The adult North and the young South: Reflections on the civilizing mission of children's rights

The civilization of the children of the "savages" in the colonial world was seen as a crucial issue from early on was an inherent part of the colonization project in Africa, America and Oceania in the 19th century. The idea of civilizing "the savages," today's South, through children has continued in the post-colonial era with the development of mass-schooling systems and various child-focused development projects. This has led to an export of internationally defined standards for a "good childhood" through various foreign funded development programs in South. While many NGOs, legitimizing their work on the basis of the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC), are genuinely working for an improvement of children's conditions, they have also taken on the role as a second guardian in order to cultivate "proper" children and parents who can live up to the supposedly universal ideals of a "good childhood." The article adopts a critical view on the child rights movement by shedding light on the crucial role, which NGOs play as civilizing institutions in the South. The article specifically draws attention to the double-sided patronization of children and parents, and "infantilization" of nations in South, which implicitly lies beneath CRC and the child rights movement.     

Reviews of books

Historia, utopía y ficción de la Ciudad de los Césares. Metamorfosis de un mito. Por FERNANDO AINSA. Madrid: Alianza Editorial, 1992. Pp. 120.

Cultural Diffusion of Spanish Humanism in New Spain: Francisco Cervantes de Salazar's ‘Diálogo de la dignidad del hombre.’ By DIANNE M. BONO. New York: Peter Lang, 1991. Pp. 161.

Soldiers of the Virgin: The Moral Economy of a Colonial Maya Rebellion. By KEVIN GOSNER. Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1992. Pp. xiv, 227.

La crisis del orden colonial. Estructura agraria y rebeliones populares de la Nueva España, 1750–1821. By ERIC VAN YOUNG. México: Alianza Editorial, 1992. Pp. 515.

Esthetic Recognition of Ancient Amerindian Art. By GEORGE KUBLER. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1991. Pp. xvii, 276.

Books of the Brave: Being an Account of Books and of Men in the Spanish Conquest and Settlement of the Sixteenth‐Century New World. By IRVING A. LEONARD. Introduced by ROLENA ADORNO. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992. Pp. xlvii, 453.

Family and Frontier in Colonial Brazil: Santana de Parnaíba, 1580–1822. By ALIDA C. METCALF. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992. Pp. xvi, 280.

Los naufragios. By ALVAR NUÑEZ CABEZA DE VACA. Edición crítica de ENRIQUE PUPO‐WALKER. Madrid: Castalia, 1992. Pp. 334.

Estudios de literatura hispanoamericana. Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz y otros poetas barrocos de la colonia. By GEORGINA SABAT‐RIVERS. Barcelona: PPU, 1992. Pp. 355.

Vida i sucesos de la monja alférez. Autobiografía atribuida a Doña Catalina de Erauso. Edición, introducción y notas de RIMA DE VALLBONA. Tempe: Center for Latin American Studies, Arizona State University, 1992. Pp. 236.     

The spatial dimension of the woodland period

ABSTRACT

State archaeological site files are a critical component of cultural resource management and information management toolkits. Yet, engagement with these datasets for research purposes can be difficult, at best. We address some of the challenges to a synthesis of spatial data from state site files by examining the Woodland period components of Deptford/Cartersville, Swift Creek, and Weeden Island. We also examine time slices of a large set of radiocarbon dates from contexts reported to be associated with Deptford and Swift Creek. Dates are plotted on a map at the same spatial scale as our site files dataset to evaluate time and space simultaneously. This study reveals important gaps in the radiocarbon dataset that can be rectified with strategic sampling. It also supports some long-held ideas about the spatial distribution of Deptford, Swift Creek, and Weeden Island. For example, Weeden Island is demonstrated to be strongly centered on the Alabama and Florida Gulf Coast, whereas Deptford is concentrated on both the Gulf and the Atlantic Coastal Plains.     

‘The Sustenance of Salisbury’ in the era of Decolonization: The Portuguese Politics of Neutrality and the Rhodesian Oil Embargo, 1965–7

This article investigates Denmark's international legal status during the Second World War. In exploring this theme it brings together two emergent research perspectives on twentieth-century international political history: (1) a growing interest in small states as actors and active interpreters of international political events in times of crisis and war; and (2) a focus on international law as an independent and so far underexplored research theme. From this double perspective the article highlights and analyses the unprecedented and unparalleled character of the legal relationship between Denmark and Germany after the German occupation of Denmark in April 1940. In doing so it places particular focus on how this situation was viewed and conceptualised by Danish politicians and legal experts. Thus it explores the complex entanglement of politics and law that characterised Danish attempts to bring about and consolidate the particular peaceful and ‘normal’ relationship with Germany as well as efforts to change this relationship and make Denmark a belligerent state. By analysing the four concepts of neutrality, non-belligerence, peaceful occupation, and war the article shows how these legal concepts served as political instruments that were pushed forward by competing and changing understandings of Denmark's international position and interests during the war. But it also shows how these legal conceptualisations were fundamentally structured by the general international legal and political developments of the war (the deterioration of neutrality and the emergence of long-term military occupation and guerrilla warfare throughout Europe). And it demonstrates how they gradually took on a life of their own and came to frame and shape perceptions of Denmark's international position - both among Danish politicians and bureaucrats during the Second World War and among historians to this day.     

Post‐totalitarian national identity: public memory in Germany and Russia

Through a comparative analysis of Germany and Russia, this paper explores how participation in the memorialization process affects and reflects national identity formation in post‐totalitarian societies. These post‐totalitarian societies face the common problem of re‐presenting their national character as civic and democratic, in great part because their national identities were closely bound to oppressive regimes. Through a comparison of three memorial sites—Sachsenhausen concentration camp memorial in Germany, and Lubianka Square and the Park of Arts in Russia—we argue that even where dramatic reductions in state power and the opening of civil society have occurred, a simple elite–public dichotomy cannot adequately capture the nature of participation in the process of memory re‐formation. Rather, mutual interactions among multiple publics and elites, differing in kind and intensity across contexts, combine to form a complex pastiche of public memory that both interprets a nation's past and suggests desirable models for its future. The domination of a ‘Western’ style of memorialization in former East Germany illustrates how even relatively open debates can lead to the exclusion of certain representations of the nation. Nonetheless, Germany has had comparatively vigorous public debates about memorializing its totalitarian periods. In contrast, Russian elite groups have typically circumvented or manipulated participation in the memorialization process, reflecting both a reluctance to deal with Russia's totalitarian past and a emerging national identity less civic and democratic than in Germany.     

Cultural racism: Something rotten in the state of Denmark?

Cultural racism has found fertile territory in a post-industrial Europe experiencing economic crisis and social disintegration, but its manifestations vary between countries. Denmark, a country traditionally regarded as liberal and tolerant, experienced a fundamental shift in attitude during the early 1980s that has seen it emerge potentially as one of the most racist countries in Europe. Paradoxically, liberal values are used as justification for negative representations of 'others'. This paper examines the place-specific manifestations of cultural racism in Denmark, which can be identified as essentially anti-Muslim and anti-refugee. Through the use of interviews with minority women, newspaper extracts and material propagated by far-right organizations, the paper traces the evolution of this discourse, identifying its key actors as: specific far-right anti-immigration groups; the media; and a culturally deterministic academic research tradition. The subtle manifestation of cultural racism in Denmark, coupled with inadequate anti-racist opposition or legislation, have rendered it particularly damaging, and 'legitimated' a range of racist policies and practices.     

Spaces of nostalgia: the hollowing out of a London market

In this paper we look at the place of memory and nostalgia in peoples' narratives of an old, traditionally white, working-class market in London, which over the last decade has experienced social and economic decline. We argue that in this hollowed out space, abandoned by many of those who can move, has emerged a nostalgia for the halcyon days of the market when people came from far and wide to shop, and when there was a strong sense of community. What these nostalgic discourses mask are the social divisions (particularly racialized divisions) of the time, while in this romanticized vision of the past, the new population of asylum seekers have become an easy trope for the dissatisfactions of the present. Regeneration strategies in an area such as this need to confront the force of these nostalgic discourses in order to tackle the deep social and racial divisions and reverse the socio-economic decline.