Journal articles on the topic 'Market surveys – Kansas'

Consumer interest and market surveys play an important role in determining what consumer wants and needs are from an industry. These surveys can also serve the role of preparing students for their future jobs in the industry. The horticulture industry is no different. Companies need to know what consumer interests and needs are so they can serve them better. Likewise, students need to know what areas of horticulture are receiving the highest demand by consumers so they can prepare themselves better. A consumer preference study was conducted at the Topeka, Kan., “Lawn, Garden, and Flower Show” by members of the Kansas State Univ. Horticulture Club. The objectives of the survey were to determine: 1) the specific gardening interests of the respondents, 2) the demand for educational materials on specific gardening areas by the respondents, 3) what the respondents' garden buying habits were, and 4) what the respondents' plant selection preferences were. Survey respondents indicated that, when selecting plant material, plant quality was the most important criterion used, while plant packaging was of least importance. Plant size and price were only given some importance in the plant selection decision. Other results of the survey will be presented.

Although Kansas geology was the subject of formal study by state geological surveys in 1864 and 1865, no state survey existed from 1866 to 1889, years that marked some of the most exciting paleontological and mineral resource discoveries in the state's history. In 1889, the state legislature recreated the Geological Survey, placing it at the University of Kansas, though it provided no additional appropriation for the survey's operation. Erasmus Haworth, Samuel W. Williston, and E. H. S. Bailey formed that university incarnation of the Survey, which was essentially limited to their field and laboratory work, along with the volunteer labor of students, mostly from the University of Kansas. Though the Survey received no funding from the state until 1895, it was far from stillborn. Survey scientists published regularly in the University Quarterly, and eventually collected their results in a series of volumes that provided the first detailed, consistent treatment of the state's geology. The members of that Survey formed three separate but equal departments, but Haworth was clearly the leader of the band. He was largely responsible for the production of those first volumes, which included the first photographic plates and geologic maps published by the state survey; these figures were strongly influential in the Survey's presentation of scientific information. Haworth became official director of the Survey in 1895 and led the Survey until 1915, when he left to work with his son Henry as a geological consultant. Among Haworth's credits was much of the field work on geologic structures that led to the discovery of the El Dorado oil field in south-central Kansas.

Correctly anticipating consumer preferences for goods and services can have a large impact on profitability. A survey to measure the influence of plant value and consumer preferences for store services was conducted at flower, lawn and garden shows in Los Angles, Portland, Kansas City, Atlanta and Philadelphia. All five regional markets placed a greater importance on plant quality than on price or plant size. A trained professional sales staff and the availability of a large quantity and good selection of plant material were the highest rated store services in all of the markets. Offering free delivery had the lowest rating in every market. Having the store open on Sunday was more important in the markets on the west coast than in the Kansas City or east coast markets.

AbstractA survey of Kansas, Texas, and Iowa agricultural producers was taken to examine the factors affecting their grain marketing practices. Sales indices models and models of qualitative choice are used to determine whether marketers' choices of cash market, forward contract, or futures and options oriented marketing practices are significantly affected by their personal and farm business characteristics. Results indicate that geographic location, farm size, grain enterprise specialization, farming experience, use of grain storage, and use of crop insurance have significant effects upon the respondents' choice of grain marketing practices.

A survey conducted at farmers' markets in eastern Kansas showed that more consumers purchased pumpkins for jack-o-lanterns than for cooking. One to four jack-o-lantern pumpkins are purchased annually per consumer. Whether or not the pumpkins are treated with insecticides to control squash bugs and regardless of their intended use, consumers preferred U.S. no. 1 grade, which sell at the higher retail price of $0.33/kg. At least 90% of the consumers surveyed would pay 20% more than the retail price for insecticide-free pumpkins. About two-thirds of those polled would pay 30% more. Cost-benefit data indicate that the higher prices consumers would pay may not be sufficient for growers to produce insecticide-free pumpkins economically using only biological control. However, if biological control is integrated with host-plant resistance, the higher prices may be sufficient for growers to produce insecticide-free pumpkins.

Seismic reflection studies were performed across actively developing sinkholes located astride Interstate Highway 70 in Russell County, Kansas. Results indicate that high‐resolution seismic reflection surveys are useful in the subsurface investigation of some sinkholes. In particular, we were able to delineate the subsurface vertical and horizontal extent of the sinkholes because of the excellent acoustical marker‐bed characteristics of the Stone Corral anhydrite. The seismic reflection evidence presented here, combined with borehole information from 1967, suggest that the Stone Corral anhydrite has been down‐dropped within one of the sinkholes as much as 30 m in 13 years. The seismic reflection method is potentially useful in engineering studies of other sinkholes and karst features. The seismic data presented here were obtained in the presence of relatively heavy highway traffic (i.e., up to a few dozen vehicles per minute) using the MiniSOSIE recording technique.

Background/aimTo determine willingness to pay for children’s spectacles, and barriers to purchasing children’s spectacles in Cambodia.MethodsWe conducted vision screenings, and eye examinations as indicated, for all consenting children at 21 randomly selected secondary schools. We invited parents/guardians of children found to have refractive problems to complete a willingness to pay for spectacles survey, using a binary-with-follow-up technique.ResultsWe conducted vision screenings on 12 128 secondary schoolchildren, and willingness to pay for spectacles surveys with 491 parents/guardians (n=491) from Kandal and Phnom Penh provinces in Cambodia. We found 519 children with refractive error, 7 who had pre-existing spectacles and 14 recommended spectacles for lower ametropias. About half (53.2%; 95% CI 44.0% to 62.1%) of parents/guardians were willing to pay KHR70 000 (US$17.5; average market price) or more for spectacles. Mean willingness-to-pay price was KHR74 595 (US$18.6; 95% CI KHR64 505 to 86 262; 95% CI US$16.1 to US$21.6) in Phnom Penh and KHR55 651 (US$13.9; 95% CI KHR48 021 to 64 494; 95% CI US$12.0 to US$16.1) in Kandal province. Logistic regression suggested parents/guardians with college education (OR 6.8; p<0.001), higher household incomes (OR 8.0; p=0.006) and those wearing spectacles (OR 2.2; p=0.01) were more likely to be willing to pay ≥US$17.5. The most common reasons for being unwilling to pay US$17.5 were related to cost (58.8%). The most common barrier to spectacle wear was fear that spectacles weaken children’s eyes (36.0%).ConclusionsWith almost half of parents/guardians unwilling to pay for spectacles at the current average market price, financial support through a subsidised spectacle scheme might be required for children to access spectacles in Cambodia.

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to investigate the impacts of social capital on the rate at which agricultural land is rented between landowners and tenants using data from the state of Kansas. Design/methodology/approach A survey of tenants provides data on the rental rate of farmland as well as characteristics of the lease, the land, and the landowner. Findings Results support the hypothesis of a negative impact on rental rates from longer-term leasing relationships. The model estimates a 10.0 percent discount relative to market rates when the leasing relationship increases from 11 to 22 years. At the sample average of $64 per acre, this is a $10 per acre discount. Research limitations/implications Increased levels of social capital, as measured by the length of the leasing relationship between landowner and tenant, reduce the rental rate. A 10 percent increase in the number of years a parcel of land is leased to the same tenant will decrease the annual rental rate by 1 percent. Originality/value Research adds to the understanding of informal relationships underlying farmland leases. A large number of farmland tracts may turnover in the coming years. This turnover may affect the rental rates for tenants who have had long-term leasing relationships over time.

To better inform conservation and management strategies directed at Franklin’s ground squirrel, Spermophilus franklinii, I reviewed published and unpublished accounts of the squirrel’s distribution, abundance, and principally, habitat associations. I present the body of literature on S. franklinii and include portions of original accounts to avoid potential bias from paraphrasing. A consensus of the literature indicates that S. franklinii is most frequently associated with habitat characterized by a mixture of grassy and woody vegetation, referred to as savanna-like or parkland habitat. Moreover, S. franklinii has had an affinity for this type of habitat throughout its geographic range in recent, historic, and even prehistoric times. This is in contrast to a view of the species as primarily associated with tallgrass prairie habitat. As indicated in the literature, populations of S. franklinii are subject to marked fluctuations, which probably are influenced by local disturbances in addition to regular dispersal events. In the southern part of its geographic range, S. franklinii is currently limited in its occurrence principally to roadside and railroad right-of-ways. In these southern regions S. franklinii is justifiably of conservation concern. I suggest that more detailed surveys for the species (such as those that have recently occurred in Illinois and Missouri) take place in Iowa and Kansas.

Twenty counties in Kansas were randomly selected from those designated as rural on the basis of their populations. A sample of 356 physicians and physicians’ assistants in these counties was chosen. A postal survey was sent to the identified providers up to three times. One hundred and eighty-six of the questionnaires were returned (a response rate of 52%). In all, 76% of the respondents were physicians, 76% were men and 42% were family practitioners. Practitioners were classified as adopters or non-adopters of telemedicine, based on their report of whether they had ever referred one or more patients for a health-care consultation via telemedicine. Of the 167 participants who marked this item, 30 (18%) were adopters and 1 37 (82%) were non-adopters. Among the adopters, 16 (53%) said that they expected to use telemedicine with about the same frequency or more often in the future. In contrast, 61 (45%) non-adopters reported that they did not expect to refer patients by telemedicine in the future and 51 (37%) were unsure. Neither age (r=0.16, P = 0.44) nor gender (χ2 = 2.35, P = 0.1 3) was related to the adoption variable or the number of referrals made to telemedicine clinics. The results suggest that adopters and non-adopters of telemedicine perceive its value very differently, and that an opportunity exists to promote the concept to non-adopters more effectively.

ObjectiveTo explore health literacy as a marker of voter confusion in order to understand the basis for public opposition to community water fluoridation.DesignA cross-sectional study.SettingConducted in three large US cities of San Antonio, Texas (602 voting precincts); Wichita, Kansas (171 voting precincts); and Portland, Oregon (132 voting precincts). Precinct-level voting data were compiled from community water fluoridation referendums conducted in San Antonio in 2002, Wichita in 2012 and Portland in 2013.ParticipantsVoter turnout expressed as a percentage of registered voters was 38% in San Antonio (n=2 92 811), 47% in Wichita (n=129 199) and 38% in Portland (n=164 301).Main outcome measuresThe dependent variable was the percentage of votes in favour of fluoridating drinking water. Precinct-level voting data were mapped to precinct scores of health literacy, and to US Census and American Community Survey characteristics of race/ethnicity, age, income and educational attainment. Multilevel regression with post-stratification predicted the precinct mean health literacy scores, with weights generated from the National Association of Adult Literacy health literacy survey, with item response theory computed scoring for health literacy. Predictive models on voter support of community water fluoridation were compared using robust linear regression to determine how precinct-level characteristics influenced voter support in order to determine whether health literacy explained more variance in voting preference than sociodemographic characteristics.ResultsPrecinct-level health literacy was positively associated with voter turnout, although sociodemographic characteristics were better predictors of turnout. Approximately 60% of voters opposed community water fluoridation in Wichita and Portland, whereas in San Antonio, a small majority (53%) voted in favour of it. Models suggest that a one SD increase in health literacy scores predicted a 12 percentage point increase support for community water fluoridation.ConclusionEducational attainment and health literacy are modifiable characteristics associated with voting precincts' support for community water fluoridation.

138 Background: Optimal cancer care is achievable when input is available from specialists in all related disciplines. To exploit the breadth and depth of clinical expertise within a large healthcare network, regularly scheduled web-based multidisciplinary tumor boards related to complex GI and breast cancers have been established. Methods: Monthly national and quarterly international multispecialty tumor boards were held in 2014. Each center presented a case for discussion and suggested management on a predetermined solid tumor subtype or clinical scenario. A web-based interface was used to show key information to the group in real time, including imaging, pathology, and laboratory results. Subspecialty participation included well known centers of excellence in radiation oncology, medical oncology, clinical research, surgical oncology and interventional oncology. A process to assure HIPPA compliance was implemented, and CME awarded. Results: Sarah Cannon centers in Nashville, Kansas City, Denver, San Antonio, Austin and London participated. An average attendance of ten physicians per center (range 4-18) was seen. Survey results demonstrated significant value as reported by participants in improving patient care leading to the development of a prospective clinical trial in one instance. Therapeutic options not available in the US but offered in the London center were discussed and a mechanism for direct referral to the London facility was developed. Improved rates of breast conservation (18% increase), breast reconstruction (31% increase) and use of AJCC staging (24% increase) were the product of breast conferences in each market. Conclusions: Physicians overwhelmingly supported and valued multidisciplinary tumor boards for GI and breast cancers. Consensus development, sharing of best practices, and promotion of the latest evidence based management led to changes in patient care. Additional centers will be invited to join meetings this year, with planned expansion to initiate similar meetings in blood and thoracic malignancies.

<span lang="EN-US">In today’s business climate, the old adage “time is money” has been expanded to mean that time is competitive weapon. Today customer’s demands are quick delivery and good quality at reasonable price. When entering the global market the companies encounter several difficulties, the most important one being excessive time for new product development. Thus to perform in a global market, short lead times are essential to provide customer satisfaction. Lead time in manufacturer point of view is the time elapse between placing of an order and the receipt of goods ordered. There are various components of lead time such as setup time, process time, move time and waiting time. This paper deals with review of various tools and techniques to reduce lead time. This problem can be solved by transition from sequential engineering to concurrent engineering, A survey of published works in the field of designing teams in big companies has revealed that in big companies a three-level team structure is recommended, as well as a workgroup, consisting of four basic teams. Method study techniques use to examine current way of work and develop effective method base on elimination, combining, changing and simplification of activities. Various lean tools such as Single Minute Exchange of Dies (SMED), 5S, Poka-yoke, Kanban, Just-in-time (JIT), Value Stream Mapping (VSM), Jidoka, Cellular manufacturing etc. helps in reducing lead time. Also Manufacturing Resource Planning (MRPII), Theory of Constraints (TOC) classic approaches of Production Planning and Control (PPC) are use to reduce Work in Process (WIP) and flow time.</span>

ABSTRAK Sungai Banjir Kanal Barat merupakan saluran utama drainase kota. Pembuangan limbah deterjen yang langsung ke saluran drainase tanpa adanya pengolahan terlebih dahulu, mengakibatkan peningkatan beban pencemaran dan penurunan kualitas air di Sungai Banjir Kanal Barat. Pencemaran deterjen dapat mengakibatkan eutrofikasi di perairan sungai, karena senyawa fosfat yang terdapat di dalam deterjen memacu pertumbuhan fitoplankton dan mengakibatkan blooming fitoplankton. Penelitian dilakukan pada bulan Februari – Maret 2016 di Sungai Banjir Kanal Barat yang bertujuan untuk mengetahui beban pencemaran limbah deterjen, mengetahui Indeks Kualitas Air (IKA), mengetahui konsentrasi deterjen dan kelimpahan fitoplankton, serta menganalisis hubungan konsentrasi deterjen dengan fitoplankton. Metode yang digunakan adalah metode survey dengan teknik purposive sampling. Lokasi sampling dibagi menjadi 3 stasiun dan 3 titik bagian (tepi, tengah, tepi) sungai. Pengambilan sampel air menggunakan metode integrated sample atau sampel gabungan tempat, sedangkan pengambilan sampel fitoplankton dilakukan secara pasif dengan metode penyaringan. Hasil penelitian menunjukkan konsentrasi deterjen di lokasi penelitian berada dalam kisaran 0,05-0,62 mg/l. Kelimpahan fitoplankton tertinggi pada semua stasiun adalah Trichodesmium sp., dimana Trichodesmium sp. merupakan indikator adanya pencemaran organik. Berdasarkan analisis regresi, kelimpahan fitoplankton dipengaruhi oleh konsentrasi deterjen sebesar 31,4% dan sisanya 68,6% dipengaruhi faktor lain. Beban pencemaran deterjen di Sungai Banjir Kanal Barat berkisar antara 13,18-215,67 ton/tahun. Indeks Kualitas Air Sungai Banjir Kanal Barat yaitu berkisar antara 1-5 yang tergolong dalam perairan sangat bersih-tercemar berat dan tidak baik digunakan untuk kegiatan perikanan. Kata Kunci : Deterjen; Kelimpahan Fitoplankton; Beban Pencemaran; Indeks Kualitas Air; Sungai Banjir Kanal Barat ABSTRACT Banjir Kanal Barat River is the main drainage channel of the city. Waste disposal detergent into drainage without any waste treatment liquid first, caused in increase load pollution detergent and decrease of water quality in Banjir Kanal Barat River. Detergent pollution can cause eutrophication in the river, because phosphate compounds contained in detergent can stimulate phytoplankton growth and phytoplankton blooming. The study was conducted in February 2016 - March 2016 at Banjir Kanal Barat River which aimed to analyzing the load pollution and Water Quality Index (WQI), determine the concentration of detergent and abundance of phytoplankton, analyzing relation between detergent concentration with abundance of phytoplankton. This research used survey method and purposive sampling. The location of sampling been divided into 3 station and 3 points (edge, middle, edge). Water sampling using integrated sample method, while phytoplankton sampling are carried passively by filtration method. The results showed detergent concentrations were in the range of 0,05-0,62 mg/l. Abundance phytoplankton on the highest all stations are Trichodesmium sp., where Trichodesmium sp. an indicator of organic pollution. Based on corelation analysis, the abundance of phytoplankton is affected by the detergent concentration of 31,4% and 68,6% influenced by other factors. Load pollution of detergent in Banjir Kanal Barat River were in the range 13,18-215,67 ton/tahun. Water Quality Index in Banjir Kanal Barat River was category 1-5 belonging to the clean waters-heavily contamined and not recommended use for fishing activities. Keywords : Detergent; Phytoplankton Abundance; Load Pollution; Water Quality Index; Banjir Kanal Barat River

Kabupaten Banyuwangi merupakan salah satu sentra penghasil udang vaname terbesar di Indonesia. Udang ini merupakan komoditas ekspor ke berbagai negara yaitu Amerika Serikat, Uni Eropa, Jepang, dan beberapa negara di kawasan Asia. Peluang pemanfaatan udang vaname di Kabupaten Banyuwangi masih perlu mendapatkan perhatian serius dari stakeholder terkait untuk meningkatkan produktivitas dan daya saing udang vaname di kancah nasional. Oleh karena itu, penelitian ini bertujuan untuk mengggambarkan profil budidaya udang vaname serta rangkaian sistem distribusi udang vaname dari hulu sampai hilir. Penelitian ini dilakukan dengan metode survey pada lima kecamatan sentra budidaya udang vaname di Kabupaten Banyuwangi. Survei dilakukan dengan melakukan observasi dan wawancara dengan kuesioner terstruktur yang telah disusun. Data yang telah dikumpulkan kemudian dianalisis secara deskriptif kualitatif dan kuantitatif untuk menggambarkan temuan-temuan selama di lapang. Hasil penelitian ini yaitu 1) petambak udang vaname di Kabupaten Banyuwangi memiliki kapasitas usaha dan kondisi budidaya yang berbeda-beda tergantung pada luasan lahan yang dimiliki, jumlah lahan, waktu pemeliharaan, jumlah siklus pertahun, bahkan jumlah benur yang digunakan pada setiap siklus tebar, 2) pemasaran udang vaname di Kabupaten Banyuwangi melalui dua sistem yaitu dari pembudidaya langsung dijual ke supllier untuk dijual ke cold storage di Banyuwangi dan Surabaya, dan yang kedua dari pembudidaya dijual ke pedagang pengepul, selanjutnya dari pedagang pengepul dijual ke pasar lokal di wilayah Banywuangi Bali dan Situbondo. Rekomendasi dari penelitian ini yaitu perlunya dukungan akses informasi dan perbaikan sarana dan prasarana dari pemerintah sehingga arus distribusi udang vaname dapat berjalan lancar, efektif, dan efisien.Title: Distribution System of Vannamei Shrimp in Banyuwangi Regency, East Java Province he distribution system influences the availability of vannamei shrimp in local market of Banyuwangi Regency. However, there is less information on shrimp stock availability. This study aimed to describe the profile of vannamei shrimp farming and to analyze its distribution system in Banyuwangi Regency. The study used qualitative approach with a survey method in Banyuwangi Regency during April 2019. The primary data were collected through interview and discussion with 40 respondents oftraditional shrimp farmers, semi-intensive and intensive farming methods, collectors, suppliers, fish processing plant, logistic services, government officers, and Indonesian Shrimp Club associations(SCI). Secondary data were collected through literature studies. Data were analyzed with descriptive qualitative to illustrate research findings. The findings showed that; 1) vannamei shrimp farmers in Banyuwangi Regency differ in business capacity and farming condition depending on the farm size, 2) vannamei shrimp in Banyuwangi were marketed in two systems; first, direct selling from the farmers to suppliers for cold storage in Banyuwangi and Surabaya; second, sales from the farmers tocollectors for local markets in Banyuwangi, Bali and Situbondo. Therefore, government need to provide information access and infrastructure to support the ease, effectivity and efficiency of vannamei shrimpdistribution.

AbstractThe Kansas Bureau of Labor and Industry surveyed attitudes towards immigration during the 1890s. The surveys reveal that individuals opposed immigration for cultural and economic reasons. Key correlates were the position in the labor market, the business cycle, and immigrant status. The magnitudes of the effects indicate that economic factors explain twice the variation in opinions across individuals than cultural factors explain. In addition, changes in economic conditions from 1880 to 1920 explain a substantial share of the rise in anti-immigrant sentiments at the end of the nineteenth and during the early twentieth centuries, but other factors, such as the rise of the eugenics movement, must have had at least as large a role.

Artikkeli käsittelee vepsänpuhujien kielellistä ja etnistä identifikaatiota. Aiemmassa tutkimuksessa vepsän kieltä on pidetty vepsäläisyyden ensisijaisena kriteerinä. Väestönlaskentatiedot kuitenkin osoittavat, että erityisesti Karjalan tasavallassa elää suuri joukko vepsäläisiksi itsensä mieltäviä, jotka eivät osaa vepsää. Tutkimuksessa tarkastellaan kyselytutkimuksen tulosten sekä haastattelujen ideologiakriittisen analyysin kautta vepsänpuhujien käsityksiä siitä, mikä on vepsän kielen merkitys etniseksi vepsäläiseksi identifioitumiselle. Fokuksessa on neljä aineistosta nousevaa teemaa: vepsän kielen osaaminen, vepsä äidinkielenä, passiin merkitty kansallisuus ja vepsäläiset sukujuuret. Tutkimuksessa erotetaan kaksi vepsänpuhujien ryhmää: puhekielistä varieteettia käyttävät kylävepsäläiset, jotka eivät osaa lukea vepsää, sekä vepsän nuoren standardikielen kanssa tekemisissä olevat koulutetut Petroskoin vepsäläiset. Ensimmäistä ryhmää edustavat aineistossa 143 keskivepsäläistä, joiden elinympäristö on yhä vepsänkielinen ja joista suurin osa on molempien vanhempiensa puolelta vepsäläistaustaisia. Jälkimmäistä ryhmää tarkastellaan ELDIA-projektissa saatujen tulosten valossa sekä projektin puitteissa tehtyjä haastatteluja lähemmin analysoiden. Aineiston analyysi osoittaa, että vaikka vepsän kielen taitoa voi pitää keskeisimpänä vepsäläisyyden määrittäjänä, se ymmärretään usealla eri tavalla. Kielitaidoksi voi riittää passiivinen kielen ymmärtäminen; laajimmillaan se kattaa myös standardikielen hallinnan. Kun kyse on äidinkielen määrittelystä, vepsän osalta vedotaan useimmin alkuperäkriteeriin, ei niinkään vepsän ensisijaisuuteen käyttökielenä. Passiin merkitty vepsäläinen tai venäläinen kansallisuus koetaan merkittäväksi seikaksi, mutta haastateltavien kokemukset siitä, missä määrin he ovat voineet itse valita kansallisuutensa, vaihtelevat. Vepsänpuhujat suhtautuvat liberaalisti vepsäläisten juurten määrittelyyn, eikä tutkimus anna viitteitä siitä, että yhteisöt pyrkisivät rajaamaan jäsenyyttään niiltä, jotka haluavat olla vepsäläisiä. Knowing the minority language, mother tongue, roots or passport? Identifying as Veps in the 21st century This article examines the linguistic and ethnic identification of speakers of the Veps language in 21st-century data. Earlier research has considered a knowledge of the Veps language an essential marker of being Veps. Instead, population censuses suggest that there is a significant group of people identifying as Veps without knowing the Veps language at all. Through analysing the results of a sociolinguistic survey and interview data, this study aims at unfolding the importance Veps speakers place on knowing the Veps language, the role of Veps as a mother tongue, Veps ancestry, and Veps nationality (indicated in passports) in identifying as Veps. Two data sets drawn from different speech communities are studied: firstly, rural users of Veps vernaculars who are typically not literate in the Veps language, and secondly, the so-called Veps elite or intelligentsia located predominantly in the city of Petrozavodsk and connected to the Veps revitalisation movement. The analysis of the data suggests that although the Veps language is seen as the most central factor in self-identification, definitions of language skills vary between the two groups as well as within them. Veps as a mother tongue is perceived as a matter of heritage, not one’s choice. Official implications of nationality marked in passports are given importance, but there are different experiences of one’s possibilities in affecting the choice of nationality in multilingual and multinational contexts. The data suggests that Veps speakers hold relatively liberal ideas on community membership and do not draw strict lines in defining who is allowed to consider themselves Veps.

1. Guy Debord in the Land of the Long WeekendIt’s the weekend – leisure time. It’s the interlude when, Guy Debord contends, the proletarian is briefly free of the “total contempt so clearly built into every aspect of the organization and management of production” in commodity capitalism; when workers are temporarily “treated like grown-ups, with a great show of solicitude and politeness, in their new role as consumers.” But this patronising show turns out to be another form of subjection to the diktats of “political economy”: “the totality of human existence falls under the regime of the ‘perfected denial of man’.” (30). As Debord suggests, even the creation of leisure time and space is predicated upon a form of contempt: the “perfected denial” of who we, as living people, really are in the eyes of those who presume the power to legislate our working practices and private identities.This Saturday The Weekend Australian runs an opinion piece by Christopher Pearson, defending ABC Radio National’s Stephen Crittenden, whose program The Religion Report has been axed. “Some of Crittenden’s finest half-hours have been devoted to Islam in Australia in the wake of September 11,” Pearson writes. “Again and again he’s confronted a left-of-centre audience that expected multi-cultural pieties with disturbing assertions.” Along the way in this admirable Crusade, Pearson notes that Crittenden has exposed “the Left’s recent tendency to ally itself with Islam.” According to Pearson, Crittenden has also thankfully given oxygen to claims by James Cook University’s Mervyn Bendle, the “fairly conservative academic whose work sometimes appears in [these] pages,” that “the discipline of critical terrorism studies has been captured by neo-Marxists of a postmodern bent” (30). Both of these points are well beyond misunderstanding or untested proposition. If Pearson means them sincerely he should be embarrassed and sacked. But of course he does not and will not be. These are deliberate lies, the confabulations of an eminent right-wing culture warrior whose job is to vilify minorities and intellectuals (Bendle escapes censure as an academic because he occasionally scribbles for the Murdoch press). It should be observed, too, how the patent absurdity of Pearson’s remarks reveals the extent to which he holds the intelligence of his readers in contempt. And he is not original in peddling these toxic wares.In their insightful—often hilarious—study of Australian opinion writers, The War on Democracy, Niall Lucy and Steve Mickler identify the left-academic-Islam nexus as the brain-child of former Treasurer-cum-memoirist Peter Costello. The germinal moment was “a speech to the Australian American Leadership Dialogue forum at the Art Gallery of NSW in 2005” concerning anti-Americanism in Australian schools. Lucy and Mickler argue that “it was only a matter of time” before a conservative politician or journalist took the plunge to link the left and terrorism, and Costello plunged brilliantly. He drew a mental map of the Great Chain of Being: left-wing academics taught teacher trainees to be anti-American; teacher trainees became teachers and taught kids to be anti-American; anti-Americanism morphs into anti-Westernism; anti-Westernism veers into terrorism (38). This is contempt for the reasoning capacity of the Australian people and, further still, contempt for any observable reality. Not for nothing was Costello generally perceived by the public as a politician whose very physiognomy radiated smugness and contempt.Recycling Costello, Christopher Pearson’s article subtly interpellates the reader as an ordinary, common-sense individual who instinctively feels what’s right and has no need to think too much—thinking too much is the prerogative of “neo-Marxists” and postmodernists. Ultimately, Pearson’s article is about channelling outrage: directing the down-to-earth passions of the Australian people against stock-in-trade culture-war hate figures. And in Pearson’s paranoid world, words like “neo-Marxist” and “postmodern” are devoid of historical or intellectual meaning. They are, as Lucy and Mickler’s War on Democracy repeatedly demonstrate, mere ciphers packed with the baggage of contempt for independent critical thought itself.Contempt is everywhere this weekend. The Weekend Australian’s colour magazine runs a feature story on Malcolm Turnbull: one of those familiar profiles designed to reveal the everyday human touch of the political classes. In this puff-piece, Jennifer Hewett finds Turnbull has “a restless passion for participating in public life” (20); that beneath “the aggressive political rhetoric […] behind the journalist turned lawyer turned banker turned politician turned would-be prime minister is a man who really enjoys that human interaction, however brief, with the many, many ordinary people he encounters” (16). Given all this energetic turning, it’s a wonder that Turnbull has time for human interactions at all. The distinction here of Turnbull and “many, many ordinary people” – the anonymous masses – surely runs counter to Hewett’s brief to personalise and quotidianise him. Likewise, those two key words, “however brief”, have an unfortunate, unintended effect. Presumably meant to conjure a picture of Turnbull’s hectic schedules and serial turnings, the words also convey the image of a patrician who begrudgingly knows one of the costs of a political career is that common flesh must be pressed—but as gingerly as possible.Hewett proceeds to disclose that Turnbull is “no conservative cultural warrior”, “onfounds stereotypes” and “hates labels” (like any baby-boomer rebel) and “has always read widely on political philosophy—his favourite is Edmund Burke”. He sees the “role of the state above all as enabling people to do their best” but knows that “the main game is the economy” and is “content to play mainstream gesture politics” (19). I am genuinely puzzled by this and imagine that my intelligence is being held in contempt once again. That the man of substance is given to populist gesturing is problematic enough; but that the Burke fan believes the state is about personal empowerment is just too much. Maybe Turnbull is a fan of Burke’s complex writings on the sublime and the beautiful—but no, Hewett avers, Turnbull is engaged by Burke’s “political philosophy”. So what is it in Burke that Turnbull finds to favour?Turnbull’s invocation of Edmund Burke is empty, gestural and contradictory. The comfortable notion that the state helps people to realise their potential is contravened by Burke’s view that the state functions so “the inclinations of men should frequently be thwarted, their will controlled, and their passions brought into subjection… by a power out of themselves” (151). Nor does Burke believe that anyone of humble origins could or should rise to the top of the social heap: “The occupation of an hair-dresser, or of a working tallow-chandler, cannot be a matter of honour to any person… the state suffers oppression, if such as they, either individually or collectively, are permitted to rule” (138).If Turnbull’s main game as a would-be statesman is the economy, Burke profoundly disagrees: “the state ought not to be considered as nothing better than a partnership agreement in a trade of pepper and coffee, callico or tobacco, or some other such low concern… It is a partnership in all science; a partnership in all art; a partnership in every virtue, and in all perfection”—a sublime entity, not an economic manager (194). Burke understands, long before Antonio Gramsci or Louis Althusser, that individuals or social fractions must be made admirably “obedient” to the state “by consent or force” (195). Burke has a verdict on mainstream gesture politics too: “When men of rank sacrifice all ideas of dignity to an ambition without a distinct object, and work with low instruments and for low ends, the whole composition [of the state] becomes low and base” (136).Is Malcolm Turnbull so contemptuous of the public that he assumes nobody will notice the gross discrepancies between his own ideals and what Burke stands for? His invocation of Burke is, indeed, “mainstream gesture politics”: on one level, “Burke” signifies nothing more than Turnbull’s performance of himself as a deep thinker. In this process, the real Edmund Burke is historically erased; reduced to the status of stage-prop in the theatrical production of Turnbull’s mass-mediated identity. “Edmund Burke” is re-invented as a term in an aesthetic repertoire.This transmutation of knowledge and history into mere cipher is the staple trick of culture-war discourse. Jennifer Hewett casts Turnbull as “no conservative culture warrior”, but he certainly shows a facility with culture-war rhetoric. And as much as Turnbull “confounds stereotypes” his verbal gesture to Edmund Burke entrenches a stereotype: at another level, the incantation “Edmund Burke” is implicitly meant to connect Turnbull with conservative tradition—in the exact way that John Howard regularly self-nominated as a “Burkean conservative”.This appeal to tradition effectively places “the people” in a power relation. Tradition has a sublimity that is bigger than us; it precedes us and will outlast us. Consequently, for a politician to claim that tradition has fashioned him, that he is welded to it or perhaps even owns it as part of his heritage, is to glibly imply an authority greater than that of “the many, many ordinary people”—Burke’s hair-dressers and tallow-chandlers—whose company he so briefly enjoys.In The Ideology of the Aesthetic, Terry Eagleton assesses one of Burke’s important legacies, placing him beside another eighteenth-century thinker so loved by the right—Adam Smith. Ideology of the Aesthetic is premised on the view that “Aesthetics is born as a discourse of the body”; that the aesthetic gives form to the “primitive materialism” of human passions and organises “the whole of our sensate life together… a society’s somatic, sensational life” (13). Reading Smith’s Theory of Moral Sentiments, Eagleton discerns that society appears as “an immense machine, whose regular and harmonious movements produce a thousand agreeable effects”, like “any production of human art”. In Smith’s work, the “whole of social life is aestheticized” and people inhabit “a social order so spontaneously cohesive that its members no longer need to think about it.” In Burke, Eagleton discovers that the aesthetics of “manners” can be understood in terms of Gramscian hegemony: “in the aesthetics of social conduct, or ‘culture’ as it would later be called, the law is always with us, as the very unconscious structure of our life”, and as a result conformity to a dominant ideological order is deeply felt as pleasurable and beautiful (37, 42). When this conservative aesthetic enters the realm of politics, Eagleton contends, the “right turn, from Burke” onwards follows a dark trajectory: “forget about theoretical analysis… view society as a self-grounding organism, all of whose parts miraculously interpenetrate without conflict and require no rational justification. Think with the blood and the body. Remember that tradition is always wiser and richer than one’s own poor, pitiable ego. It is this line of descent, in one of its tributaries, which will lead to the Third Reich” (368–9).2. Jean Baudrillard, the Nazis and Public MemoryIn 1937, during the Spanish Civil War, the Third Reich’s Condor Legion of the Luftwaffe was on loan to Franco’s forces. On 26 April that year, the Condor Legion bombed the market-town of Guernica: the first deliberate attempt to obliterate an entire town from the air and the first experiment in what became known as “terror bombing”—the targeting of civilians. A legacy of this violence was Pablo Picasso’s monumental canvas Guernica – the best-known anti-war painting in art history.When US Secretary of State Colin Powell addressed the United Nations on 5 February 2003 to make the case for war on Iraq, he stopped to face the press in the UN building’s lobby. The doorstop was globally televised, packaged as a moment of incredible significance: history in the making. It was also theatre: a moment in which history was staged as “event” and the real traces of history were carefully erased. Millions of viewers world-wide were undoubtedly unaware that the blue backdrop before which Powell stood was specifically designed to cover the full-scale tapestry copy of Picasso’s Guernica. This one-act, agitprop drama was a splendid example of politics as aesthetic action: a “performance” of history in the making which required the loss of actual historical memory enshrined in Guernica. Powell’s performance took its cues from the culture wars, which require the ceaseless erasure of history and public memory—on this occasion enacted on a breathtaking global, rather than national, scale.Inside the UN chamber, Powell’s performance was equally staged-crafted. As he brandished vials of ersatz anthrax, the power-point behind him (the theatrical set) showed artists’ impressions of imaginary mobile chemical weapons laboratories. Powell was playing lead role in a kind of populist, hyperreal production. It was Jean Baudrillard’s postmodernism, no less, as the media space in which Powell acted out the drama was not a secondary representation of reality but a reality of its own; the overheads of mobile weapons labs were simulacra, “models of a real without origins or reality”, pictures referring to nothing but themselves (2). In short, Powell’s performance was anchored in a “semiurgic” aesthetic; and it was a dreadful real-life enactment of Walter Benjamin’s maxim that “All efforts to render politics aesthetic culminate in one thing: war” (241).For Benjamin, “Fascism attempts to organize the newly created proletarian masses without affecting the property structure which the masses strive to eliminate.” Fascism gave “these masses not their right, but instead a chance to express themselves.” In turn, this required “the introduction of aesthetics into politics”, the objective of which was “the production of ritual values” (241). Under Adolf Hitler’s Reich, people were able to express themselves but only via the rehearsal of officially produced ritual values: by their participation in the disquisition on what Germany meant and what it meant to be German, by the aesthetic regulation of their passions. As Frederic Spotts’ fine study Hitler and the Power of Aesthetics reveals, this passionate disquisition permeated public and private life, through the artfully constructed total field of national narratives, myths, symbols and iconographies. And the ritualistic reiteration of national values in Nazi Germany hinged on two things: contempt and memory loss.By April 1945, as Berlin fell, Hitler’s contempt for the German people was at its apogee. Hitler ordered a scorched earth operation: the destruction of everything from factories to farms to food stores. The Russians would get nothing, the German people would perish. Albert Speer refused to implement the plan and remembered that “Until then… Germany and Hitler had been synonymous in my mind. But now I saw two entities opposed… A passionate love of one’s country… a leader who seemed to hate his people” (Sereny 472). But Hitler’s contempt for the German people was betrayed in the blusterous pages of Mein Kampf years earlier: “The receptivity of the great masses is very limited, their intelligence is small, but their power of forgetting is enormous” (165). On the back of this belief, Hitler launched what today would be called a culture war, with its Jewish folk devils, loathsome Marxist intellectuals, incitement of popular passions, invented traditions, historical erasures and constant iteration of values.When Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer fled Fascism, landing in the United States, their view of capitalist democracy borrowed from Benjamin and anticipated both Baudrillard and Guy Debord. In their well-know essay on “The Culture Industry”, in Dialectic of Enlightenment, they applied Benjamin’s insight on mass self-expression and the maintenance of property relations and ritual values to American popular culture: “All are free to dance and enjoy themselves”, but the freedom to choose how to do so “proves to be the freedom to choose what is always the same”, manufactured by monopoly capital (161–162). Anticipating Baudrillard, they found a society in which “only the copy appears: in the movie theatre, the photograph; on the radio, the recording” (143). And anticipating Debord’s “perfected denial of man” they found a society where work and leisure were structured by the repetition-compulsion principles of capitalism: where people became consumers who appeared “s statistics on research organization charts” (123). “Culture” came to do people’s thinking for them: “Pleasure always means not to think about anything, to forget suffering even where it is shown” (144).In this mass-mediated environment, a culture of repetitions, simulacra, billboards and flickering screens, Adorno and Horkheimer concluded that language lost its historical anchorages: “Innumerable people use words and expressions which they have either ceased to understand or employ only because they trigger off conditioned reflexes” in precisely the same way that the illusory “free” expression of passions in Germany operated, where words were “debased by the Fascist pseudo-folk community” (166).I know that the turf of the culture wars, the US and Australia, are not Fascist states; and I know that “the first one to mention the Nazis loses the argument”. I know, too, that there are obvious shortcomings in Adorno and Horkheimer’s reactions to popular culture and these have been widely criticised. However, I would suggest that there is a great deal of value still in Frankfurt School analyses of what we might call the “authoritarian popular” which can be applied to the conservative prosecution of populist culture wars today. Think, for example, how the concept of a “pseudo folk community” might well describe the earthy, common-sense public constructed and interpellated by right-wing culture warriors: America’s Joe Six-Pack, John Howard’s battlers or Kevin Rudd’s working families.In fact, Adorno and Horkheimer’s observations on language go to the heart of a contemporary culture war strategy. Words lose their history, becoming ciphers and “triggers” in a politicised lexicon. Later, Roland Barthes would write that this is a form of myth-making: “myth is constituted by the loss of the historical quality of things.” Barthes reasoned further that “Bourgeois ideology continuously transforms the products of history into essential types”, generating a “cultural logic” and an ideological re-ordering of the world (142). Types such as “neo-Marxist”, “postmodernist” and “Burkean conservative”.Surely, Benjamin’s assessment that Fascism gives “the people” the occasion to express itself, but only through “values”, describes the right’s pernicious incitement of the mythic “dispossessed mainstream” to reclaim its voice: to shout down the noisy minorities—the gays, greenies, blacks, feminists, multiculturalists and neo-Marxist postmodernists—who’ve apparently been running the show. Even more telling, Benjamin’s insight that the incitement to self-expression is connected to the maintenance of property relations, to economic power, is crucial to understanding the contemptuous conduct of culture wars.3. Jesus Dunked in Urine from Kansas to CronullaAmerican commentator Thomas Frank bases his study What’s the Matter with Kansas? on this very point. Subtitled How Conservatives Won the Heart of America, Frank’s book is a striking analysis of the indexation of Chicago School free-market reform and the mobilisation of “explosive social issues—summoning public outrage over everything from busing to un-Christian art—which it then marries to pro-business policies”; but it is the “economic achievements” of free-market capitalism, “not the forgettable skirmishes of the never-ending culture wars” that are conservatism’s “greatest monuments.” Nevertheless, the culture wars are necessary as Chicago School economic thinking consigns American communities to the rust belt. The promise of “free-market miracles” fails ordinary Americans, Frank reasons, leaving them in “backlash” mode: angry, bewildered and broke. And in this context, culture wars are a convenient form of anger management: “Because some artist decides to shock the hicks by dunking Jesus in urine, the entire planet must remake itself along the lines preferred” by nationalist, populist moralism and free-market fundamentalism (5).When John Howard received the neo-conservative American Enterprise Institute’s Irving Kristol Award, on 6 March 2008, he gave a speech in Washington titled “Sharing Our Common Values”. The nub of the speech was Howard’s revelation that he understood the index of neo-liberal economics and culture wars precisely as Thomas Frank does. Howard told the AEI audience that under his prime ministership Australia had “pursued reform and further modernisation of our economy” and that this inevitably meant “dislocation for communities”. This “reform-dislocation” package needed the palliative of a culture war, with his government preaching the “consistency and reassurance” of “our nation’s traditional values… pride in her history”; his government “became assertive about the intrinsic worth of our national identity. In the process we ended the seemingly endless seminar about that identity which had been in progress for some years.” Howard’s boast that his government ended the “seminar” on national identity insinuates an important point. “Seminar” is a culture-war cipher for intellection, just as “pride” is code for passion; so Howard’s self-proclaimed achievement, in Terry Eagleton’s terms, was to valorise “the blood and the body” over “theoretical analysis”. This speaks stratospheric contempt: ordinary people have their identity fashioned for them; they need not think about it, only feel it deeply and passionately according to “ritual values”. Undoubtedly this paved the way to Cronulla.The rubric of Howard’s speech—“Sharing Our Common Values”—was both a homage to international neo-conservatism and a reminder that culture wars are a trans-national phenomenon. In his address, Howard said that in all his “years in politics” he had not heard a “more evocative political slogan” than Ronald Reagan’s “Morning in America”—the rhetorical catch-cry for moral re-awakening that launched the culture wars. According to Lawrence Grossberg, America’s culture wars were predicated on the perception that the nation was afflicted by “a crisis of our lack of passion, of not caring enough about the values we hold… a crisis of nihilism which, while not restructuring our ideological beliefs, has undermined our ability to organise effective action on their behalf”; and this “New Right” alarmism “operates in the conjuncture of economics and popular culture” and “a popular struggle by which culture can lead politics” in the passionate pursuit of ritual values (31–2). When popular culture leads politics in this way we are in the zone of the image, myth and Adorno and Horkheimer’s “trigger words” that have lost their history. In this context, McKenzie Wark observes that “radical writers influenced by Marx will see the idea of culture as compensation for a fragmented and alienated life as a con. Guy Debord, perhaps the last of the great revolutionary thinkers of Europe, will call it “the spectacle”’ (20). Adorno and Horkheimer might well have called it “the authoritarian popular”. As Jonathan Charteris-Black’s work capably demonstrates, all politicians have their own idiolect: their personally coded language, preferred narratives and myths; their own vision of who “the people” might or should be that is conjured in their words. But the language of the culture wars is different. It is not a personal idiolect. It is a shared vocabulary, a networked vernacular, a pervasive trans-national aesthetic that pivots on the fact that words like “neo-Marxist”, “postmodern” and “Edmund Burke” have no historical or intellectual context or content: they exist as the ciphers of “values”. And the fact that culture warriors continually mouth them is a supreme act of contempt: it robs the public of its memory. And that’s why, as Lucy and Mickler’s War on Democracy so wittily argues, if there are any postmodernists left they’ll be on the right.Benjamin, Adorno, Horkheimer and, later, Debord and Grossberg understood how the political activation of the popular constitutes a hegemonic project. The result is nothing short of persuading “the people” to collaborate in its own oppression. The activation of the popular is perfectly geared to an age where the main stage of political life is the mainstream media; an age in which, Charteris-Black notes, political classes assume the general antipathy of publics to social change and act on the principle that the most effective political messages are sold to “the people” by an appeal “to familiar experiences”—market populism (10). In her substantial study The Persuaders, Sally Young cites an Australian Labor Party survey, conducted by pollster Rod Cameron in the late 1970s, in which the party’s message machine was finely tuned to this populist position. The survey also dripped with contempt for ordinary people: their “Interest in political philosophy… is very low… They are essentially the products (and supporters) of mass market commercialism”. Young observes that this view of “the people” was the foundation of a new order of political advertising and the conduct of politics on the mass-media stage. Cameron’s profile of “ordinary people” went on to assert that they are fatally attracted to “a moderate leader who is strong… but can understand and represent their value system” (47): a prescription for populist discourse which begs the question of whether the values a politician or party represent via the media are ever really those of “the people”. More likely, people are hegemonised into a value system which they take to be theirs. Writing of the media side of the equation, David Salter raises the point that when media “moguls thunder about ‘the public interest’ what they really mean is ‘what we think the public is interested in”, which is quite another matter… Why this self-serving deception is still so sheepishly accepted by the same public it is so often used to violate remains a mystery” (40).Sally Young’s Persuaders retails a story that she sees as “symbolic” of the new world of mass-mediated political life. The story concerns Mark Latham and his “revolutionary” journeys to regional Australia to meet the people. “When a political leader who holds a public meeting is dubbed a ‘revolutionary’”, Young rightly observes, “something has gone seriously wrong”. She notes how Latham’s “use of old-fashioned ‘meet-and-greet’campaigning methods was seen as a breath of fresh air because it was unlike the type of packaged, stage-managed and media-dependent politics that have become the norm in Australia.” Except that it wasn’t. “A media pack of thirty journalists trailed Latham in a bus”, meaning, that he was not meeting the people at all (6–7). He was traducing the people as participants in a media spectacle, as his “meet and greet” was designed to fill the image-banks of print and electronic media. Even meeting the people becomes a media pseudo-event in which the people impersonate the people for the camera’s benefit; a spectacle as artfully deceitful as Colin Powell’s UN performance on Iraq.If the success of this kind of “self-serving deception” is a mystery to David Salter, it would not be so to the Frankfurt School. For them, an understanding of the processes of mass-mediated politics sits somewhere near the core of their analysis of the culture industries in the “democratic” world. I think the Frankfurt school should be restored to a more important role in the project of cultural studies. Apart from an aversion to jazz and other supposedly “elitist” heresies, thinkers like Adorno, Benjamin, Horkheimer and their progeny Debord have a functional claim to provide the theory for us to expose the machinations of the politics of contempt and its aesthetic ruses.ReferencesAdorno, Theodor and Max Horkheimer. "The Culture Industry: Enlightenment as Mass Deception." Dialectic of Enlightenment. London: Verso, 1979. 120–167.Barthes Roland. “Myth Today.” Mythologies. Trans. Annette Lavers. St Albans: Paladin, 1972. 109–58.Baudrillard, Jean. Simulations. New York: Semiotext(e), 1983.Benjamin, Walter. “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction.” Illuminations. Ed. Hannah Arendt. Trans. Harry Zorn. New York: Schocken Books, 1969. 217–251.Burke, Edmund. Reflections on the Revolution in France. Ed. Conor Cruise O’Brien. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1969.Charteris-Black, Jonathan. Politicians and Rhetoric: The Persuasive Power of Metaphor. Houndmills: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006.Debord, Guy. The Society of the Spectacle. Trans. Donald Nicholson-Smith. New York: Zone Books, 1994.Eagleton, Terry. The Ideology of the Aesthetic. Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1990.Frank, Thomas. What’s the Matter with Kansas?: How Conservatives Won the Heart of America. New York: Henry Holt and Company, 2004.Grossberg, Lawrence. “It’s a Sin: Politics, Post-Modernity and the Popular.” It’s a Sin: Essays on Postmodern Politics & Culture. Eds. Tony Fry, Ann Curthoys and Paul Patton. Sydney: Power Publications, 1988. 6–71.Hewett, Jennifer. “The Opportunist.” The Weekend Australian Magazine. 25–26 October 2008. 16–22.Hitler, Adolf. Mein Kampf. Trans. Ralph Manheim. London: Pimlico, 1993.Howard, John. “Sharing Our Common Values.” Washington: Irving Kristol Lecture, American Enterprise Institute. 5 March 2008. ‹http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,233328945-5014047,00html›.Lucy, Niall and Steve Mickler. The War on Democracy: Conservative Opinion in the Australian Press. Crawley: University of Western Australia Press, 2006.Pearson, Christopher. “Pray for Sense to Prevail.” The Weekend Australian. 25–26 October 2008. 30.Salter, David. The Media We Deserve: Underachievement in the Fourth Estate. Melbourne: Melbourne UP, 2007. Sereny, Gitta. Albert Speer: His Battle with Truth. London: Picador, 1996.Spotts, Frederic. Hitler and the Power of Aesthetics. London: Pimlico, 2003.Wark, McKenzie. The Virtual Republic: Australia’s Culture Wars of the 1990s. St Leonards: Allen & Unwin, 1997.Young, Sally. The Persuaders: Inside the Hidden Machine of Political Advertising. Melbourne: Pluto Press, 2004.

At a time when almost every human transgression, illness, profession and other personal aspect of life has been chronicled in autobiographical writing (Rak)—in 1998 Zinsser called ours “the age of memoir” (3)—writing about fat is one of the most recent subjects to be addressed in this way. This article surveys a range of contemporary autobiographical texts that are titled with, or revolve around, that powerful and most evocative word, “fat”. Following a number of cultural studies of fat in society (Critser; Gilman, Fat Boys; Fat: A Cultural History; Stearns), this discussion views fat in socio-cultural terms, following Lupton in understanding fat as both “a cultural artefact: a bodily substance or body shape that is given meaning by complex and shifting systems of ideas, practices, emotions, material objects and interpersonal relationships” (i). Using a case study approach (Gerring; Verschuren), this examination focuses on a range of texts from autobiographical cookbooks and memoirs to novel-length graphic works in order to develop a preliminary taxonomy of these works. In this way, a small sample of work, each of which (described below) explores an aspect (or aspects) of the form is, following Merriam, useful as it allows a richer picture of an under-examined phenomenon to be constructed, and offers “a means of investigating complex social units consisting of multiple variables of potential importance in understanding the phenomenon” (Merriam 50). Although the sample size does not offer generalisable results, the case study method is especially suitable in this context, where the aim is to open up discussion of this form of writing for future research for, as Merriam states, “much can be learned from […] an encounter with the case through the researcher’s narrative description” and “what we learn in a particular case can be transferred to similar situations” (51). Pro-Fat Autobiographical WritingAlongside the many hundreds of reduced, low- and no-fat cookbooks and weight loss guides currently in print that offer recipes, meal plans, ingredient replacements and strategies to reduce fat in the diet, there are a handful that promote the consumption of fats, and these all have an autobiographical component. The publication of Jennifer McLagan’s Fat: An Appreciation of a Misunderstood Ingredient, with Recipes in 2008 by Ten Speed Press—publisher of Mollie Katzen’s groundbreaking and influential vegetarian Moosewood Cookbook in 1974 and an imprint now known for its quality cookbooks (Thelin)—unequivocably addressed that line in the sand often drawn between fat and all things healthy. The four chapter titles of this cookbook— “Butter,” subtitled “Worth It,” “Pork Fat: The King,” “Poultry Fat: Versatile and Good For You,” and, “Beef and Lamb Fats: Overlooked But Tasty”—neatly summarise McLagan’s organising argument: that animal fats not only add an unreplaceable and delicious flavour to foods but are fundamental to our health. Fat polarised readers and critics; it was positively reviewed in prominent publications (Morris; Bhide) and won influential food writing awards, including 2009 James Beard Awards for Single Subject Cookbook and Cookbook of the Year but, due to its rejection of low-fat diets and the research underpinning them, was soon also vehemently criticised, to the point where the book was often described in the media as “controversial” (see Smith). McLagan’s text, while including historical, scientific and gastronomic data and detail, is also an outspokenly personal treatise, chronicling her sensual and emotional responses to this ingredient. “I love fat,” she begins, continuing, “Whether it’s a slice of foie gras terrine, its layer of yellow fat melting at the edges […] hot bacon fat […] wilting a plate of pungent greens into submission […] or a piece of crunchy pork crackling […] I love the way it feels in my mouth, and I love its many tastes” (1). Her text is, indeed, memoir as gastronomy / gastronomy as memoir, and this cookbook, therefore, an example of the “memoir with recipes” subgenre (Brien et al.). It appears to be this aspect – her highly personal and, therein, persuasive (Weitin) plea for the value of fats – that galvanised critics and readers.Molly Chester and Sandy Schrecengost’s Back to Butter: A Traditional Foods Cookbook – Nourishing Recipes Inspired by Our Ancestors begins with its authors’ memoirs (illness, undertaking culinary school training, buying and running a farm) to lend weight to their argument to utilise fats widely in cookery. Its first chapter, “Fats and Oils,” features the familiar butter, which it describes as “the friendly fat” (22), then moves to the more reviled pork lard “Grandma’s superfood” (22) and, nowadays quite rarely described as an ingredient, beef tallow. Grit Magazine’s Lard: The Lost Art of Cooking with Your Grandmother’s Secret Ingredient utilises the rhetoric that fat, and in this case, lard, is a traditional and therefore foundational ingredient in good cookery. This text draws on its publisher’s, Grit Magazine (published since 1882 in various formats), long history of including auto/biographical “inspirational stories” (Teller) to lend persuasive power to its argument. One of the most polarising of fats in health and current media discourse is butter, as was seen recently in debate over what was seen as its excessive use in the MasterChef Australia television series (see, Heart Foundation; Phillipov). It is perhaps not surprising, then, that butter is the single fat inspiring the most autobiographical writing in this mode. Rosie Daykin’s Butter Baked Goods: Nostalgic Recipes from a Little Neighborhood Bakery is, for example, typical of a small number of cookbooks that extend the link between baking and nostalgia to argue that butter is the superlative ingredient for baking. There are also entire cookbooks dedicated to making flavoured butters (Vaserfirer) and a number that offer guides to making butter and other (fat-based) dairy products at home (Farrell-Kingsley; Hill; Linford).Gabrielle Hamilton’s Blood, Bones and Butter: The Inadvertent Education of a Reluctant Chef is typical among chef’s memoirs in using butter prominently although rare in mentioning fat in its title. In this text and other such memoirs, butter is often used as shorthand for describing a food that is rich but also wholesomely delicious. Hamilton relates childhood memories of “all butter shortcakes” (10), and her mother and sister “cutting butter into flour and sugar” for scones (15), radishes eaten with butter (21), sautéing sage in butter to dress homemade ravoli (253), and eggs fried in browned butter (245). Some of Hamilton’s most telling references to butter present it as an staple, natural food as, for instance, when she describes “sliced bread with butter and granulated sugar” (37) as one of her family’s favourite desserts, and lists butter among the everyday foodstuffs that taste superior when stored at room temperature instead of refrigerated—thereby moving butter from taboo (Gwynne describes a similar process of the normalisation of sexual “perversion” in erotic memoir).Like this text, memoirs that could be described as arguing “for” fat as a substance are largely by chefs or other food writers who extol, like McLagan and Hamilton, the value of fat as both food and flavouring, and propose that it has a key role in both ordinary/family and gourmet cookery. In this context, despite plant-based fats such as coconut oil being much lauded in nutritional and other health-related discourse, the fat written about in these texts is usually animal-based. An exception to this is olive oil, although this is never described in the book’s title as a “fat” (see, for instance, Drinkwater’s series of memoirs about life on an olive farm in France) and is, therefore, out of the scope of this discussion.Memoirs of Being FatThe majority of the other memoirs with the word “fat” in their titles are about being fat. Narratives on this topic, and their authors’ feelings about this, began to be published as a sub-set of autobiographical memoir in the 2000s. The first decade of the new millennium saw a number of such memoirs by female writers including Judith Moore’s Fat Girl (published in 2005), Jen Lancaster’s Such a Pretty Fat: One Narcissist’s Quest to Discover If Her Life Makes Her Ass Look Big, or Why Pie Is Not the Answer, and Stephanie Klein’s Moose: A Memoir (both published in 2008) and Jennifer Joyne’s Designated Fat Girl in 2010. These were followed into the new decade by texts such as Celia Rivenbark’s bestselling 2011 You Don’t Sweat Much for a Fat Girl, and all attracted significant mainstream readerships. Journalist Vicki Allan pulled no punches when she labelled these works the “fat memoir” and, although Sidonie Smith and Julia Watson’s influential categorisation of 60 genres of life writing does not include this description, they do recognise eating disorder and weight-loss narratives. Some scholarly interest followed (Linder; Halloran), with Mitchell linking this production to feminism’s promotion of the power of the micro-narrative and the recognition that the autobiographical narrative was “a way of situating the self politically” (65).aken together, these memoirs all identify “excess” weight, although the response to this differs. They can be grouped as: narratives of losing weight (see Kuffel; Alley; and many others), struggling to lose weight (most of these books), and/or deciding not to try to lose weight (the smallest number of works overall). Some of these texts display a deeply troubled relationship with food—Moore’s Fat Girl, for instance, could also be characterised as an eating disorder memoir (Brien), detailing her addiction to eating and her extremely poor body image as well as her mother’s unrelenting pressure to lose weight. Elena Levy-Navarro describes the tone of these narratives as “compelled confession” (340), mobilising both the conventional understanding of confession of the narrator “speaking directly and colloquially” to the reader of their sins, failures or foibles (Gill 7), and what she reads as an element of societal coercion in their production. Some of these texts do focus on confessing what can be read as disgusting and wretched behavior (gorging and vomiting, for instance)—Halloran’s “gustatory abject” (27)—which is a feature of the contemporary conceptualisation of confession after Rousseau (Brooks). This is certainly a prominent aspect of current memoir writing that is, simultaneously, condemned by critics (see, for example, Jordan) and popular with readers (O’Neill). Read in this way, the majority of memoirs about being fat are about being miserable until a slimming regime of some kind has been undertaken and successful. Some of these texts are, indeed, triumphal in tone. Lisa Delaney’s Secrets of a Former Fat Girl is, for instance, clear in the message of its subtitle, How to Lose Two, Four (or More!) Dress Sizes—And Find Yourself Along the Way, that she was “lost” until she became slim. Linden has argued that “female memoir writers frequently describe their fat bodies as diseased and contaminated” (219) and “powerless” (226). Many of these confessional memoirs are moving narratives of shame and self loathing where the memoirist’s sense of self, character, and identity remain somewhat confused and unresolved, whether they lose weight or not, and despite attestations to the contrary.A sub-set of these memoirs of weight loss are by male authors. While having aspects in common with those by female writers, these can be identified as a sub-set of these memoirs for two reasons. One is the tone of their narratives, which is largely humourous and often ribaldly comic. There is also a sense of the heroic in these works, with male memoirsts frequently mobilising images of battles and adversity. Texts that can be categorised in this way include Toshio Okada’s Sayonara Mr. Fatty: A Geek’s Diet Memoir, Gregg McBride and Joy Bauer’s bestselling Weightless: My Life as a Fat Man and How I Escaped, Fred Anderson’s From Chunk to Hunk: Diary of a Fat Man. As can be seen in their titles, these texts also promise to relate the stratgies, regimes, plans, and secrets that others can follow to, similarly, lose weight. Allen Zadoff’s title makes this explicit: Lessons Learned on the Journey from Fat to Thin. Many of these male memoirists are prompted by a health-related crisis, diagnosis, or realisation. Male body image—a relatively recent topic of enquiry in the eating disorder, psychology, and fashion literature (see, for instance, Bradley et al.)—is also often a surprising motif in these texts, and a theme in common with weight loss memoirs by female authors. Edward Ugel, for instance, opens his memoir, I’m with Fatty: Losing Fifty Pounds in Fifty Miserable Weeks, with “I’m haunted by mirrors … the last thing I want to do is see myself in a mirror or a photograph” (1).Ugel, as that prominent “miserable” in his subtitle suggests, provides a subtle but revealing variation on this theme of successful weight loss. Ugel (as are all these male memoirists) succeeds in the quest be sets out on but, apparently, despondent almost every moment. While the overall tone of his writing is light and humorous, he laments every missed meal, snack, and mouthful of food he foregoes, explaining that he loves eating, “Food makes me happy … I live to eat. I love to eat at restaurants. I love to cook. I love the social component of eating … I can’t be happy without being a social eater” (3). Like many of these books by male authors, Ugel’s descriptions of the food he loves are mouthwatering—and most especially when describing what he identifies as the fattening foods he loves: Reuben sandwiches dripping with juicy grease, crispy deep friend Chinese snacks, buttery Danish pastries and creamy, rich ice cream. This believable sense of regret is not, however, restricted to male authors. It is also apparent in how Jen Lancaster begins her memoir: “I’m standing in the kitchen folding a softened stick of butter, a cup of warmed sour cream, and a mound of fresh-shaved Parmesan into my world-famous mashed potatoes […] There’s a maple-glazed pot roast browning nicely in the oven and white-chocolate-chip macadamia cookies cooling on a rack farther down the counter. I’ve already sautéed the almonds and am waiting for the green beans to blanch so I can toss the whole lot with yet more butter before serving the meal” (5). In the above memoirs, both male and female writers recount similar (and expected) strategies: diets, fasts and other weight loss regimes and interventions (calorie counting, colonics, and gastric-banding and -bypass surgery for instance, recur); consulting dieting/health magazines for information and strategies; keeping a food journal; employing expert help in the form of nutritionists, dieticians, and personal trainers; and, joining health clubs/gyms, and taking up various sports.Alongside these works sit a small number of texts that can be characterised as “non-weight loss memoirs.” These can be read as part of the emerging, and burgeoning, academic field of Fat Studies, which gathers together an extensive literature critical of, and oppositional to, dominant discourses about obesity (Cooper; Rothblum and Solovay; Tomrley and Naylor), and which include works that focus on information backed up with memoir such as self-described “fat activist” (Wann, website) Marilyn Wann’s Fat! So?: Because You Don’t Have to Apologise, which—when published in 1998—followed a print ’zine and a website of the same title. Although certainly in the minority in terms of numbers, these narratives have been very popular with readers and are growing as a sub-genre, with well-known actress Camryn Manheim’s New York Times-bestselling memoir, Wake Up, I'm Fat! (published in 1999) a good example. This memoir chronicles Manheim’s journey from the overweight and teased teenager who finds it a struggle to find friends (a common trope in many weight loss memoirs) to an extremely successful actress.Like most other types of memoir, there are also niche sub-genres of the “fat memoir.” Cheryl Peck’s Fat Girls and Lawn Chairs recounts a series of stories about her life in the American Midwest as a lesbian “woman of size” (xiv) and could thus be described as a memoir on the subjects of – and is, indeed, catalogued in the Library of Congress as: “Overweight women,” “Lesbians,” and “Three Rivers (Mich[igan]) – Social life and customs”.Carol Lay’s graphic memoir, The Big Skinny: How I Changed My Fattitude, has a simple diet message – she lost weight by counting calories and exercising every day – and makes a dual claim for value of being based on both her own story and a range of data and tools including: “the latest research on obesity […] psychological tips, nutrition basics, and many useful tools like simplified calorie charts, sample recipes, and menu plans” (qtd. in Lorah). The Big Skinny could, therefore, be characterised with the weight loss memoirs above as a self-help book, but Lay herself describes choosing the graphic form in order to increase its narrative power: to “wrap much of the information in stories […] combining illustrations and story for a double dose of retention in the brain” (qtd. in Lorah). Like many of these books that can fit into multiple categories, she notes that “booksellers don’t know where to file the book – in graphic novels, memoirs, or in the diet section” (qtd. in O’Shea).Jude Milner’s Fat Free: The Amazing All-True Adventures of Supersize Woman! is another example of how a single memoir (graphic, in this case) can be a hybrid of the categories herein discussed, indicating how difficult it is to neatly categorise human experience. Recounting the author’s numerous struggles with her weight and journey to self-acceptance, Milner at first feels guilty and undertakes a series of diets and regimes, before becoming a “Fat Is Beautiful” activist and, finally, undergoing gastric bypass surgery. Here the narrative trajectory is of empowerment rather than physical transformation, as a thinner (although, importantly, not thin) Milner “exudes confidence and radiates strength” (Story). ConclusionWhile the above has identified a number of ways of attempting to classify autobiographical writing about fat/s, its ultimate aim is, after G. Thomas Couser’s work in relation to other sub-genres of memoir, an attempt to open up life writing for further discussion, rather than set in placed fixed and inflexible categories. Constructing such a preliminary taxonomy aspires to encourage more nuanced discussion of how writers, publishers, critics and readers understand “fat” conceptually as well as more practically and personally. 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