“Land of Unfinished Monuments”: The Ruins-in-Reverse of Nineteenth-Century America

Abstract

By focusing on the design and reception of successfully completed monuments, historians have overlooked the presence in nineteenth-century America of monuments that were left unfinished for decades, or even aborted altogether. This article recovers numerous such monuments, and shows how contemporaries seized on them not merely for their aesthetic value as homegrown ruins to be visited and sketched, but also for their rhetorical value as expressions of unfinished political and social struggles. In refashioning these incipient historical memorials as ironic anti-monuments to contemporary problems, diverse groups – radical workingmen and conservative Whigs, female activists and chauvinist newspapermen, patriotic Americans and critical Englishmen, proslavery southerners and abolitionist northerners – elaborated a broader discourse of unfinishedness. The fragments of these monuments could even figure the nation itself as a work-in-progress, contrary to current arguments about the construction of national identity through notions of organic wholeness. The article also questions scholars' assumption that monuments inevitably promote a culture of forgetting by projecting images of consensus and closure. In turning to the reception of monuments during their often-lengthy construction, we can perceive their more complex relationship to dominant ideologies and narratives of the nation-state.     

An Analysis of Actual and Potential Clustering Structures,Stakeholder Governance Activities and Cross-locality Linkages in the Welsh Aerospace Industry

Commercial aerospace is a key sector in the Welsh economy, engaged in complex overlapping activities from aircraft manufacture (AM), through maintenance, repair and overhaul (MRO), to research, development and training (RDT). Defining and operationalizing a framework for analysis using both qualitative and quantitative data, this paper examines the actual and potential roles of the relationships in Wales between commercial aerospace firms, industry, government and institutional stakeholders, at both local and non-local levels. Concentrations of manufacturing in North Wales, and MRO in South Wales along with RDT operate as distinct constituent parts of aerospace clusters in neighbouring regions of England and beyond. The results, however, highlight links between the location of AM, MRO and RDT in Wales, emphasizing their (partially) geographically symbiotic relationships. Moreover, there are key inter-linkages that need consideration if the long-term health of Welsh aerospace is to be secured. Simultaneously, all three sub-sectors in Wales exhibit weaknesses which could render them vulnerable to greater external competition, particularly from developing countries. This emphasizes a need to alter the current governance arrangements and utilize different clustering characteristics that currently exist, with government, as a major sponsor of the industry, having a strong (but changing) role to play in encouraging these more balanced industry structures and decision-making processes.     

Development for Whom? Rural to Urban Resettlement at the Three Gorges Dam,China

When farmers are dispossessed of their lands to make way for a development project it is often inevitable that there will not be enough land to go around. It is unlikely that parcels of fertile land are lying vacant in the surrounding areas awaiting distribution. It therefore becomes necessary for people who previously derived their livelihoods from the land to move into cities. This research explores what happens to a sample of such people and whether they are able to restore their livelihoods. It examines the Three Gorges Dam resettlement in China's Hubei province and discovers that while the Chinese government has devised an inspired toolbox of benefit-sharing initiatives, the gains accrue to a minority who live in the most amenable location of the Three Gorges area. It concludes that the availability of capital through benefit-sharing initiatives does not guarantee its productive use.     

Book reviews

Aldeghi, I., et al., Vécu et devenir des chômeurs de longue durée (La Documentation Française, 1992), 123pp., 100F., ISBN 2 11 002644 8

Baker, K.M., Inventing the French Revolution (Cambridge University Press, 1990), 372pp., £32.50 hbk., £11.95 pbk., ISBN 0 521 34618 5 and 0 521 38578 4

Blancquart, M.‐C., and Cahne, P., Littérature française du XX^e (PUF, 1992), 564pp., ISBN 2 130 44810 0

Brunet, P., ed., France et Grande‐Bretagne rurales. Rural France and Great Britain (Centre de Recherches sur l'Evolution de la Vie Rurale, Université de Caen, 1991), 510pp., 180F., ISBN 2 905 46162 4

Caune, J., La Culture en action. De Vilar à Lang: le sens perdu (Presses Universitaires de Grenoble, 1992), 368pp., 130F.

Coleman, J., and Parker, G., French and the Enterprise Path (AFLS‐CILT, 1992), 200pp., £8.95

Collot, S., Les Lieux de désir: topologie amoureuse de Zola (Hachette Université, 1992), 192pp., 150F., ‘Recherches Littéraires’ Collection, ISBN 2 010 18816 0

Coutel, C., ed., La République et l'école; une anthologie (Presses‐Pocket, 1992), 288pp., ISBN 2 266 04474 5

Crosland, M., Science under control: the French Academy of Sciences, 1795–1914 (Cambridge University Press, 1992), 454pp., £60.00, ISBN 0 521 41373 7

David, M., Le Printemps de la Fraternité: genèse et vicissitudes, 1830–1851 (Aubier, 1992), 396pp., 180F., ISBN 2 700 72237 X

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Drieu la Rochelle, P., Journal 1939–1945 (Gallimard, 1992), 521pp., 140F., ISBN 2 070 72307 0

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Estienne, P., Les régions françaises (Masson, 1991), 2 vols, 264pp., 272pp., 180F., 190F., ISBN 2 225 82509 2, 2 225 82590 4 respectively

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Hancock, M.D. et al., Politics in Western Europe (Macmillan, 1993), 526pp., £14.99, ISBN 0 000 00000 0

Hardman, J., Louis XVI (Yale University Press, 1993), 264pp., £25.00, ISBN 0 300 05719 9

Hargreaves, A.G., Voices from the North African immigrant community in France. Immigration and identity in Bear fiction (Berg, 1991), 175pp., £29.50, ISBN 0 854 96649 8

Harpaz, E., Benjamin Constant et Madame Récamier (lettres 1807–1830) (Honoré Champion, 1992), 362pp., 140F., ISBN 2 852 03706 8

Hudson, J., and Tosser, N., Business French (Made Simple, 1992), 426pp., £8.95, ISBN 0 730 60299 6

Jones, H.S., The French State in Question. Public Law and Political Argument in the Third Republic (CUP, 1993), 231pp., £30., ISBN 2 521 43149 2

Kolebka, G., Dépressions sur une partie de la France (Seghers, 1991), 164pp., 100F., ISBN 2 232 10341 2

Lagrée, M., and Roche, J., Tombes de mémoire: le dévotion populaire aux victimes de la Révolution dans l'Ouest (Rennes Apogée, 1993), 148pp., 125F., ISBN 2 909 27512 4

Lefebvre, D., Guy Mollet: Le mal aimé (Plon, 1992), 545pp., 149F., ISBN Z 259 02465 3

Lemalet, M., Lettres d'Algérie, 1954–1962: La guerre des appelés, la mémoire d'une génération (Jean‐Claude Lattès, 1992), 360pp., 139F., ISBN 2 709 61145 7

Lyotard, J.‐F., The inhuman (Polity Press, 1991), 216pp., £35, ISBN 0 745 69772 1

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Ministère du Travail, de l'Emploi et de la Formation Professionnelle, Le Tourisme Social et Familial (La Documentation Française, 1992), 333pp., 180F., ISBN 9 782 11002757 3

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Remond, R., et al., Paul Touvier et l'Eglise. Rapport de la Commission historique instituée par le cardinal Decourtray (Fayard, 1992), 418pp., 130F., ISBN 2 213 02880 X

Richardot, J.‐P., Le peuple protestant français aujourd'hui (Laffont, 1992), 388pp., ISBN 2 221 07364 9

Sainteny, G., Les Verts (PUF, 1991), 127pp., ISBN 2 130 44491 1

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Scientrier, P., Tester et enrichir ses connaissances en littérature (Marabout, 1992), 287pp., ISBN 2 501 01757 9

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A Right-of-Centre Triumph: The 2004 Australian Half-Senate Election

The Australian Senate is a significant part of the Australian parliamentary system and the electoral contest for the Senate results in representational outcomes that will influence the way the Senate will perform. This paper argues that the 2004 half-Senate election result was significant because it resulted in the Liberal–National Coalition obtaining a majority in the upper house. It accounts for this outcome by examining the contest by way of inter- and intra-party bloc contests. It finds that a particularly strong Right-of-Centre performance in Queensland, to which voters voting for Ms Pauline Hanson made a major contribution, delivered the Senate majority to the Howard government. The significance of the result also lies in the way it confounded previously held views that the combination of proportional representation used for the Senate with the need to elect six senators from each State would make it unlikely for either Labor or the Liberal and National Parties to ever win an upper house majority in the future.