Whose World Is It, Anyway?

Book reviewed in this article:
Jessica C. E. Gienow–Hecht, Transmission Impossible: American Journalism as Cultural Diplomacy inPostwar Germany, 1945–1955     

What’s radical about reality TV? An unexpected tale from Shanghai of a Chinese lesbian antihero

This article advances a Marxist approach to the contradictory relationship of minority sexuality to capitalist political economy. I use the work of Karl Marx, Antonio Gramsci and critical theorist Nancy Fraser to tell a story of an extraordinary momentary opening for a distinct lesbian subculture in Shanghai. This moment was born from a Chinese reality TV show called Super Girl. A radical space for lesbian self-development is shown to have emerged through a relative uncoupling of the social relations of capitalism from political authority. This article warns against an Althusserian tendency within gay political economy and intersectionality analyses which slips into a notion of hegemonic market containment. Instead, a Marxism that is alert to subversive outlets by and for human agency is applied.     

Zimbabwe's ‘Fast Track’ Land Reform: What about women?

The wave of occupations of commercial farms in Zimbabwe starting in the year 2000 captured worldwide attention. By the end of that year, the government of Zimbabwe initiated the ‘fast track’ land reform process meant to formalize the occupations, and encourage further land appropriation and redistribution. Where are women in this process? The Women and Land Lobby Group (WLLG) was formed in 1998 by Zimbabwean women activists committed to the land issue. Since 1998 they have lobbied government to include women's interests in the design of land reform, and have made some inroads in improving women's formal rights to land as stated in policy documents. However, the current ‘fast track’ practices continue to privilege men as primary recipients of resettlement land, and the emerging role of traditional authorities in the land reform process marginalizes women. Other legal provisions that may help women struggle for changes remain weak. The contradiction between customary law, practices and attitudes and modern individual rights represents a complex battleground for women and land in Southern Africa, and calls for new feminist conceptualizations of the state as a vehicle for gender justice.     

New Chinese Military History, 1839–1951: What’s the Story?

Since 1990, New Chinese Military History in the West has remedied scholarly neglect of Chinese warfare and changed the usual stories of modern China. These studies disproved Orientalist assumptions of a unique “Chinese way of war” or a strategic culture that avoided aggressive confrontation. Scholars also challenge the assumption that Confucian immobility led to a clash of civilizations and decisive defeat in the Opium Wars, First Sino-Japanese War, and Boxer War of 1900. In fact, Qing officials were quick and successful in creating a new military regime. New military histories of the warlords, the Sino-Japanese Wars, and the Chinese Civil War show that developing new types of warfare was central in creating the new nation. All these wars split the country into factions that were supported by outside powers: they were internationalized civil wars. The article also asks how the choice of terms, labels, and categories shapes interpretations and political messages.     

What’s in a name? A Geography of Heritage revisited

This article is a comment on: Tubridge et al., 2012. Decennial reflections on a ‘geography of heritage’ (2000). International Journal of Heritage Studies, DOI: 10.1080/13527258.2012.695038     

Making digital heritage about people’s life stories

Abstract

Actively creating new digital heritage content about people’s life histories is part of the democratisation of heritage engagement with the public. The approach of documenting unofficial histories is supported by a growing literature. Unofficial stories contribute new perspectives on the heritage identity of a region. The case study of the ‘Local People’ exhibition, curated by the author in 2013 in the North West of Ireland, is used to discuss the methodology of a digital curatorial process, www.localpeopleireland.com. This article argues that gathering and presenting unofficial histories of individuals' life experiences, can disrupt official narratives of The Troubles and challenge a regional identity based on conflict and division. The making of digital history is analysed as a curatorial process, rather than the ease of use of technology. The methods used included: filmed interviews, new portrait photography and the digitisation of family photograph albums. A virtual exhibition was produced and new digital historical sources were created that transform intangible heritage by crystallising people’s voices and images into ‘tangible’ digital objects. ‘Local People’ utilised Facebook https://www.facebook.com/localpeopleproject/?fref=ts and Vimeo https://vimeo.com/album/2518991. It is argued that the digital space provides a ‘virtual contact zone’ in which diverse, unofficial and personal narratives can be presented together.     

What’s so good about parliamentary hybrids? Comment on ‘Australian bicameralism as semi-parliamentarianism: patterns of majority formation in 29 democracies’

Commenting on ‘Australian Bicameralism as Semi-Parliamentarianism’, this paper reconstructs the underlying justification of the issue-by-issue median as a rule of collective choice, a rule central to the theory of complex majoritarianism. In semi-parliamentary systems, this rule is institutionalised in parliamentary chambers that make law and policy by issue specific majorities. The comment questions whether it is necessary to balance the vision of complex majoritarianism with the principle of simple majoritarianism, arguing that the values of identifiability, clarity of responsibility and stability are instrumental rather than intrinsic values. It notes further problems with semi-parliamentarianism as a two-chamber system.     

On the Side of Light: Performing Morality at Rwanda’s Genocide Memorials

Abstract

In Rwanda, numerous memorials have arisen to remember the 1994 genocide and its victims. This paper considers the effect of the national genocide memorials on Western tourist visitors, in the context of research on ‘dark tourism’ and Western attitudes toward death and the dead. It draws on the idea that, in a Western context, viewing the remains of violent death can be a kind of ‘soft murder’, and on the concept that the act of witnessing violence creates a community of witnesses implicated in that violence. Western visitors to Rwandan genocide memorials therefore form a community, and their responses are guided by a set of community rules regarding behaviour and experiences during and after the visit. These rules, this paper argues, are rooted in pressures to assert oneself as a properly moral individual through performing morality in a morally ambiguous setting.     

What’s the point? Retouched bladelet variability in the Protoaurignacian. Results from Fumane,Isturitz, and Les Cottés

The Protoaurignacian is considered a cultural proxy for one of the first expansions of anatomically modern humans across Europe. The stabilization of bladelet industries that characterizes this techno-complex is therefore often used as supporting evidence for the break from previous stone knapping traditions and also for the increase of human mobility through wider territories. Despite the cultural importance that bladelets have gained, a careful inter-regional comparison, stressing similarities and differences, has not yet been attempted. Moreover, the use of traditional typologies has blurred the morpho-metrical variability that characterizes lamellar tools. Here, a study has been carried out on retouched bladelets from three pivotal sites: Fumane (northeast Italy), Isturitz (southwest France), and Les Cottés (northern France). By using morphological, dimensional, and retouching attributes, and by evaluating the statistical significance of the main differences, the first detailed analysis of the variability of retouched bladelets within the Protoaurignacian has been documented. The results indicate that the features that best discriminate the bladelet assemblages are the presence and the relative variability of bladelets with convergent retouch, although a reassessment of existing studies and new methodological approaches are required to test the latter hypothesis. Throughout this paper, we demonstrate the merits of using a unified classification of retouched bladelets for comparing behavior in between groups distant in space. We hope that this paper will be a new incentive to develop unified taxonomies for the study of Early Upper Paleolithic lithics in Western Eurasia.     

What’s Up Doc? Seventh Sons in Victorian and Edwardian Lancashire

Abstract

Folklorists have long acknowledged that seventh sons had a reputation as healers in England. It has not previously been appreciated that in the region around Blackburn, Lancashire, seventh sons were frequently given the Christian name ‘Doctor’ in Victorian and Edwardian times. This article examines seventh-son traditions there and their connection to healing by reconstituting families with sons named ‘Doctor’. The article finishes with two reflections on folklore transmission and folk beliefs in Lancashire in the nineteenth and early twentieth century.     

Prof. Dever’s Last Tome: Much Ado about Things and Nothing?

In his recently published book, professor Dever breaks no new ground and adds no new insights into the ever-elusive remote past of the Israelites. Rather, he not only persists in his decades-old, and by-now pointless, scholarly tiff with the European minimalist school of biblical interpretation, but argues, unconvincingly, for the superiority of archeological things as primary sources for writing a true history of ancient Israel. Confusingly, he ends his tome with a plea for integrating [minimalist] biblical hermeneutics with archaeological findings as a way forward to hopelessly construct yet another, but the truest of all histories.     

What about effective access to cars in motorised households?

Most Canadian urban centres are facing difficulties with public transport systems. As car ownership has increased, urban areas have experienced a long‐term decrease in per capita ridership. At present, a significant proportion of riders in most cities is considered to be transit captives, which usually refers to carless individuals or members of carless households. But, what about members of motorised households without effective or real access to a car as, for instance, two‐income households with only one car? Do these ‘restricted car users’ constitute a significant, but somewhat hidden, segment of the transit market? The initial purpose of this paper was to learn more about individuals with restricted or no‐car access who live in car‐owning households: Who are they? Where do they live? Do their numbers fluctuate significantly throughout the day? More specifically, how has car access in motorised households changed in the past two decades? Sociospatial profiles of motorised household members with restricted car access are presented for 1981 and 1996. The second purpose was to analyse restricted car access in motorised households by using a multivariate model of car access for motorised households in the Québec metropolitan area. To achieve these objectives, we developed a logical typology of forms of ‘restricted car access’ based on a combination of variables, or resources, qualifying the degree of car access enjoyed by individuals at any given moment during the day: availability of a car, possession of a driver's licence and a driver at the disposal of other household members. This typology was then applied to the 1981 and 1996 origin–destination survey data obtained from the Québec Census Metropolitan Area.     

Polish migrant women’s narratives about language,racialised and gendered difference in Barcelona

The European Union expansion in 2004 resulted in significant changes in migration in Europe. For Spain, which did not open its labour market to the new accession countries until 2006, the extent of Polish migration has been substantially smaller than in countries like Britain. Hence, little scholarly attention has been paid to the experiences of Polish migrants in the Iberian Peninsula. Compared to other European cities, the case of Barcelona is significant, especially in terms of cultural diversity, Catalan identity and bilingual status, something that the newcomers are often unaware of. By drawing on the conceptual framework of conviviality and on data gathered through participant observation, narrative interviews and a focus group conducted with Polish women in Barcelona, this article concentrates on various forms of encounters with the local population. It argues that race, ethnicity, gender, language and spatiality are important factors influencing convivial relations. It contributes to the existing literature by exploring various forms and degrees of conviviality discussed as situated, not necessarily free from tensions and racialised and gendered perceptions of the Other.     

Europe’s First Settler Colonial Incursion into Africa: The Genocide of Aboriginal Canary Islanders

The annihilation of the aboriginal societies of the Canary archipelago, which consists of seven islands off the coast of southern Morocco and was populated by indigenes derived from Berber-speaking communities of north-west Africa, represents modern Europe’s first overseas settler colonial genocide. The process of social destruction, initiated by European slave raiders in the first half of the fourteenth century, was propelled to completion by mainly Iberian conquistadors and settlers towards the end of the fifteenth century. In addition to unrestrained mass violence against Canarians, European conquerors practised near-total confiscation of land and near-total enslavement and deportation of island populations. Enslavement and deportation, which went hand in hand, accounted for the largest number of victims and were central to the genocidal process. They were in effect as destructive as killing because the victims, generally the most productive members of their communities, were permanently lost to their societies. Child confiscation, sexual violence and the use of scorched earth tactics also contributed to the devastation suffered by Canarian peoples. After conquest, the remnants of indigenous Canarian societies were subjected to ongoing violence and cultural suppression, which ensured the extinction of their way of life. That the enslavement and deportation of entire island communities was the consciously articulated aim of conquerors establishes their “intent to destroy in whole,” which is the central criterion for meeting the United Nations Convention on Genocide’s definition of genocide. This article argues that individually and collectively all seven cases of social obliteration in the Canaries represent clear examples of genocide, and it is the first article to contend that the destruction of aboriginal Canarian societies constitutes genocide.     

The Irish Sí Tradition: Connections Between the Disciplines,and What’s in a Word?

One of the most prominent features of the Irish landscape is the great multitude of megalithic sites which date back to the Neolithic. In this paper, I will attempt to demonstrate that the understanding of these sites in Ireland can be enhanced by referencing the native tradition, including the Irish word for the sites, sí, and the sís powerful cultural tradition attested to throughout native Irish folklore, literature, onomastics, and traditional knowledge. In doing so, I will explore the difficulties and the potentials of interdisciplinary communication between archaeology and folkloristics, and the related issues regarding communication between official and unofficial discourses.