Mobility and modernity in Luang Prabang,Laos: re-thinking heritage and tourism

Numerous studies of tourism in Luang Prabang World Heritage site in Lao Peoples’ Democratic Republic are critical of the perceived impacts on heritage values of the city. Criticisms relate to the incursion of new buildings into the historic core, the loss of older dwellings, increases in foreigners renting and restoring properties as guest houses and restaurants and the movement of locals out of the historic core. Other criticisms relate to the effects on community support for the monastic communities that create the sacred and ritual geography of the city, the loss of community diversity within the World Heritage boundaries and increasing uniformity as the development of tourism continues apace. While our research does not challenge these observations it raises questions about the type of analyses and conclusions reached. Too often ‘heritage’, ‘tourism’ and ‘community’ are considered self-evident and bounded entities, with tourism something faintly alien that causes disruption to the urban fabric of Luang Prabang and, consequently, to the values for which it was inscribed. We propose a different way of conceptualising the relationship between heritage, community and tourism by examining the interaction between global, regional and local mobilities in the context of globalisation and under the aegis of modernity.     

The national center of social research in greece

Elie Dimitras. Enquêtes sociologiques sur les émigrants grecs. Premiere enquête: “Avant le départ de Grèce.” Athens: Centre national de recherches sociales, 1971. viii + 117pp. Tables, notes, and appendix. $3.00.

Elie Dimitras. Enquêtes sociologiques sur les émigrants grecs. Deuxième enquête: “Lors du séjour en Europe occidentale.” Athens: Centre national de recherches sociales, 1971. viii + 219 pp. Tables, notes, and appendix. $3.00.

Elie Dimitras in collaboration with Evan Vlachos. Sociological Surveys on Greek Emigrants. Third survey: “Upon the return to Greece.” Athens: National Centre of Social Research, 1971. xii + 131 pp. Tables, figures, notes, and appendix. $3.00.

Bernard Kayser, Pierre‐Yves Pechoux, and Michel Sivignon. Exode rural et attraction urbaine en Grèce. Athens: Centre national de recherches sociales, 1971. 233 pp. Tables, figures, photographs, map, and appendixes. $7.00.

John I. Baxevanis. Economy and Population Movements in the Peloponnesus of Greece. Athens: National Centre of Social Research, 1972. 86 pp. Tables, figures, maps, illustrations, notes, appendix, and bibliography. $7.00.     

Forthcoming meetings and conferences of general interest

The nineteenth-century British historian Lucy Aikin's ambitious four-part poem Epistles on Women (1810) marks both her first important contribution to women's historiography and a compelling example of Enlightenment feminist historiography. To some extent, Aikin is building on the work of male Enlightenment historians who had evaluated the status of women in different times and places and correlated it to social progress. However, she not only restricts her focus exclusively to women, but also makes a concerted effort to resolve some of the tensions apparent in previous accounts of the relationship between women and social progress. Especially striking is her mediation of two distinct historical models of femininity, which I have called the republican and commercial models of femininity, the outlines of both of which we can trace in the work of male Enlightenment historians. By suggesting that through proper education women might combine the best aspects of each model, Aikin strategically advances the project of controversial feminists like Catherine Macaulay and Mary Wollstonecraft, who had taken inspiration from the republican model of femininity in their demands for improvements to female education.     

Traditions in transition: Sanskritization and Yakkhafication in East Nepal

Based on fieldwork conducted amongst the Yakkha of East Nepal from 1989–90, this article looks at the similarities and differences in how “tradition” is approached by anthropologists and historians. It focuses on reflexivity, performance and process as key intellectual traditions within both anthropology and history, but takes issue with Hobsbawm’s suggestion that “tradition” is the stuff of “modern” societies while “custom” is a feature of “traditional” ones. It also argues for the “construction” rather than “invention” of traditions, by anthropologists as well as by people they study. In the case of the Yakkha, this construction can be seen in the changes in agricultural techniques over the past 150 years, the use of pellet bows by Yakkha men, and the celebrations of the ostensibly Hindu festival of Dasain. Only with hindsight can the ‘invented’ nature of the Dasain tradition be appreciated; even so, during the research period covered by this article, the rituals that epitomized ‘Sanskritization’ were simultaneously the subject of ‘Yakkhafication’, a process reflecting the negotiation, manipulation and subversion of Yakkha identity.     

Orientalism at Work? Dundee's Response to Competition from Calcutta,circa 1870–1914

From the late nineteenth century the Dundee jute industry faced intensifying competition from Calcutta. This article examines the responses in Dundee to this competition, focusing upon the ways Dundonians understood Calcutta and India, and how these understandings shaped the debate on possible lines of action. It argues that the diversity of approaches to the threat, inter-linked with the complexities of local politics, led to a concentration of effort on seeking to establish and then strengthen Indian factory legislation. The severity of competition from another empire country posed acute dilemmas for pro-imperial politics in the city: how could such a politics be sustained if the local economy was being so harmed by Calcutta's invasion of Dundee's markets, yet a protective response was ruled out by the realities of imperial policy?     

The role of attitudinal,institutional and environmental factors in explaining variations in the dissent rate on the High Court of Australia

This paper examines the role of attitudinal, institutional and environmental factors in explaining the dissent rate on the High Court of Australia (hereafter High Court) using data for the period 1904–2001. The paper's main conclusion is that the majority of attitudinal and institutional factors tested are important predictors of variation in the dissent rate while the urbanisation rate, which is used to measure socio-political complexity, has no statistically significant effect on the High Court's dissent rate.     

The Decline of the Empire and the Economic 'Decline' of Britain

In the 1950s and 1960s, decolonization coincided with the ‘goldenage’ of British capitalism, with record rises in popularliving standards. Economic historians have understandably usedthis coincidence to suggest that by this period the BritishEmpire was no longer offering substantial economic benefitsto the mass of the metropolitan population. Yet there were linksbetween economic performance and the decline of the Empire.First, despite the good performance, profoundly pessimistic‘declinist’ accounts of British society and theeconomy abounded in the early 1960s, and these had a major impacton policy formation. A key underpinning for such accounts wasthe ‘culture of decline’ intimately linked withthe loss of imperial status. Secondly, while it has become acommonplace of discussion of post-war Britain to assume thatreversing ‘decline’ and modernizing the economyrequired a re-orientation of policy away from the Empire andCommonwealth towards Europe, such a reorientation was not aconstant feature of modernization strategies. Indeed, a centralfeature of the initial period of Wilsonian ‘modernization’after 1964 was its attempt to use closer links with the Commonwealthto achieve this objective.