Group Identity, Individual Creativity, and Symbolic Generation in a BaKongo Diaspora

This article applies theories of group dynamics and individual agency to past material expressions of core symbols within particular African American religious beliefs. The past creation and use of such artifacts is analyzed using theories concerning modes of symbolic expression, the interplay of dominant and nondominant religions, formation and maintenance of social group identities, and the role of individual creativity and innovation within those processes. This analysis demonstrates the ways in which facets of the core symbolic expressions of the BaKongo people of West Central Africa evolved over time and across the trans-Atlantic region.     

Piot,Personhood, Place and Mobility in Lihir,Papua New Guinea

ABSTRACT This paper is an exploration of the nature of personhood through the medium of the concept of piot in the Lihir islands, Papua New Guinea. Piot is an embodied experience in response to the movement of others in space. When people leave or arrive at a place and spend the night, others in the area feel unwell. Piot is thus one aspect of the relations between persons. I suggest that ideas of relational personhood are inadequate to fully comprehend piot, and, following LiPuma (1998) and Clay (1986) rather than Strathern (1988), argue that persons in Lihir are more than just relational beings who always act with others in mind. Piot is predicated on the dual themes of fixed sociality and mobility that are important in Lihir as elsewhere in Melanesia (cf Eves 1998; Patterson 2002). Through piot, persons comment on and sanction the movement of others, yet this mobility still occurs.     

Music geography in Russia: non-auratic places and institutionalization “in becoming”

ABSTRACT

This paper focuses on the Tsoi Wall in Moscow, an iconic place on Russia's music map that appeared in Moscow in 1990 in memory of the cult Soviet rock musician Viktor Tsoi, to develop a framework for studying non-auratic music place – that is, places that are not connected with the biographies of musicians or musical events, but emerge directly from the experiences of visitors and fans. These places are constantly negotiated and only lightly formalized, but are nevertheless enduring. To analyze this type of place, we propose a concept of institutionalization “in becoming”. The case of the Tsoi Wall reveals that light formalization (vague and changing positions and rules, and openness to different interpretations of a place and ways of using it) leads to the recognition of the place as a significant one and to its popularity. We put institutionalization “in becoming” in a wider context and juxtapose it with well-studied musical places in Europe and the US.     

Identity and Place: the testament of designated heritage in Hong Kong

This paper examines the extent to which the identity of Hong Kong as a place, and of the Hong Kong Chinese as people, is expressed by the official heritage locations (the seventy-five Declared Monuments) designated by Hong Kong's Antiquities and Monuments Office. The discussion takes account of other heritage initiatives, in particular two recent monuments that commemorate the 1997 Handover of Hong Kong to China. Conclusions are that designated heritage in Hong Kong, more by chance than by deliberate strategy, reflects significant elements of the identities of the Hong Kong people and of Hong Kong as a place. However, more important to the Hong Kong Chinese person's sense of identity than built heritage are the bonds of kin and associated social events.     

Kincentric Ecology,Species Maintenance and the Relational Power of Place in Northern Australia

This paper considers themes of species maintenance and place engagement in Yanyuwa country, northern Australia. It traces the complexity of interpretations and relational contexts involved in places that are commonly – and we argue – misleadingly, referred to as increase and magic sites. Examining one specific place, at which people carry out maintenance rituals, we explore the complex bonds that unite Yanyuwa with the geography that is the Ancestral Hill Kangaroo. Not content with the classificatory habit of declaring actions either increase oriented or hunting magic, this research more fully explicates the relational substance of places that play a key role in ecological health. This is achieved by asking how might the profundity of a place of relational importance, such as a maintenance site, be better understood and written of in ways that convey an Indigenous ontology and epistemology?     

Dreaming of a Golden Bengal: Discontinuities of Place and Identity in South Asia

This article analyses five different representations of the homeland category “Bengal”. The region of Bengal was partitioned twice in the twentieth century and imagined in a multitude of forms at different historical moments. The article describes the conditions that allowed different territories and peoples to crystallise as “Bengal” and “the Bengalis”, and investigates why some versions of the Bengali homeland proved durable as others faded away. Rather than asking who is the real Bengali and where is the real Bengal, it investigates how particular identity categories become popularly practised and why particular images of the homeland come to be perceived as true, legitimate and authentic. It concludes that homeland categories are never fixed and finalised, but are rather always in a process of becoming, and are contested, reimagined and redefined as socio-political contexts change.     

美国华人餐饮业及其文化认同

通过对1965年前后两个阶段美国中餐业的变迁,蒙特利尔公园市中餐业的兴起及影响,圣盖博谷地区中餐业更深刻、更广泛变化的阐述,本文分析了新一代华人移民在多元文化背景和与主流社会的磨合中,所追求的生活方式和包括饮食习惯在内的文化认同。     

Spaces of Belonging: Home,Culture and Identity in 20th-Century French Autobiography

ALEXANDRE, P., Les Patrons de presse. Quinze ans d'histoires secrètes de la presse écrite en France (1982–1997), Anne Carrière, 1997, 297pp., 120FF., ISBN 2 84337 010 8

ATKIN, N., Pétain, Longman, 1998 238pp., £13.99, ISBN 0 582 07037 6 pbk; £39.99, ISBN 0 582 07036 8 hbk

BALL, R., The French‐speaking World, Routledge, 1997, 228pp., £10.99, ISBN 0 415 12987 7

BATCHELOR, R. E. and CHEBLI‐SAADI, M., French for Marketing: Using French in Media and Communications, CUP, 1997, 350pp., no price indicated, ISBN 0 521 58538 X

BEZBAKH, P., Histoire de la France, vol. 1, Des origines à 1914, vol. 2 De 1914 à nos jours, Larousse, 1997, 512pp. and 570pp., no price indicated, ISBNs 2 03 507141 0 and 2 03 507142 9

B?UF J.‐L., Quinze ans de décentralisation, Problèmes politiques et sociaux, 787 Documentation française, 11 juillet 1997, 45FF., ISSN 0015 9743

BRETON, A. (translated by Mary Anne Caws and Geoffrey T. Harris with notes and introduction by Mary Ann Caws), Communicating Vessels, Bison Books, 1997, 159pp., $12.00, ISBN 0 8032 6135 7

CHARAUDEAU, P., Le discours d'information médiatique. La construction du miroir social, INA‐Nathan, 1997, 286pp., 129F., ISBN 2 978209 190

COHEN, W. B. (ed.), The Transformation of Modern France. Essays in Honor of Gordon Wright, Houghton Mifflin, 1997, 242pp., £15.95 pbk

DROUIN, I. Salauds de pauvres! Programmation d'un génocide européen, Infrarouge, 1997, 253pp., 80F., ISBN 2 9086 14 20 0

FEBVRE L. (présentées et annotées par Jacqueline Pluet et Gilles Candar), Lettres à Henri Beer, Fayard, 1997, 640pp., 250F, ISBN 2 213 59566 6

FLOWER, J. E., France Today,, 8th edn Hodder &; Stoughton, 1997, 248pp., ISBN 0 340 63093 0

FOURIER, C. (edited by G. S. Jones &; I. Patterson), The Theory of Four Movements, Cambridge University Press, 1996 328pp., £14.95, ISBN 0521 35693 8

FRIOT, B. and ROSE, J., (eds), La construction sociale de l'emploi en France, L'Harmattan, Collection Forum de l'IFRAS, 1996 248pp., 130F., ISBN 2 7384 4764 3

GARAPON, A. and SALAS, D., La République pénalisée, Hachette, 1996 144pp., 59F., ISBN 2 01 235230 8

GRUBB A., The Politics of Pessimism. Albert de Broglie and Conservative Politics in the Early Third Republic, University of Delaware Press, 1996 427pp., £42.00, ISBN 0 87413575 3

JACOB G., Une histoire du cinéma moderne, Ramsay, 1997, 255pp., ISBN 2 84114 287 6

KOFMAN, M., Edgar Morin. From Big Brother to Fraternity, 140 pp., Pluto Press, 1996 £10.99, ISBN 0 7453 0852 X

MARICOURT, T., Les Nouvelles Passerelles de l'extrême‐droite, Syllepse, 1997, 199pp., 120F., ISBN 2 907993 52 6

MILZA, P., Sources de la France du XX^e siècle (de 1918 à nos jours), Larousse, 1997, 789pp., no price indicated, ISBN 2 03 741022 0

MORI, J., William Pitt and the French Revolution 1785–1795, Keele University Press, 1997, 305pp., £17.95, ISBN 1 85331 137 5

MOURIAUX, R. (ed.), L'année sociale., Editions de l'Atelier/Editions Ouvrières, 1997, 240pp., 98FF., ISBN 2 7082 3270 3

NOIN, D. and WHITE, P., Paris, John Wiley, 1997, 286pp., £45 hbk., ISBN 0 471 94944 2

NORTHCUTT, W., The Regions of France: a Reference Guide to History and Culture, Greenwood, 1996 310pp., no price indicated, ISBN 0 313 29223 X

O'BRIEN C., Women's Fictional Responses to the First World War, Peter Lang, 1997, 204pp., £28., ISBN 0 8204 3141 9

PÉAN, P. and NICK, C., TF1, un pouvoir, Fayard, 1997, 695pp., 160FF., ISBN 2 213 59819 3

RHODES, M., HEYWOOD, P., and WRIGHT V. (eds), Developments in West European Politics Macmillan, 1997, 363pp., no price indicated, ISBN 0 333 65128 6

RUFFIN, A., Normandie 1939–1944: le Temps des Épreuves, Presses de la Cité, 1997, 335pp., 130FF., ISBN 2 258 04417 0

SCHMIDT, V. A., From State to Market? The Transformation of French Business and Government, Cambridge University Press, 1996 447pp., £55.00 hbk, ISBN 0 521 49742 6

SCOTT, J., W., Only Paradoxes to Offer: French Feminists and the Rights of Man, Harvard University Press, 1996 229pp., £10.95, ISBN 0 674 63931 6

SHEPPARD, D., SPARKS, S. and THOMAS C. (eds), On Jean‐Luc Nancy. The Sense of Philosophy, Routledge, 1997, 219pp., £14.99, ISBN 0 415 14794 8

TULARD, J., Napoleon, le pouvoir, la nation, la légende, Le Livre de Poche, 1997, 153pp., 30 F., ISBN 2 2539 0534 9

WILLIAMS, J., S., The Erotics of Passage. Pleasure, Politics, and Form in the Later Work of Marguerite Duras, Liverpool University Press, 1997, 243pp., £14.95, ISBN 0 85323 501 5

WISE, H., The Vocabulary of Modern French. Origins, Structure and Function, Routledge, 1997, 256pp., £45 hbk, ISBN 0 415 11738 0; £14.99 pbk, ISBN 0 415 11739 9

WISEMAN B., and GROVES, J., Lévi‐Strauss for Beginners, Icon Books, 1997, 175pp., £8.99, ISBN 1 874166 625     

Creating Cultural Identity: Opus anglicanum and its Place in the History of English Medieval Art

The term opus anglicanum, as a designator of English national identity associated with embroidery and textiles, is unknown in any document written in England during the Middle Ages, but is used in papal and other European archives. The term has been questioned by a number of scholars who have suggested it may be a generic name used to describe a particular technique of attaching gold thread to an embroidered textile (underside couching). It is suggested in this article that the phenomenon of opus anglicanum during its golden age c. 1200–1400 was part of a wider European cultural development at a time when an appreciation of cultural identity as a transnational phenomenon emerged. The article goes on to examine the relationship between English pictorial artists and the craftswomen and men who made these textiles. It concludes with a case study of the orphrey associated with the Daroca Cope in Madrid — now associated with a designer in the artistic circle of the artist of the Wilton Diptych. The respect for, and reuse of, these works of art (many of which have survived through the care taken to preserve them in cathedral treasuries and private collections up to the present day) is an element in their continued importance as a part of our shared European heritage.