Global Application of Indigenous Archaeology: Community Based Participatory Research in Turkey

What does Indigenous archaeology offer archaeologists who do not work on Native land, at Indigenous sites, or with Indigenous people? This article demonstrates the broad applicability of Indigenous archaeology and the way it can be utilized by archaeologists working in any locale. Through recent fieldwork in south central Turkey working with a non-indigenous community of local residents near the archaeological site of Çatalhöyük, I demonstrate ways that the theories and methodology of Indigenous archaeology are a useful and relevant part of practice for archaeologists working in areas that are neither on Native land nor involve sites related to indigenous heritage. It also points to the need for further investigation into collaborative methods for the development of a set of best practices within archaeological and heritage management settings.     

关于青海省社区思想政治工作情况的调查与分析

社区是社会的细胞,是人们生活相处的社会共同体。本文在调查分析的基础上,就当前如何做好社区思想政治工作进行了探索和研究。     

Reviews

Books reviewed: G. Garrod and K.G. Willis Economic Valuation of the Environment: Methods and Case Studies D. Pearce Economics and Environment. Essays on Ecological Economics and Sustainable Development A. Gilpin Dictionary of Environmental Law H. Lithwick and Y. Gradus (eds) Developing Frontier Cities: Global Perspectives, Regional Contexts A. Holt‐Jensen Geography: History and Concepts. A Student’s Guide P. Ayres Mawson a Life J. N. Rayner Dynamic Climatology: Basis in Mathematics and Physics     

Searching for the Promised Land: Examining Dr Martin Luther King's Concept of the Beloved Community1

Abstract: 4 April 2008 marked the 40th anniversary of Dr King's assassination in Memphis, Tennessee. Since his murder we have seen Dr King's message of social justice, the growing threat of militarism, the threat the USA's burgeoning empire posed, and his goal of ending injustice boiled down to a few words spoken in Washington DC when he declared his dream to see his children grow up in a society free of race prejudice. This paper engages with Dr King's work and presents a more geographically sophisticated understanding of King's legacy than the oft repeated Washington speech. Through an analysis of Dr King's concept of the Beloved Community, I argue that Dr King's work stems from the experiences of the Black Atlantic world. Consequently, we should see Dr King's social theory as part of a larger anti‐colonial struggle which sought to integrate African American and Western notions of community, which holds contemporary importance as a counterpoint to current neoliberal conceptions of community.     

People with intellectual disability in neoliberalizing community spaces

This paper analyzes how personalized disability support interacts with the uneven and incomplete neoliberalization of community organizations and how this affects access and inclusion for people with intellectual disability. In many countries, the introduction of individual budgets for disability support has shifted some responsibility for community inclusion onto individuals with disability and their carers. Concurrently, geographers have shown that community organizations have adopted commercial and bureaucratic qualities while continuing to facilitate opportunities for active citizenship and participation. This paper highlights how personalized disability support funding interacts with community organizations that have adopted some neoliberal ideas about responsibility and entrepreneurialism. Drawing on in-depth interviews with people with intellectual disability and the managers of community centres in the state of Victoria, Australia, the paper analyzes how the resultant community spaces shape the terms on which people with intellectual disability participate. The paper demonstrates that individual support packages issued by the federal government turn people with disability into entrepreneurial employers and that this comes up against a branch of community organizations that has come to understand its responsibility for inclusion in entrepreneurial terms. The paper offers avenues for future geographical work on disability inclusion and for understanding neoliberalization that go beyond direct state interference.     

Japan’s role conception in multilateral initiatives: the evolution from Hatoyama to Abe

This article examines Japan’s role conception in its multilateral commitments to the Asia-Pacific after the global financial crisis in 2008. The Hatoyama government launched an East Asian Community initiative, which aimed to assume a kingmaker role in creating a new order in East Asia. However, the East Asian Community initiative did not develop due to stress on self-reliance and distance from partnership with the USA. The Abe government sought to play a dual role in its major multilateral commitments. On the one hand, the government sought to play a follower role in enhancing the position of the East Asia Summit with an eye to consolidating the US-based institutional framework. On the other, Abe’s new multilateral initiative of the Free and Open Indo-Pacific represented Japan’s kingmaker role in maintaining a free and open maritime regime, and to keep a liberal and open economic regime under the emergence of the Trump administration.     

The Utility of Discourse Analysis to Heritage Studies: The Burra Charter and Social Inclusion

This paper reviews the methodological utility of Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) in heritage studies. Using the Burra Charter as a case study we argue that the way we talk, write and otherwise represent heritage both constitutes and is constituted by the operation of a dominant discourse. In identifying the discursive construction of heritage, the paper argues we may reveal competing and conflicting discourses and the power relations that underpin the power/knowledge relations between expertise and community interests. This identification presents an opportunity for the resolution of conflicts and ambiguities in the pursuit of equitable dialogues and social inclusion.     

Ecomuseum Performance in Piemonte and Liguria,Italy: The Significance of Capital

Research carried out by the authors in northern Italy (see Corsane et al., ‘Ecomuseum Evaluation: Experiences in Piemonte and Liguria, Italy’, International Journal of Heritage Studies 13, no. 2 (2007): 101–16) was designed to assess how closely selected ecomuseums met the demands of ecomuseum theory. However, the discussions with ecomuseum personnel at five sites in Piemonte and Liguria also provided an opportunity to explore how these community‐based heritage projects measure their ‘success’. This research indicates that the methods of performance evaluation that are applied to most national or regional museums—criteria such as visitor numbers, the number of new collections that have been acquired, or number of educational activities delivered—have less meaning in an ecomuseum context. This work suggests that success could be measured more effectively in terms of the forms of capital that result from local people’s use of ecomuseological methods to engage with and conserve their heritage.     

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.     

Environmental interpretation is flowering in Denmark

Abstract

Environmental interpretation is flowering in Denmark. In 1986 it was decided to carry out a three‐year experimental project with 14 environmental interpreters. Today the number of environmental interpreters has grown to 230. The inspiration came from abroad, but the project is established according to Danish cultural and democratic traditions. Some Environmental Interpreters are employed by the State in the National Forests, others by counties, local authorities, museums or ‘green associations’, but they are all linked together in the Environmental Interpreter Service with secretariat in The National Forest and Nature Agency. A modern organisation provides training courses for the interpreters and has developed a series of active interpretation methods in order to make experiencing nature an important tool in modern Danish environmental management and inspire a positive attitude to the future—to sustainable development and management. The aim of setting up an Environmental Interpreter Service was to give people interesting experiences in and knowledge of the countryside and thereby a greater understanding of the complexity of nature, the conditions for agriculture and perhaps an increased environmental consciousness. It was also the hope that if people had a greater understanding of nature, they will love and care for it better. The Brundtland Report ‘Our Common Future, the conference in Rio in 1992 and Agenda 21 has changed the Environmental Interpreters’ work. We have recognised, that it is important to use live Interpreters and not only technical media in this important work. People respond best to personal, face‐to‐face interpretation. The interpreters try to create a love of nature, and at the same time, create an understanding of local and global environmental conditions.