Celebrating British multiculturalism,lamenting England/Britain's past

Drawing upon Littler and Naidoo's ‘white past, multicultural present’ alignment, this article examines English newspaper coverage of two ‘British’ events held in 2012 (the Diamond Jubilee and the London Olympic Games). In light of recent work on English nationalism, national identity and multiculturalism, this article argues that representations of Britain oscillated between lamentations for an English/British past – marred by decline – and a present that, while being portrayed as both confident and progressive, was beset by latent anxieties. In doing so, ‘past’ reflections of England/Britain were presented as a ‘safe’ and legitimate source of belonging that had subsequently been lost and undermined amidst the diversity of the ‘present’. As a result, feelings of discontent, anxiety and nostalgia were dialectically constructed alongside ‘traditional’ understandings of England/Britain. Indeed, this draws attention to the ways in which particular ‘versions’ of the past are engaged with and the impact that this can have on discussions related to multiculturalism and the multiethnic history of England/Britain.     

An Overview of Historical Archaeology in Queensland, Australia

The ability of historical archaeology to make a significant contribution to our understanding of Queensland’s recent past is hindered by factors including few practitioners, limited publications about historical archaeological research and a need to establish its relevance beyond the archaeological community. There exists great opportunities in Queensland for researchers to explore a diverse range of research topics of which only some are beginning to be investigated through historical archaeological enquiry. This paper investigates the current state of the discipline in Queensland, the challenges practitioners face today and into the future, and the avenues down which historical archaeologists may make significant contributions to our understanding of Queensland’s recent past.     

Border historicity and ethnographic rupture: Pirates,Korean Kings and borderlanders in transnational Tsushima Island,Japan

Tsushima’s community festival commemorates Tsushima’s admirable borderland diplomacy in the pre-modern East Asian politics. This indigenous historicization in performance, nevertheless, fails to resonate with ethnographic reality: anthropological fieldwork revealed that local culture differs considerably from postcolonial ritual imaginings and historicity, illuminating a discontinuity between the past performed and the present observed. A rupture exists between borderland imagery as a coherent Japanese state boundary and the ethnographic reality of an uneven liminal frontier between Korea and Japan. In order to make sense of the ethnographic ruptures, this article constructs the border-centric ethnohistory through the lens of and experiences of the border, defying a state-centric past. I de-essentialize border-state relationship, accentuating border spontaneity and contingency between and beyond the power of sovereignty – a paradoxical Janus-faced process of contradiction and negotiation. I argue that it is Tsushima’s historical metamorphosis that stands out in history, not its subjugation to the power of either state.     

Re-tribalization in the 21st century,part 1

This exploratory study presents ‘re-tribalization’ as a framework for comprehending contemporary global patterns and phenomena. It posits a link between the erosion of modernity's traits and a resurgence of tribal behaviour – the more elements that we associate with modernity diminish, the more we see the emergence of group formations akin to anthropological notions of tribes. This trend manifests not only in societies where tribal and lineage affiliations remain central to identity but also – perhaps more notably, considering modernity's promises – in developed nations, including global powerhouses like the USA, India and China. ‘Re-tribalization’ signifies a modern-day recourse to a so-called tribal past, fortifying intra-group cohesion and creating a distinction from other groups, thus delineating ‘us’ and ‘them’. This process highlights the drawing of boundaries between communities, positing that such delineations were more apparent in the past and need to be re-established to navigate today's challenges and crises. The study traces the historical lineage of re-tribalization appeals and their ties to nationalism, citing instances from Johann Gottfried Herder's works. This argument leverages the authors’ nearly two decades of ethnographic fieldwork, a collection of four studies and initial insights from their soon-to-be-published book.     

How ‘creative’ is remembering? Culture-led regeneration and the politics of memory in Bogota,Colombia

ABSTRACT

Recently, Colombia’s post-conflict transition has experienced strong international attention. In Bogota, commemorative politics of the conflict insert themselves in complex processes of place branding: employing culture to rescale the city image from unsafe and violent to culturally vibrant. However, how to reckon with the country’s violent past in the culture-led renaissance of Bogota? Based on the author’s four-month of in-depth qualitative fieldwork on the main street Avenida 26 – at the center of both branding strategies and politics of memory – this paper shows the failure of institutional efforts to promote a brand of Bogota as a ‘City of Memory’. Socio-political divisions over the interpretations of the country’s past result in multi-scalar conflictive negotiations between politics and practices on the street: they reveal the tight link between memory, social justice, and urban segregation while denouncing the exclusionary visions of citizenship bared in political efforts to display memory as a territorial mark.     

Decomposing the crude divorce rate in five countries: Singapore,Taiwan, South Korea,the UK,and Australia

Over the past few decades, the level of divorce, measured by the crude divorce rate (CDR), has increased dramatically in both the East and the West, but has recently appeared to fall or level off in some countries. To investigate whether the recent decline or stabilisation of the CDRs reflects the real trends in divorce risk, a decomposition analysis was conducted on the changes in the CDRs over the past 20 years on two western and three East Asian countries, namely, the UK, Australia, Taiwan, South Korea, and Singapore. The following is observed: the decline in the CDRs of the UK and Australia in the 1990s, and of Taiwan and Korea in the 2000s, was mainly due to shrinkage in the proportion of the married population rather than any reduction in divorce risk; only Australia experienced a genuine reduction in divorce risk between 2001 and 2011; and the continuous increase of Singapore’s divorce level between 1990 and 2010 may be is an unintentional effect of the government’s marriage promotion policies. The shift in the population age structure, and more importantly, the drastic decline in marriage, has seriously distorted the CDRs, making them unreliable indicators for monitoring divorce trends.     

Vagrant,Convict, Cannibal Chief: Abel Magwitch and the Culture of Cannibalism in Great Expectations

Charles Dickens’s Great Expectations opens with a jolt, as Abel Magwitch – an escaped convict – pounces on the narrator and protagonist, Pip. Despite this rather dramatic introduction, and the pivotal role that he goes on to play in the plot, Magwitch has never been given the sustained critical analysis that he warrants. More often than not he has been treated as one of Dickens’s infamous ‘flat’ characters; a kind of ‘pantomime wicked uncle’, in the words of George Orwell. This is a critical legacy that this paper seeks to redress. Seeing Magwitch as an essential element in Dickens’s critique of mid nineteenth-century society, this paper examines Magwitch’s largely ignored peripatetic and homeless past. By contextualizing Magwitch in his role as a vagrant outsider, and then exploring how this marginal position nuances the cannibalistic appetite he displays in the first pages of the novel, I argue that Magwitch’s violence and ‘savagery’ forms a foil for the more sadistic practices of civilized society. In doing so I position Magwitch at the dark heart of Dickens’s social pessimism, and re-evaluate the culture of cannibalism that we see in Great Expectations.     

Replication as Religious Practice,Temporality as Religious Problem

This article explores how religious communities actualize the virtual problem of temporality. Analysing two case studies from contemporary America, Mormon Trek re-enactment and a creationist theme park re-creating Noah’s ark, I argue that replication is a strategy for constructing a relationship with time in which a strict past–present divide is collapsed through affective means. This work contributes to comparative studies in the anthropology of religion and temporalizing the past.     

Nietzsche on Memory and Active Forgetting

This article explores Nietzsche’s approach to the fundamental question of “how to live one’s life”, and more specifically his view of the role of the past in seeking an answer to this question. By discussing Nietzsche’s views of how different nations and cultures relate to their history, I suggest some comparisons with how individuals might do so. Common to both is the relationship between the past as a resource and as a burden: the burden of single events or periods and the burden of the abundance of facts. Key to Nietzsche’s thinking on these questions is his account of the relationship between remembering, promising, and forgetting. He considers “active forgetting” paradoxically as both a form of forgetting and a way of taking full responsibility for the past.     

Robert Weston,Medical consulting by letter in France, 1665-1789

This review investigates Robert Weston’'s Medical Consulting by Letter in France, 1665–1789. Weston uses correspondence between physicians and patients to explore perceptions of health and methods of treatments in early modern France. He also approaches the theme of how authority was expressed and perceived in epistolary communication. This book is important in its exploration of an underutilized source and its contribution to an understanding of how medical relationships were constructed in the past. With a rigorous structure and a high volume of information, Weston’'s work is an invaluable contribution to historical literature on early modern France.     

Disciplining the Past, Policing the Present: The Postcolonial Landscape of Ecuadorian Nostalgia

The present article assesses the complex reconfiguration that studying the past signifies when one becomes visibly aware of the enormous political and cultural implications that such an endeavor entails. To this end, I will use the Ecuadorian landscape as an entry point or particular case to understand these larger theoretical problematics within a more empirically grounded ethnographic framework. I will rely heavily on my own previous assessments of particular reconfigurations of the past in the Ecuadorian imaginary through the production of the archaeological site of Cochasquí (Benavides, Making Ecuadorian Histories: Four Centuries of Defining Power, 2004a); the Indian movement’s historical recovery of their pre-Hispanic past; the representation of a troubling pre-Hispanic homosexual harem of young coastal boys known as the enchaquirados; and the more recent representation of Guayaquil’s national identity over the last century. All of these studies have viewed the manner in which the differing communities of the Ecuadorian nation-state utilize the past in conscious and unconscious forms to legitimize their own political ambitions. More concretely even, these studies exemplify the manner in which archaeological discourse is used to identify itself as the most rightful heir to assessing and understanding the national past, and ultimately, defining what being Ecuadorian means or should be all about.     

Decolonising Indonesia,Past and Present

ABSTRACT

In the pursuit of an “authentically Indonesian” nation-state, for decades Indonesians have denied the civil rights of fellow citizens for allegedly being less authentically Indonesian. A key to the longstanding efficacy of such exclusionary ethno-nationalism is the failure to recognise the trans-national solidarity that helped give birth to independent Indonesia. Such solidarity is best illustrated in the extraordinary case of the making in Australia of a documentary film, Indonesia Calling (1946). A starting point of this article is the proposition that Indonesia’s cultural politics of the past and its future is never free from a protracted battle over what the nation is allowed, or willing, or able to forget and remember from its past. Mere disclosure of Indonesia’s past history with its cosmopolitan features will not necessarily lead to changes for the better in contemporary Indonesia, especially if the new revelation runs counter to the interests of those in power. Nonetheless, no substantial and long-term change for the better is possible for Indonesia without serious, open, critical re-examination of the revolutionary making of the Republic, and due acknowledgment that inauthenticity, plurality and trans-national solidarity are the hallmarks of the process.     

Collective Remembering in Archaeology: a Relational Approach to Ancient Maya Memory

Drawing on a case study from the Maya site of Actuncan, Belize, this article presents collective remembering as a way to conceptualize the relational construction of memory by ancient societies. Emphasizing the process of remembering allows archaeologists to investigate how memory divides as well as unites. Over time, the interactions between humans and between humans and their landscape that take place as part of everyday life produce memories of the past that are inaccurate and inconsistent between individuals. In particular, people who interact frequently, either due to geographic proximity or similarity in socioeconomic status, tend to form mnemonic communities—communities based on a similar understanding of the past—that may serve as identity markers differentiating them from other groups. At Actuncan, the community’s past was collectively remembered across times of prosperity and subjugation. First, the site was a Late and Terminal Preclassic seat of an early divine king who built a monumental ceremonial center. Second, when the site was subjugated during the Early and Late Classic periods, the ceremonial center fell out of use, but the site’s commoner households remained continuously occupied. Finally, in the Terminal Classic period, the site’s residents reestablished Actuncan as a local seat of authority following the Classic Maya collapse. The community’s use of the Preclassic monumental core during the Terminal Classic period indicates that the memory of the site’s Preclassic apogee served to legitimize their Terminal Classic authority. However, the Preclassic past was remembered in a manner consistent with contemporaneous cultural forms and the site’s recent past of subjugation.     

The Rejected Candidate: John III Vasa,the Polish-Lithuanian royal elections (1573/1575) and early-modern political decision-making

This article analyses the candidacy of King John III Vasa in the royal elections of Poland-Lithuania in 1573 and 1575. Although the ‘Polish-minded’ policy of John Vasa is commonly known in earlier historiography, Swedish and Finnish historians have not given much attention to John III’s election campaigns in Poland-Lithuania in the 1570s. This article contemplates John III’s candidacy and rejection from the perspective of Poland-Lithuania. The royal elections are analysed as a political decision-making process by the Polish-Lithuanian estates. Thus the article emphasizes the existence of past alternatives and conditions of decision-making in early-modern history.     

Artefacts,archaeologists and American Indians

Abstract

Archaeologists traditionally have observed the style and technology of artefacts and used this to classify archaeological assemblages, describing the repeated association of artefact groups as a ‘Culture’. We continue to place overwhelming reliance on our ability to derive meaningful information about past culture from artefacts, yet the importance these objects had for the members of the cultural group (past and present) is not adequately considered. The typological approach sidelines the creative role of the artisans, we find out a little about their economy, gain momentary glimpses of their religion, but learn almost nothing about their humanity. Archaeologists tend to focus on the physical, technological or esoteric attributes of an artefact, while indigenous populations tend to focus on the object's ritual or social importance. This is most apparent in the treatment of funerary artefacts. Until recently, many American Indian tribal groups have seen no distinction between ‘grave robbing’ and ‘archaeological excavation’ it made no difference to them whether the dead were disturbed by looters or by qualified archaeologists. By involving indigenous populations in the design, practice and dissemination of archaeological research, we can add humanity to our study of the human past, and take a step toward a truly worldwide archaeology.     

文化遗产 文化自觉 文化建设——追寻中国文化遗产事业的发展历程

文物古迹是过去文化的载体,文化既是不同人们共同体在特定时空中适应环境与社会的结晶,也是人类曾经的生存可能性的记录,因此,文化遗产是发展的智慧资源而非包袱。改革开放以来我们对文物与文化遗产及其价值的认识有一个不断拓展和提高的过程,经历了由古玩、文物到全民性的文化遗产自觉的演变。正确认识和处理不同文化及历史文化遗产,既是作为文明古国的中国发展过程中无法避开的选择,也是全球化、信息化时代古今中外文化大会面时代人类和谐共处、共同繁荣的前提性要求。     

Ghost hands,hands of glory,and manumission in the fiction of Sheridan Le Fanu

This essay corrects a critical blindspot in the study of Anglo-Irish literature through contextualising meanings of the hand as they appeared in the fiction of Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu (1814–73). From stylised fetish object in ‘An Authentic Narrative of the Ghost of a Hand’ (1863), to symbol of the author's presence in the text in Wylder's Hand (1864), to centrepiece of a dizzying referential system in ‘The Haunted Baronet’ (1870), Le Fanu's fiction demonstrates significant indebtedness to the legend of the ‘hand of glory’. Le Fanu used this rich reference point to express the terminal insecurity of the social masters who are not free, who are in fact themselves enslaved and stupefied for reasons beyond their control. With the spectre of Catholic resurgence in mid-nineteenth-century Ireland, the impossibility of manumission from the hands that haunt functioned as a reminder of the weight of the past in Le Fanu's literary imagination.     

Ethics of care,emotional work,and collective action of solidarity: the Patronas in Mexico

In this paper, we examine the mobilization of the Patronas, a group of Mexican women who have fed thousands of Central American migrants over the past two decades. We argue that the Patronas’ work of feeding and caring for migrants goes beyond essentializing these women’s work as just housewives, mothers, and caregivers. Furthermore, we assert that through these care activities, the Patronas exert a feminist ethic of care that is understood as a set of practices based on trust, reciprocity, and solidarity. The Patronas’ praxis of caring for the migrants resonates with people and attracts hundreds of volunteers to join these women’s emotional and nurturing work leading these women and volunteers to participate in a political practice of solidarity. In this paper, we articulate three key findings: (1) the interplay between the Patronas’ emotional work and the ethics of care, (2) the emergence of a collective act of solidarity around the Patronas’ caring work that leads hundreds of volunteers to visit these women and join them, and (3) the kitchen as a place where the collective act of solidarity begins and where the Patronas experience their personal transformation. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork, this study contributes to further our understanding of the interplay between Latin American women’s participation in social movements, emotional work in these movements, and the ethics of care.     

Life Narratives of the Past: Herta Müller on Communist Romania

Narratives of the past are created and, in some cases, recreated, through literary works by revealing fragments from past traumas, reinterpreting past events, or focusing on historical events held in the collective memory. In a text dedicated to excavation and memory, Walter Benjamin notes that when approaching one’s personal past, one must proceed like a person digging in the ground, and not be afraid of returning repeatedly to the same matter. This essay argues that Herta Müller uses this method to address the personal and collective Romanian past, creating through her novels a literary remembrance of the past that deeply resonates with the memories of those affected by totalitarian regimes. Never presenting a linear or whole narrative of the past but rather the pieces of a life-narrative puzzle, Müller’s literary world becomes a medium through which the victims of totalitarian regimes can regain control over the narratives of their past.