Maya heritage: entangled and transformed

This article discusses two aspects of heritage – entanglement and transformation – that became clear during a recent cultural heritage project in Yucatan, Mexico. Regarding entanglement, heritage becomes relevant only when coupled with other concerns, ranging from politics to livelihood to personal biographies. An unpredictable array of entanglements came into being during the project and these entanglements elevated the impact and visibility of local heritage to an unanticipated degree. Transformation refers to the claim that heritage is not frozen in the past. Instead, it is in motion and subject to change. The transformations of heritage discussed in this paper are examined from the perspective of a mobilities paradigm and understood, in part, as resulting from the experience of performing heritage for outsiders for the first time. In so far as the heritage project precipitated changes in identity, this paper explores what is meant by Maya identity and argues that it is a fluid construct that can be both anchored in the past and negotiated in the present. This perspective makes sense of an event in which contemporary people anchored their identity in a spectacular 1000-year-old ruin, but falls short of explaining the uneven recognition of smaller ruins.     

The Images of Arabs and Jews as a factor in British policy towards Palestine

Moshe Davis and Ben‐Arieh Yehoshua, eds., With Eyes Toward Zion, (Volume III, Western Societies and the Holy Land), New York, Praeger, 1991, 304 pp., $55.00.

Sergio I. Minerbi, The Vatican and Zionism, Conflict in the Holy Land 1895–1925, translated from Hebrew by Arnold Schwartz (Studies in Jewish History Series) (Mus.), New York and Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1990, 272 pp., $30.00.

Ephraim Even, The Schism in the 1922 Zionist Movement: Why Jabotinsky Established the New Zionist Organization (Hebrew), Jerusalem, Rubin Mass Ltd., 1992, 243 pp.

I. Alfassi, ed., Irgun Zvai Leumi (National Military Organization): Collection of Archival Sources and Documents, April 1937‐April 1941, Tel Aviv. Vol. I, 1990, 472 pp.; Vol. II, 1992, 472 pp.

Abraham S. Hyman, The Undefeated, Jerusalem, Gefen Publishing House, 1993,486 pp., $24.95.

Yemima Rosenthal, ed., Documents on the Foreign Policy of Israel, Volume 6, 1951, Jerusalem, Israel State Archives, 1991, 916 pp. and Yehoshua Freundlich, ed., Documents on the Foreign Policy of Israel, Volume 7, 1952, Jerusalem, Israel State Archives, 1992, 774 pp.

Nitza Ben‐Dov, Notes on Agnon's Art of Indirection: Uncovering Latent Contents in the Fiction of S.Y. Agnon, New York, E.J. Brill, 1993, 168 pp., $57.25.

Morris, Benny. Israel's Border Wars, 1949–1956: Arab Infiltration, Israeli Retaliation, and the Countdown to the Suez War, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1993, xxii+470 pp.

Laurence J. Silberstein, ed., New Perspectives on Israeli History, New York, New York University Press, 1991, ix+281 pp.

Itamar Rabinovich, The Road Not Taken: Early Arab‐Israeli Negotiations, New York and Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1991, xi+259 pp., $22.95.

Benny Morris, Israel's Border Wars, 1949–1956: Arab Infiltration, Israeli Retaliation, and the Countdown to the Suez War, Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1993, xii+470 pp.     

When nationalism beats populism: The secessionist movement in Texas

Six members of the Republican Party have presented and supported a House Bill in the Texas House of Representatives proposing a referendum to decide whether Texas should leave the United States. This initiative has been seen as a success by the Texas Nationalist Movement, who has been advocating for Texit for years. Applying frame analysis on an extended corpus of Texas nationalist sympathisers' statements, this article empirically explores the discourse of the Texas Nationalist Movement. The analysis contributes to recent literature on new nationalist movements and shows that Texas nationalism articulates its discourse around a homogeneous and exclusionary national conception based on the need to achieve independence as a solution to the country's problems.     

Measuring Regional Cohesion Effects of Large-scale Transport Infrastructure Investments: An Accessibility Approach

Transport infrastructure is considered one of the main policy instruments to achieve the cohesion goal, although the inclusion of cohesion effects in assessment methodologies is scarce and uneven. Although most cohesion studies are constrained to the analysis of regional disparities in economic indicators, this approach can be broadened to include other regional performance indicators. One of these indicators could be accessibility measures, from the point of view that accessibility, representing a competitive advantage of locations, constitutes a “desirable good” closely related to the welfare of each region. This paper suggests using changes in the spatial distribution of accessibility as a proxy to assess regional cohesion effects of transport infrastructure investments. However, as the conclusions taken depend heavily on the formulation of the accessibility measure, we recommend computing a set of accessibility indicators and analysing their results in a complementary way. The proposed methodology is tested by assessing regional cohesion effects of the large-scale road and rail transport infrastructure investments carried out in Spain in the period 1992–2004. The results obtained show that cohesion has improved for the road mode, while regional disparities have increased for the rail mode. This paper identifies the main factors driving this final cohesion effect and explores the strengths and weaknesses of the different accessibility indicators that were considered. The approach suggested in this paper has the potential to be applied in transport planning processes, and may eventually complement existing strategic assessment methodologies.     

Importing phenomenology: the early editorial life of Philosophy and Phenomenological Research

This paper examines the reception of Edmund Husserl's phenomenology in Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, a philosophy quarterly which was founded in conjunction with the International Society of Phenomenology and for which Marvin Farber served as editor until his death in 1980. From its founding in 1940, Farber relied on the editorial support of many of Husserl's enthusiastic students who found themselves intellectual exiles, including Husserl's son. Farber's professional and personal interaction with Husserl's ardent followers reveals a dramatic story of former students who were ever vigilant about maintaining the core values of the Master's unique philosophy, and Farber's personal philosophical transformation from a publicist of Husserl's work to a guarded critic intent on avoiding the promotion of sectarianism.     

Resonant Materiality and Violent Remembering: Archaeology,Memory and Bombing

In this paper I outline the commemorative potential of a historical archaeology of aerial bombing. As an affective and challenging archaeology‐from‐below it offers glimpses of individuality and everyday life amidst the violence of warfare, inscribing shattered buildings and material culture as sites of memory. Firstly I examine the tropes and themes that link archaeology, memory studies and the history of bombing, both in popular imaginations and cultural representations. These include ruins, fragments, depth, wounding, and the contrast between bottom‐up and top‐down views of the world. I then develop these themes to highlight the tensions between historical and mnemonic narratives of aerial bombardment, the importance of a human centred approach to the commemoration of warfare, and the roles of oral history and archaeology in these processes. Finally I briefly discuss a case study of bombsite archaeology and suggest a valuable application for this technique in the discourses of memory and bombing in contemporary German society.