History in Two Dimensions or Three? Working Class Responses to History

Research carried out by the author in North Carolina (2007) aimed to assess how museums might help rebuild identity in communities devastated by economic decline. Interviews, compared with examples from ‘Time and Tide’, Yarmouth, UK, suggested that working class people feel a strong need for history, intense emotional ties to the industrial landscape, and believe that museums can radically change their lives. The evidence suggested that the importance of history to people’s sense of self has been underestimated, particularly in the case of the industrial poor. This paper considers reasons for this underestimation, and suggests that these groups may also have higher and more wide‐ranging expectations of history than intellectuals do. It suggests these ‘emotional’ uses of history, rather than being inferior to academic history, may be richer, and that this ‘three‐dimensional’ experience of history exhibited by the urban poor can enrich the two‐dimensional historical experience of the researcher or museums professional.     

An account of cultural heritage and nature conservation in Mustang,Nepal

Abstract

This article was presented as a paper to ‘World Cultural Heritage: a global challenge’, an International Symposium at Hildesheim, Germany in February 1997. The paper outlines the problems of attempting to develop a combined heritage and tourism strategy for the small, remote, Himalayan kingdom of Mustang. The development of tourism brings both opportunities and threats to local people and their identity.     

Heritage and national identity: Exploring the relationship in Romania

Abstract

Within heritage studies the relationship between national heritage and national identity is frequently taken as axiomatic. The construction of a national heritage is an important part of nation‐building, and historic buildings and monuments can be powerful symbols of a nation's aspirations and identity. Yet this relationship has received relatively little empirical investigation. This paper reports an exploratory study of the heritage/national identity relationship in Romania which focuses on just one Roman monument – Trajan's bridge. For many Romanians the monument is a powerful symbol of their identity representing Dacian and Roman origins, Latinity, and the continuity of Romanian settlement in Transylvania. The monument was also seen by some as an important symbol of Romania's attempt to construct a post‐Communist identity, and to forge closer links with western Europe. However, the meanings of the monument are not shared by all Romanians, and in particular are strongly contested by Romania's Hungarian minority.     

Composite projectiles and hafting technologies at Ohalo II (23 ka,Israel): analyses of impact fractures,morphometric characteristics and adhesive remains on microlithic tools

This study focuses on the correlation between the production of backed microliths in the Levant during the late Upper Palaeolithic and their use as side elements of composite projectile weapons. The investigation is based on assemblage sample of microliths from Ohalo II, a 23,000 years old submerged campsite, and involves analyses of diagnostic impact fractures, location of adhesive remains and morpho-metric characteristics of the tools. Two distinct adhesive materials have been also analyzed, and the preliminary results indicate the use of both calcareous and organic substances.     

The Past is Not Another Country: Exploring Indigenous Histories in Bolivia

The concept of indigeneity is founded on an historical relation: my people were here before yours and are therefore legitimate occupiers of this land. This aspect of indigeneity, and its concomitant claim to justice, is most clearly articulated in the indigenous politics of postcolonial nations and the rhetoric of indigenous leaders. The discourses of politicians who invoke five centuries of oppression are frequently heard and easily accessible but much less so are the views of indigenous people far from the arena of metropolitan politics. In its focus on European colonisation and conquest the standard understanding of indigeneity necessarily invokes Western concepts of identity and being focused primarily on descent and a particular relationship to history, that of being a conquered people. This paper looks at how the people of one Aymara‐speaking hamlet understand their history and their place in it. It explores the profound differences in historical consciousness to that of “mainstream” indigeneity and raises questions about how people relate to their past; the importance of the Conquest to indigenous people; and, consequently, the consequences a differently rooted identity may have for the contemporary politics of indigeneity.     

The Construction of Soviet Ethnography and “The Peoples of Siberia”

The multi-generation book project "The Peoples of Siberia" enabled a group of Leningrad-based scholars to reshape their museum into a Soviet ethnographic community. This article analyses the face-to-face performances, the legalistic stenographic documentation, the collective crafting of a single authoritative style, and a unique temporal frame as an important background to understand a hallmark volume in Siberian studies. The authors argue that the published volume indexes nearly thirty years of scholarly debates as much as it indexes the peoples it represents. The article concludes with a critical discussion of how this volume was translated and received by a Euro-American readership influencing the perception of Siberian peoples internationally. It also links the volume to contemporary post-Soviet publication projects which seem to retrace the same path. The article is based on extensive archival work and references collections recently discovered and which are presented for publication here for the first time.     

Charity as a Means of Zoroastrian Self-Preservation

Zoroastrian theology's emphasis on living the good life; the encouragement to create material wealth with the accompanying social obligations to put it to good use, explains the immensely extensive welfare system put in place by the Parsi community in India. Following the Arab conquest of Iran, the diminution in numbers and stature of the Zoroastrians in the ancestral land and the subsequent Parsi settlement in India, meant the marginalization of a people whose forebears once ruled a mighty empire. Once the Parsis acquired financial success, they put in place a community-wide network of benevolent institutions. This was followed by extending a muscular benevolence to the Zoroastrians of Iran, which evolved into a highly structured undertaking to ensure the safeguarding of the community from virtual extinction. Thus, Zoroastrian philanthropy was as much a reaffirmation of religious traditions as it was a means of self-preservation.     

Rituals of Commemoration,Rituals of Self-Invention: Safavid Religious Colleges and the Collective Memory of the Shi‘a

Shi‘ism, perhaps more than any other current of Islam, places emphasis on numerous forms of commemorative culture. Throughout the history of Shi‘ism, commemorative rituals have provided a comprehensive framework for interpreting a wide array of historical encounters between the Shi‘a and the dominant Sunni culture, thereby allowing Shi‘ism to construct itself as a community of learning and remembering. This self-construction required both a high degree of institutionalization as well as specialists to preserve the religious identity of the Shi‘a and to transmit religious knowledge to the next generation. Madrasas (Islamic institutions of higher learning) as well as the shrines of the Shi‘i Imams and their progeny served as the best institutions to achieve these goals. This paper argues that Safavid madrasas were not only centers for disseminating religious knowledge and preserving Shi'a intellectual heritage. They also rearticulated and contemporized the community's past through the active memorializing of pivotal events in the religious calendar of the Shi‘a. More specifically, the paper delineates the nature and scope of religious rituals and rites carried out in the Madrasa-ye Sultānī and a number of other madrasa-mosque complexes of Safavid Isfahan in order to explore the process by which the Shi‘i past was contextualized or contemporized as salient to suit the needs of Safavid power and society.     

高昌国末年以降砖志书写中的“高昌人”

随着外部威胁的加剧,高昌国末期的砖志中出现了一些以本地的“交河郡”为籍贯的书写,这是“高昌人”认同觉醒的表现。高昌国的灭亡以及部分高昌人内迁中原让入居内地的高昌人感受到自身文化习俗的特殊性,也促进了“高昌人”认同的增强,这在龙门石窟的题记中也留下清晰的表达。贞观年间来自中原的卫士、移民等外来势力涌入唐西州,部分高昌人的遗民认同潜滋暗长;永徽初年麹智湛及徙居中原的高昌豪族返回西州,他们的“高昌人”认同与当地既已存在的遗民认同合流,进而出现了永徽、龙朔年间墓志中“高昌人”书写显著增多的现象。此后对唐朝认同的逐步增强,处于自发状态的“高昌人”认同因为无法得到强化,最终归于消亡。     

The cognitive structuring of national identity: individual differences in identifying as American

How citizens view the nation and identify with it is an important element of the phenomenon of nationalism. While shaped by culture, this identification is also subjectively constructed by individuals. Most research on the psychology of national identity is oriented by the assumption that all people think in basically the same way, in terms of simple categories. We complement this approach by examining differences in the quality of people's thinking. While many people think in the simple concrete categorical terms assumed in most research, we argue that some individuals either do not think categorically or they think about categories in a reflective, abstract way. Consequently, these other people construct their national identity differently. To test this, we conducted an online survey that included interactive problem‐solving tasks to assess cognitive functioning and standard survey items to measure the quality and affect of participants' American identity. Our results indicate significant differences in the qualities of individuals' thinking that are reflected in differences in their national identification.