Terms upon which land is granted to settlers in New South Wales and Van Diemen's Land, Colonial Office, Downing Street, London, 1826

Document from the Colonial Office, London, 1826, outlining the terms upon which land is granted to settlers in New South Wales and Van Diemen's Land

The misuses of sustainability: adult education, citizenship and the dead hand of neoliberalism

‘‘Sustainability’’ has a captivating but disingenuous simplicity: its meanings are complex, and have political and policy significance. Exploring the application of the term to adult education, this paper argues that a particular discourse of ‘‘sustainability’’ has become a common-sense, short-circuiting critical analysis and understanding of policy options. This ‘‘business discourse’’ of sustainability, strongly influenced by neoliberal ideas, encourages the presumption that educational programmes and movements which have died out were unsustainable, bound to fail, and even responsible – having failed to adapt – for their own demise. Potentially valuable experience is thus excluded from the educational policy canon. The author uses three cases from 20th-century adult education, namely (1) English liberal adult education; (2) ‘‘mass education’’, also known as community development, in the British colonies; and (3) UNESCO’s Fundamental Education, to challenge this presumption. He demonstrates for each case how a business discourse has implied their ‘‘unsustainability’’, but that the reality was more complex and involved external political intervention

Corporate Social Responsibility at African mines: Linking the past to the present

This paper traces the origins of the 'brand' of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR)employed at large-scale mines across sub-Saharan Africa. Conceived within fortified resource enclaves, the policies adopted and actions taken in the area of CSR at many of the region's large-scale mines today have had had minimal effect on community wellbeing. Further examination reveals that contemporary CSR strategy in the region's mining sector is often a 'repackaging' and 'rebranding' of moves made by major operators during the colonial period and early years of country independence to pacify and engage local communities. Today, this work is being championed as CSR but failing to deliver much change, its impact minimized by the economic and political forces at work in an era of globalization, during which extractive industry enclaves that are disconnected from local economies have been able to flourish. As case study of Ghana, long one of the largest gold mining economies in sub-Saharan Africa, is used to illustrate these points. © 201