Maisons Tropicales/Maisons Coloniales: contesting technologies of authenticity and value in Niamey,Brazzaville, Paris,New York and Venice

This article draws on multi-sited anthropological fieldwork to analyse institutional practices of producing cultural authenticity and value under conditions of globalization. It focuses on the ‘re-discovery’ of three so-called Maisons Tropicales as modern architectural heritage in Niamey and Brazzaville. These prototypes of a colonial building project were subsequently translocated, commoditized and displayed as modern works of art in Paris and New York. The article describes the global connections and disconnections between the actors involved, claiming that the alternative practices of appropriating the Maisons Tropicales rely on competing and conflicting technologies of authenticity and value. Adding to scholarship on exchanges of material culture, as well as on the production of cultural authenticity and value, the article reframes debates in heritage studies pertaining to the ethics of site-specificity, material integrity, and integrity of place; preservation, conservation, and restoration; restitution and repatriation; as well as questions of cultural identity and the notion of a ‘shared’ colonial heritage. Ultimately, the article re-contextualizes the Maisons Tropicales in their (post-)colonial legacies. It concludes that critical interjections by artists and ethnographers suggest potential to reassemble the dominant technologies of authenticity and value in the fields of art and heritage preservation.     

Property and Authority in a Migrant Society: Balinese Irrigators in Sulawesi,Indonesia

Multiple definitions of resources as property lead to competition over legitimate authority between state and non‐state organizational and institutional arrangements. This article focuses on the overlapping and competing domains of the water users’ association, WUA, and the ‘traditional’ Balinese irrigators’ institution, subak. While the former is backed up by the power of state regulation and administration, the latter derives legitimacy from Balinese irrigators. The author presents a case study of the establishment and transformation of property rights in an irrigation‐based Balinese migrant society in Indonesia; he concludes that, in the ongoing process of competition for authority and mutual adjustment, both institutions undergo important transformations.     

From culture for the people to culture for profit: the PRC’s journey toward a cultural industries approach

This paper seeks to explore the internal driving forces behind the emergence and prosperity of China’s cultural industries. The paper traces the Chinese Communist Party’s radical transformation from stressing the class stand and ideological nature of culture to concluding with the concept of ‘cultural industries’ so as to expand an orthodox Marxist/Leninist/Maoist notion of culture. The Chinese party-state legalizes ‘cultural industries’ by extending the market mechanism into the cultural arena, and acknowledges the triple statuses of culture as a public service provider, a market profit contributor, and an essential builder of the ‘socialist core value system.’ By doing so, the Chinese Party-state is able to take advantage of the economic power of the market while retaining the ideological control function of culture. As such, cultural industries become a mode of governance for the CCP to maintain cultural security and national identity, and a source of soft power to maneuver.     

‘R.I.P. Nature Island’: the threat of a proposed oil refinery on Dominica's identity

Dominica is a small island nation in the eastern Caribbean Sea that has long struggled with issues of poverty and development. To improve these conditions, the government formed a preliminary agreement with Venezuela to build a multimillion dollar oil refinery on the island. Some discussion about this proposal took place in local forums, such as radio talk shows, but additional discussion took place online. Internet-based media, including online reproductions of traditional media and new types of media such as interactive discussion forums and weblogs, were used not only to continue the discussion but also to raise awareness among a wider audience. The framework for appealing to such a disparate set of interests both locally and abroad was already in place: the island's ‘nature island’ identity. The project was perceived as a threat to quality and aesthetic appearance of the nature island as well as a threat to the concept of Dominica as the ‘nature island’. This paper examines the role of Dominica's identity at the heart of this perceived threat in the construction of environmental discourses through internet-based media, such as online newspapers with associated discussion forums and blogs.     

The dhow as cultural icon: heritage and regional identity in the western Indian Ocean

Dhows, the traditional sailing ships of the western Indian Ocean, are currently used in museums, heritage sites and popular culture as a symbol of a regional culture in the western Indian Ocean. While scholars have embraced the notion of seas as cultural or historical units, this type of ‘basin thinking’ is a recent phenomenon in the Indian Ocean. Over the last 150 years the dhow has gone from being a despised symbol of the slave trade and economic underdevelopment to representing a romanticized past and a regional identity. This article traces the parallel development of the idea of the dhow as a symbol of regional identity and changing perceptions of both the vessels and the region it is taken to represent. It argues that recent representations of dhows as cultural heritage represent a new and developing notion of regional identity within the western Indian Ocean.     

Towards ‘Embedded Non-creative Work’? Administration,digitisation and the recorded music industry

Abstract

For contemporary cultural policy, ‘non-creative’ work continues to form a conceptual blindspot: a foil to define and value creativity against. This paper develops existing categories to augment the task-focused notion of ‘embedded creativity’ with a more situated view of work’s cultural and institutional embedding. It first interrogates this ‘embeddedness’, taking a ‘cultural economy’ approach to intermediation and administrative support. Drawing on observations from an in-depth qualitative study of employees in major record labels, the second part articulates the heightened importance of ‘admin’ to recorded music industries, after ‘digital disruption’. Routine bureaucratic labour presents an atypical example, revealing much about the hidden relational and identity work that goes into constructing ‘creative industries’ as such. The intention is not to show that ‘embedded non-creative workers’ are in fact ‘creative’ but, on the contrary, to articulate the distinct contributions and value of support work in this context, questioning a persistent reliance on creative/non-creative dualisms. Policy research would benefit from enriched understanding of culture's assembly in marketable objects, reorienting understandings of ‘cultural’ labour markets and careers, and reimagining the role of traditional cultural ‘administration’ in the contemporary ‘creative economy’.     

Imaginary Worlds,Real Stories

St Edmund, King and Martyr survived the Reformation as a hero and emblem of East Anglian regional identity. This article traces the development of the post-Reformation Edmund in ‘popular’ sources, including his continuing presence in the landscape and the influence of the nineteenth-century ‘cult of commemoration’ on perceptions of the saint.     

Circassian Encounters: The Self as Other and the Production of the Homeland in the North Caucasus

Diasporas are an increasingly important phenomenon in the ‘era of globalization’. Transnational networks structure and restructure economic exchanges, familial bonds, cultural identities and political mobilization. This article examines one such diaspora, which traces its origin to the North Caucasus, the Circassians. The break-up of the Soviet Union has enabled some people to journey back to their ‘homeland’ and even take up residence there once again. Through such journeys and the encounters that accompany them, notions of identity, history, culture and tradition are challenged. This has the dual effect of fragmenting ethnic identity while simultaneously transforming the ‘homeland’ from an abstract concept to an everyday reality. The ensuing interplay between nation and diaspora is translated by different individuals in different ways. Three narratives of journeys to the homeland are presented here, showing the complex motivations and consequences of such journeys. Ethnographies of globalization thus reveal that concepts of ‘ethnicity’, ‘nationalism’ and ‘ethnonationalism’ have to be rethought in the context of shifting borders, transnational encounters and the production of diasporas.     

Conceptualizing Greek cultural policy: the non‐democratization of public culture

This paper concentrates on several of the most significant moments of Greek cultural policy since World War II, together with its key concepts. It traces the cultural policy of the country, its main changes and its relationship with politics through a socio‐cultural analysis and a look at the political and cultural events which occurred. The concepts of national identity, hegemony, civilizing mission, democratization, and cultural democracy are applicable in this framework. Despite various attempts at reforms, the country's cultural policy could be characterized as ‘path dependent’; it connected unwaveringly to its two main objectives: heritage and the arts.     

Debating heritage authenticity: kastom and development at the Vanuatu Cultural Centre

In October 2003, 28 cultural expressions from around the world were proclaimed Masterpieces of the Oral and Intangible Heritage of Humanity, complementing the adoption of the Convention for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage by UNESCO. This proclamation has been part of the broader remit of the international organisation to protect the world’s cultural diversity from modernity and globalisation. Inherent in this is an underlying notion of cultural authenticity, implying that certain expressions, which are considered to be endangered and therefore in need of institutional protection, constitute ‘original’ and ‘pure’ manifestations of cultural identity. Taking forward debates on the safeguarding of intangible heritage, this paper examines cultural authenticity in the context of the Vanuatu Cultural Centre, the principal cultural organisation, museum and research institution of the Melanesian archipelago. The proclamation of the practice of sandroing (sand drawing) as a masterpiece of intangible heritage, and other heritage interventions taking place in Vanuatu and recorded during fieldwork in 2007, provide an interesting perspective for examining how global cultural initiatives are negotiated by local constituencies. Here, heritage preservation is coupled with calls for development, which invites new ways for thinking about authenticity not according to predefined criteria, but with respect to local understandings.     

Cultural insecurity and its discursive crystallisation in contemporary France

This article analyses the emergence in French public discourse since 2010 of the term ‘insécurité culturelle’ (‘cultural insecurity’). It traces firstly the take-up of the term outside France since the 1980s in anglophone written news media. It establishes four received meanings for the term: a ‘pure’ cultural insecurity expressing simply a relation to the arts world; a nationally refracted cultural insecurity that expresses that relation through the prism of relations between nations; an anthropologico-political conception; and a conception related to the human development paradigm. The take-up in France of the term has conformed to the anthropologico-political conception. Developments after 2002 in France created propitious conditions for coupling the semantic fields of ‘culture’ and ‘insecurity’. The term itself was launched from 2010 through the work of two quite different ‘discursive entrepreneurs’ associated with the erstwhile ‘popular left’ current close to the French Socialist Party (Christophe Guilluy and Laurent Bouvet). The article analyses in both linguistic and political perspectives how the expression has been taken up since 2012 in the national press in France. In particular, it explores the debate concerning the purchase of the term on reality, and its current discursive fit with the agendas of the mainstream and far right.     

NGOs as Social Movements: Policy Narratives,Networks and the Performance of Dalit Rights in South India

Donor‐funded development NGOs are sometimes portrayed as co‐opting, privatizing or depoliticizing citizen action or social movements. This much is implied by the term ‘NGOization’. Alternatively, NGOs can be seen as bearers of rights‐based work increasingly threatened by tighter regulation or substitution by corporate social responsibility models of development. This article engages critically with both perspectives. It traces the role of NGOs and their funders in agenda setting, specifically in bringing the previously excluded issue of caste discrimination into development policy discourse in the form of a Dalit‐rights approach in Tamil Nadu, south India. The authors explore the institutional processes of policy making and NGO networking involved, the alliances, entanglements of NGOs and social movements, and the performativity of NGO Dalit rights. But at the same time, the article illustrates how NGO institutional systems have constrained or failed to sustain such identity‐based claims to entitlement. In Nancy Fraser's terms, the article explores success and failure in addressing ‘first‐order’ issues of justice, that is rights to resources (in this case, land), and in tackling ‘second‐order’ injustices concerning the framing of who counts (who can make a claim as a rights holder) and how (by what procedures are claims and contests staged and resolved). This draws attention to the important but fragile achievements of NGOs’ discursive framings that give Dalits the ‘right to have rights’.     

The development of the agrarian landscape on gotland during the early iron age

The author discusses the investigations on prehistoric agrarian landscape recently started on the island of Gotland. Main attention is focused on traces of deserted (fossilised) fields. Systematic reconnaissance in 1972–73 all over the island has brought forth a quite new material with ‘Celtic fields’ of a very great size and regional extent. The reconnaissance and regional mapping are mainly carried out by aerial photography.

Through the field work, which started in 1973 at Uggårde‐Vinarve in Rone parish, it has been possible to demonstrate a continuous field system to a total extent of about 130 hectares (325 acres). This field pattern is superimposed by a new agrarian landscape structure with building remains and stone wall fencing systems as the dominating features. The two stratigraphically separated structures of agrarian landscape put into an agrarian economic context indicate a development from extensive farming with long fallow periods to intensive farming with established land‐use (arable, meadow, and grazing) on smaller areas than formerly. A rough dating of the two structures gives 500 — 100 B. C. and 100 B. C. ‐ A. D. 500 respectively.

The investigations carried on by geographers and archaeologists in collaboration with Quaternary geologists are included in a research project by the Swedish Council for Social Science Research.     

Evo's jumper: identity and the used clothes trade in ‘post-neoliberal’ and ‘pluri-cultural’ Bolivia

Since the election of Latin America's first indigenous president, Evo Morales, in 2005, Bolivia's ruling party, the ‘Movement Towards Socialism’, has nationalised resources and instituted a ‘post-neoliberal’ and ‘pluri-cultural’ constitution that emphasises the importance of recognising cultural, linguistic and economic plurality. This article explores gendered economic identities in this context via the case study of an informal trade that is explicitly excluded from this vision of development: the globally controversial used clothes trade (UCT). In Bolivia, political debate on the trade demonstrates gendered tensions inherent in the government's ‘post-neoliberal’ agenda of nationalisation, protection of cultural identity and the well-being of the poor in an increasingly liberalised and globalised market place. Working with women in the city of El Alto, this article examines how women's involvement in the UCT challenges understandings of identity and development in post-neoliberal Latin America and the dynamics involved in women's continued marginalisation from global economic and political processes.     

Island Biocultural Assemblages — The Case of Kinmen Island

ABSTRACT A growing mass of research contributes to our understanding of how biological and cultural diversity are related in complex and important ways. This paper presents an assembling process of biodiversity and cultural diversity on an island, Kin‐men (Quemoy), based on 1600 years of its environmental history. The study shows that the island's biocultural assemblages are a result both of external relations with the island's surrounding environment and internal relations within the island's changing human ecology. Distant political powers and economic forces are the two major external influences that have affected the flow of natural and cultural elements to and from the island, while ‘screening effects’ and ‘isolation effects’ are two factors that explain internal interactions. The island's biocultural assembling processes reveal that the openness of the island facilitates increase in the diversity of biocultural elements, while its less disturbed isolated condition fosters natural succession and co‐evolution. The study suggests that biocultural assemblages and the associated processes of co‐evolution and nature–society interactions are accomplished through the intermittent opportunities purposively provided by or inadvertently found in the openings and closures of boundaries, setting the scene for both boundary crossings and bounded shelter, by intent or chance.     

Insurgency,heritage and the working class: the case of the Theatre of Union Nº6 of the Coal Miners of Lota,Chile

This paper examines the construction and preservation history of the Theatre of Union Nº6 of the Coal Miners in Lota, Chile, a city whose identity has been redefined due to changes in the capitalist economy, becoming known as an ‘ex-coal mining community’. Drawing on insurgent planning theory and through a political, economic and social analysis of the history of this national monument, the paper explores how grassroots heritage movements, grounded on their historical memory of social struggle, question authorised voices in the field, influencing the production and definition of their urban heritage. The strategies used by these groups are discussed in the context of the emergence of social movements at the beginning of the twentieth century, the influence of the Modern Movement in Chile as a symbol of social justice, and the communities’ current preservation efforts. Through interviews, participant observations, archival research and analysis of the physical built environment, I argue that moving across ‘invited’ and ‘invented’ spaces of participation, Lotinos are capable of disrupting hegemonic conceptions of heritage, using it for their own social, cultural and economic purposes and creating opportunities for a more inclusive and democratic cultural process.     

‘Defining Moments’ and Refining Myths in the Making of Place Identity: the Newcastle Knights and the Australian Rugby League Grand Final

This paper deals with the role of the media in refashioning place identity and in repositioning places in the cultural system of space. Specifically, it examines as a case study the media coverage of the September 1997 success of the ‘Newcastle Knights’ in the Australian Rugby League Grand Final. This event produced an intriguing moment in the reimagination of the identity of Newcastle (New South Wales), an industrial city undergoing ‘deindustrialisation‘. The paper draws on Hall’s (1997) notion of ‘resemanticisation‘ in repositioning place identity to explore how key elements of Newcastle’s dominant identity myths were utilised by the media in the post‐match media coverage. Traditional industrial narratives of embattled place were merged with the vision of a bright economic future for a re‐identified Newcastle and recoverable elements of Newcastle’s problematic industrial place identity were recast, stripped of their troubling connotations, and deployed in furthering the project of reimagining a prosperous future for the city. The paper thus considers the role of the media and sport in locating and relocating places in the Australian cultural system of space.     

Playing with digital gender identity and cultural value

In cyberspace, anything is possible. Playing with digital gender identity has particularly flourished in digital dating games. Women can become the ‘masters,’ while men are the ‘pets’ when fabricating and manipulating digital gender identity to develop alternative heterosexual relationships. This implies that the breaking down of social and cultural barriers in cyberspace is possible if the digital dating game is seen as playful or a potential liberation from the barriers of digital gender identity to challenge the existing masculine power base. The current study attempts to fill the gap in knowledge related to challenging heterosexuality as the masculine dominant norm in cyberspace by examining Taiwanese online heterosexual relationship developments between gender identity and cultural value while playing a ludic digital dating game. The study employs netnography and recruits 40 people total, including Taiwanese workers and full-time university students, for participation in this research. The results highlight that the digital dating game is in some ways liberating, enabling Taiwanese users to present themselves as they want to express emotions, establish online heterosexual relationships in a nontraditional way, and engage in alternative digital gender play. These ‘ludic gaps’ allow for a fleeting, but unsustainable escape from traditional Taiwanese gender cultural values and practices. It is suggested that culture is inescapable, regardless of whether we are in the real world or cyberspace.     

Aims and contradictions of cultural diversity policies in the arts: a case study of the Rich Mix Centre in East London

In recent years, the concept of diversity has become prominent in cultural policy, echoing community arts philosophies of the 1960s and 1970s that questioned the notion of universal artistic value and argued for greater recognition of the relationship between cultural identity and inequality. Cultural diversity policies today implicitly challenge the liberal‐humanist discourse of ‘the best’, and emphasise what is ‘relevant’ to particular communities. Official policy rhetoric can often hide contradictions that are only apparent in practice. How does ‘diversity’ shape the way organisations engage with audiences and does this contradict the still present discourse of ‘universalism’, with its emphasis on value judgements? This paper explores this tension through the study of Rich Mix, a multi‐functional arts centre in London's multi‐ethnic East End. It argues that Rich Mix is caught between discourses of universalism and diversity, leading to confusion over the project's rationale and ambivalence amongst artists about how their art is judged.