Your neighbours are your friends : An investigation into microgeographical exchanges in the remote northwest of Australia between 1987-2012

This paper addresses intersections of communication, technology and geography in remote areas of Western Australia. It uses verbatim accounts from fieldwork bracketing decades of communication development to explore changes and constants in the micro-geographical exchange strategies of people living in the remote northwest of Australia. It articulates the continuing irony that the Australians who most need reliable and effective communications are those who experience the greatest difficulty in accessing them. We contend that geographical isolation and continuing problems with the reliability and reach of communication technologies in remote Western Australia have cultivated a robust community in which flexibility, resilience and interdependence redress, to some degree, the vulnerability remote communities often experience—especially in times of stress or crisis. The paper includes historical interviews from the 1980s and contemporary (2012) interviews carried out as part of an ARC Linkage-funded project, 2012-14, with industry partner Landgate, a Western Australian government entity

Towards a natural history of internet use? Working to overcome the implications for research of the child-adult divide

Using a metaphor borrowed from the biological sciences, this paper discusses a ‘natural history’ of Internet use. As ‘digital natives’ many of today’s teenagers and young people have grown up and matured interacting with the Internet from an early age. Research about young people’s Internet use tends, however, to focus on the protection of minors. Young people, 16 years or older, are often excluded from noncommercial research about how young people grow into more mature patterns of Internet use. This paper highlights how parents with teenagers are building dynamic models of their children’s engagement with the Internet as they mature. Parents reported changes in the level of their children’s Internet use as they age and they envisage further changes as their children mature. We also identify the variety of ways in which parents support their children’s developing Internet skills that anticipate and respond to Internet risks and excessive Internet use

High fidelity sorting of remarkably similar components via metal-mediated assembly.

Subtle differences in ligand coordination angle and rigidity lead to high fidelity sorting between individual components displaying identical coordination motifs upon metal-mediated self-assembly. Narcissistic self-sorting can be achieved between highly similar ligands that vary minimally in rigidity and internal coordination angle upon combination with Fe(ii) ions and 2-formylpyridine. Selective, sequential cage formation can be precisely controlled in a single flask from a mix of three different core ligands (and 33 total components) differing only in the hybridization of one group that is uninvolved in the metal coordination process

The Lore of Low Methane Livestock:Co-Producing Technology and Animals for Reduced Climate Change Impact

Methane emissions from sheep and cattle production have gained increasing profile in the context of climate change. Policy and scientific research communities have suggested a number of technological approaches to mitigate these emissions. This paper uses the concept of co-production as an analytical framework to understand farmers’ evaluation of a 'good animal’. It examines how technology and sheep and beef cattle are co-produced in the context of concerns about the climate change impact of methane. Drawing on 42 semi-structured interviews, this paper demonstrates that methane emissions are viewed as a natural and integral part of sheep and beef cattle by farmers, rather than as a pollutant. Sheep and beef cattle farmers in the UK are found to be an extremely heterogeneous group that need to be understood in their specific social, environmental and consumer contexts. Some are more amenable to appropriating methane reducing measures than others, but largely because animals are already co-constructed from the natural and the technical for reasons of increased production efficiency

'Open Marxism' against and beyond the 'Great Enclosure'? Reflections on How (Not) to Crack Capitalism

The main purpose of this article is to provide an in-depth discussion of John Holloway’s recent book, Crack Capitalism. To this end, the paper offers a detailed account of the key strengths and weaknesses of Holloway’s version of ‘open Marxism’. The analysis is divided into two parts. The first part focuses on six significant strengths of Crack Capitalism: (1) its insistence upon the importance of autonomous forms of agenda-setting for both individual and collective emancipation; (2) its emphasis on the ordinary constitution of social struggles; (3) its fine-grained interpretation of the socio-ontological conditions underlying human agency; (4) its processual conception of radical social transformation; (5) its recognition of the elastic, adaptable, and integrative power of capitalism; and (6) its proposal for an alternative critical theory, commonly known as ‘open Marxism’ or ‘autonomous Marxism’. The second part of the study examines the principal weaknesses of Crack Capitalism: (1) the counterproductive implications of the preponderance of negativity, owing to a one-sided concern with critique, cracks, and crises; (2) conceptual vagueness; (3) an overuse of poetic and metaphorical language; (4) the absence of a serious engagement with the question of normativity; (5) a lack of substantive evidence; (6) a residual economic reductionism; (7) a simplistic notion of gender; (8) the continuing presence of various problematic ‘isms’; (9) the misleading distinction between ‘doing’ and ‘labour’; (10) a reductive understanding of capitalism; (11) an unrealistic view of society; and (12) socio-ontological idealis

FireWatch: Community engagement and the communication of bushfire information

Successive bushfire inquiries in Australia have called for authorities to more effectively harness and disseminate bushfire information. Recommendations from these inquiries suggest a new approach to bushfires involving greater co-ordination, in which home dwellers, emergency fire services and government work more closely together and acknowledge that education, safety, planning and emergency management can be effective responses to the threat of bushfire. Policymakers and community members are seeking to revise bushfire protocols and access new sources of authoritative information, which may help guide public responses. Nonetheless, the effective communication of information regarding bushfires still seems to be problematic (Department of Justice, 2013). This paper reports on findings from an ARC-funded research project, titled Using Community Engagement and Enhanced Visual Information to Promote FireWatch Satellite Communications as a Support for Collaborative Decision-Making. The project investigated the fire information communications environment of remote Australia in order to develop a suitable, user-friendly bushfire information website. Using a ‘communicative ecologies’ framework, this paper analyses findings from interviews held in 2012 and 2013 with community members living in the remote area of Kununurra, Western Australia. Interviewees described a fragile ‘communicative ecology’ where the coverage or reach of different communications technologies is variable, and where there are reception and compatibility problems. They also expressed disappointment and frustration about the lack of fire information in times of bushfire – as well as a lack of operational transparency and effective community engagement on the part of emergency organisations