Meaning in the making: The potter’s wheel at Phylakopi,Melos (Greece)

It is now commonly accepted that technology is, to its very core, a social product through which we can explore cultural choices. This cultural dimension of technology will be examined with reference to the introduction and use of the potter’s wheel at Phylakopi on Melos (Greece) during the Late Bronze Age. At this site, the co-existence of two different manufacturing techniques was so deeply embedded that, despite the presence of hybrid vessels, many aspects of the pottery production had become linked to either a local (hand-built) or Minoanising (wheel-thrown) tradition. It will be argued that the traditional hand-building technique was associated with individual and rooted facets of the Melian identity (such as kinship, social class, or gender). Reasons for the initial stimulus for adoption of the potter’s wheel are considered to lie in its potential for competitive social practice through association with exotic, symbolically laden technologies, craft products and consumption rituals. The gradual application of the technology to ever more complex vessels, on the other hand, corresponds to the apprenticeship sequence outlined by Roux and Corbetta and may indicate an incomplete learning process or a certain lack of practice opportunities among local potters.     

Social memory and ethnic identity: Ancient Greek drama performances as commemorative ceremonies

This paper is an ethnographic account of ancient Greek drama performances that take place in contemporary Greece. The material presented here is part of the data that were collected, mainly through participant observation, interviews and newspapers, during 1997 and 1998 in Athens. The paper illuminates an aspect of modern ancient drama performances that has not been taken into account until today: it treats them as commemorative ceremonies that produce, reproduce, and transmit social memory. The interrelation and interdependence between social memory and ethnic identity construction processes are analyzed and is shown that ancient drama performances, due to specific characteristics, constitute something more than mere theatrical events (as they are defined within the Western tradition). These performances, which convey, sustain, and transmit perceptions of a glorious culture of the past, become, for their creators and spectators, as members of an ethnic group, occasions for consciously remembering their ethnic past, and coming, in a way, to a "mythical identification" with it.     

The fruits of migration: Understanding the ‘longue dureé’ and the socio-economic relations of the Early Transcaucasian Culture

The appearance of the Early Transcaucasian Culture (ETC) across large portions of the Near East in the 3rd millennium BC is commonly cited as one of the best archaeologically documented and broadly studied cases of a prehistoric migration. This study uses the ETC to develop a model of what happens when migrants move into regions that are already inhabited by emerging or complex societies. In particular, this study focuses on how immigrant populations can integrate themselves into indigenous communities in a physical, socio-political and economic sense, and how a migrant group’s identity can be constructed and maintained alongside these indigenous communities.     

The mosque in the suburbs: Negotiating religion and ethnicity in South London

The geography of religi on for UK residents of South Asian origin is inexorably linked to the politics of the built environment. In particular, the siting, or expansion, of places of worship for minority-religious groups has often been bound up with the negotiation and contestation of the politics of identity. In this paper we explore the historical unfolding of a complex politics of identity and difference across one particular site of religious worship. The building in question is the London Fazl Mosque, London's first mosque. The paper focuses on two periods in the architectural, social and religious life of the site: its initial planning, opening and use in the London suburbs of the 1920s; and the community's more recent--and ultimately unsuccessful--attempts to extend the mosque in the 1990s. Across these two periods we draw out the ways in which notions of similarity and difference were employed by mosque-users, other local residents, the press and local and central government bodies in their discourse relating to the mosque. In particular we are concerned with how the mosque has meant different things to different religious, ethnic and social groups across the period under study, and how the mosque's relative ability to conform to associative aesthetic valuations throughout its history effectively sanctioned as well as condemned building works. Pour les résidents du Royaume-Uni d'origine sudasiatique, la géographie de la religion est inexorablement liée à l'environnement architectural. En particulier, le choix de sites ou l'expansion de lieux de culte pour les groupes religieux minoritaires ont souvent été reliés à des débats identitaires. Dans cet article, nous explorons l'évolution historique d'un jeu complexe de politiques de l'identité et de la différence par le biais d'un édifice religieux. Le site en question est la mosquée Fazl, la première ayant été bâtie à Londres. L'article se concentre sur deux périodes de la vie architecturale, sociale et religieuse de ce site: sa planification initiale, son ouverture, et son utilisation dans la banlieue de Londres pendant les années 1920, ainsi que les efforts plus récents--éventuellement sans succès--d'agrandir la mosquée pendant les années 1990. À travers ces deux périodes, nous exposons comment des notions de similaritéet de différence ont été mises de l'avant par les usagers du lieu, les autres résidents du quartier, la presse et les institutions gouvernementales centrales et locales dans leurs discours respectifs sur la mosquée. Nous cherchons en particulier à dégager comment la mosquée acquière une signification différente selon chaque religion, ethnie ou groupe social impliqué pendant la période sous étude. Nous cherchons aussi à dégager comment la capacité relative de la mosquée à se conformer à des valeurs esthé tiques associatives au cours de son histoire a servi à supporter de même qu'à condamner les travaux de construction. La geografía de la religio´n para los habitantes del Reino Unido naturales de Asia Sudoriental es inexorablemente vinculada a la política del entorno construído. En particular, la ubicación, o la expansión de los edificios de culto para los grupos de religiones minoritarios muchas veces ha estado estrechamente vinculado con la negociación y la contestación de la política de identidad. En este papel, examinamos el desarollo histórico de la compleja política de identidad y diferencia en un sitio de culto determinado. El edificio en cuestión es la mezquita Fazl, la primera mesquita de Londres. El papel enfoca a dos períodos en la vida arquitectural, social y religiosa del sitio: su planificación, inauguración y empleo iniciales en el barrio londinense en los años 20: y los intentos más recientes de la comunidad de ampliar la mezquita en los años 90, los cuales no resultaron exitosos. Através de estos dos períodos destacamos las maneras en que las nociones de semejanza y diferencia fueron empleadas por las personas que frecuentaban la mezquita, otros residentes locales, la prensa y cuerpos de los gobiernos local y central en sus discursos sobre la mezquita. En particular nos interesa lo que significaba la mezquita para los diferentes grupos religiosos, étnicos y sociales en las épocas bajo investigación y como la manera en que la mezquita cuadraba con las valuaciones estéticas asociativas durante toda su historia efectivamente sancionaba, tanto como condenaba, su construcción.     

Between the lodge and the meeting-house: Mapping Irish Protestant identities and social worlds in late Victorian Toronto

The urban lives of Irish Protestant immigrants and their descendants are a neglected feature in geographies of the Irish diaspora. Prominent settlers from the early nineteenth century, they played a key role in the shaping of a host culture in Anglophone Canada. The social and spatial processes that moulded Irish Protestants into a wider loyal British identity are examined at a number of scales in Toronto, 'the Belfast of North America'. After initially exploring the rhetoric and practices of city-wide institutions that served many Irish Protestants, the autobiographical reflections of John McAree are used as a case study on the micro-geographies of everyday lives experienced within local space as well as an empirical test for Bourdieu's ideas of practice and 'habitus'.     

Making and remaking Tibetan diasporic identities

The fifty-year long Chinese occupation of Tibet has resulted in the deaths of hundreds of thousands and has produced a refugee flow that continues today. Although the plight of Tibetans commands international attention, this diaspora remains understudied and undertheorized. To speak to this silence, we follow Patterson and Kelley (2000) and argue that the Tibetan diaspora can be analysed as both a condition and a process. Diaspora as condition emphasizes the structural features of an exile population, such as race, gender, class and religion. Diaspora as process draws attention to lived refugee experiences--the making and remaking of diasporic identities. In the Tibetan diaspora, His Holiness the Dalai Lama holds a central position. Through his global profile, and a transnational nationalist political structure, he creates images of Tibet, builds community and works toward Tibetan self-determination. Within this nationalist frame, Tibetan identities assume a singular, unified and homogeneous form. Further analysis that focuses on individual voices, however, shows how Tibetan diasporic identities are contested, complex and embedded in not one but multiple narratives of struggle.     

The European Far North of Russia and Its Territorial Constructions in the Sixteenth–Twenty-First Centuries

Abstract

This article addresses the problem of the homogeneity and structure of the identity of the European Far North of Russia. The author comes to the conclusion that the structure of this territory has been determined since the sixteenth century by a rift between the Kola North and the Arkhangelsk North. While this rift deteriorated or was partially healed at different times, the differentiation of the European Far North of Russia into two territorial segments persisted over the periods of Muscovy, the Russian Empire and then the Soviet Union. Although the Kola Peninsula was integrated for two centuries (1708–1921) into the vast province with a centre in the city of Arkhangelsk, it not only preserved features of its identity, but in fact managed to strengthen them, which eventually led to the administrative separation of the Kola North from the Arkhangelsk Province. The development of the two northern territories has been accompanied by competition, which is still there to a large extent. The phenomenon of the division of the Russian Far North in two parts is treated as a consequence of the importance which meridional strategic ties between the centre and the outlying northern areas acquired in the Russian State, in contrast to the weaker latitudinal peripheral ties between the provinces.     

Trafficking in Liquor,Trafficking in Heritage: Beer Branding as Heritage in Post‐apartheid South Africa

A burgeoning literature on post‐apartheid heritage configuration has largely overlooked the use of branding in the creation of heritage discourses in South Africa and the significance of liquor for national identity. This article brings these two concerns together through an examination of two heritage‐scapes—the SAB World of Beer and the SAB Newlands Brewery Heritage Centre—constructed by South African Breweries (SAB) in 1995. It suggests that the commercial construction of heritage as branding provided a vehicle for a powerful corporate capitalist narrative in the post‐apartheid rhetorical contestation over a desired path for the future. It also suggests that dissonance within and between these corporate visitors’ centres mirrored a wider uncertainty over the meaning of national identity in early post‐apartheid South Africa.     

Constructing a national identity from a created literary past: Giosuè Carducci and the development of a national literature

Giosuè Carducci's conception of Italian literature differed from those of Francesco de Sanctis and Benedetto Croce. He argued that Italian literature, together with a concomitant cultural identity and political mission, developed along a continuous, progressive and evolutionary path. This study analyzes Carducci's creation of an Italian cultural and political identity through literary history and his construction of a plausible model for its historical development by incorporating literary,scientific and political theories. Carducci gave Italians a past of which they could be proud, proof of Italy's leading role in Europe's civilizing mission, and a strategy to accomplish it. Carducci's conception of italianitÀ, defined in terms of a historic mission of grandezza , was one of several brands of Italian nationalism. His linking of literary history to aspirations of national unity and aggrandizement implied that the mantle of the Risorgimento now belonged to the educated elite. This linkage of literature and national identity to aspirations of cultural and political hegemony explains why Carducci was so popular with the Nationalist Party whose leaders invoked his literary history to legitimize their political program and to discredit their political opponents prior to World War I and under Fascism.     

The geography and natural resources of Bolivia

This paper tries to show the main thread of Scottish national identity in the nineteenth century and how Scotland's close connection with the empire did not asuage Scottish desires to retain a national identity. The paper tries to illustrate that the interpretation of the union connection by the Scottish political classes was central to the understanding of Scotland as a nation during the period. Examples are also provided of the way in which the union could be questioned in this century, but this was with the caveat that this would necessarily be limited; for such was the extent to which national identity was played out on an imperial stage. Although Scots never lost sight of their distinctiveness, any extension of the critique of union would have ultimately worked against their ability to confidently display their identity as they did quite successfully in the nineteenth century.