Island Home Research Articles

Island War by Patricia Reilly Giff

Reviewed by: Island War by Patricia Reilly Giff Deborah Stevenson Giff, Patricia Reilly Island War. Holiday House, 2018 [208p] Trade ed. ISBN 978-0-8234-3954-6 $16.99 E-book ed. ISBN 978-0-8234-4131-0 $12.99 Reviewed from galleys Ad Gr. 4-6 It's 1941, and eleven-year-old Izzy has convinced her mother to move to the Aleutian Islands after the death of Izzy's naturalist father; Matt is sullenly relocating there on the insistence of his irascible dad. The two, coincidentally unfriendly schoolmates back home in Connecticut, avoid each other in their new island home as they settle in, in Izzy's case, or grumpily endure, in Matt's. Then the Japanese attack and occupy the island, first fencing the inhabitants into an enclosure and limiting their movement, then hauling them away on their ships—all except for Izzy and Matt, who must work together to survive on their own on the island and evade detection by the soldiers stationed there. With Izzy's attachment to island dog Willie, this has echoes of Mary Treadgold's 1941 classic We Couldn't Leave Dinah about the Channel Islands occupation, and the focus here is similarly on Matt and Izzy' escapades (and on their reaching détente and even friendship) rather than the import of the war. There's a lot of implausibility and handwaving of logistics here—even the survival elements that give the story its appeal are often glossed over—and the book's focus on two fictional white kids distorts a real-life tragedy whose victims were almost entirely Aleut. The prose is nonetheless swift and readable, and readers may imagine themselves ducking the enemy along with Matt and Izzy. DS Copyright © 2018 The Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois

Writing Technology in Meiji Japan: A Media History of Modern Japanese Literature and Visual Culture by Seth Jacobowitz

Reviewed by: Writing Technology in Meiji Japan: A Media History of Modern Japanese Literature and Visual Culture by Seth Jacobowitz Robert J. Tuck (bio) Writing Technology in Meiji Japan: A Media History of Modern Japanese Literature and Visual Culture. By Seth Jacobowitz. Harvard University Asia Center, Cambridge MA, 2015. xii, 299 pages. $39.95. Seth Jacobowitz’s ambitious Writing Technology in Meiji Japan sets out to do nothing less than “provide a unified theoretical and archival framework for understanding the media history of Meiji literature and culture” (p. 12). Central to his study is the notion of utsushi, a term that “contains [End Page 125] the multiple meanings to write, copy, trace, inscribe, and project” (p. 3) and which would show up between 1870 and 1900 in the shape of concepts such as shashin (photography), shasei (literary sketching), and shajitsu (realism). Per Jacobowitz, 1870–1900 also saw “an unprecedented shift toward new standardizing measures of time, space, and language, as well as a profusion of new media systems and technologies,” all of which “had profound consequences for inculcating national subjectivity and training a modern out-look on the world” (p. 6). Not only that, but a “new, transparently mimetic national language and script” which “could serve as the basis for the realist novel and other contemporary genres” (p. 7) would emerge from within technologies such as the telegraph, postal system, and shorthand notation, and from related discourses of script reform and language simplification. However, Jacobowitz contends, although “‘writing things down just as they are’ would become the compositional imperative of modern Japanese realism . . . its media-historical basis would be forgotten, lost, or marginalized by successive generations of writers and scholars” (p. 6). The book’s main contribution, then, is to “re-establish the nascence of modern Japanese literature and visual culture from within a field of techniques and technologies of writing” (p. 6). Writing Technology covers an impressively broad range of terrain over its ten chapters and 270-odd pages. Influenced by Benedict Anderson’s conceptions of imagined community, Martin Heidegger’s notion of “standing-reserve” (Bestand—namely, technology’s “capacity to purposefully reveal and transform material, form, and ends into a systematic availability” [p. 21]), and the work of German media theorist Friedrich Kittler on “discourse networks (Aufschreibesysteme—literally, ‘systems of writing down’),” part 1 first explores media technology’s role in standardizing and reinforcing the modern state. Chapters 1 and 2 highlight the effects of rail, post, and telegraph systems in standardizing previously disparate conceptions of time, space, and language in the Japanese home islands and in Japan’s colonies; such standardization is, in Jacobowitz’s terms, “a critical basis for modernity’s emergence” (p. 42). Chapter 3 contrasts two representations of media technology 50 years apart, in the shape of Hokusai’s print Shunshū Ejiri (Shunshū [post] station in Ejiri Province, c. 1830) and the 1881 kabuki play Shima chidori tsuki no shiranami (Plovers of the island and white waves of the moon). While Hokusai’s playful depiction of paper (letters?) fluttering in the wind suggests the possibility of eluding state control and surveillance, Shima chidori tsuki no shiranami, which shows criminals captured by means of telegrams and newspapers, links these new technologies to the “encompassing of territory and enforcement of state power” (p. 89). Part 2 shifts focus slightly to consider specific individuals and questions involved in Meiji discourses of reform of the Japanese language and script. Taken together, these chapters offer an alternative history of the emergence [End Page 126] of the “unified style (genbun itchi)”; this style, Jacobowitz contends, can be traced to “experimentation with conventional and newly invented phonetic scripts” (p. 97). As the book shows, Japanese language reformers were never trying to “catch up” with the West, but rather, as with Mori Arinori’s discussions with Yale’s William Dwight Whitney on adopting simplified English in Japan (chapter 4) or colonial administrator Isawa Shūji’s use in Taiwan of Alexander Melville Bell’s new phonetic and phonographic script “Visible Speech,” Japanese language reformers were usually working concurrently with their Western counterparts on issues of “orthography, experimental scripts, and planned or artificial languages” (p. 99). Perhaps most important to the book’s...

Picture Bride Stories by Barbara F. Kawakami

Reviewed by: Picture Bride Stories by Barbara F. Kawakami Kelli Y. Nakamura (bio) Barbara F. Kawakami. Picture Bride Stories. U of Hawai'i P, 2016,ix + 299 pp. ISBN 978-0824866242, $39.99. Picture Bride Stories, by Barbara Kawakami, is the culmination of nearly four decades of research on the lives of Issei women in Hawai'i. This text provides invaluable insight into the picture-bride practice in the early twentieth century, which involved immigrant workers marrying Japanese women on the recommendation of a matchmaker who exchanged photographs between the prospective bride and groom. Through interviews with these picture brides, Kawakami explores their motivations and experiences, as arranged marriages were not unusual in Japan, and women had different reasons for becoming picture brides. Kawakami's book represents an invaluable contribution to the history of Japanese Americans in Hawai'i because it gives voice and agency to women who are often a silent presence in historical accounts. As the experiences of picture brides are often romanticized and little understood, Kawakami's book illuminates their experiences and shows how these women helped establish the foundations of the Japanese community in the islands. [End Page 696] Between 1885 and 1924, both single and married Japanese immigrant men came to Hawai'i to work on plantations under a three-year contract with the goal of returning home with more money. Due to the exploitative plantation environment, many found this goal to be impossible, and, rather than return to Japan as failures, they decided to establish families in Hawai'i. Some wrote home to their families, asking them to join them, while others asked relatives to find them suitable young women as wives. While the motivations of these men are clearly understood, it is often difficult to discern the reasons why young women would leave their families and communities for a distant island home to marry strangers. Kawakami's interviews with sixteen former picture brides illustrate the diverse circumstances under which picture brides came to Hawai'i. Some, like Kishi Oki Tsujimura, married a neighbor, as both families knew one another and her husband's family had watched her grow up to become a hardworking, efficient young woman. Others, like Tei Saito, had her mother plan her marriage without her consent, but with good intentions. Regardless of the reasons why these women married men that many had only seen in photographs sent across an ocean, after arriving in Hawai'i, numerous women experienced great hardship, doing backbreaking field labor on Hawai'i's sugar and pineapple plantations. Many also faced a "double-shift" or "double day": after laboring in the fields all day, they returned home to a series of domestic duties that included raising children, cleaning, and holding multiple jobs to make ends meet, such as cooking and doing laundry for bachelors. In recounting her experiences on the plantation, Soto Kimura recalls that she "work[ed] all day, without eating anything. When I think about those days, I wonder how I managed to do it. … How many times I cried myself to sleep. I thought … I should have stayed in Japan" (65). Due to the financial and physical hardships that were compounded by the fact that her husband drank and gambled, Kimura could only gaman (persevere) and endure what must have seemed to be overwhelming circumstances. Kawakami, who began her research in 1979, conducted some of her interviews as late as 2001 when one of the last picture brides, Kishi Tsujimura, was 103 years old. Her book represents a lifetime spent documenting the lives of Issei women in Hawai'i, research that is no longer possible with the death of these women who came to Hawai'i more than a century ago. To contextualize their stories, Kawakami also contacted the families of these picture brides and was able to unearth historical artifacts, like an interview with Hisa Kawakami (no relation) done in 1976 that the family had forgotten about until Kawakami contacted them for more information about their mother. Kawakami's book is unusual because it is not a traditional oral history collection but instead is a series of narratives based upon conversations [End Page 697] that Kawakami had with the picture brides as...

Giant coconut crab stalks and kills bird

A coconut crab has been spotted hunting and devouring a seabird. It is the first time coconut crabs have been seen actively hunting large animals, and suggests they rule their island homes. Coconut crabs (Birgus latro), or robber crabs; are imposing. They can weigh up to 4 kilograms, as much as a house cat, and sport legs that span almost a metre. This makes them the largest invertebrates--animals without backbones--on land. The crabs live on coral atolls in the tropical Indian and Pacific oceans. Between January and March 2016, Mark Laidre of Dartmouth College in New Hampshire visited the Chagos Archipelago, a remote series of atolls in the Indian Ocean. Chagos is ideal for studying coconut crabs: it is in pristine condition, is surrounded by one of the largest marine reserves on earth and has lots of coconut crabs, making them easier to find and observe.

Melanesians and Music on the Move: South Sea Island Shipboard and Plantation Performance in Queensland, 1860s–1906

ABSTRACTTaking a historical ethnomusicological approach, this article argues that shipboard and plantation music and dance practices cast new light on the ways South Sea Islanders (SSI) acted out agency and asserted new identities as they became tangled up in the dynamics of colonial encounters. Trading ships started to operate in Melanesia in the 1840s and island men were quickly attracted to the nautical life. Contact with the West brought opportunity but also exploitation when in 1863 the recruitment of Islanders for farm and plantation work in Queensland began. As they ventured into the unknown on recruiting ships, Islanders engaged in performance in order to establish cross-societal bonds with villagers from islands other than their own, and also with European sailors and settlers. Experimenting with any and all modes of sound making, SSI looked to music as a source of enjoyment and a means of individual and collective self-advancement. They took instruments, repertoire items, and gramophones back to their home islands as evidence of their familiarity with the wider world, and as creative resources to employ in the changing times ahead of them. Those who remained in Queensland at the beginning of the 20th century faced the challenge of how to integrate and indigenize the new musical ideas, and transform them into life – and community-sustaining expressions.

Exploring stakeholder groups through a testimony analysis on the Hawaiian aquarium trade

ABSTRACTA remote archipelago, Hawai'i, offers a plethora of sought after coastal and marine tourism experiences. The same unique marine fauna that draws tourists also makes Hawai'i a major player in the international ornamental aquarium trade. For many residents of Hawai'i, the marine realm is part of their island home and interactions with tourists and tourism activities are a part of everyday life. For many residents, the ocean is an important resource and for some a staple source of livelihood, be it through tourism, fisheries, or the aquarium trade. This variance between extractive and non-extractive marine resource use creates conflicts between stakeholder groups in Hawai'i. This study thematically analyzes public testimony records, which included 1652 individual testimonies, from proposed legislation aimed to establish ‘an aquatic life conservation program in the Division of Aquatic Resources to implement conservation measures, including limited entry areas and certification requirements, to regulate the collection of fish and other aquatic life for aquarium purposes. Public opinions evident in individual testimonies are representative of the disagreement in the literature regarding the stability and health of reef fishes populations in Hawai'i and broader resource-user conflicts. This study aims to better describe the user conflict between stakeholder groups in the marine resources of Hawai'i by exposing themes concerning change in natural environments.

Representation of Bali in Tourism Advertisement Videos

Employing the Halliday’s theory of transitivity (1985), this study explores the representation of Balinese religion, culture, and nature in the Bali tourism advertisements videos produced by Bali’s Tourism Office, Bali Tourism Board and Ministry of Tourism of Indonesian Republic. The study reveals that the language of the advertisements mostly describes Bali in terms of material process, mental and relational process. In terms of relational process, the beauty of Bali’s culture and nature is capitalized and portrayed as having certain kind of qualities: indicated by the use of adjectives typical to tourism advertisement such as mesmerizing, exotic, unique, etc. and it is constantly defined as paradise. A stark difference, however, occurs in terms of the participants of the clause. In the advertisement produced by the Bali Tourism office, the participants having the role of ‘actors’, ‘senser’ and ‘carrier’, are Balinese people, Bali’s nature, and culture. The advertiser, taking the position of ‘we’, the Balinese, speaks to the world, explaining their home island, culture and belief. On the other hand, the more ‘mainstream’ advertisements of Bali, give more to the prospective tourists, addressed as ‘you’. Here the tourists are the actors and sensers of everything Bali can offer. Bali is depicted as purely a travel destination that can satisfy the visitors and in the position of passive ‘phenomenon’ and ‘goals’. The advertisers are taking the position of ‘the travel agent’, the third party that promotes Bali

On Pre-training for Climate Change Induced Migration from the Pacific: Lessons from the Marshall Islands

This study aims to suggest another view of the so-called “climate refugee”, especially those from the Small Island Developing States (SIDS) in the Pacific Ocean. Although many studies have been conducted on the legal aspects of the climate refugees’ situations, little has been studied about how they succeed in re-establishing their livelihoods after relocation. Unlike migrations forced by other causes, the future migrations induced by sea level rise have a long lead time which gives the people involved the opportunity to develop the skills necessary to adjust to their new lives. This paper examines whether “pre-training” opportunities are sufficient in those countries from which climate refugees are most likely to come. The author focuses on the Republic of the Marshall Islands, one of the small island countries in the Pacific being threatened by environmental changes such as rising sea level, high tides, and drought. Due to a unique situation allowing the Marshallese people to move to the United States without a visa, many people do so each year under the free association partnership. However, some of these migrants fail to adjust to the United States and come back to their home islands, possibly due to a lack of skills. Given that more climate refugees are likely in the future, pre-training that provides essential skills to benefit future climate refugees is necessary. Through key informant interviews in the Marshall Islands, it seems that such training opportunities are currently limited, but have great potential to flourish.

Presumptive diagnosis of leptospirosis before seroconversion: a review of 338 cases in Wallis and Futuna 2008 to 2015.

Leptospirosis is a common condition in Wallis and Futuna, and the definitive diagnosis needs to be established urgently at the first patient consultation, which is usually one to two days after the onset of clinical signs. As a diagnostic aid, a composite index was established based on data from 338 patients seen by the Wallis and Futuna admissions services between 2008 and 2015. The data taken into account include: age and sex of the patient, their home island, the consultation period and the results of leukocytes, platelets, CRP, creatinine and GGT tests combined with 2 major clinical signs, headache and conjunctival suffusion. Then 5 threshold limits were defined for this index, which indicates from very low risk to almost certain biologically confirmed leptospirosis. Other febrile diseases responsible for thrombocytopenia are not found in Wallis and Futuna, which probably explains the good statistical qualities of this index with a value of area under the curve equal to 0.821.

"Impressions of Korea and Manchuria" (1909)

"Impressions of Korea and Manchuria" (1909) Natsume Sōseki Translated by Andre Haag (bio) In early 2013, the rediscovery of a virtually unknown 1909 essay by Natsume Sōseki caused some stir within the Japanese media and critical establishment. The piece in question, translated here as "Impressions of Korea and Manchuria" (Kanman shokan), had first appeared in two installments dated November 5 and 6, 1909 on the front page of the Manchuria Daily Newspaper (Manshū nichinichi shinbun), a Japanese-language newspaper published in Dalian. Although more than a century old, Sōseki's brief message to an overseas newspaper garnered heightened attention, for it rekindled lingering questions about the writer's relationship to Japan's imperialist project in East Asia. On October 17, 1909, Sōseki had returned from a six-week visit to northeast China and Korea arranged by Nakamura Yoshikoto (Zekō), chairman of South Manchuria Railways (SMR) and an old schoolmate of the writer. The ostensible purpose of this grand tour was to give Sōseki "a look at what the overseas Japanese are doing" in Manchuria and Korea, the continental spheres of influence secured by the Empire of Japan following victory in the Russo-Japanese War (1904-5). The best-known account of this journey to Asia is Here and There in Manchuria and Korea (Mankan tokorodokoro), the desultory and often self-absorbed travelogue that began serialization in the Tokyo Asahi from October 21, 1909. A peculiar historical coincidence, however, capped the writer's tour and complicated his efforts to write about it. Just ten days after Sōseki returned to Japan, on October 26, came news of the assassination in Harbin, Manchuria of senior statesman Itō Hirobumi (1841-1909), chief architect of the Japanese empire's imperialist penetration of Korea, by Korean nationalist An Chunggŭn (1879-1910). Hearing of the calamity, Sōseki dashed off "Impressions of Korea and Manchuria" to the Manchuria Daily in order to register his reaction to the shooting, but also (and more substantially) to express gratitude to the many old friends who had welcomed him during his Asian travels and reflect on the remarkably "capable" (tanomoshii) character of those intrepid [End Page 153] Japanese pioneers he had seen at work on the continent.1 The controversy aroused by this "lost" essay's recovery in 2013 fixated less on Sōseki's oblique reading of the killing of Itō, an act of anticolonial protest that is even now a point of geopolitical contention between Japan, South Korea, and China, and much more on the essay's expressions of nationalist and imperialist elation at having "been born Japanese," paired with relief "not to have been born Chinese or Korean." That Sōseki's "Impressions of Korea and Manchuria" was never included in the author's collected works and remained largely unknown to scholars and readers until 2013 was undoubtedly a result of the outlet in which it was originally printed: a peripheral newspaper published outside of the naichi (the contemporary term for the Japanese home islands, as opposed to the outside territories, which appears through the text) for a readership of overseas Japanese. Novelist and scholar of imperial literature Kurokawa Sō, who unearthed the essay, has characterized it as a "missing link" that connects Sōseki, his network of past schoolmates and disciples, and Japanese-language print media in the outer lands of the empire.2 Shortly after the trip, one of Sōseki's former pupils, Nishimura Seizaburō, was hired as the editor of the Manchuria Daily, while another, Mizukami Itsuki, serialized the first Japanese-language translation of Gustave Flaubert's Madame Bovary (1856) in its pages the following year.3 "Impressions of Korea and Manchuria" might be regarded as a bridging text that further illuminates the significance of Sōseki's 1909 encounter with empire for his subsequent efforts to work through the social, economic, and cultural relations between (Japanese) center, (Asian) periphery, and (European-derived) "civilization" in public lectures and literary fiction. In contrast to the skeptical view of Japan's externally-imposed and oriented "civilization" proposed in later, better known lectures, "Impressions of Korea and Manchuria" articulates a more affirmative view of the civilization advanced in colonial and...

Forms of exile: Experimental self-positioning in postcolonial Caribbean poetry

ABSTRACTIn this essay, I want to draw attention to the distinctive experience of exile by looking at the ways in which Caribbean poets from the 1960s to the 1980s responded to it. I discuss selected examples from their poetry to argue that as a specific way of experiencing departure and migration, exile inspires specific strategies of artistic mediation and even innovation. The combination of a desire for emplacement and an openness to metropolitan influences that characterizes the situation of exile results in a distinctive strategy within Caribbean poetry that can be described as experimental self-positioning. In their negotiations of the experience of exile, poets adapt and juxtapose formal and linguistic elements from various cultural backgrounds. This hybrid poetics encompasses a wide range of manifestations; one particularly common technique is that of taking on Western poetic forms and transforming them through Caribbean and exilic elements. In the poetry this phenomenon is most immediately evident where the typographical pattern indicates Western stanzaic patterns or even specific formations such as the sonnet. In such poems, form is both a medium through which the poet can negotiate the experience of exile and a way of situating oneself in the new cultural environment: a “position-taking,” in Pierre Bourdieu’s sociological terminology, but a position-taking not just in the new literary field but in between the various cultures, languages, and literatures that the exile has to deal with. Against this background, I will examine three manifestations of experimental self-positioning in Caribbean exile poetry: Derek Walcott’s “Tales of the Islands” (1962), Anthony McNeill’s “Saint Ras” (1972), and NourbeSe Philip’s “Sprung Rhythm” (1983). Each uses a different Western form and transforms it along different lines. Read one after the other these poems form a trajectory of spatial and temporal distancing: whereas Walcott’s speaker is just leaving his home island, McNeill’s is already living in exile, and Philip’s looks back to a Caribbean childhood from a considerable temporal and geographical distance.

Forest Resource Utilization by the Siberut Community and its Implications for the Siberut Island Biosphere Reserve Policy

Siberut is one of the islands in the Mentawai group, located off the West Coast of Sumatera in Indonesia. The community of Siberut is well known for their traditional wisdom in utilizing the forest resources and unique biodiversity of their island home. For this reason, Siberut has been officially declared as biosphere reserve. One of the aims the biosphere reserve concept is to enable traditional communities to use their forest resources in a sustainable manner. Unwise activities in the utilization of forest resources have implications for the whole community and for the management of biosphere reserves. This study aimed to compile and analyse first-hand information about current usage of forest resources on Siberut and to identify particular community behavior having implications for the implementation of the Siberut Island biosphere reserve policy. The study was conducted in 3 villages of Siberut traditional communities in Mentawai Islands Regency, that are Matotonan, Saibi Samukop, and Sagulubbek villages. The study applied a qualitative approach, where data were collected through a study of relevant literatures, interviews, and direct observation. Then the data were analyzed to develop an understanding of the current forest utilization and its implications for the policy in accurately. The results showed that the Siberut traditional communities are still dependent on forest resources, even though their utilization practices have been changing in recent times. For example in this research they adopted some new technologies, which it can be destructive to forest resources in the future. For that reason, the reseach suggest the management of Siberut Island Biosphere Reserve to restore those particular aspects of the traditional wisdom which have beneficial for the sustainability of forest resources utilization. In this case involving of local community starting from centre of planning to implementation process will be benefit for a better management of the reserve.

Only a pawn in their games? environmental (?) migration in Kiribati – past, present and future

The Pacific Island Countries and Territories (PICT) are exposed to the impacts of climate change. In extreme cases entire states may disappear. Kiribati is one of these countries. Within its own territory there are no ­places to where people could be safely resettled when their home islands become unsuitable for human habitation. Large-scale resettlement is nothing new to the people of Kiribati. In colonial times people from various islands were resettled. The Phoenix Island Settlement Scheme (PISS) is one of these efforts to allegedly bring people to safety. Making use of primary sources that have become available only recently the paper raises the question if there is anything to learn from PISS for present times, or if PISS has historical value only, as the ­United Kingdom’s last colonial expansion scheme. The paper asks about conflicting intentions of colonial authorities and assesses if and possibly why strategic political considerations resulted in a situation where humanitarian motivations retreated into the background leading to a sub-optimal preparation of the scheme, which then finally led to its failure. The paper comes to the conclusion that behind reportedly noble purposes there is a layer of colonial interests which lets settlers appear as objects in a larger colonial game.

Rural Authenticity and Agency on a Cold-Water Island: Perspectives of contemporary craft-artists on Bornholm, Denmark

Bornholm, Denmark is a small, cold-water island home to a cluster of craftartists whose practices and ambitions contribute to the idyllic rural image of the island. These craft-artists formed an as ...

Slow Scrape (2012–2015)

How to describe my experience? Some Indigenous peoples have prescribed, specific protocols around introductions, but this is not the case where I'm from. Or, if it was this way in the past, we've lost the knowledge of those introductory protocols. I respect that we should give space to those who have Indigenous ways of introducing themselves. As an Alutiiq woman who lives in a kind of diaspora from my island home of Kodiak in Alaska— and my villages of Port Lions and Afognak—I don't always know how to describe my experience. I am an artist. I live in Canada. I make dance, video, photos, texts.

Effectiveness of nature reserves for natural forests protection in tropical Hainan: a 20 year analysis

The establishment of nature reserves is a key approach for biodiversity conservation worldwide. However, there is a lack of unified methodology to evaluate the effectiveness of nature reserves, particularly in China, the world′s most populous nation supporting some of the most valuable biodiversity hotspots in the world. In this study, we conducted a long-term and large-scale analysis of the effectiveness of 20 of the earliest nature reserves established in Hainan Province, an island home to among the highest concentration of plants and animals in China. Remote sensing imagery from 1988, 1998, and 2008 were analyzed to investigate the temporal and spatial changes of natural forests in these nature reserves and surrounding areas. We also conducted transition matrix analysis and principle component analysis to identify the driving factors that affect the protection effectiveness of nature reserves. The results were as follows: 1) During the 20-year period from 1988 to 2008, natural forests coverage of the 20 studied nature reserves dropped 2.34 percentage points, whereas the natural forests coverage dropped 11.31 percentage points in a 0–5 km outside reserve buffer and 9.36 percentage points in a 5–10 km outside reserve buffer, indicating a significant inhibitory effect of the nature reserves on the loss of natural forests. 2) Natural forests coverage dropped in 60% of the studied nature reserves during the 20-year period, suggesting a poor protection effectiveness of these reserves, while the coverage proportion showed some increase (0%/yr–5%/yr) in other reserves. 3) Expansion of rubber and pulp forests as part of a booming economy were the main factors affecting the effectiveness of the nature reserves for conserving natural forests in Hainan Province. The results of this study provide an important empirical basis for the protection of natural forests in Hainan Province, which can be used as a blueprint for nature reserve evaluation in other places in China.

Island home: returning to Tasmania in Peter Conrad's Down Home (1988) and Tim Bowden's The Devil in Tim (2005)

Tasmania is often spoken of domestically as a “problem”. Indeed, talk of “the problem of Tasmania” circulates through intellectual and governmental as much as everyday discourse. For writers like Peter Conrad and Tim Bowden – expatriate Tasmanians who write of their “return” to the island – the discourse on the problem of Tasmania is particularly challenging. As returnees, the narrators of Conrad's Down Home (1988) and Bowden's The Devil in Tim (2005) engage in reflections on identity, alterity and history in ways that exploit and resist the stereotypes, tropes and narratives that have traditionally underpinned discussion of the Tasmanian problem. This essay argues that while the texts can be read as complicit with the ideology that sustains the idea of that problem, in their turn to encounters with “ordinary” Tasmania they present alternative visions of the state that question the ideologies that position the island as limited, backward and perpetually beset by intransigent challenges.

Promises and Predicaments: Trade and Entrepreneurship in Colonial and Independent Indonesia in the 19th and 20th Centuries ed. by Alicia Schrikker and Jeroen Touwen

Reviewed by: Promises and Predicaments: Trade and Entrepreneurship in Colonial and Independent Indonesia in the 19th and 20th Centuries ed. by Alicia Schrikker and Jeroen Touwen Howard M. Federspiel (bio) Alicia Schrikker and Jeroen Touwen, eds. Promises and Predicaments: Trade and Entrepreneurship in Colonial and Independent Indonesia in the 19th and 20th Centuries. Singapore: University of Singapore Press, 2015. 334 pp. The well-drawn Introduction by Alicia Schrikker and Jeroen Touwen gives two reasons for bringing together the seventeen essays that make up this anthology. The first gives recognition to the economic historian J. Thomas Lindblad, to whom the collection is dedicated. His work on Indonesian economic history is widely accepted as an important contribution to Indonesian studies. Second, the volume was intended to present material on Indonesian economic development by contemporary scholars who would follow the path already described by Howard Dick et al.1 Their critical study on national Indonesian economic history defined the important periods of that history and detailed the main characteristics of each period. Nearly every article in the anthology mentions or pays tribute to Lindblad. The Introduction, of course, succinctly outlines his work on the emergence of an Indonesian national economy, starting with globalization in early history, but failing until the early twentieth century to coalesce into an overall economy because of parochial demands within the archipelago. Beyond this introduction, however, the only other author going beyond simple laudatory remarks is Freek Columbijn. In a fine piece of research using legal cases in Medan, Columbijn shows participation in the Medan workplaces by race and ethnicity. The research reveals that there was a brief period in the 1940s and 1950s when the Dutch, the Chinese, and Indonesians shared many workplaces in a complementary manner—termed complementarisasi by Columbijn—but that this stage passed away relatively quickly for full Indonesianization, which was Lindblad’s contention. All the chapters fit with the second goal, that is, contributing to a fuller understanding of Indonesian economic history a la Dick et al. Specifically, some articles outline the major issues and challenges of the past two hundred years. The Introduction certainly does, and the opening article by Anne Booth does so as well, as she describes the entire epoch in a lean, straightforward essay. Particular periods are covered equally well by several authors. Dick provides considerable detail on the development of statistics in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries by the Dutch colonial administration, which later served as a baseline for Indonesian efforts in the field. Robert Cribb contributes a nicely crafted essay on the role of rice in the early days of the Indonesian republic in the late 1940s, when ideology was often set aside for practical results in feeding urban populations. Thee Kian Wie revisits failed [End Page 131] US policies toward Indonesian development in the 1950s and early 1960s, concluding that those policies had no chance against the economic nationalism of President Sukarno. Ewout Frankeema explores the astounding “green revolution” in Indonesian agriculture during the New Order years in the last quarter of the twentieth century and assesses the remarkable convergence of factors that made it possible. While all of the essays in this volume have academic worth, several of them fail to fit the editors’ premise to provide the historic overview they sought. For example, one article, by Leonard Blusse, related a neat case study of a single—and minor—historic event about employment of Chinese sailors aboard a Dutch ship in the late-colonial era. The study had almost no relevance to long-term economic developments and might have been a footnote, at best. Another article, by Alexander Claver, marked by solid description and insight, outlined money usage in the precolonial and colonial periods, noting bifurcated use by the internationalized economy and by the local economy. But the postcolonial era, where the same phenomenon of different money usage, albeit with different currencies than earlier, but with profoundly different outcomes, was not covered by Claver or by any complementary article. A significant failing. Roger Knight’s chapter tracks the early twentieth century competition initiated by Japan to pit Formosan and Javanese growers against one another to supply the Japanese home islands’ need for rice and...

Burning Kingdoms by Lauren DeStefano (review)

Reviewed by: Burning Kingdoms by Lauren DeStefano Alaine Martaus DeStefano, Lauren Burning Kingdoms.Simon, 2015 312p (The Internment Chronicles) Trade ed. ISBN 978-1-4424-8064-3 $17.99 E-book ed. ISBN 978-1-4424-8066-7 $10.99 R Gr. 9-12 Morgan escaped her small airborne island home, Internment, and its tyrannical king (in Perfect Ruin, BCCB 12/13) and landed in the kingdom below, but now the sixteen-year-old girl and her comrades have been taken into custody by local forces. Under glorified house arrest in the home of a ranking court official and his family, including studious son Nimble and quirky daughter Birdie, Morgan and her [End Page 486] fellow refugees struggle to find their footing on new ground. Morgan seems happy to bide her time, but best friend Pen is anxious to keep connections to this new world at bay, while princess Celeste naïvely embraces her new role as ambassador. Their new home is not the safe haven they hoped, though, because the country is at war, and the young people soon find themselves fighting for their own future and the future of the home they left behind. With the shift from the isolated Internment to the more conventional alternative-history world below, the series loses touch with many of its more compelling elements, but it still manages to tell a moving story. A new cadre of possible allies and enemies, including some truly intriguing ones, are introduced and brought to the fore, while Morgan continues to develop into a dynamic, introspective heroine, with Pen as her enigmatic sidekick. Though not as philosophical as the first volume, this equally intense sequel is still sure to please fans and its steampunk-esque scenery will pick up new ones, and they’ll all be excited to see where Morgan’s adventures take her next. Copyright © 2015 The Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois

The Air Mauritius story: how HR can impact company culture

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to show how HR can quickly impact, create and develop a company’s overall culture of service. When HR leaders seek to guide their companies through essential cultural changes, they can earn a seat at the table. Design/methodology/approach – Once a struggling airline, Air Mauritius took steps to overhaul its culture. This case study outlines the steps taken by the airline and explains how HR leaders can use those steps to play a more vital role in their companies. Findings – HR leaders should seek to make key cultural changes within a company, as they can lead to substantial measurable results. By creating a service culture, Air Mauritius returned to profitability, earned a 4-Star Skytrax rating and improved employee engagement and customer satisfaction. Originality/value – By shining a light on a unique company and its island home nation, this case study provides valuable advice to HR leaders on how they can use cultural changes to play a more significant role in their companies.