Including people with learning difficulties in cultural and heritage sites

This paper examines the processes involved in a participatory inclusive research project in Liverpool and Merseyside, UK. The project involved 25 people with learning difficulties – the Heritage Forum – visiting 13 cultural and heritage sites on more than 50 occasions across a 15‐month period. The research provides a much needed resource at a time when there is a lack of provision for, and research into, the intellectual accessibility of cultural and heritage sites in the UK and globally. This paper details the research approach taken by the Heritage Forum, providing a flexible protocol about ways of working with groups and individuals with learning difficulties. It also reports on the Heritage Forum’s general findings about the cultural and heritage sites, providing some initial guidance about how to best include this diverse population.     

Intangible heritage embodied and Intangible heritage

Over the past decade, intangible cultural heritage (hereafter, ICH), the significance which it possesses and the continuation of its myriad manifestations have reached unprecedented levels of recognition and attention on international and national policy agendas. Traditional Medicine (hereafter, TM) has long been included under the vast umbrella of ICH, yet there have been few attempts to explore that relationship. This paper examines the practical implications of applying the UNESCO Convention for the Safeguarding of Intangible Heritage to TM, alongside the relationship of traditional medicine to the fields of human rights, public health and development. It considers, and reaches the conclusion that the cultural significance of traditional medicine combined with the fundamental principles of the Convention render the Convention significant in safeguarding traditional medicine for the future.     

Science,gender and moral ascendancy in liberal Italy

Following Italian unification ‘progressive’ physicians, jurists, and criminal sociologists, who constituted a sizeable if particular school of anticlericalism, adopted organic explanations separating responsible from pathological citizens. Positivist criminology enabled the conflation of sexual with political turbulence, of women with peasants and workers, of feminine deficiencies with Mezzogiorno underdevelopment. A secular, literate minority succeeded in resurrecting hierarchies grounded in gender, class and regional differences, and it did so without invoking the moral authority of the Catholic Church.     

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.     

Ardent Service: Female Eroticism and New Life Ethics in Gertrude Dix's The Image Breakers (1900)

Gertrude Dix's socialist-feminist novel, The Image Breakers (1895) has perplexed twentieth-century critics by its brief, short-circuited representation of homoerotic affection between the two female protagonists. In answer, this essay roots the women's relationship in the wider social, historical context of New Life politics and ethics in the 1890s. Members of the Fellowship of the New Life heralded not merely a variety of alternative lifestyles including vegetarianism and co-education, but also extensive discussion about sexual mindfulness and generosity. The charismatic seer and inspiration for the FNL, James Hinton, preached that utopia could be achieved by practicing an erotically-charged altruism. If, as Sharon Marcus has claimed, such female mutual devotion was common and perceived as normative, it was particularly affirmed by ethical-socialist culture. In the novel, Leslie Ardent's loving service to Rosalind is fuelled by her political mission and desire for self-realization. Through this female intimacy, Dix evokes the initial phase of New Life socialism as Hinton and his followers had espoused it. By contrast, the women's heterosexual relationships are more troubling, as male comrades pressure them respectively into heterosexual marriage and free love. In order to discredit heterosexual free love, Dix paints its proponent as a disturbed anarchist, rather than admit that historically some in ethical-socialist circles had advocated polyamoury. Nor does she acknowledge the philosophical convergences between collective anarchism and ethical socialism at the fin de siècle, though she herself was engaged in radical communities. Through her indictment of free love, Dix punctures the utopian vision of a pure, selfless, erotic affection flowing between individuals; figuratively, the novel re-enacts the collapse of Hinton's own reputation from seer to seducer. Echoing scenarios by other female ethical-socialist writers, the early intimacy between Rosalind and Leslie then serves the function of nostalgia, symbolizing a now-lost stage of New Life optimism and association.     

Defending ‘the Principle of Representation’: Andrew Bisset,The English Civil War,and The History of the Struggle for Parliamentary Government in England

Abstract

Victorian attitudes to the past were varied and in some cases irreconcilable. Newer standards of expertise and objectivity coexisted with older approaches, and the idea that history should be used for present purposes remained intact. Throughout the Victorian age there were circumstances in which history was a polemical tool, designed to give one set of interpretations or values or policies an advantage over its rivals. This article explores the work of a relatively neglected figure in Victorian historiography – the reform-minded historian and lawyer Andrew Bisset (1803–1891) – whose primary goal was to illustrate and advance what he called ‘the principle of representation’. He discussed people and events of the past to this end, offending reviewers along the way because of his obvious political agenda, but also developing a rigorous source-based style, usefully evaluating for his readers the work of Macaulay, Carlyle, and others, and helping to shape Victorian opinion about, in particular, the political and religious crises of seventeenth-century Britain. Like others, Bisset believed that the disputes of that period had relevance to the public controversies of his own day. This article is designed to contribute to ongoing debates about the Victorians’ relationship with the past.     

卫三畏的汉学观

卫三畏是近代中关关系史上的重要人物,是美国的第一位汉学教授。他从观念形态、精神产品、生活方式等方面对中国进行了研究,认为中国是一个具有高度文明的国家,但在科学上是保守的,在生活上是落后的。     

旅游产品交换过程中的价格与价值关系探讨

旅游产品的随意涨价,让很多游客感到头痛和不爽,然而业界还在蠢蠢欲动,继续运筹涨价。旅游产品的价格问题实际上关系到一重大的理论问题:由什么来衡量旅游产品价值量。旅游产品在其实现过程中没有物质性的产品传递过程,因此用"商品的价值量取决于社会必要劳动时间,商品按照价值相等的原则互相交换。价格围绕价值上下波动",已经明显解释不通了。感受才是决定旅游产品是否有价值的关键因素。旅游过程中旅游者所获得的感受越深,旅游产品的价值越大,因此它遵循刘氏"发汗定律"。也就是感受的程度是决定价格高低的直接因素。但是感受是一种纯粹的主观心理体验,它是人类社会经济文化背景的直接反映,也是人类文明的区域再现。     

解说:源起、概念、研究内容和方法

解说是旅游休闲研究中相当重要的一个概念,但关于解说的研究却只是近50年以来的事情。从20世纪60年代至今,解说研究经历了形成期、寻找最佳媒介期、探求正当性阶段,到1990年代初期初步走向成熟。目前,国际上的解说研究借助更多社会学和心理学理论,以及应用社会科学如营销、消费行为、应用行为分析及教育分析方法等,通过理性行为理论、计划行为理论、规范焦点理论、阐述可能性模式、基模理论、防御动机理论以及其他认知和社会认知理论得到理论架构,并逐渐走向成熟。与此相应,解说的理论研究在国内大陆尚未得到应有的重视,研究水平也与国际上存在较大的差距。本文从文献综述的角度,梳理了国际解说研究的最新进展,对解说的源起、概念、研究内容和方法等问题进行了探讨,并针对我国解说研究的现状分析了我国解说研究发展的前景,通过研究发现,我国的解说研究主要集中在台湾地区,研究的案例地选择较单一,对解说效果的评估缺乏定量的评估等等,另外也看到中国大陆地区,有关解说研究的论文曾逐年增多的态势,解说研究在中国也会越来越得到重视,解说也会被用到旅游的各个方面。     

黑河流域居民生活质量研究

以《Calvert-Henderson生活质量指标》一书为理论指导构建了生活质量评价指标体系,通过开展生活质量问卷调查及查找相关统计资料,运用主成分分析法确定指标的权重,研究了我国西北地区第二大内陆河流域-黑河流域城乡居民2004年的生活质量。具体的评价结果是:黑河流域城镇居民生活质量明显高于农村;黑河流域城市居民生活质量表现出中游高于上游和下游;黑河流域农村居民生活质量以乡镇为单位计算差异显著;黑河流域农村居民生活质量中游略好于上游、下游;影响黑河流域城乡居民生活质量的主要因素是收入、教育和住房。