The Evolving Relationship between the Côa Valley Archaeological Park and the Local Community: an Account of the First Decade

Abstract

The Côa Valley Archaeological Park (PAVC) reaches its 13th birthday in August 2009. Although the relationship between the Park and the local community has not always been unproblematic, the last few years have witnessed a major shift in the situation. While some misunderstandings still exist, recent efforts made by the PAVC, specifically enhancing education services involving local schools in heritage management and conservation, and in organizing activities aimed at the local population, have helped develop ties with the community.     

FROM ‘ONE OF THE COUNTRY’S GREATEST ASSETS’ TO ALIENATION AND ANGER: VOICES OF THE LOWER WHARFEDALE FARMING COMMUNITY IN THE TWENTIETH CENTURY

Abstract

The British farming community is rapidly diminishing due to its ageing workforce, the rise of second-home ownership, and the costs involved in running a farming business in the twenty-first century. The private nature of this community, often coupled with a deeply held mistrust of non-farmers has made it difficult to ascertain farmers’ own feelings on their current situation, and how things have reached such a position. This article explores how some of the major twentieth-century events for agriculture have affected a single Yorkshire farming community by tracing the deteriorating relationship between farmers and the government, through changing legislation and reactions to crises, from a point where farmers were held to be vital to Britain’s survival through to one where the agricultural community finds it plausible that their own government would actively try to destroy their livelihoods.     

Wine and Modernity in the Transylvanian Saxon Imagination (1860–1930)

Abstract

Transylvanian Saxon writings on wine and viniculture provide unusually informative insights as to the small East European community’s responses to the impacts of modernization: loss of corporate privileges, minority status in first Habsburg Hungary and after the First World War, Romania, and increasing integration into a global economy. Transylvanian Saxons imbued wine with symbolic functions beyond its dietary or economic importance; viniculture and wine embodied Saxon aspirations and fears for the future. While ethnographers invoked the traditions embodied in wine to shore up Saxon status within Transylvania, economists extolled viniculture as an industry capable of modernization and a secure financial future for the community. Conversely, Saxon abstinence campaigners identified wine as the root of the Saxons’ decline, and hoped to build a better future through its abolition. Through its symbolic roles, wine and viniculture reveal the potentials and limitations the Transylvanian Saxon community faced in confronting modernization.     

The Earth's Soil Our Ultimate,Shrinking Limit to Growth

Abstract

The loss of productive soil in the world was first brought to the attention of the international community at the Environment Conference in Stockholm, 1972. Subsequent discussions have led to the suggestion that the slow rate of transfer to the developing world of the technology for its control was perhaps due to social and economic rather than to technological constraints. The background to this hypothesis and the attempt that is being made to validate it, are here described.     

Hiding in plain sight: the Coptic Museum in the Egyptian cultural landscape

Abstract

Museums have long been important tools of nation building and of helping nations deal with their increasing diversity. The Arab Spring of 2011 brought massive social upheaval and change to the Middle East. Egypt experienced particularly dramatic changes. Long-standing fissures around who qualifies as an Egyptian, which groups dominate in this secular or religious nation, and what it means to be an Egyptian today came to the fore. How did different groups fare within this negotiation and what role did cultural institutions play? We explore these struggles through the lens of the Coptic Museum and the experiences of the Coptic community. We argue that the Museum historici s es Copticism, or depicts it as an historical, bounded period in Egyptian history. It also embraces a historical narrative that sees Copts as the direct descendants of the Pharaohs, and therefore the original Egyptians, although some later converted to Islam. By so doing, the Museum positions the community centrally but unchallengingly within the ever-changing ‘master’ national narrative, whether in its more religious or secular form. By telling this particular story, the community saves itself and its materials, but it also constructs and perpetuates its paradoxically central, but marginal position in the nation.     

Common Sense Community? The Climate Challenge Fund's Official and Tacit Community Construction

Abstract

The Climate Challenge Fund (CCF) is the Scottish Government's flagship initiative addressing the twenty-first century's core concern: environmental challenges. The CCF seeks to reduce carbon emissions explicitly through community. Building on community's long and strong social science heritage, this paper outlines the CCF's tacit and unspoken community assumptions. Through these assumptions, this policy (re)produces, prefigures and performs a particular form of community, this being community's elision with locality, and synonym for place, rurality or neighbourhood. Taking on these tacit assumptions is demonstrative of their belief in the effectiveness of such community. After exploring the CCF, its source and structure, the paper delves into empirical work situated at all levels of the CCF's funding chain. It then teases out how the assumptions around – and the need to demonstrate – community help determine the projects selected, and subsequently the vision of community chosen, enacted and mobilised. The CCF (re)produces a particular vision of community with implications for who receives funding, how environmental action is framed and also for the future of community in Scotland.     

The Parish Community Through the Vicarage Window: Nineteenth-Century Clergy Visitation Returns

Abstract

This article uses the visitation returns of the clergy to Archbishop Thomson at his primary visitation of the diocese of York in 1865 in order to look at the relationships which defined the parish community as seen, idealised and criticised by the clergymen of this mainly rural diocese. Their collective view highlights key elements which helped make or break the community with the parish church at its centre: the support given by local landowners; the central importance of the school; and the relationship with the farmers of the parish and impact of farming practices on church attendance. Though the ideal parish community rarely existed it inspired conscientious clergymen to work for its creation in sometimes difficult circumstances. The study also illustrates the value of visitation returns for the local historian and gives pause for thought as the closure of village schools and churches to-day undermines the communities our forebears strove to create.     

Reconstructing Kilmainham: the topography and architecture of the chief priory of the Knights Hospitaller in Ireland,c.1170–1349

ABSTRACT

For almost 400 years the Knights of St John of Jerusalem – the Knights Hospitaller – maintained a priory in Kilmainham, Co. Dublin, as their principal residence in Ireland. Nothing survives of it above ground. The priory's early history and topography are mainly shrouded in mystery, but a fourteenth-century registrum illuminates the workings of its community and the character of its members, and provides valuable evidence relating to the appearance of its architecture and layout when it was at the peak of its prosperity. Yet the registrum has never been subjected to detailed scrutiny. Recent research on the Hospitallers in Ireland on the one hand, and on the organisation of domestic space in medieval contexts in Ireland on the other, has prompted this comprehensive appraisal of the evidence in Kilmainham's registrum.     

First year on the faculty: the quality of their teaching

Abstract

This article considers the arguments being advanced in the USA for an expansion of academic programmes incorporating service‐learning, in which students undertake, as part of their studies, community service, and engage in academic activities designed to provide a context for reflection on their experience in doing so. Three arguments are usually advanced for this: the merits of experiential education, the value of service‐learning in education for citizenship, and its significance in promoting a sense of ‘community’. Some examples are given and the issues raised by these programmes are explored briefly. It is suggested that geography could profit from incorporating elements of service‐learning in order to enhance its treatment of moral and political issues.     

Dwelling Brothers,Oozing Oil,and Descending Dew: Reading Psalm 133 Through the Lens of Yehudite Social Memory

ABSTRACT

This paper examines the ways in which Psalm 133 contributes to and is shaped by social memory in Yehud. By reading this psalm as a voice within a larger discourse of cultural memories, the images of brothers dwell-ing together, flowing oil, and dew can be understood to fit within a standard narrative structure according to which the Yehudite community fashioned its stories, highlighting a sense of continuity between Israel’s perceived golden age and its anticipated utopian future. In this paper, I argue that through the collective reliving of shared memories, the community was able to virtually participate in the glorious existence that it perceived to be due to it as YHWH’s chosen people, contributing to a sense of collective identity.     

Nietzsche's Political Critique of Modern Science

Abstract

Contrary to the claims that The Brothers Karamazov is a polyphonic novel, in which the author's own views are irrelevant to its interpretation, and that Dostoevsky himself was unable to furnish an adequate defense of Christianity after Book V, the author shows how Zossima's doctrines of active love and responsibility for all are the interpretive keys to the novel. This so-called “unity in diversity” in Bakhtin's literary criticism thereby provide a compelling alternative vision of community from the Grand Inquisitor's.     

‘We Can Always Go Back Home’: critical lessons in helping to safeguard and promote the Singing and Praying Bands living tradition

Abstract

The article examines the process of promoting, with a view to safeguarding, the centuries-old Singing and Praying Bands living tradition, an African American musical and spiritual expression that is distinctive to the Chesapeake Bay region of the US. Discussed within the context of US public folklore, the process is understood as a co-intervention, representing an active partnership between the Bands’ community and public folklorists (including the authors) in attempting to reach new members as a means of keeping it alive. The article underscores the need for ‘bottom-up’ approaches in safeguarding living cultural traditions, bringing to light the potential strengths of public folklore work and the benefits its theories and methodologies can bring to the intangible cultural heritage discourse. Moreover, it analyses how community agency has been exercised, and community needs accommodated, through the dialogue-driven, collaborative intervention process. It also investigates how a nuanced view of ‘authenticity’ has been shaped, with regard to changes the living tradition has undergone, and is currently understood by those who embody it.     

Organizing the ‘people’s community’: the NSDAP and the ‘ethnic Germans’ in Nazi-occupied territories

ABSTRACT

This article refers to recent scholarly debates on the term ‘people’s community’ (Volksgemeinschaft), which throughout the Third Reich remained rather vague and encompassed often contradictory purposes. It deals with the relations between the National Socialist German Workers’ Party (Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei, NSDAP) and some of the ‘ethnic German’ (volksdeutsche) organizations to exemplify how German society should be transformed into a ‘people’s community’ after 1933. Thus, it is necessary to analyse the ‘people’s community’ not by asking whether or not its different purposes were realized, but by examining its functions in the Nazi regime. This functional analysis of the ‘people’s community’ focuses on the NSDAP and its relations with ‘ethnic German’ organizations after 1933, primarily in Nazi-occupied territories during the Second World War. First, the article describes the NSDAP’s efforts to align the ‘Germans abroad’ (Auslandsdeutsche) after the seizure of power and to organize the German Front (Deutsche Front) in the Saar territories in 1934/35—an experience serving as a blueprint for the relations between the NSDAP and ‘ethnic German’ organizations during the Second World War. Second, it evaluates the creation of the Ethnic German Community (Volksdeutsche Gemeinschaft) in the General Government and its efforts to organize ‘ethnic Germans’. Third, it interprets the foundation of the German People’s Community (Deutsche Volksgemeinschaft) in Lorraine and its ongoing attempts to establish a racial hierarchy of ‘ethnic Germans’ over the autochthonous French population. Fourth, it looks at the connection between the Germanization of Lower Styria and the launch of the Styrian Homeland Union (Steirischer Heimatbund) as an ‘ethnic German’ movement. The article argues that the NSDAP’s operational routines regarding both the German population and the ‘ethnic Germans’ living in the occupied territories shaped the ‘people’s community’.     

Revising the Burra Charter: Australia ICOMOS updates its guidelines for conservation practice

Abstract

This paper outlines the revisions made in 1999 to the Burra Charter, the core doctrine for heritage conservation in Australia that was first adopted by Australia ICOMOS in 1979. It examines the reasons why changes were needed, including broadened perceptions of heritage, new understandings of heritage significance, and recognition of the need for community input into conservation decisions about its heritage.

The review process, which took five years, changed its procedures halfway through after members of Australia ICOMOS roundly rejected a draft, while agreeing that a revision should still take place. Following a thorough consultative process with members, the text of the 1999 revision of the Charter was resoundingly endorsed (the text is included here as an Appendix).

The paper describes how the revised Charter differs from the previous text. The changes lie primarily in the recognition that heritage value, or significance, may be embodied in the uses, associations and meanings of a place, in addition to its physical fabric. Other key changes include incorporation of a flowchart explaining the conservation planning process; the seeking of community input; and the recognition that interpretation is an integral part of good heritage management practice.     

Outsourcing local democracy? Evidence for and implications of the commercialisation of community engagement in Australian local government

ABSTRACT

Participatory governance practices are enjoying popularity, not least in local government. This is driven by legislation that requires councils to undertake some of these processes; also by communities and practitioners – parties that derive income from participatory governance. An industry is emerging: one characterised by demand and supply, with frameworks, strategies and processes, training and conferences. This industry warrants investigation so that its impacts upon local democracy can be understood. Following a theorisation of local democracy and community engagement, the paper describes the community engagement industry, presenting evidence about council activities, providers and professional associations to establish that the commercialisation of engagement is a significant phenomenon in Australian local government. Possible risks to local governance and local democracy are explored.     

IN SEARCH OF COMMUNITY HISTORY

Abstract

This editorial response to the preceding article by Dennis Mills addresses the meaning of community history. Rejecting an over-tight definition, we argue for a methodologically distinct community history, combining a micro-historical approach with a sensitivity to the discursive construction of the term ‘community’. Furthermore the role of family and community historians should be to adapt a critical stance towards contemporary meanings of both past ‘communities’ and past ‘families’, The article concludes that Withington and Shephard’s schema for approaching the history of ‘community’ offers a practical way forward for the family and community historian.     

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.     

Church,Community and Democracy

Abstract

The doctrine of church shapes Christian practice around community, producing a Christian worldview that privileges communal life. Authoritarian and/or sectarian conceptions of church will by definition undermine the practice and sustainability of democracy. Democratic practices are needed to avoid authoritarianism within the church and to promote dialogue between the church and the larger community. Resulting, qualified understandings of community may allow for helpful reformation of the doctrine of church and create space for a communitarian corrective to the overly secular and individualistic conceptions of democracy that are currently dominant.     

Proto-Israelite Mythopoeics. A Perspective from Neuroscience on the Book of Joshua

This article contends that the Deuteronomic‐1 legend of the book of Joshua was formed into its mythical cyclical form through a process of oral transmission. As the oral stories told about an original source event were transformed into a community story it began to take on a liturgical form. This article explains the neuropsychological aspects of this natural process and also highlights how the cultural shift in the 12th century B.C.E. preserved the form of the Deuteronomic‐1 legend.