Learning from experience: Cultural policies and cultural democracy in the 20th century 1

Abstract

The discussion of the multicultural society has long been current in Danish social and educational policy, but it is only at the turn of the millennium that the issue has been placed on the agenda in a serious way in relation to the Danish national cultural policy. The transformation from a homogenous identity concept to the acceptance of a diversity of voices and interpretations is occurring only slowly in both the production and dissemination of art and culture. In the cultural policy discourse up through the 1980s there is an acute lack of discussion about the ethnic or multicultural. Far up into the 1990s, the cultural political contributions within the multicultural field are left to the social or humanitarian organs, with integration as the general goal. At the advent of the millennium we can identify greater openness and interest for the multicultural field. In the evaluation of The Ministry of Culture's Development Fund I have analysed the subsidized activities according to the strategies of ethnic revival , interculturalism and hybridisation , and in the article I discuss the problems of formulating criteria for artistic quality in an area new to members of the board. On this background I discuss the relation between multiculturalism and cultural diversity , where I find the concept of cultural diversity to be a better reflection of the new hybrid cultures, which not only transcend boundaries and traditional cultures but dissolve them and create new expressions across genres and cultural forms.     

清中前期的东堂藏书

本文以惠泽霖《北堂图书馆西文善本目录》著录的题识信息为基础,结合部分罗马耶稣会档案馆旧藏档案、埃武拉公共图书馆档案和来华传教士信件等资料,通过对乾隆朝以前北京东堂的创设和变迁情况的梳理,可知东堂藏书空间的变化。将惠泽霖著录、高华士整理部分藏书题识,与现存藏书比对与复校,对题识内容进行了分类、翻译和分析,展现出清中前期东堂藏书收集、管理与利用的历史,以及东堂藏书的专题特色与流动脉络。     

Myths,missions, and mistrust: The fate of Christianity in 16th and 17th century Japan

This article examines accepted opinion regarding the persecution and demise of Christian/Catholic missions in 16th and 17th century Japan. Many of the key issues associated with the encounter of European missionaries and Japanese feudal systems of authority and power resonate with contemporary interest in transculturalism, semantic slippage, personal agency, and the intimate interplay between religion, politics, and economics. Burdened with rigid standards of belief, heresy, and race from European inquisitions as well as Mesoamerican conquests, the Jesuit and Franciscan missionaries made numerous strategic blunders that contributed to their fates, both as recipients of expulsion orders and, finally, on the execution grounds.     

Barley and identity in the Spanish colonial Audiencia of Quito: Archaeobotany of the 18th century San Blas neighborhood in Riobamba

Archaeological excavation of two late-18th century household middens in the San Blas parish of the colonial city of Riobamba resulted in the recovery of samples of archaeobotanical remains dating to the period before the AD 1797 destruction of the city in an earthquake. These seed remains were dominated by barley (Hordeum vulgare) and quinoa (Chenopodium quinoa). The dominance of these two grains in samples from artisans’ households in this marginal neighborhood suggests that we should question the assumption that imported Old World domesticates were associated with more elite houses during the Spanish colonial period in the Andes.     

Mutilated memory: Reconstruction of the past and the mechanisms of memory among 17th century Otomis

Based on a chronicle written and translated by the Otomi — an indian group living in Querétaro City to the east of the Mexican Bajio, this work intends to describe the way they conceived the Spanish Conquest in the mid‐XVIIth century. By recalling, interpreting and idealizing their past these indians elaborated a version that conveys a complex and hopeless search for autonomy and identity in a context of social decay and crisis. This text is also a rare manifestation of colonial indian literature. Its analysis discovers the way Indians could use writing, oral and written sources to create and express an original way of coping with the past, time and colonial society.     

Institutions in context: Reconstructing Aristotle's defence of cultural studies

Within political science, there are two alternative approaches to understanding political institutions: traditional ‘institutional studies’ and the newer ‘cultural studies’. Each approach tends to go its own way, with little debate between the two. The former explains institutions by reference to their independent behaviour which has a formative influence on political culture. The latter explains institutions by reference to their dependent behaviour which reflects the formative influence of political culture. This paper proposes a synthesis between the two approaches, offering a third alternative based on a reconstructured application of Aristotle's ‘regime analysis’, along lines experimented with by J.S. Mill. My primary aim is analytical rather that historical: to reconstruct an approach to institutional analysis which better relates institution and culture.     

Ruling the Land of the Yellow Lama: Religion,Muli, and geopolitics in the 17th century Sino-Tibetan borderland

Abstract

The author scrutinizes the history of Muli (木里) as a semiautonomous political entity in the 17th century southern Sino-Tibetan borderland. By tracing Muli’s improvization in the face of multiple powerful regimes such as the Naxi kingdom, the Geluk Tibetans, the Khoshut Mongols, and the Chinese dynasties, the author explores how an indigenous notion of power took shape in the wake of geopolitical turbulence. Before 1580, Muli was a colony of the Naxi kingdom and dominated by the Kagyu school of Tibetan Buddhism. After 1640, it became a stronghold of the Tibetan Buddhist Geluk school and was deeply involved in the power struggles between the Geluk and Kakyu schools as well as the Tibetans and Mongols. Despite of acknowledging multiple sovereigns, Muli rulers utilized various tactics to hold on to power and prioritize local interest. The nuanced, yet creative, strategies Muli people adopted showcases the significant role border regimes played and their agency in shaping the power dynamics in pre-modern Eastern Asian borderlands.     

The context of migration: the example of Ireland in the nineteenth century

"A classic case where out-migration interacted with many other geographical phenomena is provided by rural Ireland in the nineteenth century. The apparent turning point was the Great Famine of the 1840s, but the areas with the greatest suffering from starvation did not necessarily show the greatest population decline, suggesting that other forces were active. Considerable economic and social changes were already taking place before the Famine: fertility was being reduced, later marriage was becoming established and considerable emigration was already taking place. Immediately after the Famine those areas which had been hardest hit often reverted to pre-Famine conditions and did not show strong population decline until the 1870s. The Famine was a most serious event, but the modernization of Irish rural life, which linked emigration with changes in family structure, agriculture and population numbers, was more important in bringing about geographical change."