Ways of seeing the Scottish Highlands: marginality, authenticity and the curious case of the Hebridean blackhouse

This paper examines popular cultural constructions of the Scottish Highlands during the interwar period. Situating events within the literary and artistic context of the «Celtic Twilight», it traces the establishment, and subsequent links between, two pioneering «heritage» sites which used as their focus the «blackhouse», the vernacular form of habitation in the Highlands. These sites, created under the auspices of the National Trust for Scotland and the 1938 Glasgow Empire Exhibition, are understood as «official» expressions of a romanticized, imaginary geography heavily reliant on ideas of cultural authenticity and marginality. By considering aspects of the «Self/Other» representational dialectic and placing in question popular constructions of peripherality the paper considers how such projects, ostensibly motivated by remembrance and preservation, were also a highly selective means of national identification. Ultimately, the work demonstrates how the modern impulse to differentiate between, and thereby classify, distinctive cultural traditions and forms of knowledge facilitated an obvious Highland bias in what subsequently became Scotland's accepted historiography.     

Authorizing landscape: «authority», naming and the Ordnance Survey's mapping of the Scottish Highlands in the nineteenth century

A range of work in human and historical geography has discussed naming and mapping as reflections of social power. In historical contexts in particular, attention has been drawn to the ways in which native knowledges, even the natives themselves, were either «written out» by being excluded, or marginalized in the processes of «translation» and cartographic representation. This article examines the work of the Ordnance Survey in the nineteenth-century Scottish Highlands and the means this English-speaking body employed in providing authoritative names to what was, in placenames and in the language of the inhabitants, a Gaelic landscape. An examination of the Ordnance Survey's Original Object Name Books is used to explore how the landscape was «authorized», to discuss who was judged an authoritative source and, from this, to emphasize naming as a social process.     

«Non urbe, non vico, non castris»: territorial control and the colonization and urbanization of Wales and Ireland under Anglo-Norman lordship

By playing on the Classical belief that urbanity is a sign of civility, urbanism has often been used by Europeans to characterize the «other» as uncivilized. In the twelfth century, contemporary chroniclers in England made much use of the myth that Wales and Ireland were unurbanized and therefore uncivilized. This conviction provided, in their view, a justification for colonizing lands in Wales and Ireland, at the western edge of the Anglo-Norman kingdom. Throughout the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, the process of this colonization was intimately linked with urbanization. This paper examines the spatial dimensions of this process and proposes two views of how urbanization facilitated colonization. First, English domination was extended geographically by the use of particular Anglo-Norman urban laws, and by the foundation of chartered towns. These laws spread English legal practices into Wales and Ireland, reinforcing the myth that these areas lacked urbanity before colonization, whilst at the same time placing them under the watchful eye of Anglo-Norman lordship. Secondly, in the creation of chartered «new» towns, Anglo-Norman lords used exclusionary devices to structure the internal spaces of towns, separating English townspeople from Welsh and Irish and in the process marking them as «outsiders» in a «colonial» society.     

Looking back: the Cotswolds and English national identity, c. 1890–1950

This paper examines how history was appropriated to construct a unique regional identity for the Cotswolds and a national identity for England in the period c. 1890 to 1950. It explores how ideas of the past, tradition, history, longevity and (dis)continuity were woven into representations of the Cotswolds as incontiguous, set apart and remote in time from contemporary England. The analysis examines how the apparently whimsical devise of «locating» the Cotswolds in specific pasts was mobilized to mount serious criticisms of the condition of England and Englishness. This was achieved through the use of the «door ajar» motif which was a particularly powerful means of expressing the perceived disruption of historical continuity in both the Cotswolds and England and is therefore examined at length. These themes are explored through non-fictional rural writing, guides and other written representations.     

Pedigree and productivity in the British and North American cattle kingdoms before 1930

The origin of the concepts of breed and pedigree in cattle in late eighteenth-century Britain, and the circumstances of their translation to north America are examined. Pedigree had a particular value to north American importers and was more widely adopted in both Britain and America for that reason. However, from the outset, competitive pressures developed which owed little to performance as measured in beef or milk. The descendants of early importations of improved but unpedigreed Shorthorn cattle were stigmatized as «unfashionable» while other bloodlines, particularly those descended from the stock of British breeder Thomas Bates, gained the attention and the premiums associated with fashion. The «fancy» thus attracted both north American and British enthusiasts, but with different results. As in Britain, fashionable pedigrees were acquired as positional, non-material goods within a general environment of speculative excess, though with less serious consequences for the overall performance of north American livestock agriculture. There appear to have been two reasons for this. First, north America had no equivalent to the British landlord–tenant system, which encouraged the wider dissemination to the productive sector of costly cattle with indifferent productivity credentials. Second, and more important, in north America the «fancy» and those who promoted it acted as a stimulus to a different kind of boosterism, which promoted competing breeds of cattle on the basis of productivity. Though breed boosters had less success in the dairy than in the beef sector, the net outcome was the more constructive application of pedigree to productivity in north America than in Britain.     

From sedition to patriotism: performance, place, and the reinterpretation of American ethnic identity

Between the two World Wars, many Americans changed their attitudes toward ethnic minorities and their place within American civic culture. States such as Wisconsin, with its dense concentration of diverse immigrant groups, came under especially harsh fire during the Great War, only to be celebrated 20 years later as microcosms of a pluralist democracy. Although much has been written about this profound transformation of American ethnic identity from the perspective of «official culture», or those governing élites in power, less is known about the role of immigrant communities themselves in this change. Examination of the intertwining of ideology with the social manifestations of cultural performance in one Wisconsin community provides a way to interpret the elusive experience of ordinary people. In the case of two interwar Swiss American cultural performances, a view of ethnic culture emerges that sought to refashion a more inclusive definition of what it meant to be American. In the process of redefining their own identity, third generation Swiss strategically used such performance-based memory work. Their efforts not merely reflected, but shaped a discourse of ethnicity between the wars that became decreasingly antagonistic and gradually more open to ethnic and cultural difference.     

Picturing the homeland: geography and national identity in late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Iran

In recent years, there has been a growing interest in geography as an ideologically loaded discourse about the world and its inhabitants which has operated both within and beyond educational institutions. Particular attention has been paid to the complex relationships between geography and imperialism, militarism and nationalism. For the most part, these studies have focused on the development of a western geographical imagination in Europe and North America. This article considers the development of geography in Iran during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries and charts some of the connections between this new spatial sensibility and an emerging Iranian nationalism. Based on rare and hitherto unexplored nineteenth-century Persian sources, including several newspaper images, this article examines the importance which Iranian statesmen and diplomats in the service of the Qajar dynasty attached to geography and to geographical reasoning in their attempts to protect their authority from external threats. The forms of Iranian geography which developed in this period sustained various myths and legends about Persia's historic importance and reflected both external, western ideas and concepts as well as indigenous, Persian traditions. Forged in a context of acute vulnerability to «Great Power» incursions, Iranian nationalism and Iranian geography both represented an intermingling of external, western and internal, non-western ideas.     

Aqui Lourenço Marques!! Radio colonization and cultural identity in colonial Mozambique, 1932–74

The Portuguese empire in Africa was one of the last to collapse amidst the waves of decolonization that swept the continent in the 1950s and 1960s. The astonishing endurance of Portuguese colonialisms until the mid-1970s can be viewed partly in relation to the communication technologies that underscored the Lusophone imperial presence in Africa in important cultural and political ways. This paper explores the historical geography of radio-broadcasting in colonial Mozambique and examines the importance of colonial anthropological knowledges in the formation of radio programming. Colonial broadcasters represented their work as «radio-colonization» and frequently stressed the links between their activities and the development of imperial and colonial modernity. From the very beginning of radio-broadcasting in Mozambique, broadcasters sought to harmonize their contribution to colonial culture and society with the objectives of the colonial state, and broadcasting became central to the capitalist development of the colony. In the dying days of Portuguese colonialism broadcasters belatedly began to attempt to assimilate non-white subjects into the perceived order of colonial modernization. Radio programming was differentiated in important ways according to ethnicity and gender and this paper seeks to discuss some of the complex relationships between colonial subjectivities and the search for the colonial modernization of Mozambique.     

Running with the land: legal-historical imagination and the spaces of modernity

In the middle decades of the nineteenth century, rural upstate New York was the site of a series of sometimes violent tenant uprisings known as the «Anti-rent Wars». The objective of tenants was to dismantle massive landholdings, some of which, such as the Manor of Rensselaerwyck, dated from the 1620s. Though tenant opposition took many forms, one crucial component was litigation and the practice of legal argument. This paper uses ideas of the production of space associated with Henri Lefebvre in presenting a reinterpretation of these events. After giving a brief account of the genealogy of Rensselaerwyck as a legal space, the historical arguments expressed in and made possible by legal discourse in a series of legal cases are analysed. One of the central issues in these cases was whether Rensselaerwyck represented an illegitimate survival of feudal spatiality in New York or whether the legal foundation of social space here could be assimilated to more modern legal forms. Legal argument in these cases is a social practice by which partisans attempt to produce (or reproduce) social space through the strategic interpretation of lines of continuity (or discontinuity) of the legal meaning of space encoded in rival conceptions of property.     

Ideology and Television in the Eastern Arab World: 1956–1990

This article deals primarily with the relationship between ideology and television from 1956 to 1990 in the Eastern Arab world. It allows us to see what kinds of ideological ideas circulate through television, why they are constructed, and when they are being challenged. It examines why and how television promotes ideology and disseminates political messages. It takes into account different ideological perspectives. This article is a type of qualitative analysis that focuses on why governments seek to attain hegemony over television and how television has been used successfully as a tool of ideological propaganda and subservience.     

对社会主义意识形态建设相关问题的探讨

本文对我国意识形态建设创新的突破口、意识形态的研究方法、意识形态领域的斗争、社会思想的多样性与意识形态的包容性、核心价值体系的大众化以及凝聚改革发展共识等问题进行了分析,并对社会主义意识形态领域发生的新变化和新情况进行了探索研究。     

In search of Wales: travel writing and narratives of difference, 1918–50

Travel writers since the eighteenth century have sought to portray Wales as a place of «difference» with its own culture, history and legends woven into the landscape. Their texts were later to inspire twentieth-century travellers. These later travellers also drew on the academic work of geographers, anthropologists and archaeologists such as H.J. Fleure, Cyril Fox and E.G. Bowen who wrote extensively and influentially on their ideas of identity and race grounded in the landscapes of Wales. One recurrent theme throughout these popular travel narratives, like H.V. Morton'sIn Search of Wales , was that of a Celtic history and culture, evident both in landscape and in the people. Travellers» books recorded journeys punctuated by visits to the monuments of this Celtic past with its hill-forts and standing stones, and by encounters with the peoples of Wales. The literature of travellers and academics combined to create a particular form of text for Wales that in turn became the language for the promotion of tourism and for the images and experiences of Wales that could be taken away by those who came to visit.     

Reframing the “Irish Question”: the role of the Irish co-operative movement in the formation of Irish nationalism, 1900–22

This article examines the role of the Irish co-operative movement in the early twentieth century and argues that it played a crucial role in shaping a popular understanding of the “Irish Question”. This mass-membership movement impacted upon the development of the Irish state and population. By taking this rural, social movement as a lens to analyse Irish society in the early twentieth century, social and economic issues re-emerge as central components to a contemporary understanding of Ireland's increasingly contested position within the Union. As the expectation of some kind of political resolution to demands for political independence grew during the First World War, radical nationalism absorbed a social and economic discourse that originated within the co-operative movement in its critique of the British state as it operated in Ireland. Irish co-operation represented a sophisticated form of political economy that provided an influential ideological platform for Irish nationalists as they anticipated some form of political independence.     

Fred Halliday: high modernism and a social science of the Middle East

This article examines Fred Halliday's research and writing on the politics of the Middle East. It classifies Halliday as a ‘high modernist’, who organized his work around a constant commitment to a universal rationality, historical progress and an opposition to relativism and a particularist reading of the Middle East. The article identifies the two dominant units of analysis that shaped Halliday's work on the region throughout his life. These were the transformative capacity of capitalism and the role of a comparatively autonomous state. The article then examines how the content of each unit was transformed as Halliday moved from an overt Marxism to a more diffuse liberalism. It then goes on to argue that Halliday's ideological affinities and his deployment of these units marginalized the role and importance of ideology, specifically both nationalism and Islamism. Finally, it traces the influence of this approach and the deployment of these units in Halliday's work on Iran, Iraq and the Arab–Israeli conflict.     

How the ideology of low fat conquered america

This article examines how faith in science led physicians and patients to embrace the low-fat diet for heart disease prevention and weight loss. Scientific studies dating from the late 1940s showed a correlation between high-fat diets and high-cholesterol levels, suggesting that a low-fat diet might prevent heart disease in high-risk patients. By the 1960s, the low-fat diet began to be touted not just for high-risk heart patients, but as good for the whole nation. After 1980, the low-fat approach became an overarching ideology, promoted by physicians, the federal government, the food industry, and the popular health media. Many Americans subscribed to the ideology of low fat, even though there was no clear evidence that it prevented heart disease or promoted weight loss. Ironically, in the same decades that the low-fat approach assumed ideological status, Americans in the aggregate were getting fatter, leading to what many called an obesity epidemic. Nevertheless, the low-fat ideology had such a hold on Americans that skeptics were dismissed. Only recently has evidence of a paradigm shift begun to surface, first with the challenge of the low-carbohydrate diet and then, with a more moderate approach, reflecting recent scientific knowledge about fats.     

Radicalization revisited: violence,politics and the skills of the body

For more than a decade, ‘radicalization’ has been a keyword in our understanding of terrorism. From the outset, radicalization was conceived of as an intellectual process through which an individual would increasingly come under a spell of extremist ideas. This ideological understanding of radicalization still prevails. In a 2015 speech on extremism, British Prime Minister David Cameron, for instance, claimed that the ‘root cause of the threat we face is the extremist ideology itself’. But the way we understand radicalization has specific consequences for the way we manage and fight the scourge of terrorism. Considering recent events, including the November 2015 Paris attacks, the present article sets out to reassess the above‐mentioned intellectualist understanding of radicalization and come up with new suggestions as to how radicalization may be understood today. Initially, the article suggests that ideology is not necessarily a precondition for violence, but that a prior experience with violence is more often a precondition for engaging an extremist ideology. Such experience with violence can be both domestic and international, obtained in Europe or Syria and other conflict zones. In the second part of the article it is argued that although radicalization is often conceived of as an individual process, pathways towards terrorism are inherently social and political. Finally, the article argues that by stressing the importance of ideology and ideological processes, concepts of radicalization have abstracted away from another factor that is pivotal for understanding pathways towards terrorist violence: the skills and capacities of the body.     

Expanding Women's Co-operatives in China through Institutional Linkages

This article examines the institutional linkages between three women workers' co-operatives, the first women's credit co-operative in China, and the co-operative support organization, the International Committee for the Promotion of Chinese Industrial Co-operatives (ICCIC). The study shows that Chinese women in rural areas have increasingly adopted co-operatives as a form of organization in their efforts to address the problem of their lack of access to resources, including land, credit, jobs, training and information, and to participate in the mainstream economy as an organized force. This article demonstrates that stronger institutional linkages between local offices of the All-China Women's Federation and the ICCIC encourage the growth of women's co-operative activities. It raises two sets of policy issues that are central to the development of co-operatives and women's banking: the continued growth of these activities will depend upon the government adopting legislation to define the legal framework governing co-operative relations and management systems, and establishing gender-inclusive policies to increase credit to women's income-generating activities.     

The failure of Asian American representation in All-American Girl and The Cho Show

This article examines Korean American comedian Margaret Cho's attempts to represent Asian American identity as the star of two television sitcoms, All-American Girl (1994) and The Cho Show (2008). It begins with All-American Girl, showing how its contradictions around race, ethnicity and gender demonstrate the ideological boundaries of the network sitcom genre. It then looks at how the post-network ‘celebreality’ sitcom, The Cho Show, reproduces the assimilationist identity politics promulgated in All-American Girl even as it purports to critique them. The commercial failure of these shows is traced ultimately to the broader institutionalised racism and sexism of the US entertainment industry, its perpetuation of the neoliberal ideology of the American Dream and the internationalisation of that ideology by social minorities.     

Anarchism,Modernism, and Nationalism: Futurism’s French Connections, 1876–1915

This article examines two of the most significant Italian political movements at the turn of the twentieth century—anarchism and Futurism. Although these movements shared a common vocabulary and rhetoric, they contrasted sharply in their aims and objectives. I address three interrelated questions: How were these movements and their ideologies related to, and perceived by, the ruling elites? What were their mutual influences and inspirational centre? Did both movements share a broader core ideology? To answer these questions, I explore the links, parallels and dissimilarities between anarchism and Futurism in the context of the nationalist mass mobilizations preceding World War I. In line with Emilio Gentile’s landmark analysis, I identify the core ideology of Futurism as a potent blend of nationalism and modernism. Futurism’s double matrix is thus contrasted with the theory and practice of anarchism, the two displaying sharply differing relationships with political power. I also consider the links between Italian Futurism and French ultra-nationalism as championed by prominent intellectuals, beyond Paris’ artistic epicentre, where art and politics intermixed. I conclude that the fusion of modernism and nationalism was central to twentieth-century ideological radicalization to which Futurism fully belonged, but from which anarchism eventually dissociated itself.     

Regional culture in post-war Friuli: Literature in dialect,nationalism and friulanita ¤

The unprecedented increase in literary production in Friuli in the post-war period has coincided with the rise of popular ethno-nationalism in the region. Although there is an evident connection between the political, social and cultural fields in Friuli, this relationship is both complex and full of potential conflicts. This paper provides a brief overview of Friulian regionalism, before considering the specific role assigned to literature in Friulian by proponents of regional autonomy. It examines the problematic nature of the dominant ideology of friulanità and discusses the responses of a number of authors to the prevailing themes of cultural discourse in the region. In conclusion, it examines the ideological conflicts caused by modernisation in the region, and considers the impact that the transformation of the region has had on the literary debate, concentrating on the difficulties caused by Friulian linguistic purism.