Urbanizing Islands: A Critical History of Singapore's Offshore Islands

While Singapore is often considered an island city in the singular sense, the city-state actually consists of many islands, with the Singapore mainland being by far the largest. While most of these islands traditionally had thriving indigenous communities, all have since been displaced over time as the islands were developed to service Singapore's economic and metabolic needs as a rapidly urbanizing and developing nation. Some of the islands have also undergone considerable transformation (through reclamation) which has had significant impacts on the ecologies of the offshore islands. This simultaneously allowed for the ‘ruralization’ of mainland Singapore to provide more green space for nature conservation, recreation and leisure. This paper will provide a brief history of these transformations, drawing on specific examples which serve to illustrate how Singapore's offshore islands have been redeveloped over time to service the nation-state and in response to the changing needs of the urban core. In doing so, the paper examines how spaces on the urban periphery are deeply bound up with processes of ‘urbanization’, given their important role in processes of urban metabolism. In this way, the paper contributes to recent work in urban political ecology which has sought to trace processes of urbanization beyond the city and render visible the socio-environmental inequalities produced therein.

'Something entirely new': A Critical History of An Béal Bocht, 1941–75

This article reconstructs an early reception of Brian Ó Nualláin’s An Béal Bocht (1941) in which the novel was hailed as a breakthrough work that advanced the Irish-language prose tradition and promised to win new readers of Irish. The story of how this initial enthusiasm hardened into a critical diminishment of Ó Nualláin’s achievement as an obscure parody involves the author’s own efforts to associate the novel with Tomás Ó Criomhthain’s An tOileánach, the dampening of the optimism which surrounded the Irish language in the 1940s, and the impact of Patrick C. Power’s translation, The Poor Mouth, on how An Béal Bocht was understood. By charting the evolution of An Béal Bocht’s reception history, this article furthers contemporary scholarship on the promise Ó Nualláin’s novel still holds for Irish-language prose.

Thinking differently about leadership: a critical history of the form and formation of leadership studies

<p>We have come to live in an age where leadership is the solution, regardless of the problem. Today, managers are called on to provide leadership which is ‘visionary’, ‘charismatic’, ‘transformational’ and ‘authentic’ in nature. This is what ‘followers’ are said to need to perform to their potential. The efforts of the academy in promoting these ideas means they are typically understood as modern, enlightened and grounded in scientific research. Taking a critical step back, this study examines why we have come to understand leadership in this way. Adopting a Foucauldian methodology, the study comprises three case studies which examine Classical Greek, 16th century European and modern scholarly discourses on leadership. The analysis foregrounds change and continuity in leadership thought and examines the underpinning assumptions, problematizations and processes of formation which gave rise to these truth claims. The relationship and subjectivity effects produced by these discourses along with their wider social function are also considered. What the study reveals is that our current understanding of leadership is not grounded in an approach more enlightened and truthful than anything that has come before. Rather, just as at other times in the past, it is contemporary problematizations, politically-informed processes of formation and the epistemological and methodological preferences of our age which profoundly shape what is understood to constitute the truth about leadership. Through showing how leadership has been thought of at different points in time, this thesis argues that far from being a stable enduring fact of human nature now revealed to us by modern science, as is typically assumed, leadership is most usefully understood as an unstable social invention, morphing in form, function and effect in response to changing norms, values and circumstances. Consistent with this understanding, a new approach to theory-building for organizational leadership studies is offered. This study shows, then, why we ought to think differently about leadership and offers a means by which this can occur.</p>

Thinking differently about leadership: a critical history of the form and formation of leadership studies

<p>We have come to live in an age where leadership is the solution, regardless of the problem. Today, managers are called on to provide leadership which is ‘visionary’, ‘charismatic’, ‘transformational’ and ‘authentic’ in nature. This is what ‘followers’ are said to need to perform to their potential. The efforts of the academy in promoting these ideas means they are typically understood as modern, enlightened and grounded in scientific research. Taking a critical step back, this study examines why we have come to understand leadership in this way. Adopting a Foucauldian methodology, the study comprises three case studies which examine Classical Greek, 16th century European and modern scholarly discourses on leadership. The analysis foregrounds change and continuity in leadership thought and examines the underpinning assumptions, problematizations and processes of formation which gave rise to these truth claims. The relationship and subjectivity effects produced by these discourses along with their wider social function are also considered. What the study reveals is that our current understanding of leadership is not grounded in an approach more enlightened and truthful than anything that has come before. Rather, just as at other times in the past, it is contemporary problematizations, politically-informed processes of formation and the epistemological and methodological preferences of our age which profoundly shape what is understood to constitute the truth about leadership. Through showing how leadership has been thought of at different points in time, this thesis argues that far from being a stable enduring fact of human nature now revealed to us by modern science, as is typically assumed, leadership is most usefully understood as an unstable social invention, morphing in form, function and effect in response to changing norms, values and circumstances. Consistent with this understanding, a new approach to theory-building for organizational leadership studies is offered. This study shows, then, why we ought to think differently about leadership and offers a means by which this can occur.</p>

“To Leaven the Lump”: A Critical History of the Anglican Pacifist Fellowship in New Zealand

<p>This thesis is an interpretation of the history and character of the Anglican Pacifist Fellowship in New Zealand (NZAPF). It focuses on accounting for the limited growth and influence of the Fellowship upon New Zealand’s largest Christian denomination, and on the continuing marginality of the pacifist position. Throughout its history, the organisation has sought to convince others within the Anglican Church that an absolutist, politically engaged and non-anarchistic pacifism is the truest Christian response to the problem of modern warfare. This has been attempted primarily through efforts at education aimed at both clergy and laity. The thesis argues that the NZAPF has been characterised by a commitment to absolute doctrinaire pacifism, despite ongoing tensions between this position and more pragmatic considerations. Overall, the NZAPF attracted only a small group of members throughout its history, and it exerted a limited demonstrable influence on the Anglican Church. This thesis analyses the reasons for this, focusing especially on those factors which arose from the nature of the NZAPF itself, the character of its pacifism, and the relationship between the NZAPF and its primary target audience, the Anglican Church in New Zealand. The research is based on literature and correspondence from the NZAPF as well as personal communication with extant members, where this was feasible. It additionally draws on a range of relevant secondary literature on Christian pacifism, and the history of the Anglican Church and the peace movement in New Zealand.</p>

“To Leaven the Lump”: A Critical History of the Anglican Pacifist Fellowship in New Zealand

<p>This thesis is an interpretation of the history and character of the Anglican Pacifist Fellowship in New Zealand (NZAPF). It focuses on accounting for the limited growth and influence of the Fellowship upon New Zealand’s largest Christian denomination, and on the continuing marginality of the pacifist position. Throughout its history, the organisation has sought to convince others within the Anglican Church that an absolutist, politically engaged and non-anarchistic pacifism is the truest Christian response to the problem of modern warfare. This has been attempted primarily through efforts at education aimed at both clergy and laity. The thesis argues that the NZAPF has been characterised by a commitment to absolute doctrinaire pacifism, despite ongoing tensions between this position and more pragmatic considerations. Overall, the NZAPF attracted only a small group of members throughout its history, and it exerted a limited demonstrable influence on the Anglican Church. This thesis analyses the reasons for this, focusing especially on those factors which arose from the nature of the NZAPF itself, the character of its pacifism, and the relationship between the NZAPF and its primary target audience, the Anglican Church in New Zealand. The research is based on literature and correspondence from the NZAPF as well as personal communication with extant members, where this was feasible. It additionally draws on a range of relevant secondary literature on Christian pacifism, and the history of the Anglican Church and the peace movement in New Zealand.</p>

Negotiating Boundaries: The Nurse Family Member Caring for Her Own Relative in Palliative Care

<p>This research illuminates the challenges of living well within one's own family as a nurse caring for her own relative who is dying of a cancer-related illness. Developing a deeper awareness of the consequences of this caring work has been the central focus for inquiry in this research. Nursing requires epistemologies that encompass new ways of understanding how we live within our own families and communities and practice as nurses. The theoretical framework that guides this research interprets the French Philosopher Michel Foucault's (1926-1984) critical history of thought as an ethical project for nursing. It uses conceptual tools developed in his later writing and interviews to draw attention to how discursive knowledge and practices constitute subjectivity in relations of truth, power and the self's relation to the self. The first aspect of the analysis, landscapes of care examines the techniques of discourse as relations of power and knowledge that constitute nurse family members as subjects who have relationships with their own families and other health professionals. The second aspect analyses care of the self and others as self work undertaken to form the self as a particular kind of subject and achieve mastery over one's thoughts and actions. Nurses are called to care because they are present within their families with knowledge and expertise that makes a difference to how a dying relative experiences palliative care. Caring discourse positions nurses with responsibilities to their own; responsibilities that require sensitivity in knowing how to negotiate the relational spaces that constitute relationships with other family members and health professionals. Family discourse calls nurse family members to care as daughters, daughters-in-law, wives or mothers within normative understandings about the obligations that families have to care for their ill or dependent members. The discourse of expertise in knowing as a nurse positions nurse family members as interpreters of information for their families and observers who use their inside knowledge of how the health system works to watch over the ill person's clinical care. This expertise, which becomes visible as the exercise of professional authority in practising nursing, challenges the normative frameworks that classify and demarcate professional and lay roles in caring for the dying person. As an exploration of the complex and contradictory subjectivities of the nurse family member, this research illuminates the forms and limits of nursing practice knowledge. It shows how nursing is practised, and the identity of the nurse is created, through intellectual, political and relational work, undertaken on the self in relation to others, as modes of ethical engagement. Within this ethical engagement, nurse family members work to transform the self into discursive subjects, with the knowledge, skills and other capacities that are necessary to honour their commitments and responsibilities for care of another person. The experience of caring for their own relative transforms nurse family members' previously held values about how nurses ought to be with others in their professional work, creating a deeper sense of interest in and concern for the vulnerability of other people in palliative care.</p>

Negotiating Boundaries: The Nurse Family Member Caring for Her Own Relative in Palliative Care

<p>This research illuminates the challenges of living well within one's own family as a nurse caring for her own relative who is dying of a cancer-related illness. Developing a deeper awareness of the consequences of this caring work has been the central focus for inquiry in this research. Nursing requires epistemologies that encompass new ways of understanding how we live within our own families and communities and practice as nurses. The theoretical framework that guides this research interprets the French Philosopher Michel Foucault's (1926-1984) critical history of thought as an ethical project for nursing. It uses conceptual tools developed in his later writing and interviews to draw attention to how discursive knowledge and practices constitute subjectivity in relations of truth, power and the self's relation to the self. The first aspect of the analysis, landscapes of care examines the techniques of discourse as relations of power and knowledge that constitute nurse family members as subjects who have relationships with their own families and other health professionals. The second aspect analyses care of the self and others as self work undertaken to form the self as a particular kind of subject and achieve mastery over one's thoughts and actions. Nurses are called to care because they are present within their families with knowledge and expertise that makes a difference to how a dying relative experiences palliative care. Caring discourse positions nurses with responsibilities to their own; responsibilities that require sensitivity in knowing how to negotiate the relational spaces that constitute relationships with other family members and health professionals. Family discourse calls nurse family members to care as daughters, daughters-in-law, wives or mothers within normative understandings about the obligations that families have to care for their ill or dependent members. The discourse of expertise in knowing as a nurse positions nurse family members as interpreters of information for their families and observers who use their inside knowledge of how the health system works to watch over the ill person's clinical care. This expertise, which becomes visible as the exercise of professional authority in practising nursing, challenges the normative frameworks that classify and demarcate professional and lay roles in caring for the dying person. As an exploration of the complex and contradictory subjectivities of the nurse family member, this research illuminates the forms and limits of nursing practice knowledge. It shows how nursing is practised, and the identity of the nurse is created, through intellectual, political and relational work, undertaken on the self in relation to others, as modes of ethical engagement. Within this ethical engagement, nurse family members work to transform the self into discursive subjects, with the knowledge, skills and other capacities that are necessary to honour their commitments and responsibilities for care of another person. The experience of caring for their own relative transforms nurse family members' previously held values about how nurses ought to be with others in their professional work, creating a deeper sense of interest in and concern for the vulnerability of other people in palliative care.</p>

‘Their lamentable hone’

This chapter examines the sounds and voices of caoineadh (keen), an Irish Gaelic form of lament, associated with performance by women as part of the burial process and with the female expression of political protest. It opens with a study of the sounds of caoineadh, setting non-Gaelic, often travellers’ accounts, from the 1570s through to the 1770s, in context with the genre’s long-established formal conventions of metre, rhyme, and theme. This is grounded in a critical history of the genre and illustrated with examples from the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Questions of oral transmission, performance, textual authority, and authenticity are crucial to the history of the surviving texts and, therefore, central to the discussion.