UNESCO’s project to ‘Revive the Spirit of Mosul’: Iraqi and Syrian opinion on heritage reconstruction after the Islamic State

ABSTRACT

Following the devastation of the northern Iraqi city of Mosul by the Islamic State (IS), UNESCO launched a project to ‘Revive the Spirit of Mosul’. This article critically reflects on this UNESCO-led project, drawing on 47 interviews with Syrians and Iraqis, as well as documenting the implications of UNESCO’s efforts in earlier (post-)conflict heritage reconstruction projects in the Balkans, Afghanistan and Mali. Specifically, this article focuses on two sites in Mosul, both deliberately destroyed by the IS and both nominated by UNESCO for reconstruction. The data analysed reveal that heritage reconstruction projects, especially in complex (post-)conflict environments such as Iraq, requires ongoing, nuanced and careful engagement with local populations to succeed. Failure to do so leaves both local people and their heritage sites vulnerable to renewed attacks and therefore ultimately undermines UNESCO’s broader mission to foster peace.     

Book reviews

Ian McLean, White Aborigines. Identity Politics in Australian Art, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998. x + 204 pp., 9 b. & w. illus. ISBN 0–521–58416–7. £40.00.

Ákos Moravánszky, Competing Visions. Aesthetic Invention and Social Imagination in Central European Architecture, 1867–1918, Cambridge, Mass. & London: MIT Press, 1998. xvi + 508 pp., 32 col. and 312 b. & w. illus. ISBN 0–262–13334–2. £29.95.

Andrew Piersenné, Explaining Our World, London and New York: E. & F. N. Spon, 1999. xii + 252 pp., 50 b. & w. illus. ISBN 0–419–21940–4. £45–00.

Simone Abram, Jacqueline Waldren and Donald V. L. Macleod (eds.), Tourists and Tourism: Identifying with People and Places, Oxford and New York: Berg, 1997. xii + 245 pp., 4 figs. ISBN 1–85973–905–9. £14.99.

Martin Cooper (ed.), Laser Cleaning in Conservation: An Introduction, Oxford: Butterworth‐Heinemann, 1998. xii + 98 pp, 43 col. and 11 b. & w. illus. ISBN 0–7506–3117–1. £40.00.

Jon Lang, Madhavi Desai and Miki Desai, Architecture and Independence. The Search for Identity—India 1880 to 1980, Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1997. xxii + 347 pp., c. 750 b. & w. illus. and figs. ISBN 0–19–563900–6. £20.00.     

Enlivened Geographies of Volunteering: Situated,Embodied and Emotional Practices of Voluntary Action

Abstract

Examining the everyday practices and feelings of volunteering, in particular their situated, emotional and embodied nature, serves to place the experiences of volunteers centrally in accounts of what matters in the doing of volunteering and goes beyond service provision or active citizenship. Using qualitative evidence from three collaborative research projects, we present enlivened geographies of volunteering which focus on: the situatedness of formal volunteering in place and the negotiation of local ‘moral economies’ of norms and expectations surrounding access to volunteering opportunities and the practices of volunteering; complex positionings of informal volunteering in biographies of social participation; and intersections of embodiment and emotions in experiences among environmental volunteers. We contribute to the development of social geographies which are ‘more-than-representational’ and argue that connecting insights on everyday practices of volunteering with wider policy and practice agendas requires a focus on the enduring, but also emergent and excessive nature of the spaces of doing volunteering, on the relational nature of volunteering, and on opening up debates in the networks of research-policy-practice which understand spaces of volunteering as entailing more than volunteering.     

REGIONAL INEQUITY AND SOVIET CONCERN FOR RURAL AND SMALL-TOWN INDUSTRALIZATION

Regional inequity has been an important national issue in most industrial societies. Measures to reduce inequity usually include the location of more industries in rural and small-town areas. The USSR has always possessed a strong ideologically based concern for regional inequity, but it was not until the 1960's that the matter was given serious attention. The last three five-year plans have called for more industry in small towns and rural villages. Life in these areas is to be made more attractive, labor resources more fully utilized, local economies improved, and the out- migration of people reduced. However, there are obvious barriers to industrialization in rural and small-town areas, and as in most industrial nations, the reduction of regional inequity is a slow and difficult process.     

How Would Jesus Vote? The Churches and the Election of the Rudd Government

The Coalition's clear victory over Labor at the 2004 federal election after prominent campaigning by conservative church-based groups – along with the election to the Senate of a member of the Family First party – seemed to many commentators to confirm the growing power of a ‘Religious Right’ in Australia. This paper argues that two features of the 2007 federal election campaign are impossible to square with the rise of the Religious Right thesis. First, Labor won in 2007 without shifting its leadership, policies or electoral strategy to suit the Christian Right. Second, the contributions of church groups to the 2007 election campaign were not dominated by a single perspective but covered a wide range of issues and expressed competing views on key policy issues. This pluralism allowed Kevin Rudd, the Labor Party and even the Greens room to present themselves favourably to significant groups of Christian voters. The 2007 election suggests that, rather than being dominated by a hegemonic Christian Right, church involvement in Australian electoral politics is pluralistic in character.