"I have some exciting news! I got in to Mac! Yay! Just thought I'd share hehe"

So I replied expressing my joy and pride that my friend had finally been enlightened towards the Apple Mac way and has managed to love and appreciate Macintosh technology with me and the rest of the minority:

"OMG! That's amazing news!! You have no idea how much you've just made my day!! Are you going to get one? We can have Mac parties & everything! :P LOL What was it that turned you from evil?"

This was the return message I received:

"What do you mean? You do know that I'm talking about Mac uni? Hehe"

*heart sinks*

I have never felt like such an idiot. I expressed my joy at the actual news and apologised for my noobiness. At least it made her laugh I guess. Congrats Kate, for getting accepted into Macquarie University :P

In other news, I got a haircut today. My head's cold.

Every day for the next 10 days I’ll research one aspect of our 10-point test (see below). I’ll publish a blog entry (on The Intelligent Investor and Bristlemouth) by lunch and then it’s your turn to add your comments and thoughts. On Friday 4 July we’ll have covered the final point and I’ll need to make a decision: cheap, expensive or one for the ‘too hard basket’.

The non-banking investment banking industry

So let’s get cracking by taking a look at the industry. While Babcock is often called an investment bank, it’s not a bank. It’s not regulated by APRA, can’t accept retail deposits and doesn’t have access to the Reserve Bank of Australia (or any other reserve bank for that matter). It’s business is corporate advisory, fund development and fund management, none of which requires a banking licence.

And it’s not really an industry per se. Typically when researching this question we’re looking at, for example, the grocery business or the banking business, and trying to get a feel for the general economics of the industry. Is it capital intensive? Is it competitive? Is it cyclical?

It’s impossible to pigeon-hole Babcock into any particular category. But without getting into the specifics of Babcock’s business – we’ll get onto that tomorrow – we can attempt to answer the same general questions about its business model and competition.

Corporate advisory is a competitive but potentially highly lucrative business. Most ‘wanna be’ corporate advisors struggle, but the few that rise to the top can generate hundreds of millions of dollars in fees without bearing any risk.

Most of the successful players, including the likes of Macquarie Group and UBS, bring balance sheet and underwriting capabilities to the table, which gives them an edge when it comes to the big deals. They also bring their conflicts of interest, which has allowed the likes of Carnegie Wiley and Gresham Partners (part owned by Wesfarmers) to carve out successful businesses on the back of independence.

Most of Babcock’s advisory fees are generated from its own managed funds – a locked-in client is as good as any – but it does have specific industry knowledge that is sometimes used by external clients.

Fund development – the lynch pin

The most important cog in the Babcock wheel seems to be its ability to generate new funds by taking assets onto its own balance sheet for a period of time, before creating a listed fund and selling it the assets at a profit. It’s been obscenely profitable over the past few years thanks to booming equity markets – it didn’t seem to matter what asset you bought, you could flog it off at a profit – and every investment bank around the world has been getting in on the act.

While a lot of participants think they are geniuses when the wind is at their back, my guess is that if there is any sort of competitive advantage in this business, it would come from an ability to identify assets that are cheap. As of, well, now, the pass the parcel game is over, and anyone caught with overvalued assets on their balance sheet has a problem. But if you’ve identified assets that are cheap, or even reasonably priced, it shouldn’t matter if you have to hang on to them for a few years.

Again, we’ll come to the specifics of Babcock tomorrow but it seems they’ve done some intelligent and somewhat contrarian things over the years, especially before they listed (think Japanese property, German property and wind farms before they became the latest craze).

While distinguishing skill from luck is nigh on impossible, it is conceivable that some participants could have a competitive advantage.

The managed fund gravy train

Not only have Babcock been selling their assets at huge profits, they’ve been selling them to listed funds under lucrative long-term management contracts with, you guessed it, Babcock. While generating new business was only possible while the stockmarket was dishing out cash like the late Kerry Packer in a casino, the funds already created will remain lucrative as long as the contracts stay in place.

As far as economic returns go, there aren’t many better businesses than funds management. Especially ones where the funds are locked in (while Babcock will get lower fees if the value of its funds falls, you can’t redeem your investment, you can only sell it to someone else). Once you cover your fixed costs – how hard can it be to buy a wind farm and hold it for the next 25 years? – everything flows through to the bottom line.

So, after all that, I’d sum up the Babcock business model as follows:

a) potentially lucrative for the bigger players;

b) capital intensive but with the potential to earn excellent returns on capital;

c) highly dependent on financial markets and therefore highly cyclical; and

d) a people business – long-term returns are driven by quality of staff and risk management.

Tomorrow I’ll publish my thoughts on the Babcock business itself. But in the meantime, why not post your own thoughts on Babcock’s industry – and my assessment of it – in the comments area below.

London-based Rio is committed to securing more than the 71 percent agreed by Brazil's Cia. Vale do Rio Doce in February, and greater than "the 85 percent and 95 percent estimates that have figured prominently in recent speculation,'' Macquarie analysts led by Jim Lennon said in a report today.

Mills in China, the largest iron-ore buyers, have failed to arrest a tripling of prices in five years. Rio is seeking to double output from its Western Australian mines to 320 million metric tons within five years to take advantage of these prices.

"Investors should be prepared for an extended and potentially hostile conclusion to the negotiations,'' Lennon wrote in the report. Talks may continue past the end of June, he said.

Rio fell by as much as A$2.33, or 1.7 percent, to A$136.27, and was A$137.00 at 10:13 a.m. Sydney time on the Australian stock exchange. It has gained 2.3 percent this year outpacing the benchmark index, which as declined 17.6 percent.

Rio and rival BHP Billiton Ltd. want to charge a so-called freight premium on iron-ore sales to Asian mills because companies such as China's Baosteel Group Corp. pay less to ship the material from the companies' Australian mines than from Vale's operations in Brazil.

Rio spokeswoman Amanda Buckley was not available for comment at her office.

Here are some statistics from my job search:

Graduate Analyst Roles i applied to : 8

• Lazard Carnegie Wylie
• Macquarie
• Citi
• Morgan Stanley
• Merrill Lynch
• Lehman Brothers
• JPMorgan
• Credit Suisse

(note: i didn't apply to UBS and GS)

Number of first round interviews: 5

Number of final round interviews: 3

Number of offers: 3

As a result, i will be moving to Sydney in 2009. Guess i will have to change this blog to "A Sydney Life"

If you want to get an analyst role at an investment bank, here check out my advice in this post.

I’ve submitted further comments regarding that article and the issue of Mrs Kibble’s salary and her role to The Liverpool City Champion and posted them below.

I stand by my comment that we have to pay for qualified people, especially those with the expertise required. What would we be able to do if we didn't have the financials of Liverpool sorted out? The Macquarie/Oasis situation needed to be addressed, now that is done (or at least underway) the elected council can make the decisions necessary to get our community up and running. We have some clever people here in Liverpool but how many people do we have that could have done the negotiating that was required. Thanks Mrs Kibble, I may not agree with everything you've done but at least you've paved the way for a new council. We are looking forward to having our Council back, now we need the citizens of Liverpool to make clear choices, not just tick one box allowing others (party officials) to decide who our councilors are. Take a close look at those of us who are running and as a voter decide who you would like to be making decisions so we don't end up in the same place in another 8-12years... remember as councilors we live here too, what happens in Liverpool is important to us as individuals just as it is to the rest of the community. Elect People who are passionate and willing to do the things that are best for Liverpool as a whole not just special interest groups or those with an agenda of their own.

 

When it all comes out in the wash we can get on with the business of running Liverpool for the betterment of the whole community, making decisions about Collingwood and local issue with out having the Macquarie/Oasis hanging over our heads.

What is important to me now is that we acknowledge the past, and Mrs Kibble’s efforts at rectifying Liverpool City Council’s situation and move very quickly on to focus on new representation and the candidates for the upcoming election. I maintain that a forward focus and highly anticipate a return to an elected council as a member of this community. And I believe that we will succeed by electing councilors with a passion for this community, a desire to see it flourish into the future, no hidden agendas and who are able to separate the needs of our community from party politics.

Let’s not dwell on the mistakes of the past when it is our power to move forward into the future and build a community together.

Just as I was furrowing my brow and thinking, "Yes indeed, where are today's Margaret Meads?," my dad sent me a link to a Der Spiegel interview with Lila Abu-Lughod on the occasion of Israel's founding and Palestine's nakba. "Ah," I thought to myself, relieved, "here we go! An anthropologist in the public sphere!"

It was particularly timely given that Bunzl credits Abu-Lughod's 1991 article, "Writing Against Culture," with the most persuasive argument for the epistemology that he criticizes.  Now, mind you, Abu-Lughod is no pundit, and this is an interview, rather than a regular magazine column, but it's always exciting to see an anthropologist in the mainstream news, and a quick read of the interview will convince anyone that
Abu-Lughod is hardly suffering from an inability to speak to the public because she's too busy complexifying the world. (As my dad put it in his e-mail to me, "no wasted words, she goes straight to the real point. I admire her, both for her clarity, and for her guts.")

Bunzl's article is well written and his point well argued, but I'm not convinced it's our dominant epistemological paradigm that keeps anthropologists out of the public sphere. I suspect that there are a few other factors that are more influential. For one, I know that many anthropologists are skeptical of writing for the popular press, because all too often their arguments get distorted by editorial processes over which they have little control.

For another, the incentive structures at many of our universities do not favor anthropologists who write for the popular press. I don't know how this is factored at other institutions, but at Macquarie University, at least, an article written for the popular press is formally valued at 1/10th (one TENTH!) the value given to an article published in a peer reviewed journal. The weighting of our publications affects not only our performance reviews as academics, but even the funding that our department receives.

In other words, I could write ONE article for American Anthropologist (Category C1, Article in Scholarly Refereed Journal, weight: 1.0) or TEN for the Sydney Morning Herald (Category L, Other Public Output
Substantial scholarly contribution to newspaper or magazine that must be in area of expertise of author, weight: 0.1) and Macquarie would see it as the same amount of work, in spite of the fact that the latter might have a significant impact on public opinion, while the former is virtually guaranteed to have no impact whatsoever.  And I don't think I get ANY credit for contributing to Culture Matters, even though the world is far more likely to read my blog postings than my book (Category A1, Major work of research: substantial innovative contribution published by recognised publisher or University Press, weight: 5.0).

--L.L. Wynn (cross-posted at Khaldoun)

Just as I was furrowing my brow and thinking, "Yes indeed, where are today's Margaret Meads?," my dad sent me a link to a Der Spiegel interview with Lila Abu-Lughod on the occasion of Israel's founding and Palestine's nakba. "Ah," I thought to myself, relieved, "here we go! An anthropologist in the public sphere!"

It was particularly timely given that Bunzl credits Abu-Lughod's 1991 article, "Writing Against Culture," with the most persuasive argument for the epistemology that he criticizes.  Now, mind you, Abu-Lughod is no pundit, and this is an interview, rather than a regular magazine column, but it's always exciting to see an anthropologist in the mainstream news, and a quick read of the interview will convince anyone that
Abu-Lughod is hardly suffering from an inability to speak to the public because she's too busy complexifying the world. (As my dad put it in his e-mail to me, "no wasted words, she goes straight to the real point. I admire her, both for her clarity, and for her guts.")

Bunzl's article is well written and his point well argued, but I'm not convinced it's our dominant epistemological paradigm that keeps anthropologists out of the public sphere. I suspect that there are a few other factors that are more influential. For one, I know that many anthropologists are skeptical of writing for the popular press, because all too often their arguments get distorted by editorial processes over which they have little control.

For another, the incentive structures at many of our universities do not favor anthropologists who write for the popular press. I don't know how this is factored at other institutions, but at Macquarie University, at least, an article written for the popular press is formally valued at 1/10th (one TENTH!) the value given to an article published in a peer reviewed journal. The weighting of our publications affects not only our performance reviews as academics, but even the funding that our department receives.

In other words, I could write ONE article for American Anthropologist (Category C1, Article in Scholarly Refereed Journal, weight: 1.0) or TEN for the Sydney Morning Herald (Category L, Other Public Output
Substantial scholarly contribution to newspaper or magazine that must be in area of expertise of author, weight: 0.1) and Macquarie would see it as the same amount of work, in spite of the fact that the latter might have a significant impact on public opinion, while the former is virtually guaranteed to have no impact whatsoever.

--L.L. Wynn (cross-posted at Culture Matters)

Suite à une défaillance de trackengine, T0m de Vagueo a été plus rapide sur ce coup (bravo et merci pour le tuyau), et il faut que je trouve quelque chose d'original à ajouter... Voilà : Sandy Point c'est à la pointe sud de l'Australie, juste au nord de la Tasmanie. C'est une magnifique plage déserte d'après la photo satellite, et en cliquant dessus vous saurez comment vous y rendre si vous allez chez les kangourous.

On the contribution of academic programs to Capabilities
I see the advantage of retaining the units currently made available by SCMP and Humanities, and grouping some of these into People and Planet electives. However, it may be equally plausible to develop a single introductory unit that is compulsory for all students. For example, a unit in Critical thinking that draws its material and examples from Cultural Anthropology and Business/Workplace Ethics. Students of the introductory module could be given the task of contemplating, from time to time throughout their degree studies, the lessons they have learnt in this module.

I propose that such a unit could be assessed in the same fashion that a typical SCMP or Humanities unit would be assessed. It would provide students with references and awareness of the opportunities for further study at MQ in these fields.
Most importantly it would prepare students for a capstone module (or something similar).

The capstone module would require students to demonstrate that they have developed the capabilities desired of them. Students might keep a journal or maintain a blog during the course of their studies. They might undertake independent research, or they might add SCMP and Humanities units to their stream. Whatever the method, they would aim to demonstrate at the completion of their degree the graduate capabilities of a Macquarie University student.

This proposal would still permit for students to take one or two electives from the “People” and “Planet” designations, including Languages.

On Academic Program Delivery - Technologies and Modes
From my perspective as a mature aged student, the availability of on-line resources is a necessity. While I much prefer the face to face contact of lectures and tutorials, the necessities of working full-time will force me to undertake the remainder of my degree externally. I would value every opportunity for social interaction, knowledge creation and knowledge consumption that Macquarie University could offer as part of its commitment to students.

In line with the Principles set out in this section of the green paper, I would recommend adding the following principle:
- Respect the needs and capitalise on the strengths of the external students of Macquarie University.

I note that SCMP and Mitch Parsell have given support for an Undergraduate conference at the end of 2008. This conference does place the external and OUA students at the forefront. I hope that this event becomes a regular part of the MQ commitment to its students.

On Academic Program Delivery: Structure and Shape
I am among those who find the current system of coherencies and study patterns confusing. The 100,200,300 level divisions seem straight forward though. In any case, it is currently a confusing task to decide upon a course of study. Any system that can introduce clarity would likely be an improvement on the current system.

Finally, the potential elimination of the hard copy handbook has one disadvantage that comes to mind. Students are held to the rules and systems in place upon entry to their degree. Keeping an electronic copy from the year of entry would therefore be necessary. Does MQ plan to provide a CD version?

A draft of this contribution has been posted at http://mqphil.wordpress.com/2008/04/07/review-of-academic-programs-green-paper/

Further comments/responses from some of our students have been posted here for your consideration.

Many thanks and best regards,

Brad Frederiksen

You can browse the Engaging Students Home Page or subscribe to their RSS feed.

Award for Excellence in Teaching at 100 level: Cynthia Townley
Award for Excellence in Teaching at 200 level: Mianna Lotz
Award for Excellence in Teaching at 300 level: Maree Delofski
Award for Excellence in Student Engagement: Willa McDonald and Peter Doyle
Award for Innovation in Teaching: Kalpana Ram
Award for Excellence in Teaching Support: Clara Wong
Award for Excellence in the Scholarship of Teaching: Nicole Matthews

Congratulations to all.

Also, SCMP are circulating a new draft Assessment Policy Document. I haven't seen this document but if you have any issues relating to Macquarie's Assessment Policy then let your Lecturers and/or T.A.s know about it.

Olam hit a intraday high of S$1.97, with 13.2 million shares traded, a day after the stock slipped 12.6 percent on rumours that the food and agricultural products firm has exposure to a commodities brokerage firm which has been hit by liquidity problems.

Macquarie analyst Patrick Yau, who kept Olam at "outperform" at a target price of S$3.82, said the recent sell-off in Olam's shares on Wednesday has created greater value in the stock.

UBS analyst Gaurung Bhatia also said Olam's shares were oversold. "We believe there may be concerns about its working capital requirements given its high gearing levels and high commodity prices...the concerns are overdone and the stock should bounce back," Bhatia said.

Chinese-based Synear Food Holdings fell as much as 10.7 percent to S$0.375 with 9.7 million shares traded a day after the firm issued a profit guidance for its 2008 first-quarter earnings, dealers said. The frozen foods company said that a recent snowstorm in China was expected to cut its sales in the first quarter by up to 10 percent as compared to the same period in 2007.

The company said that sales would still be higher than what they were in the fourth quarter of 2007.

CIMB analyst Ho Choon Seng downgraded Synear's investment rating to "underperform" from "trading sell" and cut its share target price to S$0.35 from S$0.77, citing poor near-term outlook and execution risks from the company's aggressive expansion plans in China to capitalise on the upcoming Beijing Olympics.

My views: Synear's price has dropped significantly recently from more than S$1.00 to its current price of about S$0.37 in a short period. Though its suffering from the snowstorm impact and rising inflation, I still expect a decent profit, perhaps, a diminishing profits in view of the China's increasing inflation. Somehow, I disagree with CIMB's investment ratings. I find synear to be a good company to hold over long term due to its strong financial backing. Most of the time, they are performing relative better than the industry. I am looking for further bargain around S$0.20-S$0.25.

Screaming bargains are still hard to find. The most significant pain has been in the sectors that were most overpriced – namely insurance and banking. Even in these sectors, though, we have high-quality businesses like QBE Insurance coming back to much more reasonable prices. Overall, industrial companies are 29% cheaper than they were in November.

Sure, there’s plenty to worry about. Credit crises, liquidity crises, a US recession, a global slowdown, Australia’s dependence on the commodity boom – the list goes on. But there’s always plenty to worry about. The time to do something about it is when conditions seem best.

Boom times for big banks

Consider the big banks. For the past two years conditions have been perfect and the banks have been lending money willy-nilly and at prices that in no way compensated them for the risks. That was the time to worry.

Now the big four banks’ competitors are dropping like flies. Macquarie Group has quit the market for mortgages and most of the non-bank lenders are on their last legs if not already dead. Risk is once again being priced appropriately at worst and attractively at best. That’s a recipe for future profitability. And in anticipation of that profitability, you should be considering buying, not selling.

For mine, at two times book, the banks still aren’t screaming value, especially given that some of the stupid loans made over the past few years are yet to manifest themselves as bad. But they’re a lot cheaper than they were.

The same holds true elsewhere. In some areas of the market – particularly among heavily indebted companies – the falls look justified. But many high-quality and well-financed businesses have been dragged down alongside them. Cochlear (-30%), Macquarie Group (-48%), ASX (-38%), Westfield Group (-21%), Aristrocrat Leisure (-39%), Billabong (-34%), Cabcharge (-34%), Computershare (-28%) and Harvey Norman (-51%) are just the ones off the top of my head. Some of these make better buying opportunities than others, but in all cases we’re certainly past the time for panicking.

Disclosure: The author, Steve Johnson, doesn't own any of the shares mentioned but staff own shares in Cochlear, Macquarie Group, Harvey Norman and Westfield Group.

The main speakers are Hon. Abbas Lel Hasham, MP, Free Patriotic Movement Party, Parliament of Lebanon and Dr Pierre Raffoul of the American University of Beirut, Adviser to the Free Patriotic Movement Party, Lebanon.

They will be discussing "Contemporary Issues in Lebanon's Politics." The event coincides with the build-up to upcoming elections in Lebanon.

The lecture will be held on Wednesday 12 March from 7:00pm-8:30pm, in W5A T2. The event is free, but donations on the night are welcome. For more information contact mecentre@hmn.mq.edu.au.

Well, today I saw the first issue. Jovan showed me his copy. It's a glossy magazine. "It's called Speculum," Jovan told me. My jaw dropped. Jovan said, "Isn't that...?"

I finished his sentence: "...A tool used in vaginal and anal examinations?"

The psychology guy next door said, "Does that mean that we are a bodily cavity to examine?"

Much hilarity and bad punning ensued.

Now, what, you might ask, does that have to do with applied anthropology? Umm... Well, there is a fine academic tradition of deconstructing the gynecological exam. Consider "Dramaturgical Desexualization: The Sociology of the Vaginal Examination" (1971) by James M. Henslin and Mae A. Biggs, which analyzed the ritual steps taken and role playing involved as a woman prepares for a gynecological exam, in which, as they argued, she was turned from person into pelvis in order to deal with "the problematics of genital exposure" in a nonsexual context. See also "Public Privates: Performing Gynecology from Both Ends of the Speculum," by Terri Kapsalis.

No, really, I'm just grasping at straws here. I just wanted to have an excuse to share with all of you the funny name of the new student publication at Macquarie. But hey, David, Cassie, Ben, Ben, and Emiko, bravo for getting it off the ground, even if I have no idea how you chose the name.

PS Let me preempt clever commentators by saying that yes I know that speculum means "mirror" in Latin, thanks.

Aaron Dykes
JonesReport
December 14, 2007

As Texas Governor Rick Perry goes on the road to stump for Giuliani's campaign, it is increasingly clear that the two figureheads not only share a penchant for presiding over thinly-veiled corruption, but do their presiding in the same globalist circles.

Perry's appearance at the secretive Bilderberg meeting in 2007 gives credence to whispers about the Texas Governor becoming a GOP running mate alongside Giuliani, even as Perry denies interest in being VP. Bilderberg has a noted and well-deserved reputation as kingmaker.

Together, Rick Perry, as Governor, and Rudy Giuliani, as a named partner in the Houston-based Bracewell & Giuliani, have been instrumental in selling off Texas infrastructure and utilities while ushering in agents of globalism and (North American Union) regional control.

TRANS-TEXAS CORRIDOR

Giuliani's law firm is heavily tied to Rick Perry's Texas-style 'Big Dig'-- a highly contentious and very real Trans-Texas Corridor that has foreign firms building up on land seized in the face of opposition from both the state legislature and the people.

Bracewell & Giuliani is exclusively representing the Spanish-owned Cintra and essentially won the contract to build the first ever private toll road in Texas. The Online Journal refers to Bracewell & Giuliani as "the 'guiding' law firm on the privatization of Texas State Highway 121"

Cintra is further partnered with the Australian company Macquarie, who "previously acquired the business and assets of an investment bank known as Giuliani Capital Advisors," according to Cliff Kincaid who further observes:

Terri Hall, founder and director of Texans Uniting for Reform and Freedom (TURF), notes that Giuliani clients with an interest in acquiring Texas roads and infrastructure have also invested in his presidential campaign. She comments, "This could explain why Giuliani has spent so much time fundraising in Texas. The monied proponents of the Trans-Texas Corridor, of which there are many, would like to see this man become President."

Perry's advocacy for the TTC has been unwavering and he has refused to back down even after the legislature passed a two-year moratorium. Perry called in U.S. Secretary of Transportation Mary Peters to lobby against the moratorium while publicly declaring that there is no alternative to toll roads (Peters has, of course, been present at a number of NAFTA super-highway meetings as well).

Bracewell & Giuliani gave Rick Perry $20,000 in PAC money in the 2006 cycle. Current Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott was also a partner in Bracewell & Giuliani, which Lobby Watch suggests was related to his run for office after stepping down from the Texas Supreme Court. He received $25,000 in PAC contributions in the 2006 cycle.

TxU BUYOUT

As we previously reported, the 'largest ever' buyout of TxU (now slashed from $45 billion to $32 billion) was managed by KKR, who are represented annually at Bilderberg by partner Henry Kravis.

"Energy Future bought TXU Corp. in a $32 billion leveraged buyout that closed in October. It was formed by Kohlberg, Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Co., TPG, formerly Texas Pacific Group, and other investors," reports the Dallas Morning News.

The deal stalled over environmental issues with TxU's plans for new coal plants, but never faltered thanks to cheerleading by Rick Perry as well as personal appearances by Henry Kravis, who is known as a virtuoso in the world of leveraged buyouts (see Barbarians at the Gate which dramatizes his infamous high-priced buyout with R.J. Reynolds and also features a younger but no less-aged Fred Thompson).

Governor Perry was involved in facilitating the TxU buyout, including the issuance of an executive order to instigate fast-track approval for TxU plant deals:

"Last year, after private meetings with TXU executives, Perry fast-tracked the permitting process for TXU's 11-plant expansion through an executive order, slashing the time frame in half, to six months...."

"The bottom line: Only Governor Perry and TXU, which stands to make a lot of money, are championing these plants."

Goldman Sachs and Credit Suisse First Boston (both deeply nested in Bilderberg) were also involved in the deal while Bracewell & Giuliani represented TxU (as they handle a number of energy companies). A number of criminal insider trading cases involving Pakistani financiers working inside these firms-- including Hafiz Naseem-- have already been prosecuted as a result of the buyout. Others, still under investigation, are potentially outstanding.

In fact, Hafiz Naseem, then a Credit Suisse investor, was defended by Bracewell & Giuliani's Marc Mukasey, who is the son of U.S. Attorney General Michael Mukasey. Bracewell's Mukasey commented that the "case is inference built on inference built on inference." However, prosecutors were investigating other links to alleged inside trading that went as high as Pakistani Prime Minister Aziz, who is also a former Citigroup chairman. Investigators also believe there was a link to al Qaeda money laundering.

MEXICO

And what about Mexico? If a continent-wide merger is underway, it seems to coincide with the cozy relationship Perry and Vicente Fox had as contemporaries. As WND reports, the vision to expand the Corridor into Mexico is heavily discussed and well under way.

On May 24, Gonzáles Parás announced during his recent meetings in Austin, Perry had agreed the envisioned Trans North America Corridor would pass through Laredo and connect with San Antonio, just as Mexico ultimately planned to extend the superhighway south into Colombia.

Note also that the current U.S. ambassador to Mexico is none other than Bracewell & Giuliani partner Tony Garza (who is, incidentally, married to Mexico's richest woman, billionaire Grupo Modelo heiress María Asunción Aramburuzabala).

Read Full Article Here

What is the 'North American Union'?

• ANZ
• CBA
• Westpac

Foundation and AMA -

• Macquarie

AMA only -

• NAB
• BankWest

There is a lot of gossip in here. Just as a first cut, I went to the banks' websites to have a read - at this point only CBA had their media release out. The rest still had their usual "we are wonderful" media releases.

Macquarie going Foundation is interesting. The difference between Foundation and Advanced is really only in the Retail area and, as Mac Bank does not have a huge exposure to retail lending (except through securitisations) this seems a sensible approach.

NAB not getting Advanced credit risk is really a smack in the eye. They have (according to rumour) spent the most on their project of everyone and have failed to do it. For Australia's biggest bank this is not good. They, and BankWest, can beexpected to catch up soon, though. APRA originally said that no-one would be able to go AMA without an Advanced credit risk approach, o this means they, and the Millionaires' Factory can be expected to go Advanced credit risk soon.
The notable absence is St. George - who seem to have disappeared off the radar. Anyone with decent gossip on this?

[BTW - if you do leave gossip I maintain I will not hand out contact details or other information unless compelled to do so by a court of law. Keep it factual and there should be no problems.]

*Free screening*

Introduced by the director, Tom Zubrycki

(Molly and Mobarak, The Diplomat, Billal),

and followed by a post-screening Q&A discussion.

Temple of Dreams follows a group of Lebanese Australians who set up an Islamic youth centre in Western Sydney. The documentary - by one of Australia’s leading documentary film makers - follows the group's battle against the local council to keep the centre open, and their struggle to fit into the wider community.

When: Wednesday 14 November

Time: 4-6pm

Place: Building C5C Room 498 (Enter via Research Hub EAST), Macquarie University

RSVP: By 12 November 2007 to crsi@scmp.mq.edu.au or on 02 9850 9171

**FREE**

Please spread the word to your colleagues and friends - download event flyer here.

For more information about the film, click here, or visit

http://australianscreen.com.au/titles/temple-dreams

In the largest outsourcing deal involving an Indian tech services firm, Tata Consultancy Services Ltd or TCS, Asia's largest software company, has been contracted for 10 years by information and audience measurement major AC Nielsen Co. to manage its networks, finance and human resource functions.

TCS will receive at least $1.2 billion or Rs4,740 crore, which is unevenly spread over the contract period, with a potential upsidedepending on performance. "This deal commits us to a certain amount of spending of $1.2 billion; in some areas, services are on fixed-price
basis, in others, there are incentives," said Mitchell Habib, executive vice-president, global business, Nielsen, in a phone interview.

Rest of the article here.

Reliance Q2 rises 28% on refining gains

Reliance Industries Ltd (RIL) posted a 28% increase in its second quarter profit (compared with a year ago) on the back of higher earnings from oil refining and chemicals. The Rs3,837 crore net profit bettered the Rs3,300 crore market expectations of seven analysts polled by Bloomberg. Revenues rose 6% to Rs33,402 crore.

In a statement issued on Thursday, RIL said it earned $13.6 (Rs537.20) from processing each barrel of oil into fuels, compared with $9.1 a year ago. Profit from the refining and marketing business rose 56%, from Rs1,486 crore in the second quarter of last year to Rs2,321 crore in the quarter ended 30 September 2007.

Rest of the article here.

Macquarie to buy 50% of Religare wealth management arm

Australia's biggest securities firm, Macquarie Bank Ltd, will buy 50% of an Indian wealth management firm founded by Religare Enterprises Ltd for an undisclosed sum. The business, Religare Wealth Management Services Ltd, will be renamed Religare Macquarie Wealth Ltd.

The number of Indians with at least $1 million (Rs3.95 crore) in net financial assets grew 21% in 2006, the second fastest in Asia Pacific, according to a Merrill Lynch & Co. and Capgemini report released on Wednesday. Rising incomes and the country's rallying equity and real estate markets have helped create wealth. India's high net worth individuals hold a total $350 billion in financial assets, it said.

Rest of the article here.

+++

Airport privatization appears to be the norm in Europe, given the news of Macquarie Airports' increased stake in Brussels. According to Egoli, the financial information service of Australia's SHAW Stockbrokering:

Macquarie Airports (MAP) announced that it has bought an additional 5% stake in Brussels Airport, taking its holding to 58.9%. The company said it bought the additional interest from Federale Participatie-en Investeringsmaatschappij (FIPM) for about $122 million. The Australian airport infrastructure owner said in a statement that the transaction with Belgian state-owned FPIM was completed Oct. 22 and the price was based on the directors' June 30 valuation. MAp chief executive Kerrie Mather said Brussels Airport had been an excellent performer since the group made its initial investment. ... Brussels Airport had generated EBITDA of euro 195 million in the 12 months to June 30, up from euro 136 million in the 12 months prior to the acquisition.

Macquarie's various entities have been aggressive players in privatization of public infrastructure. I'm personally somewhat conflicted on the idea of privatization -- what are functions that should clearly fall within the scope of public control, and what is better served being run by private interests?

Recently, a friend and former member of the Missouri legislature turned me on to a book titled The Fox in the Henhouse - How Privatization Threatens Democracy by Si Kahn and Elizabeth Minnich. The authors make a compelling argument that privatization of the commons does not serve the public interest. In many cases, I agree -- prisons and public water supply systems are two prime examples of public functions that should not be run by private for-profit interests. In his role of devil's advocate, another friend who's currently a member of the Missouri House of Representatives loaned me a DVD set of the PBS/WGBH Boston television series Commanding Heights, which covers the war of ideas between Keynesian economics and the views of Friedrich Hayek, set against the backdrop of globalization.

Yes, Virginia, I am indeed conflicted and haven't made up my mind whether or not privatization is a good thing. My guess is that I'll probably come to the conclusion that some governmental functions should remain in the public sphere and that others are perfectly fine when operated by private interests. Whether or not I can develop a set of coherent principles remains to be seen. For now, whether I think privatization is to be lauded or, alternatively, anathema, runs akin to Justice Potter Stewart's view of pornography in Jacobellis v. Ohio -- "I know it when I see it."

At Macquarie University all applications to the Ethics Review Committee (Human Research) go through a vetting process that can send them along several tracks for consideration. For the moment, two tracks for consideration exist, but there is the possibility that a third is arising (a couple of applications have been recommended for a new trajectory in the past month as the Committee responds to language in the National Statement on Research Ethics that allows us to shorten review of applications with no perceptible risk).

In this posting, I want to help clarify for students what the two review trajectories are, how long they take, and what are the factors that will likely lead an application to be sent along one or the other. As our own records show in the Ethics Committe (and is on the diagram) over three-quarters of all applications are now handled through the Expedited online review, which seems to be speeding up the process (in addition to getting rid of the previous system of monthly deadlines so that applications are rolling).

Applications without significant issues (see below) can be handled online through the Expedited process. There is no need to apply specially for this; all applications are examined and then allocated either to the Expedited or the Normal process. The Expedited process can take up to 20 working days (four work weeks) although it generally takes less time in the off-peak months (the Committee tends to get swamped at the start of the year as an influx of MA and Honours projects comes into the office).

The Normal process can take longer or shorter because it depends upon the next time that the Committee will have a physical meeting (see the schedule here). If you have an application with certain complicating factors (again, see below), you actually WANT it to go to a meeting so that it can be evaluated, discussed, voted upon, and reported upon at this meeting. You do NOT want to hide the complications and hope that it will slide through on an electronic review. The longest application turnarounds happen when an applicant tries to conceal things to get an electronic review, and then part way through the electronic review, after days have already been wasted, someone points out this fact, and the application gets remanded over to the Normal process. This can happen, for example, if an applicant indicates that he or she is not investigating illegal activity—i.e., answering ‘no’ to Item 3.8—when it becomes clear this is a possibility, as it often is with open-ended interviews.

If you have a complicated application with some serious issues, you definitely need to be aware of the meeting schedule, and you want your application to go to the meeting. You can actually get very quick turnaround on this if you time it correctly. Please note, however, that you are only guaranteed to get into a meeting if you get your application in two weeks before the meeting—the day before will mean that you can’t be considered until the following meeting, so you’ll have to wait at least a month.

So I can already hear you asking, what are the key issues that demand a Normal review process rather than an Expedited one?

1) Investigating illegal behaviour: If you’re directly investigating illegal activity, then the Committee needs to carefully consider the risks (including to you), the reporting requirements, the applicable law, and the risks to the university.

The question of whether or not information about illegal activity may come to light during the research is a lot more ambiguous. I am personally concerned that an overly high bar currently applies to open-ended interviews with populations that might have been engaged in illegal behaviour (that is, just about any population). Anthropologists get questioned about this by the Committee a lot, especially when they want to work in areas where illegal activity is pretty common (e.g., borders, communities with drug abuse, at-risk families). Personally, I think that the Committee is overly sensitive on this one, and I’m strongly encouraging that we give out advice for researchers, helping to clarify what their reporting responsibilities are under the law (most don’t know this) and what we consider important ethical considerations to be. Currently, we ask every researcher to come up with his or her own process for contingencies. I’m not happy about this, and I’m working to fix it.

2) Working with vulnerable populations: This condition does frequently apply to anthropological research, although Macquarie is most concerned about disabled people, refugees, asylum-seekers, Aboriginal communities, prisoners, hospital patients, and anyone else covered in 4.2. You’ll notice that all minorities and children are not on this list, so applications that include them are not automatically put through the Normal process but may still be directed along the Expedited path.

3) Deception of subjects (unless it is terribly minor): This issue tends not to apply to ethnographic projects as they seldom involve systematic deception (except, perhaps, self-deception). But this goes to the issue of informed consent; how can a person truly agree to participate in research if he or she does not know what that entails? Deception does not mean that a project will be rejected, but it usually requires a discussion of the Committee to approve it.

4) A conflict of interest: The whole Committee will have to review a proposal when there is a conflict of interest, but only the types of conflict of interest described in Section 8 of the application. Most participant observation does not involve these sorts of conflict of interest, as they primarily concentrate on asymmetries of power or role conflict in which unintentional coercion might occur with subjects. For example, if you are an employer and want to study your employees, you may have a conflict of interest.

5) Institutional information sought: If you answer ‘yes’ to Item 6.1 and need to fill out Appendix D, then you will go to a full Committee discussion. This involves seeking personal records about people from the government, police, hospital, school, or similar organization. That is, it involves examining personal and typically confidential files. Note: this doesn’t apply if you ask for those files from your subjects, only when you go to them from the organization holding them. From the description, it is clear that this does not generally apply to ethnographic work, although I can imagine some projects where it might.

6) Passive consent sought: In some very limited settings (see the Ethics Committee’s Guidelines), researchers may seek for an ‘opt out’ form of consent. This only really applies to school-based research, where it’s often very hard to get kids to take consent forms home to their parents or guardians and then get them back. So many forms get lost or never shown to parents that, in some circumstances, researchers ask to have a ‘passive consent’ process. It’s only really possible if the students will be doing tasks for the research that are very similar to what they would normally do in the classroom (that is, you couldn’t do a survey on sexual behaviour or run medical tests on kids, and hope to have it get approval for passive consent).

If one of these conditions does apply to your research, you will want your application to go to the Committee meeting, so you may even want to mention it in the email when you submit your application electronically (you’ll also need to submit a hard copy for archiving and photocopy). Remember: It’s not necessarily a longer process if you make it in prior to the two-week cut-off before a meeting (and the administrators have been known to bend even this deadline to try to get applications through).

You may not believe it if you give credence to the gossip you might hear around campus, but many of us on the committee really want to expedite research. But we need good applications to do this. Vague, unclear, self-contradictory applications that seek to cover over or conceal ethical concerns are the slowest, most difficult applications to get through, and the applicant can actually work against the efforts of the Committee to get it approved. Challenging but well argued cases, even for work with ethical concerns, often go through very quickly. I’ve frequently heard Committee members say things to the effect of, ‘I might be concerned about the [fill in the blank: deception, oral consent, questions about illegal activity, work with vulnerable people…], but the application is really well put together and makes a great case for [same thing in the blank], so I think we should approve it conditionally so that the researcher can get to work.’ For example, we on the Committee know that research about vulnerable populations is some of the most valuable work that we in academe can do for the good of society, so we want it to happen.

So, in the interest of punching up the entertainment value (after all, I have to compete with some brilliant posts on the new Creationist museum in Missouri, my home state, by Lisa Wynn and ongoing cultural observations from Nursel and Jovan), I’m going to take a little different strategy and write in a more conversational tone.

Although the institutional dynamics of something like the Ethics Review Committee (Human Research) at Macquarie might be fascinating to a few (mostly to me), the majority of our readers at Culture Matters are likely to be more interested in practical questions. So I’ll try to highlight the most important, recurring issues for ethnographic projects from my perspective as researcher, ethics advisor, and application reviewer on the committee. Although all of the examples I discuss below are fictional, some resemblance to individuals living or deceased is inevitable. But please know, if it sounds like I’m talking about you, and you’re a Macquarie student or faculty member, you’re probably part of fictional synthesis because none of these issues is rare or unusual.

The over-arching issue for anthropologists proposing ethnographic fieldwork (IMHO) is probably that we don’t spend enough time nutting out the pragmatics of fieldwork before we go. We often just assume that students will figure it out on their own. While this may have been an effective strategy at one point and at some places, the short time horizon for research degrees (our MAA and PhD) makes this strategy less likely to succeed. The contemporary realities of ethics review also mean that now, perhaps more than in some earlier periods, we need to think about research methods before we enter the field.

Ten biggest issues in no particular order:

#1: Applications contradict themselves internally in several places. This is not just a problem for anthropologists; for example, an applicant says she’s going to get permission to record or photograph her subjects, but fails to include any mention of this in the information and consent procedure. Or a student says he’s working in one place, but has letters of support from another. (I know, you were saying to yourself, ‘maybe they won’t notice…’, but you forget, committee members get really good at reading these forms…)

Admittedly, some committee members, even at Macquarie, can get overly finicky about these sorts of inconsistencies, but one of the concerns is that such inconsistencies are a sign that the researcher hasn’t really thought about things. Best advice: read quickly through the form before setting off to work and check yourself as you go to make sure that you’re being consistent. One of the places on the Macquarie form that frequently causes trouble is item 6.6 on giving subjects feedback. Frequently, the answer here has nothing to do with the actual information given to participants; in Macquarie’s Department of Anthropology, we’re setting up on on-line clearing house where students can circulate for their subjects ‘research reports,’ short, non-jargon-filled accounts of their findings. It’s a great way to publicize the kinds of research done in the department (without foreclosing other forms of publication) and, at the same time, create an easy channel to give something back to the subjects generous enough to work with us.

#2: No interview questions. I say this baldly even though I know that interview questions are a controversial demand. My approach is that, in most projects, some sort of non-binding, sample interview questions can and should be provided. Some projects — like life histories — make these sorts of provisions less appropriate, and I’ll typically argue against such demands in committee meetings if other members bring them up.

HOWEVER, many ethnographers say that they are going to do ‘in depth’ interviews on very specific topics, as much of contemporary anthropological inquiry is topic-based rather than holistic research in small-scale communities. In this case, some sense of the kinds of questions you might ask helps the committee to understand the invasiveness, sensitivity, or extensiveness of the interview process that the applicant proposes. This is especially important if your research topic is controversial or sensitive, less critical if it’s innocuous (not an insult; my research probably falls under the latter category). But I want to emphasize this: the questions are not binding IF the applicant makes it clear that the interview format is open, non-invasive, and not overly personal. At least at Macquarie, the ethics reviewers know what this means.

What seems to me to be the most common situation is that ethnographers haven’t really thought that much about the pragmatics of interviewing or they’ve become so convinced that they are self-reflexive, auto-deconstructing, and co-creational in their research that they are ‘politically opposed’ to asking questions. Then how the hell are you going to conduct interviews? If you’re really not doing interviews — that is, you’re just going to do participant observation — then don’t say you’re doing interviews on the application. Interviews imply questions, at least some sense of what you will ask about.

What I tend to ask students is, if you get off the plane, catch a bus into town or to your site, introduce yourself to an important member of the community, explain your project, and the person says, unexpectedly, ‘Great, I want to help. Turn on your recorder. What do you want to know?’ what are you going to ask? Are you really going to have no questions? According to one of my former professors at the University of Chicago, the late David Schneider used to ask students a similar question in the proposal defenses for doctoral research: ‘What are you going to do when you get off the plane (or boat or bus or train…)?’ The question would frequently stop pre-field students in their tracks. I’ve had similar halting conversations with pre-field students. So one thing that I suspect is that the ethics application may be the first time that novice researchers have ever even thought this practically and concretely about field methods in ethnography (note: I know other fields, probably even other anthropology departments, prepare their students differently. This applies to a limited number of places and types of projects. We’re trying to prepare students here better for things like interviewing).

#3: Changes in research: One of the issues raised by Katz’s article on ethics review is the possibility — nay, inevitability — that research agendas change over the course of an ethnographic project. How can you ask for prior approval if the research agenda and methods are themselves emergent? The easy answer to that (and I’m not sure that the whole committee here at Macquarie would agree with me) is that you do the best you can and then remember that ethics review has a dialogic and ongoing quality in ethnography, especially long-term fieldwork. Some changes seem to warrant serious consultation: for example, if a hot-button of risk, working with children, learning of illegal activity, etc. (see below) comes up in research where it was not anticipated.

If the subject matter changes and crosses into areas where significant NEW ethical issues are raised, then I recommend contacting the ethics administrators. We have excellent ones at Macquarie: Kokila de Silva (a former student in our department), Fran Thorpe, and Nicola Meyton among them (research office staff here but you can also use their general email, ethics.secretariat@vc.mq.edu.au. Other advisors are available in every division of the university (the list is here). Whoever you contact is most likely to run any changes by the chair of the committee and some members that are particularly well versed in the area you’re working on. You’re likely to be given some advice and feedback but virtually never told ‘you can’t follow this research.’ If the change is very significant, we’ll probably just ask you to submit an ‘amendment’ to the ethics form (that is, a new version of whichever items of the application have changed). For example, if your research starts to uncover a lot of illegal activity, and you’ve decided to directly investigate it, we’d ask you to submit a new version of item 3.8.

You won’t be ‘in trouble,’ but the Ethics Review Committee will want to make sure that you’ve thought about how to handle it and put some safeguards in place; we might be able to offer some advice (you’d be surprised — we read some really clever ways of dealing with issues like this), and we’ll be able to back you up later if there are questions about this. For example, in Australia, you are legally bound to report to police certain sorts of crimes (for example, abuse of children). Many researchers may not realize this; although you’re unlikely to get prosecuted, you may find yourself in a very uncomfortable position.

(I understand that other IRBs and ethics review committees may not handle this ongoing interaction well, and our committee does not always handle precedent-setting cases in the best possible way. But we do very much try to learn from experience and help other researchers to share the hard-won wisdom that faculty around campus are gaining. As I’ve said in an earlier blog post, we are in the business of supporting good research, not making it impossible. As Dr. Schrag and others have pointed out, some — many? — other IRBs may lose the plot on this part of the agenda.)

#4: A related recurring problem in anthropology applications is to misinterpret how to deal with the question of ‘risk.’ I take others’ comments, such as Dr. Schrag’s discussion of the ‘canard of interview trauma,’ to heart, but there is a problem with the way that we, anthropologists, tend to discuss risk in our proposals.

Some parts of our field like to play up the drama, the controversy, the conflict, the Sturm und Drang of our projects. Some anthropologists truly do amazing, harrowing research, in fieldsites and social situations where the intensity of human drama cannot be questioned. Nevertheless, an ethics application is not the place for the most hyperbolic, emotional, or explosive description of the conflict in your research; both the researcher and the committee need a pretty sober assessment of the risks involved to subjects and researcher.

If you write a research description (10.1 in the Macquarie form) that plays up the conflict in your website, the marginal legality of your subject, the possible dramatic dangers, the ‘frontline’ quality of the research, and similar traits, — or better yet, cut and paste it from another document — and then you check the box in 3.1 that says ‘no’ risks to anyone participating (this includes you), then you are asking the committee to send your application back to explain the discrepancy. Save the adrenaline-drenched prose about ethnographic research for other forums; it’s a bad idea to play this up in the ethics application.

The point is not that there are no risks in good research. Good research may include serious risks. But the way to approach those is to think about them, minimize or mitigate them, plan for foreseeable problems, or even describe why risks are worth running. For example, ethnographers are surprisingly reluctant on the Macquarie form to talk soberly about the public interest dimension of our research, the indirect effects that better knowledge might have for the good of society as a whole, on item 3.7. We have researchers at the university who go to war zones, who conduct experimental medical procedures, who ask about trauma and human rights violations and genocide and crime, who regularly work with children or the mentally disabled. Our committee does not have a problem with research that has risks; we do have a problem when the answers to questions about risk are answered in a way that suggests the researcher hasn’t thought about them.

Short suggestion: Simply checking the box to indicate that there are ‘no risks’ is not the ‘easy way’ to get through review. And the ethics application is not the place to play up the drama and danger inherent in your project; save it for your undergrad students in lecture.

(In passing, and with no expectation that this will lesson the likelihood of students doing a particular project, subjects wherein the researcher is in danger do seem to exercise a disproportionate fascination among our students. I frequently ask them if the intellectual issues that they’re interested in couldn’t be studied elsewhere, and they give me a look of disgust that would usually be reserved for someone with an indecent proposal. Alas, I’ll keep trying. But if the risks of a project are very great and the potential public good to come of it low, is it really a good project? I know, you’re getting that look even reading this…)

#5: Another way to make the ethics clearance process go off the rails is to turn the proposal in at the last minute. A really stunning number of the problem cases we confront are simply researchers who want to ram through proposals that are, at best, half cooked; our committee is actually very accommodating, and our turnaround, especially in the ‘off peak’ season, can be quite good (I think we promise 20 days, but see the committee’s website for certain). The proposals that come in at the last minute, however, invariably are the ones with missing information, no information & consent form, suggestions that an ad will be used to recruit participants but no ad provided, serious gaps in the discussion of methods, no letters of support from organizations that are said to be cooperating, etc. There’s some weird inverse law that, the less time applicants have to get approval, the more likely they are to fail to fill out the form comprehensively.

Give yourself a couple of months, especially if you have a topic that’s likely to raise any red flags (working with children, investigating illegal activity, going into conflict zones, asking very personal questions such as about medical histories, working in a place under authoritarian regime, studying human rights struggles where activists are disappearing, seeking permission to work with Aboriginal Australians…). Bottom line is that your failure to plan is not an emergency for the committee.

If you’re waiting on a research visa or a letter of support, but everything else is in order, SUBMIT immediately. The committee is likely to give you conditional approval pending the forwarding of this letter to our office; even if you have to go to the field first to get, as is often the case with ethnographic projects, we will give you approval and ask you to forward on this material once you get it. The same goes for other details, such as the specific organizations you’ll be working with, the translations of information and consent forms, and the like; if one or a couple of details is holding up the process, please submit and explain in a cover letter. You’re quite likely to get conditional approval if the rest of the application is done well. Better to submit with a missing element than to submit with no time before the start of the project.

#6. Informed consent. This is a major issue with ethnographic researchers, as postings by Rena Lederman and Alex Golub, personal discussions with other researchers have really highlighted for me, and ongoing observations as an ethics advisor make abundantly apparent. Informed consent, however, is one of the pillars of research ethics; since the Nuremberg Code in 1948, voluntary, informed consent of research subjects has been a cornerstone of human research. Although some commentators might argue that this code should apply primarily to medical research and laboratory research (such as psychology), and should not apply to non-invasive observation in a naturalistic setting, I’m not one of those.

Informed consent, however, comes in many forms; in many anthropological settings, oral consent is more appropriate, so answering ‘yes’ to item 7.1 is not compulsory (at least a quarter to a third of all projects at Macquarie check ‘no’ here, I’d estimate with no systematic review). Although the Macquarie ethics application provides a lengthy and involved template for a consent form (item 7.4. a), there’s many reasons why one might depart from this. In my experience, a substantial minority of ethnographic projects do depart from it in some way; the ones that correspond are with highly literate, Western populations who will understand consent or release forms.

My advice to students, however, is to think seriously about how you want to go about informing people and describe your ideal process to the committee. If you need to be very careful about protecting anonymity, for example, even a signed form might prove more dangerous than not getting one. If you are dealing with an illiterate or semi-literate population, or even one that would be suspicious about signing documents, then it’s probably best not to use a written consent form.

That said, read the template, think about what the committee is asking you to accomplish, and prepare a consent ‘script’ that you will use or work from. The biggest problem for many novice ethnographers is that it can be hard to communicate clearly to our collaborators what we’re trying to do in a non-technical language. Hell, I had problems communicating with my grandmother about what I was trying to do in my research!

For me, the key issues are: who are you and what are you doing? What you hope to accomplish with your research (although sometimes it’s hard to even explain a degree)? What are you asking people to do and are there any risks (if not, no need to write about it)? Do you want to record them and do you have their permission? How are you going to protect them if there’s any danger? What are they going to get from you? That, in a nutshell, is the key set of issues. If you’re dealing with a really superficial investigation or short observation or if you’re interviewing people for whom this process is going to be really alien, what I sometimes suggest is that the researcher get collaborators in the field who are better educated, who will be given more substantial information, and after the oral consent process, the researcher tell the subjects that, if they have any questions or problems, talk to the collaborator. The whole oral consent process should really be quite brief, probably less verbiage than I’m spending talking about informed consent. Too long and complicated, and it actually defeats the purpose of informing (as any lecturer knows, one way to make sure someone doesn’t understand a set of concepts is to give them more and more concepts).

For several projects, I’ve suggested a ‘tiered’ approach to information and consent; first, under no circumstances (except to avoid serious risk to the researcher temporarily) does the researcher conceal what he or she is doing. If you have to hide that your doing research, it’s a dangerous situation to be in, and I suspect one that an experienced ethnographer only should be doing. Second, if you are working with a group where its reasonable to inform people what you’re doing, try to use local channels to do so. Third, if you are actually taking person information from someone, you need to do a real oral consent process. If you’re sitting at a bus stop talking to someone about the building across the street, you don’t have to get them to sign a form. In our committee, at least, a tiered approach that differentiates public behaviour where a person has no reasonable expectation of anonymity from private behaviour or personal information through direct questioning has been upheld.

Public officials speaking in their roles and public behaviour, in which there is neither an expectation of anonymity, nor an attempt to identify subjects individually, really needs no consent, as far as I’m concerned. Although the researcher shouldn’t conceal what he or she is doing, nor try to exploit the subjects, there are many public events where informed consent is practically impossible and ethically unnecessary. In many of the capoeira events that I attended in Brazil, for example, a half-dozen people might be videotaping at any one time, and people making public speeches knew that they might be quoted by local media or anthropologists (sometimes I was not the only ethnographer present).
With long relationships, once a collaborator is clear about the researcher’s project and agenda, and has gone through the consent process, I think it’s not incumbent to keep going through the process again, but I do think that there are ways that a researcher can remind the subject of the nature of the relationship. Openly taking notes or asking if you can record something for your research, although not mandated, is one way to remind your subjects that what they say is being taken down. I find that, if I conduct myself responsibly, most collaborators have no problem with this. But I intentionally make it clear that I’m doing research, and, if they ask me to, I don’t record what I’m hearing or take notes, allowing people to talk ‘off the record.’ Of course, what they say will influence me, even if unconsciously, so it’s likely to enter the research surreptitiously; but that’s often what my subjects intended (at least in my work in Brazil).

This is probably more confusing than it needs to be, but the point is just that the ethics committee does not believe that a one-size-fits-all form will apply to all research projects. A substantial portion of the projects that we review are approved without using the ideal template, but all applicants need to think seriously about how they will fulfill the principles of seeking informed consent rather than just getting forms filled out. As always, protecting our subjects is our first priority, protecting our researchers, second, and assuring that good research with integrity is carried out is third (but still up there).

#7. Many ethnographers seem to get confused about the relationship between confidentiality and anonymity. Most ethnographic research is not strictly anonymous because the researcher typically knows the subject. However, ethnographic writing tends to protect anonymity. In a project where anonymity of subjects is a serious concern, either for safety or protection from social stigma, then the researcher should really think about how to build safeguards for confidentiality. This goes without saying.

Different countries (and probably even different states) have different laws about confidentiality for doctors, lawyers, journalists, and other professions, but none that I know of protects anthropologists and their subjects. So, if you’re taking notes on something that the government might want to know about, you won’t be able to protect those notes if they’re subpoenaed, at least not in any jurisdiction I know. The only thing worse than refusing to turn over your information in those settings, however, is to try to destroy the records, so you need to think about this ahead of time.

This said, however, I think that anthropologists’ concerns about their data falling into the wrong hands seem to me, except in certain exceptional cases, to be overblown. When I was applying for language study grants in the 1990s, some of us were worried about accepting area studies money that was clearly allocated by the government for strategic purposes; now that a lot of these funds have dried up, I’m sure I’d feel a lot less morally suspect intercepting some money from the government that might otherwise be spent on corrupt subcontracting, various pork boondoggles, or yet another tax cut. If you’re collecting this sort of information, however, it’s in your interest to learn what the rules are. Since you won’t be able to protect your notes, think of some way to make sure that they won’t be compromised (I, for example, have handwriting that I even find illegible after a very short period of time.).

But it’s also possible that, in some projects, subjects will not want to be anonymous. I think a good case can be made that public recognition is one of the things that we hope to give to our collaborators (item 3.7 in the Macquarie form, again). If you’re not sure, make it part of the consent process; a check box that allows subjects to choose. In my work on capoeira, recognition was one of the motives for people to work with me at all. Nevertheless, I still protected people if they were saying things that might reflect poorly on them or cause conflict in their home communities.

#8. Remember that your thesis IS a public document. So saying that you are not publishing the research results is not an option in most cases (item 6.3). In general, especially honours and masters students here seem to undersell the likelihood that their research will reach a public. The committee is committed to getting research out, so we’ll generally encourage people to say that they would like to publish their results.

#9. Recruitment, conflict of interest, and other power-related issues. In many anthropological projects, researchers are embedded in their communities in multiple ways; sometimes we conduct research among ‘our own people,’ sometimes we have other roles in the community while conducting research, sometimes we enter under the umbrellas of other groups already working in the field.

So the sections on conflicts of interest (section 4) and recruitment (section 5) are meant to sort out the possibility of coercion. Some populations (section 4) are likely to raise concerns for the ethics review board, especially students (if you’re their teacher) or employees (if you or the person recruiting them is their boss). In addition, the committee will be more careful with any of the populations indicated in 4.2: Aboriginal groups or Torres Strait Islanders, foreign populations, prisoners, asylum seekers, soldiers, the mentally ill or disabled. Although the committee WANTS responsible researchers to do work with these groups, we also want to make sure that they have the same protections as other participants, which may mean that the researcher has to go to a fair bit more trouble; for example, getting real informed consent from a population that is not free or does not feel free to refuse to participate is tricky.

The committee tends to worry about coercion, either implicit or explicit. Some members of the committee may even be overly concerned about coercion; my own experience in fieldwork is that people find MANY ways of refusing to participate in our research, not all of which are immediately obvious.

But the most chronic problem about coercion actually tends to come up with recruitment, especially when recruiting is being done through an organization or group representative. The committee doesn’t want people to think that getting access to resources (including therapy, treatment, or legal support) is contingent upon participating in research, so we tend to prefer a bit of an arm’s length relationship between contact people in organizations and the researcher. That is, we’d prefer that contact people give out information, but not actually sign up participants. We’d prefer that participants be asked to do something active in order to participate rather than force them to be active to opt out.

In general, in ethnography, if we explain our situation to the ethics committee, it’s not a problem. Approaching people directly, in most places, is not a problem, as long as you can explain to the committee that the participants have a relatively straightforward path to exercise in a right of refusal. For example, in an ethics application that I’m currently writing (and should be finishing instead of doing this), I’m proposing to interview a stonemason who I have contracted to work on the farm my wife and I have. Although he’s an ‘employee,’ and thus might be considered liable to coercion, in reality, our relative social positions in the community, the shortage of stonemasons, and the fact that he has a backhoe (infinitely valuable if you have a rural property) actually means that there’s no way I cold possible coerce him into participating if he didn’t want to. If I describe the social situation, it should be clear to the committee that this gentleman is virtually immune to any attempt to compel him to participate in research.

#10. Finally, the committee is committed to protecting the researcher and the integrity of research done under the auspices of Macquarie University, not just the subjects. Sometimes I think students (and even senior researchers) can lose track of this.

Applicants sometimes promise things that are unnecessarily onerous, especially those who are most dedicated to ethical behaviour. We sometimes suggest that a procedure for transcript review or a promise to give all of the subjects a copy of the resulting thesis is simply too difficult and disproportionate for the researcher. This may be hard for observers from outside our university to believe, but we think that sometimes the conditions imposed on research – even conditions imposed by the researcher – can be too burdensome. It is always better to deliver more than one promises than to make assurances in the field that cannot be followed up on. I know that, for any researcher who does believe strongly in ethic