Battlefields as cultural resources

Abstract

The category of 'historic battlefield' is a relatively new one in archaeology. As a place of activity in the past, a battlefield is most often considered to be a 'historic place', rather than an 'archaeological site', although the attention of archaeologists over the past few decades has done much to indicate the archaeological potential and significance of such places. As a site of attention by heritage agencies in the present, battlefields are subject to a range of different treatments not only in different territories, but often also different manners of treatment under the same management regime. Neither of these sets of approaches has resulted in any kind of debate about the nature of the historic battlefield as an object — the discourse remains locked in a set of unexamined assumptions that are worthy of review. Accordingly, this paper reviews, from the perspective of archaeology, the current state of the category of 'historic battlefield' internationally. In particular, it considers the historical development of battlefield studies in archaeology and examines the ontology of the historic battlefield from three key perspectives: the definition of 'battle'; battlefields as places; and the manner in which they are given value as part of management regimes.     

Fieldwork as cultural process

Butler, Barbara, and Diane Michalski Turner, eds. Children and Anthropological Research. New York and London: Plenum Press, 1987. xi + 161 pp. including chapter references and author and subject indices. $39.50 cloth.

Friedrich, Paul. The Princes of Naranja: An Essay in Anthrohistorical Method. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1986. xx + 305 pp. including appendices and notes. $29.95 cloth, $12.95 paper.

Alverson, Marianne. Under African Sun. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987. xiii + 233 pp. including photographs and glossary. $19.95 cloth.     

Cultural diversity as a multilevel and multifaceted legal notion operating in the law on cultural policies

The objective of the present article is to highlight the obscured links between the multilevel and multifaceted legal concept of cultural diversity and its political uses. It intends to provide a clear appraisal of the concepts of cultural diversity within the legal framework in which cultural policies are immersed. It seeks to focus on the uses of cultural diversity as a legal concept that reflect intense disagreements on cultural policies, that helps legitimatize very different and variable political ideas and that emerges from very different backgrounds. After identifying the exact legal scope of the notion, the article analyses the narratives and discourses that lead to the consolidation and use of cultural diversity as a multilevel legal notion.     

Theorising the role of cultural products in cultural diplomacy from a Cultural Studies perspective

Cultural diplomacy continues to attract significant interest as a potential means for states to exercise ‘soft power’. However, policy-makers and academics who assert the efficacy of cultural diplomacy in terms of influencing foreign publics and states rarely consider how cultural products are actually received abroad. This article proposes that this process of reception can be better understood with reference to the theoretical approaches of Cultural Studies, which encourage us to recognise the extent to which audiences are implicated in processes of meaning-making, processes which are closely associated with the articulation of identity. By applying these approaches to cultural diplomacy, policy-makers and researchers could shift their focus to an exploration of realities of the reception cultural products abroad, which would better inform their assumptions about how to achieve successful cultural diplomacy.     

Education as a cultural process

John Collier, Jr. Alaskan Eskimo Education: A Film Analysis of Cultural Confrontation in the Schools. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1973. v + 130 pp. Illustrations, index and bibliography. $2.75 (paper).

Nancy Modiano. Indian Education in the Chiapas Highlands. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1973. 128 pp. Illustrations and index. $2.75 (paper).

Harry F. Wolcott. The Man in the Principal's Office: An Ethnography. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1973. vii + 334 pp. Tables, charts and references. $4.95 (paper).     

Diversity and cultural policy: cultural citizenship as a tool for inclusion

At the crossroads of citizenship, cultural and diversity studies, I enter in the emerging debate on cultural citizenship. Culture is seen as a channel for diversity inclusion, and cultural policy carries the function of enhancing citizenship. My reasoning will follow two steps. First, in overviewing the recent literature, I identify two main drivers making cultural citizenship: the democratic/equality and the identity/national drivers. However, I will note that the debate is concentrated in the plurality of meanings of ‘culture’, and not, as I will argue as a second step, in the plurality of citizenship traditions: a liberal, a communitarian and a republican one. This view is at the basis of different approaches of cultural policies when we focus on them as enhancing cultural citizenship in diversity contexts. At the end, I will also contend that this can ground an interpretative framework capable of distinguishing current social practices and policies.     

Protecting contemporary cultural soundscapes as intangible cultural heritage: sounds of Istanbul

This paper aims to evaluate culture and traditions of everyday life from a sonic perspective and to suggest ways for protecting characteristic sounds and soundscapes. This multidisciplinary research, having roots in such fields as soundscape studies, intangible cultural heritage (ICH), museum studies and sensory studies, explores the larger contemporary cultural soundscape of Istanbul. This paper also draws on the project The Soundscape of Istanbul (https://soundscapeofistanbul.ku.edu.tr/), which is archiving the contemporary elements of the cultural soundscape of Istanbul that were determined by public contribution, and outlines examples from this collection. Sounds constitute an inevitable part of daily life and are therefore very important as ICH. Thus, they deserve to be protected to strengthen cultural memory. However, sonic culture is twice endangered due to the physical characteristics of sound itself and the dynamic structure of intangible culture. Therefore, urgent protection of contemporary cultural soundscapes in the context of ICH is crucial for transferring the present sonic environments to following generations in order to maintain cultural identity.     

Cultural rights and citizenship in cultural policy: Taiwan and China

From the 1990s, academia has paid increasing attention to cultural rights and cultural citizenship. This paper reviews existing literature on the construction of cultural rights and cultural citizenship and argues that cultural citizenship expands the concept of ‘citizenship’, promotes citizens’ consciousness, and confirms the content of ‘cultural rights’. The concept of cultural citizenship provides a new perspective from which to examine the challenges of cultural inequality, taste differences, symbolic struggle in cultural participation, and consumption. Based on western theories, this paper discusses the development of cultural citizenship and cultural rights in cultural policy in Taiwan and China, and it finds the tension between control and autonomy and between the government and the civil society in the practice of cultural citizenship. In Taiwan, most cultural policies are developed and implemented by the government, and those affected by them often do not have the necessary critical awareness to judge or examine them. In China, the protection of cultural rights provides a new type of control rather than autonomy from the Chinese Government. In both Taiwan and China, it is important to empower civil society to balance the governments’ control over the practice of cultural citizenship.     

Decadence as historical myth and cultural theory

This article traces the early history of the concept of European decadence with special emphasis on its manifestations in French literary production in the period between 1860 and 1900. It argues that decadence was not a historical reality, but a cultural myth, that gave expression to a new, specifically urban experience of modernity first thematized in Baudelaire's poetry and prose work. It further claims that this concept continues to have important contemporary relevance in the form of debates about the “second modernity” and the new “cosmopolitanism.”     

Degraded towns in Poland as cultural heritage

This paper discusses how the concept of cultural heritage is currently used in relation to the so-called degraded towns (i.e. deprived of their urban status) in Poland. It shows the role of heritagisation in the process of restitution of urban status, and addresses the effects of the ongoing revitalisation of degraded towns in order to restore their lost urban glory. I argue that the Polish understanding of urbanity is ambiguous, muddling formality with cultural connotations. I address how such convolution both rewrites history and affects modernity by the imposition of values and foreclosures. I also discuss how alterations to the built environment made in the name of cultural heritage (revitalisation) are often conducted with disregard to identity, authenticity and historical hybridity, and how the introduction of ‘history’ into a modern arena affects the local society. I conclude that considering degraded towns as a special form of cultural heritage is a new construction, where coupling of the disconnected dimensions of the Polish understanding of urbanity becomes even more apparent. I stress that this field is neither sufficiently differentiated nor problematised, and that cultural heritage relating to degraded towns is often taken for granted.     

Cultural rights and their contribution to sustainable development: implications for cultural policy

Abstract

This article aims to analyse the meaning and implications of cultural rights for cultural policies concerned with sustainable development. Although references to both cultural rights and sustainable development have become widespread within cultural policy documents in recent decades, the actual conceptual and operational implications often remain vague, as an ambitious discourse that may conceal a poverty of resources and capacities. As a result, the ideal horizon suggested by cultural rights and sustainable development may not always be achieved in practice, nor are the mechanisms to achieve it always well known. In this respect, the article aims to dissect the actual requirements posed by cultural rights and sustainable development, including their different notions and areas of synergy and intersections, in order to shed light on relevant cultural policy approaches. To this end, a range of examples taken from a variety of contexts will also be examined as areas of expressed needs or areas of possible solutions.     

关于民俗文物

过去,在中国人的日常生活中,各种造型不同、材质各异的器物默默地发挥着其应有的作用,给人们的生活和学习带来了极大的便利。这些平凡的器物与中国传     

Cultural policy as mythical narrative

ABSTRACT

In this paper, we argue that policy assumptions are shaped by mythical narratives carrying underlying beliefs and values. Drawing on narrative studies, organisational theory and Gramsci’s cultural hegemony theory, we examine how sense-making narratives create consensus, how they imply causation and individual agency, and finally how narratives fragment to reveal alternatives to hegemonic ‘common sense’ assumptions. Applying this framework to cultural policy we examine the place of mythic, sense-making narratives in the historical development of foundational national cultural policies in the UK and Mexico – respectively, narratives of ‘the civilising mission’ and ‘social transformation’. We then consider narrative emplotment and individualisation underpinning assumptions about individual creativity in the UK creative industries policy. Finally, we address the postmodern turn in narrative studies, showing how fragmented, polysemous narratives fracture cultural policy into ‘personalised truths’ and give voice to other, counter-hegemonic perspectives. We conclude by proposing an agenda for narrative research in cultural policy.     

EU media policy and/as cultural policy: economic and cultural tensions in MEDIA 2007

This article is an examination of the cultural and economic tensions that arise in the formulation and implementation of media policy in the European Union. Through an analysis of the MEDIA 2007 MEDIA Desk Germany. 2007. Interview with Aviva Silver, head of the MEDIA Programme, European Commission carried out by MEDIA Desk Germany in preparation of the Programme launch at Berlinale 2007 [online] Available from: http://www.mediadesk.co.uk/usr/images/news_images/interview_with_aviva_on_media_2007.doc [Accessed 17 May 2010] [Google Scholar] program, the authors investigate how the priorities of cultural policy and media policy interact and conflict. EU policy goals from the mid‐2000s onwards have emphasized attention to the economic potential of the creative and cultural industries, which complicates the cultural potential of audiovisual media. MEDIA 2007 MEDIA Desk Germany. 2007. Interview with Aviva Silver, head of the MEDIA Programme, European Commission carried out by MEDIA Desk Germany in preparation of the Programme launch at Berlinale 2007 [online] Available from: http://www.mediadesk.co.uk/usr/images/news_images/interview_with_aviva_on_media_2007.doc [Accessed 17 May 2010] [Google Scholar] in particular demonstrates these tensions, as the design of this policy mechanism emphasized audiovisual media’s potential for European economic growth as a precondition for achieving cultural objectives.