Museum Volunteering: Heritage as ‘Serious Leisure’

The growing number of volunteers in the heritage sector indicates a desire for a leisure experience by pursuing a subject interest with like‐minded people. Millar and others have suggested that volunteers are the ‘ultimate frequent visitors’, and as the day visitor market for museums and heritage attractions declines, this paper offers the repositioning of ‘heritage visiting’ from day visits to longer term connections with particular heritage attractions via volunteering. It draws on Stebbins’s concept of serious leisure as a way of reading museum volunteering as a leisure practice and argues that museum volunteering is a way of practising heritage as leisure that is ‘self‐generated’, with museum volunteers active in constructing their own identities. According to the concept of ‘serious leisure’, museum volunteers become part of a social world inhabited by those knowledgeable about heritage and history. The paper concludes by examining the adequacy of Stebbins’s P‐A‐P system for analysing the power relations between museum professionals and volunteers in the museum social world.     

Fighting the Risorgimento: foreign volunteers in southern Italy (1860–63)

Abstract

Between 1860 and 1863 hundreds of men from all over Europe volunteered for service in the wars of southern ‘brigands’ on behalf of the exiled King Francis II of Naples. In an attempt to correct the often biased interpretation of this involvement (that was attributed simply to a thirst for adventure, romanticism or even psychological disorder) that coloured the accounts by Italian patriots, this essay suggests the need for fresh consideration. It develops three lines of inquiry that focus respectively on the strong impact of Italian Unification on conservative and Catholic opinion and the ways in which these sources portrayed the struggles of the southern insurgents, the clumsy efforts made by the Neapolitan government-in-exile to recruit volunteers and organize armed expeditions against the former kingdom, and the so-called ‘white international’ in which the warriors of the counter-revolution were depicted as combatants in conflicts that were both civil wars and at the same time episodes in a much longer international ideological struggle. In this context, the significance of foreign involvement in defence of the Neapolitan Bourbons takes on a significance that goes far beyond its poor military outcome.     

The politics of finance in Napoleonic Italy (1802‐1814)

Abstract

The Republic and Kingdom of Italy (1802‐14) served as an important source of revenues for Napoleonic France. Most importantly, the authorities had to pay for a growing Italian army and for the French troops in northern Italy. To satisfy the Emperor's increasing financial pressure, Prina, the Finance Minister, increased the tax burden and reorganized the financial administration and tax collection. Prina kept a moderate property tax to secure the support of the landowners and raised indirect taxes, thereby increasing the burden on the poor. His reforms in the financial administration made it more orderly, uniform and efficient, thus strengthening the central state. While Prina modernized the financial machinery and expanded the state's resources, the fiscal pressure contributed to growing hostility from the population to the Napoleonic state. Following the fall of the Kingdom of Italy, the Austrians left the Napoleonic financial system intact, a demonstration of Prina's effective reforms and long‐term impact.     

‘To Make a New Tongue’: Natural and Manufactured Language in the Late Fiction of William Morris

The paper considers William Morris's belief that modern language was ‘degraded’, and explores how his late fiction tried to resist this degradation. Morris was influenced by the romantic philology of the mid-Victorian period which depicted languages as living organisms. Philologists such as Max Müller claimed that modern civilization had arrested this growth, mechanizing language into conventional signs; and Morris adapted the idea into a critique of industrial capitalism. He conceptualized modern English as manufactured external forms, sundered from organic history. His late prose fictions trace the ‘natural’ meanings of words which he imagined feudalism and capitalism had suppressed. However, this narrative of organic origins existed in tension with Morris's socialist ideals, which sought an objective language above local or national perspectives. The older Morris was writing at a time when romantic philology was coming under attack from a new generation of scholars. These proto-linguists regarded meaning as conventional and narratives of organic ‘roots’ in the distant past as mere mythology. Morris's struggles to reconcile the contradictions in his philosophy of language reflect wider tensions in romantic philology. His imaginary worlds in which everyone spoke the same relied upon myths of original linguistic unity and stasis which new research and theories were undermining. Ironically, Morris's attempts to re-organicize English inadvertently demonstrated the conventionality and perspectivism of language, relying upon common cultural frames of reference.     

Canadian foreign direct investment in the United States by type: mergers and acquisitions, greenfield, real estate, joint ventures and investment increases

This paper provides an overview of Canadian foreign direct investment (FDI) in the United States by type. Mergers and acquisitions (M&As), greenfield investments, joint ventures, real estate purchases and increases to existing investments are compared spatially, through time (using a data set that consists of transactions from 1977 to 1994) and by industrial classification. Over this study's time-frame, direct investors from Canada were most likely to perform a real estate or M&A transaction in the United States (and least likely to be involved in a joint venture). The most consequential years for real estate purchases were the 1970s and early 1980s; whereas M&A and greenfield transactions have gained in proportionate importance through time. M&As, greenfield and investment increases were most often enumerated as manufacturing transactions, but mining and consumer and business services were also very common. A series of bivariate regression models established that growing state economies significantly increased M&A, real estate, greenfield and investment increase activity from Canada. Relative regional specializations (as given by location quotients) provided additional spatial information. M&As formed a pattern of specialization that emphasized the Great Lakes region and also the central portion of the US (roughly following the Mississippi River). Greenfield and investment increase transactions favoured states along the east coast and those adjacent to the Canada-US border. Real estate investors were most attracted to the US south and extreme west.     

中国乡村城市化研究:起源、概念、进展与展望

本文回顾了20世纪80年代以来我国乡村城市化研究的起源,对乡村城市化和自下而上城市化两个概念进行了辨析,对近20年来乡村城市化研究的内容、进展以及存在的主要问题进行了评述,并对未来乡村城市化研究的方向作出了展望。     

沈阳市何时开始建城考

关于沈阳何时开始建城的问题,史学家一般都认为始于辽东郡候城县的建立。但对于候城的建置年代,则有不同的看法,有的认为是在汉代,有的认为是在战国时。木文以历史文献记载和新近考古发现为依据,结合前人的研究成果,进一步证明候城建置不始于西汉王朝,而始于战国时的燕园。     

论张学良与“西北国防政府”计划

张学良自成局面的设想和中共先行建立地区性国防政府的策略 ,是促成“西北国防政府”计划产生之两大要素。但在该计划的实施步骤及是否反蒋、如何打通苏联等问题上 ,张与中共间存在着某些潜在分歧 ,加之中共的政策由反蒋抗日急剧转向逼蒋抗日 ,打通苏联亦未能成功 ,从而导致该计划终归流产     

国外对零售业及其附生——衍生的营业性娱乐场所的空间关系研究

零售业及其附生-衍生的营业性娱乐场所是城市居民日常生活(闲暇娱乐)行为的四大场所之一,零售业中附生-衍生的娱乐场所的类型、结构与空间模式是揭示城市社会-生活空间质量的重要方面,本文从城市社会地理学以及人类文化生态学等多学科的研究角度,分析与总结国外学者对零售业及其附生-衍生的营业性娱乐场所的研究现状、内容以及其在城市中的空间作用与(社会)空间关系。     

北赵出土铜器铭文中之晋侯及其他晋侯名新考

北赵出土铜器铭文,从考古和训诂两方面考证,对晋侯名与史载各代晋侯的 对应关系提供了难得的资料。