Sibyl: The Women's College Academic Journal 2017

Sibyl

THE WOMEN’S COLLEGE ACADEMIC JOURNAL Volume 6 / 2017

EDITORIAL BOARD Dr Amanda Bell Dr Tiffany Donnelly Dr Rosemary Hancock Dr Gabrielle Kemmis Dr Tamson Pietsch Dr Chris Rudge Ms Elisabeth Tondl

CONTACT DETAILS The Women’s College The University of Sydney NSW 2006 Australia Phone: +61 2 9517 5000 Web: www.thewomenscollege.com.au Published by: The Women’s College within the University of Sydney, Sydney, Australia 2017

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CONTENTS Introduction TIFFANY DONNELLY

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Guest Article: The Women’s College Ellis Rowan collection DR ANN EYLAND

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STUDENT ARTICLES Mechthild of Magdeburg and Women Claiming Authorship VERONICA MURDOCH

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Assessing Australia’s record on global environmental issues JOSPHINE GOLDMAN

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Nature and a National Canon: On the Dissolution of Generic Boundaries through a Consideration of the Poet’s Relationship to Nature ERIN MCFADYEN

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Foreign Direct Investment and the Case of Toyota SOPHIA ASTON BSc

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‘The Woman in Love’: De Beauvoir’s Relevance to Gender Relations Today ISOBEL MAGRATH

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Starbucks Australia: A Business Case Study LAURA FARQUHAR

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The Claims of a Pluralist Society with a Hegemonic Narrative: The Role of Statues in Maintaining an Exclusive National Narrative.

PHOEBE KAY

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Introduction This sixth volume of the Women’s College academic journal, Sibyl, will come off the presses at a significant time in the physical history of the College. The beginning of the 2018 academic year has also heralded the grand opening of the Sibyl Centre, the first new building constructed on Women’s College grounds in almost fifty years. This graceful structure shares its name with our academic journal through its connection to the literary history of the College. The Sibyl, a female seer who foretells of women’s continued progress through access to education and professional life, is the protagonist of the 1913 play A Mask, commissioned for the College’s twenty-first birthday. The image etched in copper on the façade of the new Sibyl Centre commemorates the Mask in a beautifully tangible manner, giving those of us fortunate enough to walk these hallways a daily reminder of the proud history of the College, and a portent of its future endeavours.

We are fortunate to begin this issue of the journal with an article by former Women’s College Principal Ann Eyland (1987-1997), detailing the extraordinary gift to the College in 1939 of twelve botanical works on paper by the prominent watercolourist, Ellis Rowan (1848-1922). These works, still held by the College, were a bequest of Sarah Hynes, a trained botanist and a member of the original Ladies’ Committee, which raised the funds for the establishment of the College in the late nineteenth century. Dr Eyland’s eagle research eye has revealed a new understanding of the Rowans as educational charts commissioned for the teaching of Australian flora in schools. One of the works on paper held by the College, the feather-leafed boronia [Boronia pinnata], features on the cover of this issue.

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The additional articles in this volume once again demonstrate the scholarly prowess our students display across a range of disciplines. Veronica Murdoch’s paper on Mechthild of Magdeburg redefines notions of women’s authorship in the medieval period by close examination of Mechthild’s seminal work, The Flowing Light of the Godhead, written between 1250 and 1282. A rather more recent example of female authorship is analysed by Isobel Magrath in her essay on the gendered power dynamics of Simone De Beauvoir’s theory of women in love in her 1949 book The Second Sex. Magrath makes a convincing case for the continued relevance of De Beauvoir’s theory while norms of women as sexual objects persist in modern society. Continuing in a literary vein, Erin McFadyen examines the important role played by nature in the eighteenth century in producing poetry and in constructing the notion of the poet. Her essay on nature and the national canon focuses on the forms of the georgic and the ode alongside other poetic traditions of the day.

In the economics and business realm, two large companies come under scrutiny for their competitive global strategies.

Sophia Aston discusses theories of foreign direct investment by multinational corporations, looking specifically at Japanese motor company Toyota. Consistent with theories of political economy, Toyota makes strategic choices to invest in infrastructure in countries which confer a profitable advantage to the company by way of location, production and labour costs. Laura Farquhar’s business case study on Starbucks Australia is a lesson in competing global and local markets in the production, sustainability and consumption of coffee.

The Australian national narrative comes under scrutiny in two other essays in this volume. Phoebe Kay’s essay on public monuments and statues looks at the myths and memories which together form the construction of Australia’s dominant national identity. Kay argues that this identity adheres to outmoded historical notions for a modern pluralist society, and is reinforced in public memorials in a manner which

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excludes alternative discourses of being Australian. And finally, Australia’s record on the issue of climate change is interrogated in Josephine Goldman’s essay. Goldman makes the case that Australian governments have consistently prioritised economic and political interests over global environmental issues, at the expense of long-term human security.

Each of these essays received a high distinction mark (85%+) in its university assessment, and has been selected from a larger number of high-ranking submissions by Women’s College students across all university disciplines.

The research, critical thinking and writing skills collectively displayed in these seven student essays underscores the serious intellectual endeavor which will enable our students to turn these skills to bettering their professions and the nation in the years to come.

Dr Tiffany Donnelly Editor-in-Chief

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The Women’s College Ellis Rowan Collection ANN EYLAND Principal 1987-97 When I became Principal of The Women’s College, the main corridor of the Sulman building was lined with photos of works by Ellis Rowan. The originals were hanging in an alcove in the Principal’s Drawing Room. A year or so later disaster struck. The alcove is directly beneath the main bathroom of the Principal’s flat. Need I say more. The originals were moved to the archives, at that time in a converted bathroom. They were not in good condition and they were even worse after the problem with the Principal’s bathroom. Later in my final year as Principal, we arranged for the restoration of one of the paintings with the intention that further work would be budgeted for over a period of time. This article answers some questions about the paintings, including how the College acquired the paintings, Ellis Rowan’s connection to the College, and the purpose behind the design of the paintings.

The paintings There are twelve paintings in watercolour on paper. Each one is divided into three columns. In each column, there are two paintings, a native flower and the flower’s botanical detail. Altogether, thirty-six native flowers are depicted. Their authenticity as paintings by the artist Ellis Rowan is unquestioned. For many years, the paintings could not be found in College.

One story about their discovery is that the Housekeeper found them in a cupboard in the rooms above the Dining Room where she lived. I have not been able to verify this but know that members of the Senior Common Room in the late sixties knew of their existence but had not seen them.

This was at the time the Langley wing was built and the Dining Room was extended in order to cater for the increase in numbers that Langley created.

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The Sarah Hynes bequest The Ellis Rowan paintings were part of a bequest left to the College by Sarah Hynes, one of the early women graduates of the University of Sydney. Sarah died in May 1938. She also left funds to the College for a prize for the student attaining the highest marks in Botany. She herself was a botanist, graduating in Arts in 1891 having majored in Botany. Sarah enrolled at the University in 1888 at the age of twenty-nine, a mature-age student in today’s parlance. Her family had migrated to Sydney in about 1884 when her father became managing director of the Australasian Steam Navigation Co. She had been educated post school at Chichester (Bishop Otter) College, a teacher training college for women when Sarah attended; now part of the University of Chichester. Changes in British Education Acts in the early 1870s had been made to promote education for girls and Chichester College, a teacher training college for men, changed to a teachers’ college for women. This was in response to the lack of men seeking to train as teachers and to the influence of Louisa Hubbard, a feminist who worked to provide educational opportunities for women. As well as the teaching qualification, Sarah obtained a Botanical certificate from the Science and Art Department of the South Kensington Museum, later the Victoria and Albert Museum.

Sarah Hynes and The College Sarah Hynes’ time as an undergraduate coincided with the period when funds were raised and legal matters were finalised for the college for women which had been agreed to at a public meeting in 1887. The Act of Parliament establishing the College was passed in late 1889. Sarah subscribed to the Women’s College fund and became a member of the fund raising committee (the Ladies Committee). She stood for election to the first Council of the College, the electorate consisting of the subscribers, but was not successful. Through her committee membership of the University Women’s Society (later the University Settlement) founded in 1891, she maintained her connection with the University and with The Women’s College.

Louisa MacDonald, the founding Principal of the College, was appointed in late 1891. She was a graduate of King’s College London (whose first Principal was Bishop Otter) and had become an active member of The Soho

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Club and Home for Working Girls. In many ways, the University Women’s Society set out to emulate the Soho Club and other London Clubs for Girls.

She joined the Society and her London experience proved important. The new Women’s College (opened in temporary premises in Glebe in 1892) became a regular venue for Society activities.

Sarah Hynes Botanist In 1892 Sarah Hynes became the first woman member of the Linnean Society, thus ensuring that she established strong connections within her profession as a botanist. On graduation, she became Vice Principal of Macleay House School Elizabeth Bay. The Principal was Miss Lydia Yate whose circumstances resulted in the closure of the school by 1897.

In July 1897, Sarah joined the New South Wales Public Service as a teacher of Botany at the Sydney Technical College. Here she met Joseph Henry Maiden the Director of the nearby Technological Museum (now the Powerhouse Museum). He invited her to become a botanical assistant at the Museum. She was the first woman to hold a government position in science in New South Wales.

When Maiden was appointed Director of the Royal Botanic Gardens, Sarah transferred to the Gardens where she worked in the Herbarium from 1898 to 1910. She identified, classified, catalogued, preserved and displayed specimens for public education and private investigation, having responsibility for class teaching also. This was not the happiest of times as she clashed with her superiors over wages which were related to her grading as a botanist. Twice she was charged with insubordination and on the first occasion suspended by the Public Service Board but eventually reinstated. On the second occasion she was transferred to the Department of Public Instruction. For the last twelve years of her working life she was employed as a teacher of Botany, retiring in 1823 from St George Girls High School.

Sarah Hynes and Ellis Rowan Sarah Hynes and Ellis Rowan were friends. When Sarah Hynes began teaching in Public Schools in 1911, Ellis Rowan was in Australia, perhaps living in Sydney. Sarah found that there were no teaching aids featuring Australian flora, so as Sarah wrote in a paper given at the ANZAAS conference of 1913:

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I was confronted with the difficulty of obtaining wall charts of our native flora to illustrate my lectures. I found there were none procurable. Mrs. Rowan, the distinguished flower painter, came to my assistance, and painted for me an artistically, beautifully, and scientifically accurate series of botanical charts. They have been adopted by the Department of Public Instruction of New South Wales and are being hung in the schools. They are both decorative and instructive and the first of their kind in Australia.

The wall charts were published by William Brooks and Company Sydney.

There were twelve charts, each 57.15 x 69 cms, each featuring three native flowers with their botanical details. The complete set of charts illustrated thirty-six native flowers painted by Mrs Ellis Rowan. The details of the charts can be found in Ellis Rowan’s Cutting Book held by the National Library of Australia. As described, the College’s paintings match the design and layout of the advertised wall charts. Further, the flowers featured in the wall charts match those in the College paintings. I am confident that the College holds the originals from which the wall charts were made.

Ellis Rowan the flower hunter was a prolific painter. Her friend Sarah Hynes with the support of women’s clubs in Australia persuaded the Commonwealth to purchase almost one thousand of her paintings which are now held by the National Library of Australia. She gave as her address in correspondence about Ellis Rowan’s paintings The Women’s Club Sydney, a Club founded in 1901 at The Women’s College and still in existence today. She belonged to those remarkable women who at the turn of the century saw that women were given the right to vote and to stand for Parliament, who continued in the first quarter of the century to speak out for women, putting the case for equal pay and equal opportunity. Sarah Hynes wrestled with these problems in her own life. Her bequest to the College symbolises that fight and honours a remarkable artist who herself had to speak out for women in the world of art. The College set of Ellis Rowan Paintings serves to remind us of the achievements of these women in science, education and art.

I wish to thank Dr Christine Yeats for sharing with me her research on the life of Sarah Hynes. The College has generously allowed me to bring visitors, mainly members of The Women’s Club, to view the Ellis Rowan paintings. Final confirmation of the origin of the paintings was given by Jan

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Brazier from the Macleay Museum Sydney University and Molly Duggins from the National Art School who discovered the brochure advertising the wall charts in their research on visual aids in teaching Biology. I am grateful to Drs Tiffany and Paul Donnelly who facilitated their visit to inspect the paintings.

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REFERENCES Australia’s First A History of the University of Sydney Vol1 1850-1939 Clifford Turney, Ursula Bygott & Peter Chippendale Hynes, Sarah (Sally) (1859-1938) Claire Hooker Australian Dictionary of Biology Battling the Bureaucracy Pioneer Botanist Sarah Hyne’s Waterloo? Christine Yeats Independent Scholars Association of Australia Twenty Years On Visualising Nature: Models and wall charts for teaching biology in Australia and New Zealand reCollections Volume 10 no.2

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Mechthild of Magdeburg and Women Claiming Authorship VERONICA MURDOCH Arts Law 3rd Year Mechthild of Magdeburg’s The Flowing Light of the Godhead (FL), written between 1250 and 1282, may be described as one of the most important embodiments of thirteenth-century Western European mysticism and beguine spirituality. Mechthild’s intimate and evocative account of the soul’s relationship with the Divine has garnered theological interest and scholarship. This essay will argue that Mechthild’s writings also exemplify claims of medieval female authorship and agency, thus meriting historical and literary significance. After a preliminary discussion of understandings of medieval women’s authorship and literacy, this essay will posit four of Mechthild’s distinct and persuasive methods of claiming authorship.

First, the deliberate and in turn, powerful use of the vernacular, then her extraordinary position in society as a beguine, followed by experimentation with genre and finally, use of sexual imagery. Each claim of authorship will be supported with excerpts from FL, allowing the conclusion that Mechthild of Magdeburg was a unique and remarkable woman author, both within and beyond the paradigm of medieval religious writing.

The question of authorship is raised immediately by Mechthild in the prologue of FL when she asks: “Ah, Lord God, who made this book?”1 Such uncertainty is emblematic of the fact that theoretical understandings of medieval authorship, particularly women’s authorship, are varied and complex. Scholarship from Summit suggests that the term “author” or auctor must be problematised in relation to the work of medieval women.

Central to women’s writing is the struggle for authority or auctoritas, 1

Frank Tobin, The Flowing Light of the Godhead (New Jersey: Paulist Press, 1998), 39.

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meaning tradition or “stream of conscious influence.”2 The framework of auctoritas for determining authorship is inherently problematic for medieval woman authors for two reasons. First, the term is patriarchal in origin, and fails to account for how medieval women were excluded from scholastic institutions of literacy and learning.3 This is true in the case of Mechthild and other religious women. Summit posits that the scholastic definition of auctor should be understood more in terms of “a range of acts and cultural practices…across social and gender boundaries”4 when referring to written works of women, rather than the physical practice of writing. Second, auctoritas was understood as ultimately emanating from God, the Word of whom is merely interpreted by mystical writers. This understanding denies the agency5 and expression of writers like Mechthild, who consciously shaped and re-evaluated the Word of God in the context of their own mystical experience and spiritual beliefs. If Summit’s “range of acts and cultural practices” is taken to be a persuasive conceptualisation of medieval women’s authorship, then Mechthild successfully claims this in FL. This essay will discuss how use of the vernacular, fervent sexual imagery and criticism of the clergy transgress social, gender and religious boundaries. However, Mechthild does express agency and textual auctoritas on a personal and spiritual level. She claims ownership of her personal experience, constructs a distinct sense of selfhood and questions the indisputable control that clerics exercised over women’s spiritual lives.6 This essay understands medieval women’s authorship to include non-traditional practices, personal experience and resistance, and will assess FL accordingly.

Use of the vernacular is Mechthild’s most conscious claim of authorship in FL. Her admission: “now my German fails me, I do not know Latin”7 (II 3), raises the historical question of whether she deliberately chose to compose the original text in Middle Low German, the vernacular of Northern 2

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Jennifer Summit, “Women and authorship” in The Cambridge Companion to Medieval Women’s Writing, ed. Carolyn Dinshaw and David Wallace (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 92.

Ibid, 93.

Ibid.

Sara Poor, Mechthild of Magdeburg and Her Book: Gender and the Making of Textual Authority (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2004), 12.

Alison Weber, “Gender,” in The Cambridge Companion to Christian Mysticism, ed. Patricia Z. Beckman and Amy Hollywood (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012), 324.

Frank Tobin, The Flowing Light of the Godhead, 72.

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Germany. Poor posits that it is highly likely that Mechthild chose to write in German, as Helfta, the monastery in which she lived in the later years of her life, would almost certainly have been able to provide the means for her book to be dictated or translated into Latin.8 Further, her unfamiliarity with the language of the Church or lack of theological training “did not mean that she had no choice other than to write in her native language.”9 In fact, this would have compelled Mechthild to embrace the vernacular as a mechanism to oppose the Christian institutions and ecclesiastical spaces in Europe that traditionally sought to exclude women. The significance of this decision is that it represents “a sign of authorial agency insofar as it represents a choice.”10 Poor’s argument is even more persuasive when considering the context of the rising “popular piety”11 movement amongst the lay people of Northern Germany and the Low Countries. Mysticism, and vernacular lay piety generally, bypassed the Church and the clergy, facilitating “more direct access to the people of an expanding linguistic community.”12 Writing in the vernacular was the most efficacious way to reach a wider audience. Ranft attributes the term “Vernacular Mothers” to mystical writers such as Mechthild of Magdeburg, Hadewijch of Brabant and Beatrice of Nazareth. She aptly describes their purpose, as being “to present a new type of theology to a new audience,” a purpose which they fulfilled intuitively by using the vernacular.13 Mechthild affirms this by declaring: “I hereby send this book as a messenger to all religious people, both the good and the bad”14 (V 34). From this perspective, Mechthild’s deliberate political and religious decision to write FL in Middle Low German can clearly be viewed as a mark of conscious authorship and agency.

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Poor, Mechthild of Magdeburg and Her Book, 19.

Sara Poor, “Mechthild von Magdeburg, Gender and the ‘Unlearned Tongue’,” Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies 31, no. 2 (Spring 2001): 221.

10 Ibid.

11 Fiona Bowie, Beguine Spirituality: Mystical writings of Mechthild of Magdeburg, Beatrice of Nazareth and Hadewijch of Brabant (New York: The Crossroad Publishing Company, 1989), 27.

12 Poor, “Gender and the Unlearned Tongue,” 225.

13 Patricia Ranft, Women in Western Intellectual Culture, 600-1500 (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2002), 97.

14 Tobin, The Flowing Light, 217.

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Mechthild’s use of the vernacular coincides with her choice of a particular form of religious life,15 which in itself accorded her a significant amount of agency and autonomy. FL provides insight as to how Mechthild was able to exploit effectively her position in medieval society as a beguine, “poised between the secular world and the cloistered world,”16 in order to transgress social and religious boundaries in her writings. The fundamentally unregulated and self-determined nature of the beguine path meant Mechthild could develop a distinct linguistic style in her candid discussion of spirituality, free from the influence of the Church. Her tone is both didactic and evangelical, showing how mystical writing of laywomen could be just as prescriptive and influential as clerical texts. Mechthild instructs her readers how to be humble17 (V 4), how to behave18 (VI 12) and warns of the dangers of temptation19 (VI 40). According to Poor, FL is a fitting example of how thirteenth-century religiosity was a place where anyone, religious or lay, could strive to achieve religious perfection.20 Mystical writing also had the potential to fracture the Church’s institutional authority,21 in the way that it criticised the clergy. As a beguine, who could ostensibly create her own rules and regulations for living, Mechthild was critical of monastic life and ascetic practices. She admonishes those who lead overly penitential lives, such as “sighing, weeping, confessing, fasting, keeping vigils, scourging with rods”22 (IV 2). She accuses them of being “more concerned about that mongrel body of yours than about Jesus, your sweet Lord…”23 (II 23). She also questions the legitimacy of those with theological training: “one finds many a professor learned in scripture who actually is a fool in my eyes”24 (II 26). Mechthild’s beguine perspective is a significant expression of agency. Bowie suggests that one

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Poor, “Gender and the Unlearned Tongue,” 221.

Elizabeth Andersen, “Mechthild von Magdeburg: Her Creativity and her Audience,” in Women, the Book and the Godly, ed. Lesley Smith and Jane H. M. Taylor (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 1995), 78.

Tobin, The Flowing Light, 182.

Ibid, 238.

Ibid, 265.

Poor, Mechthild of Magdeburg and Her Book, 17.

Ibid, 6.

Tobin, The Flowing Light, 143.

Ibid, 87.

Ibid, 97.

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way to view beguines is as “a response to the reality of living as a woman in a male-oriented world.”25 As one of the few religious movements of medieval Europe that was initiated and controlled by women, beguines contrasted not only with male-dominated religious orders, but also with other patriarchal institutions where “men usually set the standards and numerically dominated.”26 FL can certainly be viewed as a reaction to traditional religious texts and ways of life, therefore Mechthild uses her autonomous position as a beguine in thirteenth-century Germany to assert authorship.

Mechthild persuasively claims authorship and exercises creative autonomy by experimenting with the conventions of medieval religious writing.

FL is principally devotional, yet stylistically sophisticated. Mechthild skilfully fuses poetry, lyrical song and short story with mystical ideas,27 reconceptualising the medieval spiritual treatise. This will be elucidated through a discussion of “la mystique courtoise” and bridal mysticism.

First, by situating the experience of the mystical union in the context of the Minnesang28 (German lyrical traditional of courtly love), Mechthild creates a new genre of religious writing for a wider audience of laypeople. The language of the Gottesminne (divine love) is appropriated to bring spiritual ideas to life in FL. A dialogue is created between the soul and Lady Minne to illustrate the soul’s love for God: “Lady Love, you are indeed perfect”29 (I 1). This is further explained in terms of courtly activities such as dancing in: “I cannot dance, Lord, unless you lead me”30 (I 44), and the court’s social hierarchy: “all holy Christian values are the handmaids of the soul”31 (I 3). This imagery, in addition to use of Middle High German, would have been particularly resonant with the upper classes of Northern Germany;

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27 28 29 30 31

Bowie, Beguine Spirituality, 32.

Walter Simons, “Staining the Speech of Things Divine: The Uses of Literacy in Medieval Beguine Communities,” in The Voice of Silence: Women’s Literacy in a Men’s Church, ed.

Thérèse de Hemptinne and María Eugenia Góngora (Belgium: Brepols Publishers, 2004), 86.

Elizabeth A. Andersen, The Voices of Mechthild of Magdeburg (Bern: European Academic Publishers, 2000), 96.

Poor, Mechthild of Magdeburg and Her Book, 23.

Tobin, The Flowing Light, 39.

Ibid, 59.

Ibid, 42.

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Wiethaus believes that Mechthild was, in fact, heavily influenced by her class, location and theological context.32 The Flowing Light can also be read through the lens of “bridal mysticism,” where God and the soul are characterised as bridegroom and bride. Gendered language such as “my Bridegroom by love,/ And I his bride from all eternity”33 (I 44) allegorises masculinity and femininity as the divine Minne and Christ.34 Bridal mysticism was not unique to Mechthild. FL belongs to a tradition of female mystical writing influenced by the Minnesang, including that of Hadewijch of Brabant and Beatrice of Nazareth. However, Mechthild’s manipulation of genre is a significant expression of her authorial agency. By incorporating aspects of “la mystique courtoise” and bridal mysticism, she consciously “constructed a genre specific to fit her message, because available genres did not do it justice.”35 Further, Mechthild establishes textual authority by employing an intensely personal, subjective voice to communicate her mystical experience. The language of personal experience is what makes the message of her work simultaneously unique and universal.36 Mechthild’s personal take on medieval religious writing, through manipulating genre, form and voice, is what makes FL a significant medieval embodiment of female authorship and agency.

Individual experience and agency are vehemently asserted by the use of erotic imagery in FL. Mechthild allegorises the soul’s spiritual union with Christ as a series of sexual acts, describing surprisingly vivid and ecstatic scenes such as: “the narrower the bed of love becomes, the more intense are the embraces”37 (I 22). Scholarship diverges significantly as to the purpose of this particular type of imagery, however the decision even to use such erotically charged language constitutes authorship and distinct literary identity in itself. It is not difficult to construct sexual meaning from passages such as: “What do you bid me, Lord/Take off your clothes”38 (I

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Ulrike Wiethaus, “Sexuality, Gender and the Body in Late Medieval Women’s Spirituality: Cases from Germany and the Netherlands,” Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion, no. 1 (Spring 1991): 38.

Tobin, The Flowing Light, 61.

Ibid, 51.

Ranft, Women in Western Intellectual Culture, 109.

Bowie, Beguine Spirituality, 3.

Tobin, The Flowing Light, 50.

Ibid, 62.

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44) or “He surrenders himself to her/And she surrenders herself to Him”39 (I 44). Tobin argues that Mechthild is not conflating spiritual devotion with physical love, but using imagery as a clever literary device; “the searing images of physical passion are just that: images.”40 Adopting this position, intricacies of one’s personal relationship with God are merely enlivened through an interplay of opposites, such as the “fluctuations and alternations of below and above, full and empty, soft and hard…” of sexual intercourse.41 Physicality represents, rather than replaces spirituality. The very fact that Mechthild had the agency to use such language constitutes a reclaiming of the female body as simultaneously a spiritual and sexual site42 in women’s mystical writing. This act of authorship in FL can be seen as having two consequences. First, women are valorised as “the natural partners for a lover male God,”43 opposing the Church’s tradition of excluding women and regulating their bodies. Further, the female body is significantly imbued with an “inherently symbolic and spiritual value, akin to the fully transubstantiated wafer and the sinless flesh of Jesus himself.”44 This is important when considering the biblical, Classical and Patristic legacies that dominated medical and theological discourse on women’s bodies in the Middle Ages. Mechthild’s call to God “Ah, Lord, love me passionately, love me often, and love me long”45 (I 23), venerates women’s bodies and exemplifies the inextricable link between the spiritual, sexual, personal and institutional in “bridal mysticism.” Analysis of erotic imagery in FL illuminates Mechthild of Magdeburg’s authorial agency in her language choice, discussion of physicality and her personal voice.

Mechthild of Magdeburg’s The Flowing Light of the Godhead is a product of a profoundly experimental period where laypeople could essentially create their own religious lifestyle. As a result, her work is an important expression of medieval mysticism and beguine spirituality in response

39 40 41 42 43 44 45

Ibid, 62.

Ibid, 16.

Margaret Merrill Toscano, Making Love with God: Sex and Identity in Two Late-Medieval Women Mystics, Mechthild of Magdeburg and Margery Kempe (Ann Arbor: UMI Dissertation Services, 2002), 109.

Ibid, 115.

Ibid, 116.

Amiri Ayana, “Renegotiating the Body of the Text: Mechthild von Magdeburg’s Terminology of the Sublime,” Exemplaria 20, no. 4 (Winter 2008): 386.

Tobin, The Flowing Light, 52.

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to traditional religious paths. However, a study of FL through the lens of authorship and literary agency has illuminated four persuasive claims: use of the vernacular, position as a beguine, experimentation with genre and use of sexual imagery. While medieval women’s authorship can be a vague notion, it is clear that Mechthild’s writing is deeply personal, theologically unique and is imbued with textual integrity. In addition to the authorship and autonomy it espouses, The Flowing Light of the Godhead also possesses “pure, white, just humanity”46 (II 26).

46

Tobin, The Flowing Light, 97.

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BIBLOGRAPHY Primary sources Mechthild of Magdeburg. The Flowing Light of the Godhead. Translated by Frank Tobin. New Jersey: Paulist Press, 1998.

Secondary sources Andersen, Elizabeth A. “Mechthild von Magdeburg: Her Creativity and Her Audience.” In Women, the Book and the Godly, edited by Leslely Smith and Jane H. M. Taylor, 77-88. Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 1995.

Andersen, Elizabeth A. The Voices of Mechthild of Magdeburg. Bern: European Academic Publishers, 2000.

Ayanna, Amiri. “Renegotiating the Body of the Text: Mechthild von Magdeburg’s Terminology of the Sublime.” Exemplaria 20, no. 4 (Winter 2008): 385-409.

Bowie, Fiona. Beguine Spirituality: Mysitcal Writings of Mechthild of Magdeburg, Beatrice of Nazareth and Hadewijch of Brabamt. New York: The Crossroad Publishing Company, 1989.

Finnegan, Mary Jeremy. The Women of Helfta: Scholars and Mystics. Athens: The University of Georgia Press, 1991.

Newman, Barbara. “Latin and the Vernaculars.” In The Cambridge Companion to Christian Mysticism, edited by Patricia Z. Beckman and Amy Hollywood, 225-239. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012.

Poor, Sara. Mechthild of Magdeburg and Her Book: Gender and the Making of Textual Authority.

Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2004.

Poor, Sara. “Mechthild von Magdeburg, Gender and the ‘Unlearned Tongue’.” Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies 31, no. 2 (Spring 2001): 213-50.

Ranft, Patricia. Women in Western Intellectual Culture, 600-1500. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2002.

Simons, Walter. “Staining the Speech of Things Divine: The Uses of Literacy in Medieval Beguine Communities.” In The Voice of Silence: Women’s Literacy in a Men’s Church, edited by Thérèse de Hemptinne and María Eugenia Góngora, 85-111. Belgium: Brepols Publishers, 2004.

Summit, Jennifer. “Women and Authorship.” In The Cambridge Companion to Medieval Women’s Writing, edited by Carolyn Dinshaw and David Wallace, 91-108. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003.

Tobin, Frank. “Medieval Thought on Visions and its Resonance in Mechthild von Magdeburg’s Flowing Light of the Godhead.” In Vox Mystica: Essays for Valerie M. Lagorio, edited by Anne Clark Bartlett, Thomas Bestful, Janet Goebel and William F. Pollard, 41-57. Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 1995.

Toscano, Margaret Merrill. Making Love with God: Sex and Identity in Two Late-Medieval Women Mystics, Mechthild of Magdeburg and Margery Kempe. Ann Arbor: UMI Dissertation Services, 2002.

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Weber, Alison. “Gender.” In The Cambridge Companion to Christian Mysticism, edited by Patricia Z. Beckman and Amy Hollywood, 315-327. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012.

Wiethaus, Ulrike. “Sexuality, Gender and the Body in Late Medieval Women’s Spirituality: Cases from Germany and the Netherlands.” Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion 7, no. 1 (Spring 1991(: 35-52.

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Assessing Australia’s record on global environment issues JOSPHINE GOLDMAN Arts/Languages 2nd Year Australia’s record on global environmental issues has been characterised by inaction. For the most part, successive Australian governments have prioritised short-term political goals, and have sought to maximise immediate economic prosperity, at the expense of long-term human security. Focusing on the global issue of climate change, this essay will interrogate the record of Australian policymakers over the last thirty years—a period in which climate change has been an international political issue. Australian climate policy has been the subject of an extensive body of literature, from chronologies, through examinations of discourse and norms, to specific government focused studies. 1 Drawing on these works, this essay will argue that placing economic and political interests first has led to Australia’s unfortunate performance on climate change, which is widely considered among the worst in the world.2 In doing so, the essay will highlight the recurring components of Australian foreign and 1

2

See A. Firsova, V. Strezov, and R. Taplin, “After 20 years of creating Australian climate policy: was the proposed carbon pollution reduction scheme a change in direction?,” Australasian Journal of Environmental Management 19, no. 1 (2012): ##; and Kate Crowley, “Up and down with climate politics 2013–2016: the repeal of carbon pricing in Australia,” Wiley Interdisciplinary Reviews: Climate Change 8, no. 3 (2017): 3; Hayley Stevenson, “Cheating on climate change?

Australia’s challenge to global warming norms,” Australian Journal of International Affairs 63, no. 2 (2009): ##; Simon Lightfoot, «A good international citizen? Australia at the World Summit on Sustainable Development,» Australian Journal of International Affairs 60, no. 3 (2006): ##; Matt McDonald, “Climate security and economic security: The limits to climate change action in Australia?” International Politics 52, no. 4 (2015): 487, doi:10.1057/ip.2015.5. and Kate Crowley, «Irresistible Force? Achieving Carbon Pricing in Australia,» Australian Journal of Politics and History 59, no. 3 (2013): 379; Peter Christoff, “Policy autism or double-edged dismissiveness?

Australia’s climate policy under the Howard government,” Global Change, Peace & Security 17, no. 1 (2006): 39–40; and Joan Staples, “Environmental Policy, Environmental NGOs and the Keating Government” (Paper presented at Australian Political Studies Conference, Hobart, Tasmania, September 26, 2012).

See Jan Burck, Franziska Marten, and Christoph Bals, “The Climate Change Performance Index: Results 2017,” Germanwatch, last modified November 2016, https://germanwatch. org/en/download/16484.pdf.

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domestic policy that have impeded effective climate policy formation and implementation.

Firstly, this essay will address the “no regrets” strategy that has functioned as a domestic political safeguard over the past thirty years. It will examine this strategy as both an explicit prioritisation of the economy over the environment, and as a factor influencing the timidity of Australian policymakers. Secondly, the essay will examine the discourse of Australia’s “unique” position and the influence of the fossil fuel industry in stagnating proactive climate policy, comparing the influence of industry interests over those of the Australian public.3 Finally, it will address the fact that international norms have had little purchase on Australian policy, with several governments refusing to participate in multilateral fora and acting as an obstructionist veto-state to global progress on climate change.

“No regrets”: A mantra of domestic economic and political precaution The “no regrets” approach to climate policymaking has entrenched policies that limit emissions without imposing economic cost; this approach has come as a result of various governments prioritising short-term economic prosperity over Australia’s contribution to the international effort to manage climate change. “No regrets” first became prominent when the Paul Keating Labor government (1991-96) replaced the Bob Hawke Labor government (1983-91); and since then, it has pervaded Australian climate discourse. The first significant implementation of this strategy was Keating’s 1992 release of the National Greenhouse Response Strategy, which relied on voluntary emissions reductions when economically feasible. Further, at the first Conference of Parties (COP) of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) in 1995, the government emphasised the economic cost of meeting emissions targets.4 Under John Howard’s Coalition government (1996-2007), the “no regrets” policy culminated in the government’s refusal to ratify the Kyoto Protocol to avoid binding Emissions Reduction Targets (ERTs). However, even the 2007 ratification of the Kyoto Protocol under Kevin Rudd’s Labor government (2007-2010) did not represent any significant deviation from this strategy as, by 2007, it

3 4

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Simon Lightfoot, “A good international citizen?,” 446.

Matt McDonald, “Fair Weather Friend? Ethics and Australia’s Approach to Global Climate Change,” Australian Journal of Politics and History 51, no. 2 (2005): 223.

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did not mean a departure from business as usual.5 The Direct Action Policy (DAP) of Tony Abbott’s Coalition government (2013-15) continued under Malcolm Turnbull’s (Coalition) government (2015-current), representing not just a continuation but an augmentation of “no regrets”: stagnation, under Rudd, was replaced by explicitly anti-environmental policy under Abbott and Turnbull.6 Economic security has dominated dialogue about climate policy in Australia, regardless of the government’s position on the environment.7 The privileging of a “conservative economistic discourse” under Howard, with GDP growth and budget surpluses serving as “ersatz indicators of national well-being,” meant that preventative investment in emissions reduction was sacrificed for short-term economic gains.8 Rudd’s commissioning of the economist Ross Garnaut to examine the impacts of climate change on the Australian economy also demonstrated the considerable weight given to economic priorities in the assessment and design of climate policy.9 In this respect, Rudd reinforced the neoliberal framing of climate change by making it an economic issue.

The causes of the “no regrets” strategy extend beyond economic stability, however. Politicians have also remained unambitious on climate policy issues to avoid political fallout. Australia’s leaders have repeatedly avoided strong climate policy to make themselves smaller political targets, as Rudd’s actions on climate change exemplify. While Rudd’s election was touted the “world’s first climate election”—and his ratification of Kyoto considered a milestone—Rudd’s championing of climate action was the safest political move at the time.10 But Rudd’s Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme (CPRS) failed to pass through the Senate twice in 2009, with each iteration weakening concessions to the fossil fuel industry.

5 6 7 8 9 10

Firsova, Stresov, and Taplin, “After 20 years of creating Australian climate policy,” 25.

Karin Von Strokirch, “Abbott’s war on the environment and Turnbull’s hot air,” Social Alternatives 35, no. 2 (2016): 26.

McDonald, “Climate security and economic security,” 487.

Peter Christoff, “Policy autism or double-edged dismissiveness? Australia’s climate policy under the Howard government,” Global Change, Peace & Security 17, no. 1 (2006): 39–40.

See Ross Garnaut, The Garnaut Climate Change Review: Final Report (Port Melbourne, Vic: Cambridge University Press, 2008).

Christopher Rootes, “The first climate change election? The Australian general election of 24 November 2007,” Environmental Politics 17, no. 3 (2008): 1.

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Fearing loss of government, Rudd made the decision to delay the implementation of the CPRS, thus compromising environmental action to retain power. Nonetheless, Rudd’s political safeguard failed, and subsequently he lost the Labor leadership.

Political compromise in order to retain power was also characteristic of Julia Gillard’s Labor government (2010-2013). Gillard was forced to implement a strong climate policy because her conditional preference deal with the Australian Greens supplanted the “immovable object of economic and political self-interest, and the power of the carbon lobby,” prising open a “window of opportunity to act.”11 Gillard’s 2011 implementation of the Clean Energy Package (CEP) was a breakthrough in climate change mitigation; however, it was also in many ways only coincidental that Gillard’s progress had come as a result of political compromise. Although Gillard had led the country to its highest point in climate performance (Australia then ranked 40th of the 61 responsible for 90% of CO2 emissions12), she had done so as a result of political expediency. Of course, policy infrastructure is rarely built on opportunism, and Australia’s strong performance did not endure.

The imperative of retaining power over personal commitments to climate policy or considerations of human security is still clearly dominant in the Turnbull Coalition government (2015-current). Though Turnbull was outspoken about the importance of climate action while Opposition Leader (2007-09)—he even crossed the floor to support Rudd’s CPRS—Turnbull no longer expresses the same environmental convictions.13 The power of political ambition in suppressing climate action is clearly evident in Turnbull’s current support for Abbott’s DAP, despite its complete inefficacy in halting carbon emissions or in meeting Australia’s Kyoto target.

11 12 13

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Crowley, “Irresistible Force?” 379.

Jan Burck, Franziska Marten, and Christoph Bals, “The Climate Change Performance Index: Results 2014,” Germanwatch, last modified November 2013, https://germanwatch.org/en/ download/8599.pdf.

Graham Readfearn, “Ten years ago Turnbull called out Peter Garrett on climate. What went wrong?,” Guardian, June 21, 2017, https://www.theguardian.com/environment/planetoz/2017/jun/21/ten-years-ago-turnbull-called-out-peter-garrett-on-climate-what-wentwrong.

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Australia’s “unique” economic circumstances: the influence of the fossil fuel industry The prioritisation of economic interests above long-term environmental sustainability is in large part due to the powerful leverage wielded by the fossil fuel industry in Australia—a leverage resulting from Australia’s abundance of mineral resources. Australia’s reliance on energy-intensive resources is often described as the country’s “unique” economic circumstances; indeed, Howard used this very term when negotiating for the “Australia clause” at the 1997 Kyoto COP.14 Howard’s election would mean “ever more explicit support for fossil fuel energy use and exports.”15 This support was clear from the presence of climate sceptics in Howard’s government, including Minister for Energy Warwick Parer, who had “exceptionally close associations” with the coal industry, and Commonwealth Chief Scientist Dr Robin Batterham, who was senior scientist for the mining company CRA.16 Special interests in fossil fuels were also explicit in the Abbott government.

Like Howard, Abbott filled his cabinet with climate change sceptics and deniers, including Nationals Member George Christenson and Industry Minister Ian McFarlane. Christenson’s funding of pro-fossil fuel advertisements in 2015 caused Greenpeace CEO David Ritter to declare that the Abbott government was “in thrall to the coal mining industry.”17 Industry affiliations critically influenced Abbott’s anti-environmental actions, including his government’s dismantling of the Australian Renewable Energy Agency, the Clean Energy Finance Corporation, and the Climate Change authority.18 Under Abbott, Gillard’s Clean Energy Package (CEP) was immediately replaced with the ineffective DAP, which reversed the “polluter-pays” onus on emitters by establishing a taxpayer-funded rewards-for-emissions reduction.19 Abbott’s poor record on environmental issues reinforces the precedence given to short-term economic interests, including fossil fuel interests.

14 15 16 17 18 19

Simon Lightfoot, “A good international citizen?” 446.

Christoff, “Policy autism or double-edged dismissiveness?,” 32–33.

Ibid., 33.

Kirsty Mugridge, “Ad draws reaction,” The Daily Mercury, July 1, 2015.

Crowley, “Up and down with climate politics 2013–2016,” 3.

Crowley, “Irresistible Force?” p. 380.

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Interests of the Australian public: critical or dismissible?

The precedence of economic and political considerations is particularly evident on an examination of the beliefs and opinions of the Australian public. While public opinion does have an effect on rhetoric, it seems not to have affected climate policy. Hawke’s government, to be sure, could be regarded as something of an outlier, with “relatively strong … public attention” coinciding with a government enthusiastically involved in responses to climate change such as the Toronto Target and “Ecologically Sustainable Development.”20 However, Hawke’s personal commitment to environmental action and the fossil fuel lobby’s slow start to mobilisation were more important for the trajectory of climate policy than was public support. Keating was “unsympathetic and actively antagonistic” towards the environment, and allowed the fossil fuel lobby to benefit from “favour, inside knowledge [and] connections.”21 Public opinion on climate action did not change significantly between the Hawke and Keating Labor governments, yet climate proactivity suffered.22 The Rudd and Gillard governments suggest that public opinion has only a very limited influence on policy, despite climate change being a key election issue in both the 2007 and 2010 elections. Rudd was elected on a wave of popular support for climate action, with climate change ranked as Australia’s most important foreign policy goal in 2007.23 Rudd’s pro-environmental rhetoric reflected public support for climate action; Rudd even declared himself “determined to make Australia part of the global climate change solution.”24 Yet, public support did not lead to the implementation of Rudd’s CPRS, which twice failed to pass through Senate. Indeed, Rudd made the greatest effort to pass the CPRS in 2009, when Australia’s prioritisation of climate action had so dramatically declined that it

20 21 22 23 24

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McDonald, “Fair Weather Friend?” 221.

See Staples, “Environmental Policy, Environmental NGOs and the Keating Government”; Kate Crowley, “Is Australia Faking It? The Kyoto Protocol and the Greenhouse Policy Challenge,” Global Environmental Politics 7, no. 4 (2007): 122.

See Lightfoot, “A good international citizen?,” 459; and McDonald, “Fair Weather Friend?,” 222.

Allan Gyngell, The Lowy Institute Poll 2007 (Sydney, Australia: The Lowy Institute, 2007), https://www.lowyinstitute.org/sites/default/files/pubfiles/Lowy_Poll_2007_LR_1.pdf.

Kevin Rudd, speech, Brisbane, Australia, November 14, 2007.

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was then ranked seventh out of the top ten foreign policy goals—a result that emphasised the discorrelation between public opinion and policy.25 The impotence of public opinion can also be seen under the Gillard government. Gillard replaced Rudd largely due to public opinion, insofar as Rudd’s approval ratings were low.26 And yet, Gillard’s desire to retain political power led to cautious policymaking, with Abbott’s “vitriolic” campaign against carbon pricing eroding public confidence in Gillard’s climate policy.27 In 2011, when the CEP passed, public opinion hit what was almost its lowest point in recent years, with only 46% of Australians stating that “tackling climate change” was “very important”—a decline of 7 points since 2010, and 29 points since 2007.28 Political necessity, rather than public support, caused Gillard to implement the CEP, the strongest climate policy on Australia’s record.

International environmental norms: Australia against the world The UNFCCC operates as the world’s best chance of managing climate change. However, due to the way in which Australian politicians have given precedence to domestic economic and political considerations, policymakers have rarely been swayed by the environmental norms the UNFCCC enforces. Though initially considered a “leader,” Australia was the eighth UN member to ratify the UNFCCC in 1992; nevertheless, the country led the international community with its “innovative” response to the 1987 Brundtlandt report. 29 Early enthusiasm was trumped, however, by the Keating government’s overwhelming concern for economic security; and soon, “environmental ambivalence” developed into obstructionism under Howard and Abbot. 30 Thirty years of climate policy stagnation has

25 26 27 28 29 30

Brenton Holmes and Sophia Fernandes, 2010 Federal Election: a brief history (Parliament of Australia, 2012), http://parlinfo.aph.gov.au/parlInfo/download/library/prspub/1479741/ upload_binary/1479741.pdf;fileType=application/pdf#search=%222010s%202012%22.

Ibid.

Crowley, “Up and down with climate politics 2013–2016,” 2.

Fergus Hanson, The Lowy Institute Poll 2011: Australia and the World (Sydney: The Lowy Institute, 2011), https://www.lowyinstitute.org/sites/default/files/pubfiles/Lowy_Poll_2011_ WEB_1.pdf.

McDonald, “Fair Weather Friend?” 223; Lightfoot, “A good international citizen?” 549.

McDonald, “Fair Weather Friend?” 223.

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led to Australia’s current ranking of the 57 out of 61 in a list of countries responsible for 90% of global CO2 emissions.31 Not only is it evident Australia lacks a “strong record of meeting [its] commitments,” as the 2015 INDC submission to the UNFCCC suggests; it is also clear that Australia’s relationship with the UNFCCC has been often antagonistic, notably under Howard and Abbott.32 Extending his realist preference for bilateralism into climate negotiation, Howard proudly crafted an image of “Australia standing strong against a multilateral regime in defence of the national interest.” Howard’s Australia consistently played the role of a “veto state” at UN forums, embracing the position of “international pariah” in order to ensure “the security of the Australian nation and the jobs and standard of living of the Australian people.”33 This deliberate disregard for international climate norms culminated in Australia’s non-ratification of Kyoto in 2002.

As another “archetypal climate change denier,” Abbott followed Howard in expressing disrespect for international climate norms and negotiating forums. In 2013, for the first time since 1997, no Australian delegation was sent to the UN COP in Warsaw. As host of the G20 Conference in November 2014, Australia would not list climate change on the agenda; Abbott even declared that he would not support the Green Climate Fund because he needed to “stand up for coal.” While Australia did bow to international pressure to pledge $200 million to the GCF in December 2014, this limited contribution is still below 2% of global pledges from the developed world.

Australia’s highly criticised position on climate change reflects a refusal to acknowledge international concerns of real environmental harm and a prioritisation of domestic economic and political interests.

31 32

33

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Burck, Marten, and Bals, “The Climate Change Performance Index: Results 2017,” https:// germanwatch.org/en/download/16484.pdf.

Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, Australia’s Intended Nationally Determined Contribution to a new Climate Change Agreement, (Canberra: Government of Australia, 2015), http://dfat.gov.au/international-relations/themes/climate-change/submissions/Documents/ausintended-nationally-determined-cont-new-cc-agreement-aug-2015.pdf.

See Lightfoot, “A good international citizen?”; Firsova, Strezov, and Taplin, “After 20 years of creating Australian climate policy”; Stevenson, “Cheating on climate change?” 176; and Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, In the national interest (Canberra: Commonwealth of Australia, 1997), http://repository.jeffmalone.org/files/foreign/In_the_National_Interest.pdf.

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While environmentalists had hoped that Turnbull, Abbott’s successor as Prime Minister (September 2015), would mean stronger climate policy, Turnbull has proved bound by a desire to retain Prime Ministership. To ensure his leadership of the Coalition, Turnbull has largely adhered to Abbott’s climate policies, and declared ERTs of 26–28% at the 2015 Paris COP, “at or near the bottom of the group of countries [Australia] generally compares [itself] with” according to the Climate Change Authority Chair.34 Turnbull has largely ignored international pressure to create strong climate policy and has instead sought to appease his party and ensure his own government’s power, continuing the prioritisation of politics above environmental interests.

Conclusions Australia’s environment record has been defined by the prioritisation of shortterm economic and political interests over environmental sustainability, and this has impeded contributions to the global management of climate change. Australia’s refusal to acknowledge international environmental norms or respect multilateral negotiations has resulted in a national climate policy divorced from science and global mitigation efforts.35 Moreover, the influence of the fossil fuel industry, which is far more persuasive than Australian public opinion, has seen the renewable energy industry and support for the emissions-intensive fossil fuel industry sabotaged. Finally, the strategy of “no regrets” has served to encourage political precaution and allowed our leaders to systematically prioritise short-term economic growth over proactive environmental policy. All of these factors have culminated in the “bizarre and productivity destroying” DAP. Examining Australia’s environmental record makes clear that the prioritisation of economic and political considerations over environmental norms and human security has generated ineffective political policy, which impedes global sustainability. In order to contribute fairly and responsibly to the international climate change response, Australia would do well to consider the opinions of the Australian people and the long-term ramifications of a weak climate policy.

34 35

Crowley, “Up and down with climate politics 2013-2016,” 8.

Ibid., 6.

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BIBLIOGRAPHY Burck, Jan, Franziska Marten, and Christoph Bals. “The Climate Change Performance Index: Results 2014.” Germanwatch. Last modified November 2013. https://germanwatch.org/en/ download/8599.pdf.

Burck, Jan, Franziska Marten, and Christoph Bals. “The Climate Change Performance Index: Results 2017.” Germanwatch. Last modified November 2016. https://germanwatch.org/en/ download/16484.pdf.

Christoff, Peter. “Policy autism or double-edged dismissiveness? Australia’s climate policy under the Howard government.” Global Change, Peace & Security 17, no. 1 (2006), 29–44.

Crowley, Kate. “Irresistible Force? Achieving Carbon Pricing in Australia.” Australian Journal of Politics and History 59, no. 3 (September 2013), 368–381.

Crowley, Kate. “Is Australia Faking It? The Kyoto Protocol and the Greenhouse Policy Challenge.” Global Environmental Politics 7, no. 4 (November 2007), 118–139.

Crowley, Kate. “Up and down with climate politics 2013–2016: the repeal of carbon pricing in Australia.” Wiley Interdisciplinary Reviews: Climate Change 8, no. 3 (May/June 2017), 1–13.

Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade. Australia’s Intended Nationally Determined Contribution to a new Climate Change Agreement. Canberra: Government of Australia, 2015. http://dfat.gov.au/international-relations/themes/climate-change/submissions/Documents/ausintended-nationally-determined-cont-new-cc-agreement-aug-2015.pdf.

Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade. In the national interest. Canberra: Commonwealth of Australia, 1997. http://repository.jeffmalone.org/files/foreign/In_the_National_Interest.pdf.

Firsova, A., V. Strezov, and R. Taplin. “After 20 years of creating Australian climate policy: was the proposed carbon pollution reduction scheme a change in direction?” Australasian Journal of Environmental Management 19, no. 1 (March 2012), 21–34.

Garnaut, Ross. The Garnaut Climate Change Review: Final Report. Port Melbourne, Vic: Cambridge University Press, 2008.

Gyngell, Allan. The Lowy Institute Poll 2007. Sydney, Australia: The Lowy Institute, 2007. https://www.lowyinstitute.org/sites/default/files/pubfiles/Lowy_Poll_2007_LR_1.pdf Hanson, Fergus. The Lowy Institute Poll 2011: Australia and the World. Sydney, Australia: The Lowy Institute, 2011. https://www.lowyinstitute.org/sites/default/files/pubfiles/Lowy_ Poll_2011_WEB_1.pdf.

Holmes, Brenton, and Sophia Fernandes. 2010 Federal Election: a brief history. Parliament of Australia, 2012. http://parlinfo.aph.gov.au/parlInfo/download/library/prspub/1479741/upload_ binary/1479741.pdf;fileType=application/pdf#search=%222010s%202012%22.

Lightfoot, Simon. “A good international citizen? Australia at the World Summit on Sustainable Development.” Australian Journal of International Affairs 60, no. 3 (2006), 457–471.

McDonald, Matt. “Climate security and economic security: The limits to climate change action in Australia?” International Politics 52, no. 4 (2015), 484–501.

McDonald, Matt. “Fair Weather Friend? Ethics and Australia’s Approach to Global Climate Change.” Australian Journal of Politics and History 51, no. 2 (2005), 216–234.

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Mugridge, Kirsty. “Ad draws reaction.” The Daily Mercury (Mackay, Queensland), July 1, 2015.

Readfearn, Graham. “Ten years ago Turnbull called out Peter Garrett on climate. What went wrong?” Guardian, June 21, 2017. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/planet-oz/2017/ jun/21/ten-years-ago-turnbull-called-out-peter-garrett-on-climate-what-went-wrong.

Rootes, Christopher. “The first climate change election? The Australian general election of 24 November 2007.” Environmental Politics 17, no. 3 (June 2008), 473–480.

Rudd, Kevin. Speech, Brisbane, Australia, November 14, 2007.

Staples, Joan. “Environmental Policy, Environmental NGOs and the Keating Government.”

Paper presented at Australian Political Studies Conference, Hobart, Tasmania, September 26, 2012.

Stevenson, Hayley. “Cheating on climate change? Australia’s challenge to global warming norms.” Australian Journal of International Affairs 63, no. 2 (2009), 165–186. doi:10.1080/10357710902895111.

Turnbull, Malcolm. “Abbott’s climate policy is bullshit.” Sydney Morning Herald, December 7, 2009. http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/political-opinion/abbotts-climate-change-policyis-bullshit-20091206-kdmb.htm.

Von Strokirch, Karin. “Abbott’s war on the environment and Turnbull’s hot air.” Social Alternatives 35, no. 2 (2016), 23–31.

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Nature and a National Canon: On the Disolution of Generic Boundaries through a Consideration of the Poet’s Relationship to Nature ERIN MCFADYEN Arts 3rd Year

In ‘Winter, A Poem,’ James Thomson takes ‘Mother Earth’ (99) as a point of poetic departure. William Collins constructs a similar model, elegising Thomson as ‘Nature’s Child’ (36) in his ‘Ode on the Death of Mr Thomson.’

These examples may suggest how the natural world was a catalyst for poetic creativity in the eighteenth century. However, this conception is predicated on narrow definitions of both ‘the poet’ and ‘nature.’ One might more broadly understand ‘the poet’ as an historical figure defined by a place in the canon, and ‘nature’ as taking two forms: an extra-textual and a poetically augmented form. Adopting this broader understanding, this essay will examine the manner in which the two poets cited not only take nature but their poetic predecessors as reactants in the catalysis that produces their creation of a poeticised nature. This essay will also interrogate the reader’s role in creating the conspicuously textual and inherently nationalistic nature that both Thomson’s georgic (as it reads in its first edition) and Collins’ ode encourage. In this way, my analysis of the relationship between the poet and the nature finds that the pair are mutual co-creators of nature; in this way, the essay dissolves the boundaries between the poet’s nature and their nation, but also between generic categories.

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Through his ‘topological construction’ (Antinucci, 42), as well as through his proposal of a genealogical relationship between the subject and natural phenomena, Collins frames nature as a source of poetic inspiration. In the ‘Advertisement’ that precedes the poem, we are reminded that ‘the scene of the following stanzas is supposed to lie on the Thames near Richmond’ (in Thomas Gray, 488). By foregrounding the poem in a worldly natural setting, ‘Mr Thomson’ is not only set in a place but becomes a ‘poem of place’ (Antinucci, 39, italics mine). It emphasises the worldly experience of nature as a precedent for poetic production. Moreover, stanza ten demonstrates Collins’ explicit and aesthetic exposition of nature as the source of its own poetic representation.

The genial Meads, assign’d to bles Thy Life, shall mourn thy early Doom, Their Hinds and Shepherd-Girls shall dress With simple hands thy rural tomb. (37-40) The meads are ‘genial’ in the sense that they are ‘inspirational, here associated with genius’ (Fairer and Gerrard, 451), and they shall also ‘mourn’ Thomson’s death. In this configuration, the meads—synecdoches for natural phenomena more broadly—function as the subject of the verb phrases. They are granted agency, and given the ability to act upon the poet. This mechanism echoes throughout the ode in varied proclamations, such as ‘The Year’s best Sweets shall duteous rise / To deck its POET’s sylvan GRAVE!’ (3). Here, nature is again given agency so that it may act upon the poet through its role as grammatical subject. However, it is by establishing a hierarchical relationship between the elegised poet and nature that Collins is able most explicitly to position the poet as indebted to nature for their creative production. The possessive ‘its’ subjects the poet to the world around him, suggesting that the poet—as distinct from the ‘man’ by his poetic production—is created by nature. This also implies, in concurrence with then-contemporary thinkers such as Locke, that ‘the objects of sensation are one source of ideas’ (90) and that the experience of nature, in turn, is an impetus for poetic production.

In his ‘Preface’ to the second edition of ‘Winter,’ Thomson defines nature as ‘all that enlarges, and transports, the soul’ (‘Preface,’ 9). He frames nature as empowering imaginative and poetic production, as something that

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is ‘ready to awake the poetical enthusiasm’ (11). Furthermore, Thomson declares his indebtedness to nature directly, announcing the following of Vapours, and Clouds, and Storms: Be these my Theme, / These, that exalt the Soul to solemn Thought, / And heavenly musing. Welcome kindred Glooms!’ (‘Winter,’ 3-5). Here, as in Collins’ poem, nature is made the subject of verb phrases (such as in ‘exalt the soul’ (4)). As such, Thomson’s poem highlights its own creative dependence on nature. Elsewhere, Thomson portrays sensory experiences of nature as inspiring encounters.

For instance, the persona ‘Hear(s) the winds road, the big Torrent burst; / Or see(s) the deep, fermenting, Tempest brew’d, / In the red, evening, Sky’ (‘Winter’, 12-14). The evocation of sensory experience, as in ‘heard’ and ‘seen,’ and the colourific imagery of ‘red, evening, Sky,’ accords with the ‘anti-nativist’ ideas (Rickless, 34) in Locke’s Essay on Human Understanding (see Rickless, 34), an exposition that aims ‘to find out how we come to have the ideas that we observe ourselves to have’ (Rogers, 7).

As such, Locke identifies sensory experience as one of the significant bases of all ideas (Uzgalis, 14). Thomson’s emphasis on the sensory perception of nature suggests his shared belief with Locke (and with Collins) that experience of the world—and here, specifically, of nature—is a foundation for creative production.

However, neither of these poets, nor the then-contemporary theorists whose ideas permeate their work, propose that nature should be the sole reactant in the catalysis that produces poetry. Rather, the mechanisms of the poet’s own mind (as well as the poetic traditions from which they these mechanisms emerge) are at work when the poet augments nature with extra-textual materials. Locke designates ‘the operations of our mind’ (12) as adjuncts to sensory perception, which enable the formation of human ideas. Hobbes maps a similar genealogy of poetic creation, writing that ‘Time and Education beget experience,’ emphasising that ‘Experience begets memory’ (59), and suggesting that memory influences the poet’s exercise of imagination and judgement in poetic composition. Thomson’s and Collins’ privileged engagement with the literary canon as a particularly instructive kind of ‘experience’ also informs their transposition of extratextual nature into poeticised forms. Indeed, Thomson’s depiction of the poet’s disengagement with sensory experience demonstrates a ‘recognition of the value of … the literary past’ in poetic composition (Van de Walle, 674). ‘Winter’ depicts the persona retreating from nature, conversing with

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the voices of classical literary tradition, so that he may order his experience of the world. Thomson declares:

… be my Retreat

A rural, sheltered, solitary, Scene

…

… there let me sit,

And hold high Converse with the mighty Dead,

Sages of Ancient Times, as Gods revered,

As Gods beneficent, who blest Mankind

With Art, and Arms, and humanised a World (225-6, 227-31).

On this retreat, Thomson’s poetic persona exalts ‘First, Socrates, / Truth’s early Champion, Martyr for his God’ (266-7) and, subsequently, various figures of classical antiquity including Solon, Numa, and Cimon.

These figures serve as inspirations, or as moral directions, for his poetic production. Indeed, Thomson’s very choice to compose a georgic—a poem involving rural themes—underpins the creative reliance on the classical poets that this visionary passage suggests. Reid’s assertion that Thomson and his contemporaries ‘imitate the classics with an inventiveness that is remarkably free from the anxiety of influence’ (674) points acutely to the eminent role that literary and poetic tradition plays in Thomson’s composition of a poeticised nature.

Similarly, Collins gestures to literary tradition as an adjunct to the experience of nature inspiring his poetry. ‘Mr Thomson’ demonstrates how the intervention of poets of previous centuries can enable the poet to transpose the perceptual world into a poeticised nature. In a mode characterised by a ‘reflect(ion) on the poet’s vocation and origins,’ the poet quotes from Virgil’s Eclogues in an epigraph, thus rendering ‘Mr Thomson’ something of an homage not only to Thomson but to the classical poetic traditions (Weiseman, 55; Tiech, 93). But this citation also functions as a mode of canon-creation: it establishes a community of reference that implies a narrative of creative inheritance (Cohen) from Virgil through to Collins.

This narrative also highlights Collins’ exposition of literary inheritance as a factor that enables him to create a poetic nature. It is not the mere fact of the quotation, however, that gestures to canonical inheritance as a ground for poetic creativity. Rather, to read ‘These rites will be forever yours,

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when we pay our yearly vows to the nymphs, and when we purify our fields … me also Daphnis loved,’ (Fairer and Gerrard, 449) is to recognise the poet’s invoked notions of posterity and empathetic sharing in classical literature. Thus, ‘Mr Thomson’ highlights that poet’s inheritance from his poetic predecessors in the act of poetic production. Both Collins and Thomson model their relationships with nature on the textual worlds that they create; these relationships are contingent not solely on the experience of nature but on the workings of their own minds as they are informed by their poetic predecessors.

In addition, Thomson positions his readers alongside himself as imaginative participants in the creation of textual—and, importantly, nationalistic— natures. As such, one may read ‘Winter’ as conforming to generic characteristics of the georgic in ways directly related to notions of the poet and poeticised nature. Thomson stimulates his readers’ imaginations by placing an emphasis on sight (Gottlieb, 44). In particular, the poet’s use of the imperative in the opening line (in which he encourages the reader to ‘See!’) along with the instruction to ‘behold’ in line 24, implicates the reader in the sensory perception of the poem’s nature. Addison implies that this activation of readerly imagination is fundamental in the effective delivery of moral precepts in georgic poetry (3). Thomson restates this position in the ‘Preface’ to ‘Winter.’ He posits that poetry must ‘instruct, surprise, and astonish’ in order that ‘ignorance … be struck dumb’ (10).

It is unsurprising, then, that contemporaneous critical opinion commends the poem’s achievement of this didactic aim: Malloch, for example, was ‘charmed and instructed’ by the piece (20).

In what, however, were such readers as Malloch instructed—and in what way does this instruction rely on nature and the figure of the poet? To modern readers, the idea of nationhood readily emerges as a significant precept woven into the fabric of ‘Winter’s’ poeticised nature. For instance, when Thomson evokes figures of classical antiquity, their appearance is followed by a proclamation of the worthiness of British poetry: ‘Parent of Song! And equal, by his Side, / The British Muse, join’d Hand in Hand they walk, / Darkling, nor miss their way to Fame’s Ascent’ (290-292).

Here, Thomson expounds the significance of British poets and, in so doing, injects the idea of British nationhood into his imaginative landscape, tying it to the view of the poet as a figure who creates a body of work that can stand for a nation. Here, canonical poets and the reader’s imagination—as is

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typical of the georgic—are drawn together as co-creators of a nationalistic textual nature. The georgic, therefore, becomes a genre that uniquely positions the historical poet alongside the reader as a creative contributor to a national nature.

The same ideational architecture is evident in Collins’ ode. Indeed, the similarities between Collins’ and Thomson’s poems may challenge the generic boundaries that are thought to exist between them. Collins’ use of the reader’s own voice, and of personification, exemplify his engagement with the ‘georgic’ idea of readerly imaginativeness. Eighteenth-century readers valued personification because, in Bergstrom’s words, ‘it encouraged flights of imagination for both writer and reader’ (32). The ode,

by Collins’ time, had become increasingly introspective (Koehler, 662). As such, the personification of values whose ‘character’ is partly determined by the reader is a significant strategy in the poet’s quest to ‘transcend his private experience,’ particularly by including and involving the reader in the poem (Bronson, 25). As such, the ‘tears, that LOVE and PITY shed’ (Collins, in Eighteenth-Century Poetry, 23) serve the georgic agenda of deepening the audience’s engagement and imagination with respect to the poetic world. If georgic poems allow readers to colour the non-prescriptive, open-ended figures of the abstractions, so too does Collins’ assumption of the audience’s voice at the close of the poem invite readerly engagement.

In the final stanza, Collins adopts the voice of the ‘BRITON’ who observes the scene as an avatar for the audience:

Long, long, thy Stone and pointed Clay

Shall melt the musing BRITON’s Eyes:

‘O! Vales and WILD WOODS’! shall he say

‘In yonder grace YOUR DRUID lies!’ (in Eighteenth-Century Poetry, 41-4) In speaking for the audience through the ‘BRITON,’ Collins implicates the reader in the construction of his artful nature.

It is this Druidic image of Thomson that most succinctly demonstrates the link between nature, the poet, and nation in Collins’ poetry. But it also unites Collins’ ode with Thomson’s georgic, both in aim and in strategy.

Druids were Celtic or Gallic religious ministers; they ‘figure in native Irish and Welsh legends as magicians,’ appearing as ‘soothsayers and the like’

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(Oxford English Dictionary, ‘Druid’). Thus, the notion of the Druid connotes ideas related to British historical identity—ideas that predate eighteenthcentury conceptions of imperial nationhood. Tied directly to the worship of nature, Druidic religious practices were enacted by these ‘ministers,’ many of whom were ‘believed to have been ardent patriots … enflaming their people … to cast back the unconquered Roman’ (Thompkins, 12). In this way, Collins’ imagining of the poet as Druidic amalgamates notions of nature and nation, using the poet as the point of intersection between them.

‘Mr Thomson’ further conceptualises ‘Britishness’ as inherently connected both to nature and the poet in its second stanza: In yon deep Bed of whispering Reeds His airy Harp shall now be laid, That He, whose Heart in Sorrow bleeds, May love thro’ life the soothing Shade (in Eighteenth-Century Poetry, 5-8).

With the harp standing in for the poet metonymically, it may be possible to read the poem as suggesting that the poetic imagination is inspired into song by natural phenomena. However, the reference to the Aeolian harp multiplies the meaning of this image. In invoking a contemporary British poem—Thomson’s Castle of Indolence (Fairer and Gerrard, 450)—Collins brings together the natural world, the poetic imagination, and British nationhood, as embodied by a contemporary canon of British poetry. In this way, the textual nature of Collins’ ode, which calls upon both the readerly imagination and its poetic predecessors in its creation, proposes the idea of nationhood—a function commonly associated with the georgic in critical literature (Crawford, 123).

Analysing the relationship between Thomson and Collins and the textual natures they create is exciting because both poets challenge generic boundaries. Taking the notion of the ‘poet’ as representing not only the eighteenth-century poets in question but the canonical poets who influence them, this essay has interrogated the role of the literary canon in the creation of a conspicuously textual, poeticised nature. Additionally, this essay has argued that the reader is a collaborator in the creation of textual nature. In the the foregoing paragraphs, I have observed the ways in which the idea of nation is not only promoted imaginatively—that is, according

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to georgic principles—but structurally, insofar as it is embedded in these poets’ shared idea of the historical poet. Thus, these poems’ depiction of the role of the poet—both as the canonical poet and the eighteenth-century poet, and as the creator of poeticised, nationalistic nature in collaboration with the reader—serves to question the distinction between the georgic and the ode.

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WORKS CITED Addison, Joseph. ‘An Essay on Virgil’s Georgics’ (1697). Eighteenth-Century Critical Essays, edited by Scott Elledge, Cornell University Press, 1961, pp. 1–8.

Antinucci, Raffaella. ‘‘In yonder grave’: William Collins and the Gaze Beyond.’ ANQ: A Quarterly Journal of Short Articles, Notes, and Reviews, 2007, pp. 36–44.

Bergstrom, Carson. ‘William Collins and Personification (Once Again).’ ANQ: A Quarterly Journal of Short Articles, Notes, and Reviews, 20:4, 2007, pp. 29–39.

Bronson, Bertrand. ‘Personification Reconsidered.’ Facets of the Enlightenment, University of California Press, 1968, pp. 24–46.

Cohen, Ralph. ‘The Return to the Ode.’ The Cambridge Companion to Eighteenth-Century Poetry, Cambridge University Press, pp. 203–24.

Collins, William. ‘Ode on the Death of Mr Thomson.’ Eighteenth-Century Poetry: An Annotated Anthology, 3rd edition, edited by David Fairer and Christine Gerrard, Wiley-Blackwell, 2015, pp.

449–451.

Collins, William. ‘Ode on the Death of Mr Thomson.’ The Poems of Thomas Gray, William Collins, Oliver Goldsmith, edited by Thomas Gray, Longman, 1969, pp. 486–491.

Crawford, Rachel. ‘English Georgic and British Nationhood.’ ELH, 65:1 1998, pp. 123–158.

‘Druid.’ Oxford English Dictionary, 3rd ed., Oxford University Press, 2017. http://www.oed.com. ezproxy.is.ed.ac.uk/view/Entry/192686?rskey=SwB9pt&result=1#eid, accessed 13 March 2017.

Fairer, David, and Gerrard, Christine. Eighteenth-Century Poetry: An Annotated Anthology, 3rd edition, Wiley-Blackwell, 2015.

Gottlieb, Evan. ‘The Astonished Eye: The British Sublime and Thomson’s ‘Winter’.’ The Eighteenth Century, March 2001, pp. 43–57.

Hobbes, Thomas. ‘Answer to D’avenant’s Preface to Gondibert’ (1650). Critical Essays of the Seventeenth Century, vol. 2, edited by J. E. Spingarn, Oxford University Press, 1908, pp. 59–60.

Koehler, Margaret, ‘Odes of Absorption in the Restoration and Early Eighteenth Century.’ SEL Studies in English Literature 1500-1900, 40:3, 2007, pp. 659–78.

Locke, John. An Essay Concerning Human Understanding. Edited by A.D Woozley, Collins, 1964.

Malloch, David. ‘To Mr Thomson, On his Publishing the Second Edition of his Poem call’d Winter.’ Winter. A Poem. By James Thomson. 2nd ed., Printed by N. Blandford for J. Millan, 1726, pp. 20-1. Eighteenth Century Collections Online, tinyurl.galegroup.com/tinyurl/3Xzjh7.

Reid, David. ‘Thomson’s Poetry of Reverie and Milton.’ Studies in English Literature, 1500– 1900, July 2003, pp. 667–682.

Rickless, Samuel C. ‘Locke’s Polemic Against Nativism.’ The Cambridge Companion To Locke’s ‘Essay Concerning Human Understanding’ edited by Lex Newman, Cambridge University Press, 2007, pp. 33-66.

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Rogers, G. A. J. ‘The Intellectual Setting and Aims of the Essay.’ The Cambridge Companion To Locke’s ‘Essay Concerning Human Understanding’ edited by Lex Newman, Cambridge University Press, 2007, pp. 7-32.

‘Subject.’ Oxford English Dictionary, 3rd ed., Oxford University Press, 2017. http://www.oed. com.ezproxy.is.ed.ac.uk/view/Entry/192686?rskey=SwB9pt&result=1#eid, accessed 10 March 2017.

Tiech, Nathaniel. ‘The Ode in English Literary History: Transformations from the Mid-Eighteenth to the Early Nineteenth Century.’ Papers on Language & Literature, Winter 1985, pp. 88-103.

Thomson, James. ‘Preface.’ Winter. A Poem. By James Thomson. 2nd ed., Printed by N. Blandford for J. Millan , 1726, pp. 6-16. Eighteenth Century Collections Online, tinyurl.galegroup.com/ tinyurl/3Xzjh7.

Thomson, James. ‘Winter. A Poem.’ Eighteenth-Century Poetry: An Annotated Anthology, 3rd ed., edited by David Fairer and Christine Gerrard, Wiley-Blackwell, 2015, pp. 247-256.

Tompkins, J. M. S. ‘In Yonder Grave a Druid Lies.’ The Review of English Studies, Jan. 1946, pp.

1-16.

Uzgalis, William. Locke’s Essay Concerning Human Understanding. Continuum, 2007.

Van de Walle, Kwinten. ‘Negotiations of Tradition in James Thomson’s Winter (1726-44).’ English Studies, 2012, pp. 668-682.

Weiseman, Karen A. ‘The Aesthetics of Separation: Collins’ Ode Occasion’ by the Death of Mr Thomson.’ Issues in English and American Literatures, March 1994, pp. 55-64.

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Foreign Direct Investment and the case of Toyota SOPHIA ASTON BSc Liberal Arts and Sciences 1st Year Over the past two decades, multinational corporations (MNCs) have become a major force within the international economy. MNCs are created when firms associated with an origin home nation expand through the acquisition of either partially or wholly owned subsidiaries in foreign countries (Gilpin, 2001: 278). This expansion is usually achieved through foreign direct investment (FDI), which occurs when a firm gains control over productive assets overseas (Moosa, 2002: 1). As of 2016, the top ten multinational corporations – ranked by the value of their foreign assets – had an average of 67% of their total assets in foreign countries (United Nations Conference on Trade and Development, 2017).

A large proportion of research surrounding FDI concerns why firms choose to engage in such investment as opposed to increasing domestic investment and exporting to foreign markets. Until recently, mainstream economists had scarcely engaged in discussion of this question. As such, the most prominent theories of MNCs and FDI were developed by political and business economists respectively (Calvet, 1981: 43). This essay will elaborate upon these key theories in detail before applying one such framework to the Japanese corporation, Toyota. It will be argued that Dunning’s Eclectic Paradigm is the most apt in its explanation of why MNCs engage in FDI, whereas other theories fail to be supported by empirical evidence.

Theories of Foreign Direct Investment The most notable explanation of MNCs and FDI from a political economy background stems from the works of Stephen Hymer. Hymer argued that firms engage in FDI to exploit and protect advantages that they have over domestic corporations. This is because, when a firm establishes a subsidiary

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in a foreign country it is at a disadvantage compared to domestic companies as it does not have as strong an understanding of the language, culture, legal system, and other intricacies of the host nation. Therefore, the benefit of investing in a foreign country must outweigh the difficulty associated with these disadvantages. Hymer stated that these benefits are derived from the corporation’s ownership of intangible assets such as advanced technologies or branding (Dunning & Pitelis, 2010: 3). An example of how such advantages may drive a firm to engage in FDI can be seen in the case of Coca-Cola’s global expansion of its bottling facilities. Instead of licensing foreign firms to produce Coke, the company invested in production of its own bottling plants to avoid exposing the formula used to make the drink (Moosa, 2002: 30). Another fundamental aspect of Hymer’s theory is the notion that MNCs’ capitalist tendencies result in the exploitation of poor countries by rich countries, leading to the perpetuation of an affluent core abusing an underdeveloped periphery (Gilpin, 2001: 287).

Following Hymer’s explanation, the discussion of MNCs and FDI gained traction in the sphere of business economics, resulting in the development of several theories, two of which were particularly prominent – Dunning’s Eclectic Paradigm and Vernon’s Product Life-Cycle Theory. John Dunning’s Eclectic Paradigm was founded largely upon the principles of Stephen Hymer’s writings on the subject (Moosa, 2002: 36). The crux of this theory is that firms only engage in FDI if they have an advantage in the following three areas: ownership, internalisation, and location. The firm will have a comparative advantage in terms of ownership if, for example, it possesses a trademark or patent for a product or technology, or if it has access to cheaper finance or raw materials. Further, it must be more beneficial for the firm to use these ownership advantages internally rather than to sell or lease them to competing companies. Finally, it must be more profitable for the firm to expand production overseas. For example, such expansion may confer access to low-cost labour, location-specific resources, or the ability to tap into regional markets. If this is not the case, then it would be more beneficial to maintain production in the home country and continue accessing foreign markets by way of exporting the product (Cywiński & Harasym, 2012: 3).

A second theory of MNCs and FDI from a business economics background is the Product Life-Cycle Theory developed by American economist Raymond Vernon in the late 1970s. Vernon based this theory upon his observations of

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the transnational expansion of American firms throughout the 1950s and 60s (Gilpin, 2001: 282). They theory builds upon the proposition that every product has a life-cycle beginning with innovation and concluding in eventual obsolescence. Initially, in the innovation stage of the life-cycle, the product is designed and manufactured in the home country. This enables co-ordination between the research and design (R&D) and production departments, and thus allows for consumer feedback to be implemented efficiently. The second stage of the life-cycle involves the innovating firm exporting the product to countries within the next highest income tier. Gradually, however, the production process becomes increasingly more standardised, while foreign demand for the product increases and information regarding its production processes becomes more widespread. These factors result in the innovating firm being threatened with the possibility of competition from foreign firms.

To pre-emptively combat this, FDI is implemented, ultimately leading to the home country becoming a net importer of the product, both from its own overseas subsidiaries, as well as from foreign firms (Vernon, 1966: 195-198).

This hypothesis is consistent with the case of personal computers, which were first produced by American firms such as Apple and IBM, but are now imported to the USA from foreign nations, for example, from Apple’s production facilities in China (Moosa, 2002: 39).

However, Vernon’s theory was proposed in a time in which the USA was the undisputed leader in innovation, both because of the sheer size of the US market and because of the demonstrated research and development capabilities of American firms. This situation has changed significantly, since there is now a wide array of high-income countries capable of innovating at the same level as the USA. Therefore, since the income and technology gap between the USA and other countries has narrowed, this theory is no longer as plausible as it once was (Gilpin, 2001: 283).

Toyota: A Case in Point for Dunning In 2016, Toyota owned over 300 billion USD in overseas assets, making it the second largest non-financial MNC based upon foreign asset value (United Nations Conference on Trade and Development, 2017). Upon analysis of two of the firm’s major foreign investments, in France and the USA, it is evident that Toyota’s FDI decisions can be explained comprehensively by Dunning’s Eclectic Paradigm.

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In terms of ownership, the corporation has a clear technological advantage, as well as having the upper hand in terms of its globally recognisable brand, extensive budget, and relative ease of access to additional funds.

In 2006/2007, Toyota dedicated 22 million USD per day to R&D, and it is reasonable to expect that this figure has risen further over the past decade (Thuermer, 2007: 2). It is precisely this innovation that puts Toyota ahead of its competitors, particularly in a market in which technological advancements are so increasingly valued and expected in vehicles. In 1998, Toyota commenced operations at a new assembly plant in Valenciennes, in the north of France, specialising in the production of the Toyota Yaris.

By comparison to other car models on the market at the time, both those produced by Toyota and its competitors, the Yaris was superior in terms of its environmentally conscious technology (Davison-Aitkins, 1998: 7).

Investing in the Valenciennes plant thus represented Toyota exploiting its ownership advantage gained from being in possession of this technology.

Furthermore, in autumn of 2006, Toyota opened its tenth USA plant in San Antonio, Texas, for the assembly of the Tundra pickup truck. Toyota opted to open this plant at a time in which other automotive companies were shutting down their US-based facilities due to falling sales. Toyota owed this contrast in success to its innovative new products that were “breathing life into the industry” (Thuermer, 2007: 2). Therefore, it makes sense that Toyota would seek to hold these technologies close to its chest, opting to expand rather than to sell the technology to its competitors. This demonstrates that the firm’s engagement in FDI was driven by a desire to internalise its ownership advantages.

As predicted by Dunning, it is evident that Toyota chooses to invest specifically in foreign locations that confer profitable advantages to the company. Many of the factors that go into the decision-making process when it comes to selecting a location for a new plant can be traced back to Toyota’s ‘just-in-time’ philosophy. The location of Valenciennes was chosen for Toyota’s French plant so that the facility would be near the final consumers of the Yaris. The immediate population of 10 million as well as the accessibility of the location to other European markets meant that the cars could be readily and inexpensively transported to consumers (DavisonAitkins, 1998: 6). In addition, Toyota’s decision to expand its American production by way of investing in a new San Antonio plant was driven by the strong demand for the product within the country, allowing Toyota to

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better observe its ‘just-in-time’ principle by producing the vehicles in the same region in which they will be purchased (Thuermer, 2007: 2). This ‘just-in-time’ philosophy has a clear profitability advantage as it reduces the amount of wasted materials and ensures that prospective plant locations are near parts suppliers and export hubs, thus reducing the company’s transport expenditure.

Additionally, Toyota ensures that FDI will increase profitability by investing in regions in which there is low-cost labour, low taxes, a low cost of production, and considerable government incentive, all of which are factors that contribute to profitability. These factors came into play in Toyota’s choice of its Valenciennes location since, at the time, this region of France had a high rate of unemployment, which was ideal for Toyota as it promised a long-term abundance of relatively cheap labour (Davison-Aitkins, 1998: 6). This was evident in reverse in Australia, with Toyota ceasing production in the country, in part due to exorbitant labour costs.

Finally, in the unique case of Toyota, FDI can also be deemed to play a role in protecting and securing the profits of the corporation in the case of a natural disaster. In 2011, an earthquake in Japan threatened the profitability of the company due to disruption of its output. Part of the firm’s rebound strategy was to expand production to a greater number of international locations (Greimel, 2013). Whether intentional or not, this expansion resulted in Toyota gaining stability in terms of being more able to withstand any potential profit loss caused by such natural disasters in the future. Japan is in a relatively high risk zone for earthquakes and tsunamis, so expansion means that if there was an obstruction to productivity due to a natural disaster in Japan, the corporation could continue to operate through its foreign subsidiaries while the Japanese arm was able to recover. Furthermore, in the current climate of volatile political tension on the North Korean peninsula, this establishment of foreign subsidiaries could also buffer any potential financial downfall experienced by Toyota’s Japanese headquarters as a result of conflict in the region. Overall, Toyota clearly engages in FDI only when there is an advantage in terms of ownership, internalisation, and location. Therefore, Dunning’s Eclectic Paradigm provides an apt and accurate explanation for FDI in this instance.

Because Dunning’s theory was founded largely upon the principles held within Hymer’s works, it can be said that Hymer too was accurate in his

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explanation. However, in contrast to Dunning, Hymer also maintained that FDI occurred primarily when corporations from high-income home countries invest in low-income nations, exporting products back to the origin country and exploiting poorer countries in the process (Gilpin, 2001: 287).

This aspect of Hymer’s theory cannot be corroborated empirically. In fact, the opposite has been demonstrated through data which shows that MNCs invest more heavily in wealthy countries than in low-income nations (United Nations Conference on Trade and Development, 2016). Furthermore, in the case of Toyota, the company clearly establishes its plants in locations that either have potential to become a large market or are close to a pre-existing market. Their emphasis is not upon exploiting low-income countries but instead involves establishing subsidiaries in locations that contain populations which will then purchase the vehicle being produced. Since a low-income country likely doesn’t have the economy to whet Toyota’s consumption appetite, it is unlikely that the firm would select such a nation for a subsidiary, unless this location offered a delicate balance between lowcost wages and resources, and proximity to target markets. This is the case with Toyota’s presence in Southeast Asia – the region boasts low wages and low-cost land and resources but is geographically proximal to markets in high-income nations such as Australia, New Zealand, and parts of Asia (Pugliese, 2004: 38).

FDI is a crucial component of our globalised world and naturally, the reasons driving the engagement of MNCs in FDI are of increasing interest to economists. A rudimentary analysis of the prominent theories attempting to explain this issue suggests that overall, John Dunning’s Eclectic Paradigm provides the most apt explanation. However, it is vital to acknowledge that, as has been the case with Vernon’s Product Life-Cycle Theory, hypotheses that once perfectly explained the real-world case can become redundant with changes in society, finance, and politics. Therefore, since this is an area of such importance to the global economy, it is vital that economists continue to attempt to theorise more accurately what motivates MNCs to engage in FDI.

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WORKS CITED Calvet, A., 1981. A Synthesis of Foreign Direct Investment Theories and Theories of the Multinational Firm. Journal of International Business Studies, 12(1), pp. 43-59.

Cywiński, L. & Harasym, R., 2012. Review of FDI Theory In The Knowledge-Intensive Economy. Financial Internet Quarterly, 8(4), pp. 1-14.

Davison-Aitkins, N., 1998. How Toyota Parked in Europe. Corporate Location, 46(1), pp. 6-7.

Dunning, J. & Pitelis, C., 2010. The Political Economy of Globilization: Revisiting Stephen Hymer 50 Years On. Transnational Corporations, 19(3), pp. 1-29.

Gilpin, R., 2001. The State and the Multinationals. In: Global Political Economy: Understanding the International Economic Order. Princeton: Princeton University Press, pp. 278-304.

Greimel, H., 2013. As Toyota Rebounds, the Mantra is ‘More’. Automotive News, 87(6583), pp. 1.

Moosa, I., 2002. Foreign Direct Investment: Theory, Evidence and Practice. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.

Pugliese, T., 2004. How Toyota and its Partners Seized Southeast Asia. Far Eastern Economic Review, 167(32), pp. 38-39.

Thuermer, K., 2006. Automotives: Toyota - Land of opportunity. Foreign Direct Investment, 9(1), pp. 1.

United Nations Conference on Trade and Development, 2016. World Investment Report 2016.

Available at: http://unctad.org/en/PublicationsLibrary/wir2016_en.pdf [Accessed 9 October 2017].

United Nations Conference on Trade and Development, 2017. World Investment Report 2017: Annex Tables. Available at: http://unctad.org/Sections/dite_dir/docs/WIR2017/WIR17_tab24.xlsx [Accessed 9 October 2017].

Vernon, R., 1966. International Investment and International Trade in the Product Cycle.

Quarterly Journal of Economics, 80(2), pp. 190-207.

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‘The Woman in Love’: De Beauvoir’s Relevance to Gender Relations Today ISOBEL MAGRATH Science/Nutrition 1st Year

In her book The Second Sex (1949), Simone de Beauvoir paints a vivid portrait of a woman in love. She is devoted to her husband beyond measure, and willing to sacrifice anything; but sadly, to him, she is merely one object among many.

While this description may seem antiquated, it still relates to contemporary gender relations, at least as far as heterosexual pairs are concerned. Indeed, cultural norms and stereotypes continue to depict women as objects that belong to men. With this observation in mind, this essay will argue that de Beauvoir’s theory, while described in terms of the discourse of love, is actually a commentary on women’s reactions to power disparities between sexes. In this way, I argue that de Beauvoir’s theory will continue to remain relevant— at least while patriarchal power structures reinforce the same gendered power dynamics.

Nonetheless, as much de Beauvoir’s philosophical theory is broadly applicable, it was also influenced by her specific situation, which limits its current applicability. In light of this fact, this paper will analyse the relevance of the theory by viewing it through the lens of the politics of location and performativity. To provide examples of the commodification of women with respect to love and relationships, I will examine selected wedding and marriage rites and stereotypes—practices that are often seen as the ultimate representation of love—so as to confirm aspects of de Beauvoir’s theory and showcase the modern “woman in love.”

De Beauvoir’s theory of “the woman in love” describes how cultural and power discrepancies between males and females assert themselves in heterosexual relationships. As de Beauvoir puts it, “it is the differences of their situations

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that is reflected in the difference men and women show in their conceptions of love” (1953, p. 608). In the historical context in which de Beauvoir wrote, women were regarded as inferior to men, and destined to rely on a man simply to survive. To these women, a man was represented as a “superb being whom she cannot possibly equal” (De Beauvoir 1953, p. 609). A woman, in response to her inevitable reliance on a man, forms an intense attachment to him: “she chooses to desire her enslavement so ardently that it will seem to her the expression of her liberty” (De Beauvoir 1953, p. 609). It is clear that this “love” is merely the woman’s attempt to reconcile herself with the facts of her inferior reality.

For women, a man represents not only a necessary means of survival, but also an opportunity to access the arenas of life normally withheld from her by the constructs of society. By subordinating herself to a man, a woman “hopes he will give her at once possession of herself and of the universe he represents” (De Beauvoir 1953, p. 611). Indeed, this is the best option a woman may have to access the world, so she devotes herself fully to him, so much so that “for her, love becomes a religion” (De Beauvoir 1953, p. 609). While a woman’s devotion to her husband thus constitutes her entire existence, she remains merely an object in his life. He wants to “take possession of her,” while still remaining a “sovereign subject” (De Beauvoir 1953, p. 608). The woman is “only one value among others,” and by accepting this fate she becomes the “woman in love” (De Beauvoir 1953, p. 608). It is clear that, in De Beauvoir’s theory, power imbalances exists between men and women; she represents men as conscious beings and sovereign subjects while women are merely objects to be owned.

De Beauvoir’s theory is based on her experience as a white, middle- class woman in post-war Paris. In her chapter, “The Woman in Love,” de Beauvoir writes of the actions of “every woman,” yet the woman she describes is surprisingly like de Beauvoir, and informed by de Beauvoir’s experiences.

She is certainly not representative of women in different classes and races to de Beauvoir. By describing the actions of “every woman,” de Beauvoir ignores the fact that a person cannot be only a woman, for many different factors impact upon someone’s identity, and therefore lived experience” (1953, p. 615). A useful concept here is the “politics of location.” This conceptual tool can be used to identify what situates a person and how their location, as such, impacts on their lived experience. Adrienne Rich writes that “to locate myself in my body means … recognising this white skin and the places it has

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taken me, and the places that it has not let me go” (Rich 1986, pp. 215-216). It is not only race that establishes a person’s location, however, but the overlap and intersection of factors including class, geographical location, wealth, age, education, physical and mental ability, beliefs, religion and the time in history in which a person lived.

De Beauvoir was influenced by her situation as a white, middle-class woman who lived in a Western country in the 1940s and ’50s. When de Beauvoir refers to “every woman,” she is of course referring to a specifically located woman, and to who is a heterosexual, middle-class woman who is not in an interracial relationship. Significantly, however, de Beauvoir recognises the limits of her theory through the concept of the ‘frame’, stating that “of course the male is to belong to the same class and race as hers, for sexual privilege is in play only within this frame” (De Beauvoir 1953, p. 609). Given that de Beauvoir’s conceptualisation of sexual relations was conceived out of a specific location, and refers to a specific type of relationship, it remains at least partially inaccessible to whatever part of modern society does not share in and of that location. In particular, people in non-heterosexual relationships and people in non-Western cultures are likely to find little of real applicability in de Beauvoir; and yet, it would also be ignorant to imagine that all heterosexual Western relationships today will chime with those described by de Beauvoir.

In any event, de Beauvoir’s work may still be useful in examining the norms and ideals that permeate heterosexual relationships in Western society, and for exploring how these norms may impact on both current and future gender relations.

The most relevant aspect of de Beauvoir’s theory to contemporary society is her identification that women are devalued—not as subject but as objects; indeed, her description of the effects this has on women in relationships continues to ramify in contemporary readings. De Beauvoir’s theory suggests that women fall ardently in love because they can do little other than impute to themselves the value ascribed to them by society as “inessential objects” (De Beauvoir 1953, p. 609); as she writes, women are “destined to the male from childhood, for “there is no other way out for her than to lose herself, body and soul, in him who is represented to her as the absolute” (De Beauvoir 1953, p. 609). Though these words were written more than sixty years ago, and today many women need not rely on a man for survival, it is clear that patriarchal power systems and gender stereotypes remain in play in contemporary society, reaffirming the continuing relevance of de Beauvoir’s observations.

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Many current gender norms reinforce the notion that women are objects, especially in those norms related to romance and relationships. For example, the practice of marriage, which is often considered to be the principal expression of love, is replete with objectifying norms and traditions. One such practice is the tradition of the white wedding dress, a symbol of the virginity and purity of the bride. The dress aims to position the woman as a worthy object, rendering her so merely by virtue of her physical appearance. That a similarly crystallised or enduring symbol does not exist for men demonstrates that men are valued less as objects and more as human beings, subject to greater freedom.

Perhaps an even better example is the act of a woman changing her surname after marriage. This is still prevalent in Australian society, as over 80 percent of married women adopt their husband’s surname (ABC News 2016). The default law is that a person retains their name after becoming married, so to take the husband’s name is a conscious decision requiring thought and action (ABC News 2016). The deliberate nature of this decision heightens the formality of the objectification process: once married, women lose their identity and adopt that of their husband. A third example is the practice of “giving away” the bride, a ritual in which a father (or substitute father) walks his daughter down the aisle. This ritual symbolises a transfer of ownership, one in which the bride passes from the father to the groom. De Beauvoir credits this system of ownership among men to the extreme nature of women’s love, but these wedding practices also reveal the extent to which modern society continues to render women in relationships as objects—goods to be given or to be owned.

De Beauvoir’s theory details the effect that being viewed as objects has on women in relationships. While this part of the theory is hard to prove or disprove (based as it is on a highly philosophical argument that makes only limited use of empirical evidence), it is possible to identify a contemporary norm that is similar to the reaction of the woman in love. Much as the women in de Beauvoir’s theory who convince themselves of the “grand amour”— often, it seems, to distract themselves from the facts of their patriarchal enslavement—the grand romantic gestures of the “big white wedding” serves to distract people from the sexist and demeaning nature of these matrimonial traditions.

A stereotype of the woman who becomes obsessed with planning her wedding frequently appears in popular culture. The reality TV show Say Yes

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to the Dress, for instance, portrays numerous womens’ attempts to pick the “perfect” wedding dress, and stresses the importance of a woman looking her “best” at her wedding. This common stereotype is the contemporary “woman in love.” Embracing her role as the bride (and the commodifying aspects that come with it), she exhibits a similar intensity and fervour to the “woman in love” who, as de Beauvoir writes, ever tries “to rise above her situation as an inessential object by fully accepting it” (De Beauvoir 1953, p. 609). The modern obsession with these “big white weddings” is a product of social norms, most of which hold out weddings as the ultimate act of romance while reinforcing sexist values.

Beyond de Beauvoir’s conceptions, Judith Butler’s theory of performativity is useful in identifying the potential impact of wedding traditions in modern relationships. Performativity, Butler writes, is “a repetition of a norm or set of norms” that gain power as they are continually re-enacted (Butler 1993, p.12).

Butler writes that “the norm of sex takes hold to the extent that is ‘cited’ as such a norm, but it also derives its power from the citations that it compels” (Butler 1993, p.13). As the normative wedding practices are repeated, so they more powerfully perpetuate the concept of women as objects; and yet, they are also disguised as constituting the very “ideal” of love. The frequent representation of the woman who is fully invested in planning her wedding, along with attaining the attendant cultural commodities, and the obsession surrounding high profile weddings (such as that between Prince William and Kate Middleton), serve to encourage women to eagerly embrace their role as brides and all that it symbolises. While these performative norms continue to influence the power imbalance in heterosexual relationships, the structural aspects of de Beauvoir’s theory remain relevant to evaluating them.

Parts of de Beauvoir’s theory of the woman in love are, as I have argued, relevant to some but not all aspects of modern gender relations. In particular, the part of her theory that hinges on the value of the woman as an object in heterosexual relationships remains pertinent to contemporary heterosexual relationship norms. As I have argued, these norms remain apparent in certain wedding practices, where the woman is commodified and devalued.

Understood through the prism of performativity theory, the continued adoption and performance of these traditions reinforces the norms by which women are regarded objects, with the risk, as described by de Beauvoir, that these women will lose their identity to men once married. Furthermore, the message that women should be highly invested in their wedding serves to

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encourage them to embrace the role of mere object, much as the women in de Beauvoir’s theorisation.

Yet, clearly, de Beauvoir’s model cannot possibly describe the experiences of all women and all relationships, informed as it is by de Beauvoir’s particular situation—by her own “politics of location.” Though it lacks pertinence for people in especially different situations, and may often fall short in relation to non-heterosexual and non-normative relationships, it yet proves useful for analysing cultural norms in heterosexual, Western relationships, and is likely to remain so for as long those norms persist.

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REFERENCES Simone De Beauvoir (1953), “The Woman in Love,” H. M. Parshley (trans.), The Second Sex, Cape, London. pp. 608–632.

Judith Butler (1993), “Preface” and “Introduction,” in Bodies that Matter. New York: Routledge.

Sara Garcia (2016). Most Australian women still take husband’s name after marriage, Professor says, ABC News, Viewed 1 October 2017, http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-03-31/mostaustralian-women-still-take-husbands-name-after-marriage/7287022.

Adrienne Rich (1986), “Notes Towards a Politics of Location,” in Blood, Bread & Poetry: Selected Prose, 1979-85, pp. 210–231. New York: W.W. Norton.

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Starbucks Australia: A Business Case Study LAURA FARQUHAR Commerce 1st Year

1. Overview An iconic organisation licensed from Starbucks Corporation, Starbucks Australia has the potential for extensive growth and sustainability.

Operating as a privately owned company by the Withers Group (Fickling, 2015), Starbucks has twenty three stores throughout Australia (“Starbucks in Australia”, 2017). The company’s vision is “[t]o establish Starbucks as the premier purveyor of the finest coffee in the world while maintaining our uncompromising principles while we grow” (Gregory, 2017, p. 2).

This desire to achieve unmatched quality and service through sustainable practices is fundamental to Starbucks’ mission “[t]o inspire and nurture the human spirit – one person, one cup and one neighbourhood at a time” (“Mission Statement”, 2017). Caring for people and the environment through business activities is at the heart of the company’s stated aims.

Starbucks prides itself on offering an experience not limited to consumption of products. Its ethos of providing a third place for consumers (Patterson, Scott, Uncles, 2010) is centred on creating an environment essential to daily life external to the home and workplace. Offering a diverse range of products, including eighteen blends of coffee, seven types of fine leaf teas (“Coffee and Tea”, 2017), thirty-eight varieties of cold and hot beverages and a selection of fresh food (“Menu”, 2017), Starbucks operates in the fiercely competitive retail café chain market competing against the local café market within Australia. Both have well established consumer loyalty.

2. External environment The macro-environment is constantly changing, as globalisation and advancing technologies enable instant access to information and communication, impacting business operations. Politically, the introduction of United Nations Global Goals (United Nations, 2015) is influential

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for the supply chain, with businesses transforming their operations in alignment to these goals. Constantly changing legislation domestically and internationally must be followed by business practices. However, key issues affecting Starbucks in the macro-environment are important to consider.

Climate change The progressively worsening climatic conditions of the world, as a result of human activities, is detrimental for coffee production. The presence of climate changes is indisputable, with an increase in average global temperature by almost 1°C and further estimated rise of 2.6°C to 4.8°C by 2100 (Stocker, 2013, cited in Watts, 2016). Climate change has also resulted in unpredictable weather for farmers, with volatile rainfall and temperature changes detrimental to agricultural productivity. Hence, “The yield and flavor of coffee, as well as pest and disease activity, are tightly linked to climate and weather, particularly temperature and moisture” (Watts, 2016, p. 4). Global warming is detrimental for the growing conditions and quality of coffee beans, due to susceptibility to harsh variations in temperature and rainfall. Farmers are faced with the issue of unpredictable weather, reducing the yield of coffee crops and their income, while supply to the market is decreased.

Market demand and supply The reduction of coffee production globally due to climate change is a critical issue, resulting in a lack of supply for domestic and international markets. Arabica coffee beans which account for 70% of global production and constitute a large proportion of demand, are at risk (Bunn, Läderach, Rivera, Kirschke, 2014). Future suitability of land for coffee production is expected to be cut by 50% by 2050 and global losses of production are therefore predicted (Bunn et al., 2014). Nevertheless, global consumption is increasing by 5% every year (Watts, 2016), as 46% of Australians are drinking coffee daily (Australian Bureau of Statistics, 2014), and coffee has become an ingrained part of Australian consumers’ lives. Despite foreign and domestic uncertainty in the Australian economy due to political instability (Moore, 2016), coffee demand in Australia is relatively price inelastic as it is considered by the market to be indispensable. However, future cuts to coffee production have the potential to create volatile market

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conditions with rising coffee prices and excess demand, due to decreased supply of Arabica beans for specialty coffee.

Response of ethical consumers to impoverished communities The increase in ethical consumers has led to value changes within society and for operations of businesses globally. Consumers have widespread access to information and have responded to the disadvantage experienced by farming communities in developing populations with a desire to support. Sixty percent of the world’s poor live in middle-income countries, including Indonesia (World Bank, cited in, Liden, 2013), one of the world’s largest coffee producers (Schroth, Läderach, Cuero, Neilson, Bunn, 2014).

Issues of wage inequality and increasing disconnection between wages and productivity in Indonesia are exacerbated , since the agricultural sector is less educated and unskilled (Tadjoeddin, 2016). There are scarce resources and a lack of access to health, education and food security for families due to the nature of coffee farming, as high prices do not guarantee improved incomes (Watts, 2016). Consequently, businesses are engaging in ethical sourcing and supporting local communities in order to satisfy these changing values.

3. SWOT Analysis Strengths within Starbucks are strong brand recognition and existing visibility as an important resource for growth. The emblematic nature of the Starbucks brand enables significant savings from advertising to be made in operations. The substantial product range offered covers a large segment of the retail and local café markets, increasing potential profits. Strong partnerships between Starbucks and suppliers are well established within the supply chain, providing an advantage over new entrants into the market.

In particular, partnership with Conservation International and C.A.F.E. practices has strengthened ethical sourcing, sustainability practices and ensured adherence to initiatives (“Global Responsibility Report”, 2014).

Additional partnerships and projects have allowed for investment in social development to improve health and stability of farming communities, transforming more than 80,000 lives (“Investing in farming communities”, 2017).

Weaknesses of Starbucks are premium pricing, regarded as uncompetitive and excessive by the Australian market. The process of extraction of coffee

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flavor from the beans is automated and while this is resource efficient, the perception of lack of involvement of baristas as compared to local café’s is detrimental for sales (Patterson et al., 2010). The operational process whereby coffee is shipped from America to Australia involves transport costs and increased lead times, as coffee suppliers have to ship coffee to the United States first, reducing potential profits. While Starbucks has substantial investment in social development for farming communities, in some coffee producing areas, including North Sumatra in Indonesia, farmer education has not been fully addressed, detracting from potential long-term growth.

Opportunities for Starbucks include the utilisation of e-commerce in relation to online ordering. Utilising technology in-store and within operations, through organising orders of coffee shipments, will increase time and resource efficiency. Starbucks can also address its inability to recycle coffee cups due to waterproofing (Whyte, 2016). This results in a potential selling point for ethical consumers, addressing sustainability issues and detrimental environmental impacts.

Threats for Starbucks are the strong loyalty to local cafés and existing retail café chains displayed by Australians. The Australian coffee culture (Fickling, 2015) of patronisation of local coffee shops and strongly developed tastes over many years (Patterson et al., 2010), has resulted in weak penetration of the market. This is a threat to profitability due to competitor activity and substitution from independent cafés and retail café chains. The perception of Starbucks as an American brand and unaligned with Australian needs for coffee is threatening for sales and inhibits growth.

4. Recommendation Our recommendation for Starbucks in response to the internal and external environment as well as its organisational operation, is to implement a Farmer Education and Support Facility to achieve sustainable growth.

This facility will implement a long-term plan to improve agricultural productivity through education and training, allowing for monitoring, evaluation and research by agronomists. Starbucks has identified a strong reliance upon Sumatra in Indonesia, their third largest producer in the world, with the flavors integral for many of their blends (“A journey to the source of one of Starbucks most popular single-origin coffees”, 2015). This

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facility should be established for a farming cooperative already employed

by Starbucks in the Lintong region near Lake Toba of approximately two hundred farmers (“Starbucks Reserve Sumatra Lake Toba�, 2017). This strategy addresses the weaknesses of lack of education and issues of access in certain farming communities.

In this model, eight agronomists employed by Starbucks will be responsible for four zones established within the Lintong province in North Sumatra.

This facility will provide ongoing education, training and advice in advancing agricultural practices and minimising environmental impact in the following areas. These will include water conservation and drought management in responding to temperature changes and weather volatility.

Soil management training for farmers will allow them to undertake their own soil tests, providing advice on replenishing trace elements to maintain soil quality. Disease resistance education and prevention will be provided through testing of coffee plant samples, providing advice on current coffee plant varieties and undertaking research. One-on-one consultation and relevant training seminars for twenty farmers at a time in varying locations, will introduce and monitor sustainable practices. In response to the macroenvironment, farmers are able to adapt to climate change throughout their processes and minimise their environmental impact. Lack of future supply is addressed, with improved practices contributing to agricultural sustainability. Investing in farmer education will also improve wellbeing and improved practices will lead to increased incomes and livelihoods in communities.

Shared benefit will be created for Starbucks, farmers, the environment and local communities in the long term with the establishment of a Farmer Education and Support Facility. For Starbucks, addressing farmer learning and training improves productivity of farmers in the long term, evident through increased yield as agricultural practices become more efficient.

This initiative stimulates growth of the supply chain and works to ensure a sustainable supply for Starbucks, as high quality coffee beans will be grown in communities for generations to come. Past research concerning agricultural practices can be used to benefit supply and quality of coffee produced by helping inform strategic decision making. The long-term development of relationships with farmers in a one-on-one environment will allow for monitoring to ensure practices are correctly implemented and are translating into benefits. Due to high quality coffee sourcing through

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sustainable methods, market share and sales are expected to increase for Starbucks, improving profitability and performance against independent and retail cafĂŠs in the market.

For farmers in the long term, agricultural output of high quality coffee and productivity of increased yield will improve incomes earned by farmers.

With increased incomes for farming families, food security, health and education requirements can be addressed in the long term and improved in the short term. Smallholder farmers will be connected and channels of communication will be opened through which they can meet and discuss issues of production with farmers in the same region. Education and training on sustainable farming practices will enable their land to be suitable for continuous production. Soil quality will improve which aids productivity as it can be used sustainably for a longer period of time. Access to qualified professionals and the development of strong relationships will allow farmers knowledge and productivity to grow.

For the environment, agricultural practices will be less harmful and farming will be more sustainable as agricultural land is more viable in the future.

For communities, farming families can re-invest increased income from maximising coffee supply into local economy. In the long term, wellbeing of the community and living standards will be improved. Establishing a Farmer Education and Support Facility is a sustainable initiative which will result in growth for Starbucks in the Australian cafĂŠ market and address weaknesses and threats in the external and internal environment.

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REFERENCES Australian Bureau of Statistics. (2014). Australian Health Survey: Nutrition First Results – Foods and Nutrients, 2011-12. Retrieved from http://www.abs.gov.au/ausstats/abs@.nsf/mf/4364.0.55.007 Bunn, C., Läderach, P., Rivera, O., Kirschke, D. (2014). A bitter cup: climate change profile of global production of Arabica and Robusta coffee. Climate Change. doi: 10.1007/s10584-014-1306-x Coffee and Tea. (2017). Retrieved from https://www.starbucks.com.au/Coffee-and-Tea.php Fickling, D. (2015, May 27). Australia is exporting its $3.2 Billion Café Culture to the World.

Retrieved from https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-05-26/coffee-gurus-tout-2-000courses-where-starbucks-stumbled Global Responsibility Report. (2014). Retrieved from https://mena.starbucks.com/en/media/ get/20150513_Download-the-2014-Global-Responsibility-Report.pdf Gregory, L. (2017, January 31). Starbucks Coffee’s Vision Statement & Mission Statement.

Retrieved from http://panmore.com/starbucks-coffee-vision-statement-mission-statement Investing in Farming Communities. (2017). Retrieved from https://www.starbucks.com/ responsibility/sourcing/coffee A Journey to the Source of One of Starbucks Most Popular Single-Origin Coffees. (2015). Retrieved from https://news.starbucks.com/news/the-source-of-one-of-starbucks-most-popular-single-origincoffees Liden, J. (2013). Poverty in a rich man’s world. The World Today, 69 (3), 24-25.

Menu. (2017). Retrieved from https://www.starbucks.com.au/Menu.php Mission Statement. (2017). Retrieved from https://www.starbucks.com.au/Mission-Statement.php Moore, A. (2016). Measuring economic uncertainty and its effects. Economic Research Department, Reserve Bank of Australia.

Patterson, P., Scott, J., Uncles, M. (2010). How the local competition defeated a global brand: The case of Starbucks. Australasian Marketing Journal, 18(1), 41-47 Schroth, G., Läderach, P., Cuero, D., Neilson, J., Bunn, C. (2014). Winner or loser of climate change? A modelling study of current and future climatic suitability of Arabica coffee in Indonesia.

Regulating Environmental Change. Doi: 10.1007/s10113-014-0713-x Starbucks in Australia. (2017). Retrieved from https://www.starbucks.com.au/Starbucks-inAustralia.php Starbucks Reserve Sumatra Lake Toba. (2017). Retrieved from https://1912pike.com/starbucksreserve-sumatra-lake-toba/ Tadjoeddin, M. (2016). Earnings Productivity and inequality in Indonesia. Economic and Labour Relations Review, (27) 2, 248-271.

United Nations. (2015). Transforming our world: the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.

General Assembly Resolution.

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Watts, C. (2016). A Brewing Storm: The climate change risks to coffee. The Climate Institute. http:// www.climateinstitute.org.au/verve/_resources/TCI_A_Brewing_Storm_FINAL_WEB270916.pdf Whyte, S. (2016, October 24). Takeaway coffee cups piling up in landfill as Australia’s caffeine habit soars. Retrieved from http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-02-03/takeaway-coffee-cups-piling-up-inlandfill/7136926

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The Claims of a Pluralist Society with a Hegemonic Narrative: The Role of Statues in Maintaining an Exclusive National Narrative.

PHOEBE KAY Arts 2nd year Although it is commonly declared that modern Australia is a multidimensional and pluralist country, Australia’s national narrative is strikingly hegemonic insofar as it excludes various identities (Moran 2011). Indigenous people, for instance, are silenced, ignored, and marginalised, even as—or perhaps because—their stories and perceptions challenge the colonial narrative that has been long avowed in the public sphere. Connell argues that the dominant, hegemonic culture of Australia exerts itself at three levels: at a conscious level, a subconscious level, and through the social expectations we have as individuals (van Krieken et al. 2014b, 348). In this essay, I argue that statues, memorials, and monuments are agents that perpetuate a dominant hegemony at all three of these levels. To do so, I shall define Australia’s national narrative through its identity, then I shall illustrate how statues perpetuate this narrative. Subsequently, I shall discuss the exclusive and oppressive effects that this narrative establishes in Indigenous populations.

In conclusion, I shall argue that, in order to establish the pluralist and multi-dimensional society that Australia claims to have already achieved, intervention methods must be inclusive; that is, they must be influenced by their subject(s), rather than simply by the researcher or policymaker who proposes them (Goulding et al. 2016).

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Australia’s national narrative is defined by its emphasis on “country, region or nationality,” which formulates a civic identity (Tranter & Donoghue 2014, 238). This form of identity is manifested through a variety of characteristics and values, including those embodied by the ANZACs and the concept of free settlers (Donoghue & Tranter 2015; Tranter & Donoghue 2015). Both the ANZAC values and the ideal of free settlement have propagated the augmented values of hard work, mateship, and the “fair go,” not to mention resiliency in the face insurmountable adversity (Moran 2011, 2160–2161; Tranter & Donoghue 2015, 236–237). These ideals have been examined by Smith (1991, 14), who defines Australia’s national identity as a product of the nation’s historical memories of settlement; however, this history, as Smith suggests, includes deeply ingrained myths, including that of white men’s triumph, the glory of the Gallipoli landing, and the story of peaceful settlement within Australia (Donoghue & Tranter 2014; Moran 2011, 2156; Foster 2009; Perkins 2017). In order to commemorate these memories, public exhibitions of rhetoric often celebrate, enshrine, and memorialise these ideas, perhaps most notably through such figures such as Captain James Cook, the war hero, and Simpson and his Donkey. While these figures play an important role within Australia’s national identity, they also fundamentally structure the hegemonic and monocultural paradigm of Australia’s social landscape.

Indeed, the process by which this national mythology is reproduced serves to perpetuate the hegemonic colonial perspective.

Australia’s hegemonic national identity tends to reject the ‘nativist claims’ that have often been adduced by Indigenous people (Donoghue & Tranter 2014, 238). To be sure, it defends against such claims because they challenge the foundations of Australia’s civic identity. Moreton-Robinson argues that Indigenous people’s identity is “derived from an ontological relationship to country,” which is itself “derived from the Dreaming” (2003, 31). This form of identity emerges, he claims, from Indigenous peoples’ respect for and dependency on the country—a relationship that was undermined by the fictitious doctrine of ‘terra nullius,’ which, in one form, was advanced by the settlers (Moran 2011, 2156). The notion of ‘terra nullius,’ while it was rejected by the High Court in 1992, still plays a prominent role in the perception of civic identity, it being the foundation for British colonisation.

This has led to a paradoxical cultural tension that, as Hage characterises, can only be resolved by the reinforcement of a ‘white nation fantasy’ (as cited in Matamoros-Fernández 2017, 932). Hage further argues that those who do

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not conform to the typical identity are racially and socially excluded by the dominant culture; indeed, they are regarded as “Other.” This is evident in the case of Indigenous people, who are not simply regarded unfavourably based on their values, but are sterotyped as “dole bludgers,” “lazy,” “criminals,” “savage[s],” or “uncultured” (Phillips 1996, 115; Tranter & Donoghue 2014).

This perception of the Indigenous identity embodies Connells’ secondary value of hegemony; as Connell maintains, recognising the exclusionary nature of this perceptual system allows us to reflect on and to challenge the colonial ideals Australia has assumed.

Many statues, monuments, and memorials in Australia’s spatial landscape perpetuate the dominant, colonialist national identity—especially those that represent colonial, white, male figures (Perkins 2017). In considering statues, Goodrich and Bombardella (2016, 2) state that these figural representations function as symbolic representations of a nation’s values. Indeed, a statue is the very personification of a nation’s value system, exhibited in an evocative and emotive space. These authors further argue that a nation’s birth narrative is indisputably linked to its political and public spaces (2016, 3). And, as Grieves illustrates, this narrative–political link is evident in Australia in the form of the prolific representation of the country’s “founding” figures, such as John Batman and Captain James Cook (Perkins 2017).

To the colonial onlooker, statues of these men are merely the symbolic forms of Australia’s history. However, these representations are structures that play into Connell’s third level of hegemony—social expectations—as they serve to strongly reinforce the dominant ideology of Australia’s settler narrative.

Statues of Cook reinforce the myth of the peaceful settlement, which was fictitiously achieved through the doctrine of “terra nullius.” Moreover, these statues do not merely reinforce the peacefulness of settlement, but perpetuate the myth of a permanent, uncontested settlement. Foster (2009) denounces this myth, highlighting the way in which Indigenous populations, both in the eighteenth century and today, have violently resisted the occupation of their native land—historically through the so-called Frontier Wars. Despite this reality, little to no representation of this resistance exists in any prominent public space in Australia. This apparent concealment of particular elements of Australian history reflects the nation’s subconscious desire to exclude conflicting and confronting histories, and to reinforce the colonialist national narrative.

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The perpetuation of an exclusionary national narrative has led to drastic social, legal and political outcomes, resulting both in widespread oppression of Indigenous people and the establishment of a “Fourth World peoples” (van Krieken et al. 2014a, 233). Since the colonisation of Australia in 1788, successive governments have denied from Indigenous people their social and legal ability to nurture an autonomous, self-determining population (Moses 2011). No Australian government has signed a treaty with Indigenous peoples, nor has any government substantively acknowledged Indigenous peoples’ traditional ownership of the Australian land. In addition, the lack of constitutional recognition in Australia means that Indigenous people have been excluded from the privileges accorded to those who are recognised by Australia’s lawmaking. All of this is underscored by the absence of Indigenous monuments in Australia. While Kevin Rudd’s 2008 national apology to the Stolen Generations sought to demonstrate that the Australian government accepted responsibility (and, more generally, to improve settler/non-settler relations), colonial dominance is still asserted over Indigenous populations today. Such dominance is expressed in the Australian government’s failure to incorporate Indigenous peoples into the Australian constitution, the public celebration of our colonialist national identity on the day of ‘British invasion’ (2011, 156), and even in the fact that native title rights, which are highly volatile (and almost always defeasible in any case), have been identified as applicable in respect of only 26% of the Australian continent (Moorcroft 2016, p.606). These and many other failures to recognise Indigenous rights have not just perpetuated the national myths addressed above; they have also delegitimised the very idea of an Australian nativist identity.

To challenge Australia’s hegemonic national identity will require policymakers and governments to create “an open, inclusive, self-reflective national identity” (Moran 2011, 2168). Statues present a unique opportunity to achieve this end, as they are an evocative, emotive, and physical way of reinforcing national narratives (Strakosch 2010, 273). A fundamental sociological issue that arises in the case of statues, however, is this: How do we ensure that a narrative is inclusive, especially when it is guided by a colonialist voice? Goulding et al. argue that the way in which we approach research in today’s political society must take into consideration differing knowledge systems (2016). This means that we must understand and value non-Western methods of doing research, even if the results are

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not immediately reducible to empirical datasets. Modern policymakers and researchers must not seek to assert a predisposed national narrative premised on colonialist history; rather, they must write a new narrative in collaboration and consultation with Indigenous people (2016, 787). The value of such a collaborative form of research lies in its ability to produce a multidimensional national narrative that may be incorporated into the statues and monuments in Australian public spaces. Moreover, such an approach will not completely erase all elements of the colonialist narrative in modern Australia, which, after all, is embedded at various levels of hegemony (including those identified by Connell); rather, it will supplement the existing narratives with additional elements, thus providing a fuller, more truthful, history of the country.

In conclusion, Australia’s artistic and memorial landscape is dominated by figures and scenes that endorse and reinscribe a hegemonic and colonialist national narrative. Moreover, the conspicuous absence of Indigenous statues illustrates the ideological disavowal of Indigenous history and culture in Australia. In the last half-century, growing recognition of the necessity to create an open dialogue with Indigenous Australians has emerged.

Acknowledging Australia’s confronting, troubling, and complex past may be difficult; however, it is bound to achieve a more pluralistic and inclusive national narrative. The possibility of such a story, however, is utterly dependent on the recognition of a simple fact: namely, that policymaking and related research in Australia has never had a real occasion or impetus to question its routine methods or assumptions. If, by changing these methods, we accord some measure of power and influence to Indigenous populations concerning those matters of concern to them—and of concern to us all—we will ensure that a pluralistic society is in fact promoted and enabled within Australia. In the same vein, statues, monuments, and memorials must no longer be seen as merely decorative allusions to Australian history. They must instead be seen as symbols of ideological power and, as such, always be regarded as the confronting and unsettling reflections of nation’s decisions and actions.

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