Between Sydney and Hong Kong: Doing Cultural Research without Guarantees

Between Sydney and Hong Kong: doing cultural research without guarantees

Introduction

The article introduces the theme of this issue, 'Cultural Research'. It outlines the contributions and provides them with a scholarly context

Repurposing literacy: the uses of Richard Hoggart for creative education

After 50 years, what are the implications of Uses of Literacy for educational modernisation, in the light of subsequent changes from 'read only' literacy to 'read-write' uses of multimedia? This chapter argues that a broad extension of popular literacy via consumer-created digital content offers not only emancipationist potential in line with Hoggart's own project, but also economic benefits via the dynamics of creative innovation. Multimedia 'popular entertainments' pose a challenge to formal education, but not in the way that Hoggart feared. Instead of producing 'tamed helots,' commercial culture may be outpacing formal schooling in promoting creative digital literacy via entrepreneurial and distributed learning. It may indeed be that those in need of a creative make-over are not teenagers but teachers

The experience of mortgage distress in Western Sydney

Mortgage distress is affecting a growing number of Australian households. Distress ranges from arrears in mortgage payments to defaults, foreclosures and repossessions. The impacts of mortgage distress are complex and include issues relating to the ongoing financial viability of the affected households, wider neighbourhood effects, and a range of psychological and social impacts. In recent years, mortgage stress has had a consistently higher prevalence in certain parts of Western Sydney than in any other region across Australia.This study is an attempt to uncover the experiences of mortgage distress in Western Sydney and of mortgage holders’ coping strategies. While not claiming to be a representative sample of mortgagors in distress, the report reveals much about the circumstances contributing to mortgage distress and its considerable impacts on the lives of those affected

The Human Cell Atlas.

The recent advent of methods for high-throughput single-cell molecular profiling has catalyzed a growing sense in the scientific community that the time is ripe to complete the 150-year-old effort to identify all cell types in the human body. The Human Cell Atlas Project is an international collaborative effort that aims to define all human cell types in terms of distinctive molecular profiles (such as gene expression profiles) and to connect this information with classical cellular descriptions (such as location and morphology). An open comprehensive reference map of the molecular state of cells in healthy human tissues would propel the systematic study of physiological states, developmental trajectories, regulatory circuitry and interactions of cells, and also provide a framework for understanding cellular dysregulation in human disease. Here we describe the idea, its potential utility, early proofs-of-concept, and some design considerations for the Human Cell Atlas, including a commitment to open data, code, and community

The Human Cell Atlas White Paper

The Human Cell Atlas (HCA) will be made up of comprehensive reference maps of all human cells - the fundamental units of life - as a basis for understanding fundamental human biological processes and diagnosing, monitoring, and treating disease. It will help scientists understand how genetic variants impact disease risk, define drug toxicities, discover better therapies, and advance regenerative medicine. A resource of such ambition and scale should be built in stages, increasing in size, breadth, and resolution as technologies develop and understanding deepens. We will therefore pursue Phase 1 as a suite of flagship projects in key tissues, systems, and organs. We will bring together experts in biology, medicine, genomics, technology development and computation (including data analysis, software engineering, and visualization). We will also need standardized experimental and computational methods that will allow us to compare diverse cell and tissue types - and samples across human communities - in consistent ways, ensuring that the resulting resource is truly global. This document, the first version of the HCA White Paper, was written by experts in the field with feedback and suggestions from the HCA community, gathered during recent international meetings. The White Paper, released at the close of this yearlong planning process, will be a living document that evolves as the HCA community provides additional feedback, as technological and computational advances are made, and as lessons are learned during the construction of the atlas

That dog was Marine! Human-Dog Assemblages in the Pacific War

A photograph taken on the island of Iwo Jima in 1945 shows an American marine apparently asleep in a hastily dug foxhole. His body swathed in a camouflage poncho, the man’s helmeted head presses against the island’s black volcanic sand and his rifle lies on the crest of his hole. This form of image, a marine at rest, is a familiar one in the archive of America’s Pacific War, but what distinguishes this particular picture is that, even in the midst of sleep, the serviceman’s left hand is clutching a leash, at the end of which is a dog, a Doberman. In counterpoint to the ‘master’, the dog sits at alert, ears pricked attentively, noble gaze directed across the body of the human and outwards towards unseen dangers. This paper will focus on the Marine dog battalions deployed against Japan in the Pacific: the product of a striking confluence of race and animal-based orders of knowledge and orientation. The Japanese, it was hoped (so ‘animal-like’ in their being according to the prevailing American understanding), would meet an equally sentient and yet superior opponent in the form of the Marine Doberman. Yet simultaneously, the process of combat encouraged the increasing anthropomorphising of the dogs, to the extent that they were assigned ranks within the Marine Corps, promoted and so on. A funeral memorial built on the island of Guam in tribute to a number of individual Marine dogs features in the paper as a key symbol of these processes. Such contradictions, especially as they converge around issues of culture, class, gender and identity, are at the heart of the human-animal nexus and form the concerns of this pape

An ontology of everyday control : space, media flows and 'smart' living in the absolute present

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Backpacker heaven : the consumption and construction of tourist spaces and landscapes in Sydney

This article explores the changing cultural dynamics of "amenity-rich" touristic landscapes in Sydney, Australia, focusing on the specific group of young budget travelers known as backpackers. The article also considers the consequences of diverse mobilities, including contemporary forms of travel, for the identities and social relations of places and communities. It also addresses recent suggestions that the focus of analysis should be turned away from fixed sites (field, society, community), to instead account for the flows and connections that transcend borders and boundaries. The article also considers the differential status given to various mobilities. At a time of escalating fears around "illegal" migration (refugees and asylum seekers), the expansion of tourism trategies, particularly for independent travelers, illuminates the highly uneven nature of transnational mobilities

Translated spaces/translated identities : the production of place, culture and memory in an Australian suburb

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