Engagement Tactics Research Articles

Rethinking human rights: the 2014 Sochi Winter Olympics, LGBT protections and the limits of cosmopolitanism

Prior to the start of the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi, Russia, activists from several Western countries protested the implementation of draconian laws in Russia that targeted the LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans) community. This paper offers an alternative analysis of these protests, drawing attention to the effects of cosmopolitanism and contemporary human rights discourse within a current version of the ‘responsibility to protect’. The Western LGBT protest strategies are part of a broader historical shift from a classical notion of human rights as political demands with individuals seeking self-emancipation from their ‘Western’ nation states (rights of women, civil rights movement, etc.) to a current form of demands, which operate globally and serve existing neoliberal values related to capital and multicultural diversity. The problems with this type of intervention are multiple. In the case of the Sochi Olympic Games, advocates elevated visibility strategies instead of engaging Russian communities, histories and realities, to understand how local, Russian LBGT lives exist under an increasingly authoritarian regime. Such approaches not only privilege and assume ‘Western’ tactics of engagement embedded in a hegemonic discourse of human rights, but also elide important local Russian contexts and histories related to LGBT struggles.

Engagement tactics with foster parents: Experiences of resource workers

Resource workers are child welfare workers who work closely with foster parents following placement of a child placed in care. One of the challenges they experience is reluctance to their involvement. Resource workers from a large metropolitan area were asked: “What do you do when foster parents are reluctant about your involvement?” Responses to this question were analyzed with multidimensional scaling and cluster analysis. Nine concepts resulted, including: Recognize Problems, Build Trust, Go the Extra, Be Positive, Broaden their Network, Find Commonalities, Set Limits, Understand Them, and Reinforce Accountability. These concepts were compared and contrasted with the available literature.

Stance-taking as negotiating academic conflict in applied linguistics research article discussion sections

While huge efforts were devoted to the identification of moves and steps in research article Discussion sections, how writers justify the value of the new research through conflict negotiation to transform empirical results into knowledge claims is left unnoticed. The purpose of this study is to show how writers negotiate academic conflict to demonstrate the legitimacy of their new research within the academic discipline. Based on analysis of 21 Applied Linguistics research articles, the present study conducted rhetorical analysis of academic conflict drawing on Hunston’s (1993) framework and then applied Martin and White’s (2005) engagement system to closely examine the use of interpersonal resources in representing and negotiating conflict. This study reveals that/how writers strategically vary their engagement tactics in relation to the functional components of academic conflict to activate readers' positive evaluation of the new knowledge. Most notably, although researchers represent the empirical discrepancies between their own findings and previous research, such conflict is generally not resolved by explicitly dismissing the opposing studies but by conferring authority and legitimation on the new findings. These results not only contribute to our understanding of knowledge construction processes through argumentation but also have important pedagogical implications for the writing practices of novice researchers.

Terrorism or clamor for resource control: An analysis of Nigeria’s Niger Delta militants

The purpose of this study is to find out whether the activities of the Niger Delta militants can be classified as acts of terrorism or a clamor for resource control. The engagement tactics of kidnappings, attacks on oil infrastructural facilities and the placement of bombs and other explosive devices in public places suggest to some observers that the Niger Delta militants should be considered terrorists. Using content analysis of relevant secondary data, with insights from the experiences and perceptions of the study participants, this paper examines the engagement tactics of the Niger Delta militants. The findings may be useful in contributing to the development of policies that address the Niger Delta crisis. Similarly, key stakeholders equipped with such vital information derived from the result findings may understand, appreciate, identify, and develop appropriate strategies and guidelines that can be used to address the reasons behind the Niger Delta conflicts. All of these may lead to improvement in the lives of the residents that inhabit the land. Findings of this study may also enable the multinational oil corporations to re-evaluate their strategies and mode of operations and come up with better ways to operate in a peaceful environment, and thus contribute steadfastly and uninterruptedly to the Nigerian economy, and all these may invariably lead to positive social change. Much of the empirical evidence to be presented derives from my own research.

Engagement Tactics That Work

The Membership Management ReportVolume 12, Issue 8 p. 5-5 Member Engagement Engagement Tactics That Work First published: 15 July 2016 https://doi.org/10.1002/mmr.30448Read the full textAboutPDF ToolsRequest permissionExport citationAdd to favoritesTrack citation ShareShare Give accessShare full text accessShare full-text accessPlease review our Terms and Conditions of Use and check box below to share full-text version of article.I have read and accept the Wiley Online Library Terms and Conditions of UseShareable LinkUse the link below to share a full-text version of this article with your friends and colleagues. Learn more.Copy URL Share a linkShare onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditWechat No abstract is available for this article. Volume12, Issue8August 2016Pages 5-5 RelatedInformation

Evaluating Chinese Economic Engagement in Africa versus Latin America

AbstractSince the early 2000s, when China joined the World Trade Organization and the Chinese government announced an official ‘going out policy’ to encourage economic engagement beyond China's territorial borders, growth of Chinese foreign direct investment (FDI) and trade with both Africa and Latin America has risen exponentially. Reasons for this rise include (1) Chinese economic actors' view that expansion within these former European colonial regions is critical for accessing primary resources and new markets and (2) leadership in Beijing's view that its legitimacy continues to be based on economic growth. Given China's recent bleak economic forecast and plunging stock market, an increase in Chinese overseas economic engagement in Africa and Latin America warrants a closer examination of the ‘Chinese model’ of economic expansion in the developing world and implies that the Chinese economy may be more dependent on connections with these regions than has been previously suggested. By distinguishing the political economic forces at play, on the ground, in Africa from those in Latin America, Chinese economic engagement tactics in these regions can be more accurately understood as a set of dependent and negotiated processes that are location specific.

Balance campus threat assessment with community engagement tactics

When Hampton Cantrell became chief of the Department of Public Safety at Loyola Marymount University in 2008, he brought a wealth of practical experience with him. Cantrell started his career in law enforcement as a police officer in the Compton Police Department and then served with the Inglewood Police Department for 24 years. He left the force after nine years as a captain to take the position at LMU.

(In)visible spaces and tactics of transnational engagement: A multi-dimensional approach to the Kurdish diaspora

The Kurdish diaspora has been transnationally active and efficient in terms of raising awareness of the plight of the Kurds in Europe and elsewhere. However, there is a clear need to situate the current analysis of the diaspora in the context of rapidly changing political landscapes that includes both local and global power relations conditioning the diaspora’s transnational participation, political mobilisation and action. This special issue contributes to the abundant stream of research by including articles that touch upon various issues regarding Kurdish diasporic behaviour. We hope this will provide new openings for scholars working on the Kurdish diaspora. We present articles from diverse disciplines in social sciences including sociology, anthropology, and political science. This interdisciplinary approach not only enriches the analysis related to Kurdish diaspora mobilisation, but also highlights new perspectives emerging from this initiative. Keywords: Kurdish diaspora; Kurdistan; transnational engagement; political mobilisation; belonging.Meydanên (ne)diyar û rêbazên çalakvaniya siyasî ya fera-neteweyî: Nirxandineke pir-rehendî li ser diyasporaya kurdDiyasporaya kurd ji bo bilindkirina asta hişyariya li ser kambaxiya rewşa kurdan li Ewrûpa û li cihine din bi rengekî fera-neteweyî çalak û karîger bûye. Lê belê, pêdiviyeke berçav bi wê yekê heye ku nirxandina heyî ya diyasporayê di nav wê çarçoveya dîmenên siyasî de bi cih bikin ku bi lez diguhere û ku, bi hewandina pêwendiyên hêzê yên mehelî û gerdûnî, şikl û şertên beşdariya diyasporayê ya navneteweyî û tevger û çalakiyên wê yên siyasî diyar dike. Ev jimareya taybet a kovarê, bi rêya belavkirina gotarên li ser rehendên cihê yên diyasporaya kurd, li wê pêla adan a vekolînan zêde dike. Em bi hêvî ne ku rê û deriyên nû veke li vekolerên diyasporaya kurd. Em gotarên ji dîsîplînên cihê yên zanistên civakî pêşkêş dikin, ji wan sosyolojî, antropolojî û zanistên siyasî. Ev boçûna navber-dîsîplînî nirxandina çalakvaniya diyasporayê dewlemendtir dike, lê her wiha rê dide peydabûn û geşedana perspektîvên nû li ser vê meydana lêkolînê. بەشداری سیاسییانەی رادیكاڵ و تاراوگەی ناوخۆیی كورد لە توركیائەم گوتارە شیكردنەوەیەكە لە سەر مۆبایلیزە كردنی سیاسییانەی تاراوگەی ناوخۆیی كورد لە دەرەوەی دەڤەرە كوردییەكان لە توركیا. ئەم لێكۆڵینەوەیە لەو پێشنیازە دەكۆڵێتەوە كە دەلێت، تاراوگە پشتیوانی لەو ئەكتەرە سیاسییانە دەكات كە زیاتر رادیكاڵن. ئەم گوتارە باس دەکا لە مۆبایلیزە كردن لە لایەن پ.ك.ك وە لە رۆژاوای توركیا و ئەو شێوانەی کە ئەو ڕێکخراوەیە بە ڕەچاوکردنیان توانیویەتی ناسنامەیەکی بەرفراوانی كۆمەڵی كوردی ببووژێنێتەوە. ئەم لێكۆڵینەوەیە بەر لەوەی تاوتوێی رۆڵی چەوساندنەوە لە لایەن دەوڵەتەوە بکات و سەرنج بداتە هەڵاواردنی ئینتنیکی و پەراوێز خستنی ئابووری-كۆمەڵایەتی لە سەر كۆچبەرە كوردەكانی ئەو ساڵانەی دوایی، شێوازە مێژووییەكانی كۆچ كردنی كورد راڤە دەكا. لە كۆتاییدا، ئەم گوتارە پێشنیار دەكات كە ھۆكاری بە دەستھێنانی ئەو پشتگیریە جەماوەرییەی پ.ك.ك لە ناو كوردی رۆژئاوای توركیا دەگەڕێتەوە بۆئەو ستراتیژییە تایبەتە فەزایی و ئایدیۆلۆژییانەی كە ئەو ڕێکخراوەیە پەیڕەوی كردووە، نەك فاكتەرە بەربڵاوە ژینگەییەکان (contextual).

Customer engagement planning emerging from the “individualist-collectivist”-framework

Purpose– Today marketers operate in globalised markets, planning new ways to engage with domestic and foreign customers alike. While there is a greater need to understand these two customer groups, few studies examine the impact of customer engagement tactics on the two customer groups, focusing on their perceptual differences. Even less attention is given to customer engagement tactics in a cross-cultural framework. In this research, the authors investigate customers in China and UK, aiming to compare their perceptual differences on the impact of multiple customer engagement tactics.Design/methodology/approach– Using a quantitative approach with 286 usable responses from China and the UK obtained through a combination of person-administered survey and computer-based survey screening process, the authors test a series of hypotheses to distinguish across-cultural differences.Findings– Findings show that the collectivists (Chinese customers) perceive customer engagement tactics differently than the individualists (UK customers). The Chinese customers are more sensitive to price and reputation, whereas the UK customers respond more strongly to service, communication and customisation. Chinese customers’ concerns with extensive price and reputation comparisons may be explained by their awareness towards face (status), increased self-expression and equality.Practical implications– The findings challenge the conventional practice of using similar customer engagement tactics for a specific market place with little concern for multiple cultural backgrounds. The paper proposes strategies for marketers facing challenges in this globalised context.Originality/value– Several contributions have been made to the literatures. First, the study showed the effects of culture on the customers’ perceptual differences. Second, the study provided more information to clarify customers’ different reactions towards customer engagement tactics, highlighted by concerns towards face and status. Third, the study provided empirical evidence to support the use of multiple customer engagement tactics to the across cultural studies.

Accessing the State: Everyday Practices and Politics in Cities of the South

This special issue explores everyday practices and politics of accessing the state and state resources from a southern, urban perspective. The collection of papers documents, urban low-income residents’ everyday relationships with the state, through the study of actual practices of interaction with a range of state representatives at the local level (councilors and officials, at various levels of local government). Formal and informal, legal and illegal, confrontational and cooperative, we analyze the multiple tactics of engagement with the state by low-income residents to understand the extent to which they allow access to state resources and to degrees of state recognition, even in contexts of mass poverty, informality and scarce public resources. The modes of interaction with the state also embody and frame low-income residents’ representations of the state, of their expectations, and of their own citizenship. This special issue critically draws together a wide-ranging and important debate on governance, and the relationships it constructs between state and civil society. The main question we raise is how the dynamics of governance reform, with attempted development or deepening of both decentralization and participation, affect everyday practices to access the state and the resulting politics that shape state–society relations in southern contexts? Collectively, the papers in the special issue reflect on the ways in which low-income citizens’ access to the state challenges existing theories of the state and democracy. Stemming from a research programme entitled ‘The Voices of the Poor in Urban Governance: Participation, Mobilization and Politics in South African Cities’,1 this special issue focuses on South African cities primarily but not exclusively. Although the contexts examined have their own specificities, we argue that they provide an interesting and critical context in which to work through the debate from a Southern perspective. South African societies are specific in the huge expectations residents have in the post-apartheid state, and in the ways that ideals continue to be framed in modernist terms, as emblematized by policies of mass public housing delivery and effort towards mass access to urban

A Year in the Writing Workshop

This article reports the findings from a year-long study of 6 writing teachers in an urban elementary school who also received intensive professional development in writing instruction from a nonprofit organization. Repeated observations demonstrated that the teachers displayed consistency in their use of the core instructional elements associated with writing workshop, which aligned with the emphasis of the professional development support. However, the teachers exhibited substantial variability in their use of student engagement tactics, management techniques, and instructional supports. According to survey data, the teachers demonstrated a strong and relatively stable sense of teaching efficacy and held a fairly balanced view of the importance of explicit and incidental writing instruction, and these beliefs were related to their instructional practices. Interviews with the teachers highlighted the relevance of teachers’ own writing behaviors and attitudes.

Tactics and Strategies of Relationship- Based Practice: Reassessing the Institutionalization of Community Literacy

This essay revises Paula Mathieu's call for relationship-based tactics of engagement over institution-based strategies. Because engaged scholars operate within institutional contexts, they should utilize both tactics and strategies to make the academic institutional paradigm more conducive to relationship-based engagement. In supporting this long-term goal, community-literacy practitioners can adapt Brian Huot's theory of instructive evaluation to enable collaborative assessment of community partnerships. One possible mechanism for such institutional invention would be the establishment of quasi-strategic, quasi-tactical Community-Literacy Associations.

Engagement Tactics for Two Missiles Against an Optimally Maneuvering Aircraft

The engagement tactics for two missiles to attack an aircraft are studied. A tail chase scenario between two aircraft is assumed where the attacker tries to kill the evader with two missiles, while the evader employs optimal maneuvers for avoiding two missiles. The algorithm to solve this optimal control problem is first developed. For the aircraft, in order to simultaneously maximize the miss distances against two missiles, a special type of performance index is introduced and the problems are solved by the solver based on the steepest ascent method. The result shows that the aircraft optimal maneuvers are divided into three patterns. Next, the optimal timing for the attacker to launch the two missiles, in order to minimize both miss distances against the aircraft is studied. The effect of their taking trajectory shaping is also studied.

Establishing an Australian/Caribbean Alliance: Stories Passed on by Penny van Toorn and Olive Senior

Brings the work of Caribbean poet and Australian scholar Penny van Toorn into conversation. 'Given van Toom's emphasis on the tactics of Indigenous engagement with the dominant ( colonising) culture, Senior's notion of an ambushed pen provides a nice point of connection between two story-tellers and the marginalised cultures with which they engage.'

Environmental Justice and Sustainability in the Former Soviet Union

Review: Environmental Justice and Sustainability in the Former Soviet Union Julian Agyeman and Yelena Ogneva-Himmelberger (Eds.) Reviewed by Peter C. Little Orgeon State University, USA Agyeman, Julian and Ogneva-Himmelberger, Yelena (Eds.). Environmental Justice and Sustainability in the Former Soviet Union. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2009. 320pp. ISBN 9780262512336. US$25, paper. The central questions grounding Environmental Justice and Sustainability in the Former Soviet Union are 1) To what extent are increased popular environmental awareness and associated activism driving public policy and planning in the former Soviet republics, and 2) Are there emergent, separate brown (environmental justice) and green (environmentally sustainable development) agendas or are these joining together in a single just sustainability or human security agenda (p.4). This is one of the first books addressing these questions to make sense of environmental justice and sustainability struggles unfolding in countries of the former Soviet Union (FSU), which is now a post-Soviet geopolitical landscape made up of fifteen republics. The book unpacks the laws, politics, and economics germane to this region of the world that in turn exacerbate struggles for “just sustainability,” a term Agyeman helped coin in an earlier publication (Agyeman, Bullard, and Evans (Eds), Just Sustainabilities: Development in an Unequal World. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2003). It begins with an introduction that provides a brief history of the environmental movement in Russia, the diversity of the movement and tactics of civic engagement, the rise of non-governmental organizations supporting movement agendas, and the common interest among activists to connect sustainability, public health, and environmental justice. The majority of the contributing authors to the book contend there “is the emergence of at least a justice-informed environmental discourse in the former Soviet Union, if not a full-fledged environmental justice or a just sustainability/human security agenda” (p.9). The remaining chapters explore a diversity topics and issues germane to civic struggles in countries of the FSU. Brian Donahoe explores the critical role of the contemporary and unstable Russian legal system and therefore the regulatory system for understanding environmental protection and indigenous peoples’ rights. Donahoe exposes the fact that the enforcement of laws are weak and ineffective largely because, as he puts it “these laws are only very general framework laws. The actual details of their implementation are supposed to be hammered out at the regional level. As a result, they are inconsistently interpreted and unevenly enforced” (p.25). He does a good job of also explaining the chronic uneasiness with democracy in Russia, noting that the Putin-Medvedev administration has made at least some judicial reforms that dovetail with the goals of environmental activists. Other chapters look at the ways in which sustainable development has been incorporated into Russia’s nation-building program as a response to economic crisis and because of strategic pressure from actors engaged in the Russian environmental movement (2); indigenous protest on Sakhalin Island (3) and in subarctic Russia (8) to protect natural resources, culture, and identity (3); petro-capital resistance in Azerbaijan (4) and Kazakhstan (7), and pipeline resistance in Russia’s Tanka National Park (5); the meshing of culture and nationalism to inform environmental action in Latvia (6); and environmental justice and sustainability activism in Estonia (9) and Tajikistan (10). The book concludes with the thought that environmental justice and sustainability movements in the former Soviet Union vary “according to the complex of sociocultural, socioeconomic, political, ethnic, and nationalistic factors that currently define, and are reshaping, the republics” (p.280). This book does an excellent job of exposing this variation, as well as the boundary-crossing human security interests that bring diverse activists and stakeholders together in their shared struggle for a better life. The book will excite scholars and activist interested in environmental justice, sustainability, environmental social science, and post-Soviet studies. Peter C. Little , PhD candidate, Department of Anthropology, Oregon State University, Corvallis, Oregon, USA. Electronic Green Journal, Issue 30, Spring 2010, ISSN:1076-7975

Cosmopolitan Style: Modernism Beyond the Nation (review)

Reviewed by: Cosmopolitan Style: Modernism Beyond the Nation April Bullock Cosmopolitan Style: Modernism Beyond the Nation By Rebecca L. Walkowitz. (New York: Columbia University Press, 2006) In Cosmopolitan Style, Rebecca Walkowitz’s analysis of modernist literary style and its contribution to new forms of international engagement and new ways of practicing political criticism is creative and refreshing. Drawing on an impressive group of disparate theorists and theoretical debates, Walkowitz persuasively argues for the political importance of literary modernism’s focus on seemingly trivial events, disoriented thought and language, and a refusal to engage directly in transparent struggles for progressive international engagement to the creation of late-twentieth century cosmopolitan literary style. Critical cosmopolitanism is a distinctive type of international engagement that is averse to “heroic tones of appropriation and progress” and wary of “epistemological privilege” that takes for granted “a consistent distinction between who is seeing and what is being seen” (2). Walkowitz breaks new ground with her insistence that this modernist literary style should be treated politically, and that traditional models of modernist exile should be replaced by “more dynamic models of migration, entanglement, and mix-up” (6). Her introduction lays the theoretical groundwork—which is far too complex for the scope of this review—that informs her close readings of the works of six authors in the chapters that follow. Walkowitz moves easily between the philosophical cosmopolitan tradition that begins with Kant, to more recent debates surrounding modernist cosmopolitanism that focus on anticolonialism, multiculturalism, and migration. In the works of James Clifford, Homi K. Bhabha, and Bruce Robbins, Walkowitz finds “new theories of sharing, which value the partial allegiances and unassimilated communities that for many constitute home” (10). This cosmopolitan style can be seen in the works of all of the authors she analyzes leading them to draw attention to the ways in which we might reimagine the relationships between center and periphery and see connections between international cultures as well as the lack of coherence within national culture, specifically twentieth century Britain. In part one of the book, Walkowitz elucidates the repertoire of cosmopolitan modernist narrative styles developed by Virginia Woolf, James Joyce, and Joseph Conrad in the early twentieth century. In her readings, narrative tactics of evasion, triviality, and naturalness are developed as means of resisting colonialism, militarism and imperialism. In part two, Walkowitz explores the ways in which late twentieth-century novelists have expanded and built upon the tactics of cosmopolitan modernism to build a modernist cosmopolitanism. Thus Salman Rushdie’s mix-ups, Kazou Ishiguro’s treason, and W.G. Sebald’s vertigo are developed as critical attitudes that “circulate and provoke new conceptions of self and community” (27). Walkowitz skillfully employs contemporary criticism of the authors in her study to show how each of them subverts critical expectations. This is especially apparent in her treatment of Conrad and Ishiguro. Critics in the early twentieth century applauded Conrad for bringing a Polish sensibility to British literature while simultaneously condemning his decision to write in English. What they overlooked was the way in which Conrad’s project was to draw attention to the artificiality of English culture, how social expectations created supposedly natural national identity. Ishiguro’s work exemplifies the double consciousness that Walkowitz argues is central to critical cosmopolitanism. In his stories and novels, Ishiguro promotes the idea that national culture is an achieved fiction, and that styles or cultures that claim to be authentic and true are less trustworthy than those that do not pretend to authenticity or truth. Thus for Ishiguro treason may be more reliable than allegiance to collective identities and values that are constructed to create boundaries between inside and outside, and also within national culture. The chapter on Virginia Woolf counters critics who have argued that Woolf’s fiction failed to engage in purposeful and direct criticism of militarism and fascism, especially in Mrs. Dalloway. Instead, Walkowitz argues that Woolf’s apparent refusal to engage offered an alternative to modes of thought and narrative structures Woolf associated with militarism and fascism. Woolf’s evasions become tactics of engagement, tactics that will provide a rich legacy for the late twentieth century novelists in the second half of the book. Cosmopolitan Style...

Social reporting, engagements, controversies and conflict in an arena context

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to empirically investigate relationships between engagement activities and social reporting practices in a controversial and environmentally sensitive industry. The interactions investigated were not restricted to stakeholder relationships but included other communications between different stakeholders.Design/methodology/approachThis paper presents a case study approach framed within a contested political arena. Data were gathered using multiple methods including interviews with salmon farming organisations, stakeholders, rule‐enforcers, issue amplifiers and political institutions.FindingsAll arena participants used social reports in their interactions to communicate the social, environmental and economic consequences of salmon farming. Different social reporting practices appeared to be reflexively related to the competing motivations of different stakeholders. However, social reporting in Scottish salmon farming was fragmented, driven by many different factors and did not necessarily lead to a resolution of the conflicts within this arena.Research limitations/implicationsResearching social reporting should consider the co‐existence and co‐evolution of different social reports, competing motivations and engagement tactics of stakeholders. This paper identifies the construction of holistic reports from multiple reports and issue amplification as two research methods to engage in social and environmental policy debates.Originality/valueThis paper presents empirical evidence from an under‐researched industry, which has the potential to develop the theoretical understanding of social reporting. It also introduces the arena concept as a useful tool in further social reporting research.

English

Accurate predictions of electro-optical imager performance are important for defence decision-making. The predictions serve as a guide for system development and are used in war game,simulations that directly influence engagement tactics. In the present study, mathematical modelshave been developed which involves detection of different military targets using their opto-electronics properties in different environmental conditions. The method first calculates thesignal-to-noise ratio received by the observing sensors reflected from the target by quantifyingthe light energy in terms of photons, which is used for evaluating the detection probability.

Intertextual Medía Considerations on a Pair of Classics: “Blow-Up” and Blow-Up

Even after forty years, the haunting explorations of reality in Cortàzar 's short story and Antonioni's adapted film are enticing to re-explore, specifically: confusion over the narrators ' identities; difficulties of telling the events; stylistic and content similarities of each author to others of their works in this period; paucity of dialogue yet tactics of engagement in each narrative; terse presentation of the characters in each of the works; contrasts between specific time frames for events but ambiguity of the actual occurrences; concluding altered perceptions of reality for the two protagonists; and problematic depictions in each medium seen from today's perspectives.

Paradise Now? Contemporary Art from the Pacific (review)

Reviewed by: Paradise Now? Contemporary Art from the Pacific Fred Myers Paradise Now? Contemporary Art from the Pacific. Asia Societies Galleries, New York, New York, 18 February–9 May 2004. I was drawn to the recent exhibition of "Pacific" art at New York's Asia Society Galleries both because of its resonance with the thematic of Indigenous art emerging in the world and because the inclusion of New Zealand represents a new, and challenging, step for the Asia Society's geographical orientation and its usual viewers. Aside from recognizing the presence of Pacific people in New York, the exhibition is a striking expression of the fit between the practices of conceptual and performance art and the circumstances of postcolonial indigeneity and diaspora. Sixteen years ago, the exhibition of Aboriginal Australian art at this gallery caused a fabulous stir of recognition and response throughout New York. If that exhibition addressed the question of Aboriginal cultural production as art, Paradise Now? Contemporary Art from the Pacific—thoughtfully curated by Melissa Chiu, herself an Australian—has a very different, political and conceptual edge. Consisting of forty-five works by fifteen contemporary artists, the central frame of this exhibition (accompanied and illuminated by an excellent catalog) lies in the artists' engagement with influential images of the Pacific forged by eighteenth-century French and English explorers, familiar images of insular, verdant islands with friendly, uninhibited people. The artists—some residents of New Zealand, but including Māori, New Caledonian, Samoan, Fijian, Torres Strait Islander, Rotuman, and Niuean—respond in different ways to the confinements and concealments of the Paradise myth.With different particular histories, coming from different islands, they also represent an emergent "Pacific" identity in the region, one more cosmopolitan and distinct from the themes of the familiar Primitivism so vehemently rejected in critical writing over the past few decades, and also one that does not disclaim its histories. Different strategies and tactics of engagement are employed. Some of the works play with and subvert ideas of Paradise—drawing attention to the degradation of the Pacific environment that has taken place in the wake of European attention. Others comment on the changing nature of local customs and cultures. They foreground the emerging cosmopolitanism and changing relationships to local cultures cited and distanced through the migrations that have brought so many Islanders to New [End Page 273] Zealand, where twelve of the artists were born or now live. And still others attend to the history of the region since European and US settlement—a history marked by the presence of Christianity and the extraction of resources. This Paradise is scarred and brutalized by extraction and threats to local traditions, shadowed by the pains of diaspora, and perceived through the experiences of childhood interrupted. This is post-Primitive, post-tribal art, "cutting and mixing" very different from the Caribbean diaspora in Britain, mainly springing from urban Polynesian settings and, as Karen Stevenson argues in her catalog essay, contributing significantly to the awareness of a new regional identity. The exhibition is organized on two floors of the building. As one enters the lobby on the first floor, one passes by five models of male security guards—Pacific Islanders in black suits, in a line, arms crossed. Four more are placed to the right, along the stairs, two across the lobby, and one more positioned in front of the elevator. It is certainly impossible to ignore the presence of these figures. The work of Michael Parekowhai, the fifteen clothed, cast-fiberglass figures of Kapahaka (2003 ), transforms the usually invisible security guard into a performance—implied by the use of the word given to traditional Māori performing arts. While these seem appropriate to the heightened security typical of contemporary New York City, the wall plaques inform the viewer that these also "suggest other issues related to the protection of Maori traditions." I found them to be an appropriate connection to the famous earlier Māori exhibition, Te Maori, at the Metropolitan Museum in 1984 , which was distinguished by the presence of Māori cultural authorities and marked by Māori cultural authority itself. Indeed, like the Te Maori theme, these figures seem self-consciously to articulate the uncertainty...