The sound of yesteryear on display: a rethinking of nostalgia as a strategy for exhibiting pop/rock heritage

The increasing presentation of popular music culture as heritage is manifested in the recent proliferation of museums of pop/rock culture. This calls for an examination of the current practices of disseminating pop/rock heritage through exhibitions. Two trends have been identified and criticised by previous commentators: first, the prominence of nostalgia in exhibition narratives and second, that exhibitions of popular music tend to display ancillary objects rather than music itself. This article offers a rethinking of nostalgia as a strategy for disseminating pop/rock heritage and explores the potential of music as a trigger for nostalgic experiences in exhibitions. While agreeing with much of the critique levelled at the nostalgic approach to pop/rock culture, we suggest that with a more nuanced conception of reflective nostalgia, the affective appeal of the nostalgic approach can be harnessed without giving in to glamourised oversimplifications of the past. Further, we suggest that mediated memories can form the basis of nostalgic feelings and thus enable the nostalgic approach to span the generational gap and engage visitors who do not have a lived experience of pop/rock heritage. We will illustrate this by contrasting our approach to that taken at ABBA The Museum.     

The Italian government's response to the problem of Jewish refugees 1945–1948∗

This article deals with the fall of Palestinian-Arab Jaffa in the 1948 war. As the largest Arab city in Palestine, its accelerated social and military collapse came as a surprise to many, despite Jewish dominance in the Jaffa region. While previous research has mostly neglected this question, the present study aims at revealing the underlying causes, besides Jewish military pressure, for Jaffa's collapse and the resulting exodus of its Arab population. The article describes the precarious social and military Palestinian-Arab situation in Jaffa as a case study for Palestine as a whole during the December 1947–May 1948 inter-communal war.     

The process of international mediation: An analysis of the determinants of successful and unsuccessful outcomes

This article examines the relevance and importance of mediation in the management of international disputes. It utilises an original data set on disputes and mediation events to analyse systematically the factors and conditions associated with successful mediation. Four clusters of factors, and their relative impact on mediation, are explored. These are: (a) factors concerning the dispute itself, (b) factors concerning the parties in dispute, (c) factors pertaining to the mediator, and (d) factors pertaining to mediation behaviour. Multiple regression analysis reveals that the level of hostility, as measured by fatalities, has the greatest (negative) impact on the chances of successful mediation. Other variables that significantly affect mediation success include a history of friendly relations, socio‐cultural similarity, neutral grounds, and an active mediation strategy.     

Voices From This Long Brown Land: Oral Recollections of Owens Valley Lives and Manzanar Pasts

Nestled between the Sierra Nevada and the White-Inyo mountainranges in eastern California, the Owens Valley is geographicallyisolated and spatially bound. Yet this secluded sliver of Californiapossesses a history that blatantly transcends the local. Asa major site of the well-known water wars, the Owens Valleybecame a significant, albeit controversial source of water,enabled Los Angeles’ burgeoning development in the earlytwentieth century. Conceived of in 1904 and completed by 1913,the Los Angeles aqueduct literally bound the Owens Valley tothe demands of the growing metropolis. Several decades later,in the wake of Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor, the agriculturallyand economically floundering Owens Valley was chosen as     

Exclusion in Area-based Urban Policy Programmes

Area-based urban regeneration programmes such as the New Deal for Communities in the UK, the German Soziale Stadt and the Danish Kvarterloft are based on a participatory approach emphasizing active citizen participation and the involvement of local stakeholders. The article argues that these initiatives are not as open and inclusive as they strive to be, and in this article, we explore the different types of exclusion that can take place when such programmes are implemented. Based on the theoretical literature and on empirical data from the Danish Kvarterloft project, we identify three types of exclusion—structural, discursive and deliberate exclusion—and offer a theoretical analysis and an empirical account of these exclusions. The article concludes that practitioners as well as politicians need to reflect critically on different types of exclusion in order to create transparent and inclusive democratic processes.