Ethnography and the Production of Anthropological Knowledge

Professor Nicolas Peterson is a central figure in the anthropology of Aboriginal Australia. This volume honours his anthropological body of work, his commitment to ethnographic fieldwork as a source of knowledge, his exemplary mentorship of generations of younger scholars and his generosity in facilitating the progress of others. The diverse collection produced by former students, current colleagues and long-term peers provides reflections on his legacy as well as fresh anthropological insights from Australia and the wider Asia-Pacific region. Inspired by Nicolas Peterson’s work in Aboriginal Australia and his broad ranging contributions to anthropology over several decades, the contributors to this volume celebrate the variety of his ethnographic interests. Individual chapters address, revisit, expand on, and ethnographically re-examine his work about ritual, material culture, the moral domestic economy, land and ecology. The volume also pays homage to Nicolas Peterson’s ability to provide focused research with long-term impact, exemplified by a series of papers engaging with his work on demand sharing and the applied policy domai

Where the clouds stand: Australian Aboriginal relationships to water, place, and the Marine environment in Blue Mud Bay, Northern Territory

This thesis explores the relationships between people, water, and places in the everyday life of the Yolngu people of Yilpara in northeast Arnhem Land. In the Yolngu world, a sophisticated understanding of the fluid and dynamic relationships between fresh and saltwater is given a greater priority than the division of the coast into land and sea. These waters are continually moving and mixing, both underground and on the surface, across an area that stretches from several kilometers inland to the deep sea, and they combine with clouds, rain, tides, and seasonal patterns in a coastal water cycle. Yolngu people use their understanding of water flows as one basis for generating systems of coastal ownership, whilst water also provides a source of rich and complex metaphors in wider social life. Describing this coastal water cycle provides the basis for a critique of the way European topographic maps represent coastal space, and also for a critique of common formulations of customary marine tenure (CMT). However as a methodological tool, I use maps to provide a detailed analysis of people's connections to place and as part of a wider examination of how places are generated and sustained. In this way the thesis contributes to anthropology, marine studies, and indigenous studies as well as touching on some issues of coastal geography. The approach I adopt has a phenomenological emphasis, since it enables me to show how Yolngu concepts arise out of and articulate with their experience of living in their environment and of using knowledge in context. This perspective contributes fresh ethnographic insights to some ongoing contemporary debates about people and place. The paired tropes of flow and movement are used as a gloss throughout the work, as each chapter takes a different domain of human life at Yilpara and explores how water, place, and human movement are manifested in it. Such domains include subsistence hunting and fishing, group and gender distinctions in presence on the country, food sharing, memories of residence and travel, personal names, spirits and Dreaming figures, patterns of coastal ownership, and interactions with professional fishermen. Together, they provide an account of the different ways that people relate to water, place and country in contemporary everyday life. ‘Where the Clouds Stand’ is predominantly an ethnographically driven work from one locality, but within that approach, it also explores broader considerations of phenomenology, anthropological inquiry, and human life more generally

Scoping market-based opportunities for Indigenous provision of water quality services and associated conservation governance in the Northern Great Barrier Reef: interim report

[Extract] NESP TWQ Hub Project 2.3.3 focuses on scoping water-related ecosystem services (ES) market opportunities and products that are culturally, environmentally, economically, and politically suited to CYP catchments flowing into the northern Great Barrier Reef (GBR). These kinds of ES are often known internationally by terms such as 'nutrient offsets' and 'watershed ES', and the particular focus here is on potential water quality ES (WQES). The project also considers the importance of developing water-oriented services and products that might deliver a range of additional ecosystem services (e.g. biodiversity), cultural and socio-economic benefits. Multiple-benefit products and services have the value of being both more attractive in building Indigenous livelihoods, but also potentially deliver higher market value. The project is a collaboration between researchers at CSIRO and JCU, and staff at local (Kalan Enterprises) and regional Cape York Partnership (CYPS) Indigenous development agencies in CYP. It has been designed to underpin ES-based livelihood opportunities and the realisation of social co-benefits from Indigenous Cultural Resource and Natural Resource Management (ICNRM). This report is effectively a working paper that outlines key developments in the project thus far, and outlines next steps for the second year of the project

Scoping market-based opportunities for Indigenous provision of water quality services and associated conservation governance in the Northern Great Barrier Reef: interim report

[Extract] NESP TWQ Hub Project 2.3.3 focuses on scoping water-related ecosystem services (ES) market opportunities and products that are culturally, environmentally, economically, and politically suited to CYP catchments flowing into the northern Great Barrier Reef (GBR). These kinds of ES are often known internationally by terms such as 'nutrient offsets' and 'watershed ES', and the particular focus here is on potential water quality ES (WQES). The project also considers the importance of developing water-oriented services and products that might deliver a range of additional ecosystem services (e.g. biodiversity), cultural and socio-economic benefits. Multiple-benefit products and services have the value of being both more attractive in building Indigenous livelihoods, but also potentially deliver higher market value. The project is a collaboration between researchers at CSIRO and JCU, and staff at local (Kalan Enterprises) and regional Cape York Partnership (CYPS) Indigenous development agencies in CYP. It has been designed to underpin ES-based livelihood opportunities and the realisation of social co-benefits from Indigenous Cultural Resource and Natural Resource Management (ICNRM). This report is effectively a working paper that outlines key developments in the project thus far, and outlines next steps for the second year of the project

Monte Carlo investigations of phase transitions: status and perspectives

Using the concept of finite-size scaling, Monte Carlo calculations of various models have become a very useful tool for the study of critical phenomena, with the system linear dimension as a variable. As an example, several recent studies of Ising models are discussed, as well as the extension to models of polymer mixtures and solutions. It is shown that using appropriate cluster algorithms, even the scaling functions describing the crossover from the Ising universality class to the mean-field behavior with increasing interaction range can be described. Additionally, the issue of finite-size scaling in Ising models above the marginal dimension (d*=4) is discussed.Comment: 23 pages, including 14 PostScript figures. Presented at StatPhys-Taiwan, August 9-16, 1999. Also available as PDF file at http://www.cond-mat.physik.uni-mainz.de/~luijten/erikpubs.htm

Conservative management versus open reduction and internal fixation for mid-shaft clavicle fractures in adults - The Clavicle Trial: Study protocol for a multicentre randomized controlled trial

Background: Clavicle fractures account for around 4% of all fractures and up to 44% of fractures of the shoulder girdle. Fractures of the middle third (or mid-shaft) account for approximately 80% of all clavicle fractures. Management of this group of fractures is often challenging and the outcome can be unsatisfactory. In particular it is not clear whether surgery produces better outcomes than non-surgical management. Currently there is much variation in the use of surgery and a lack of good quality evidence to inform our decision.Methods/Design: We aim to undertake a multicentre randomised controlled trial evaluating the effectiveness and safety of conservative management versus open reduction and internal fixation for displaced mid-shaft clavicle fractures in adults. Surgical treatment will be performed using the Acumed clavicle fixation system. Conservative management will consist of immobilisation in a sling at the side in internal rotation for 6 weeks or until clinical or radiological union. We aim to recruit 300 patients. These patients will be followed-up for at least 9 months. The primary endpoint will be the rate of non-union at 3 months following treatment. Secondary endpoints will be limb function measured using the Constant-Murley Score and the Disabilities of the Arm, Shoulder and Hand (DASH) Score at 3 and 9 months post-operatively.Discussion: This article presents the protocol for a multicentre randomised controlled trial. It gives extensive details of, and the basis for, the chosen methods, and describes the key measures taken to avoid bias and to ensure validity.Trial Registration: United Kingdom Clinical Research Network ID: 8665. The date of registration of the trial is 07/09/2006. The date the first patient was recruited is 18/12/2007. © 2011 Longo et al; licensee BioMed Central Ltd

Optimising the data combination rule for seamless phase II/III clinical trials

We consider seamless Phase II/III clinical trials which compare K treatments with a common control in Phase II, then test the most promising treatment against control in Phase III. The final hypothesis test for the selected treatment can use data from both Phases, subject to controlling the familywise type I error rate. We show that the choice of method for conducting the final hypothesis test has a substantial impact on the power to demonstrate that an effective treatment is superior to control. To understand these differences in power we derive optimal decision rules, maximising power for particular configurations of treatment effects. Rules with optimal frequentist properties are found as solutions to multivariate Bayes decision problems. Although the optimal rule depends on the configuration of treatment means considered, we are able to identify two decision rules with robust efficiency: a rule using a weighted average of the Phase II and Phase III data on the selected treatment and control, and a closed testing procedure using an inverse normal combination rule and a Dunnett test for intersection hypotheses. For the first of these rules, we find the optimal division of a given total sample size between Phase II and Phase III.We also assess the value of using Phase II data in the final analysis and find that for many plausible scenarios, between 50% and 70% of the Phase II numbers on the selected treatment and control would need to be added to the Phase III sample size in order to achieve the same increase in power