Cultural implications of international volunteer tourism: US students’ experiences in Cameroon

ABSTRACT

A popular trend is for US colleges to organise short-term, self-funded trips for students to volunteer for several weeks in poverty-stricken communities in the global South. To explore the cultural implications of short-term, international volunteer projects, I undertake an ethnographic study of college students of who travel to a small village in Cameroon to improve the quality of drinking water and community health. I examine whether the volunteer tourism can serve as a unique opportunity to see beyond the African stereotypes to recognise the historical and structural context in which Africa continues to suffer. Although a trip such as this can be a disruptive event for students to critically evaluate the global privileges of Westerners, students tend to experience Cameroon through the lens of popular stereotypes about Africa and Western paternalism. The encounters with Africans in the absence of sufficient education about postcolonial Africa can affirm the stereotypes and cultural superiority formed in USA because students negotiate their actual experience in ways to confirm their perception of Africa. Therefore, seminars and workshops about the fundamental aspects about global inequality can help educate volunteers about the postcolonial context of foreign aid of Western countries for the Third World, and White privilege.     

A journey – crossing boundaries

ABSTRACT

Dr George L. Mallen writes about his introduction to computer simulation in the early 1960s and his work with Gordon Pask, founder and director of System Research Ltd, a convergence point of cognitive science, computer technology and art. In 1969 Mallen co-founded the Computer Arts Society and helped to organize Event One at the Royal College of Art which brought computers into the art school. In 1969 he formed System Simulation Ltd and in 1970 developed ECOGAME, a system dynamics model of a hypothetical national economy, implemented at the First European Management Forum, the predecessor of the World Management Forum. Some of the ECOGAME technology was also used by Stafford Beer for the government economic decision room he designed and implemented for the Allende government in Chile in 1972–1973.     

Book Reviews

Book reviewed in this article: Cristovam Buarque, The End of Economics? Ethics and the Disorder of Progress. Gautam Mathur, Economic Justice in a Free Society. Gerry Rodgers, Charles Gore and José B. Figueiredo (eds), Social Exclusion: Rhetoric, Reality, Responses. G. P. Chapman and M. Thompson (eds), Water and the Quest for Sustainable Development in the Ganges Valley. Krishna Bharadwaj, Accumulation, Exchange and Development: Essays on the Indian Economy. Willem van Schendel, Reviving a Rural Industry. Silk Producers and Officials in India and Bangladesh 1880s to 1980s. Jennifer A. Widner (ed.), Economic Change and Political Liberalization in Sub-Saharan Africa. Adebayo Adedeji (ed.), Africa Within the World: Beyond Dispossession and Dependence. Jomo K. S. (ed.), Industrialising Malaysia: Policy, Performance, Prospects. K. Saradamoni (ed.), Finding the Household: Conceptual and Methodological Issues. Md Anisur Rahman, People's Self-Development: Perspectives on Participatory Action Research. A Journey through Experience. Michael Painter and William H. Durham (eds), The Social Causes of Environmental Destruction in Latin America. Ilja A. Luciak, The Sandinista Legacy: Lessons from a Political Economy in Transition. Overseas Development Administration, A Guide to Social Analysis for Projects in Developing Countries. Heng-Kang Sang, Project Evaluation. Techniques and Practices for Developing Countries. Charles Stewart Goodwin, The Third World Century.     

Impatience: On Derrida,Milbank and the Decision

Abstract

Derrida has long served as a foil, in the work of John Milbank, and represented the neo-pagan nature of much contemporary philosophy. He appeared in Theology and Social Theory as one of the heirs of Nietzsche, politically justifying and ritualizing violence. In the Vico books, Derrida appears again, contrasted with Vico's ability to imbue language not only with constituting power, but with a teleologically oriented realism. This theme is expanded in subsequent works, where Milbank makes Christological and Trinitarian studies of linguistic difference, and accuses Derrida's thought of degenerating into nihilism. Nonetheless, Milbank and Derrida are disturbed by a similar problem. There is, for both, an irrational moment at the foundations of political life that calls out for a decision. For Derrida this decision institutes the whole order of meaning, undergirded by the quasi-transcendental structure of writing. According to Milbank, this renders all content arbitrary, leaving Derrida unable to imagine a genuinely meaningful world. Milbank argues, instead, that the important decision is whether or not one will see the content of experience as meaningful or meaningless. Derrida's denial of meaning, which is also a denial of God, is ungrounded. One ought, instead, see the world as the image of God.     

Dimensions of remapping: Heinrich Schiffers and his mental map of Africa

ABSTRACT

At the beginning of the 1960s, the Athenäum publishing house in Germany planned a revised and extended edition of Heinrich Schiffers’ (1901–1982) successful book Wilder Erdteil Afrika (English translation: The Quest for Africa). The bestselling author had published several monographs about Africa since the 1930s, and authored and edited numerous works after World War II. Nearly all of these works, whose substantial print runs are testament to their popularity, are characterized by an engaging combination of text, images, and cartographic material, creating narratives and mental maps about Africa, its history, and the colonial past. In his later writings, he stressed the importance of “relearning” with regard to Africa and struggled to remap the imaginative geography of Africa. In this paper, I examine the characteristics of Schiffers’ imaginative geography and the change in his writings and maps. I explore whether his concept of “relearning” was an epistemological decolonization or if there were any continuities found in his imaginative geography. In order to grasp the specifics of his thinking, his geography will be briefly compared with that of his contemporary, Frankfurt zoo director Bernhard Grzimek.     

“Punching Above its Weight”. The Mafikeng Anti-Repression Forum (Maref) and the Fall of Bophuthatswana

Abstract

This article traces the history of the Mafikeng Anti-Repression Forum (Maref) that operated in the former homeland of Bophuthatswana from early 1990 to late 1994. It was the only human rights organisation in Bophuthatswana. Maref's work was in five areas. Firstly, it monitored human rights abuses as a consequence of political repression in the homeland. Secondly, it responded to these abuses by means of disseminating the facts behind them. Thirdly, it attempted to defend the interests of the victims by means of seeking legal redress and relief from suffering and deprivation. Fourthly, it agitated for political change in Bophuthatswana in accordance with the changing nature of political reform in South Africa as a whole. Lastly it collated and published the information that formed an essential component of the negotiations that led to the new dispensation in 1994. For these activities, Maref members were severely harassed. The role the organisation played generally has received little analysis or comment, and is deserving of a place in the annals of human rights activities and activists during this period of transformation and upheaval in South Africa.     

Amplified British Aviation Authority in Africa, 1947–1960: Regulation of Low-cost Overseas Airlines

ABSTRACT

Britain first exerted considerable civil and military aerial authority in Africa in the 1920s and 1930s. The occasional but striking presence of British pioneer pilots and aircraft was soon followed by formal agreements about Empire airbases, and operation of imperial airline service. During the Second World War, all British aviation resources in Africa were tailored to mobilising and executing military action. At the end of the War, Britain’s nationalised airline resumed scheduled commercial services to and from Africa. In the post-War Commonwealth there was demand for air services at lower prices than Britain’s flag-carrying airline offered. Private charter airlines provided long-haul but low-cost ‘trooping’ flights, ‘colonial coach’ passenger flights, and ‘tramp’ cargo flights, and consolidated and extended British aerial presence and influence in Africa. Mostly, London set and managed the regulatory regime under which they operated. Coloniality provided a key licensing element. In the 1950s, before widespread decolonisation, the authority for the least expensive long-haul flying across Africa vested in layers of complex regulation in Britain.     

Conservation and management of prehistoric rock art sites on the World Heritage List: A report on the Côa Valley international symposium, 1999

Abstract

A meeting of managers of prehistoric rock art sites inscribed on the World Heritage List was held at the Côa Valley Archaeological Park in Portugal in May 1999. Site managers from Africa, the Americas, Australia and Europe discussed issues of site protection, visitor management and interpretation to the public. The following report summarizes the experience reported at the symposium, which has led to the proposal to create an international network of site managers responsible for rock art sites.     

Lessons in the rubble: The world trade center and the history of disaster investigations in the United States

The World Trade Center collapse stands as a singular event in American history. As such, it might also stand to reason that the technical investigation into the circumstances of the collapse also stands alone. Clashes over authority among powerful institutions both public and private, competition among rival experts for influence, inquiry into a disaster elevated to the status of a memorial for the dead: these are the base elements of the World Trade Center investigation. These elements, however, are not unique. This article illustrates--drawing on case studies including the burning of the United States Capitol Building (1814), the Hague Street boiler explosion and building collapse in New York (1850), and the Iroquois Theater Fire in Chicago (1903)--that conflicts over authority, expertise, memory, and ultimately the attribution of responsibility suffuse the history of disaster in the United States. The "disaster investigation," far from proving itself the dispassionate, scientific verdict on causality and blame, actually emerges as a hard-fought contest to define the moment in politics and society, in technology and culture.     

BOOK REVIEWS

The Masterless: Self and Society in Modern America.
The Making of a Hinterland: State, Society, and Economy in Inland North China, 1853–1937.
A World at Arms: A Global History of World War II.
Peter Lombard.
Merchant Capital and Economic Decolonization: The United Africa Company 1929–1987.
A History of Christianity in Africa: From Antiquity to the Present.
Carthage, A History.
From Civilization to Segregation: Social ldeals and Social Control in Southern Rhodesia, 1890–1934
The Movement and the Sixties: Protest in America from Greensboro to Wounded Knee.
Better in Darkness: A Biography of Henry Adams, His Second Lqe, 1862–1891.     

Nested assemblages: migrants,war heritage,informal learning and national identities

ABSTRACT

This article examines relations between Anzac heritage and Australian national identity, among migrant visitors to the Australian War Memorial (AWM). What meaning could a story derived from Australian involvement in the First World War have to migrants who moved to Australia after the Second World War? Participants in qualitative interviews were eleven first-generation Australians, whose countries of birth were England, Greece, Ireland, New Zealand, Philippines, Scotland, South Africa and Sri Lanka, with parental countries of birth extending to Austria, Germany, India and Japan. Drawing on sociomaterial assemblage theory, the findings illustrate the concept of nested assemblages. At increasing scalar levels, the migrants form visitor-AWM assemblages, they may (or may not) feel part of a national Anzac heritage assemblage, and as migrants they are entangled in multiple national assemblages concurrently. Assemblages pertaining to family, faith, learning and memorialising were additional networks at play. Mapping interrelations amongst these assemblages showed migrants as actively gathering and interpreting heritage, sometimes as the enactment of national identity and at other times as the performance of informal, lifelong learning. The findings have importance to institutions seeking to be responsive to diverse and changing populations, particularly those wrestling with tensions around national identity.     

Developing a Heritage Database for the Middle East and North Africa

ABSTRACT

The Endangered Archaeology in the Middle East and North Africa (EAMENA) project based at the Universities of Oxford, Leicester, and Durham uses remote sensing to record archaeological and cultural heritage landscapes across twenty countries from Morocco to Iran and from Syria to Yemen. The project has developed an online heritage database built by adapting the open-source Arches heritage inventory platform developed by the Getty Conservation Institute and the World Monuments Fund. This paper discusses the process of customization of Arches v.3 adopted by EAMENA, particularly with regard to the development of new CIDOC CRM resource data models, reference data, and modifications to the Arches codebase.     

Book Reviews

Abstract

I begin with an attempt to discern the contours of the "debate" contained in the edited volume Theology and the Political: The New Debate. While the Radical Orthodox contributors are eager to critique those outside the fold, only two authors seem to talk back to them: Kenneth Surin and Mary-Jane Rubenstein. I agree with Surin's rejection of ontological hierarchy and Rubenstein's recommendation of Nancy's notion of "being-with," and I use their arguments to critique Radical Orthodoxy's ontology and their simplistic approach to "secular" authors, respectively. Insofar as one must discuss ontology in relation to theology and the political, I propose that we must actually develop a new ontology rather than simply reassert some version of the Thomistic synthesis. Finally, I fault the relative lack of reference to actual political practice, and above all the complete absence of Latin American liberation theology, in a volume ostensibly discussing "theology and the political."     

Book Reviews

Book reviewed in this article: James H. Cassing and Steven L. Husted (eds). Capital, Technology, and Labor in the New Global Economy. G.T. Kenshaw (ed.), Market Liberalisation, Equity and Development. Joan M. Nelson el al., Fragile Coalitions: The Politics of Economic Adjustment. Hamza Alavi and John Harriss (eds), South Asia — Sociology of ‘Developing Societies’. Frans Schuurman and Ton van Naerssen (eds), Urban Social Movements in the Third World. Susan Eckstein (ed.), Power and Popular Protest. Latin American Social Movements. Jonathan Hartlyn, The Politics of Coalition Rule in Colombia. Bernard Eccleston, State and Society in Post-war Japan. Melanie Beresford, National Unification and Economic Development in Vietnam. June I. Parpart (ed.), Homen and Development in Africa: Comparative Perspectives. Anil Bhatt, Development and Social Justice. Micro Action by Weaker Sections.     

Archaeological Heritage Management and Site Inventory Systems in Africa

Abstract

Archaeological Heritage Management in West Africa is hampered by lack of adequately trained personnel, lack of funds, and lack of appropriate equipment such as computers. It is suggested that organizations such as the World Bank should consider supporting training programs for Third World archaeologists, with internships at U.S. universities with appropriate expertise, and in areas where the World Bank has development projects, providing equipment which would be most efficient for archaeological survey and testing. Most particularly needed are intensive surveys in all African countries; one cannot “manage” if one does not know what the resource base contains.     

Redrawing the Boundary between India and Britain: The Succession Crisis at Zanzibar, 1870–1873

Abstract

WIDE-RANGING, STIMULATING, AND debatable interpretations of the enforced black diaspora from Africa to the New World are the hallmarks of all of these books, even though they differ in focus and are written by historians at various stages of their careers. Two books contain reflections on slavery and abolitionism by renowned historians of slavery, Gary B. Nash and David Brion Davis. Nash, in an elegant, slim volume (originally the Nathan I. Huggins lectures at Harvard University in 2oo4), returns to a theme he has addressed before, namely the reasons why the founding fathers did not eradicate the blot of slavery from the United States. He argues that action could, and should, have been taken. Davis offers a set of essays - some previously published, some appearing for the first time - that examine the inhumanity of slavery in North America, primarily in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, but with a broader contextual and chronological canvas. Tlle three other books are revisions of doctoral dissertations. Eric Robert Taylor and Stephanie E. Smallwood are both concerned primarily with the Middle Passage as a crucial phase of the Adantic slave trade. In Taylor's case, the emphasis falls upon shipboard revolts by slaves during the crossing from Africa to America. Smallwood focuses on the process by which people from the Gold Coast were captured, transported, and fashioned into slaves in the English slave trade of the late seventeenth century. Robert Pierce Forbes's book brings the focus back to the United States and the significance of the Missouri Compromise (a set of congressional acts passed in 182o and 1821) for the political history of American slavery.     

A Witness to the Early Reception of Bonaventure’s Collationes in Hexaëmeron: Nicholas of Ockham’s Leccio at Oxford (c. 1286) — Introduction and Text

Abstract

This essay presents a brief introduction to and an edition of Nicholas of Ockham’s Leccio at Oxford, which begins with the biblical verse, O altitudo diviciarum sapiencie et sciencie Dei (Romans 11. 33). This leccio may have been Nicholas’s inaugural sermon as a Master of Theology at Oxford and therefore dates to 1286. Whatever the precise genre of Nicholas’s leccio, the text is also important because much of it copies entire sections of St Bonaventure’s (d. 1274) Collationes in Hexaëmeron. Nicholas’s text is therefore a witness to Oxford University practices of the late thirteenth-century and to the late thirteenth-century reception of Bonaventure.     

Wet-Site Excavation and Field Methodology at Butrint,Albania: The Roman Forum Excavations Project

Since the start of archaeological research at the UNESCO World Heritage Site of Butrint (Bouthrotos/ Buthrotum) in southern Albania, archaeologists have allowed the water table to serve as a limit to archaeological excavation. From 2011 to 2013, the Roman Forum Excavations (RFE) Project conducted the first wet-site excavations at Butrint, reaching depths of up to 4 m below the water table in the ancient urban center. Well-preserved wood and other organic remains were recovered from waterlogged deposits, dating as early as the 7th century b.c. Major changes in RFE Project methodology emerged in response to wet-site archaeology. Unskilled local workers were trained to become local excavators. This significantly improved excavation techniques and recording procedures and enhanced the quality of the archaeological data, showing the high degree to which seemingly disparate elements of field methodology are intertwined.     

A Critique of the Metaphysics of Ontological Poesis : Responding to Theology and the Political

Abstract

A common set of metaphysical assumptions inform the theological proposals of many contributors to Theology and the Political: The New Debate. Those assumptions are orientated toward grounding the possibility of genuine ontological creativity (poesis) in a particular construal of nature's mediation of the supernatural. Applying the claims of Bernard Lonergan's early work on grace and freedom to those assumptions, the argument is made that this position repeats the most fundamental flaws of the Bañezian position in the de Auxiliis controversy: namely, a basic confusion of form with act, which gives rise to the misguided assumption that a "third" (i.e., physical premotion, causal influx, sophia) must be posited to mediate divine grace to the world and within it. It is argued that this confusion reveals that a competitive understanding of the God/world relation is presumed in this proposal, which itself is the result of a failure to affirm the absolute and immediate dependence implied by the doctrine of creatio ex nihilo.     

Book Reviews

Book reviewed in this article: Thomas J. Biersteker, Multinationals, the State, and Control of the Nigerian Economy. Olusola Akinrinade and J. Kurt Barling (eds), Economic Development in Africa: International Efforts, Issues and Prospects. Kamran Mofid, Development Planning in Iran from Monarchy to Islamic Republic. George Kopils, Structural Reform, Stabilization and Growth in Turkey. Rizwanul Islam (ed.), Rural Industrialization and Employment in Asia. Javier Gonzalo Alcade, The Idea of Third World Development: Emerging Perspectives in the United States and Britain Christopher Layton, Europe and the Global Crisis: a First Exploration of Europe's Potential Contribution to World Order. Roger C. Riddell, Foreign Aid Reconsidered Stephen Britton and William C. Clarke (eds), Ambiguous Alternative: Tourism in Small Developing Countries. Rosemary B. Jommo, Indigenous Enterprise in Kenya's Tourism Industry. Clare Wells, The UN, UNESCO and the Politics of Knowledge. Caroline Thomas, In Search of Security: The Third World in International Relations. Nzongola-Ntalaja, Bade Onimode, Bernard Magubane, Harold Wolpe, Kempton Makamure, Fatima Babikar Mahmoud, Abdoulaye Bathily, Africa's Crisis. Alan Berg, Malnutrition. What can be done? Lessons from World Bank Experience. Charles L. Choguill, New Communities for Urban Squatters; Lessons from the Plan that Failed in Dhaka, Bangladesh. John W. Mellor, Christopher L. Delgado and Malcolm J. Blackie (eds), Accelerating Food Production in Sub-Saharan Africa. James A. Beckford (ed.), New Religious Movements and Rapid Social Change. Kirsten Hoist Petersen (ed.), Religion, Development and African Identity. Jean-Paul Sajhau and Jiirgen Von Muralt, Plantations and Plantation Workers. Colin Kirk, People in Plantations: A Literature Review and Annotated Bibliography. Victor Buhner-Thomas, The Political Economy of Central America since 1920. Judith Gentleman (ed. h Mexican Politics in Transition. Chris Prouty, Empress Taytu and Menilek II. Ethiopia 1883–1910. Stewart MacPherson and James Midgley, Comparative Social Policy and the Third World. Mansour Khalid (ed.), John Garang Speaks. Robert E. Hudec, Developing Countries in the GA TT Legal System.