Journal articles: 'Animal-plant relationships Australia' – Grafiati (2024)

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The microbial world colonises the gastrointestinal tracts of vertebrates soon after birth or hatching. These animal-microbe relationships have been described as competitive, cooperative or combinatorial, and all provide a variety of functional and metabolic capabilities that are relevant to host animal nutrition, health and well-being. The evolutionary adaptations of Australia?s marsupial herbivores have been relatively well characterised and favour both the cooperative and combinatorial animal-microbe models. Kangaroos and wallabies possess the cooperative model: the foregut functions as an obligate combustion chamber for a microbiome specialised in the release of nutrients from plant biomass, and which precedes a region of acid and pepsinogen secretions by the host. The common ringtail possum and wombats are examples of Australian herbivores with specialised caecal and colonic obligate combustion chambers, respectively. As such, these animals typify the combination model of animal-microbe association: the stomach and its associated digestive processes precede the obligate combustion chamber and its resident microbiome that coordinates the enzymatic hydrolysis and fermentation of plant biomass.

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Context The phylogenetic diversity and biogeography of most animal and plant lineages endemic to the Australian Monsoonal tropics remains poorly understood. Of particular note (and in contrast to many other tropical regions in both Australia and elsewhere) is the current paucity of evidence for diverse endemic radiations of restricted-range taxa. Aims To use recently collected material from major surveys of the Kimberley Islands, Western Australia, to expand on a previous study that provided preliminary evidence of very high levels of geographically structured phylogenetic diversity in a lineage of tiny geckos (Crenadactylus). Methods Mitochondrial (ND2) and nuclear (RAG-1) sequence data were used to estimate the relationships, phylogenetic diversity and timescale of diversification of all populations of Crenadactylus from northern Australia from which samples for genetic analysis were available. Key results In striking contrast to the two subspecies currently recognised in the Kimberley, our analyses confirm the existence of a notable diversity of highly divergent and apparently allopatric lineages within the Kimberley, including at least 10 that are estimated to date to the late Pliocene/early Miocene (or earlier) and seven that we recognise as candidate new species. Most of this diversity is concentrated in the high-rainfall zone along the western edge of the Kimberley. Key conclusions A growing number of genetic datasets are revealing northern Australian vertebrate clades characterised by the juxtaposition of deeply divergent and highly geographically structured genetic diversity on the one hand, and major geographic gaps in sampling that impede full assessment of the distribution and taxonomic significance of this diversity on the other. Implications There is a pressing need for further surveys, voucher material and phylogenetic analyses to allow us to properly understand the diversity, biogeography and conservation needs of the northern Australian biota.

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Abstract The relationships of Madagascan plant and animal taxa have been the object of much fascination, Madagascar sharing numerous lineages with Africa, others with Asia, Australia, or the Americas, and many others being of uncertain relationships. In commonly accepted global regionalization schemata, Madagascar is treated together with Africa for animals, and with Africa, tropical Asia and the Pacific islands in the case of plants. Here we examine the similarities between the biotic assemblages of (i) tropical Africa, (ii) Madagascar, and (iii) the rest of the world, on a basic taxonomic level, considering the families of vascular plants and vertebrates as analysis units. The percentages of endemic families, families shared pair-wise between regions, or present in all three, are roughly similar between the two broad groups, though plant families with ranges limited to one region are proportionally fewer. In dendrograms and multidimensional scaling plots for different groups, Madagascar clusters together with Africa, Asia or both, and sometimes with smaller Indian Ocean Islands, but quite often (though not in plants) as a convincingly separate cluster. Our results for vertebrates justify the status of full zoogeographic region for Madagascar, though an equally high rank in geobotanical regionalization would mean also treating Africa and Tropical Asia as separate units, which would be debatable given the overall greater uniformity of plant assemblages. Beyond the Madagascan focus of this paper, the differences between plant and vertebrate clusters shown here suggest different levels of ecological plasticity at the same taxonomic level, with plant families being much more environmentally-bound, and thus clustering along biome lines rather than regional lines.

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There is widespread evidence that beef cattle land managers in Queensland are using stocking rates for perennial pastures that are substantially higher than recommended guidelines, and some indication that these decisions are motivated by perceived financial and economic benefits. Considerable effort has been, and is currently being, applied by public-sector organisations to encourage producers to reduce grazing pressure from beef cattle across Queensland’s pastoral lands. A better understanding of the relationships among stocking rate, land condition and profitability of beef-grazing enterprises is imperative to better inform cattle producers and policy makers. The present study assessed the effect of grazing pressure and land condition on the productivity and profitability of a steer-turnover enterprise utilising buffel grass (Cenchrus ciliaris) pastures in central Queensland. A property-level, regionally relevant herd model was used to determine whole-of-business productivity and profitability over a 30-year investment period. Growth paths for steers from weaning to marketing were developed for 16 scenarios encompassing a range of pasture-utilisation rates (30%, 35% and 50% of annual biomass growth), land condition (A, B and C) and market targets (feedlot entry at 474 kg or slaughter at 605 kg). The economic effect of each scenario was assessed by comparison to a base scenario of 30% pasture utilisation and turn-off of slaughter steers. Our analyses demonstrated a large economic advantage from increasing grazing pressure above 30% utilisation for buffel grass pastures, even with assumptions of declining land condition and animal performance. For instance, producing slaughter steers under a 50% pasture-utilisation regime with a continuous decline in land condition from A to C (and, hence, productivity) over Years 10–30 was AU$21 772/annum more profitable than was a 30% pasture-utilisation strategy, which is widely recommended as closer to a long-term, safe utilisation rate. The present research has provided insights into the relationship between grazing pressure and economic returns of beef producers over the medium term. However, it should be considered as a scoping study due to the paucity of data for effects of utilisation rate on the productivity of buffel grass pastures and, hence, on land-condition rating. Further research is required to better understand the effects of utilisation rate of buffel grass, and other sown pasture grass and legume species, on plant biomass production, plant-diet quality for cattle, land-condition decline and cattle productivity.

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The Andean subregion corresponds to south-western South America below 30˚S latitude, extending through the Andean highlands north of this latitude, and comprises five provinces: Subantarctic, Central Chilean, Patagonian, Puna and Paramo. Based on a track analysis of the Andean biota, three main types of distributions were found: (1) no relationship of the Andean subregion with other areas (Andean endemic distributions); (2) relationships with one area or subregion, namely (a) Austral, (b) Tropical and (c) Amphitropical distributions; and (3) relationships with more than one subregion (cosmopolitan distributions). These relationships were described and mapped as individual tracks, based on data from plant and animal taxa. Coinciding individual tracks constitute generalised tracks, which follow three basic patterns: Andean endemic, Austral and Tropical. The first pattern is represented by three generalised tracks, namely (a) along the Puna, Central Chilean, Subantarctic and Patagonian provinces; (b) along the Central Chilean, Patagonian and Subantarctic provinces; and (c) in the Subantarctic and Patagonian provinces. The second pattern (Austral) is represented by two generalised tracks: (a) along the Subantarctic province of South America, south-eastern Australia, and New Zealand and (b) along the Subantarctic province and New Zealand. The third pattern (Tropical) is based on three generalised tracks joining (a) all the Andean subregion with the Neotropical subregion; (b) Paramo and Puna provinces, and the Neotropical subregion; and (c) Patagonian province and Neotropical subregion. The Austral pattern reflects the existence of an ancient Austral biota, with Gondwana events likely to have played a major role in its evolution, whereas the origin of the Neotropical pattern is probably linked to a more recent history, especially the uplift of the Andes and further glaciations. Both of these patterns reveal that the biota of the Andean subregion has a complex or hybrid origin where two different ancestral biological and geological worlds met and combined. The Puna, Patagonian, and Subantarctic provinces appear as panbiogeographic nodes, because of the numerous tracks that cross them, probably due to complex geological events. It is possible that the patterns analysed are the consequence not only of vicariant events promoted by tectonic phenomena, but also of dispersal and/or extinctions that have concealed these events.

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This paper tested the general hypothesis that differences in grazing intensity and phosphate application lead to adjustments in the structure of an annual legume community in natural and diverse grassland at Tel Hadya, Syria, due to changes in competitive relationships between species. The management treatments imposed were a factorial design of 0 or 60 kg/ha of superphosphate fertiliser (applied annually) and relatively low or high continuous sheep stocking intensities. These management treatments were applied for 13 years across three replicate paddocks for each treatment before the annual legume seed banks were sampled. The seed was sorted and representative plants were grown in a common garden in Perth, Australia, to assess reproductive and morphological traits. We found that phosphate application had more influence on species composition than stocking rate and favoured species with relatively competitive reproductive strategies (plants with relatively large seeds, low fecundity and early maturity). Contrary to our expectations, a higher stocking rate did not result in an increase in the proportion of small seeds in the legume seed bank or favour species with other strongly ruderal-type reproductive strategies (high fecundity and high seed dormancy). In paddocks without phosphate application, the high and low stocking rate paddocks were dominated by different species (Trifolium tomentosum and T. campestre), each with a similar reproductive strategy. Plant architecture and/or differences in animal selectivity may account for these differences. The study highlights the importance of phosphate fertiliser for maintaining seedbanks of competitive-type (large seed size, highly productive with good early vigour) annual legume species.

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Invasive species threaten many ecological communities and predicting which communities and sites are invasible remains a key goal of invasion ecology. Although invasive ants often reach high abundances in association with plant-based carbohydrate resources, the source and provenance of these resources are rarely investigated. We characterized carbohydrate resources across ten sites with a range of yellow crazy ant abundance in Arnhem Land, Australia and New Caledonia to determine whether yellow crazy ant (Anoplolepis gracilipes) abundance and trophic position correlate with carbohydrate availability, as well as the relative importance of native and non-native sources of carbohydrates to ant diet. In both locations, measures of yellow crazy ant abundance strongly positively correlated with carbohydrate availability, particularly honeydew production, the number of tended hemipterans, and the number of plants with tended hemipterans. In Arnhem Land, 99.6% of honeydew came from native species, whereas in New Caledonia, only 0.2% of honeydew was produced by a native hemipteran. More honeydew was available in Australia due to three common large-bodied species of Auchenorrhyncha honeydew producers (treehoppers and leafhoppers). Yellow crazy ant trophic position declined with increasing yellow crazy ant abundance indicating that in greater densities the ants are obtaining more of their diet from plant-derived resources, including honeydew and extrafloral nectar. The relationships between yellow crazy ant abundance and carbohydrate availability could not be explained by any of the key environmental variables we measured at our study sites. Our results demonstrate that the positive correlation between yellow crazy ant abundance and honeydew production is not contingent upon the provenance of the hemipterans. Native sources of carbohydrate may play an underappreciated role in greatly increasing community invasibility by ants.

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CRISPR-Cas is an adaptive immunity system of prokaryotes, composed of CRISPR arrays and the associated proteins. The successive addition of spacer sequences in the CRISPR array has made the system a valuable molecular marker, with multiple applications. Due to the high degree of polymorphism of the CRISPR loci, their comparison in bacteria from various sources may provide insights into the evolution and spread of the CRISPR-Cas systems. The aim of this study was to establish a correlation between the enterobacterial CRISPR loci, the sequence of direct repeats (DR), and the number of spacer units, along with the geographical origin and collection source. For this purpose, 3474 genomes containing CRISPR loci from the CRISPRCasdb of Salmonella enterica, Escherichia coli, and Klebsiella pneumoniae were analyzed, and the information regarding the isolates was recorded from the NCBI database. The most prevalent was the I-E CRISPR-Cas system in all three studied taxa. E. coli also presents the I-F type, but in a much lesser percentage. The systems found in K. pneumoniae can be classified into I-E and I-E*. The I-E and I-F systems have two CRISPR loci, while I-E* has only one locus upstream of the Cas cluster. PCR primers have been developed in this study for each CRISPR locus. Distinct clustering was not evident, but statistically significant relationships occurred between the different CRISPR loci and the number of spacer units. For each of the queried taxa, the number of spacers was significantly different (p < 0.01) by origin (Africa, Asia, Australia and Oceania, Europe, North America, and South America) but was not linked to the isolation source type (human, animal, plant, food, or laboratory strains).

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There is growing evidence that rapid adaptation to novel environments drives successful establishment and spread of invasive plant species. However, the mechanisms driving trait adaptation, such as selection pressure from novel climate niche envelopes, remain poorly tested at global scales. In this study, we investigated differences in 20 traits (relating to growth, resource acquisition, reproduction, phenology and defence) amongst 14 populations of the herbaceous plant Sonchus oleraceus L. (Asteraceae) across its native (Europe and North Africa) and introduced (Australia and New Zealand) ranges. We compared traits amongst populations grown under standard glasshouse conditions. Introduced S. oleraceus plants seemed to outperform native plants, i.e. possessing higher leaf and stem dry matter content, greater number of leaves and were taller at first flowering stage. Although introduced plants produced fewer seeds, they had a higher germination rate than native plants. We found strong evidence for adaptation along temperature and precipitation gradients for several traits (e.g. shoot height, biomass, leaf and stem dry matter contents increased with minimum temperatures, while germination rate decreased with annual precipitations and temperatures), which suggests that similar selective forces shape populations in both the native and invaded ranges. We detected significant shifts in the relationships (i.e. trade-offs) (i) between plant height and flowering time and (ii) between leaf-stem biomass and grain yield between native and introduced plants, indicating that invasion was associated with changes to life-history dynamics that may confer competitive advantages over native vegetation. Specifically, we found that, at first flowering, introduced plants tended to be taller than native ones and that investment in leaf and stem biomass was greater in introduced than in native plants for equivalent levels of grain yield. Our study has demonstrated that climatic conditions may drive rapid adaption to novel environments in invasive plant species.

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Grains such as wheat and barley, combined with legumes and oilseed meals, provide not only the bulk of essential nutrients for commercial poultry production and reproduction, but are also the prime source of anti-nutritive components, which are likely to have significant bearing on how effectively all dietary components are utilised by poultry. Sources of variation in the physical and chemical characteristics of grains used in poultry diets include variety, seasonal effects, and growth sites, crop treatment and grain fumigants, and post-harvest storage conditions and period of storage. The available energy and protein contents of grains fed to poultry, which best represent nutritive value, are extremely wide and in consequence there is an urgent need to develop rapid and objective tests for the assessment of nutritive value prior to including grains in poultry diets. Variation in the available energy and protein content of grains can be attributed to a wide range of anti-nutritive factors such as non-starch polysaccharides (NSP), enzyme activity, tannins, alkyl resorcinols, protease inhibitors, α-amylase inhibitors, phytohaemagglutinins, alkaloids, saponins, and lathyrogens. The relative importance of such factors will also differ according to the type of grain in question. However, NSP seem to be the predominant factor in Australia over the past few years given the volume of published literature on this topic. This argument is strongly supported by the fact that NSP-degrading enzymes are routinely used in monogastric diets with great success throughout the world. Numerous attempts over a long period have failed to provide unequivocal evidence that nutritive value in grains for poultry can be predicted with sufficient accuracy and precision by simple, low-cost physico-chemical measurements used singly or in combination. Nevertheless, it is highly desirable to continue to explore these simple measurements in the expectation that useful statistical relationships with more complex measurements will emerge, or that simple measurements can be used to fine-tune prediction equations based on more powerful techniques such as near infrared spectrophotometry. Finally, the nutritive value of grains for poultry will be determined not only by the chemical and physical properties of grains but also by the way that these interact with the processes of ingestion, digestion, absorption, and metabolism in birds. For this reason it is imperative that plant and animal scientists join forces to improve the nutritive value of plant material as feed for animals for the benefit of grain growers and producers of livestock.

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Environmental Context. The pathways by which arsenic is accumulated and transferred in aquatic ecosystems are relatively unknown. Examination of whole marine ecosystems rather than individual organisms provides greater insights into the biogeochemical cycling of arsenic. Saltmarshes with low ecological diversity are an important terrestrial–marine interface about which little is known regarding arsenic concentrations and species distribution. This study examines the cycling of arsenic within Australian saltmarsh ecosystems to further understand its distribution and trophic transfer. Abstract. This paper reports the distribution of total arsenic and arsenic species in saltmarsh ecosystems located in south-east Australia. We also investigated the relationship between arsenic, iron, and phosphorus concentrations in saltmarsh halophytes and associated sediment. Total mean arsenic concentrations in saltmarsh plants, S. quinqueflora and S. australis, for leaves ranged from 0.03 ± 0.05 to 0.67 ± 0.48 μg g−1 and 0.03 ± 0.02 to 0.08 ± 0.06 μg g−1, respectively, and for roots ranged from 2 ± 2 to 6 ± 12 μg g−1 and 0.39 ± 0.20 to 0.57 ± 1.06 μg g−1 respectively. Removal of iron plaque from the roots reduced the arsenic concentration variability to 0.40–0.79 µg g−1 and 0.95–1.05 µg g−1 for S. quinqueflora and S. australis roots respectively. Significant differences were found between locations for total arsenic concentrations in plant tissues and these differences could be partially attributed to differences in sediment arsenic concentrations between locations. For S. quinqueflora but not S. australis there was a strong correlation between arsenic and iron concentrations in the leaf and root tissues. A significant negative relationship between arsenic and phosphorus concentrations was found for S. quinqueflora leaves but not roots. Total mean arsenic concentrations in salt marsh animal tissues (7 ± 2–21 ± 13 µg g−1) were consistent with those found for other marine animals. The concentration of total arsenic in gastropods and amphipods could be partially explained by the concentration of total arsenic in the dominant saltmarsh plant S. quinqueflora. Of the extractable arsenic, saltmarsh plants were dominated by arsenic(iii), arsenic(v) (66–99%), and glycerol arsenoribose (17–35%). Arsenobetaine was the dominant extractable arsenic species in the gastropods Salinator soilda (84%) and Ophicardelus ornatus (89%) and the crab Neosarmatium meinerti (89%). Amphipods contained mainly arsenobetaine (44%) with some phosphate arsenoribose (23%). Glycerol trimethyl arsonioribose was found in both gastropods (0.7–0.8%) and the visceral mass of N. meinerti (0.1%). These results show that arsenic uptake into plants from uncontaminated saltmarsh environments maybe dependent on plant iron uptake and inhibited by high phosphorus concentrations. Arsenic in saltmarsh plants is mainly present as inorganic arsenic, but arsenic in animals that eat plant detritus is present as organo arsenic species, primarily arsenobetaine and arsenosugars. The presence of glycerol trimethyl arsonioribose poses the question of whether trimethylated arsonioriboses are transitory intermediates in the formation of arsenobetaine.

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Aerodynamic fluxes (frictional, thermal, evaporative) in the atmosphere as it flows over and through a plant community determine the Foliage Projective Covers and eco-morphological attributes of new leaves developed annually in overstorey and understorey strata. The number of leaves produced on vertical foliage shoots depends on available soil water and nutrients, also ambient temperature, during this short growth season. Stem density (number of stems per hectare) and species richness (number of species per hectare) in the overstorey of major Floristic Groups are correlated with annual shoot growth (ASG, t ) in that stratum. Species richness in the overstorey increases in the climatic gradient from the arid to the humid zone as well as with increasing air temperatures (about C) from temperate to tropical Australia. Species richness in the understorey is highest in plant communities in temperate Australia, decreasing in the temperature gradient towards the tropics. As with other major plant and animal groups within an ecosystem, the species richness of Amphibia is correlated with the amount of solar energy fixed (per annum) by the major plant formation in the region—a photosynthetic potential determined by the foliage shoots (ASG, t ) produced annually in the overstorey.

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Most food studies of Australian waterfowl have relied on gizzard analyses. This introduces bias because of differential digestion rates. Oesophageal and gizzard contents collected from feeding grey teal (Anas gibberifrons) and pink-eared duck (Malacorhynchus membranaceus) at 2 sites in south-western New South Wales were determined. Pink-eared duck ate 99.6% animal food (mainly chironomid larvae and ostracods); grey teal ate 74.2% animal food (mainly corixids and dipteran larvae) at one site but 63.9% plant food (mainly grass seeds) at the other. Both species contained higher proportions of animal material in their oesophagi than in their gizzards. Rank correlation analyses showed no significant relationships between oesophageal and gizzard contents in the 2 species in this study, nor in other Australian and overseas waterfowl reported in the literature. It is suggested that gizzard analysis has led to overestimation of the importance of seeds in the diet of Australian waterfowl and underestimation of the importance of invertebrates. It is recommended that future food habits studies of waterfowl use oesophageal contents from feeding birds, and results from previous gizzard studies be treated with caution.

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Predispersal seed predators are widespread throughout the legume flora of south-eastern Australia. Within the Coleoptera, weevils, anthribids and bruchids are important seed predators. Some weevils are restricted to certain host plant genera and are found on many species of these genera, e.g. Melanterius on Acacia; Plaesiorhinus on Bossiaea. Anthribids and bruchids are found in a range of plant genera. Host-specific relationships in these latter two groups must await further insect collections and subsequent taxonomic treatments of the insects involved. More generalist seed feeders are some Hymenoptera, including Eurytoma (Eurytomidae) and probably Megastigmus (Torymidae). Other hymenopterans associated with seeds are mostly parasitic on coleopteran larvae, e.g. Diospilus spp. (Brachonidae) on Plaesiorhinus (Curculionidae). Lepidopterans are also widespread seed feeders; however, detailed relationships between lepidoptera and host plants requires successful rearing of adult moths. Hemipterans are probably relatively unimportant as destructive seed feeders in south-eastern Australian legumes.

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Relationships are considered among taxa of Thripinae lacking long setae on the pronotum, and these taxa are here discussed as the Anaphothrips genus-group. Seven genera from Australia are considered members of this group: Anaphothrips, Apterothrips, Aptinothrips, Caprithrips, Dodonaeathrips gen.n., Ozanaphothrips gen. n. and Pandorathrips gen. n. Six new species are described in Ozanaphothrips, and one each in Dodonaeathrips and Pandorathrips. The worldwide genus Anaphothrips now comprises 79 species, of which 43 are here recorded from Australia, including 27 new species. In other parts of the world Anaphothrips species breed on grasses, but hostassociations of the Australian species are remarkably diverse, involving at least 20 plant families. Illustrated keys are provided for the identification of the Anaphothrips genus-group taxa from Australia. Variation is discussed in the form of the pore plates (=glandular areas or areae porosae) that occur on the sternites of males.

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The spatial arrangement of plants has implications for their pollination. Dense patches of flowering plants can result in increased pollinator attraction and, consequently, higher pollination and seed set per flower. We investigated this effect in the endangered, self-incompatible Australian daisy Rutidosis leptorhynchoides F.Muell. (Asteraceae) by quantifying the effect of plant density on pollinator visitation and seed set in a wild population. Pollinator activity was investigated by direct observation of insect behaviour, by examining the pollen carried on candidate insect species, by video monitoring of visitation, and by tracking the movement of dye as a pollen analogue. Two native Lasioglossum species (Hymenoptera: Halictidae) were identified as the most frequent pollen-carrying visitors to inflorescences. Their visitation was significantly higher where plants were dense, but no statistical correlation between seed set and plant density was found. Florivory was identified as potentially having a substantial negative influence on seed set, but without any clear relationship to plant density. Given that R. leptorhynchoides has declined substantially across its range, and previous reintroduction attempts have often failed, our findings provide key information pertaining to knowledge of pollinator and florivore behaviour in relation to plant density. To maximise success of future management strategies, these animal-plant interactions should be captured in species recovery designs.

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The effects of various grazing management systems on sown, naturalised, and native pastures were studied at 6 different locations in the temperate high rainfall zone (HRZ, >600 mm rainfall/year) of southern Australia, as part of the Sustainable Grazing Systems (SGS) Program. The treatments examined had different pasture species and fertiliser management, with grazing method ranging from set stocking (continuous grazing) to rotation with rests based on pre- and post-grazing herbage mass or season and plant phenology. Sites were located at: Albany, Western Australia; Manilla, Barraba, Nundle, New South Wales; (grazed by wethers); and Carcoar, New South Wales; Maindample, Ruffy, north-east Victoria; Vasey, western Victoria; (grazed by ewes and lambs).Grazing method significantly (P<0.001) influenced stocking rate (expressed as dry sheep equivalents (DSE)/ha), but effects were not consistent across sites. At Vasey the stocking rate of the rotation treatments ranged from 5 to 23% higher than the set stocked treatments depending upon year. For all sites, significant factors (P<0.001) affecting stocking rate were soil Olsen P, soil pH, grazing management (resting), legume percent, and an index of growing season effectiveness. Although total annual rainfall had a significant effect (P<0.002) in an initial analysis, its influence became non-significant (P>0.05), when a growing season index (P<0.001) was used. Non-significant (P>0.05) factors included solar radiation, annual average temperature, fertiliser applied in the current year, and average annual perennial and broadleaf percent composition. The implications of these data for productivity and sustainability (as assessed by perenniality and water use) were encouraging. Generally, there were positive relationships between increased stocking rate and the probability of achieving a zero mm soil water surplus in winter, and between increased productivity and the proportion of perennial grass species where extremes of treatments were compared at each site. The results indicate that stocking rate can be increased without jeopardising sustainability, that grazing management can bring about more sustainable pastures, that there is scope to increase productivity particularly through increasing soil fertility, and growing season length can be used to predict potential carrying capacity. These are positive outcomes that graziers in the HRZ of southern Australia can use to enhance productivity (thus profitability) and sustainability.

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Rangeland degradation continues in Australia, China and elsewhere. The stocking rate/animal production relationship has been a successful concept for pastoralists wanting to avoid degradation and/or raise incomes. However, there are no means available of alerting pastoralists to the approach of critical thresholds that would ‘flip’ rangelands into alternative states when grazing-stressed. Critical threshold forecasting for avoiding degradation (and seizing restoration opportunities) could be made available online. Research has yet to find, assemble and test the set of indicators needed to forecast the approach of critical thresholds envisaged in State-and-Transition thinking. Forecasting at paddock, property and regional scales would have to involve high-performance computing because the thresholds will be space and time dependent. The case for Australia and China to contribute cooperatively to this research effort rests on the large number of contrasting rangeland ecosystems across the two countries that represent rangelands globally. A proven history of past collaboration is extant with existing research programs on plant population dynamics, landscape patchiness/leakiness and soil biota status, and their responses to the separate and combined effects of climate and grazing animals. The road to adoption would involve partnerships with pastoralists throughout the process, remote sensing to identify approaching thresholds in real time, application of high-performance computing and possibly artificial intelligence, and packaging of forecasts for different socio-economic rangeland systems.

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Md-Zain BM, Abdul-Mutalib SA, Aifat NR, Masstor NH, Mohd-Yusof NS, Mohd-Hashim A, Abdul-Latiff MAB, Yaakop S,Samat A. 2018. Molecular phylogenetic inference of White-Spotted Guitarfish (Rhynchobatus australiae) collected from local Malaysianfish markets. Biodiversitas 19: 1382-1386. The white-spotted guitarfish (Rhynchobatus australiae) is in high demand at local Malaysianfish markets because its fins are a valuable food source. To date, few molecular studies have characterized their genetic identity. Wehave conducted a molecular study to infer the phylogenetic relationships of white-spotted guitarfish, which portray a similarmorphology to sharks and rays. The main objective of this study was to determine the phylogenetic position of R. australiae usingcytochrome oxidase I (COI) sequences of mitochondrial DNA based on fish samples collected from local Malaysian fish markets. Thisstudy included nine genetic samples of R. australiae and fourteen samples from other members of the shark and ray families, includingSphyrna lewini (Sphyrnidae), Rhizoprionodon oligolinx and Carcharhinus sorrah (Carcharhinidae), Dasyatis zugei, Himantura walga,Himantura gerradi, Himantura jenkinsii and Neotrygon kuhlii (Dasyatidae). Chimaera fulva, a member of the Chimaera family, wasused as the outgroup. Sequences in size of ~701 base pairs were successfully obtained from all fish samples. The phylogenetic treetopology was reconstructed using distance-based (neighbor-joining) and character-based (maximum parsimony) methods using MEGAand PAUP software. Results indicated that R. australiae formed monophyletic clade and is closely related to sharks (Sphyrnidae andCarcharhinidae). This conclusion was also supported by genetic distance analysis which indicated that Rhynchobatidae and sharks(Carcharhinidae and Sphyrnidae) were closer to each other than to rays (Dasyatidae). This study has proven the efficiency of the COImitochondrial locus in revealing the phylogenetic position of R. australiae. Research findings from this study have increased ourunderstanding of the phylogenetic relationships among guitarfish, sharks, and rays, and their respective taxonomic positions are giventheir shared morphological characters. This will benefit us in identifying these fish species before consumption from local fish markets.

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Genetic relationships among nominal subspecies of the lycaenid butterfly Ogyris amaryllis were investigated in eastern Australia. High levels of variation and population differentiation observed for allozyme markers were not consistent with subspecies boundaries. Partitioning of allozyme variation was explained better by arranging populations according to their larval host plant. Mitochondrial sequence data recovered a polyphyletic inland subspecies, with several peripheral subspecies showing reduced variation within this topology. Non-parametric topology tests rejected monophyly of the nominal subspecies and suggested that allopatric divergence is unlikely to account for the evolution of this complex. Genetic data, combined with information on distribution and ecology, are more consistent with a pattern of peripheral isolation associated with host-plant specialisation of coastal populations.

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Extensive surveys during the winter months in inland areas of Australia have greatly extended both the range and known hosts of Australia's two pest Helicoverpa species. H. punctigera was the more common species, being collected from c. half of the sites sampled. Here a further 47 plant species in 8 families are recorded as possible host plants; the majority (all except two) are new records of native hosts, and greatly extend the existing lists. H. armigera was less common, being recorded from c. 10% of the 554 sites sampled. This species was reared from 28 species in 10 plant families. Both moth species are recorded for the first time from various native plant species, predominantly in the Asteraceae and Fabaceae. The Goodeniaceae is also added to the host list of both species. Determination of the status of host plants is discussed.

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AbstractAn experiment was conducted to examine the digestible energy (DE) content for weanling pigs in a cohort of wheats grown in Western Australia, and to establish relationships between DE content and their chemical composition. The 3 ✕ 3 ✕ 2 factorial experiment examined the wheat variety (Arrino, Stiletto and Westonia), growing location (high, medium and low rainfall zone) and harvest year (1999 and 2000). Pigs (no. = 5 per diet) aged about 28 days were given a diet at a level of 0·05 ✕ live weight containing 900 g/kg of the wheat and an acid-insoluble ash marker for 10 days, with samples of faeces collected from each pig for the final 5 days. The average live weight of pigs was 6·6 (s.d. 0·77) kg. The DE content of wheats harvested in 1999 varied by up to 1·3 MJ/kg, while wheats harvested in 2000 varied by up to 1·8 MJ/kg. When the 2 years’ data were combined, the DE content ranged from 12·5 to 14·4 MJ/kg. Both the variety and growing region significantly influenced (P < 0·05, P < 0·001, respectively in year 1999; P < 0·001, P < 0·01, respectively in year 2000) the DE content of wheat. Also, DE content of wheat differed significantly due to growing season (P < 0·001). Correlation studies between chemical composition and DE content of the wheats found significant inverse relationships between DE content and total xylose (r = –0·719, P < 0·05), insoluble xylose (r = –0·742, P < 0·05), neutral-detergent fibre (r = –0·839, P < 0·01), total-P (r = –0·833, P < 0·01), and phytate-P (r = –0·753, P < 0·05) contents with the wheats harvested in 1999. However, such relationships were not significant (P > 0·05) with the wheats harvested in 2000. In addition, the precipitation level (mm) during the growing season of wheats was strongly correlated (r = –0·821, P < 0·01) to the DE content of wheat in year 1999, but was not correlated in 2000. The results indicate that the genetic and environmental conditions during the growth of wheat have a significant impact on the utilization of plant energy in weaner pigs, and that greater attention needs to be paid to these influences in the assignment of energy values for wheats given to weaner pigs.

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As part of the ongoing revision of the Australian Cixiidae, here we revise the endemic genus Chidaea Emeljanov, 2000. Examination of the holotype of Cixius sidnicus Stål, 1859 revealed that it is not congeneric with Cixius nervosus (Linnaeus, 1758) but belongs to the hitherto monotypic genus Chidaea resulting in the new combination Chidaea sidnicus (Stål, 1859). Chidaea dayi Emeljanov, 2000 is redescribed and thirteen new species are described: Chidaea algida sp. nov., Ch. armidalensis sp. nov., Ch. belairensis sp. nov., Ch. bobadeenensis sp. nov., Ch. carinata sp. nov., Ch. crassa sp. nov., Ch. dickinsonorum sp. nov., Ch. etelis sp. nov., Ch. kimbaensis sp. nov., Ch. orangensis sp. nov., Ch. pulyonna sp. nov., Ch. punctata sp. nov., and Ch. wilarra sp. nov. An identification key to species of Chidaea and to Australian genera of Cixiini is presented. Host plant relationships and distribution are discussed. Chidaea is endemic to Australia and occurs in all states and territories apart from the Northern Territory.

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This paper presents work from several studies on pasture production that were conducted in south-west Victoria at the Pastoral Research Institute, Hamilton. The frequency with which pasture growth commenced for each week of autumn in the years from 1965 to 1991 was assessed. The median period for the commencement of growth was in the third week of March (although the average date was March 27). Autumn data from several trials conducted over 3 decades were collated and analysed. A relationship between the grazed pasture yield (average of stocking rates plots) at the end of autumn and the rainfall showed that 200 mm of rainfall in the 3 months to the end of May was optimal while higher rainfall depressed the growth. The average daily growth rates of introduced pasture (perennial rye grass, Lolium perenne L. cv. Victorian, phalaris, Phalaris aquatica L. cv. Australian, subterranean clover Trifolium subterranneum L. and volunteer species) were measured in 2- and 4-week growth periods (G 2 and G 4, kg DM/ha.day) for the seasonal growth cycles over 4 years (1980–84 except 1983) when grazed by Merino wether sheep at stocking rates of 10, 13 or 18 sheep/ha. The rainfall throughout the study was lower than normal. Although differences in the animal performance between the stocking rates were only small, at the low stocking rate capeweed (Arctotheca calendula L.) in patches became the major component of the sward. Greater variation in G 2 than in G 4 indicated that growth responded quickly to current environmental conditions. A nonlinear regression accounted for 74% of the variance in G 2 when related to the 3 climatic factors of daylength, soil temperature at 10 cm depth and the soil moisture to a depth of 10 cm, and a plant factor of green herbage yield. The 26 % of unaccounted variance appears to be associated with an effect of stocking rate, possibly botanical composition. The botanical composition was not continuously monitored hence the only sward character included in the investigation was herbage yield. Comparison of the patterns of pasture growth from different latitudes indicated that while the growth pattern in south-western Victoria is erratic, it is intermediary between Mediterranean and temperate pasture types. Understanding this aspect has implications for improving the efficiency of animal production in this environment.

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Background In arid environments, plant primary productivity is generally low and highly variable both spatially and temporally. Resources are not evenly distributed in space and time (e.g., soil nutrients, water), and depend on global (El Niño/ Southern Oscillation) and local climate parameters. The launch of the Sentinel2-satellite, part of the European Copernicus program, has led to the provision of freely available data with a high spatial resolution (10 m per pixel). Here, we aimed to test whether Sentinel2-imagery can be used to quantify the spatial variability of a minor tussock grass (Enneapogon spp.) in an Australian arid area and whether we can identify different vegetation cover (e.g., grass from shrubs) along different temporal scenarios. Although short-lasting, the Enneapogon grassland has been identified as a key primary food source to animals in the arid environment. If we are able to identify and monitor the productivity of this species remotely, it will provide an important new tool for examining food resource dynamics and subsequent animal responses to them in arid habitat. Methods We combined field vegetation surveys and Sentinel2-imagery to test if satellite spectral data can predict the spatial variability of Enneapogon over time, through GLMMs. Additionally, a cluster analysis (‘gower’ distance, ‘complete’ method), based on Enneapogon seed-productivity, and total vegetation cover in October 2016, identified three clusters: bare ground, grass dominated and shrub dominated. We compared the vegetation indices between these different clusters from October 2016 to January 2017. Results We found that MSAVI2 and NDVI correlated with the proportion of Enneapogon with seeds across the landscape and this relationship changed over time. Both vegetation indices (MSAVI2 and NDVI) were higher in patches with high seed-productivity of Enneapogon than in bare soil, but only in October, a climatically-favorable period during which this dominant grass reached peak seed-productivity. Discussion MSAVI2 and NDVI provided reliable estimates of the heterogeneity of vegetation type across the landscape only when measured in the Austral spring. This means that grass cover is related to seed-productivity and it is possible to remotely and reliably predict food resource availability in arid habitat, but only in certain conditions. The lack of significant differences between clusters in the summer was likely driven by the short-lasting nature of the vegetation in the study and the sparseness of the grass-dominated vegetation, in contrast to the shrub vegetation cluster that was particularly well measured by the NDVI. Conclusions Overall, our study highlights the potential for Sentinel2-imagery to estimate and monitor the change in grass seed availability remotely in arid environments. However, heterogeneity in grassland cover is not as reliably measured as other types of vegetation and may only be well detected during periods of peak productivity (e.g., October 2016).

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This paper is meant to study the apocalyptic scenario of the at the perspectives of the Great Acceleration. the apocalyptic scenario is not a pure imagination of the literature works. Instead, scientific evidences are in favour of dramatic change in the climatic conditions related to the climax of Man actions. the modelling of the future climate leads to horrible situations including intolerable temperatures, dryness, tornadoes, and noticeable sear level rise evading coastal regions. Going far from these scientific claims, hom*o Sapiens Sapiens extended his imagination through the Climate-Fiction (cli-fi) to propose a dramatic end. Climate Fiction is developed into a recording machine containing every kind of fictions that depict environmental condition events and has consequently lost its true significance. Introduction The Great Acceleration may be considered as the Late Anthropocene in which Man actions reached their climax to lead to dramatic climatic changes paving the way for a possible apocalyptic scenario threatening the existence of the humanity. So, the apocalyptic scenario is not a pure imagination of the literature works. Instead, many scientific arguments especially related to climate change are in favour of the apocalypse1. As a matter of fact, the modelling of the future climate leads to horrible situations including intolerable temperatures (In 06/07/2021, Kuwait recorded the highest temperature of 53.2 °C), dryness, tornadoes, and noticeable sear level rise evading coastal regions. These conditions taking place during the Great Acceleration would have direct repercussions on the human species. Considering that the apocalyptic extinction had really caused the disappearance of many stronger species including dinosaurs, hom*o Sapiens Sapiens extended his imagination though the Climate-Fiction (cli-fi) to propose a dramatic end due to severe climate conditions intolerable by the humankind. The mass extinction of animal species has occurred several times over the geological ages. Researchers have a poor understanding of the causes and processes of these major crises1. Nonetheless, whatever the cause of extinction, the apocalyptic scenario has always been present in the geological history. For example, dinosaurs extinction either by asteroids impact or climate changes could by no means denies the apocalyptic aspect2.At the same time as them, many animal and plant species became extinct, from marine or flying reptiles to marine plankton. This biological crisis of sixty-five million years ago is not the only one that the biosphere has suffered. It was preceded and followed by other crises which caused the extinction or the rarefaction of animal species. So, it is undeniable that many animal groups have disappeared. It is even on the changes of fauna that the geologists of the last century have based themselves to establish the scale of geological times, scale which is still used. But it is no less certain that the extinction processes, extremely complex, are far from being understood. We must first agree on the meaning of the word "extinction", namely on the apocalyptic aspect of the concept. It is quite understood that, without disappearances, the evolution of species could not have followed its course. Being aware that the apocalyptic extinction had massacred stronger species that had dominated the planet, hom*o Sapiens Sapiens has been aware that the possibility of apocalyptic end at the perspective of the Anthropocene (i.e., Great Acceleration) could not be excluded. This conviction is motivated by the progressive defaunation in some regions3and the appearance of alien species in others related to change of mineralogy and geochemistry4 leading to a climate change during the Anthropocene. These scientific claims fed the vast imagination about climate change to set the so-called cli-fi. The concept of the Anthropocene is the new geological era which begins when the Man actions have reached a sufficient power to modify the geological processes and climatic cycles of the planet5. The Anthropocene by no means excludes the possibility of an apocalyptic horizon, namely in the perspectives of the Great Acceleration. On the contrary, two scenarios do indeed seem to dispute the future of the Anthropocene, with a dramatic cross-charge. The stories of the end of the world are as old as it is, as the world is the origin of these stories. However, these stories of the apocalypse have evolved over time and, since the beginning of the 19th century, they have been nourished particularly by science and its advances. These fictions have sometimes tried to pass themselves off as science. This is the current vogue, called collapsology6. This end is more than likely cli-fi driven7and it may cause the extinction of the many species including the hom*o Sapiens Sapiens. In this vein, Anthropocene defaunation has become an ultimate reality8. More than one in eight birds, more than one in five mammals, more than one in four coniferous species, one in three amphibians are threatened. The hypothesis of a hierarchy within the living is induced by the error of believing that evolution goes from the simplest to the most sophisticated, from the inevitably stupid inferior to the superior endowed with an intelligence giving prerogative to all powers. Evolution goes in all directions and pursues no goal except the extension of life on Earth. Evolution certainly does not lead from bacteria to humans, preferably male and white. Our species is only a carrier of the DNA that precedes us and that will survive us. Until we show a deep respect for the biosphere particularly, and our planet in general, we will not become much, we will remain a predator among other predators, the fiercest of predators, the almighty craftsman of the Anthropocene. To be in the depths of our humanity, somehow giving back to the biosphere what we have taken from it seems obvious. To stop the sixth extinction of species, we must condemn our anthropocentrism and the anthropization of the territories that goes with it. The other forms of life also need to keep their ecological niches. According to the first, humanity seems at first to withdraw from the limits of the planet and ultimately succumb to them, with a loss of dramatic meaning. According to the second, from collapse to collapse, it is perhaps another humanity, having overcome its demons, that could come. Climate fiction is a literary sub-genre dealing with the theme of climate change, including global warming. The term appears to have been first used in 2008 by blogger and writer Dan Bloom. In October 2013, Angela Evancie, in a review of the novel Odds against Tomorrow, by Nathaniel Rich, wonders if climate change has created a new literary genre. Scientific basis of the apocalyptic scenario in the perspective of the Anthropocene Global warming All temperature indices are in favour of a global warming (Fig.1). According to the different scenarios of the IPCC9, the temperatures of the globe could increase by 2 °C to 5 °C by 2100. But some scientists warn about a possible runaway of the warming which can reach more than 3 °C. Thus, the average temperature on the surface of the globe has already increased by more than 1.1 °C since the pre-industrial era. The rise in average temperatures at the surface of the globe is the first expected and observed consequence of massive greenhouse gas emissions. However, meteorological surveys record positive temperature anomalies which are confirmed from year to year compared to the temperatures recorded since the middle of the 19th century. Climatologists point out that the past 30 years have seen the highest temperatures in the Northern Hemisphere for over 1,400 years. Several climatic centres around the world record, synthesize and follow the evolution of temperatures on Earth. Since the beginning of the 20th century (1906-2005), the average temperature at the surface of the globe has increased by 0.74 °C, but this progression has not been continuous since 1976, the increase has clearly accelerated, reaching 0.19 °C per decade according to model predictions. Despite the decline in solar activity, the period 1997-2006 is marked by an average positive anomaly of 0.53 °C in the northern hemisphere and 0.27 °C in the southern hemisphere, still compared to the normal calculated for 1961-1990. The ten hottest years on record are all after 1997. Worse, 14 of the 15 hottest years are in the 21st century, which has barely started. Thus, 2016 is the hottest year, followed closely by 2015, 2014 and 2010. The temperature of tropical waters increased by 1.2 °C during the 20th century (compared to 0.5 °C on average for the oceans), causing coral reefs to bleach in 1997. In 1998, the period of Fort El Niño, the prolonged warming of the water has destroyed half of the coral reefs of the Indian Ocean. In addition, the temperature in the tropics of the five ocean basins, where cyclones form, increased by 0.5 °C from 1970 to 2004, and powerful cyclones appeared in the North Atlantic in 2005, while they were more numerous in other parts of the world. Recently, mountains of studies focused on the possible scenario of climate change and the potential worldwide repercussions including hell temperatures and apocalyptic extreme events10 , 11, 12. Melting of continental glaciers As a direct result of the global warming, melting of continental glaciers has been recently noticed13. There are approximately 198,000 mountain glaciers in the world; they cover an area of approximately 726,000 km2. If they all melted, the sea level would rise by about 40 cm. Since the late 1960s, global snow cover has declined by around 10 to 15%. Winter cold spells in much of the northern half of the northern hemisphere are two weeks shorter than 100 years ago. Glaciers of mountains have been declining all over the world by an average of 50 m per decade for 150 years. However, they are also subject to strong multi-temporal variations which make forecasts on this point difficult according to some specialists. In the Alps, glaciers have been losing 1 meter per year for 30 years. Polar glaciers like those of Spitsbergen (about a hundred km from the North Pole) have been retreating since 1880, releasing large quantities of water. The Arctic has lost about 10% of its permanent ice cover every ten years since 1980. In this region, average temperatures have increased at twice the rate of elsewhere in the world in recent decades. The melting of the Arctic Sea ice has resulted in a loss of 15% of its surface area and 40% of its thickness since 1979. The record for melting arctic sea ice was set in 2017. All models predict the disappearance of the Arctic Sea ice in summer within a few decades, which will not be without consequences for the climate in Europe. The summer melting of arctic sea ice accelerated far beyond climate model predictions. Added to its direct repercussions of coastal regions flooding, melting of continental ice leads to radical climatic modifications in favour of the apocalyptic scenario. Fig.1 Evolution of temperature anomaly from 1880 to 2020: the apocalyptic scenario Sea level rise As a direct result of the melting of continental glaciers, sea level rise has been worldwide recorded14 ,15. The average level of the oceans has risen by 22 cm since 1880 and 2 cm since the year 2000 because of the melting of the glaciers but also with the thermal expansion of the water. In the 20th century, the sea level rose by around 2 mm per year. From 1990 to 2017, it reached the relatively constant rate of just over 3mm per year. Several sources contributed to sea level increase including thermal expansion of water (42%), melting of continental glaciers (21%), melting Greenland glaciers (15%) and melting Antarctic glaciers (8%). Since 2003, there has always been a rapid rise (around 3.3 mm / year) in sea level, but the contribution of thermal expansion has decreased (0.4 mm / year) while the melting of the polar caps and continental glaciers accelerates. Since most of the world’s population is living on coastal regions, sea level rise represents a real threat for the humanity, not excluding the apocalyptic scenario. Multiplication of extreme phenomena and climatic anomalies On a human scale, an average of 200 million people is affected by natural disasters each year and approximately 70,000 perish from them. Indeed, as evidenced by the annual reviews of disasters and climatic anomalies, we are witnessing significant warning signs. It is worth noting that these observations are dependent on meteorological survey systems that exist only in a limited number of countries with statistics that rarely go back beyond a century or a century and a half. In addition, scientists are struggling to represent the climatic variations of the last two thousand years which could serve as a reference in the projections. Therefore, the exceptional nature of this information must be qualified a little. Indeed, it is still difficult to know the return periods of climatic disasters in each region. But over the last century, the climate system has gone wild. Indeed, everything suggests that the climate is racing. Indeed, extreme events and disasters have become more frequent. For instance, less than 50 significant events were recorded per year over the period 1970-1985, while there have been around 120 events recorded since 1995. Drought has long been one of the most worrying environmental issues. But while African countries have been the main affected so far, the whole world is now facing increasingly frequent and prolonged droughts. Chile, India, Australia, United States, France and even Russia are all regions of the world suffering from the acceleration of the global drought. Droughts are slowly evolving natural hazards that can last from a few months to several decades and affect larger or smaller areas, whether they are small watersheds or areas of hundreds of thousands of square kilometres. In addition to their direct effects on water resources, agriculture and ecosystems, droughts can cause fires or heat waves. They also promote the proliferation of invasive species, creating environments with multiple risks, worsening the consequences on ecosystems and societies, and increasing their vulnerability. Although these are natural phenomena, there is a growing understanding of how humans have amplified the severity and impacts of droughts, both on the environment and on people. We influence meteorological droughts through our action on climate change, and we influence hydrological droughts through our management of water circulation and water processes at the local scale, for example by diverting rivers or modifying land use. During the Anthropocene (the present period when humans exert a dominant influence on climate and environment), droughts are closely linked to human activities, cultures, and responses. From this scientific overview, it may be concluded apocalyptic scenario is not only a literature genre inspired from the pure imagination. Instead, many scientific arguments are in favour of this dramatic destiny of hom*o Sapiens Sapiens. Fig.2. Sea level rise from 1880 to 2020: a possible apocalyptic scenario (www.globalchange.gov, 2021) Apocalyptic genre in recent writing As the original landmark of apocalyptic writing, we must place the destruction of the Temple of Jerusalem in 587 BC and the Exile in Babylon. Occasion of a religious and cultural crossing with imprescriptible effects, the Exile brought about a true rebirth, characterized by the maintenance of the essential ethical, even cultural, of a national religion, that of Moses, kept as pure as possible on a foreign land and by the reinterpretation of this fundamental heritage by the archaic return of what was very old, both national traditions and neighbouring cultures. More precisely, it was the place and time for the rehabilitation of cultures and the melting pot for recasting ancient myths. This vast infatuation with Antiquity, remarkable even in the vocabulary used, was not limited to Israel: it even largely reflected a general trend. The long period that preceded throughout the 7th century BC and until 587, like that prior to the edict of Cyrus in 538 BC, was that of restorations and rebirths, of returns to distant sources and cultural crossings. In the biblical literature of this period, one is struck by the almost systematic link between, on the one hand, a very sustained mythical reinvestment even in form and, on the other, the frequent use of biblical archaisms. The example of Shadday, a word firmly rooted in the Semites of the Northwest and epithet of El in the oldest layers of the books of Genesis and Exodus, is most eloquent. This term reappears precisely at the time of the Exile as a designation of the divinity of the Patriarchs and of the God of Israel; Daily, ecological catastrophes now describe the normal state of societies exposed to "risks", in the sense that Ulrich Beck gives to this term: "the risk society is a society of catastrophe. The state of emergency threatens to become a normal state there1”. Now, the "threat" has become clearer, and catastrophic "exceptions" are proliferating as quickly as species are disappearing and climate change is accelerating. The relationship that we have with this worrying reality, to say the least, is twofold: on the one hand, we know very well what is happening to us; on the other hand, we fail to draw the appropriate theoretical and political consequences. This ecological duplicity is at the heart of what has come to be called the “Anthropocene”, a term coined at the dawn of the 21st century by Eugene Stoermer (an environmentalist) and Paul Crutzen (a specialist in the chemistry of the atmosphere) in order to describe an age when humanity would have become a "major geological force" capable of disrupting the climate and changing the terrestrial landscape from top to bottom. If the term “Anthropocene” takes note of human responsibility for climate change, this responsibility is immediately attributed to overpowering: strong as we are, we have “involuntarily” changed the climate for at least two hundred and fifty years. Therefore, let us deliberately change the face of the Earth, if necessary, install a solar shield in space. Recognition and denial fuel the signifying machine of the Anthropocene. And it is precisely what structures eco-apocalyptic cinema that this article aims to study. By "eco-apocalyptic cinema", we first mean a cinematographic sub-genre: eco-apocalyptic and post-eco-apocalyptic films base the possibility (or reality) of the end of the world on environmental grounds and not, for example, on damage caused by the possible collision of planet Earth with a comet. Post-apocalyptic science fiction (sometimes abbreviated as "post-apo" or "post-nuke") is a sub-genre of science fiction that depicts life after a disaster that destroyed civilization: nuclear war, collision with a meteorite, epidemic, economic or energy crisis, pandemic, alien invasion. Conclusion Climate and politics have been linked together since Aristotle. With Montesquieu, Ibn Khaldûn or Watsuji, a certain climatic determinism is attributed to the character of a nation. The break with modernity made the climate an object of scientific knowledge which, in the twentieth century, made it possible to document, despite the controversies, the climatic changes linked to industrialization. Both endanger the survival of human beings and ecosystems. Climate ethics are therefore looking for a new relationship with the biosphere or Gaia. For some, with the absence of political agreements, it is the beginning of inevitable catastrophes. For others, the Anthropocene, which henceforth merges human history with natural history, opens onto technical action. The debate between climate determinism and human freedom is revived. The reference to the biblical Apocalypse was present in the thinking of thinkers like Günther Anders, Karl Jaspers or Hans Jonas: the era of the atomic bomb would mark an entry into the time of the end, a time marked by the unprecedented human possibility of 'total war and annihilation of mankind. The Apocalypse will be very relevant in describing the chaos to come if our societies continue their mad race described as extra-activist, productivist and consumerist. In dialogue with different theologians and philosophers (such as Jacques Ellul), it is possible to unveil some spiritual, ethical, and political resources that the Apocalypse offers for thinking about History and human engagement in the Anthropocene. What can a theology of collapse mean at a time when negative signs and dead ends in the human situation multiply? What then is the place of man and of the cosmos in the Apocalypse according to Saint John? Could the end of history be a collapse? How can we live in the time we have left before the disaster? Answers to such questions remain unknown and no scientist can predict the trajectory of this Great Acceleration taking place at the Late Anthropocene. When science cannot give answers, Man tries to infer his destiny for the legend, religion and the fiction. Climate Fiction is developed into a recording machine containing every kind of fictions that depict environmental condition events and has consequently lost its true significance. Aware of the prospect of ecological collapse additionally as our apparent inability to avert it, we tend to face geology changes of forceful proportions that severely challenge our ability to imagine the implications. Climate fiction ought to be considered an important supplement to climate science, as a result, climate fiction makes visible and conceivable future modes of existence inside worlds not solely deemed seemingly by science, however that area unit scientifically anticipated. Hence, this chapter, as part of the book itself, aims to contribute to studies of ecocriticism, the environmental humanities, and literary and culture studies. References David P.G. Bondand Stephen E. Grasby. "Late Ordovician mass extinction caused by volcanism, warming, and anoxia, not cooling and glaciation: REPLY." Geology 48, no. 8 (Geological Society of America2020): 510. Cyril Langlois.’Vestiges de l'apocalypse: ‘le site de Tanis, Dakota du Nord 2019’. Accessed June, 6, 2021, https://planet-terre.ens-lyon.fr/pdf/Tanis-extinction-K-Pg.pdf NajouaGharsalli,ElhoucineEssefi, Rana Baydoun, and ChokriYaich. ‘The Anthropocene and Great Acceleration as controversial epoch of human-induced activities: case study of the Halk El Menjel wetland, eastern Tunisia’. Applied Ecology and Environmental Research 18(3) (Corvinus University of Budapest 2020): 4137-4166 Elhoucine Essefi, ‘On the Geochemistry and Mineralogy of the Anthropocene’. International Journal of Water and Wastewater Treatment, 6(2). 1-14, (Sci Forschen2020): doi.org/10.16966/2381-5299.168 Elhoucine Essefi. ‘Record of the Anthropocene-Great Acceleration along a core from the coast of Sfax, southeastern Tunisia’. Turkish journal of earth science, (TÜBİTAK,2021). 1-16. Chiara Xausa. ‘Climate Fiction and the Crisis of Imagination: Alexis Wright’s Carpentaria and The Swan Book’. Exchanges: The Interdisciplinary Research Journal 8(2), (WARWICK 2021): 99-119. Akyol, Özlem. "Climate Change: An Apocalypse for Urban Space? An Ecocritical Reading of “Venice Drowned” and “The Tamarisk Hunter”." Folklor/Edebiyat 26, no. 101 (UluslararasıKıbrısÜniversitesi 2020): 115-126. Boswell, Suzanne F. "The Four Tourists of the Apocalypse: Figures of the Anthropocene in Caribbean Climate Fiction.". Paradoxa 31, (Academia 2020): 359-378. Ayt Ougougdal, Houssam, Mohamed YacoubiKhebiza, Mohammed Messouli, and Asia Lachir. "Assessment of future water demand and supply under IPCC climate change and socio-economic scenarios, using a combination of models in Ourika Watershed, High Atlas, Morocco." Water 12, no. 6 (MPDI 2020): 1751.DOI:10.3390/w12061751. Wu, Jia, Zhenyu Han, Ying Xu, Botao Zhou, and Xuejie Gao. "Changes in extreme climate events in China under 1.5 C–4 C global warming targets: Projections using an ensemble of regional climate model simulations." Journal of Geophysical Research: Atmospheres 125, no. 2 (Wiley2020): e2019JD031057.https://doi.org/10.1029/2019JD031057 Khan, Md Jamal Uddin, A. K. M. Islam, Sujit Kumar Bala, and G. M. Islam. "Changes in climateextremes over Bangladesh at 1.5° C, 2° C, and 4° C of global warmingwith high-resolutionregionalclimate modeling." Theoretical&AppliedClimatology 140 (EBSCO2020). Gudoshava, Masilin, Herbert O. Misiani, Zewdu T. Segele, Suman Jain, Jully O. Ouma, George Otieno, Richard Anyah et al. "Projected effects of 1.5 C and 2 C global warming levels on the intra-seasonal rainfall characteristics over the Greater Horn of Africa." Environmental Research Letters 15, no. 3 (IOPscience2020): 34-37. Wang, Lawrence K., Mu-Hao Sung Wang, Nai-Yi Wang, and Josephine O. Wong. "Effect of Global Warming and Climate Change on Glaciers and Salmons." In Integrated Natural Resources Management, ed.Lawrence K. Wang, Mu-Hao Sung Wang, Yung-Tse Hung, Nazih K. Shammas(Springer 2021), 1-36. Merschroth, Simon, Alessio Miatto, Steffi Weyand, Hiroki Tanikawa, and Liselotte Schebek. "Lost Material Stock in Buildings due to Sea Level Rise from Global Warming: The Case of Fiji Islands." Sustainability 12, no. 3 (MDPI 2020): 834.doi:10.3390/su12030834 Hofer, Stefan, Charlotte Lang, Charles Amory, Christoph Kittel, Alison Delhasse, Andrew Tedstone, and Xavier Fettweis. "Greater Greenland Ice Sheet contribution to global sea level rise in CMIP6." 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Abstract. Wijaya IMS, Daryono BS, Purnomo. 2020. Genetic variation and phylogenetic relationships of Thelymitra javanica Blume (Orchidaceae: Orchidoideae) in East and Central Java, Indonesia. Biodiversitas 21: 1174-1181. Thelymitra J.R. Forst & G. Forst is a terrestrial orchid genera and mainly distributed in Australia as a center of its diversification. Moreover, Thelymitra javanica Blume is the only species of Thelymitra found in Asia, especially in Indonesia. In Australia and New Zealand, most of Thelymitra species easily found in lowland, whereas, T. javanica in Indonesia preferred to grows near the peaks of mountains around 2,000-3,000 m asl. The high altitude correlated with high light intensity and lower soil nutrients which require specific adaptation of plant to survive. The wide range of adaptation could be due to the presence of genetic variability among populations of Thelymitra. Therefore, this study was carried out to assess the genetic variability and phylogenetic relationships of T. javanica in East and Central Java. The genetic variability of Thelymitra was evaluated by molecular approaches, which is preferably utilized to determine the plant taxonomy to establish the taxonomic uncertainties. ITS-nrDNA is a popular DNA marker that widely used in phylogenetic study among various taxa. Sequences were analyses using Maximum Likelihood method with 11 in-group, 6 interspecies out-group of Thelymitra, and 2 intergeneric out-group of Thelymitrinae subtribe. The result showed that ITS-nrDNA sequences of T. javanica have no variation in nucleotide compositions and showing polytomy branch in cladogram. Thelymitra javanica also has a close relationship with Thelymitra longifolia J.R. Forst & G. Forst that are endemic to New Zealand.

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Introduction Negative stereotyping of alternative diets such as veganism and other plant-based diets has been common in Australia, conventionally a meat-eating culture (OECD qtd. in Ting). Indeed, meat consumption in Australia is sanctioned by the ubiquity of advertising linking meat-eating to health, vitality and nation-building, and public challenges to such plant-based diets as veganism. In addition, state, commercial enterprises, and various community groups overtly resist challenges to Australian meat-eating norms and to the intensive animal husbandry practices that underpin it. Hence activists, who may contest not simply this norm but many of the customary industry practices that comprise Australia’s meat production, have been accused of promoting a vegan agenda and even of undermining the “Australian way of life”.If veganism meansa philosophy and way of living which seeks to exclude—as far as is possible and practicable—all forms of exploitation of, and cruelty to, animals for food, clothing or any other purpose; and by extension, promotes the development and use of animal-free alternatives for the benefit of humans, animals and the environment. In dietary terms it denotes the practice of dispensing with all products derived wholly or partly from animals. (Vegan Society)then our interest in this article lies in how a stereotyped label of veganism (and other associated attributes) is being used across Australian public spheres to challenge the work of animal activists as they call out factory farming for entrenched animal cruelty. This is carried out in three main parts. First, following an outline of our research approach, we examine the processes of stereotyping and the key dimensions of vegan stereotyping. Second, in the main part of the article, we reveal how opponents to such animal activist organisations as Animals Australia attempt to undermine activist calls for change by framing them as promoting an un-Australian vegan agenda. Finally, we consider how, despite such framing, that organisation is generating productive public debate around animal welfare, and, further, facilitating the creation of new activist identifications and identities.Research ApproachData collection involved searching for articles where Animals Australia and animal activism were yoked with veg*n (vegan and vegetarian), across the period May 2011 to 2016 (discussion peaked between May and June 2013). This period was of interest because it exposed a flare point with public discord being expressed between communities—namely between rural and urban consumers, farmers and animal activists, Coles Supermarkets (identified by The Australian Government the Treasury as one of two major supermarkets holding over 65% share of Australian food retail market) and their producers—and a consequent voicing of disquiet around Australian identity. We used purposive sampling (Waller, Farquharson, and Dempsey 67) to identify relevant materials as we knew in advance the case was “information-rich” (Patton 181) and would provide insightful information about a “troublesome” phenomenon (Emmel 6). Materials were collected from online news articles (30) and readers’ comments (167), online magazines (2) and websites (2) and readers’ comments (3), news items (Factiva 13), Australian Broadcasting Commission television (1) and radio (1), public blogs (2), and Facebook pages from involved organisations, specifically Australia’s National Farmers’ Federation (NFF, 155 posts) and Coles Supermarkets (29 posts). Many of these materials were explicitly responsive to a) Animals Australia’s Make It Possible campaign against Australian factory farming (launched and highly debated during this period), and b) Coles Supermarket’s short-lived partnership with Animals Australia in 2013. We utilised content analysis so as to make visible the most prominent and consistent stereotypes utilised in these various materials during the identified period. The approach allowed us to code and categorise materials so as to determine trends and patterns of words used, their relationships, and key structures and ways of speaking (Weerakkody). In addition, discourse analysis (Gee) was used in order to identify and track “language-in-use” so as to make visible the stereotyping deployed during the public reception of both the campaign and Animals Australia’s associated partnership with Coles. These methods enabled a “nuanced approach” (Coleman and Moss 12) with which to spot putdowns, innuendos, and stereotypical attitudes.Vegan StereotypingStereotypes creep into everyday language and are circulated and amplified through mainstream media, speeches by public figures, and social media. Stereotypes maintain their force through being reused and repurposed, making them difficult to eradicate due to their “cumulative effects” and influence (Harris and Sanborn 38; Inzlicht, Tullett, Legault, and Kang; Pickering). Over time stereotypes can become the lens through which we view “the world and social reality” (Harris and Sanborn 38; Inzlicht et al.). In summation, stereotyping:reduces identity categories to particular sets of deeds, attributes and attitudes (Whitley and Kite);informs individuals’ “cognitive investments” (Blum 267) by associating certain characteristics with particular groups;comprises symbolic and connotative codes that carry sets of traits, deeds, or beliefs (Cover; Rosello), and;becomes increasingly persuasive through regulating language and image use as well as identity categories (Cover; Pickering; Rosello).Not only is the “iterative force” (Rosello 35) of such associative stereotyping compounded due to its dissemination across digital media sites such as Facebook, YouTube, websites, and online news, but attempts to denounce it tend to increase its “persuasive power” (29). Indeed, stereotypes seem to refuse “to die” (23), remaining rooted in social and cultural memory (Whitley and Kite 10).As such, despite the fact that there is increasing interest in Australia and elsewhere in new food norms and plant-based diets (see, e.g., KPMG), as well as in vegan lifestyle options (Wright), studies still show that vegans remain a negatively stereotyped group. Previous studies have suggested that vegans mark a “symbolic threat” to Western, conventionally meat-eating cultures (MacInnis and Hodson 722; Stephens Griffin; Cole and Morgan). One key UK study of national newspapers, for instance, showed vegans continuing to be discredited in multiple ways as: 1) “self-evidently ridiculous”; 2) “ascetics”; 3) having a lifestyle difficult and impossible to maintain; 4) “faddist”; 5) “oversensitive”; and 6) “hostile extremists” (Cole and Morgan 140–47).For many Australians, veganism also appears anathema to their preferred culture and lifestyle of meat-eating. For instance, the NFF, Meat & Livestock Australia (MLA), and other farming bodies continue to frame veganism as marking an extreme form of lifestyle, as anti-farming and un-Australian. Such perspectives are also circulated through online rural news and readers’ comments, as will be discussed later in the article. Such representations are further exemplified by the MLA’s (Lamb, Australia Day, Celebrate Australia) Australia Day lamb advertising campaigns (Bembridge; Canning). For multiple consecutive years, the campaign presented vegans (and vegetarians) as being self-evidently ridiculous and faddish, representing them as mentally unhinged and fringe dwellers. Such stereotyping not only invokes “affective reactions” (Whitley and Kite 8)—including feelings of disgust towards individuals living such lifestyles or holding such values—but operates as “political baits” (Rosello 18) to shore-up or challenge certain social or political positions.Although such advertisem*nts are arguably satirical, their repeated screening towards and on Australia Day highlights deeply held views about the normalcy of animal agriculture and meat-eating, “hom*ogenizing” (Blum 276; Pickering) both meat-eaters and non-meat-eaters alike. Cultural stereotyping of this kind amplifies “social” as well as political schisms (Blum 276), and arguably discourages consumers—whether meat-eaters or non-meat-eaters—from advocating together around shared goals such as animal welfare and food safety. Additionally, given the rise of new food practices in Australia—including flexitarian, reducetarian, pescatarian, kangatarian (a niche form of ethical eating), vegivores, semi-vegetarian, vegetarian, veganism—alongside broader commitments to ethical consumption, such stereotyping suggests that consumers’ actual values and preferences are being disregarded in order to shore-up the normalcy of meat-eating.Animals Australia and the (So-Called) Vegan Agenda of Animal ActivismGiven these points, it is no surprise that there is a tacit belief in Australia that anyone labelled an animal activist must also be vegan. Within this context, we have chosen to primarily focus on the attitudes towards the campaigning work of Animals Australia—a not-for-profit organisation representing some 30 member groups and over 2 million individual supporters (Animals Australia, “Who Is”)—as this organisation has been charged as promoting a vegan agenda. Along with the RSPCA and Voiceless, Animals Australia represents one of the largest animal protection organisations within Australia (Chen). Its mission is to:Investigate, expose and raise community awareness of animal cruelty;Provide animals with the strongest representation possible to Government and other decision-makers;Educate, inspire, empower and enlist the support of the community to prevent and prohibit animal cruelty;Strengthen the animal protection movement. (Animals Australia, “Who Is”)In delivery of this mission, the organisation curates public rallies and protests, makes government and industry submissions, and utilises corporate outreach. Campaigning engages the Web, multiple forms of print and broadcast media, and social media.With regards to Animals Australia’s campaigns regarding factory farming—including the Make It Possible campaign (see fig. 1), launched in 2013 and key to the period we are investigating—the main message is that: the animals kept in these barren and constrictive conditions are “no different to our pets at home”; they are “highly intelligent creatures who feel pain, and who will respond to kindness and affection – if given the chance”; they are “someone, not something” (see the Make It Possible transcript). Campaigns deliberately strive to engender feelings of empathy and produce affect in viewers (see, e.g., van Gurp). Specifically they strive to produce mainstream recognition of the cruelties entrenched in factory farming practices and build community outrage against these practices so as to initiate industry change. Campaigns thus expressly challenge Australians to no longer support factory farmed animal products, and to identify with what we have elsewhere called everyday activist positions (Rodan and Mummery, “Animal Welfare”; “Make It Possible”). They do not, however, explicitly endorse a vegan position. Figure 1: Make It Possible (Animals Australia, campaign poster)Nonetheless, as has been noted, a common counter-tactic used within Australia by the industries targeted by such campaigns, has been to use well-known negative stereotypes to discredit not only the charges of systemic animal cruelty but the associated organisations. In our analysis, we found four prominent interconnected stereotypes utilised in both digital and print media to discredit the animal welfare objectives of Animals Australia. Together these cast the organisation as: 1) anti-meat-eating; 2) anti-farming; 3) promoting a vegan agenda; and 4) hostile extremists. These stereotypes are examined below.Anti-Meat-EatingThe most common stereotype attributed to Animals Australia from its campaigning is of being anti-meat-eating. This charge, with its associations with veganism, is clearly problematic for industries that facilitate meat-eating and within a culture that normalises meat-eating, as the following example expresses:They’re [Animals Australia] all about stopping things. They want to stop factory farming – whatever factory farming is – or they want to stop live exports. And in fact they’re not necessarily about: how do I improve animal welfare in the pig industry? Or how do I improve animal welfare in the live export industry? Because ultimately they are about a meat-free future world and we’re about a meat producing industry, so there’s not a lot of overlap, really between what we’re doing. (Andrew Spencer, Australian Pork Ltd., qtd. in Clark)Respondents engaging this stereotype also express their “outrage at Coles” (McCarthy) and Animals Australia for “pedalling [sic]” a pro-vegan agenda (Nash), their sense that Animals Australia is operating with ulterior motives (Flint) and criminal intent (Brown). They see cultural refocus as unnecessary and “an exercise in futility” (Harris).Anti-FarmingTo be anti-farming in Australia is generally considered to be un-Australian, with Glasgow suggesting that any criticism of “farming practices” in Australian society can be “interpreted as an attack on the moral integrity of farmers, amounting to cultural blasphemy” (200). Given its objectives, it is unsurprising that Animals Australia has been stereotyped as being “anti-farming”, a phrase additionally often used in conjunction with the charge of veganism. Although this comprises a misreading of veganism—given its focus on challenging animal exploitation in farming rather than entailing opposition to all farming—the NFF accused Animals Australia of being “blatantly anti-farming and proveganism” (Linegar qtd. in Nason) and as wanting “to see animal agriculture phased out” (National Farmers’ Federation). As expressed in more detail:One of the main factors for VFF and other farmers being offended is because of AA’s opinion and stand on ALL farming. AA wants all farming banned and us all become vegans. Is it any wonder a lot of people were upset? Add to that the proceeds going to AA which may have been used for their next criminal activity washed against the grain. If people want to stand against factory farming they have the opportunity not to purchase them. Surely not buying a product will have a far greater impact on factory farmed produce. Maybe the money could have been given to farmers? (Hunter)Such stereotyping reveals how strongly normalised animal agriculture is in Australia, as well as a tendency on the part of respondents to reframe the challenge of animal cruelty in some farming practices into a position supposedly challenging all farming practices.Promoting a Vegan AgendaAs is already clear, Animals Australia is often reproached for promoting a vegan agenda, which, it is further suggested, it keeps hidden from the Australian public. This viewpoint was evident in two key examples: a) the Australian public and organisations such as the NFF are presented as being “defenceless” against the “myopic vitriol of the vegan abolitionists” (Jonas); and b) Animals Australia is accused of accepting “loans from liberation groups” and being “supported by an army of animal rights lawyers” to promote a “hard core” veganism message (Bourke).Nobody likes to see any animals hurt, but pushing a vegan agenda and pushing bad attitudes by group members is not helping any animals and just serves to slow any progress both sides are trying to resolve. (V.c. Deb Ford)Along with undermining farmers’ “legitimate business” (Jooste), veganism was also considered to undermine Australia’s rural communities (Park qtd. in Malone).Hostile ExtremistsThe final stereotype linking veganism with Animals Australia was of hostile extremism (cf. Cole and Morgan). This means, for users, being inimical to Australian national values but, also, being akin to terrorists who engage in criminal activities antagonistic to Australia’s democratic society and economic livelihood (see, e.g., Greer; ABC News). It is the broad symbolic threat that “extremism” invokes that makes this stereotype particularly “infectious” (Rosello 19).The latest tag team attacks on our pork industry saw AL giving crash courses in how to become a career criminal for the severely impressionable, after attacks on the RSPCA against the teachings of Peter Singer and trying to bully the RSPCA into vegan functions menu. (Cattle Advocate)The “extremists” want that extended to dairy products, as well. The fact that this will cause the total annihilation of practically all animals, wild and domestic, doesn’t bother them in the least. (Brown)What is interesting about these last two dimensions of stereotyping is their displacement of violence. That is, rather than responding to the charge of animal cruelty, violence and extremism is attributed to those making the charge.Stereotypes and Symbolic Boundary ShiftingWhat is evident throughout these instances is how stereotyping as a “cognitive mechanism” is being used to build boundaries (Cherry 460): in the first instance, between “us” (the meat-eating majority) and “them” (the vegan minority aka animal activists); and secondly between human interest and livestock. This point is that animals may hold instrumental value and receive some protection through such, but any more stringent arguments for their protection at the expense of perceived human interests tend to be seen as wrong-headed (Sorenson; Munro).These boundaries are deeply entrenched in Western culture (Wimmer). They are also deeply problematic in the context of animal activism because they fragment publics, promote restrictive identities, and close down public debate (Lamont and Molnár). Boundary entrenching is clearly evident in the stereotyping work carried out by industry stakeholders where meat-eating and practices of industrialised animal agriculture are valorised and normalised. Challenging Australia’s meat production practices—irrespective of the reason given—is framed and belittled as entailing a vegan agenda, and further as contributing to the demise of farming and rural communities in Australia.More broadly, industry stakeholders are explicitly targeting the activist work by such organisations as Animals Australia as undermining the ‘Australian way of life’. In their reading, there is an irreconcilable boundary between human and animal interests and between an activist minority which is vegan, unreasonable, extremist and hostile to farming and the meat-eating majority which is representative of the Australian community and sustains the Australian economy. As discussed so far, such stereotyping and boundary making—even in their inaccuracies—can be pernicious in the way they entrench identities and divisions, and close the possibility for public debate.Rather than directly contesting the presuppositions and inaccuracies of such stereotyping, however, Animals Australia can be read as cultivating a process of symbolic boundary shifting. That is, rather than responding by simply underlining its own moderate position of challenging only intensive animal agriculture for systemic animal cruelty, Animals Australia uses its campaigns to develop “boundary blurring and crossing” tactics (Cherry 451, 459), specifically to dismantle and shift the symbolic boundaries conventionally in place between humans and non-human animals in the first instance, and between those non-human animals used for companionship and those used for food in the second (see fig. 2). Figure 2: That Ain’t No Way to Treat a Lady (Animals Australia, campaign image on back of taxi)Indeed, the symbolic boundaries between humans and animals left unquestioned in the preceding stereotyping are being profoundly shaken by Animals Australia with campaigns such as Make It Possible making morally relevant likenesses between humans and animals highly visible to mainstream Australians. Namely, the organisation works to interpellate viewers to exercise their own capacities for emotional identification and moral imagination, to identify with animals’ experiences and lives, and to act upon that identification to demand change.So, rather than reactively striving to refute the aforementioned stereotypes, organisations such as Animals Australia are modelling and facilitating symbolic boundary shifting by building broad, emotionally motivated, pathways through which Australians are being encouraged to refocus their own assumptions, practices and identities regarding animal experience, welfare and animal-human relations. Indeed the organisation has explicitly framed itself as speaking on behalf of not only animals but all caring Australians, suggesting thereby the possibility of a reframing of Australian national identity. Although such a tactic does not directly contest this negative stereotyping—direct contestation being, as noted, ineffective given the perniciousness of stereotyping—such work nonetheless dismantles the oppositional charge of such stereotyping in calling for all Australians to proudly be a little bit anti-meat-eating (when that meat is from factory farmed animals), a little bit anti-factory farming, a little bit pro-veg*n, and a little bit proud to consider themselves as caring about animal welfare.For Animals Australia, in other words, appealing to Australians to care about animal welfare and to act in support of that care, not only defuses the stereotypes targeting them but encourages the work of symbolic boundary shifting that is really at the heart of this dispute. 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Abstract. Sulaeman TN, Hamidy A, Farajallah A, Fouquet A, Riyanto A, Arida E, Mulyadi, Trilaksono W, Munir M. 2021. Mitochondrial DNA suggests the existence of two distinct species in Moluccas and New Guinea within Nyctimystes infrafrenatus (Günther, 1867). Biodiversitas 22: 3287-3297. Nyctimystes infrafrenatus is a widespread frog species distributed across northern Australia, New Guinea, Bismarck archipelago and in the eastern part of Indonesian archipelago. The species thus encompasses two biogeographic regions, Papua and Wallacea. We evaluated the phylogenetic relationships among the populations from Papua and Moluccas based on two mitochondrial loci (16S rRNA and Cytochrome Oxidase Subunit I). Two major subclades are recovered within Nyctimystes infrafrenatus with subclade A being represented by populations from New Guinea and northern Australia and subclade B by Moluccan populations (Halmahera and Tidore). Genetic distances (2.3-4.2% in 16S rRNA) between these subclades suggest they could belong to distinct species. Since New Guinea populations correspond to the nominal species and that Nyctimystes tennuigranulatus (Boettger 1895), currently considered as a junior synonym of Nyctimystes infrafrenatus, is available for the northern Moluccan populations, we proposed to remove this taxon from synonymy. However, samples used in this study come from northern Moluccas, further studies including samples from Ambon (where another synonym was described i.e. Calamita dolichopsis) is needed to determine the taxonomic status of the southern Moluccan population whether they are conspecific with northern Moluccan population or not.

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The Black Summer of 2019/2020 saw the forests of southeast Australia go up in flames. The fire season started early, in September 2019, and by March 2020 fires had burned over 12.6 million hectares (Werner and Lyons). The scale and severity of the fires was quickly confirmed by scientists to be “unprecedented globally” (Boer et al.) and attributable to climate change (Nolan et al.).The fires were also a media spectacle, generating months of apocalyptic front-page images and harrowing broadcast footage. Media coverage was particularly preoccupied by the cause of the fires. Media framing of disasters often seeks to attribute blame (Anderson et al.; Ewart and McLean) and, over the course of the fire period, blame for the fires was attributed to climate change in much media coverage. However, as the disaster unfolded, denialist discourses in some media outlets sought to veil this revelation by providing alternative explanations for the fires. Misinformation originating from social media also contributed to this obscuration.In this article, we investigate the extent to which media coverage of the 2019/2020 bushfires functioned both to precipitate a climate change epiphany and also to support refutation of the connection between catastrophic fires and the climate crisis.Environmental Communication and RevelationIn its biblical sense, revelation is both an ending and an opening: it is the apocalyptic end-time and also the “revealing” of this time through stories and images. Environmental communication has always been revelatory, in these dual senses of the word – it is a mode of communication that is tightly bound to crisis; that has long grappled with obfuscation and misinformation; and that disrupts power structures and notions of the status quo as it seeks to reveal what is hidden. Climate change in particular is associated in the popular imagination with apocalypse, and is also a reality that is constantly being “revealed”. Indeed, the narrative of climate change has been “animated by the revelations of science” (McNeish 1045) and presented to the public through “key moments of disclosure and revelation”, or “signal moments”, such as scientist James Hansen’s 1988 US Senate testimony on global warming (Hamblyn 224).Journalism is “at the frontline of environmental communication” (Parham 96) and environmental news, too, is often revelatory in nature – it exposes the problems inherent in the human relationship with the natural world, and it reveals the scientific evidence behind contentious issues such as climate change. Like other environmental communicators, environmental journalists seek to “break through the perceptual paralysis” (Nisbet 44) surrounding climate change, with the dual aim of better informing the public and instigating policy change. Yet leading environmental commentators continually call for “better media coverage” of the planetary crisis (Suzuki), as climate change is repeatedly bumped off the news agenda by stories and events deemed more newsworthy.News coverage of climate-related disasters is often revelatory both in tone and in cultural function. The disasters themselves and the news narratives which communicate them become processes that make visible what is hidden. Because environmental news is “event driven” (Hansen 95), disasters receive far more news coverage than ongoing problems and trends such as climate change itself, or more quietly devastating issues such as species extinction or climate migration. Disasters are also highly visual in nature. Trumbo (269) describes climate change as an issue that is urgent, global in scale, and yet “practically invisible”; in this sense, climate-related disasters become a means of visualising and realising what is otherwise a complex, difficult, abstract, and un-seeable concept.Unsurprisingly, natural disasters are often presented to the public through a film of apocalyptic rhetoric and imagery. Yet natural disasters can be also “revelatory” moments: instances of awakening in which suppressed truths come spectacularly and devastatingly to the surface. Matthewman (9–10) argues that “disasters afford us insights into social reality that ordinarily pass unnoticed. As such, they can be read as modes of disclosure, forms of communication”. Disasters, he continues, can reveal both “our new normal” and “our general existential condition”, bringing “the underbelly of progress into sharp relief”. Similarly, Lukes (1) states that disasters “lift veils”, revealing “what is hidden from view in normal times”. Yet for Lukes, “the revelation tells us nothing new, nothing that we did not already know”, and is instead a forced confronting of that which is known yet difficult to engage with. Lukes’ concern is the “revealing” of poverty and inequality in New Orleans following the impact of Hurricane Katrina, yet climate-related disasters can also make visible what McNeish terms “the dark side effects of industrial civilisation” (1047). The Australian bushfires of 2019/2020 can be read in these terms, primarily because they unveiled the connection between climate change and extreme events. Scorching millions of hectares, with a devastating impact on human and non-human communities, the fires revealed climate change as a physical reality, and—for Australians—as a local issue as well as a global one. As media coverage of the fires unfolded and smoke settled on half the country, the impact of climate change on individual lives, communities, landscapes, native animal and plant species, and well-established cultural practices (such as the summer camping holiday) could be fully and dramatically realised. Even for those Australians not immediately impacted, the effects were lived and felt: in our lungs, and on our skin, a physical revelation that the impacts of climate change are not limited to geographically distant people or as-yet-unborn future generations. For many of us, the summer of fire was a realisation that climate change can no longer be held at arm’s length.“Revelation” also involves a temporal collapse whereby the future is dragged into the present. A revelatory streak of this nature has always existed at the heart of environmental communication and can be traced back at least as far as the environmentalist Rachel Carson, whose 1962 book Silent Spring revealed a bleak, apocalyptic future devoid of wildlife and birdsong. In other words, environmental communication can inspire action for change by exposing the ways in which the comforts and securities of the present are built upon a refusal to engage with the future. This temporal rupture where the future meets the present is particularly characteristic of climate change narratives. It is not surprising, then, that media coverage of the 2019/2020 bushfires addressed not just the immediate loss and devastation but also dread of the future, and the understanding that summer will increasingly hold such threats. Bushfires, Climate Change and the MediaThe link between bushfire risk and climate change generated a flurry of coverage in the Australian media well before the fires started in the spring of 2019. In April that year, a coalition of 23 former fire and emergency services leaders warned that Australia was “unprepared for an escalating climate threat” (Cox). They requested a meeting with the new government, to be elected in May, and better funding for firefighting to face the coming bushfire season. When that meeting was granted, at the end of Australia’s hottest and driest year on record (Doyle) in November 2019, bushfires had already been burning for two months. As the fires burned, the emergency leaders expressed frustration that their warnings had been ignored, claiming they had been “gagged” because “you are not allowed to talk about climate change”. They cited climate change as the key reason why the fire season was lengthening and fires were harder to fight. "If it's not time now to speak about climate and what's driving these events”, they asked, “– when?" (McCubbing).The mediatised uncovering of a bushfire/climate change connection was not strictly a revelation. Recent fires in California, Russia, the Amazon, Greece, and Sweden have all been reported in the media as having been exacerbated by climate change. Australia, however, has long regarded itself as a “fire continent”: a place adapted to fire, whose landscapes invite fire and can recover from it. Bushfires had therefore been considered part of the Australian “normal”. But in the Australian spring of 2019, with fires having started earlier than ever and charring rainforests that did not usually burn, the fire chiefs’ warning of a climate change-induced catastrophic bushfire season seemed prescient. As the fires spread and merged, taking homes, lives, landscapes, and driving people towards the water, revelatory images emerged in the media. Pictures of fire refugees fleeing under dystopian crimson skies, masked against the smoke, were accompanied by headlines like “Apocalypse Now” (Fife-Yeomans) and “Escaping Hell” (The Independent). Reports used words like “terror”, “nightmare” (Smee), “mayhem”, and “Armageddon” (Davidson).In the Australian media, the fire/climate change connection quickly became politicised. The Deputy Prime Minister Michael McCormack interviewed by the ABC, responding to a comment by Greens leader Adam Bandt, said connecting bushfire and climate while the fires raged was “disgraceful” and “disgusting”. People needed help, he said, not “the ravings of some pure enlightened and woke capital city greenies” (Goloubeva and Haydar). Gladys Berejiklian the NSW Premier also described it as “inappropriate” (Baker) and “disappointing” (Fox and Higgins) to talk about climate change at this time. However Carol Sparks, Mayor of bushfire-ravaged Glen Innes in rural NSW, contradicted this stance, telling the ABC (Australian Broadcasting Corporation) “Michael McCormack needs to read the science”. Climate change, she said, was “not a political thing” but “scientific fact” (Goloubeva and Haydar).As the fires merged and intensified, so did the media firestorm. Key Australian media became a sparring ground for issue definition, with media predictably split down ideological lines. Public broadcasters the ABC and SBS (Special Broadcasting Service), along with The Age, The Sydney Morning Herald and The Guardian Australia, predominantly framed the catastrophe as wrought by climate change. The Guardian, in an in-depth investigation of climate science and bushfire risk, stated that “despite the political smokescreen” the connection between the fires and global warming was “unequivocal” (Redfearn). The ABC characterised the fires as “a glimpse of the horrors of climate change’s crescendoing impact” (Rose). News outlets owned by Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp Australia, however, actively sought to play down the fires’ seriousness. On 2 January, as front pages of newspapers across the world revealed horrifying fiery images, Murdoch’s Australian ran an upbeat shot of New Year’s Day picnic races as its lead, relegating discussion of the fires to page 4 (Meade). More than simply obscuring the fires’ significance, News Corp media actively sought to convince readers that the fires were not out of the ordinary. For example, as the fires’ magnitude was becoming clear on the last day of 2019, The Australian ran a piece comparing the fires with previous conflagrations, claiming such conditions were “not unprecedented” and the fires were “nothing new” (Johnstone). News Corp’s Sky News also used this frame: “climate alarmists”, “catastrophise”, and “don’t want to look at history”, it stated in a segment comparing the event to past major bushfires (Kenny).As the fires continued into January and February 2020, the refutation of the climate change frame solidified around several themes. Conservative media continued to insist the fires were “normal” for Australia and attributed their severity to a lack of hazard reduction burning, which they blamed on “Greens policies” (Brown and Caisley). They also promoted the argument, espoused by Energy Minister Angus Taylor, that with only “1.3% of global emissions” Australia “could not have meaningful impact” on global warming through emissions reductions, and that top-down climate mitigation pressure from the UN was “doomed to fail” (Lloyd). Foreign media saw the fires in quite different terms. From the outside looking in, the Australian fires were clearly revealed as fuelled by global heating and exacerbated by the Australian government’s climate denialism. Australia was framed as a “notorious climate offender” (Shield) that was—as The New York Times put it—“committing climate suicide” (Flanagan) with its lack of coherent climate policy and its predilection for mining coal. Ouest-France ran a headline reading “High on carbon, rich Australia denies global warming” in which it called Scott Morrison’s position on climate change “incomprehensible” (Guibert). The LA Times called the Australian fires “a climate change warning to its leaders—and ours”, noting how “fossil fuel friendly Morrison” had “gleefully wielded a fist-sized chunk of coal on the floor of parliament in 2017” (Karlik). In the UK, the Independent online ran a front page spread of the fires’ vast smoke plume, with the headline “This is what a climate crisis looks like” (Independent Online), while Australian MP Craig Kelly was called “disgraceful” by an interviewer on Good Morning Britain for denying the fires’ link to climate change (Good Morning Britain).Both in Australia and internationally, deliberate misinformation spread by social media additionally shaped media discourse on the fires. The false revelation that the fires had predominantly been started by arson spread on Twitter under the hashtag #ArsonEmergency. While research has been quick to show that this hashtag was artificially promoted by bots (Weber et al.), this and misinformation like it was also shared and amplified by real Twitter users, and quickly spread into mainstream media in Australia—including Murdoch’s Australian (Ross and Reid)—and internationally. Such misinformation was used to shore up denialist discourses about the fires, and to obscure revelation of the fire/climate change connection. Blame Framing, Public Opinion and the Extent of the Climate Change RevelationAs studies of media coverage of environmental disasters show us, media seek to apportion blame. This blame framing is “accountability work”, undertaken to explain how and why a disaster occurred, with the aim of “scrutinizing the actions of crisis actors, and holding responsible authorities to account” (Anderson et al. 930). In moments of disaster and in their aftermath, “framing contests” (Benford and Snow) can emerge in which some actors, regarding the crisis as an opportunity for change, highlight the systemic issues that have led to the crisis. Other actors, experiencing the crisis as a threat to the status quo, try to attribute the blame to others, and deny the need for policy change. As the Black Summer unfolded, just such a contest took place in Australian media discourse. While Murdoch’s dominant News Corp media sought to protect the status quo, promote conservative politicians’ views, and divert attention from the climate crisis, other Australian and overseas media outlets revealed the fires’ link to climate change and intransigent emissions policy. However, cracks did begin to show in the News Corp stance on climate change during the fires: an internal whistleblower publicly resigned over the media company’s fires coverage, calling it a “misinformation campaign”, and James Murdoch also spoke out about being “disappointed with the ongoing denial of the role of climate change” in reporting the fires (ABC/Reuters).Although media reporting on the environment has long been at the forefront of shaping social understanding of environmental issues, and news maintains a central role in both revealing environmental threats and shaping environmental politics (Lester), during Australia’s Black Summer people were also learning about the fires from lived experience. Polls show that the fires affected 57% of Australians. Even those distant from the catastrophe were, for some time, breathing the most toxic air in the world. This personal experience of disaster revealed a bushfire season that was far outside the normal, and public opinion reflected this. A YouGov Australia Institute poll in January 2020 found that 79% of Australians were concerned about climate change—an increase of 5% from July 2019—and 67% believed climate change was making the bushfires worse (Australia Institute). However, a January 2020 Ipsos poll also found that polarisation along political lines on whether climate change was indeed occurring had increased since 2018, and was at its highest levels since 2014 (Crowe). This may reflect the kind of polarised media landscape that was evident during the fires. A thorough dissection in public discourse of Australia’s unprecedented fire season has been largely eclipsed by the vast coverage of the coronavirus pandemic that so quickly followed it. In May 2020, however, the fires were back in the media, when the Bushfires Royal Commission found that the Black Summer “played out exactly as scientists predicted it would” and that more seasons like it were now “locked in” because of carbon emissions (Hitch). It now remains to be seen whether the revelatory extent of the climate change blame frame that played out in media discourse on the fires will be sufficient to garner meaningful action and policy change—or whether denialist discourses will again obscure climate change revelation and seek to maintain the status quo. References Anderson, Deb, et al. "Fanning the Blame: Media Accountability, Climate and Crisis on the Australian ‘Fire Continent’." Environmental Communication 12.7 (2018): 928-41.Australia Institute. “Climate Change Concern.” Jan. 2020. <https://www.tai.org.au/sites/default/files/Polling%20-%20January%202020%20-%20Climate%20change%20concern%20and%20attitude%20%5BWeb%5D.pdf>.Baker, Nick. “NSW Mayor Alams Deputy PM’s 'Insulting' Climate Change Attack during Bushfires.” SBS News 11 Nov. 2019. <https://www.sbs.com.au/news/nsw-mayor-slams-deputy-pm-s-insulting-climate-change-attack-during-bushfires>.Benford, Robert D., and David A. Snow. "Framing Processes and Social Movements: An Overview and Assessment." Annual Review of Sociology 26.1 (2000): 611-39.Boer, Matthias M., Víctor Resco de Dios, and Ross A. Bradstock. "Unprecedented Burn Area of Australian Mega Forest Fires." Nature Climate Change 10.3 (2020): 171-72.Brown, Greg, and Olivia Caisley. “Greens Policies Increasing Bushfire Threat, Barnaby Joyce Says.” The Australian 11 Nov. 2019. <https://www.theaustralian.com.au/nation/politics/deputy-pm-michael-mccormack-slams-raving-innercity-lunatics-for-linking-climate-change-to-fires/news-story/5c3ba8d3e72bc5f10fcf49a94fc9be85>.Carson, Rachel. Silent Spring. Boston and New York: Houghton Mifflin, 2002 [1962].Cox, Lisa. “Former Fire Chiefs Warn Australia Is Unprepared for Escalating Fire Threat.” The Guardian 10 Apr. 2019. <https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2019/apr/09/former-fire-chiefs-warn-australia-unprepared-for-escalating-climate-threat>.Crowe, David. “Ipsos Poll Offers Only a Rough Guide to the Liberal Party’s Uncertain Fate.” Sydney Morning Herald 7 Apr. 2019.Davidson, Helen. “Mallacoota Fire: Images of 'Mayhem' and 'Armageddon' as Bushfires Rage.” The Guardian 31 Dec. 2019. <https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2019/dec/31/mallacoota-fire-mayhem-armageddon-bushfires-rage-victoria-east-gippsland>.Doyle, Kate. “2019 Was Australia’s Hottest and Driest Year on Record.” ABC News 2 Jan. 2020. <https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-01-02/2019-was-australias-hottest-and-driest-year-on-record/11837312>.“Escaping Hell.” The Independent 2 Jan. 2020.Ewart, Jacqui, and Hamish McLean. "Ducking for Cover in the ‘Blame Game’: News Framing of the Findings of Two Reports into the 2010–11 Queensland floods." Disasters 39.1 (2015): 166-84.Fife-Yeomans, Janet. “Apocalypse Now.” Herald Sun 1 Jan. 2020. Flanagan, Richard. “Australia Is Committing Climate Suicide.” The New York Times 3 Jan. 2020. <https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/03/opinion/australia-fires-climate-change.html>.Fox, Aine, and Hannah Higgins. “Climate Talks for Another Day: NSW Premier.” 7 News 11 Nov. 2019. <https://7news.com.au/news/disaster-and-emergency/climate-change-talk-inappropriate-premier-c-55045>.Goloubeva, Jenya, and Nour Haydar. “Regional Mayors Criticise Politicians for Failing to Link Climate Change and Deadly Bushfires.” ABC News 11 Nov. 2019. <https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-11-11/carol-sparks-climate-change-federal-government-claire-pontin/11691444>.Good Morning Britain. “Interview with Craig Kelly MP.” ITV 6 Jan. 2020.Guibert, Christelle. “Dopée au Charbon, la Riche Australie Nie le Réchauffement Climatique.” Ouest France 20 Dec. 2019. <https://www.ouest-france.fr/monde/australie/dopee-au-charbon-la-riche-australie-nie-le-rechauffement-climatique-6664289>.Hamblyn, Richard. “The Whistleblower and the Canary: Rhetorical Constructions of Climate Change.” Journal of Historical Geography 35 (2009): 223–36.Hansen, Anders. Environment, Media, and Communication. New York: Routledge, 2010.Happer, Catherine, and Greg Philo. “New Approaches to Understanding the Role of the News Media in the Formation of Public Attitudes and Behaviours on Climate Change.” European Journal of Communication 31.2 (2016): 136–51.Hitch, Georgia. “Bushfire Royal Commission: 'Black Summer' Played Out Exactly as Scientists Predicted It Would.” ABC News 25 May 2020. <https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-05-25/bushfire-royal-commission-hearing-updates/12282808>.Johnstone, Craig. “History of Disasters Shows There Is Nothing New about Nation’s Destructive Blazes.” The Australian 31 Dec. 2019. <https://www.theaustralian.com.au/nation/history-of-disasters-shows-there-is-nothing-new-about-nations-destructive-blazes/news-story/f43c2a6037a8b0e422a69880bce10139>.Karlik, Evan. “Opinion: In Australia’s Raging Bushfires, a Climate-Change Warning to Its Leaders — and Ours.” The Los Angeles Times 10 Jan. 2020. <https://www.latimes.com/opinion/story/2020-01-10/australia-fires-prime-minister-politics-united-states>.Kenny, Chris. “Climate Alarmists Don't Want to Look at History.” Sky News 21 Nov. 2019. <https://www.skynews.com.au/details/_6106878027001>.Lester, Libby. Media & Environment: Conflict, Politics and the News. Polity: Cambridge, 2010. Lloyd, Graham. “Climate Pressure ‘Doomed to Fail’, Says Angus Taylor.” The Australian 30 Dec. 2019. <https://www.theaustralian.com.au/nation/politics/climate-pressure-doomed-to-fail-says-angus-taylor/news-story/f2441a20c70b944dd1d54ae15f304791>.Lukes, Stephen. “Questions about Power: Lessons from the Louisiana Hurricane.” Social Science Research Council (2006). 12 May. 2020 <https://items.ssrc.org/understanding-katrina/questions-about-power-lessons-from-the-louisiana-hurricane/>.Matthewman, Steve. Disasters, Risks and Revelation: Making Sense of Our Times. London and New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015.McCubbing, Gus. “Declare Climate Emergency: Ex-Fire Chiefs.” The Canberra Times 14 Nov. 2019. <https://www.canberratimes.com.au/story/6491540/declare-climate-emergency-ex-fire-chiefs/>.McNeish, Wallace. “From Revelation to Revolution: Apocalypticism in Green Politics.” Environmental Politics 26.6 (2017): 1035–54.Meade, Amanda. “The Australian: Murdoch-Owned Newspaper Accused of Downplaying Bushfires in Favour of Picnic Races.” The Guardian 4 Jan. 2020. <https://www.theguardian.com/media/2020/jan/04/the-australian-murdoch-owned-newspaper-accused-of-downplaying-bushfires-in-favour-of-picnic-races>.Nisbet Matthew C. “Knowledge into Action: Framing the Debates over Climate Change and Poverty.” Doing News Framing Analysis: Empirical and Theoretical Perspectives. Eds. Paul D’Angelo and Jim A. Kuypers. London and New York: Routledge, 2010. 59–99.Nolan, Rachael H., et al. "Causes and Consequences of Eastern Australia’s 2019‐20 Season of Mega‐Fires." Global Change Biology (2020): 1039-41.Parham, John. Green Media and Popular Culture: An Introduction. New York and London: Palgrave, 2016.Redfearn, Graham. “Explainer: What Are the Underlying Causes of Australia's Shocking Bushfire Season?” The Guardian 13 Jan. 2020. <https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/jan/13/explainer-what-are-the-underlying-causes-of-australias-shocking-bushfire-season>.Rose, Anna. “The Battle against the Bushfires Should Focus Our Attention on the War against Climate Inaction”. ABC News 2 Feb. 2020. <https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-02-02/battle-against-bushfires-war-against-climate-inaction/11909806>.Ross, David, and Imogen Reid. “Bushfires: Firebugs Fuelling Crisis as National Arson Toll Hits 183.” The Australian 15 Jan. 2020. <https://www.theaustralian.com.au/nation/bushfires-firebugs-fuelling-crisis-asarson-arresttollhits183/news-story/52536dc9ca9bb87b7c76d36ed1acf53f>. “Rupert Murdoch's Son James Criticises News Corp, Fox for Climate Change and Bushfire Coverage.” ABC/Reuters 15 Jan. 2020. <https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-01-15/james-murdoch-criticises-news-corp-fox-climate-change-coverage/11868544>.Shield, Charli. “Australian Bushfires: The Canary Building the Coal Mine.” Deutsche Welle 1 Jan. 2020. <https://www.dw.com/en/australian-bushfires-the-canary-building-the-coal-mine/a-51955677>.Smee, Ben. “Darkness at Noon: Australia’s Bushfire Day of Terror.” The Guardian 31 Dec. 2019. <https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2019/dec/31/darkness-at-noon-australia-bushfire-day-of-terror>.“This Is What a Climate Crisis Looks Like.” Independent Online. 2 Jan. 2020. Suzuki, David. “Ecological Crises Deserve Better Media Coverage.” The David Suzuki Foundation, 2020. 18 Mar. 2020. <https://davidsuzuki.org/story/ecological-crises-deserve-better-media-coverage/>.Trumbo, Craig. “Constructing Climate Change: Claims and Frames in US News Coverage of an Environmental Issue.” Public Understanding of Science 5.3 (1996): 269–84.Weber, Derek, et al. "#ArsonEmergency and Australia's ‘Black Summer’: Polarisation and Misinformation on Social Media." arXiv preprint arXiv:2004.00742 (2020).Werner, Joel, and Suzannah Lyons. “The Size of Australia's Bushfire Crisis Captured in Five Big Numbers.” ABC News 5 Mar. 2020. <https://www.abc.net.au/news/science/2020-03-05/bushfire-crisis-five-big-numbers/12007716>.

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AbstractBasic respiration characteristics were measured in turions of six aquatic plant species differing greatly in their ecological and overwintering characteristics both before and after overwintering, i.e., in dormant and non-dormant state: non-carnivorous Hydrocharis morsus-ranae and Caldesia parnassifolia and carnivorous Aldrovanda vesiculosa, Utricularia australis, U. ochroleuca, and U. bremii, and in non-dormant winter apices of three Australian (sub)tropical populations of Aldrovanda and of two temperate North American Utricularia species, U. purpurea and U. radiata. Respiration rate of autumnal (dormant) turions at 20°C ranged from 0.36 to 1.3 µmol O2 kg−1 (FM) s−1 and, except for U. bremii, increased by 11–114% after overwintering. However, this increase was statistically significant only in two species. Respiration Q10 in dormant turions ranged within 1.8–2.6 and within 2.3–3.4 in spring (non-dormant) turions. Turions of aquatic plants behave as typical storage, overwintering organs with low respiration rates. No relationship was found between respiration rate of turions and overwintering strategy. In spite of their low respiration rates, turions can usually survive only from one season to another, due to their limited reserves of respiratory substrates for long periods. Contrary to true turions, respiration rates in non-dormant winter apices both in Australian Aldrovanda populations and temperate U. radiata and U. purpurea, in sprouting turions, and growing shoot apices of Aldrovanda were high and ranged from 2.1 to 3.1 µmol kg−1 (FM) s−1, which is comparable to that in aquatic plant leaves or shoots.

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Abstract. Madduppa H, Putri ASP, Wicaksono RZ, Subhan B, Akbar N, Ismail F, Arafat D, Prabuning D, Sani LMI, Srimariana ES, Baksir A, Bengen DG. 2020. Morphometric and DNA Barcoding of endemic Halmaheran walking shark (Hemiscyllium halmahera, Allen, 2013) in North Maluku, Indonesia. Biodiversitas 21: 3331-3343. The walking shark (Hemiscyllium halmahera) commonly referred to as bamboo shark, is a shark species that belongs to the Hemiscyllidae family which is endemic in North Maluku, and Indonesian waters. These Hemiscyllium species are generally confined to the Australian-New Guinea region, save a specie which originates from Halmahera, an Indonesian island. Ever since its discovery, sufficient information on its existence has been largely unavailable. Hence, the purpose of this study is (1) to assess the morphology, using meristic measurements and length-weight relationship, and (2) to determine the molecular characteristics through DNA barcoding, phylogenetic reconstruction, and genetic diversity. The samples used in this research were obtained from Halmahera Archipelago, North Maluku, including Halmahera, Tidore, Ternate, Maitara, and Guraici in several expeditions between March 2017 and January 2018. 36 individuals in total were measured for morphometric parameters including Total Length (TL), Standard Length (SL), Head Length (HL), Body Circumference (BC), and Body Weight (BW). Out of a total of 36 sharks, tissue samples were obtained from 32 individuals for molecular identification. After the required measurements were obtained, all individuals sharks were released back to their habitat safely. Equations of linear regression were used to analyze the relationship between length and weight. Morphometric measurements indicated that the average total length of the walking shark samples obtained, were not more than 75± cm for both male and female specimens. The length-weight analysis revealed a positive allometric growth pattern in H. halmahera species, where weight was gained faster than an increase in length. The results of the DNA fragment length analysis from all samples were 793-bp. All 32 tissue samples identified as H. halmahera consisted of 3 samples from Ternate Island, 14 samples from Maitara Island, 9 samples from Guraici Island (South Halmahera), 10 samples from Central Halmahera, and 2 samples from Tidore Island. These results confirmed that DNA subsequence analysis indicates that H. halmahera is different from those sequences extracted from Genbank in the Australia-New Guinea region. This study successfully identified H. halmahera based on their morphological and molecular characters, and has therefore contributed to international genetic database (Barcoding Of Life Database-BOLD) for further studies.

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Abstract. Mahrus H, Idrus AA, Zulkifli L. 2022. Molecular phylogeny of anchovy (Clupeiformes: Clupeidae) from southern waters of Lombok using mitochondrial DNA CO1 gene sequences. Biodiversitas 23: 2433-2443. This study aimed to identify anchovy samples genetically and evaluate their phylogenetic relationship to anchovies using the CO1 genetics markers. Fragment amplification of COI gene anchovy used a pair of COI commercially available primer with a length amplicon of about 693 base pairs (bp), coding for 231 amino acids successfully. The reconstruction of the phylogenetic tree with the neighbor-joining (NJ) method using Kimura 2 Parameters (K2P) by employing a bootstrap of 1000 replications. The genetic distance analysis between 19 fishes species in different families and 13 species in the genera Spartelloides acceded from NCBI indicated the closest distance between anchovy samples from the southern waters of Lombok and Spratelloides delicatulus from Australia is 0.02. The comparisons results of hom*ology with the NCBI and the BOLD database show the anchovy sample has similarities to the CO1 sequences of S. delicatulus with a similar of 99%. The results of the phylogenetic tree analysis showed that the anchovy samples from the southern waters of Lombok were in the same clade as S. delicatulus from Australia. The study concluded a fish sample of anchovy from the southerly waters of Lombok was a closed related species to S. delicatulus.

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IntroductionEmpathy: the action of understanding, being aware of, being sensitive to, and vicariously experiencing the feelings, thoughts, and experience of another, either in the past or present without having the feelings, thoughts, and experience fully communicated in an objectively explicit manner; also: the capacity for this. (Merriam-Webster, “Empathy”)Compassion: sympathetic consciousness of others’ distress together with a desire to alleviate it. (Merriam-Webster, “Compassion”)After thirty years of being a vegetarian, my eyes were opened to the inherent cruelty in animal-use industries. I became vegan and spoke out on these issues at animal rights events, rallies and ethical leadership forums. My private psychology practice attracted a significant number of vegans who presented with symptoms of anxiety and depression. However, unlike many of my non-vegan clients who were unclear as to what caused their symptoms, vegans reported it as being directly related to their discovery of systematised animal misuse in society. It was as if they had extended their compassion beyond their own species.Despite these issues being increasingly discussed in open circles, this extension of compassion seems to be limited to veganism. Why is veganism increasing as a compassionate centre, with animal social justice being at its core? Drawing on key emotional experiences of vegans, based on a survey conducted in 2018 and observational data from a private psychology practice, this article explores the experiences of compassion and empathy of vegans, and the impact such experiences can have on social change.The Increase in VeganismVeganism has noticeably increased over the past decade, with greater public debate in the media. A 2016 Roy Morgan poll indicated that the number of strict vegetarian adults in Australia was 2.1 million; an increase of nearly half a million people over four years, and likely to grow (Roy Morgan). Internationally, veganism was the biggest trend of 2018, with over three times the level of interest online as “vegetarian” or “gluten-free” (The Vegan Society).I believe there are a number of reasons for this, including greater awareness through social media, increased social mobility, and people becoming aware of international practices (Oberst). Photos and videos of animal suffering are more easily accessible via mobile devices, and can be shared at a faster rate than mainstream media could traditionally share news (Forgrieve). Small budget Indie films have also shared unknown information with the public, such as Earthlings, Dominion, Cowspiracy, and Kangaroo. In addition to this, I believe there is a greater propensity for people to challenge authority and previous direction from doctors or politicians in what is known as “the era of respect” (Mowat, Corrigan, and Long).These circ*mstances and more have led to an increase in people making more informed, kinder choices with regard to veganism; suggesting the opening of a new era of compassion beyond one’s own species. However, living in a world where the majority of people’s consumer choices facilitates animal abuse behind closed doors, the vegan is left struggling with “the burden of knowing”; knowledge of the facts of animal mistreatment and the inability to change it or successfully induce others to acknowledge it (Mann, Vystopia).Case Study ResearchBetween 2013 and 2018 I held individual psychological counselling sessions with over 100 self-selected vegans. For these case studies, the definition of “vegan” means someone who has chosen to live their life underpinned by the philosophy of the non-use and non-exploitation of animals and informs what they eat, wear, use and are involved in. These individuals reached out to me because of the trauma they reported experiencing since learning of the ubiquitous nature of animal cruelty in society. They claimed to feel more comfortable with a vegan professional who they felt understood their anguish.From these sessions, using the qualitative research methodology of hermeneutics (Rennie), I began to notice a pattern relating to the nature and enormity of the typical vegan’s distress. Almost every vegan who came to see me presented with symptoms related to their awareness of the systemised cruelty towards animals. Their distress was compounded when they shared this information with their friends and family, whom they were sure would be equally upset by it. Instead, many people responded with indifference, criticism, and anger, saying that everyone has a right to choose what to eat. These feelings of frustration and powerlessness left them unable to reconcile competing beliefs; that the people they loved were capable of turning their eyes away from the suffering their consumer choices were financing. The typical symptoms they reported included (fig. 1):Complicated griefMental anguishDepressionAnxietySelf-medicationAnger and despairSelf-harmSuicidal thoughtsHopelessnessLonelinessPost-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD)Fig. 1: Typical symptoms reported by vegans in individual counselling sessions, 2013–2018.After over 1,300 hours of one-to-one sessions with vegans around the world, plus anecdotal stories from vegans I met at numerous events, I came to believe that the vegan’s pain is unique to being vegan and warrants a specific definition.It is imperative to me that vegans do not become labelled as mentally ill or chronically dysfunctional, for which the only solution is medication. As a fellow sufferer of the “burden of knowing”, I wanted to create a term to validate our experience and avoid medicalising our plight. Only then can the vegan’s experience be examined from a humane perspective and solutions be found to help us. Then, we can become part of the rising tide of social action that says human superiority and animal abuse is unacceptable. Because I believe that this experience and associated symptoms are existential in nature, I called this “Vystopia” (Mann, Vystopia).VystopiaThe Existential crisis experienced by vegans, arising out of an awareness of the trance-like collusion with a dystopian world and the awareness of the greed, ubiquitous animal exploitation, and speciesism in a modern dystopia. (Mann, “Suffer”)Vystopia is the anguish a vegan feels, knowing about the systematised cruelty towards animals in society, and the further distress they experience with the unconscious collusion of non-vegans, and their resistance or criticism of this information. Many of my clients experienced a range of symptoms of vystopia (fig. 2): Feelings of alienation from non-vegansMisanthropyGuilt over past consumption of animalsGuilt that they are not doing enough to save animalsInability to enjoy normal aspects of lifeFrustration with non-vegans who don’t ask more questionsAnger with the “burden of knowing”Powerlessness when health professionals tell them “it’s normal”Fig. 2: Symptoms of VystopiaMisdiagnosis of the Vegan’s ConditionMany doctors have referred patients to me for mental health symptoms of eating disorders, social adjustment disorder, and self-harm. It is my opinion that vegans referred to me with these symptoms do not suffer from traditional eating or self-harm disorders.As I learned from working in a psychiatric teaching hospital in the UK, clients with these conditions are often deeply unaware of the reasons influencing their symptoms. Their symptoms become an outward sign of hidden or unconscious distress which is too painful to confront directly. The vegans sent to me are deeply distressed due to the horror they’ve witnessed or now know about in the animal industries.I discovered that regularly viewing graphic videos of animal abuse was linked with vegan clients diagnosed as having self-harm tendencies (Klonsky). They view these as they feel guilty if they don’t know about all aspects of the animal’s suffering. It’s only by knowing all the details that they can be informed and act to change it. Vegan clients who have told their doctors they “can’t eat around people who are consuming animals” are often diagnosed as having eating disorders, although they lack the typical medical symptoms of eating disorders. While it is possible for vegans, like anyone else, to suffer from these conditions, I believe that many clients have been misdiagnosed. For many, their symptoms are indicative of a normal, feeling human’s way of dealing with vystopia: The truth is that it is not a pathology, but the distress a vegan feels when they look at the state of the world and the cruelty and suffering and it’s an absolutely rational response any feeling human being should feel; a dystopian reaction to what they are seeing. (Klaper)Survey ResearchBetween February and July 2018, I conducted an anonymous online survey of 820 vegans. The survey comprised 26 multiple-choice questions covering 7 main areas:How long someone has been veganLength they have experienced vystopiaWhen vystopia was most experiencedWhere people seek help for vystopiaWhat they do to reduce symptomsFamily and relationships where significant others are not veganWhat support is most needed to help vystopiansResultsWhilst an in-depth analysis of the results is outside the scope of this article, some of the key responses are as follows (figs. 3–6):How long have you been vegan?1–5 years48%Less than 6 months16%6–12 months14%5–10 years12%10 years plus10%Fig. 3: Length of time as vegan.How long have you suffered from vystopia?1–5 years39%5–10 years21%6–12 months15%Less than 6 months13%10 years plus12%Fig. 4: Length of time suffering from vystopia.When do you most experience vystopia?Others around you eat animals79%Seeing images of animal cruelty78%Other people refuse to hear about animal cruelty78%Grocery shopping69%People laugh at you for being vegan56%Family celebrations55%Holidays40%At work events39%All the time37%When away from vegan friends30%Other8%NB: Participants invited to tick all that apply Fig. 5: When vystopia is experienced.What do you do to reduce your vystopia?Remove yourself from the world58%Increase animal advocacy55%Talk to friends34%Self-medicate (e.g. alcohol, drugs, food)24%Other16%See a doctor2%Fig. 6: Actions taken to reduce vystopia.Explaining the Differences in Adoption of VeganismWhy do some people extend their compassion towards animals whilst others are unaware of the need to do so, or believe it is anthropomorphic or sentimental? Research is needed to examine this more, but my own research and anecdotal experience suggests some factors:Social ConformityMany people are strongly influenced by what they perceive as socially normal (Mallinson and Hatemi). Cultural and family traditions, media, and community behaviour all influence the food and lifestyle choices of society. Most people are unaware that their consumer choices play a role in the mistreatment and abuse of animals.Social conditioning influences whether people choose to investigate new information further or continue with the status quo for the sake of fitting in. The need to fit in creates a social trance whereby people continue to collude with animal cruelty through their inaction, and in fact their willful ignorance means they are not likely to change their actions, as they don’t know any differently.The vegan is one who has chosen to find out the truth about animal exploitation and extend their compassion towards other species by abstaining from anything related to animal abuse.Personal and Social Defense MechanismsSimilar to social conformity, the concept of being “different” from the perceived norm is enough for many people to continue with their actions, regardless of the consequence for animals. Similarly, those who are suddenly privy to new information may feel judged by the messenger, and resistance is easier than change. The vegan is one who chooses to adjust their actions, despite the judgement or ridicule which may accompany it.Personality VariablesOn the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (Myers and Myers), my anecdotal experience suggests that individuals with preferences for “feeling” over “thinking” are more likely to become vegan. The vegan community consists of many different personality types, with those who are strong “feeling” types more inclined to display empathy and empathetic action.Avoidance of Existential Anxiety When a person’s understanding of the world is challenged, this can create anxiety, where one is compelled to ask, “What else don’t I know?” If animal cruelty can occur at such a widespread rate—with most of society oblivious to it—what else is going on behind closed doors? For some, the reality of facing the truth can create enough angst that they will resist knowing and changing. The vegan may still experience such angst, but is compelled to change for the sake of the animals. Differing Capacity to Encompass Novel IdeasIdeas which vary from a widely believed ideology are often rejected, simply because the new idea is too radical to believe or comprehend. Consider the Law of Gravity or the concept of germs, both initially shunned by experts. Some people are more willing to delve into a new concept and explore the possibilities which come with it. Others are firmly tied to conformist ideology and will only jump on the bandwagon once others are driving it.Differing Levels of ConsciousnessIn the original book on Spiral Dynamics, Beck and Cowan talk about the magnetic forces that attract and repel individuals, the webs that connect people within organisations, and influence the rise and fall of nations and cultures. The book tracks our historic emergence from clans and tribes to networks and inter-connected networks. It identifies seven variations on how change occurs in individuals, society and leadership.Its relevance for veganism is in appreciating that there are different levels of consciousness in society. For example, a vegan passionate about the ethical treatment of animals would be faced with resistance from a hunter with a more tribal level of consciousness, according to the Spiral Dynamics model. It would be like two people from different planets communicating. Another example would be a community outraged by the influence of veganism on local employment, as demand for dairy reduces. By understanding where other people or groups are coming from, we can adapt the way in which we communicate. If vegans talk ethics and non-speciesism to people focused primarily on job security, they will face resistance.Tipping PointsIn marketing, the uptake of products and services follows a certain pattern. For example, in the 1990s, few people believed that the mobile phone market would explode to such a point. The same goes for changes in collective beliefs and ideas in society, such as the early protagonists for the Abolition of Slavery. These early innovators and adopters faced enormous resistance by those who benefited from the trade. As the movement gathered momentum, it reached what Gladwell has called the “Tipping Point”, “the moment of critical mass, the threshold, the boiling point” (12). As Gladwell stresses here, “ideas, products, messages and behaviours spread like viruses do” (7).In The Empathetic Civilization, Rifkin discusses society being wired for empathy. This occurs when the neurons in the brain mirror those of people around them, and can be likened to the psychological concept of “entrainment”. This phenomenon suggests that vegans have the ability to influence others through showing empathy and compassion.Increasingly, teenage vegans are referred to me who say, “I just had this awareness and know it is wrong to eat animals”. Many of them hadn’t seen anything on veganism or spoken to anyone about animal exploitation. I believe that this is an example of what Jung has called the “Collective Unconscious”; the structures of the unconscious mind which are shared among beings of the same species. This is encouraging for vegans who often feel helpless and cannot see how a vegan world will happen in their lifetime.ConclusionThose who are vegan for ethical reasons appear to feel compelled to take action to end animals’ plight. This may be because of the ubiquitous nature of the problem, but also because other people’s non-veganism is contributing to their vystopia.The extended compassion of vegans leaves them feeling depressed, wondering how enough people are going to change in order for veganism to become the new norm. The concept of entrainment is an encouraging one for vegans, reminding us of the importance of playing our part in being the example we want others to “entrain” to.It is my experience that empathy alone will not alleviate vystopia for these ethically-driven vegans. Vystopia can only be alleviated through action. A person may feel compelled to take action to end the suffering of refugees, children, the homeless and when they tell people, their efforts are applauded. The vegan who changes their everyday consumer choices to end animal suffering is often met with resistance, derision or criticism, as the non-vegan insists they have choice or that animals are inferior to humans. Another person may disagree with animal cruelty and yet refuse to change their consumer habits which finance the cruelty. One’s food choices are powerful political actions, and disagreeing with animal cruelty yet eating animals fuels the vegan’s vystopia. By shifting our focus from how awful the world is to taking action every day to mirror the vegan world we seek, we are creating a new norm to which others will entrain.With the increase in veganism trending upwards, the changes we are seeing across the world might mirror our compulsion to act. While the depth of animal empathy and vystopia is full of real anguish, I believe it also provides what we need to propel the world towards a vegan norm.ReferencesBeck, Don Edward, and Christopher Cowan. Spiral Dynamics: Mastering Values, Leadership and Change. New York: Wiley-Blackwell, 2005.Cowspiracy: The Sustainability Secret. Dirs. Kip Anderson and Keegan Kuhn. Appian Way, A.U.M. Films, First Spark Media, 2014.Dominion. Dir. Chris Delforce. Aussie Farms, 2018.Earthlings. Dir. Shaun Monson. Libra Max and Maggie Q, 2005.Forgrieve, Janet. “The Growing Acceptance of Veganism.” Forbes 2 Nov. 2018. 29 Mar. 2018 <https://www.forbes.com/sites/janetforgrieve/2018/11/02/picturing-a-kindler-gentler-world-vegan-month/#331421342f2b>.Gladwell, Malcolm. The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference. London: Abacus, 2000.Jung, Carl G. The Structure and Dynamics of the Psyche. 1969.Kangaroo: A Love-Hate Story. Dirs. Michael McIntyre and Kate Clere-McIntyre. Hopping Pictures, 2017.Klaper, Michael. “Interview with Dr. Michael Klaper.” YouTube 17 Aug. 2018. 29 Mar. 2019 <https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=87&v=8EQOUODlq2c>.Klonsky, E. David. “The Functions of Deliberate Self-Injury: A Review of the Evidence.” Clinical Psychology Review 27.2 (2007): 226–39. Mallinson, Daniel J., and Peter K. Hatemi. “The Effects of Information and Social Conformity on Opinion Change.” Plos One 13.5 (2018). 29 Mar. 2019 <https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0196600>.Mann, Clare. “Do You Suffer from Vystopia? The Discovery of Systemised Cruelty.” Blog post. No date. 5 Apr. 2019 <https://www.veganpsychologist.com/do-you-suffer-from-vystopia/?platform=hootsuite>.———. Vystopia: The Anguish of Being Vegan in a Non-Vegan World. Sydney: Communicate31, 2018.Mowat, Andrew, John Corrigan, and Douglas Long. The Success Zone: 5 Powerful Steps to Growing Yourself and Leading Others. Mt. Evelyn: Global Publishing Group, 2009.Myers, Isabel Briggs, and Peter B. Myers. Gifts Differing: Understanding Personality Type. 2nd ed. Mountain View: Consulting Psychologists Press, 1995.Oberst, Lindsay. “Why the Global Rise in Vegan and Plant-Based Eating Isn’t a Fad (600% Increase in U.S. Vegans + Other Astounding Stats).” Food Revolution Network 18 Jan. 2018. 20 Mar. 2019 <https://foodrevolution.org/blog/vegan-statistics-global/>. Rennie, David L. “Methodical Hermeneutics and Humanistic Psychology.” The Humanistic Psychologist 35.1 (2007): 1-14.Rifkin, Jeremy. The Empathic Civilization: The Race to Global Consciousness in a World in Crisis. Cambridge: Polity, 2010.Roy Morgan. “The Slow But Steady Rise of Vegetarianism in Australia.” Roy Morgan 15 Aug. 2016. 29 Mar. 2019 <http://www.roymorgan.com/findings/vegetarianisms-slow-but-steady-rise-in-australia-201608151105>.The Vegan Society. “Statistics.” The Vegan Society, 2019. 20 Mar. 2019 <https://www.vegansociety.com/news/media/statistics>.

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Abstract:

We are looking for a tongue that speaks with reverence for life, searching for an ecology of mind. Without it, we have no home, have no place of our own within the creation. It is not only the vocabulary of science that we desire. We also want a language of that different yield. A yield rich as the harvests of the earth, a yield that returns us to our own sacredness, to a self-love and respect that will carry out to others (Hogan 122). Through storytelling the world is created and recreated: in the values and worldviews stories offer, in the patterns of thinking and knowing that listening and reading place in our spirits and minds, in the stories we tell and live. We walk in the ripples our old people left behind and we follow them up, just as our children and the generations after us will walk in shapes and patterns we make with our lives. Our delicate world is poised on a precipice with increasing species extinction and loss of habitat, deforestation, displacement of animal and human communities, changing weather patterns, and polluted waterways. How do we manage the environmental and cultural issues of our complex global world? How do we come together to look after each other and the world around us? Often there is a sense that science will save us, that if we keep “progressing” at a fast enough rate we can escape the consequences of our actions. However, science alone, no matter how sophisticated, cannot alter the fundamental truths of action and reaction in Country: that if you take too much, something, somewhere, will go without. As Guungu Yimithirr man Roy McIvor writes: Dad often spoke about being aware of the consequences of our actions. He used different stories as teaching tools, but the idea was the same. Like a boomerang, your bad actions will come back to hurt you (89). In the end, it will not be technological innovation alone that will alter the course we have set out for ourselves. Rather, it will be human beings embracing a different way of relating to the environment than the current dominant paradigm that sees people take too much, too often. With this is mind, we would like to consider the integral role children’s literature plays in sustaining knowledge patterns of Country and ecology for the future. In the context of children’s literature and ecology the idea of sustaining environmental and cultural awareness is shared via the written word—how it is used, presented, and read, particularly with ideas of the child reader in mind. Our children will be the ones who struggle with the ripples we leave in our wake and they will be the ones who count the cost of our decisions as they in turn make decisions for the generations that will follow them. If we teach the right values then the behaviour of our children will reflect those ideas. In the Aboriginal way it’s about getting the story right, so that they can learn the right ways to be in Country, to be a human being, and to look after the world they inherit. As Deborah Bird Rose states, Country is a “nourishing terrain; a place that gives and receives life” (Rose Country 7). This paper will examine two Aboriginal children’s stories that teach about a living, holistic, interrelated world and the responsibilities of human beings to look after it. Specifically, the authors will examine Joshua and the Two Crabs by Joshua Button and Dingo’s Tree by Gladys and Jill Milroy. Both stories are published by Aboriginal publisher Magabala Books and represent a genre of Aboriginal writing about Country and how to take care of it. They form part of the “language of that different yield” (Hogan 122) that Indigenous writer Linda Hogan advocates, a language that emerges from an ecology of the mind that locates human beings as an interconnected part of the patterns of the earth. The first text discussion focuses on the sharing of implicit meaning via textual form—that is, the lay out of the story, its peritext, and illustrations. The second textual discussion centres explicitly on content and meaning. Both textual analyses aim to open up a dialogue between Aboriginal ecology and children’s literature to provide inter-subjective approaches for Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal readers/listeners. Aboriginal Story Ecology In Aboriginal philosophy the universe is the creative expression of Dreaming Ancestors who created the world—the land, plants, animals, stars and elements—and then settled into the creation they had made: …white people also call this the Dreaming. The Tjukurpa tells how the landscape, animals, plants, and people were made and what they mean for one another. The Tjukurpa is in everything. It is in the rocks, in the trees, even in the mice, mingkiri (Baker xii). Through their actions they formed the pattern of reality that finds its expression in human beings and in everything around us—the stars, earth, rivers, trees, rocks, and forms of life that make up the world. Aboriginal knowledge systems understand the patterns of life and our relationships to them through the structure of story. Dreaming stories—stories about the creation of the world and how the fundamental Laws were handed down to the people—have special significance. However, the stories we make with our lives and experiences are also important—stories about funny things that happened and our relationships with our families and loved ones. These stories are also a part of Country because there is nothing that does not emerge and return to the land, nothing that is not part of the pattern that the Dreaming Ancestors made: The Story is the Land, and the Land is the Story. The Story holds the people, and the people live inside the Story. The Story lives inside the people also. It goes all ways to hold the land (Turner 45). The imprint of creation, the structure of the relationships that make up the world, is held in story. Thus, in Aboriginal logic the patterns of nature, the patterns of stories, and the patterns of language, society, and culture are reflections and expressions of the pattern of creation woven by the Dreaming Ancestors. As Yunipingu writes: …For us society and nature are not separate. We have Yirritja and Dhuwa, and these categories contain elements which are both natural and social. Also, of course, they have elements which Europeans call supernatural or metaphysical (9). Through stories we come to know not just the world but who we are and the proper ways of relating to the ecology’s around us. As we learn stories the pattern of learning grows inside of us, in our ways of thinking, doing, and being. They provide the framework for our spirit and mind to develop so we come to know and be in the world in a proper or straight way—to enhance the pattern of life, not to destroy it. This is an Aboriginal “Story Ecology” where stories serve as maps that teach us who we are and our role in the world. Yuin Elder Max Harrison (2009) observes the three truths on passing on traditional knowledge: See the land…the beautyHear the land….the storyFeel the land…the spirit (no pg). To sustain Country is to sustain the self. To tell, share, and know story is to know the environment and to sustain the environment. As Kathy Deveraux writes ‘it’s like the spider: a lot of things tie in together, so when you ask one thing, you get a whole big history’ (qtd in Rose, Country 7). Aboriginal story promotes ecological practice by enlivening the reader’s empathy toward the environment and nurturing a sense of union between what is within us and what is outside of us. The imagery and text of Aboriginal story often achieves this umbilical in two defining ways. The first is through the positioning of the age, setting, or backdrop. The second is born from the relationships animated between these vitally active surrounds and the characters contained therein. Makere Stewart-Harrawira states that: All human experiences and all forms of knowledge contributed to the overall understandings and interpretations. The important task was to find the proper pattern of interpretation. Hence it can be said that indigenous peoples have traditionally regarded knowledge as something that must be stood in its entire context. The traditional principles of traditional knowledge [...] remain fixed and provide the framework within which new experiences and situations are understood and given meaning. As such, these principles are the means by which cultural knowledge becomes remade and given meaning in our time. Another principle is that every individual element of the natural world, each individual rock and stone, each individual animal and plant, every body of land and of water, has its own unique life force (155). Examples of these features of Aboriginal story ecology can be seen in our analysis of the following two stories Joshua and the Two Crabs and Dingo’s Tree. Joshua and the Two Crabs In Joshua and the Two Crabs by Joshua Button, published by Magabala Books in 2008, the narrative, illustrations, and peritext all combine to enable alternative eco-cultural understandings and values. Joshua Button is a young Indigenous author from saltwater country, as is the protagonist in the text. Joshua, the character, observes the movements of country and its inhabitants and Joshua, the author and illustrator, expresses these meanings via words, colours, and illustrations. In particular, the text represents relationships with, and within, Crab Creek. The peritext offers information about Crab Creek—a tidal creek in the mangroves of Roebuck Bay in north-west Western Australia. “The area abounds with wildlife, including migratory birds, fruit bats, crabs and shellfish. It is a place for local people to spend the day fishing off the beach for a ‘pan-sized’ feed of salmon, queenfish, silver bream or trevally. Catching and cooking mud crabs is one of Joshua’s favourite things to do” (no pg). Story, place, and child are now formally positioned as the centre of the narrative and their relationship strengthened by the colours used to represent country and movement. The narrative focuses on Joshua’s family trip to Crab Creek and his interactions with the land, the water, and the animals. His story reveals a meeting of land and sea, a reading of land and sea, and a listening to land and sea. Country and its inhabitants are revealed as having multiple relationships. From the moment his mob arrives, the narrative emphasizes listening to and reading country: Joshua’s Mum moves faster when she reads the movement of the tides and when Joshua ventures into the mangroves he listens to the “Plop! Plop! Plop! Of the air rising up through the mud” (Button, no pg.). With his bucket and spear Joshua’s movements through country are observed and considered by the creatures around him; wader birds carefully watch him and Joshua engages in a dialogue with two big mud crabs that remind the boy that he has also been perceived by Country, which is itself sentient. Animals and country speak and observe—the tide moves, the sand is hot, mudskippers skip, and crabs escape and hide. Joshua’s relationship with the mud crabs is dependent on the boy and the crabs seeing each other and communicating: “‘I can see you two!’ ‘Well, we can see you too,’ said the crabs” (Button, no pg). The narrative provides a beautifully simplistic example of different perspectives and positions for the intended child reader. Both Joshua and the crabs’ perspectives are given space to be acknowledged and understood: one character is searching, another character is escaping. When Joshua finally catches the crabs he carefully brings them back to camp and the entire family have a good feed of them and the golden trevally Joshua’s Mum caught. “Afterwards they sat watching the tide empty out of the bay. Long-legged wader birds picked their way across the silvery mudflats. It had been a good day” (Button, no pg). The story offers a colourful, fun, and cyclical way of seeing country from a perspective that centres the relationship between family, food, and land. It presents this relationship and the implicit meaning of observing and living in country via traditional textual elements such as the written word, colour illustrations, and movement from left to right, but in doing so, the text becomes a form of sustaining relationship with country as well, not just for Joshua but also for the intended child reader. Dingo’s Tree Dingo’s Tree by Jill and Gladys Milroy is a much longer story than Joshua and the Two Crabs and also deals with more serious themes. The story is about Dingo who drew his own rain tree on a rock because the other animals didn’t share their shade with him. The tree then becomes real and grows beyond the limit of the sky and keeps Dingo’s waterhole full through the drought season. The others come to rely on Dingo’s waterhole and feel bad for not sharing with him and teasing him about his tree. As the water dries up, one single special raindrop is found on a little tree and Dingo decides to spare the drop even when all the waterholes become dry. Dingo feels that something is wrong when he sees that the raindrop is slowly growing larger. To survive, Dingo and his friend Wombat teach Little Tree to walk to water. He becomes known as Walking Tree and they are soon joined by all of the others in the land. On their way to the mountain to find water they see the river and half the mountain replaced by mining, and Walking Tree soon becomes overburdened with the weight of the others. The birds decide to carry him—his branches full of friends—and they succeed for a short time only to grow tired. Soon they are all falling toward their impending death until Dingo chooses to use the last raindrop, now much larger, and their fall is broken and a new waterhole is made. However, it is only enough for Walking Tree to live forever and because he is the last tree, the others (but one baby crow) go to the Heavens awaiting their return at the end of humankinds reign on the land. In the story of the Dingo’s Tree the adventure begins in “unspoiled country” with its inventory of cast members who, in real life, naturally inhabit the area. All are shown to be adjusting recurrently within the known cycles of drought and abundance, suggested by the authors in the line “the drought came”, then a subtle reference to patterns of migration as the season is introduced and the cast move to more reliable waterholes. Establishing the story in this space encourages the young reader to identify the natural landscape as “normal”, and part of that normality are the cycles that create and degenerate growth. It is the antagonist that is responsible for the creation of unnatural change. Mining becomes the assassin of country with men as poachers "carting away great loads of rock and earth in huge machines" (Milroy and Milroy 39). This scene is of great importance, although it is only allocated a single page, because it shows where the artery of country has been severed. Its effects have been cleverly woven into the storyline beforehand in several ways. The line “the drought stayed” illustrates a seasonal defiance. In turn, Dingo becomes aware of this imbalance: "for a while Dingo lived happily in his cave but lately he’d begun to worry about the country, something wasn’t right" (Milroy and Milroy 1). Dingo reads the signs of the country. His attention to the life cycles of the land are brought to the attention of the reader teaching children about the important role of observation in caring for country. In addition to this, a warning is given to Crow by the Rain Tree through a vision of a future landscape devastated and dying: "It is what your country will become…The mining is cutting too deep for the scars to heal. Once destroyed the mountains can’t grow again and give birth to the rivers that they send to the sea…"(Milroy and Milroy 20). Contained in this passage is a direct environmental truth, but the beauty of the passage lies in the language chosen by the authors. The phrase “cutting too deep for the scars to heal” links a human experience to an environmental one, as does the phrase “give birth to the rivers”. A child is able to recognise the physical pain of a cut and a child is also able to recognise that birth belongs to the Mother. The use of this language forges a powerful connection in the mind of the reader between the self and the Earth - the child and the Mother. Country feels pain, the mountains and rivers activate their own membership in life’s cycles, and even the far off Moon participates in thought and conversation, all of which awaken a consciousness within the reader toward the animate spirit of the natural world, parenting a considerate relationship to land. It is this animate relationship with the land that it is at the heart of the story. It is the mountain that sends the rivers to the sea, rather than the abstract force of gravity. If the authors were to omit this living relationship between the mountains, the rivers, and the sea, the readers understanding would be contained to simple geophysical processes with their life force reduced to an impersonal science, if thought of at all. Instead, the mountain chooses to send the rivers to the sea because it is the right way, so natural processes become exposed as conscious participants in story rather than being portrayed as passive or inanimate objects and this not only deepens the impact of their destruction later in the plot, it also deepens the connection between the reader and the land. Writing the Future Joshua and the Two Crabs and Dingo’s Tree offer two different Aboriginal stories with underlying commonalities: they both position relationships, Country, and people into an integrated web and provide a moral framework for sustaining the relationships around us. Children’s picture books and narratives are foundational initiations for many Australian child readers in their ecological education—whether overtly or covertly. How a society, a character, a narrative, represents, treats, and perceives the land influences how the reader encounters the landscape. We argue that Indigenous Australian children’s literature, written, illustrated, produced, and disseminated largely by Indigenous knowledges, offers counter-point views and stories about the land and accompanying interrelated relationships that provide the reader with a space to re-consider, re-inhabit, or transform their own ecological positioning. References Baker, Lynn. Mingkirri: A Natural History of Ulu-ru by the Mu-titjulu Community. Canberra: IAD Press, 1996. Button, Joshua. Joshua and the Two Crabs. Broome: Magabala Books, 2008. Harrison, Max. My Peoples Dreaming. Sydney: Finch Publishing, 2009. Hogan, Linda. “A Different Yield.” Reclaiming Indigenous Voice and Vision. Ed. Marie Battise. Toronto: UBC Press, 2000. 115 – 23. McIvor, Roy. co*ckatoo: My Life in Cape York. Broome: Magabala Books, 2010. Milroy, Gladys and Jill Milroy. Dingo’s Tree. Broome: Magabala Books, 2012. Rose, Deborah Bird. Country of the Heart: An Indigenous Australian Homeland. Canberra: Aboriginal Studies Press, 2002. ——-. “Pattern, Connection, Desire: In Honour of Gregory Bateson”. Australian Humanities Review, 35 (2005). 14th June 2012, ‹http://wwwlib.latrobe.cdu.au/A1IR/archive!lssue-June 2005/rose.html›. Stewart-Harawira, Makere. “Cultural Studies, Indigenous Knowledge and Pedagogies of Hope.” Policy Futures in Education 3.2 (2005):153-63. Turner, Margaret. Iwenhe Tyerrtye: What It Means to Be an Aboriginal Person. Alice Springs: IAD Press, 2010. Yunupingu, Mandawuy. Voices from the Land. Canberra: Australian Broadcasting Corporation, 1994.

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As the name suggests, the humanities is largely a study of the human condition, in which history sits as a discipline concerned with the past. Environmental history is a new field that brings together scholars from a range of disciplines to consider the changing relationships between humans and the environment over time. Critiques of anthropocentrism that place humans at the centre of the universe or make assessments through an exclusive human perspective provide a challenge to scholars to rethink our traditional biases against the nonhuman world. The movement towards nonhumanism or posthumanism, however, does not seem to have had much of an impression on history as a discipline. What would a nonhumanist history look like if we re-centred the historical narrative around pigs? There are histories of pigs as food (see for example, The Cambridge History of Food which has a chapter on “Hogs”). There are food histories that feature pork in terms of its relationship to multiethnic identity (such as Donna Gabaccia’s We Are What We Eat) and examples made of pigs to promote ethical eating (Singer). Pigs are central to arguments about dietary rules and what motivates them (Soler; Dolander). Ancient pig DNA has also been employed in studies on human migration and colonisation (Larson et al.; Durham University). Pigs are also widely used in a range of products that would surprise many of us. In 2008, Christien Meindertsma spent three years researching the products made from a single pig. Among some of the more unexpected results were: ammunition, medicine, photographic paper, heart valves, brakes, chewing gum, porcelain, cosmetics, cigarettes, hair conditioner and even bio diesel. Likewise, Fergus Henderson, who coined the term ‘nose to tail eating’, uses a pig on the front cover of the book of that name to suggest the extraordinary and numerous potential of pigs’ bodies. However, my intention here is not to pursue a discussion of how parts of their bodies are used, rather to consider a reorientation of the historical narrative to place pigs at the centre of stories of our co-evolution, in order to see what their history might say about humans and our relationships with them. This is underpinned by recognition of the inter-relationality of humans and animals. The relationships between wild boar and pigs with humans has been long and diverse. In a book exploring 10,000 years of interaction, Anton Ervynck and Peter Rowley-Conwy argue that pigs have been central to complex cultural developments in human societies and they played an important role in human migration patterns. The book is firmly grounded within the disciplines of zoology, anthropology and archaeology and contributes to an understanding of the complex and changing relationship humans have historically shared with wild boar and domestic pigs. Naturalist Lyall Watson also explores human/pig relationships in The Whole Hog. The insights these approaches offer for the discipline of history are valuable (although overlooked) but, more importantly, such scholarship also challenges a humanist perspective that credits humans exclusively with historical change and suggests, moreover, that we did it alone. Pigs occupy a special place in this history because of their likeness to humans, revealed in their use in transplant technology, as well as because of the iconic and paradoxical status they occupy in our lives. As Ervynck and Rowley-Conwy explain, “On the one hand, they are praised for their fecundity, their intelligence, and their ability to eat almost anything, but on the other hand, they are unfairly derided for their apparent slovenliness, unclean ways, and gluttonous behaviour” (1). Scientist Niamh O’Connell was struck by the human parallels in the complex social structures which rule the lives of pigs and people when she began a research project on pig behaviour at the Agricultural Research Institute at Hillsborough in County Down (Cassidy). According to O’Connell, pigs adopt different philosophies and lifestyle strategies to get the most out of their life. “What is interesting from a human perspective is that low-ranking animals tend to adopt one of two strategies,” she says. “You have got the animals who accept their station in life and then you have got the other ones that are continually trying to climb, and as a consequence, their life is very stressed” (qtd. in Cassidy). The closeness of pigs to humans is the justification for their use in numerous experiments. In the so-called ‘pig test’, code named ‘Priscilla’, for instance, over 700 pigs dressed in military uniforms were used to study the effects of nuclear testing at the Nevada (USA) test site in the 1950s. In When Species Meet, Donna Haraway draws attention to the ambiguities and contradictions promoted by the divide between animals and humans, and between nature and culture. There is an ethical and critical dimension to this critique of human exceptionalism—the view that “humanity alone is not [connected to the] spatial and temporal web of interspecies dependencies” (11). There is also that danger that any examination of our interdependencies may just satisfy a humanist preoccupation with self-reflection and self-reproduction. Given that pigs cannot speak, will they just become the raw material to reproduce the world in human’s own image? As Haraway explains: “Productionism is about man the tool-maker and -user, whose highest technical production is himself […] Blinded by the sun, in thrall to the father, reproduced in the sacred image of the same, his rewards is that he is self-born, an auto telic copy. That is the mythos of enlightenment and transcendence” (67). Jared Diamond acknowledges the mutualistic relationship between pigs and humans in Guns, Germs and Steel and the complex co-evolutionary path between humans and domesticated animals but his account is human-centric. Human’s relationships with pigs helped to shape human history and power relations and they spread across the world with human expansion. But questioning their utility as food and their enslavement to this cause was not part of the account. Pigs have no voice in the histories we write of them and so they can appear as passive objects in their own pasts. Traces of their pasts are available in humanity’s use of them in, for example, the sties built for them and the cooking implements used to prepare meals from them. Relics include bones and viruses, DNA sequences and land use patterns. Historians are used to dealing with subjects that cannot speak back, but they have usually left ample evidence of what they have said. In the process of writing, historians attempt to perform the miracle, as Curthoys and Docker have suggested, of restoration; bringing the people and places that existed in the past back to life (7). Writing about pigs should also attempt to bring the animal to life, to understand not just their past but also our own culture. In putting forward the idea of an alternative history that starts with pigs, I am aware of both the limits to such a proposal, and that most people’s only contact with pigs is through the meat they buy at the supermarket. Calls for a ban on intensive pig farming (RSPCA, ABC, AACT) might indeed have shocked people who imagine their dinner comes from the type of family farm featured in the movie Babe. Baby pigs in factory farms would have been killed a long time before the film’s sheep dog show (usually at 3 to 4 months of age). In fact, because baby pigs do grow so fast, 48 different pigs were used to film the role of the central character in Babe. While Babe himself may not have been aware of the relationship pigs generally have to humans, the other animals were very cognisant of their function. People eat pigs, even if they change the name of the form it takes in order to do so:Cat: You know, I probably shouldn’t say this, but I’m not sure if you realize how much the other animals are laughing at you for this sheep dog business. Babe: Why would they do that? Cat: Well, they say that you’ve forgotten that you’re a pig. Isn't that silly? Babe: What do you mean? Cat: You know, why pigs are here. Babe: Why are any of us here? Cat: Well, the cow’s here to be milked, the dogs are here to help the Boss's husband with the sheep, and I’m here to be beautiful and affectionate to the boss. Babe: Yes? Cat: [sighs softly] The fact is that pigs don’t have a purpose, just like ducks don’t have a purpose. Babe: [confused] Uh, I—I don’t, uh ... Cat: Alright, for your own sake, I’ll be blunt. Why do the Bosses keep ducks? To eat them. So why do the Bosses keep a pig? The fact is that animals don’t seem to have a purpose really do have a purpose. The Bosses have to eat. It’s probably the most noble purpose of all, when you come to think about it. Babe: They eat pigs? Cat: Pork, they call it—or bacon. They only call them pigs when they’re alive (Noonan). Babe’s transformation into a working pig to round up the sheep makes him more useful. Ferdinand the duck tried to do the same thing by crowing but was replaced by an alarm clock. This is a common theme in children’s stories, recalling Charlotte’s campaign to praise Wilbur the pig in order to persuade the farmer to let him live in E. B. White’s much loved children’s novel, Charlotte’s Web. Wilbur is “some pig”, “terrific”, “radiant” and “humble”. In 1948, four years before Charlotte’s Web, White had published an essay “Death of a Pig”, in which he fails to save a sick pig that he had bought in order to fatten up and butcher. Babe tried to present an alternative reality from a pig’s perspective, but the little pig was only spared because he was more useful alive than dead. We could all ask the question why are any of us here, but humans do not have to contemplate being eaten to justify their existence. The reputation pigs have for being filthy animals encourages distaste. In another movie, Pulp Fiction, Vincent opts for flavour, but Jules’ denial of pig’s personalities condemns them to insignificance:Vincent: Want some bacon? Jules: No man, I don’t eat pork. Vincent: Are you Jewish? Jules: Nah, I ain’t Jewish, I just don’t dig on swine, that’s all. Vincent: Why not? Jules: Pigs are filthy animals. I don’t eat filthy animals. Vincent: Bacon tastes gooood. Pork chops taste gooood. Jules: Hey, sewer rat may taste like pumpkin pie, but I’d never know ’cause I wouldn’t eat the filthy motherf*cker. Pigs sleep and root in sh*t. That’s a filthy animal. I ain’t eat nothin’ that ain’t got sense enough to disregard its own feces [sic]. Vincent: How about a dog? Dogs eats its own feces. Jules: I don’t eat dog either. Vincent: Yeah, but do you consider a dog to be a filthy animal? Jules: I wouldn’t go so far as to call a dog filthy but they’re definitely dirty. But, a dog’s got personality. Personality goes a long way. Vincent: Ah, so by that rationale, if a pig had a better personality, he would cease to be a filthy animal. Is that true? Jules: Well we’d have to be talkin’ about one charming motherf*ckin’ pig. I mean he’d have to be ten times more charmin’ than that Arnold on Green Acres, you know what I’m sayin’? In the 1960s television show Green Acres, Arnold was an exceptional pig who was allowed to do whatever he wanted. He was talented enough to write his own name and play the piano and his attempts at painting earned him the nickname “Porky Picasso”. These talents reflected values that are appreciated, and so he was. The term “pig” is, however, chiefly used a term of abuse, however, embodying traits we abhor—gluttony, obstinence, squealing, foraging, rooting, wallowing. Making a pig of yourself is rarely honoured. Making a pig of the humanities, however, could be a different story. As a historian I love to forage, although I use white gloves rather than a snout. I have rubbed my face and body on tree trunks in the service of forestry history and when the temperature rises I also enjoy wallowing, rolling from side to side rather than drawing a conclusion. More than this, however, pigs provide a valid means of understanding key historical transitions that define modern society. Significant themes in modern history—production, religion, the body, science, power, the national state, colonialism, gender, consumption, migration, memory—can all be understood through a history of our relationships with pigs. Pigs play an important role in everyday life, but their relationship to the economic, social, political and cultural matters discussed in general history texts—industrialisation, the growth of nation states, colonialism, feminism and so on—are generally ignored. However “natural” this place of pigs may seem, culture and tradition profoundly shape their history and their own contribution to those forces has been largely absent in history. What, then, would the contours of such a history that considered the intermeshing of humans and pigs look like? The intermeshing of pigs in early human history Agricultural economies based on domestic animals began independently in different parts of the world, facilitating increases in population and migration. Evidence for long-term genetic continuity between modern and ancient Chinese domestic pigs has been established by DNA sequences. Larson et al. have made an argument for five additional independent domestications of indigenous wild boar populations: in India, South East Asia and Taiwan, which they use to develop a picture of both pig evolution and the development and spread of early farmers in the Far East. Domestication itself involves transformation into something useful to animals. In the process, humans became transformed. The importance of the Fertile Crescent in human history has been well established. The area is attributed as the site for a series of developments that have defined human history—urbanisation, writing, empires, and civilisation. Those developments have been supported by innovations in food production and animal husbandry. Pig, goats, sheep and cows were all domesticated very early in the Fertile Crescent and remain four of the world’s most important domesticated mammals (Diamond 141). Another study of ancient pig DNA has concluded that the earliest domesticated pigs in Europe, believed to be descended from European wild boar, were introduced from the Middle East. The research, by archaeologists at Durham University, sheds new light on the colonisation of Europe by early farmers, who brought their animals with them. Keith Dobney explains:Many archaeologists believe that farming spread through the diffusion of ideas and cultural exchange, not with the direct migration of people. However, the discovery and analysis of ancient Middle Eastern pig remains across Europe reveals that although cultural exchange did happen, Europe was definitely colonised by Middle Eastern farmers. A combination of rising population and possible climate change in the ‘fertile crescent’, which put pressure on land and resources, made them look for new places to settle, plant their crops and breed their animals and so they rapidly spread west into Europe (ctd in ScienceDaily). Middle Eastern farmers colonised Europe with pigs and in the process transformed human history. Identity as a porcine theme Religious restrictions on the consumption of pigs come from the same area. Such restrictions exist in Jewish dietary laws (Kashrut) and in Muslim dietary laws (Halal). The basis of dietary laws has been the subject of much scholarship (Soler). Economic and health and hygiene factors have been used to explain the development of dietary laws historically. The significance of dietary laws, however, and the importance attached to them can be related to other purposes in defining and expressing religious and cultural identity. Dietary laws and their observance may have been an important factor in sustaining Jewish identity despite the dispersal of Jews in foreign lands since biblical times. In those situations, where a person eats in the home of someone who does not keep kosher, the lack of knowledge about your host’s ingredients and the food preparation techniques make it very difficult to keep kosher. Dietary laws require a certain amount of discipline and self-control, and the ability to make distinctions between right and wrong, good and evil, pure and defiled, the sacred and the profane, in everyday life, thus elevating eating into a religious act. Alternatively, people who eat anything are often subject to moral judgments that may also lead to social stigmatisation and discrimination. One of the most powerful and persuasive discourses influencing current thinking about health and bodies is the construction of an ‘obesity epidemic’, critiqued by a range of authors (see for example, Wright & Harwood). As omnivores who appear indiscriminate when it comes to food, pigs provide an image of uncontrolled eating, made visible by the body as a “virtual confessor”, to use Elizabeth Grosz’s term. In Fat Pig, a production by the Sydney Theatre Company in 2006, women are reduced to being either fat pigs or shrieking shallow women. Fatuosity, a blog by PhD student Jackie Wykes drawing on her research on fat and sexual subjectivity, provides a review of the play to describe the misogyny involved: “It leaves no options for women—you can either be a lovely person but a fat pig who will end up alone; or you can be a shrill bitch but beautiful, and end up with an equally obnoxious and shallow male counterpart”. The elision of the divide between women and pigs enacted by such imagery also creates openings for new modes of analysis and new practices of intervention that further challenge humanist histories. Such interventions need to make visible other power relations embedded in assumptions about identity politics. Following the lead of feminists and postcolonial theorists who have challenged the binary oppositions central to western ideology and hierarchical power relations, critical animal theorists have also called into question the essentialist and dualist assumptions underpinning our views of animals (Best). A pig history of the humanities might restore the central role that pigs have played in human history and evolution, beyond their exploitation as food. Humans have constructed their story of the nature of pigs to suit themselves in terms that are specieist, racist, patriarchal and colonialist, and failed to grasp the connections between the oppression of humans and other animals. The past and the ways it is constructed through history reflect and shape contemporary conditions. In this sense, the past has a powerful impact on the present, and the way this is re-told, therefore, also needs to be situated, historicised and problematicised. The examination of history and society from the standpoint of (nonhuman) animals offers new insights on our relationships in the past, but it might also provide an alternative history that restores their agency and contributes to a different kind of future. As the editor of Critical Animals Studies, Steve Best describes it: “This approach, as I define it, considers the interaction between human and nonhuman animals—past, present, and future—and the need for profound changes in the way humans define themselves and relate to other sentient species and to the natural world as a whole.” References ABC. “Changes to Pig Farming Proposed.” ABC News Online 22 May 2010. 10 Aug. 2010 http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2010/05/22/2906519.htm Against Animal Cruelty Tasmania. “Australia’s Intensive Pig Industry: The Intensive Pig Industry in Australia Has Much to Hide.” 10 Sep. 2010 http://www.aact.org.au/pig_industry.htm Babe. Dir. Chris Noonan. Universal Pictures, 1995. Best, Steven. “The Rise of Critical Animal Studies: Putting Theory into Action and Animal Liberation into Higher Education.” Journal for Critical Animal Studies 7.1 (2009): 9-53. Cassidy, Martin. “How Close are Pushy Pigs to Humans?”. BBC News Online 2005. 10 Sep. 2010 http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/northern_ireland/4482674.stmCurthoys, A., and Docker, J. “Time Eternity, Truth, and Death: History as Allegory.” Humanities Research 1 (1999) 10 Sep. 2010 http://www.anu.edu.au/hrc/publications/hr/hr_1_1999.phpDiamond, Jared. Guns, Germs and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies. New York: W. W. Norton, 1999. Dolader, Miguel-Àngel Motis. “Mediterranean Jewish Diet and Traditions in the Middle Ages”. Food: A Culinary History. Eds. Jean-Louis Flandrin and Massimo Montanari. Trans. Clarissa Botsford, Arthus Golhammer, Charles Lambert, Frances M. López-Morillas and Sylvia Stevens. New York: Columbia UP, 1999. 224-44. Durham University. “Chinese Pigs ‘Direct Descendants’ of First Domesticated Breeds.” ScienceDaily 20 Apr. 2010. 29 Aug. 2010 http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/04/100419150947.htm Gabaccia, Donna R. We Are What We Eat: Ethnic Food and the Making of Americans. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1998. Grosz, Elizabeth. Volatile Bodies: Toward a Corporeal Feminism. St Leonards: Allen & Unwin, 1994. Haraway, D. “The Promises of Monsters: A Regenerative Politics for Inappropriate/d Others.” The Haraway Reader. New York: Routledge, 2005. 63-124. Haraway, D. When Species Meet: Posthumanities. 3rd ed. London: University of Minnesota Press, 2008. Henderson, Fergus. Nose to Tail Eating: A Kind of British Cooking. London: Bloomsbury, 2004. Kiple, Kenneth F., Kriemhild Coneè Ornelas. Cambridge History of Food. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000. Larson, G., Ranran Liu, Xingbo Zhao, Jing Yuan, Dorian Fuller, Loukas Barton, Keith Dobney, Qipeng Fan, Zhiliang Gu, Xiao-Hui Liu, Yunbing Luo, Peng Lv, Leif Andersson, and Ning Li. “Patterns of East Asian Pig Domestication, Migration, and Turnover Revealed by Modern and Ancient DNA.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, United States 19 Apr. 2010. 10 Sep. 2010 http://www.pnas.org/cgi/content/full/0912264107/DCSupplemental Meindertsma, Christien. “PIG 05049. Kunsthal in Rotterdam.” 2008. 10 Sep. 2010 http://www.christienmeindertsma.com/index.php?/books/pig-05049Naess, A. “The Shallow and the Deep, Long-Range Ecology Movement.” Inquiry 16 (1973): 95-100. Needman, T. Fat Pig. Sydney Theatre Company. Oct. 2006. Noonan, Chris [director]. “Babe (1995) Memorable Quotes”. 10 Sep. 2010 http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0112431/quotes Plumwood, V. Feminism and the Mastery of Nature. London: Routledge, 1993. Pulp Fiction. Dir. Quentin Tarantino. Miramax, 1994. RSPCA Tasmania. “RSPCA Calls for Ban on Intensive Pig Farming.” 10 Sep. 2010 http://www.rspcatas.org.au/press-centre/rspca-calls-for-a-ban-on-intensive-pig-farming ScienceDaily. “Ancient Pig DNA Study Sheds New Light on Colonization of Europe by Early Farmers” 4 Sep. 2007. 10 Sep. 2010 http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/09/070903204822.htm Singer, Peter. “Down on the Family Farm ... or What Happened to Your Dinner When it was Still an Animal.” Animal Liberation 2nd ed. London: Jonathan Cape, 1990. 95-158. Soler, Jean. “Biblical Reasons: The Dietary Rules of the Ancient Hebrews.” Food: A Culinary History. Eds. Jean-Louis Flandrin and Massimo Montanari. Trans. Clarissa Botsford, Arthus Golhammer, Charles Lambert, Frances M. López-Morillas and Sylvia Stevens. New York: Columbia University Press, 1999. 46-54. Watson, Lyall. The Whole Hog: Exploring the Extraordinary Potential of Pigs. London: Profile, 2004. White, E. B. Essays of E. B. White. London: HarperCollins, 1979. White, E. B. Charlotte’s Web. London: HarperCollins, 2004. Wright, J., and V. Harwood. Eds. Biopolitics and the ‘Obesity Epidemic’. New York: Routledge, 2009. Wykes, J. Fatuosity 2010. 29 Aug. 2010 http://www.fatuosity.net

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IntroductionRegional identity is a constant construction, in which landscape, human activity and cultural imaginary build a narrative of place. For the Tasmanian Midlands, the interactions between history, ecology and agriculture both define place and present problems in how to recognise, communicate and balance these interactions. In this sense, regionality is defined not so much as a relation of margin to centre, but as a specific accretion of environmental and cultural histories. According weight to more-than-human perspectives, a region can be seen as a constellation of plant, animal and human interactions and demands, where creative art and design can make space and give voice to the dynamics of exchange between the landscape and its inhabitants. Consideration of three recent art and design projects based in the Midlands reveal the potential for cross-disciplinary research, embedded in both environment and community, to create distinctive and specific forms of connectivity that articulate a regional identify.The Tasmanian Midlands have been identified as a biodiversity hotspot (Australian Government), with a long history of Aboriginal cultural management disrupted by colonial invasion. Recent archaeological work in the Midlands, including the Kerry Lodge Archaeology and Art Project, has focused on the use of convict labour during the nineteenth century in opening up the Midlands for settler agriculture and transport. Now, the Midlands are placed under increasing pressure by changing agricultural practices such as large-scale irrigation. At the same time as this intensification of agricultural activity, significant progress has been made in protecting, preserving and restoring endemic ecologies. This progress has come through non-government conservation organisations, especially Greening Australia and their program Tasmanian Island Ark, and private landowners placing land under conservation covenants. These pressures and conservation activities give rise to research opportunities in the biological sciences, but also pose challenges in communicating the value of conservation and research outcomes to a wider public. The Species Hotel project, beginning in 2016, engaged with the aims of restoration ecology through speculative design while The Marathon Project, a multi-year curatorial art project based on a single property that contains both conservation and commercially farmed zones.This article questions the role of regionality in these three interconnected projects—Kerry Lodge, Species Hotel, and Marathon—sited in the Tasmanian Midlands: the three projects share a concern with the specificities of the region through engagement with specifics sites and their histories and ecologies, while also acknowledging the forces that shape these sites as far more mobile and global in scope. It also considers the interdisciplinary nature of these projects, in the crossover of art and design with ecological, archaeological and agricultural practices of measuring and intervening in the land, where communication and interpretation may be in tension with functionality. These projects suggest ways of working that connect the ecological and the cultural spheres; importantly, they see rural locations as sites of knowledge production; they test the value of small-scale and ephemeral interventions to explore the place of art and design as intervention within colonised landscape.Regions are also defined by overlapping circles of control, interest, and authority. We test the claim that these projects, which operate through cross-disciplinary collaboration and network with a range of stakeholders and community groups, successfully benefit the region in which they are placed. We are particularly interested in the challenges of working across institutions which both claim and enact connections to the region without being centred there. These projects are initiatives resulting from, or in collaboration with, University of Tasmania, an institution that has taken a recent turn towards explicitly identifying as place-based yet the placement of the Midlands as the gap between campuses risks attenuating the institution’s claim to be of this place. Paul Carter, in his discussion of a regional, site-specific collaboration in Alice Springs, flags how processes of creative place-making—operating through mythopoetic and story-based strategies—requires a concrete rather than imagined community that actively engages a plurality of voices on the ground. We identify similar concerns in these art and design projects and argue that iterative and long-term creative projects enable a deeper grappling with the complexities of shared regional place-making. The Midlands is aptly named: as a region, it is defined by its geographical constraints and relationships to urban centres. Heading south from the northern city of Launceston, travellers on the Midland Highway see scores of farming properties networking continuously for around 175 kilometres south to the outskirts of Brighton, the last major township before the Tasmanian capital city of Hobart. The town of Ross straddles latitude 42 degrees south—a line that has historically divided Tasmania into the divisions of North and South. The region is characterised by extensive agricultural usage and small remnant patches of relatively open dry sclerophyll forest and lowland grassland enabled by its lower attitude and relatively flatter terrain. The Midlands sit between the mountainous central highlands of the Great Western Tiers and the Eastern Tiers, a continuous range of dolerite hills lying south of Ben Lomond that slope coastward to the Tasman Sea. This area stretches far beyond the view of the main highway, reaching east in the Deddington and Fingal valleys. Campbell Town is the primary stopping point for travellers, superseding the bypassed towns, which have faced problems with lowering population and resulting loss of facilities.Image 1: Southern Midland Landscape, Ross, Tasmania, 2018. Image Credit: Patrick Sutczak.Predominantly under private ownership, the Tasmanian Midlands are a contested and fractured landscape existing in a state of ecological tension that has occurred with the dominance of western agriculture. For over 200 years, farmers have continually shaped the land and carved it up into small fragments for different agricultural agendas, and this has resulted in significant endemic species decline (Mitchell et al.). The open vegetation was the product of cultural management of land by Tasmanian Aboriginal communities (Gammage), attractive to settlers during their distribution of land grants prior to the 1830s and a focus for settler violence. As documented cartographically in the Centre for 21st Century Humanities’ Colonial Frontier Massacres in Central and Eastern Australia 1788–1930, the period 1820–1835, and particularly during the Black War, saw the Midlands as central to the violent dispossession of Aboriginal landowners. Clements argues that the culture of violence during this period also reflected the brutalisation that the penal system imposed upon its subjects. The cultivation of agricultural land throughout the Midlands was enabled by the provision of unfree convict labour (Dillon). Many of the properties granted and established during the colonial period have been held in multi-generational family ownership through to the present.Within this patchwork of private ownership, the tension between visibility and privacy of the Midlands pastures and farmlands challenges the capacity for people to understand what role the Midlands plays in the greater Tasmanian ecology. Although half of Tasmania’s land areas are protected as national parks and reserves, the Midlands remains largely unprotected due to private ownership. When measured against Tasmania’s wilderness values and reputation, the dry pasturelands of the Midland region fail to capture an equivalent level of visual and experiential imagination. Jamie Kirkpatrick describes misconceptions of the Midlands when he writes of “[f]latness, dead and dying eucalypts, gorse, brown pastures, salt—environmental devastation […]—these are the common impression of those who first travel between Spring Hill and Launceston on the Midland Highway” (45). However, Kirkpatrick also emphasises the unique intimate and intricate qualities of this landscape, and its underlying resilience. In the face of the loss of paddock trees and remnants to irrigation, change in species due to pasture enrichment and introduction of new plant species, conservation initiatives that not only protect but also restore habitat are vital. The Tasmanian Midlands, then, are pastoral landscapes whose seeming monotonous continuity glosses over the radical changes experienced in the processes of colonisation and intensification of agriculture.Underlying the Present: Archaeology and Landscape in the Kerry Lodge ProjectThe major marker of the Midlands is the highway that bisects it. Running from Hobart to Launceston, the construction of a “great macadamised highway” (Department of Main Roads 10) between 1820–1850, and its ongoing maintenance, was a significant colonial project. The macadam technique, a nineteenth century innovation in road building which involved the laying of small pieces of stone to create a surface that was relatively water and frost resistant, required considerable but unskilled labour. The construction of the bridge at Kerry Lodge, in 1834–35, was simultaneous with significant bridge buildings at other major water crossings on the highway, (Department of Main Roads 16) and, as the first water crossing south of Launceston, was a pinch-point through which travel of prisoners could be monitored and controlled. Following the completion of the bridge, the site was used to house up to 60 male convicts in a road gang undergoing secondary punishment (1835–44) and then in a labour camp and hiring depot until 1847. At the time of the La Trobe report (1847), the buildings were noted as being in bad condition (Brand 142–43). After the station was disbanded, the use of the buildings reverted to the landowners for use in accommodation and agricultural storage.Archaeological research at Kerry Lodge, directed by Eleanor Casella, investigated the spatial and disciplinary structures of smaller probation and hiring depots and the living and working conditions of supervisory staff. Across three seasons (2015, 2016, 2018), the emerging themes of discipline and control and as well as labour were borne out by excavations across the site, focusing on remnants of buildings close to the bridge. This first season also piloted the co-presence of a curatorial art project, which grew across the season to include eleven practitioners in visual art, theatre and poetry, and three exhibition outcomes. As a crucial process for the curatorial art project, creative practitioners spent time on site as participants and observers, which enabled the development of responses that interrogated the research processes of archaeological fieldwork as well as making connections to the wider historical and cultural context of the site. Immersed in the mundane tasks of archaeological fieldwork, the practitioners involved became simultaneously focused on repetitive actions while contemplating the deep time contained within earth. This experience then informed the development of creative works interrogating embodied processes as a language of site.The outcome from the first fieldwork season was earthspoke, an exhibition shown at Sawtooth, an artist-run initiative in Launceston in 2015, and later re-installed in Franklin House, a National Trust property in the southern suburbs of Launceston.Images 2 and 3: earthspoke, 2015, Installation View at Sawtooth ARI (top) and Franklin House (bottom). Image Credits: Melanie de Ruyter.This recontextualisation of the work, from contemporary ARI (artist run initiative) gallery to National Trust property enabled the project to reach different audiences but also raised questions about the emphases that these exhibition contexts placed on the work. Within the white cube space of the contemporary gallery, connections to site became more abstracted while the educational and heritage functions of the National Trust property added further context and unintended connotations to the art works.Image 4: Strata, 2017, Installation View. Image Credit: Karen Hall.The two subsequent exhibitions, Lines of Site (2016) and Strata (2017), continued to test the relationship between site and gallery, through works that rematerialised the absences on site and connected embodied experiences of convict and archaeological labour. The most recent iteration of the project, Strata, part of the Ten Days on the Island art festival in 2017, involved installing works at the site, marking with their presence the traces, fragments and voids that had been reburied when the landscape returned to agricultural use following the excavations. Here, the interpretive function of the works directly addressed the layered histories of the landscape and underscored the scope of the human interventions and changes over time within the pastoral landscape. The interpretative role of the artworks formed part of a wider, multidisciplinary approach to research and communication within the project. University of Manchester archaeology staff and postgraduate students directed the excavations, using volunteers from the Launceston Historical Society. Staff from Launceston’s Queen Victorian Museum and Art Gallery brought their archival and collection-based expertise to the site rather than simply receiving stored finds as a repository, supporting immediate interpretation and contextualisation of objects. In 2018, participation from the University of Tasmania School of Education enabled a larger number of on-site educational activities than afforded by previous open days. These multi-disciplinary and multi-organisational networks, drawn together provisionally in a shared time and place, provided rich opportunities for dialogue. However, the challenges of sustaining these exchanges have meant ongoing collaborations have become more sporadic, reflecting different institutional priorities and competing demands on participants. Even within long-term projects, continued engagement with stakeholders can be a challenge: while enabling an emerging and concrete sense of community, the time span gives greater vulnerability to external pressures. Making Home: Ecological Restoration and Community Engagement in the Species Hotel ProjectImages 5 and 6: Selected Species Hotels, Ross, Tasmania, 2018. Image Credits: Patrick Sutczak. The Species Hotels stand sentinel over a river of saplings, providing shelter for animal communities within close range of a small town. At the township of Ross in the Southern Midlands, work was initiated by restoration ecologists to address the lack of substantial animal shelter belts on a number of major properties in the area. The Tasmania Island Ark is a major Greening Australia restoration ecology initiative, connecting 6000 hectares of habitat across the Midlands. Linking larger forest areas in the Eastern Tiers and Central Highlands as well as isolated patches of remnant native vegetation, the Ark project is vital to the ongoing survival of local plant and animal species under pressure from human interventions and climate change. With fragmentation of bush and native grasslands in the Midland landscape resulting in vast open plains, the ability for animals to adapt to pasturelands without shelter has resulted in significant decline as animals such as the critically endangered Eastern Barred Bandicoot struggle to feed, move, and avoid predators (Cranney). In 2014 mass plantings of native vegetation were undertaken along 16km of the serpentine Macquarie River as part of two habitat corridors designed to bring connectivity back to the region. While the plantings were being established a public art project was conceived that would merge design with practical application to assist animals in the area, and draw community and public attention to the work that was being done in re-establishing native forests. The Species Hotel project, which began in 2016, emerged from a collaboration between Greening Australia and the University of Tasmania’s School of Architecture and Design, the School of Land and Food, the Tasmanian College of the Arts and the ARC Centre for Forest Value, with funding from the Ian Potter Foundation. The initial focus of the project was the development of interventions in the landscape that could address the specific habitat needs of the insect, small mammal, and bird species that are under threat. First-year Architecture students were invited to design a series of structures with the brief that they would act as ‘Species Hotels’, and once created would be installed among the plantings as structures that could be inhabited or act as protection. After installation, the privately-owned land would be reconfigured so to allow public access and observation of the hotels, by residents and visitors alike. Early in the project’s development, a concern was raised during a Ross community communication and consultation event that the surrounding landscape and its vistas would be dramatically altered with the re-introduced forest. While momentary and resolved, a subtle yet obvious tension surfaced that questioned the re-writing of an established community’s visual landscape literacy by non-residents. Compact and picturesque, the architectural, historical and cultural qualities of Ross and its location were not only admired by residents, but established a regional identity. During the six-week intensive project, the community reach was expanded beyond the institution and involved over 100 people including landowners, artists, scientists and school children from the region (Wright), attempting to address and channel the concerns of residents about the changing landscape. The multiple timescales of this iterative project—from intensive moments of collaboration between stakeholders to the more-than-human time of tree growth—open spaces for regional identity to shift as both as place and community. Part of the design brief was the use of fully biodegradable materials: the Species Hotels are not expected to last forever. The actual installation of the Species Hotelson site took longer than planned due to weather conditions, but once on site they were weathering in, showing signs of insect and bird habitation. This animal activity created an opportunity for ongoing engagement. Further activities generated from the initial iteration of Species Hotel were the Species Hotel Day in 2017, held at the Ross Community Hall where presentations by scientists and designers provided feedback to the local community and presented opportunities for further design engagement in the production of ephemeral ‘species seed pies’ placed out in and around Ross. Architecture and Design students have gone on to develop more examples of ‘ecological furniture’ with a current focus on insect housing as well as extrapolating from the installation of the Species Hotels to generate a VR visualisation of the surrounding landscape, game design and participatory movement work that was presented as part of the Junction Arts Festival program in Launceston, 2017. The intersections of technologies and activities amplified the lived in and living qualities of the Species Hotels, not only adding to the connectivity of social and environmental actions on site and beyond, but also making a statement about the shared ownership this project enabled.Working Property: Collaboration and Dialogues in The Marathon Project The potential of iterative projects that engage with environmental concerns amid questions of access, stewardship and dialogue is also demonstrated in The Marathon Project, a collaborative art project that took place between 2015 and 2017. Situated in the Northern Midland region of Deddington alongside the banks of the Nile River the property of Marathon became the focal point for a small group of artists, ecologists and theorists to converge and engage with a pastoral landscape over time that was unfamiliar to many of them. Through a series of weekend camps and day trips, the participants were able to explore and follow their own creative and investigative agendas. The project was conceived by the landowners who share a passion for the history of the area, their land, and ideas of custodianship and ecological responsibility. The intentions of the project initially were to inspire creative work alongside access, engagement and dialogue about land, agriculture and Deddington itself. As a very small town on the Northern Midland fringe, Deddington is located toward the Eastern Tiers at the foothills of the Ben Lomond mountain ranges. Historically, Deddington is best known as the location of renowned 19th century landscape painter John Glover’s residence, Patterdale. After Glover’s death in 1849, the property steadily fell into disrepair and a recent private restoration effort of the home, studio and grounds has seen renewed interest in the cultural significance of the region. With that in mind, and with Marathon a neighbouring property, participants in the project were able to experience the area and research its past and present as a part of a network of working properties, but also encouraging conversation around the region as a contested and documented place of settlement and subsequent violence toward the Aboriginal people. Marathon is a working property, yet also a vital and fragile ecosystem. Marathon consists of 1430 hectares, of which around 300 lowland hectares are currently used for sheep grazing. The paddocks retain their productivity, function and potential to return to native grassland, while thickets of gorse are plentiful, an example of an invasive species difficult to control. The rest of the property comprises eucalypt woodlands and native grasslands that have been protected under a conservation covenant by the landowners since 2003. The Marathon creek and the Nile River mark the boundary between the functional paddocks and the uncultivated hills and are actively managed in the interface between native and introduced species of flora and fauna. This covenant aimed to preserve these landscapes, linking in with a wider pattern of organisations and landowners attempting to address significant ecological degradation and isolation of remnant bushland patches through restoration ecology. Measured against the visibility of Tasmania’s wilderness identity on the national and global stage, many of the ecological concerns affecting the Midlands go largely unnoticed. The Marathon Project was as much a project about visibility and communication as it was about art and landscape. Over the three years and with its 17 participants, The Marathon Project yielded three major exhibitions along with numerous public presentations and research outputs. The length of the project and the autonomy and perspectives of its participants allowed for connections to be formed, conversations initiated, and greater exposure to the productivity and sustainability complexities playing out on rural Midland properties. Like Kerry Lodge, the 2015 first year exhibition took place at Sawtooth ARI. The exhibition was a testing ground for artists, and a platform for audiences, to witness the cross-disciplinary outputs of work inspired by a single sheep grazing farm. The interest generated led to the rethinking of the 2016 exhibition and the need to broaden the scope of what the landowners and participants were trying to achieve. Image 7: Panel Discussion at Open Weekend, 2016. Image Credit: Ron Malor.In November 2016, The Marathon Project hosted an Open Weekend on the property encouraging audiences to visit, meet the artists, the landowners, and other invited guests from a number of restoration, conservation, and rehabilitation organisations. Titled Encounter, the event and accompanying exhibition displayed in the shearing shed, provided an opportunity for a rhizomatic effect with the public which was designed to inform and disseminate historical and contemporary perspectives of land and agriculture, access, ownership, visitation and interpretation. Concluding with a final exhibition in 2017 at the University of Tasmania’s Academy Gallery, The Marathon Project had built enough momentum to shape and inform the practice of its participants, the knowledge and imagination of the public who engaged with it, and make visible the precarity of the cultural and rural Midland identity.Image 8. Installation View of The Marathon Project Exhibition, 2017. Image Credit: Patrick Sutczak.ConclusionThe Marathon Project, Species Hotel and the Kerry Lodge Archaeology and Art Project all demonstrate the potential of site-based projects to articulate and address concerns that arise from the environmental and cultural conditions and histories of a region. Beyond the Midland fence line is a complex environment that needed to be experienced to be understood. Returning creative work to site, and opening up these intensified experiences of place to a public forms a key stage in all these projects. Beyond a commitment to site-specific practice and valuing the affective and didactic potential of on-site installation, these returns grapple with issues of access, visibility and absence that characterise the Midlands. Paul Carter describes his role in the convening of a “concretely self-realising creative community” in an initiative to construct a meeting-place in Alice Springs, a community defined and united in “its capacity to imagine change as a negotiation between past, present and future” (17). Within that regional context, storytelling, as an encounter between histories and cultures, became crucial in assembling a community that could in turn materialise story into place. In these Midlands projects, a looser assembly of participants with shared interests seek to engage with the intersections of plant, human and animal activities that constitute and negotiate the changing environment. The projects enabled moments of connection, of access, and of intervention: always informed by the complexities of belonging within regional locations.These projects also suggest the need to recognise the granularity of regionalism: the need to be attentive to the relations of site to bioregion, of private land to small town to regional centre. The numerous partnerships that allow such interconnect projects to flourish can be seen as a strength of regional areas, where proximity and scale can draw together sets of related institutions, organisations and individuals. However, the tensions and gaps within these projects reveal differing priorities, senses of ownership and even regional belonging. Questions of who will live with these project outcomes, who will access them, and on what terms, reveal inequalities of power. Negotiations of this uneven and uneasy terrain require a more nuanced account of projects that do not rely on the geographical labelling of regions to paper over the complexities and fractures within the social environment.These projects also share a commitment to the intersection of the social and natural environment. They recognise the inextricable entanglement of human and more than human agencies in shaping the landscape, and material consequences of colonialism and agricultural intensification. Through iteration and duration, the projects mobilise processes that are responsive and reflective while being anchored to the materiality of site. Warwick Mules suggests that “regions are a mixture of data and earth, historically made through the accumulation and condensation of material and informational configurations”. Cross-disciplinary exchanges enable all three projects to actively participate in data production, not interpretation or illustration afterwards. Mules’ call for ‘accumulation’ and ‘configuration’ as productive regional modes speaks directly to the practice-led methodologies employed by these projects. The Kerry Lodge and Marathon projects collect, arrange and transform material taken from each site to provisionally construct a regional material language, extended further in the dual presentation of the projects as off-site exhibitions and as interventions returning to site. The Species Hotel project shares that dual identity, where materials are chosen for their ability over time, habitation and decay to become incorporated into the site yet, through other iterations of the project, become digital presences that nonetheless invite an embodied engagement.These projects centre the Midlands as fertile ground for the production of knowledge and experiences that are distinctive and place-based, arising from the unique qualities of this place, its history and its ongoing challenges. Art and design practice enables connectivity to plant, animal and human communities, utilising cross-disciplinary collaborations to bring together further accumulations of the region’s intertwined cultural and ecological landscape.ReferencesAustralian Government Department of the Environment and Energy. Biodiversity Conservation. Canberra: Commonwealth of Australia, 2018. 1 Apr. 2019 <http://www.environment.gov.au/biodiversity/conservation>.Brand, Ian. The Convict Probation System: Van Diemen’s Land 1839–1854. Sandy Bay: Blubber Head Press, 1990.Carter, Paul. “Common Patterns: Narratives of ‘Mere Coincidence’ and the Production of Regions.” Creative Communities: Regional Inclusion & the Arts. Eds. Janet McDonald and Robert Mason. Bristol: Intellect, 2015. 13–30.Centre for 21st Century Humanities. Colonial Frontier Massacres in Central and Eastern Australia 1788–1930. Newcastle: Centre for 21st Century Humanitie, n.d. 1 Apr. 2019 <https://c21ch.newcastle.edu.au/colonialmassacres/>.Clements, Nicholas. The Black War: Fear, Sex and Resistance in Tasmania. St Lucia: U of Queensland P, 2014. Cranney, Kate. Ecological Science in the Tasmanian Midlands. Melbourne: Bush Heritage Australia, 2016. 1 Apr. 2019 <https://www.bushheritage.org.au/blog/ecological-science-in-the-tasmanian-midlands>.Davidson N. “Tasmanian Northern Midlands Restoration Project.” EMR Summaries, Journal of Ecological Management & Restoration, 2016. 10 Apr. 2019 <https://site.emrprojectsummaries.org/2016/03/07/tasmanian-northern-midlands-restoration-project/>.Department of Main Roads, Tasmania. Convicts & Carriageways: Tasmanian Road Development until 1880. Hobart: Tasmanian Government Printer, 1988.Dillon, Margaret. “Convict Labour and Colonial Society in the Campbell Town Police District: 1820–1839.” PhD Thesis. U of Tasmania, 2008. <https://eprints.utas.edu.au/7777/>.Gammage, Bill. The Biggest Estate on Earth: How Aborigines Made Australia. Crows Nest: Allen & Unwin, 2012.Greening Australia. Building Species Hotels, 2016. 1 Apr. 2019 <https://www.greeningaustralia.org.au/projects/building-species-hotels/>.Kerry Lodge Archaeology and Art Project. Kerry Lodge Convict Site. 10 Mar. 2019 <http://kerrylodge.squarespace.com/>.Kirkpatrick, James. “Natural History.” Midlands Bushweb, The Nature of the Midlands. Ed. Jo Dean. Longford: Midlands Bushweb, 2003. 45–57.Mitchell, Michael, Michael Lockwood, Susan Moore, and Sarah Clement. “Building Systems-Based Scenario Narratives for Novel Biodiversity Futures in an Agricultural Landscape.” Landscape and Urban Planning 145 (2016): 45–56.Mules, Warwick. “The Edges of the Earth: Critical Regionalism as an Aesthetics of the Singular.” Transformations 12 (2005). 1 Mar. 2019 <http://transformationsjournal.org/journal/issue_12/article_03.shtml>.The Marathon Project. <http://themarathonproject.virb.com/home>.University of Tasmania. Strategic Directions, Nov. 2018. 1 Mar. 2019 <https://www.utas.edu.au/vc/strategic-direction>.Wright L. “University of Tasmania Students Design ‘Species Hotels’ for Tasmania’s Wildlife.” Architecture AU 24 Oct. 2016. 1 Apr. 2019 <https://architectureau.com/articles/university-of-tasmania-students-design-species-hotels-for-tasmanias-wildlife/>.

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AbstractBackgroundWhole-genome sequence (WGS) data are increasingly available on large numbers of individuals in animal and plant breeding and in human genetics through second-generation resequencing technologies, 1000 genomes projects, and large-scale genotype imputation from lower marker densities. Here, we present a computationally fast implementation of a variable selection genomic prediction method, that could handle WGS data on more than 35,000 individuals, test its accuracy for across-breed predictions and assess its quantitative trait locus (QTL) mapping precision.MethodsThe Monte Carlo Markov chain (MCMC) variable selection model (Bayes GC) fits simultaneously a genomic best linear unbiased prediction (GBLUP) term, i.e. a polygenic effect whose correlations are described by a genomic relationship matrix (G), and a Bayes C term, i.e. a set of single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) with large effects selected by the model. Computational speed is improved by a Metropolis–Hastings sampling that directs computations to the SNPs, which are, a priori, most likely to be included into the model. Speed is also improved by running many relatively short MCMC chains. Memory requirements are reduced by storing the genotype matrix in binary form. The model was tested on a WGS dataset containing Holstein, Jersey and Australian Red cattle. The data contained 4,809,520 genotypes on 35,549 individuals together with their milk, fat and protein yields, and fat and protein percentage traits.ResultsThe prediction accuracies of the Jersey individuals improved by 1.5% when using across-breed GBLUP compared to within-breed predictions. Using WGS instead of 600 k SNP-chip data yielded on average a 3% accuracy improvement for Australian Red cows. QTL were fine-mapped by locating the SNP with the highest posterior probability of being included in the model. Various QTL known from the literature were rediscovered, and a new SNP affecting milk production was discovered on chromosome 20 at 34.501126 Mb. Due to the high mapping precision, it was clear that many of the discovered QTL were the same across the five dairy traits.ConclusionsAcross-breed Bayes GC genomic prediction improved prediction accuracies compared to GBLUP. The combination of across-breed WGS data and Bayesian genomic prediction proved remarkably effective for the fine-mapping of QTL.

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Abstract. Greyvenstein B, Botha M, van den Berg J, Siebert SJ. 2021. Level of urbanization and habitat type, and not patch size, influence predacious arthropod diversity patterns of urban grasslands in South Africa. Biodiversitas 22: 4078-4094. Predacious arthropods provide a valuable ecosystem service within urban environments by suppressing pest numbers. However, urban ecological studies largely ignore this functional group and its diversity and species composition patterns. Some studies have been published regarding these patterns, however they were mostly done in Australia, Europe and America, thus an African perspective is lacking. Our aim was to address the gap in African literature by quantify the differences in predacious arthropod species richness and diversity within urban green space in varying urbanization intensities, habitat types of grassland and patch sizes in South Africa. Various indices were considered to examine the effect of urbanization on the diversity patterns of Chrysopidae (Neuroptera), Mantodea, Araneae and Coccinellidae (Coleoptera). Study sites included three levels of urbanization represented by population density, two types of urban grasslands (i.e., ruderal and fragmented grassland) and a peri-urban rangeland grassland as control, and a wide range of patch sizes. Our results indicated that an increase in urbanization intensities was associated with increased abundance of predacious arthropod taxa. Also, that urban and peri-urban grasslands had similar predacious arthropod species richness and diversity, but differed in species composition. No relationship was found between patch size and arthropod diversity or composition. Thus, predacious arthropod abundances are influenced by the level of urbanization and their species composition is influenced by the type of urban grassland (ruderal or fragmented), which are important considerations for future urban planning/management and conservation strategies. This study gives a South African perspective and indicates that despite the lack of assigned function of urban green spaces, they sustain diverse and distinct predacious arthropod communities, which in turn fulfill various roles in a functioning ecosystem.

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AbstractThe deleterious effects of soil salinity on biodiversity and agricultural productivity make it essential to devise strategies that would reduce its impact and expansion. For sustainable agriculture on dryland salinity affected areas, the use of native salt-tolerant plant species of economic value could provide a solution. In this work, the salinity tolerance potential of fifteen different Australian Acacia (wattle) species, pre-selected on the basis of phylogenetic relationships, were tested. The effects of salinity stress on morphological and physiological parameters, such as shoot and root lengths, shoot and root biomass, tissue water content, tolerance indices and accumulation of major cations (sodium, potassium, magnesium, calcium), all of which are indicators of salt stress response, were investigated. The species exhibited varied responses to the various parameters, some species consistently indicative of salt tolerance. Consolidating the tolerance indices based on morphological and physiological effects of salt stress, a method was developed to arbitrarily rank the species for their tolerance. Two highly tolerant, three tolerant and six moderately tolerant species could thus be identified. The work supports use of phylogenetics for initial screening for large genera, such as Acacia, and provides an experimental methodology for identification of candidate species for environmental stress tolerance and other applications.

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Introduction There is, as Andrew Rowan dubs it, a “constant paradox” in the way we treat, relate to, and consume animals in our everyday lives (Arluke and Sanders 4). This paper examines this paradox in relation to the rise of vegetarianism as a new taste and consumer culture in the West. The first part of the paper, drawing upon Bourdieu, argues that vegetarian “taste” is fundamentally a social practice linked to class and gender. It then offers a preliminary theoretical sketch of the sociological drivers and consequences of vegetarianism in late-modernity, drawing on social theory. Having established the theoretical framework, the second part of the paper turns to an empirical analysis of the moral motivations and experiences of a selection of Australian bloggers. The key argument is that the bloggers narrate vegetarianism as a taste practice that entangles self-care with a larger assemblage of non-human responsibility that works to re-enchant a demoralised consumer modernity. Vegetarianism as Taste Practice “Taste classifies, and it classifies the classifier”, Pierre Bourdieu famously claimed (xxix). Bourdieu demonstrated the classificatory power of taste not only in relation to music, home décor, and art but also in relation to food. Taste, for Bourdieu, is a social process by which people actively communicate social position through classification of the judgements and preferences of both themselves and others. For example, he highlighted how the working-class dislike for fish was part of a wider class system of dispositions where the middle-class favour “the light, the refined and the delicate” defined in negation of working-class taste for “the heavy, the fat and the coarse” (182–83). How then do we read vegetarianism as a taste practice? First, we need to take Bourdieu’s point that vegetarianism is not simply an expression of personal preference, but is a social practice that articulates identity, group membership, and systems of cultural distinction. Bourdieu, while not writing about vegetarianism, did link meat eating to masculine and working-class displays of embodied strength and power—“warrior food”, as Nietzsche called it (Bennett 141). Meat, Bourdieu wrote, was “nourishing food par excellence, strong and strong-making, giving vigour, blood, and health is the dish for men” (190). On this reading, meat avoidance can be located as part of a middle-class taste for the “light” and the “healthy” but also a rejection of working-class and masculine food taste practices. Vegetarianism, like buying fair-trade, organic, and eco-friendly, might be theorised as a symbolic device for enacting middle-class displays of cultural distinction based on claims to moral purity and virtue. On the gender front, female vegetarians conform to taste trends for middle-class women—light, not fattening, and healthy—whereas for men, vegetarianism is linked to the rejection of “hegemonic” masculinity and patriarchy (Bourdieu; Connell). Empirical research partially lends support to this depiction, showing that vegetarianism is predominantly practiced by female, middle-class, university-qualified professionals working in service-sector or white-collar occupations (RealEat; Keane and Willetts). This kind of Bourdieuian analysis is important in drawing attention to the social configurations of vegetarianism as a taste practice. It, however, misses the ethical substance of vegetarianism and the wider social and cultural changes that are driving its growth in the West. The following section addresses this gap. Theorising Vegetarianism Adrian Franklin explains the growth of vegetarianism in the last part of the 20th century as part of a process of “de-centring” human-animal relations in conditions of late-modernity. Franklin suggests that vegetarianism is part of a wider social and cultural shift where animals make new types of moral claims on humans as they form closer and more intimate emotional bonds. He argues that in the context of widespread feelings of moral decline and disorder, animals are constructed as morally pure and innocent, and humans morally blameworthy and destructive (Franklin 196). From this perspective, vegetarianism is less about an ethical regards for animals but more about what animals reveal about human moral worlds: the reflections are less about an ethical consideration of the “Other” and more about a moral consideration of “ourselves” (Franklin 196). A sticker plastered on the door of my local vegetarian café encapsulates this perspective: it reads, “humans are the real pests.” Unlike Bourdieu and Franklin, Tester is important in moving from a narrow focus on what humans “do” with animals as symbolic or communicative acts to the ethical significance of vegetarianism. Tester makes a critical distinction between the “ethical” and “lifestyle” vegetarian. In Tester’s terms, the “lifestyle” vegetarian avoids meat for health and well-being reasons while the “ethical” vegetarian is concerned for the ethical treatment of animals. The “lifestyle” vegetarian is problematic for Tester due to “the being of the ethical conduct of life” being substituted for “the doing of the consumer” (218). Vegetarianism becomes emptied of moral meaning as it turns into big business marked by the growth of a multi-billion dollar faux meat industry, trendy vegetarian restaurants, lifestyle converts, and celebrity endorsem*nts. In “lifestyle” mode, Tester argues, vegetarian concern for animal cruelty, slaughter, and death is colonised by a narcissistic concern for slimming, youth, and health—for the promotion of a contented consumer self (Humphery). Although Tester highlights the ethical substance of vegetarianism and the challenges it faces in a consumer world, like the rest of the accounts, it tends to be anthropocentric. Animals tend to speak solely to human worlds, ignoring the vitality and “distributed agency” (Bennett 38) of the non-human. The non-human animal tends to be construed as a passive and inert resource existing solely for human intentionality, rather than acknowledging their “vital power” and “liveliness” outside human agendas (133). Bennett claims that eating highlights the inseparability of humans and edible matter, and the capacity for both human and nonhuman bodies to effect social and political change. She proposes that through a greater sense of ourselves as entwined with, and part of, nature as physical entities, we can enchant the world and become energised as co-participants. Here vegetarianism can be understood as part of recognition of the “assemblage” of human and non-human actions, where self, body, nature and planet become mutually constituting and supportive. Vegetarian taste is not just about middle-class concerns for distinction, but an ethics of the non-human. What does vegetarianism as an ethical taste practice look like “on the ground”? What are the moral motivations for becoming vegetarian, and how is this understood and experienced? What roles do lifestyle and ethical motivations play in vegetarian eating behaviours? In the following section, I turn to a selection of Australian bloggers to make a modest contribution to understanding these questions in the contemporary Australian context. The bloggers are taken from a wider study that analysed 44 urban Australian blogs as part of a project on everyday Australian moralities. The blogs were sampled from the blog hosting website LiveJournal (LJ) between 2006 and 2007. Blog usernames used have been fictionalised to maintain anonymity. Specifically, I focus on a selection of three blog case studies: Universal_cloak, a 32-year-old female artistic designer from Melbourne, Starbright, a 28-year-old female student from Brisbane, and Snig, a 25-year-old male paramedic from Melbourne. The bloggers are a representative selection from a wider sample of blog writing on vegetarianism and human-animal relations. The blog narratives complicate Tester’s simplistic distinction between the “ethical” and “lifestyle” vegetarian, articulating vegetarianism as form of ethical practice that works to morally enchant the world in a dialogue between self-improvement, personal well-being, and ethical relationships with animals and the planet (Taylor). Vegetarianism in Practice: “Positive for Me, Positive for Others” Universal_cloak writes how “being hippy—wearing hippy clothes, eating healthy organic food and being full of positive energy” makes her “feel healthier […] like I’m doing a better thing for the world (society in particular) […] like I’m doing something good”. Being “authentic” to a “hippy” identity—“being true to herself”—is connected for Universal_cloak to a wider concern for the non-human—for animals, nature, and the planet. An important component of this link between self-fulfilment and “doing a better thing for the world” is not eating the “corpses of animals.” Universal_cloak describes this in detail, at the same time underlining the environmental dimensions of her vegetarianism: I feel sick to my stomach to think that an animal dies so I can eat. Why is it any different to feel the same way that people are abused, tortured and killed, that eco-systems are ravaged and torn up and irreversibly damaged, just so I can have the choice of four kinds of marinated tuna in a can? So I can have two newsagents to choose from? So I can have Alice Cooper iron-on patches, miniature plastic bowling pins, disposable cameras, instant oats, microwavable popcorn, extra-soft, quilted and f*cking fragranced toilet paper? McDonalds f*cking everywhere [...] ugh, I can't take it. I need to go to bed. No wonder depression is on the rise—we have a kingdom of putrid revulsion to look down upon. Vegetarianism figures for Universal_cloak as a form of ethical consumption that enables resistance to feelings of modern demoralisation, to the feeling of being “swallowed up by the great hulky polluted monster, with ads and consumer sh*t everywhere around you.” For Universal_cloak, vegetarianism works to both critique and re-enchant modernity: a way of saying “she doesn’t agree with the modern world” but also building a “better world around herself.” She writes that following her “ideal diet” of “fair-trade, veg-o, organic and local” and not “white bread and processed meat” gives her a strong sense of “staving off her fear that I’m f*cking up the planet”. Universal_cloak locates vegetarianism within an assemblage of self-interest, nutritional advantage, ecological sustainability, and anti-consumerism (Bennett). Universal_cloak, ­as Tester distinguishes, is neither a straightforward “lifestyle vegetarian” or “ethical vegetarian” (218), neither avoiding meat-eating solely because of reasons to do with health, well-being, and risk avoidance or due to an ethical regard for the being of animals. Universal_cloak shows up Tester’s critique on two fronts. First, she highlights how vegetarianism comes alive in an assemblage that includes not only the needs of the non-human animal but also the materiality of food production, marketing, consumerism, and issues of ecological unsustainability. Universal_Cloak’s practice reflects a wider “greening of the ‘vegetarian assemblage’.” As an advertisem*nt on the Australian Vegetarian Society’s website states: “reduce your eco footprint—GO VEGO.” Secondly, Universal_cloak underscores how Tester is bound to an overly pessimistic reading of contemporary lifestyle cultures of well-being or self-improvement. Tester reads the “lifestyle vegetarian,” focused on well-being and health, as morally inferior. In contrast, Universal_cloak reveals how vegetarianism built around a culture of self-improvement—being true to her “hippy” identity—connects her to a larger web of interacting material flows and forces constituted between self, body, non-human animals, and planetary concern. As Bennett argues, recognising the entanglement of self within a larger assemblage of the non-human means that self-interest is refashioned as ecological and interconnected ­(119). Starbright, a 28-year-old woman from Brisbane and newly practising Buddhist, further captures the expansion of self-interest within the larger aggregate of ecological and non-human concern. Picking up a copy of Peter Singer’s call to arms Animal Liberation in a second-hand bookshop while travelling in Laos, Starbright describes how she initially decided to make “a firm decision to stick to vegetarianism.” Now a devoted vegan, Starbright abstains from eating and using “anything that comes from an animal”, including clothing and footwear (e.g., wool, silk, and leather), food sources such as eggs, milk, honey or cochineal (red dye from beetles) and cosmetic products that may either contain animal derivatives or have been tested on animals. While requiring rigorous discipline and regulation of the self—a kind of secular version of Weber’s Protestant ascetic—Starbright depicts her decision to become vegan as being “one of the easiest and most rewarding changes I've made in my life.” In explaining this, Starbright, in a manner similar to that of Universal_cloak, invokes the interconnections between humans and ecological and animal life as the basis of her moral motivation. She writes: “I’m just another well-informed individual who has discovered the virtues of not eating meat, like being environmentally and ethically aware.” Starbright positions her choice not to eat meat as both an ethical and political act, which compounds to improve the lives of both human and non-human animals: If I don’t support the meat industry, I make a tiny dent in the consumption rate. Others around me take on vegetarianism, and the effect increases. Others eat less meat around me, and the dent gets slightly bigger [...] Less grazing land needed means less environmental destruction as well. Less crops to feed the animals as well. Veganism is a “rewarding change” not only because “its good to reduce suffering” but also because it is “positive to [her] health”, that she is “happier now” and she “get[s] a positive feeling out of it.” Starbright adds: “it just makes me happy, and it reduces the suffering in the world—that’s the main reason I do it.” Vegetarianism enables Starbright to engage in clearly defined morally “good works,” where there is mutual reinforcement of the “feel-good factor” (Franklin 36) between personal wellbeing and “care for the Other” (Bauman 8): “it just seems positive for me, and positive for others.” This is a form of care not perpetuating a human centred approach, which Bennett (88) warns against, but one that recognises the entanglement of human lives with non-human lives—where humans are called upon to recognise that the plight of animals and the environment is also our own plight. Snig similarly places his practice of vegetarianism within a dialectic of self-fulfilment and interconnection with the non-human world. For him, vegetarianism is about maintaining what he refers to as “internal balance,” enabling him to avoid “over-filling” his “physical needs” bucket at the expense of his “emotional bucket.” Snig believes that much of the “physical or psychic illness, unhappiness and dissatisfaction” experienced in the contemporary West is due to an “over-filling” or “over-satisfaction of one at the expense of another.” Accordingly, he advocates the “positive effects” of “filling the emotional bucket” by “doing good works” which downplay the negative psychological consequences of an “excess of sex but no romantic love” and an “excess of shallow entertainment but no deeper intellectual life.” Snig writes: If you put yourself in a position where you have a greater capacity to do good works, the path to do so becomes easier. But if you’re hopelessly mired in your own filth, any benefit you do to the world will be by accident. If you’re so locked up in your tiny little world of tv-fast-food-boring job, you can’t see what the big wide world has to offer, and what you have to offer it. Step outside and it can become much clearer. Similar to Universal_cloak, there is an emphasis in Snig’s blog on how “doing good works” (which includes vegetarianism, alongside working as a paramedic, living in small flat in the city, and volunteering on conservation projects) enables a kind of moral renewal in a perceived demoralised consumer modernity. Abstaining from eating meat—sometimes alone, but often in conjunction with a range of other eco-friendly acts—works as a way of distancing oneself, of “stepping outside,” from the excess and waste of modernity and a practical way of “doing good,” of “trying to make a better world.” Conclusion This paper has analysed vegetarianism as a contemporary taste and consumer practice. Drawing upon Bourdieu, the first part argued that it is important to recognise vegetarianism as a taste practice with distinct social configurations that are classed and gendered. Vegetarianism is linked to taste as a vehicle of distinction, making and reinforcing social divisions and distance. In such an analysis, Vegetarianism aligns with feminine and middle-class notions of food as “light, healthy and non-fattening” and for men can figure as a rejection of dominant forms of masculinity. It was argued that while Bourdieu is useful for highlighting the social dimensions of taste, this form of analysis underplays the ethical substance of vegetarianism and the wider drivers of change in contemporary human–animal relations. Here the paper drew upon the work of Franklin, Tester, and Bennett. The first two authors underline the tensions between ethics, consumerism, and lifestyle in late-modernity while Bennett highlights the distribution of agency across human/non-human “assemblages.” This theoretical background was used as a framework to investigate blogged accounts of vegetarianism. The bloggers highlight how vegetarianism works as a moral space for performing “good works” and re-enchanting a demoralised consumer modernity. In Universal_cloak’s words, vegetarianism serves as a way of saying “you don’t agree with the modern world”. Critiquing Tester’s distinction between the “lifestyle” and “ethical” vegetarian, the bloggers show how vegetarianism/veganism is constituted in a complex assemblage between health, personal well-being, animal, and environmental concerns. Drawing upon Bennett, it was suggested that vegetarianism emerges as part of a refashioning of self-interest where concerns for self and personal wellbeing are articulated within wider concerns for nature, animals and the planet. This paper raises bigger questions concerning how animals enter into human lives as “particular” Others in conditions of growing human–animal closeness. For example, to what extent will responsibility for and with the non-human grow and how will this impact upon meat eating in the West? Will vegetarianism flourish as part of contemporary middle-class taste trends toward “green,” “healthy,” and “organic” consumption? The question remains whether vegetarianism will primarily be an expression of middle-class distinction or part of a genuine ecological sensibility where the non-human—both animal and planetary—play a significant role in the working out of moral sensibilities. Perhaps Universal_cloak’s practice of vegetarianism provides an important model, where contemporary concern for self-fulfilment, health, and well-being are articulated within a large assemblage of interdependence and connection with animals, nature and the environment. The recent UN recommendation to either reduce meat-intake or adopt a plant-based diet to minimise carbon emissions (Steinfeld et al.) suggests that the nexus between human, animal, and environmental responsibility is, and will continue to be, central to everyday moral negotiation in late-modernity. References Arluke, Arnold, and Clinton R. Sanders. Regarding Animals. Philadelphia: Temple UP, 1996. Bauman, Zygmunt. Postmodern Ethics. Oxford: Blackwell, 1993. Bennett, Jane. Vibrant Matter: A Political Ecology of Things. Duke UP, 2010. Bourdieu, Pierre. Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste. Harvard UP, 1984. Franklin, Adrian. Animals and Modern Cultures: A Sociology of Human–Animal Relations in Modernity. London: Sage, 1999.Humphrey, Kim. Excess: Anti-Consumerism in the West. Cambridge: Polity, 2009. Keane, Anne, and Anna Willets. Concepts of Healthy Eating: An Anthropological Investigation in South-East London. London: Goldsmiths College, 1996. RealEat Survey Office. The RealEat Survey 1984–1993: Changing Attitudes to Meat Consumption. London: Vegetarian Society, 1995. Steinfeld, Henning, Pierre Gerber, Tom Wassenaar, Vincent Castel, Mauricio Rosales, M. and Cees de Haan. “LiveStock’s Long Shadow: Environmental Issues and Options”. Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations (2006). 10 Jan. 2014 ‹http://www.fao.org/docrep/010/a0701e/a0701e00.HTM›. Taylor, Charles. The Ethics of Authenticity. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1992. Tester, Keith. “The Moral Malaise of McDonaldization: The Values of Vegetarianism”. Resisting McDonaldization. Ed. Barry Smart. London: Sage, 1999. 207–222.

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According to The Betoota Advocate (Parker), a CSIRO (Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation) paper has recently established that “it takes roughly seven minutes on average for a vegan to tell you that they’re vegan” (qtd. in Harrington et al. 135). For such a statement to have currency as a joke means that it is grounded in a shared experience of being vegan on the one hand, and of encountering vegans on the other. Why should vegans feel such a need to justify themselves? I recognise the observation as being true of me, and this article is one way to explore this perspective: writing to find out what I currently only intuit. As Richardson notes (516), writing is “a way of ‘knowing’—a method of discovery and analysis. By writing in different ways, we discover new aspects of our topic and our relationship to it. Form and content are inseparable” (qtd. in Wall 151).Autoethnography, the qualitative research methodology used for this article, is etymologically derived from Greek to indicate a process for exploring the self (autos) and the cultural (“ethno” from ethnos—nation, tribe, people, class) using a shared, understood, approach (“graphy” from graphia, writing). It relies upon critical engagement with and synthesising of the personal. In Wall’s words, this methodological analysis of human experience “says that what I know matters” (148). The autoethnographic investigation (Riggins; Sparkes) reported here interrogates the experience of “being judged” as a vegan: firstly, by myself; secondly, by other vegans; and ultimately by the wider society. As Ellis notes, autoethnography is “research, writing, story and method that connect the autobiographical and personal to the cultural, social and political. Autoethnographic forms feature concrete action, emotion, embodiment, self-consciousness, and introspection” (xix).Introspection is important because researchers’ stories of their observations are interwoven with self-reflexive critique and analysis: “illustrative materials are meant to give a sense of what the observed world is really like, while the researcher’s interpretations are meant to represent a more detached conceptualization of that reality” (Strauss and Corbin 22). Leaving aside Gans’s view that this form of enquiry represents the “climax of the preoccupation with self […] an autobiography written by sociologists” (542), an autoethnography generally has the added advantage of protecting against Glendon and Stanton’s concern that interpretive studies “are often of too short a duration to be able to provide sufficiently large samples of behaviour” (209). In my case, I have twelve years of experience of identifying as a vegan to draw upon.My experience is that being vegan is a contested activity with a significant range of variation that partly reflects the different initial motivations for adopting this increasingly mainstream identity. Greenebaum notes that “ethical vegans differentiate between those who ‘eat’ vegan (health vegans) and those who ‘live’ vegan (ethical vegans)”, going on to suggest that these differences create “hierarchies and boundaries between vegans” (131). As Greenebaum acknowledges, there is sometimes a need to balance competing priorities: “an environmental vegan […] may purchase leather products over polyvinyl chloride (PVC), thinking that leather is a better choice for the environment” (130). Harrington et al. similarly critique vegan motivations as encompassing “a selfless pursuit for those who cared for other beings (animals)” to “a concern about impacts that affect all humans (environment), and an interest mostly in the self (individual health …)” (144). Wright identifies a fourth group of vegans: those searching for a means of dietary inclusivity (2). I have known Orthodox Jewish households that have adopted veganism because it is compatible with keeping Kosher, while many strict Hindus are vegan and some observant Muslims may also follow suit, to avoid meat that is not Halal certified.The Challenge of the EverydayAlthough my initial vegan promptings were firmly at the selfish end of an altruism spectrum, my experience is that motivation is not static. Being a vegan for any reason increasingly primes awareness of more altruistic motivations “at the intersection of a diversity of concerns [… promoting] a spread and expansion of meaning to view food choices holistically” (Harrington et al. 144). Even so, everyday life offers a range of temptations and challenges that require constant juggling and, sometimes, a string of justifications: to oneself, and to others. I identify as a bit of a bad vegan, and not simply because I embrace the possibility that “honey is a gray area” (Greenebaum, quoting her participant Jason, 139). I’m also flexible around wine, for example, and don’t ask too many questions about whether the wine I drink is refined using milk, or egg-shells or even (yuk!) fish bladders. The point is, there are an infinite number of acid tests as to what constitutes “a real vegan”, encouraging inter-vegan judgmentality. Some slight definitional slippage aligns with Singer and Mason’s argument, however, that vegans should avoid worrying about “trivial infractions of the ethical guidelines […] Personal purity isn’t really the issue. Not supporting animal abuse – and persuading others not to support it – is. Giving people the impression that it is virtually impossible to be vegan doesn’t help animals at all” (Singer and Mason 258–9).If I were to accept a definition of non-vegan, possibly because I have a leather handbag among other infractions, that would feel inauthentic. The term “vegan” helpfully labels my approach to food and drink. Others also find it useful as a shorthand for dietary preferences (except for the small but significant minority who muddle veganism with being gluten free). From the point of view of dietary prohibitions I’m a particularly strict vegan, apart from honey. I know people who make exceptions for line-caught fish, or the eggs from garden-roaming happy chooks, but I don’t. I increasingly understand the perspectives of those who have a more radical conception of veganism than I do, however: whose vision and understanding is that “behind every meal of meat is an absence: the death of the animal whose place the meat takes. The ‘absent referent’ is that which separates the meat eater from the animal and the animal from the end product [… keeping] something from being seen as having been someone” (Adams 14). The concept of the global suffering of animals inherent in the figures: “31.1 billion each year, 85.2 million each day, 3.5 million each hour, 59,170 each minute” (Adams dedication) is appalling; as well as being an under-representation of the current situation since the globe has had almost two further decades of population growth and rising “living standards”.Whatever the motivations, it’s easy to imagine that the different branches of veganism have more in common than divides them. Being a vegan of any kind helps someone identify with other variations upon the theme. For example, even though my views on animal rights did not motivate my choice to become vegan, once I stopped seeing other sentient creatures as a handy food source I began to construct them differently. I gradually realised that, as a species, we were committing the most extraordinary atrocities on a global scale in treating animals as disposable commodities without rights or feelings. The large-scale production of what we like to term “meat and poultry” is almost unadulterated animal suffering, whereas the by-catch (“waste products”) of commercial fishing represents an extraordinary disregard of the rights to life of other creatures and, as Cole and Morgan note, “The number of aquatic animals slaughtered is not recorded, their individual deaths being subsumed by aggregate weight statistics” (135). Even if we did accept that humans have the right to consume some animals some of the time, should the netting of a given weight of edible fish really entail the death of many, many time more weight of living creatures that will be “wasted”: the so-called by-catch? Such wanton destruction has increasingly visible impacts upon complex food chains, and the ecosystems that sustain us all.The Vegan Threat to the Status QuoExamining the evidence for the broader community being biased against vegetarians and vegans, MacInnis and Hodson identify that these groups are “clear targets of relatively more negative attitudes” (727) towards them than other minority groups. Indeed, “only drug addicts were evaluated more negatively than vegetarians and vegans” (726). While “vegans were evaluated more negatively than vegetarians” (732), there was a hierarchy in negative evaluations according to the underlying motivation for someone adopting veganism or vegetarianism. People motivated by personal health received the least negative evaluations from the general population followed by those who were motivated by the environment. The greatest opprobrium was reserved for vegans who were motivated by animal rights (732). MacInnis and Hodson reason that this antipathy is because “vegetarians and vegans represent strong threats to the status quo, given that prevailing cultural norms favour meat-eating” (722). Also implied here is that fact that eating meat is itself a cultural norm associated with masculinity (Rothgerber).Adams’s work links the unthinking, normative exploitation of animals to the unthinking, normative exploitation of women, a situation so aligned that it is often expressed through the use of a common metaphor: “‘meat’ becomes a term to express women’s oppression, used equally by patriarchy and feminists, who say that women are ‘pieces of meat’” (2002, 59). Rothberger further interrogates the relationship between masculinity and meat by exploring gender in relation to strategies for “meat eating justification”, reflecting a 1992 United States study that showed, of all people reporting that they were vegetarian, 68% were women and 32% men (Smart, 1995). Rothberger’s argument is that:Following a vegetarian diet or deliberately reducing meat intake violates the spirit of Western hegemonic masculinity, with its socially prescribed norms of stoicism, practicality, seeking dominance, and being powerful, strong, tough, robust and invulnerable […] Such individuals have basically cast aside a relatively hidden male privilege—the freedom and ability to eat without criticism and scrutiny, something that studies have shown women lack. (371)Noting that “to raise concerns about the injustices of factory farming and to feel compelled by them would seem emotional, weak and sensitive—feminine characteristics” (366), Rothberger sets the scene for me to note two items of popular culture which achieved cut-through in my personal life. The evidence for this is, in terms of all the pro-vegan materials I encounter, these were two of a small number that I shared on social media. In line with Rothberger’s observations, both are oppositional to hegemonic masculinity:one represents a feminised, mother and child exchange that captures the moment when a child realises the “absent referent” of the dead animal in the octopus on his plate—https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SrU03da2arE;while the other is a sentimentalised and sympathetic recording of cattle luxuriating in their first taste of pastureland after a long period of confinement—https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=huT5__BqY_U.Seeing cows behaving like pets does call attention to the artificial distinction between “companion animals” and other animals. As Cole and Stewart note, “the naming of other animals is useful for human beings, while it is dangerous, and frequently lethal, for other animals. This is because the words we use to name other animals are saturated with common sense knowledge claims about those animals that legitimate their habitual use for humans” (13). Thus a cat, in Western culture, has a very different life trajectory to a cow. Adams notes the contrary case where the companion animal is used as a referent for a threatened human:Child sexual abusers often use threats and/or violence against companion animals to achieve compliance from their victims. Batterers harm or kill a companion animal as a warning to their partner that she could be next; as a way of further separating her from meaningful relationships; to demonstrate his power and her powerlessness. (Adams 57)For children who are still at a stage where animals are creatures of fascination and potential friends, who may be growing up with Charlotte’s Web (White) or Peter Rabbit (Potter), the mental gymnastics of suspending identification with these fellow creatures are harder because empathy and imagination are more active and the ingrained habit of eating without thinking has not had so long to develop. Indeed, children often understand domestic animals as “members of the family”, as illustrated by an interview with Kani, a 10-year old participant in one of my research projects. “In the absence of her extended family overseas, Kani adds her pets to [the list of] those with whom she shares her family life: ‘And my mum and my uncle and then our cat Dobby. I named it [for Harry Potter’s house elf] ...and the goldfish. The goldfish are Twinkle, Glitter, Glow and Bobby’” (Green and Stevenson). Such perceptions may well filter through to children having a different understanding of animals-as-food, even though Cole and Stewart note that “children enter into an adult culture habituated to [the] banal conceptualization of other animals according to their (dis)utilities” (21).Evidence-Based VeganismThose M/C Journal readers who know me personally will understand that one reason why I embrace the “bad vegan” label, is that I’m no more obviously a pin-up for healthy veganism than I am for ethical or environmental veganism. In particular, my BMI (Body Mass Index) is significantly outside the “healthy” range. Even so, I attribute a dramatic change in my capacity for stamina-based activity to my embrace of veganism. A high-speed recap of the evidence would include: in 2009 I embarked on a week-long 500km Great Vic bike ride; in 2012 I successfully completed a Machu Picchu trek at high altitude; by 2013 I was ready for my first half marathon (reprised in 2014, and 2017); in 2014 I cycled from Surfers’ Paradise to Noosa—somewhat less successfully than in my 2009 venture, but even so; in 2016 I completed the Oxfam 50km in 24 hours (plus a half hour, if I’m honest); and in 2017 I completed the 227km Portuguese Camino; in 2018 I jogged an average of over 3km per day, every day, up until 20 September... Apart from indicating that I live an extremely fortunate life, these activities seem to me to demonstrate that becoming vegan in 2007 has conferred a huge health benefit. In particular, I cannot identify similar metamorphoses in the lives of my 50-to-60-something year-old empty-nester friends. My most notable physical feat pre-veganism was the irregular completion of Perth’s annual 12km City-to-Surf fun run.Although I’m a vegan for health reasons, I didn’t suddenly wake up one day and decide that this was now my future: I had to be coaxed and cajoled into looking at my food preferences very differently. This process entailed my enrolling in a night school-type evening course, the Coronary Health Improvement Program: 16 x 3 hour sessions over eight weeks. Its sibling course is now available online as the Complete Health Improvement Program. The first lesson of the eight weeks convincingly demonstrated that what is good for coronary health is also good for health in general, which I found persuasive and reassuring given the propensity to cancer evident in my family tree. In the generation above me, my parents each had three siblings so I have a sample of eight immediate family to draw upon. Six of these either have cancer at the moment, or have died from cancer, with the cancers concerned including breast (1), prostate (2), lung (1), pancreas (1) and brain (1). A seventh close relative passed away before her health service could deliver a diagnosis for her extraordinarily elevated eosinophil levels (100x normal rates of that particular kind of white blood cell: potentially a blood cancer, I think). The eighth relative in that generation is my “bad vegan” uncle who has been mainly plant-based in his dietary choices since 2004. At 73, he is still working three days per week as a dentist and planning a 240 km trek in Italy as his main 2019 holiday. That’s the kind of future I’m hoping for too, when I grow up.And yet, one can read volumes of health literature without stumbling upon Professor T. Colin Campbell’s early research findings via his work on rodents and rodent cells that: “nutrition [was] far more important in controlling cancer promotion than the dose of the initiating carcinogen” and that “nutrients from animal-based foods increased tumor development while nutrients from plant-based foods decreased tumor development” (66, italics in original). Plant was already an eminent scientist at the point where she developed breast cancer, but she noted her amazement at learning “precisely how much has been discovered already [that] has not filtered through to the public” (18). The reason for the lack of visible research in this area is not so much its absence, but more likely its political sensitivity in an era of Big Food. As Harrington et al.’s respondent Samantha noted, “I think the meat lobby’s much bigger than the vegetable lobby” (147). These arguments are addressed in greater depth in Green et al.My initiating research question—Why do I feel the need to justify being vegan?—can clearly be answered in a wide variety of ways. Veganism disrupts the status quo: it questions both the appropriateness of humanity’s systematic torturing of other species for food, and the risks that those animal-based foods pose for the long-term health of human populations. It offends many vested interests from Big Food to accepted notions of animal welfare to the conventional teachings of the health industry. Identifying as a vegan represents an outcome of one or more of a wide range of motivations, some of which are more clearly self-serving (read “bad”); while others are more easily identified as altruistic (read “good”). After a decade or more of personal experimentation in this space, I’m proud to identify as a “bad vegan”. It’s been a great choice personally and, I hope, for some other creatures whose planet I share.ReferencesAdams, Carol. The Sexual Politics of Meat: A Feminist-Vegetarian Critical Theory. New York: Continuum, 1990.Campbell, T. Colin, and Thomas M. Cambell. The China Study: Startling Implications for Diet, Weight Loss and Long-Term Health. Dallas: BenBella Books, 2005.Cole, Matthew, and Karen Morgan. “Vegaphobia: Derogatory Discourses of Veganism and the Reproduction of Speciesism in UK National Newspaper.” British Journal of Sociology 62 (2011): 134–53.———, and Kate Stewart. Our Children and Other Animals: The Cultural Construction of Human-Animal Relations in Childhood. Farnham: Ashgate, 2014.Ellis, Carolyn. The Ethnographic I: A Methodological Novel about Autoethnography. Oxford: Altamira Press, 2004.Gans, Herbert J. “Participant Observation in the Era of ‘Ethnography’.” Journal of Contemporary Ethnography 28.5 (1999): 540–48.Glendon, A. 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C., and Gordon Hodson. “It Ain’t Easy Eating Greens: Evidence of Bias Toward Vegetarians and Vegans from Both Source and Target.” Group Processes and Intergroup Relations 20.6 (2015): 721–44.Parker, Errol. “Study Finds the Easiest Way to Tell If Someone Is Vegan Is to Wait until They Inevitably Tell You.” The Betoota Advocate 2017. 10 Apr. 2019 <https://www.betootaadvocate.com/humans-of-betoota/study-finds-easiest-way-tell-someone-vegan-wait-inevitably-tell/>.Plant, Jane A. Your Life in Your Hands: Understand, Prevent and Overcome Breast Cancer and Ovarian Cancer. 4th ed. London: Virgin Books, 2007.Potter, Beatrix. The Tale of Peter Rabbit. London: Frederick Warne and Co, 1902.Richardson, Laurel. “Writing: A Method of Inquiry.” Handbook of Qualitative Research. Eds. Norman K. Denzon and Yvonne S. Lincoln. 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Introduction Eating is one of the most quintessential activities of human life. Because of this primacy, eating is, as food anthropologist Sidney Mintz has observed, “not merely a biological activity, but a vibrantly cultural activity as well” (48). This article posits that the current awareness of climate change in the Western world is animating such cultural activity as the Slow Food movement and is, as a result, stimulating what could be seen as an evolutionary change in popular foodways. Moreover, this paper suggests that, in line with modelling provided by the Slow Food example, an increased awareness of the connections of climate change to the social injustices of food production might better drive social change in such areas. This discussion begins by proposing that contemporary foodways—defined as “not only what is eaten by a particular group of people but also the variety of customs, beliefs and practices surrounding the production, preparation and presentation of food” (Davey 182)—are changing in the West in relation to current concerns about climate change. Such modification has a long history. Since long before the inception of modern hom*o sapiens, natural climate change has been a crucial element driving hominidae evolution, both biologically and culturally in terms of social organisation and behaviours. Macroevolutionary theory suggests evolution can dramatically accelerate in response to rapid shifts in an organism’s environment, followed by slow to long periods of stasis once a new level of sustainability has been achieved (Gould and Eldredge). There is evidence that ancient climate change has also dramatically affected the rate and course of cultural evolution. Recent work suggests that the end of the last ice age drove the cultural innovation of animal and plant domestication in the Middle East (Zeder), not only due to warmer temperatures and increased rainfall, but also to a higher level of atmospheric carbon dioxide which made agriculture increasingly viable (McCorriston and Hole, cited in Zeder). Megadroughts during the Paleolithic might well have been stimulating factors behind the migration of hominid populations out of Africa and across Asia (Scholz et al). Thus, it is hardly surprising that modern anthropogenically induced global warming—in all its’ climate altering manifestations—may be driving a new wave of cultural change and even evolution in the West as we seek a sustainable homeostatic equilibrium with the environment of the future. In 1962, Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring exposed some of the threats that modern industrial agriculture poses to environmental sustainability. This prompted a public debate from which the modern environmental movement arose and, with it, an expanding awareness and attendant anxiety about the safety and nutritional quality of contemporary foods, especially those that are grown with chemical pesticides and fertilizers and/or are highly processed. This environmental consciousness led to some modification in eating habits, manifest by some embracing wholefood and vegetarian dietary regimes (or elements of them). Most recently, a widespread awareness of climate change has forced rapid change in contemporary Western foodways, while in other climate related areas of socio-political and economic significance such as energy production and usage, there is little evidence of real acceleration of change. Ongoing research into the effects of this expanding environmental consciousness continues in various disciplinary contexts such as geography (Eshel and Martin) and health (McMichael et al). In food studies, Vileisis has proposed that the 1970s environmental movement’s challenge to the polluting practices of industrial agri-food production, concurrent with the women’s movement (asserting women’s right to know about everything, including food production), has led to both cooks and eaters becoming increasingly knowledgeable about the links between agricultural production and consumer and environmental health, as well as the various social justice issues involved. As a direct result of such awareness, alternatives to the industrialised, global food system are now emerging (Kloppenberg et al.). The Slow Food (R)evolution The tenets of the Slow Food movement, now some two decades old, are today synergetic with the growing consternation about climate change. In 1983, Carlo Petrini formed the Italian non-profit food and wine association Arcigola and, in 1986, founded Slow Food as a response to the opening of a McDonalds in Rome. From these humble beginnings, which were then unashamedly positing a return to the food systems of the past, Slow Food has grown into a global organisation that has much more future focused objectives animating its challenges to the socio-cultural and environmental costs of industrial food. Slow Food does have some elements that could be classed as reactionary and, therefore, the opposite of evolutionary. In response to the increasing hom*ogenisation of culinary habits around the world, for instance, Slow Food’s Foundation for Biodiversity has established the Ark of Taste, which expands upon the idea of a seed bank to preserve not only varieties of food but also local and artisanal culinary traditions. In this, the Ark aims to save foods and food products “threatened by industrial standardization, hygiene laws, the regulations of large-scale distribution and environmental damage” (SFFB). Slow Food International’s overarching goals and activities, however, extend far beyond the preservation of past foodways, extending to the sponsoring of events and activities that are attempting to create new cuisine narratives for contemporary consumers who have an appetite for such innovation. Such events as the Salone del Gusto (Salon of Taste) and Terra Madre (Mother Earth) held in Turin every two years, for example, while celebrating culinary traditions, also focus on contemporary artisanal foods and sustainable food production processes that incorporate the most current of agricultural knowledge and new technologies into this production. Attendees at these events are also driven by both an interest in tradition, and their own very current concerns with health, personal satisfaction and environmental sustainability, to change their consumer behavior through an expanded self-awareness of the consequences of their individual lifestyle choices. Such events have, in turn, inspired such events in other locations, moving Slow Food from local to global relevance, and affecting the intellectual evolution of foodway cultures far beyond its headquarters in Bra in Northern Italy. This includes in the developing world, where millions of farmers continue to follow many traditional agricultural practices by necessity. Slow Food Movement’s forward-looking values are codified in the International Commission on the Future of Food and Agriculture 2006 publication, Manifesto on the Future of Food. This calls for changes to the World Trade Organisation’s rules that promote the globalisation of agri-food production as a direct response to the “climate change [which] threatens to undermine the entire natural basis of ecologically benign agriculture and food preparation, bringing the likelihood of catastrophic outcomes in the near future” (ICFFA 8). It does not call, however, for a complete return to past methods. To further such foodway awareness and evolution, Petrini founded the University of Gastronomic Sciences at Slow Food’s headquarters in 2004. The university offers programs that are analogous with the Slow Food’s overall aim of forging sustainable partnerships between the best of old and new practice: to, in the organisation’s own words, “maintain an organic relationship between gastronomy and agricultural science” (UNISG). In 2004, Slow Food had over sixty thousand members in forty-five countries (Paxson 15), with major events now held each year in many of these countries and membership continuing to grow apace. One of the frequently cited successes of the Slow Food movement is in relation to the tomato. Until recently, supermarkets stocked only a few mass-produced hybrids. These cultivars were bred for their disease resistance, ease of handling, tolerance to artificial ripening techniques, and display consistency, rather than any culinary values such as taste, aroma, texture or variety. In contrast, the vine ripened, ‘farmer’s market’ tomato has become the symbol of an “eco-gastronomically” sustainable, local and humanistic system of food production (Jordan) which melds the best of the past practice with the most up-to-date knowledge regarding such farming matters as water conservation. Although the term ‘heirloom’ is widely used in relation to these tomatoes, there is a distinctively contemporary edge to the way they are produced and consumed (Jordan), and they are, along with other organic and local produce, increasingly available in even the largest supermarket chains. Instead of a wholesale embrace of the past, it is the connection to, and the maintenance of that connection with, the processes of production and, hence, to the environment as a whole, which is the animating premise of the Slow Food movement. ‘Slow’ thus creates a gestalt in which individuals integrate their lifestyles with all levels of the food production cycle and, hence to the environment and, importantly, the inherently related social justice issues. ‘Slow’ approaches emphasise how the accelerated pace of contemporary life has weakened these connections, while offering a path to the restoration of a sense of connectivity to the full cycle of life and its relation to place, nature and climate. In this, the Slow path demands that every consumer takes responsibility for all components of his/her existence—a responsibility that includes becoming cognisant of the full story behind each of the products that are consumed in that life. The Slow movement is not, however, a regime of abstention or self-denial. Instead, the changes in lifestyle necessary to support responsible sustainability, and the sensual and aesthetic pleasure inherent in such a lifestyle, exist in a mutually reinforcing relationship (Pietrykowski 2004). This positive feedback loop enhances the potential for promoting real and long-term evolution in social and cultural behaviour. Indeed, the Slow zeitgeist now informs many areas of contemporary culture, with Slow Travel, Homes, Design, Management, Leadership and Education, and even Slow Email, Exercise, Shopping and Sex attracting adherents. Mainstreaming Concern with Ethical Food Production The role of the media in “forming our consciousness—what we think, how we think, and what we think about” (Cunningham and Turner 12)—is self-evident. It is, therefore, revealing in relation to the above outlined changes that even the most functional cookbooks and cookery magazines (those dedicated to practical information such as recipes and instructional technique) in Western countries such as the USA, UK and Australian are increasingly reflecting and promoting an awareness of ethical food production as part of this cultural change in food habits. While such texts have largely been considered as useful but socio-politically relatively banal publications, they are beginning to be recognised as a valid source of historical and cultural information (Nussel). Cookbooks and cookery magazines commonly include discussion of a surprising range of issues around food production and consumption including sustainable and ethical agricultural methods, biodiversity, genetic modification and food miles. In this context, they indicate how rapidly the recent evolution of foodways has been absorbed into mainstream practice. Much of such food related media content is, at the same time, closely identified with celebrity mass marketing and embodied in the television chef with his or her range of branded products including their syndicated articles and cookbooks. This commercial symbiosis makes each such cuisine-related article in a food or women’s magazine or cookbook, in essence, an advertorial for a celebrity chef and their named products. Yet, at the same time, a number of these mass media food celebrities are raising public discussion that is leading to consequent action around important issues linked to climate change, social justice and the environment. An example is Jamie Oliver’s efforts to influence public behaviour and government policy, a number of which have gained considerable traction. Oliver’s 2004 exposure of the poor quality of school lunches in Britain (see Jamie’s School Dinners), for instance, caused public outrage and pressured the British government to commit considerable extra funding to these programs. A recent study by Essex University has, moreover, found that the academic performance of 11-year-old pupils eating Oliver’s meals improved, while absenteeism fell by 15 per cent (Khan). Oliver’s exposé of the conditions of battery raised hens in 2007 and 2008 (see Fowl Dinners) resulted in increased sales of free-range poultry, decreased sales of factory-farmed chickens across the UK, and complaints that free-range chicken sales were limited by supply. Oliver encouraged viewers to lobby their local councils, and as a result, a number banned battery hen eggs from schools, care homes, town halls and workplace cafeterias (see, for example, LDP). The popular penetration of these ideas needs to be understood in a historical context where industrialised poultry farming has been an issue in Britain since at least 1848 when it was one of the contributing factors to the establishment of the RSPCA (Freeman). A century after Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle (published in 1906) exposed the realities of the slaughterhouse, and several decades since Peter Singer’s landmark Animal Liberation (1975) and Tom Regan’s The Case for Animal Rights (1983) posited the immorality of the mistreatment of animals in food production, it could be suggested that Al Gore’s film An Inconvenient Truth (released in 2006) added considerably to the recent concern regarding the ethics of industrial agriculture. Consciousness-raising bestselling books such as Jim Mason and Peter Singer’s The Ethics of What We Eat and Michael Pollan’s The Omnivore’s Dilemma (both published in 2006), do indeed ‘close the loop’ in this way in their discussions, by concluding that intensive food production methods used since the 1950s are not only inhumane and damage public health, but are also damaging an environment under pressure from climate change. In comparison, the use of forced labour and human trafficking in food production has attracted far less mainstream media, celebrity or public attention. It could be posited that this is, in part, because no direct relationship to the environment and climate change and, therefore, direct link to our own existence in the West, has been popularised. Kevin Bales, who has been described as a modern abolitionist, estimates that there are currently more than 27 million people living in conditions of slavery and exploitation against their wills—twice as many as during the 350-year long trans-Atlantic slave trade. Bales also chillingly reveals that, worldwide, the number of slaves is increasing, with contemporary individuals so inexpensive to purchase in relation to the value of their production that they are disposable once the slaveholder has used them. Alongside sex slavery, many other prevalent examples of contemporary slavery are concerned with food production (Weissbrodt et al; Miers). Bales and Soodalter, for example, describe how across Asia and Africa, adults and children are enslaved to catch and process fish and shellfish for both human consumption and cat food. Other campaigners have similarly exposed how the cocoa in chocolate is largely produced by child slave labour on the Ivory Coast (Chalke; Off), and how considerable amounts of exported sugar, cereals and other crops are slave-produced in certain countries. In 2003, some 32 per cent of US shoppers identified themselves as LOHAS “lifestyles of health and sustainability” consumers, who were, they said, willing to spend more for products that reflected not only ecological, but also social justice responsibility (McLaughlin). Research also confirms that “the pursuit of social objectives … can in fact furnish an organization with the competitive resources to develop effective marketing strategies”, with Doherty and Meehan showing how “social and ethical credibility” are now viable bases of differentiation and competitive positioning in mainstream consumer markets (311, 303). In line with this recognition, Fair Trade Certified goods are now available in British, European, US and, to a lesser extent, Australian supermarkets, and a number of global chains including Dunkin’ Donuts, McDonalds, Starbucks and Virgin airlines utilise Fair Trade coffee and teas in all, or parts of, their operations. Fair Trade Certification indicates that farmers receive a higher than commodity price for their products, workers have the right to organise, men and women receive equal wages, and no child labour is utilised in the production process (McLaughlin). Yet, despite some Western consumers reporting such issues having an impact upon their purchasing decisions, social justice has not become a significant issue of concern for most. The popular cookery publications discussed above devote little space to Fair Trade product marketing, much of which is confined to supermarket-produced adverzines promoting the Fair Trade products they stock, and international celebrity chefs have yet to focus attention on this issue. In Australia, discussion of contemporary slavery in the press is sparse, having surfaced in 2000-2001, prompted by UNICEF campaigns against child labour, and in 2007 and 2008 with the visit of a series of high profile anti-slavery campaigners (including Bales) to the region. The public awareness of food produced by forced labour and the troubling issue of human enslavement in general is still far below the level that climate change and ecological issues have achieved thus far in driving foodway evolution. This may change, however, if a ‘Slow’-inflected connection can be made between Western lifestyles and the plight of peoples hidden from our daily existence, but contributing daily to them. Concluding Remarks At this time of accelerating techno-cultural evolution, due in part to the pressures of climate change, it is the creative potential that human conscious awareness brings to bear on these challenges that is most valuable. Today, as in the caves at Lascaux, humanity is evolving new images and narratives to provide rational solutions to emergent challenges. As an example of this, new foodways and ways of thinking about them are beginning to evolve in response to the perceived problems of climate change. The current conscious transformation of food habits by some in the West might be, therefore, in James Lovelock’s terms, a moment of “revolutionary punctuation” (178), whereby rapid cultural adaption is being induced by the growing public awareness of impending crisis. It remains to be seen whether other urgent human problems can be similarly and creatively embraced, and whether this trend can spread to offer global solutions to them. References An Inconvenient Truth. Dir. Davis Guggenheim. Lawrence Bender Productions, 2006. Bales, Kevin. Disposable People: New Slavery in the Global Economy. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2004 (first published 1999). Bales, Kevin, and Ron Soodalter. The Slave Next Door: Human Trafficking and Slavery in America Today. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2009. Carson, Rachel. Silent Spring. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1962. Chalke, Steve. “Unfinished Business: The Sinister Story behind Chocolate.” The Age 18 Sep. 2007: 11. Cunningham, Stuart, and Graeme Turner. The Media and Communications in Australia Today. Crows Nest: Allen & Unwin, 2002. Davey, Gwenda Beed. “Foodways.” The Oxford Companion to Australian Folklore. Ed. Gwenda Beed Davey, and Graham Seal. Melbourne: Oxford University Press, 1993. 182–85. Doherty, Bob, and John Meehan. “Competing on Social Resources: The Case of the Day Chocolate Company in the UK Confectionery Sector.” Journal of Strategic Marketing 14.4 (2006): 299–313. Eshel, Gidon, and Pamela A. Martin. “Diet, Energy, and Global Warming.” Earth Interactions 10, paper 9 (2006): 1–17. Fowl Dinners. Exec. Prod. Nick Curwin and Zoe Collins. Dragonfly Film and Television Productions and Fresh One Productions, 2008. Freeman, Sarah. Mutton and Oysters: The Victorians and Their Food. London: Gollancz, 1989. Gould, S. J., and N. Eldredge. “Punctuated Equilibrium Comes of Age.” Nature 366 (1993): 223–27. (ICFFA) International Commission on the Future of Food and Agriculture. Manifesto on the Future of Food. Florence, Italy: Agenzia Regionale per lo Sviluppo e l’Innovazione nel Settore Agricolo Forestale and Regione Toscana, 2006. Jamie’s School Dinners. Dir. Guy Gilbert. Fresh One Productions, 2005. Jordan, Jennifer A. “The Heirloom Tomato as Cultural Object: Investigating Taste and Space.” Sociologia Ruralis 47.1 (2007): 20-41. Khan, Urmee. “Jamie Oliver’s School Dinners Improve Exam Results, Report Finds.” Telegraph 1 Feb. 2009. 24 Aug. 2009 < http://www.telegraph.co.uk/education/educationnews/4423132/Jamie-Olivers-school-dinners-improve-exam-results-report-finds.html >. Kloppenberg, Jack, Jr, Sharon Lezberg, Kathryn de Master, G. W. Stevenson, and John Henrickson. ‘Tasting Food, Tasting Sustainability: Defining the Attributes of an Alternative Food System with Competent, Ordinary People.” Human Organisation 59.2 (Jul. 2000): 177–86. (LDP) Liverpool Daily Post. “Battery Farm Eggs Banned from Schools and Care Homes.” Liverpool Daily Post 12 Jan. 2008. 24 Aug. 2009 < http://www.liverpooldailypost.co.uk/liverpool-news/regional-news/2008/01/12/battery-farm-eggs-banned-from-schools-and-care-homes-64375-20342259 >. Lovelock, James. The Ages of Gaia: A Biography of Our Living Earth. New York: Bantam, 1990 (first published 1988). Mason, Jim, and Peter Singer. The Ethics of What We Eat. Melbourne: Text Publishing, 2006. McLaughlin, Katy. “Is Your Grocery List Politically Correct? Food World’s New Buzzword Is ‘Sustainable’ Products.” The Wall Street Journal 17 Feb. 2004. 29 Aug. 2009 < http://www.globalexchange.org/campaigns/fairtrade/coffee/1732.html >. McMichael, Anthony J, John W Powles, Colin D Butler, and Ricardo Uauy. “Food, Livestock Production, Energy, Climate Change, and Health.” The Lancet 370 (6 Oct. 2007): 1253–63. Miers, Suzanne. “Contemporary Slavery”. A Historical Guide to World Slavery. Ed. Seymour Drescher, and Stanley L. Engerman. New York: Oxford University Press, 1998. Mintz, Sidney W. Tasting Food, Tasting Freedom: Excursions into Eating, Culture, and the Past. Boston: Beacon Press, 1994. Nussel, Jill. “Heating Up the Sources: Using Community Cookbooks in Historical Inquiry.” History Compass 4/5 (2006): 956–61. Off, Carol. Bitter Chocolate: Investigating the Dark Side of the World's Most Seductive Sweet. St Lucia: U of Queensland P, 2008. Paxson, Heather. “Slow Food in a Fat Society: Satisfying Ethical Appetites.” Gastronomica: The Journal of Food and Culture 5.1 (2005): 14–18. Pietrykowski, Bruce. “You Are What You Eat: The Social Economy of the Slow Food Movement.” Review of Social Economy 62:3 (2004): 307–21. Pollan, Michael. The Omnivore’s Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals. New York: The Penguin Press, 2006. Regan, Tom. The Case for Animal Rights. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1983. Scholz, Christopher A., Thomas C. Johnson, Andrew S. Cohen, John W. King, John A. Peck, Jonathan T. Overpeck, Michael R. Talbot, Erik T. Brown, Leonard Kalindekafe, Philip Y. O. Amoako, Robert P. Lyons, Timothy M. Shanahan, Isla S. Castañeda, Clifford W. Heil, Steven L. Forman, Lanny R. McHargue, Kristina R. Beuning, Jeanette Gomez, and James Pierson. “East African Megadroughts between 135 and 75 Thousand Years Ago and Bearing on Early-modern Human Origins.” PNAS: Proceedings of the National Academy of the Sciences of the United States of America 104.42 (16 Oct. 2007): 16416–21. Sinclair, Upton. The Jungle. New York: Doubleday, Jabber & Company, 1906. Singer, Peter. Animal Liberation. New York: HarperCollins, 1975. (SFFB) Slow Food Foundation for Biodiversity. “Ark of Taste.” 2009. 24 Aug. 2009 < http://www.fondazioneslowfood.it/eng/arca/lista.lasso >. (UNISG) University of Gastronomic Sciences. “Who We Are.” 2009. 24 Aug. 2009 < http://www.unisg.it/eng/chisiamo.php >. Vileisis, Ann. Kitchen Literacy: How We Lost Knowledge of Where Food Comes From and Why We Need to Get It Back. Washington: Island Press/Shearwater Books, 2008. Weissbrodt, David, and Anti-Slavery International. Abolishing Slavery and its Contemporary Forms. New York and Geneva: Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, United Nations, 2002. Zeder, Melinda A. “The Neolithic Macro-(R)evolution: Macroevolutionary Theory and the Study of Culture Change.” Journal of Archaeological Research 17 (2009): 1–63.

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At a time when almost every human transgression, illness, profession and other personal aspect of life has been chronicled in autobiographical writing (Rak)—in 1998 Zinsser called ours “the age of memoir” (3)—writing about fat is one of the most recent subjects to be addressed in this way. This article surveys a range of contemporary autobiographical texts that are titled with, or revolve around, that powerful and most evocative word, “fat”. Following a number of cultural studies of fat in society (Critser; Gilman, Fat Boys; Fat: A Cultural History; Stearns), this discussion views fat in socio-cultural terms, following Lupton in understanding fat as both “a cultural artefact: a bodily substance or body shape that is given meaning by complex and shifting systems of ideas, practices, emotions, material objects and interpersonal relationships” (i). Using a case study approach (Gerring; Verschuren), this examination focuses on a range of texts from autobiographical cookbooks and memoirs to novel-length graphic works in order to develop a preliminary taxonomy of these works. In this way, a small sample of work, each of which (described below) explores an aspect (or aspects) of the form is, following Merriam, useful as it allows a richer picture of an under-examined phenomenon to be constructed, and offers “a means of investigating complex social units consisting of multiple variables of potential importance in understanding the phenomenon” (Merriam 50). Although the sample size does not offer generalisable results, the case study method is especially suitable in this context, where the aim is to open up discussion of this form of writing for future research for, as Merriam states, “much can be learned from […] an encounter with the case through the researcher’s narrative description” and “what we learn in a particular case can be transferred to similar situations” (51). Pro-Fat Autobiographical WritingAlongside the many hundreds of reduced, low- and no-fat cookbooks and weight loss guides currently in print that offer recipes, meal plans, ingredient replacements and strategies to reduce fat in the diet, there are a handful that promote the consumption of fats, and these all have an autobiographical component. The publication of Jennifer McLagan’s Fat: An Appreciation of a Misunderstood Ingredient, with Recipes in 2008 by Ten Speed Press—publisher of Mollie Katzen’s groundbreaking and influential vegetarian Moosewood Cookbook in 1974 and an imprint now known for its quality cookbooks (Thelin)—unequivocably addressed that line in the sand often drawn between fat and all things healthy. The four chapter titles of this cookbook— “Butter,” subtitled “Worth It,” “Pork Fat: The King,” “Poultry Fat: Versatile and Good For You,” and, “Beef and Lamb Fats: Overlooked But Tasty”—neatly summarise McLagan’s organising argument: that animal fats not only add an unreplaceable and delicious flavour to foods but are fundamental to our health. Fat polarised readers and critics; it was positively reviewed in prominent publications (Morris; Bhide) and won influential food writing awards, including 2009 James Beard Awards for Single Subject Cookbook and Cookbook of the Year but, due to its rejection of low-fat diets and the research underpinning them, was soon also vehemently criticised, to the point where the book was often described in the media as “controversial” (see Smith). McLagan’s text, while including historical, scientific and gastronomic data and detail, is also an outspokenly personal treatise, chronicling her sensual and emotional responses to this ingredient. “I love fat,” she begins, continuing, “Whether it’s a slice of foie gras terrine, its layer of yellow fat melting at the edges […] hot bacon fat […] wilting a plate of pungent greens into submission […] or a piece of crunchy pork crackling […] I love the way it feels in my mouth, and I love its many tastes” (1). Her text is, indeed, memoir as gastronomy / gastronomy as memoir, and this cookbook, therefore, an example of the “memoir with recipes” subgenre (Brien et al.). It appears to be this aspect – her highly personal and, therein, persuasive (Weitin) plea for the value of fats – that galvanised critics and readers.Molly Chester and Sandy Schrecengost’s Back to Butter: A Traditional Foods Cookbook – Nourishing Recipes Inspired by Our Ancestors begins with its authors’ memoirs (illness, undertaking culinary school training, buying and running a farm) to lend weight to their argument to utilise fats widely in cookery. Its first chapter, “Fats and Oils,” features the familiar butter, which it describes as “the friendly fat” (22), then moves to the more reviled pork lard “Grandma’s superfood” (22) and, nowadays quite rarely described as an ingredient, beef tallow. Grit Magazine’s Lard: The Lost Art of Cooking with Your Grandmother’s Secret Ingredient utilises the rhetoric that fat, and in this case, lard, is a traditional and therefore foundational ingredient in good cookery. This text draws on its publisher’s, Grit Magazine (published since 1882 in various formats), long history of including auto/biographical “inspirational stories” (Teller) to lend persuasive power to its argument. One of the most polarising of fats in health and current media discourse is butter, as was seen recently in debate over what was seen as its excessive use in the MasterChef Australia television series (see, Heart Foundation; Phillipov). It is perhaps not surprising, then, that butter is the single fat inspiring the most autobiographical writing in this mode. Rosie Daykin’s Butter Baked Goods: Nostalgic Recipes from a Little Neighborhood Bakery is, for example, typical of a small number of cookbooks that extend the link between baking and nostalgia to argue that butter is the superlative ingredient for baking. There are also entire cookbooks dedicated to making flavoured butters (Vaserfirer) and a number that offer guides to making butter and other (fat-based) dairy products at home (Farrell-Kingsley; Hill; Linford).Gabrielle Hamilton’s Blood, Bones and Butter: The Inadvertent Education of a Reluctant Chef is typical among chef’s memoirs in using butter prominently although rare in mentioning fat in its title. In this text and other such memoirs, butter is often used as shorthand for describing a food that is rich but also wholesomely delicious. Hamilton relates childhood memories of “all butter shortcakes” (10), and her mother and sister “cutting butter into flour and sugar” for scones (15), radishes eaten with butter (21), sautéing sage in butter to dress homemade ravoli (253), and eggs fried in browned butter (245). Some of Hamilton’s most telling references to butter present it as an staple, natural food as, for instance, when she describes “sliced bread with butter and granulated sugar” (37) as one of her family’s favourite desserts, and lists butter among the everyday foodstuffs that taste superior when stored at room temperature instead of refrigerated—thereby moving butter from taboo (Gwynne describes a similar process of the normalisation of sexual “perversion” in erotic memoir).Like this text, memoirs that could be described as arguing “for” fat as a substance are largely by chefs or other food writers who extol, like McLagan and Hamilton, the value of fat as both food and flavouring, and propose that it has a key role in both ordinary/family and gourmet cookery. In this context, despite plant-based fats such as coconut oil being much lauded in nutritional and other health-related discourse, the fat written about in these texts is usually animal-based. An exception to this is olive oil, although this is never described in the book’s title as a “fat” (see, for instance, Drinkwater’s series of memoirs about life on an olive farm in France) and is, therefore, out of the scope of this discussion.Memoirs of Being FatThe majority of the other memoirs with the word “fat” in their titles are about being fat. Narratives on this topic, and their authors’ feelings about this, began to be published as a sub-set of autobiographical memoir in the 2000s. The first decade of the new millennium saw a number of such memoirs by female writers including Judith Moore’s Fat Girl (published in 2005), Jen Lancaster’s Such a Pretty Fat: One Narcissist’s Quest to Discover If Her Life Makes Her Ass Look Big, or Why Pie Is Not the Answer, and Stephanie Klein’s Moose: A Memoir (both published in 2008) and Jennifer Joyne’s Designated Fat Girl in 2010. These were followed into the new decade by texts such as Celia Rivenbark’s bestselling 2011 You Don’t Sweat Much for a Fat Girl, and all attracted significant mainstream readerships. Journalist Vicki Allan pulled no punches when she labelled these works the “fat memoir” and, although Sidonie Smith and Julia Watson’s influential categorisation of 60 genres of life writing does not include this description, they do recognise eating disorder and weight-loss narratives. Some scholarly interest followed (Linder; Halloran), with Mitchell linking this production to feminism’s promotion of the power of the micro-narrative and the recognition that the autobiographical narrative was “a way of situating the self politically” (65).aken together, these memoirs all identify “excess” weight, although the response to this differs. They can be grouped as: narratives of losing weight (see Kuffel; Alley; and many others), struggling to lose weight (most of these books), and/or deciding not to try to lose weight (the smallest number of works overall). Some of these texts display a deeply troubled relationship with food—Moore’s Fat Girl, for instance, could also be characterised as an eating disorder memoir (Brien), detailing her addiction to eating and her extremely poor body image as well as her mother’s unrelenting pressure to lose weight. Elena Levy-Navarro describes the tone of these narratives as “compelled confession” (340), mobilising both the conventional understanding of confession of the narrator “speaking directly and colloquially” to the reader of their sins, failures or foibles (Gill 7), and what she reads as an element of societal coercion in their production. Some of these texts do focus on confessing what can be read as disgusting and wretched behavior (gorging and vomiting, for instance)—Halloran’s “gustatory abject” (27)—which is a feature of the contemporary conceptualisation of confession after Rousseau (Brooks). This is certainly a prominent aspect of current memoir writing that is, simultaneously, condemned by critics (see, for example, Jordan) and popular with readers (O’Neill). Read in this way, the majority of memoirs about being fat are about being miserable until a slimming regime of some kind has been undertaken and successful. Some of these texts are, indeed, triumphal in tone. Lisa Delaney’s Secrets of a Former Fat Girl is, for instance, clear in the message of its subtitle, How to Lose Two, Four (or More!) Dress Sizes—And Find Yourself Along the Way, that she was “lost” until she became slim. Linden has argued that “female memoir writers frequently describe their fat bodies as diseased and contaminated” (219) and “powerless” (226). Many of these confessional memoirs are moving narratives of shame and self loathing where the memoirist’s sense of self, character, and identity remain somewhat confused and unresolved, whether they lose weight or not, and despite attestations to the contrary.A sub-set of these memoirs of weight loss are by male authors. While having aspects in common with those by female writers, these can be identified as a sub-set of these memoirs for two reasons. One is the tone of their narratives, which is largely humourous and often ribaldly comic. There is also a sense of the heroic in these works, with male memoirsts frequently mobilising images of battles and adversity. Texts that can be categorised in this way include Toshio Okada’s Sayonara Mr. Fatty: A Geek’s Diet Memoir, Gregg McBride and Joy Bauer’s bestselling Weightless: My Life as a Fat Man and How I Escaped, Fred Anderson’s From Chunk to Hunk: Diary of a Fat Man. As can be seen in their titles, these texts also promise to relate the stratgies, regimes, plans, and secrets that others can follow to, similarly, lose weight. Allen Zadoff’s title makes this explicit: Lessons Learned on the Journey from Fat to Thin. Many of these male memoirists are prompted by a health-related crisis, diagnosis, or realisation. Male body image—a relatively recent topic of enquiry in the eating disorder, psychology, and fashion literature (see, for instance, Bradley et al.)—is also often a surprising motif in these texts, and a theme in common with weight loss memoirs by female authors. Edward Ugel, for instance, opens his memoir, I’m with Fatty: Losing Fifty Pounds in Fifty Miserable Weeks, with “I’m haunted by mirrors … the last thing I want to do is see myself in a mirror or a photograph” (1).Ugel, as that prominent “miserable” in his subtitle suggests, provides a subtle but revealing variation on this theme of successful weight loss. Ugel (as are all these male memoirists) succeeds in the quest be sets out on but, apparently, despondent almost every moment. While the overall tone of his writing is light and humorous, he laments every missed meal, snack, and mouthful of food he foregoes, explaining that he loves eating, “Food makes me happy … I live to eat. I love to eat at restaurants. I love to cook. I love the social component of eating … I can’t be happy without being a social eater” (3). Like many of these books by male authors, Ugel’s descriptions of the food he loves are mouthwatering—and most especially when describing what he identifies as the fattening foods he loves: Reuben sandwiches dripping with juicy grease, crispy deep friend Chinese snacks, buttery Danish pastries and creamy, rich ice cream. This believable sense of regret is not, however, restricted to male authors. It is also apparent in how Jen Lancaster begins her memoir: “I’m standing in the kitchen folding a softened stick of butter, a cup of warmed sour cream, and a mound of fresh-shaved Parmesan into my world-famous mashed potatoes […] There’s a maple-glazed pot roast browning nicely in the oven and white-chocolate-chip macadamia cookies cooling on a rack farther down the counter. I’ve already sautéed the almonds and am waiting for the green beans to blanch so I can toss the whole lot with yet more butter before serving the meal” (5). In the above memoirs, both male and female writers recount similar (and expected) strategies: diets, fasts and other weight loss regimes and interventions (calorie counting, colonics, and gastric-banding and -bypass surgery for instance, recur); consulting dieting/health magazines for information and strategies; keeping a food journal; employing expert help in the form of nutritionists, dieticians, and personal trainers; and, joining health clubs/gyms, and taking up various sports.Alongside these works sit a small number of texts that can be characterised as “non-weight loss memoirs.” These can be read as part of the emerging, and burgeoning, academic field of Fat Studies, which gathers together an extensive literature critical of, and oppositional to, dominant discourses about obesity (Cooper; Rothblum and Solovay; Tomrley and Naylor), and which include works that focus on information backed up with memoir such as self-described “fat activist” (Wann, website) Marilyn Wann’s Fat! So?: Because You Don’t Have to Apologise, which—when published in 1998—followed a print ’zine and a website of the same title. Although certainly in the minority in terms of numbers, these narratives have been very popular with readers and are growing as a sub-genre, with well-known actress Camryn Manheim’s New York Times-bestselling memoir, Wake Up, I'm Fat! (published in 1999) a good example. This memoir chronicles Manheim’s journey from the overweight and teased teenager who finds it a struggle to find friends (a common trope in many weight loss memoirs) to an extremely successful actress.Like most other types of memoir, there are also niche sub-genres of the “fat memoir.” Cheryl Peck’s Fat Girls and Lawn Chairs recounts a series of stories about her life in the American Midwest as a lesbian “woman of size” (xiv) and could thus be described as a memoir on the subjects of – and is, indeed, catalogued in the Library of Congress as: “Overweight women,” “Lesbians,” and “Three Rivers (Mich[igan]) – Social life and customs”.Carol Lay’s graphic memoir, The Big Skinny: How I Changed My Fattitude, has a simple diet message – she lost weight by counting calories and exercising every day – and makes a dual claim for value of being based on both her own story and a range of data and tools including: “the latest research on obesity […] psychological tips, nutrition basics, and many useful tools like simplified calorie charts, sample recipes, and menu plans” (qtd. in Lorah). The Big Skinny could, therefore, be characterised with the weight loss memoirs above as a self-help book, but Lay herself describes choosing the graphic form in order to increase its narrative power: to “wrap much of the information in stories […] combining illustrations and story for a double dose of retention in the brain” (qtd. in Lorah). Like many of these books that can fit into multiple categories, she notes that “booksellers don’t know where to file the book – in graphic novels, memoirs, or in the diet section” (qtd. in O’Shea).Jude Milner’s Fat Free: The Amazing All-True Adventures of Supersize Woman! is another example of how a single memoir (graphic, in this case) can be a hybrid of the categories herein discussed, indicating how difficult it is to neatly categorise human experience. Recounting the author’s numerous struggles with her weight and journey to self-acceptance, Milner at first feels guilty and undertakes a series of diets and regimes, before becoming a “Fat Is Beautiful” activist and, finally, undergoing gastric bypass surgery. Here the narrative trajectory is of empowerment rather than physical transformation, as a thinner (although, importantly, not thin) Milner “exudes confidence and radiates strength” (Story). ConclusionWhile the above has identified a number of ways of attempting to classify autobiographical writing about fat/s, its ultimate aim is, after G. Thomas Couser’s work in relation to other sub-genres of memoir, an attempt to open up life writing for further discussion, rather than set in placed fixed and inflexible categories. Constructing such a preliminary taxonomy aspires to encourage more nuanced discussion of how writers, publishers, critics and readers understand “fat” conceptually as well as more practically and personally. It also aims to support future work in identifying prominent and recurrent (or not) themes, motifs, tropes, and metaphors in memoir and autobiographical texts, and to contribute to the development of a more detailed set of descriptors for discussing and assessing popular autobiographical writing more generally.References Allan, Vicki. “Graphic Tale of Obesity Makes for Heavy Reading.” Sunday Herald 26 Jun. 2005. Alley, Kirstie. How to Lose Your Ass and Regain Your Life: Reluctant Confessions of a Big-Butted Star. Emmaus, PA: Rodale, 2005.Anderson, Fred. From Chunk to Hunk: Diary of a Fat Man. USA: Three Toes Publishing, 2009.Bhide, Monica. “Why You Should Eat Fat.” Salon 25 Sep. 2008.Bradley, Linda Arthur, Nancy Rudd, Andy Reilly, and Tim Freson. “A Review of Men’s Body Image Literature: What We Know, and Need to Know.” International Journal of Costume and Fashion 14.1 (2014): 29–45.Brien, Donna Lee. “Starving, Bingeing and Writing: Memoirs of Eating Disorder as Food Writing.” TEXT: Journal of Writers and Writing Courses Special Issue 18 (2013).Brien, Donna Lee, Leonie Rutherford, and Rosemary Williamson. “Hearth and Hotmail: The Domestic Sphere as Commodity and Community in Cyberspace.” M/C Journal 10.4 (2007).Brooks, Peter. Troubling Confessions: Speaking Guilt in Law and Literature. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000.Chester, Molly, and Sandy Schrecengost. Back to Butter: A Traditional Foods Cookbook – Nourishing Recipes Inspired by Our Ancestors. Vancouver: Fair Winds Press, 2014.Cooper, Charlotte. “Fat Studies: Mapping the Field.” Sociology Compass 4.12 (2010): 1020–34.Couser, G. Thomas. “Genre Matters: Form, Force, and Filiation.” Lifewriting 2.2 (2007): 139–56.Critser, Greg. Fat Land: How Americans Became the Fattest People in the World. New York: First Mariner Books, 2004. Daykin, Rosie. Butter Baked Goods: Nostalgic Recipes from a Little Neighborhood Bakery. New York: Random House, 2015.Delaney, Lisa. Secrets of a Former Fat Girl: How to Lose Two, Four (or More!) Dress Sizes – and Find Yourself along the Way. New York: Plume/Penguin, 2008.Drinkwater, Carol. The Olive Farm: A Memoir of Life, Love and Olive Oil in the South of France. New York: Little, Brown and Company, 2001.Farrell, Amy Erdman. Fat Shame: Stigma and the Fat Body in American Culture. New York: New York University Press, 2011.Farrell-Kingsley, Kathy. 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Blood, Bones and Butter: The Inadvertent Education of a Reluctant Chef. New York: Random House, 2013.Heart Foundation [Australia]. “To Avoid Trans Fat, Avoid Butter Says Heart Foundation: Media Release.” 27 Sep. 2010.Hill, Louella. Kitchen Creamery: Making Yogurt, Butter & Cheese at Home. San Francisco: Chronicle Books, 2015.Jordan, Pat. “Dysfunction for Dollars.” New York Times 28 July 2002.Joyne, Jennifer. Designated Fat Girl: A Memoir. Guilford, CT: Skirt!, 2010.Katzen, Mollie. The Moosewood Cookbook. Berkeley: Ten Speed Press, 1974.Klein, Stephanie. Moose: A Memoir. New York: HarperCollins, 2008.Kuffel, Frances. Passing for Thin: Losing Half My Weight and Finding My Self. New York: Broadway, 2004. Lancaster, Jen. Such a Pretty Fat: One Narcissist’s Quest to Discover If Her Life Makes Her Ass Look Big, or Why Pie Is Not the Answer. New York: New American Library/Penguin, 2008.Lay, Carol. The Big Skinny: How I Changed My Fattitude. 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Berkeley: Ten Speed Press, 2008.Milner, Jude. Fat Free: The Amazing All-True Adventures of Supersize Woman! New York: Jeremy P. Tarcher/Penguin, 2006.Mitchell, Allyson. “Big Judy: Fatness, Shame, and the Hybrid Autobiography.” Embodied Politics in Visual Autobiography, eds. Sarah Brophy and Janice Hladki. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2014. 64–77.Moore, Judith. Fat Girl: A True Story. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 2005. Morris, Sophie. “Fat Is Back: Rediscover the Delights of Lard, Dripping and Suet.” The Independent 12 Mar. 2009. Multiple Sclerosis Society, New York. “Books for a Better Life Awards: 2007 Finalists.” Book Reporter 2006. Okada, Toshio. Sayonara Mr. Fatty: A Geek’s Diet Memoir. Trans. Mizuho Tiyishima. New York: Vertical Inc., 2009.O’Neill, Brendan. “Misery Lit … Read On.” BBC News 17 Apr. 2007. O’Shea, Tim. “Taking Comics with Tim: Carol Lay.” Robot 6 16 Feb. 2009. Peck, Cheryl. Fat Girls and Lawn Chairs. New York: Warner Books, 2004. 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Abstract:

This paper argues that illegitimacy is a concept that relates to almost all of the fundamental ways in which Western society has traditionally organised itself. Sex, family and marriage, and the power of the church and state, are all implicated in the various ways in which society reproduces itself from generation to generation. All employ the concepts of legitimacy and illegitimacy to define what is and what is not permissible. Further, the creation of the illegitimate can occur in more or less legitimate ways; for example, through acts of consent, on the one hand; and force, on the other. This paper uses the study of an English Renaissance text, Shakespeare’s Henry V, to argue that these concepts remain potent ones, regularly invoked as a means of identifying and denouncing perceived threats to the good ordering of the social fabric. In western societies, many of which may be constructed as post-marriage, illegitimate is often applied as a descriptor to unlicensed migrants, refugees and asylum seekers. In countries subject to war and conflict, rape as a war crime is increasingly used by armies to create fractures within the subject community and to undermine the paternity of a cohort of children. In societies where extramarital sex is prohibited, or where rape has been used as a weapon of war, the bastard acts as physical evidence that an unsanctioned act has been committed and the laws of society broken, a “failure in social control” (Laslett, Oosterveen and Smith, 5). This paper explores these themes, using past conceptions of the illegitimate and bastardy as an explanatory concept for problematic aspects of legitimacy in contemporary culture.Bastardy was a particularly important issue in sixteenth and seventeenth century Europe when an individual’s genealogy was a major determining factor of social status, property and identity (MacFarlane). Further, illegitimacy was not necessarily an aspect of a person’s birth. It could become a status into which they were thrust through the use of divorce, for example, as when Henry VIII illegitimised his daughter Mary after annulling his marriage to Mary’s mother, Catherine of Aragon. Alison Findlay’s study of illegitimacy in Renaissance literature lists over 70 portrayals of illegitimacy, or characters threatened with illegitimacy, between 1588 and 1652 (253–257). In addition to illegitimacy at an individual level however, discussions around what constitutes the “illegitimate” figure in terms of its relationship with the family and the wider community, are also applicable to broader concerns over national identity. In work such as Stages of History, Phyllis Rackin dissected images of masculine community present in Shakespeare’s history plays to expose underlying tensions over gender, power and identity. As the study of Henry V indicates in the following discussion, illegitimacy was also a metaphor brought to bear on issues of national as well as personal identity in the early modern era. The image of the nation as a “family” to denote unity and security, both then and now, is rendered complex and problematic by introducing the “illegitimate” into that nation-family image. The rhetoric used in the recent debate over the Scottish independence referendum, and in Australia’s ongoing controversy over “illegitimate” migration, both indicate that the concept of a “national bastard”, an amorphous figure that resists precise definition, remains a potent rhetorical force. Before turning to the detail of Henry V, it is useful to review the use of “illegitimate” in the early modern context. Lacking an established position within a family, a bastard was in danger of being marginalised and deprived of any but the most basic social identity. If acknowledged by a family, the bastard might become a drain on that family’s economic resources, drawing money away from legitimate children and resented accordingly. Such resentment may be reciprocated. In his essay “On Envy” the scientist, author, lawyer and eventually Lord Chancellor of England Francis Bacon explained the destructive impulse of bastardy as follows: “Deformed persons, and eunuchs, and old men, and bastards, are envious. For he that cannot possibly mend his own case will do what he can to impair another’s.” Thus, bastardy becomes a plot device which can be used to explain and to rationalise evil. In early modern English literature, as today, bastardy as a defect of birth is only one meaning for the word. What does “in everything illegitimate” (quoting Shakespeare’s character Thersites in Troilus and Cressida [V.viii.8]) mean for our understanding of both our own society and that of the late sixteenth century? Bastardy is an important ideologeme, in that it is a “unit of meaning through which the ‘social space’ constructs the ideological values of its signs” (Schleiner, 195). In other words, bastardy has an ideological significance that stretches far beyond a question of parental marital status, extending to become a metaphor for national as well as personal loss of identity. Anti-Catholic polemicists of the early sixteenth century accused priests of begetting a generation of bastards that would overthrow English society (Fish, 7). The historian Polydore Vergil was accused of suborning and bastardising English history by plagiarism and book destruction: “making himself father to other men’s works” (Hay, 159). Why is illegitimacy so important and so universal a metaphor? The term “bastard” in its sense of mixture or mongrel has been applied to language, to weaponry, to almost anything that is a distorted but recognisable version of something else. As such, the concept of bastardy lends itself readily to the rhetorical figure of metaphor which, as the sixteenth century writer George Puttenham puts it, is “a kind of wresting of a single word from his owne right signification, to another not so natural, but yet of some affinitie or coueniencie with it” (Puttenham, 178). Later on in The Art of English Poesie, Puttenham uses the word “bastard” to describe something that can best be recognised as being an imperfect version of something else: “This figure [oval] taketh his name of an egge […] and is as it were a bastard or imperfect rounde declining toward a longitude.” (101). “Bastard” as a descriptive term in this context has meaning because it connects the subject of discussion with its original. Michael Neill takes an anthropological approach to the question of why the bastard in early modern drama is almost invariably depicted as monstrous or evil. In “In everything illegitimate: Imagining the Bastard in Renaissance Drama,” Neill argues that bastards are “filthy”, using the term as it is construed by Mary Douglas in her work Purity and Danger. Douglas argues that dirt is defined by being where it should not be, it is “matter in the wrong place, belonging to ‘a residual category, rejected from our normal scheme of classifications,’ a source of fundamental pollution” (134). In this argument the figure of the bastard aligns strongly with the concept of the Other (Said). Arguably, however, the anthropologist Edmund Leach provides a more useful model to understand the associations of hybridity, monstrosity and bastardy. In “Animal Categories and Verbal Abuse”, Leach asserts that our perceptions of the world around us are largely based on binary distinctions; that an object is one thing, and is not another. If an object combines attributes of itself with those of another, the interlapping area will be suppressed so that there may be no hesitation in discerning between them. This repressed area, the area which is neither one thing nor another but “liminal” (40), becomes the object of fear and of fascination: – taboo. It is this liminality that creates anxiety surrounding bastards, as they occupy the repressed, “taboo” area between family and outsiders. In that it is born out of wedlock, the bastard child has no place within the family structure; yet as the child of a family member it cannot be completely relegated to the external world. Michael Neill rightly points out the extent to which the topos of illegitimacy is associated with the disintegration of boundaries and a consequent loss of coherence and identity, arguing that the bastard is “a by-product of the attempt to define and preserve a certain kind of social order” (147). The concept of the liminal figure, however, recognises that while a by-product can be identified and eliminated, a bastard can neither be contained nor excluded. Consequently, the bastard challenges the established order; to be illegitimate, it must retain its connection with the legitimate figure from which it diverges. Thus the illegitimate stands as a permanent threat to the legitimate, a reminder of what the legitimate can become. Bastardy is used by Shakespeare to indicate the fear of loss of national as well as personal identity. Although noted for its triumphalist construction of a hero-king, Henry V is also shot through with uncertainties and fears, fears which are frequently expressed using illegitimacy as a metaphor. Notwithstanding its battle scenes and militarism, it is the lawyers, genealogists and historians who initiate and drive forward the narrative in Henry V (McAlindon, 435). The reward of the battle for Henry is not so much the crown of France as the assurance of his own legitimacy as monarch. The lengthy and legalistic recital of genealogies with which the Archbishop of Canterbury proves to general English satisfaction that their English king Henry holds a better lineal right to the French throne than its current occupant may not be quite as “clear as is the summer sun” (Henry V 1.2.83), but Henry’s question about whether he may “with right and conscience” make his claim to the French throne elicits a succinct response. The churchmen tell Henry that, in order to demonstrate that he is truly the descendant of his royal forefathers, Henry will need to validate that claim. In other words, the legitimacy of Henry’s identity, based on his connection with the past, is predicated on his current behaviour:Gracious lord,Stand for your own; unwind your bloody flag;Look back into your mighty ancestors:Go, my dread lord, to your great-grandsire’s tomb,From whom you claim; invoke his warlike spirit…Awake remembrance of these valiant dead,And with your puissant arm renew their feats:You are their heir, you sit upon their throne,The blood and courage that renowned themRuns in your veins….Your brother kings and monarchs of the earthDo all expect that you should rouse yourselfAs did the former lions of your blood. (Henry V 1.2.122 – 124)These exhortations to Henry are one instance of the importance of genealogy and its immediate connection to personal and national identity. The subject recurs throughout the play as French and English characters both invoke a discourse of legitimacy and illegitimacy to articulate fears of invasion, defeat, and loss of personal and national identity. One particular example of this is the brief scene in which the French royalty allow themselves to contemplate the prospect of defeat at the hands of the English:Fr. King. ‘Tis certain, he hath pass’d the river Somme.Constable. And if he be not fought withal, my lord,Let us not live in France; let us quit all,And give our vineyards to a barbarous people.Dauphin. O Dieu vivant! shall a few sprays of us,The emptying of our fathers’ luxury,Our scions, put in wild and savage stock,Spirt up so suddenly into the clouds,And overlook their grafters?Bourbon. Normans, but bastard Normans, Norman bastards!...Dauphin. By faith and honour,Our madams mock at us, and plainly sayOur mettle is bred out; and they will giveTheir bodies to the lust of English youthTo new-store France with bastard warriors. (Henry V 3.5.1 – 31).Rape and sexual violence pervade the language of Henry V. France itself is constructed as a sexually vulnerable female with “womby vaultages” and a “mistress-court” (2.4.131, 140). In one of his most famous speeches Henry graphically describes the rape and slaughter that accompanies military defeat (3.3). Reading Henry V solely in terms of its association of military conquest with sexual violence, however, runs the risk of overlooking the image of bastards themselves as both the threat and the outcome of national defeat. The lines quoted above exemplify the extent to which illegitimacy was a vital metaphor within early modern discourses of national as well as personal identity. Although the lines are divided between various speakers – the French King, Constable (representing the law), Dauphin (the Crown Prince) and Bourbon (representing the aristocracy) – the images develop smoothly and consistently to express English dominance and French subordination, articulated through images of illegitimacy.The dialogue begins with the most immediate consequence of invasion and of illegitimacy: the loss of property. Legitimacy, illegitimacy and property were so closely associated that a case of bastardy brought to the ecclesiastical court that did not include a civil law suit about land was referred to as a case of “bastardy speciall”, and the association between illegitimacy and property is present in this speech (Cowell, 14). The use of the word “vine” is simultaneously a metonym for France and a metaphor for the family, as in the “family tree”, conflating the themes of family identity and national identity that are both threatened by the virile English forces.As the dialogue develops, the rhetoric becomes more elaborate. The vines which for the Constable (from a legal perspective) represented both France and French families become instead an attempt to depict the English as being of a subordinate breed. The Dauphin’s brief narrative of the English origins refers to the illegitimate William the Conqueror, bastard son of the Duke of Normandy and by designating the English as being descendants of a bastard Frenchman the Dauphin attempts to depict the English nation as originating from a superabundance of French virility; wild offshoots from a true stock. Yet “grafting” one plant to another can create a stronger plant, which is what has happened here. The Dauphin’s metaphors, designed to construct the English as an unruly and illegitimate offshoot of French society, a product of the overflowing French virility, evolve instead into an emblem of a younger, stronger branch which has overtaken its enfeebled origins.In creating this scene, Shakespeare constructs the Frenchmen as being unable to contain the English figuratively, still less literally. The attempts to reduce the English threat by imagining them as “a few sprays”, a product of casual sexual excess, collapses into Bourbon’s incoherent ejacul*tion: “Normans, but bastard Normans, Norman bastards!” and the Norman bastard dominates the conclusion of the scene. Instead of containing and marginalising the bastard, the metaphoric language creates and acknowledges a threat which cannot be marginalised. The “emptying of luxury” has engendered an uncontrollable illegitimate who will destroy the French nation beyond any hope of recovery, overrunning France with bastards.The scene is fascinating for its use of illegitimacy as a means of articulating fears not only for the past and present but also for the future. The Dauphin’s vision is one of irreversible national and familial disintegration, irreversible because, unlike rape, the French women’s imagined rejection of their French families and embrace of the English conquerors implies a total abandonment of family origins and the willing creation of a new, illegitimate dynasty. Immediately prior to this scene the audience has seen the Dauphin’s fear in action: the French princess Katherine is shown learning to speak English as part of her preparation for giving her body to a “bastard Norman”, a prospect which she anticipates with a frisson of pleasure and humour, as well as fear. This scene, between Katherine and her women, evokes a range of powerful anxieties which appear repeatedly in the drama and texts of the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries: anxieties over personal and national identity, over female chastity and masculine authority, and over continuity between generations. Peter Laslett in The World We Have Lost – Further Explored points out that “the engendering of children on a scale which might threaten the social structure was never, or almost never, a present possibility” (154) at this stage of European history. This being granted, the Dauphin’s depiction of such a “wave” of illegitimates, while it might have no roots in reality, functioned as a powerful image of disorder. Illegitimacy as a threat and as a strategy is not limited to the renaissance, although a study of renaissance texts offers a useful guidebook to the use of illegitimacy as a means of polarising and excluding. Although as previously discussed, for many Western countries, the marital status of one’s parents is probably the least meaningful definition associated with the word “illegitimate”, the concept of the nation as a family remains current in modern political discourse, and illegitimate continues to be a powerful metaphor. During the recent independence referendum in Scotland, David Cameron besought the Scottish people not to “break up the national family”; at the same time, the Scottish Nationalists have been constructed as “ungrateful bastards” for wishing to turn their backs on the national family. As Klocker and Dunne, and later O’Brien and Rowe, have demonstrated, the emotive use of words such as “illegitimate” and “illegal” in Australian political rhetoric concerning migration is of long standing. Given current tensions, it might be timely to call for a further and more detailed study of the way in which the term “illegitimate” continues to be used by politicians and the media to define, demonise and exclude certain types of would-be Australian immigrants from the collective Australian “national family”. Suggestions that persons suspected of engaging with terrorist organisations overseas should be stripped of their Australian passports imply the creation of national bastards in an attempt to distance the Australian community from such threats. But the strategy can never be completely successful. Constructing figures as bastard or the illegitimate remains a method by which the legitimate seeks to define itself, but it also means that the bastard or illegitimate can never be wholly separated or cast out. In one form or another, the bastard is here to stay.ReferencesBeardon, Elizabeth. “Sidney's ‘Mongrell Tragicomedy’ and Anglo-Spanish Exchange in the New Arcadia.” Journal for Early Modern Cultural Studies 10 (2010): 29 - 51.Davis, Kingsley. “Illegitimacy and the Social Structure.” American Journal of Sociology 45 (1939).John Cowell. The Interpreter. Cambridge: John Legate, 1607.Greenblatt, Stephen. Renaissance Self-Fashioning: From More to Shakespeare. 1980. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005.Findlay, Alison. Illegitimate Power: Bastards in Renaissance Drama. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2009.Hay, Denys. Polydore Vergil: Renaissance Historian and Man of Letters. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1952.Laslett, Peter. The World We Have Lost - Further Explored. London: Methuen, 1983.Laslett, P., K. Oosterveen, and R. M. Smith, eds. Bastardy and Its Comparative History. London: Edward Arnold, 1980.Leach, Edmund. “Anthropological Aspects of Language: Animal Categories and Verbal Abuse.” E. H. Lennenberg, ed. New Directives in the Study of Language. MIT Press, 1964. 23-63. MacFarlane, Alan. The Origins of English Individualism: The Family Property and Social Transition Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1978.Mclaren, Ann. “Monogamy, Polygamy and the True State: James I’s Rhetoric of Empire.” History of Political Thought 24 (2004): 446 – 480.McAlindon, T. “Testing the New Historicism: “Invisible Bullets” Reconsidered.” Studies in Philology 92 (1995):411 – 438.Neill, Michael. Putting History to the Question: Power, Politics and Society in English Renaissance Drama. New York: Columbia University Press, 2000.Poco*ck, J.G.A. Virtue, Commerce and History: Essays on English Political Thought and History, Chiefly in the Eighteenth Century. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985. Puttenham, George. The Arte of English Poesie. Ed. Gladys Doidge Willco*ck and Alice Walker. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1936.Reekie, Gail. Measuring Immorality: Social Inquiry and the Problem of Illegitimacy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998. Rowe, Elizabeth, and Erin O’Brien. “Constructions of Asylum Seekers and Refugees in Australian Political Discourse”. In Kelly Richards and Juan Marcellus Tauri, eds., Crime Justice and Social Democracy: Proceedings of the 2nd International Conference. Brisbane: Queensland University of Technology, 2013.Schleiner, Louise. Tudor and Stuart Women Writers. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1994.Shakespeare, William. Henry V in The Norton Shakespeare. Ed. S. Greenblatt, W. Cohen, J.E. Howard, and Katharine Eisaman Maus. New York and London: Norton, 2008.

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Introduction With a deluge of mouthwatering pre-publicity, the opening of The Spotted Pig, the USA’s first self-identified British-styled gastropub, in Manhattan in February 2004 was much anticipated. The late Australian chef, food writer and restauranteur Mietta O’Donnell has noted how “taking over a building or business which has a long established reputation can be a mixed blessing” because of the way that memories “can enrich the experience of being in a place or they can just make people nostalgic”. Bistro Le Zoo, the previous eatery on the site, had been very popular when it opened almost a decade earlier, and its closure was mourned by some diners (Young; Kaminsky “Feeding Time”; Steinhauer & McGinty). This regret did not, however, appear to affect The Spotted Pig’s success. As esteemed New York Times reviewer Frank Bruni noted in his 2006 review: “Almost immediately after it opened […] the throngs started to descend, and they have never stopped”. The following year, The Spotted Pig was awarded a Michelin star—the first year that Michelin ranked New York—and has kept this star in the subsequent annual rankings. Writing Restaurant Biography Detailed studies have been published of almost every type of contemporary organisation including public institutions such as schools, hospitals, museums and universities, as well as non-profit organisations such as charities and professional associations. These are often written to mark a major milestone, or some significant change, development or the demise of the organisation under consideration (Brien). Detailed studies have also recently been published of businesses as diverse as general stores (Woody), art galleries (Fossi), fashion labels (Koda et al.), record stores (Southern & Branson), airlines (Byrnes; Jones), confectionary companies (Chinn) and builders (Garden). In terms of attracting mainstream readerships, however, few such studies seem able to capture popular reader interest as those about eating establishments including restaurants and cafés. This form of restaurant life history is, moreover, not restricted to ‘quality’ establishments. Fast food restaurant chains have attracted their share of studies (see, for example Love; Jakle & Sculle), ranging from business-economic analyses (Liu), socio-cultural political analyses (Watson), and memoirs (Kroc & Anderson), to criticism around their conduct and effects (Striffler). Eric Schlosser’s Fast Food Nation: The Dark Side of the All-American Meal is the most well-known published critique of the fast food industry and its effects with, famously, the Rolling Stone article on which it was based generating more reader mail than any other piece run in the 1990s. The book itself (researched narrative creative nonfiction), moreover, made a fascinating transition to the screen, transformed into a fictionalised drama (co-written by Schlosser) that narrates the content of the book from the point of view of a series of fictional/composite characters involved in the industry, rather than in a documentary format. Akin to the range of studies of fast food restaurants, there are also a variety of studies of eateries in US motels, caravan parks, diners and service station restaurants (see, for example, Baeder). Although there has been little study of this sub-genre of food and drink publishing, their popularity can be explained, at least in part, because such volumes cater to the significant readership for writing about food related topics of all kinds, with food writing recently identified as mainstream literary fare in the USA and UK (Hughes) and an entire “publishing subculture” in Australia (Dunstan & Chaitman). Although no exact tally exists, an informed estimate by the founder of the Gourmand World Cookbook Awards and president of the Paris Cookbook Fair, Edouard Cointreau, has more than 26,000 volumes on food and wine related topics currently published around the world annually (ctd. in Andriani “Gourmand Awards”). The readership for publications about restaurants can also perhaps be attributed to the wide range of information that can be included a single study. My study of a selection of these texts from the UK, USA and Australia indicates that this can include narratives of place and architecture dealing with the restaurant’s location, locale and design; narratives of directly food-related subject matter such as menus, recipes and dining trends; and narratives of people, in the stories of its proprietors, staff and patrons. Detailed studies of contemporary individual establishments commonly take the form of authorised narratives either written by the owners, chefs or other staff with the help of a food journalist, historian or other professional writer, or produced largely by that writer with the assistance of the premise’s staff. These studies are often extensively illustrated with photographs and, sometimes, drawings or reproductions of other artworks, and almost always include recipes. Two examples of these from my own collection include a centennial history of a famous New Orleans eatery that survived Hurricane Katrina, Galatoire’s Cookbook. Written by employees—the chief operating officer/general manager (Melvin Rodrigue) and publicist (Jyl Benson)—this incorporates reminiscences from both other staff and patrons. The second is another study of a New Orleans’ restaurant, this one by the late broadcaster and celebrity local historian Mel Leavitt. The Court of Two Sisters Cookbook: With a History of the French Quarter and the Restaurant, compiled with the assistance of the Two Sisters’ proprietor, Joseph Fein Joseph III, was first published in 1992 and has been so enduringly popular that it is in its eighth printing. These texts, in common with many others of this type, trace a triumph-over-adversity company history that incorporates a series of mildly scintillating anecdotes, lists of famous chefs and diners, and signature recipes. Although obviously focused on an external readership, they can also be characterised as an instance of what David M. Boje calls an organisation’s “story performance” (106) as the process of creating these narratives mobilises an organisation’s (in these cases, a commercial enterprise’s) internal information processing and narrative building activities. Studies of contemporary restaurants are much more rarely written without any involvement from the eatery’s personnel. When these are, the results tend to have much in common with more critical studies such as Fast Food Nation, as well as so-called architectural ‘building biographies’ which attempt to narrate the historical and social forces that “explain the shapes and uses” (Ellis, Chao & Parrish 70) of the physical structures we create. Examples of this would include Harding’s study of the importance of the Boeuf sur le Toit in Parisian life in the 1920s and Middlebrook’s social history of London’s Strand Corner House. Such work agrees with Kopytoff’s assertion—following Appadurai’s proposal that objects possess their own ‘biographies’ which need to be researched and expressed—that such inquiry can reveal not only information about the objects under consideration, but also about readers as we examine our “cultural […] aesthetic, historical, and even political” responses to these narratives (67). The life story of a restaurant will necessarily be entangled with those of the figures who have been involved in its establishment and development, as well as the narratives they create around the business. This following brief study of The Spotted Pig, however, written without the assistance of the establishment’s personnel, aims to outline a life story for this eatery in order to reflect upon the pig’s place in contemporary dining practice in New York as raw foodstuff, fashionable comestible, product, brand, symbol and marketing tool, as well as, at times, purely as an animal identity. The Spotted Pig Widely profiled before it even opened, The Spotted Pig is reportedly one of the city’s “most popular” restaurants (Michelin 349). It is profiled in all the city guidebooks I could locate in print and online, featuring in some of these as a key stop on recommended itineraries (see, for instance, Otis 39). A number of these proclaim it to be the USA’s first ‘gastropub’—the term first used in 1991 in the UK to describe a casual hotel/bar with good food and reasonable prices (Farley). The Spotted Pig is thus styled on a shabby-chic version of a traditional British hotel, featuring a cluttered-but-well arranged use of pig-themed objects and illustrations that is described by latest Michelin Green Guide of New York City as “a country-cute décor that still manages to be hip” (Michelin 349). From the three-dimensional carved pig hanging above the entrance in a homage to the shingles of traditional British hotels, to the use of its image on the menu, website and souvenir tee-shirts, the pig as motif proceeds its use as a foodstuff menu item. So much so, that the restaurant is often (affectionately) referred to by patrons and reviewers simply as ‘The Pig’. The restaurant has become so well known in New York in the relatively brief time it has been operating that it has not only featured in a number of novels and memoirs, but, moreover, little or no explanation has been deemed necessary as the signifier of “The Spotted Pig” appears to convey everything that needs to be said about an eatery of quality and fashion. In the thriller Lethal Experiment: A Donovan Creed Novel, when John Locke’s hero has to leave the restaurant and becomes involved in a series of dangerous escapades, he wants nothing more but to get back to his dinner (107, 115). The restaurant is also mentioned a number of times in Sex and the City author Candace Bushnell’s Lipstick Jungle in relation to a (fictional) new movie of the same name. The joke in the book is that the character doesn’t know of the restaurant (26). In David Goodwillie’s American Subversive, the story of a journalist-turned-blogger and a homegrown terrorist set in New York, the narrator refers to “Scarlett Johansson, for instance, and the hostess at the Spotted Pig” (203-4) as the epitome of attractiveness. The Spotted Pig is also mentioned in Suzanne Guillette’s memoir, Much to Your Chagrin, when the narrator is on a dinner date but fears running into her ex-boyfriend: ‘Jack lives somewhere in this vicinity […] Vaguely, you recall him telling you he was not too far from the Spotted Pig on Greenwich—now, was it Greenwich Avenue or Greenwich Street?’ (361). The author presumes readers know the right answer in order to build tension in this scene. Although this success is usually credited to the joint efforts of backer, music executive turned restaurateur Ken Friedman, his partner, well-known chef, restaurateur, author and television personality Mario Batali, and their UK-born and trained chef, April Bloomfield (see, for instance, Batali), a significant part has been built on Bloomfield’s pork cookery. The very idea of a “spotted pig” itself raises a central tenet of Bloomfield’s pork/food philosophy which is sustainable and organic. That is, not the mass produced, industrially farmed pig which produces a leaner meat, but the fatty, tastier varieties of pig such as the heritage six-spotted Berkshire which is “darker, more heavily marbled with fat, juicier and richer-tasting than most pork” (Fabricant). Bloomfield has, indeed, made pig’s ears—long a Chinese restaurant staple in the city and a key ingredient of Southern US soul food as well as some traditional Japanese and Spanish dishes—fashionable fare in the city, and her current incarnation, a crispy pig’s ear salad with lemon caper dressing (TSP 2010) is much acclaimed by reviewers. This approach to ingredients—using the ‘whole beast’, local whenever possible, and the concentration on pork—has been underlined and enhanced by a continuing relationship with UK chef Fergus Henderson. In his series of London restaurants under the banner of “St. John”, Henderson is famed for the approach to pork cookery outlined in his two books Nose to Tail Eating: A Kind of British Cooking, published in 1999 (re-published both in the UK and the US as The Whole Beast: Nose to Tail Eating), and Beyond Nose to Tail: A Kind of British Cooking: Part II (coauthored with Justin Piers Gellatly in 2007). Henderson has indeed been identified as starting a trend in dining and food publishing, focusing on sustainably using as food the entirety of any animal killed for this purpose, but which mostly focuses on using all parts of pigs. In publishing, this includes Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall’s The River Cottage Meat Book, Peter Kaminsky’s Pig Perfect, subtitled Encounters with Some Remarkable Swine and Some Great Ways to Cook Them, John Barlow’s Everything but the Squeal: Eating the Whole Hog in Northern Spain and Jennifer McLagan’s Fat: An Appreciation of a Misunderstood Ingredient, with Recipes (2008). In restaurants, it certainly includes The Spotted Pig. So pervasive has embrace of whole beast pork consumption been in New York that, by 2007, Bruni could write that these are: “porky times, fatty times, which is to say very good times indeed. Any new logo for the city could justifiably place the Big Apple in the mouth of a spit-roasted pig” (Bruni). This demand set the stage perfectly for, in October 2007, Henderson to travel to New York to cook pork-rich menus at The Spotted Pig in tandem with Bloomfield (Royer). He followed this again in 2008 and, by 2009, this annual event had become known as “FergusStock” and was covered by local as well as UK media, and a range of US food weblogs. By 2009, it had grown to become a dinner at the Spotted Pig with half the dishes on the menu by Henderson and half by Bloomfield, and a dinner the next night at David Chang’s acclaimed Michelin-starred Momof*cku Noodle Bar, which is famed for its Cantonese-style steamed pork belly buns. A third dinner (and then breakfast/brunch) followed at Friedman/Bloomfield’s Breslin Bar and Dining Room (discussed below) (Rose). The Spotted Pig dinners have become famed for Henderson’s pig’s head and pork trotter dishes with the chef himself recognising that although his wasn’t “the most obvious food to cook for America”, it was the case that “at St John, if a couple share a pig’s head, they tend to be American” (qtd. in Rose). In 2009, the pigs’ head were presented in pies which Henderson has described as “puff pastry casing, with layers of chopped, cooked pig’s head and potato, so all the lovely, bubbly pig’s head juices go into the potato” (qtd. in Rose). Bloomfield was aged only 28 when, in 2003, with a recommendation from Jamie Oliver, she interviewed for, and won, the position of executive chef of The Spotted Pig (Fabricant; Q&A). Following this introduction to the US, her reputation as a chef has grown based on the strength of her pork expertise. Among a host of awards, she was named one of US Food & Wine magazine’s ten annual Best New Chefs in 2007. In 2009, she was a featured solo session titled “Pig, Pig, Pig” at the fourth Annual International Chefs Congress, a prestigious New York City based event where “the world’s most influential and innovative chefs, pastry chefs, mixologists, and sommeliers present the latest techniques and culinary concepts to their peers” (Starchefs.com). Bloomfield demonstrated breaking down a whole suckling St. Canut milk raised piglet, after which she butterflied, rolled and slow-poached the belly, and fried the ears. As well as such demonstrations of expertise, she is also often called upon to provide expert comment on pork-related news stories, with The Spotted Pig regularly the subject of that food news. For example, when a rare, heritage Hungarian pig was profiled as a “new” New York pork source in 2009, this story arose because Bloomfield had served a Mangalitsa/Berkshire crossbreed pig belly and trotter dish with Agen prunes (Sanders) at The Spotted Pig. Bloomfield was quoted as the authority on the breed’s flavour and heritage authenticity: “it took me back to my grandmother’s kitchen on a Sunday afternoon, windows steaming from the roasting pork in the oven […] This pork has that same authentic taste” (qtd. in Sanders). Bloomfield has also used this expert profile to support a series of pork-related causes. These include the Thanksgiving Farm in the Catskill area, which produces free range pork for its resident special needs children and adults, and helps them gain meaningful work-related skills in working with these pigs. Bloomfield not only cooks for the project’s fundraisers, but also purchases any excess pigs for The Spotted Pig (Estrine 103). This strong focus on pork is not, however, exclusive. The Spotted Pig is also one of a number of American restaurants involved in the Meatless Monday campaign, whereby at least one vegetarian option is included on menus in order to draw attention to the benefits of a plant-based diet. When, in 2008, Bloomfield beat the Iron Chef in the sixth season of the US version of the eponymous television program, the central ingredient was nothing to do with pork—it was olives. Diversifying from this focus on ‘pig’ can, however, be dangerous. Friedman and Bloomfield’s next enterprise after The Spotted Pig was The John Dory seafood restaurant at the corner of 10th Avenue and 16th Street. This opened in November 2008 to reviews that its food was “uncomplicated and nearly perfect” (Andrews 22), won Bloomfield Time Out New York’s 2009 “Best New Hand at Seafood” award, but was not a success. The John Dory was a more formal, but smaller, restaurant that was more expensive at a time when the financial crisis was just biting, and was closed the following August. Friedman blamed the layout, size and neighbourhood (Stein) and its reservation system, which limited walk-in diners (ctd. in Vallis), but did not mention its non-pork, seafood orientation. When, almost immediately, another Friedman/Bloomfield project was announced, the Breslin Bar & Dining Room (which opened in October 2009 in the Ace Hotel at 20 West 29th Street and Broadway), the enterprise was closely modeled on the The Spotted Pig. In preparation, its senior management—Bloomfield, Friedman and sous-chefs, Nate Smith and Peter Cho (who was to become the Breslin’s head chef)—undertook a tasting tour of the UK that included Henderson’s St. John Bread & Wine Bar (Leventhal). Following this, the Breslin’s menu highlighted a series of pork dishes such as terrines, sausages, ham and potted styles (Rosenberg & McCarthy), with even Bloomfield’s pork scratchings (crispy pork rinds) bar snacks garnering glowing reviews (see, for example, Severson; Ghorbani). Reviewers, moreover, waxed lyrically about the menu’s pig-based dishes, the New York Times reviewer identifying this focus as catering to New York diners’ “fetish for pork fat” (Sifton). This representative review details not only “an entree of gently smoked pork belly that’s been roasted to tender goo, for instance, over a drift of buttery mashed potatoes, with cabbage and bacon on the side” but also a pig’s foot “in gravy made of reduced braising liquid, thick with pillowy shallots and green flecks of deconstructed brussels sprouts” (Sifton). Sifton concluded with the proclamation that this style of pork was “very good: meat that is fat; fat that is meat”. Concluding remarks Bloomfield has listed Michael Ruhlman’s Charcuterie as among her favourite food books. Publishers Weekly reviewer called Ruhlman “a food poet, and the pig is his muse” (Q&A). In August 2009, it was reported that Bloomfield had always wanted to write a cookbook (Marx) and, in July 2010, HarperCollins imprint Ecco publisher and foodbook editor Dan Halpern announced that he was planning a book with her, tentatively titled, A Girl and Her Pig (Andriani “Ecco Expands”). As a “cookbook with memoir running throughout” (Maurer), this will discuss the influence of the pig on her life as well as how to cook pork. This text will obviously also add to the data known about The Spotted Pig, but until then, this brief gastrobiography has attempted to outline some of the human, and in this case, animal, stories that lie behind all businesses. References Andrews, Colman. “Its Up To You, New York, New York.” Gourmet Apr. (2009): 18-22, 111. Andriani, Lynn. “Ecco Expands Cookbook Program: HC Imprint Signs Up Seven New Titles.” Publishers Weekly 12 Jul. (2010) 3 Sep. 2010 http://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/book-news/cooking/article/43803-ecco-expands-cookbook-program.html Andriani, Lynn. “Gourmand Awards Receive Record Number of Cookbook Entries.” Publishers Weekly 27 Sep. 2010 http://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/book-news/cooking/article/44573-gourmand-awards-receive-record-number-of-cookbook-entries.html Appadurai, Arjun. 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