Nostalgia and Titanic commemorations in Cobh,Ireland

The year 2012 marked the centenary of the sinking of the liner Titanic. This event has been commemorated in a variety of ways, including the development of “authentic” and “created” tourist projects related to Titanic. This research presents one location's tourist response to the centenary. The heritage town of Cobh in Ireland was the last port of call for the ill-fated liner. Its commemorative activities focused on a week-long festival of cultural events from 9 to 15 April. It will be contended that its use of nostalgia and “vintage” can be interpreted more as a function of the interpretative agenda of Irish tourism policy and its heritage construction of Cobh than as a genuine symbolic expression of a town remembering its past.     

Biofuels and the politics of mapmaking

On a world scale companies and governments are acquiring tracts of land from rural communities across the developing world in what some describe as a global “land grab.” Yet looking into local settings reveals that negotiations and arrangements are often piecemeal and halting, with little resemblance to a coordinated seizure of land. Conflicting maps, overlapping territorial claims, and unclear acquisition processes are creating land disputes, mistrust, and ambiguity. Resulting cycles of contention are enabling companies to obtain—even appropriate—some land. Still, in at least some locales the process is doing more to undermine development opportunities for all parties.To probe into these local politics of mapmaking, this article draws on fieldwork from 2010 to 2011 in Tanzania's Rufiji District, located in the lower floodplain of the Rufiji River. Companies, one might surmise, should be able to exploit information asymmetries to wrest control of land from local villagers. Interviews, primary documents, and field observations reveal, however, that this is not occurring as much as one might expect along the lower Rufiji River. The politics of such land acquisitions, we argue, would seem to be better understood in terms of cycles of contentious politics, as an ongoing process in which movements and counter-movements vie for control through the strategic use of images, maps, and discourse.This research extends the understanding of the processes changing global agriculture and energy production by bridging the frames of the “politics of mapping” and “cycles of contention” to more fully reveal how and why control over land and resources is shifting in the global South.     

The beginnings of royal pardon in Scotland

The well attested (and comprehensively studied) animus that informed English attitudes towards the Gaelic-speaking peoples of the British Isles in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries has tended to obscure important developments in the legal landscape of contemporary Scotland. This article argues that soon after 1200, the king of Scots deliberately abandoned as barbaric, obnoxious and unbecoming a Christian prince the practice of mutilating high-status political enemies and ritually defiling their bodily remains. The transformation reflected influences from England and Europe in general, but the argument here is that ultimately the change reflected the maturation of the Scottish ideas about Christian kingship, royal justice and royal mercy.     

开放参观对莫高窟洞窟微环境的影响

洞窟微环境相对湿度是影响壁画保存的关键因素,为了解开放参观对莫高窟洞窟相对湿度的影响,本研究选择莫高窟南区四个相似洞窟进行长达10年(2004~2013年)的定期监测,对比分析了开放洞窟和关闭洞窟其相对湿度的变化情况。结果表明:开放洞窟相对湿度在开放时段波动频率与游客参观频次正相关,发生降雨时开放洞窟相对湿度迅速上升,关闭洞窟可有效阻隔窟外相对湿度波动的影响。开放洞窟在参观量大的旅游旺季,其相对湿度月极大值、日较差月均值以及日极大值超过60%的频次均明显高于关闭洞窟。将开放洞窟关闭,关闭洞窟开放后,其相对湿度呈相反规律变化。开放参观会导致洞窟相对湿度水平显著升高,日波动幅度明显增大,从而增加壁画劣化风险。这些结论可为洞窟的预防性管理和风险评估提供科学依据。