Efficient Estimation of the Non-linear Volatility and Growth Model

Econometrics, Macroeconomics, Growth, Volatility

Jungle Book: Authoritarian Conservation and its Alternatives

Making Conservation Work: Securing Biodiversity in this New Century, edited by Ghazala Shahabuddin & Mahesh Rangarajan. Ranikhet (Uttaranchal): Permanent Black, (298 pages). There is a crisis in Indian nature conservation. For years now community conservation has seemed to many of us to have been consolidating its position as the only ethical and workable model for conserving biodiversity in the developing world. The fortress conservation model whereby protected areas are garrisoned for total exclusion of local people and their extractive activities had been thoroughly critiqued and seemed to have been consigned to a place in history along with colonial game reserves. Yet we are now witnessing a swing back to exclusionary thinking on the part of many conservationists

Excavating desire: queer heritage in the Asia-Pacific Region

"How might we define the term ‘queer heritage’? We could choose to define it as encompassing the whole culture of ‘queerness’ that we have in a sense ‘inherited’ from the past. And that would include everything from our politics to our language to our literature. In other words, it would constitute the passing on of a tradition of what it has meant to be queer in this part of the world. What I am concerned with here, however, is restricted to the physical places and landscapes created or inhabited by homosexuals in the Asia-Pacific region in the past. These would include the buildings or outdoor spaces that we have lived in, danced in, or had sex in. The places where we have created gardens, painted, written novels, or fallen in love. It would include gay beaches and gay beach resorts, the sites of lesbian music camps, famous cruising areas in public parks or shopping malls, saunas and sex clubs, gay hairdressers, drag clubs, gay and lesbian discos. It would also, of course, include sites of discrimination and physical violence against us."AsiaPacifiQueer Network, Australian National Universit

Prospects for a postsecular heritage practice : convergences between posthumanism and popular religious practice in Asia

By failing to document popular belief in the supernatural attributes of religious sites and by drawing up conservation management plans that fail to attend to such beliefs, current heritage regimes effectively perform a secular translation of them. I argue that the posthuman turn in the humanities and social sciences, and in particular its openness to forms of agency, vibrancy and vitality in the object world, offers prospects for a kind of heritage practice newly comfortable with the vibrancy that belief in the supernatural lends to the things of popular religion. Focusing on the material heritage of popular religion in Asia—in particular in China and Southeast Asia—attitudes of devotees to the rebuilding of temples and shrines are examined. Practices of rebuilding and restoration come to be seen as a form of worship. While ontological differences between worshipers and heritage practitioners remain, it is possible to be positive about the prospects for a postsecular heritage practice precisely because the rationalist authority of established practice is so under challenge by the counter discourses of posthumanism, the new materialism, and related streams of thought

Transcending the Culture–Nature Divide in Cultural Heritage

While considerable research and on-ground project work focuses on the interface between Indigenous/local people and nature conservation in the Asia-Pacific region, the interface between these people and cultural heritage conservation has not received the same attention. This collection brings together papers on the current mechanisms in place in the region to conserve cultural heritage values. It will provide an overview of the extent to which local communities have been engaged in assessing the significance of this heritage and conserving it. It will address the extent to which management regimes have variously allowed, facilitated or obstructed continuing cultural engagement with heritage places and landscapes, and discuss the problems agencies experience with protection and management of cultural heritage places

The past of others : archaeological heritage management in Thailand and Australia

Beginning with the understanding that several European discourses compete for the right to interpret the physical traces of past human cultures I have examined what seem to be the major of these in the European context. They are the discourses of the divine, namely paganism and early Christianity, and the discourses of the secular and rational, the principal of which are antiquarianism and archaeology. Since the mid-nineteenth century archaeology has secured for itself official recognition as the proper knowledge of the material past. Archaeology is now to be found practised in almost every part of the world. The transfer of the discourses of archaeology and art history from the West to the non- West has, not surprisingly, included the transfer of the conservation ethic. While the conservation ethic has attained a foothold at a government and elite level in the non- West it appears to have little constituency at a local and non-elite level. In Thailand I have looked at Buddhism and animism as systems of knowledge about the material past and have found beliefs and practices which honour the spiritual essence of ancient remains but rarely seek to conserve their material fabric. In Australia the European conception of Aboriginal heritage is implicated in a primitivist longing for a 'traditional', unchanging Aboriginal culture in which authenticity is partly equated within pastness. Archaeology established its primacy in Australia by mixing its discourse with the discourse of heritage. It now finds its position destabilized as Aborigines themselves borrow elements of the same discourse in a counter-appropriation of their 'archaeological' cultural property. The universality of the conservation ethic is manifestly spurious. The West, in its bid to domesticate the past of the Other World, allies itself with the non-Western state. The state draws upon the material past as a resource for nation-building, monumentalizing the past also in the interests of legitimizing present political arrangements. This alliance of interests is fundamentally anti-religious. Its programme of 'conserving' ancient sites cuts across local practices

Inhibitory control and counterintuitive science and maths reasoning in adolescence

Existing concepts can be a major barrier to learning new counterintuitive concepts that contradict pre-existing experience-based beliefs or misleading perceptual cues. When reasoning about counterintuitive concepts, inhibitory control is thought to enable the suppression of incorrect concepts. This study investigated the association between inhibitory control and counterintuitive science and maths reasoning in adolescents (N=90, 11-15 years). Both response and semantic inhibition were associated with counterintuitive science and maths reasoning, when controlling for age, general cognitive ability, and performance in control science and maths trials. Better response inhibition was associated with longer reaction times in counterintuitive trials, while better semantic inhibition was associated with higher accuracy in counterintuitive trials. This novel finding suggests that different aspects of inhibitory control may offer unique contributions to counterintuitive reasoning during adolescence and provides further support for the hypothesis that inhibitory control plays a role in science and maths reasoning

Waters of belonging : Al-miyahu Tajma'unah: Arabic Australians and the Georges River Parklands

This book, Rivers of Belonging, includes the stories of Arabic Australians about the parks and rivers of their homeland as well as those about the parks on the Georges River.This book arises from Parklands, Culture and Communities, a project which looks at how cultural diversity shapes people's understandings and use of the Georges River and green spaces in Sydney's south west. Culturally diverse uses and views have not often been recognised in Australia in park and green space management models, which tend to be based on Anglo-Celtic 'norms' about nature and recreation. This book focusses on the experiences of four local communities - Aboriginal, Vietnamese, Arabic and Anglo Australians - and their relationships with the river, parks and each other

Waters of Belonging

This book arises from Parklands, Culture and Communities, a project which looks at how cultural diversity shapes people's understandings and use of the Georges River and green spaces in Sydney's south west. Culturally diverse uses and views have not often been recognised in Australia in park and green space management models, which tend to be based on Anglo-Celtic 'norms' about nature and recreation. This book focusses on the experiences of four local communities - Aboriginal, Vietnamese, Arabic and Anglo Australians - and their relationships with the river, parks and each other