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In this paper, I suggest that the category of 'ward,' a designation used for Aboriginal Australians in the 1950s and 1960s, has re-emerged in contemporary Northern Territory (NT) life. Wardship represents an in-between status, neither citizens nor non-citizens, but rather an anticipatory citizenship formation constructed by the Australian state. The ward is a not-yet citizen, and the deeds, acts, and discourses that define the ward's capacities to act as a political subject can maintain their anticipatory nature even as people 'achieve' formal citizenship. Wardship can be layered on top of citizen and non-citizen status alike. Rather than accounting for the grey areas between 'citizen' and 'non-citizen,' therefore, wards exist beyond this theoretical continuum, demanding a more nuanced accounting of political subjectivities and people's relationships to the state. I trace the emergence of the category 'ward' in the 1950s and 1960s in Australia and its re-emergence for Aboriginal Australians impacted by the 2007 Northern Territory Emergency Response legislation. The promise of citizenship offered by the status of 'ward' is built upon expectations about family life, economic activity, and appropriate behaviour. These assumptions underscore an implicit bargain between individuals and the state, that neoliberalised self-discipline will lead to both formal citizenship rights and a sense of belonging. Built-in impediments, however, ensure that this bargain is difficult, if not impossible, to fulfil.

Scholars have theorized that advocates who listen to the experiences of traumatized individuals suffer from 'vicarious trauma,' where they become affected by the process of working with trauma sufferers. Yet I argue that trauma is contagious, rather than vicarious: contagious trauma spreads, compounding and binding together sometimes unrelated life traumas. This paper focuses on the spread of contagious trauma within advocates who work together with people affected by two sets of policies that compound trauma in Australia's Northern Territory, Aboriginal Australians affected by the 2007 Northern Territory Emergency Response Legislation and asylum seekers affected by Australia's policies of mandatory detention. Using ethnographic data from participant observation and interviews with advocates as well as autoethnographic excerpts from field notes, I argue that advocates experience contagious trauma as the effects of witnessing trauma combine toxically with their own life traumas. Contagious trauma expands the destructive effects of traumatic public policy, and simultaneously shrinks the capacity of advocacy that contests these policies. Capacity shrinks as advocates construct barriers to keep trauma at bay.

Drawing on the concepts of paradigm repair and professional boundary work, this study examined the way the New York Times and the Guardian portrayed the whistle-blowing group WikiLeaks as being beyond the bounds of professional journalism. Through a textual analysis of Times and Guardian content about WikiLeaks during 2010 and early 2011, the study found that the Times depicted WikiLeaks as outside journalism's professional norms regarding institutionality, source-based reporting routines, and objectivity, while the Guardian did so only with institutionality. That value thus emerged as a supranational journalistic norm, while source-based reporting routines and objectivity were bound within national contexts.

Strategic reasoning must take place, explicitly or implicitly, within some framework, whether this be a formal one or otherwise. It is often assumed that game theory is the only formal frame work for strategic analysis. In this paper, however, strategic reasoning is distinguished from its particular bases. It is suggested that formal bases other than the game theoretic one are possible. A number of weaknesses and inadequacies of game theory, both as a direct and as an indirect basis for strategic reasoning, are pointed out. (With a game theoretic model of bargaining proces ses which in turn serves as a framework for strategic reasoning, game theory forms an indirect basis.) An alternative approach is suggested, involving the idea of a closed loop system; and it is argued that this may serve as a more fruitful basis for strategic reasoning.