The 4.2 ka Event and the End of the Maltese “Temple Period”

The small size and relatively challenging environmental conditions of the semi-isolated Maltese archipelago mean that the area offers an important case study of societal change and human-environment interactions. Following an initial phase of Neolithic settlement, the “Temple Period” in Malta began ∼5.8 thousand years ago (ka), and came to a seemingly abrupt end ∼4.3 ka, and was followed by Bronze Age societies with radically different material culture. Various ideas concerning the reasons for the end of the Temple Period have been expressed. These range from climate change, to invasion, to social conflict resulting from the development of a powerful “priesthood.” Here, we explore the idea that the end of the Temple Period relates to the 4.2 ka event. The 4.2 ka event has been linked with several examples of significant societal change around the Mediterranean, such as the end of the Old Kingdom in Egypt, yet its character and relevance have been debated. The Maltese example offers a fascinating case study for understanding issues such as chronological uncertainty, disentangling cause and effect when several different processes are involved, and the role of abrupt environmental change in impacting human societies. Ultimately, it is suggested that the 4.2 ka event may have played a role in the end of the Temple Period, but that other factors seemingly played a large, and possibly predominant, role. As well as our chronological modelling indicating the decline of Temple Period society in the centuries before the 4.2 ka event, we highlight the possible significance of other factors such as a plague epidemic.

Enhancing Australian Mortality Data to Meet Future Health Information Demands

The Australian mortality data are a foundational health dataset which supports research, policy and planning. The COVID-19 pandemic necessitated the need for more timely mortality data that could assist in monitoring direct mortality from the virus as well as indirect mortality due to social and economic societal change. This paper discusses the evolution of mortality data in Australia during the pandemic and looks at emerging opportunities associated with electronic infrastructure such as electronic Medical Certificates of Cause of Death (eMCCDs), ICD-11 and automated coding tools that will form the foundations of a more responsive and comprehensive future mortality dataset.

Philosophical Foundations for Establishing Scientific Humanism as Naturalism

In this chapter, the author presents the Marx-Hegel dialogue, a retracing of Hegel's system of philosophy and Marx's criticism of the absolute notion of Hegel's system of philosophy. Of particular importance is the emphasis placed on the nature of historical reality and the essence of alienation which arises in humans during periods of societal change. In this chapter, attention is drawn to the important role of philosophy in guiding the society to rethink the ontological and anthropological importance of human beings and the creation of new forms of life with a unique non-biological ontological basis.

Conversations with the Common Law: Exposure, Privacy and Societal Change

This is an edited version of an inaugural professorial lecture delivered at the Faculty of Law, Te Herenga Waka – Victoria University of Wellington on 16 March 2021 (the promotion to professor having taken place on 1 January 2019). In the address, Professor Moreham asked what the development of new torts of privacy over the last two decades has told us about the way in which common law both shapes and responds to changing societal values. Reflecting on her own experience ''growing up with'' the privacy torts, Professor Moreham considered the role of the legal academic in common law development and showed how conversations between the common law and the society it serves enrich both parties to it.

Leveraging Student Identities to Develop Pedagogical Fluency

Mathematics education can be positioned as fertile ground for societal change. This article deconstructs the complex work of supporting students’ positive mathematical identities by introducing pedagogical fluency to embody equitable beliefs and practices.

Testamentary Inheritance in Comparative Law. A comparative View of Testamentary Practices and Legal Frameworks in Italy and Latin America

The practice of making wills is as diverse as it is old. While the legislation in some cultures favors certain principles, others emphasize distinct precepts, all of which are guided in the background by the different cultural views about family and the importance attributed to the surviving spouse. Since the practice of testamentary inheritance is based on the desire to provide care to those left behind by the testator, and not in a few cases, in the absence of a constant income that he used to provide, it is important to identify the logic after which each legislator decides who are vulnerable people and which part of the successoral mass should be attributed to them. In the context of societal change in which the family no longer has the same definitions, the present study conducts a comparative analysis of testamentary practices and legal frameworks in Italy and Latin America in an effort to identify both the common elements that define these two Latin geographical areas, as well as their particularities. This analysis is relevant to the established literature in the field of inheritances by capturing the characteristics of two legal systems that have not received the necessary academic attention.

Public pedagogy and leadership in sports organisations: Futebol dá força for sustainability?

Sport is a key educational and leadership arena for societal change and today’s sustainability challenges. Sports organisations have the potential to provide, initiate and create processes, situations and spaces for learning, socialisation and meaning making that go beyond traditional schooling and lead community change and capacity building towards sustainable development. This article is located in the research fields of public pedagogy and the intersection of leadership and sport for development, and contributes knowledge about how sports organisations’ public pedagogical practices and leadership support community change towards sustainability. The study is confined to soccer and the non-governmental sports organisation Futebol dá força (Football gives strength). The approach of public pedagogical leadership is developed and used to analyse and reflect on the function of sports organisations’ pedagogical leadership in community change and capacity building towards sustainability.

Contesting and reshaping learning spaces: Students’ activism in South Africa

Universities in South Africa are a microcosm of society and thus offer grounds for criticism. In 2015, the Rhodes Must Fall student movement emerged, which demanded decolonization. This movement became one of the most important social movements in post-apartheid South Africa. While the student movement was formed to protest against the university, students created a space for transformative learning within the frame of the university. This article examines the ambivalence of the university: on the one hand, as a target of criticism and as a space for experimentation and reflection on society and societal change; and, on the other hand, as a space for emerging collective processes of transformative learning which created alternative knowledge, for instance in respect of decolonization and thus also discrimination, racism and marginalization.