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In this Modern Asian Studies book symposium, scholars of South Asia analyse the political, ethical, and epistemic aspects of market life. They build on the 2020 Cambridge volume, Rethinking Markets in Modern India: Embedded Exchange and Contested Jurisdiction , edited by Ajay Gandhi, Barbara Harriss-White, Douglas Haynes, and Sebastian Schwecke. This interdisciplinary conversation approaches transactional realms from the disciplines of history, anthropology, development studies, and political economy. The symposium's contributors examine a range of pertinent issues that encompass customary forms of exchange and capitalist aspects of trade. Among the topics discussed are those of market fetishism, bazaar knowledge, social embeddedness, forms of transactional representation and translation, and institutional and regulatory contexts for commerce. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Indonesian invasion of East Timor in December 1975 and subsequent military operations to suppress the East Timorese resistance led to widespread displacement and famine in 1977–79. With Indonesia restricting access to East Timor during the operations, a set of photographs of famine-afflicted children, taken by Australian journalist Peter Rodgers and published in metropolitan daily newspapers in Melbourne and Sydney in November 1979, triggered renewed debate about conditions in the territory. This article traces the production and circulation of the photographs by a range of image brokers, those working in the media and those campaigning for East Timor's independence. The Rodgers photographs are now recognised as iconic and foundational in the collection of images used in the independence campaign. However, the history of the Rodgers photographs and the discourses that developed around them demonstrate the multiple interpretations and problems that arise in representations of famine through photographs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Australia's efforts to pursue public diplomacy through a government-funded international television service have been sporadic and ineffectual. The reasons for failure lie in the way such efforts have been pawns in other political conflicts and relationships – conflicts between Coalition governments and the ABC; conflicts between Kevin Rudd and Julia Gillard that dominated the Labor government from 2010 onwards; and the wish of key players in both major parties to please Rupert Murdoch and News Corp. The Abbott Government's 2014 axing of the ten-year contract with Australian Television slashed Australia's international broadcasting capacity. Domestic agendas have repeatedly trumped what should be a tool of international policy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Between 1975 and 1983, Indonesia's handling of the integration of East Timor caused a decline in Australia–Indonesia relations. This article argues that Australian foreign policy to isolate East Timor from its bilateral relationship with Indonesia failed because it conflicted with the activities of interested Australians who exposed Indonesia's military campaigns in East Timor. Activists created a powerful counter‐narrative about the conflict that mobilised public opposition to the official policy, and complicated Australia's co‐operative policies towards Indonesia. To demonstrate the challenge of public opinion to Australian foreign policy, the article examines a brief prepared by the First Assistant Secretary at the Department of Defence, William Beale Pritchett in October 1975, which warned that Indonesia's integration of East Timor would involve "force on a scale that could not be hidden from the Australian public eye". Applying Pritchett's brief to three case studies — Balibo (October 1975), invasion and occupation (1975–76), and humanitarian crises (1977–82) — the article demonstrates the conflict between public and official policy to illustrate why the official Australian policy failed, and how the East Timor issue had become inseparable from Australia–Indonesia relations by 1983. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents information related to the journal "Chemistry in New Zealand" (CiNZ) published by the New Zealand Institute of Chemistry (NZIC).

This article foregrounds a case of informal diplomacy with far reaching consequences for the international politics of postcolonial Indonesia and capitalist Southeast Asia during the Cold War. The case is Suharto's New Order Indonesia (1966–1998), where the Republic's diplomacy was dominated not by the foreign ministry but by a small elite network (jaringan) of sectarian activists of Catholic faith allied with military officers of an intelligence background against Communism and Islam. Operating under the patronage of intelligence czar Ali Murtopo, this jaringan emerged as a powerful and conservative channel of influence on the early New Order and steered some of its major diplomatic initiatives: from the covert diplomacy that ended Konfrontasi, and the founding and elaboration of ASEAN's diplomacy, to planning and justifying the annexation of East Timor in 1975. The article moves in three steps. One, it situates the New Order's informal diplomats in the long arc of diplomacy in postcolonial Indonesia. Two, it atomizes this network in sociological terms and probes how the habitus of its members shaped the substance and style of their diplomatic practices. Three, it examines the main foreign policy initiatives of this network. This Indonesian case brings to the study of informal diplomacy an appreciation of how partisan networks embedded in domestic and international circuits – rather than standalone individuals – shore up a strongman. It also offers insight into the tortured fightback by actors of 'formal' diplomacy as they come under the assault of informal diplomats and their patrons. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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This article examines how Muslim religious actors exert their collective authority within institutional settings. It focuses primarily on the role of the Australian National Imams Council (ANIC). The article examines ANIC's formation as a clerical organization and its role in qualifying, recruiting and monitoring imams in Australia. It draws on fieldwork data conducted between 2018-2019 and includes in-depth interviews with imams and sheikhs as well as ANIC members, Muslim academics and educators in the field of Islamic studies. The study includes survey data collected from members of the Muslim community about ANIC's legitimacy as a nation-wide representative council of imams. It investigates the extent to which participants recognize and contest ANIC's authority based on its interaction, inclusion and transparency with the wider Muslim community. The article concludes that ANIC operates with the goal of legitimizing its religious authority through its organizational structure, traditional Islamic schooling and social activism in a localized Australian context. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Myanmar (Burma) from 2007 to 2020 observed a short-lived détente with major Western governments after decades of ostracism. Armed conflict and mass atrocities worsened despite significant democratisation. The article outlines Myanmar's short-lived democratic rule from beginning to end, before its coup d'etat in early 2021 and acceleration to state failure by the time of writing. This article assesses the strengths and limitations of Western human rights diplomacy vis-à-vis Myanmar during this 14-year frame, using in-depth interviews with former/working diplomats and experts as primary sources, in addition to secondary sources. Ostracism dominated Western bilateralism pre-2011, followed by the principled engagement of Australia, Norway and the UNSG's good offices, the latter based on Articles 98 and 99 of the UN Charter. Myanmar's military democratised with the aim of counterbalancing overdependence on China and seeking legitimacy as reformers. A reverse trend was observed after the 2016 Rohingya crisis. It demonstrates the dangers of neglecting the law of diminishing returns through advocacy, and of conflating domestic democracy and human rights advocates as principled practitioners. It concludes that it is in the pragmatic interests of Western governments to coordinate and institutionalise human rights principles in longer-term foreign policymaking, and that democratisation before peacebuilding increases state fragility. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]