Assembled landscapes: The sites and sounds of some recent shakuhachi recordings

This article examines the folding together of music and landscape in some recent albums featuring the shakuhachi, a Japanese bamboo flute that today animates an active and international music scene. Through analysis of the texts, images, and sounds on these albums, I explore the reimagining of the shakuhachi's musical geography as the instrument reaches new players and places in Europe, Australia, and North America. Using recordings that incorporate environmental sounds alongside the shakuhachi, I examine ideas about the perceived authenticity of particular sounds, performance spaces, and recording aesthetics. These recordings unsettle our thinking about the relationship between music and landscape in several ways. First they document performers' connections with particular sites, yet complicate any notion that the shakuhachi is related to a single place or nation, signalling a distinctly contemporary sense of place. Second, the centrality of mediation in these artistic projects makes technology crucial to the production of the natural and renders the naturalness of the shakuhachi audible in new ways. Third, the use of environmental sounds provokes questions about agency and the boundaries between human and non-human sound-making. By treating these albums as assemblages of material, social, technological, and natural elements, I reveal the lively and complex character of otherwise everyday musical objects

Researching the future

The author, a recent Chair of the Soil Association and an organic farmer, examines the relationship between the research community and farmers, and argues for publicly funded, radical 'pioneering research' which will increase the sustainability of organic farming and deliver greater benefits. This will require genuine collaboration between researchers, farmers and the public

Do cross listed securities in the face of extreme events present any risk return benefits for New Zealand investors? : a thesis presented in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Business Studies in Finance at Massey University

Many investors are looking for alternative investment options in todays market as correlations among markets have increased, causing diversification benefits once gained to be diminished. This thesis examines what risk return benefits can be gained by investors from international diversification, especially cross listed securities, and how these benefits may enhance the risk return relationship in the face of extreme events. Extreme events being researched are Russian Ruble Crisis in 1998, September 11 2001, and Argentina Financial Crisis in 2002. It was found that cross listed securities held within a portfolio provided diversification benefits for investors with an improvement in the risk return relationship of lower risk and higher returns. Tested under extreme events it was found that holding cross listed securities within a portfolio mitigated some of the affects demonstrated

Nation Branding and Policy transfer: Insights from Norden. EL-CSID Working Paper Issue 2018/22 • October 2018

Recent years have seen an interesting development in practices and policies of nation branding. Alongside an emphasis in which nation branding programmes seek to activate desires of conspicuous consumption in consumers, or to use branded messages to attract investment, there has also been a growing emphasis placed on policy transfer as a part of nation branding strategies. Thus, we see countries emphasising the possibility of exporting (amongst others) their educational, environmental, gender, criminological and even administrative policies, models and approaches. Instead of jealously guarding points of possible competitive advantage the message is instead apparently benevolent, a declaration that such countries may have something to offer that they are willing to share for the greater good. To date, this shift towards the incorporation of policy transfer within nation branding practices has received only limited analysis (e.g. Marsh and Fawcett 2011a; 2011b). Questions that arise, therefore, include: why are countries increasingly shifting their nation branding programmes in this direction? What do they seek to gain by engaging in such exports? And should we take the ostensibly beneficent nature of such practices at face value? The aim of this working paper is therefore to consider what the shift to policy transfer may tell us about the developing politics of nation branding, with particular focus placed on how policy transfer can be seen as a form of branded identity politics that arguably belies its apparently benevolent intentions by reaffirming hierarchical geopolitical imaginaries that remain premised on a politics of leveraging perceived competitive advantage. However, while the paper indicates why such a shift in nation branding strategies may be attractive, it also considers the potential pitfalls and limitations of such an approach. The working paper first discusses the shift towards nation branding through policy transfer at a general level, before ending with a discussion that draws on examples from Norden – the countries of which frequently populate the upper echelons of numerous nation branding and benchmarking indices, which have historically presented themselves as a model for export, and which, following an extended period of post-Cold War identity crisis and doubt, have more recently rediscovered a sense of self-confidence and self-identity, not least manifest in a resurrection of ideas of Nordic knowledge exports and policy transfer that re-instantiates more historical notions of Nordic exceptionalism

Reassessing Putin's project : reflections on IR theory and the West

Putin's aim was not to isolate Russia from international society but to challenge the West's claim to define its norms

Blood ties : the labyrinth of family membership in long term adoption reunion : a thesis presented in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in Social Anthropology at Massey University

This thesis reports original research conducted with twenty adoptees, adopted under closed-stranger protocols, who have been experiencing regular post-reunion contact with their birth families for more than ten years. It examines the themes of the mothering role, family obligation and family membership to uncover how adoptees navigate their family membership within and between two families (adoptive and birth family). This study presents the thoughts, feelings and observations of the participants in their own words to convey a deeper understanding of their experiences. Drawing upon in-depth interviews, this study has sought to expand on earlier research focusing on the search and reunion and immediate post-reunion stages to examine the long-term experiences of adoptees in post-reunion. The principal finding is that reunited relationships have no predictable pathways and are approached with varying levels of ambivalence and emotional strain, and that there is no fixed pattern of family arrangements and relational boundaries. While closed-stranger adoptions and the subsequent reunions may eventually cease, this research may assist in understanding the issues surrounding the reunion between gamete (egg) and sperm donor's and their offspring in the future. KEYWORDS: Adoption Post-reunion, Adoptee, Birth Family, Family Membership, Family Relationships, Closed Adoption Reunion

A Reflection of Cultural Exchange

While still in the midst of their study abroad experiences, students at Linfield College write reflective essays. Their essays address issues of cultural similarity and difference, compare lifestyles, mores, norms, and habits between their host countries and home, and examine changes in perceptions about their host countries and the United States. In this essay, Austin Browning describes his observations during his study abroad program at Hong Kong Baptist University in Hong Kong, China

The Manin conjecture in dimension 2

These lecture notes describe the current state of affairs for Manin's conjecture in the context of del Pezzo surfaces.Comment: 57 pages. These are a preliminary version of lecture notes for the "School and conference on analytic number theory", ICTP, Trieste, 23/04/07-11/05/0

\u3cem\u3eThe Gran Para\u3c/em\u3e: The Delicate Dance of South American Privateering from Baltimore

The Consul General of Portugal filed a libel in the District Court of Maryland, alleging silver and gold coin had been taken out of the Portuguese ship, Gran Para, and the specie subsequently deposited in the Marine Bank of Baltimore. In 1818, The Gran Para was sailing to Lisbon from Rio de Janeiro when the privateer, La Irresistible, captained by John Daniel Danels, took her cargo as prize. The lower courts entered decrees in favor of the Consul of Portugal, restoring property to the original owners. The Supreme Court affirmed the lower court decrees, finding it very clear that La Irresistible was armed and manned in Baltimore, in violation of the laws and of the neutral obligations of the United States. Chief Justice Marshall delivered the opinion of the court. The Court found La Irresistible was not commissioned as a privateer, nor did she attempt to act as one; the size of the crew and the lack of a cargo evidenced the ship’s intent to sail against a nation with whom the United States was at peace