The Buffalo Nations/Luxton Museum: Tourism,Regional Forces and Problematising Cultural Representations of Aboriginal Peoples in Banff,Canada

This paper examines the cultural representations of Aboriginal peoples at the Buffalo Nations/Luxton Museum in Banff, Canada. The museum has been part of the cultural landscape of the tourism industry in Banff since 1952. Using interviews, newspaper articles and analyses of the exhibits, I problematise the museum's representations of Aboriginal peoples by focusing on the challenges associated with navigating regional power relations while participating in forms of capitalist exchange. My findings suggest that the museum's representations engender complex readings of Aboriginal peoples that need to be interpreted considering the processes of production, but also the broader conditions that are embedded in this history. This paper puts cultural representations of Aboriginal peoples into socio‐economic, political, cultural and historical contexts in ways that may interest scholars and practitioners from diverse disciplines and specific fields such as museum, recreation, tourism, heritage and Indigenous studies.     

The development of geographical differences in education levels within the Swedish tourism industry

ABSTRACT

The nexus of workforce and destination development is a largely uncharted area within tourism research. The local human capital has above all been in focus when underlining tourism's potential to create employment even for the inexperienced and less educated. However, a discordant strand of theory holds the low levels of qualified knowledge within the industry responsible for absent destination development in areas struggling to develop competitive advantages. Additionally, the in-migration of a skilled workforce may be hampered by a lack of amenities attracting permanent residents. In order to explore whether the tourism sector is characterized by a less educated share of the workforce, a study was performed using micro-level data on the full working population of Sweden during the years 2000–2010. The workforce in tourism was compared to the total and two other low-skill sectors, and the results show that the educational aspects within tourism are more related to geography than economic sectors. Contrary to general presumptions, the workforce within the tourism sector has a higher level of formal education than the other selected sectors in regions with generally low educational levels. The implication is thus that strategies aimed at creating employment for the least educated in rural areas need to be reconsidered, and not unconditionally target the tourism sector. Above all, tourism development needs to be based on assessments of local preconditions rather than a generalized image.     

Magna Carta: repositioning the secular as ‘sacred’

Museums and heritage attractions worldwide are dependent on their volunteers, and this is particularly the case within the UK. However, the demographics of volunteers are changing and volunteers are more likely to be retired individuals than seeking work experience. Traditionally, volunteer management in the UK has adopted a top‐down approach. This paper, based on a sample of 222 volunteers within museums and heritage visitor attractions in the UK, argues that a significant proportion of volunteers are leisure seeking. Volunteers at ten museums and heritage attractions were questioned about their motivation, and predominantly leisure‐like motives were cited, including subject interest and social interaction. Indeed, volunteer's motives bear a strong similarity to those of visitors. Thus, older, leisure‐seeking volunteers would be more appropriately considered as an additional element of the museum's audience. A model showing the relationship between visiting, volunteering and paid staff is presented.     

The Russian Military-Industrial Sector and Conversion

A retired senior CIA analyst assesses developments in conversion from military-related to civilian production in Russia's military-industrial sector over the period 1992-1994. Topics covered include recent economic performance of the military-industrial complex, the lack of congruence between “demilitarization” and “conversion,” reactions of the defense plant workforce and management to conversion, and the outlook for the machine-building sector over the near future. Although the focus of the paper is the military-industrial complex per se, the analysis also applies to Russian machine-building. 7 tables, 67 references.     

PROJECTIONS OF RACE,NATURE, AND ETHNOGRAPHIC CHILDHOOD IN EARLY EDUCATIONAL CINEMA AT THE NATIONAL MUSEUM OF CANADA

In this article, we examine depictions of race, nature, and childhood in Harlan Ingersoll Smith's early ethnographic films at the National Museum of Canada. Created in the 1920s for a children's education programme, Smith's films construct ethnographic portraits of different Indigenous peoples in Western Canada. We demonstrate how museum education appropriated Indigeneity as a discursive resource to immerse viewing children in particular narratives of Canadian national heritage and development. The films worked through a complex double movement, bringing children in the Ottawa museum audience into association with Indigenous children based on shared experience as children while simultaneously differentiating Indigenous peoples as Other. The films inculcated white youth at the museum in a romanticized connection to Canada's prehistory through knowledge of the nation's Indigenous peoples as well as nature. In the films, the position of Indigeneity within the future remained ambiguous (traditional practices sometimes disappearing, sometimes enduring). Yet, despite Smith's uncertainty about colonial beliefs in the disappearance of Indigeneity, his films nonetheless presented the teleological development of the settler nation as certain. Our article highlights how thinking about children, as audience for and thematic focus of these films, extends discussions of the geographies of film, of children, and of settler colonial nationalism.     

The looting of the Iraq Museum: Thoughts on archaeology in a time of crisis

Abstract

The looting of the Iraq Museum has been widely proclaimed to be the worst cultural destruction since World War II; some have compared it to the decimation wrought by the Mongol invasion of Baghdad. Others have contended that the damage was wildly exaggerated. Any attempt at understanding the events surrounding the looting and destruction of the museum's collections must examine both what happened and how it was represented to a worldwide audience through the news media. I compare these events with the toppling of a statue of Saddam Hussein in Fardus Square and the burning of major libraries in Baghdad and suggest that their perceived significances for Western audiences stem in large measure from the extent and tone of press reporting. The long-standing coverage by major mainstream news media of Mesopotamian archaeology as foundational to Western civilization may be a prime reason why otherwise pro-(US) government reporting also included some critical coverage about the loss of the museum collections. Such circumstances challenge archaeologists to use media interest to convey more nuanced and ethically responsible views of archaeology to broader publics.     

Evaluating the governance of structural funds programmes: The case of community economic development in South Yorkshire

Methods for evaluating regional and urban policies have become increasingly sophisticated in recent years. However, this paper argues that the evaluation of Structural Funds programmes has systematically underplayed the effect of governance on both programme design and implementation. This paper uses the role of voluntary and community sector organizations in promoting community economic development initiatives within the European Union's Structural Funds programmes in South Yorkshire as a case study. An argument is made for extending evaluation methods, especially theory-based evaluation, through using multi-level governance as a “theory of change”. A key finding is that to explain how programmes work, evaluators need to consider formal partnership and management arrangements, their traditional focus, but also wider governance structures and the importance of informal policy networks. Such a focus allows for a consideration of issues such as resource mobilization and power.     

Knowledge Networks as a Regional Development Resource: A Network Analysis of the Interlinks between Scientific Institutions and Regional Firms in the Metropolitan region of Hanover,Germany

The debate on regional innovation potentials has concentrated in recent times upon the topic of regional knowledge networking. This article presents the findings of the first phase of a detailed network analysis of the cooperation relations between scientific institutions and firms in the “metropolitan region Hanover-Brunswick-Göttingen”. The research concentrated on the regional and supra-regional cooperation relations of approximately 500 science establishments of the region, including their interlinks with private sector firms. This analysis of a polycentric metropolitan region's knowledge networks in different fields of competence produced detailed information on the density of knowledge interlinking within the region, on the degree of connectivity between the region's scientific institutions and private sector firms, and on central network nodes within the regional innovation networks. The case study exemplifies the methodical approach of a regional network analysis and emphasizes the role of knowledge networks as a development resource which is of particular relevance to the region's innovation capacities.     

Exhibiting Cultures: Singapore’s Asian Civilisations Museum

Museums occupy many roles which are influenced by wider circumstances and changing conditions. This study deals with the case of Singapore’s Asian Civilisations Museum and the manner in which it is used to promote nation building in a multi‐ethnic and relatively newly independent state. In addition, it serves a political purpose and acts as an economic resource. The Asian Civilisations Museum illustrates some of the recent trends affecting the museum sector as a whole and also the particular challenges facing such institutions in a country like Singapore with its many distinctive qualities.     

Building Peace with Conflict Diamonds? Merging Security and Development in Sierra Leone

This article examines the merging of security and development agendas in primary commodity sectors, focusing on the case of peace‐building reforms in Sierra Leone's diamond sector. Reformers frequently assume that reforming the diamond sector through industrializing alluvial diamond mining will reduce threats to security and development, thereby contributing to peace building. Our findings, however, suggest that the industrialization of alluvial diamond mining that has taken place in Sierra Leone has not reduced threats to security and development, as it has entailed human rights abuses and impoverishment of local communities without consolidating state fiscal revenues and trust in local authorities. This suggests alternative strategies for resource‐related peace‐building initiatives, which we consider at the end of the article: the decriminalization of informal economic activities; the prioritization of local livelihoods and development needs over central government fiscal priorities and foreign direct investment; and better integration between local economies and industrial resource exploitation.     

Poles apart: comparative resource sector governance in Australia and Norway

This article contrasts the resource policy performance of Norway and Australia. Australia has not established a long-term sovereign wealth fund or a medium-term stabilisation fund to save windfall revenue during boom times and its resource sector is characterised by relatively modest rates of taxation. In contrast, Norway has established the largest sovereign wealth fund in the world and imposed very high rates of taxation shortly after discovering its resource wealth. This article argues that Norway's consensual approach to industry development and regulation are the primary causes of its success in capitalising on its resource wealth. The difference between the two countries’ approaches is exacerbated by Australia's federal system, which has created less effective governance of resource industries.     

Reinforcing Diversity: From the ‘inside’ and the ‘outside’

This paper focuses on Jan Monk's contribution to reinforcing diversity and collaboration in the field of human geography. It illustrates how gendered diversity and feminism is promoted in her academic work both inside the Anglo-American academic world and outside, by exposing the feminist voices from around the world and mainstreaming them in her collaborative work. Fostering and reinforcing diversity has become a body of knowledge in her extensive publications in which she assesses the varying extent and nature of feminist geography in the Anglophone world and across countries, attempting to interpret differences in terms of geographical and cultural contexts and disciplinary trends. The paper emphasizes how fostering diversity and collaboration in Jan's academic work is not only about writing articles, editing books and producing a film, but also engages the formulation of organizational structures such as the Routledge book series and the initiation and establishment of the Commission of Gender and Geography of the International Geographical Union which have contributed to the production of collaborative feminist geographical knowledge across spaces and places.     

The (Jean) Nouvel Other: Primitivism and the Musée du Quai Branly

The Musée du Quai Branly, located beside the Eiffel Tower in Paris, opened in June 2006. Constructed to house France's important collection of non-western art, the museum has been promoted as ‘decidedly post-colonial’ and a place of ‘reconciliation and sharing’. Historians have situated the creation of the museum within political debates over the restructuring of several of France's museums and, more broadly, the country's position in a post-colonial world, while focusing little critical attention on the building itself. The author argues that Jean Nouvel's architectural program for the Musée du Quai Branly—a ‘primitive shelter’ surrounded by a ‘sacred wood’—gives physical form to a primitivist aesthetic. The unproblematised binaries of self versus other and culture versus nature evident in Nouvel's design reveal a surprisingly unsophisticated theoretical standpoint. As a frame in which to view and understand the objects on display, the Musée du Quai Branly invites a primitivist—and colonial—reading of its collection.     

Museum Volunteering: Heritage as ‘Serious Leisure’

The growing number of volunteers in the heritage sector indicates a desire for a leisure experience by pursuing a subject interest with like‐minded people. Millar and others have suggested that volunteers are the ‘ultimate frequent visitors’, and as the day visitor market for museums and heritage attractions declines, this paper offers the repositioning of ‘heritage visiting’ from day visits to longer term connections with particular heritage attractions via volunteering. It draws on Stebbins’s concept of serious leisure as a way of reading museum volunteering as a leisure practice and argues that museum volunteering is a way of practising heritage as leisure that is ‘self‐generated’, with museum volunteers active in constructing their own identities. According to the concept of ‘serious leisure’, museum volunteers become part of a social world inhabited by those knowledgeable about heritage and history. The paper concludes by examining the adequacy of Stebbins’s P‐A‐P system for analysing the power relations between museum professionals and volunteers in the museum social world.     

Cultural franchising,imperialism and globalisation: What's new?

Abstract

The late 1997 opening of Frank Gehry's spectacular new Guggenheim in Bilbao has been widely promoted as the international museum event of the decade. In the context of other developments, it has also been seen as evidence of Guggenheim director Thomas Krens's ‘tireless efforts to build the world's first global museum brand’. In post‐colonial countries such as Australia we know that museums have often been inextricably involved in imperial and international as well as national cultural power struggles. In this paper the ‘global brand’ view of the Guggenheim is further examined in an attempt to clarify whether this is just more of the same, (old wine in a new bottle) or whether museums are entering a new era of globalisation—and if so what may be some of the consequences for professional museum practice.     

Observations on the Geographical Dimensions of Russia's Resource Abundance

A UK-based authority on Russia's economic geography examines the geographical dimensions of Russia's resource abundance, devoting particular attention to the spatial redistribution of resource rents generated by extraction, primary processing, and fabrication. After establishing Russia's credentials as a "resource-abundant economy," the author identifies the country's resource regions and considers their relative importance in terms of population, territory, and national economic contribution. He then considers the various dimensions (and different geographies) of resource rent, focusing on the oil and gas sector. The paper extends Gaddy and Ickes' (2005) macro-economic assessment and discusses the consequences of rent redistribution for interregional income flows as well as Russia's territorial cohesion. Journal of Economic Literature, Classification Numbers: O11, O13, O18, Q30. 5 figures, 1 table, 55 references.     

Implications of gendered environmental knowledge in water allocation processes in central Australia

The existence of gendered knowledge has been identified as a significant feature of Indigenous Australian culture, and the importance of considering the implications of gendered environmental knowledge in collaborative cross-cultural natural resource management has been highlighted. There is a lack of case studies that demonstrate how Indigenous women's knowledge and laws can be provided for in resource management contexts. From collaborative research with Anmatyerr women in central Australia, we discuss the implications of gender bias in relation to gendered knowledge in natural and cultural resource management, with a specific focus on Anmatyerr women's involvement in providing inputs about the cultural values of water within water allocation planning processes. This research highlights Anmatyerr women's own perspectives of their roles in contemporary contexts and identifies the existence of cultural change and continuity in relation to rights and responsibilities around water.     

Cultivating Personalized Museum Tours Online and On-Site

Abstract

Web 2.0 — the perceived second generation of the World Wide Web that aims to improve collaboration, sharing of information and interoperability — enables increasing access to digital collections of museums. The expectation is that more and more people will spend time preparing their visit before actually visiting the museum and look for related information reflecting on what they have seen or missed after visiting the museum. It can also be expected that museum curators want to enhance visitors' museum experiences in the more personalized, intensive and engaging way promised by an improved Web. In other words, to keep their visitors, they should adopt an immersive museum environment that combines the museum Web site (online) with the physical museum space (on-site). In this context, the CHIP (Cultural Heritage Information Presentation) project offers tools to the users to be their own curators, e.g. browsing the online collections, planning a personalized museum tour suiting their art interests, getting some recommendations about interesting artworks to see, and quickly finding their ways in the museum. In this paper, we present the new additions to the CHIP tools, which target such functionality: a Web-based museum Tour Wizard based on the user's interests and the Mobile Guide that converts the tours to a mobile device (PDA) used in the physical museum space. To connect the user's various interactions with these tools online and on-site, we built a dynamic user model. Online, the user model stores the user's personal background, ratings of artworks and art concepts, recommended or created museum tours. On-site, it is a conversion of the online user model stored in RDF into XML format which the mobile guide can parse. When the user rates artworks inside the physical museum, the on-site user model is updated and when the tour is finished, it is synchronized with the online user model. In such a way, we support a 'virtuous circle' of the museum visit, which links the personalized museum experiences both online and on-site.     

Diversity and diplomacy

ABSTRACT

Diplomats are the face of their country abroad. One way that a country can represent and benefit from its diversity is through the diversity of its diplomatic representatives. Australia’s Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT) has made a sustained effort to increase the diversity of its workforce and has improved the representation of some groups: for example, the increased number of women in senior positions in recent decades. A case study of DFAT’s Indigenous Recruitment and Career Development Strategy (2007–2015) identifies the following key factors needed for such efforts to succeed: sustained effort, high-level support, availability of peer support and a willingness to adapt programs over time. While there are challenges in implementing a diversity strategy, such as resource constraints and the broader organisational culture, the Indigenous Recruitment and Career Development Strategy provides a positive model of how to increase diversity among a country’s diplomats.     

Painful pasts,painful places: Confronting ambivalence at the Islands of Vanishment conference,Port Arthur Historic Site,Tasmania, 7–10 June 2002

Abstract

This is a museum about Power and Powerlessness

And the struggle for dignity by ordinary people.

Let this never be forgotten.

Let us be mindful of the abuses of the past and celebrate the human capacity

In all its diversity and richness

To overcome.

(From the Kwa Muhle Museum, Durban, South Africa)

Islands of Vanishment was more than just a conference; it was a piece of theatre, acted out in a place which has seen more than its share of suffering over the last 200 years. Throughout the conference the legacy of Port Arthur's painful past, and the sense of hope and emergence that has grown from it, was tangible, the sense of place which envelops the Port Arthur Historic Site contributing much to the success of this important event.