Journal articles: 'Course book appraisal' – Grafiati (2024)

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The purposes of this case study were to explore Thai EFL students’ levels of satisfactions regarding the implication of the book “The Language of Evaluation: Appraisal in English”, and to explore their comments and recommendations on the use of the course book in the Subject of Selected Topics in English based on appraisal theory developed by Martin and White (2005). The study employed the appraisal theory to teach three undergraduate students who enrolled in the Course of Selected Topics in English Curriculum at the Faculty of Liberal Arts and Science, Kasetsart University, Thailand, in the 2019 academic year. A questionnaire was used to collect data of students’ level of satisfaction towards the course. Analysis of the study shows that for all sections of evaluation: the book, the lecturer and student’s learning and evaluation, the students evaluated the lecturer at the “good” level (mean=4.27) followed by the book (mean=3.394) and student’s learning and reflection (mean=3.53). In this regard, they evaluated the book from an overall perspective at the “good” level (mean=3.94). In more detail, the chapter they rated as the first rank is Chapter 1 Introduction which has the highest mean of 4.13 followed by Chapter 2 Attitude: Ways of feeling (mean=4.07), Chapter 3 Engagement and graduation: Alignment, solidarity and the construed reader (mean=3.93), Chapter 4 Evaluative key: Taking a stance (mean=3.93) and Chapter 5 Enacting Appraisal: Text Analysis (mean=3.60) respectively. For the section of student’s learning and reflection, they evaluated their learning at the “good” level (mean=3.53) which is the least mean of all sections. The students advised that some chapters of the book were difficult for them to understand since they were not familiar with terms used. The analysis also shows that the students mainly suggest that the book should be integrated into the course continuously every semester which would be beneficial for students in understanding how to evaluate language use in different contexts. However, more easy examples should be included in the book.

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The moment you settle down to write and travel into the ESP world, ESP book-series, you are apt to encounter and get startled from the most commonly used “ESP words”, such as ESP course, students’ needs, study skills, language skills and many more. But the scope of academic debate and appraisal on ESP domain and textbooks exceeds and runs beyond the range of technical terms and technicalities. Like the ESP evolving world, ESP University Teachers are frequently puzzled and empowered by the genuine question and fact whether they are sufficiently qualified and technically competent to teach in ESP courses. This paper reviews points of appraisal and hints arising from the adoption and teaching situations in a “technical university media”, like Polytechnic University of Tirana. In view of the above, we strive to highlight and pinpoint at certain moments of teaching and learning experiences together with the outcomes. Similarly, through this paper we try to introduce several additional steps and specific hints with the focus on a more detailed picture and manner, by regarding these textbooks in an evaluative approach, and practically integrated skills; because ESP teachers need to develop and display a pioneering spirit of teaching activities and practice, into the ESP Realm.

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The aim would clinical immunology and inspection content and network. Is connected, enable medical students more convenient and more vividly understanding, then learning this course, motivate the study interest. Methods: Using webpage making software FrontPage 2003 and animation software (flash and photo editing software (Photoshop) vivid teaching content on the website will be displayed, and the form of peer appraisal, students through questionnaire survey of software evaluating. Results: Using FrontPage software will book knowledge into a web page making mode of learning in the student to study independently receive a good result, also added "online self-test" edition piece, more effective inspection study effect, student feedback is good. Conclusion: This study pattern application of student learning, for students to deepen the understanding of this course and improve the learning efficiency, arouse the interest in learning has very good effect.

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One of the greatest challenges to those researching and lecturing on China today is the country's rapid rate of change. To date, there have been only a handful of timely general texts for use in English-language geography and other social science courses. These have included single authored efforts, such as Christopher Smith's China: People and Places in the Land of One Billion (1991), Frank Leeming's The Changing Geography of China (1993) and Songqiao Zhao's Geography of China: Environment, Resources, Population and Development (1994); and edited collections such as Terry Cannon and Alan Jenkins' The Geography of Contemporary China: The Impact of Deng Xiaoping's Decade (1990), Gregory Veeck's The Uneven Landscape: Geographic Studies in Post-Reform China (1991), and Robert Gamer's Understanding Contemporary China (2003). Although each of these books remains an important and valuable contribution to the literature and to the teaching of courses on China, the remarkable pace of change in China has rendered them out of date in less than a decade.In this context, it is good to see a new contribution. Using China's rapid post-1978 change as a theme, geographers Chiao-min Hsieh and Max Lu have assembled Changing China: A Geographic Appraisal, an edited collection of 26 chapters, in 500 pages. These chapters, largely written by geographers, are organized into three sections entitled “Economic changes,” “Social changes” and “Changes along China's periphery.” The primary strength of the book is its breadth. Although it addresses neither physical geography nor China's environmental issues, it does speak to a wide range of human geographic questions, from land use and agricultural development to population and economy. The majority of the chapters, with a few exceptions, are well grounded within the authors' own research foci and expertise. The most notable weakness of the book is one shared by many edited collections: that it lacks integration and a sense of dialogue between the chapters. This weakness might have been overcome through a face to face meeting of the authors, through an exchange of chapter drafts, through editorial guidance, or through more extensive section introductions and summaries by the editors. This type of integration is, of course, rare.

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The paper deals with the phenomenological, ontological, and existential grounds of the political philosophy and the philosophy of history as proposed by Vladimir Bibikhin in a course of lectures called (It’s) Time (Time-Being). Following the crucial ideas of Martin Heidegger’s Being and Time, Bibikhin introduces the concepts of “early” and “late” disciplines, illustrated by the rules of Sophia Alekseyevna and Peter the Great, accordingly. These concepts are introduced to indicate two different ontological structures of historical and political action. An ‘early’ discipline stands for an ontological basis for democracy, whereas a ‘late’ one refers to autocracy and despotism. Drawing on multiple Bibikhin’s works dedicated to Russia, such as Introduction to the Philosophy of Law, The Power of Russia, and Our Place in the Word, the author argues that Bibikhin further elaborates the political and ontological aspects of the above-mentioned concept of the ‘late’ discipline in these texts. In contrast, the book New Renaissance is considered as an illustration of an ‘early’ discipline which is prevalent in the West, according to Bibikhin. Finally, the author proposes a critical evaluation of Bibikhin’s political philosophy in regards to its close link with an ideology and outlines the possible perspectives of implementing some of Bibikhin’s ideas in contemporary debates about the political.

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The monograph by E. Deaner «The electronic book as a bibliological object» [«Elektronnaya kniga kak kategoriya knigovedeniya», 2017, in Russian] is analyzed. The monograph logically extends the previous book by the same author published in 2016, namely “Theoretical and methodological foundations of digital books as a bibliological category” [«Teoretikometodologicheskiye osnovy elektronnoy knigi kak kategorii knigovedeniya», in Russian]. The monograph is seen as a radical breakthrough in the modern Russian bibliology, as it tends to reconcile the traditional bibliology and new information technologies on which e-publishing and book distribution are based today. The author demonstrates that digital books completely matches the theoretical and practical provisions of bibliology and documentology being specific type of the document rather than a specific genre. The digital books can be blended seamlessly into the book culture phenomenon, to enrich it with a radically new and innovative object. The high appraisal is given to the methodological approaches toward defining the concept of the digital book and its representation within the book communication system. The principle of the digital book ergonomics is examined in detail and is positively appraised, as well as the principle main factors, i.e.: the material, semantic, signatury, syntactic, pragmatic and temporal elements.The monograph content would enable to liven up the academic courses in bibliology and documentology. The librarians in collection development and digital collection development and bibliographers will make the readership of the monograph.

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Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to retrospectively review what is considered to be a forgotten classic in the marketing literature, Marketing in the American Economy, published in 1952 by Roland Vaile, ET Grether and Reavis Cox. Design/methodology/approach – Marketing in the American Economy is summarized, situated in its historical context and retrospectively evaluated by the author including commentaries by other scholars today. Findings – The book’s legacy or continuing value is described as including an insightful discussion of the relative roles of the market and the state in the American economy. The closing three chapters of Marketing in the American Economy merits inclusion in any contemporary “history of marketing thought” course. Finally, Marketing in the American Economy is an early example of a textbook on macromarketing making it a significant contribution to the history of marketing thought. Originality/value – Marketing in the American Economy was reviewed when it was published in 1952. With the benefit of time passed, a more meaningful appraisal of this book can now be made with a focus on its legacy.

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Oscar Wilde's sally about Lord Darlington ‘a man who knows the price of everything, and the value of nothing’ is very much the embodiment of the idea of what the valuation of rare books has come to mean today. Samuel Johnson defined the practitioner of this art, if one can call it that, a valuator, and defined him as ‘one who sets upon anything its price,’ a term for which he gives as synonym, appraiser. The term valuer is still used, and mostly pompously so, in the Anglo-Saxon auction world, its usage confirmed by the 19th century definition within the Act of Parliament 17 & 18 Victoria c.229 § 29 ‘to appoint a valuer to value the same.’ One can of course dismiss the subject as an etymological conceit, which in a sense it is, and say, what's in a name ? or conclude that ‘woord is but wynd.'

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<p>This study aims to develop a key book in the Myriapoda determination Inquiry learning model to improve learning outcomes and determine the feasibility Taxonomy Inveretebrata the book as a learning supporting Prodi Biology Education. The subjects that students Prodi Biology Education IIB half the number 12. Collecting data using multiple assessment sheet including key book appraisal determination Myriapoda, the student questionnaire responses, the performance test sheet, sheet cognitive test results, student activity sheets, and activity sheets lecturer. Analysis of the data using the average of each assessment. The result of this research is a key book Myriapoda determination developed with 4D models (Four D Models) with the stages of defining, designing, developing, while the spread was not done because of the larger scale. The results showed that 80% assessment supervisor and lecturer of Invertebrate Taxonomy courses give a good assessment can be categorized or fit for use Other research results are students responded positively to the book developed by providing an assessment that is equal to 70.8% agreed, and 22% strongly agreed, besides learning the Inquiry model can improve the process and the results of this study demonstrated the value of cognitive test results the average is 80 so it can be categorized as good.</p>

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This examination was intended to look into the Text books of Islamic Studies for auxiliary schools in Karachi. The examination secured the significant components of the Text books of Islamic Studies, to be specific the points, the educational plan, showing strategies, helps and exercises and the styles of appraisal. The strategies which were utilized to gather the information for this examination were the survey and the meeting. The examination populace included: educators of the Islamic Studies, directors, and understudies of the tenth grade optional schools. The discoveries demonstrated that in principle the Text books of Islamic Studies' points appear to be far reaching, covering all the parts of understudy improvement. Be that as it may, shockingly, there were no genuine applications for each one of those points in the down to earth instructing of the Text books of Islamic Studies., regardless of whether one inspected the reading material, showing techniques, or styles of appraisal. The subjects of the course books commonly centered on the hypothetical parts of the Text books of Islamic Studies, and a portion of those points were dreary. Training techniques were customary and centered on telling by the educator, with an absence of present day instructing strategies to urge the understudy to play a functioning job in the learning procedure. Furthermore, there was an away from of present day instructive guides like various media gear. At last, the style of evaluation was conventional planned for estimating the understudies' information, without focusing on estimating different parts of understudy accomplishment.

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The medical practice has become complex and challenging because of the entry of newer medicines and technologies. The key objective of pharmacology teaching-learning activities is to make graduates enable to select medicines by appraising safety, efficacy, cost and suitability. Promotional activities conducted by pharmaceutical industries deleteriously affect physicians’ prescribing practice. The present research was conducted with an attempt to explore current academic documents related to Pharmacology education in Bangladesh. The curriculum (pharmacology portion of undergraduate medical curriculum), books of pharmacology (preferred by the pharmacologists), and written question papers (of last five years from all universities) were evaluated by searching certain key phrases. The curriculum of undergraduate course did not give adequate emphasis on issues related to the pharmaceutical promotion. Ethical issues and ‘critical appraisal skill’ are not mentioned in the pharmacology books, and not appear in the written examinations.

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Property law scholars in the United States have discussed the doctrine of adverse possession for more than a century. Indeed, ever since American property law scholars began to write property law treatises, formalize property law courses in modern law schools, publish property specific articles in law reviews, and publish property law case books, adverse possession has served as a staple of property law discourse. This Article examines how property law scholars think about and discuss adverse possession. It explores how adverse possession talk has changed—and not changed—over time. In other words, this Article examines both the substance and rhetoric of property law scholars’ attempts to explain, appraise and, at times, reform the doctrine of adverse possession.

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The assets of a business entity that is subject to bankruptcy proceedings form bankruptcy estate. The correct assessment of its value is a necessary pre-condition to save time and cost effective bankruptcy proceedings. The article presents the valuation methods applied in Poland for assets consisting of real estate and movables that collectively constitute the bankruptcy estate. The main objective of this study is to assess the reliability and efficiency of the appraisals of book, market and forced sale value in relation to the possibility of correct estimation of funds obtained from the sale of individual assets in the course of liquidation proceedings. The article presents the results of a study conducted in 15 intentionally selected enterprises in bankruptcy operating on the territory of Lubelskie Voivodeship in Poland. It offers the analysis of applied valuation methods and the description of specific conditions of sale of bankrupt entity’s assets in accordance with legal regulations and applied practices. In particular, it compares the differences in the value of the examined assets determined by different methods and identifies the reasons for these differences. The most important conclusion of the study is the fact that neither the market value nor the book value allow for reliable estimation of the revenues that could be obtained from the sale of the bankruptcy estate, which makes it impossible to determine the probable level of satisfaction of creditors’ claims. The specific nature of sale under bankruptcy justifies the use of the forced sale value despite difficulties connected with its estimation. The basic recommendation is the necessity to supplement the valuation report with the estimation of the forced sale value along with the comprehensive description of the algorithm of its calculation.

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Reading the book under review has truly taken me down memory lane. Some 20 years ago I encountered the academic study of Islam primarily through reading the books of Professor Fazlur Rahman (including the ‘Serbo-Croatian’ translation of his book Islam) all of which left a deep and indelible impression on me both as a Muslim and as an aspiring academic. In that sense I wish I had myself authored this or a similar book. Generally speaking, Ahmed appraises and frames the theological thinking of Rahman from the perspective of considering him a significant contributor to the “Islamic theology of modernity” (jadid ‘ilm al-kalam) in the tradition of Muhammad Iqbal, the famous twentieth-century phi- losopher of the Subcontinent (xiv-xv). Rightfully so, this reviewer would add! The main aim the author sets himself in the book is to “scrutinise” Rahman’s contribution to traditional kalam, theology proper (ilāhiyāt), and prophecy (nubuwwat) but with an eye on assessing the implications Rahman’s theological thought has on “modernization and reformation of ‘ilm ul kalam” (xv). Methodologically, Ahmed considers his approach as falling in line with “the constructivist method” associated with Albert Hou- rani’s Arabic Thought in the Liberal Age (1967), “wherein the emphasis is placed on the importance of locating ideas within their unique intellectual context” and maximum attention is awarded to the influences, personality traits and circ*mstances that have had a bearing on the intellectual under analysis (xvi). The book under review consists of an introduction and four chapters. The first chapter is a biographical overview of Rahman’s life and his major works. It also helpfully positions Rahman’s ideas in the context of his two major interlocutory traditions, namely, what the author of the book terms (perhaps problematically) as Orientalism and Islamic orthodoxy. Finally, the chapter provides an outline of the intellectual “sources” of Rahman’s Islamic thought (Qur’an, Sunna, ijmā‘, and ijtihād) with special attention given to how his approach to these sources plays out in relation to major issues in Islamic intellectual history including the conceptual, epistemolog- ical, and hermeneutical relationship between the concepts of hadith and Sunna and his position on the issue of the closing of the gates of ijtihād. Drawing upon Rahman’s work Revival and Reform and Islam and Modernity in particular, Ahmed in the second chapter examines Rahman’s thinking on the issues pertaining to the emergence and the development of Islamic theology (kalām) and the major debates that have animated them (e.g., islām and īmān; qadar and jabr, irjā’, al-ḥusn wa-l-qubh) and the role of the major theological groups and scholars in the development of Sunni theology during the formative and post-formative stages of kalām and up to the modern period. Here Ahmed argues that Rahman’s analytical method is to seek “a synthesis between Modern Orientalist methodology and the history of kalam literature” (71), which is also evident in other aspects of Rahman’s Islamic thought—especially in his views on the nature and scope of the concept of Sunna and its relationship with the hadith literature. Chapter three, titled “Concept of God,” is dedicated to Rahman’s con- ceptualization of what constitutes an Islamic worldview and the necessary approach for arriving at it. Ahmed argues that Rahman’s thematic and con- textualist approach to the Qur’an and his dynamic concept of Sunna are the only sources he considers as normative in formulating such a worldview. In this respect Ahmed paints a picture of Rahman’s theology as having af- finities with ideas underpinning liberation theology, with its emphasis on orthopraxy, God’s concern for the poor and the marginalized, and the cre- ation of a just (socio-economic) order. As such, Rahman’s Qur’anic worl- dview, for Ahmed, points to the essentially ethical nature of the Islamic message. I fully concur with this assessment. The chapter also positions Rahman’s thought on the concept of God in relation to major ideas de- veloped by Islamic philosopher-jurists and mystics (Sufis). Ahmed, in this respect, argues that some of Rahman’s ideas were influenced by those of Ibn Sina (on whom he wrote his doctoral dissertation) but that in essence Rahman’s concept of God was different from that of both the Islamic phi- losopher-jurists and Sufis. For Rahman, in Ahmed’s view, the concept of God was that of “a God of creativity” (158). In the final chapter, Rahman’s theory of prophethood takes front stage. Ahmed argues that the roots of Rahman’s theory of prophethood are to be found in the thinking of Ibn Sina, with important modifications and addi- tions rendering theology on equal footing with philosophy (218). Ahmed also describes Rahman’s thinking on related issues such as historical de- bates on the doctrine of miracles and prophetic infallibility. The book importantly brings into discussion in one volume all of the main topics that Rahman wrote on during the course of his life, and provides an informed discussion of Rahman’s thinking as well as the major influences on his thought. Moreover, the author has also more or less successfully con- textualized Rahman’s thinking both in relation to Islamic intellectual histo- ry and the context in which Rahman himself wrote and worked (though as with all other books of this nature and scope, I am sure that specialists may take issue with how Ahmed interprets Rahman’s views). However, in this respect, the reviewer considers that no justice was done to the reception of Rahman’s ideas in the writings of Muslim and non-Muslim scholars who engaged with his ideas from the 1990s through the present. For example, one could mention the ideas of Abdullah Saeed (e.g., Reading the Qur’an in the Twenty-First Century, 2014) on contextualizing the Qur’an, inspired by Rahman’s work on the interpretation of Qur’anic ethico-legal injunctions; that of Amina Wadud (The Qur’an and Woman, 1999) and Asma Barlas (Believing Women in Islam, 2002) on producing gender-egalitarian inter- pretations that are rooted in Rahman’s double movement theory; some of my ideas on the nature and the scope of the concept of Sunna (“The Relative Status of Hadith and Sunna,” 2014) that build further on those of Rahman; and the work of other twenty-first century progressive Muslim scholars like Ebrahim Moosa and Muqtedar Khan. This of course could fill another full book but at least warranted mention here. I hope the author will consider writing a separate volume on this topic. The writing style is, at times, awkward, in part due to the book’s pri- marily descriptive orientation, for the author is often referring to the ideas of others discussed by Rahman in his own work (so that the voices of dif- ferent authors are sometimes confused). Occasional typos are present too. I would recommend this book to all those interested in Islamic intellectual history at less advanced levels and of course those who are keen to get a broad overview of the theological thinking of one of the most important Muslim academics and intellectuals of the twentieth century. However, I would still recommend a direct engagement with Rahman’s works. Adis Duderija, PhDLecturer, Study of Islam and SocietyGriffith University

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Reading the book under review has truly taken me down memory lane. Some 20 years ago I encountered the academic study of Islam primarily through reading the books of Professor Fazlur Rahman (including the ‘Serbo-Croatian’ translation of his book Islam) all of which left a deep and indelible impression on me both as a Muslim and as an aspiring academic. In that sense I wish I had myself authored this or a similar book. Generally speaking, Ahmed appraises and frames the theological thinking of Rahman from the perspective of considering him a significant contributor to the “Islamic theology of modernity” (jadid ‘ilm al-kalam) in the tradition of Muhammad Iqbal, the famous twentieth-century phi- losopher of the Subcontinent (xiv-xv). Rightfully so, this reviewer would add! The main aim the author sets himself in the book is to “scrutinise” Rahman’s contribution to traditional kalam, theology proper (ilāhiyāt), and prophecy (nubuwwat) but with an eye on assessing the implications Rahman’s theological thought has on “modernization and reformation of ‘ilm ul kalam” (xv). Methodologically, Ahmed considers his approach as falling in line with “the constructivist method” associated with Albert Hou- rani’s Arabic Thought in the Liberal Age (1967), “wherein the emphasis is placed on the importance of locating ideas within their unique intellectual context” and maximum attention is awarded to the influences, personality traits and circ*mstances that have had a bearing on the intellectual under analysis (xvi). The book under review consists of an introduction and four chapters. The first chapter is a biographical overview of Rahman’s life and his major works. It also helpfully positions Rahman’s ideas in the context of his two major interlocutory traditions, namely, what the author of the book terms (perhaps problematically) as Orientalism and Islamic orthodoxy. Finally, the chapter provides an outline of the intellectual “sources” of Rahman’s Islamic thought (Qur’an, Sunna, ijmā‘, and ijtihād) with special attention given to how his approach to these sources plays out in relation to major issues in Islamic intellectual history including the conceptual, epistemolog- ical, and hermeneutical relationship between the concepts of hadith and Sunna and his position on the issue of the closing of the gates of ijtihād. Drawing upon Rahman’s work Revival and Reform and Islam and Modernity in particular, Ahmed in the second chapter examines Rahman’s thinking on the issues pertaining to the emergence and the development of Islamic theology (kalām) and the major debates that have animated them (e.g., islām and īmān; qadar and jabr, irjā’, al-ḥusn wa-l-qubh) and the role of the major theological groups and scholars in the development of Sunni theology during the formative and post-formative stages of kalām and up to the modern period. Here Ahmed argues that Rahman’s analytical method is to seek “a synthesis between Modern Orientalist methodology and the history of kalam literature” (71), which is also evident in other aspects of Rahman’s Islamic thought—especially in his views on the nature and scope of the concept of Sunna and its relationship with the hadith literature. Chapter three, titled “Concept of God,” is dedicated to Rahman’s con- ceptualization of what constitutes an Islamic worldview and the necessary approach for arriving at it. Ahmed argues that Rahman’s thematic and con- textualist approach to the Qur’an and his dynamic concept of Sunna are the only sources he considers as normative in formulating such a worldview. In this respect Ahmed paints a picture of Rahman’s theology as having af- finities with ideas underpinning liberation theology, with its emphasis on orthopraxy, God’s concern for the poor and the marginalized, and the cre- ation of a just (socio-economic) order. As such, Rahman’s Qur’anic worl- dview, for Ahmed, points to the essentially ethical nature of the Islamic message. I fully concur with this assessment. The chapter also positions Rahman’s thought on the concept of God in relation to major ideas de- veloped by Islamic philosopher-jurists and mystics (Sufis). Ahmed, in this respect, argues that some of Rahman’s ideas were influenced by those of Ibn Sina (on whom he wrote his doctoral dissertation) but that in essence Rahman’s concept of God was different from that of both the Islamic phi- losopher-jurists and Sufis. For Rahman, in Ahmed’s view, the concept of God was that of “a God of creativity” (158). In the final chapter, Rahman’s theory of prophethood takes front stage. Ahmed argues that the roots of Rahman’s theory of prophethood are to be found in the thinking of Ibn Sina, with important modifications and addi- tions rendering theology on equal footing with philosophy (218). Ahmed also describes Rahman’s thinking on related issues such as historical de- bates on the doctrine of miracles and prophetic infallibility. The book importantly brings into discussion in one volume all of the main topics that Rahman wrote on during the course of his life, and provides an informed discussion of Rahman’s thinking as well as the major influences on his thought. Moreover, the author has also more or less successfully con- textualized Rahman’s thinking both in relation to Islamic intellectual histo- ry and the context in which Rahman himself wrote and worked (though as with all other books of this nature and scope, I am sure that specialists may take issue with how Ahmed interprets Rahman’s views). However, in this respect, the reviewer considers that no justice was done to the reception of Rahman’s ideas in the writings of Muslim and non-Muslim scholars who engaged with his ideas from the 1990s through the present. For example, one could mention the ideas of Abdullah Saeed (e.g., Reading the Qur’an in the Twenty-First Century, 2014) on contextualizing the Qur’an, inspired by Rahman’s work on the interpretation of Qur’anic ethico-legal injunctions; that of Amina Wadud (The Qur’an and Woman, 1999) and Asma Barlas (Believing Women in Islam, 2002) on producing gender-egalitarian inter- pretations that are rooted in Rahman’s double movement theory; some of my ideas on the nature and the scope of the concept of Sunna (“The Relative Status of Hadith and Sunna,” 2014) that build further on those of Rahman; and the work of other twenty-first century progressive Muslim scholars like Ebrahim Moosa and Muqtedar Khan. This of course could fill another full book but at least warranted mention here. I hope the author will consider writing a separate volume on this topic. The writing style is, at times, awkward, in part due to the book’s pri- marily descriptive orientation, for the author is often referring to the ideas of others discussed by Rahman in his own work (so that the voices of dif- ferent authors are sometimes confused). Occasional typos are present too. I would recommend this book to all those interested in Islamic intellectual history at less advanced levels and of course those who are keen to get a broad overview of the theological thinking of one of the most important Muslim academics and intellectuals of the twentieth century. However, I would still recommend a direct engagement with Rahman’s works. Adis Duderija, PhDLecturer, Study of Islam and SocietyGriffith University

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AbstractObjectivesEnhanced skills training in emergency medicine through the Canadian College of Family Physicians, CCFP(EM), has existed since the 1980s. Accreditation standards define what every program “must” and “should” have, yet little is known on what is currently done across Canada. Our objectives were to 1) describe major components of CCFP(EM) programs and 2) determine how curricular components are taught.MethodsAfter a rigorous development process (expert content development, cognitive reviews, and pilot testing), a survey questionnaire was administered to all 17 CCFP(EM) program directors using a modified Dillman technique.ResultsAll (17/17) program directors responded. Programs are similar in core clinical rotations conducted and provide ultrasound courses for basic skills (trauma, abdominal aortic aneurysm, intrauterine pregnancy). Variation exists for offering independent ultrasound certification (77%), advanced scanning (18%), and protected time for scanning (53%). All programs utilize high fidelity simulation. Some programs use in situ simulation (18%) and carry out a simulation boot camp (41%). Most centres require an academic project, which is a quality assurance project (53%) and/or a critical appraisal of the literature (59%). Publication or national conference presentations are required by 12% of programs. Competency-based curricula include simulation for rare procedures (88%), direct observations (65%), and a “transition to practice” curriculum (24%). All programs maintain strong connections to family medicine.ConclusionThis study demonstrates the diverse structures of CCFP(EM) programs across Canada. Programs have similar clinical rotations, ultrasound, and simulation requirements. Variation exists in administrative structure and financial resources of programs, academic project requirements, and programs’ competency-based curricula.

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Introduction: Enhanced skills training in emergency medicine (EM) for family physicians (CCFP(EM)) has existed since the 1970s. Accreditation standards define what every program must and should have, yet little is known on what is currently done across Canada. Our objectives were to: 1) describe major components of CCFP(EM) programs; and 2) determine how programs incorporate these components into their curriculum. Methods: A rigorous development process included expert content development and in-person pilot testing using Royal College Emergency Medicine Program Directors. An electronic survey questionnaire comprised of 63 questions was administered to all 17 CCFP(EM) program directors using a modified Dillman technique. Non-responders were sent a reminder email every 2 weeks over a 6-week period and an in-person reminder was given to non-responders at a face to face meeting 4 weeks after the initial survey was sent in June 2016. Results: All 17/17 (100%) program directors responded. There was considerable variation in administrative structure and financial support for each program. All programs provided ultrasound courses for basic skills (trauma, abdominal aortic aneurysm, intrauterine pregnancy). Variation exists for offering independent ultrasound certification (77%), advanced scanning (18%) and protected academic time for scanning (53%). All programs utilize high fidelity simulation. Some programs use in situ simulation (18%) and hold a simulation boot camp (41%). Most centres required an academic project, most commonly a quality assurance project (53%) and/or a critical appraisal of the literature (59%). Publication or national conference presentations were required by 12% of programs. Competency based assessments use simulation (88%) and direct observations (53%). Only 24% of programs have a transition to practice curriculum. All programs maintain strong connections to family medicine. Conclusion: This study demonstrates diverse structures of CCFP(EM) programs across Canada. Programs are similar regarding the provision of ultrasound, simulation and protected teaching time. Variation exists in administrative structure and financial resources of each program, academic project requirements, and how programs perform competency based assessments.

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Mathematics courses are given to students from elementary school to higher education which equip them with logical, analytical, systematic, critical, and creative thinking skills, as well as the ability to work together. According to the Organization for Economics Cooperation and Development (OECD) year 2013, the concep of mathematical literacy in Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) supports the importance of developing strong understanding of pure mathematical concepts and the benefits involved in exploration in the abstract world of mathematics. This research produces a Mathematics strategic learning analysis of grade IX that supports high-order mathematical thinking skills (HOMT). Two (2) parts of the materials will be discussed more focused, ie (a) learning materials and (b) learning strategies. With a learning syllabus that supports the HOMT, the opportunity to increase the value of Mathematics education is greater, one of which is formulate challenging questions. Challenging Mathematical questions will meet the criteria of high-level questions (PISA has a level of questions from level 1 to level 6). HOMT supports the development of a strong understanding of pure mathematical concepts and is useful in exploration in the abstract world of mathematics. The sources of data used in the preparation of this reseach are the results of the PISA survey in 2006 and 2012 and the 2013 curriculum book sourced from the Ministry of Education and Culture. Keywords: Mathematics grade IX, 2013 curriculum, PISA, HOMT Abstrak Mata pelajaran Matematika diberikan kepada semua peserta didik mulai dari sekolah dasar untuk membekali peserta didik dengan kemampuan berpikir logis, analitis, sistematis, kritis, dan kreatif, serta kemampuan bekerja sama. Menurut Organization for Economics Coopration and Development (OECD) tahun 2013, konsepsi literasi matematika dalam Program for International Student Assessment PISA mendukung pentingnya siswa mengembangkan pemahaman yang kuat tentang konsep-konsep matematika murni dan manfaat yang terlibat dalam eksplorasi dalam dunia abstrak matematika. Penelitian ini menghasilkan sebuah analisis trategi pembelajaran matematika Kelas IX yang mendukung kemampuan berpikir tingkat tinggi matematika (HOMT). Dua (2) bagian dari materi akan dibahas lebih fokus, yaitu (a) materi pembelajaran dan (b) strategi pembelajaran. Dengan silabus pembelajaran yang mendukung HOMT tersebut maka peluang untuk meningkatkan nilai pendidikan Matematika lebih besar, salah satu di antaranya adalah dapat disusunnya soal-soal yang menantang. Soal-soal matematika yang menantang akan memenuhi kriteria soal level tinggi (PISA memiliki tingkatan soal dari level 1 hingga level 6). HOMT mendukung pengembangan pemahaman yang kuat tentang konsep-konsep matematika murni dan bermanfaat dalam eksplorasi dalam dunia abstrak matematika. Sumber data yang digunakan dalam penyusunan buku penelitian ini adalah hasil survey PISA tahun 2006 dan 2012 dan buku kurikulum 2013 yang bersumber dari Kementerian Pendidikan dan Kebudayaan. Kata Kunci: Matematika kelas IX, Kurikulum 2013, PISA, HOMT References B. Johnson. 2002. Contextual Teaching and Learning: What it is and why it’s here to stay. Corwin Press,Inc. California. A. Dahlan. 2009. Pengembangan model computer based e-learning untuk meningkatkan kemampuan high order mathematical thinking siswa SMA. LPPM UPI. Bandung. Watson and E. M. Glaser. 1980. Critical Thinking Appraisal. Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Inc. New York. Hakim. 2016. Analisis Gambaran Kompetensi Guru Terhadap Prestasi Belajar Siswa SMP Pada Ujian Nasional Tahun 2015 Provinsi Daerah Istimewa Yogyakarta. Pusat Data dan Statistik Pendidikan dan Kebudayaan. Jakarta. Abdurrahman. 2003. Pendidikan Bagi Anak Berkesulitan Belajar. Rineka Cipta. Jakarta. Nata. 2009. Perspektif Islam Tentang Strategi Pembelajaran. Kencana Prenada Media Group. Jakarta. Purwanto. 2004. Psikologi Pendidikan. Remaja Rosdakarya. Bandung OECD. 2012. OECD Programme for International Student Assessment 2012. OECD. Westat. OECD. 2006. OECD Programme for International Student Assessment 2006. OECD. Westat. P. P. Kemdikbud. 2016. Penilaian yang Berkualitas untuk Pendidikan yang Berkualitas [Online]. Available:http://litbang.kemdikbud.go.id/pengumuman/Mengenal%20Puspendik%205%20Jan %202015-2.pdf. [Accessed 07 Feb 2016]. K. d. Perbukuan. 2015. Buku Guru Matematika Kelas IX SMP/MTs. Kementerian Pendidikan dan Kebudayaan. Jakarta. H. Ennis. 1985. Critical Thinking. University of lllinois. New Jersey: Prentice Hall. W. Weisberg. 2006. Expertise and Reason in Creative Thinking: Evidence from Case Studies and the Laboratory. Cambridge University Press. Cambridge. Mariana. 2011. Penerapan pendekatan kontekstual dengan pemberian tugas mind map setelah pembelajaran terhadap peningkatan kemampuan koneksi matematis siswa SMP. Krulik and J. A. Rudnick. 1995. The New Sourcebook for Teaching Reasoning and Problem Solving in Elementary School. Allyn & Bacon. Needham Heights. Sardiman. 1987. Interaksi dan Motivasi Belajar Mengajar. Rajawali Pers. Jakarta. Suwarma and D. Mayadiana. 2009. Suatu Alternatif Pembelajaran Kemampuan Berpikir Kritis Matematika. Cakrawala Maha Karya. Jakarta Gustiningsi. 2015. Pengembangan Soal Matematika Model Pisa Untuk Mengetahui Kemampuan Berpikir Kritis Matematis Siswa Kelas VII. Jurnal Pendidikan Matematika JPM RAFA , vol. Vol.1, no. No.1, September 2015. Y. E. Siswono. 2016. Berpikir Kritis dan Berpikir Kreatif sebagai Fokus Pembelajaran Matematika in Seminar Nasional Matematika Dan Pendidikan Matematika (1st SENATIK). Semarang.

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La propuesta presentada surge de las preocupaciones de enseñar el curso de Historia de las Matemáticas en el curso de pregrado en Matemáticas, en 2005, y estudios relacionados con el doctorado, de 2009 a 2012, y evaluado en el curso de posgrado al enseñar el curso de Historia de las Matemáticas. como recurso didáctico. Después de revisar la literatura sobre el uso de la historia en la enseñanza y varios estudios empíricos utilizando el diagrama de pregrado y posgrado, cuyos resultados rentables fueron expuestos en libros, inicialmente en 2015, reestructurados en 2016 y refinados en 2017, me propuse presentar el diagrama, reflexiones sobre el texto marcado por el diagrama y el público objetivo, así como ejemplos y percepciones de los estudiantes sobre el diagrama. Los experimentos señalan que el diagrama puede ser un elemento guía importante en la composición de textos que relacionan la historia y las matemáticas en función de la elección del tema/contenido. Además, la composición del diagrama se ha configurado como un espléndido ejercicio de investigación en la búsqueda de información en diversos contextos y, más aún, la composición textual se ha convertido en un ejercicio admirable ante la necesidad de articular y dar forma a diferentes coyunturas y contenidos en el mismo.Palabras clave: Historia de las matemáticas. La historia como recurso didáctico. Historia de la enseñanza de la matemática. Elaboración de textos con Historia y Matemáticas. HISTORY AND MATHEMATICS INTEGRATEDTHROUGH A METHODOLOGICAL DIAGRAM AbstractThe proposal presented emerges from the concerns of teaching the History of Mathematics course in the undergraduate course in Mathematics, in 2005, and studies related to the doctorate, from 2009 to 2012, and appraised in the postgraduate course when teaching the course History of Mathematics. as a didactic resource. After reviewing the literature on the use of history in teaching and various empirical studies using the undergraduate and postgraduate diagram, which profitable results were exposed in books, initially in 2015, restructured in 2016 and refined in 2017, I set out to present the diagram, reflections about the text marked by the diagram and the target audience, as well as example and students' perceptions of the diagram. Experiments point out that the diagram can be an important guiding element in the composition of texts that relate history and mathematics based on the choice of theme/content. Moreover, the composition of the diagram has been configured as a splendid research exercise in the search for information in various contexts and, more, the textual composition has become an admirable exercise in the face of the need to articulate and shape different conjunctures and contents in the same.Keywords: History of Mathematics. History as a didactic resource. History for Mathematics Teaching. Text Writing with History and Mathematics. HISTÓRIA E MATEMÁTICA INTEGRADASPOR MEIO DE UM DIAGRAMA METODOLÓGICO ResumoA proposta apresentada emerge a partir das inquietações ao ministrar a disciplina História da Matemática no curso de licenciatura em Matemática, em 2005, e de estudos relativos ao doutoramento, de 2009 a 2012, e aquilatada na pós-graduação ao ministrar a disciplina História da Matemática como recurso didático. Após revisões da literatura sobre o uso da história no ensino e de diversas empirias utilizando o diagrama na graduação e na pós-graduação, cujos resultados proveitosos foram expostos em livros, inicialmente em 2015, reestruturados em 2016 e afinados em 2017, estabeleci como objetivo apresentar o diagrama, reflexões acerca do texto balizado pelo diagrama e do público alvo, bem como exemplo e percepções de alunos em relação ao diagrama. As experimentações apontam que o diagrama pode ser um importante elemento balizador na composição de textos que relacionam história e matemática a partir da eleição de tema/conteúdo. Além disso, a composição do diagrama tem se configurado como um esplêndido exercício de pesquisa na busca de informações em diversos contextos e, mais, a composição textual tem se tornado um admirável exercício frente a necessidade de se articular e amoldar diferentes conjunturas e conteúdos num mesmo texto.Palavras-chave: História da Matemática. História como recurso didático. História para o Ensino de Matemática. Elaboração de texto com História e Matemática.

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Rosebud is the sleigh. Consumers of popular culture texts -- films, popular fiction, games -- have an enormous emotional investment in the narrative details of the texts they consume. Particularly, readers invest strongly in the accumulation of plot and development of narrative that produces the end of a text. In other words, that which gives the text closure. Darth Vader is really Luke's father. One only needs to look to the popular culture-oriented newsgroups (see for example rec.arts.movies.misc, aus.films, rec.arts.sf.written) on Usenet to see the extent of this investment. In the terminology of the participants of these discussions, plot details of the texts under discussion are "spoilers" -- revealing them will "spoil" the text. Participants contrive elaborate mechanisms to avoid spoilers. Large amounts of blank space in the body of a message is required, to act as a kind of radiation shield against the unwary accidentally coming across the potent data. Social sanctions against revealing spoilers are severe -- even the inadvertent mention of plot data by an inexperienced poster will attract tremendous opprobrium. There is something of a hierarchy of spoilers, and the biggest, most potent ones are always the ones that revolve around the conclusion of the text. And it's not just the new texts that require spoiler "warnings" and "protection" -- there's always someone who hasn't seen The Crying Game. She is actually he. What I want to address here is this emotional investment in the end, by analysing it as a set of distinct cultural practices that organises and defines a range of relationships and identities with the act of consuming highly narratively driven popular cultural texts. First, to come to greater theoretical grips with what a spoiler is, in a structural sense, I'll use a bit of early Barthes, from "Introduction to the Structural Analysis of Narratives". The spoiler is a unit of plot data of the type that Barthes refers to as a "cardinal function". A cardinal function is a narrative node point that, in conjunction with other such points, maps out the basic network of the narrative (93). However, what makes the spoiler a particularly potent cardinal function of narrative is that has a certain diachronic effectivity -- its proximity to the moment (or defining sequence) of narrative closure ensures that it has explanatory power over the entire text. Thus, a regulatory practice effected when discussing the text in a group context (in which one assumes differing levels of knowledge about the text at hand) is to carefully quarantine the spoiler, in case it does in fact "spoil" the enjoyment of the text for the uninitiated. Soylent Green is people. I want to introduce here another mode of textual consumption that will mirror the spoiler. This particular mode is applicable to interactive multimedia texts, i.e. games, which structurally incorporate both linear and non-linear narrative mechanisms. I am talking, of course, of the cheat mode. Cheat modes enable the player to intervene in the gameplay "reading" process much more directly than is allowed by conventional modes. They are activated by a special code (the knowledge of which is a highly valued piece of cultural capital, that circulates through game player cultural networks) that releases the player's on-screen character from the typical game restrictions. For instance, in a "shooter" style game, the player may have access to all the weapons in the game, unlimited ammunition and health. This divorces the gameplay from the linear structure imposed by the game's designers, and allows the player to wander freely, and indeed to reach the end of the level of the game with little effort. In some games, the cheat mode is implemented in such a way as to allow the player to reach the end instantaneously, or to drop dead at once. Instant closure. We never find out who killed Ari. Although cheat codes, as mentioned above, have a strong cultural value (indeed, whole Websites and game magazines are devoted to listings of cheats for various games), the player who cheats, like the reader who skips to the last page or the viewer who reads the spoilers before seeing the film, is constructed by other readers as being at the bottom of a hierarchy of textual competence. Those at the top acquire their mastery of the text through firm resolve and hard work. Spoilers can therefore be seen as a form of subversion of this arrangement, by allowing anyone with access to them to play the game just as effectively as those hardened textual masters. This hierarchy has a moral/ethical dimension as well. Cheaters and spoiler lovers are seen by the "legitimate" players and readers as being weaker, lacking in resolve, and will probably go blind from their activities. Neo is the One. But isn't this quite appropriate? Aren't players who cheat and readers who appraise the spoilers destroying all the fun of the game/narrative? Perhaps. But on the other hand, film and book narratives that rely on certain information being withheld from the audience to produce suspense effects, and that focus all their textual energies on this payoff, aren't often texts that invite a revisit. And, I would argue, it's those texts that reward re-reading, even when all the overt plot cues are revealed, that are the ones that produce the most readerly pleasure. Being Earnest really is important after all. In any case, no reading of a text is produced in a vacuum. We always apply the resources of previous readings of other texts to interpret the one at hand, especially when reading, viewing, or playing extensively in a particular genre. The ending of a particular book may be quite obvious from the familiar narrative patterns it employs. Every seasoned player of scrolling-shoot-em-ups knows that the boss alien on the last level has some kind of fatal flaw that can be exploited to achieve victory. It was a dream all along. Cheating/spoiling as a textual practice seems to me to be an intensely analytical one, through the way it divorces considerations of authorial intention utterly from the reading practice. The player/readers make their own way through the text, and in doing so, learn about how the text produces its effects. It offers pleasures that are quite different from those produced through the slow accretion of knowledge that typifies the standard reading experience. These pleasures involve circumventing the structures that order a linear reading of texts. In a game, the player who cheats becomes much more aware of, and can manipulate the highly constrained parameters of the game environment. A reader of a book that has had its contents spoiled in advance has a much greater degree of awareness of the techniques that orchestrate emotional responses. The end may indeed lose its impact, but a greater appreciation of the textual resources that produced it may be obtained. The butler did it. Of course, up until now, I've played it safe by only revealing spoliers from older films and novels. Perhaps the final test for my readers will be if they can look at the spolier for one much more recent film: The kid's psychologist was a ghost the whole time... References Barthes, Roland. "Introduction to the Structural Analysis of Narratives." Image, Music, Text. Trans Stephen Heath. New York: Noonday, 1977. 79-124. Carrol, Noel. "Film, Emotion, and Genre." Passionate Views: Film Cognition and Emotion. Eds. Carl Plantinga and Greg H. Smith. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 1999. 21-47. Citation reference for this article MLA style: Nick Caldwell. "Spoilers and Cheaters: Narrative Closure and the Cultural Dimensions of Alternate Reading Practices." M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 2.8 (1999). [your date of access] <http://www.uq.edu.au/mc/9912/spoilers.php>. Chicago style: Nick Caldwell, "Spoilers and Cheaters: Narrative Closure and the Cultural Dimensions of Alternate Reading Practices," M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 2, no. 8 (1999), <http://www.uq.edu.au/mc/9912/spoilers.php> ([your date of access]). APA style: Nick Caldwell. (1999) Spoilers and cheaters: narrative closure and the cultural dimensions of alternate reading practices. M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 2(8). <http://www.uq.edu.au/mc/9912/spoilers.php> ([your date of access]).

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Study level/applicability This case can be used in the core course on entrepreneurship for Bachelor of Business Administration (BBA) and Master of Business Administration/Post Graduate Diploma in Management (MBA/PGDM) students. It will help them to understand the motivations and challenges of women entrepreneurs, strategies to manage challenges, interactive style of leadership and their contribution to the economic growth of the country. Subject area Entrepreneurship. Case overview Roopa Rani, co-founded a digital design company, DesignTheme Innoventics (DTI), with her husband Yoganand, in November 2007, on the first floor of their residence. Yoganand’s creativity and Roopa’s determination made them bootstrap, scale slow and steady. As a novice to the industry, the initial days posed many challenges. Roopa hired artists to be appointed as designers, which gave them a unique selling preposition. They progressed slowly from a team of 2 to 20, with a revenue of INR 0.3M per annum to INR 12M per annum. As the company grew, Roopa wanted Yoganand’s support in handling the responsibilities, and hence, converted DTI into a limited liability partnership in 2013 and the couple were directors. As the client base improved, the need for shifting to a bigger space became more evident. A calculative risk-taker, Roopa, was forced to move DTI to a bigger office space end 2017, with a rent of INR60,000 per month. Meanwhile, they became a team of 20, with revenue of INR12m. The shift from no rent to a rented space made DTI slip to break-even. However, after two years, they moved into a smaller space and it coincided with the COVID-19 outbreak. Although the backlog orders were processed during the first quarter of 2020–2021, the business for the next quarter was affected. Social distancing norms created a shift in the way of doing business, which was a boon for a designing company like DTI. Now, the task before this self-made woman entrepreneur was to formulate strategies to scale up the business. Expected learning outcomes After analysing the case, the students will be able to: i. Value the contribution of women entrepreneurs towards the economy. ii. Examine the motivational factors and challenges of women entrepreneurs. iii. Understand the importance of networking. iv. Appraise the socio-cultural factors in a patriarchal society and their impact on the work-life balance of a woman entrepreneur. v. Appreciate the interactive leadership style of women entrepreneurs. vi. Formulate strategies to scale up the business. Supplementary materials • Agarwal, S., & Lenka, U. (2015). Study on work-life balance of women entrepreneurs – review and research agenda. Industrial and Commercial Training, 47(7), 356–362. doi:10.1108/ict-01–2015-0006 • Amit, R., & Muller, E. (1995). “Push” And “Pull” Entrepreneurship. Journal of Small Business & Entrepreneurship, 12(4), 64–80. doi:10.1080/08276331.1995.10600505 • Buttner, E. H. (2001). Examining Female Entrepreneurs' Management Style: An Application of a Relational Frame. Journal of Business Ethics, 29(3), 253–269. doi:10.1023/a:1026460615436 • Carter, S.C. (1997). E. Holly Buttner and Dorothy P. Moore (1997), ‘Women’s Organisational Exodus to Entrepreneurship: Self-reported Motivations and Correlates with Success', Journal of Small Business Management, January, pp34-47. • Cohoon, J. McGrath and Wadhwa, Vivek and Mitchell, Lesa, Are Successful Women Entrepreneurs Different from Men? (May 11, 2010). Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract = 1604653 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.1604653 •Fletcher, J. (1998), Relational Practice: A Feminist Reconstruction of Work, Journal of Management Inquiry, 7(2), 163-186. • Kirkwood, J. (2009). Motivational factors in a push‐pull theory of entrepreneurship. Gender in Management: An International Journal, 24(5), 346–364. doi:10.1108/17542410910968805. • Malyadri, G., Dr. (2012). Role of women Entrepreneurs in the Economic Development of India. Paripex – Indian Journal of Research, 3(3), 104–105. doi: 10.15373/22501991/mar2014/36. Pal, N. (2016). Women Entrepreneurship in India: Important for Economic Growth. International Journal of Pure and Applied Researches, 4(1), 55–64. Pugazhendhi, D. P. (2019). Problems, Challenges and Development of Women Entrepreneurs. Emperor Journal of Economics and Social Science Research, 1(4), 48–53. doi:10.35338/ejessr.2019.1407. Shastri, S., Shastri, S., & Pareek, A. (2019). Motivations and challenges of women entrepreneurs. International Journal of Sociology and Social Policy, 39(5/6), 338–355. doi:10.1108/ijssp-09–2018-0146. Tende, S.B. (2016). The Impact of Women Entrepreneurs towards National Development: Selected Study on Taraba State. Information and Knowledge Management, 6, 30–43. Xheneti, M., Karki, S. T., & Madden, A. (2018). Negotiating business and family demands within a patriarchal society – the case of women entrepreneurs in the Nepalese context. Entrepreneurship & Regional Development, 31(3–4), 259–278. doi:10.1080/08985626.2018.1551792 Subject code CSS 3: Entrepreneurship.

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If I find out that you have bought a $90 red light sabre, Tara, well there's going to be trouble. -- Kevin Brabazon A few Saturdays ago, my 71-year old father tried to convince me of imminent responsibilities. As I am considering the purchase of a house, there are mortgages, bank fees and years of misery to endure. Unfortunately, I am not an effective Big Picture Person. The lure of the light sabre is almost too great. For 30 year old Generation Xers like myself, it is more than a cultural object. It is a textual anchor, and a necessary component to any future history of the present. Revelling in the aura of the Australian release for Star Wars: The Phantom Menace, this paper investigates popular memory, an undertheorised affiliation between popular culture and cultural studies.1 The excitement encircling the Star Wars prequel has been justified in terms of 'hype' or marketing. Such judgements frame the men and women cuing for tickets, talking Yodas and light sabres as fools or duped souls who need to get out more. My analysis explores why Star Wars has generated this enthusiasm, and how cultural studies can mobilise this passionate commitment to consider notions of popularity, preservation and ephemerality. We'll always have Tattooine. Star Wars has been a primary popular cultural social formation for a generation. The stories of Luke Skywalker, Princess Leia, Han Solo, Chewbacca, Darth Vader, Yoda, C-3PO and R2D2 offer an alternative narrative for the late 1970s and 1980s. It was a comfort to have the Royal Shakespearian tones of Alec Guinness confirming that the Force would be with us, through economic rationalism, unemployment, Pauline Hanson and Madonna discovering yoga. The Star Wars Trilogy, encompassing A New Hope, The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi, was released between 1977 and 1983. These films have rarely slipped from public attention, being periodically 'brought back' through new cinematic and video releases. The currency of Star Wars is matched with the other great popular cultural formations of the post-war period: the James Bond series and Star Trek. One reason for the continued success of these programmes is that other writers, film makers and producers cannot leave these texts alone. Bond survives not only through Pierce Brosnan's good looks, but the 'Hey Baby' antics of Austin Powers. Star Trek, through four distinct series, has become an industry that will last longer than Voyager's passage back from the Delta Quadrant. Star Wars, perhaps even more effectively than the other popular cultural heavyweights, has enmeshed itself into other filmic and televisual programming. Films like Spaceballs and television quizzes on Good News Week keep the knowledge system and language current and pertinent.2 Like Umberto Eco realised of Casablanca, Star Wars is "a living example of living textuality" (199). Both films are popular because of imperfections and intertextual archetypes, forming a filmic quilt of sensations and affectivities. Viewers are aware that "the cliches are talking among themselves" (Eco 209). As these cinematic texts move through time, the depth and commitment of these (con)textual dialogues are repeated and reinscribed. To hold on to a memory is to isolate a moment or an image and encircle it with meaning. Each day we experience millions of texts: some are remembered, but most are lost. Some popular cultural texts move from ephemera to popular memory to history. In moving beyond individual reminiscences -- the personal experiences of our lifetime -- we enter the sphere of popular culture. Collective or popular memory is a group or community experience of a textualised reality. For example, during the Second World War, there were many private experiences, but certain moments arch beyond the individual. Songs by Vera Lynn are fully textualised experiences that become the fodder for collective memory. Similarly, Star Wars provides a sense-making mechanism for the 1980s. Like all popular culture, these texts allow myriad readership strategies, but there is collective recognition of relevance and importance. Popular memory is such an important site because it provides us, as cultural critics, with a map of emotionally resonant sites of the past, moments that are linked with specific subjectivities and a commonality of expression. While Star Wars, like all popular cultural formations, has a wide audience, there are specific readings that are pertinent for particular groups. To unify a generation around cultural texts is an act of collective memory. As Harris has suggested, "sometimes, youth does interesting things with its legacy and creatively adapts its problematic into seemingly autonomous cultural forms" (79). Generation X refers to an age cohort born between the mid-1960s and the mid-1970s. Finally cultural studies theorists have found a Grail subculture. Being depthless, ambivalent, sexually repressed and social failures, Xers are a cultural studies dream come true. They were the children of the media revolution. Star Wars is integral to this textualised database. A fan on the night of the first screening corrected a journalist: "we aren't Generation X, we are the Star Wars generation" (Brendon, in Miller 9). An infatuation and reflexivity with the media is the single framework of knowledge in which Xers operate. This shared understanding is the basis for comedy, and particularly revealed (in Australia) in programmes like The Panel and Good News Week. Television themes, lines of film dialogue and contemporary news broadcasts are the basis of the game show. The aesthetics of life transforms television into a real. Or, put another way, "individual lives may be fragmented and confused but McDonald's is universal" (Hopkins 17). A group of textual readers share a literacy, a new way of reading the word and world of texts. Nostalgia is a weapon. The 1990s has been a decade of revivals: from Abba to skateboards, an era of retro reinscription has challenged linear theories of history and popular culture. As Timothy Carter reveals, "we all loved the Star Wars movies when we were younger, and so we naturally look forward to a continuation of those films" (9). The 1980s has often been portrayed as a bad time, of Thatcher and Reagan, cold war brinkmanship, youth unemployment and HIV. For those who were children and (amorphously phrased) 'young adults' of this era, the popular memory is of fluorescent fingerless gloves, Ray Bans, 'Choose Life' t-shirts and bubble skirts. It was an era of styling mousse, big hair, the Wham tan, Kylie and Jason and Rick Astley's dancing. Star Wars action figures gave the films a tangibility, holding the future of the rebellion in our hands (literally). These memories clumsily slop into the cup of the present. The problem with 'youth' is that it is semiotically too rich: the expression is understood, but not explained, by discourses as varied as the educational system, family structures, leisure industries and legal, medical and psychological institutions. It is a term of saturation, where normality is taught, and deviance is monitored. All cultural studies theorists carry the baggage of the Birmingham Centre into any history of youth culture. The taken-for-granted 'youth as resistance' mantra, embodied in Resistance through Rituals and Subculture: The Meaning of Style, transformed young people into the ventriloquist's puppet of cultural studies. The strings of the dancing, smoking, swearing and drinking puppet took many years to cut. The feminist blade of Angela McRobbie did some damage to the fraying filaments, as did Dick Hebdige's reflexive corrections in Hiding in the Light. However, the publications, promotion and pedagogy of Gen X ended the theoretical charade. Gen X, the media sophisticates, played with popular culture, rather than 'proper politics.' In Coupland's Generation X, Claire, one of the main characters believed that "Either our lives become stories, or there's just no way to get through them." ... We know that this is why the three of us left our lives behind us and came to the desert -- to tell stories and to make our own lives worthwhile tales in the process. (8) Television and film are part of this story telling process. This intense connection generated an ironic and reflexive literacy in the media. Television became the basis for personal pleasures and local resistances, resulting in a disciplined mobilisation of popular cultural surfaces. Even better than the real thing. As the youngest of Generation Xers are now in their late twenties, they have moved from McJobs to careers. Robert Kizlik, a teacher trainer at an American community college expressed horror as the lack of 'commonsensical knowledge' from his new students. He conducted a survey for teachers training in the social sciences, assessing their grasp of history. There was one hundred percent recognition of such names as Madonna, Mike Tyson, and Sharon Stone, but they hardly qualify as important social studies content ... . I wondered silently just what it is that these students are going to teach when they become employed ... . The deeper question is not that we have so many high school graduates and third and fourth year college students who are devoid of basic information about American history and culture, but rather, how, in the first place, these students came to have the expectations that they could become teachers. (n. pag.) Kizlik's fear is that the students, regardless of their enthusiasm, had poor recognition of knowledge he deemed significant and worthy. His teaching task, to convince students of the need for non-popular cultural knowledges, has resulted in his course being termed 'boring' or 'hard'. He has been unable to reconcile the convoluted connections between personal stories and televisual narratives. I am reminded (perhaps unhelpfully) of one of the most famous filmic teachers, Mr Holland. Upon being attacked by his superiors for using rock and roll in his classes, he replied that he would use anything to instil in his students a love of music. Working with, rather than against, popular culture is an obvious pedagogical imperative. George Lucas has, for example, confirmed the Oprahfied spirituality of the current age. Obviously Star Wars utilises fables, myths3 and fairy tales to summon the beautiful Princess, the gallant hero and the evil Empire, but has become something more. Star Wars slots cleanly into an era of Body Shop Feminism, John Gray's gender politics and Rikki Lake's relationship management. Brian Johnson and Susan Oh argued that the film is actually a new religion. A long time ago in a galaxy far far away -- late 1970s California -- the known universe of George Lucas came into being. In the beginning, George created Star Wars. And the screen was without form, and void. And George said, 'Let there be light', and there was Industrial Light and Magic. And George divided the light from the darkness, with light sabres, and called the darkness the Evil Empire.... And George saw that it was good. (14) The writers underestimate the profound emotional investment placed in the trilogy by millions of people. Genesis narratives describe the Star Wars phenomenon, but do not analyse it. The reason why the films are important is not only because they are a replacement for religion. Instead, they are an integrated component of popular memory. Johnson and Oh have underestimated the influence of pop culture as "the new religion" (14). It is not a form of cheap grace. The history of ideas is neither linear nor traceable. There is no clear path from Plato to Prozac or Moses to Mogadon. Obi-Wan Kenobi is not a personal trainer for the ailing spirituality of our age. It was Ewan McGregor who fulfilled the Xer dream to be the young Obi Wan. As he has stated, "there is nothing cooler than being a Jedi knight" (qtd. in Grant 15). Having survived feet sawing in Shallow Grave and a painfully large enema in Trainspotting, there are few actors who are better prepared to carry the iconographic burden of a Star Wars prequel. Born in 1971, he is the Molly Ringwall of the 1990s. There is something delicious about the new Obi Wan, that hails what Hicks described as "a sense of awareness and self- awareness, of detached observation, of not taking things seriously, and a use of subtle dry humour" (79). The metaphoric light sabre was passed to McGregor. The pull of the dark side. When fans attend The Phantom Menace, they tend to the past, as to a loved garden. Whether this memory is a monument or a ruin depends on the preservation of the analogue world in the digital realm. The most significant theoretical and discursive task in the present is to disrupt the dual ideologies punctuating the contemporary era: inevitable technological change and progress.4 Only then may theorists ponder the future of a digitised past. Disempowered groups, who were denied a voice and role in the analogue history of the twentieth century, will have inequalities reified and reinforced through the digital archiving of contemporary life. The Web has been pivotal to the new Star Wars film. Lucasfilm has an Internet division and an official Website. Between mid November and May, this site has been accessed twenty million times (Gallott 15). Other sites, such as TheForce.net and Countdown to Star Wars, are a record of the enthusiasm and passion of fans. As Daniel Fallon and Matthew Buchanan have realised, "these sites represent the ultimate in film fandom -- virtual communities where like-minded enthusiasts can bathe in the aura generated by their favourite masterpiece" (27). Screensavers, games, desktop wallpaper, interviews and photo galleries have been downloaded and customised. Some ephemeral responses to The Phantom Menace have been digitally recorded. Yet this moment of audience affectivity will be lost without a consideration of digital memory. The potentials and problems of the digital and analogue environments need to be oriented into critical theories of information, knowledge, entertainment and pleasure. The binary language of computer-mediated communication allows a smooth transference of data. Knowledge and meaning systems are not exchanged as easily. Classifying, organising and preserving information make it useful. Archival procedures have been both late and irregular in their application.5 Bocher and Ihlenfeldt assert that 2500 new web sites are coming on-line every day ("A Higher Signal-to-Noise Ratio"). The difficulties and problems confronting librarians and archivists who wish to preserve digital information is revealed in the Australian government's PADI (Preserving Access to Digital Information) Site. Compared with an object in a museum which may lie undisturbed for years in a storeroom, or a book on a shelf, or even Egyptian hieroglyd on the wall of a tomb, digital information requires much more active maintenance. If we want access to digital information in the future, we must plan and act now. (PADI, "Why Preserve Access to Digital Information?") phics carve The speed of digitisation means that responsibility for preserving cultural texts, and the skills necessary to enact this process, is increasing the pressure facing information professionals. An even greater difficulty when preserving digital information is what to keep, and what to release to the ephemeral winds of cyberspace. 'Qualitative criteria' construct an historical record that restates the ideologies of the powerful. Concerns with quality undermine the voices of the disempowered, displaced and decentred. The media's instability through technological obsolescence adds a time imperative that is absent from other archival discussions.6 While these problems have always taken place in the analogue world, there was a myriad of alternative sites where ephemeral material was stored, such as the family home. Popular cultural information will suffer most from the 'blind spots' of digital archivists. While libraries rarely preserve the ephemera of a time, many homes (including mine) preserve the 'trash' of a culture. A red light sabre, toy dalek, Duran Duran posters and a talking Undertaker are all traces of past obsessions and fandoms. Passion evaporates, and interests morph into new trends. These objects remain in attics, under beds, in boxes and sheds throughout the world. Digital documents necessitate a larger project of preservation, with great financial (and spatial) commitments of technology, software and maintenance. Libraries rarely preserve the ephemera -- the texture and light -- of the analogue world. The digital era reduces the number of fan-based archivists. Subsequently forfeited is the spectrum of interests and ideologies that construct the popular memory of a culture. Once bits replace atoms, the recorded world becomes structured by digital codes. Only particular texts will be significant enough to store digitally. Samuel Florman stated that "in the digital age nothing need be lost; do we face the prospect of drowning in trivia as the generations succeed each other?" (n. pag.) The trivia of academics may be the fodder (and pleasures) of everyday life. Digitised preservation, like analogue preservation, can never 'represent' plural paths through the past. There is always a limit and boundary to what is acceptable obsolescence. The Star Wars films suggests that "the whole palette of digital technology is much more subtle and supple; if you can dream it, you can see it" (Corliss 65). This film will also record how many of the dreams survive and are archived. Films, throughout the century, have changed the way in which we construct and remember the past. They convey an expressive memory, rather than an accurate history. Certainly, Star Wars is only a movie. Yet, as Rushkoff has suggested, "we have developed a new language of references and self-references that identify media as a real thing and media history as an actual social history" (32). The build up in Australia to The Phantom Menace has been wilfully joyful. This is a history of the present, a time which I know will, in retrospect, be remembered with great fondness. It is a collective event for a generation, but it speaks to us all in different ways. At ten, it is easy to be amazed and enthralled at popular culture. By thirty, it is more difficult. When we see Star Wars, we go back to visit our memories. With red light sabre in hand, we splice through time, as much as space. Footnotes The United States release of the film occurred on 19 May 1999. In Australia, the film's first screenings were on 3 June. Many cinemas showed The Phantom Menace at 12:01 am, (very) early Thursday morning. The three main players of the GNW team, Paul McDermott, Mikey Robbins and Julie McCrossin, were featured on the cover of Australia's Juice magazine in costumes from The Phantom Menace, being Obi-Wan, Yoda and Queen Amidala respectively. Actually, the National Air and Space Museum had a Star Wars exhibition in 1997, titled "Star Wars: The Magic of Myth". For example, Janet Collins, Michael Hammond and Jerry Wellington, in Teaching and Learning with the Media, stated that "the message is simple: we now have the technology to inform, entertain and educate. Miss it and you, your family and your school will be left behind" (3). Herb Brody described the Net as "an overstuffed, underorganised attic full of pictures and documents that vary wildly in value", in "Wired Science". The interesting question is, whose values will predominate when the attic is being cleared and sorted? This problem is extended because the statutory provision of legal deposit, which obliges publishers to place copies of publications in the national library of the country in which the item is published, does not include CD-ROMs or software. References Bocher, Bob, and Kay Ihlenfeldt. "A Higher Signal-to-Noise Ratio: Effective Use of WebSearch Engines." State of Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction Website. 13 Mar. 1998. 15 June 1999 <http://www.dpi.state.wi.us/dpi/dlcl/lbstat/search2.php>. Brody, Herb. "Wired Science." Technology Review Oct. 1996. 15 June 1999 <http://www.techreview.com/articles/oct96/brody.php>. Carter, Timothy. "Wars Weary." Cinescape 39 (Mar./Apr. 1999): 9. Collins, Janet, Michael Hammond, and Jerry Wellington. Teaching and Learning with Multimedia. London: Routledge, 1997. Corliss, Richard. "Ready, Set, Glow!" Time 18 (3 May 1999): 65. Count Down to Star Wars. 1999. 15 June 1999 <http://starwars.countingdown.com/>. Coupland, Douglas. Generation X. London: Abacus, 1991. Eco, Umberto. Travels in Hyper-Reality. London: Picador, 1987. Fallon, Daniel, and Matthew Buchanan. "Now Screening." Australian Net Guide 4.5 (June 1999): 27. Florman, Samuel. "From Here to Eternity." MIT's Technology Review 100.3 (Apr. 1997). Gallott, Kirsten. "May the Web Be with you." Who Weekly 24 May 1999: 15. Grant, Fiona. "Ewan's Star Soars!" TV Week 29 May - 4 June 1999: 15. Hall, Stuart, and Tony Jefferson, eds. Resistance through Rituals. London: Hutchinson, 1976. Harris, David. From Class Struggle to the Politics of Pleasure: the Effects of Gramscianism on Cultural Studies. London: Routledge, 1992. Hebdige, Dick. Hiding in the Light. London: Routledge, 1988. Hopkins, Susan. "Generation Pulp." Youth Studies Australia Spring 1995. Johnson, Brian, and Susan Oh. "The Second Coming: as the Newest Star Wars Film Illustrates, Pop Culture Has Become a New Religion." Maclean's 24 May 1999: 14-8. Juice 78 (June 1999). Kizlik, Robert. "Generation X Wants to Teach." International Journal of Instructional Media 26.2 (Spring 1999). Lucasfilm Ltd. Star Wars: Welcome to the Official Site. 1999. 15 June 1999 <http://www.starwars.com/>. Miller, Nick. "Generation X-Wing Fighter." The West Australian 4 June 1999: 9. PADI. "What Digital Information Should be Preserved? Appraisal and Selection." Preserving Access to Digital Information (PADI) Website. 11 March 1999. 15 June 1999 <http://www.nla.gov.au/padi/what.php>. PADI. "Why Preserve Access to Digital Information?" Preserving Access to Digital Information (PADI) Website. <http://www.nla.gov.au/padi/why.php>. Rushkoff, Douglas. Media Virus. Sydney: Random House, 1994. Citation reference for this article MLA style: Tara Brabazon. "A Red Light Sabre to Go, and Other Histories of the Present." M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 2.4 (1999). [your date of access] <http://www.uq.edu.au/mc/9906/sabre.php>. Chicago style: Tara Brabazon, "A Red Light Sabre to Go, and Other Histories of the Present," M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 2, no. 4 (1999), <http://www.uq.edu.au/mc/9906/sabre.php> ([your date of access]). APA style: Tara Brabazon. (1999) A red light sabre to go, and other histories of the present. M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 2(4). <http://www.uq.edu.au/mc/9906/sabre.php> ([your date of access]).

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Abstract:

There is, in our sense of place, little cognisance of what lies underground. Yet our sense of place, instinctive, unconscious, primeval, has its own underground: the secret spaces which mirror our insides; the world beneath the skin. Our roots lie beneath the ground, with the minerals and the dead. (Hughes 83) The-Home-and-Away-Game Imagine the earth-grounded, “diagrammatological” trajectory of a footballer who as one member of a team is psyching himself up before the start of a game. The siren blasts its trumpet call. The footballer bursts out of the pavilion (where this psyching up has taken place) to engage in the opening bounce or kick of the game. And then: running, leaping, limping after injury, marking, sliding, kicking, and possibly even passing out from concussion. Finally, the elation accompanying the final siren, after which hugs, handshakes and raised fists conclude the actual match on the football oval. This exit from the pavilion, the course the player takes during the game itself, and return to the pavilion, forms a combination of stasis and movement, and a return to exhausted stasis again, that every player engages with regardless of the game code. Examined from a “diagrammatological” perspective, a perspective Rowan Wilken (following in the path of Gilles Deleuze and W. J. T. Mitchell) understands as “a generative process: a ‘metaphor’ or way of thinking — diagrammatic, diagrammatological thinking — which in turn, is linked to poetic thinking” (48), this footballer’s scenario arises out of an aerial perspective that depicts the actual spatial trajectory the player takes during the course of a game. It is a diagram that is digitally encoded via a sensor on the footballer’s body, and being an electronically encoded diagram it can also make available multiple sets of data such as speed, heartbeat, blood pressure, maybe even brain-wave patterns. From this limited point of view there is only one footballer’s playing trajectory to consider; various groupings within the team, the whole team itself, and the diagrammatological depiction of its games with various other teams might also be possible. This singular imagining though is itself an actuality: as a diagram it is encoded as a graphic image by a satellite hovering around the earth with a Global Positioning System (GPS) reading the sensor attached to the footballer which then digitally encodes this diagrammatological trajectory for appraisal later by the player, coach, team and management. In one respect, this practice is another example of a willing self-surveillance critical to explaining the reflexive subject and its attribute of continuous self-improvement. According to Docker, Official Magazine of the Fremantle Football Club, this is a technique the club uses as a part of game/play assessment, a system that can provide a “running map” for each player equipped with such a tracking device during a game. As the Fremantle Club’s Strength and Conditioning Coach Ben Tarbox says of this tactic, “We’re getting a physiological profile that has started to build a really good picture of how individual players react during a game” (21). With a little extra effort (and some sizeable computer processing grunt) this two dimensional linear graphic diagram of a footballer working the football ground could also form the raw material for a three-dimensional animation, maybe a virtual reality game, even a hologram. It could also be used to sideline a non-performing player. Now try another related but different imagining: what if this diagrammatological trajectory could be enlarged a little to include the possibility that this same player’s movements could be mapped out by the idea of home-and-away games; say over the course of a season, maybe even a whole career, for instance? No doubt, a wide range of differing diagrammatological perspectives might suggest themselves. My own particular refinement of this movement/stasis on the footballer’s part suggests my own distinctive comings and goings to and from my own specific piece of home country. And in this incessantly domestic/real world reciprocity, in this diurnally repetitive leaving and coming back to home country, might it be plausible to think of “Home as Capital of the Region”? If, as Walter Benjamin suggests in the prelude to his monumental Arcades Project, “Paris — the Capital of the Nineteenth Century,” could it be that both in and through my comings and goings to and from this selfsame home country, my own burgeoning sense of regionality is constituted in every minute-by-minutiae of lived experience? Could it be that this feeling about home is manifested in my every day-to-night manoeuvre of home-and-away-and-away-and-home-making, of every singular instance of exit, play/engage, and the return home? “Home, Capital of the Region” then examines the idea that my home is that part of the country which is the still-point of eternal return, the bedrock to which I retreat after the daily grind, and the point from which I start out and do it all again the next day. It employs, firstly, this ‘diagrammatological’ perspective to illustrate the point that this stasis/movement across country can make an electronic record of my own psychic self-surveillance and actualisation in-situ. And secondly, the architectural plan of the domestic home (examined through the perspective of critical regionalism) is used as a conduit to illustrate how I am physically embedded in country. Lastly, intermingling these digressive threads is chora, Plato’s notion of embodied place and itself an ancient regional rendering of this eternal return to the beginning, the place where the essential diversity of country decisively enters the soul. Chora: Core of Regionality Kevin Lynch writes that, “Our senses are local, while our experience is regional” (10), a combination that suggests this regional emphasis on home-and-away-making might be a useful frame of reference (simultaneously spatiotemporal, both a visceral and encoded communication) for me to include as a crucial vector in my own life-long learning package. Regionality (as, variously, a sub-generic categorisation and an extension/concentration of nationality, as well as a recently re-emerged friend/antagonist to a global understanding) infuses my world of home with a grounded footing in country, one that is a site of an Eternal Return to the Beginning in the micro-world of the everyday. This is a point John Sallis discusses at length in his analysis of Plato’s Timaeus and its founding notion of regionality: chora. More extended absences away from home-base are of course possible but one’s return to home on most days and for most nights is a given of post/modern, maybe even of ancient everyday experience. Even for the continually shifting nomad, nightfall in some part of the country brings the rest and recreation necessary for the next day’s wanderings. This fundamental question of an Eternal Return to the Beginning arises as a crucial element of the method in Plato’s Timaeus, a seemingly “unstructured” mythic/scientific dialogue about the origins and structure of both the psychically and the physically implaced world. In the Timaeus, “incoherence is especially obvious in the way the natural sequence in which a narrative would usually unfold is interrupted by regressions, corrections, repetitions, and abrupt new beginnings” (Gadamer 160). Right in the middle of the Timaeus, in between its sections on the “Work of Reason” and the “Work of Necessity”, sits chora, both an actual spatial and bodily site where my being intersects with my becoming, and where my lived life criss-crosses the various arts necessary to articulating a recorded version of that life. Every home is a grounded chora-logical timespace harness guiding its occupant’s thoughts, feelings and actions. My own regionally implaced chora (an example of which is the diagrammatological trajectory already outlined above as my various everyday comings and goings, of me acting in and projecting myself into context) could in part be understood as a graphical realisation of the extent of my movements and stationary rests in my own particular timespace trajectory. The shorthand for this process is ‘embedded’. Gregory Ulmer writes of chora that, “While chorography as a term is close to choreography, it duplicates a term that already exists in the discipline of geography, thus establishing a valuable resonance for a rhetoric of invention concerned with the history of ‘place’ in relation to memory” (Heuretics 39, original italics). Chorography is the geographic discipline for the systematic study and analysis of regions. Chora, home, country and regionality thus form an important multi-dimensional zone of interplay in memorialising the game of everyday life. In light of these observations I might even go so far as to suggest that this diagrammatological trajectory (being both digital and GPS originated) is part of the increasingly electrate condition that guides the production of knowledge in any global/regional context. This last point is a contextual connection usefully examined in Alan J. Scott’s Regions and the World Economy: The Coming Shape of Global Production, Competition, and Political Order and Michael Storper’s The Regional World: Territorial Development in a Global Economy. Their analyses explicitly suggest that the symbiosis between globalisation and regionalisation has been gathering pace since at least the end of World War Two and the Bretton Woods agreement. Our emerging understanding of electracy also happens to be Gregory Ulmer’s part-remedy for shifting the ground under the intense debates surrounding il/literacy in the current era (see, in particular, Internet Invention). And, for Tony Bennett, Michael Emmison and John Frow’s analysis of “Australian Everyday Cultures” (“Media Culture and the Home” 57–86), it is within the home that our un.conscious understanding of electronic media is at its most intense, a pattern that emerges in the longer term through receiving telegrams, compiling photo albums, listening to the radio, home- and video-movies, watching the evening news on television, and logging onto the computer in the home-office, media-room or home-studio. These various generalisations (along with this diagrammatological view of my comings and goings to and from the built space of home), all point indiscriminately to a productive confusion surrounding the sedentary and nomadic opposition/conjunction. If natural spaces are constituted in nouns like oceans, forests, plains, grasslands, steppes, deserts, rivers, tidal interstices, farmland etc. (and each categorisation here relies on the others for its existence and demarcation) then built space is often seen as constituting its human sedentary equivalent. For Deleuze and Guatteri (in A Thousand Plateaus, “1227: Treatise on Nomadology — The War Machine”) these natural spaces help instigate a nomadic movement across localities and regions. From a nomadology perspective, these smooth spaces unsettle a scientific, numerical calculation, sometimes even aesthetic demarcation and order. If they are marked at all, it is by heterogenous and differential forces, energised through constantly oscillating intensities. A Thousand Plateaus is careful though not to elevate these smooth nomadic spaces over the more sedentary spaces of culture and power (372–373). Nonetheless, as Edward S. Casey warns, “In their insistence on becoming and movement, however, the authors of A Thousand Plateaus overlook the placial potential of settled dwelling — of […] ‘built places’” (309, original italics). Sedentary, settled dwelling centred on home country may have a crust of easy legibility and order about it but it also formats a locally/regionally specific nomadic quality, a point underscored above in the diagrammatological perspective. The sedentary tendency also emerges once again in relation to home in the architectural drafting of the domestic domicile. The Real Estate Revolution When Captain Cook planted the British flag in the sand at Botany Bay in 1770 and declared the country it spiked as Crown Land and henceforth will come under the ownership of an English sovereign, it was also the moment when white Australia’s current fascination with real estate was conceived. In the wake of this spiking came the intense anxiety over Native Title that surfaced in late twentieth century Australia when claims of Indigenous land grabs would repossess suburban homes. While easily dismissed as hyperbole, a rhetorical gesture intended to arouse this very anxiety, its emergence is nonetheless an indication of the potential for political and psychic unsettling at the heart of the ownership and control of built place, or ‘settled dwelling’ in the Australian context. And here it would be wise to include not just the gridded, architectural quality of home-building and home-making, but also the home as the site of the family romance, another source of unsettling as much as a peaceful calming. Spreading out from the boundaries of the home are the built spaces of fences, bridges, roads, railways, airport terminals (along with their interconnecting pathways), which of course brings us back to the communications infrastructure which have so often followed alongside the development of transport infrastructure. These and other elements represent this conglomerate of built space, possibly the most significant transformation of natural space that humanity has brought about. For the purposes of this meditation though it is the more personal aspect of built space — my home and regional embeddedness, along with their connections into the global electrosphere — that constitutes the primary concern here. For a sedentary, striated space to settle into an unchallenged existence though requires a repression of the highest order, primarily because of the home’s proximity to everyday life, of the latter’s now fading ability to sometimes leave its presuppositions well enough alone. In settled, regionally experienced space, repressions are more difficult to abstract away, they are lived with on a daily basis, which also helps to explain the extra intensity brought to their sometimes-unsettling quality. Inversely, and encased in this globalised electro-spherical ambience, home cannot merely be a place where one dwells within avoiding those presuppositions, I take them with me when I travel and they come back with me from afar. This is a point obliquely reflected in Pico Iyer’s comment that “Australians have so flexible a sense of home, perhaps, that they can make themselves at home anywhere” (185). While our sense of home may well be, according to J. Douglas Porteous, “the territorial core” of our being, when other arrangements of space and knowledge shift it must inevitably do so as well. In these shifts of spatial affiliation (aided and abetted by regionalisation, globalisation and electronic knowledge), the built place of home can no longer be considered exclusively under the illusion of an autonomous sanctuary wholly guaranteed by capitalist property relations, one of the key factors in its attraction. These shifts in the cultural, economic and psychic relation of home to country are important to a sense of local and regional implacement. The “feeling” of autonomy and security involved in home occupation and/or ownership designates a component of this implacement, a point leading to Eric Leed’s comment that, “By the sixteenth century, literacy had become one of the definitive signs — along with the possession of property and a permanent residence — of an independent social status” (53). Globalising and regionalising forces make this feeling of autonomy and security dynamic, shifting the ground of home, work-place practices and citizenship allegiances in the process. Gathering these wide-ranging forces impacting on psychic and built space together is the emergence of critical regionalism as a branch of architectonics, considered here as a theory of domestic architecture. Critical Regionality Critical regionalism emerged out of the collective thinking of Liane Lefaivre and Alexander Tzonis (Tropical Architecture; Critical Regionalism), and as these authors themselves acknowledge, was itself deeply influenced by the work of Lewis Mumford during the first part of the twentieth century when he was arguing against the authority of the international style in architecture, a style epitomised by the Bauhaus movement. It is Kenneth Frampton’s essay, “Towards a Critical Regionalism: Six Points for an Architecture of Resistance” that deliberately takes this question of critical regionalism and makes it a part of a domestic architectonic project. In many ways the ideas critical regionalism espouses can themselves be a microcosm of this concomitantly emerging global/regional polis. With public examples of built-form the power of the centre is on display by virtue of a building’s enormous size and frequently high-cultural aesthetic power. This is a fact restated again and again from the ancient world’s agora to Australia’s own political bunker — its Houses of Parliament in Canberra. While Frampton discusses a range of aspects dealing with the universal/implaced axis across his discussion, it is points five and six that deserve attention from a domestically implaced perspective. Under the sub-heading, “Culture Versus Nature: Topography, Context, Climate, Light and Tectonic Form” is where he writes that, Here again, one touches in concrete terms this fundamental opposition between universal civilization and autochthonous culture. The bulldozing of an irregular topography into a flat site is clearly a technocratic gesture which aspires to a condition of absolute placelessness, whereas the terracing of the same site to receive the stepped form of a building is an engagement in the act of “cultivating” the site. (26, original italics) The “totally flat datum” that the universalising tendency sometimes presupposes is, within the critical regionalist perspective, an erroneous assumption. The “cultivation” of a site for the design of a building illustrates the point that built space emerges out of an interaction between parallel phenomena as they contrast and/or converge in a particular set of timespace co-ordinates. These are phenomena that could include (but are not limited to) geomorphic data like soil and rock formations, seismic activity, inclination and declension; climatic considerations in the form of wind patterns, temperature variations, rainfall patterns, available light and dark, humidity and the like; the building context in relation to the cardinal points of north, south, east, and west, along with their intermediary positions. There are also architectural considerations in the form of available building materials and personnel to consider. The social, psychological and cultural requirements of the building’s prospective in-dwellers are intermingled with all these phenomena. This is not so much a question of where to place the air conditioning system but the actuality of the way the building itself is placed on its site, or indeed if that site should be built on at all. A critical regionalist building practice, then, is autochthonous to the degree that a full consideration of this wide range of in-situ interactions is taken into consideration in the development of its design plan. And given this autochthonous quality of the critical regionalist project, it also suggests that the architectural design plan itself (especially when it utilised in conjunction with CAD and virtual reality simulations), might be the better model for designing electrate-centred projects rather than writing or even the script. The proliferation of ‘McMansions’ across many Australian suburbs during the 1990s (generally, oversized domestic buildings designed in the abstract with little or no thought to the above mentioned elements, on bulldozed sites, with powerful air-conditioning systems, and no verandas or roof eves to speak of) demonstrates the continuing influence of a universal, centralising dogma in the realm of built place. As summer temperatures start to climb into the 40°C range all these air-conditioners start to hum in unison, which in turn raises the susceptibility of the supporting infrastructure to collapse under the weight of an overbearing electrical load. The McMansion is a clear example of a built form that is envisioned more so in a drafting room, a space where the architect is remote-sensing the locational specificities. In this envisioning (driven more by a direct line-of-sight idiom dominant in “flat datum” and economic considerations rather than architectural or experiential ones), the tactile is subordinated, which is the subject of Frampton’s sixth point: It is symptomatic of the priority given to sight that we find it necessary to remind ourselves that the tactile is an important dimension in the perception of built form. One has in mind a whole range of complementary sensory perceptions which are registered by the labile body: the intensity of light, darkness, heat and cold; the feeling of humidity; the aroma of material; the almost palpable presence of masonry as the body senses it own confinement; the momentum of an induced gait and the relative inertia of the body as it traverses the floor; the echoing resonance of our own footfall. (28) The point here is clear: in its wider recognition of, and the foregrounding of my body’s full range of sensate capacities in relation to both natural and built space, the critical regionalist approach to built form spreads its meaning-making capacities across a broader range of knowledge modalities. This tactility is further elaborated in more thoroughly personal ways by Margaret Morse in her illuminating essay, “Home: Smell, Taste, Posture, Gleam”. Paradoxically, this synaesthetic, syncretic approach to bodily meaning-making in a built place, regional milieu intensely concentrates the site-centred locus of everyday life, while simultaneously, the electronic knowledge that increasingly underpins it expands both my body’s and its region’s knowledge-making possibilities into a global gestalt, sometimes even a cosmological one. It is a paradoxical transformation that makes us look anew at social, cultural and political givens, even objective and empirical understandings, especially as they are articulated through national frames of reference. Domestic built space then is a kind of micro-version of the multi-function polis where work, pleasure, family, rest, public display and privacy intermingle. So in both this reduction and expansion in the constitution of domestic home life, one that increasingly represents the location of the production of knowledge, built place represents a concentration of energy that forces us to re-imagine border-making, order, and the dynamic interplay of nomadic movement and sedentary return, a point that echoes Nicolas Rothwell’s comment that “every exile has in it a homecoming” (80). Albeit, this is a knowledge-making milieu with an expanded range of modalities incorporated and expressed through a wide range of bodily intensities not simply cognitive ones. Much of the ambiguous discontent manifested in McMansion style domiciles across many Western countries might be traced to the fact that their occupants have had little or no say in the way those domiciles have been designed and/or constructed. In Heidegger’s terms, they have not thought deeply enough about “dwelling” in that building, although with the advent of the media room the question of whether a “building” securely borders both “dwelling” and “thinking” is now open to question. As anxieties over border-making at all scales intensifies, the complexities and un/sureties of natural and built space take ever greater hold of the psyche, sometimes through the advance of a “high level of critical self-consciousness”, a process Frampton describes as a “double mediation” of world culture and local conditions (21). Nearly all commentators warn of a nostalgic, romantic or a sentimental regionalism, the sum total of which is aimed at privileging the local/regional and is sometimes utilised as a means of excluding the global or universal, sometimes even the national (Berry 67). Critical regionalism is itself a mediating factor between these dispositions, working its methods and practices through my own psyche into the local, the regional, the national and the global, rejecting and/or accepting elements of these domains, as my own specific context, in its multiplicity, demands it. If the politico-economic and cultural dimensions of this global/regional world have tended to undermine the process of border-making across a range of scales, we can see in domestic forms of built place the intense residue of both their continuing importance and an increased dependency on this electro-mediated world. This is especially apparent in those domiciles whose media rooms (with their satellite dishes, telephone lines, computers, television sets, games consuls, and music stereos) are connecting them to it in virtuality if not in reality. Indeed, the thought emerges (once again keeping in mind Eric Leed’s remark on the literate-configured sense of autonomy that is further enhanced by a separate physical address and residence) that the intense importance attached to domestically orientated built place by globally/regionally orientated peoples will figure as possibly the most viable means via which this sense of autonomy will transfer to electronic forms of knowledge. If, however, this here domestic habitué turns his gaze away from the screen that transports me into this global/regional milieu and I focus my attention on the physicality of the building in which I dwell, I once again stand in the presence of another beginning. This other beginning is framed diagrammatologically by the building’s architectural plans (usually conceived in either an in-situ, autochthonous, or a universal manner), and is a graphical conception that anchors my body in country long after the architects and builders have packed up their tools and left. This is so regardless of whether a home is built, bought, rented or squatted in. Ihab Hassan writes that, “Home is not where one is pushed into the light, but where one gathers it into oneself to become light” (417), an aphorism that might be rephrased as follows: “Home is not where one is pushed into the country, but where one gathers it into oneself to become country.” For the in-and-out-and-around-and-about domestic dweller of the twenty-first century, then, home is where both regional and global forms of country decisively enter the soul via the conduits of the virtuality of digital flows and the reality of architectural footings. 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