Communicating Science through the Performing Arts

Abstract

The author reviews over a decade of science and the arts programming he and his colleagues have produced and disseminated. The programs have been supported by the National Science Foundation, the American Physical Society, the Graduate Center of the City University of New York and various foundations and corporations. The author gives detailed examples of using science and the arts to reach the public and students with respect to programming related to the play Copenhagen, the opera Doctor Atomic, the Science & the Arts Series, a major international conference on Communicating Science to the Public, and many other outreach efforts.     

Performing refugeeness in the Czech Republic: gendered depoliticisation through NGO assistance

The article examines the gender micropolitics of non-governmental assistance to refugees in the Czech Republic – a post-socialist society which is becoming a country of immigration. It critically examines relations of power between refugees and local non-governmental organisations (NGOs). These NGOs act as mediators between refugees and the state, media, wider public and academic production of knowledge. It is argued that despite the important roles they play in securing refugees' access to rights, their assistance is often perceived as problematic by refugees. The article analyses these relations in a wider context of the institutions of the refugee system where the state has increasing power in defining the conditions under which NGO assistance to refugees is provided. The study is based on qualitative research among recognised refugees from the former Soviet Union living in the Czech Republic and local NGOs assisting them with integration into society. I demonstrate how particular forms of assistance and public representation depoliticise refugees in a sense of fostering rather than challenging unequal power relations that lock refugees in a position of clients lacking political means of influencing their place in a receiving society. This is done by conceptualising ‘a refugee’ as a performative identity that is being produced and enacted in feminised NGO spaces. The analysis highlights refugees' critical reflections on their position in the relations of assistance.     

Reimagining Alterities: The Formation of Identities through Memory,History, and Place

Anthropologists have firmly established the need to attend to the paradoxes of mobile cultural and symbolic forms—these portable imaginaries of belonging or exclusion—during periods of transnational crisis and restructuring. In this article, I examine how formations of selfhood and otherness have come to public visibility in the context of globalization. My review of recent anthropological publications scrutinizes the range of possible methodological approaches to social identity practices, both in the past and present. Although contemporary scholars seek to refine anthropological insights on the plausible linkages between identity and alterity, the reliance on select methodological frames produces corresponding limitations in research focus and interpretative acuity.     

Materializing Identities: An African Perspective

Archaeological approaches to social boundaries are currently emphasizing the dynamic nature of processes thought which individuals construct, maintain, and negotiate their identity. Although the integration of such concepts has led to a more accurate reconstruction of past social boundaries, it has also revealed a need for more sophisticated ways of interpreting material culture. This paper is a step in that direction. Focusing on pottery chaînes opératoires and addressing questions about the salience and scale of particular behaviors, I seek to develop general propositions regarding the relationships between technological styles and aspects of social identity. To that end, I compare African pottery techniques at a subcontinental level and see whether there are recurrent patterns in their distribution and whether these can be related to specific social boundaries or historical processes of group formation.     

Ajrakh: From Caste Dress to Catwalk

Ajrakh is a double-sided, block-printed textile worn as caste dress by cattle herders in the desert regions of Kachchh and Thar in north-west India and Sindh in Pakistan, where it is made by Khatri artisans. Readily identified by its distinctive combination of geometric and floral designs, traditional ajrakh is notably printed on both sides of the cloth and is dyed with indigo and madder. In the past forty years ajrakh has not only been transformed from a rustic block print into a popular fashion fabric, it has also become the signature cloth of the Khatri communities at Dhamadka and Ajrakhpur in Kachchh and is their most successful product. This article analyses the interventions that led to the successful adaptation of ajrakh as a regional product to a modern design milieu. It discusses early government initiatives that resulted in the introduction of artisan-designer collaborations in the 1970s, as well as later design developments that were led by Indian and foreign entrepreneurs. It traces the continuing trajectory of ajrakh from rural western India to the catwalks of New Delhi, Mumbai and beyond. Case studies of three fashion companies illuminate the factors that have influenced the commercial ascent of ajrakh. This textile is also considered in respect of recent initiatives to organise and protect the craft sector by the Government of India and by non-governmental organisations. In a final section, the article appraises the value of ajrakh as both a successful commodity and a cultural asset.     

Teaching European Identities

Under fiscal pressure and grappling with technological transformations, more and more universities are attempting to re-invent themselves as technologically facilitated educational institutions, fast and flexible enough for networking times. The adoption of new instructional technologies poses challenges to universities and education as we know it. This paper considers the educational challenges and opportunities offered by sociotechnical networks such as the Internet. Using the case of a second-year undergraduate course on globalisation, it outlines some practical educational possibilities for using the Internet that might facilitate, instead of compromise, critical thinking. It suggests that geography educators need to begin developing a critical technoliteracy that will respond to our informationally mediated world, a literacy not merely of technical competence but one which contextualises the Internet within a political economy of globalisation and continuously deconstructs, destablises and displaces its presentation as a spectacle and cyber-utopia.