The production of diaspora: Algerian emigration from colonialism to neo-colonialism (1840-1970)

The extensive literature on migration within a Marxist framework tends to focus on the difficulties migrants face in labor markets of "receiving countries." This paper adopts a different approach, arguing that more attention should be paid to the historical production of diaspora, rather than the continued analysis of the problems of "integration." It suggests that articulation of modes of production theory set within the transition from colonialism to neo-colonialism offers an appropriate means to reverse this analytical lens; further, that to understand contemporary "post-colonial" concerns such as hybridity or migrancy, we need an economic approach which is itself hybrid. An historical narrative exploring the processes of emigration and immigration between Algeria and France shows the emergence of an industrial, and more particularly an automobile diaspora.     

Memory, Distortion, and History in the Museum

Museums are conventionally viewed as institutions dedicated to the conservation of valued objects and the education of the public. Recently, controversies have arisen regarding the representation of history in museums. National museums in America and Germany considered here, such as the Smithsonian's Air and Space Museum, the Holocaust Memorial Museum, and the German Historical Museum, have become sites of contention where national histories and personal memories are often at odds. Contemporary art installations in museums which take historical consciousness as their theme similarly raise contentious issues about public knowledge of and personal interest in the past. When members of publics find that their memories of the past or their expectations for museum experiences are not being met, a kind of "distortion" occurs. The "distortion" related to memory and history in the museum is not so much of facts or interpretations, but rather a distortion from the lack of congruity between personal experience and expectation, on the one hand, and the institutional representation of the past on the other. This essay explores the possibilities for a redefined relationship between personal memory and history that is experienced in contemporary museums.     

CHOOSING NOT TO LOOK: REPRESENTATION,REPATRIATION, AND HOLOCAUST ATROCITY PHOTOGRAPHY1

This essay considers, from ethical and historical‐critical perspectives, alternatives to unconditional public access to Holocaust atrocity photographs. Photographic images have become the common coin of public awareness and historical information about the Holocaust. For the generations immediately following the genocide, atrocity photos and images of Nazi crimes served as vital testimony. For succeeding generations, however, access to certain “recirculated” images (Barbie Zelizer) has created a sense of familiarity with the Holocaust and with the National Socialist era that may prevent, rather than facilitate, engagement with the historical subject, particularly for students. Few of the victims of the Shoah pictured in either the best known or the least circulated images were willing subjects. As such, the bulk of Holocaust and National Socialist photography should perhaps fall under the same category as the results of Nazi medical experiments: they have been rendered inadmissible because they are ethically compromised materials, made without the participants’consent. While I am not advocating the wholesale destruction of Holocaust photographs, I will suggest that removing them from view or “repatriating” them might serve Holocaust memory better than their reduction to atrocious objects of banal attention. Just as the Native American Grave Protection and Repatriation Act of 1990 provided a mechanism for the reclassification of human remains, from ethnographic to spiritually sacred artifacts, we should consider what a similar reclassification of Holocaust photographs could offer. Have Holocaust atrocity photographs reached the limits of their usefulness as testimony?     

Agency, Postmodernism, and the Causes of Change

This theme issue's call for papers notes that "several prevalent and influential historical practices of the last thirty years have limited agency's significance, . . . seeing the human as the patient of History rather than its agent." The questions implicit in this statement are nowhere more urgent than in those practices collectively known as the "linguistic turn." Yet such questions have been explored sparsely enough in relation to this movement that some adherents can still insist that the ideas they favor do not devalue agency, while many simply ignore the issue and incorporate agency as an integral part of their work. By examining a largely unremarked episode in Michel Foucault's highly influential thought and considering its connections to foundational assumptions of the linguistic turn, we seek to demonstrate in detail why the premises that underlie both structuralism and poststructuralism (the theoretical movements most deeply implicated in the direction the linguistic turn has taken in history) logically require the denial of agency as a causal force and ultimately compel the conclusion that no change can occur in realities as interpreted by humans. We illustrate the intractability of these logical problems by analyzing unsatisfactory defenses from some of the few linguistic-turn historians who have discussed relevant issues, after which we conclude by suggesting that attention to current work in linguistics and cognitive science may help resolve such difficulties.     

PHOTOGRAPHS, SYMBOLIC IMAGES, AND THE HOLOCAUST: ON THE (IM)POSSIBILITY OF DEPICTING HISTORICAL TRUTH

Photography has often been scrutinized regarding its relationship to reality or historical truth. This includes not only the indexicality of photography, but also the question of how structures and processes that comprise history and historical events can be depicted. In this context, the Holocaust provides a particular challenge to photography. As has been discussed in numerous publications, this historic event marks the "limits of representation." Nevertheless there are many photographs "showing" the Holocaust that have been produced in different contexts that bespeak the photographers' gaze and the circumstances of the photographs' production. Some of the pictures have become very well known due to their frequent reproduction, even though they often do not show the annihilation itself, but situations different from that; their interpretation as Holocaust pictures results rather from a metonymic deferral. When these pictures are frequently reproduced they are transformed into symbolic images, that is, images that can be removed from their specific context, and in this way they come to signify abstract concepts such as "evil." Despite being removed from their specific context these images can, as this essay argues, refer to historical truth. First, I explore the arguments of some key theorists of photography (Benjamin, Kracauer, Sontag, Barthes) to investigate the relationship between photography and reality in general, looking at their different concepts of reality, history, and historical truth, as well as the question of the meaning of images. Second, I describe the individual circumstances in which some famous Holocaust pictures were taken in order to analyze, by means of three examples, the question what makes these specific pictures so particularly suitable to becoming symbolic images and why they may—despite their abstract meaning—be able to depict historical truth.     

Historical Archaeology and the Recent Urban Past

This paper examines the ways in which international historical archaeologists have explored the recent past, in an effort to inform and contribute to contemporary debates about social identity and social inclusion. It is argued that the archaeology of the mundane and everyday can contribute to contemporary culture by creating a sense of community and developing social cohesion. Emphasis is placed upon the archaeology of the recent urban past and case studies are presented from New York, Sydney and Cape Town. The paper concludes that the study of the materiality of urban social life offers a powerful research tool for social scientists, and that archaeologists and heritage interpreters should make greater use of this form of evidence within the context of early 21st‐century urban regeneration schemes in the UK.     

CULTURAL HISTORY,THE POSSIBLE,AND THE PRINCIPLE OF PLENITUDE1

Cultural historical research has deliberately challenged “historical realism,” the view that history is comprised entirely of observable actions that actually occurred, and instead has emphasized the historical significance of thoughts, emotions, and representations; it has also focused on the invisible, the momentary, and the perishable. These latter elements introduce the notion of the possible in history. This article examines the ways in which cultural history has approached the notion of the possible, as well as the methodological and theoretical implications of this approach. Its chief claim is that the idea of possibility is fundamental for the concept of culture and ineliminable from its historical study. The question of possibility is present in multiple ways in the study of history; it is important to distinguish among different levels of possibility. The possible may mean, for instance, what it is possible for historians to know about the past, or the possibilities open to historical agents themselves, or, indeed, the possibilities they perceived themselves as having even if these seem impossible from the point of view of the historian. The article starts with the first aspect and moves on toward the possibilities that existed in the past world either in fact or in the minds of those in the past. The article argues that the study of past cultures always entails the mapping of past possibilities. The first strand of the essay builds on the metaphor of the black hole and intends to solve one of the central problems faced by cultural historians, namely, how to access the horizon of the people of the past, their experience of their own time, especially when the sources remain silent. The second, more speculative strand builds on the notion of plenitude and is designed to open up avenues for further discussion about the concept of culture in particular.     

Visual Histories and Photographic Evidence

Over the last decade, historical research into photography in the Pacific has grown and diversified, yet an enormous amount of visual material remains untapped, new approaches and questions await exploration, and most historians still neglect critical engagement with visual evidence. This article, in summarising developments in the historical research of photography both generally and in the Pacific, identifies directions in recent work, and argues that closer links between visual history and Pacific History promise revisions and new vistas of Pacific pasts.     

Discovering the antipodes

Recent work on the past of Australia and New Zealand is surveyed in terms broadly relevant to the many evolving geographies of European settlement overseas since the eighteenth century. Although there was uncertainty about the future of historical geography in the antipodes during the late 1960s, a good deal has been accomplished in the last six years. Recent work has been strongly empirical as historical geographers, and others, have sought to understand the complexity of local development. In this process of discovery, there are immense possibilities for further work. New questions asked of new sources, incisive analyses and thoughtful syntheses will reveal much about the development of society and setting in these outposts of nineteenth-century European expansion.     

A College Student's Rural Journey: Early Sociology and Anthropology in China Seen through Fieldwork on Sichuan's Secret Society

This paper focuses on the investigators of rural society in the Republican period,specifically research made through fieldwork on the Gowned Brothers (or,Paoge) in 1940s Sichuan.It takes up one such investigator,Shen Baoyuan—a student at Yenching University;her youthful work never became published or recognized.The present study reveals how the pioneers of Chinese sociology and anthropology,who called themselves "rural activists," tried to understand rural China.It argues that the developments in those fields in China of the 1920s and 1940s made it possible for us today to have a better understanding of the contemporary rural problems.The investigators played an important role in the Rural Construction and Rural Education Movements in Republican China.They show us how Western sociology and anthropology were localized in order to answer "Chinese questions" and to solve "Chinese problems." As source material,these investigations have given us rich records,which in turn have become precious sources and historical memories of rural China's past.     

Photography as Geographical Fieldwork

Photography has a long history in geographical fieldwork. This paper reports on a student project that recovers this history and uses photography and commentary to represent the city of Barcelona. The place of the project within the broader (second-year undergraduate) fieldcourse and curriculum is described. The paper concludes with considerations of the way that photography lends itself to raise issues of representation evident in contemporary human geography. Since it is accessible to students, and offers practical examples, photography is a good way to approach and introduce more complex questions of method, epistemology and representation.     

Editorial-Heritage Challenges in the New Century

The paper considers the case of Raffles Hotel in Singapore which has been the subject of a conservation project with a significant element of redevelopment. The circumstances are discussed within the context of heritage tourism in colonial cities and changing approaches to conservation in Singapore. Built colonial heritage exhibits a symbolism which affects how it is presented and interpreted, serving as a tool for nation building and as a tourist attraction. Policies about conservation and use are influenced by these alternative and often contested meanings, while economic imperatives may demand that buildings generate revenue. Raffles Hotel illustrates the difficulties involved in managing and marketing colonial heritage and securing an acceptable balance between commercial and conservation objectives, with possibilities for confusion as a consequence of the combination of restoration, reconstruction and new building techniques employed.The case has a wider relevance which extends to other forms of built heritage around the world and highlights the dilemmas facing those making decisions about how to present the conserved past as a contemporary tourist space.     

The Autonomy Argument for Liberal Nationalism

Abstract. The article examines a recent normative argument for ‘liberal nationalism’ that can be found in the work of a range of influential contemporary writers. That argument seeks to defend the view that the state has a responsibility to preserve and promote national cultures. It does so by arguing that the liberal ideal of an autonomous individual chooser presupposes a rich and healthy national culture which provides, and gives meaning to, the options which an individual faces. The claim of the present article is that the liberal nationalist argument is much less successful than these writers would like to think. Although the argument may be valid in certain restricted contexts, the article shows that it runs into severe difficulties for a wide range of central cases that nationalists have traditionally been concerned with.     

The paradox of contemporary linguistic nationalism: the case of Luxembourg

Through a case study of the mobilisation around the Luxembourgish language in the 1970s and 1980s, this article investigates the paradox of contemporary linguistic nationalism, resulting from a hiatus between the continued influence of the classic nation‐state model and the new constraints linked to a changed socio‐historical context. Based on an analysis of actors' discourses, parliamentary debates and legislative documents, the investigation retraces the social, political and economic dynamics as well as the cognitive mechanisms leading to a change in the social perception of the Luxembourgish language. It shows how the contemporary context implies specific constraints and difficulties for mechanisms of the invention of tradition, but that at the same time the traditional nation‐state model, where one nation equates with one state and one language continues to function as a reference. Through the Luxembourgish case is raised the more general question of the relation between linguistic nationalism, modernity and change in a contemporary context.     

Views and Commentaries: What Difference Does Feminist Theory Make?

This discussion explores what difference a feminist perspective makes in our understandings of the past in two ways. The first section examines to what extent feminist research questions were asked in the preceding papers by Lu Ann De Cunzo, Eleanor Casella, and Susan Piddock. The second section shows what difference feminist theory has made in asking new questions that have produced new gendered understandings of the global historical context of these papers. As a whole, this discussion shows how feminist theoretical approaches change our understanding of the lives of historic women and men in nineteenth century reform institutions within their larger gendered cultural context. While the introduction to this volume presents the broader ungendered historical context, this discussion focusses on the gendered cultural context that was foundational to the gender relationships embodied in the arrangement of architectural spaces and material culture at the sites in the preceding three papers.     

Defining and Contesting Environmental Justice: Socio-natures and the Politics of Scale in the Delta

Abstract:  This article examines a contemporary process intended to "identify a strategy for managing the Sacramento–San Joaquin Delta as a sustainable ecosystem that would continue to support environmental and economic functions that are critical to the people of California" ( Delta Vision 2008 , http://deltavision.ca.gov/AboutDeltaVision.shtml ). Environmental injustices in the Delta are exacerbated by connected conflicts between knowledge and power, over the scale at which "environmental justice" and the "Delta" are understood through public policy. The rejection of environmental justice and the socio-natural in the Delta Vision process represents how contemporary policy processes are recreating and reenacting the power/knowledge dynamics that have defined the Delta, placed it on a path to ecological collapse and injected high levels of social and racial injustice in its landscape over the past 150 years. Our article combines an ethnographic and a historical geographical approach that contributes to the literature on environmental justice and scale and links with the literature on water governance and power to advance the task of defining environmental justice from the academic and policy perspectives.     

Historical geography and early Canada: a life and an interpretation

The first section of this two‐part paper describes my historical geographical career, particularly the topics and issues I have pursued and the changing intellectual environment in which they have been situated. The second section offers a summary interpretation of the emerging human geography of early‐modern Canada followed by some reflections on its contemporary implications. This interpretation stresses the extent to which boundaries and discontinuities marked early Canada, and contrasts a pinched Canadian experience with the land with a far more expansive American one. It shows how deeply difference was constructed and ingrained in the Canadian past, and suggests some challenges and opportunities that follow from this inheritance.     

Justice and Injustice in the City

Following a recent growth of interest in questions of justice and the city, this paper considers how the work of contemporary critical urbanists compares with earlier accounts of urban justice and injustice. Our purpose in making this comparison is to consider how scholars concerned with justice and injustice in the city might better articulate the conceptual relationship between justice‐thinking and (in)justice‐documenting in their writings about the contemporary planned city. Using a selection of influential texts as evidence, our comparative commentary on past and present approaches focuses on three issues we think are crucial to this relationship. First, with the rise of analyses of the politics of difference, concepts of justice stressing procedure, process, and the hearing of multiple voices have come to the fore recently, especially in urban planning. Second, contemporary writers about geographies of justice have queried the value of using pre‐formulated, philosophical justice norms to judge outcomes and processes in particular contexts, seeing justice, rather, as intuited in the enactment of social conflicts and practices in those actual situations. Third, questions about the spatiality of justice and injustice have been aired recently asking whether justice and injustice have primarily a social rather than a spatial ontology. The conclusion of our evaluative review is that similar issues are being named and investigated now as were four decades ago, in investigations of justice and injustice in cities, but that concerted debates about theory and epistemology have elaborated the conceptual focus of discussion. We call for grounded investigations of enactments of justice as well as of injustice.