Sustaining popular music’s material culture in community archives and museums

This article examines the challenges of sustainability faced by community archives and museums that are concerned with the preservation and display of the material culture of popular music’s recent past. The sustainability of grassroots sites of popular music heritage is of great concern due to their role in making accessible cultural artefacts that have limited representation in the collections of more prestigious institutions. Drawing on three sites that have ceased operation – Jazz Museum Bix Eiben Hamburg, Mutant Sounds and Holy Warbles – the article highlights difficulties faced by the founders and volunteers of physical and online archives in sustaining their ‘do-it-yourself’ heritage practices in the medium- to long-term.     

Reviews

Douglas Crimp, On the Museum's Ruins (with photographs by Louise Lawler), Cambridge, Mass. and London: The MIT Press, 1993. xx + 348 pp., 110 b. & w. illus. ISBN 0–262–03209–0. £24.95.

Clarissa Campbell Orr (ed.), Women in the Victorian Art World, Manchester and New York: Manchester University Press, 1995. xiv + 208 pp., 1 fig., 29 b. & w. illus. ISBN 0–7190–4123–6. £14.99.

Diana Ketcham, Le Désert de Retz, Cambridge, Mass. & London: The MIT Press, 1994. vii + 135 pp., 99 b. & w. illus. ISBN 0–262–11186–1. £35.95.

Anthony & Patricia Wylson, Theme Parks, Leisure Centres, Zoos and Aquaria, London: Longman, 1994. 183 pp., 107 figs., 109 b. & w. illus. ISBN 0–582–099285. £60.00.

David Lambert, Peter Goodchild, & Judith Roberts, Researching a Garden's History: A Guide to Documentary and Published Sources, Reigate: Landscape Design Trust, in association with Institute of Advanced Architectural Studies, University of York, 1995. 28 pp. 12 b. & w. illus. ISBN 0–9518377–0–2. £6.00.

Mike Sixsmith (ed.), Touring Exhibitions: The Touring Exhibitions Group's Manual of Good Practice, Oxford: Butterworth‐Heinemann, 1995. xviii + 237 pp., ISBN 0–7506–2518‐x. £35.00.

Richard Harrison (ed.), Manual of Heritage Management, Oxford: Butterworth Heinemann and the Association of Independent Museums, 1994. xiii + 425 pp. ISBN 0–7506–0822–6. £65.00.

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Determining the Accuracy of Historical Landscape Paintings

Historical landscape paintings are widely used to reconstruct past environments. However, artists did not necessarily fully depict reality, many exercising license to relocate and remould features. This paper applies photogrammetric techniques to the problem of determining the accuracy of artistic depictions of landscapes. Four 19th century paintings of Hobart, Tasmania, Australia by different artists were used to test the methods. The artists varied in their accuracy, with Frankland, the surveyor, being the most accurate, and Glover, the romantic professional artist, being the least accurate. This variation suggests that the use of paintings for historical reconstructions and measurements of historic features should be preceded by an accuracy assessment.     

Economy and Settlement Pattern 1350–1600 AD,Based on Evidence from Farm Mounds

The examination of Norse farm sites in Greenland has been taking place for nearly a century, and a reasonable picture has been built up from several disciplines of the nature of the settlements. There has, however, been little integration of the research between the various scientists. Using the example of a recent interdisciplinary palaeoecological study at Nipáitsoq in the Western Settlement, this paper summarizes the interrelated results of the work of an archaeologist (C.A.), historian (G.S.), animal bone specialist (T. McG.), entomologists (P.C.B. &; P.S.), and plant macrofossil researcher (D.S.). A detailed picture of the demise of the farm and of living conditions is attempted, and the paper ends with a plea for further integrated multi‐disciplinary studies.     

The development of the agrarian landscape on gotland during the early iron age

The author discusses the investigations on prehistoric agrarian landscape recently started on the island of Gotland. Main attention is focused on traces of deserted (fossilised) fields. Systematic reconnaissance in 1972–73 all over the island has brought forth a quite new material with ‘Celtic fields’ of a very great size and regional extent. The reconnaissance and regional mapping are mainly carried out by aerial photography.

Through the field work, which started in 1973 at Uggårde‐Vinarve in Rone parish, it has been possible to demonstrate a continuous field system to a total extent of about 130 hectares (325 acres). This field pattern is superimposed by a new agrarian landscape structure with building remains and stone wall fencing systems as the dominating features. The two stratigraphically separated structures of agrarian landscape put into an agrarian economic context indicate a development from extensive farming with long fallow periods to intensive farming with established land‐use (arable, meadow, and grazing) on smaller areas than formerly. A rough dating of the two structures gives 500 — 100 B. C. and 100 B. C. ‐ A. D. 500 respectively.

The investigations carried on by geographers and archaeologists in collaboration with Quaternary geologists are included in a research project by the Swedish Council for Social Science Research.     

Carion's chronicle in sixteenth‐century Danish historiography

The brief world history called Carion's Chronicle, telling the history of the world from the Creation up to the sixteenth century, was widely read in the Protestant world. The first edition (1532 in German) was written, it seems, by Johann Carion in collaboration with Philipp Melanchthon. In 1558–60 Me‐lanchthon published a revised Latin version of the first part (up to AD 800). After a presentation of the contents, the article traces the influence of Carion's Chronicle in two works of Danish history from around 1570, one by Hans Svaning, the other by A.S. Vedel. It is argued that both authors project the universal perspective of the Chronicle onto national dimensions.     

Tacitus and Tacitism in Johannes Meursius’ historia danica (1630–38).∗

The article examines the role of Tacitus in the Latin history of Denmark (1630–38) by Johannes Meursius. It is argued that “Ta‐citism”; ‐ a contemporary movement influenced by Tacitus both as a stylist and as a political writer ‐ is reflected in Meursius’ work in various ways. The first part deals with Meursius’ introduction and his use of Tacitus’ famous avowal of writing sine ira et studio. Next, Meursius’ Latin prose style, with its brevity, antitheses, and paradoxes, is seen in the context of the contemporary “Attic”; movement, which advocated primarily Seneca and Tacitus as prose models. Thirdly, Meursius’ portrait of the Danish king Nicolaus is shown to be inspired by the Tacitean archtyrant Tiberius. Fourthly, it is argued that Meursius also drew extensively on one of the seminal works of Tacitism in Northern Europe, Justus Lipsius’ Política (1589). Finally, the apparently incongruous union of Tacitean cynicism and Meursius’ generally Christian and moralistic outlook is taken up.     

Marxist Critiques of the Developmental State and the Fetishism of National Development

The developmental state has been heavily discussed in various disciplines and across diverse political spectrums. However, the statist notion formulated by institutionalists that the developmental state is autonomous from society and therefore effective in achieving “national development” has more often been taken for granted than problematised. The statist notion of the developmental state has also been accepted and reproduced or challenged merely inadequately by Marxist critics. By analysing how and why currently available Marxist assessments of the developmental state fail to challenge statism, this article offers an alternative theory of the developmental state by drawing on both social form critique and world system analysis. It then locates the origins of statism itself in the dynamics of global capitalism, in which the totality of capitalist social relations (understood as global from its inception) are hierarchically and unevenly constituted. From this it extends Marx's critique of commodity fetishism to the question of the international (the relationship between the nation state and world market) and criticises the statist notion of the developmental state from the perspective of a critique of the fetishism of national development.