Contested Identities: The Dissonant Heritage of European Town Walls and Walled Towns

Town walls have always played a critical role in shaping the identities and images of the communities they embrace. Today, the surviving fabric of urban defences is a feature of heritage holding great potential as a cultural resource but in management terms one that poses substantial challenges, both practical and philosophical. Town walls can be conceptualised as a ‘dissonant’ form of heritage whose value is contested between different interest groups and whose meanings are not static but can be rewritten. Evidence is gathered from walled towns across Europe, including member towns of the WTFC (Walled Towns Friendship Circle) and inscribed UNESCO World Heritage Sites, to explore the cyclical biographies of town walls in their transformation from civic monuments, through phases of neglect, decay and destruction to their current status as cherished cultural resources. To explore this area of interface between archaeology and tourism studies, the varying attitudes of populations and heritage agencies to walled heritage are reviewed through examination of policies of conservation, preservation, presentation and restoration. Areas of commonality and contrast are thus identified.     

The Parkes Elvis Revival Festival: Economic Development and Contested Place Identities in Rural Australia

This paper discusses the annual Elvis Revival Festival in the small town of Parkes, 350 km to the west of Sydney, in rural Australia. It explores the way in which a remote place with few economic prospects has created a tourism product, and subsequently captured national publicity, through a festival based around commemoration of the birthday of Elvis Presley, a performer who had never visited Australia, and certainly not Parkes. The Festival began in the early 1990s, when a keen Elvis fan rallied promoters (and other fans) around the idea of bringing Elvis impersonators to the town for an annual celebration. Since then, the Festival has grown in size, with notable economic impact. The town now partly trades on its association with Elvis, constituting an ‘invented’ tradition and place identity. Yet the festival is not without tensions. The images of Elvis and the traditions generated by the festival challenge those who wish to promote Parkes through more austere, staid notions of place and identity. For some, Elvis is a means for the town to generate income and national notoriety, while others prefer less ‘kitsch’ tourism attractions such as a nearby (and nationally famous) radio telescope. Results from interviews with key players and surveys of visitors demonstrate how ‘tradition’ is constructed in places (rather than being innate), and how small places, even in remote areas, can develop economic activities through festivals, and create new identities – albeit contested ones.     

Identities and agency in religious spheres: a study of British Muslim women's experience

This article examines the ways in which British born South Asian Muslim women engage with Islam through study circles, using data drawn from participant observation of, and interviews with, 25 women in two major cities in northern England. I argue that the religious spaces within which the women participate allow them to assert various identities, as well as agency, as they collectively search to comprehend Islam. In particular, I demonstrate that in traversing these religious spheres, women transform them from male dominated sites to spaces wherein feminine, political and cosmopolitan identities are expressed. Scholarship on Islamic feminism in western contexts has focused on visible symbols such as the veil and little attention has been given to the social processes that Muslim women may engage in order to better understand and practise Islam. For the women who formed part of this study, the veil was only one aspect of their religious identity. In examining religious spheres such as the mosque, I argue these are not disembodied sites where only religious rituals are performed, but are created, discursive spaces and social networks that allow women to feel empowered within British society.     

后伊拉克时代与中国的内政外交--普遍主义与单边主义的冲突

"9·11"事件后,冷战后的国际政治格局发生了重大变化.其最大特征可以概括为以下两点:第一,确立了以唯一超级大国--美国为核心的以反恐为普遍主义的全球性安全阵线;第二,美国的爱国主义、民族主义戏剧性地高涨起来.就像当时有人强调因为全世界有60多个国家的人在世界贸易中心工作,所以对世贸中心的攻击就是对全世界的攻击那样,在美国国民中普遍存在着这样的观点:因为美国社会自身就是世界的缩影,所以星条旗也可被看作是超越一国国界的全人类的普遍象征.     

French Immersion Programs: New Identities and Recurring Concerns

This study focuses upon French immersion programs, an educational innovation which seeks to produce bilingual students in Canada. As part of publicly supported school systems, the program recruits from non-French speaking families. Research findings bearing on the nature of the program, its organization and its eventual outcome are examined. Three problems are discussed: availability and accessibility to the program, competition and conflict arising from it and its meaning for French-Canadian communities.