Identity,place and culture: Patrick McCarthy's columns in the Bologna pages of La Repubblica

Abstract

For six years between 1994 and 2000, Patrick McCarthy contributed occasional articles to the Bologna section of La Repubblica. These writings were intensely personal interventions on various themes that reflected their author's lifelong interest in literature, culture, politics and sport. Many of them addressed issues of civic life in a city that had once enjoyed a reputation as a showcase of Communist local administration in Italy, but which in 1999 elected a right-wing mayor. In contrast to an impersonal urban modernization that he saw as destructive, McCarthy championed a humane ideal of community that was not ‘traditional’, but rather open and flexible.     

Geolinguistics,culture, and politics in the development and maintenance of Tajiki

The importance the Soviet government placed on language and language planning in the creation of identity and space with a view to the ultimate creation of a Soviet culture is here explored through the lens of geolinguistics. Linguists, poets, and politicians were organized to educate each ethnic group and to socialize them within communism. Using the country of Tajikistan as an example, a new language, Tajiki, was created and implemented throughout all education curricula. That this language was never fully embraced by the population shows the difficulty in political language planning as well as the resilience of language as a measure of cultural identity in the face of a government's effort to ultimately supplant it with the more acceptable “international” language of Russian. Given that the current government of Tajikistan is still made up of former Soviet officials, it comes as no surprise that it has continued to use literary Tajiki as one of the primary bases for Tajik culture as expressed in the Republic of Tajikistan. The effort expended on this creation, the continued allegiance to it, and the overall value of using language and geography as a lens for understanding culture will be explored in this paper.     

Crafting masculinities: gender,culture and emotion at work in the surfboard industry

This article examines the masculinities of male workers in the context of an emotionally rich form of labour: surfboard-making. Contributing to emerging research around the emotional and embodied dimensions of men's working lives, the article maps the cultural, emotional and embodied dimensions of work onto masculine identity construction. Combining cultural economy theory, emotional geographies and in-depth ethnographic methods, I reveal how surfboard-making has become a gendered form of work; how jobs rely on (and impact) the body and what surfboard-making means to workers outside of financial returns. Following a manual labour process, and informed by Western surfing subculture, commercial surfboard-making has layered onto male bodies. Men perform ‘blokey’ masculinities in relation with one another. However, doing manual craftwork evokes close, personal interaction; among co-workers but also through engagements with place and local customers. Felt, embodied craft skills help workers personalise boards for individual customers and local breaks. Beneath masculine work cultures and pretensions, surfboard-making is a deeply emotional and embodied work. Labour is dependent on haptic knowledge: sense of touch, bodily movement and eye for detail. Contrasting their blokey masculinity, surfboard-makers rely on intimate links between their bodies, tools, materials, customers and surfing places. These ‘strong bodied’ men articulate a ‘passion’ and ‘love’ for ‘soulful’ jobs, demonstrating how waged work comprises alternative masculinities, shaped by working culture, relations and labour processes. A cultural economy framework and emotionally engaged research approach are valuable for challenging hegemonic masculinity, important for achieving more inclusive, tolerant and equitable workplaces.     

Changing addresses: social conflict,civic culture,and the politics of house numbering reform in Milwaukee, 1913–1931

House numbering systems are way-finding systems with cultural significance not only by virtue of their quantification of space but because large centralized systems define a center and axes which have symbolic potential. The article briefly traces house numbering systems in American cities, then analyzes the evolution of Milwaukee's system, beginning with rudimentary numbering of a few business and upper-middle class streets, moving to a number of systems, one for each side of town, after prodding by the Post Office, and then to their unification, 1913–1931. It shows how the interests of large citywide businesses and government promoted reform efforts, while the public was largely uninterested and localistic. Reformers concerned about class and ethnic cleavages favored a unified, centralized numbering scheme symbolically centered on downtown business and a new civic center, conferring enhanced legitimacy on business and law; but this was politically unpopular because it required renaming streets on which a majority of voters lived. But the public acquiesced to the idea of reform, and an alternative unified scheme was adopted in the end. This article provides a detailed analysis of the practical interests underlying house numbering and explores the surprising symbolic potential of house numbers.     

Islands,extraction and violence: Mining and the politics of scale in Island Melanesia

Set against the backdrop of past, contemporary and possible future mining-related violence on islands in the western Pacific, this article explores how scholarship on the politics of scale, as well as strands of the burgeoning island studies literature, might sharpen our understanding of the political economic and violent effects of extractive resource enclaves in Island Melanesia. Drawing upon field research in Bougainville and Solomon Islands, I argue that just as Melanesian islands were produced as a scale of struggle in the context of the introduction of capitalist social relations under colonialism, so too have they emerged as a critical, albeit problematic, scale of struggle in contemporary contestations around extractive resource capitalism under the current round of globalisation and accumulation by dispossession. I suggest that this politics of scale lens enriches our understanding of how “islandness” can be an important variable in social and political economic processes. When the politics of scale is imbricated with the well-established idea of the island as the paradigmatic setting for territorialising projects, including the nation-state and sub-national jurisdictions, islandness emerges as a potentially powerful variable in the political economic struggles that attend extractive resource enclaves. I also highlight, in the cases considered here, how islands can become containers for internal socio-spatial contradictions that can be animated by extractive enclaves and can contribute to the island scale becoming violent and “ungovernable”. The article advances recent efforts to bring the island studies literature into closer conversation with political and economic geography.     

Cultural Property Protection in the Context of Military Operations: The Case of Uruk,Iraq

Abstract

This paper deals with the use of military or militarized experts for cultural property protection (CPP) during times of conflict. CPP activities generally take place within a juridical framework that gives obligations for all parties involved, primarily the 1954 Hague Convention for the Protection of Cultural Property in the Event of Armed Conflict, and attention is paid to various implications and challenges that occur when implementing military CPP obligations within this framework. To illustrate matters, the paper details a speci?c case study from the author’s own ?eld experience in the safeguarding of the archaeological site of Uruk in Iraq. Aspects, including economic, legal, ?nancial, and educational implications, are presented and these are especially relevant since they apply (to an extent) to other situations, such as the recent cultural disasters in Egypt, Libya, and Syria. The Uruk case study is used to suggest a number of key elements that are vital for the implementation of an effective CPP strategy in the context of military operations. Overall, the importance of international cooperation, training, and education, along with the assistance of civil reach-back capabilities, is emphasized. The paper argues that an effective way to protect Cultural Property during armed conflicts is through military channels and with military logistics and tools. To ful?l CPP in agreement with International Humanitarian Law (IHL) joint preparations in peacetime are necessary. The handover of military initiated CPP projects to civil authorities has to take place as soon as the situation permits. The paper concludes with a set of recommendations.     

Re-thinking festivals: a comparative study of the integration/marginalization of arts festivals in the urban regimes of Manchester,Copenhagen and Vienna

Arts festivals have been on the ascendant since the 1980s. However, while these are proliferating, it remains unclear as to whether they are also flourishing. The present narrow construction of festivals for marketing and economic purposes tends to disregard the festivals’ social and cultural potential, i.e. in terms of functioning as urban laboratories where new and alternative urban and cultural strategies can be tested and developed. In order to address these imbalanced conceptualizations of arts festivals within urban policy frameworks, the article is based on a comparative case study of festivals that try to function as urban laboratories. By examining how these festivals are integrated in or marginalized by the urban regime, and how this influences their operational conditions, the research elucidates the need to create new and more holistic policy frameworks to chart an equitable path for the future development of arts festivals.     

The militarisation of aerial theatre: air displays and airmindedness in Britain and Australia between the world wars

ABSTRACT

Aerial theatre, the use of aviation spectacle to project images of future warfare, national power and technological prowess, was a key method for creating an airminded public in the early twentieth century. The most significant and influential form of aerial theatre in interwar Britain was the Royal Air Force Display at Hendon, in which military aircraft put on impressive flying performances before large crowds, including an elaborate set-piece acting out a battle scenario with an imaginary enemy. Hendon was emulated by other air displays in Britain and in Australia, even civilian ones. Indeed, the inability of the much smaller Royal Australian Air Force to regularly project spectacle on the scale of Hendon across a much larger nation created a gap which civilian aviation organisations then tried to fill. Hendon thus helped to propagate a militarised civilian aerial theatre, and hence airmindedness, in both Britain and Australia.     

The place of politics and the politics of place: Housing,the Labour Party and the local state in England

This paper argues that geographical research needs to pay greater attention to political parties and their relationship to local governing. In returning to, and updating the concept of the local state, analysis of local socio-spatial and political relations reveals the quieter registers of political power in local governing, and in turn what this means for the condition of local democracy. The long-term housing regeneration of a neighbourhood in Gateshead, North East England is used here as an optic to do just that. Through moments of housing activism, the social and political relations between and within a local Labour Party and local state are considered. A local manifestation of a growing trend that questions the representation of mature structures of power that the Labour Party holds in deindustrialised areas of the UK is considered through struggles over decision-making, belonging, representation and legitimacy. Such accounts of the local scale are critical in relation to global political trends; where apathy, cynicism, lack of expectation and representation and insurgent populist parties are increasingly framed as potential political crises of mature western democracies.     

Magnate Counsel and Parliament,c.1340–76: The Place of the Lords in the Era of the Commons

The mid 14th century has long been identified as a crucial period in the emergence of the Commons. Its rise fundamentally reconfigured the traditional landscape of representation, in which the magnates embodied the ‘community of the realm’. It is the place of the Commons that has drawn the bulk of scholarly attention. Through a close examination of the surviving Parliament Rolls for the period 1340–76, this article argues that magnate counsel, especially on the interrelated themes of warfare, diplomacy, and supply, remained integral to meetings of parliament in the ‘era of the Commons’. Parliament formed a crucial ‘point of contact’ between the king and a broad political society that actively pushed the practice and performance of noble advice‐giving, in line with common assumptions about the ideal social composition of the king's counsellors.     

The politics of identity,recognition and multiculturalism: the Kurds in Turkey

The politics of identity and recognition regarding the Kurds in Turkey has gained momentum since 2002 but has never been implemented fully. The rightful critics emphasising the continuity of the State's authoritarian character, however, have not so far analysed if their own normative suggestions are theoretically consistent and sociologically grounded. Based on the Author's fieldwork and contemporary social surveys, this article shows that there are conflicting views within the Kurdish community about the forms that the politics of recognition could take. By exploring the conflicts of interest within the Kurdish community from a bottom‐up approach, the article concludes that the recognition of an authentic Kurdish identity is problematic sociologically. It is also more likely to harm than help the Kurds in the country from a normative perspective. The article explains how the quest for an authentic Kurdish political identity and attempts to generate it actually limit the individual autonomy and exacerbate the disparity between the Turks and the Kurds in the country.     

Co-evolution of institutions,culture and industrial organization in the film industry: the case of Shanghai in China

Research about the Chinese film industry is far behind the actual development of practice, especially considering its evolution and main influential factors. Furthermore, existing research on the film industry in economic geography is mostly conducted from the perspective of cluster theory, with lesser attention to institutions or culture. In this paper, the theory of co-evolution is used to tackle these two gaps. The role of institutions, culture and industrial organization as three fundamental elements of co-evolution is pointed out and discussed in the theoretical section. The phenomena of co-evolution in the Shanghai film industry as important examples of the Chinese film industry are analysed in the empirical part. We phase the development process in four periods and differentiate identified effects of co-evolution between institutions, culture and industrial organization based on the specific setting in each particular period.     

The intimate politics of secularism and the headscarf: the mall,the neighborhood,and the public square in Istanbul

The headscarf continues to be a highly charged political issue in Turkey where it is often understood through the prism of the opposition between so-called Islamists versus secularists. My work brings together feminist scholarship on the politics of everyday space and recent rethinking of the categories of secularism and religion. I begin by situating this politicized debate in the everyday material contexts of the public square, the street, and the mall. By introducing popular culture (notably the film Bü?ra) and my own fieldwork on the veil, I argue that the headscarf represents the intersection of politics of place and individual agency in a way that renders ideological debates contingent on everyday practices. Reducing the headscarf to a sign of Islamism fails to take into account the ever-shifting meanings of this object across time and space. The differences within and between the everyday urban sites I examine reveal much more complex, often contradictory, and discontinuous geographies of secularism and Islam. This analysis reveals a multiplicity that belies attempts to delineate clearly bounded spaces, subjects, and ideologies, one that is intimate and political.     

The coastal evacuation of Zhangpu County in early Qing: Borders,shifting zones,and social change as seen in forts and fortified villages

Abstract

Qianhai, the early Qing order that forced people in southeast coast to evacuate the coast to a distance of ten to eighteen miles inland in order to eliminate anti-Qing activities, is an excellent topic through which to examine the formation of the border in Han local society. The development of regional studies during the past 20 years encourages us to both refine our local case studies and map the wider picture. The story of social transformation in Zhangpu County during the Ming-Qing transition provides a perfect case to discuss how the coastal evacuation policy was implemented in local society. It can also promote our understanding of multiple histories. First, the lineage story of the coastal evacuation can be described in greater detail. Even in a single county, there was no standard evacuation distance. Local officials relied on mountainous terrain and existing forts and fortified villages to form a line of defense that determined the scope of the evacuation. Second, the social landscape in the communities of the county demonstrates the rise and decline of local power structures. Many of the most influential and deep-rooted lineages were badly weakened by the time they returned home after the evacuation order was rescinded. On the basis of the ebb and flow of local elites, the Qing state began to regulate households more closely, and state power thus penetrated to the local level. The household registers of Zhangpu were established based on the specific historical context of the county, but the process shared with the rest of the southeastern coastal region a pattern whereby pacification and local Defense shaped state penetration. Even in a supposedly “traditional” Han region, the empire needed to handle the problems of the border and social complexity, just as it did in “non-Han” areas. This illustrates the process of late imperial state formation in practice.     

The governance of national cultural organisations: comparative study of performance contracts with the main cultural organisations in England,France and Catalonia (Spain)

In some European countries, performance contracts have become an instrument for the governance and control of major cultural organisations by the public administration. The negotiation and signing of a performance contract are mainly aimed at developing the goals of cultural policies by means of large organisations in order to achieve the traditional objectives of cultural democratisation and other instrumental objectives (economic development, urban regeneration or social inclusion). Nevertheless, the development level of performance contracts varies when we compare England, France and Catalonia (Spain). Each particular level of development is conditioned by the overall administrative and institutional context and the development level of results-based management and an accountability culture. The level of public funding and the degree of autonomy of management within each organisation can also explain why in some cases governance has been contractualised whereas in other cases either progress is more rhetorical than real.     

The international heritage doctrine and the management of heritage in Sarajevo,Bosnia and Herzegovina: the case of the Commission to Preserve National Monuments

Since the formal end to the conflict of dissolution of Yugoslavia in 1995, cultural heritage has been given a central role in post-war recovery and reconstruction, and in the development of sustainable peace in the region. This role reflects the pivotal function accorded to heritage in post-conflict settings within the international heritage doctrine, while re-assessing the crucial role of culture in ‘building peace in the minds of men and women’ (UNESCO) and in creating ‘greater understanding of one another among the peoples of Europe’. I will present and analyse the current formal/legal system of heritage construction and reconstruction in Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH), its relations with the international heritage doctrine and its implications on the local process of memorialisation of armed conflict. As I will argue, one fundamental pitfall of the international heritage doctrine fashioned by UNESCO and the Council of Europe is that it implicitly relies on the nation-state as the carrier and developer of collective cultural memory and identity, overlooking settings where the primary mode of group identification and legitimisation occurs at different (lower) levels, as in BiH.     

The Hopi,the katsinam,and the French courts: looking outside the law in the repatriation of Indigenous cultural heritage

Katsinam (plural of katsina) are effigies central to the religion of the Hopi people of northern Arizona in the United States. Since 2013 the Hopi have sought the return of katsinam being sold in French auction houses. The Hopi have employed a series of legal actions to stop the auctions. All such actions, however, have been consistently denied by French courts. This paper uses social science analysis to understand why the legal actions of the Hopi failed. This paper treats the case of the katsinam as a cautionary lesson in cultural heritage studies, with the goal of drawing insights that can inform other situations involving the repatriation of Indigenous cultural heritage.     

Continuity,chance, and change: The character of the industrial revolution in England

This article examines the life and works of Robert Blakey, author of the first English-language history of political thought. Studies of Blakey have typically concentrated on one aspect of his life, whether as an authority on field sports or as an historian of philosophy. However, some of Blakey’s lesser-known ventures, particularly his early Radical politics, his hagiographies, and his attempts to write a biography of Charlemagne, heavily influenced his more famous works. Similarly, Blakey’s upbringing in a Calvinist tradition, rooted in the Scottish School of Common Sense philosophy helps makes sense of his philosophical and theological commitments, yet has been largely ignored. This article provides a sketch of Blakey’s life, tying these disparate strands together, and explaining their influence upon, and relevance to, the first history of political philosophy.