Journal articles on the topic 'Point from which waves appear to diverge as if coming from that point'

Acousticians typically consider the acoustic center of a source to be the point from which sound waves appear to diverge spherically. Many applications require the center's accurate determination, but its deeper significance and means of assessment have often remained ambiguous. This work revisits the acoustic center and shows how a low-frequency sound radiator with omnidirectional far-field directivity has a center defined by its dipole-to-monopole moment ratio. This definition yields conclusive results for several theoretical sources and highlights the limitations of characterizing the acoustic center only in terms of an equivalent point source.

Slightly biconical shaped bowls, the upper cone (rim and shoulder) of which is decorated with horizontal and slanted facets or slanted channels, as well as semi-globular bowls of inverted rim decorated with horizontal facets or slanted channels are characteristic of the end of Bronze Age and mark the beginning of Iron Age in many cultural groups within the Balkan Peninsula. Problem of their origin, chronology and distribution is present in archaeological literature for a long time. Many authors perceived the significance of this ceramic shape for the chronological, ethnic and cultural interpretation of the Late Bronze, that is, of the Early Iron Ages within the territory of the Balkans. Pottery from the burned layers in Vardina and Vardaroftsa sites in the north of Greece, among which there were bowls with inverted, slanted channeled rim, was designated way back by W. Heurtley as Danubian pottery or Lausitz ware, connecting its origin with the Danube Basin. Anumber of conclusions have been reached upon the study of finds of slightly biconical bowls and bowls of inverted rim, decorated with channels or facets, from several indicative sites from Late Bronze and Early Iron Ages within the Balkan Peninsula and south part of the Middle Europe. It has been stated that the bowls appear first within the southwest Slovakia and northwest Hungary in the Br D period, to spread very fast, already in the Br D/Ha A1 period, from its home territory to the east, to the northeast Hungary and northwest Romania. Namely, this first spreading wave into these territories brought along only variety Ia bowls, which were further distributed to the south, during the Ha A1 period, to the central parts of the Balkan Peninsula and consequently it can be concluded that these bowls are somewhat older than other varieties. In the period Br D - Ha A1, in north Hungary, under the influence of Gava Culture, on one hand, and Caka Culture, on the other, appear also variety IIa bowls (turban dish), distributed to the east with a new migration wave, in the same manner as was the case with the first migration wave, but also to the south, along the Bakonjska Range, to the present day Croatia and Slovenia, where, in the Ha A1/A2 periods, were stated exclusively variety IIa bowls. Representatives of the variety Ia bowls remained in the Pomoravlje region and Juzna Morava Basin, as confirmed by a large number of these bowls and also by other ceramic shapes of that stylistic and typological pattern, prevailing within this region in the Ha A1/A2 periods. First variety IIa bowls (Mediana, Krzince) appear only during the second migration wave coming from the north of the Balkans to the central part of the Balkan Peninsula (Ha A2 period). These bowls, however, are particularly characteristic of Macedonia and lower Povardarje, where variety Ia bowls were not stated at all. The second migration wave representatives, with turban dish bowls (variety IIa), were much more aggressive as witnessed by many burned settlements from that period in the Vranjska-Bujanovacka Valleys and Povardarje. During Ha B-C periods, bowls of both types (particularly variety IIa) became inevitable part of ceramic inventory of nearly all cultural groups in the Balkan Peninsula, which could be explained by the spread of cultural influence of the new stylistic trend, though, however, it could be possible that migrations, which at the time were numerous and of greater or lesser intensity, were one of the spreading causes of this ceramic shape into the east, south and west parts of the Balkan Peninsula in the Ha B period. Representatives of the mentioned migrations, which were carried out in at least two larger migration waves, bringing along bowls to the Balkan Peninsula, are protagonists of historically known migrations from that period, known under names of Doric and Aegean migrations. The assumed direction of these migrations coincides mainly with the distribution direction of bowl types I and II. Migrations spreading the bowl types I and II started in the south part of the Middle Europe, but were initiated by the representatives of the Urnenfelder cultural complex from the Middle Europe, as observed in certain ceramic shapes, stated together with type I bowls and originating from cultures of the Urnenfelder complex, and in numerous metal finds, which were produced in Middle European workshops. It is of interest to point out that bowl movements could be followed up to the northwest shores of the Aegean Sea, but they are not stated in the south Trace and in Troy, thus imposing conclusion that their representatives did not reach Troy. Consequently, their possible participation in destruction of VIIb2 layer settlements is utterly uncertain. The migrations, however, started chain reaction of ethnic movements in the Balkans, causing many ethnic and cultural changes within this territory which will lead to creation of new cultural groups to mark the developed Iron Age. To what extent bowls of this type, particularly variety IIa, left deep trace in the Iron Age Cultures in the central Balkans, is shown in the fact that survivals of this variety remained within these regions even several centuries later, in late phases of the Ha C period (VI/V century BC).

An investigation was carried out to determine the energy-dissipating effects of submerged curved planform breakwaters on water waves. The submerged breakwaters are of the shape of planoconvex and planoconcave optical lenses in planform. Physical modeling involving small-scale structures in a wave tank was done. The general concept is to make use of the refractive effects of the contours of these shapes to refract and cause converging or diverging of water waves so that they undergo superposition after passing over the shapes. When the waves superpose constructively their heights will increase according to the principle of superposition and, if the wave-breaking criteria for deep to shallow water are reached, breaking will occur and the wave energy will be dissipated in the lee of the submerged breakwaters. This will help to reduce wave impacts on coastal structures and on vulnerable shorelines by using an unobtrusive and aesthetic means of coastal protection. The research involved measuring the wave heights of incident waves in front of the submerged structures and the wave heights of transmitted waves in the lee. In this way, the incident and transmitted wave energy density can be obtained to determine the wave transformations that may have been caused by the breakwaters. Energy loss coefficients were also computed. Comparisons were done with the wave energy transformations produced by rectangular planform submerged breakwaters of comparable size. Generally, it was found that all three types of breakwaters dissipated wave energy, with the planoconcave ones performing the least and the rectangular ones the best. The planoconvex breakwaters performed comparably to the rectangular ones, showing only slightly smaller energy density dissipations and loss coefficients. So, it is possible for planoconvex breakwaters to replace rectangular ones and give comparable energy attenuation performance for a lower cost and fewer building materials.

Introduction This article argues in favour of same-sex marriage, but only under certain conditions. Same-sex marriage ought to be introduced in the Australian context in order to remedy the formal inequalities between lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) citizens and their heterosexual/cisgendered counterparts. One common method of justifying the introduction of formal same-sex relationship recognition has been via the promotion of LGBT “normalcy.” This article explores such a trend by analysing popular media and advertising, since media representations and coverage have been shown to affect the way the general public “learns, understands, and thinks about an issue” (Li and Lui 73). This article finds that the promotion of normalcy can, in fact, perpetuate hetero-norms, and only offer LGBT people an imaginary social equality. Such normalisation, it is suggested, is detrimental to a wider goal of gaining respect for LGBT people regardless, not in spite of, their identity and relationships. Yet, this article maintains that such imaginary equality can be avoided, so long as a plurality of possibilities for one’s intimate and familial life are actively legitimated and promoted. Australian Same-Sex Relationship Recognition The Relationships Act 2003 (Tas) was the first piece of Australian legislation to formally recognise same-sex relationships. This act allowed Tasmanian residents to register a partnership, although these unions were not recognised in any other Australian State. However, despite this State-based movement, as well as other examples of same-sex unions gaining increasing recognition in the West, not all legal changes have been positive for LGBT people. One example of this was the Howard Government’s 2004 reformation of the Marriage Act 1961 (Cwlth), which made explicit that marriage could only take place between one man and one woman to the exclusion of all others, and also refused to acknowledge same-sex marriages performed legally overseas. Furthermore, 2012 saw the failure of several Bills which sought the introduction of same-sex marriage at both the State and Federal level. Thus, same-sex marriage is still illegal in Australia to-date. But, despite these major setbacks, other progress towards same-sex relationship recognition has continued. At the Federal level, different-sex and same-sex de facto relationship recognition became formally equal over the period of 2008-9. Furthermore, it is both official Greens and Australian Labor Party policy to support equal marriage rights. At the State level, the example of recognising same-sex civil unions/registered partnerships has been followed by Victoria, the Australian Capital Territory, New South Wales, and Queensland. There are several reasons why same-sex couples may desire the right to marry. Some reasons are practical; in any given Nation-State where same-sex couples are without the right to marry, then same-sex partners are unable to claim the same benefits and undertake the same obligations as heterosexual married couples. They are formally unequal. On the basis of their empirical research Jowett and Peel argue that formal equality is a motivating factor for the same-sex marriage movement, noting that a likely incentive to engage in these unions would be security, since LGBT people have heretofore lived and continue to live with a very real threat of discrimination. This is largely why the option of civil unions was created in the West. The measure was first introduced by Denmark in 1989, and its purpose was to be a marriage-like institution, existing solely for the recognition of same-sex couples (Broberg 149). Although civil unions should theoretically offer same-sex couples the same legal benefits and obligations that heterosexual married couples receive, this is widely believed to be false in practice. The Netherlands has almost achieved full equality, at 96%; however, countries such as Belgium rate poorly, at 48% (Waaldijk 9). As such, it has been argued that civil unions are not sufficient alternatives to marriage. Amitai Etzioni claims, “many gay people feel strongly that unless they are entitled to exactly the same marriages as heterosexuals, their basic individual rights are violated, which they (and many liberals) hold as semisacred” (qtd. in Shanley 65). This opinion demonstrates that formal equality is a key concern of the same-sex marriage debate. However, it is not the only concern. The organisation Australian Marriage Equality (AME), which has been at the forefront of the fight for same-sex marriage since its establishment in 2004, claims that “Civil unions are not as widely understood or respected as marriage and creating a separate name for same-sex relationships entrenches a different, discriminatory, second-class status for these relationships” (Greenwich, The Case for Same-Sex Marriage 3). They claim further that, if recognition continues to be refused, it maintains the message that same-sex partners are not capable of the level of love and commitment associated with marriage (Greenwich, The Case for Same-Sex Marriage). Thus, AME claim that not only do the legal entitlements of civil unions frequently fail to be formally equivalent, but even the difference in name contributes to the ongoing discrimination of LGBT people. Although neither marriage nor civil unions are federally available to same-sex couples in Australia, AME argue that marriage must be primarily endorsed, then (Greenwich, A Failed Experiment 1). The argument is, if Australia were to introduce civil unions, but not marriage, civil unions would reify the second-class status of homosexuals, and would present same-sex relationships and homosexuality as inferior to different-sex relationships and heterosexuality. Thus, the title “marriage” is significant, and one strategy for demonstrating that LGBT people are fit for this title has been by promoting representations of sameness to the heterosexual mainstream. To achieve the status that goes along with the ability to marry, same-sex couples have typically tried to get their relationships publicly recognised and legally regulated in two ways. They have sought to (a) demonstrate that LGBT people do structure their relationships and familial lives according to the heteropatriarchal normative stereotypes of traditional family values, and/or (b) they emphasise the “born this way” aspect of LGBT sexuality/gender identity, refusing to situate it as a choice. This latter aspect is significant, since arguments based on natural “facts” often claim that what is true by nature cannot be changed, and/or what is true by nature is good (Antony 12). These two strategies thus seek to contribute to a shift in the public perception of homosexuals, homosexuality, and same-sex relationships. The idea, in other words, is to promote the LGBT subject as being a “normal” and “good” citizen (Jowett and Peel 206). Media Representations of Normal Gays In Australia, the normalcy of same-sex relationships has been advocated perhaps most obviously in television adverting. One such advertisement is run by Get Up! Action for Australia, an independent, grass-roots advocacy organisation. This ad is shot from a first-person perspective, where the camera is the eyes of the subject. It follows the blossoming of a relationship: from meeting a man on a boat, to exchanging phone numbers, dating, attending social events with friends, sharing special occasions, meeting each other’s families, sharing a home, caring for sick family members, and so forth, finally culminating in a proposal for marriage. Upon the proposal it is revealed that the couple consists of two young-adult, white, middle-class men. The purpose of this advertisement is to surprise the audience member, as the gay couple’s relationship follows the same trajectory of what is typically expected in a heterosexual relationship. The effect, in turn, is to shock the audience member into recognising that same-sex couples are just like different-sex couples. Hopefully, this will also serve to justify to the audience member that LGBT people deserve the same legal treatment as heterosexuals. The couple in this advertisement appear to be monogamous, their relationship seems to have blossomed over a length of time, they support each other’s families, and the couple comes to share a home. Projecting images like these suggests that such aspects are the relevant features of marriage, which LGBT people mimic. The second Australian advertisement from AME, features a young-adult, interracial, gay couple, who also appear to be middle-class. In this advertisement the families of the two partners, Ivan and Chris, comment on the illegal status of same-sex marriage in Australia. The ad opens with Ivan’s parents, and notes the length of their marriage—45 years. Ivan later claims that he wants to get married because he wants to be with Chris for life. These signals remind the viewer that marriage is supposed to be a life-long commitment, despite the prevalence of divorce. The advertisement also focuses on Chris’s parents, who claim that thanks to their son’s relationship their family has now expanded. The ad cuts between segments of spoken opinion and shots of family time spent at dinner, or in a park, and so on. At one point Ivan states, “We’re not activists; we’re just people who want to get married, like everyone else.” This reiterates the “normalcy” of the desire to marry in general, which is confirmed by Chris’s statement when he says, “It means that everyone would accept it. It’s sort of like a normal... A sense of normalcy.” This implies that to be seen as normal is both desirable and good; but more to the point, the ad positions LGBT people as if they are all already normal, and simply await recognition. It does not challenge the perception of what “normalcy” is. Finally, the advertisement closes with the written statement: “Marriage: It’s about family. Everyone’s family.” This advertisement thus draws connections between the legal institution of marriage and socially shared normative conceptions of married family life. While these two advertisements are not the only Australian television ads which support this particular vision of same-sex marriage, they are typical. What is interesting is that this particular image of homosexuality and same-sex relationships is becoming increasingly common in popular media also. For example, American sitcom Modern Family features a gay couple who share a house, have an adopted daughter, and maintain a fairly traditional lifestyle where one works full time as a lawyer, while the other remains at home and is the primary care-giver for their daughter. Their relationship is also monogamous and long-term. The couple is white, and they appear to have a middle-class status. Another American sitcom, The New Normal, features a white gay couple (one is Jewish) who also share a home, are in a long-term monogamous relationship, and who both have careers. This sitcom centres on this couple’s decision to have a child and the life of the woman who decides to act as their surrogate. This couple are also financially well off. Both of these sitcoms have prime Australian television slots. Although the status of the couples’ relationships in the aforementioned sitcoms is not primarily focussed on, they each participate in a relationship which is traditionally marriage-like in structure. This includes long-term commitment, monogamy, sharing a home and economic arrangements, starting and raising a family, and so on. And it is the very marriage-like aspects of same-sex relationships which Australian equal marriage advocates have used to justify why same-sex marriage should be legal. The depiction of on-screen homosexual couples (who are gay, rather than lesbian, bisexual, or trans) and the public debate in favour of same-sex marriage both largely promote and depend upon the perception of these relationships as effectively "the same" as heterosexual relationships in terms of structure, goals, commitment, life plans, lifestyle, and so on. A comment should be made on the particular representations in the examples above. The repetition of images of the LGBT community as primarily male, white, young-adult, middle-class, straight-looking, monogamous, and so on, comes at the expense of distancing even further those who do not conform to this model (Borgerson et. al. 959; Fejes 221). These images represent what Darren Rosenblum calls “but-for queers,” meaning that but-for their sexual orientation, these people would be just the same as “normal” heterosexuals. Rosenblum has commented on the increased juridical visibility of but-for queers and the legal gains they have won; however, he criticises that these people have been unable to adequately challenge heterosexism since their acceptance is predicated on being as much like normative heterosexuals as possible (84-5). Heterosexism and heteronormativity refer to the ways in which localised practices and centralised institutions legitimise and privilege heterosexuality, seeing it as fundamental, natural, and normal (Cole and Avery 47). If the only queers who gain visibility thanks to these sitcoms and advertisements are but-for queers, the likelihood that heterosexism will be challenged with the legal recognition of same-sex marriage drastically decreases. Appeals to sameness and normalcy typically refuse to critically examine heteronormative standards of acceptability. This results in the continued promotion of the “sexually involved couple,” realised according to particular normative standards, as the appropriate, best, or even natural trajectory for one’s intimate life. Thus, a key reason that some LGBT people have rejected marriage as an appropriate goal is because assimilative inclusion does not offer a legitimately respected social identity to LGBT people as a whole. When legal changes promoting the equality of LGBT people are predicated on their assimilation to heteronormative relationship criteria, this can only achieve “imaginary” equality and the illusion of progress, while real instances of homophobia, discrimination, marginalisation and hostility towards LGBT people continue (Richardson 394). Thus, given the highly specified representations of “normal” LGBT people, it is fair to conclude that there is a biased representation of same-sex relationships on-screen in terms of sex, race, ability, wealth, monogamy, and so on. The assimilationist strategy of publicising particularly gay identity and relationships as just like heterosexuality appears to depoliticise queerness and render lesbians, bisexuals, and transgender people more or less invisible. This can be problematic insofar as the subversive role that queer identity could play in bringing about social change regarding acceptability of other sexual and intimate relationships is lessened (Richardson 395-6). The question that emerges at this point, then, is whether same-sex marriage is doomed to perpetuate hetero-norms and designate all other non-conformists as socially, morally, and/or legally inferior. Pluralisation Ironically, while some activists reject civil unions, their introduction may be crucial to support a “pluralisation strategy.” AME is, in fact, not opposed to civil unions, so long as they do not pretend to be marriage (Greenwich, A Failed Experiment 1). However, AME’s main focus is still on achieving marriage equality, rather than promoting a diverse array of relationship recognition. A pluralisation strategy, though, would seek to question the very normative and hierarchical status of marriage, given the strategy’s key aim of greater options for legally regulated relationship recognition. Regarding polyamorous relationships specifically, Elizabeth Emens has argued that,The existence of some number of people choosing to live polyamorous lives should prompt us all to [...] think about our own choices and about the ways that our norms and laws urge upon us one model rather than pressing us to make informed, affirmative choices about what might best suit our needs and desires.” (in Shanley 79) While non-monogamous relationships have frequently been rejected, even by same-sex marriage activists, since they too threaten traditional forms of marriage, the above statement clearly articulates the purpose of the pluralisation strategy: to challenge people to think about the way norms and laws press one model upon people, and to challenge that model by engaging in and demanding recognition for other models of intimate and familial relationships. When a variety of formal options for legalising various types of relationships is legislated for, this allows people greater choice in how they can conceive and structure their relationships. It also creates a political space where norms can be publicly assessed, criticised, and re-evaluated. Thus, the goal to be achieved is the representation of multiple relationship/family structures as being of equal worth, rather than fixing them in a relationship hierarchy where traditional marriage is the ideal. There exist many examples of people who “do relationships differently”—whether they are homosexual, polyamorous, asexual, step-families, and so on—and the existence of these must come to be reflected as equally valuable and viable options in the dominant social imaginary. Representations in popular media are one avenue, for example, which advocates of this pluralisation strategy might employ in order to achieve such a shift. Another avenue is advocacy. If advocacy on the importance of formally recognising multiple types of relationships increased, this may balance the legitimacy of these relationships with marriage. Furthermore, it may prevent the perpetuation of hetero-norms and increase respect for LGBT identity, since they would be less likely to be pressured into assimilation. Thus, same-sex marriage activists could, in fact, gain from taking up the cause of refusing one single model for relationship-recognition (Calhoun 1037). In this sense, then, the emergence of civil union schemes as an alternative to marriage in the West has potentially yielded something very valuable in the way of increasing options regarding one’s intimate life, especially in the Australian context where diverse recognition has already begun. Interestingly, Australia has come some way towards pluralisation at the State level; however, it is hardly actively promoted. The civil union schemes of both Tasmania and Victoria have a provision entitling “caring couples” to register their relationships. A “caring couple” involves two people who are not involved in a sexual relationship, who may or may not be related, and who provide mutual or one-sided care to the other. The caring couple are entitled to the same legal benefits as those romantic couples who register their relationships. One can infer then, that not only sexual relationships, but those of the caring couple as in Tasmania and Victoria, or possibly even those of a relationship like one “between three single mothers who are not lovers but who have thrown in their lot together as a family,” could be realised and respected if other alternatives were available and promoted alongside marriage (Cornell, in Shanley 84). While Australia would have quite some way to go to achieve these goals, the examples of Tasmania and Victoria are a promising start in the right direction. Conclusion This paper has argued that marriage is a goal that LGBT people should be wary of. Promoting limited representations of same-sex oriented individuals and couples can perpetuate the primacy of hetero-norms, and fail to deliver respect for all LGBT people. However, despite the growing trend of justifying marriage and homosexuality thanks to “normalcy”, promotion of another strategy—a pluralisation strategy—might result in more beneficial outcomes. It may result in a more balanced weight of normative worth between institutions and types of recognition, which may then result in citizens feeling less compelled to enter marriage. Creating formal equality while pursuing the promotion of other alternatives as legitimate will result in a greater acceptance of queer identity than will the endorsement of same-sex marriage justified by LGBT normalcy. While the latter may result in speedier access to legal benefits for some, the cost of such a strategy should be underscored. Ultimately, a pluralisation strategy should be preferred. References Antony, Louise M. “Natures and Norms.” Ethics 111.1 (2000): 8–36. Australian Marriage Equality. "The Hintons, a Family that Supports Marriage Equality" YouTube. (2012) 24 Nov. 2012 ‹http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M7hwFD4Ii3E›. Borgerson, Janet, Jonathan E. Schroeder, Britta Blomberg, and Erika Thorssén. “The Gay Family in the Ad: Consumer Responses to Non-Traditional Families.” Journal of Marketing Management 22.9–10 (2006): 955–78. Broberg, Morten. “The Registered Partnership for Same-Sex Couples in Denmark.” Child and Family Law Quarterly 8.2 (1996):149–56. Calhoun, Cheshire. “Who’s Afraid of Polygamous Marriage? Lessons for Same-Sex Marriage Advocacy from the History of Polygamy.” San Diego Law Review 42 (2005): 1023–42. Cole, Elizabeth, and Lanice Avery. “Against Nature: How Arrangements about the Naturalness of Marriage Privilege Heterosexuality.” Journal of Social Issues 68.1 (2012): 46–62. Fejes, Fred. “Advertising and the Political Economy of Lesbian/Gay Identity.” Sex & Money: Feminism and Political Economy in the Media. Ed. Eileen Meehan & Ellen Riordan. Minnesota: University of Minnesota Press (2001): 213–22. GetUp!. "It’s Time." YouTube. (2011) 24 Nov. 2012 ‹http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_TBd-UCwVAY›. Greenwich, Alex. “A Failed Experiment: Why Civil Unions Are No Substitute For Marriage Equality”. Australian Marriage Equality. (2009): 1–13. 20 Nov. 2012 ‹http://www.australianmarriageequality.com/wp/wp-content/uploads/2010/12/A-failed-experiment.pdf›. —. “The Case for Same-Sex Marriage”. Australian Marriage Equality. 2011. 20 Nov. 2012 ‹http://www.australianmarriageequality.com/wp/wp-content/uploads/2011/08/Why-Marriage-Equality.pdf›. Jowett, Adam, and Elizabeth Peel. “'Seismic Cultural Change?’: British Media Representations of Same-Sex Marriage.” Women’s Studies International Forum 33 (2010): 206–14. Li, Xigen, and Xudong Liu. “Framing and Coverage of Same-Sex Marriage in U.S. Newspapers.” Howard Journal of Communications 21 (2010): 72–91. Marriage Act 1961 (Cwlth). 20 Sept. 2012 ‹http://www.austlii.edu.au/au/legis/cth/consol_act/ma196185/›. Mclean, Sam. “About GetUp!” GetUp! Action for Australia. 2012. 20 Nov. 2012 ‹http://www.getup.org.au/about›. Relationships Act 2003 (Tas). 20 Sept. 2012 ‹http://www.austlii.edu.au/au/legis/tas/consol_act/ra2003173/›. Relationships Act 2008 (Vic). Web. 20 Nov. 2012 ‹http://www.austlii.edu.au/au/legis/vic/consol_act/ra2008173/›. Richardson, Diane. “Locating Sexualities: From Here to Normality.” Sexualities 7.4 (2004): 391–411. Rosenblum, Darren. “Queer Intersectionality and the Failure of Recent Lesbian and Gay ‘Victories.’” Law & Sexuality 4 (1994): 83–122. Shanley, Mary Lyndon. Just Marriage. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004. Waaldijk, Kees. More or Less Together: Levels of Legal Consequences of Marriage, Cohabitation and Registered Partnership for Different-Sex and Same-Sex Partners. A Comparative Study of Nine European Countries. Paris: Institut National d’Etudes Démographiques, 2005.

Barbie was the largest worldwide film release of 2023, dominating the box office with over $1 billion in earnings (PRNewswire). The reported marketing budget was over $150 million, which was greater than the $145 million spent on making the film (Adekaiyero). While marketing and public relations (PR) differ in approach and goals, the overall goal for Barbie was evident in the campaign: get fans excited for the film release. The number of collaborations, events, and advertisements executed for the Barbie campaign was extensive, with the convergence of traditional and digital media interplaying seamlessly. The vast majority of PR and marketing professionals were talking about the campaign as a superior example for the field to follow for the purposes of fuelling a passionate target audience. This article examines the public relations strategies that heightened fan interest in Barbie and reaffirms Barbie as a cultural icon. By analysing the most noteworthy components of the Barbie campaign that were highlighted in articles and PR blog posts, valuable insights are shared regarding how audience participation cultivates the success of cultural phenomena. These insights underscore the symbiotic relationship between PR practitioners and fans. PR’s Role in Barbie The film industry recognises the pivotal role PR plays in getting people to the theatre, especially in a post-COVID-19 world where it is estimated that only eight percent of US citizens go often to the theatres as of 2022, with over half never going to the movie theatres (Statista Research). Another factor that has affected movie-going trends is the accessibility of streaming services. A poll from HarrisX found that two-thirds of US adults prefer to wait for movies that premiere in theatres to be released on streaming (Maglio). It’s also becoming clear that the ‘Barbenheimer’ opening weekend is a box office standout, as 2024 box office numbers are predicted to drop by over one billion dollars (D’Alessandro). This was determined by the movies that have come out as of March 24, with anticipated titles like Madame Web and Argyle tanking, and Dune: Part Two being the best thus far with an $80 million at the box office (Carras). That is less than half of what Barbie made on opening weekend at $162 million (Fischer). Evidently, the hype around ‘Barbenheimer’ is a topic that continues to be investigated, as reports of fan anecdotes and fan made content continue coming out (D’Alessandro). Before ‘Barbenheimer’ became the plan for fans, the PR for Barbie started before production began. Presumably, those outside of PR and marketing professions assume that trailers are the starting point for promoting a film, but it starts at the beginning of the film’s creation, when rumours and press releases come out revealing who is going to work on the project (Qiang). At the 2021 CinemaCon, Warner Bros made the announcement that a live-action Barbie movie would come to theatres in the summer of 2023 (Soares). The film’s director and main star, Greta Gerwig and Margot Robbie, were signed onto the project in 2020, and the full cast list was shared in 2022, which built excitement with fans because of the names attached to the project indicating the star power interest (Murphy). Pre-production is key in starting to build excitement for any movie, but how Barbie approached pre-release with its trailers continued to build the mystery surrounding the movie’s plot. The first teaser trailer was released as part of the series of trailers ahead of Avatar: The Way of Water (2022) – a highly anticipated sequel since Avatar broke all-time box office records in 2009 (Soares; Romano). Then, on 4 April 2023, character posters were released alongside the second trailer, which still didn’t reveal much about the plot, but did incorporate snippets of dialogue that were indicative of a more PG-13 sense of humour (Soares). The character posters quickly became the Internet’s new favourite meme because of the taglines that gave some insight into the Barbies and Kens in the movie (Hudgins). Joining in on the trend didn’t require Photoshop; Warner Bros. partnered with PhotoRoom to create the interactive barbieselfie.ai generator, which was used over 13 million times since it was released on April 3 – a day ahead of the character posters (Barr). In PR and marketing campaigns, earned media success is the goal, meaning that the social media buzz happens organically. Movie trailer spots and particular partnerships, as sometimes partners will pay to collaborate more on one side of the deal, are examples of paid media, which is most of what the marketing budget supports. In an interview with Variety, Josh Goldstine, Warner Bros. president of global marketing, used the terms ‘earned media’ and ‘paid media’ to talk about the different elements of the Barbie campaign (Rubin). These terms are rooted in the public relations lexicon of the PESO (paid media, earned media, shared media, and owned media) model, and evolve as multimedia channel opportunities expand (Detrich). Understanding where media types fit in the PESO Model ensures that a PR campaign has a holistic approach in reaching its target audience, or rather, ‘publics’, as a way of identifying consumers as co-creators (Pieczka). For context, the PESO Model was coined by Gini Detrich in 2014, and it became popularised because it is a comprehensible, yet high-level framework categorising converged media (Brandpoint). Applying this model helps better understand the strategy and goals of PR, marketing, and advertising campaigns, and in the case of Barbie, figuring out where certain campaign comments fit in the model allows outsiders a means to ascertain the audience mapping. The terms ‘audience’ and ‘publics’ are often treated as synonymous in describing a group of consumers, but in the PR field, the key difference is that the former is passive in receiving PR messages, while the latter describes having an active response (Knighton and Wakefield). Having “an active response” means being invited or motivated to take action as part of two-way communication (Knighton and Wakefield), and fans can use social media to voice their excitement and participate in unplanned trends, with ‘Barbenheimer’ being a prime example. Appealing to fans as the intended public of the Barbie campaign was crucial. The selfie AI generator was only the beginning in a series of earned media efforts. Barbie had over one hundred brand deals licenced before the movie was released in late July, with the licencing for products ranging from clothing brands to entertainment and lifestyle (Addley). All of the pink collaborations reignited Barbiecore as a fashion trend (Dockerman). Mattel having multiple partnerships enabled the notice around Barbie to have a life of its own as fans (Rubin). Essentially, the role of PR in Barbie aligns with what Barbie represents, which is to give the public a combination of empirical and imaginative thought to take action (Pieczka), or in other words, ‘you can be anything’ with Barbie. Fig. 1: PESO model of Barbie campaign milestones. Fan Engagement: All Things Barbiecore Fan engagement is becoming an increasing focus of contemporary PR campaigns. The idea of what a “fan” is can vary but we have an inherent idea or assumption of what it means based on our standpoint, and academic definitions tend to revolve around being an “enthusiast” or “cultist” and “follower” (Hills). The research on the intersection of public relations and fandom is growing, as the need to better understand fandom audiences is pertinent to ideas of what being a fan means as an identity. Academic works that specify the relationship between fandom and public relations are actualised in two editions co-edited by Hutchins and Tindall (2016; 2021). The current state of PR theories does not recognise fan motivations that occur within fandom, meaning that two-way communication has altered the responses that are gathered from target audiences (Hutchins and Tindall). In the case of Barbie, the earned media response is indicative of great success, such as having over 7 million social media mentions in 2023 and over 227 million engagement actions (Galliot). Conversation surrounding ‘Barbiecore’ outfit ideas alone saw over 11 million views on TikTok (Smith). For movies, generating fan engagement is an obvious need. There are instances in the entertainment industry wherein movie fans or television fans mobilise out of passion to see certain ideas or wants fulfilled (Fraser and Buckler). The 2023 Writers Guild of America Strike taught the industry and the public many things about writing, wages, and AI, and how the strike relates to fan passions is that fans want to see quality, authentic writing, which AI cannot achieve (Lawler). The reveal of Greta Gerwig being part of Barbie as co-screenwriter and director made fans confused, yet excited, since Gerwig is well-known for feminist-centric movies (Dockterman). Fans love to support passionate creators who put thoughtful effort into the stories and characters, and with creating the first-ever live-action Barbie movie, the high feels to fill in were massive. Barbie has been around for sixty-five years and is one of the most recognisable toys on a global scale with 99 percent awareness (Weitzman). Though having over one hundred brand deals for promoting the movie can garner great fan appeal, having those deals does not promise success without consideration of what fans want. Barbie and Mattel have a long history, and the film “doesn’t miss a beat” – enabling the film to become enriched by acknowledging both Barbie’s successes and polarising feminism (Lord). The movie premiere showed how Barbie was more than a doll, with a sea of pink outfits going to watch the movie, the fan response was more than the marketing team hoped for in setting its goals (Rubin). Though the exact sales numbers on how the different licences succeeded or not are unavailable, the social media conversation and in-person dress-up were strong indicators of success beyond the numbers, as fans wanted to talk about Barbie and what the doll and movie meant to them (Keegan). The approach in doing so is not directly asking fans to get creative; it is an implicit open invitation for the public to contribute to the discourse (Piezka). Associate professor at Boston University, Amy Shanler, explains that Barbie is a well-executed campaign because “the best PR isn’t when you do your own Public Relations. It’s when other people are doing it for you” (qtd. in Laskowski). Barbie’s Fan Engagement Techniques In examining the Barbie campaign, the key ideas to note are: fulfilling the PESO Model, appealing to fan knowledge of Barbie (including the doll’s controversies), and leaving room for imagination. This draws on articles analysing the PR strategy by PR practitioners who are currently active in the field, along with insights from online articles with direct marketer interviews. The PESO Model, despite not being a long-standing PR framework, is the most widely used and talked about application not only for building PR campaigns but for being able to dissect major campaigns from the outside looking in. By applying the PESO Model to what is known about the Barbie campaign, not only are all aspects of the model met, but it is impactful in how strongly the Barbie identity and message are implemented. As mentioned, Barbie is a highly recognisable toy, and most people are familiar with Barbie dolls. Appealing to fan knowledge about Barbie, encompassing all of the positive and negative aspects of the doll, was an enjoyable factor of the movie. And in the weeks leading up to the movie, the mystery of the plot was alluring, yet fans were excited to see what Barbie lore would be included. Arguably, the most impactful aspect of a PR campaign is having strategies that can potentially inspire a public (target audience) to mobilise. ‘Barbenheimer’ was not part of the marketing plan, and neither was dressing up in Barbiecore to see the film, but because of the overwhelming success in earned media and shared media, these trends came to fruition and will be remembered as part of what made Barbie a global success. While Barbie had a massive marketing budget, the success that the campaign saw was rooted in fan engagement. The structure of the campaign, with its numerous collaborations, trailers that gave everything visually but nothing plot-wise, star-studded cast, and activities to involve fans like the selfie AI generator and wearing pink to automatically become a Barbie, built an unflappable excitement for a wide-ranging audience. Looking ahead, the PR and marketing industries can utilise the Barbie campaign as an example of fan collaboration by giving fans the tools to become co-creators. To be a successful campaign, knowing the converged media types that are necessary to implement for a diverse fan audience is essential in creating further accessibility. This means that employing the PESO Model structure ensures great reach, whether or not the campaign is backed by Mattel’s budget. The Barbie campaign was loud and unapologetically pink, and such authenticity is what makes fans empowered to embrace Barbie as a cultural icon. The excitement generated for Barbie can’t be easily replicated for other movies or products in terms of massive marketing budgets, but the core of appealing to fans can be studied and taken into consideration for future campaigns. The makings of success for Barbie are in how the campaign gave fans the tools to become collaborators in the campaign. References Addley, Esther. “From Airbnb to Xbox: Brand Barbie Goes for Big Bucks with 100 Partnerships.” The Guardian, 1 July 2023. <https://www.theguardian.com/film/2023/jul/01/from-airbnb-to-xbox-brand-barbie-goes-for-big-bucks-with-100-partnerships>. Adekaiyero, Ayomikun. “‘Barbie’ Reportedly Had a $150 Million Marketing Budget – More than the Movie’s Actual Budget.” Business Insider, 24 July 2023. <https://www.businessinsider.com/barbie-had-150-million-marketing-budget-2023-7>. Barr, Aaron. “‘Barbie’ AI Selfie Generator Goes Viral with 13m Users.” Marketing Dive, 27 July 2023. <https://www.marketingdive.com/news/barbie-ai-selfie-generator-13m-users /689191/>. Beckett, Lois. “How Did Barbie Do It? Warner’s Head of Marketing on Creating a ‘Pink Movement.’” The Guardian, 28 July 2023. <https://www.theguardian.com/film/2023/jul/28/warner-bros-marketing-head-josh-goldstine-barbie-pink-movement>. Brandpoint Staff. “Peso Model for PR: Paid, Earned, Shared, Owned Media.” Brandpoint, 5 Apr. 2024. <https://www.brandpoint.com/blog/earned-owned-paid-media/>. Carras, Christi. “Oscars Mark Last Hurrah for ‘Barbenheimer’ as 2024 Box Office Faces Uncertain Future.” Los Angeles Times, 9 Mar. 2024. <https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/business/story/2024-03-09/oscars-2024-barbie-oppenheimer-box-office>. D’Alessandro, Anthony. “Domestic Box Office Expected to Drop by $1 Billion in 2024 amid Fewer Films & Waning Moviegoer Sentiment. But 31 Tentpoles Provide Hope.” Deadline, 31 Dec. 2023. <https://deadline.com/2023/12/box-office-2024-predictions-movies-cinemas-1235682149/>. Dietrich, Gini. “A 2024 Peso ModelTM Primer for Communicators.” Spin Sucks – Professional Development for PR and Marketing Pros, 28 Mar. 2024. <https://spinsucks.com/communication/pr-pros-must-embrace-the-peso-model/>. Dockterman, Eliana. “All the Barbie Partnerships, from Crocs to Burger King.” Time, 13 July 2023. <https://time.com/6294123/barbie-partnerships-crocs-burger-king/>. Dockterman, Eliana. “How Barbie Came to Life.” Time, 27 June 2023. <https://time.com/6289864/barbie-time-cover-story/>. Gaillot, Ann-Derrick. “Barbie vs. Oppenheimer in Social Media Numbers.” Meltwater, 13 Mar. 2024. <https://www.meltwater.com/en/blog/barbie-oppenheimer-social-media>. Hills, Matt. Fan Cultures. Routledge, 2005. Hudgins, Ryan. “Barbie Posters Have Become the Internet’s New Favorite Meme.” TODAY, 5 Apr. 2023. <https://www.today.com/popculture/movies/barbie-posters-internets-new-favorite-meme-rcna78348>. Keegan, Matthew. “How Barbie Has Sustained as One of the Most Successful Toy Brands of All Time.” Campaign Asia, 9 Aug. 2023. <https://www.campaignasia.com/article/how-barbie-has-sustained-as-one-of-the-most-successful-toy-brands-of-all-time/485675>. Laskowski, Amy. “Why Are We Obsessed with Barbie? And Why Is Barbie Still Here?” Boston University, 19 July 2023. <https://www.bu.edu/articles/2023/why-are-we-obsessed-with-barbie/>. Lawler, Kelly. “Exclusive: Survey Says Movie and TV Fans Side with Striking Actors and Writers.” USA Today, 4 Aug. 2023. <https://www.usatoday.com/story/entertainment/tv/2023/08/02/sag-aftra-wga-hollywood-strikes-fans-side-with-actors-and-writers-survey/70506956007/>. Lord, M.G. Forever Barbie: The Unauthorized Biography of a Real Doll. 30th ed. Liveright Publishing Corporation, 2024. Maglio, Tony. “Two-Thirds of U.S. Adults Would Rather Wait to Watch Movies on Streaming.” IndieWire, 20 Mar. 2024. <https://www.indiewire.com/news/analysis/movies-on-streaming-not-in-theaters-1234964413/>. Murphy, Chris. “A Complete History of the ‘Barbie’ Movie.” Vanity Fair, 12 Apr. 2023. <https://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2023/04/a-complete-history-of-the-barbie-movie>. Pieczka, Magda. “Looking Back and Going Forward: The Concept of ‘the Public’ in Public Relations Theory.” Public Relations Inquiry 8.3 (2019): 225–244. <https://doi.org/10.1177/2046147x19870269>. “Public Relations and Participatory Culture Fandom, Social Media and Community Engagement.” Eds. Amber Hutchins and Natalie T.J. Tindall. Routledge, 2016. DOI: 10.4324/9781315766201. Qiang, Rico. “How Does Public Relations Work in the Film Industry.” Boston University, 19 Apr. 2022. <https://www.bu.edu/prlab/2022/04/19/how-does-public-relations-work-in-the-film-industry/>. Romano, Nick. “James Cameron Has Now Directed 3 of the 5 Highest-Grossing Movies Ever.” Entertainment Weekly, 27 Jan. 2023. <https://ew.com/movies/james-cameron-directed-3-of-5-highest-grossing-movies-ever-avatar-the-way-of-water/>>. Rubin, Rebecca. “Inside ‘Barbie’s’ Pink Publicity Machine: How Warner Bros.. Pulled off the Marketing Campaign of the Year.” Variety, 12 Nov. 2023. <https://variety.com/ 2023/film/box-office/barbie-marketing-campaign-explained-warner-bros-1235677922/>. Smith, Emily. “The Barbenheimer Phenomenon: What Social Data Tells Us.” Brandwatch, 3 Aug. 2023. <https://www.brandwatch.com/blog/barbenheimer/>. Soares, Isabella. “‘Barbie’: Release Date, Cast, Trailer, and Everything You Need To Know.” Collider, 17 Dec. 2023. <https://collider.com/barbie-movie-release-date-cast-trailer/>. Statista Research. “U.S.: Post-Pandemic Moviegoing Frequency 2022.” Statista, 29 June 2023. <https://www.statista.com/statistics/1316061/post-pandemic-moviegoing-frequency-us/>. Wakefield, Robert, and Devin Knighton. “Distinguishing among Publics, Audiences, and Stakeholders in the Social Media Era of Unanticipated Publics.” Public Relations Review 45.5 (2019). <https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pubrev.2019.101821>. Warner Bros. Home Entertainment. “The Highest Grossing Film of 2023 Worldwide: Barbie.” PR Newswire, 5 Sep. 2023. <https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/the-highest-grossing-film-of-2023-worldwide-barbie-301917178.html>. Weitzman, Sarah. “Barbie: From Doll to Global Empire.” Fox School of Business, Temple University, 19 July 2023. <https://www.fox.temple.edu/news/2023/07/barbie-doll-global-empire>.

IntroductionI spent five days on the Arizona Utah border, photographing Monument Valley and the surrounding areas as part of a group of eight undertaking a landscape photography workshop under the direction of a Navajo guide. Observing where our guide was taking us, and watching and talking to other tourist photographers, I was reminded of John Urry’s concept of the “tourist gaze” and the idea that tourists see destinations in terms of the promotional images they are familiar with (Urry 1). It seemed that tourists re-created images drawn from the popular imaginary, inserting themselves into familiar narratives of place. The goal of the research was to look specifically at the tourist gaze, that is, the way that tourists see view destinations and then represent that vision in their images. Circle of Representation Urry explained the tourist gaze as a particular way of seeing the world as a series of images created by the tourism industry; images which were then consumed or collected through tourist photography. He saw this as constituting a “closed circle of representation” where the images employed by the tourism industry to attract tourists to particular destinations were reproduced in tourists’ own holiday snaps, and as more tourists sought out these locations, they were increasingly used to represent the destination. Susan Sontag saw travel employed as “a strategy for accumulating photographs” (9) suggesting that the images were the culmination of the journey. Urry also saw the end point of tourism as travellers to a destination “demonstrating that they have really been there by showing their version of the images that they had seen originally before they set off” (140).Talking to the guide, my group, and other tourists about the images we were recording, and reviewing images tagged Monument Valley on Instagram revealed that digital and network technologies had altered tourists’ photographic practices. Tourist impressions of destinations come from a wide range of popular culture sources. They have, even on smartphones, fairly sophisticated tools for creating images; and they have diverse networks for distributing their images. Increasingly, the images that tourists see as representative of Monument Valley came from popular culture and social media, and not simply from tourism promotions. People are posting their travel images online, and are in turn looking to posts from others in their search for travel information (Akehurst 55). The current circle of representation in tourist photography is not simply a process of capturing promotional imagery, but an interaction between tourists that draws upon films, television, and other popular culture forms. Tourist photographs are less a matter of “consuming places” (Urry 259) and more an identity performance through which they create ongoing personal narratives of place by inserting themselves into pre-existing stories about the destination and circulating the new narratives.Jenkins analysed brochures on Australia available to potential tourists in Vancouver, Canada, and determined that the key photographic images used to promote Australia were Uluru and the Sydney Opera House, followed by sandy beaches alongside tropical blue waters. Interviews with Canadian backpackers travelling around Australia, and an examination of the images these backpackers took with the disposable cameras they were given, found a correlation between the brochure images and the personal photographs. Jenkins concluded that the results supported Urry’s theory of a closed circle of representation, in that the images from the brochures were “tracked down and recaptured, and the resulting photographs displayed upon return home by the backpackers as evidence of the trip” (Jenkins 324).Garrod randomly selected 25 tourists along the seafront of Aberystwyth, Wales, and gave them a single-use camera, a brief socio-demographic questionnaire, a photo log, and a reply-paid envelope in which they could return these items. The tourists were asked to take 12 photos and log the reason they took each photograph and what they tried to capture in terms of their visit to Aberystwyth. Nine females and four males returned their cameras, providing 164 photographs, which were compared with 70 postcards depicting Aberystwyth. While an initial comparison revealed similarities in the content of tourist photographs and the picture postcards of the town, Garrod’s analysis revealed two main differences: postcards featured wide angle or panoramic views, while tourist photos tended to be close up or detail shots and postcards included natural features, particularly bodies of water, while tourist photographs were more often of buildings and man-made structures. Garrod concluded that the relationship between tourism industry images and tourist photographs “might be more subtle and complex than simply for the two protagonists in the relationship to mimic one other” (356).MethodIdentifying a tourist’s motivation for taking a particular photograph, the source of inspiration for the image, and the details of what the photographer was attempting to capture involves the consideration of a range of variables, many of which cannot be controlled. The ability of the photographer and the sophistication of their equipment will have an impact on the type of images captured; for example this may explain the absence of panoramas in Aberystwyth tourist photos. The length of the stay and the level of familiarity with the location may also have an impact; on a first visit a tourist may look for the major landmarks and on subsequent visits photograph the smaller details. The personal history of the tourist, the meaning the location has for them, their reasons for visiting and their mood at the time, will all influence their selection of photo subjects. Giving tourists a camera and then asking them to photograph the destination may influence the choice of subject and the care taken with composition, however this does ensure a direct link between the tourist opinions gathered and the images analysed. An approach that depends on seeing the images taken independently by the tourists who were interviewed has logistical problems that significantly reduce sample size.Fourteen randomly selected tourists at the visitors centre in Monument Valley, a random sampling of 500 Instagram images hash tagged Monument Valley, and photographs taken by seven photographers in the author’s group were studied by the author. The tourists were asked what they wanted to take photographs of while in Monument Valley, and why of those particular subjects. The images taken by these tourists were not available for analysis for logistical reasons, and 500 Instagram images tagged #MonumentValley were collected as generally representative of tourist images. Members of the photography workshop group were all serious amateur photographers with digital SLR cameras, interchangeable lenses, and tripods. Motivations, decisions and the evaluation of images were discussed with this group, and their images reviewed in terms of the extent to which the image was felt to be representative of the location.Monument ValleyMonument Valley can be considered a mythic space in that it is a real place that has taken on mythic meanings that go beyond physical characteristics and lived experiences (Slotkin 11). Located on the Navajo Tribal Park on the Arizona Utah border, it is known by the Navajo as Tse'Bii'Ndzisgaii or “Valley of the Rocks.” Monument Valley is emblematic of the Wild West, the frontier beyond which civilization vanishes, a mythology originally derived from the Western Films of director John Ford. Ford's film, Stagecoach, was shot in Monument Valley and Ford returned nine times to shoot Westerns here, even when films (such as The Searchers, set in Texas) were not set in Arizona or Utah. The spectacular desert scenery with its towering rock formations combine epic grandeur with brutal conditions, providing an appropriate backdrop for dramatic oppositions: civilization versus barbarity, community versus wilderness, freedom versus domestication. The mythological meanings attached to Monument Valley were extended in the films, novels, television programs, and advertising that followed. Footage of Monument Valley is used to represent a blend of freedom and danger in 2001: A Space Odyssey, Easy Rider, Thelma & Louise, Marlborough and Chevrolet advertising, the television series Airwolf and episodes of Doctor Who. Monument Valley was the culmination of Forrest Gump's exhaustive run, and the setting for music videos by Kanye West, Madonna and Michael Jackson, each drawing on the themes of alienation and the displacement of the hero. While Westerns are on one level uniquely American, they are consistent with widely known romantic myths and stories, and the universal narratives evoked by Monument Valley have appeal far outside the USA. The iconic images of Monument Valley have been circulated well beyond tourist informational material, permeating a breadth of popular culture forms.Photographing the ValleyPhotography is intrinsically linked with tourism, fulfilling a number of roles. Travel can have as its purpose the collection of images, and as such, photography can function to structure the travel experience, and to evaluate its success (Schroeder; Sontag). Recognisable images of the location provide evidence that travel was undertaken, places were visited, and the traveller has experienced some form of authentic or exotic experience (Chalfen 435). Sharing images is an essential part of the process. The various roles of photography are to an extent dependent on having a shared mental image of what photographs from the travel location would look like. This mental image is derived, in part, from tourism sources such as postcards, brochures, and websites, but also from popular culture, and increasingly from photographs taken by other tourists. Travel images are shared online on sites such as Trip Advisor and Virtual Tourist, as well as travel blogs and photo sharing sites like Flickr and Instagram. People who post images online are likely to look to the same sites to search for travel information from others (Akehurst 55), reinforcing specific images as representative of the place and the experience.At the beginning of our photography-based tour we were asked which locations we wanted to photograph. There was a general consensus, with people looking for vistas and panoramas, “golden hour” light on the rock formations of buttes and mesas, sunrises and sunsets with silhouetted landscape forms, and close-ups of shadow patterns and textures. Our guide added that one day had been set aside for the iconic images, which were described as the “Forest Gump” shot from Highway 163, the Mittens at sunrise, John Ford Point (as most recently seen in The Lone Ranger movie posters), and the vista from Artist’s Point or North Window. When I asked tourists at the visitor information centre the same question about the images they wanted to capture, the responses were uniform with all of them saying the view of The Mittens, which was immediately before them. Seventy-eight percent (N=11) said that they were after a general panorama with the distinctive landforms, and Highway 163 was named by 57 percent (N=8). Few gave more than these three sites. Forty-two percent (N=6) described the John Ford Point image with the Navajo rider as a goal, and the same number said they would like to take some sunrise or sunset images. Twenty-eight percent (N=4) were looking to take images of themselves or their friends and family, with the distinctive landscape as a backdrop. There was a high level of consistency between the images described by the guide as “iconic” and the photographs that tourists wished to capture.Categorising five hundred Instagram images with the hashtag Monument Valley revealed 195 pictures (39 percent) of the Mittens, 58 of which were taken at sunrise or sunset. There were 88 images (18 percent) taken of Highway 163. John Ford Point featured in 26 images (five percent) of images and Artist’s Point was the location in 20 (four percent). Seventy-nine photographs (16 percent) were of other landmarks such as the Three Sisters, Elephant Butte, and Rain God Mesa, all visible from the self-drive circuit. Landmarks which could only be visited accompanied by a Navajo guide, accounted for 48 (nine percent) of the Instagram images. There were 16 images (three percent) of people, meals, and cars without any recognisable landmarks in the frame. The remaining 28 images (five percent) were of landmarks in the Southwest, but not in Monument Valley, although they were tagged as such.As expected, the photography tour group had a fairly wide range of images, which included close-ups of rocks, images of juniper trees, and images taken in places that were accessible only with a high clearance vehicle and a Navajo guide, such as the Totem Pole and Yei Bi Chei, the Valley of the Gods, and the slickrock formations of Mystery Valley. However, in the images selected at the end of the workshop as representative of their experience of Monument Valley, all participants included the iconic images of Highway 163, the Mittens, and the Artist’s Point vista.Very few images were of the Navajo people. Tourists are requested not to photograph the Navajo unless they were at a sign-posted location where a mechanism was available for paying for the privilege. Here the Navajo posed in traditional dress, engaged in customary activities, or as foreground interest in the desert landscape. The few tourists availing themselves of these opportunities seemed self-conscious, hurriedly taking the snap and paying the fee. Gillespie explains this as the effect of the “reverse gaze” where the photographed positions the photographer “as an ignorant and superficial tourist” (349). At the time, only one of the iconic images was featured on one of the official tourist sites, with the Mittens forming the banner image on the Visit Utah Monument Valley page. The Visit Arizona Monument Valley page had a single image (of the Ear of the Wind natural arch), and the Navajo Nation Parks and Recreation Monument Valley page also had a single image, that of the Three Sisters formation.Image and MeaningThe dominant subject in both tourist and tourism industry images is the Mittens. This image is also prominent in popular culture beginning with John Ford's film Stagecoach, through to Kanye West’s Bound 2 music video. This suggests that there is a closed circle of representation in tourist photography, with visitors capturing the images they have previously seen as representative of the destination. However, there may be an additional, more prosaic, explanation. The Mittens can be photographed from the terrace at the visitors centre, from the rooms at the View Hotel, or they can be captured from the car park, meaning that tourists do not have to leave their cars to attach this image to their travel narrative. The second most photographed landscape was that of Highway 163, an image that can be taken without even having to pay the fee and enter the Navajo Park.Garrod’s study of tourist and professional images of Aberystwyth noted that tourists did not have photographs taken from the top of the hill, and while no explanation for this was given, it could be that ease of access was a consideration. While the number of visitors to America’s national parks and recreation areas is increasing each year, the amount of time each visitor spends at the attraction is in decline. The average visit to Yosemite lasts just under five hours, visitors stay for just under two hours in Saguaro National Park in Arizona, and at the Grand Canyon National Park, most visitors spend just 17 minutes looking at the magnificent landscape (Bernstein; de Graaf). In Yosemite National Park many visitors “simply rolled by slowly in their cars, taking photos out the windows” (de Graaf np). So, ease of access to locations familiar from popular culture images is a factor in tourist representations of their destinations.Our photography tour group stayed five days in Monument Valley and travelled further afield to locations only accessible with a Navajo guide, however the images selected as representative of Monument Valley were of the same easily reached landmarks. This suggests that the process around the perpetuation of iconic tourist images is more complex than simple ease of access, or first impressions.What is apparent in looking at both the Instagram images and those photographs selected as representative by the tour group, is that what is depicted is not necessarily contemporary tourist experience, but rather a way of seeing the experience in terms of personal and cultural stories. Photography involves the selection, structuring and shaping of what is to be captured (Urry 260), so that the image is as much the representation of a perception, as a snapshot of experienced reality. In a guide to photographing the southwest of the USA, Matrés regrets the greater restrictions on movement and the increased commercialisation in Monument Valley (170), which reduce the possibility of photographing under good light conditions, and of capturing images without tourist buses, sales booths, and consequent crowds. However, almost all of the photographs studied avoided these. Photographers seemed to have expended considerable effort to produce an idealised image of a Western landscape that would have been familiar to John Ford, as the photographs were not of a commercialised, crowded tourist destination. When someone paid the horseman to ride out to the end of John Ford Point, groups of tourists would walk out too, fussing over the horse, however having people in the image led to those on the photography tour rejecting the image as representative of Monument Valley. For the most part, the landscape images highlighted the isolation and remoteness, depicting the frontier beyond which civilization ceases to exist.ConclusionPhotography is one of the performances through which people establish personal realities (Crang 245), and the reality for Monument Valley tourists is that it is still a remote destination. It is in the driest and least populated part of the US, and receives only 350,000 visitors a year compared, with the five million people who visit the nearby Grand Canyon. On a prosaic level, tourist photographs verify that the location was visited (Sontag 9), so the images must be able to be readily associated with the destination. They are evidence that the tourist has experienced some form of authentic, exotic, place (Chalfen 435), and so must depict scenes that differ from the everyday landscape. They also play a role in constructing an identity based in being a particular type of tourist, so they need to contribute to the narrative constructed from a blend of mythologies, memories and experiences. The circle of representation in tourist images is still closed, though it has broadened to constitute a narrative derived from a range of sources. By capturing the iconic landmarks of Monument Valley framed to emphasise the grandeur and isolation, tourists insert themselves into a narrative that includes John Wayne and Kanye West at the edge of civilization.References2001: A Space Odyssey. Dir. Stanley Kubrick. Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, 1968.Airwolf. Dir. Donald P. Bellisario, CBS, 1984–1986.Akehurst, Gary. “User Generated Content: The Use of Blogs for Tourism Organisations and Tourism Consumers.” Service Business 3.1 (2009): 51-61.Bernstein, Danny. “The Numbers behind National Park Visitation.” National Parks Traveller, 2010. 5 Aug. 2016 <http://www.nationalparkstraveler.com/2010/04/numbers-behind-national-park-visitation/>.Kanye West. Bound 2. Nick Knight Good Music, 2013.Chalfen, Richard M. “Photography’s Role in Tourism: Some Unexplored Relationships.” Annals of Tourism Research 6.4 (1979): 435–447Crang, Mike. “Knowing, Tourism and Practices of Vision.” Leisure/Tourism Geographies: Practices and Geographical Knowledge. Ed. David Crouch. London: Routledge, 1999. 238–56.De Graaf, John. “Finding Time for Our Parks.” Earth Island Journal, 2016. 5 Aug. 2016 <http://www.earthisland.org/journal/index.php/eij/article/finding_time_for_our_parks/>.Doctor Who. Sydney Newman, C. E. Webber, Donald Wilson. BBC One, 1963–present.Easy Rider. Dir. Dennis Hopper. Columbia Pictures, 1969.Garrod, Brian. “Understanding the Relationship between Tourism Destination Imagery and Tourist Photography.” Journal of Travel Research 47.3 (2009): 346-358Gillespie, Alex. "Tourist Photography and the Reverse Gaze." Ethos 34.3 (2006): 343-366.Jenkins, Olivia. “Photography and Travel Brochures: The Circle of Representation.” Tourism Geographies 5.3 (2003): 305-328.Matrés, Laurent. Photographing the Southwest. Alta Loma, CA: Graphie Publishers, 2006.Schroeder, Jonathan E. Visual Consumption. London: Routledge, 2002.Slotkin, Richard. The Fatal Environment: The Myth of the Frontier in the Age of Industrialization, 1800-1890. Norman, OK: University of Oklahoma Press, 1998. Sontag, Susan. On Photography. London: Penguin Books, 1977 Stagecoach. Dir. John Ford. United Artists, 1937.The Searchers. Dir. John Ford. Warner Bros, 1956.Thelma & Louise. Dir. Ridley Scott. Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, 1991.Urry, John. The Tourist Gaze: Leisure and Travel in Contemporary Societies. London: Sage, 1992.

Introduction Throughout the early and mid-twentieth century, cadet training was a feature of many secondary schools and educational establishments across Australia, with countless young men between the ages of 14 and 18 years of age undergoing military training, ostensibly in preparation for service in Australia’s armed forces upon their coming of age. Unlike earlier in the century, when cadet training was mandatory for all males within the relevant age range, during the Second World War cadet detachments could only be formed and maintained by secondary schools for pupils attending those schools. Additionally, the Australian Army provided so little financial support to school cadet detachments during the conflict that schools had to rely on the parents of their pupils to purchase their sons’ not inexpensive cadet uniforms, with a result that only a limited number of schools could afford to maintain a cadet detachment, and almost every schools that could do so made enrolment in their detachments voluntary for their pupils. Counterbalancing these material obstacles, however, was the threat of the ongoing conflict and the demands for trained soldiers both overseas and within Australia, which resulted in school cadet training becoming increasingly popular between 1939 and 1945, with many schools across Australia either establishing new cadet detachments or expanding their existing cadet detachments in order to contribute to their nation’s war effort. Not only did the Second World War increase the number of cadet detachments among educational establishments, but cadet training became more diverse and varied both within and between schools. Owing to their preoccupation with maintaining both the Australian Imperial Force and a defence force against a potential invasion of Australia, the Australian Army’s supervision of and contribution to cadet training became more sporadic than it had been in peacetime. As a result, school headmasters became increasingly powerful in their discretion to direct the cadet training that went on at their schools, with the Australian Army providing little to no input to or supervision of the day-to-day training at the myriad of cadet detachments across the nation. This state of affairs allowed schools, and the educators who ran them, an unprecedented amount of freedom to enact their own idealised version of military training through their cadet detachments, resulting in a diverse range of training syllabi, organisational practices, and uniforms. Unlike in other nations such as New Zealand, Australian schools’ cadet uniforms were not issued by the Australian Army, but instead were designed and purchased by the individual cadet detachments, with the Australian Army only providing official recognition and partial funding for the designs. Under this system, Australian schools designed a diverse range of uniforms for their cadet detachments, tailoring them to suit their individual conceptions of what cadet training should contain and how a cadet detachment should appear. This resulted in cadet detachments clad in uniforms that reflected the ideals of the schools to which they were attached, with the training practices and identities of a school reflected in the design of its cadet uniform. This article will examine two prevalent influences behind the design of Australian school cadet uniforms during the Second World War – the competing prioritisation of smartness and practicality, and the range of identities and loyalties which schools attempted to inculcate in their pupils. In the process, it will be argued that these variations in cadet uniform designs reflect the diversity of practices and ideology within male secondary education in Australia during the 1940s. Uniforms for Purpose Despite the limitations imposed by wartime shortages, a school’s priorities for their cadet training could still be expressed through their design of uniforms. For many, the range of priorities can be summarised as a split between smartness and toughness. Some establishments designed their cadet uniforms on traditional ideals of rigid sartorial orderliness, tailoring them to be pleasing to the eye when paraded in public. Others disregarded smartness in favour of hard-wearing uniforms more suited to rigorous physical training under a variety of climactic conditions, emphasising comfort and durability above appearance. Schools did not openly state that their choice of uniform was motivated by a desire to have their cadets appear impressive on the parade ground. However, many voiced their praise for their cadet detachments’ appearances in public parades. One example of this can be found in the June 1940 edition of Terrace, the magazine of Christian Brothers’ College Gregory Terrace, in which the cadet training column finished by proudly declaring that “the appearance of the cadets and their military bearing called forth expressions of praise from all who saw them marching in the Corpus Christi procession at NC” (“G.T. Corps Jottings” 5). Similar evidence of a school’s prioritisation of smartness and presentability in their cadet training can also be found in numerous contemporary descriptions of cadet training by the cadets themselves. One anonymous pupil at Sydney Church of England Grammar School described the hardships that the school’s cadets faced in maintaining their uniforms – a khaki combination of woollen slouch hat, tunic with brass buttons, brown leather ‘Sam Browne’ belt and trousers with a blue stripe down each leg. In a lengthy poem describing many aspects of school life, the pupil’s ‘Song of Shore’ described how “of each cadet the heart is set on being clean and smart; A fleck of dust, a speck of rust, will break his sergeant's heart” (‘A Song of Shore’ 131). These demands for cleanliness and smartness weighed heavily on a cadet, with the author lamenting how “he cleans his boots, he cleans his belt, he cleans his bits of brass: his Brasso goes to chapel and his Kiwi into class; but still they say, ‘Put it away! To Friday drill you go!’ And button-sticks in period six are dangerous things to show” (‘A Song of Shore’ 131). Given that this context of uniform maintenance is the only description of cadet training in this poem, the emphasis placed on sartorial orderliness at schools such as Sydney Church of England Grammar School was clearly strong enough to eclipse all other aspects of training in the eyes of those subjected to it. Uniforms designed to visually impress, however, often wore out quite quickly under the harsh conditions of cadet training. One cadet at Geelong College noted how after an afternoon of instruction on the school oval in “a comfortable spot in the rain and wind … my well-tailored uniform is sopping with either sweat or rain according to the consistent weather of these parts. My chin-strap has lost all its flavour and generally I feel most inefficient” (“Chank” 31). The short life of stylistically-prioritised uniforms was often exacerbated by the difficulty of obtaining replacement items of clothing under wartime conditions. In 1941, the cadet uniforms of Hale School, Western Australia – presented in fig. 1 and consisting of slouch hat, woollen khaki tunic, Khaki drill breeches and tall leather gaiters – had been reduced in number and quality to such an extent that one boy described the process of selecting uniforms at the beginning of each year as “scramble day”, when, “after trying on various clothing you begin to wonder how many deformed people were in the corps before you” (“Lance-Corporal” 96). The cadet elaborated by lamented how “pick[ing] out the right hat is like winning the Charities, and all you can do is to hope for the best next year” (“Lance-Corporal” 96), and “on being issued with your hat badge you will say confidently, ‘Well, at least this must fit.’ But don't be optimistic; it is sure to have the clip missing” (“Lance-Corporal” 97). The shortage of serviceable uniforms became so acute that by 1943 the annual ‘Cadet Notes’ article in the school’s magazine The Cygnet announced that “it would be greatly appreciated if Old Boys who have any part of a uniform, would make it available” (“Cadets” Cygnet 20). This sentiment was echoed the following year by an anonymous cadet’s cartoon (fig. 2), highlighting the deplorable state of the school’s cadet uniforms after so many years of use, with frayed hems, baggy seams, and, most significantly, a severe shortage of sizes which fitted the average cadet (“Uniforms for ‘B’ Company” 74). This, when compared with the formal photographs of cadets published by the school in an earlier edition of the Cygnet, seen in fig. 1, gives a clear indication of the disparity between the image that schools intended to project and the and that which cadets perceived. Fig. 1: Hale School cadet uniforms as presented by the school in 1939 (“Officers and N.C.Os.” 55) Fig. 2: Hale School cadet uniforms as perceived by a cadet in 1944 (“Uniforms for ‘B’ Company” 74) For many schools, however, the ideal cadet uniform was simple, easily-maintained and durable, often drawing inspiration from contemporary, rather than traditional, military uniforms. When designing a uniform for their newly-established cadet detachment in 1939, Brisbane Boys’ College stated categorically that “the first consideration was smartness” and that “the preservation of that smartness will be the duty of every cadet” (“Cadet Corps” 41). However, while other schools chose stiff and heavy woollen cadet uniforms, the committee appointed by the College to decide on a uniform opted for a light combination of felt hat, khaki drill jacket, and shorts, “similar in design to that of the Darwin Mobile Force”, a new Australian Army formation created the previous year intended to defend Australia’s northern coastline from invasion, “which looked so smart when that force marched through the city early in the year” (“Cadet Corps” 41-42). When further explaining their choice, the College argued that “shorts, we consider, are more serviceable for the Queensland climate” (“Cadet Corps” 42). Brisbane Boys’ College was not the only establishment to be impressed by new military formations and their heralding of a new form of warfare. Newcastle Boys’ High School’s cadet uniform deviated from those of other schools’ cadet detachments by including a navy blue beret in place of the ubiquitous felt ‘slouch hat’. This choice of headwear, coupled with the School’s unusual decision to replace the normal khaki items of clothing with a field grey battledress-style jacket and slacks, was so similar to that worn by the armoured divisions both in Australia and Britain that when the Newcastle Sun published a picture of four Newcastle cadets wearing their new uniforms, they jocularly warned their readers that “these are not members of the Tank Corps” (“High School Cadet Corps” 7). Evidently, while some schools opted for a more traditionally smart design for their cadet uniforms, others chose to emulate more modern military uniform designs, even to the point where their uniforms lost all similarity to those traditionally worn by cadet detachments in Australia. It was not through the emulation of contemporary Australian Army uniforms that schools implemented practical uniform components in place of stylish ones. When several independent Roman Catholic schools in New South Wales applied to form cadet units and intended to adopt cadet uniforms in a variety of colours with brimless, forage cap headdress, Australia’s Military Board directed Captain McConnel, the Staff Officer Commanding Senior Cadets for New South Wales, “to invite schools again to reconsider the uniforms they have submitted with a view to their adoption of the Australian Hat and Khaki materials” (McConnel 1). McConnel acknowledged that “particular uniforms are not stipulated”, but claimed “khaki to be most suitable and economical for field training while the Australian Hat gives greater protection from the sun”, which was a factor of “considerable importance” as “work in the open is one of the main objects of cadet training” (McConnel 1). However, despite McConnel’s emphatic pleas to the institutions to reconsider their uniforms, only two of the eleven schools chose to alter their uniforms to suit the Military Board’s recommendations. The remainder either compromised by retaining their forage caps but adopting McConnel’s recommendation of using khaki material for their uniforms, or, as was the case with Marist Brothers’ High School, Darlinghurst, wrote in response to McConnel’s letter stating that they found “no reason for altering the design initially submitted”, and persisted with their application (Frederic 1). This case demonstrates that while dispassionate logic could motivate schools to design practical uniforms resistant to the wear and tear produced by strenuous outdoor cadet training in the Australian climate, these considerations were often outweighed by the subjective ideological motivations behind educators’ desires to adopt attractively smart cadet uniforms that were expensive and ill-suited to physical training. Evidently, educators’ personal desires to make their cadets, and as a result their schools, appear impressively smart and orderly were a powerful motivation behind not only their choice of uniform but also their support for cadet training in its entirety. These motivations could and frequently did outweigh practical considerations, to the point where the appearance of a cadet detachment, and thereby that of the cadet detachment’s school, was considered more important than the training it provided. Uniforms as Identity The division between concepts of cadet training held by the Australian Army and the highly diverse forms of training practiced by individual schools extended beyond differences of opinion over the relative merits of smartness and practicality expressed by cadet uniforms. A cadet uniform not only reflected educators’ intentions regarding the contents of their training, but also reflected the values of the group identity they wished to immerse their boys in, and the overarching group to which this identity owed its loyalty. The best example of uniforms reflecting a cadet detachment’s loyalty can be seen in the widespread adoption of uniforms that emulated Australian Army uniforms almost exactly. Although Australian cadet detachments were not issued with official Service Dress uniforms until 1945, many detachments’ uniforms emulated the Service Dress’s design and material down to the ubiquitous wide-brimmed ‘slouch hat’ or ‘Australian hat’ worn by the Australian Army in both the First and Second World Wars. Brother RJ McCartney, “the nominal C.O.” of the cadet detachment at Christian Brothers’ College Ipswich, specifically described his detachment’s uniform to the Queensland Times in 1944 as “similar to that issued to Army personnel” after declaring that “the training [cadets] receive will be most useful to them should they join one of the fighting forces later” (“95 Boys” 2). The popularity of this design cannot be attributed solely to the arguments made by the Military Board for its practicality, and the symbolic power of these uniforms raised the cadet detachments from insular, extra-curricular organisations to a unified whole, connected to the Commonwealth’s war effort through their uniforms and the martial identities they espoused. Fig. 3: A contemporary drawing of Brisbane Boys’ College cadet badge from 1939 (“Cadet Corps” 42) Not all Australian educational establishments, however, chose to emulate the Australian Army uniform in their cadet detachments’ uniforms, with many adopting uniforms that emphasised school or local identities above national identity. Most schools expressed their local identity through the implementation of school colours in their hat bands or ‘puggaree’ or designed insignia for their cadet uniforms based on school insignia. The cadet detachment at Brisbane Boys College adopted a badge that was nearly identical to the College badge, seen in fig. 3, albeit with a crown in place of the book (“Cadet Corps” 42). This alteration brought the design into alignment with common practice in military insignia, but it could also be viewed as symbolic representation of the difference between the College and the cadet detachment – whereas the College’s primary objective was to educate, the cadet detachment’s objective was to instil a sense of patriotism and duty. The most prominent examples of schools deviating in this manner can be found among Presbyterian schools, many of which chose to emphasise their Scottish ancestry instead of their Australian nationality. One such school was Scotch College in Claremont, Western Australia, where in August 1939, after “several unsuccessful attempts to secure a uniform dress for the cadets”, “the corps fitted out with uniforms which made the boys look like trained soldiers … which consisted of a Cameron kilt, with a kangaroo-skin sporran, a khaki tunic and glengarrie [sic]” (“Cadets” Scotch 16), which gave the detachment the appearance of a highland regiment of the British Army. After being issued with their new uniforms and instructed on their wearing, an event that was satirically recalled later that year by a cadet asking the headmaster what was worn beneath the kilt, the cadets were addressed by the school’s headmaster Mr Anderson, who “mention[ed] the fine example set by our predecessors, which example, he knew, we would endeavour to live up to” (“Cadets” Scotch 16). A similar uniform was worn by The Scots College, Sydney, prior to and during the Second World War. The College’s cadet uniform, shown in fig. 4, was just as rife with Scottish motifs as the uniform of Scotch College, including a kilt which one anonymous cadet described as “eleven yards of pleats, folds, buckles, buttons and straps all mixed up” (“C.S.R., IVa” 91). The Scots College’s uniform incorporated more colonial aspects than their West Australian contemporary’s uniform, however, with the glengarry and khaki tunic replaced by a Blancoed-white pith helmet and dark green standing-collared jacket with hooks and eyes that, according to the anonymous cadet, “were typically scotch”, in that “they would not give in” (“C.S.R., IVa” 91). Despite the free issue of Service Dress by the Australian Army in 1945, the College maintained its distinctly Scottish cadet uniform, albeit with the pith helmet replaced by a glengarry cap. So strong was the College’s prioritisation of its colonial ancestral identity above any contemporary Australian national identity that the Sun newspaper described them as “Black Watch juniors” when publishing a photograph of them parading “in support of the War Loan Campaign” in October 1941, seen in fig. 4 (“Black Watch Juniors” 3). Although these schools formed the minority in espousing divergent local identities above a centralised national identity, is these exceptions to the broad consensus which reflect the diverse nature of not only cadet training but secondary education within Australia in the first half of the twentieth century. Furthermore, this diversity was only revealed due to the refusal of the Australian Army to issue free uniforms to cadet detachments, with the resulting absence of a centralised identity leading to a vacuum in which schools decided upon an identity with which to imbue their pupils through the medium of cadet uniforms. Fig. 4: The Scots College cadets parading through Sydney, as presented by the Sun (“Black Watch Juniors” 3). Conclusion The Australian Army’s refusal to issue a free, standardised cadet uniform to secondary school cadet detachments prevented many educational establishments from establishing their own cadet detachment. However, this policy allowed those schools that did establish a detachment to clothe their members in a manner that they believed would align with the school’s unique conceptions of both what cadet training should consist of and how a cadet detachment should be presented to the world. As a result of this freedom, Australian secondary school cadet uniforms were influenced by a wide range of practical and ideological factors, with a diverse range of uniform designs reflecting an equally diverse range of thinking around cadet training. Some schools preferred a cadet uniform to be tough and suited to strenuous outdoor use under harsh climatic conditions, with Brisbane Boys’ College modelling their uniform after the recently-formed Darwin Mobile Force and incorporating shorts and a wide-brimmed Australian hat of the type recommended by the Australian Army for its value in shielding its wearer from the sun. Other cadet uniforms, such as those adopted by many Roman Catholic schools in Sydney, emphasised sartorial orderliness and visual splendour, incorporating unusual colours and forage caps to showcase their cadets and their school while emphasising their institutions’ individuality, against the Australian Army’s recommendations for durability and practicality. Similarly, a school’s cadet uniform could reflect its ideological objectives, revealing the identity it aimed to immerse its pupils in. The wide range of schools’ cadet uniform headdress alone, from ‘slouch hats’ to glengarry and forage caps to pith helmets, reveals the many split loyalties and ideals held by Australian schools during the Second World War between imperial, national, local, and religious identities and ethos. However, despite Australian Schools’ diverse and meticulously curated choices in cadet uniforms, cadets’ contemporary descriptions of their uniforms reveal that the intentions behind the uniforms’ designs were often entirely lost on those who wore them. Many cadets overlooked the lofty educational and ideological intentions behind their educators’ choices and instead only took note of their ridiculous, impractical, and uncomfortable aspects. This difference in perception, with educators praising and pupils decrying their cadet uniforms, reveals the performative nature of the entire uniform design process, with schools designing their cadet detachments’ uniforms not for those wearing them but for any third party who might view them. As such, schools’ overtures regarding the practicality, smartness and identity of their uniforms were not the result of the schools’ established practices, but the values with which the schools wished to be associated, with cadet uniforms acting as the medium through which these values would be communicated to the wider world. Images “Black Watch Juniors in City Parade.” The Sun 10 Oct. 1941: 3. “Officers and N.C.Os. of the Cadet Corps, 1939.” The Cygnet: Hale School Magazine 19.3 (June 1939): 55. “Uniforms for ‘B’ Company. Only Two Sizes 2 Large OR 2 Small.” The Cygnet: Hale School Magazine 14.4 (June 1944): 74. References “A Song of Shore” The Torch-Bearer: The Magazine of the Sydney Church of England Grammar School 43.2 (1 Sep. 1939): 130-131. “Cadets.” The Cygnet: Hale School Magazine 13.3 (June 1943): 19-20. “Cadets.” The Scotch College Reporter 32 (Dec. 1939): 16-17. “Cadet Corps.” The Portal: The Magazine of the Brisbane Boys’ College Dec. 1939: 41-43. “Chank”; “A Day in the Ranks.” The Pegasus: The Journal of The Geelong College 37.1 (June 1946): 30-31. “C.S.R., IVa”; “A Bonny Wee Scotsman.” The Scotsman: A Record of The Scots College, Bellevue Hill, Sydney 32.3 (May 1946): 91. “G.T. Corps Jottings.” Terrace: Quarterly Review, Published by Christian Brothers’ College Gregory Terrace, Brisbane, Queensland 3.2 (24 June 1940): 5. “High School Cadet Corps.” The Newcastle Sun 4 June 1940: 7. “Lance-Corporal”; “Scramble Day.” The Cygnet: Hale School Magazine 13 (5 June 1941): 96-97. “95 Boys Receive Training in School Cadet Corps.” The Queensland Times 21 Aug. 1944: 2. Memoranda Brother Frederic to Captain McConnel. “Cadets – Educational establishments – Approval to form senior cadet detachments – Roman Catholic schools.” 7 April 1941. Australian War Memorial, Ref. AWM61 426/2/176. Captain McConnel to Director CBC Waverley, CBC Lewisham, CBC Darlinghurst, MBC Darlinghurst, MBC Randwick, MBC Kogarah, MBC Parramatta, MBC Church Hill, DLSC Ashfield, DLSC Marrickville, HCC Ryde, SJC Hunter's Hill. “Cadets – Educational establishments – Approval to form senior cadet detachments – Roman Catholic schools.” 13 March 1941. Australian War Memorial, Ref. AWM61 426/2/176.

Do we eat what we are, or are we what we eat? Do we eat or are we eaten? In less cryptic terms, in eating, do we confirm our identities, or are our identities reforged, and refracted by what and how we eat? In posing these questions, I want to shift the terms of current debates about identity. I want to signal that the study of identity may take on new insights when we look at how we are or want to be in terms of what, how, and with whom we eat. If the analysis of identity has by and large been conducted through the optic of sex, it may well be that in western societies we are witnessing a shift away from sex as the sovereign signifier, or to put it more finely, the question of what we are is a constantly morphing one that mixes up bodies, appetites, classes, genders and ethnicities. It must be said that the question of identity and subjectivity has been so well trodden in the last several decades that the possibility of any virgin territory is slim. Bombarded by critiques of identity politics, any cultural critic still interested in why and how individuals fabricate themselves must either cringe before accusations of sociological do-gooding (and defend the importance of the categories of race, class, sex, gender and so forth), or face the endless clichés that seemingly support the investigation of identity. The momentum of my investigation is carried by a weak wager, by which I mean that the areas and examples I study cannot be overdetermined by a sole axis of investigation. My point of departure is basic: what if we were to think identities in another dimension, through the optic of eating and its associated qualities: hunger, greed, shame, disgust, pleasure, etc? While the connections suggested by eating are diverse and illuminating, interrogating identity through this angle brings its own load of assumptions and preconceptions. One of the more onerous aspects of 'writing about food' is the weight of previous studies. The field of food is a well traversed one, staked out by influential authors concerned with proper anthropological, historical and sociological questions. They are by and large attracted to food for its role in securing social categories and classifications. They have left a legacy of truisms, such as Lévi-Strauss's oft-stated maxim that food is good to think with1, or Brillat-Savarin's aphorism, 'tell me what you eat: I will tell you what you are' (13). In turn, scientific idioms meet up with the buzzing clichés that hover about food. These can be primarily grouped around the notion that food is fundamental, that we all eat, and so on. Indeed, buffeted by the winds of postmodernism that have permeated public debates, it seems that there is a popular acceptance of the fact that identities are henceforth difficult, fragmented, temporary, unhinged by massive changes to modes of employment and the economy, re-formations of family, and the changes in the gender and sexual order. Living with and through these changes on a daily basis, it is no wonder that food and eating has been popularly reclaimed as a 'fundamental' issue, as the last bastion of authenticity in our lives. To put it another way, and in the terms that guide me, eating is seen as immediate -- it is something we all have to do; and it is a powerful mode of mediation, of joining us with others. What, how, and where we eat has emerged as a site of considerable social concern: from the fact that most do not eat en famille, that we increasingly eat out and through drive-in fast food outlets (in the US, 50% of the food budget is spent on eating outside the home), to the worries about genetically altered food and horror food -- mad cows, sick chickens, square tomatoes. Eating performs different connections and disconnections. Increasingly the attention to what we eat is seen as immediately connecting us, our bodies, to large social questions. At a broad level, this can be as diffuse as the winds that some argue spread genetically modified seed stock from one region to another. Or it can be as individually focussed as the knowledge that others are starving as we eat. This connection has long haunted children told 'to eat up everything on your plate because little children are starving in Africa', and in more evolved terms has served as a staple of forms of vegetarianism and other ethical forms of eating. From the pictures of starving children staring from magazine pages, the spectre of hunger is now broadcast by the Internet, exemplified in the Hunger Site where 'users are met by a map of the world and every 3.6 seconds, a country flashes black signifying a death due to hunger'. Here eating is the subject of a double articulation: the recognition of hunger is presumed to be a fundamental capacity of individuals, and our feelings are then galvanised into painless action: each time a user clicks on the 'hunger' button one of the sponsors donates a cup and a half of food. As the site explains, 'our sponsors pay for the donations as a form of advertising and public relations'. Here, the logic is that hunger is visceral, that it is a basic human feeling, which is to say that it is understood as immediate, and that it connects us in a basic way to other humans. That advertising companies know that it can also be a profitable form of meditation, transforming 'humans' into consumers is but one example of how eating connects us in complex ways to other people, to products, to new formulations of identity, and in this case altruism (the site has been called 'the altruistic mouse')2. Eating continually interweaves individual needs, desires and aspirations within global economies of identities. Of course the interlocking of the global and the local has been the subject of much debate over the last decade. For instance, in his recent book on globalisation, John Tomlinson uses 'global food and local identity' as a site through which to problematise these terms. It is clear that changes in food processing and transportation technologies have altered our sense of connection to the near and the far away, allowing us to routinely find in our supermarkets and eat products that previously would have been the food stuff of the élite. These institutional and technological changes rework the connections individuals have to their local, to the regions and nations in which they live. As Tomlinson argues, 'globalisation, from its early impact, does clearly undermine a close material relationship between the provenance of food and locality' (123). As he further states, the effects have been good (availability and variety), and bad (disrupting 'the subtle connection between climate, season, locality and cultural practice'). In terms of what we can now eat, Tomlinson points out that 'the very cultural stereotypes that identify food with, say, national culture become weakened' (124). Defusing the whiff of moralism that accompanies so much writing about food, Tomlinson argues that these changes to how we eat are not 'typically experienced as simply cultural loss or estrangement but as a complex and ambiguous blend: of familiarity and difference, expansion of cultural horizons and increased perceptions of vulnerability, access to the "world out there" accompanied by penetration of our own private worlds, new opportunities and new risks' (128). For the sake of my own argument his attention to the increased sense of vulnerability is particularly important. To put it more strongly, I'd argue that eating is of interest for the ways in which it can be a mundane exposition of the visceral nature of our connectedness, or distance from each other, from ourselves, and our social environment: it throws into relief the heartfelt, the painful, playful or pleasurable articulations of identity. To put it more clearly, I want to use eating and its associations in order to think about how the most ordinary of activities can be used to help us reflect on how we are connected to others, and to large and small social issues. This is again to attend to the immediacy of eating, and the ways in which that immediacy is communicated, mediated and can be put to use in thinking about culture. The adjective 'visceral' comes to mind: 'of the viscera', the inner organs. Could something as ordinary as eating contain the seeds of an extraordinary reflection, a visceral reaction to who and what we are becoming? In mining eating and its qualities might we glimpse gut reactions to the histories and present of the cultures within which we live? As Emily Jenkins writes in her account of 'adventures in physical culture', what if we were to go 'into things tongue first. To see how they taste' (5). In this sense, I want to plunder the visceral, gut levels revealed by that most boring and fascinating of topics: food and eating. In turn, I want to think about what bodies are and do when they eat. To take up the terms with which I started, eating both confirms what and who we are, to ourselves and to others, and can reveal new ways of thinking about those relations. To take the most basic of facts: food goes in, and then broken down it comes out of the body, and every time this happens our bodies are affected. While in the usual course of things we may not dwell upon this process, that basic ingestion allows us to think of our bodies as complex assemblages connected to a wide range of other assemblages. In eating, the diverse nature of where and how different parts of ourselves attach to different aspects of the social becomes clear, just as it scrambles preconceptions about alimentary identities. Of course, we eat according to social rules, in fact we ingest them. 'Feed the man meat', the ads proclaim following the line of masculinity inwards; while others draw a line outwards from biology and femininity into 'Eat lean beef'. The body that eats has been theorised in ways that seek to draw out the sociological equations about who we are in terms of class and gender. But rather than taking the body as known, as already and always ordered in advance by what and how it eats, we can turn such hypotheses on their head. In the act of ingestion, strict divisions get blurred. The most basic fact of eating reveals some of the strangeness of the body's workings. Consequently it becomes harder to capture the body within categories, to order stable identities. This then forcefully reminds us that we still do not know what a body is capable of, to take up a refrain that has a long heritage (from Spinoza to Deleuze to feminist investigations of the body). As Moira Gatens and Genevieve Lloyd argue in terms of this idea, 'each body exists in relations of interdependence with other bodies and these relations form a "world" in which individuals of all kinds exchange their constitutive parts -- leading to the enrichment of some and the demise of others (e.g. eating involves the destruction of one body at the same time as it involves the enhancement of the other)' (101). I am particularly interested in how individuals replay equations between eating and identity. But that phrase sounds impossibly abstracted from the minute instances I have in mind. From the lofty heights, I follow the injunction to 'look down, look way down', to lead, as it were, with the stomach. In this vein, I begin to note petty details, like the fact of recently discovering breakfast. From a diet of coffee (now with a milk called 'Life') and cigarettes, I dutifully munch on fortified cereal that provides large amounts of folate should I be pregnant (and as I eat it I wonder am I, should I be?3). Spurred on by articles sprinkled with dire warnings about what happens to women in Western societies, I search out soy, linseed and other ingredients that will help me mimic the high phytoestrogen diet of Japanese women. Eating cereal, I am told, will stave off depression, especially with the addition of bananas. Washed down with yoghurt 'enhanced' with acidophilius and bifidus to give me 'friendly' bacteria that will fight against nasty heliobacter pylori, I am assured that I will even lose weight by eating breakfast. It's all a bit much first thing in the morning when the promise of a long life seems like a threat. The myriad of printed promises of the intricate world of alimentary programming serve as an interesting counterpoint to the straightforward statements on cigarette packages. 'Smoking kills' versus the weak promises that eating so much of such and such a cereal 'is a good source of soy phytoestrogenes (isolfavones) that are believed to be very beneficial'. Apart from the unpronounceable ingredients (do you really want to eat something that you can't say?), the terms of the contract between me and the cereal makers is thin: that such and such is 'believed to be beneficial'? While what in fact they may benefit is nebulous, it gets scarier when they specify that 'a diet rich in folate may reduce the risk of birth defects such as spina bifida'. The conditional tense wavers as I ponder the way spina bifida is produced as a real possibility. There is of course a long history to the web of nutritional messages that now surrounds us. In her potted teleology of food messages, Sue Thompson, a consultant dietitian, writes that in the 1960s, the slogan was 'you are what you eat'. Then in the 1970s and 1980s, the idea was that food was bad for you. In her words, 'it became a time of "Don't eat" and "bad foods". Now, happily, 'we are moving into a time of appreciating the health benefits of food' (Promotional release by the Dairy Farmers, 1997). As the new battle ground for extended enhanced life, eating takes on fortified meaning. Awed by the enthusiasm, I am also somewhat shocked by the intimacy of detail. I can handle descriptions of sex, but the idea of discussing the ways in which you 'are reducing the bacterial toxins produced from small bowel overgrowth' (Thompson), is just too much. Gut level intimacy indeed. However, eating is intimate. But strangely enough except for the effusive health gurus, and the gossip about the eating habits of celebrities, normally in terms of not-eating, we tend not to publicly air the fact that we all operate as 'mouth machines' (to take Noëlle Châtelet's term). To be blunt about it, 'to eat, is to connect ... the mouth and the anus' (Châtelet 34). We would, with good reason, rather not think about this; it is an area of conversation reserved for our intimates. For instance, in relationships the moment of broaching the subject of one's gut may mark the beginning of the end. So let us stay for the moment at the level of the mouth machine, and the ways it brings together the physical fact of what goes in, and the symbolic production of what comes out: meanings, statements, ideas. To sanitise it further, I want to think of the mouth machine as a metonym4 for the operations of a term that has been central to cultural studies: 'articulation'. Stuart Hall's now classic definition states that 'articulation refers to the complex set of historical practices by which we struggle to produce identity or structural unity out of, on top of, complexity, difference, contradiction' (qtd. in Grossberg, "History" 64). While the term has tended to be used rather indiscriminately -- theorists wildly 'articulate' this or that -- its precise terms are useful. Basically it refers to how individuals relate themselves to their social contexts and histories. While we are all in some sense the repositories of past practices, through our actions we 'articulate', bridge and connect ourselves to practices and contexts in ways that are new to us. In other terms, we continually shuttle between practices and meanings that are already constituted and 'the real conditions' in which we find ourselves. As Lawrence Grossberg argues, this offers 'a nonessentialist theory of agency ... a fragmented, decentered human agent, an agent who is both "subject-ed" by power and capable of acting against power' ("History" 65). Elsewhere Grossberg elaborates on the term, arguing that 'articulation is the production of identity on top of difference, of unities out of fragments, of structures across practices' (We Gotta Get Out 54). We are then 'articulated' subjects, the product of being integrated into past practices and structures, but we are also always 'articulating' subjects: through our enactment of practices we reforge new meanings, new identities for ourselves. This then reveals a view of the subject as a fluctuating entity, neither totally voluntaristic, nor overdetermined. In more down to earth terms, just because we are informed by practices not of our own making, 'that doesn't mean we swallow our lessons without protest' (Jenkins 5). The mouth machine takes in but it also spits out. In these actions the individual is constantly connecting, disconnecting and reconnecting. Grossberg joins the theory of articulation to Deleuze and Guattari's notion of rhizomes. In real and theoretical terms, a rhizome is a wonderful entity: it is a type of plant, such as a potato plant or an orchid, that instead of having tap roots spreads its shoots outwards, where new roots can sprout off old. Used as a figure to map out social relations, the rhizome allows us to think about other types of connection. Beyond the arboreal, tap root logic of, say, the family tree which ties me in lineage to my forefathers, the rhizome allows me to spread laterally and horizontally: as Deleuze puts it, the rhizome is antigenealogical, 'it always has multiple entryways' compelling us to think of how we are connected diversely, to obvious and sometimes not so obvious entities (35). For Grossberg the appeal of joining a theory of articulation with one inspired by rhizomes is that it combines the 'vertical complexity' of culture and context, with the 'wild realism' of the horizontal possibilities that connect us outward. To use another metaphor dear to Deleuze and Guattari, this is to think about the spread of rhizomatic roots, the 'lines of flight' that break open seemingly closed structures, including those we call ourselves: 'lines of flight disarticulate, open up the assemblage to its exterior, cutting across and dismantling unity, identity, centers and hierarchies' (qtd. in Grossberg, We Gotta Get Out 58). In this way, bodies can be seen as assemblages: bits of past and present practice, openings, attachments to parts of the social, closings and aversion to other parts. The tongue as it ventures out to taste something new may bring back fond memories, or it may cause us to recoil in disgust. As Jenkins writes, this produces a fascinating 'contradiction -- how the body is both a prison and a vehicle for adventure' (4). It highlights the fact that the 'body is not the same from day to day. Not even from minute to minute ... . Sometimes it seems like home, sometimes more like a cheap motel near Pittsburgh' (7). As we ingest we mutate, we expand and contract, we change, sometimes subtly, sometimes violently. The openings and closings of our bodies constantly rearranges our dealings with others, as Jenkins writes, the body's 'distortions, anxieties, ecstasies and discomforts all influence a person's interaction with the people who service it'. In more theoretical terms, this produces the body as 'an articulated plane whose organisation defines its own relations of power and sites of struggle', which 'points to the existence of another politics, a politics of feeling' (Grossberg, "History" 72). These theoretical considerations illuminate the interest and the complexity of bodies that eat. The mouth machine registers experiences, and then articulates them -- utters them. In eating, we may munch into whole chains of previously established connotations, just as we may disrupt them. For instance, an email arrives, leaving traces of its rhizomatic passage zapping from one part of the world to another, and then to me. Unsolicited, it sets out a statement from a Dr. Johannes Van Vugt in San Francisco who on October 11, 1999, National Coming Out Day in the US, began an ongoing 'Fast for Equal Rights for persons who are gay, lesbian and other sexual orientation minorities'. Yoking his fast with the teachings of Ghandi and Martin Luther King, Dr. Van Vugt says he is fasting to 'call on you to choose love, not fear, and to do something about it'. The statement also reveals that he previously fasted 'to raise awareness and funds for African famine relief for which he received a Congressional commendation'. While personally I don't give much for his chances of getting a second commendation, this is an example of how the mouth machine closed still operates to articulate identities and politics to wildly diverging sites. While there is something of an arboreal logic to fasting for awareness of famine, the connection between not eating and anti-homophobic politics is decidedly rhizomatic. Whether or not it succeeds in its aim, and one of the tenets of a rhizomatic logic is that the points of connection cannot be guaranteed in advance, it does join the mouth with sex with the mouth with homophobic statements that it utters. There is then a sort of 'wild realism' at work here that endeavours to set up new assemblages of bodies, mouths and politics. From fasting to writing, what of the body that writes of the body that eats? In Grossberg's argument, the move to a rhizomatic field of analysis promises to return cultural theory to a consideration of 'the real'. He argues that such a theory must be 'concerned with particular configurations of practices, how they produce effects and how such effects are organized and deployed' (We Gotta Get Out 45). However, it is crucial to remember that these practices do not exist in a pure state in culture, divorced from their representations or those of the body that analyses them. The type of 'wild realism' that Grossberg calls for, as in Deleuze's 'new empiricism' is both a way of seeing the world, and offers it anew, illuminates otherly its structures and individuals' interaction with them. Following the line of the rhizome means that we must 'forcibly work both on semiotic flows, material flows, and social flows', Guattari goes on to argue that 'there is no tripartition between a field of reality, the world, a field of representation, the book, and a field of subjectivity, the author. But an arrangement places in connection certain multiplicities taken from each of these orders' (qtd. in Grossberg, We Gotta Get Out 48). In terms of the possibilities offered by eating, these theoretical and conceptual arguments direct us to other ways of thinking about identity as both digestion and as indigestible. Bodies eat into culture. The mouth machine is central to the articulation of different orders, but so too is the tongue that sticks out, that draws in food, objects and people. Analysed along multiple alimentary lines of flight, in eating we constantly take in, chew up and spit out identities. Footnotes 1. As Barbara Santich has recently pointed out, Lévi-Strauss's point was made in relation to taboos on eating totem animals in traditional societies and wasn't a general comment on the connection between eating and thinking (4). 2. The sponsors of the Hunger Site include 0-0.com, a search engine, Proflowers.com, and an assortment of other examples of this new form of altruism (such as GreaterGood.com which advertises itself as a 'shop to benefit your favorite cause'), and 'World-Wide Recipes', which features a 'virtual restaurant'. 3. The pregnant body is of course one of the most policed entities in our culture, and pregnant friends report on the anxieties that are produced about what will go into the future child's body. 4. While Châtelet writes that thinking about the eating body 'throws her into full metaphor ... joining, for example the nutritional mouth and the lover's mouth' (8), I have tried to avoid the tug of metaphor. Of course, the seduction of metaphor is great, and there are copious examples of the metaphorisation of eating in regards to consumption, ingestion, reading and writing. However, as I've argued elsewhere (Probyn, Outside Belongings), I prefer to focus on the 'work' (or as Le Doeuff would say, 'le faire des images') that Deleuze and Guattari's terms accomplish as ways of modelling the social. This is a particularly crucial (if here underdeveloped) point in terms of my present project, where I seek to analyse the ways in which eating may reproduce an awareness of the visceral nature of social relations. That said, and as my valued colleague Melissa Hardie has often pointed out, my text is littered with metaphor. References Brillat-Savarin, Jean-Anthelme. The Physiology of Taste. Trans. Anne Drayton. Penguin, 1974. Châtelet, Noëlle. Le Corps a Corps Culinaire. Paris: Seuil, 1977. Deleuze, Gilles. "Rhizome versus Trees." The Deleuze Reader. Ed. Constantin V. Boundas. New York: Columbia UP, 1993. Foucault, Michel. The Order of Things: An Archaeology of the Human Sciences. New York: Vintage, 1973. Gatens, Moira, and Genevieve Lloyd. Collective Imaginings: Spinoza, Past and Present. New York and London: Routledge, 1999. Grossberg, Lawrence. "History, Politics and Postmodernism: Stuart Hall and Cultural Studies." Journal of Communication Inquiry 10.2 (1986): 61-77. ---. We Gotta Get Out of This Place: Popular Conservatism and Postmodern Culture. New York and London: Routledge,1992. Le Doeuff, Michèle. L'Étude et le Rouet. Paris: Seuil, 1989. Jenkins, Emily. Tongue First: Adventures in Physical Culture. London: Virago, 1999. Probyn, Elspeth. Outside Belongings. New York and London: Routledge, 1996. ---. Sexing the Self. Gendered Positions in Cultural Studies. New York and London: Routledge, 1993. Santich, Barbara. "Research Notes." The Centre for the History of Food and Drink Newsletter. The University of Adelaide, September 1999. Thompson, Sue. Promotional pamphlet for the Dairy Farmers' Association. 1997. Tomlinson, John. Globalization and Culture. Oxford: Polity Press, 1999. Citation reference for this article MLA style: Elspeth Probyn. "The Indigestion of Identities." M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 2.7 (1999). [your date of access] <http://www.uq.edu.au/mc/9910/indigestion.php>. Chicago style: Elspeth Probyn, "The Indigestion of Identities," M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 2, no. 7 (1999), <http://www.uq.edu.au/mc/9910/indigestion.php> ([your date of access]). APA style: Elspeth Probyn. (1999) The indigestion of identities. M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 2(7). <http://www.uq.edu.au/mc/9910/indigestion.php> ([your date of access]).

The Leichhardt Highway is a six hundred-kilometre stretch of sealed inland road that joins the Australian Queensland border town of Goondiwindi with the Capricorn Highway, just south of the Tropic of Capricorn. Named after the young Prussian naturalist Ludwig Leichhardt, part of this roadway follows the route his party took as they crossed northern Australia from Morton Bay (Brisbane) to Port Essington (near Darwin). Ignoring the usual colonial practice of honouring the powerful and aristocratic, Leichhardt named the noteworthy features along this route after his supporters and fellow expeditioners. Many of these names are still in use and a series of public monuments have also been erected in the intervening century and a half to commemorate this journey. Unlike Leichhardt, who survived his epic trip, some contemporary travellers who navigate the remote roadway named in his honour do not arrive at their final destinations. Memorials to these violently interrupted lives line the highway, many enigmatically located in places where there is no obvious explanation for the lethal violence that occurred there. This examination profiles the memorials along Leichhardt’s highway as Gothic practice, in order to illuminate some of the uncanny paradoxes around public memorials, as well as the loaded emotional terrain such commemorative practices may inhabit. All humans know that death awaits them (Morell). Yet, despite this, and the unprecedented torrent of images of death and dying saturating news, television, and social media (Duwe; Sumiala; Bisceglio), Gorer’s mid-century ideas about the denial of death and Becker’s 1973 Pulitzer prize-winning description of the purpose of human civilization as a defence against this knowledge remains current in the contemporary trope that individuals (at least in the West) deny their mortality. Contributing to this enigmatic situation is how many deny the realities of aging and bodily decay—the promise of the “life extension” industries (Hall)—and are shielded from death by hospitals, palliative care providers, and the multimillion dollar funeral industry (Kiernan). Drawing on Piatti-Farnell’s concept of popular culture artefacts as “haunted/haunting” texts, the below describes how memorials to the dead can powerfully reconnect those who experience them with death’s reality, by providing an “encrypted passageway through which the dead re-join the living in a responsive cycle of exchange and experience” (Piatti-Farnell). While certainly very different to the “sublime” iconic Gothic structure, the Gothic ruin that Summers argued could be seen as “a sacred relic, a memorial, a symbol of infinite sadness, of tenderest sensibility and regret” (407), these memorials do function in both this way as melancholy/regret-inducing relics as well as in Piatti-Farnell’s sense of bringing the dead into everyday consciousness. Such memorialising activity also evokes one of Spooner’s features of the Gothic, by acknowledging “the legacies of the past and its burdens on the present” (8).Ludwig Leichhardt and His HighwayWhen Leichhardt returned to Sydney in 1846 from his 18-month journey across northern Australia, he was greeted with surprise and then acclaim. Having mounted his expedition without any backing from influential figures in the colony, his party was presumed lost only weeks after its departure. Yet, once Leichhardt and almost all his expedition returned, he was hailed “Prince of Explorers” (Erdos). When awarding him a significant purse raised by public subscription, then Speaker of the Legislative Council voiced what he believed would be the explorer’s lasting memorial —the public memory of his achievement: “the undying glory of having your name enrolled amongst those of the great men whose genius and enterprise have impelled them to seek for fame in the prosecution of geographical science” (ctd. Leichhardt 539). Despite this acclaim, Leichhardt was a controversial figure in his day; his future prestige not enhanced by his Prussian/Germanic background or his disappearance two years later attempting to cross the continent. What troubled the colonial political class, however, was his transgressive act of naming features along his route after commoners rather than the colony’s aristocrats. Today, the Leichhardt Highway closely follows Leichhardt’s 1844-45 route for some 130 kilometres from Miles, north through Wandoan to Taroom. In the first weeks of his journey, Leichhardt named 16 features in this area: 6 of the more major of these after the men in his party—including the Aboriginal man ‘Charley’ and boy John Murphy—4 more after the tradesmen and other non-aristocratic sponsors of his venture, and the remainder either in memory of the journey’s quotidian events or natural features there found. What we now accept as traditional memorialising practice could in this case be termed as Gothic, in that it upset the rational, normal order of its day, and by honouring humble shopkeepers, blacksmiths and Indigenous individuals, revealed the “disturbance and ambivalence” (Botting 4) that underlay colonial class relations (Macintyre). On 1 December 1844, Leichhardt also memorialised his own past, referencing the Gothic in naming a watercourse The Creek of the Ruined Castles due to the “high sandstone rocks, fissured and broken like pillars and walls and the high gates of the ruined castles of Germany” (57). Leichhardt also disturbed and disfigured the nature he so admired, famously carving his initials deep into trees along his route—a number of which still exist, including the so-called Leichhardt Tree, a large coolibah in Taroom’s main street. Leichhardt also wrote his own memorial, keeping detailed records of his experiences—both good and more regretful—in the form of field books, notebooks and letters, with his major volume about this expedition published in London in 1847. Leichhardt’s journey has since been memorialised in various ways along the route. The Leichhardt Tree has been further defaced with numerous plaques nailed into its ancient bark, and the town’s federal government-funded Bicentennial project raised a formal memorial—a large sandstone slab laid with three bronze plaques—in the newly-named Ludwig Leichhardt Park. Leichhardt’s name also adorns many sites both along, and outside, the routes of his expeditions. While these fittingly include natural features such as the Leichhardt River in north-west Queensland (named in 1856 by Augustus Gregory who crossed it by searching for traces of the explorer’s ill-fated 1848 expedition), there are also many businesses across Queensland and the Northern Territory less appropriately carrying his name. More somber monuments to Leichhardt’s legacy also resulted from this journey. The first of these was the white settlement that followed his declaration that the countryside he moved through was well endowed with fertile soils. With squatters and settlers moving in and land taken up before Leichhardt had even arrived back in Sydney, the local Yeeman people were displaced, mistreated and completely eradicated within a decade (Elder). Mid-twentieth century, Patrick White’s literary reincarnation, Voss of the eponymous novel, and paintings by Sidney Nolan and Albert Tucker have enshrined in popular memory not only the difficult (and often described as Gothic) nature of the landscape through which Leichhardt travelled (Adams; Mollinson, and Bonham), but also the distinctive and contrary blend of intelligence, spiritual mysticism, recklessness, and stoicism Leichhardt brought to his task. Roadside Memorials Today, the Leichhardt Highway is also lined with a series of roadside shrines to those who have died much more recently. While, like centotaphs, tombstones, and cemeteries, these memorialise the dead, they differ in usually marking the exact location that death occurred. In 43 BC, Cicero articulated the idea of the dead living in memory, “The life of the dead consists in the recollection cherished of them by the living” (93), yet Nelson is one of very few contemporary writers to link roadside memorials to elements of Gothic sensibility. Such constructions can, however, be described as Gothic, in that they make the roadway unfamiliar by inscribing onto it the memory of corporeal trauma and, in the process, re-creating their locations as vivid sites of pain and suffering. These are also enigmatic sites. Traffic levels are generally low along the flat or gently undulating terrain and many of these memorials are located in locations where there is no obvious explanation for the violence that occurred there. They are loci of contradictions, in that they are both more private than other memorials, in being designed, and often made and erected, by family and friends of the deceased, and yet more public, visible to all who pass by (Campbell). Cemeteries are set apart from their surroundings; the roadside memorial is, in contrast, usually in open view along a thoroughfare. In further contrast to cemeteries, which contain many relatively standardised gravesites, individual roadside memorials encapsulate and express not only the vivid grief of family and friends but also—when they include vehicle wreckage or personal artefacts from the fatal incident—provide concrete evidence of the trauma that occurred. While the majority of individuals interned in cemeteries are long dead, roadside memorials mark relatively contemporary deaths, some so recent that there may still be tyre marks, debris and bloodstains marking the scene. In 2008, when I was regularly travelling this roadway, I documented, and researched, the six then extant memorial sites that marked the locations of ten fatalities from 1999 to 2006. (These were all still in place in mid-2014.) The fatal incidents are very diverse. While half involved trucks and/or road trains, at least three were single vehicle incidents, and the deceased ranged from 13 to 84 years of age. Excell argues that scholarship on roadside memorials should focus on “addressing the diversity of the material culture” (‘Contemporary Deathscapes’) and, in these terms, the Leichhardt Highway memorials vary from simple crosses to complex installations. All include crosses (mostly, but not exclusively, white), and almost all are inscribed with the name and birth/death dates of the deceased. Most include flowers or other plants (sometimes fresh but more often plastic), but sometimes also a range of relics from the crash and/or personal artefacts. These are, thus, unsettling sights, not least in the striking contrast they provide with the highway and surrounding road reserve. The specific location is a key component of their ability to re-sensitise viewers to the dangers of the route they are travelling. The first memorial travelling northwards, for instance, is situated at the very point at which the highway begins, some 18 kilometres from Goondiwindi. Two small white crosses decorated with plastic flowers are set poignantly close together. The inscriptions can also function as a means of mobilising connection with these dead strangers—a way of building Secomb’s “haunted community”, whereby community in the post-colonial age can only be built once past “murderous death” (131) is acknowledged. This memorial is inscribed with “Cec Hann 06 / A Good Bloke / A Good hoarseman [sic]” and “Pat Hann / A Good Woman” to tragically commemorate the deaths of an 84-year-old man and his 79-year-old wife from South Australia who died in the early afternoon of 5 June 2006 when their Ford Falcon, towing a caravan, pulled onto the highway and was hit by a prime mover pulling two trailers (Queensland Police, ‘Double Fatality’; Jones, and McColl). Further north along the highway are two memorials marking the most inexplicable of road deaths: the single vehicle fatality (Connolly, Cullen, and McTigue). Darren Ammenhauser, aged 29, is remembered with a single white cross with flowers and plaque attached to a post, inscribed hopefully, “Darren Ammenhauser 1971-2000 At Rest.” Further again, at Billa Billa Creek, a beautifully crafted metal cross attached to a fence is inscribed with the text, “Kenneth J. Forrester / RIP Jack / 21.10.25 – 27.4.05” marking the death of the 79-year-old driver whose vehicle veered off the highway to collide with a culvert on the creek. It was reported that the vehicle rolled over several times before coming to rest on its wheels and that Forrester was dead when the police arrived (Queensland Police, ‘Fatal Traffic Incident’). More complex memorials recollect both single and multiple deaths. One, set on both sides of the road, maps the physical trajectory of the fatal smash. This memorial comprises white crosses on both sides of road, attached to a tree on one side, and a number of ancillary sites including damaged tyres with crosses placed inside them on both sides of the road. Simple inscriptions relay the inability of such words to express real grief: “Gary (Gazza) Stevens / Sadly missed” and “Gary (Gazza) Stevens / Sadly missed / Forever in our hearts.” The oldest and most complex memorial on the route, commemorating the death of four individuals on 18 June 1999, is also situated on both sides of the road, marking the collision of two vehicles travelling in opposite directions. One memorial to a 62-year-old man comprises a cross with flowers, personal and automotive relics, and a plaque set inside a wooden fence and simply inscribed “John Henry Keenan / 23-11-1936–18-06-1999”. The second memorial contains three white crosses set side-by-side, together with flowers and relics, and reveals that members of three generations of the same family died at this location: “Raymond Campbell ‘Butch’ / 26-3-67–18-6-99” (32 years of age), “Lorraine Margaret Campbell ‘Lloydie’ / 29-11-46–18-6-99” (53 years), and “Raymond Jon Campbell RJ / 28-1-86–18-6-99” (13 years). The final memorial on this stretch of highway is dedicated to Jason John Zupp of Toowoomba who died two weeks before Christmas 2005. This consists of a white cross, decorated with flowers and inscribed: “Jason John Zupp / Loved & missed by all”—a phrase echoed in his newspaper obituary. The police media statement noted that, “at 11.24pm a prime mover carrying four empty trailers [stacked two high] has rolled on the Leichhardt Highway 17km north of Taroom” (Queensland Police, ‘Fatal Truck Accident’). The roadside memorial was placed alongside a ditch on a straight stretch of road where the body was found. The coroner’s report adds the following chilling information: “Mr Zupp was thrown out of the cabin and his body was found near the cabin. There is no evidence whatsoever that he had applied the brakes or in any way tried to prevent the crash … Jason was not wearing his seatbelt” (Cornack 5, 6). Cornack also remarked the truck was over length, the brakes had not been properly adjusted, and the trip that Zupp had undertaken could not been lawfully completed according to fatigue management regulations then in place (8). Although poignant and highly visible due to these memorials, these deaths form a small part of Australia’s road toll, and underscore our ambivalent relationship with the automobile, where road death is accepted as a necessary side-effect of the freedom of movement the technology offers (Ladd). These memorials thus animate highways as Gothic landscapes due to the “multifaceted” (Haider 56) nature of the fear, terror and horror their acknowledgement can bring. Since 1981, there have been, for instance, between some 1,600 and 3,300 road deaths each year in Australia and, while there is evidence of a long term downward trend, the number of deaths per annum has not changed markedly since 1991 (DITRDLG 1, 2), and has risen in some years since then. The U.S.A. marked its millionth road death in 1951 (Ladd) along the way to over 3,000,000 during the 20th century (Advocates). These deaths are far reaching, with U.K. research suggesting that each death there leaves an average of 6 people significantly affected, and that there are some 10 to 20 per cent of mourners who experience more complicated grief and longer term negative affects during this difficult time (‘Pathways Through Grief’). As the placing of roadside memorials has become a common occurrence the world over (Klaassens, Groote, and Vanclay; Grider; Cohen), these are now considered, in MacConville’s opinion, not only “an appropriate, but also an expected response to tragedy”. Hockey and Draper have explored the therapeutic value of the maintenance of “‘continuing bonds’ between the living and the dead” (3). This is, however, only one explanation for the reasons that individuals erect roadside memorials with research suggesting roadside memorials perform two main purposes in their linking of the past with the present—as not only sites of grieving and remembrance, but also of warning (Hartig, and Dunn; Everett; Excell, Roadside Memorials; MacConville). Clark adds that by “localis[ing] and personalis[ing] the road dead,” roadside memorials raise the profile of road trauma by connecting the emotionless statistics of road death directly to individual tragedy. They, thus, transform the highway into not only into a site of past horror, but one in which pain and terror could still happen, and happen at any moment. Despite their increasing commonality and their recognition as cultural artefacts, these memorials thus occupy “an uncomfortable place” both in terms of public policy and for some individuals (Lowe). While in some states of the U.S.A. and in Ireland the erection of such memorials is facilitated by local authorities as components of road safety campaigns, in the U.K. there appears to be “a growing official opposition to the erection of memorials” (MacConville). Criticism has focused on the dangers (of distraction and obstruction) these structures pose to passing traffic and pedestrians, while others protest their erection on aesthetic grounds and even claim memorials can lower property values (Everett). While many ascertain a sense of hope and purpose in the physical act of creating such shrines (see, for instance, Grider; Davies), they form an uncanny presence along the highway and can provide dangerous psychological territory for the viewer (Brien). Alongside the townships, tourist sites, motels, and petrol stations vying to attract customers, they stain the roadway with the unmistakable sign that a violent death has happened—bringing death, and the dead, to the fore as a component of these journeys, and destabilising prominent cultural narratives of technological progress and safety (Richter, Barach, Ben-Michael, and Berman).Conclusion This investigation has followed Goddu who proposes that a Gothic text “registers its culture’s contradictions” (3) and, in profiling these memorials as “intimately connected to the culture that produces them” (Goddu 3) has proposed memorials as Gothic artefacts that can both disturb and reveal. Roadside memorials are, indeed, so loaded with emotional content that their close contemplation can be traumatising (Brien), yet they are inescapable while navigating the roadway. Part of their power resides in their ability to re-animate those persons killed in these violent in the minds of those viewing these memorials. In this way, these individuals are reincarnated as ghostly presences along the highway, forming channels via which the traveller can not only make human contact with the dead, but also come to recognise and ponder their own sense of mortality. While roadside memorials are thus like civic war memorials in bringing untimely death to the forefront of public view, roadside memorials provide a much more raw expression of the chaotic, anarchic and traumatic moment that separates the world of the living from that of the dead. While traditional memorials—such as those dedicated by, and to, Leichhardt—moreover, pay homage to the vitality of the lives of those they commemorate, roadside memorials not only acknowledge the alarming circumstances of unexpected death but also stand testament to the power of the paradox of the incontrovertibility of sudden death versus our lack of ability to postpone it. In this way, further research into these and other examples of Gothic memorialising practice has much to offer various areas of cultural study in Australia.ReferencesAdams, Brian. Sidney Nolan: Such Is Life. Hawthorn, Vic.: Hutchinson, 1987. Advocates for Highway and Auto Safety. “Motor Vehicle Traffic Fatalities & Fatality Rate: 1899-2003.” 2004. Becker, Ernest. The Denial of Death. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1973. Bisceglio, Paul. “How Social Media Is Changing the Way We Approach Death.” The Atlantic 20 Aug. 2013. Botting, Fred. Gothic: The New Critical Idiom. 2nd edition. Abingdon, UK: Routledge, 2014. Brien, Donna Lee. “Looking at Death with Writers’ Eyes: Developing Protocols for Utilising Roadside Memorials in Creative Writing Classes.” Roadside Memorials. Ed. Jennifer Clark. Armidale, NSW: EMU Press, 2006. 208–216. Campbell, Elaine. “Public Sphere as Assemblage: The Cultural Politics of Roadside Memorialization.” The British Journal of Sociology 64.3 (2013): 526–547. Cicero, Marcus Tullius. The Orations of Marcus Tullius Cicero. 43 BC. Trans. C. D. Yonge. London: George Bell & Sons, 1903. Clark, Jennifer. “But Statistics Don’t Ride Skateboards, They Don’t Have Nicknames Like ‘Champ’: Personalising the Road Dead with Roadside Memorials.” 7th International Conference on the Social Context of Death, Dying and Disposal. Bath, UK: University of Bath, 2005. Cohen, Erik. “Roadside Memorials in Northeastern Thailand.” OMEGA: Journal of Death and Dying 66.4 (2012–13): 343–363. Connolly, John F., Anne Cullen, and Orfhlaith McTigue. “Single Road Traffic Deaths: Accident or Suicide?” Crisis: The Journal of Crisis Intervention and Suicide Prevention 16.2 (1995): 85–89. Cornack [Coroner]. Transcript of Proceedings. In The Matter of an Inquest into the Cause and Circumstances Surrounding the Death of Jason John Zupp. Towoomba, Qld.: Coroners Court. 12 Oct. 2007. Davies, Douglas. “Locating Hope: The Dynamics of Memorial Sites.” 6th International Conference on the Social Context of Death, Dying and Disposal. York, UK: University of York, 2002. Department of Infrastructure, Transport, Regional Development and Local Government [DITRDLG]. Road Deaths Australia: 2007 Statistical Summary. Canberra: Commonwealth of Australia, 2008. Duwe, Grant. “Body-count Journalism: The Presentation of Mass Murder in the News Media.” Homicide Studies 4 (2000): 364–399. Elder, Bruce. Blood on the Wattle: Massacres and Maltreatment of Aboriginal Australians since 1788. Sydney: New Holland, 1998. Erdos, Renee. “Leichhardt, Friedrich Wilhelm Ludwig (1813-1848).” Australian Dictionary of Biography Online Edition. Melbourne: Melbourne UP, 1967. Everett, Holly. Roadside Crosses in Contemporary Memorial Culture. Austin: Texas UP, 2002. Excell, Gerri. “Roadside Memorials in the UK.” Unpublished MA thesis. Reading: University of Reading, 2004. ———. “Contemporary Deathscapes: A Comparative Analysis of the Material Culture of Roadside Memorials in the US, Australia and the UK.” 7th International Conference on the Social Context of Death, Dying and Disposal. Bath, UK: University of Bath, 2005. Goddu, Teresa A. Gothic America: Narrative, History, and Nation. New York: Columbia UP, 2007. Gorer, Geoffrey. “The Pornography of Death.” Encounter V.4 (1955): 49–52. Grider, Sylvia. “Spontaneous Shrines: A Modern Response to Tragedy and Disaster.” New Directions in Folklore (5 Oct. 2001). Haider, Amna. “War Trauma and Gothic Landscapes of Dispossession and Dislocation in Pat Barker’s Regeneration Trilogy.” Gothic Studies 14.2 (2012): 55–73. Hall, Stephen S. Merchants of Immortality: Chasing the Dream of Human Life Extension. Boston: Houghton, Mifflin, Harcourt, 2003. Hartig, Kate V., and Kevin M. Dunn. “Roadside Memorials: Interpreting New Deathscapes in Newcastle, New South Wales.” Australian Geographical Studies 36 (1998): 5–20. Hockey, Jenny, and Janet Draper. “Beyond the Womb and the Tomb: Identity, (Dis)embodiment and the Life Course.” Body & Society 11.2 (2005): 41–57. Online version: 1–25. Jones, Ian, and Kaye McColl. (2006) “Highway Tragedy.” Goondiwindi Argus 9 Jun. 2006. Kiernan, Stephen P. “The Transformation of Death in America.” Final Acts: Death, Dying, and the Choices We Make. Eds. Nan Bauer-Maglin, and Donna Perry. Rutgers University: Rutgers UP, 2010. 163–182. Klaassens, M., P.D. Groote, and F.M. Vanclay. “Expressions of Private Mourning in Public Space: The Evolving Structure of Spontaneous and Permanent Roadside Memorials in the Netherlands.” Death Studies 37.2 (2013): 145–171. Ladd, Brian. Autophobia: Love and Hate in the Automotive Age. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 2008. Leichhardt, Ludwig. Journal of an Overland Expedition of Australia from Moreton Bay to Port Essington, A Distance of Upwards of 3000 Miles during the Years 1844–1845. London, T & W Boone, 1847. Facsimile ed. Sydney: Macarthur Press, n.d. Lowe, Tim. “Roadside Memorials in South Eastern Australia.” 7th International Conference on the Social Context of Death, Dying and Disposal. Bath, UK: University of Bath, 2005. MacConville, Una. “Roadside Memorials.” Bath, UK: Centre for Death & Society, Department of Social and Policy Sciences, University of Bath, 2007. Macintyre, Stuart. “The Making of the Australian Working Class: An Historiographical Survey.” Historical Studies 18.71 (1978): 233–253. Mollinson, James, and Nicholas Bonham. Tucker. South Melbourne: Macmillan Company of Australia, and Australian National Gallery, 1982. Morell, Virginia. “Mournful Creatures.” Lapham’s Quarterly 6.4 (2013): 200–208. Nelson, Victoria. Gothicka: Vampire Heroes, Human Gods, and the New Supernatural. Harvard University: Harvard UP, 2012. “Pathways through Grief.” 1st National Conference on Bereavement in a Healthcare Setting. Dundee, 1–2 Sep. 2008. Piatti-Farnell, Lorna. “Words from the Culinary Crypt: Reading the Recipe as a Haunted/Haunting Text.” M/C Journal 16.3 (2013). Queensland Police. “Fatal Traffic Incident, Goondiwindi [Media Advisory].” 27 Apr. 2005. ———. “Fatal Truck Accident, Taroom.” Media release. 11 Dec. 2005. ———. “Double Fatality, Goondiwindi.” Media release. 5 Jun. 2006. Richter, E. D., P. Barach, E. Ben-Michael, and T. Berman. “Death and Injury from Motor Vehicle Crashes: A Public Health Failure, Not an Achievement.” Injury Prevention 7 (2001): 176–178. Secomb, Linnell. “Haunted Community.” The Politics of Community. Ed. Michael Strysick. Aurora, Co: Davies Group, 2002. 131–150. Spooner, Catherine. Contemporary Gothic. London: Reaktion, 2006.

Introduction One of the ways in which ‘country’ is made to work discursively is in ‘country music’ – defining a genre and sensibility in music production, marketing and consumption. This article seeks to excavate one small niche in the historical geography of country music to explore exactly how discursive antecedents emerged, and crucially, how images associated with ‘country’ surfaced and travelled internationally via one of the new ‘global’ media of the first half of the twentieth century – sheet music. My central arguments are twofold: first, that alongside aural qualities and lyrical content, the visual elements of sheet music were important and thus far have been under-acknowledged. Sheet music diffused the imagery connecting ‘country’ to music, to particular landscapes, and masculinities. In the literature on country music much emphasis has been placed on film, radio and television (Tichi; Peterson). Yet, sheet music was for several decades the most common way people bought personal copies of songs they liked and intended to play at home on piano, guitar or ukulele. This was particularly the case in Australia – geographically distant, and rarely included in international tours by American country music stars. Sheet music is thus a rich text to reveal the historical contours of ‘country’. My second and related argument is that that the possibilities for the globalising of ‘country’ were first explored in music. The idea of transnational discourses associated with ‘country’ and ‘rurality’ is relatively new (Cloke et al; Gorman-Murray et al; McCarthy), but in music we see early evidence of a globalising discourse of ‘country’ well ahead of the time period usually analysed. Accordingly, my focus is on the sheet music of country songs in Australia in the first half of the twentieth century and on how visual representations hybridised travelling themes to create a new vernacular ‘country’ in Australia. Creating ‘Country’ Music Country music, as its name suggests, is perceived as the music of rural areas, “defined in contrast to metropolitan norms” (Smith 301). However, the ‘naturalness’ of associations between country music and rurality belies a history of urban capitalism and the refinement of deliberate methods of marketing music through associated visual imagery. Early groups wore suits and dressed for urban audiences – but then altered appearances later, on the insistence of urban record companies, to emphasise rurality and cowboy heritage. Post-1950, ‘country’ came to replace ‘folk’ music as a marketing label, as the latter was considered to have too many communistic references (Hemphill 5), and the ethnic mixing of earlier folk styles was conveniently forgotten in the marketing of ‘country’ music as distinct from African American ‘race’ and ‘r and b’ music. Now an industry of its own with multinational headquarters in Nashville, country music is a ‘cash cow’ for entertainment corporations, with lower average production costs, considerable profit margins, and marketing advantages that stem from tropes of working class identity and ‘rural’ honesty (see Lewis; Arango). Another of country music’s associations is with American geography – and an imagined heartland in the colonial frontier of the American West. Slippages between ‘country’ and ‘western’ in music, film and dress enhance this. But historical fictions are masked: ‘purists’ argue that western dress and music have nothing to do with ‘country’ (see truewesternmusic.com), while recognition of the Spanish-Mexican, Native American and Hawaiian origins of ‘cowboy’ mythology is meagre (George-Warren and Freedman). Similarly, the highly international diffusion and adaptation of country music as it rose to prominence in the 1940s is frequently downplayed (Connell and Gibson), as are the destructive elements of colonialism and dispossession of indigenous peoples in frontier America (though Johnny Cash’s 1964 album The Ballads Of The American Indian: Bitter Tears was an exception). Adding to the above is the way ‘country’ operates discursively in music as a means to construct particular masculinities. Again, linked to rural imagery and the American frontier, the dominant masculinity is of rugged men wrestling nature, negotiating hardships and the pressures of family life. Country music valorises ‘heroic masculinities’ (Holt and Thompson), with echoes of earlier cowboy identities reverberating into contemporary performance through dress style, lyrical content and marketing imagery. The men of country music mythology live an isolated existence, working hard to earn an income for dependent families. Their music speaks to the triumph of hard work, honest values (meaning in this context a musical style, and lyrical concerns that are ‘down to earth’, ‘straightforward’ and ‘without pretence’) and physical strength, in spite of neglect from national governments and uncaring urban leaders. Country music has often come to be associated with conservative politics, heteronormativity, and whiteness (Gibson and Davidson), echoing the wider politics of ‘country’ – it is no coincidence, for example, that the slogan for the 2008 Republican National Convention in America was ‘country first’. And yet, throughout its history, country music has also enabled more diverse gender performances to emerge – from those emphasising (or bemoaning) domesticity; assertive femininity; creative negotiation of ‘country’ norms by gay men; and ‘alternative’ culture (captured in the marketing tag, ‘alt.country’); to those acknowledging white male victimhood, criminality (‘the outlaw’), vulnerability and cruelty (see Johnson; McCusker and Pecknold; Saucier). Despite dominant tropes of ‘honesty’, country music is far from transparent, standing for certain values and identities, and yet enabling the construction of diverse and contradictory others. Historical analysis is therefore required to trace the emergence of ‘country’ in music, as it travelled beyond America. A Note on Sheet Music as Media Source Sheet music was one of the main modes of distribution of music from the 1930s through to the 1950s – a formative period in which an eclectic group of otherwise distinct ‘hillbilly’ and ‘folk’ styles moved into a single genre identity, and after which vinyl singles and LP records with picture covers dominated. Sheet music was prevalent in everyday life: beyond radio, a hit song was one that was widely purchased as sheet music, while pianos and sheet music collections (stored in a piece of furniture called a ‘music canterbury’) in family homes were commonplace. Sheet music is in many respects preferable to recorded music as a form of evidence for historical analysis of country music. Picture LP covers did not arrive until the late 1950s (by which time rock and roll had surpassed country music). Until then, 78 rpm shellac discs, the main form of pre-recorded music, featured generic brown paper sleeves from the individual record companies, or city retail stores. Also, while radio was clearly central to the consumption of music in this period, it obviously also lacked the pictorial element that sheet music could provide. Sheet music bridged the music and printing industries – the latter already well-equipped with colour printing, graphic design and marketing tools. Sheet music was often literally crammed with information, providing the researcher with musical notation, lyrics, cover art and embedded advertisements – aural and visual texts combined. These multiple dimensions of sheet music proved useful here, for clues to the context of the music/media industries and geography of distribution (for instance, in addresses for publishers and sheet music retail shops). Moreover, most sheet music of the time used rich, sometimes exaggerated, images to convince passing shoppers to buy songs that they had possibly never heard. As sheet music required caricature rather than detail or historical accuracy, it enabled fantasy without distraction. In terms of representations of ‘country’, then, sheet music is perhaps even more evocative than film or television. Hundreds of sheet music items were collected for this research over several years, through deliberate searching (for instance, in library archives and specialist sheet music stores) and with some serendipity (for instance, when buying second hand sheet music in charity shops or garage sales). The collected material is probably not representative of all music available at the time – it is as much a specialised personal collection as a comprehensive survey. However, at least some material from all the major Australian country music performers of the time were found, and the resulting collection appears to be several times larger than that held currently by the National Library of Australia (from which some entries were sourced). All examples here are of songs written by, or cover art designed for Australian country music performers. For brevity’s sake, the following analysis of the sheet music follows a crudely chronological framework. Country Music in Australia Before ‘Country’ Country music did not ‘arrive’ in Australia from America as a fully-finished genre category; nor was Australia at the time without rural mythology or its own folk music traditions. Associations between Australian national identity, rurality and popular culture were entrenched in a period of intense creativity and renewed national pride in the decades prior to and after Federation in 1901. This period saw an outpouring of art, poetry, music and writing in new nationalist idiom, rooted in ‘the bush’ (though drawing heavily on Celtic expressions), and celebrating themes of mateship, rural adversity and ‘battlers’. By the turn of the twentieth century, such myths, invoked through memory and nostalgia, had already been popularised. Australia had a fully-established system of colonies, capital cities and state governments, and was highly urbanised. Yet the poetry, folk music and art, invariably set in rural locales, looked back to the early 1800s, romanticising bush characters and frontier events. The ‘bush ballad’ was a central and recurring motif, one that commentators have argued was distinctly, and essentially ‘Australian’ (Watson; Smith). Sheet music from this early period reflects the nationalistic, bush-orientated popular culture of the time: iconic Australian fauna and flora are prominent, and Australian folk culture is emphasised as ‘native’ (being the first era of cultural expressions from Australian-born residents). Pioneer life and achievements are celebrated. ‘Along the road to Gundagai’, for instance, was about an iconic Australian country town and depicted sheep droving along rustic trails with overhanging eucalypts. Male figures are either absent, or are depicted in situ as lone drovers in the archetypal ‘shepherd’ image, behind their flocks of sheep (Figure 1). Figure 1: No. 1 Magpie Ballads – The Pioneer (c1900) and Along the road to Gundagai (1923). Further colonial ruralities developed in Australia from the 1910s to 1940s, when agrarian values grew in the promotion of Australian agricultural exports. Australia ‘rode on the sheep’s back’ to industrialisation, and governments promoted rural development and inland migration. It was a period in which rural lifestyles were seen as superior to those in the crowded inner city, and government strategies sought to create a landed proletariat through post-war land settlement and farm allotment schemes. National security was said to rely on populating the inland with those of European descent, developing rural industries, and breeding a healthier and yet compliant population (Dufty), from which armies of war-ready men could be recruited in times of conflict. Popular culture served these national interests, and thus during these decades, when ‘hillbilly’ and other North American music forms were imported, they were transformed, adapted and reworked (as in other places such as Canada – see Lehr). There were definite parallels in the frontier narratives of the United States (Whiteoak), and several local adaptations followed: Tex Morton became Australia’s ‘Yodelling boundary rider’ and Gordon Parsons became ‘Australia’s yodelling bushman’. American songs were re-recorded and performed, and new original songs written with Australian lyrics, titles and themes. Visual imagery in sheet music built upon earlier folk/bush frontier themes to re-cast Australian pastoralism in a more settled, modernist and nationalist aesthetic; farms were places for the production of a robust nation. Where male figures were present on sheet music covers in the early twentieth century, they became more prominent in this period, and wore Akubras (Figure 2). The lyrics to John Ashe’s Growin’ the Golden Fleece (1952) exemplify this mix of Australian frontier imagery, new pastoralist/nationalist rhetoric, and the importation of American cowboy masculinity: Go west and take up sheep, man, North Queensland is the shot But if you don’t get rich, man, you’re sure to get dry rot Oh! Growin’ the golden fleece, battlin’ a-way out west Is bound to break your flamin’ heart, or else expand your chest… We westerners are handy, we can’t afford to crack Not while the whole darn’d country is riding on our back Figure 2: Eric Tutin’s Shearers’ Jamboree (1946). As in America, country music struck a chord because it emerged “at a point in history when the project of the creation and settlement of a new society was underway but had been neither completed nor abandoned” (Dyer 33). Governments pressed on with the colonial project of inland expansion in Australia, despite the theft of indigenous country this entailed, and popular culture such as music became a means to normalise and naturalise the process. Again, mutations of American western imagery, and particular iconic male figures were important, as in Roy Darling’s (1945) Overlander Trail (Figure 3): Wagon wheels are rolling on, and the days seem mighty long Clouds of heat-dust in the air, bawling cattle everywhere They’re on the overlander trail Where only sheer determination will prevail Men of Aussie with a job to do, they’ll stick and drive the cattle through And though they sweat they know they surely must Keep on the trail that winds a-head thro’ heat and dust All sons of Aussie and they will not fail. Sheet music depicted silhouetted men in cowboy hats on horses (either riding solo or in small groups), riding into sunsets or before looming mountain ranges. Music – an important part of popular culture in the 1940s – furthered the colonial project of invading, securing and transforming the Australian interior by normalising its agendas and providing it with heroic male characters, stirring tales and catchy tunes. Figure 3: ‘Roy Darling’s (1945) Overlander Trail and Smoky Dawson’s The Overlander’s Song (1946). ‘Country Music’ Becomes a (Globalised) Genre Further growth in Australian country music followed waves of popularity in the United States in the 1940s and 1950s, and was heavily influenced by new cross-media publicity opportunities. Radio shows expanded, and western TV shows such as Bonanza and On the Range fuelled a ‘golden age’. Australian performers such as Slim Dusty and Smokey Dawson rose to fame (see Fitzgerald and Hayward) in an era when rural-urban migration peaked. Sheet music reflected the further diffusion and adoption of American visual imagery: where male figures were present on sheet music covers, they became more prominent than before and wore Stetsons. Some were depicted as chiselled-faced but simple men, with plain clothing and square jaws. Others began to more enthusiastically embrace cowboy looks, with bandana neckerchiefs, rawhide waistcoats, embellished and harnessed tall shaft boots, pipe-edged western shirts with wide collars, smile pockets, snap fasteners and shotgun cuffs, and fringed leather jackets (Figure 4). Landscapes altered further too: cacti replaced eucalypts, and iconic ‘western’ imagery of dusty towns, deserts, mesas and buttes appeared (Figure 5). Any semblance of folk music’s appeal to rustic authenticity was jettisoned in favour of showmanship, as cowboy personas were constructed to maximise cinematic appeal. Figure 4: Al Dexter’s Pistol Packin’ Mama (1943) and Reg Lindsay’s (1954) Country and Western Song Album. Figure 5: Tim McNamara’s Hitching Post (1948) and Smoky Dawson’s Golden West Album (1951). Far from slavish mimicry of American culture, however, hybridisations were common. According to Australian music historian Graeme Smith (300): “Australian place names appear, seeking the same mythological resonance that American localisation evoked: hobos became bagmen […] cowboys become boundary riders.” Thus alongside reproductions of the musical notations of American songs by Lefty Frizzel, Roy Carter and Jimmie Rodgers were songs with localised themes by new Australian stars such as Reg Lindsay and Smoky Dawson: My curlyheaded buckaroo, My home way out back, and On the Murray Valley. On the cover of The square dance by the billabong (Figure 6) – the title of which itself was a conjunction of archetypal ‘country’ images from both America and Australia – a background of eucalypts and windmills frames dancers in classic 1940s western (American) garb. In the case of Tex Morton’s Beautiful Queensland (Figure 7), itself mutated from W. Lee O’Daniel’s Beautiful Texas (c1945), the sheet music instructed those playing the music that the ‘names of other states may be substituted for Queensland’. ‘Country’ music had become an established genre, with normative values, standardised images and themes and yet constituted a stylistic formula with enough polysemy to enable local adaptations and variations. Figure 6: The Square dance by the billabong, Vernon Lisle, 1951. Figure 7: Beautiful Queensland, Tex Morton, c1945 source: http://nla.gov.au/nla.mus-vn1793930. Conclusions In country music images of place and masculinity combine. In music, frontier landscapes are populated by rugged men living ‘on the range’ in neo-colonial attempts to tame the land and convert it to productive uses. This article has considered only one media – sheet music – in only one country (Australia) and in only one time period (1900-1950s). There is much more to say than was possible here about country music, place and gender – particularly recently, since ‘country’ has fragmented into several niches, and marketing of country music via cable television and the internet has ensued (see McCusker and Pecknold). My purpose here has been instead to explore the early origins of ‘country’ mythology in popular culture, through a media source rarely analysed. Images associated with ‘country’ travelled internationally via sheet music, immensely popular in the 1930s and 1940s before the advent of television. The visual elements of sheet music contributed to the popularisation and standardisation of genre expectations and appearances, and yet these too travelled and were adapted and varied in places like Australia which had their own colonial histories and folk music heritages. Evidenced here is how combinations of geographical and gender imagery embraced imported American cowboy imagery and adapted it to local markets and concerns. Australia saw itself as a modern rural utopia with export aspirations and a desire to secure permanence through taming and populating its inland. Sheet music reflected all this. So too, sheet music reveals the historical contours of ‘country’ as a transnational discourse – and the extent to which ‘country’ brought with it a clearly defined set of normative values, a somewhat exaggerated cowboy masculinity, and a remarkable capacity to be moulded to local circumstances. Well before later and more supposedly ‘global’ media such as the internet and television, the humble printed sheet of notated music was steadily shaping ‘country’ imagery, and an emergent international geography of cultural flows. References Arango, Tim. “Cashville USA.” Fortune, Jan 29, 2007. Sept 3, 2008, http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/fortune_archive/2007/01/22/8397980/index.htm. Cloke, Paul, Marsden, Terry and Mooney, Patrick, eds. Handbook of Rural Studies, London: Sage, 2006. Connell, John and Gibson, Chris. Sound Tracks: Popular Music, Identity and Place, London: Routledge, 2003. Dufty, Rae. Rethinking the politics of distribution: the geographies and governmentalities of housing assistance in rural New South Wales, Australia, PhD thesis, UNSW, 2008. Dyer, Richard. White: Essays on Race and Culture, London: Routledge, 1997. George-Warren, Holly and Freedman, Michelle. How the West was Worn: a History of Western Wear, New York: Abrams, 2000. Fitzgerald, Jon and Hayward, Phil. “At the confluence: Slim Dusty and Australian country music.” Outback and Urban: Australian Country Music. Ed. Phil Hayward. Gympie: Australian Institute of Country Music Press, 2003. 29-54. Gibson, Chris and Davidson, Deborah. “Tamworth, Australia’s ‘country music capital’: place marketing, rural narratives and resident reactions.” Journal of Rural Studies 20 (2004): 387-404. Gorman-Murray, Andrew, Darian-Smith, Kate and Gibson, Chris. “Scaling the rural: reflections on rural cultural studies.” Australian Humanities Review 45 (2008): in press. Hemphill, Paul. The Nashville Sound: Bright Lights and Country Music, New York: Simon and Schuster, 1970. Holt, Douglas B. and Thompson, Craig J. “Man-of-action heroes: the pursuit of heroic masculinity in everyday consumption.” Journal of Consumer Research 31 (2004). Johnson, Corey W. “‘The first step is the two-step’: hegemonic masculinity and dancing in a country western gay bar.” International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education 18 (2004): 445-464. Lehr, John C. “‘Texas (When I die)’: national identity and images of place in Canadian country music broadcasts.” The Canadian Geographer 27 (1983): 361-370. Lewis, George H. “Lap dancer or hillbilly deluxe? The cultural construction of modern country music.” Journal of Popular Culture, 31 (1997): 163-173. McCarthy, James. “Rural geography: globalizing the countryside.” Progress in Human Geography 32 (2008): 132-137. McCusker, Kristine M. and Pecknold, Diane. Eds. A Boy Named Sue: Gender and Country Music. UP of Mississippi, 2004. Peterson, Richard A. Creating Country Music: Fabricating Authenticity. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1997. Saucier, Karen A. “Healers and heartbreakers: images of women and men in country music.” Journal of Popular Culture 20 (1986): 147-166. Smith, Graeme. “Australian country music and the hillbilly yodel.” Popular Music 13 (1994): 297-311. Tichi, Cecelia. Readin’ Country Music. Durham: Duke UP, 1998. truewesternmusic.com “True western music.”, Sept 3, 2008, http://truewesternmusic.com/. Watson, Eric. Country Music in Australia. Sydney: Rodeo Publications, 1984. Whiteoak, John. “Two frontiers: early cowboy music and Australian popular culture.” Outback and Urban: Australian Country Music. Ed. P. Hayward. Gympie: AICMP: 2003. 1-28.

Introduction The accelerometer seems, at first, both advanced and dated, both too complex and not complex enough. It sits in our video game controllers and our smartphones allowing us to move beyond mere button presses into immersive experiences where the motion of the hand is directly translated into the motion on the screen, where our flesh is transformed into the flesh of a superhero. Or at least that was the promise in 2005. Since then, motion control has moved from a promised revitalization of the video game industry to a not-quite-good-enough gimmick that all games use but none use well. Rogers describes the diffusion of innovation, as an invention or technology comes to market, in five phases: First, innovators will take risks with a new invention. Second, early adopters will establish a market and lead opinion. Third, the early majority shows that the product has wide appeal and application. Fourth, the late majority adopt the technology only after their skepticism has been allayed. Finally the laggards adopt the technology only when no other options are present (62). Not every technology makes it through the diffusion, however, and there are many who have never warmed to the accelerometer-controlled video game. Once an innovation has moved into the mainstream, additional waves of innovation may take place, when innovators or early adopters may find new uses for existing technology, and bring these uses into the majority. This is the case with the accelerometer that began as an airbag trigger and today is used for measuring and augmenting human motion, from dance to health (Walter 84). In many ways, gestural control of video games, an augmentation technology, was an interlude in the advancement of motion control. History In the early 1920s, bulky proofs-of-concept were produced that manipulated electrical voltage levels based on the movement of a probe, many related to early pressure or force sensors. The relationships between pressure, force, velocity and acceleration are well understood, but development of a tool that could measure one and infer the others was a many-fronted activity. Each of these individual sensors has its own specific application and many are still in use today, as pressure triggers, reaction devices, or other sensor-based interactivity, such as video games (Latulipe et al. 2995) and dance (Chu et al. 184). Over the years, the probes and devices became smaller and more accurate, and eventually migrated to the semiconductor, allowing the measurement of acceleration to take place within an almost inconsequential form-factor. Today, accelerometer chips are in many consumer devices and athletes wear battery-powered wireless accelerometer bracelets that report their every movement in real-time, a concept unimaginable only 20 years ago. One of the significant initial uses for accelerometers was as a sensor for the deployment of airbags in automobiles (Varat and Husher 1). The sensor was placed in the front bumper, detecting quick changes in speed that would indicate a crash. The system was a significant advance in the safety of automobiles, and followed Rogers’ diffusion through to the point where all new cars have airbags as a standard component. Airbags, and the accelerometers which allow them to function fast enough to save lives, are a ubiquitous, commoditized technology that most people take for granted, and served as the primary motivating factor for the mass-production of silicon-based accelerometer chips. On 14 September 2005, a device was introduced which would fundamentally alter the principal market for accelerometer microchips. The accelerometer was the ADXL335, a small, low-power, 3-Axis device capable of measuring up to 3g (1g is the acceleration due to gravity), and the device that used this accelerometer was the Wii remote, also called the Wiimote. Developed by Nintendo and its holding companies, the Wii remote was to be a defining feature of Nintendo’s 7th-generation video game console, in direct competition with the Xbox 360 and the Playstation 3. The Wii remote was so successful that both Microsoft and Sony added motion control to their platforms, in the form of the accelerometer-based “dual shock” controller for the Playstation, and later the Playstation Move controller; as well as an integrated accelerometer in the Xbox 360 controller and the later release of the Microsoft Kinect 3D motion sensing camera. Simultaneously, computer manufacturing companies saw a different, more pedantic use of the accelerometer. The primary storage medium in most computers today is the Hard Disk Drive (HDD), a set of spinning platters of electro-magnetically stored information. Much like a record player, the HDD contains a “head” which sweeps back and forth across the platter, reading and writing data. As computers changed from desktops to laptops, people moved their computers more often, and a problem arose. If the HDD inside a laptop was active when the laptop was moved, the read head might touch the surface of the disk, damaging the HDD and destroying information. Two solutions were implemented: vibration dampening in the manufacturing process, and the use of an accelerometer to detect motion. When the laptop is bumped, or dropped, the hard disk will sense the motion and immediately park the head, saving the disk and the valuable data inside. As a consequence of laptop computers and Wii remotes using accelerometers, the market for these devices began to swing from their use within car airbag systems toward their use in computer systems. And with an accelerometer in every computer, it wasn’t long before clever programmers began to make use of the information coming from the accelerometer for more than just protecting the hard drive. Programs began to appear that would use the accelerometer within a laptop to “lock” it when the user was away, invoking a loud noise like a car alarm to alert passers-by to any potential theft. Other programmers began to use the accelerometer as a gaming input, and this was the beginning of gesture control and the augmentation of human motion. Like laptops, most smartphones and tablets today have accelerometers included among their sensor suite (Brezmes et al. 796). These accelerometers strictly a user-interface tool, allowing the phone to re-orient its interface based on how the user is holding it, and allowing the user to play games and track health information using the phone. Many other consumer electronic devices use accelerometers, such as digital cameras for image stabilization and landscape/portrait orientation. Allowing a device to know its relative orientation and motion provides a wide range of augmentation possibilities. The Language of Measuring Motion When studying accelerometers, their function, and applications, a critical first step is to examine the language used to describe these devices. As the name implies, the accelerometer is a device which measures acceleration, however, our everyday connotation of this term is problematic at best. In colloquial language, we say “accelerate” when we mean “speed up”, but this is, in fact, two connotations removed from the physical property being measured by the device, and we must unwrap these layers of meaning before we can understand what is being measured. Physicists use the term “accelerate” to mean any change in velocity. It is worth reminding ourselves that velocity (to the physicists) is actually a pair of quantities: a speed coupled with a direction. Given this definition, when an object changes velocity (accelerates), it can be changing its speed, its direction, or both. So a car can be said to be accelerating when speeding up, slowing down, or even turning while maintaining a speed. This is why the accelerometer could be used as an airbag sensor in the first place. The airbags should deploy when a car suddenly changes velocity in any direction, including getting faster (due to being hit from behind), getting slower (from a front impact crash) or changing direction (being hit from the side). It is because of this ability to measure changes in velocity that accelerometers have come into common usage for laptop drop sensors and video game motion controllers. But even this understanding of accelerometers is incomplete. Because of the way that accelerometers are constructed, they actually measure “proper acceleration” within the context of a relativistic frame of reference. Discussing general relativity is beyond the scope of this paper, but it is sufficient to describe a relativistic frame of reference as one in which no forces are felt. A familiar example is being in orbit around the planet, when astronauts (and their equipment) float freely in space. A state of “free-fall” is one in which no forces are felt, and this is the only situation in which an accelerometer reads 0 acceleration. Since most of us are not in free-fall most of the time, any accelerometers in devices in normal use do not experience 0 proper acceleration, even when apparently sitting still. This is, of course, because of the force due to gravity. An accelerometer sitting on a table experiences 1g of force from the table, acting against the gravitational acceleration. This non-zero reading for a stationary object is the reason that accelerometers can serve a second (and, today, much more common) use: measuring orientation with respect to gravity. Gravity and Tilt Accelerometers typically measure forces with respect to three linear dimensions, labeled x, y, and z. These three directions orient along the axes of the accelerometer chip itself, with x and y normally orienting along the long faces of the device, and the z direction often pointing through the face of the device. Relative motion within a gravity field can easily be inferred assuming that the only force acting on the device is gravity. In this case, the single force is distributed among the three axes depending on the orientation of the device. This is how personal smartphones and video game controllers are able to use “tilt” control. When held in a natural position, the software extracts the relative value on all three axes and uses that as a reference point. When the user tilts the device, the new direction of the gravitational acceleration is then compared to the reference value and used to infer the tilt. This can be done hundreds of times a second and can be used to control and augment any aspect of the user experience. If, however, gravity is not the only force present, it becomes more difficult to infer orientation. Another common use for accelerometers is to measure physical activity like walking steps. In this case, it is the forces on the accelerometer from each footfall that are interpreted to measure fitness features. Tilt is unreliable in this circumstance because both gravity and the forces from the footfall are measured by the accelerometer, and it is impossible to separate the two forces from a single measurement. Velocity and Position A second common assumption with accelerometers is that since they can measure acceleration (rate of change of velocity), it should be possible to infer the velocity. If the device begins at rest, then any measured acceleration can be interpreted as changes to the velocity in some direction, thus inferring the new velocity. Although this is theoretically possible, real-world factors come in to play which prevent this from being realized. First, the assumption of beginning from a state of rest is not always reasonable. Further, if we don’t know whether the device is moving or not, knowing its acceleration at any moment will not help us to determine it’s new speed or position. The most important real-world problem, however, is that accelerometers typically show small variations even when the object is at rest. This is because of inaccuracies in the way that the accelerometer itself is interpreted. In normal operation, these small changes are ignored, but when trying to infer velocity or position, these little errors will quickly add up to the point where any inferred velocity or position would be unreliable. A common solution to these problems is in the combination of devices. Many new smartphones combine an accelerometer and a gyroscopes (a device which measures changes in rotational inertia) to provide a sensing system known as an IMU (Inertial measurement unit), which makes the readings from each more reliable. In this case, the gyroscope can be used to directly measure tilt (instead of inferring it from gravity) and this tilt information can be subtracted from the accelerometer reading to separate out the motion of the device from the force of gravity. Augmentation Applications in Health, Gaming, and Art Accelerometer-based devices have been used extensively in healthcare (Ward et al. 582), either using the accelerometer within a smartphone worn in the pocket (Yoshioka et al. 502) or using a standalone accelerometer device such as a wristband or shoe tab (Paradiso and Hu 165). In many cases, these devices have been used to measure specific activity such as swimming, gait (Henriksen et al. 288), and muscular activity (Thompson and Bemben 897), as well as general activity for tracking health (Troiano et al. 181), both in children (Stone et al. 136) and the elderly (Davis and Fox 581). These simple measurements are the first step in allowing athletes to modify their performance based on past activity. In the past, athletes would pour over recorded video to analyze and improve their performance, but with accelerometer devices, they can receive feedback in real time and modify their own behaviour based on these measurements. This augmentation is a competitive advantage but could be seen as unfair considering the current non-equal access to computer and electronic technology, i.e. the digital divide (Buente and Robbin 1743). When video games were augmented with motion controls, many assumed that this would have a positive impact on health. Physical activity in children is a common concern (Treuth et al. 1259), and there was a hope that if children had to move to play games, an activity that used to be considered a problem for health could be turned into an opportunity (Mellecker et al. 343). Unfortunately, the impact of children playing motion controlled video games has been less than successful. Although fitness games have been created, it is relatively easy to figure out how to activate controls with the least possible motion, thereby nullifying any potential benefit. One of the most interesting applications of accelerometers, in the context of this paper, is the application to dance-based video games (Brezmes et al. 796). In these systems, participants wear devices originally intended for health tracking in order to increase the sensitivity and control options for dance. This has evolved both from the use of accelerometers for gestural control in video games and for measuring and augmenting sport. Researchers and artists have also recently used accelerometers to augment dance systems in many ways (Latulipe et al. 2995) including combining multiple sensors (Yang et al. 121), as discussed above. Conclusions Although more and more people are using accelerometers in their research and art practice, it is significant that there is a lack of widespread knowledge about how the devices actually work. This can be seen in the many art installations and sports research studies that do not take full advantage of the capabilities of the accelerometer, or infer information or data that is unreliable because of the way that accelerometers behave. This lack of understanding of accelerometers also serves to limit the increased utilization of this powerful device, specifically in the context of augmentation tools. Being able to detect, analyze and interpret the motion of a body part has significant applications in augmentation that are only starting to be realized. The history of accelerometers is interesting and varied, and it is worthwhile, when exploring new ideas for applications of accelerometers, to be fully aware of the previous uses, current trends and technical limitations. It is clear that applications of accelerometers to the measurement of human motion are increasing, and that many new opportunities exist, especially in the application of combinations of sensors and new software techniques. The real novelty, however, will come from researchers and artists using accelerometers and sensors in novel and unusual ways. References Brezmes, Tomas, Juan-Luis Gorricho, and Josep Cotrina. “Activity Recognition from Accelerometer Data on a Mobile Phone.” In Distributed Computing, Artificial Intelligence, Bioinformatics, Soft Computing, and Ambient Assisted Living. Springer, 2009. Buente, Wayne, and Alice Robbin. “Trends in Internet Information Behavior, 2000-2004.” Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology 59.11 (2008).Chu, Narisa N.Y., Chang-Ming Yang, and Chih-Chung Wu. “Game Interface Using Digital Textile Sensors, Accelerometer and Gyroscope.” IEEE Transactions on Consumer Electronics 58.2 (2012): 184-189. Davis, Mark G., and Kenneth R. Fox. “Physical Activity Patterns Assessed by Accelerometry in Older People.” European Journal of Applied Physiology 100.5 (2007): 581-589.Hagstromer, Maria, Pekka Oja, and Michael Sjostrom. “Physical Activity and Inactivity in an Adult Population Assessed by Accelerometry.” Medical Science and Sports Exercise. 39.9 (2007): 1502-08. Henriksen, Marius, H. Lund, R. Moe-Nilssen, H. Bliddal, and B. Danneskiod-Samsøe. “Test–Retest Reliability of Trunk Accelerometric Gait Analysis.” Gait & Posture 19.3 (2004): 288-297. Latulipe, Celine, David Wilson, Sybil Huskey, Melissa Word, Arthur Carroll, Erin Carroll, Berto Gonzalez, Vikash Singh, Mike Wirth, and Danielle Lottridge. “Exploring the Design Space in Technology-Augmented Dance.” In CHI’10 Extended Abstracts on Human Factors in Computing Systems. ACM, 2010. Mellecker, Robin R., Lorraine Lanningham-Foster, James A. Levine, and Alison M. McManus. “Energy Intake during Activity Enhanced Video Game Play.” Appetite 55.2 (2010): 343-347. Paradiso, Joseph A., and Eric Hu. “Expressive Footwear for Computer-Augmented Dance Performance.” In First International Symposium on Wearable Computers. IEEE, 1997. Rogers, Everett M. Diffusion of Innovations. New York: Free Press of Glencoe, 1962. Stone, Michelle R., Ann V. Rowlands, and Roger G. Eston. "Relationships between Accelerometer-Assessed Physical Activity and Health in Children: Impact of the Activity-Intensity Classification Method" The Free Library 1 Mar. 2009. Thompson, Christian J., and Michael G. Bemben. “Reliability and Comparability of the Accelerometer as a Measure of Muscular Power.” Medicine and Science in Sports and Exercise. 31.6 (1999): 897-902.Treuth, Margarita S., Kathryn Schmitz, Diane J. Catellier, Robert G. McMurray, David M. Murray, M. Joao Almeida, Scott Going, James E. Norman, and Russell Pate. “Defining Accelerometer Thresholds for Activity Intensities in Adolescent Girls.” Medicine and Science in Sports and Exercise 36.7 (2004):1259-1266Troiano, Richard P., David Berrigan, Kevin W. Dodd, Louise C. Masse, Timothy Tilert, Margaret McDowell, et al. “Physical Activity in the United States Measured by Accelerometer.” Medicine and Science in Sports and Exercise, 40.1 (2008):181-88. Varat, Michael S., and Stein E. Husher. “Vehicle Impact Response Analysis through the Use of Accelerometer Data.” In SAE World Congress, 2000. Walter, Patrick L. “The History of the Accelerometer”. Sound and Vibration (Mar. 1997): 16-22. Ward, Dianne S., Kelly R. Evenson, Amber Vaughn, Anne Brown Rodgers, Richard P. Troiano, et al. “Accelerometer Use in Physical Activity: Best Practices and Research Recommendations.” Medicine and Science in Sports and Exercise 37.11 (2005): S582-8. Yang, Chang-Ming, Jwu-Sheng Hu, Ching-Wen Yang, Chih-Chung Wu, and Narisa Chu. “Dancing Game by Digital Textile Sensor, Accelerometer and Gyroscope.” In IEEE International Games Innovation Conference. IEEE, 2011.Yoshioka, M., M. Ayabe, T. Yahiro, H. Higuchi, Y. Higaki, J. St-Amand, H. Miyazaki, Y. Yoshitake, M. Shindo, and H. Tanaka. “Long-Period Accelerometer Monitoring Shows the Role of Physical Activity in Overweight and Obesity.” International Journal of Obesity 29.5 (2005): 502-508.

“What is the point of stories in such a moment”, asks author and critic James Bradley, writing about climate extinction: Bradley emphasises that “climatologist James Hansen once said being a climate scientist was like screaming at people from behind a soundproof glass wall; being a writer concerned with these questions often feels frighteningly similar” (“Writing”). If the impact of climate change asks humans to think differently, to imagine differently, then surely writing—and reading—must change too? According to writer and geographer Samuel Miller-McDonald, “if you’re a writer, then you have to write about this”. But how are we to do that? Where might it be done already? Perhaps not in traditional (or even post-) Modernist modes. In the era of the Anthropocene I find myself turning to non-traditional, un-real models to write the slow violence and read the deep time that is where we can see our current climate catastrophe.At a “Writing in the Age of Extinction” workshop earlier this year Bradley and Jane Rawson advocated changing the language of “climate change”—rejecting such neutral terms—in the same way that I see the stories discussed here pushing against Modernity’s great narrative of progress.My research—as a reader and writer, is in the fantastic realm of speculative fiction; I have written in The Conversation about how this genre seems to be gaining literary popularity. There is no doubt that our current climate crisis has a part to play. As Margaret Atwood writes: “it’s not climate change, it’s everything change” (“Climate”). This “everything” must include literature. Kim Stanley Robinson is not the only one who sees “the models modern literary fiction has are so depleted, what they’re turning to now is our guys in disguise”. I am interested in two recent examples, which both use the strongly genre-associated time-travel trope, to consider how science-fiction concepts might work to re-imagine our “deranged” world (Ghosh), whether applied by genre writers or “our guys in disguise”. Can stories such as The Heavens by Sandra Newman and “Anxiety is the Dizziness of Freedom” by Ted Chiang—which apply time travel, whether as an expression of fatalism or free will—help us conceive the current collapse: understand how it has come to pass, and imagine ways we might move through it?The Popularity of Time TravelIt seems to me that time as a notion and the narrative device, is key to any idea of writing through climate change. “Through” as in via, if the highly contested “cli-fi” category is considered a theme; and “through” as entering into and coming out the other side of this ecological end-game. Might time travel offer readers more than the realist perspective of sweeping multi-generational sagas? Time-travel books pose puzzles; they are well suited to “wicked” problems. Time-travel tales are designed to analyse the world in a way that it is not usually analysed—in accordance with Tim Parks’s criterion for great novels (Walton), and in keeping with Darko Suvin’s conception of science fiction as a literature of “cognitive estrangement”. To read, and write, a character who travels in “spacetime” asks something more of us than the emotional engagement of many Modernist tales of interiority—whether they belong to the new “literary middlebrow’” (Driscoll), or China Miéville’s Booker Prize–winning realist “litfic” (Crown).Sometimes, it is true, they ask too much, and do not answer enough. But what resolution is possible is realistic, in the context of this literally existential threat?There are many recent and recommended time-travel novels: Kate Atkinson’s 2013 Life after Life and Jenny Erpenbeck’s 2014 End of Days have main characters who are continually “reset”, exploring the idea of righting history—the more literary experiment concluding less optimistically. For Erpenbeck “only the inevitable is possible”. In her New York Times review Francine Prose likens Life after Life to writing itself: “Atkinson sharpens our awareness of the apparently limitless choices and decisions that a novelist must make on every page, and of what is gained and lost when the consequences of these choices are, like life, singular and final”. Andrew Sean Greer’s 2013 The Impossible Lives of Greta Wells also centres on the WorldWar(s), a natural-enough site to imagine divergent timelines, though he draws a different parallel. In Elan Mastai’s 2017 debut All Our Wrong Todays the reality that is remembered—though ultimately not missed, is more dystopic than our own time, as is also the way with Joyce Carol Oates’s 2018 The Hazards of Time Travel. Oates’s rather slight contribution to the subgenre still makes a clear point: “America is founded upon amnesia” (Oates, Hazards). So, too, is our current environment. We are living in a time created by a previous generation; the environmental consequence of our own actions will not be felt until after we are gone. What better way to write such a riddle than through the loop of time travel?The Purpose of Thought ExperimentsThis list is not meant to be comprehensive. It is an indication of the increasing literary application of the “elaborate thought experiment” of time travel (Oates, “Science Fiction”). These fictional explorations, their political and philosophical considerations, are currently popular and potentially productive in a context where action is essential, and yet practically impossible. What can I do? What could possibly be the point? As well as characters that travel backwards, or forwards in time, these titles introduce visionaries who tell of other worlds. They re-present “not-exactly places, which are anywhere but nowhere, and which are both mappable locations and states of mind”: Margaret Atwood’s “Ustopias” (Atwood, “Road”). Incorporating both utopian and dystopian aspects, they (re)present our own time, in all its contradictory (un)reality.The once-novel, now-generic “novum” of time travel has become a metaphor—the best possible metaphor, I believe, for the climatic consequence of our in/action—in line with Joanna Russ’s wonderful conception of “The Wearing out of Genre Materials”. The new marvel first introduced by popular writers has been assimilated, adopted or “stolen” by the dominant mode. In this case, literary fiction. Angela Carter is not the only one to hope “the pressure of the new wine makes the old bottles explode”. This must be what Robinson expects: that Ken Gelder’s “big L” literature will be unable to contain the wine of “our guys”—even if it isn’t new. In the act of re-use, the time-travel cliché is remade anew.Two Cases to ConsiderTwo texts today seem to me to realise—in both senses of that word—the possibilities of the currently popular, but actually ancient, time-travel conceit. At the Melbourne Writers Festival last year Ted Chiang identified the oracle in The Odyssey as the first time traveller: they—the blind prophet Tiresias was transformed into a woman for seven years—have seen the future and report back in the form of prophecy. Chiang’s most recent short story, “Anxiety is the Dizziness of Freedom”, and Newman’s novel The Heavens, both of which came out this year, are original variations on this re-newed theme. Rather than a coherent, consistent, central character who travels and returns to their own time, these stories’ protagonists appear diversified in/between alternate worlds. These texts provide readers not with only one possible alternative but—via their creative application of the idea of temporal divergence—myriad alternatives within the same story. These works use the “characteristic gesture” of science fiction (Le Guin, “Le Guin Talks”), to inspire different, subversive, ways of thinking and seeing our own one-world experiment. The existential speculation of time-travel tropes is, today, more relevant than ever: how should we act when our actions may have no—or no positive, only negative—effect?Time and space travel are classic science fiction concerns. Chiang’s lecture unpacked how the philosophy of time travel speaks uniquely to questions of free will. A number of his stories explore this theme, including “The Alchemist’s Gate” (which the lecture was named after), where he makes his thinking clear: “past and future are the same, and we cannot change either, only know them more fully” (Chiang, Exhalation). In “Story of Your Life”, the novella that the film Arrival is based on, Chiang’s main character-narrator embraces a future that could be seen as dystopic while her partner walks away from it—and her, and his daughter—despite the happiness they will offer. Gary cannot accept the inevitable unhappiness that must accompany them. The suggestion is that if he had had Louise’s foreknowledge he might, like the free-willing protagonist in Looper, have taken steps to ensure that that life—that his daughter’s life itself—never eventuated. Whether he would have been successful is suspect: according to Chiang free will cannot foil fate.If the future cannot be changed, what is the role of free will? Louise wonders: “what if the experience of knowing the future changed a person? What if it evoked a sense of urgency, a sense of obligation to act precisely as she knew she would?” In his “story notes” Chiang says inspiration came from variational principles in physics (Chiang, Stories); I see the influence of climate calamity. Knowing the future must change us—how can it not evoke “a sense of urgency, a sense of obligation”? Even if events play out precisely as we know they will. In his talk Chiang differentiated between time-travel films which favour free will, like Looper, and those that conclude fatalistically, such as Twelve Monkeys. “Story of Your Life” explores the idea that these categories are not mutually exclusive: exercising free will might not change fate; fatalism may not preclude acts of free will.Utopic Free Will vs. Dystopic Fate?Newman’s latest novel is more obviously dystopic: the world in The Heavens is worse each time Kate wakes from her dreams of the past. In the end it has become positively post-apocalyptic. The overwhelming sadness of this book is one of its most unusual aspects, going far beyond that of The Time Traveler’s Wife—2003’s popular tale of love and loss. The Heavens feels fatalistic, even though its future is—unfortunately, in this instance—not set but continually altered by the main character’s attempts to “fix” it (in each sense of the word). Where Twelve Monkeys, Looper, and The Odyssey present every action as a foregone conclusion, The Heavens navigates the nightmare that—against our will—everything we do might have an adverse consequence. As in A Christmas Carol, where the vision of a possible future prompts the protagonist to change his ways and so prevent its coming to pass, it is Kate’s foresight—of our future—which inspires her to act. History doesn’t respond well to Kate’s interventions; she is unable to “correct” events and left more and more isolated by her own unique version of a tortuous Cassandra complex.These largely inexplicable consequences provide a direct connection between Newman’s latest work and James Tiptree Jr.’s 1972 “Forever to a Hudson Bay Blanket”. That tale’s conclusion makes no “real” sense either—when Dovy dies Loolie’s father’s advisers can only say that (time) paradoxes are proliferating—but The Heavens is not the intellectual play of Tiptree’s classic science fiction: the wine of time-travel has been poured into the “depleted” vessel of “big L” literature. The sorrow that seeps through this novel is profound; Newman apologises for it in her acknowledgements, linking it to the death of an ex-partner. I read it as a potent expression of “solastalgia”: nostalgia for a place that once provided solace, but doesn’t any more—a term coined by Australian philosopher Glen Albrecht to express the “psychic or existential distress caused by environmental change” (Albrecht et al.). It is Kate’s grief, for a world (she has) destroyed that drives her mad: “deranged”.The Serious Side of SpeculationIn The Great Derangement Ghosh laments the “smaller shadow” cast by climate change in the landscape of literary fiction. He echoes Miéville: “fiction that deals with climate change is almost by definition not the kind that is taken seriously by serious literary journals; the mere mention of the subject is often enough to relegate a novel or short story to the genre of science fiction” (Ghosh). Time-travel tales that pose the kind of questions handled by theologians before the Enlightenment and “big L” literature after—what does it mean to exist in time? How should we live? Who deserves to be happy?—may be a way for literary fiction to take climate change “seriously”: to write through it. Out-of-time narratives such as Chiang and Newman’s pose existential speculations that, rather than locating us in time, may help us imagine time itself differently. How are we to act if the future has already come to pass?“When we are faced with a world whose problems all seem ‘wicked’ and intractable, what is it that fiction can do?” (Uhlmann). At the very least, should writers not be working with “sombre realism”? Science fiction has a long and established tradition of exposing the background narratives of the political—and ecological—landscapes in which we work: the master narratives of Modernism. What Anthony Uhlmann describes here, as the “distancing technique” of fiction becomes outright “estrangement” in speculative hands. Stories such as Newman and Chiang’s reflect (on) what readers might be avoiding: that even though our future is fixed, we must act. We must behave as though our decisions matter, despite knowing the ways in which they do not.These works challenge Modernist concerns despite—or perhaps via—satisfying genre conventions, in direct contradiction to Roy Scranton’s conviction that “Narrative in the Anthropocene Is the Enemy”. In doing so they fit Miéville’s description of a “literature of estrangement” while also exemplifying a new, Anthropocene “literature of recognition” (Crown). These, then, are the stories of our life.What Is Not ExpectedChiang’s 2018 lecture was actually a PowerPoint presentation on how time travel could or would “really” work. His medium, as much as his message, clearly showed the author’s cross-disciplinary affiliations, which are relevant to this discussion of literary fiction’s “depleted” models. In August this year Xu Xi concluded a lecture on speculative fiction for the Vermont College of Fine Arts by encouraging attendees to read—and write—“other” languages, whether foreign forms or alien disciplines. She cited Chiang as someone who successfully raids the riches of non-literary traditions, to produce a new kind of literature. Writing that deals in physics, as much as characters, in philosophy, as much as narrative, presents new, “post-natural” (Bradley, “End”) retro-speculations that (in un- and super-natural generic traditions) offer a real alternative to Modernism’s narrative of inevitable—and inevitably positive—progress.In “What’s Expected of Us” Chiang imagines the possible consequence of comprehending that our actions, and not just their consequence, are predetermined. In what Oates describes as his distinctive, pared-back, “unironic” style (Oates, “Science Fiction”), Chiang concludes: “reality isn’t important: what’s important is your belief, and believing the lie is the only way to avoid a waking coma. Civilisation now depends on self-deception. Perhaps it always has”. The self-deception we need is not America’s amnesia, but the belief that what we do matters.ConclusionThe visions of her “paraself” that Nat sees in “Anxiety Is the Dizziness of Freedom” encourage her to change her behaviour. The “prism” that enables this perception—a kind of time-tripped iPad that “skypes” alternate temporal realities, activated by people acting in different ways at a crucial moment in their lives—does not always reflect the butterfly effect the protagonist, or reader, might expect. Some actions have dramatic consequences while others have minimal impact. While Nat does not see her future, what she spies inspires her to take the first steps towards becoming a different—read “better”—person. We expect this will lead to more positive outcomes for her self in the story’s “first” world. The device, and Chiang’s tale, illustrates both that our paths are predetermined and that they are not: “our inability to predict the consequences of our own predetermined actions offers a kind of freedom”. The freedom to act, freedom from the coma of inaction.“What’s the use of art on a dying planet? What’s the point, when humanity itself is facing an existential threat?” Alison Croggon asks, and answers herself: “it searches for the complex truth … . It can help us to see the world we have more clearly, and help us to imagine a better one”. In literary thought experiments like Newman and Chiang’s artful time-travel fictions we read complex, metaphoric truths that cannot be put into real(ist) words. In the time-honoured tradition of (speculative) fiction, Chiang and Newman deal in, and with, “what cannot be said in words … in words” (Le Guin, “Introduction”). These most recent time-slip speculations tell unpredictable stories about what is predicted, what is predictable, but what we must (still) believe may not necessarily be—if we are to be free.ReferencesArrival. Dir. Dennis Villeneuve. Paramount Pictures, 2016.Albrecht, Glenn, et al. “Solastalgia: The Distress Caused by Environmental Change.” Australasian Psychiatry (Feb. 2007): 41–55. Atwood, Margaret. “The Road to Ustopia.” The Guardian 15 Oct. 2011 <https://www.theguardian.com/books/2011/oct/14/margaret-atwood-road-to-ustopia>.———. “It’s Not Climate Change, It’s Everything Change.” Medium 27 July 2015. <https://medium.com/matter/it-s-not-climate-change-it-s-everything-change-8fd9aa671804>.Bradley, James. “Writing on the Precipice: On Literature and Change.” City of Tongues. 16 Mar. 2017 <https://cityoftongues.com/2017/03/16/writing-on-the-precipice-on-literature-and-climate-change/>.———. “The End of Nature and Post-Naturalism: Fiction and the Anthropocene.” City of Tongues 30 Dec. 2015 <https://cityoftongues.com/2015/12/30/the-end-of-nature-and-post-naturalism-fiction-and-the-anthropocene/>.Bradley, James, and Jane Rawson. “Writing in the Age of Extinction.” Detached Performance and Project Space, The Old Mercury Building, Hobart. 27 July 2019.Chiang, Ted. Stories of Your Life and Others. New York: Tor, 2002.———. Exhalation: Stories. New York: Knopf, 2019.Carter, Angela. The Bloody Chamber. London: Gollancz, 1983. 69.Croggon, Alison. “On Art.” Overland 235 (2019). 30 Sep. 2019 <https://overland.org.au/previous-issues/issue-235/column-on-art/>.Crown, Sarah. “What the Booker Prize Really Excludes.” The Guardian 17 Oct. 2011 <https://www.theguardian.com/books/booksblog/2011/oct/17/science-fiction-china-mieville>.Driscoll, Beth. The New Literary Middlebrow: Tastemakers and Reading in the Twenty-First Century. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014.Erpenbeck, Jenny. Trans. Susan Bernofsky. The End of Days. New York: New Directions, 2016.Gelder, Ken. Popular Fiction: The Logics and Practices of a Literary Field. London: Routledge, 2014.Ghosh, Amitav. The Great Derangement: Climate Change and the Unthinkable. India: Penguin Random House, 2018.Le Guin, Ursula K. “Introduction.” The Left Hand of Darkness. New York: Ace Books, 1979. 5.———. “Ursula K. Le Guin Talks to Michael Cunningham about Genres, Gender, and Broadening Fiction.” Electric Literature 1 Apr. 2016. <https://electricliterature.com/ursula-k-le-guin-talks-to-michael- cunningham-about-genres-gender-and-broadening-fiction-57d9c967b9c>.Miller-McDonald, Samuel. “What Must We Do to Live?” The Trouble 14 Oct. 2018. <https://www.the-trouble.com/content/2018/10/14/what-must-we-do-to-live>.Oates, Joyce Carol. Hazards of Time Travel. New York: Ecco Press, 2018.———. "Science Fiction Doesn't Have to be Dystopian." The New Yorker 13 May 2019. <https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2019/05/13/science-fiction-doesnt-have-to-be-dystopian>.Prose, Francine. “Subject to Revision.” New York Times 26 Apr. 2003. <https://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/28/books/review/life-after-life-by-kate-atkinson.html>.Robinson, Kim Stanley. “Kim Stanley Robinson and the Drowning of New York.” The Coode Street Podcast 305 (2017). <http://www.jonathanstrahan.com.au/wp/the-coode-street-podcast/>.Russ, Joanna. “The Wearing Out of Genre Materials.” College English 33.1 (1971): 46–54.Scranton, Roy. “Narrative in the Anthropocene Is the Enemy.” Lithub.com 18 Sep. 2019. <https://lithub.com/roy-scranton-narrative-in-the-anthropocene-is-the-enemy/>.Suvin, Darko. Metamorphoses of Science Fiction: On the Poetics and History of a Literary Genre. New Haven: Yale UP, 1979. Walton, James. “Fascinating, Fearless, and Distinctly Odd.” The New York Review of Books 9 Jan. 2014: 63–64.Uhlmann, Anthony. “The Other Way, the Other Truth, the Other Life: Simpson Returns.” Sydney Review of Books. 2 Sep. 2019 <https://sydneyreviewofbooks.com/macauley-simpson-returns/>. Xu, Xi. “Speculative Fiction.” Presented at the International MFA in Creative Writing and Literary Translation, Vermont College of Fine Arts, Vermont, 15 Aug. 2019.

All history of this area and the general talk and all of that is that 1973 was a turning point and the Aquarius Festival is credited with having turned this region around in so many ways, but I think that is a myth ... and I have to honour the truth; and the truth is that old Dicke Donelly came and did a Welcome to Country the night before the festival. (Joseph in Joseph and Hanley)In 1973 the Australian Union of Students (AUS) held the Aquarius Arts and Lifestyle Festival in a small, rural New South Wales town called Nimbin. The festival was seen as the peak expression of Australian counterculture and is attributed to creating the “Rainbow Region”, an area with a concentration of alternative life stylers in Northern NSW (Derrett 28). While the Aquarius Festival is recognised as a founding historical and countercultural event, the unique and important relationships established with Indigenous people at this time are generally less well known. This article investigates claims that the 1973 Aquarius Festival was “the first event in Australian history that sought permission for the use of the land from the Traditional Owners” (Joseph and Hanley). The diverse international, national and local conditions that coalesced at the Aquarius Festival suggest a fertile environment was created for reconciliatory bonds to develop. Often dismissed as a “tree hugging, soap dodging movement,” the counterculture was radically politicised having sprung from the 1960s social revolutions when the world witnessed mass demonstrations that confronted war, racism, sexism and capitalism. Primarily a youth movement, it was characterised by flamboyant dress, music, drugs and mass gatherings with universities forming the epicentre and white, middle class youth leading the charge. As their ideals of changing the world were frustrated by lack of systematic change, many decided to disengage and a migration to rural settings occurred (Jacob; Munro-Clarke; Newton). In the search for alternatives, the counterculture assimilated many spiritual practices, such as Eastern traditions and mysticism, which were previously obscure to the Western world. This practice of spiritual syncretism can be represented as a direct resistance to the hegemony of the dominant Western culture (Stell). As the new counterculture developed, its progression from urban to rural settings was driven by philosophies imbued with a desire to reconnect with and protect the natural world while simultaneously rejecting the dominant conservative order. A recurring feature of this countercultural ‘back to the land’ migration was not only an empathetic awareness of the injustices of colonial past, but also a genuine desire to learn from the Indigenous people of the land. Indigenous people were generally perceived as genuine opposers of Westernisation, inherently spiritual, ecological, tribal and communal, thus encompassing the primary values to which the counterculture was aspiring (Smith). Cultures converged. One, a youth culture rebelling from its parent culture; the other, ancient cultures reeling from the historical conquest by the youths’ own ancestors. Such cultural intersections are rich with complex scenarios and politics. As a result, often naïve, but well-intended relations were established with Native Americans, various South American Indigenous peoples, New Zealand Maori and, as this article demonstrates, the Original People of Australia (Smith; Newton; Barr-Melej; Zolov). The 1960s protest era fostered the formation of groups aiming to address a variety of issues, and at times many supported each other. Jennifer Clarke says it was the Civil Rights movement that provided the first models of dissent by formulating a “method, ideology and language of protest” as African Americans stood up and shouted prior to other movements (2). The issue of racial empowerment was not lost on Australia’s Indigenous population. Clarke writes that during the 1960s, encouraged by events overseas and buoyed by national organisation, Aborigines “slowly embarked on a political awakening, demanded freedom from the trappings of colonialism and responded to the effects of oppression at worst and neglect at best” (4). Activism of the 1960s had the “profoundly productive effect of providing Aborigines with the confidence to assert their racial identity” (159). Many Indigenous youth were compelled by the zeitgeist to address their people’s issues, fulfilling Charlie Perkins’s intentions of inspiring in Indigenous peoples a will to resist (Perkins). Enjoying new freedoms of movement out of missions, due to the 1967 Constitutional change and the practical implementation of the assimilation policy, up to 32,000 Indigenous youth moved to Redfern, Sydney between 1967 and 1972 (Foley, “An Evening With”). Gary Foley reports that a dynamic new Black Power Movement emerged but the important difference between this new younger group and the older Indigenous leaders of the day was the diverse range of contemporary influences. Taking its mantra from the Black Panther movement in America, though having more in common with the equivalent Native American Red Power movement, the Black Power Movement acknowledged many other international struggles for independence as equally inspiring (Foley, “An Evening”). People joined together for grassroots resistance, formed anti-hierarchical collectives and established solidarities between varied groups who previously would have had little to do with each other. The 1973 Aquarius Festival was directly aligned with “back to the land” philosophies. The intention was to provide a place and a reason for gathering to “facilitate exchanges on survival techniques” and to experience “living in harmony with the natural environment.” without being destructive to the land (Dunstan, “A Survival Festival”). Early documents in the archives, however, reveal no apparent interest in Australia’s Indigenous people, referring more to “silken Arabian tents, mediaeval banners, circus, jugglers and clowns, peace pipes, maypole and magic circles” (Dunstan, “A Survival Festival”). Obliterated from the social landscape and minimally referred to in the Australian education system, Indigenous people were “off the radar” to the majority mindset, and the Australian counterculture similarly was slow to appreciate Indigenous culture. Like mainstream Australia, the local counterculture movement largely perceived the “race” issue as something occurring in other countries, igniting the phrase “in your own backyard” which became a catchcry of Indigenous activists (Foley, “Whiteness and Blackness”) With no mention of any Indigenous interest, it seems likely that the decision to engage grew from the emerging climate of Indigenous activism in Australia. Frustrated by student protestors who seemed oblivious to local racial issues, focusing instead on popular international injustices, Indigenous activists accused them of hypocrisy. Aquarius Festival directors, found themselves open to similar accusations when public announcements elicited a range of responses. Once committed to the location of Nimbin, directors Graeme Dunstan and Johnny Allen began a tour of Australian universities to promote the upcoming event. While at the annual conference of AUS in January 1973 at Monash University, Dunstan met Indigenous activist Gary Foley: Gary witnessed the presentation of Johnny Allen and myself at the Aquarius Foundation session and our jubilation that we had agreement from the village residents to not only allow, but also to collaborate in the production of the Festival. After our presentation which won unanimous support, it was Gary who confronted me with the question “have you asked permission from local Aboriginal folk?” This threw me into confusion because we had seen no Aboriginals in Nimbin. (Dunstan, e-mail) Such a challenge came at a time when the historical climate was etched with political activism, not only within the student movement, but more importantly with Indigenous activists’ recent demonstrations, such as the installation in 1972 of the Tent Embassy in Canberra. As representatives of the counterculture movement, which was characterised by its inclinations towards consciousness-raising, AUS organisers were ethically obliged to respond appropriately to the questions about Indigenous permission and involvement in the Aquarius Festival at Nimbin. In addition to this political pressure, organisers in Nimbin began hearing stories of the area being cursed or taboo for women. This most likely originated from the tradition of Nimbin Rocks, a rocky outcrop one kilometre from Nimbin, as a place where only certain men could go. Jennifer Hoff explains that many major rock formations were immensely sacred places and were treated with great caution and respect. Only a few Elders and custodians could visit these places and many such locations were also forbidden for women. Ceremonies were conducted at places like Nimbin Rocks to ensure the wellbeing of all tribespeople. Stories of the Nimbin curse began to spread and most likely captivated a counterculture interested in mysticism. As organisers had hoped that news of the festival would spread on the “lips of the counterculture,” they were alarmed to hear how “fast the bad news of this curse was travelling” (Dunstan, e-mail). A diplomatic issue escalated with further challenges from the Black Power community when organisers discovered that word had spread to Sydney’s Indigenous community in Redfern. Organisers faced a hostile reaction to their alleged cultural insensitivity and were plagued by negative publicity with accusations the AUS were “violating sacred ground” (Janice Newton 62). Faced with such bad press, Dunstan was determined to repair what was becoming a public relations disaster. It seemed once prompted to the path, a sense of moral responsibility prevailed amongst the organisers and they took the unprecedented step of reaching out to Australia’s Indigenous people. Dunstan claimed that an expedition was made to the local Woodenbong mission to consult with Elder, Uncle Lyle Roberts. To connect with local people required crossing the great social divide present in that era of Australia’s history. Amy Nethery described how from the nineteenth century to the 1960s, a “system of reserves, missions and other institutions isolated, confined and controlled Aboriginal people” (9). She explains that the people were incarcerated as a solution to perceived social problems. For Foley, “the widespread genocidal activity of early “settlement” gave way to a policy of containment” (Foley, “Australia and the Holocaust”). Conditions on missions were notoriously bad with alcoholism, extreme poverty, violence, serious health issues and depression common. Of particular concern to mission administrators was the perceived need to keep Indigenous people separate from the non-indigenous population. Dunstan described the mission he visited as having “bad vibes.” He found it difficult to communicate with the elderly man, and was not sure if he understood Dunstan’s quest, as his “responses came as disjointed raves about Jesus and saving grace” (Dunstan, e-mail). Uncle Lyle, he claimed, did not respond affirmatively or negatively to the suggestion that Nimbin was cursed, and so Dunstan left assuming it was not true. Other organisers began to believe the curse and worried that female festival goers might get sick or worse, die. This interpretation reflected, as Vanessa Bible argues, a general Eurocentric misunderstanding of the relationship of Indigenous peoples with the land. Paul Joseph admits they were naïve whites coming into a place with very little understanding, “we didn’t know if we needed a witch doctor or what we needed but we knew we needed something from the Aborigines to lift the spell!”(Joseph and Hanley). Joseph, one of the first “hippies” who moved to the area, had joined forces with AUS organisers. He said, “it just felt right” to get Indigenous involvement and recounted how organisers made another trip to Woodenbong Mission to find Dickee (Richard) Donnelly, a Song Man, who was very happy to be invited. Whether the curse was valid or not it proved to be productive in further instigating respectful action. Perhaps feeling out of their depth, the organisers initiated another strategy to engage with Australian Indigenous people. A call out was sent through the AUS network to diversify the cultural input and it was recommended they engage the services of South African artist, Bauxhau Stone. Timing aligned well as in 1972 Australia had voted in a new Prime Minister, Gough Whitlam. Whitlam brought about significant political changes, many in response to socialist protests that left a buoyancy in the air for the counterculturalist movement. He made prodigious political changes in support of Indigenous people, including creating the Aboriginal Arts Board as part of the Australian Council of the Arts (ACA). As the ACA were already funding activities for the Aquarius Festival, organisers were successful in gaining two additional grants specifically for Indigenous participation (Farnham). As a result We were able to hire […] representatives, a couple of Kalahari bushmen. ‘Cause we were so dumb, we didn’t think we could speak to the black people, you know what I mean, we thought we would be rejected, or whatever, so for us to really reach out, we needed somebody black to go and talk to them, or so we thought, and it was remarkable. This one Bau, a remarkable fellow really, great artist, great character, he went all over Australia. He went to Pitjantjatjara, Yirrkala and we arranged buses and tents when they got here. We had a very large contingent of Aboriginal people come to the Aquarius Festival, thanks to Whitlam. (Joseph in Joseph and Henley) It was under the aegis of these government grants that Bauxhau Stone conducted his work. Stone embodied a nexus of contemporary issues. Acutely aware of the international movement for racial equality and its relevance to Australia, where conditions were “really appalling”, Stone set out to transform Australian race relations by engaging with the alternative arts movement (Stone). While his white Australian contemporaries may have been unaccustomed to dealing with the Indigenous racial issue, Stone was actively engaged and thus well suited to act as a cultural envoy for the Aquarius Festival. He visited several local missions, inviting people to attend and notifying them of ceremonies being conducted by respected Elders. Nimbin was then the site of the Aquarius Lifestyle and Celebration Festival, a two week gathering of alternative cultures, technologies and youth. It innovatively demonstrated its diversity of influences, attracted people from all over the world and was the first time that the general public really witnessed Australia’s counterculture (Derrett 224). As markers of cultural life, counterculture festivals of the 1960s and 1970s were as iconic as the era itself and many around the world drew on the unique Indigenous heritage of their settings in some form or another (Partridge; Perone; Broadley and Jones; Zolov). The social phenomenon of coming together to experience, celebrate and foster a sense of unity was triggered by protests, music and a simple, yet deep desire to reconnect with each other. Festivals provided an environment where the negative social pressures of race, gender, class and mores (such as clothes) were suspended and held the potential “for personal and social transformation” (St John 167). With the expressed intent to “take matters into our own hands” and try to develop alternative, innovative ways of doing things with collective participation, the Aquarius Festival thus became an optimal space for reinvigorating ancient and Indigenous ways (Dunstan, “A Survival Festival”). With philosophies that venerated collectivism, tribalism, connecting with the earth, and the use of ritual, the Indigenous presence at the Aquarius Festival gave attendees the opportunity to experience these values. To connect authentically with Nimbin’s landscape, forming bonds with the Traditional Owners was essential. Participants were very fortunate to have the presence of the last known initiated men of the area, Uncle Lyle Roberts and Uncle Dickee Donnely. These Elders represented the last vestiges of an ancient culture and conducted innovative ceremonies, song, teachings and created a sacred fire for the new youth they encountered in their land. They welcomed the young people and were very happy for their presence, believing it represented a revolutionary shift (Wedd; King; John Roberts; Cecil Roberts). Images 1 and 2: Ceremony and talks conducted at the Aquarius Festival (people unknown). Photographs reproduced by permission of photographer and festival attendee Paul White. The festival thus provided an important platform for the regeneration of cultural and spiritual practices. John Roberts, nephew of Uncle Lyle, recalled being surprised by the reaction of festival participants to his uncle: “He was happy and then he started to sing. And my God … I couldn’t get near him! There was this big ring of hippies around him. They were about twenty deep!” Sharing to an enthusiastic, captive audience had a positive effect and gave the non-indigenous a direct Indigenous encounter (Cecil Roberts; King; Oshlak). Estimates of the number of Indigenous people in attendance vary, with the main organisers suggesting 800 to 1000 and participants suggesting 200 to 400 (Stone; Wedd; Oshlak: Joseph; King; Cecil Roberts). As the Festival lasted over a two week period, many came and left within that time and estimates are at best reliant on memory, engagement and perspectives. With an estimated total attendance at the Festival between 5000 and 10,000, either number of Indigenous attendees is symbolic and a significant symbolic statistic for Indigenous and non-indigenous to be together on mutual ground in Australia in 1973. Images 3-5: Performers from Yirrkala Dance Group, brought to the festival by Stone with funding from the Federal Government. Photographs reproduced by permission of photographer and festival attendee Dr Ian Cameron. For Indigenous people, the event provided an important occasion to reconnect with their own people, to share their culture with enthusiastic recipients, as well as the chance to experience diverse aspects of the counterculture. Though the northern NSW region has a history of diverse cultural migration of Italian and Indian families, the majority of non-indigenous and Indigenous people had limited interaction with cosmopolitan influences (Kijas 20). Thus Nimbin was a conservative region and many Christianised Indigenous people were also conservative in their outlook. The Aquarius Festival changed that as the Indigenous people experienced the wide-ranging cultural elements of the alternative movement. The festival epitomised countercultural tendencies towards flamboyant fashion and hairstyles, architectural design, fantastical art, circus performance, Asian clothes and religious products, vegetarian food and nudity. Exposure to this bohemian culture would have surely led to “mind expansion and consciousness raising,” explicit aims adhered to by the movement (Roszak). Performers and participants from Africa, America and India also gave attending Indigenous Australians the opportunity to interact with non-European cultures. Many people interviewed for this paper indicated that Indigenous people’s reception of this festival experience was joyous. For Australia’s early counterculture, interest in Indigenous Australia was limited and for organisers of the AUS Aquarius Festival, it was not originally on the agenda. The counterculture in the USA and New Zealand had already started to engage with their Indigenous people some years earlier. However due to the Aquarius Festival’s origins in the student movement and its solidarities with the international Indigenous activist movement, they were forced to shift their priorities. The coincidental selection of a significant spiritual location at Nimbin to hold the festival brought up additional challenges and countercultural intrigue with mystical powers and a desire to connect authentically to the land, further prompted action. Essentially, it was the voices of empowered Indigenous activists, like Gary Foley, which in fact triggered the reaching out to Indigenous involvement. While the counterculture organisers were ultimately receptive and did act with unprecedented respect, credit must be given to Indigenous activists. The activist’s role is to trigger action and challenge thinking and in this case, it was ultimately productive. Therefore the Indigenous people were not merely passive recipients of beneficiary goodwill, but active instigators of appropriate cultural exchange. After the 1973 festival many attendees decided to stay in Nimbin to purchase land collectively and a community was born. Relationships established with local Indigenous people developed further. Upon visiting Nimbin now, one will see a vibrant visual display of Indigenous and psychedelic themed art, a central park with an open fire tended by local custodians and other Indigenous community members, an Aboriginal Centre whose rent is paid for by local shopkeepers, and various expressions of a fusion of counterculture and Indigenous art, music and dance. While it appears that reconciliation became the aspiration for mainstream society in the 1990s, Nimbin’s early counterculture history had Indigenous reconciliation at its very foundation. The efforts made by organisers of the 1973 Aquarius Festival stand as one of very few examples in Australian history where non-indigenous Australians have respectfully sought to learn from Indigenous people and to assimilate their cultural practices. It also stands as an example for the world, of reconciliation, based on hippie ideals of peace and love. They encouraged the hippies moving up here, even when they came out for Aquarius, old Uncle Lyle and Richard Donnelly, they came out and they blessed the mob out here, it was like the hairy people had come back, with the Nimbin, cause the Nimbynji is the little hairy people, so the hairy people came back (Jerome). References Barr-Melej, Patrick. “Siloísmo and the Self in Allende’s Chile: Youth, 'Total Revolution,' and the Roots of the Humanist Movement.” Hispanic American Historical Review 86.4 (Nov. 2006): 747-784. Bible, Vanessa. Aquarius Rising: Terania Creek and the Australian Forest Protest Movement. BA (Honours) Thesis. University of New England, Armidale, 2010. Broadley, Colin, and Judith Jones, eds. Nambassa: A New Direction. Auckland: Reed, 1979. Bryant, Gordon M. Parliament of Australia. Minister for Aboriginal Affairs. 1 May 1973. Australian Union of Students. Records of the AUS, 1934-1991. National Library of Australia MS ACC GB 1992.0505. Cameron, Ian. “Aquarius Festival Photographs.” 1973. Clarke, Jennifer. Aborigines and Activism: Race, Aborigines and the Coming of the Sixties to Australia. Crawley: University of Western Australia Press, 2008. Derrett, Ross. Regional Festivals: Nourishing Community Resilience: The Nature and Role of Cultural Festivals in Northern Rivers NSW Communities. PhD Thesis. Southern Cross University, Lismore, 2008. Dunstan, Graeme. “A Survival Festival May 1973.” 1 Aug. 1972. Pamphlet. MS 6945/1. Nimbin Aquarius Festival Archives. National Library of Australia, Canberra. ---. E-mail to author, 11 July 2012. ---. “The Aquarius Festival.” Aquarius Rainbow Region. n.d. Farnham, Ken. Acting Executive Officer, Aboriginal Council for the Arts. 19 June 1973. Letter. MS ACC GB 1992.0505. Australian Union of Students. Records of the AUS, 1934-1991. National Library of Australia, Canberra. Foley, Gary. “Australia and the Holocaust: A Koori Perspective (1997).” The Koori History Website. n.d. 20 May 2013 ‹http://www.kooriweb.org/foley/essays/essay_8.html›. ---. “Whiteness and Blackness in the Koori Struggle for Self-Determination (1999).” The Koori History Website. n.d. 20 May 2013 ‹http://www.kooriweb.org/foley/essays/essay_9.html›. ---. “Black Power in Redfern 1968-1972 (2001).” The Koori History Website. n.d. 20 May 2013 ‹http://www.kooriweb.org/foley/essays/essay_1.html›. ---. “An Evening with Legendary Aboriginal Activist Gary Foley.” Conference Session. Marxism 2012 “Revolution in the Air”, Melbourne, Mar. 2012. Hoff, Jennifer. Bundjalung Jugun: Bundjalung Country. Lismore: Richmond River Historical Society, 2006. Jacob, Jeffrey. New Pioneers: The Back-to-the-Land Movement and the Search for a Sustainable Future. Pennsylvania: Penn State Press, 1997. Jerome, Burri. Interview. 31 July 2012. Joseph, Paul. Interview. 7 Aug. 2012. Joseph, Paul, and Brendan ‘Mookx’ Hanley. Interview by Rob Willis. 14 Aug. 2010. Audiofile, Session 2 of 3. nla.oh-vn4978025. Rob Willis Folklore Collection. National Library of Australia, Canberra. Kijas, Johanna, Caravans and Communes: Stories of Settling in the Tweed 1970s & 1980s. Murwillumbah: Tweed Shire Council, 2011. King, Vivienne (Aunty Viv). Interview. 1 Aug. 2012. Munro-Clarke, Margaret. Communes of Rural Australia: The Movement Since 1970. Sydney: Hale and Iremonger, 1986. Nethery, Amy. “Aboriginal Reserves: ‘A Modern-Day Concentration Camp’: Using History to Make Sense of Australian Immigration Detention Centres.” Does History Matter? Making and Debating Citizenship, Immigration and Refugee Policy in Australia and New Zealand. Eds. Klaus Neumann and Gwenda Tavan. Canberra: Australian National University Press, 2009. 4. Newton, Janice. “Aborigines, Tribes and the Counterculture.” Social Analysis 23 (1988): 53-71. Newton, John. The Double Rainbow: James K Baxter, Ngati Hau and the Jerusalem Commune. Wellington: Victoria University Press, 2009. Offord, Baden. “Mapping the Rainbow Region: Fields of Belonging and Sites of Confluence.” Transformations 2 (March 2002): 1-5. Oshlak, Al. Interview. 27 Mar. 2013. Partridge, Christopher. “The Spiritual and the Revolutionary: Alternative Spirituality, British Free Festivals, and the Emergence of Rave Culture.” Culture and Religion: An Interdisciplinary Journal 7 (2006): 3-5. Perkins, Charlie. “Charlie Perkins on 1965 Freedom Ride.” Youtube, 13 Oct. 2009. Perone, James E. Woodstock: An Encyclopedia of the Music and Art Fair. Greenwood: Greenwood Publishing Group, 2005. Roberts, John. Interview. 1 Aug. 2012. Roberts, Cecil. Interview. 6 Aug. 2012. Roszak, Theodore. The Making of a Counter Culture: Reflections on the Technocratic Society and Its Youthful Opposition. New York: University of California Press,1969. St John, Graham. “Going Feral: Authentica on the Edge of Australian culture.” The Australian Journal of Anthropology 8 (1997): 167-189. Smith, Sherry. Hippies, Indians and the Fight for Red Power. New York: Oxford University Press, 2012. Stell, Alex. Dancing in the Hyper-Crucible: The Rite de Passage of the Post-Rave Movement. BA (Honours) Thesis. University of Westminster, London, 2005. Stone, Trevor Bauxhau. Interview. 1 Oct. 2012. Wedd, Leila. Interview. 27 Sep. 2012. White, Paul. “Aquarius Revisited.” 1973. Zolov, Eric. Refried Elvis: The Rise of the Mexican Counterculture. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999.

“There is nothing more public than privacy.” (Berlant and Warner, Sex) How did it come to this? How did it happen that a one-off, two-hour event at a public swimming pool in a suburb of outer Melbourne ignited international hate mail and generated media-fanned political anguish and debate about the proper use of public spaces? In 2010, women who attend a women’s only swim session on Sunday evenings at the Dandenong Oasis public swimming pool asked the pool management and the local council for permission to celebrate the end of Ramadan at the pool during the time of their regular swim session. The request was supported by the pool managers and the council and promoted by both as an opportunity for family and friends to get together in a spirit of multicultural learning and understanding. Responding to criticisms of the event as an unreasonable claim on public facilities by one group, the Mayor of the City of Greater Dandenong, Jim Memeti, rejected claims that this event discriminates against non-Muslim residents of the suburb. But here’s the rub. The event, to be held after hours at the pool, requires all participants older than ten years of age to follow a dress code of knee-length shorts and T-shirts. This is a suburban moment that is borne of but exceeds the local. It reflects and responds to a contemporary global conundrum of great political and theoretical significance—how to negotiate and govern the relations between multiculturalism, religion, gender, sexual freedom, and democracy. Specifically this event speaks to how multicultural democracy in the public sphere negotiates the public presence and expression of different cultural and religious frameworks related to gender and sexuality. This is demanding political stuff. Situated in the messy political and theoretical terrains of the relation between public space and the public sphere, this local moment called for political judgement about how cultural differences should be allowed to manifest in and through public space, giving consideration to the potential effects of these decisions on an inclusive multicultural democracy. The local authorities in Dandenong engaged in an admirable process of democratic labour as they puzzled over how to make decisions that were responsible and equitable, in the absence of a rulebook or precedents for success. Ultimately however this mode of experimental decision-making, which will become increasingly necessary to manage such predicaments in the future, was foreclosed by unwarranted and unhelpful media outrage. "Foreclosed" here stresses the preemptive nature of the loss; a lost opportunity for trialing approaches to governing cultural diversity that may fail, but might then be modified. It was condemned in advance of either success or failure. The role of the media rather than the discomfort of the local publics has been decisive in this event.This Multicultural SuburbDandenong is approximately 30 kilometres southeast of central Melbourne. Originally home to the Bunorong People of the Kulin nation, it was settled by pastoralists by the 1800s, heavily industrialised during the twentieth century, and now combines cultural diversity with significant social disadvantage. The City of Greater Dandenong is proud of its reputation as the most culturally and linguistically diverse municipality in Australia. Its population of approximately 138,000 comprises residents from 156 different language groups. More than half (56%) of its population was born overseas, with 51% from nations where English is not the main spoken language. These include Vietnam, Cambodia, Sri Lanka, India, China, Italy, Greece, Bosnia and Afghanistan. It is also a place of significant religious diversity with residents identifying as Buddhist (15 per cent) Muslim (8 per cent), Hindu (2 per cent) and Christian (52 per cent) [CGD]. Its city logo, “Great Place, Great People” evokes its twin pride in the placemaking power of its diverse population. It is also a brazen act of civic branding to counter its reputation as a derelict and dangerous suburb. In his recent book The Bogan Delusion, David Nichols cites a "bogan" website that names Dandenong as one of Victoria’s two most bogan areas. The other was Moe. (p72). The Sunday Age newspaper had already depicted Dandenong as one of two excessively dangerous suburbs “where locals fear to tread” (Elder and Pierik). The other suburb of peril was identified as Footscray.Central Dandenong is currently the site of Australia’s largest ever state sponsored Urban Revitalisation program with a budget of more than $290 million to upgrade infrastructure, that aims to attract $1billion in private investment to provide housing and future employment.The Cover UpIn September 2010, the Victorian and Civil and Administrative Appeals Tribunal (VCAT) granted the YMCA an exemption from the Equal Opportunity Act to allow a dress code for the Ramadan event at the Oasis swimming pool that it manages. The "Y" sees the event as “an opportunity for the broader community to learn more about Ramadan and the Muslim faith, and encourages all members of Dandenong’s diverse community to participate” (YMCA Ramadan). While pool management and the municipal council refer to the event as an "opening up" of the closed swimming session, the media offer a different reading of the VCAT decision. The trope of the "the cover up" has framed most reports and commentaries (Murphy; Szego). The major focus of the commentaries has not been the event per se, but the call to dress "appropriately." Dress codes however are a cultural familiar. They exist for workplaces, schools, nightclubs, weddings, racing and sporting clubs and restaurants, to name but a few. While some of these codes or restrictions are normatively imposed rather than legally required, they are not alien to cultural life in Australia. Moreover, there are laws that prohibit people from being meagerly dressed or naked in public, including at beaches, swimming pools and so on. The dress code for this particular swimming pool event was, however, perceived to be unusual and, in a short space of time, "unusual" converted to "social threat."Responses to media polls about the dress code reveal concerns related to the symbolic dimensions of the code. The vast majority of those who opposed the Equal Opportunity exemption saw it as the thin edge of the multicultural wedge, a privatisation of public facilities, or a denial of the public’s right to choose how to dress. Tabloid newspapers reported on growing fears of Islamisation, while the more temperate opposition situated the decision as a crisis of human rights associated with tolerating illiberal cultural practices. Julie Szego reflects this view in an opinion piece in The Age newspaper:the Dandenong pool episode is neither trivial nor insignificant. It is but one example of human rights laws producing outcomes that restrict rights. It raises tough questions about how far public authorities ought to go in accommodating cultural practices that sit uneasily with mainstream Western values. (Szego)Without enquiring into the women’s request and in the absence of the women’s views about what meaning the event held for them, most media commentators and their electronically wired audiences treated the announcement as yet another alarming piece of evidence of multicultural failure and the potential Islamisation of Australia. The event raised specific concerns about the double intrusion of cultural difference and religion. While the Murdoch tabloid Herald Sun focused on the event as “a plan to force families to cover up to avoid offending Muslims at a public event” (Murphy) the liberal Age newspaper took a more circumspect approach, reporting on its small vox pop at the Dandenong pool. Some people here referred to the need to respect religions and seemed unfazed by the exemption and the event. Those who disagreed thought it was important not to enforce these (dress) practices on other people (Carey).It is, I believe, significant that several employees of the local council informed me that most of the opposition has come from the media, people outside of Dandenong and international groups who oppose the incursion of Islam into non-Islamic settings. Opposition to the event did not appear to derive from local concern or opposition.The overwhelming majority of Herald Sun comments expressed emphatic opposition to the dress code, citing it variously as unAustralian, segregationist, arrogant, intolerant and sexist. The Herald Sun polled readers (in a self-selecting and of course highly unrepresentative on-line poll) asking them to vote on whether or not they agreed with the VCAT exemption. While 5.52 per cent (512 voters) agreed with the ruling, 94.48 per cent (8,760) recorded disagreement. In addition, the local council has, for the first time in memory, received a stream of hate-mail from international anti-Islam groups. Muslim women’s groups, feminists, the Equal Opportunity Commissioner and academics have also weighed in. According to local reports, Professor of Islamic Studies at the University of Melbourne, Shahram Akbarzadeh, considered the exemption was “nonsense” and would “backfire and the people who will pay for it will be the Muslim community themselves” (Haberfield). He repudiated it as an example of inclusion and tolerance, labeling it “an effort of imposing a value system (sic)” (Haberfield). He went so far as to suggest that, “If Tony Abbott wanted to participate in his swimwear he wouldn’t be allowed in. That’s wrong.” Tasneem Chopra, chairwoman of the Islamic Women’s Welfare Council and Sherene Hassan from the Islamic Council of Victoria, both expressed sensitivity to the group’s attempt to establish an inclusive event but would have preferred the dress code to be a matter of choice rather coercion (Haberfield, "Mayor Defends Dandenong Pool Cover Up Order"). Helen Szoke, the Commissioner of the Victorian Equal Opportunity and Human Rights Commission, defended the pool’s exemption from the Law that she oversees. “Matters such as this are not easy to resolve and require a balance to be achieved between competing rights and obligations. Dress codes are not uncommon: e.g., singlets, jeans, thongs etc in pubs/hotels” (in Murphy). The civil liberties organisation, Liberty Victoria, supported the ban because the event was to be held after hours (Murphy). With astonishing speed this single event not only transformed the suburban swimming pool to a theatre of extra-local disputes about who and what is entitled to make claims on public space and publically funded facilities, but also fed into charged debates about the future of multiculturalism and the vulnerability of the nation to the corrosive effects of cultural and religious difference. In this sense suburbs like Dandenong are presented as sites that not only generate fear about physical safety but whose suburban sensitivities to its culturally diverse population represent a threat to the safety of the nation. Thus the event both reflects and produces an antipathy to cultural difference and to the place where difference resides. This aversion is triggered by and mediated in this case through the figure, rather than the (corpo)reality, of the Muslim woman. In this imagining, the figure of the Muslim woman is assigned the curious symbolic role of "cultural creep." The debates around the pool event is not about the wellbeing or interests of the Muslim women themselves, nor are broader debates about the perceived, culturally-derived restrictions imposed on Muslim women living in Australia or other western countries. The figure of the Muslim woman is, I would argue, simply the ground on which the debates are held. The first debate relates to social and public space, access to which is considered fundamental to freedom and participatory democracy, and in current times is addressed in terms of promoting inclusion, preventing exclusion and finding opportunities for cross cultural encounters. The second relates not to public space per se, but to the public sphere or the “sphere of private people coming together as a public” for political deliberation (Habermas 21). The literature and discussions dealing with these two terrains have remained relatively disconnected (Low and Smith) with public space referring largely to activities and opportunities in the socio-cultural domain and the public sphere addressing issues of politics, rights and democracy. This moment in Dandenong offers some modest leeway for situating "the suburb" as an ideal site for coalescing these disparate discussions. In this regard I consider Iveson’s provocative and productive question about whether some forms of exclusions from suburban public space may actually deepen the democratic ideals of the public sphere. Exclusions may in such cases be “consistent with visions of a democratically inclusive city” (216). He makes his case in relation to a dispute about the exclusion of men exclusion from a women’s only swimming pool in the Sydney suburb of Coogee. The Dandenong case is similarly exclusive with an added sense of exclusion generated by an "inclusion with restrictions."Diversity, Difference, Public Space and the Public SphereAs a prelude to this discussion of exclusion as democracy, I return to the question that opened this article: how did it come to this? How is it that Australia has moved from its renowned celebration and pride in its multiculturalism so much in evidence at the suburban level through what Ghassan Hage calls an “unproblematic” multiculturalism (233) and what others have termed “everyday multiculturalism” (Wise and Velayutham). Local cosmopolitanisms are often evinced through the daily rituals of people enjoying the ethnic cuisines of their co-residents’ pasts, and via moments of intercultural encounter. People uneventfully rub up against and greet each other or engage in everyday acts of kindness that typify life in multicultural suburbs, generating "reservoirs of hope" for democratic and cosmopolitan cities (Thrift 147). In today’s suburbs, however, the “Imperilled Muslim women” who need protection from “dangerous Muslim men” (Razack 129) have a higher discursive profile than ethnic cuisine as the exemplar of multiculturalism. Have we moved from pleasure to hostility or was the suburban pleasure in racial difference always about a kind of “eating the other” (bell hooks 378). That is to ask whether our capacity to experience diversity positively has been based on consumption, consuming the other for our own enrichment, whereas living with difference entails a commitment not to consumption but to democracy. This democratic multicultural commitment is a form of labour rather than pleasure, and its outcome is not enrichment but transformation (although this labour can be pleasurable and transformation might be enriching). Dandenong’s prized cultural precincts, "Little India" and the "Afghan bazaar" are showcases of food, artefacts and the diversity of the suburb. They are centres of pleasurable and exotic consumption. The pool session, however, requires one to confront difference. In simple terms we can think about ethnic food, festivals and handicrafts as cultural diversity, and the Muslim woman as cultural difference.This distinction between diversity and difference is useful for thinking through the relation between multiculturalism in public space and multicultural democracy of the public sphere. According to the anthropologist Thomas Hylland Eriksen, while a neoliberal sensibility supports cultural diversity in the public space, cultural difference is seen as a major cause of social problems associated with immigrants, and has a diminishing effect on the public sphere (14). According to Eriksen, diversity is understood as aesthetic, or politically and morally neutral expressions of culture that are enriching (Hage 118) or digestible. Difference, however, refers to morally objectionable cultural practices. In short, diversity is enriching. Difference is corrosive. Eriksen argues that differences that emerge from distinct cultural ideas and practices are deemed to create conflicts with majority cultures, weaken social solidarity and lead to unacceptable violations of human rights in minority groups. The suburban swimming pool exists here at the boundary of diversity and difference, where the "presence" of diverse bodies may enrich, but their different practices deplete and damage existing culture. The imperilled Muslim woman of the suburbs carries a heavy symbolic load. She stands for major global contests at the border of difference and diversity in three significant domains, multiculturalism, religion and feminism. These three areas are positioned simultaneously in public space and of the public sphere and she embodies a specific version of each in this suburban setting. First, there a global retreat from multiculturalism evidenced in contemporary narratives that describe multiculturalism (both as official policy and unofficial sensibility) as failed and increasingly ineffective at accommodating or otherwise dealing with religious, cultural and ethnic differences (Cantle; Goodhart; Joppke; Poynting and Mason). In the UK, Europe, the US and Australia, popular media sources and political discourses speak of "parallel lives,"immigrant enclaves, ghettoes, a lack of integration, the clash of values, and illiberal cultural practices. The covered body of the Muslim woman, and more particularly the Muslim veil, are now read as visual signs of this clash of values and of the refusal to integrate. Second, religion has re-emerged in the public domain, with religious groups and individuals making particular claims on public space both on the basis of their religious identity and in accord with secular society’s respect for religious freedom. This is most evident in controversies in France, Belgium and Netherlands associated with banning niqab in public and other religious symbols in schools, and in Australia in court. In this sense the covered Muslim woman raises concerns and indignation about the rightful place of religion in the public sphere and in social space. Third, feminism is increasingly invoked as the ground from which claims about the imperilled Muslim woman are made, particularly those about protecting women from their dangerous men. The infiltration of the Muslim presence into public space is seen as a threat to the hard won gains of women’s freedom enjoyed by the majority population. This newfound feminism of the public sphere, posited by those who might otherwise disavow feminism, requires some serious consideration. This public discourse rarely addresses the discrimination, violation and lack of freedom experienced systematically on an everyday basis by women of majority cultural backgrounds in western societies (such as Australia). However, the sexism of racially and religiously different men is readily identified and decried. This represents a significant shift to a dubious feminist register of the public sphere such that: “[w]omen of foreign origin, ...more specifically Muslim women…have replaced the traditional housewife as the symbol of female subservience” (Tissot 41–42).The three issues—multiculturalism, religion and feminism—are, in the Dandenong pool context, contests about human rights, democracy and the proper use of public space. Szego’s opinion piece sees the Dandenong pool "cover up" as an example of the conundrum of how human rights for some may curtail the human rights of others and lead us into a problematic entanglement of universal "rights," with claims of difference. In her view the combination of human rights and multiculturalism in the case of the Dandenong Pool accommodates illiberal practices that put the rights of "the general public" at risk, or as she puts it, on a “slippery slope” that results in a “watering down of our human rights.” Ideas that entail women making a claim for private time in public space are ultimately not good for "us."Such ideas run counter to the West's more than 500-year struggle for individual freedom—including both freedom of religion and freedom from religion—and for gender equality. Our public authorities ought to be pushing back hardest when these values are under threat. Yet this is precisely where they've been buckling under pressure (Szego)But a different reading of the relation between public and private space, human rights, democracy and gender freedom is readily identifiable in the Dandenong event—if one looks for it. Living with difference, I have already suggested, is a problem of democracy and the public sphere and does not so easily correspond to consuming diversity, as it demands engagement with cultural difference. In what remains, I explore how multicultural democracy in the public sphere and women’s rights in public and private realms relate, firstly, to the burgeoning promise of democracy and civility that might emerge in public space through encounter and exchange. I also point out how this moment in Dandenong might be read as a singular contribution to dealing with this global problematic of living with difference; of democracy in the public sphere. Public urban space has become a focus for speculation among geographers and sociologists in particular, about the prospects for an enhanced civic appreciation of living with difference through encountering strangers. Random and repetitious encounters with people from all cultures typify contemporary urban life. It remains an open question however as to whether these encounters open up or close down possibilities for conviviality and understanding, and whether they undo or harden peoples’ fears and prejudices. There is, however, at least in some academic and urban planning circles, some hope that the "throwntogetherness" (Massey) and the "doing" of togetherness (Laurier and Philo) found in the multicultural city may generate some lessons and opportunities for developing a civic culture and political commitment to living with difference. Alongside the optimism of those who celebrate the city, the suburb, and public spaces as forging new ways of living with difference, there are those such as Gill Valentine who wonder how this might be achieved in practice (324). Ash Amin similarly notes that city or suburban public spaces are not necessarily “the natural servants of multicultural engagement” (Ethnicity 967). Amin and Valentine point to the limited or fleeting opportunities for real engagement in these spaces. Moreover Valentine‘s research in the UK revealed that the spatial proximity found in multicultural spaces did not so much give rise to greater mutual respect and engagement, but to a frustrated “white self-segregation in the suburbs.” She suggests therefore that civility and polite exchange should not be mistaken for respect (324). Amin contends that it is the “micro-publics” of social encounters found in workplaces, schools, gardens, sports clubs [and perhaps swimming pools] rather than the fleeting encounters of the street or park, that offer better opportunities for meaningful intercultural exchange. The Ramadan celebration at the pool, with its dress code and all, might be seen more fruitfully as a purposeful event engaging a micro-public in which people are able to “break out of fixed relations and fixed notions” and “learn to become different” (Amin, Ethnicity 970) without that generating discord and resentment.Micropublics, Subaltern Publics and a Democracy of (Temporary) ExclusionsIs this as an opportunity to bring the global and local together in an experiment of forging new democratic spaces for gender, sexuality, culture and for living with difference? More provocatively, can we see exclusion and an invitation to share in this exclusion as a precursor to and measure of, actually existing democracy? Painter and Philo have argued that democratic citizenship is questionable if “people cannot be present in public spaces (streets, squares, parks, cinemas, churches, town halls) without feeling uncomfortable, victimized and basically ‘out of place’…" (Iveson 216). Feminists have long argued that distinctions between public and private space are neither straightforward nor gender neutral. For Nancy Fraser the terms are “cultural classifications and rhetorical labels” that are powerful because they are “frequently deployed to delegitimate some interests, views and topics and to valorize others” (73). In relation to women and other subordinated minorities, the "rhetoric of privacy" has been historically used to restrict the domain of legitimate public contestation. In fact the notion of what is public and particularly notions of the "public interest" and the "public good" solidify forms of subordination. Fraser suggests the concept of "subaltern counterpublics" as an alternative to notions of "the public." These are discursive spaces where groups articulate their needs, and demands are circulated formulating their own public sphere. This challenges the very meaning and foundational premises of ‘the public’ rather than simply positing strategies of inclusion or exclusion. The twinning of Amin’s notion of "micro-publics" and Fraser’s "counterpublics" is, I suggest, a fruitful approach to interpreting the Dandenong pool issue. It invites a reading of this singular suburban moment as an experiment, a trial of sorts, in newly imaginable ways of living democratically with difference. It enables us to imagine moments when a limited democratic right to exclude might create the sorts of cultural exchanges that give rise to a more authentic and workable recognition of cultural difference. I am drawn to think that this is precisely the kind of democratic experimentation that the YMCA and Dandenong Council embarked upon when they applied for the Equal Opportunity exemption. I suggest that by trialing, rather than fixing forever a "critically exclusive" access to the suburban swimming pool for two hours per year, they were in fact working on the practical problem of how to contribute in small but meaningful ways to a more profoundly free democracy and a reworked public sphere. In relation to the similar but distinct example of the McIver pool for women and children in Coogee, New South Wales, Kurt Iveson makes the point that such spaces of exclusion or withdrawal, “do not necessarily serve simply as spaces where people ‘can be themselves’, or as sites through which reified identities are recognised—in existing conditions of inequality, they can also serve as protected spaces where people can take the risk of exploring who they might become with relative safety from attack and abuse” (226). These are necessary risks to take if we are to avoid entrenching fear of difference in a world where difference is itself deeply, and permanently, entrenched.ReferencesAmin, Ash. “Ethnicity and the Multicultural City: Living with Diversity.” Environment and Planning A 34 (2002): 959–80.———. “The Good City.” Urban Studies 43 (2006): 1009–23.Berlant, Lauren, and Michael Warner. “Sex in Public.” Critical Inquiry 24 (1998): 547–66.Cantle, Ted. Community Cohesion: A Report of the Independent Review Team. London, UK Home Office, 2001.Carey, Adam. “Backing for Pool Cover Up Directive.” The Age 17 Sep. 2010. ‹http://www.theage.com.au/victoria/backing-for-pool-coverup-directive-20100916-15enz.html›.Elder, John, and Jon Pierick. “The Mean Streets: Where the Locals Fear to Tread.” The Sunday Age 10 Jan. 2010. ‹http://www.theage.com.au/national/the-mean-streets-where-the-locals-fear-to-tread-20100109-m00l.html?skin=text-only›.Eriksen, Thomas Hyland. “Diversity versus Difference: Neoliberalism in the Minority Debate." The Making and Unmaking of Difference. Ed. Richard Rottenburg, Burkhard Schnepel, and Shingo Shimada. Bielefeld: Transaction, 2006. 13–36.Fraser, Nancy. “Rethinking the Public Sphere: A Contribution to the Critique of Actually Existing Democracy.” Social Text 25/26 (1990): 56–80.Goodhart, David. “Too Diverse.” Prospect 95 (2004): 30-37.Haberfield, Georgie, and Gilbert Gardner. “Mayor Defends Pool Cover-up Order.” Dandenong Leader 16 Sep. 2010 ‹http://dandenong-leader.whereilive.com.au/news/story/dandenong-oasis-tells-swimmers-to-cover-up/›.Habermas, Jürgen. The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere: An Inquiry into a Category of Bourgeois Society. Cambridge, MA: MIT P, 2001.Hage, Ghassan. White Nation: Fantasies of White Supremacy in a Multicultural Society. Sydney: Pluto, 1998.hooks, bell. "Eating the Other: Desire and Resistance." Media and Cultural Studies Keyworks. Eds. Meenakshi Gigi and Douglas Kellner. Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2001. 366-380.Iveson, Kurt. "Justifying Exclusion: The Politics of Public Space and the Dispute over Access to McIvers Ladies' Baths, Sydney.” Gender, Place and Culture 10.3 (2003): 215–28.Joppke, Christian. “The Retreat of Multiculturalism in the Liberal State: Theory and Policy.” The British Journal of Sociology 55.2 (2004): 237–57.Laurier, Chris, and Eric Philo. “Cold Shoulders and Napkins Handed: Gestures of Responsibility.” Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers 31 (2006): 193–207.Low, Setha, and Neil Smith, eds. The Politics of Public Space. London: Routledge, 2006.Massey, Doreen. For Space. London: Sage, 2005.Murphy, Padraic. "Cover Up for Pool Even at Next Year's Ramadan.” Herald Sun 23 Sep. 2010. ‹http://www.heraldsun.com.au/news/victoria/cover-up-for-pool-event-during-next-years-ramadan/story-e6frf7kx-1225924291675›.Nichols, David. The Bogan Delusion. Melbourne: Affirm Press, 2011.Poynting, Scott, and Victoria Mason. "The New Integrationism, the State and Islamophobia: Retreat from Multiculturalism in Australia." International Journal of Law, Crime and Justice 36 (2008): 230–46.Razack, Sherene H. “Imperilled Muslim Women, Dangerous Muslim Men and Civilised Europeans: Legal and Social Responses to Forced Marriages.” Feminist Legal Studies 12.2 (2004): 129–74.Szego, Julie. “Under the Cover Up." The Age 9 Oct. 2010. < http://www.theage.com.au/victoria/under-the-coverup-20101008-16c1v.html >.Thrift, Nigel. “But Malice Afterthought: Cities and the Natural History of Hatred.” Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers 30 (2005): 133–50.Tissot, Sylvie. “Excluding Muslim Women: From Hijab to Niqab, from School to Public Space." Public Culture 23.1 (2011): 39–46.Valentine, Gill. “Living with Difference: Reflections on Geographies of Encounter.” Progress in Human Geography 32.3 (2008): 323–37.Wise, Amanda, and Selveraj Velayutham, eds. Everyday Multiculturalism. Houndsmills: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009.YMCA. “VCAT Ruling on Swim Sessions at Dandenong Oasis to Open Up to Community During Ramadan Next Year.” 16 Sep. 2010. ‹http://www.victoria.ymca.org.au/cpa/htm/htm_news_detail.asp?page_id=13&news_id=360›.

Apparently some people upon coming across [Down Syndrome dolls] were offended. […] Still, it’s curious, and telling, what gives offense. Was it the shock of seeing a doll not modeled on the normative form that caused such offense? Or the assumption that any representation of Down Syndrome must naturally intend ridicule? Either way, it would seem that we might benefit from an examination of such reactions—especially as they relate to instances of the idealisation of the human form that dolls […] represent. (Faulkner) IntroductionWhen Joanne Faulkner describes public criticism of dolls designed to look like they have Down Syndrome, she draws attention to the need for an examination of the way discourses of disability are communicated. She calls, in particular, for an interrogation of people’s reactions to the disruption of the idealised human form that most dolls adopt. The case of Down Syndrome dolls is fascinating, yet critical discussion of these dolls from a disability or cultural studies perspective is conspicuously lacking. To address this lack, this paper draws upon theories of the cultural construction of disability, beauty, and normalcy (Garland-Thompson, Kumari Campbell, Wendell), to explore the way ideas about disability are communicated and circulated. The dominant discourse of disability is medical, where people are diagnosed or identified as disabled if they meet certain criteria, or lists of physical impairments. These lists have a tendency to subsume the disparate qualities of disability (Garland-Thompson) and remove people considered disabled from the social and cultural world in which they live (Snyder and Mitchell 377). While Down Syndrome dolls, produced by Downi Creations and Helga’s European Speciality Toys (HEST) in the US and Europe respectively, are reflective of such lists, they also perform the cultural function of increasing the visibility of disability in society. In addition, the companies distributing these dolls state that they are striving for greater inclusion of people with Down Syndrome (Collins, Parks). However, the effect of the dominance of medicalised discourses of disability can be seen in the public reaction to these dolls. This paper seeks also to bring an interrogation of disability into dialogue with a critical analysis of the discursive function of lists.The paper begins with a consideration of lists as they have been used to define disability and organise knowledge within medicine, and the impact this has had on the position of disability within society. In order to differentiate itself from medical discourses, the emerging social model also relied on lists during the 1980s and 1990s. However, these lists also decontextualised disability by ignoring certain factors for political advantage. The social model, like medicine, tended to ignore the diversity of humanity it was apparently arguing for (Snyder and Mitchell 377). The focus then shifts to the image of Down Syndrome dolls and the ensuing negative interpretation of them focusing, in particular, on reader comments following a Mail Online (Fisher) article. Although the dolls were debated across the blogosphere on a number of disability, special needs parenting, and Down Syndrome specific blogs, people commenting on The Mail Online—a UK based conservative tabloid newspaper—offer useful insights into communication and meaning making around disability. People establish meanings about disability through communication (Hedlund 766). While cultural responses to disability are influenced by a number of paradigms of interpretation such as superstition, religion, and fear, this paper is concerned with the rejection of bodies that do not ascribe to cultural standards of beauty and seeks to explore this paradigm alongside and within the use of lists by the various models of disability. This paper interrogates the use of lists in the way meanings about disability are communicated through the medical diagnostic list, the Down Syndrome dolls, and reactions to them. Each list reduces the disparate qualities and experiences of disability, yet as a cultural artefact, these dolls go some way towards recognising the social and cultural world that medicalised discourses of disability ignore. Drawing on the use of lists within different frameworks of disability, this paper contrasts the individual, or medical, model of disability (that being disabled is a personal problem) with the social model (that exclusion due to disability is social oppression). Secondly, the paper compares the characteristics of Down Syndrome dolls with actual characteristics of Down Syndrome to conclude that these features aim to be a celebrated, not stigmatised, aspect of the doll. By reasserting alternative notions of the body, the dolls point towards a more diverse society where disability can be understood in relation to social oppression. However, these aims of celebration have not automatically translated to a more diverse understanding. This paper aims to complicate perceptions of disability beyond a rudimentary list of characteristics through a consideration of the negative public response to these dolls. These responses are an example of the cultural subjugation of disability.Lists and the Creation of Normative Cultural ValuesFor Robert Belknap, lists are the dominant way of “organizing data relevant to human functioning” (8). While lists are used in a number of ways and for a variety of purposes, Belknap divides lists into two categories—the practical and the literary. Practical lists store meanings, while literary lists create them (89). Belknap’s recognition of the importance of meaning making is particularly relevant to a cultural interrogation of disability. As Mitchell and Snyder comment:Disability’s representational “fate” is not so much dependant upon a tradition of negative portrayals as it is tethered to inciting the act of meaning-making itself. (6)Disability unites disparate groups of people whose only commonality is that they are considered “abnormal” (Garland-Thompson). Ableism—the beliefs, processes, and practices which produce the ideal body—is a cultural project in which normative values are created in an attempt to neutralise the fact that all bodies are out of control (Kumari Campbell). Medical models use diagnostic lists and criteria to remove bodies from their social and cultural context and enforce an unequal power dynamic (Snyder and Mitchell 377).By comparison, the social model of disability shifts the emphasis to situate disability in social and cultural practices (Goggin and Newell 36). Lists have also been integral to the formation of the social model of disability as theorists established binary oppositions between medical and social understandings of disability (Oliver 22). While these lists have no “essential meaning,” through discourse they shape human experience (Liggett). Lists bring disparate items together to structure meaning and organisation. According to Hedlund, insights into the experience of disability—which is neither wholly medical nor wholly social—can be found in the language we use to communicate ideas about disability (766). For example, while the recent production of children’s dolls designed to reflect a list of the physical features of Down Syndrome (Table 2) may have no inherent meaning, negative public reception reveals recognisable modes of understanding disability. Down Syndrome dolls are in stark contrast to dolls popularly available which assume a normative representation. For Blair and Shalmon (15), popular children’s toys communicate cultural standards of beauty. Naomi Wolf describes beauty as a socially constructed normative value used to disempower women in particular. The idealisation of the human form is an aspect of children’s toys that has been criticised for perpetuating a narrow conception of beauty (Levy 189). Disability is likewise subject to social construction and is part of a collective social reality beyond diagnostic lists (Hedlund 766).Organising Knowledge: The Social vs. Medical Model of DisabilityDisability has long been moored in medical cultures and institutions which emphasise a sterile ideal of the body based on a diagnosis of biological difference as deviance. For example, in 1866, John Langdon Down sought to provide a diagnostic classification system for people with, what would later come to be called (after him), Down Syndrome. He focused on physical features:The hair is […] of a brownish colour, straight and scanty. The face is flat and broad, and destitute of prominence. The cheeks are roundish, and extended laterally. The eyes are obliquely placed, and the internal canthi more than normally distant from one another. The palpebral fissure is very narrow. The forehead is wrinkled transversely from the constant assistance which the levatores palpebrarum derive from the occipito-frontalis muscle in the opening of the eyes. The lips are large and thick with transverse fissures. The tongue is long, thick, and is much roughened. The nose is small. The skin has a slight dirty yellowish tinge, and is deficient in elasticity, giving the appearance of being too large for the body. (Down)These features form what Belknap would describe as a “pragmatic” list (12). For Belknap, scientific classification, such as the description Langdon Down offers above, introduces precision and validation to the use of lists (167). The overt principle linking these disparate characteristics together is the normative body from which these features deviate. Medicalised discourses, such as Down’s list, have been linked with the institutionalisation of people with this condition and their exclusion from the broader community (Hickey-Moody 23). Such emphasis on criteria to proffer diagnosis removes and decontextualises bodies from the world in which they live (Snyder and Mitchell 370). This world may in fact be the disabling factor, rather than the person’s body. The social model emerged in direct opposition to medicalised definitions of disability as a number of activists with disabilities in the United Kingdom formed The Union of Physically Impaired Against Segregation (UPIAS) and concluded that people with disability are disabled not by their bodies but by a world structured to exclude their bodies (Finkelstein 13). By separating disability (socially created) from impairment (the body), disability is understood as society’s unwillingness to accommodate the needs of people with impairments. The British academic and disability activist Michael Oliver was central to the establishment of the social model of disability. Following the activities of the UPIAS, Oliver (re)defined disability as a “form of social oppression,” and created two lists (reproduced below) to distinguish between the social and individual (or medical) models of disability. By utilising the list form in this way, Oliver both provided a repository of information regarding the social model of disability and contextualised it in direct opposition to what he describes as the individual model. These lists present the social model as a coherent discipline, in an easy to understand format. As Belknap argues, the suggestion of order is a major tool of the list (98). Oliver’s list suggests a clear order to the emerging social model of disability—disability is a problem with society, not an individual. However, this list was problematic because it appeared to disregard impairment within the experience of disability. As the “impersonal became political” (Snyder and Mitchell 377), impairment became the unacknowledged ambiguity in the binary opposition the social model was attempting to create (Shakespeare 35). Nevertheless, Oliver’s lists successfully enforced a desired order to the social model of disability. The individual modelThe social modelPersonal tragedy theorySocial oppression theoryPersonal problemSocial problemIndividual treatmentSocial actionMedicalisationSelf helpProfessional dominanceIndividual and collective responsibilityExpertiseExperienceAdjustmentAffirmationIndividual identityCollective identityPrejudiceDiscriminationAttitudesBehaviourCareRightsControlChoicePolicyPoliticsIndividual adaptation Social changeTable 1 The Individual v Social Model of Disability (Oliver)The social model then went through a period of “lists,” especially when discussing media and culture. Positive versus negative portrayals of disability were identified and scholars listed strategies for the appropriate representation of disability (Barnes, Barnes Mercer and Shakespeare). The representations of impairment or the physical markers of disability were discouraged as the discipline concerned itself with establishing disability as a political struggle against a disabling social world. Oliver’s lists arrange certain “facts” about disability. Disability is framed as a social phenomenon where certain aspects are emphasised and others left out. While Oliver explains that these lists were intended to represent extreme ends of a continuum to illustrate the distinction between disability and impairment (33), these are not mutually exclusive categories (Shakespeare 35). Disability is not simply a list of physical features, nor is it a clear distinction between individual/medical and social models. By utilising lists, the social model reacts to and attempts to move beyond the particular ordering provided by the medical model, but remains tied to a system of classification that imposes order on human functioning. Critical analysis of the representation of disability must re-engage the body by moving beyond binaries and pragmatic lists. While lists organise data central to human functioning, systems of meaning shape the organisation of human experience. Down Syndrome dolls, explored in the next section, complicate the distinction between the medical and social models.Down Syndrome DollsThese dolls are based on composites of a number of children with Down Syndrome (Hareyan). Helga Parks, CEO of HEST, describes the dolls as a realistic representation of nine physical features of Down Syndrome. Likewise, Donna Moore of Downi Creations employed a designer to oversee the production of the dolls which boast 13 features of Down Syndrome (Velasquez). These features are listed in the table below. HEST Down Syndrome Dolls Downi CreationsSmall ears set low on head with a fold at the topSmall ears with a fold at the topEars set low on the headSmall mouthSmall mouthProtruding tongueSlightly protruding tongueShortened fingers Shortened fingersPinkie finger curves inwardAlmond shaped eyesAlmond-shaped eyesHorizontal crease in palm of handHorizontal crease in palm of handGap between first and second toeA gap between the first and second toesShortened toesFlattened back of headFlattened back of headFlattened bridge across nose Flattened bridge across noseOptional: An incision in the chest to indicate open-heart surgery Table 2: Down Syndrome Dolls (Parks, Velasquez) Achieving the physical features of Down Syndrome is significant because Parks and Moore wanted children with the condition to recognise themselves:When a child with Down’s syndrome [sic.] picks up a regular doll, he doesn’t see himself, he sees the world’s perception of “perfect.” Our society is so focused on bodily perfection. (Cresswell)Despite these motivations, studies show that children with Down Syndrome prefer to play with “typical dolls” that do not reflect the physical characteristics of Down Syndrome (Cafferty 49). According to Cafferty, it is possible that children prefer typical dolls because they are “more attractive” (49). Similar studies of diverse groups of children have shown that children prefer to play with dolls they perceive as fitting into social concepts of beauty (Abbasi). Deeply embedded cultural notions of beauty—which exclude disability (see Morris)—are communicated from childhood (Blair & Shalmon 15). Notions of bodily perfection dominate children’s toys and Western culture in general as Cresswell comments above. Many bodies, not just those deemed “disabled,” do not conform to these cultural standards. Cultural ideals of beauty and an idealisation of the human body according to increasingly narrow parameters are becoming conflated with conceptions of normality (Wendell 86). Recognition of disability as subject to cultural rejection allows us to see “beauty and normalcy [as] a series of practices and positions [taken] in order to avoid the stigmatization of ugliness and abnormality” (Garland-Thompson). The exaggerated features of the doll problematise the idea that people with disability should strive to appear as nondisabled as possible and in turn highlights that some people, such as those with Down Syndrome, cannot “pass” as nondisabled and must therefore navigate a life and community that is not welcoming. While lists of the features of Down Syndrome store associated medicalised meanings, the discussion of the dolls online (the medium through which they are sold) provides insight into the cultural interpretation of disability and the way meaning is made. The next section of the paper considers a selection of negative responses to the Down Syndrome dolls that followed an article published in Mail Online (Fisher). What Causes Offence? Prior to Down Syndrome dolls, the majority of “disability dolls” were constructed through their accessories rather than through the dolls’ physical form and features. Wheelchairs, white canes, guide dogs and harnesses, plastic walkers, leg braces, and hearing aids could be purchased for use with dolls. Down Syndrome dolls look different as the features of impairment are embedded in the dolls’ construction. While accessories have a more temporary feel about them, the permanence of the impairments attributed to the doll was problematic for some who felt it projected a negative image of disability. Listed below are several negative comments following an article published in Mail Online (Fisher):What a grim world we are living in. No longer are dollies for play, for make believe, or for fun. Now it all about self image and psychological “help.” We “disabled” know we are “disabled”—we don’t need a doll to remind us of that! Stop making everything PC; let children be children and play and laugh once again!I think it’s sick and patronising.Who on earth are those education “experts?” Has nobody told them that you don’t educate children by mirroring their defects/weaknesses/negative traits but by doing exactly the opposite, mirroring back the BEST in them?The Downs Syndrome doll looks like they took the physical traits and presented them in an exaggerated way to make them more noticeable. That doll does not look attractive to me at all. If someone has a child that WANTS such a doll, fine. I can’t really see how it would help many of them, it would be like a huge sign saying “You are different.”The terminology used (grim, sick, patronising, defect, weak, negative, unattractive, different) to describe disability in these posts is significant. These descriptions are ideological categories which disadvantage and devalue “bodies that do not conform to certain cultural standards” (Garland-Thompson). Implicit and explicit in all of these comments is the sense that disability and Downs Syndrome in particular is undesirable, unattractive even. When listed together, like Belknap’s literary lists, they are not random or isolated interpretations; they form part of a larger system of meaning making around disability.These responses are informed by the notion that in order to gain equality in society, people with disability must suppress their difference and focus instead on how they are really just like everybody else. However, this focus ignores barriers to inclusion, such as in the rejection of bodies that do not ascribe to cultural standards of beauty. An increasing visibility of impairment in popular culture such as children’s toys advances an understanding of disability as diversity through difference and not something inherently bad. ConclusionPeter Laudin of Pattycake Doll, a company which sells Black, Hispanic, Asian, and Disabled dolls, has found that children “love all dolls unconditionally whether it’s special needs or not” (Lee Adam). He suggests that the majority of the negative responses to the Down Syndrome dolls stem from prejudice (Lee Adam). Dolls popularly available idealise the human form and assume a normative representation. While this has been criticised for communicating damaging standards of beauty from childhood (Levy, Blair and Shalmon), critiques about disability are not as widely understood. The social and medical models of disability focus attention on certain aspects of disability through lists; however, the reduction of diagnostic criteria in the form of a list (whether medical or social) decontextualises disability from the social and cultural world. Thus, the list form, while useful, has elided the disparate qualities of disability. As Belknap argues, lists “ask us to make them meaningful” (xv). Although the dolls discussed in this paper have been criticised for stereotyping and emphasising the difference between children with disability and those without, an inclusion of the physical features of Down Syndrome is consistent with recent moves within critical disability studies to re-engage the body (Shakespeare 35). As Faulkner notes in the epigraph to this paper, an examination of negative reactions to these dolls reveals much about the cultural position of people with disability. References Abbasi, Jennifer. “Why 6-Year Old Girls Want to be Sexy.” Live Science 16 July (2012). 30 Aug. 2012 ‹http://www.livescience.com/21609-self-sexualization-young-girls.html›. Barnes, Colin. Disabling Imagery and the Media: An Exploration of the Principles for Media Representations of Disabled People. Krumlin Halifax: Ryburn Publishing, 1992. 5 Aug. 2012 http://www.leeds.ac.uk/disability-studies/archiveuk/Barnes/disabling%20imagery.pdf.Barnes, Colin, Geoff Mercer, and Tom Shakespeare. Exploring Disability: A Sociological Introduction. Malden: Polity Press, 1999.Belknap, Robert. The List: The Uses and Pleasures of Cataloguing. New Haven: Yale U P, 2004.Blair, Lorrie, and Maya Shalmon. “Cosmetic Surgery and the Cultural Construction of Beauty.” Art Education 58.3 (2005): 14-18.Cafferty, Diana De Rosa. A Doll Like Me: Do Children with Down Syndrome Prefer to Play with Dolls That Have the Physical Features Associated with Down Syndrome? MS thesis. U of California, 2012. Campbell, Fiona Kumari. Contours of Ableism: The Production of Disability and Abledness. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009.Collins, Allyson. “Dolls with Down Syndrome May Help Kids.” ABC News. 27 Jun. 2008. 4 Oct. 2012 ‹http://abcnews.go.com/Health/Parenting/story?id=5255393&page=1#.UGzQXK6T-XP›. Cresswell, Adam. “Dolls with Disability Divide Opinion.” The Australian 12 Jul. 2008. 26 Dec. 2008 ‹http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,24000338-23289,00.html›.Down, John Langdon. “Observations on an Ethnic Classification of Idiots.” Neonatology on the Web. 1866. 3 Aug. 2012 ‹http://www.neonatology.org/classics/down.html›.Faulkner, Joanne “Disability Dolls.” What Sorts of People? 26 Jun. 2008. 29 Aug. 2012 ‹http://whatsortsofpeople.wordpress.com/2008/06/26/disability-dolls/›.Finkelstein, Vic. “Representing Disability.” Disabling Barriers—Enabling Environments. Ed. John Swain, et al. Los Angeles: Sage, 2004. 13-20.Fisher, Lorraine. “Parents’ Fury at ‘Down's Syndrome Dolls’ Designed to Help Children Deal with Disability.” Mail Online 7 Jul. 2008. 26 Dec. 2008. ‹http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-1032600/Parents-fury-Downs-Syndrome-dolls-designed-help-children-deal-disability.html›. Garland-Thomson, Rosemarie. “Re-Shaping, Re-Thinking, Re-Defining: Feminist Disability Studies.” The Free Library 1 Jan. 2008. 3 Aug. 2012. ‹http://www.thefreelibrary.com/Re-shaping, Re-thinking, Re-defining: Feminist Disability Studies.-a084377500›.Goggin, Gerard and Christopher Newell. Disability in Australia: Exposing a Social Apartheid. Sydney: U of New South Wales, 2005.Hareyan, Armen. “Using Dolls to Reduce the Stigma of Down Syndrome.” EMax Health. 4 Dec. 2008. Jan 2009 ‹http://www.emaxhealth.com/7/22865.html›.Hedlund, Marianne. “Disability as a Phenomenon: A Discourse of Social and Biological Understanding.” Disability & Society. 15.5 (2000): 765-80.Hickey-Moody, Anna. Unimaginable Bodies. Netherlands: Sense Publishers, 2009.Lee Adams, William. “New Dolls on the Block.” Time Magazine 19 Mar. 2009. 13 Dec. 2009. ‹http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1886457,00.html›.Levy, Ariel. Female Chauvinist Pigs: Women and the Rise of Raunch Culture. Collingwood: Black Inc. 2010.Liggett, Helen. “Stars are not Born: An Interpretive Approach to the Politics of Disability” in Disability Studies: Past Present and Future. Ed. Len Barton and Mike Oliver. Leeds: The Disability Press, 1997. 178-194.Mitchell, David and Sharon Snyder. Narrative Prosthesis: Disability and the Dependencies of Discourse. Ann Arbor, The U of Michigan P, 2000.Morris, Jenny “A Feminist Perspective.” Framed. Ed. Ann Pointon & Chris Davies. London: British Film Institute, 1997. 21-30. Oliver, Michael. Understanding Disability: From Theory to Practice. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 1996.Parks, Helga. “New Doll Is Child’s Best Friend.” HEST Press Release, 2005. Shakespeare, Tom. Disability Rights and Wrongs. London: Routledge, 2006.Snyder, Sharon, and David Mitchell. “Re-Engaging the Body: Disability Studes and the Resistance to Embodiment.” Public Culture 13.3 (2001): 367-89.Velasquez, Leticia. “Downi Creations.” 2007. 4 Dec. 2009. ‹http://cause-of-our-joy.blogspot.com/2007/08/downi-creations.html›.Wendell, Susan. The Rejected Body: Feminist Philosophical Reflections on Disability. New York: Routledge, 1996.Wolf, Naomi. The Beauty Myth: How Images of Beauty Are Used against Women. New York: Harper Perennial, 2002 [1991].

For the past twenty years, academics and other social commentators have, by and large, shared the view that the phase of modernity through which we are currently passing is defined by two interrelated catalysts of change: the physical movement of people and the virtual movement of information around the globe. As we enter the second decade of the new millennium, it is certainly a timely moment to reflect upon the ways in which the prognoses of the scholars and scientists writing in the late twentieth century have come to pass, especially since—during the time this special issue has been in press—the revolutions that are gathering pace in the Arab world appear to be realising the theoretical prediction that the ever-increasing “flows” of people and information would ultimately bring about the end of the nation-state and herald an era of transnationalism (Appadurai, Urry). For writers like Arjun Appadurai, moreover, the concept of diaspora was key to grasping how this new world order would take shape, and how it would operate: Diasporic public spheres, diverse amongst themselves, are the crucibles of a postnational political order. The engines of their discourse are mass media (both interactive and expressive) and the movement of refugees, activists, students, laborers. It may be that the emergent postnational order proves not to be a system of homogeneous units (as with the current system of nation-states) but a system based on relations between heterogeneous units (some social movements, some interest groups, some professional bodies, some non-governmental organizations, some armed constabularies, some judicial bodies) ... In the short run, as we can see already, it is likely to be a world of increased incivility and violence. In the longer run, free from the constraints of the nation form, we may find that cultural freedom and sustainable justice in the world do not presuppose the uniform and general existence of the nation-state. This unsettling possibility could be the most exciting dividend of living in modernity at large. (23) In this editorial, we would like to return to the “here and now” of the late 1990s in which theorists like Arjun Appaduri, Ulrich Beck, John Urry, Zygmunt Bauman, Robert Robertson and others were “imagining” the consequences of both globalisation and glocalisation for the twenty-first century in order that we may better assess what is, indeed, coming to pass. While most of their prognoses for this “second modernity” have proven remarkably accurate, it is their—self-confessed—inability to forecast either the nature or the extent of the digital revolution that most vividly captures the distance between the mid-1990s and now; and it is precisely the consequences of this extraordinary technological revolution on the twin concepts of “glocality” and “diaspora” that the research featured in this special issue seeks to capture. Glocal Imaginaries Appadurai’s endeavours to show how globalisation was rapidly making itself felt as a “structure of feeling” (Williams in Appadurai 189) as well as a material “fact” was also implicit in our conceptualisation of the conference, “Glocal Imaginaries: Writing/Migration/Place,” which gave rise to this special issue. This conference, which was the culmination of the AHRC-funded project “Moving Manchester: Literature/Migration/Place (2006-10)”, constituted a unique opportunity to gain an international, cross-disciplinary perspective on urgent and topical debates concerning mobility and migration in the early twenty-first century and the strand “Networked Diasporas” was one of the best represented on the program. Attracting papers on broadcast media as well as the new digital technologies, the strand was strikingly international in terms of the speakers’ countries of origin, as is this special issue which brings together research from six European countries, Australia and the Indian subcontinent. The “case-studies” represented in these articles may therefore be seen to constitute something of a “state-of-the-art” snapshot of how Appadurai’s “glocal imaginary” is being lived out across the globe in the early years of the twenty-first century. In this respect, the collection proves that his hunch with regards to the signal importance of the “mass-media” in redefining our spatial and temporal coordinates of being and belonging was correct: The third and final factor to be addressed here is the role of the mass-media, especially in its electronic forms, in creating new sorts of disjuncture between spatial and virtual neighborhoods. This disjuncture has both utopian and dystopian potentials, and there is no easy way to tell how these may play themselves out in the future of the production of locality. (194) The articles collected here certainly do serve as testament to the “bewildering plethora of changes in ... media environments” (195) that Appadurai envisaged, and yet it can clearly also be argued that this agent of glocalisation has not yet brought about the demise of the nation-state in the way (or at the speed) that many commentators predicted. Digital Diasporas in a Transnational World Reviewing the work of the leading social science theorists working in the field during the late 1990s, it quickly becomes evident that: (a) the belief that globalisation presented a threat to the nation-state was widely held; and (b) that the “jury” was undecided as to whether this would prove a good or bad thing in the years to come. While the commentators concerned did their best to complexify both their analysis of the present and their view of the future, it is interesting to observe, in retrospect, how the rhetoric of both utopia and dystopia invaded their discourse in almost equal measure. We have already seen how Appadurai, in his 1996 publication, Modernity at Large, looks beyond the “increased incivility and violence” of the “short term” to a world “free from the constraints of the nation form,” while Roger Bromley, following Agamben and Deleuze as well as Appadurai, typifies a generation of literary and cultural critics who have paid tribute to the way in which the arts (and, in particular, storytelling) have enabled subjects to break free from their national (af)filiations (Pearce, Devolving 17) and discover new “de-territorialised” (Deleuze and Guattari) modes of being and belonging. Alongside this “hope,” however, the forces and agents of globalisation were also regarded with a good deal of suspicion and fear, as is evidenced in Ulrich Beck’s What is Globalization? In his overview of the theorists who were then perceived to be leading the debate, Beck draws distinctions between what was perceived to be the “engine” of globalisation (31), but is clearly most exercised by the manner in which the transformation has taken shape: Without a revolution, without even any change in laws or constitutions, an attack has been launched “in the normal course of business”, as it were, upon the material lifelines of modern national societies. First, the transnational corporations are to export jobs to parts of the world where labour costs and workplace obligations are lowest. Second, the computer-generation of worldwide proximity enables them to break down and disperse goods and services, and produce them through a division of labour in different parts of the world, so that national and corporate labels inevitably become illusory. (3; italics in the original) Beck’s concern is clearly that all these changes have taken place without the nation-states of the world being directly involved in any way: transnational corporations began to take advantage of the new “mobility” available to them without having to secure the agreement of any government (“Companies can produce in one country, pay taxes in another and demand state infrastructural spending in yet another”; 4-5); the export of the labour market through the use of digital communications (stereotypically, call centres in India) was similarly unregulated; and the world economy, as a consequence, was in the process of becoming detached from the processes of either production or consumption (“capitalism without labour”; 5-7). Vis-à-vis the dystopian endgame of this effective “bypassing” of the nation-state, Beck is especially troubled about the fate of the human rights legislation that nation-states around the world have developed, with immense effort and over time (e.g. employment law, trade unions, universal welfare provision) and cites Zygmunt Bauman’s caution that globalisation will, at worst, result in widespread “global wealth” and “local poverty” (31). Further, he ends his book with a fully apocalyptic vision, “the Brazilianization of Europe” (161-3), which unapologetically calls upon the conventions of science fiction to imagine a worst-case scenario for a Europe without nations. While fourteen or fifteen years is evidently not enough time to put Beck’s prognosis to the test, most readers would probably agree that we are still some way away from such a Europe. Although the material wealth and presence of the transnational corporations strikes a chord, especially if we include the world banks and finance organisations in their number, the financial crisis that has rocked the world for the past three years, along with the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the ascendancy of Al-Qaida (all things yet to happen when Beck was writing in 1997), has arguably resulted in the nations of Europe reinforcing their (respective and collective) legal, fiscal, and political might through rigorous new policing of their physical borders and regulation of their citizens through “austerity measures” of an order not seen since World War Two. In other words, while the processes of globalisation have clearly been instrumental in creating the financial crisis that Europe is presently grappling with and does, indeed, expose the extent to which the world economy now operates outside the control of the nation-state, the nation-state still exists very palpably for all its citizens (whether permanent or migrant) as an agent of control, welfare, and social justice. This may, indeed, cause us to conclude that Bauman’s vision of a world in which globalisation would make itself felt very differently for some groups than others came closest to what is taking shape: true, the transnationals have seized significant political and economic power from the nation-state, but this has not meant the end of the nation-state; rather, the change is being experienced as a re-trenching of whatever power the nation-state still has (and this, of course, is considerable) over its citizens in their “local”, everyday lives (Bauman 55). If we now turn to the portrait of Europe painted by the articles that constitute this special issue, we see further evidence of transglobal processes and practices operating in a realm oblivious to local (including national) concerns. While our authors are generally more concerned with the flows of information and “identity” than business or finance (Appaduri’s “ethnoscapes,” “technoscapes,” and “ideoscapes”: 33-7), there is the same impression that this “circulation” (Latour) is effectively bypassing the state at one level (the virtual), whilst remaining very materially bound by it at another. In other words, and following Bauman, we would suggest that it is quite possible for contemporary subjects to be both the agents and subjects of globalisation: a paradox that, as we shall go on to demonstrate, is given particularly vivid expression in the case of diasporic and/or migrant peoples who may be able to bypass the state in the manufacture of their “virtual” identities/communities) but who (Cohen) remain very much its subjects (or, indeed, “non-subjects”) when attempting movement in the material realm. Two of the articles in the collection (Leurs & Ponzanesi and Marcheva) deal directly with the exponential growth of “digital diasporas” (sometimes referred to as “e-diasporas”) since the inception of Facebook in 2004, and both provide specific illustrations of the way in which the nation-state both has, and has not, been transcended. First, it quickly becomes clear that for the (largely) “youthful” (Leurs & Ponzanesi) participants of nationally inscribed networking sites (e.g. “discovernikkei” (Japan), “Hyves” (Netherlands), “Bulgarians in the UK” (Bulgaria)), shared national identity is a means and not an end. In other words, although the participants of these sites might share in and actively produce a fond and nostalgic image of their “homeland” (Marcheva), they are rarely concerned with it as a material or political entity and an expression of their national identities is rapidly supplemented by the sharing of other (global) identity markers. Leurs & Ponzanesi invoke Deleuze and Guattari’s concept of the “rhizome” to describe the way in which social networkers “weave” a “rhizomatic path” to identity, gradually accumulating a hybrid set of affiliations. Indeed, the extent to which the “nation” disappears on such sites can be remarkable as was also observed in our investigation of the digital storytelling site, “Capture Wales” (BBC) (Pearce, "Writing"). Although this BBC site was set up to capture the voices of the Welsh nation in the early twenty-first century through a collection of (largely) autobiographical stories, very few of the participants mention either Wales or their “Welshness” in the stories that they tell. Further, where the “home” nation is (re)imagined, it is generally in an idealised, or highly personalised, form (e.g. stories about one’s own family) or through a sharing of (perceived and actual) cultural idiosyncrasies (Marcheva on “You know you’re a Bulgarian when …”) rather than an engagement with the nation-state per se. As Leurs & Ponzanesi observe: “We can see how the importance of the nation-state gets obscured as diasporic youth, through cultural hybridisation of youth culture and ethnic ties initiate subcultures and offer resistance to mainstream cultural forms.” Both the articles just discussed also note the shading of the “national” into the “transnational” on the social networking sites they discuss, and “transnationalism”—in the sense of many different nations and their diasporas being united through a common interest or cause—is also a focus of Pikner’s article on “collective actions” in Europe (notably, “EuroMayDay” and “My Estonia”) and Harb’s highly topical account of the role of both broadcast media (principally, Al-Jazeera) and social media in the revolutions and uprisings currently sweeping through the Arab world (spring 2011). On this point, it should be noted that Harb identifies this as the moment when Facebook’s erstwhile predominantly social function was displaced by a manifestly political one. From this we must conclude that both transnationalism and social media sites can be put to very different ends: while young people in relatively privileged democratic countries might embrace transnationalism as an expression of their desire to “rise above” national politics, the youth of the Arab world have engaged it as a means of generating solidarity for nationalist insurgency and liberation. Another instance of “g/local” digital solidarity exceeding national borders is to be found in Johanna Sumiala’s article on the circulatory power of the Internet in the Kauhajoki school shooting which took place Finland in 2008. As well as using the Internet to “stage manage” his rampage, the Kauhajoki shooter (whose name the author chose to withhold for ethical reasons) was subsequently found to have been a member of numerous Web-based “hate groups”, many of them originating in the United States and, as a consequence, may be understood to have committed his crime on behalf of a transnational community: what Sumiala has defined as a “networked community of destruction.” It must also be noted, however, that the school shootings were experienced as a very local tragedy in Finland itself and, although the shooter may have been psychically located in a transnational hyper-reality when he undertook the killings, it is his nation-state that has had to deal with the trauma and shame in the long term. Woodward and Brown & Rutherford, meanwhile, show that it remains the tendency of public broadcast media to uphold the raison d’être of the nation-state at the same time as embracing change. Woodward’s feature article (which reports on the AHRC-sponsored “Tuning In” project which has researched the BBC World Service) shows how the representation of national and diasporic “voices” from around the world, either in opposition to or in dialogue with the BBC’s own reporting, is key to the way in which the Commission has changed and modernised in recent times; however, she is also clear that many of the objectives that defined the service in its early days—such as its commitment to a distinctly “English” brand of education—still remain. Similarly, Brown & Rutherford’s article on the innovative Australian ABC children’s television series, My Place (which has combined traditional broadcasting with online, interactive websites) may be seen to be positively promoting the Australian nation by making visible its commitment to multiculturalism. Both articles nevertheless reveal the extent to which these public service broadcasters have recognised the need to respond to their nations’ changing demographics and, in particular, the fact that “diaspora” is a concept that refers not only to their English and Australian audiences abroad but also to their now manifestly multicultural audiences at home. When it comes to commercial satellite television, however, the relationship between broadcasting and national and global politics is rather harder to pin down. Subramanian exposes a complex interplay of national and global interests through her analysis of the Malayalee “reality television” series, Idea Star Singer. Exported globally to the Indian diaspora, the show is shamelessly exploitative in the way in which it combines residual and emergent ideologies (i.e. nostalgia for a traditional Keralayan way of life vs aspirational “western lifestyles”) in pursuit of its (massive) audience ratings. Further, while the ISS series is ostensibly a g/local phenomenon (the export of Kerala to the rest of the world rather than “India” per se), Subramanian passionately laments all the progressive national initiatives (most notably, the campaign for “women’s rights”) that the show is happy to ignore: an illustration of one of the negative consequences of globalisation predicted by Beck (31) noted at the start of this editorial. Harb, meanwhile, reflects upon a rather different set of political concerns with regards to commercial satellite broadcasting in her account of the role of Al-Jazeera and Al Arabiya in the recent (2011) Arab revolutions. Despite Al-Jazeera’s reputation for “two-sided” news coverage, recent events have exposed its complicity with the Qatari government; further, the uprisings have revealed the speed with which social media—in particular Facebook and Twitter—are replacing broadcast media. It is now possible for “the people” to bypass both governments and news corporations (public and private) in relaying the news. Taken together, then, what our articles would seem to indicate is that, while the power of the nation-state has notionally been transcended via a range of new networking practices, this has yet to undermine its material power in any guaranteed way (witness recent counter-insurgencies in Libya, Bahrain, and Syria).True, the Internet may be used to facilitate transnational “actions” against the nation-state (individual or collective) through a variety of non-violent or violent actions, but nation-states around the world, and especially in Western Europe, are currently wielding immense power over their subjects through aggressive “austerity measures” which have the capacity to severely compromise the freedom and agency of the citizens concerned through widespread unemployment and cuts in social welfare provision. This said, several of our articles provide evidence that Appadurai’s more utopian prognoses are also taking shape. Alongside the troubling possibility that globalisation, and the technologies that support it, is effectively eroding “difference” (be this national or individual), there are the ever-increasing (and widely reported) instances of how digital technology is actively supporting local communities and actions around the world in ways that bypass the state. These range from the relatively modest collective action, “My Estonia”, featured in Pikner’s article, to the ways in which the Libyan diaspora in Manchester have made use of social media to publicise and support public protests in Tripoli (Harb). In other words, there is compelling material evidence that the heterogeneity that Appadurai predicted and hoped for has come to pass through the people’s active participation in (and partial ownership of) media practices. Citizens are now able to “interfere” in the representation of their lives as never before and, through the digital revolution, communicate with one another in ways that circumvent state-controlled broadcasting. We are therefore pleased to present the articles that follow as a lively, interdisciplinary and international “state-of-the-art” commentary on how the ongoing revolution in media and communication is responding to, and bringing into being, the processes and practices of globalisation predicted by Appadurai, Beck, Bauman, and others in the 1990s. The articles also speak to the changing nature of the world’s “diasporas” during this fifteen year time frame (1996-2011) and, we trust, will activate further debate (following Cohen) on the conceptual tensions that now manifestly exist between “virtual” and “material” diasporas and also between the “transnational” diasporas whose objective is to transcend the nation-state altogether and those that deploy social media for specifically local or national/ist ends. Acknowledgements With thanks to the Arts and Humanities Research Council (UK) for their generous funding of the “Moving Manchester” project (2006-10). Special thanks to Dr Kate Horsley (Lancaster University) for her invaluable assistance as ‘Web Editor’ in the production of this special issue (we could not have managed without you!) and also to Gail Ferguson (our copy-editor) for her expertise in the preparation of the final typescript. References Appadurai, Arjun. Modernity at Large: Cultural Dimensions of Globalisation. Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P, 1996. Bauman, Zygmunt. Globalization. Cambridge: Polity, 1998. Beck, Ulrich. What is Globalization? Trans. Patrick Camiller. Cambridge: Polity, 2000 (1997). Bromley, Roger. Narratives for a New Belonging: Diasporic Cultural Fictions. Edinburgh: Edinburgh UP, 2000. Cohen, Robin. Global Diasporas. 2nd ed. London and New York: Routledge, 2008. Deleuze, Gilles, and Felix Guattari. A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia. Trans. Brian Massumi. Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P, 1987. Latour, Bruno. Reassembling the Social: An Introduction to Actor-Network Theory. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1995. Pearce, Lynne, ed. Devolving Identities: Feminist Readings in Home and Belonging. London: Ashgate, 2000. Pearce, Lynne. “‘Writing’ and ‘Region’ in the Twenty-First Century: Epistemological Reflections on Regionally Located Art and Literature in the Wake of the Digital Revolution.” European Journal of Cultural Studies 13.1 (2010): 27-41. Robertson, Robert. Globalization: Social Theory and Global Culture. London: Sage, 1992. Urry, John. Sociology beyond Societies. London: Routledge, 1999. Williams, Raymond. Dream Worlds: Mass Consumption in Late Nineteenth-Century France. Berkeley: U of California P, 1982.

<strong>Gyeongsang University Turnitin Trash Files</strong> <strong>HUMAN CAPITAL NEXUS AND GROWTH OF NIGERIA ECONOMY</strong> <strong>CHAPTER ONE</strong> <strong>INTRODUCTION</strong> <strong>Background to the Study </strong> Government expenditure equally known as public spending simply refers to yearly expenditure by the public sector (government) in order to achieve some macroeconomic aims notably high literacy rate, skilled manpower, high standard of living, poverty alleviation, national productivity growth, and macro-economic stability. It is also expenditure by public authorities at various tiers of government to collectively cater for the social needs of the people. Generally, it has been revealed that public expenditure plays a key role in realizing economic growth. This is because providing good education to individuals is one of the principal avenues of improving human resource quality in any economy. From this perspective, advancing school enrolment may subsequently lead to economic growth. Therefore, education remains the effective way to subdue poverty, illiteracy, underfeeding and accelerate economic growth in the long-term. Much attention has been channeled towards clarifying the relationship between education and economic growth, and so, has led to series of studies by economists over the past 30 years. There is substantial literature to back the fact that correlation exists between the two. (Sylvie, 2018). In line with the views of Hadir and Lahrech (2015), the fact that humans are the most worthy assets remains undisputable in both developed and developing countries. Therefore efficiency in human resource management is pertinent if development must be realized. In this sense, the major gateway to development is adequate investment in human capital which may be described as an individual&rsquo;s potential economic value in terms of skills, knowledge, and other intangible assets. In order to realize the well-known macroeconomic objective of economic growth, Nigeria being a developing country embarked on some programs in the educational sector with the aim of boosting human capital development. However, these programs have only served as conduits for enriching the corrupt political elite. Given the high prospects of achieving economic growth in Nigeria and the place of human capital development in its actualization, education, therefore, remains a top priority for the Nigeria government as well as concerned researchers. Thus, this study is one among other concerned studies that will attempt to examine economic growth and human capital nexus in Nigeria through education variables. In particular, using education as a measure of human capital, it will attempt to explore the impact of education variables on the growth of Nigeria&rsquo;s economy. According to Wamboye, (2015), education makes way for vital knowledge, skills, techniques and information for individuals to function in family and society. Education can groom a set of educated leaders to take on jobs in government services, public and private firms, and domestic and foreign firms. The growth of education can provide all kinds of grooming that would foster literacy and basic skills. Though alternative investments in the economy could generate more growth, it must not deviate from the necessary contributions; economic as well as non-economic, that education can make and has made to expediting macroeconomic growth (Clark, 2015). Todaro and Smith in Clark (2015), likewise called attention to the fact that, extension of education lead to an increasingly gainful labor force and provide it with expanded information and abilities, and boost employment and income-earning avenues for educators, schools, and employees. Economic growth, proxied by Gross Domestic Product (GDP), gives numerous advantages which include increasing the general living standard of the masses as estimated by per capita pay (income), making the distribution of income simpler to accomplish, thus, shortening the time span needed to achieve the fundamental needs of man to a considerable majority of the masses. The main source of per capita yield (output) in any nation, regardless of whether it is advanced or developing, is really increment in &#39;human productivity&#39;. Per capita yield (output) growth is notwithstanding a significant aspect of economic prosperity (Abramowitz, 1981). For the most part, it has been uncovered that individuals are the most important source of productivity growth and economic prosperity. Technology and technological hardware are the results of human inventions and innovativeness. The suggestion of UNESCO, that 26% of yearly planned expenditure (budget) in developing nations should be dedicated to education has become intangible, particularly in Nigeria. Planned expenditure on education in Nigeria ranges from only 5%-7% of total planned expenditure. The impact of the above situation on the economic prosperity of the nation as it concerns human capital development, capacity building, infrastructural advancement, etc, is troubling. On this note, the necessity of a well-thought out plan for rectifying this unwanted situation can&#39;t be over stressed. &nbsp; <strong>1.2 Statement of the Problem </strong> Sikiru (2011) as cited in Ajibola (2016) rightly pointed out that the role of education in any economy is no longer business as usual because of the knowledge based globalized economy where productivity greatly depends on the quantity and quality of human resource, which itself largely depends on investment in education. Governments continue to increase spending on education with a view toward enhancing the standard of education, build human capacity and attainment of economic growth. Ironically, this effort by government is still a far cry of UNESCO&rsquo;s recommendation of 26% total annual budget to education, and so, has not yielded the expected results. Thus, researchers sought to understand the relationship between government expenditure on education and economic growth and how they influence each other. These researches on the above subject matter, have given rise to divergent school of thoughts. Over time, Nigeria has indicated willingness to develop&nbsp; education in order to curtail illiteracy and quicken national development. Anyway regardless of the irreproachable evidence that education is key to the improvement of the economy; there exists a wide loop-hole in accessibility, quality and fairness (equity) in education (Ayo, 2014). Empirically verifiable facts in recent years have indicated that the Nigeria&nbsp;education system has continuously turned-out graduates who overtime have defaulted in adapting to evolving techniques and methods of production; due to inadequate infrastructure, underfunding, poor learning aids, outmoded curriculum, dearth of research and development. This has resulted to drastic reduction in employment and the advent of capacity underutilization. This paper assesses growth of Nigeria economy in relation to government expenditure on education and school enrollment from 1981 to 2018. Frequent adjustments and changes in education system in Nigeria, points to the fact that, all is not well with the countries education system. Government have experimented 6-3-3-4, 9-3-4 systems of education, among others. Enrollment in schools forms the main part of investment in human capital in most of the world&rsquo;s societies (Schultz, 2002). There are several explanations concerning why improvement in scholastic quality is not forthcoming in Nigeria as regards the above subject matter. Researchers disagree on whether changes in education attainment levels alters economic growth rate in the long-term. &nbsp;&ldquo;In Nigeria, average public education expenditure to total government expenditure between 1981 and 2018 is 5.68 per cent. It ranged between 0.51 and 10.8 per cent during the period under review&rdquo; (CBN Statistical Bulletin, 2019). However, the major problem therefore, is that despite an increase in the numeric value of budgetary allocation to education in Nigeria over the years, they still fall short of 26 % UNESCO,S recommendation. For instance, 2014, 10.6%; 2015, 9.5%; 2016, 6.1%, 2017, 5.41%, 2018, 7.0% and 2019, 7.2% percent respectively of total annual budget to education. The statistics presented above indicates that investment in education has not produced the desired level of human capital and economic growth in Nigeria. These uncertainties as it relates to government expenditure on education, school enrollment and growth of Nigeria economy gave birth to this research work. Furthermore, most studies relating to the subject matter, conducted analysis on times series data without subjecting these data sets to structural breaks, thereby giving rise to spurious results and therefore, unreliable recommendations. For instance, unit root test with structural breaks were not employed in majority of these studies. <strong>1.3 Research Questions </strong> The issues raised above have provoked series of questions which this study attempts to provide answers. These questions include; i. To what extent does government expenditure on education affect growth of Nigeria economy? ii. To what extent does primary school enrollment affect growth of Nigeria economy? iii. To what extent does secondary school enrollment affect growth of Nigeria economy? iv. To what extent does tertiary school enrollment affect growth of Nigeria economy? <strong>1.4 Objectives of the Study </strong> The main objective of the study is to access the effect of government expenditure on education and growth of Nigeria economy. Specific objectives of the study are to; i. Access the effect of government expenditure on growth of Nigeria economy. ii. Access the effect of primary school enrollment on growth of Nigeria economy. iii. Access the effect of secondary school enrollment on growth of Nigeria economy. iv. Access the effect of tertiary school enrollment on growth of Nigeria economy. <strong>1.5 Hypotheses of the Study </strong> The following hypotheses were tested in this study. i. Government expenditure on education has no significant effect on growth of Nigeria economy. ii. Primary school enrollment has no significant effect on growth of Nigeria economy. iii. Secondary school enrollment has no significant effect on growth of Nigeria economy. iv. Tertiary school enrollment has no significant effect on growth of Nigeria economy. <strong>1.6 Scope of the Study </strong> The study covers the time series analysis of government expenditure on education, school enrolment; primary, secondary and tertiary, and growth of Nigeria economy from 1981 to 2018. Based on available data. Justification for this study is on the premise that, time series data used for the study is a current data on government expenditure on education, education enrolment and economic growth in Nigeria. This study used annual data for the period 1981-2018, collected from the CBN Statistical Bulletin (2019) and World Bank databank. Variables employed for the study include; Real GDP Per Capita, government expenditure on education, primary, secondary and tertiary school enrolment. <strong>1.7 Significance of the Study </strong> Models of economic growth provide useful predictions that inform decisions made by policy makers. Agreeing with policy options based on inaccurate research studies could undermine government intervention particularly in the education sector. A good perception of the interaction among investment in education, its outcome, school enrolment and economic growth is appropriate policy measure, guarantees human capital development. Thus, a representative model that take cognisance of inter-play among public education expenditure, school enrolment and growth of the economy will lead to adequate disbursement and utilization of government funds. The outcome of this research will serve as a tool for policy makers in the Ministries of Finance, Education and the National Planning Commission including regulatory agencies not mentioned here. It will also serve as a reference material for subsequent research work in this field. <strong>1.8 Limitation of the Study </strong> This research x-rays Government Expenditure on Education, school (primary, secondary and tertiary) enrolment as they relate to Growth of Nigeria Economy. Time series data covering the period 1981 to 2018 is used for this study. A study undertaken in 2020, but can not access 2019 data on the variables used, stand as one of the limitations, since lag periods are essential in policy implementation. Data availability, genuineness and accuracy of same, time and financial constraints, constitute limitations to this research work. Effect of corruption on government expenditure and outbreak of Corona virus, resulting to closure of tertiary institutions in Nigeria, also constitute limitation to this study. <strong>1.9 Organization of the Study </strong> This research work comprises of five (5) chapters, these includes; Chapter one: this consists of background to the study, Problem Statement, research questions, research hypothesis and scope of the study. Chapter two: consisting of conceptual framework, theoretical review, review of related literatures and theoretical framework. Chapter three: explained the methodology this research adopted. Chapter four: presentation of results and discussion of findings. Chapter five: consists of summary of findings, conclusion, policy recommendation, contribution to knowledge and suggestion for further studies.&nbsp; <strong>CHAPTER TWO</strong> <strong>LITERATURE REVIEW AND THEORITICAL FRAMEWORK</strong> <strong>2.1 Conceptual Review</strong> <strong>2.1.1 Government&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; </strong> Government is the sector of the economy focusing on giving different public services. Its structure differs by nation, yet in many nations, government involves such services as infrastructure, military, police, public travel, government provided education, alongside medical services and those working for the public sector itself, like, elected authorities. The government may offer types of assistance that a non-taxpayer can&#39;t be barred from, (for example, street lighting), goods which aids all of society instead of benefiting only one person. Finances for government goods and services are generally obtained through various techniques, including taxes, charges, and through monetary transfers from different tiers of government (for example from federal to state government). Various governments from around the globe may utilize their own strategies for financing public goods and services. <strong>2.1.2 Government Expenditure</strong> Government Expenditure refers to government spending both capital and recurrent. For the purpose of this study we limited our scope to government educational expenditure in Nigeria. The theory of government expenditure is the theory of the costs of availing goods and services through planned spending (budget). There are two ways to deal with the subject of growth of government, precisely, the expansion in total size of government spending and the expansion of government in terms of economic magnitudes. Government expenditure is spending made by the public sector (government) of a nation on aggregate needs and wants, for example, pension and arrangement of infrastructure, among others. Until the nineteenth century, government speding was constrained, as free enterprise theorists believed that financial resources left in the private sector could lead to higher returns. In the twentieth century, John Maynard Keynes advocated the job of government spending in influencing levels of wages and income distribution in the economy. From that point forward government spending has demonstrated an expanding pattern. The public expenditure trend of the government of a nation is essentially the manner in which assets (resources) are distributed to the various segments of the economy where spending is required. It is exemplified in the government&rsquo;s ways of spending money. In analyzing the trend of government spending hence, it is critical to realize that under a federal system of administration, government job in dealing with the economy is the joint duty of the different tiers of government (Eze and Ikenna 2014). <strong>2.1.3 Human Capital </strong> By and large, human capital is characterized as all skills that are indistinguishably helpful to numerous organizations, including the training organization. Industry-specific skills, conversely, foster efficiency (productivity) just in the industry in which the skills were obtained. In a serious market setting, laborers consistently get a pay that approaches their minor profitability and in this manner, on account of general human capital, laborers win a similar compensation any place they work. <strong>2.1.4 Economic Growth</strong> As per Haller (2012), economic growth or economic expansion means the way toward expanding the size of a country&rsquo;s economy, its macro-economic indicators, particularly the per capita GDP, in an incremental yet not mandatorily linear course, with beneficial outcomes on the socio-economic sector. IMF (2012) perceives economic expansion as the expansion in the market worth of commodities created in a country over a period of time after discounting for inflation. The rate of increment in real Gross Domestic Product is often used as an estimate of economic expansion. In the perspectives of Kimberly (2012), economic expansion is an expansion in the creation of commodities. Any expansion in the worth of a nation&rsquo;s created commodities is likewise characterized as economic expansion. Economic expansion means an expansion in real GNP per unit of labor input. This relates to labor efficiency variation with time. Economic expansion is routinely estimated with the pace of increment in GDP. It is often estimated in real terms (deducting the impact of inflation on the cost of all commodities created). Growth improves the living standard of the individuals in that specific nation. As per Jhingan (2004), one of the greatest aims of money policy approach as of late has been quick macroeconomic expansion. He thus, characterized economic prosperity (growth) as the event whereby the real per capita earnings (income) of a nation increments over a significant stretch of time. Economic expansion is estimated by the expansion in the quantity of commodities created in a nation. An expanding economy creates more commodities in each subsequent timespan. In this manner, growth happens when an economy&#39;s capacity to produce increases which in turn, is utilized to create a greater quantity of commodities. In a more extensive perspective, economic expansion means increasing the living standard of individuals, and reducing disparities in earnings. &nbsp; <strong>2.1.5 </strong><strong>Gross Domestic Product</strong> - GDP Investopedia designates Gross Domestic Product (GDP) as the financial worth of marketable commodities created in a nation during any given duration of time. It is normally computed on a yearly or a quarterly premise. It comprises household and government consumption, government pay-outs, investments and net exports that exist in a sovereign territory. Set forth plainly, GDP is a broad estimation of a country&#39;s aggregate economic activity. &nbsp; <strong>2.1.6 Education</strong> There is no singular meaning of education and this is on the grounds that it indicates various things to various individuals, cultures and societies (Todaro and Stephen, 1982). Ukeje (2002), considers education to be a process, a product and a discipline. When viewed as a process, education is a group of activities which involves passing knowledge across age-groups (generations). When viewed as a product, education is estimated by the characteristics and attributes displayed by the educated individual. Here, the informed (educated) individual is customarily considered to be an informed and refined individual. While as a discipline, education is perceived in terms of the pros of well-structured knowledge which learners are acquainted with. Education is a discipline concerned with techniques of giving guidance and learning in institutions of learning in lieu of informal socialization avenues like rural development undertakings and education via parent-child interactions). It comprises both inherent (intrinsic) and instrumental worth. It is attractive for the person as well as for the general public. Education as private commodity directly aids the individuals who get it, which thusly influences the person&#39;s future pay (income) stream. At the macroeconomic level, a workforce that is superior in terms of education is thought to expand the supply of human capital in the economy and increment its efficiency (productivity). Considering the externalities pervasive in education, it is broadly acknowledged that the state has a key task to carry out in guaranteeing fair distribution of educational chances (opportunities) to the whole populace. This is especially critical in developing nations, for example, Nigeria that experiences the ill effects of elevated poverty levels, inequality and market imperfections. Enrolment might be viewed as the process of commencing participation in a school, which is the number of learners (students) adequately registered as well as participating in classes (Oxford dictionaries). 2.1.7 Primary Education Pupils usually commence learning at the elementary level when they are as old as 5 years or more. Pupils go through 18 terms equivalent to 6 years at the elementary level and may be awarded a first school leaving certification upon successful completion of learning. Subjects treated at the elementary stage comprise arithmetic, foreign and indigenous languages, culture, home economics, religious studies, and agric science. Privately owned institutions of learning may opt to treat computer science, and fine arts. It is mandatory to participate in a Common Entrance Examination in order to meet requirements for induction into secondary institutions of learning. <strong>2.1.8 Secondary Education In Nigeria</strong> Decades after the advancement of elementary education, government gave attention to secondary education, because of the requirement for pupils to advance their education in secondary schools. Secondary education is defined as the completion of fundamental education that started at the elementary level, and seeks to establish the frameworks for long-term learning and human development, by providing subject and skill-centred guidance. It is equally a link between elementary learning and tertiary learning. It is given in two phases, junior and senior levels of three years each and it is six-year duration. It was only in 1909 that the colonial administration began to supplement the endeavors of the Christian Missions in giving secondary education. This was when King&#39;s College was established in Lagos as the colonial government&#39;s secondary institution of learning. As per Adesina and Fafunwa , numerous laws were enacted to improve the condition of secondary education in Nigeria. For the duration of the time the nation was under Colonial Governments, there were scarcely any secondary schools to give secondary education to those that were then ready to gain it. 2.1.9 Tertiary Education Institutions of tertiary learning comprise universities, colleges of education, polytechnics and monotechnics. Government has dominant control of university education, and regulates them through National Universities Commission (NUC). At the university level, first year selection criteria include: At least 5 credits in not more than two sittings in WAEC/NECO; and a score above the 180 benchmark in the Joint Admission and Matriculation Board Entrance Examination (JAMB). Prospective entrants who hold satisfactory national certificates of education (NCE) or national diplomas (ND) having 5 or more ordinary level credits may gain direct entry into universities at the undergraduate level. &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; <strong>2.2 Theoretical Review</strong> <strong>2.2.1 Wagner&rsquo;s Law of Expending State Activity </strong> Public expenditure has one its oldest theories rooted in Adolph Wagner&rsquo;s (1883) work. A German economist that came up with a fascinating hypothesis of development in 1883 which held that as a country builds its public sector up, government spending will consequently become more significant. Wagner built up a &ldquo;law of increasing state activity&quot; after empirical investigation on Western Europe toward the conclusive part of the nineteenth century. Wagner&#39;s Law as treated to in Likita (1999) contended that government administration development is a product of advancement in industrialization and economic development. Wagner believed that during industrialization, the expansion of real earnings per capita will be accompanied by increments in the portion of government spending in total spending. He stated that the coming of industrial communities can bring about greater political impetus for social advancement and expanded earnings. Wagner (1893) stated three central reasons for the expansion in state spending. To start with, activities in the public sector will supplant non-private sector activities during industrialization. State duties like authoritative and defensive duties will increment. Furthermore, governments will be expected to give social services and government assistance like education, and public health for the elderly, subsidized food, natural hazards and disaster aids, protection programs for the environment and social services. Thirdly, industrial expansion will lead to novel&nbsp; technology and erode monopoly. Governments will need to balance these impacts by offering public goods through planned spending. Adolf Wagner in Finanzwissenschaft (1883) and Grundlegung der politischen Wissenschaft (1893) identified state spending as an &ldquo;internal&rdquo; factor, controlled by the development of aggregate earnings. Thus, aggregate earnings give rise to state spending. Wagner&#39;s may be viewed as a long-term phenomenon which is best observed with lengthy time-series for better economic interpretation and factual (statistical) derivations. This is because these patterns were expected to manifest after 5 or 10 decades of present day industrial community. The hypothesis of public spending is the hypothesis of the costs of availing commodities through planned government spending as well as the theory of policies and laws enacted to bring about private spending. Two ways to deal with the topic of the growth of the government sector are, namely, the expansion in volume of non-private spending and the expansion of non-private sector. Okafor and Eiya (2011) investigated the factors responsible for increment of government spending utilizing BLUE-OLS estimator. They discovered that population, government borrowing, government income, and inflation significantly affected government at the 5% level, while inflation most certainly did not. Further, Edame (2014) examined the predictive factors of state infrastructure spending in Nigeria, utilizing error correction modeling. In this study, it was found that growth-pace of urbanization, public income, density of population, system of government, and foreign reserves collectively or separately impact Nigeria&rsquo;s state infrastructure spending. &nbsp; <strong>2.2.3</strong><strong>The Classical Theory of Economic Growth</strong> This theory signifies the underlying structure of economic reasoning and Adam Smith&#39;s &quot;The Wealth of Nations&quot; (1776) typically paves the way for classical economics. Prominent and remarkable advocates of the classical school are: Adam Smith (1723-1790), David Ricardo (1772-1823), Thomas Malthus (1766-1834), Karl Marx (1818-1883), John Stuart Mill (1808-1873), Jean-Baptiste Say (1767-1832) and so on. Basically Smith&#39;s theory says that the endowment of countries was put together not with respect to gold, but with respect to commerce: As when two economic agents trade valuable commodities, in order to reap the benefits of trade, endowment grows. The classicalists see that markets are self-regulating, when liberated from compulsion. The classicalists termed this figuratively as the &quot;invisible hand&quot;, which establishes equilibrium, when consumers choose among various suppliers, and failure is allowed among firms that fail to compete successfully. The classicalists often warned against the risks of &ldquo;trust&rdquo;, and emphasized on free market economy (Smith, 1776). Adam Smith connected the expansion in endowment of individuals to the expansion of the yield of production factors, which manifests in the improvement of productivity of labor and an expansion in the quantity of working capital. Much scrutiny was given to population expansion, to the expansion in the portion of laborers in material production, to investment and geographical findings, which added to far-reaching prosperity. The perspectives of Thomas Malthus on economic expansion, portraying the expansion of populace and the expansion in production appeared pessimistic. As per Malthus, when the proportion between population expansion and subsistence methods&nbsp; remains, when the populace is expanding increasingly, and subsistence methods expand steadily, the aftermath will be inadequate earth resources (land), and consequently a severe battle for few resources, the prevalence of wars, plagues, hunger, mass illness, etc (Ojewumi and Oladimeji, 2016). As a solution to this issue, Malthus proposed to limit the growth of the populace by the &quot;call to prudence&quot;, particularly the impoverished, and the birth of children on the bases that they were to be provided with decent means of subsistence. One among the most compelling classicalists was David Ricardo (1772 &ndash; 1823). Apparently, the hypothesis of comparative advantage which recommends that a country should engage exclusively in internationally competitive businesses and trade with different nations to acquire commodities lacking domestically is his most notable contribution. He contended the possibility of the presence of a natural market wages and expected that new technologies will result to a fall in the demand for labor. John Stuart Mill (1808-1873) to a great extent summarized the past ideologies of the classicalists. Specifically, he finished the classicalists&rsquo; hypothesis of economic dynamics that considers long-term economic patterns. At the core of this idea is the unceasing amassing of capital. As indicated by the hypothesis, the expansion in capital prompts an increment in the need for labor, and zero population growth gives rise to increment in real earnings, and therefore gives rise to population expansion in the long-run. When the amassing of capital is quicker than the expansion in the workforce, both of these processes can, in principle, remain forever. Increment in the quantity of laborers means having more &quot;mouths&quot;, hence the expansion in the demand for consumption and particularly for food. Food created in agribusiness, which, as we know, characterized by diminishing returns to scale. Therefore, issues of diminishing marginal productivity of capital emerge and the fall of incentives to invest. <strong>2.2.4 The Keynesian Approach of Public Expenditure </strong> John M. Keynes (1936), a British Economist and the pioneer of macroeconomics contended that public spending is a crucial determinant of economic posperity. Keynes hypothesis clearly stated that fiscal policy instrument (for example government expenditure) is a significant apparatus for obtaining stability and better economic expansion rate in the long-term. To obtain stability in the economy, this hypothesis endorses government action in the economy through macroeconomic policy especially fiscal policy. From the Keynesian view, government spending will contribute incrementally to economic expansion. Keynes contended that it is necessary for government to mediate in the economy since government could change financial downturns by raising finances from private borrowing and afterward restoring the funds to the private sector through several spending programs. Likewise, government capital and recurrent spending in the structure provision of class rooms, research centers, acquisition of teaching and learning aids including PCs and payment of salary will have multiplier effects on the economy. Spending on education will boost productivity as well as advancement by improving the quality of labour. It will likewise help in developing a stream of educated administrators in both the private and public sectors of the economy. Keynes classified public spending as an exogenous variable that can create economic prosperity rather than an endogenous phenomenon. In summary, Keynes acknowledged the functioning of the government to be significant as it can prevent economic downturn by expanding aggregate demand and in this manner, switching on the economy again by the multiplier effect. It is an apparatus that proffers stability the short-term yet this should be done carefully as excessive government spending leads to inflation while lack of spending aggravates unemployment. &nbsp; <strong>2.2.5 </strong><strong>Human Capital Theory</strong> Human capital theory, at first developed by Becker (1962), contends that workers have a set of abilities which they can improve or acquire by learning and instruction (education). Be that as it may, human capital hypothesis often assume for the most part expect that experiences are converted into knowledge and skills. It helps us comprehend the training activities of organizations. It (re-)introduced the view that education and training add up to investment in future efficiency (productivity) and not only consumption of resources. From this viewpoint, both firms and labourers rely upon investment in human capital to foster competitiveness, profitability, and earnings. In spite of the fact that these advantages are self-evident, these investments are tied to some costs. From the firm&#39;s perspective, investment in human capital contrast from those in physical capital, because the firm doesn&#39;t gain a property right over its investment in skills, so it and its employees need to agree on the sharing of costs and benefits derived from these investments. While investment in physical capital are solely the organization&#39;s own choice, investment in the abilities (skills) of its workforce include interaction with the workers to be groomed. In the basic formulation, Becker, assuming that commodity and labour markets are perfectly competitive, introduced the distinction between firm-specific and general human capital to answer the question: who bears the expenses of training? &nbsp; <strong>2.2.6 Neoclassical Growth Theories </strong> The neoclassical development hypotheses arose in the 1950s and 1960s, when regard for the issues of dynamic equilibrium declined and the issue of actualizing growth potentials through the adoption of novel technology, boosting productivity and improving the organization of production gained popularity. The principle advocates of this school are Alfred Marshall (1842-1924), Leon Walras (1834-1910), William Stanley Jevons (1835-1882), Irving Fisher (1867-1947) and others. The American economist Robert Solow (1924-present) along with other economists opposed the state&#39;s participation and rather supported the notion of permitting firms to competitively grow by utilizing the majority of the assets accessible to them. They hinged on the production theory and marginal productivity theory from the classical school, according to which, the earnings obtained production factors depend on their marginal products. Neoclassical scholars disagreed with neo-Keynesian views on growth on three grounds (UN, 2011): Firstly, in light of the fact that they are centered around capital accumulation, overlooking land, labour, technology and so on; On the second note, owing to the fact that they are rooted in the unchanging nature of capital share in earnings (income); On the third note, while the neoclassicists recognized the self-restoring equilibrium of the market mechanism, the former overlooked it. On this premise, they identified inflationary government spending as a source of instability in the economy. <strong>2.2.7 The Endogenous Growth Theory</strong> This was created as a response to exclusions and inadequacies in the Solow-Swan model. This theory throws light on long-term economic expansion pace based on the pace of population expansion and the pace of technical advancement which is autonomous with regards to savings rate. Since long-term economic expansion rate depended on exogenous factors, Romer (1994) saw that the neoclassical hypothesis had hardly limited implications. As per Romer, in models with exogenous technical change and exogenous population expansion, it never truly made a difference what the public administration did. The new growth theory doesn&#39;t rebuff the neoclassical growth theory. Perhaps it broadens the neoclassical growth hypothesis by incorporating endogenous technical advancement in growth models. The endogenous development models have been improved by Kenneth J. Arrow, Paul M. Romer, and Robert E. Lucas. The endogenous development model highlights technical advancement arising from pace investment, quantity of capital, and human capital supply. Romer saw natural assets as a lower priority than ideas. He refers to case of Japan which has limited natural assets but welcomed novel ideas and technology from the West. These included improved plans for production of producer durable goods for final production. Accordingly, ideas are key in economic prosperity. With respect to endogenous growth theory, Chude and Chude (2013) submitted that the major improvement in the endogenous growth hypothesis in relation to the past models lies in the fact that it treats the determinants of technology. That is, it openly attempts to model technology instead of expecting it to be exogenous. Momentously, it is a statistical clarification of technological improvement that introduced a novel idea of human capital, knowledge and abilities (skills) that empower employees to be increasingly productive. More often than not, economic expansion is a product of progress in technology, arising from effective utilization of productive resources through the process of learning. This is because human capital development has high rate or increasing rate of return. Therefore, the rate of growth depends heavily on what (the type of capital) a country invests in. Thus to achieve economic expansion, public expenditure in human capital development especially education spending must be increased. At the same time, the theory predicts unexpected additional benefits from advancement of a substantial valued-added knowledge economy, that can develop and preserve a competitive advantage in expanding industries. <strong>2.3 Empirical Review</strong> Bearing in mind the sensitive nature of the field being studied, many investigations had been conducted with the aim of clarifying the divergent ideological schools. For example, Amadi, and Alolote, (2020) explored government infrastructural spending and Nigeria&rsquo;s economic advancement nexus. The investigation uncovered that public spending on transport, communication, education and medical infrastructure significantly affect economic expansion, while spending on agric and natural resources infrastructure recorded a major adverse impact on economic expansion. Despite the fact that the investigation is recent, the time series variables were not exposed to unit root tests with breaks, and thus will yield misleading outcomes. Shafuda and Utpal (2020) explored government spending on human capital and Namibia&rsquo;s economic prosperity (growth) nexus from 1980 to 2015. The examination utilized human development indicators like healthcare outcomes, educational accomplishments and increment in national earnings in Namibia. The investigation uncovered huge effects of government spending on medical care and education on GDP expansion over the long-term. Study conducted in 2020 that utilized data from 1980-1915, comprises a setback to this work. Ihugba, Ukwunna, and Obiukwu (2019) explored government education spending and Nigeria&rsquo;s elementary school enrolment nexus by applying the bounds testing (ARDL) method of cointegration during the time of 1970 to 2017. The model utilized for the investigation attempted to recognize the interaction between two variables and their relationship with control variables; per capita earning (income), remittances, investment and population expansion. The bounds tests indicated that the variables that were studied are bound together over the long-term, when elementary school enrolment is the endogenous variable. The investigation saw that an inconsequential relationship exists between government education spending on elementary school enrolment while a positive relationship exists among remittances and primary school enrolment. Sylvie (2018) explored education and India&rsquo;s economic expansion nexus. The investigation inspected the connection among education and economic prosperity in India from 1975 to 2016 by concentrating on elementary, secondary and tertiary levels of education. It used econometric estimations with the Granger Causality Method and the Cointegration Method. The study indicated that there is convincing proof demonstrating a positive association between education levels and economic expansion in India which may impact government activities and shape the future of India. Ayeni, and Osagie (2018), explored education spending and Nigeria&rsquo;s economic expansion nexus from 1987 to 2016. The investigation uncovered that education spending was inconsistent with education sectoral yield (output), while recurrent education spending had meaningful relationship with real gross national output (or GNP), conversely, capital spending on education was weak. Ogunleye, Owolabi, Sanyaolu, and Lawal, (2017), utilized BLUE-OLS estimator to study the effect of advancement in human capital on Nigeria&rsquo;s economic expansion from 1981 to 2015. The empirical outcomes indicated that human capital development has strong effects on economic expansion (growth). Likewise, human capital development variables; secondary school enrolment, tertiary enrolment, aggregated government spending on health and aggregated government spending on education displayed positive and strong effect on economic expansion of Nigeria. Glylych, Modupe and Semiha (2016) explored education and Nigeria&rsquo;s economic expansion nexus utilizing BLUE-OLS estimator to unveil the interaction between education as human capital and real Gross Domestic Product. The investigation found a strong connection between GDP and different indicators (capital spending on education, recurrent spending on education, elementary school enrolment and secondary school enrolment) utilized in the investigation except for elementary school enrolment (PRYE). Lingaraj, Pradeep and Kalandi (2016) explored education expenditure and economic expansion nexus in 14 major Asian nations by utilizing balanced panel data from 1973 to 2012. The co-integration result indicated the presence of long-run relationships between education spending and economic expansion in all the nations. The findings additionally uncovered a positive and significant effect of education training on economic advancement of all the 14 Asian nations. Further, the panel vector error correction showed unidirectional Granger causality running from economic expansion to education spending both in the short and long-run, however, education spending only Granger causes long-run economic expansion in all the nations. The findings likewise demonstrated a positive effect of education spending on economic expansion. The study contended that education sector is one of the significant elements of economic expansion in each of the 14 Asian nations. A significant portion of government spending ought to be made on education by upgrading different essential, senior and technical educations in the respective countries to make available the skilled labour for long-term economic advancement. Ojewumi and Oladimeji (2016) explored government financing and Nigeria&rsquo;s education nexus. In the research work, public spending on education was arranged into two classes (recurrent and capital spending). The data covered the period 1981 to 2013 and were secondary in nature. The data were gotten for the most part from the publications of the World Bank, Central Bank of Nigeria and National Bureau of Statistics. BLUE-OLS estimator was utilized to study the data. The main results indicated that the effect of both capital and recurrent spending on education expansion were negative during the examination time frame. The study suggested that the elevated level of corruption common in the educational sector ought to be checked to guarantee that finances ear-marked for education particularly capital spending in the sector are prudently appropriated. Government at various levels ought to likewise increment both capital and recurrent spending to support the educational sector up to the United Nations standard. Obi, Ekesiobi, Dimnwobi, and Mgbemena, (2016) explored government education spending and Nigeria&rsquo;s education outcome nexus from 1970 &ndash; 2013. The investigation utilized BLUE-OLS estimator, and demonstrated that government spending on education has a cordial and notable impact on education. Public health spending and urban population expansion were likewise found to positively affect education outcome but are insignificant in influencing education outcome. Omodero, and Azubike, (2016), explored government spending on education and Nigeria&rsquo;s economic advancement nexus from 2000&ndash;2015. Multiple regression analysis and student t-test were applied for investigation. The outcome of the investigation showed that education spending is significant and affects the economy. Additionally, education enrolment demonstrated a significant relationship with GDP but minor effect on the economy. Muhammad and Benedict (2015) explored education spending and Nigeria&rsquo;s economic expansion nexus during the time covering 1981-2010. Co-joining and Granger causality tests were utilized so as to unveil the causal nexus between education spending and economic expansion. They found that there is co-integration between real growth rate of GDP, aggregated government spending on education, recurrent expenditure on education and elementary school enrolment. Adeyemi and Ogunsola (2016) explored advancement in human capital and Nigeria&rsquo;s economic expansion nexus from 1980-2013 on secondary school enrolment, life expectancy rate, government spending on education, gross capital formation and economic expansion rate. ARDL cointegration approach was utilized in the investigation and it uncovered a positive since a long-run nexus among secondary school enrolment, life expectancy rate, government spending on education, gross capital formation and economic expansion rate. Olalekan (2014) explored human capital and Nigeria&rsquo;s economic expansion nexus utilizing yearly data on education and health, from 1980 to 2011. The investigation made use of Generalized Method of Moment (GMM) techniques in the research and the estimated outcomes gave proof of positive connection between human capital and economic expansion. Oladeji (2015) explored human capital (through education and effective services in healthcare) and Nigeria&rsquo;s economic expansion nexus from 1980 to 2012. The investigation utilized BLUE-OLS estimator and uncovered that there is a significant functional and institutional connection between the investment in human capital and economic expansion. The work indicated that a long-term nexus existed between education and economic expansion rate. Hadir and Lahrech, (2015) explored human capital advancement and Morocco&rsquo;s economic expansion nexus utilizing yearly data from 1973 to 2011. The BLUE-OLS estimator was incorporated utilizing aggregated government spending on education and health, the enrolment data of tertiary, secondary and elementary educational institutions as a measure for human capital. The research uncovered a positive nexus between aggregated government spending on education, aggregated government spending on health, elementary education enrolment, secondary education enrolment and tertiary education enrolment. Obi and Obi (2014) explored education spending and Nigeria&rsquo;s economic expansion nexus as a method for accomplishing ideal socio-economic change required from 1981 to 2012. The Johansen co-integration method and BLUE-OLS estimator econometric methods were utilized to closely study the connection between GDP and recurrent education spending. The results showed that regardless of the fact that a positive relationship was obtainable between education spending and economic expansion, a long-term nexus was not obtainable over the period under examination. Jaiyeoba (2015) explored investment in education/health and Nigeria&rsquo;s economic expansion nexus from 1982 to 2011. He utilized trend analysis, the Johansen cointegration and BLUE-OLS estimator. The outcomes demonstrated that there was long-term connection between government spending on education, health and economic expansion. The factors: health and education spending, secondary and tertiary enrolment rate and gross fixed capital formation carried the speculated positive signs and were notable determinants (apart from government spending on education and elementary education enrolment rate). Sulaiman, Bala, Tijani, Waziri and Maji (2015) explored human capital /technology and Nigeria&rsquo;s economic expansion nexus. They utilized yearly time series covering 35 years (1975-2010) and applied autoregressive distributed lag method of cointegration to look at the connection between human capital, technology, and economic expansion. Two measures of human capital (secondary and university enrolment) were utilized in two different models. Their outcome uncovered that all the factors in the two separate models were cointegrated. Besides, the findings from the two assessed models indicated that human capital in measured by secondary and tertiary education enrolments have significant positive effect on economic expansion. Borojo and Jiang (2015) explored education/health (human capital) and Ethiopia&rsquo;s economic expansion nexus from 1980 to 2013. Human capital stock is measured by elementary, secondary and tertiary education enrolment. Human capital investment is proxied by spending on health and education. The Augmented Dickey Fuller test and Johansen&#39;s Co-integration method were utilized to test unit root and to ascertain co-integration among factors, respectively. Their investigation indicated that public spending on health as well as education and elementary as well as secondary education enrolments has positive and significant impacts on economic expansion both in the short-term and the long-term. Ekesiobi, Dimnwobi, Ifebi and Ibekilo (2016) explored public education investment and Nigeria&rsquo;s manufacturing yield nexus. The investigation utilized Augmented Dickey Fuller (ADF) unit root test and BLUE-OLS estimator to examine the connection between public educational spending, elementary school enrolment rate, per capita income, exchange rate, FDI and manufacturing yield (output) rate. The investigation discovered that public education spending has a positive but inconsequential impact on manufacturing yield (output) rate. Odo, Nwachukwu, and Agbi (2016) explored government spending and Nigeria&rsquo;s economic expansion nexus. Their finding demonstrated that social capital had inconsequential positive effect on economic expansion during the period under consideration. Jiangyi, (2016) explored government educational spending and China&rsquo;s economic expansion nexus bearing in mind the spatial third-party spill-over effects. The findings uncover that public educational spending in China has a significant positive effect on economic expansion, but spending in various educational level shows varying outcomes. Public educational spending beneath high-education is positively related with domestic economic expansion, while the impact of educational spending in high-education is inconsequential. Lawanson (2015) explored the importance of health and educational elements of human capital to economic expansion, utilizing panel data from sixteen West African nations over the period 1980 to 2013. He utilized Diff-GMM dynamic panel procedure. The empirical results show that coefficients of both health and education have positive and significant impacts on GDP per capita. The paper ascertains the importance of human capital to economic expansion in West Africa. He suggested that more assets and policies to persuade and improve access to both education and health by the populace ought to be sought after by policy makers. Ehimare, Ogaga-Oghene, Obarisiagbon and Okorie (2014), explored the connection between Nigerian government Expenditure and Human Capital Development. The level of human capital development, which is a measure of the degree of wellbeing (health) and educational achievement of a country influence the level of economic activities in that country. The unit root test was employed to ascertain if the stationary or non-stationary with the Phillip Peron test. So as to measure the efficiency of government spending on human capital development, the data analysis was performed with Data Envelopment Analysis including Input Oriented Variable Return to Scale. The discoveries of the study uncovered that there has been substantial decrease in the efficiency of government spending since 1990 up till 2011 which has been diminishing. Ajadi and Adebakin (2014), investigated the nature of association between human capital development and economic expansion. The descriptive survey method of research was incorporated and multi&ndash;stage sampling method was utilized to choose a size of 200 respondents utilized for the research. An adopted questionnaire with 0.86 reliability index was utilized for information gathering. Data gathered were examined utilizing the Pearson&#39;s Product Moment Correlation Coefficient. The results demonstrated that education has a predictive r-value of 0.76 on individual personal earnings and the type of occupation (job) is linked with individual personal earnings (r=0.64). It, subsequently, concluded that economic expansion rate is influenced by individual personal earnings and suggested that government ought to create adequate educational policy to avail the human capital need of the populace for economic prosperity. Harpaljit, Baharom and Muzafar (2014) examined the connection between education spending and economic expansion rate in China and India by utilizing yearly data from 1970 to 2005. This investigation used multi econometric methods including co-integration test, BLUE-OLS estimator, and VECM. The result uncovered that there is a long-term nexus between earnings (income) level, Gross Domestic Product per capital and education spending in both China and India. Also, a unidirectional causal relationship was obtained for the two nations, running from earnings (income) level to education spending for China, while for India, education spending Granger causes the level of earnings. Urhie (2014) analyzed the impacts of the components of public education spending on both educational achievement and Nigeria&rsquo;s economic expansion rate from 1970 to 2010. The investigation utilized Two Stage Least Squares estimation procedure to analyze the hypotheses. The result uncovered that both capital and recurrent spending on education affect education achievement and economic expansion rate differently. Recurrent spending negatively affected education while capital spending was found to have a positive effect. Conversely, recurrent education had a positive and notable effect on economic expansion while capital spending had a negative effect. Chude and Chude (2013) explored the impacts of public education spending on Nigeria&rsquo;s economic expansion over a time frame from 1977 to 2012, with particular focus on disaggregated and sectorial spending analysis. Error correction model (ECM) was utilized. The result uncovered that over the long-term, aggregated education spending is significant and has a positive relationship on economic expansion. Abdul (2013), analyzed Education and Economic expansion in Malaysia given the fact human capital or education has is now one of the focal issues in the research of economic advancement. The researcher contended that the current studies showed that human capital, particularly education, is a significant ingredient of economic expansion. Thus the researcher investigated the issue of Malaysia education data. Notwithstanding a few issues and data quality issues, Malaysian education datasets are heavily correlated for both secondary and tertiary education. The researcher further tests the impact of various datasets on education and economic expansion relationship. The results were fundamentally the same thereby indicating that Malaysian education datasets are not unreliable. The results were econometrically consistent irrespective of measure of education utilized. All datasets lead to the same conclusion; education is inversely associated with economic expansion. Alvina and Muhammad (2013), inspected the long-term connection between government education spending and economic expansion. The investigation utilized heterogeneous panel data analysis. Panel unit root test are applied for checking stationarity. The single equation approach of panel co-integration (Kao, 1999); Pedroni&#39;s Residual-Based Panel of co-integration Test (1997, 1999) was applied to ascertain the presence of long-term connection between public education spending and gross domestic production. Finally Panel fully modified OLS result uncovered that the effect of government public education on economic expansion is more prominent in developing nations as contrasted with the developed nations, which confirmed the &quot;catching-up effect&quot; in developing nations. Mehmet and Sevgi (2013), inspected the nexus between education spending and economic expansion in Turkey. The examination utilized econometric method as the principal investigation instrument. The result uncovered a positive connection between education spending and economic expansion in the Turkish economy for the period 1970-2012. Implying that, education spending in Turkey positively affected economic expansion. Edame (2014) researched the determinants of Nigeria&rsquo;s public infrastructure spending, utilizing ECM. He found that pace (rate) of urbanization, government income, population density, external reserves, and kind of government collectively or independently impact on public spending on infrastructure. Aregbeyen and Akpan (2013) examined the long-term determinants of Nigeria&rsquo;s government spending, utilizing a disaggregated approach. In their examination, they found that foreign aid is significantly and positively influencing recurrent spending to the detriment of capital spending; that income (revenue) is likewise positively influencing government spending; that trade transparency (openness) is adversely impacting government spending; that debt service obligation diminishes all parts of government spending over the long-term; that the higher the size of the urban population, the higher would be government recurrent spending on economic services; solid proof that Federal government spending is one-sided with regards to recurrent spending, which increments substantially during election times. In likewise manner, Adebayo et al. (2014) researched the effect of public spending on industrial expansion of Nigeria through co-integration and causality and discovered that public spending on administration, economic services, and transfers remained negatively related with industrial expansion while government spending on social services remained positively related in the long-term. They concluded in this manner that there is no crowding-out impact. From these studies reviewed, there is proof that all the investigations joined economic, social, and political determinants of government spending. Srinivasan (2013), analyzed the causal nexus between public spending and economic expansion in India utilizing co-integration approach and error correction model from 1973 to 2012. The co-integration test result uncovered the presence of a long-term equilibrium connection between public spending and economic expansion. The error correction model estimate indicated unilateral causality which runs from economic expansion to public spending in the short-term and long-term. Mohd and Fidlizan (2012), narrowed down on the long-term relationship and causality between government spending in education and economic expansion in Malaysian economy from 1970-2010. The investigation utilized Vector Auto Regression (VAR). The result indicated that economic expansion co-integrated with fixed capital formation (CAP), labour force participation (LAB) and government spending on education (EDU). The Granger cause for education variable and vice versa. In addition, the investigation demonstrated that human capital like education variable goes a long way in affecting economic expansion. Consensus from the above investigations demonstrates that government spending impacts positively on economic expansion. Notable theories that support this case include; Keynes, Wagner, Peacock and Wiseman. Keynes, in his hypothesis draws a connection between public spending and economic expansion and infers that causality runs from public spending to income, meaning that public sector spending is an exogenous factor and public instrument for expanding national income. Again, it holds that expansion in government spending prompts higher economic expansion. Wagner, Peacock and Wiseman and numerous economists have developed various theories on public spending and economic expansion. Wagner positioned public sector spending as a behavioral variable that positively indicates if an economy is prospering. Notwithstanding, the neo classical growth model created by Solow opined that the fiscal policy doesn&#39;t have any impact on the expansion of national income. These multifaceted results obtained from prior investigations show that in reality public spending and other inputs in the education system may have some innate heterogeneity, suggesting that what holds in a given area or country may not hold in another. In the light of the above, this investigation sees that it is necessary to revise the allotment of public spending on education, with regards to the type of impact this spending has on education outcomes. <strong>2.4 Theoretical Framework</strong> The endogenous growth theory has been adopted as the appropriate theoretical framework for this study. This owes much to the fact that, the theory emphasizes the critical role of human capital development, through public investments on education, as a major driver of aggregate productivity in the economy. This is also supported by the work of Ogunleye, Owolabi, Sanyaolu, and Lawal, (2017) who ascertained how economic expansion is influenced by advancement in human capital from 1981 to 2015. In this study it was discovered that economic expansion is greatly influenced by advancement in human capital. Also, economic expansion appeared to facilitated by secondary education enrolment, tertiary education enrolment, and aggregate spending on health and education by the government. <strong>2.5 Research Gap</strong> Though, so much research work has been carried out on the relationship between human capital development, Public Sector Expenditure on Education and Economic expansion in Nigeria, a lot still needed to be done to address some abnormities in these studies. Of note, is that methods adopted in most of these studies are faced with methodological limitations and policy carry-overs, not minding that no two economies are the same. This study therefore, seeks to fill these gaps created by previous researches. Importantly, time plays a vital role in research, making it imperative for continuous and up to date studies, so as to keep abreast with changes as quickly as possible. In the study carried out by Ojewumi and Oladimeji (2016), time series data covering from 1981-2013 was used, while Muhammad and Benedict (2015), used time series data from 1981-2010. These studies above used time series data of 1981 to 2013 and 1981 to 2010 respectively, while this study used updated data covering 1981-2018, thereby making the study current and up to date. &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; <strong>Chapter Three</strong> <strong>Research Methods</strong> <strong>3.1&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Research Design</strong> &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Ex post facto research design and econometric procedures of analysis will be employed for empirical investigation. <strong>3.2&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Model Specification</strong> &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Here, we specify a model which captures the relationship between real gross domestic product in per capita terms and the selected education enrolment variables. &nbsp; &nbsp; (3.1) In the above model, <em>Ln</em> denotes natural log, <em>PER_RGDP</em> denotes real gross domestic product in per capita terms,<em> PER_PEE</em> denotes public expenditure on education in per capita terms, <em>PENR</em> denotes percentage of primary education enrolment from population total, <em>SENR</em> denotes percentage of secondary education enrolment from population total, and <em>TENR</em> denotes percentage of tertiary education enrolment from population total. &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; For further empirical analysis we can explicitly express the above model in the form of an autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL) model: &nbsp; &nbsp; (3.2) Here, based on economic theory and intuition all of the coefficients are expected to be positive. <strong>3.3&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Estimation Procedure</strong> <strong>3.3.1&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Unit Root Test with Breaks</strong> &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Unlike the popularly used unit root tests (e.g. ADF and PP) which test the null of non-stationarity without accounting for possible breaks-points in data, the break-point unit root test of Peron (1989) tests the null of non-stationarity against other alternatives while accounting for a single break-point in the given data. The alternative hypotheses for this test are succinctly described in the following equations: &nbsp; &nbsp; (3.3) &nbsp; &nbsp; (3.4) &nbsp; &nbsp; (3.5) The first equation captures a break in the intercept of the data with the intercept-break dichotomous variable <em>I_t</em> which takes on values of 1 only when <em>t</em> surpasses the break-point <em>Br</em>; the second captures a break in the slope of the data with a regime-shift dichotomous variable <em>T_t*</em> which takes on values of 1 only when <em>t </em>surpasses the break-point <em>Br</em>; and the third equation captures both effects concurrently with the &ldquo;crash&rdquo; dichotomous variable <em>D</em> which takes on values of 1 only when <em>t</em> equals <em>Br</em>+1. <strong>3.3.2&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; ARDL Bounds Cointegration Approach</strong> &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; The popularly-used residual-based cointegration methods may not be very useful when the time-series under consideration attain stationarity at different levels. On the other hand, in addition to being econometrically efficient for small sample cases (<em>n</em> &lt; 30), the bounds cointegration method developed by Pesaran and Shin (1999) is particularly useful for combining time-series that attain stationarity at levels and first-difference. The bounds cointegration method makes use of upper bounds and lower bounds derived from 4 pairs of critical values corresponding to 4 different levels of statistical significance: the 1% level, the 2.5% level, the 5% level, and the 10% level. The null of &ldquo;no cointegration&rdquo; is to be rejected only if the computed bounds f-statistic surpasses any of the upper bounds obtained from a chosen pair of critical values, while the alternative hypothesis of cointegration is to be rejected only if the bounds f-statistic falls below any of the lower bounds obtained from a chosen pair of critical values. Therefore, in contrast to other cointegration tests, the bounds test can be inconclusive if the bounds f-statistic neither surpasses the chosen upper bound nor falls below the chosen lower bound. &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; To obtain the bounds f-test statistic, an f-test is performed jointly on all of the un-differenced explanatory variables of the &ldquo;unrestricted&rdquo; error correction model (ECM) derived from any corresponding autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL) model such as the previously specified empirical ARDL model in (3.2). This takes the general form: &nbsp; &nbsp; (3.6) where &Delta;<em>i_t</em> denotes the chosen endogenous variable in first difference; &Delta;<em>j_t</em> and &Delta;<em>k_t</em> denote the chosen exogenous variables in first differences;&nbsp; and <em>e_t</em> denotes the stochastic component. Choosing the best lag-length to be included is made possible by information criteria such as the Akaike and the Schwarz Information Criterion. In the case where the bounds cointegration test disapproves the null, a &ldquo;restricted&rdquo; version of the error correction model can be estimated along-side a long-run model to capture the relevant short-run and long-run dynamics as seen in the following expressions: &nbsp; &nbsp; (3.7) &nbsp; &nbsp; (3.8) Here, the error correction term <em>_t</em>_-1 is non-positive and bounded between 0 and 1 (or 0 and 100) in order to capture the short-run rate of adjustment to long run equilibrium, while the coefficients <em>₁</em>,&hellip;,<em>_j</em>&nbsp; in (3.7) capture the state of long-run equilibrium and are obtained from <em>₁</em>=<em>b₂</em>/<em>b₁</em>,&hellip;, <em>_j</em>=<em>b_j</em>/<em>b₁</em> respectively. &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; <strong>3.4&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Model Evaluation Tests and Techniques</strong> <strong>3.4.1&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; R² and Adjusted R²</strong> &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; The R² and the adjusted R² both provide measures of goodness-of-fit. However, the adjusted R² is preferably used because it is robust against redundant regressors which inflate the conventional R². They involve the following statistics: &nbsp; &nbsp; (3.9) &nbsp; &nbsp; (3.10) where <em>SS_r</em> denotes the sum of squares of the regression residuals, <em>SS_t</em> denotes the total sum of squares of the dependent variable, <em>n</em> denotes the number of observations, and <em>k</em> denotes the number of regressors (Verbeek, 2004). <strong>3.4.2&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; T-Test and F-Test</strong> &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; The t-test and the f-test can be utilized to evaluate hypotheses pertaining to statistical significance of the parameters in a regression. Particularly, the t-test may be applied to a single parameter while the f-test may be applied to multiple parameters. They involve the following statistics: &nbsp; &nbsp; (3.11) &nbsp; &nbsp; (3.12) where <em>a_k</em> denotes a single parameter-estimate, <em>se </em>denotes its standard error, <em>R²</em> denotes the coefficient of determination of the regression, <em>N</em> denotes the number of observations, and <em>J</em> denotes the number of regressors. For the t-test, the statistical insignificance null hypothesis is to be rejected only if <em>t_i</em> exceeds its 5% critical-value, while for the f-test the joint statistical insignificance null hypothesis is to be rejected only if <em>f</em> exceeds its 5% critical-value at <em>N-J</em> and <em>J-1</em> degrees of freedom (Verbeek, 2004). <strong>3.4.3&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Residual Normality Test</strong> The Jarque-Bera test statistic (Jarque and Bera, 1987) is useful in determining whether the residuals of a regression are normally distributed. The Jarque-Bera statistic is computed as: &nbsp; &nbsp; (3.13) where <em>S</em> is the skewness, <em>K</em> is the kurtosis, and <em>N</em> is the number of observations. Under the null hypothesis of a normal distribution, the Jarque-Bera statistic is distributed as <em>X²</em> with 2 degrees of freedom. Therefore, the null hypothesis is to be accepted if the absolute value of the Jarque-Bera statistic exceeds the observed value under the null hypothesis. Contrarily, the null hypothesis is to be rejected if the absolute value does not exceed the observed value. <strong>Heteroskedasticity Test</strong> The Breusch-Pagan-Godfrey test (Breusch and Pagan, 1979; Godfrey, 1978) evaluates the null hypothesis of &ldquo;no heteroskedasticity&rdquo; against the alternative hypothesis of heteroskedasticity of the form , where is a vector of independent variables. The test is performed by completing an auxiliary regression of the squared residuals from the original equation on . The explained sum of squares from this auxiliary regression is then divided by to give an LM statistic, which follows a chi square <em>X² </em>distribution with degrees of freedom equal to the number of variables in <em>Z </em>under the null hypothesis of no heteroskedasticity. Therefore, the null hypothesis is to be accepted if the LM statistic exceeds the observed value under the null hypothesis. Contrarily, the null hypothesis is to be rejected if the LM statistic does not exceed the observed value. <strong>3.4.5&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Serial Correlation Test</strong> The Godfrey (1978) Lagrange multiplier (LM) test is useful when testing for serial correlation in the residuals of a regression. The LM test statistic is computed as follows: First, assuming there is a regression equation: &nbsp; &nbsp; (3.14) where <em>&beta;</em> are the estimated coefficients and <em>&epsilon;</em> are the errors. The test statistic for the lag order <em>&rho;</em> is based on the regression for the residuals <em>&epsilon; = y - XḂ</em> which is given by: &nbsp; &nbsp; (3.15) The coefficients <em>𝛾</em> and <em>𝛼</em><em>_&delta;</em>are expected to be statistically insignificant if the null hypothesis of &ldquo;no serial correlation&rdquo; is to be accepted. On the other hand, the null hypothesis cannot be accepted if the coefficients <em>𝛾</em> and <em>𝛼</em><em>_&delta;</em>are found to be statistically significant. <strong>3.4.6&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Model Specification Test</strong> The Ramsey (1969) Regression Error Specification Test (RESET) is a general test for the following types of functional specification errors: Omitted variables; some relevant explanatory variables are not included. Incorrect functional form; some of the dependent and independent variables should be transformed to logs, powers, etc. Correlation between the independent variables and the residuals. Ramsey (1969) showed that these specification errors produce a non-zero mean vector for the residuals. Therefore, the null and alternative hypotheses of the RESET test are: &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; (3.16) The RESET test is based on an augmented regression which is given as: &nbsp; &nbsp; (3.17) The test of the null hypothesis of a well-specified model is tested against the alternative hypothesis of a poorly specified model by evaluating the restriction <em>𝛾</em><em> = 0</em>. The null hypothesis is to be accepted if <em>𝛾</em><em> = 0</em>, whereas the null hypothesis is to be rejected if <em>𝛾</em><em> &ne; 0</em>. The crucial factor to be considered in constructing the augmented regression model is determining which variable should constitute the <em>Z</em> variable. If <em>Z</em> is an omitted variable, then the test of <em>𝛾</em><em> = 0</em> is simply the omitted variables test. But if <em>y</em> is wrongly specified as an additive relation instead of a multiplicative relation such as <em>y =</em><em>𝛽</em><em>₀</em> X^𝛽¹X^𝛽² + 𝜖 then the test of <em>𝛾</em><em> = 0 </em>is a functional form specification test. In the latter case the restriction <em>𝛾</em><em> = 0 </em>is tested by including powers of the predicted values of the dependent variables in <em>Z</em> such that . <strong>3.4.7&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; CUSUMSQ Stability Test</strong> &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; For the test of stability, cumulative sum of recursive residuals (CUSUM) and cumulative sum of recursive residuals squares (CUSUMSQ) tests as proposed by Brown, Durbin, and Evans (1975) was employed. The technique is appropriate for time series data and is recommended for use if one is uncertain about when a structural change might have taken place. The null hypothesis is that the coefficient vector &szlig; is the same every period. The CUSUM test is based on the cumulated sum of the residuals: &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; (3.18) where &nbsp; &nbsp; (3.19) and &nbsp; &nbsp; (3.20) <strong>3.5&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Sources of Data</strong> The Central bank of Nigeria served as the main source of data collection. This implies also that the study adopted secondary data. <strong>Chapter Four</strong> <strong>Empirical Results</strong> <strong>4.1&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Descriptive Statistics</strong> &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Before going into cointegration analysis, we will attempt to briefly examine the properties of the data with descriptive statistics. Table 4.1 and Figures 4.1 to 4.5 will be acknowledged for this purpose. Table 4.1: Descriptive Statistics &nbsp; PER_RGDP PER_PEE PENR SENR TENR Mean 264316.01 635.72 23096192.94 5796345.78 787115.08 Median 232704.55 361.03 19747039.31 4410684.33 755776.70 Maximum 385349.04 2340.12 46188979.59 11840028.21 1648670.36 Minimum 199039.15 7.38 9554076.94 1846106.82 49626.49 Std. Dev. 66113.04 681.06 9425336.46 3142601.76 592505.50 Skewness 0.65 0.77 0.59 0.79 0.17 Kurtosis 1.83 2.43 2.27 2.15 1.36 Jarque-Bera 4.88 4.24 3.01 5.14 4.47 Probability 0.09 0.12 0.22 0.08 0.11 Observations 38 38 38 38 38 &nbsp; Figure 4.1: Trend of Real Gross Domestic Product (RGDP) Per Capita &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; Figure 4.2: Trend of Public Expenditure on Education (PEE) Per Capita &nbsp; &nbsp; Figure 4.3: Trend of Primary School Enrolment (PENR) &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; Figure 4.4: Trend of Secondary School Enrolment (SENR) &nbsp; &nbsp; Figure 4.5: Trend of Tertiary School Enrolment (TENR) &nbsp; &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; From the second column of Table 4.1, RGDP per capita mean is NGN 264, 316.01 ($734.21). This critically lags behind RGDP per capita mean in all developed (OECD) countries and underscores the need for human and non-human capital development. Further, RGDP per capita maximum is NGN 385, 349.04 while its minimum is NGN 199, 039.15. Given that the trend of RGDP per capita is positively sloped as seen in Figure 4.1, the disparity between RGDP per capita maximum and its minimum indicates growth in RGDP per capita during the period under investigation. Lastly, the Jarque-Bera statistic (4.88) and probability value (0.09) of RGDP per capita simply suggest that it follows a normal distribution, with NGN 66, 113.04 as its standard deviation. &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; From the third column of Table 4.1, PEE per capita mean is NGN 635.72 ($1.77). Just like RGDP per capita, this critically lags behind PEE per capita mean in all developed (OECD) countries and underscores the need for more government intervention in the education sector. Further, PEE per capita maximum is NGN 2, 340.12 while its minimum is NGN 7.38. Given that the trend of PEE per capita is positively sloped exponentially as seen in Figure 4.2, the disparity between PEE per capita maximum and its minimum indicates rapid growth in PEE per capita during the period under investigation. Lastly, the Jarque-Bera statistic (4.24) and probability value (0.12) of PEE per capita simply suggest that it follows a normal distribution, with NGN 681.06 as its standard deviation. From the fourth column of Table 4.1, PENR mean is 23096192.94. This represents about 18.33% of total population mean (126036036.63) and indicates high primary school enrolment during the period under investigation. Further, PENR maximum is 46188979.59 while its minimum is 9554076.94. Given that the trend of PENR is positively sloped linearly as seen in Figure 4.3, the disparity between PENR maximum and its minimum indicates consistent growth in PENR during the period under investigation. Lastly, the Jarque-Bera statistic (3.01) and probability value (0.22) of PENR simply suggest that it follows a normal distribution, with 9425336.46 as its standard deviation. From the fifth column of Table 4.1, SENR mean is 5796345.78. This represents about 4.60% of total population mean (126036036.63) and indicates relatively low secondary school enrolment during the period under investigation. Further, SENR maximum is 11840028.21 while its minimum is 1846106.82. Given that the trend of SENR is positively sloped exponentially as seen in Figure 4.4, the disparity between SENR maximum and its minimum indicates rapid growth in SENR during the period under investigation. Lastly, the Jarque-Bera statistic (5.14) and probability value (0.08) of SENR simply suggest that it follows a normal distribution, with 3142601.76 as its standard deviation. From the sixth column of Table 4.1, TENR mean is 787115.08. This represents about 0.63% of total population mean (126036036.63) and indicates very low tertiary school enrolment during the period under investigation. Further, TENR maximum is 1648670.36 while its minimum is 49626.49. Given that the trend of TENR is positively sloped concavely as seen in Figure 4.5, the disparity between TENR maximum and its minimum indicates slow growth in TENR during the period under investigation. Lastly, the Jarque-Bera statistic (4.47) and probability value (0.11) of TENR simply suggest that it follows a normal distribution, with 592505.50 as its standard deviation. From the descriptive statistics above, it is obvious that substantial disparities exist between the maximum and minimum values of the variables, especially for PEE per capita and TENR. This may distort the regression results of the cointegration analysis and may also lead to unnecessarily large regression coefficients. In order to avoid these problems, we have transformed the variables in two major ways. Firstly, we have reduced disparity among the variables by expressing PENR, SENR, and TENR as percentages of population total. Secondly, we have downsized all the variables to a smaller scale by expressing them in natural log form. Therefore instead of RGDP, PEE per capita, PENR, SENR, and TENR, we now have Ln_PER_RGDP, Ln_PER_PEE, Ln_PENR, Ln_SENR, and Ln_TENR respectively as our investigative variables. &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; <strong>4.2&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Break-Point Unit Root Test Results</strong> Table 4.2: Break-Point Unit Root Test Result Summary Variables Lags Included Specification Break Date ADF Test Statistic 5% Critical Value Summary <em>Ln_PER_RGDP</em><em>_t</em> 0 Intercept &amp; Trend 2001 -3.3506 -5.1757 Non-Stationary <em>∆Ln_PER_RGDP</em><em>_t</em> 2 Intercept &amp; Trend 2001 -5.4176 -5.1757 Stationary <em>Ln_PER_PEE</em><em>_t</em> 0 Intercept &amp; Trend 2004 -3.3665 -5.1757 Non-Stationary <em>∆Ln_PER_PEE</em><em>_t</em> 5 Intercept &amp; Trend 1995 -5.6226 -5.1757 Non-Stationary <em>Ln_PENR</em><em>_t</em> 7 Intercept &amp; Trend 2004 -7.6901 -5.1757 Stationary <em>Ln_SENR</em><em>_t</em> 3 Intercept &amp; Trend 1998 -5.0584 -5.1757 Non-Stationary <em>∆Ln_SENR</em><em>_t</em> 3 Intercept &amp; Trend 2016 -6.4199 -5.1757 Stationary <em>Ln_TENR</em><em>_t</em> 1 Intercept &amp; Trend 1998 -6.9768 -5.1757 Stationary Note(s): Lag selection based on Schwarz Information Criterion (SIC) &nbsp; As seen in the above table, there are different orders of integration for the time-series variables. Specifically, <em>Ln_PENR</em> and <em>Ln_TENR</em> are stationary at levels, while others are stationary only at the first difference. The bounds cointegration method is more appropriate in this case because it permits the combination of stationary and difference-stationary time series. <strong>4.3&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; ARDL Bounds Cointegration Test Results</strong> Table 4.3: Lag/Model Selection Criteria Table Number of Models Evaluated: 16 Dependent Variable: <em>Ln_PER_RGDP</em> S|N Model AIC Specification 1 16 -4.0889 ARDL(1, 0, 0, 0, 0) 2 15 -4.0552 ARDL(1, 0, 0, 0, 1) 3 12 -4.0477 ARDL(1, 0, 1, 0, 0) 4 14 -4.0448 ARDL(1, 0, 0, 1, 0) 5 8 -4.0445 ARDL(1, 1, 0, 0, 0) 6 11 -4.0212 ARDL(1, 0, 1, 0, 1) 7 13 -4.0121 ARDL(1, 0, 0, 1, 1) 8 10 -4.0118 ARDL(1, 0, 1, 1, 0) 9 7 -4.0066 ARDL(1, 1, 0, 0, 1) 10 6 -3.9994 ARDL(1, 1, 0, 1, 0) 11 4 -3.9970 ARDL(1, 1, 1, 0, 0) 12 9 -3.9894 ARDL(1, 0, 1, 1, 1) 13 3 -3.9672 ARDL(1, 1, 1, 0, 1) 14 5 -3.9626 ARDL(1, 1, 0, 1, 1) 15 2 -3.9589 ARDL(1, 1, 1, 1, 0) 16 1 -3.9357 ARDL(1, 1, 1, 1, 1) Note(s): * indicates chosen optimal lag specification based on the Akaike Information Criterion The Akaike criterion shows that ARDL(1, 0, 0, 0, 0) is the best lag specification for the ARDL model, thereby indicating that it is best to include only a single lag of the endogenous variable (<em>Ln_PER_RGDP</em>), and 0 lags of the other exogenous variables (<em>Ln_PER_PEE, Ln_PENR, Ln_SENR, </em>and <em>Ln_TENR</em>). On this basis, an ARDL model was estimated and the bounds cointegration method was applied to test for cointegration as seen in the following tables. Table 4.4: Auto Regressive Distributed Lag (ARDL) Model Estimates Dependent Variable: <em>Ln_PER_RGDP</em><em>_t</em> Regressors Coefficient Standard Error t-statistic Prob. <em>Ln_PER_RGDP _t-1</em> 0.723844 0.063884 11.33053 0.0000 <em>Ln_PER_PEE</em><em>_t</em> 0.006558 0.014438 0.454194 0.6529 <em>Ln_PENR</em><em>_t</em> 0.166945 0.048731 3.425881 0.0017 <em>Ln_SENR_t</em> 0.105751 0.044395 2.382033 0.0235 <em>Ln_TENR</em><em>_t</em> 0.033421 0.036354 0.919326 0.3650 <em>C</em> 2.80666 0.598588 4.688802 0.0001 &nbsp; Table 4.5: Bounds Cointegration Test &nbsp; Computed Wald (F-Statistic): 8.5420 10% level 5% level 2.5% level 1% level <em>k </em>= 4 I(0) I(1) I(0) I(1) I(0) I(1) I(0) I(1) <em>F</em>* 2.45 3.52 2.86 4.01 3.25 4.49 3.74 5.06 Source: Pesaran et al. <em>k</em> signifies the number of regressors <em>F</em>* corresponds to the model with unrestricted intercept and trend In the above table, the bounds test statistic (8.5420) surpasses the upper-bound (4.01) at the 5% level of significance and therefore leads to the rejection of the null hypothesis of &ldquo;no cointegration&rdquo;. Based on this result, a &ldquo;restricted&rdquo; error correction model was estimated as well as a long-run &lsquo;equilibrium&rsquo; model as seen in the subsequent tables and equations. Table 4.6a: Error Correction Model Dependent Variable: &Delta;<em> Ln_PER_RGDP</em><em>_t</em> Regressors Coefficient Standard Error t-statistic Prob. <em>∆Ln_PER_PEE</em><em>_t</em> 0.0065 0.0144 0.4541 0.6529 <em>∆Ln_PENR</em><em>_t</em> 0.1669 0.0487 3.4258 0.0017 <em>∆Ln_SENR</em><em>_t</em> 0.1057 0.0443 2.3820 0.0235 <em>∆Ln_TENR</em><em>_t</em> 0.0334 0.0363 0.9193 0.3650 <em>ECT _t-1</em> -0.2761 0.0638 -4.3227 0.0001 &nbsp; Table 4.6b: Long-Run Model Dependent Variable: <em>Ln_PER_RGDP</em><em>_t</em> Regressors Coefficient Standard Error t-statistic Prob. <em>Ln_PER_PEE</em><em>_t</em> 0.0237 0.0489 0.4850 0.6310 <em>Ln_PENR</em><em>_t</em> 0.6045 0.1253 4.8213 0.0000 <em>Ln_SENR</em><em>_t</em> 0.3829 0.1106 3.4602 0.0016 <em>Ln_TENR</em><em>_t</em> 0.1210 0.1500 0.8064 0.4261 <em>C</em> 10.1633 0.5757 17.6524 0.0000 &nbsp; In the error correction model, the error correction term (<em>ECT_t-1</em>) is expectedly negative and statistically significant at the 5% level (based on its <em>p</em>-value (0.0001)). Its magnitude (-0.2761) indicates a low but significant rate of adjustment to long-run equilibrium and specifically implies that approximately 27.61% of all discrepancies in long-run equilibrium will be corrected in each period. On the other hand, in the long-run model, the first long-run coefficient (<em>Ln_PER_PEE</em><em>_t</em>) is expectedly positive but its <em>p</em>-value (0.6310) indicates that it is statistically insignificant at the 5% level of significance, thereby implying that increment in <em>Ln_PER_PEE</em> will not cause <em>Ln_PER_RGDP</em> to increase. . Similarly, the fourth long-run coefficient (<em>Ln_TENR</em>) is expectedly positive but its <em>p</em>-value (0.4261) indicates that it is statistically insignificant at the 5% level of significance, thereby implying that increment in <em>Ln_TENR</em> will not cause <em>Ln_PER_RGDP</em> to increase. On the other hand, the second long-run coefficient (<em>Ln_PENR</em>) is expectedly positive and its <em>p</em>-value (0.0000) indicates that it is statistically significant at the 5% level of significance, thereby implying that increment in <em>Ln_PENR</em> will cause <em>Ln_PER_RGDP</em> to increase by 0.6045. Similarly, the third long-run coefficient (<em>Ln_SENR</em>) is expectedly positive and its <em>p</em>-value (0.0016) indicates that it is statistically significant at the 5% level of significance, thereby implying that increment in <em>Ln_SENR</em> will cause <em>Ln_PER_RGDP</em> to increase by 0.3829. The intercept also appears to be positive and statistically significant thereby indicating that the long-run model has a positive autonomous component measuring up to 10.1633 units. <strong>4.4&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Model Evaluation Results</strong> <strong>4.4.1&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Test of Goodness-of-Fit</strong> Table 4.7: Test of Goodness-of-Fit Summary Model R² Adj. R² ARDL Model 0.9875 0.9854 ECM 0.6948 0.6567 &nbsp; The adjusted R² of the ARDL model has a magnitude of 0.9854 and therefore implies that the ARDL model explains as much as 98.54% of the variation in its endogenous variable. Further, the adjusted R² of the ECM has a magnitude of 0.6567 and therefore implies that the error correction model (ECM) explains as much as 65.67% of the variation in its endogenous variable. <strong>4.4.2&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; T-Test and F-Test</strong> Table 4.8: F-Test Summary Model F-Statistic 5% Critical Value Prob. Remarks ARDL Model 490.1238 F(5,31) = 2.52 0.0000 Jointly Significant @ 5% ECM 15.2700 F(4,32) = 2.67 0.0000 Jointly Significant @ 5% &nbsp; The F-statistic (490.1238) for the ARDL model exceeds its 5% critical value (2.66), thereby implying that the parameters of the ARDL model are jointly significant at the 5% level of significance. Further, the F-statistic (15.2700) of the ECM also exceeds its 5% critical value (2.84), thereby implying that the parameters of the error correction model (ECM) are jointly significant at the 5% level of significance. Table 4.9: T-Test Summary T-Test for the Long-Run Estimates Regressors t-statistic 5% Critical Value Remarks <em>Ln_PER_PEE</em><em>_t</em> 0.4850 1.9600 Insignificant <em>Ln_PENR</em><em>_t</em> 4.8213 1.9600 Significant <em>Ln_SENR</em><em>_t</em> 3.4602 1.9600 Significant <em>Ln_TENR</em><em>_t</em> 0.8064 1.9600 Insignificant <em>C</em> 17.6524 1.9600 Significant &nbsp; T-Test for the Error Correction Model (ECM) Estimates &nbsp; Regressors t-statistic 5% Critical Value Remarks &nbsp; <em>∆Ln_PER_PEE</em><em>_t</em> 0.4541 1.9600 Insignificant &nbsp; <em>∆Ln_PENR</em><em>_t</em> 3.4258 1.9600 Significant &nbsp; <em>∆Ln_SENR</em><em>_t</em> 2.3820 1.9600 Significant &nbsp; <em>∆Ln_TENR</em><em>_t</em> 0.9193 1.9600 Insignificant &nbsp; <em>ECT _t-1</em> -4.3227 1.9600 Significant &nbsp; &nbsp; In the long-run model, the t-statistics for the first and fourth parameters are less than the 5% critical value (1.96), thereby indicating that the first and fourth parameters are statistically insignificant at the 5% level of significance, while the t-statistic for the second, third, and fifth parameters are greater than the 5% critical value (1.96), thereby indicating that they are statistically significant at the 5% level of significance. Similarly, in the ECM, the t-statistics for the first and fourth parameters are less than the 5% critical value (1.96), thereby indicating that the first and fourth parameters are statistically insignificant at the 5% level of significance, while the t-statistic for the second, third, and fifth parameters are greater than the 5% critical value (1.96), thereby indicating that they are statistically significant at the 5% level of significance. <strong>Normality Test</strong> Table 4.10: Jarque-Bera Normality Test Summary Model Skewness Kurtosis JB Statistic Prob. ARDL Model -0.5558 2.8731 1.9297 0.3810 ECM -0.7369 2.9430 3.3544 0.1868 &nbsp; &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; In the ARDL model, the <em>p</em>-value (0.3810) of the J-B test exceeds the 0.05 benchmark, and therefore indicates that the residuals of the ARDL model are normally distributed. Further, in the ECM, the <em>p</em>-value (0.1868) of the J-B test also exceeds the 0.05 benchmark, and therefore indicates that the residuals of the error correction model (ECM) are normally distributed. <strong>4.4.4&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Heteroskedasticity Test</strong> Table 4.11: Breusch-Pagan-Godfrey Heteroskedasticity Test Summary Model BPG Statistic (Obs*R-sq) Prob. ARDL Model 4.3085 0.5059 ECM 7.2979 0.1209 &nbsp; In the ARDL model, the <em>p</em>-value (0.5059) of the BPG test exceeds the 0.05 benchmark, and therefore indicates that the residuals of the ARDL model are homoskedastic. Similarly, in ECM, the <em>p</em>-value (0.1209) of the BPG test also exceeds the 0.05 benchmark, and therefore indicates that the residuals of the error correction model (ECM) are homoskedastic. <strong>4.4.5&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Autocorrelation Test</strong> Table 4.12: Breusch-Godfrey Serial Correlation Test Summary Model BG Statistic (Obs*R-sq) Prob. ARDL Model 0.1021 0.7493 ECM 0.8776 0.3488 &nbsp; In the ARDL model, the <em>p</em>-value (0.7493) of the BG test exceeds the 0.05 benchmark, and therefore indicates that the residuals of the ARDL model are not serially correlated. Similarly, in ECM, the <em>p</em>-value (0.3488) of the BG test also exceeds the 0.05 benchmark, and therefore indicates that the residuals of the error correction model (ECM) are not serially correlated. <strong>4.4.6&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Functional Specification Test</strong> Table 4.13: RESET Model Specification Test Summary Model Test Statistics Value Degrees of Freedom Prob. ARDL Model t-statistic 0.805722 30 0.4267 F-statistic 0.649189 (1, 30) 0.4267 ECM t-statistic 0.533837 31 0.5973 F-statistic 0.284982 (1, 31) 0.5973 &nbsp; In the ARDL model, the F-statistic <em>p</em>-value (0.4267) of the RESET test exceeds the 0.05 benchmark, and therefore indicates that the ARDL model was adequately specified. Further, in the ECM, the F-statistic <em>p</em>-value (0.5973) of the RESET test exceeds the 0.05 benchmark, and therefore indicates that the error correction model (ECM) was adequately specified. <strong>4.4.7&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; CUSUMSQ Stability Test</strong> &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; The Cumulative Sum of Residuals (CUSUM) Squares test was used to examine the stability of the ARDL model. The result is captured in the following figure. Figure 4.6: CUSUMSQ Plot &nbsp; &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; In interpreting the CUSUMSQ test, we may conclude that there is instability only if the CUSUMSQ plot falls outside the boundaries of the upper and lower dotted lines which signify the &ldquo;5% level of significance&rdquo;. In this regard, the plot of the CUSUMSQ test in the above figure shows that the ARDL model becomes momentarily unstable in year 2002. However, apart from 2002, the ARDL model appears to be stable in every other year as indicated by the confinement of the CUSUMSQ plot between the upper and lower dotted lines. Overall, considering the fact that this momentary period of instability does not coincide with any major event in Nigeria&rsquo;s education sector, we can conclude that instability is due to chance, and that the estimates of the model are reliable because apart from year 2002 the ARDL model appears to be stable.