Identifying heritage values in local communities

Preservation of cultural heritage is often carried out by voluntary workers in local communities, especially when the objects are not of major national interest, not listed, and not preserved by heritage authorities. The motivation for local preservation, and for spending time and money on objects belonging to the community, is not primarily to preserve cultural heritage objects for the future, but to establish and maintain common social institutions in the local society, institutions of vital importance to the local identity. The aim of this paper is to investigate how the local understanding of heritage relates to its official understanding in a Norwegian context. The paper will also examine to what degree the Norwegian heritage authorities have managed to implement the emphasis on local participation and the social dimensions of heritage, given strong articulation in later international conventions. Criteria for value assessment, as defined by national heritage authorities, do not seem to play a vital role in the local heritage field. The central authorities’ focus on professionalism, qualified management, and predefined criteria appears to meet limited resonance in local communities.     

Ethnic belonging of the children born out of rape in postconflict Bosnia‐Herzegovina and Rwanda

Sexual violence has been used as a weapon of war in ethnic conflicts, and forced impregnations have been central to this strategy. Scholars however disagree on whether the cultural assimilation to the maternal group influences these children's identities, or whether they are perceived as belonging to the enemy group (Carpenter; Nikolic‐Ristanovic). Drawing on preliminary qualitative findings collected in 2013 in Rwanda and Bosnia‐Herzegovina, this paper analyses the ethnic identification imposed by the enemy group, the mothers and their community on the children born out of rape. It first explores how the mothers' ethnic identities are often subordinated to their fathers' ethnic background, and how this then justifies their social exclusion from their maternal ethnic group. This paper suggests that sexual violence is extremely effective in ensuring the continuation of the ethnic conflict in the aftermath of the violence by attacking the children's senses of belonging.     

Shopping,social inclusion and the urban geographies of people with intellectual disability

In this paper, we examine the social geographies of people with intellectual disabilities. We focus particular attention on the significance of shopping and spaces of consumption as they relate to questions social inclusion and belonging in the lives of PWID. The focus on consumption offers a useful counterpoint to a prevailing policy emphasis on social inclusion through productive activities. The paper also contributes to the literature on intellectual disability within social and health geography, shedding light on the varied socio-spatial experiences of people beyond the confines of community-care facilities and other separate spaces. Our analysis draws on data collected from a participatory research project in Toronto (Canada). The project involved a small but diverse group of people with intellectual disabilities, who led academic researchers on a series of excursions designed to explore those places and routes that make up their everyday social geographies. Shopping emerged as a significant but often ambivalent theme in the context of these geographies, and the analysis demonstrates the complex interplay of autonomy and control, pleasure and restraint, care and support that shape people’s experiences of consumption. We conclude by discussing the significance of these findings for notions of social inclusion and belonging.     

第二居所旅居地社会互动及其对社区发展的影响——以三亚市为例

第二居所旅居是一种旅游现象,旅居者为了追求愉悦和非日常经历,在目的地长时间逗留,重构旅居地的社会关系.本文以社区场域理论为研究框架,综合运用访谈法、观察法等研究方法,探析三亚市第二居所旅居者与当地居民社会互动的现状及其对社区发展的影响,并讨论如何提升两者的互动.结果发现:旅居者与当地居民以浅层次的社会互动为主,缺乏深入...     

Communities in Catchments: Implications for Natural Resource Management

Economic and social considerations in natural resource management include the need for community participation and a greater appreciation of social and economic processes in understanding environmental problems. It is anticipated that new frameworks will guide these inclusions and redirect planning and management activities to achieve environmental sustainability. This paper examines issues of participation and the nature of ‘community’ through an analysis of relevant natural resource management policy documents and a case study of a public drinking water supply catchment in Western Australia. The findings indicate that if NRM strategies are to be successful, then a much wider and more inclusive view of community is needed, one that fully captures the different stakeholder groups beyond farmers, such as town residents, indigenous people, and those involved in other land uses. We need strategies that can accommodate differences within and between communities.     

Building Communities in Ancient Samnium: Cult,Ethnicity and Nested Identities

This article addresses the meaning of community in an area of the ancient world that is normally seen to diverge from the paradigm of the Classical city‐state, by examining the role of sanctuaries in the articulation of identity and belonging. The focus is on Samnium (central Italy) in the last four centuries BC, where archaeological and historical evidence, including a wealth of recent discoveries, supports a dynamic view of a region that is traditionally associated with a cohesive ethnic group. Whilst it is true that the major sanctuary at Pietrabbondante fostered the construction of Samnite ethnic identity, this article highlights the importance of other types and levels of belonging in light of a broader range of cult sites. The concept of ‘nested identities’ (a scenario where individuals identify simultaneously with overlapping groups) can bring about a more nuanced view of how cult was used as a means to negotiate belonging on ethnic and non‐ethnic levels. I hope to show that local communities, and particularly the local elites, were able to function independently rather than simply as the building blocks of the Samnite ethnos.     

Das andere Zuhause

Cities are increasingly addressing high-skilled migrants. Our contribution examines the factors that shape how this group relates to places and why cities provide different conditions for this. We draw on empirical data from an explorative case study with highly qualified migrants in the university city of Münster. First, we look at the place ties at the new place of residence and thereby focus on their local social networks and their sense of belonging. Second, we turn to the place-specific characteristics, in particular the role of “connections” and “urban opportunity structures”. Based on our findings we discuss how urban policy-making may influence the place attachment of this desired group.     

The bourgeoisification of the Green-Line: The new Israeli middle-class and the Suburban Settlement

This paper focuses on Kochav-Yair and Oranit, two localities that exemplify the Israeli Suburban Settlement phenomenon. With the first being developed by a selective group of families and the latter by a single private entrepreneur, yet both with the full support of the state, they represent the selective privatisation of the national settlement project during the 1980s. Examining the geopolitical, social and economic interests that accompanied their development, this paper illustrates how both projects incorporated the upper-middle-class bourgeoisie in the national territorial effort along the border with the occupied West-Bank (the Green-Line). Analysing the planning and construction process of both case studies, as well as their spatial characteristics, this paper explains how the upwardly middle-class and its contractors were granted substantial planning rights. Consequently, enabling them to influence the production of space while promoting a new local suburban typology that is based on better living standards, private family life and a distinctive isolated community. Therefore, this paper illustrates the Suburban Settlement typology as an outcome of the bourgeoisification of the Green-Line, which domesticated the former frontier area and enabled its inclusion in the greater national consensus.     

Conservation,extraction and social contracts at a violent frontier: Evidence from eastern DRC’s Itombwe Nature Reserve

Conservation efforts must develop strategies to perform at violent frontiers where environmental values, mineral extraction and conflict intersect. Using war-torn eastern Democratic Republic of Congo's Itombwe Nature Reserve as an illustrative example, this article explores how community conservation is implemented and received at a violent frontier. Taking inspiration from an emerging body of literature which portrays conservation as a form of ‘social contract’ in regions where the nation state is weak or absent, it explores some of the expectations and obligations that surround community conservation initiatives. It draws the conclusion that conservation social contracts are likely to produce unintended consequences when left unfulfilled or broken. Conservation actors perceived to be breaking the terms of (implicit) social contracts can inadvertently encourage local communities to embrace alternative contracts with other actors seeking to extract value from the resources located in frontiers, such as industrial mining companies.     

The Contested Landscapes of World Heritage on a Tourist Island: the case of Garajonay National Park,La Gomera

This paper considers the World Heritage Site of Garajonay National Park on the island of La Gomera (Canary Islands). It is based on a research project carried out during 1999-2000 that explored the circumstances surrounding its declaration as a National Park and inclusion into the World Heritage List, in conjunction with the consequences for local communities which ensued. The proximity of Garajonay National Park to a large concentration of mass coastal tourism constitutes a further source of potential conflict which may have a wider relevance to other sites of a similar and indeed diverse nature. This paper, therefore, examines the configurations of space and social relations occasioned by the processes of social change, conservation and tourism development in and adjacent to this protected forest. In doing so it elucidates the manner in which these processes are locally mediated in and through contested values over the meaning and purpose of nature conservation in this 'world heritage space'. It argues that a sense of the forest as a place of cultural belonging has been marginalised in favour of its intrinsic ecological value.     

Institutionalising Future Geographies of Financial Inclusion: National Legitimacy Versus Local Autonomy in the British Credit Union Movement

In Great Britain, financial infrastructure withdrawal and community economic decline have focused attention on the capacity of locally "alternative" financial institutions to combat social and financial exclusion. This paper examines one such institution, the residential or "community" credit union, which provides a low-cost source of credit for members drawn from a common bond area usually based upon place of residence and/or work. Although community credit unions have traditionally been seen as providing individuals and communities with the opportunity to access credit and savings facilities in areas where there has been contraction in bank and building society provision (the financial "mainstream"), ongoing attempts exist to move away from the traditional role of community credit unions. This transition has set up three main challenges for the British credit union movement, discussed in this paper as follows: (1) a struggle over the attempt to redefine the "model" credit union within the national credit union movement; (2) the changing regulatory context for credit union development, including attempts to embrace credit unions within New Labour policies on social exclusion; and (3) a "local" challenge, including the incorporation of credit unions into community economic development initiatives. The paper considers how these challenges feed into wider understandings about the social relations, categorisation and autonomy of locally "alternative" financial institutions. We argue that future research on geographies of financial inclusion focusing on "alternative" institutions and their relationship to the financial mainstream needs to pay close critical attention to potential contradictions and tensions operating at different, yet intersecting spatial scales.     

The Unstable Coastline: Navigating Dispossession and Belonging in Colombo

This article explores how residents of a small coastal fishing enclave in Colombo live with cumulative waves of dispossession brought on by exclusionary projects of urban development. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork, I introduce the analytic of navigation to describe how people move, plan and live with both present and future threats of dispossession. Navigation offers a unique perspective on questions of agency and resistance in oppressive conditions. Rather than framing subjects as “resisting” projects of world-class city-making, this analysis shows that urban residents instead engage in complex and occasionally contradictory modes of living with uncertainty. I complicate existing understandings of the term “navigation” by describing how questions of nation and belonging are crucial to comprehending how people navigate. Ultimately, I suggest that expressions of belonging and obligation to an imagined community might not only be strategic, but instead reflect some of the broader social forces which structure possibilities for action.     

Rainwater Tank Households: Water Savers or Water Users?

This paper provides the first published post‐installation analysis of retrofitted rainwater tanks and their effects on mains water consumption. The study aimed to determine the average mains water reductions achieved in households with recently installed rainwater tanks and compare this figure with wider community consumption. The social and cultural impacts of rainwater tank ownership were also explored to understand how rainwater is used and perceived. The results show that during the period of analysis, the drought years of 2005–2007, 7125 or 8% of Illawarra households installed a tank. Comparison of mains water consumption for two years before and after installation shows that rainwater tank households reduced their mains water consumption about the same amount (10.26%) as the wider community (10.8%). The social and cultural components reveal three main groups of households. The largest group, water users, had a desire for water autonomy and independence to continue previously enjoyed water practices that had been restricted. Among a light green group, tanks were part of a package of overtly pro‐environmental behaviours that did not necessarily change consumption patterns. A frugal group, many of whom had been raised in rural areas, were the main water savers. Perception of tank water quality was shown to be an influential determinant of how rainwater was used, particularly for connections internal to the house. This study shows that rainwater tanks have the potential to achieve significant water savings, but if water‐intensive behaviours are not modified, and rainwater tanks are not plumbed indoors, the potential of this alternative water source will not be met. Currently, rainwater tanks facilitate water users as much as water savers.     

Diary

Abstract

The Temple of the Tooth Relic of the Buddha is the most sacred Buddhist site in Sri Lanka. The Temple complex is on the World Heritage List. It was bombed on 25th January 1998 by Tamil terrorists who are fighting for a separate state within the country. As an actively used monument belonging to a living religious tradition, comprehensive restoration was considered necessary. Yet the restoration process became much more than a technical job, guided by professional conservation ethics. Because of its symbolic value within the Buddhist community, the conservators were faced with negotiating a host of political, social and religious issues. The author, who was the Conservator in charge of the project, describes how underlying cultural values affected the restoration process.     

The Changing Face of Heritage at Canada’s National Historic Sites

In order for all citizens to fully belong to a nation or a community, they must have membership in that society’s institutions, systems and social relations on both the formal and everyday levels. Heritage sites are public institutions of formal cultural presentation and informal social encounters where society demonstrates community membership. But in a country such as Canada where global economics and popular culture combine with an unprecedented influx of immigrants, how a community imagines itself and articulates its heritage is changing radically. Canada’s National Historic Sites (NHS) is among the important public institutions devoted to both the presentation of heritage and demonstration of citizen membership. This paper describes how this institution is adapting to changes in imaginings about citizenship, on both the formal and informal level. It looks at how NHS is expanding the involvement of all citizens in the why, what, how and to whom of heritage presentation, evolving its practices to include ethic minorities in its imaginings of Canadianness. Using as an example a new NHS exhibit and designations related to the Underground Railroad and African‐Canadians, the paper considers how historic sites, as formal instruments of the state, can be re‐tuned as informal sites of discourse and negotiation about identity, citizenship and belonging.     

Assessing place-based identities in the early Middle Ages: a proposal for post-Roman Iberia

Sociological models of place-based identity can be used to better understand the social dynamics of local communities and how they interact with their surroundings. This paper explores how these theoretical models of belonging to a place, in tandem with communal cognitive maps, can be applied to post-Roman contexts, taking the Iberian Peninsula in the Visigothic period (sixth–eighth centuries) as a preliminary case study. We argue that this approach can give us not only a more complex understanding of community agencies but also allows us to reconsider the social context for past social interactions. Furthermore, it will open a new archaeological perspective for future work on the relations between groups and individuals with their built, social, and natural environments.     

The Symbolic Politics of Belonging and Community in Peri‐urban Environmental Disputes: the Traveston Crossing Dam in Queensland,Australia

This paper examines a recent dispute generated by the Queensland State Government proposal to build the Traveston Crossing Dam on the Mary River in southeast Queensland, Australia. It is particularly concerned with the ways in which interrelated issues of belonging, community identity, and social diversity were negotiated during the anti‐dam campaign. As an unusual alliance of farmers, environmentalists, urban retirees, some Aboriginal people and others, it takes a view of the anti‐Traveston Crossing Dam campaign as a fluid network of people and approaches the notion of community identity as the symbolic construction of similarity. Locally specific, the paper describes pertinent aspects of community politics in the context of rural socioeconomic change, and the mobilisation of heritage. With regard to local senses of belonging, it also discusses the involvement of Aboriginal people during the campaign. More broadly then, this paper attempts to make an ethnographic contribution to the study of environmental disputes and the politics of alliance in peri‐urban areas of settler‐descendant societies such as Australia.     

People with intellectual disability in neoliberalizing community spaces

This paper analyzes how personalized disability support interacts with the uneven and incomplete neoliberalization of community organizations and how this affects access and inclusion for people with intellectual disability. In many countries, the introduction of individual budgets for disability support has shifted some responsibility for community inclusion onto individuals with disability and their carers. Concurrently, geographers have shown that community organizations have adopted commercial and bureaucratic qualities while continuing to facilitate opportunities for active citizenship and participation. This paper highlights how personalized disability support funding interacts with community organizations that have adopted some neoliberal ideas about responsibility and entrepreneurialism. Drawing on in-depth interviews with people with intellectual disability and the managers of community centres in the state of Victoria, Australia, the paper analyzes how the resultant community spaces shape the terms on which people with intellectual disability participate. The paper demonstrates that individual support packages issued by the federal government turn people with disability into entrepreneurial employers and that this comes up against a branch of community organizations that has come to understand its responsibility for inclusion in entrepreneurial terms. The paper offers avenues for future geographical work on disability inclusion and for understanding neoliberalization that go beyond direct state interference.     

Mothers,communities and the scale of difference

Only recently did geographic concern turn to why and how, and when and where political identities are reproduced but, as yet, our understanding of the political relations between families and communities remains understudied. This lack of attention is attributable, in part, to the complexities of families and communities but, this aside, all societies regulate reproduction and there are always claims for legitimization of particular views of family values and community relations. With this paper, I argue that highlighting the social construction of scale suggests ways that the social imaginary of a domestic myth is spatially embedded within a nurturing local community. I outline some recent feminist discussion of local childcare cultures and critique of 'the public sphere' prior to raising scale as a way to open up static versions of justice and difference. Arguments in the paper that relate to the social construction of scale are illustrated by examples from a study of the impact of a new child and a residential move on mothers in San Diego. I argue that although the birth of a child highlights important questions that relate to responsibility, self-identity and notions of family, community and society, it is from within a politically structured notion of scale that many of the constraints and contexts of childcare arise. This paper focuses specifically on negotiating childcare as a basis of resistance through day-to-day contestations at multiple scales.     

The Dynamics of Heritage-Making at an Archaeological Site in South 24 Parganas,Bengal, India

Archaeological heritage is seldom fixed in time. Heritage-making is an ongoing process deeply entwined with social/cultural memory and identity formation. These processes are traced through an archaeological monument, located in the Sundarbans, in the South 24 Parganas district of West Bengal, India. The monument, named ‘Jatar Deul’, is a brick tower, stylistically labelled as a rekha deul — a curvilinear tower with a cruciform ground plan —belonging to the Orissan architectural style. Its exact chronology is unknown, as is its creator, although it is stylistically dated to the thirteenth century ce. It has survived more in myths, legends, and local tradition than in historical sources. This paper explores how the monument becomes a site of memories and how multi-vocal identities are forged around the locus of the site, now revered as a sacred place of Shaiva worship. The Postcolonial State has only a marginalized presence and the main stakeholders remain non-professional archaeologists, local schoolteachers, and the local population living in close vicinity. Identity work at the site is no longer the archetypal Bengali/regional identity seen in the pre-independence context, but reflects sub-regional cultural/religious affiliations. This paper is the result of ethnographic research, particularly interviews, of select sections of the local community, focusing on the recent organization of an annual fair at the site, which has thrown up questions on archaeological tourism. On the whole, this study examines how an archaeological monument is shaped and formed in the present in contemporary South Asia.