Body as weapon: the archaeology of a war victim’s narrative

ABSTRACT

The soldier's body is the most important subject of violence and destruction in war. Humans live primarily through their body in the material world, and when the body is destroyed, their whole existence is affected, both physically and non-physically. Therefore, the first locus on which we can observe the effects of war and violence is the human body, mainly soldiers. In modern wars, the soldier’s body is combined with weapons and machines of war, but is also the first target of killing whether in attack or defence. On the one hand it is targeted and killed, but on the other hand the body itself targets and kills. In warfare, bodies are trained to be the mechanism of killing and they are employed on battlefields according to the political objectives of their sovereign power. Thus, the soldier’s body becomes a weapon separated from the individual human body by the political authority.     

Europe as a nation? Intellectuals and debate on Europe in the inter-war period

In 1933, a number of European intellectuals among whom Paul Valéry, Johan Huizinga, Julien Benda, Hermann von Keyserling, met in Madrid and in Paris to discuss the identity and history of Europe under the initiative of the International Institute of Intellectual Cooperation of the League of Nations. During the symposia, the participants try to define a common European narrative beyond national differences, and some of them evoke the idea of a European ‘homeland’ or ‘nation’, as already advocated in those years by Gaston Riou (Europe ma patrie, 1928) and Julien Benda (Discours à la nation européenne, 1933). Salvador de Madariaga for example calls for a ‘European nationalism’; Georges Duhamel presents ‘Mother Europe’ as an opposing force to growing patriotism; Julio Dantas hopes for a ‘européenité’ as opposed to the individual ‘national’ feelings. What is the reason for insisting so repeatedly on those concepts, when trying to overcome the dangers of nationalism? This paper analyses the different formulations adopted by the participants in the symposiums to describe their idea of a European ‘nation/homeland’, and tries to identify the specific aspects and historical implications of these concepts.     

Divided commons: The political economy of Southern Africa's cultural heritage landscapes—Observations of the central Kalahari game reserve, Botswana

La herencia cultural de Africa del Sur provee un mayor entendimiento sobre cómo la herencia discordante y su manejo puede reflejar tensiones más sistemáticas en la manera cómo las identidades son construidas. Estos conflictos pueden en parte ser atribuidos a las maneras por las cuales el pasado ha sido construido en la sociedad. Algunas antiguas demandas disputadas sobre recursos, particularmente sobre tierra, son evidentes en los conflictos contemporáneos que están identificados con el valor del uso de los escenarios culturales en el sur de Africa actual. Los debates sobre Indigenidad y el uso de lugares heredados en Botswana y el sur de Africa sugieren que los arqueólogos y los practicantes todavia están involucrados en la escritura del pasado particularmente en cómo el pasado es presentado para el consumo del público. Este discurso necesita ser contextualizado dentro los estudios globales sobre los indígenas y otras arqueologías. Los arqueólogos africanos pueden compartir sus experiencias en cómo las economías políticas cambiantes de los lugares donde ellos trabajan impactan en el acceso del público al pasado. De la misma manera, el mundo arqueológico consciente de algunos de los desafíos que sus practicantes y el público en Africa pueden vigilar por la protección de su herencia y ciudadanía para el futuro de tal manera que se pueda mantener aspiraciones más amplias en un mundo arqueológico integro.

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Résumé L'héritage culturel du sud de l'Afrique donne des exemples évoquant comment la discordance sur le patrimoine et sa gestion peuvent refléter des tensions systématiques sur la fa?on dont l'identité est construite. De pareils conflits peuvent être, en partie, attribués à la fa?on par laquelle le passé a été construit dans une société. Certains lègues des revendications contestataires sur les ressources, en particulier celles des terres, sont évidents dans les conflits contemporains avec l'identification, la valeur et l'utilisation du paysage culturel aujourd'hui dans le sud de l'Afrique. Les débats autour de “l'autochtonéité” et de l'utilisation des lieux patrimoniaux au Botswana et au sud de l'Afrique suggèrent que les archéologues et les spécialistes du patrimoine doivent encore s'engager avec l'écriture sur le passé et en particulier sur comment le passé est conditionné pour la consommation publique. Ce discours doit être contextualisé dans des discours globaux sur les autochtones et les autres archéologies. Les archéologues africains peuvent partager leur expérience sur comment le changement économique et politique du lieu où ils travaillent, influe l'accès public au passé. Dans le même ordre d'idées, une archéologie mondiale consciente de certains défis auxquels font face les professionnels et le publique en Afrique peut permettre une vigilance dans la protection future du patrimoine et des communautés respectant ainsi les vastes aspirations d'une archéologie mondiale intègre.

     

The heritage ‘NGO’: a case study on the role of grass roots heritage societies in Iran and their perception of cultural heritage

This paper examines the activities of a group of heritage enthusiasts in Iran. Grass roots heritage activism is a relatively recent phenomenon that appeared in Iran since the late 1990s. They are increasingly operating collectively as cultural or heritage NGOs. They have diverse socio-economic origins and political views. However, as this paper argues, they share a common ground in their activities; one that maintains an ambivalent and critical relationship with the state and official definitions of heritage and identity. Referring to interview and other data collected during fieldwork in Iran, this paper traces and analyses the contours of that common ground and argues that there is a nascent heritage movement in the country. The impact and contribution of these emerging and self-reflective heritage movements to Iranian identity, which is reflected in their embracing of diversity and the notion of historical continuity, reveal the dynamism and complexity of the cultural and political landscape of contemporary Iranian society. They also reveal the importance of generating further scholarship in the field of Iranian cultural heritage. In conceptualising the characteristics of a nascent heritage movement in Iran, the paper makes a new contribution to the approach of existing scholarship in the broader field of heritage studies.     

British national interest in the Gulf: rediscovering a role?

The British government is in the process of re‐energizing its relations with the Gulf states. A new Gulf strategy involving a range of activities including more frequent elite bilateral visits and proposals sometimes touted as Britain's military ‘return to east of Suez’ are two key elements of the overarching strategy. Such polices are designed to fall in line with British national interest as identified by the government‐authored 2010 National Security Strategy (NSS), which emphasizes the importance of security, trade, and promoting and expanding British values and influence as perennial British raisons d'etat. In the short term, the Gulf initiatives reflect and compliment these core interests, partly based on Britain's historical role in the region, but mostly thanks to modern day trade interdependencies and mutually beneficial security‐based cooperation. However, there is yet to emerge a coherent understanding of Britain's longer‐term national interest in the region. Instead, government‐led, party‐political priorities, at the expense of thorough apolitical analysis of long‐term interests, appear to be unduly influential on the origins of both the Gulf proposals and the NSS conclusions themselves. Without a clear strategic, neutral grounding, both the Gulf prioritization and the NSS itself are weakened and their longevity undermined.     

Building identities in post-Soviet “de facto states”: cultural and political icons in Nagorno-Karabakh,South Ossetia,Transdniestria, and Abkhazia

Abstract

For states that have recently declared their independence but remained unrecognized “de facto states,” building a national identity is critical in the face of international rejection of their political status. Key elements of this new or re-animated national identity are political and cultural icons symbolizing the new political entity but with historical antecedents. Following Anthony Smith’s ethno-symbolism approach to the study of nationalism and motivated by Jean Gottmann’s research on iconographies in political geography, the article reports the results of nationally representative samples in four post-Soviet de facto states, Nagorno-Karabakh, South Ossetia, Transdniestria, and Abkhazia. Respondents were asked to name up to five political and cultural figures that they admired. The collated results show a great array of local and Russian names in the four republics. Categorizing the names by historical era and by provenance allows a clarification of the extent to which nation building can rely on local heroes. Among the four republics, Nagorno-Karabakh stands out for its ethno-symbolic local character, while Transdniestrian respondents identified few iconic figures. South Ossetia shows a mix of local and Russian names while the respondents in Abkhazia were divided by nationality in their choices.     

The enemy as the unthinkable: a concretist reading of Carl Schmitt’s conception of the political

This article offers an unconventional interpretation of Carl Schmitt’s conception of the political. It first identifies two alternative readings – an ‘exceptionalist’ and a ‘concretist’ one – to make the claim that in the late 1920s he laid the foundations for a theory of politics that overcame the flaws of his theory of exception. It then explains why the concretist reading provides an insightful key to Schmitt’s take on the relationship between politics and law as a whole. Despite this, the chief aim of this analysis is not interpretive. Rather, the article claims that such a paradigm change was related to Schmitt’s pondering on the elements that were menacing to draw the experience of modern statehood to an end even more seriously than any upheavals and revolutions. For he came to the conclusion that the mere claim to political self-sufficiency on the part on non-state social entities was able to defy the idea of the state as the political entity par excellence. While these reflections urged Schmitt to reformulate many features of his conception of the political, the article contends that this particular juncture in his production sheds light on a crucial feature of contemporary politics.     

Pressurised pastoralism in South Gobi, Mongolia: what is the role of drought?

The desert-steppe region of southern Mongolia is susceptible to drought and extreme winter weather ( dzud ) that in combination form Mongolia's worst natural hazard. Low precipitation and high climatic variability in this dryland environment impact the landscape and affect pastoralism, the dominant rural lifestyle. Using the Standardised Precipitation Index (SPI), this paper identifies drought occurrence in South Gobi Province, Mongolia. It then examines the relationship of drought with climate factors, interaction with vegetation (derived from Normalised Difference Vegetation Index - NDVI - data), and local human and livestock populations, and the dzuds of 1999–2001. Results show that drought is recurrent in the region, reaching extreme intensity most recently in 2005–2006. In contrast with the prevailing concept of drought impacting dzuds , the study did not find a connection between drought and dzud in South Gobi Province. Though repeated events, these natural hazards occur independently in the region. Climatic variables show increasing temperatures (>1°C), fluctuating precipitation patterns and a decline in vegetation cover. The principal long-term correlation of drought is with human population rather than natural factors, dzud or livestock numbers.     

Cultural development: a new policy paradigm in the cultural policies of the 1970s in Québec

The common expression of ‘cultural development’ appears in many cultural policy statements without it necessarily arousing questions about its precise meaning. Indeed, we usually spontaneously associate ‘cultural development’ to any governmental intervention that aims at stimulating cultural vitality. However, if we look more closely at the origin of this concept, we soon discover that its appearance on the eve of May 68, in France, corresponds to the rise of new concerns in cultural policy matters and to a radical redefinition of the state’s role in this domain. Still enjoying a strong influence, France’s political transformations were closely followed by some Quebecois politicians and socially engaged intellectuals who were participating, at that time, in the formulation of a new political vision in cultural matters in Québec in the 1960s and 1970s. The objective of this paper is thus to retrace the origin of the idea of cultural development and follow its evolution in Québec.     

Comecon and the South in the years of détente: a study on East–South economic relations

The article deals with the economic relations of the socialist bloc with less-developed countries in the 1960s and 1970s. It focuses on the economic policies envisaged by technocrats and policy-makers in the Comecon's Commission for technical assistance. It argues that the original formula based on autarky, whereby socialist aid aimed at building a clear alternative to the West and less-developed countries were advised to introduce Soviet-style planning, nationalisation and industrialisation, was progressively abandoned during détente. Doubts on the appropriateness of the Soviet model emerged, especially in Eastern European governments. Trade became increasingly crucial and the strategy of promoting an international division of labour based on mutual advantage turned into an obsession with importing strategic raw materials. In the mid-1970s, despite the official socialist view, the East pursued ‘realist’ policies that made sense in terms of economics rather than ideology. The myth of socialist modernity as a variant of industrial modernity had definitely collapsed, and socialist countries' participation in the Western-dominated world economy became a necessity. Eventually, the developing world became the place where a joint East–West co-operation could take place, often in the framework of the so-called trilateral co-operation, where Western Europe had a special role.     

Heather moorland in the Scottish Highlands: the history of a cultural landscape, 1600–1880

The heather moorland of the Scottish Highlands represents a highly symbolic habitat for the region. Significantly, recent work by ecologists and palaeobotanists has stressed the strong anthropogenic role in its development. Indeed, so vital is the role played by human interference, heather moorland is now seen as a cultural landscape. Yet despite being seen as a cultural landscape, there has hitherto been no attempt to use available documentary evidence to understand how this human interference may have affected its development over recent centuries. This paper examines such evidence, paying particular attention to how human activity contributed to its expansion over the early modern period and to its decline from ca. 1800 onwards, exploring such themes as moor burning, the harvesting of young tree growth, and grazing levels and practices, both before and after the clearances. Particular attention is paid to how the spread of sheep after the clearances contributed to the decline of heather moor and the role that heavy sheep grazing may have played in the deterioration in the quality of Highlands pastures during the mid-nineteenth century.     

Internationalization as a challenge for geographical education in Poland: experience of a new postgraduate study “cultural industries in the development policies of cities and regions”

For many years internationalization has not been a strong point of geographical education in post-socialist countries, including Poland. Therefore, all attempts at intensifying it are a real challenge and good practices deserve dissemination. This paper seeks to present the organizational and programme assumptions of a new field of postgraduate study called Cultural industries in the development policies of cities and regions, (Project supported by the European Social Fund under the Human Capital Operational Programme in the years 2013–2015 (Priority IV: Tertiary Education and Science, Measure 4.3: Enhancing the didactic potential of universities in areas of key importance for the Europe 2020 Strategy. UDA-POKL.04.03.00–00-152/12–00).) developed by the staff of the Institute of Socio-Economic Geography and Spatial Management of Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań (Poland) as a didactic innovation, based on a modular system of education offering wide internationalization possibilities. The analysis focuses on experiences connected with this process. They include classes prepared in cooperation with visiting professors and practitioners from eight universities and European institutions as well as week-long practical placements in Brussels, arranged thanks to a network of experts and institutions specifically established for this purpose. The results obtained help to formulate conclusions and recommendations for higher schools interested in adopting this kind of good practices connected with the development of geographical education.     

Yeats,Samhain, and the aesthetics of cultural nationalism: ‘a supreme moment in the life of a nation’

Together, in the plays and essays published in the 1903 issue of Samhain, William Butler Yeats assembled writings that endorse his vision of cultural nationalism in that they stress the possibilities of an artistic regeneration that that has the power to reconcile perceived exclusive strata within Irish society and also to herald a new age not only for Irish culture but for the Irish nation. Yeats, in his cultural nationalism, ultimately vested faith in an Ascendancy tradition, defined not by birth as much as by a willingness to surrender not just political ambitions but all ambition to that of the artist.