization – the Committee on Scholarly Communication with the PRC (CSCPRC) – initially failed but ultimately succeeded in extending the frontier of their epistemic community by reopening China to American scientists. Drawing on records from this non-governmental organization, interpolated with Chinese and US government sources, this article argues that the CSCPRC’s failures and successes depended on how effectively they adapted their scholarly initiative to changing US-China diplomatic ties. Scientists were not beholden to politics, however; indeed, they made a critical contribution to the development of Sino-American diplomacy, helping reestablish official relations in 1978. This article further reveals the transnational origins of China’s opening to the world and subsequent meteoric economic development, as well as the nexus between science and America’s historic ‘Open Door’ policy.

This study takes the Sub-Region of the Bas-Ulélé as an example of the recent history of the rural areas in Zaire. It gives a description from an insider's point of view based on local research, results in a testimony relating the complete deterioration of rural potentialities in Zaire. The article describes how in the first years after independence, the rich natural resources and the colonial infrastructure brought prosperous development. From 1964 to 1966, however, the Simba-rebellion ravaged the area, destroying a great deal of the infrastructure and caused large-scale massacres among the local population. After the crushing of the rebellion, the subsequent revival was quickly halted by constant bureaucratic hindrances and interference from Mobutu's MPR. "Zairisation " led to further deterioration of the economic infrastructure. From 1980 on, the Sub-Region was neglected more and more by the central government and even by its elected representatives. Finally, the liberalising of gold- prospecting withdrew farmers, schoolchildren and teachers form their normal activities leading only to more misery in the area.KEY WORDS: Development, Local Administration, Politics, Zaire

The Indonesian nation, which has undergone its independence for more than 70 years, experienced two major changes, namely in 1966 and 1998. 1966 gave birth to the New Order. The New Order period which lasted 32 years with a full orientation to pursue economic growth which was supported by security stability which killed democratic values. We have also gone through the reform era that was rolled out in 1998 which later gave birth to the state order as we feel today. During the 20 years or so of reformation, Indonesia's condition can be said to be more democratic even though it is still procedural which is marked by an election celebration party and post-conflict local election. However, economic orientation and development have almost no fundamental correction, no significant changes. The strategic economic policies taken by the government have not been in favor of the people. Potential economic resources are still held hostage by the interests of foreign countries. Both in the banking sector, insurance, capital markets, state-owned enterprises (BUMN), oil and gas mining and other economic sectors. The government only relies on the amount of economic growth, which does not contribute much to the real economy of the people. As a result, poverty and unemployment rates have not been significantly reduced. The quality of life of the people becomes low. In this paper, the author tries to study the economic growth which is always glorified by the ruling regime in the perspective of Islamic political economy. However, economic policies are inseparable from government political interference. Therefore, questions such as how is the political economy of Islam in view of economic growth amid the high poverty rate of the Indonesian people? Then what is the solution that Islamic political economy can provide in overcoming policies that are deemed not to benefit the people? From the discussion, the writer can provide some things that according to the authors are important to conclude. Islamic political economy is only one area of science that will be built based on the tauhid paradigm. Basically, all existing science needs to be built within the framework of the monotheistic paradigm. The emergence and development of Islamic civilization for more than a thousand years is always based on the Tawhid paradigm. At that time, all science was built on the basis of monotheism. The problem of economic development can be solved by tauhid paradigm. Keywords: Islamic Economic Politics, Maqashid al-Shari’ah Approach

Troubled visions of white ash and concrete-grey powder water-logged my mind. Just as I had ‘understood’ and ‘contextualised’ the events of September 11, I witnessed Jules and Gedeon Naudet’s 9/11, the documentary of the events, as they followed the firefighters into Tower One. Their cameras witness death, dense panic and ashen fear. I did not need to see this – it was too intimate and shocking. But it was the drained, grey visage – where the New York streets and people appeared like injured ghosts walking through the falling ruins of a paper mill – that will always stay with me. Not surprisingly I was drawn (safely?) back in time, away from the grey-stained New York streets, when another series of images seismically shifted by memory palate. Aberfan was the archetypal coal mining town, but what made it distinct was tragedy. On the hill above the village, coal waste from the mining process was dumped on water-filled slurry. Heavy rain on October 20, 1966 made way for a better day to follow. The dense rain dislodged the coal tip, and at 9:15, the slurry became a black tidal wave, overwhelming people and buildings in the past. There have been worse tragedies than Aberfan, if there are degrees of suffering. In the stark grey iconography of September 11, there was an odd photocopy of Aberfan, but in the negative. Coal replaced paper. My short piece explores the notion of shared tragedy and media-ted grief, utilising the Welsh mining disaster as a bloodied gauze through which to theorise collective memory and social change. Tragedy on the television A disaster, by definition, is a tragic, unexpected circumstance. Its etymology ties it to astrology and fate. Too often, free flowing emotions of sympathy dissipate with the initial fascination, without confronting the long-term consequences of misfortune. When coal slurry engulfed the school and houses in Aberfan, a small working class community gleaned attention from the London-based media. The Prime Minister and royalty all traveled to Aberfan. Through the medium of television, grief and confusion were conveyed to a viewing public. For the first time, cameras gathered live footage of the trauma as it overwhelmed the Taff Valley. The sludge propelled from the Valley and into the newspapers of the day. A rescue worker remembers, “I was helping to dig the children out when I heard a photographer tell a kiddie to cry for her dear friends, so that he could get a good picture – that taught me silence.” (“The last day before half-term.”) Similarly, a bereaved father remembers that, during that period the only thing I didn’t like was the press. If you told them something, when the paper came out your words were all the wrong way round. (“The last day before half-term.”) When analyzed as a whole, the concerns of the journalists – about intense emotion and (alternatively) censorship of emotion - blocked a discussion of the reasons and meaning of the tragedy, instead concentrating on the form of the news broadcasts. Debates about censorship and journalistic ethics prevented an interpretative, critical investigation of the disaster. The events in Aberfan were not created by a natural catastrophe or an unpredictable or blameless ‘act of God.’ Aberfan’s disaster was preventable, but it became explainable within a coal industry village accustomed to unemployment and work-related ‘accidents.’ Aberfan was not merely a disaster that cost life. It represented a two-fold decline of Britain: industrially and socially. Coal built the industrial matrix of Britain. Perhaps this cost has created what Dean MacCannell described as “the collective guilt of modernised people” (23). Aberfan was distinct from the other great national tragedies in the manner the public perceived the events unfolding in the village. It was the disaster where cameras recorded the unerring screams of grief, the desperate search for a lost – presumed dead – child, and the building anger of a community suffering through a completely preventable ‘accident.’ The cameras – in true A Current Affair style – intruded on grief and privacy. A bereaved father stated that “I’ve got to say this again, if the papers and the press and the television were to leave us alone in the very beginning I think we could have settled down a lot quicker than what we did” (“The last day before half-term.”). This breach of grieving space also allowed those outside the community to share a memory, create a unifying historical bond, and raised some sympathy-triggered money. To actually ‘share’ death and grief at Aberfan through the medium of television led to a reappraisal, however temporary, about the value and costs of industrialisation. The long-term consequences of these revelations are more difficult to monitor. A question I have always asked – and the events of September 11, Bali and the second Gulf War have not helped me – is if a community or nation personally untouched by tragic events experience grief. Sympathy and perhaps empathy are obvious, as is voyeurism and curiosity. But when the bodies are simply unidentified corpses and a saddened community as indistinguishable from any other town, then viewers needs to ponder the rationale and depth of personal feelings. Through the window of television, onlookers become Peeping Toms, perhaps saturated with sympathy and tears, but still Peeping Toms. How has this semiotic synergy continued through popular memory? Too often we sap the feelings of disasters at a distance, and then withdraw when it is no longer fashionable, relevant or in the news. Notions about Wales, the working class and coal mining communities existed in journalists’ minds before they arrived in the village, opened their notebook or spoke to camera. They mobilised ‘the facts’ that suited a pre-existing interpretation. Bereaved parents digging into the dirt for lost children, provide great photographs and footage. This material was ideologically shaped to infantilise the community of Aberfan and, indirectly, the working class. They were exoticised and othered. It is clear from testimony recorded since the event that the pain felt by parents was compounded by television and newspaper reportage. Television allowed “a collective witnessing” (McLean and Johnes, “Remembering Aberfan”) of the disaster. Whether these televisual bystanders actually contributed anything to the healing of the tragedy, or forged an understanding of the brutal work involved in extracting coal, is less clear. There is not a natural, intrinsic sense of community created through television. Actually, it can establish boundaries of difference. Television has provided a record of exploitation, dissent and struggle. Whether an event or programme is read as an expression of unequal power relations or justifiable treatment of the ‘unworthy poor’ is in the hands of the viewer. Class-based inequalities and consciousness are not blinked out with the operation of a remote control. Intervention When I first researched Aberfan in the 1980s, the story was patchy and incomplete. The initial events left journalistic traces of the horror and – later – boredom with the Aberfan tragedy. Because of the thirty year rule on the release of government documents, the cause, motivation and rationale of many decisions from the Aberfan disaster appeared illogical or without context. When searching for new material and interpretations on Aberfan between 1968 and 1996, little exists. The release of documents in January 1997 triggered a wave of changing interpretations. Two committed and outstanding scholars, upon the release of governmental materials, uncovered the excesses and inequalities, demonstrating how historical research can overcome past injustice, and the necessity for recompense in the present. Iain McLean and Martin Johnes claimed a media profile and role in influencing public opinion and changing the earlier interpretations of the tragedy. On BBC radio, Professor McLean stated I think people in the government, people in the Coal Board were extremely insensitive. They treated the people of Aberfan as trouble makers. They had no conception of the depth of trauma suffered (“Aberfan”). McLean and Johnes also created from 1997-2001 a remarkable, well structured and comprehensive website featuring interview material, a database of archival collections and interpretations of the newly-released governmental documents. The Website possessed an agenda of conservation, cataloguing the sources held at the Merthyr Tydfil and Dowlais libraries. These documents hold a crucial function: to ensure that the community of Aberfan is rarely bothered for interviews or morbid tourists returning to the site. The Aberfan disaster has been included in the UK School curriculum and to avoid the small libraries and the Community Centre being overstretched, the Website possesses a gatekeepping function. The cataloguing work by the project’s research officer Martin Johnes has produced something important. He has aligned scholarly, political and social goals with care and success. Iain McLean’s proactive political work also took another direction. While the new governmental papers were released in January 1997, he wrote an article based on the Press Preview of December 1996. This article appeared in The Observer on January 5, 1997. From this strong and timely intervention, The Times Higher Education Supplement commissioned another article on January 17, 1997. Through both the articles and the Web work, McLean and Johnes did not name the individual victims or their parents, and testimony appears anonymously in the Website and their publications. They – unlike the journalists of the time – respected the community of Aberfan, their privacy and their grief. These scholars intervened in the easy ‘sharing’ of the tragedy. They built the first academic study of the Aberfan Disaster, released on the anniversary of the landslide: Aberfan, Government and Disasters. Through this book and their wide-ranging research, it becomes clear that the Labour Government failed to protect the citizens of a safe Labour seat. A bereaved husband and parent stated that I was tormented by the fact that the people I was seeking justice from were my people – a Labour Government, a Labour council, a Labour-nationalised Coal Board (“The last day before half-term”). There is a rationale for this attitude towards the tragedy. The Harold Wilson Labour Governments of 1964-70 were faced with severe balance of payments difficulties. Also, they only held a majority in the house of five, which they were to build to 96 in the 1966 election. While the Welfare State was a construction ‘for’ the working class after the war, the ‘permissive society’ – and resultant social reforms – of the 1960s was ‘for’ middle class consumers. It appeared that the industrial working class was paying for the new white heat of technology. This paradox not only provides a context for the Aberfan disaster but a space for media and cultural studies commentary. Perhaps the most difficult task for those of us working in cultural and media studies is to understand the citizens of history, not only as consumers, spectators or an audience, but how they behave and what they may feel. We need to ask what values and ideas do we share with the ‘audiences,’ ‘citizens’ and ‘spectators’ in our theoretical matrix. At times we do hide behind our Foucaults and Kristevas, our epistemologies and etymology. Raw, jagged emotion is difficult to theorise, and even more complex to commit to the page. To summon any mode of resistive or progressivist politics, requires capturing tone, texture and feeling. This type of writing is hard to achieve from a survey of records. A public intellectual role is rare these days. The conservative media invariably summon pundits with whom they can either agree or pillory. The dissenting intellectual, the diffident voice, is far more difficult to find. Edward Said is one contemporary example. But for every Said, there is a Kissinger. McLean and Johnes, during a time of the Blair Government, reminded a liberal-leaning Labour of earlier mistakes in the handling of a working-class community. In finding origins, causes and effects, the politicisation of history is at its most overt. Path of the slag The coal slurry rolled onto the Welsh village nearly thirty-seven years ago. Aberfan represents more than a symbol of decline or of burgeoning televisual literacy. It demonstrates how we accept mediated death. A ‘disaster’ exposes a moment of insight, a transitory glimpse into other people’s lives. It composes a mobile, dynamic photograph: the viewer is aware that life has existed before the tragedy and will continue after it. The link between popular and collective memory is not as obvious as it appears. All memory is mediated – there is a limit to the sharing. Collective memory seems more organic, connected with an authentic experience of events. Popular memory is not necessarily contextually grounded in social, historical or economic formations but networks diverse times and spaces without an origin or ending. This is a post-authentic memory that is not tethered to the intentions, ideologies or origins of a sender, town or community. To argue that all who have seen photographs or televisual footage of Aberfan ‘share’ an equivalent collective memory to those directly touched by the event, place, family or industry is not only naïve, but initiates a troubling humanism which suggests that we all ‘share’ a common bank of experience. The literacy of tragedy and its reportage was different after October 1966. When reading the historical material from the disaster, it appears that grieving parents are simply devastated puppets lashing out at their puppeteers. Their arguments and interpretation were molded for other agendas. Big business, big government and big unions colluded to displace the voices of citizens (McLean and Johnes “Summary”). Harold Wilson came to office in 1964 with the slogan “13 wasted years.” He promised that – through economic growth – consensus could be established. Affluence through consumer goods was to signal the end of a polarisation between worker and management. These new world symbols, fed by skilled scientific workers and a new ‘technological revolution,’ were – like the industrial revolution – uneven in its application. The Aberfan disaster is situated on the fault line of this transformation. A Welsh working class community seemed out of time and space in 1960s Britain. The scarved women and stocky, strong men appeared to emerge from a different period. The television nation did not share a unified grief, but performed the gulf between England and Wales, centre and periphery, middle and working class, white collar and black collar. Politics saturates television, so that it is no longer possible to see the join. Aberfan’s television coverage is important, because the mend scar was still visible. Literacy in televisual grief was being formed through the event. But if Aberfan did change the ‘national consciousness’ of coal then why did so few southern English citizens support the miners trying to keep open the Welsh pits? The few industries currently operating in this region outside of Cardiff means that the economic clock has stopped. The Beveridge Report in 1943 declared that the great achievement of the Second World War was the sharing of experience, a unity that would achieve victory. The People’s War would create a People’s Peace. Aberfan, mining closures and economic decline destroyed this New Jerusalem. The green and pleasant land was built on black coal. Aberfan is an historical translator of these iconographies. Works Cited Bereaved father. “The last day before half-term.” 1999. 6 April 2003 <http://www.nuff.ox.ac.uk/politics/aberfan/chap1.htm>. Bereaved husband and parent. “The last day before half-term.” 1999. 6 April 2003 <http://www.nuff.ox.ac.uk/politics/aberfan/chap1.htm>. MacCannell, Dean. Empty Meeting Grounds. London: Routledge, 1992. McLean, Iain. “Aberfan.” 6 April 2003 <http://news.bbc.co.uk/olmedia/980000/audio/_983056_mclean_ab... ...erfan_21oct_0800.ram>. McLean, Iain, and Martin Johnes. Aberfan: Government and Disasters. Cardiff: Welsh Academic Press, 2000. McLean, Iain, and Martin Johnes. “Remembering Aberfan.” 1999. 6 April 2003 <http://www.nuff.ox.ac.uk/politics/aberfan/remem.htm>. McLean, Iain, and Martin Johnes. “Summary of Research Results.” 1999. 6 April 2003 <http://www.nuff.ox.ac.uk/politics/aberfan/eoafinal.htm>. Naudet, Jules, Gedeon Naudet, and James Hanlon. 9/11. New York: Goldfish Pictures and Silverstar Productions, 2001. Rescue worker. “The last day before half-term.” 1999. 6 April 2003 <http://www.nuff.ox.ac.uk/politics/aberfan/chap1.htm>. Links http://news.bbc.co.uk/olmedia/980000/audio/_983056_mclean_aberfan_21oct_0800.ram http://www.nuff.ox.ac.uk/politics/aberfan/chap1.htm http://www.nuff.ox.ac.uk/politics/aberfan/chap1.htm.(1999 http://www.nuff.ox.ac.uk/politics/aberfan/eoafinal.htm http://www.nuff.ox.ac.uk/politics/aberfan/home.htm http://www.nuff.ox.ac.uk/politics/aberfan/remem.htm Citation reference for this article Substitute your date of access for Dn Month Year etc... MLA Style Brabazon, Tara. "Black and Grey" M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture< http://www.media-culture.org.au/0304/07-blackandgrey.php>. APA Style Brabazon, T. (2003, Apr 23). Black and Grey. M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture, 6,< http://www.media-culture.org.au/0304/07-blackandgrey.php>

Resilience is an interdisciplinary concept that has been interrogated and investigated in a number of fields of research and practice including psychology, climate change, trauma studies, education and disaster planning. This paper considers its position within critical disability studies, popular understandings of disability and the emergence of a disability culture. Patrick Martin-Breen and J. Marty Anderies offer a colloquial definition of resilience as: Bouncing back after stress, enduring greater stress, and being less disturbed by a given amount of stress. … To be resilient is to withstand a large disturbance without, in the end, changing, disintegrating, or becoming permanently damaged; to return to normal quickly; and to distort less in the face of such stresses. (1182) Conversely, Glenn E. Richardson argues that resiliency is a ‘metatheory’ that can best be described as ‘growth or adaptation through disruption rather than to just recover or bounce back’ (1184). He argues that resiliency theory has progressed through several stages, from the recognition of characteristics of resilient individuals to an appreciation of the support structures required beyond the level of the individual. In her memoir Resilience, Ann Deveson describes resilience as a concept that people think they understand until they are called upon to define it. Deveson offers many definitions and examples of resilience throughout her book, beginning with stories about disability, people with disability and their experiences of changing levels of social inclusion and exclusion (632). She paints an evocative picture of a young mother whose five year old son has cerebral palsy giving evidence before a Royal Commission into Human Relationships during a period of significant social change involving the deinstitutionalisation of people with disabilities: A few years earlier, this child with cerebral palsy would have been placed in an institution. His mother might not even have seen him. Now she had care of her child but the pendulum had swung in the opposite direction. (632) During the 1980s a number of large institutions caring for people with developmental impairments and psychiatric illnesses were closed in favour of community care (Clear 652). Although giving an appearance of endorsing equality of disabled people in the community, the ‘hidden agenda’ of this initiative was to cut public expenditure on social services (Ellis 163). As a result, an undue burden fell to women who became primary carers with little support such as the woman Deveson remembers. She questions where this young mother mustered such ‘magnificent resilience’ when she had such little support: When he was born, she had been discharged from the hospital with her baby, a feeding formula and a tiny pink plate for the child’s cleft palate. The only advice she received was to come back later to have the plate refitted. Her general practitioner prescribed her sedatives for depression, and she and her husband found their own way to the Royal Blind society by asking a blind man they saw outside a supermarket. She had only learned accidentally from one of the nurses that her baby was blind. ‘He’s mentally retarded too,’ the nurse had added, almost as an afterthought. (632) Thus Deveson’s consideration of resilience includes both an individual’s response to what could be described as tragedy and the importance of social support and the drive to demand it. Despite her child’s impairment and the lack of community resources made available to her family to cope, this young woman was leading public discussion about the plight of people with disabilities and their families in the hopes the government would intervene to help improve the situation (Deveson 632). Indeed, when it comes to the experience of disability, resilience is implied and generally understood to mean an attribute of the individual. However, as resilience theory has progressed, resilience can no longer be considered as existing exclusively within the domain of an individual’s personal qualities. Environmental support structures are vital in fostering resilience (Wilkes). Despite resiliency theory moving on from the level of the individual, popular discourses of resiliency as an individual’s attribute continue to dominate disability. As such, some critical disability commentators have redefined resilience as a response to a disabling social world. My aim in this paper is to explore this discourse by engaging with ideas about disability and resilience that emerge in popular culture. Despite the changing social position of people with disabilities in the community, notions of resilience are often invoked to describe the experience of people with disability and attributes of successful (often considered ‘inspiring’) people with disability. I begin by offering a definition of resilience as it is bound up in notions of inspiration and usually applied to people with disabilities. The second part of the paper explores disability as a cultural signifier to comment on the ways in which disability offers cultural meanings that may work to reassure nondisabled people of their privileged position. Finally, the paper considers interpretations of disability as a personal tragedy before exploring the emergence of a disability culture that recognises the social and cultural oppression experienced by people with disabilities and reworks definitions of resilience as a response to that oppression. Defining Resilience: Good Outcomes in Spite of Serious Threats Disability is often invoked in stories about resilience. Gillian King, Elizabeth Brown, and Linda Smith argue that a clear link exists between resilience and feeling that life is meaningful. They argue that the experiences of people with disabilities can offer a template for how to develop resilience and cope with life changes (King, Brown and Smith 633). According to the Oxford English Dictionary Online, resilience is ‘the action or an act of rebounding or springing back’ (653). King et al add that several concepts are associated with resilience such as hardiness, a sense of coherence and learned optimism (633). Deveson, resilience ‘has come to mean an ability to confront adversity and still find hope and meaning in life’. She comments that it conjures up notions of heroism, endurance and determination (632). Each of these characteristics we might describe as inspirational. It is telling that both Deveson and King et al use people with disabilities as signifiers of resilience in practice. However, Katherine Runswick-Cole and Dan Goodley argue that this definition of resilience has not necessarily been useful to people with disabilities and instead recommend a definition of resilience that Deveson only alludes to. For Runswick-Cole and Goodley resilience can be located in social processes. They argue that a thorough investigation of resilience in the lives of people with disabilities considers the broader social and cultural restrictions placed on top of impairments rather than simply individualising resilience as a character trait of people who can ‘overcome the odds’: An exploration of resilience in the lives of disabled people must, then, focus on what resources are available and who is accessing those resources. Crucially, in seeking to build resilience in the lives of disabled people, this can never simply be a matter of building individual capacity or family support, it must also be a case of challenging social, attitudinal and structural barriers which increase adversity in the lives of disabled people. (634) This is an alternative approach to disability that sees ‘the problem’ located in social structures and inaccessible environments. This so-called social model of disability is based on principles of empowerment and argues that able-bodied mainstream society disables people who have impairments through an inaccessible built environment and the perpetuation of stereotypes and prejudicial attitudes. Disability Dustbins and Inspirational Cripples Arthur Frank, sociologist and author of The Wounded Storyteller, explains that ‘the human body, for all its resilience, is fragile; breakdown is built into it. Bodily predictability, if not the exception, should be regarded as exceptional; contingency ought to be accepted as normative’ (634). Frank argues that we do not want to admit that our bodies are unpredictable and could ‘break down’ at any moment. Those bodies that do break down therefore become representatives of many of the things [the able-bodied, normal world] most fear-tragedy, loss, dark and the unknown. Involuntarily we walk- or more often sit- in the valley of the shadow of death. Contact with us throws up in people's faces the fact of sickness and death in the world … A deformed and paralysed body attacks everyone's sense of well-being and invincibility. (Hunt 186) People with disabilities therefore become loaded cultural signifiers, as Tom Shakespeare argues in Cultural Representations of Disabled People: Dustbins for Disavowal: ‘it is non-disabled people’s embodiment which is the issue: disabled people remind non-disabled people of their own vulnerability’ (139). As a result, people with disabilities are culturally othered. Several disability theorists have argued that this makes the non-disabled feel better about themselves and their tenuous privileged position (Barnes; Ellis; Kumari Campbell; Oliver, Goggin and Newell; Shakespeare). Disability, as a concept, is both everywhere and nowhere. Generally considered a medical experience or personal tragedy, the discipline of critical disability studies has emerged to question why disability is considered an inherently negative experience and if there is more to disability than a body that has something wrong with it. Fiona Kumari Campbell suggests ableism – ‘the network of beliefs, processes and practices that produces a particular kind of self and body (the corporeal standard) that is projected as the perfect, species typical and therefore essential and fully human’ – is repeatedly performed in our culture. This cultural project is difficult to sustain because by their very nature all bodies are out of control. People with disability are an acute reminder of the temporariness of an able bodied ontology (650). In order to maintain this division and network of beliefs, the idea that disability is a personal tragedy rather than a set of social relations designed to exclude some bodies but not others is culturally reproduced through stereotypes such as the idea that people with disabilities who achieve both ordinary and extraordinary things are sources of inspiration. Resilience as a personal quality is implicated in this stereotype. In a powerful Ramp Up blog that was republished on the ABC’s Drum and the influential popular culture/mummy blogging site website Mamamia, Stella Young takes issues with the media’s framing of disability as inspirational: We all learn how to use the bodies we're born with, or learn to use them in an adjusted state, whether those bodies are considered disabled or not. So that image of the kid drawing a picture with the pencil held in her mouth instead of her hand? That's just the best way for her, in her body, to do it. For her, it's normal. I can't help but wonder whether the source of this strange assumption that living our lives takes some particular kind of courage is the news media, an incredibly powerful tool in shaping the way we think about disability. Most journalists seem utterly incapable of writing or talking about a person with a disability without using phrases like "overcoming disability", "brave", "suffers from", "defying the odds", "wheelchair bound" or, my personal favourite, "inspirational". If we even begin to question the way we're labelled, we slide immediately to the other end of the scale and become "bitter" and "ungrateful". We fail to be what people expect. (610) These phrases, that Young claims the media rely on to isolate people with disabilities, are synonyms for the qualities Deveson attributes to resilient individuals (632). As Beth Haller notes, although disabled activists and academics attempt to progress important political work, the news media continue to frame people with disability as courageous and inspirational simply for living their lives (216). By comparison, disability theorist Irving Zola describes rejecting his leg braces (symbolic of his professional status) electing instead to use a wheelchair: If we lived in a less healthiest, capitalist, and hierarchal society, which spent less time finding ways to exclude and disenfranchise people and more time finding ways to include and enhance the potentialities of everyone, then there wouldn’t have been so much for me to overcome. (654) Harilyn Russo agrees, and in her memoir Don’t Call Me Inspirational highlights the socially created barriers put in her way and the ways these are ignored in favour of individualising social disablement as something inspirational people ‘overcome’: I’ll tell you why I am inspirational: I put up with the barriers, the barricades, the bullshit you put between us to avoid confronting something—probably yourself—and still pay the rent on time and savor dark chocolate. Now that takes real courage. (651) Throughout her book, Russo seeks to ‘overcome disability prejudice’ rather than ‘overcome disability’. Russo establishes herself and her experiences as normal and every day while articulating the tedium she finds in being pigeon holed as inspirational. These authors are constructing a new way of thinking about disability. Michael Oliver first described this as the ‘social model of disability’ in 1981. He sought to overturn the pathologisation of disability by giving people ‘a way of applying the idea that it was society not people with impairments that should be the target for professional intervention and practice’ (Runswick-Cole and Goodley 634). Resilience: A Key Concept Fiona Kumari Campbell questions whether resilience is a useful concept in the context of disability and reflects on its use to obscure “the ‘real’ problem, namely disability oppression” (649). She interrogates traditional definitions of resilience as they draw on notions of good outcomes in spite of risk factors or experiences of severe trauma and calls for an understanding of the interactive and dynamic features of resilience as opposed to ‘individualised psychological attributes’. Thus, individualised notions of resilience as they are implicated in the cultural stories of inspirational people with disabilities are embedded within the ableist relations that Kumari Campbell seeks to expose. In Empowerment, Self-Advocacy and Resilience, Dan Goodley argues that resilience is a key concept that has repeatedly emerged throughout his research into disability and self-advocacy. He draws on the reflections of people with disabilities to offer a re-definition of resilience as a response to a disabling society that includes five interrelated aspects (648). First is resilience as contextual, which recognises resilience as the result of the contexts in which it emerges, including through relationships with others and the experience of disabling and enabling environments. Secondly, resilience complicates preconceived notions about people with disabilities such as the view that they are passive. Goodley’s third feature of resilience is optimism. He notes resistance toward oppression as a key characteristic of optimistic resilience. Goodley again considers the importance of interpersonal relationships and group identity when he argues that the fourth feature of resilience relies on people with disabilities forming relationships with each other and group identities to question their oppression. Finally, Goodley argues ‘resilience is indicative of disablement’ and suggests that people with disability must be resilient in everyday life because we live in a disabling society. Kumari Campbell posits that individualised notions of resilience are a ‘cop out’ designed to ‘distract and defuse the reality of people labouring under very difficult circumstances of which the solution is better access to quality services’. She is hopeful, like Goodley, that resilience can be redefined as a political project, and encourages people with disabilities to develop a critical consciousness and find a new sense of community through art, humour and peer support. Therefore, according to Kumari Campbell and Goodley, resilience can be redefined as a response to social disablement rather than bodily impairment. Disability Culture: Acts of Resilience in a Disabling Society Russo and Zola’s work is part of a disability culture that has emerged in response to narrow ways of understanding disability. Steven Brown emphasises the importance of experience and personal identity in his definition of disability culture: People with disabilities have forged a group identity. We share a common history of oppression and a common bond of resilience. We generate art, music, literature, and other expressions of our lives and our culture, infused from our experience of disability. Most importantly, we are proud of ourselves as people with disabilities. We claim our disabilities with pride as part of our identity. (520) Brown’s definition of disability culture therefore draws on all five of Goodley’s features of resilience. Disability culture is contextual, complicating, optimistic, interpersonal and indicative of disablement. The forging of a group identity reveals the resilience of disability culture as contextual and interpersonal. The creation of art, music, literature and other cultural artefacts reveals resilience as optimistic. The notion that people with disabilities are proud of their identity complicates traditional understandings of disability as a personal tragedy. Brown’s emphasis on the common history of the oppression of people with disabilities, as it initiated the whole disability culture movement, is ‘indicative of disablement’. The bonds of resilience that create the disability cultural movement are a result of the social oppression of people with disabilities (Gill; Martin; Brown; Goodley). Conclusion Whereas people with disabilities going about their every day lives have often been considered inspirational and as possessing resilient qualities, a new disability culture is emerging that repositions the resilience of people with disabilities as a political response to social oppression. Drawing on Runswick-Cole and Goodley’s argument that individualising qualities of resilience in inspirational people with disabilities has not benefitted people with disabilities, this paper sought to reveal the importance of resilience as a response to social oppression. People with disabilities in their formation of a disability cultural movement are reworking and redefining resilience as a response to oppression. Throughout this paper I have drawn on the reflections of a number of people with disabilities to illustrate the emergence of a disability culture as it has begun the work of redefining resilience as a political project that “‘outs’ the problems that disabled people face and names and prioritises the concerns” (Kumari Campbell 649). As Goodley argues, people with disabilities have developed a politics of resilience ‘in the face of a disabling world’. References Barnes, Colin. “Disabling Imagery and the Media: An Exploration of the Principles for Media Representations of Disabled People.” 1992. Brown, Steven. “What Is Disability Culture?” Disability Studies Quarterly 22.2 (2002). Clear, Mike. Promises, Promises: Disability and Terms of Inclusion. Leichhardt: Federation Press, 2000. Deveson, Ann. Resilience. Crows Nest: Allen & Unwin, 2003. Ellis, Katie. Disabling Diversity: The Social Construction of Disability in 1990s Australian National Cinema. Saarbrücken, Germany: VDM Verlag, 2008. Frank, Arthur. The Wounded Storyteller: Body, Illness and Ethics. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1995. Gill, Carol. “A Psychological View of Disability Culture.” Disability Studies Quarterly (Fall 1995). ———. "Disability in Australia: Exposing a Social Apartheid." Sydney: University of New South Wales, 2005. Goodley, Dan. “Empowerment, Self-Advocacy and Resilience.” Journal of Intellectual Disabilities 9.4 (2005): 333-343. Haller, Beth. Representing Disability in an Ableist World: Essays on Mass Media. Louisville, KY: Avocado Press, 2010. Hunt, Paul. “A Critical Condition.” Stigma: The Experience of Disability. Ed. Paul Hunt. London: Geoffrey Chapman, 1966. King, Gillian, Elizabeth Brown, and Linda Smith. “Resilience: Learning from People with Disabilities and the Turning Points in Their Lives.” Health Psychology. Ed. Barbara, Tinsley. Westport, CT: Praeger, 2003. Kumari Campbell, Fiona. Contours of Ableism: The Production of Disability and Abledness. New York: Palgrave Macmillian, 2009. ———. “Out of the Shadows: Resilience and Living with Ableism Seminar.” The University of Dundee, 13 Sep. 2010. Martin-Breen, Patrick, and J. Marty Anderies. “Resilience: A Literature Review.” The Rockefeller Foundation, 2011. Martin, Douglas. Disability Culture: Eager to Bite the Hands That Would Feed Them. New York Times, 1997. Oliver, Mike. “Understanding Disability: From Theory to Practice.” Houndsmill, Basingstoke: Macmillian, 1996. Oxford English Dictionary. “resilience, n.” Oxford University Press. Richardson, G. E. “The Metatheory of Resilience and Resiliency,” Journal of Clinical Psychology 58.3. (2002): 307-321. Rousso, Harilyn. "Don’t Call Me Inspirational: A Disabled Feminist Talks Back." Philadelphia: Temple University Press. 2013. Runswick-Cole, Katherine, and Dan Goodley. “Resilience: A Disability Studies and Community Psychology Approach.” Social and Personality Psychology Compass 7. 2 (2013): 67-78. Shakespeare, Tom. “Cultural Representation of Disabled People: Dustbins for Disavowal?” Disability & Society 9.3 (1994): 283-299. Wilkes, Glenda. “Introduction – A Second Generation of Resilience Research.” Journal of Clinical Psychology 58.3 (2002): 229-232. Young, Stella. “We’re Not Here for Your Inspiration.” Ramp Up 2012. Zola, Irving. Missing Pieces: A Chronicle of Living with a Disability. Philadelphia: Temple University Press. 1982.

IntroductionIn 1802 George Howe (1769-1821), the recently appointed Government Printer, published Australia’s first book. The following year he established Australia’s first newspaper; an enterprise that ran counter to all the environmental factors of the day, including: 1) issues of logistics and a lack of appropriate equipment and basic materials to produce a regularly issued newspaper; 2) issues resulting from the very close supervision of production and the routine censorship by the Governor; and 3) issues associated with the colony’s primary purposes as a military outpost and as a penal settlement, creating conflicts between very different readerships. The Sydney Gazette was, critically for Howe, the only newspaper in the infant city for over two decades. Alternative voices would not enter the field of printed media until the 1820s and 1830s. This article briefly explores the birth of an Australian industry and looks at how a very modest newspaper overcame a range of serious challenges to ignite imaginations and lay a foundation for media empires.Government Printer The first book published in Australia was the New South Wales General Standing Orders and General Orders (1802), authorised by Governor Philip Gidley King for the purposes of providing a convenient, single-volume compilation of all Government Orders, issued in New South Wales, between 1791 and 1802. (As the Australian character has been described as “egalitarian, anti-authoritarian and irreverent” [D. Jones 690], it is fascinating that the nation’s first published book was a set of rules.) Prescribing law, order and regulation for the colony the index reveals the desires of those charged with the colony’s care and development, to contain various types of activities. The rules for convicts were, predictably, many. There were also multiple orders surrounding administration, animal husbandry as well as food stuffs and other stores. Some of the most striking headings in the index relate to crime. For example, in addition to headings pertaining to courts there are also headings for a broad range of offences from: “BAD Characters” to “OFFENSIVE Weapons – Again[s]t concealing” (i-xii). The young colony, still in its teenage years, was, for the short-term, very much working on survival and for the long-term developing ambitious plans for expansion and trade. It was clear though, through this volume, that there was no forgetting the colony of New South Wales was first, and foremost, a penal settlement which also served as a military outpost. Clear, too, was the fact that not all of those who were shipped out to the new colony were prepared to abandon their criminal careers which “did not necessarily stop with transportation” (Foyster 10). Containment and recidivism were matters of constant concern for the colony’s authorities. Colonial priorities could be seen in the fact that, when “Governor Arthur Phillip brought the first convicts (548 males and 188 females) to Port Jackson on 26 January 1788, he also brought a small press for printing orders, rules, and regulations” (Goff 103). The device lay dormant on arrival, a result of more immediate concerns to feed and house all those who made up the First Fleet. It would be several years before the press was pushed into sporadic service by the convict George Hughes for printing miscellaneous items including broadsides and playbills as well as for Government Orders (“Hughes, George” online). It was another convict (another man named George), convicted at the Warwick Assizes on March 1799 (Ferguson vi) then imprisoned and ultimately transported for shoplifting (Robb 15), who would transform the small hand press into an industry. Once under the hand of George Howe, who had served as a printer with several London newspapers including The Times (Sydney Gazette, “Never” 2) – the printing press was put to much more regular use. In these very humble circumstances, Australia’s great media tradition was born. Howe, as the Government Printer, transformed the press from a device dedicated to ephemera as well as various administrative matters into a crucial piece of equipment that produced the new colony’s first newspaper. Logistical Challenges Governor King, in the year following the appearance of the Standing Orders, authorised the publishing of Australia’s first newspaper, The Sydney Gazette and New South Wales Advertiser. The publication history of The Sydney Gazette, in a reflection of some of the challenges faced by the printer, is erratic. First published on a Saturday from 5 March 1803, it quickly changed to a Sunday paper from 10 April 1803. Interestingly, Sunday “was not an approved day for the publication of newspapers, and although some English publishers had been doing so since about 1789, Sunday papers were generally frowned upon” (Robb 58). Yet, as argued by Howe a Sunday print run allowed for the inclusion of “the whole of the Ship News, and other Incidental Matter, for the preceeding week” (Sydney Gazette, “To the Public” 1).The Sydney Gazette and New South Wales Advertiser Vol. 1, No. 1, 5 March 1803 (Front Page)Call Number DL F8/50, Digital ID a345001, State Library of New South WalesPublished weekly until 1825, then bi-weekly until 1827 before coming out tri-weekly until 20 October 1842 (Holden 14) there were some notable pauses in production. These included one in 1807 (Issue 214, 19 April-Issue 215, 7 June) and one in 1808-1809 (Issue 227, 30 August-Issue 228, 15 May) due to a lack of paper, with the latter pause coinciding with the Rum Rebellion and the end of William Bligh’s term as Governor of New South Wales (see: Karskens 186-88; Mundle 323-37). There was, too, a brief attempt at publishing as a daily from 1 January 1827 which lasted only until 10 February of that year when the title began to appear tri-weekly (Kirkpatrick online; Holden 14). There would be other pauses, including one of two weeks, shortly before the final issue was produced on 20 October 1842. There were many problems that beset The Sydney Gazette with paper shortages being especially challenging. Howe regularly advertised for: “any quantity” of Spanish paper (e.g.: Sydney Gazette, “Wanted to Purchase” 4) and needing to be satisfied “with a variety of size and colour” (P.M. Jones 39). In addition, the procurement of ink was so difficult in the colony, that Howe often resorted to making his own out of “charcoal, gum and shark oil” (P.M. Jones 39).The work itself was physically demanding and papers printed during this period, by hand, required a great deal of effort with approximately “250 sheets per hour … [the maximum] produced by a printer and his assistant” (Robb 8). The printing press itself was inadequate and the subject of occasional repairs (Sydney Gazette, “We Have” 2). Type was also a difficulty. As Gwenda Robb explains, traditionally six sets of an alphabet were supplied to a printer with extras for ‘a’, ‘e’, ‘r’ and ‘t’ as well as ‘s’. Without ample type Howe was required to improvise as can be seen in using a double ‘v’ to create a ‘w’ and an inverted ‘V’ to represent a capital ‘A’ (50, 106). These quirky work arounds, combined with the use of the long-form ‘s’ (‘∫’) for almost a full decade, can make The Sydney Gazette a difficult publication for modern readers to consume. Howe also “carried the financial burden” of the paper, dependent, as were London papers of the late eighteenth century, on advertising (Robb 68, 8). Howe also relied upon subscriptions for survival, with the collection of payments often difficult as seen in some subscribers being two years, or more, in arrears (e.g.: Sydney Gazette, “Sydney Gazette” 1; Ferguson viii; P.M. Jones 38). Governor Lachlan Macquarie granted Howe an annual salary, in 1811, of £60 (Byrnes 557-559) offering some relief, and stability, for the beleaguered printer.Gubernatorial Supervision Governor King wrote to Lord Hobart (then Secretary of State for War and the Colonies), on 9 May 1803: it being desirable that the settlers and inhabitants at large should be benefitted by useful information being dispersed among them, I considered that a weekly publication would greatly facilitate that design, for which purpose I gave permission to an ingenious man, who manages the Government printing press, to collect materials weekly, which, being inspected by an officer, is published in the form of a weekly newspaper, copies of which, as far as they have been published, I have the honor to enclose. (85)In the same letter, King wrote: “to the list of wants I have added a new fount of letters which may be procured for eight or ten pounds, sufficient for our purpose, if approved of” (85). King’s motivations were not purely altruistic. The population of the colony was growing in Sydney Cove and in the outlying districts, thus: “there was an increasing administrative need for information to be disseminated in a more accessible form than the printed handbills of government orders” (Robb 49). There was, however, a need for the administration to maintain control and the words “Published By Authority”, appearing on the paper’s masthead, were a constant reminder to the printer that The Sydney Gazette was “under the censorship of the Secretary to the Governor, who examined all proofs” (Ferguson viii). The high level of supervision, worked in concert with the logistical difficulties described above, ensured the newspaper was a source of great strain and stress. All for the meagre reward of “6d per copy” (Ferguson viii). This does not diminish Howe’s achievement in establishing a newspaper, an accomplishment outlined, with some pride, in an address printed on the first page of the first issue:innumerable as the Obstacles were which threatened to oppose our Undertaking, yet we are happy to affirm that they were not insurmountable, however difficult the task before us.The utility of a PAPER in the COLONY, as it must open a source of solid information, will, we hope, be universally felt and acknowledged. (Sydney Gazette, “Address” 1)Howe carefully kept his word and he “wrote nothing like a signature editorial column, nor did he venture his personal opinions, conscious always of the powers of colonial officials” (Robb 72). An approach to reportage he passed to his eldest son and long-term assistant, Robert (1795-1829), who later claimed The Sydney Gazette “reconciled in one sheet the merits of the London Gazette in upholding the Government and the London Times in defending the people” (Walker 10). The censorship imposed on The Sydney Gazette, by the Governor, was lifted in 1824 (P.M. Jones 40), when the Australian was first published without permission: Governor Thomas Brisbane did not intervene in the new enterprise. The appearance of unauthorised competition allowed Robert Howe to lobby for the removal of all censorship restrictions on The Sydney Gazette, though he was careful to cite “greater dispatch and earlier publication, not greater freedom of expression, as the expected benefit” (Walker 6). The sudden freedom was celebrated, and still appreciated many years after it was given:the Freedom of the Press has now been in existence amongst us on the verge of four years. In October 1824, we addressed a letter to the Colonial Government, fervently entreating that those shackles, under which the Press had long laboured, might be removed. Our prayer was attended to, and the Sydney Gazette, feeling itself suddenly introduced to a new state of existence, demonstrated to the Colonists the capabilities that ever must flow from the spontaneous exertions of Constitutional Liberty. (Sydney Gazette, “Freedom” 2)Early Readerships From the outset, George Howe presented a professional publication. The Sydney Gazette was formatted into three columns with the front page displaying a formal masthead featuring a scene of Sydney and the motto “Thus We Hope to Prosper”. Gwenda Robb argues the woodcut, the first produced in the colony, was carved by John W. Lewin who “had plenty of engraving skills” and had “returned to Sydney [from a voyage to Tahiti] in December 1802” (51) while Roger Butler has suggested that “circumstances point to John Austin who arrived in Sydney in 1800” as being the engraver (91). The printed text was as vital as the visual supports and every effort was made to present full accounts of colonial activities. “As well as shipping and court news, there were agricultural reports, religious homilies, literary extracts and even original poetry written by Howe himself” (Blair 450). These items, of course, sitting alongside key Government communications including General Orders and Proclamations.Howe’s language has been referred to as “florid” (Robb 52), “authoritative and yet filled with deference for all authority, pompous in a stiff, affected eighteenth century fashion” (Green 10) and so “some of Howe’s readers found the Sydney Gazette rather dull” (Blair 450). Regardless of any feelings towards authorial style, circulation – without an alternative – steadily increased with the first print run in 1802 being around 100 copies but by “the early 1820s, the newspaper’s production had grown to 300 or 400 copies” (Blair 450).In a reflection of the increasing sophistication of the Sydney-based reader, George Howe, and Robert Howe, would also publish some significant, stand-alone, texts. These included several firsts: the first natural history book printed in the colony, Birds of New South Wales with their Natural History (1813) by John W. Lewin (praised as a text “printed with an elegant and classical simplicity which makes it the highest typographical achievement of George Howe” [Wantrup 278]); the first collection of poetry published in the colony First Fruits of Australian Poetry (1819) by Barron Field; the first collection of poetry written by a Australian-born author, Wild Notes from the Lyre of a Native Minstrel (1826) by Charles Tompson; and the first children’s book A Mother’s Offering to Her Children: By a Lady, Long Resident in New South Wales (1841) by Charlotte Barton. The small concern also published mundane items such as almanacs and receipt books for the Bank of New South Wales (Robb 63, 72). All against the backdrop of printing a newspaper.New Voices The Sydney Gazette was Australia’s first newspaper and, critically for Howe, the only newspaper for over two decades. (A second paper appeared in 1810 but the Derwent Star and Van Diemen’s Land Intelligencer, which only managed twelve issues, presented no threat to The Sydney Gazette.) No genuine, local rival entered the field until 1824, when the Australian was founded by barristers William Charles Wentworth and Robert Wardell. The Monitor debuted in 1826, followed the Sydney Herald in 1831 and the Colonist in 1835 (P.M. Jones 38). It was the second title, the Australian, with a policy that asserted articles to be: “Independent, yet consistent – free, yet not licentious – equally unmoved by favours and by fear” (Walker 6), radically changed the newspaper landscape. The new paper made “a strong point of its independence from government control” triggering a period in which colonial newspapers “became enmeshed with local politics” (Blair 451). This new age of opinion reflected how fast the colony was evolving from an antipodean gaol into a complex society. Also, two papers, without censorship restrictions, without registration, stamp duties or advertisement duties meant, as pointed out by R.B. Walker, that “in point of law the Press in the remote gaol of exile was now freer than in the country of origin” (6). An outcome George Howe could not have predicted as he made the long journey, as a convict, to New South Wales. Of the early competitors, the only one that survives is the Sydney Herald (The Sydney Morning Herald from 1842), which – founded by immigrants Alfred Stephens, Frederick Stokes and William McGarvie – claims the title of Australia’s oldest continuously published newspaper (Isaacs and Kirkpatrick 4-5). That such a small population, with so many pressing issues, factions and political machinations, could support a first newspaper, then competitors, is a testament to the high regard, with which newspaper reportage was held. Another intruder would be The Government Gazette. Containing only orders and notices in the style of the London Gazette (McLeay 1), lacking any news items or private advertisements (Walker 19), it was first issued on 7 March 1832 (and continues, in an online format, today). Of course, Government orders and other notices had news value and newspaper proprietors could bid for exclusive rights to produce these notices until a new Government Printer was appointed in 1841 (Walker 20).Conclusion George Howe, an advocate of “reason and common sense” died in 1821 placing The Sydney Gazette in the hands of his son who “fostered religion” (Byrnes 557-559). Robert Howe, served as editor, experiencing firsthand the perils and stresses of publishing, until he drowned in a boating accident in Sydney Harbour, in 1829 leaving the paper to his widow Ann Howe (Blair 450-51). The newspaper would become increasingly political leading to controversy and financial instability; after more changes in ownership and in editorial responsibility, The Sydney Gazette, after almost four decades of delivering the news – as a sole voice and then as one of several alternative voices – ceased publication in 1842. During a life littered with personal tragedy, George Howe laid the foundation stone for Australia’s media empires. His efforts, in extraordinary circumstances and against all environmental indicators, serve as inspiration to newspapers editors, proprietors and readers across the country. He established the Australian press, an institution that has been described asa profession, an art, a craft, a business, a quasi-public, privately owned institution. It is full of grandeurs and faults, sublimities and pettinesses. It is courageous and timid. It is fallible. It is indispensable to the successful on-going of a free people. (Holden 15)George Howe also created an artefact of great beauty. The attributes of The Sydney Gazette are listed, in a perfunctory manner, in most discussions of the newspaper’s history. The size of the paper. The number of columns. The masthead. The changes seen across 4,503 issues. Yet, consistently overlooked, is how, as an object, the newspaper is an exquisite example of the printed word. There is a physicality to the paper that is in sharp contrast to contemporary examples of broadsides, tabloids and online publications. Concurrently fragile and robust: its translucent sheets and mottled print revealing, starkly, the problems with paper and ink; yet it survives, in several collections, over two centuries since the first issue was produced. The elegant layout, the glow of the paper, the subtle crackling sound as the pages are turned. The Sydney Gazette and New South Wales Advertiser is an astonishing example of innovation and perseverance. It provides essential insights into Australia’s colonial era. It is a metonym for making words matter. AcknowledgementsThe author offers her sincere thanks to Geoff Barker, Simon Dwyer and Peter Kirkpatrick for their comments on an early draft of this paper. The author is also grateful to Bridget Griffen-Foley for engaging in many conversations about Australian newspapers. ReferencesBlair, S.J. “Sydney Gazette and New South Wales Advertiser.” A Companion to the Australian Media. Ed. Bridget Griffen-Foley. North Melbourne: Australian Scholarly Publishing, 2014.Butler, Roger. Printed Images in Colonial Australia 1801-1901. Canberra: National Gallery of Australia, 2007.Byrnes, J.V. “Howe, George (1769–1821).” Australian Dictionary of Biography, National Centre of Biography: 1788–1850, A–H. Canberra: Australian National University, 1966. 557-559. Ferguson, J.A. “Introduction.” The Sydney Gazette and New South Wales Advertiser: A Facsimile Reproduction of Volume One, March 5, 1803 to February 26, 1804. Sydney: The Trustees of the Public Library of New South Wales in Association with Angus & Robertson, 1963. v-x. Foyster, Elizabeth. “Introduction: Newspaper Reporting of Crime and Justice.” Continuity and Change 22.1 (2007): 9-12.Goff, Victoria. “Convicts and Clerics: Their Roles in the Infancy of the Press in Sydney, 1803-1840.” Media History 4.2 (1998): 101-120.Green, H.M. “Australia’s First Newspaper.” Sydney Morning Herald, 11 Apr. 1935: 10.Holden, W. Sprague. Australia Goes to Press. Detroit: Wayne State UP, 1961. “Hughes, George (?–?).” Australian Dictionary of Biography, National Centre of Biography: 1788–1850, A–H. Canberra: Australian National University, 1966. 562. Isaacs, Victor, and Rod Kirkpatrick. Two Hundred Years of Sydney Newspapers. Richmond: Rural Press, 2003. Jones, Dorothy. “Humour and Satire (Australia).” Encyclopedia of Post-Colonial Literatures in English. 2nd ed. Eds. Eugene Benson and L.W. Conolly. London: Routledge, 2005. 690-692.Jones, Phyllis Mander. “Australia’s First Newspaper.” Meanjin 12.1 (1953): 35-46. Karskens, Grace. The Colony: A History of Early Sydney. Crows Nest: Allen & Unwin, 2010. King, Philip Gidley. “Letter to Lord Hobart, 9 May 1803.” Historical Records of Australia, Series 1, Governors’ Despatches to and from England, Volume IV, 1803-1804. Ed. Frederick Watson. Sydney: Library Committee of the Commonwealth Parliament, 1915.Kirkpatrick, Rod. Press Timeline: 1802 – 1850. Canberra: National Library of Australia, 2011. 6 Jan. 2017 <https://www.nla.gov.au/content/press-timeline-1802-1850>. McLeay, Alexander. “Government Notice.” The New South Wales Government Gazette 1 (1832): 1. Mundle, R. Bligh: Master Mariner. Sydney: Hachette, 2016.New South Wales General Standing Orders and General Orders: Selected from the General Orders Issued by Former Governors, from the 16th of February, 1791, to the 6th of September, 1800. Also, General Orders Issued by Governor King, from the 28th of September, 1800, to the 30th of September, 1802. Sydney: Government Press, 1802. Robb, Gwenda. George Howe: Australia’s First Publisher. Kew: Australian Scholarly Publishing, 2003.Spalding, D.A. Collecting Australian Books: Notes for Beginners. 1981. Mawson: D.A. Spalding, 1982. The Sydney Gazette and New South Wales Advertiser. “Address.” 5 Mar. 1803: 1.———. “To the Public.” 2 Apr. 1803: 1.———. “Wanted to Purchase.” 26 June 1803: 4.———. “We Have the Satisfaction to Inform Our Readers.” 3 Nov. 1810: 2. ———. “Sydney Gazette.” 25 Dec. 1819: 1. ———. “The Freedom of the Press.” 29 Feb. 1828: 2.———. “Never Did a More Painful Task Devolve upon a Public Writer.” 3 Feb. 1829: 2. Walker, R.B. The Newspaper Press in New South Wales, 1803-1920. Sydney: Sydney UP, 1976.Wantrup, Johnathan. Australian Rare Books: 1788-1900. Sydney: Hordern House, 1987.

Introduction: Artist Villages in Beijing Many of the most renowned sites of Beijing are found in the inner-city districts of Dongcheng and Xicheng: for instance, the Forbidden City, Tiananmen Square, the Lama Temple, the National Theatre, the Central Opera Academy, the Bell Tower, the Drum Tower, the Imperial College, and the Confucius Temple. However, in the past decade a new attraction has been added to the visitor “must-see” list in Beijing. The 798 Art District originated as an artist village within abandoned factory buildings at Dashanzi, right between the city’s Central Business District and the open outer rural space on Beijing’s north-east. It is arguably the most striking symbol of China’s contemporary art scene. The history of the 798 Art District is by now well known (Keane), so this paper will provide a short summary of its evolution. Of more concern is the relationship between the urban fringe and what Howard Becker has called “art worlds.” By art worlds, Becker refers to the multitude of agents that contribute to a final work of art: for instance, people who provide canvasses, frames, and art supplies; critics and intermediaries; and the people who run exhibition services. To the art-world list in Beijing we need to add government officials and developers. To date there are more than 100 artist communities or villages in Beijing; almost all are located in the city’s outskirts. In particular, a high-powered art centre outside the city of Beijing has recently established a global reputation. Songzhuang is situated in outer Tongzhou District, some 30 kilometres east of Tiananmen Square. The Beijing Municipal Government officially classifies Songzhuang as the Capital Art District (CAD) or “the Songzhuang Original Art Cluster.” The important difference between 798 and Songzhuang is that, whereas the former has become a centre for retail and art galleries, Songzhuang operates as an arts production centre for experimental art, with less focus on commercial art. The destiny of the artistic communities is closely related to urban planning policies that either try to shut them down or protect them. In this paper I will take a close look at three artist villages: Yuanmingyuan, 798, and Songzhuang. In tracing the evolution of the three artist villages, I will shed some light on artists’ lives in city fringes. I argue that these outer districts provide creative industries with a new opportunity for development. This is counter to the conventional wisdom that central urban areas are the ideal locality for creative industries. Accordingly, this argument needs to be qualified: some types of creative work are more suitable to rural and undeveloped areas. The visual art “industry” is one of these. Inner and Outer Worlds Urban historians contend that innovation is more likely to happen in inner urban areas because of intensive interactions between people (Jacobs). City life has been associated with the development of creative industries and economic benefits brought about by the interaction of creative classes. In short, the argument is that cities, or, more specifically, urban areas are primary economic entities (Montgomery) whereas outer suburbs are uncreative and dull (Florida, "Cities"). The conventional wisdom is that talented creative people are attracted to the creative milieu in cities: universities, book shops, cafes, museums, theatres etc. These are both the hard and the soft infrastructure of modern cities. They illustrate diversified built forms, lifestyles and experiences (Lorenzen and Frederiksen; Florida, Rise; Landry; Montgomery; Leadbeater and Oakley). The assumption that inner-city density is the cradle of creative industries has encountered critique. Empirical studies in Australia have shown that creative occupations are found in relatively high densities in urban fringes. The point made in several studies is that suburbia has been neglected by scholars and policy makers and may have potential for future development (Gibson and Brennan-Horley; Commission; Collis, Felton, and Graham). Moreover, some have argued that the practice of constructing inner city enclaves may be leading to homogenized and prescriptive geographies (Collis, Felton, and Graham; Kotkin). As Jane Jacobs has indicated, it is not only density of interactions but diversity that attracts and accommodates economic growth in cities. However, the spatiality of creative industries varies across different sectors. For example, media companies and advertising agencies are more likely to be found in the inner city, whereas most visual artists prefer working in the comparatively quiet and loosely-structured outskirts. Nevertheless, the logic embodied in thinking around the distinctions between “urbanism” and “suburbanism” pays little attention to this issue, although both schools acknowledge the causal relationship between locality and creativity. According to Drake, empirical evidence shows that the function of locality is not only about encouraging interactions between SMEs (small to medium enterprises) within clusters which can generate creativity, but also a catalyst for individual creativity (Drake). Therefore for policy makers in China, the question here is how to plan or prepare a better space to accommodate creative professionals’ needs in different sectors while making the master plan. This question is particularly urgent to the Chinese government, which is undertaking a massive urbanization transition throughout the country. In placing a lens on Beijing, it is important to note the distinctive features of its politics, forms of social structure, and climate. As Zhu has described it, Beijing has spread in a symmetrical structure. The reasons have much to do with ancient history. According to Zhu, the city which was planned in the era of Genghis Khan was constituted by four layers or enclosures, with the emperor at the centre, surrounded by the gentry and other populations distributed outwards according to wealth, status, and occupation. The outer layer accommodated many lower social classes, including itinerant artists, musicians, and merchants. This ”outer city” combined with open rural space. The system of enclosures is carried on in today’s city planning of Beijing. Nowadays Beijing is most commonly described by its ring roads (Mars and Hornsby). However, despite the existing structure, new approaches to urban policy have resulted in a great deal of flux. The emergence of new landscapes such as semi-urbanized villages, rural urban syndicates (chengxiang jiehebu), and villages-within-cities (Mars and Hornsby 290) illustrate this flux. These new types of landscapes, which don’t correspond to the suburban concept that we find in the US or Australia, serve to represent and mediate the urban-rural relationship in China. The outer villages also reflect an old tradition of “recluse” (yin shi), which since the Wei and Jin Dynasties allowed intellectuals to withdraw themselves from the temporal world of the city and live freely in the mountains. The Lost Artistic Utopia: Yuanmingyuan Artist Village Yuanmingyuan, also known as the Ming Dynasty summer palace, is located in Haidian District in the north-west of Beijing. Haidian has transformed from an outer district of Beijing into one of its flourishing urban districts since the mid-1980s. Haidian’s success is largely due to the electronics industry which developed from spin-offs from Peking University, Tsinghua University and the Chinese Academy of Sciences in the 1980s. This led to the rapid emergence of Zhongguancun, sometimes referred to as China’s Silicon Valley. However there is another side of Haidian’s transformation. As the first graduates came out of Chinese Academies of the Arts following the Cultural Revolution (1966–1976), creative lifestyles became available. Some people quit jobs at state-owned institutions and chose to go freelance, which was unimaginable in China under the former regime of Mao Zedong. By 1990, the earliest “artist village” emerged around the Yuanmingyuan accommodating artists from around China. The first site was Fuyuanmen village. Artists living and working there proudly called their village “West Village” in China, comparing it to the Greenwich Village in New York. At that time they were labelled as “vagabonds” (mangliu) since they had no family in Beijing, and no stable job or income. Despite financial difficulties, the Yuanmingyuan artist village was a haven for artists. They were able to enjoy a liberating and vigorous environment by being close to the top universities in Beijing[1]. Access to ideas was limited in China at that time so this proximity was a key ingredient. According to an interview by He Lu, the Yuanmingyuan artist village gave artists a sense of belonging which went far beyond geographic identification as a marginal group unwelcomed by conservative urban society. Many issues arose along with the growth of the artist village. The non-traditional lifestyle and look of these artists were deemed abnormal by many of the general public; the way of their expression and behaviour was too extreme to be accepted by the mainstream in what was ultimately a political district; they were a headache for local police who saw them as troublemakers; moreover, their contact with the western world was a sensitive issue for the government at that time. Suddenly, the village was closed by the government in 1993. Although the Yuanmingyuan artist village existed for only a few years, it is of significance in China’s contemporary art history. It is the birth place of the cynical realism movement as well as the genesis of Fang Lijun, Zhang Xiaogang and Yue Mingjun, now among the most successful Chinese contemporary artists in global art market. The Starting Point of Art Industry: 798 and Songzhuang After the Yuanmingyuan artist village was shut down in 1993, artists moved to two locations in the east of Beijing to escape from the government and embrace the free space they longed for. One was 798, an abandoned electronic switching factory in Beijing’s north-east urban fringe area; the other was Songzhuang in Tongzhou District, a further twenty kilometres east. Both of these sites would be included in the first ten official creative clusters by Beijing municipal government in 2006. But instead of simply being substitutes for the Yuanmingyuan artist village, both have developed their own cultures, functioning and influencing artists’ lives in different ways. Songzhuang is located in Tongzhou which is an outer district in Beijing’s east. Songzhuang was initially a rural location; its livelihood was agriculture and industry. Just before the closing down of the Yuanmingyuan village, several artists including Fang Lijun moved to this remote quiet village. Through word of mouth, more artists followed their steps. There are about four thousand registered artists currently living in Songzhuang now; it is already the biggest visual art community in Beijing. An artistic milieu and a local sense of place have grown with the increasing number of artists. The local district government invests in building impressive exhibition spaces and promoting art in order to bring in more tourists, investors and artists. Compared with Songzhuang, 798 enjoys a favourable location along the airport expressway, between the capital airport and the CBD of Beijing. The unused electronics plant was initially rented as classrooms by the China Central Academy of Fine Arts in the 1990s. Then several artists moved their studios and workshops to the area upon eviction from the Yuanmingyuan village. Until 2002 the site was just a space to rent cheap work space, a factor that has stimulated many art districts globally (Zukin). From that time the resident artists began to plan how to establish a contemporary art district in China. Led by Huang Rui, a leading visual artist, the “798 collective” launched arts events and festivals, notably a “rebuilding 798” project of 2003. More galleries, cafés, bars, and restaurants began to set up, culminating in a management takeover by the Chaoyang District government with the Seven Stars Group[2] prior to the Beijing Olympics. The area now provides massive tax revenue to the local and national government. Nonetheless, both 798 and Songzhuang face problems which reflect the conflict between artists’ attachment to fringe areas and the government’s urbanization approach. 798 can hardly be called an artist production village now due to the local government’s determination to exploit cultural tourism. Over 50 percent of enterprises and people working in 798 now identify 798 as a tourism area rather than an art or “creative” cluster (Liu). Heavy commercialization has greatly disappointed many leading artists. The price for renting space has gone beyond the affordability of artists, and many have chosen to leave. In Songzhuang, the story is similar. In addition to rising prices, a legal dispute between artists and local residents regarding land property rights in 2008 drove some artists out of Songzhuang because they didn’t feel it was stable anymore (Smith). The district’s future as a centre of original art runs up against the aspirations of local officials for more tax revenue and tourist dollars. In the Songzhuang Cultural Creative Industries Cluster Design Plan (cited in Yang), which was developed by J.A.O Design International Architects and Planners Limited and sponsored by the Songzhuang local government in 2007, Songzhuang is designed as an “arts capital incorporated with culture, commerce and tourism.” The down side of this aspiration is that more museums, galleries, shopping centres, hotels, and recreation infrastructure will inevitably be developed in order to capitalise on Songzhuang’s global reputation. Concluding Reflections In reflecting on the recent history of artist villages in Beijing, we might conclude that rural locations are not only a cheap place for artists to live but also a space to showcase their works. More importantly, the relation of artists and outlying district has evolved into a symbiotic relationship. They interact and grow together. The existence of artists transforms the locale and the locale in turn reinforces the identity of artists. In Yuanmingyuan the artists appreciated the old “recluse” tradition and therefore sought spiritual liberation after decades of suppression. The outlying location symbolized freedom to them and provided distance from the world of noisy interaction. But isolation of artists from the local community and the associated constant conflict with local villagers deepened estrangement; these events brought about the end of the dream. In contrast, at 798 and Songzhuang, artists not only regarded the place as their worksite but also engaged with the local community. They communicated with local people and co-developed projects to transform the local landscape. Local communities changed; they started to learn about the artistic world while gaining economic benefits in many ways, such as house renting, running small grocery stores, providing art supplies and even modelling. Their participation into the “art worlds” (Becker) contributed to a changing cultural environment, in turn strengthening the brand of these artist villages. In many regards there were positive externalities for both artists and the district, although as I mentioned in relation to Songzhuang, tensions about land use have never completely been resolved. Today, the fine arts in China have gone far beyond the traditional modes of classics, aesthetics, liberation or rebellion. Art is also a business which requires the access to the material world in order to produce incomes and make profits. It appears that many contemporary artists are not part of a movement of rebellion (except several artists, such as Ai Weiwei), adopting the pure spirit of art as their life-time mission, as in the Yuanmingyuan artist village. They still long for recognition, but they are also concerned with success and producing a livelihood. The boundary between inner urban and outer urban areas is not as significant to them as it once was for artists from a former period. While many artists enjoy the quiet and space of the fringe and rural areas to work; they also require urban space to exhibit their works and earn money. This factor explains the recent emergence of Caochangdi and other artist villages in the neighbouring area around the 798. These latest artist villages in the urban fringe still have open and peaceful spaces and can be accessed easily due to convenient transportation. Unfortunately, the coalition of business and government leads to rapid commercialization of place which is not aligned with the basic need of artists, which is not only a free or affordable place but also a space for creativity. As mentioned above, 798 is now so commercialized that it is too crowded and expensive for artists due to the government’s overdevelopment; whereas the government’s original intention was to facilitate the development of 798. Furthermore, although artists are a key stakeholder in the government’s agenda for visual art industry, it is always the government’s call when artists’ attachment to rural space comes into conflict with Beijing government’s urbanization plan. Hence the government decides which artist villages should be sacrificed to give way to urban development and which direction the reserved artist villages or art clusters should be developed. The logic of government policy causes an absolute distinction between cities and outlying districts. And the government’s enthusiasm for “urbanization” leads to urbanized artist villages, such as the 798. A vicious circle is formed: the government continuously attempts to have selected artist villages commercialized and transformed into urbanized or quasi-urbanized area and closes other artist villages. One of the outcomes of this policy is that in the government created creative clusters, many artists do not stay, and move away into rural and outlying areas because they prefer to work in non-urban spaces. To resolve this dilemma, greater attention is required to understand artists needs and ways to combine urban convenience and rural tranquillity into their development plans. This may be a bridge too far, however. Reference Becker, Howard Saul. Art Worlds. 25th anniversary, updated and expanded ed. Berkeley, CA: U of California P, 2008. Collis, Christy, Emma Felton, and Phil Graham. "Beyond the Inner City: Real and Imagined Places in Creative Place Policy and Practice." The Information Society: An International Journal 26.2 (2010): 104–12. Commission, Outer London. 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