Australia's Campaign for Security Council Membership

The United Nations Security Council has global responsibility for the maintenance of international peace and security. It is therefore essential for Australia to nominate periodically for non-permanent membership, and 2013–14 was the earliest feasible opportunity available to the Rudd government. Australia's uneven record of participation in the United Nations over the last decade and a half was an impediment to election, but recent renewed commitment to international law and upgraded multilateral engagement, among other factors, strengthened the case for election. Australia was elected in the first round of voting, principally due to effective political leadership and the sustained campaign organised by diplomatic officers. Membership will enable Australia to participate actively in discussion of issues on the Council's agenda and to lead discussion of two or three additional subjects.

联合国安理会负有维护国际和平及安全的责任。因此澳大利亚有必要定期提名为非常任理事国,2013—14年对陆克文政府是最早的机会。过去十五年中澳大利亚参与联合国事务颇不均衡,这不利于其当选。而最近它对国际法的重新关注、对多边关系的提升则有助于其当选。澳大利亚主要由于有效的政治领导和外交官坚持不懈的努力而在第一轮投票中当选。有了成员国资格,澳大利亚就能积极参与安理会的讨论,并领导两三个附加议题的讨论。     

UNESCO World Heritage Site of Lenggong Valley,Malaysia: A Review of its Contemporary Heritage Management

This article reviews contemporary heritage management through a systematically coded content analysis at one of Malaysia’s UNESCO World Heritage Sites: the Archaeological Heritage of the Lenggong Valley (AHLV). It evaluates the competency of the preliminary Conservation Management Plan (CMP) of AHLV by looking at the accuracy of five distinctive dimensions of the CMP in conveying the information about the sites and management objectives: the legislation related to the heritage conservation and management; the action and implementation of the management strategies; the level of stakeholder’s participation; and, finally, how the CMP integrates local values and ideas into management planning. The results show that contemporary heritage management planning at Lenggong Valley tends to prioritize the conservation of the archaeological values of the sites over other values (i.e. social, historical, and aesthetic values), and that planning has largely been in the hands of governmental agencies with limited involvement from local communities in the decision-making process.     

Planting Peace: The Greater London Council and the Community Gardens of Central London

‘Peace’ has not lent itself easily to emblematic or mnemonic forms of representation. In Europe’s furnished urban landscapes of the 19th century peace was often personified in female allegorical form. She can be seen in many of the sculpted memorials that commemorate distant battles fought on the edges of Empire. Invariably, however, the figure of ‘Peace’ had a more modest role in the allegory of commemoration than that of ‘Victory’ or ‘Triumph’. As an ideal, peace and pacifism is more often regarded as a process, a long‐term goal that cannot be captured in single static form. To this end, the promotion of peace has most often been realised through intervention, occupation, and fluid, temporal forms such as campaigns, marches, songs, dances and other extended programmes. Peace has also been promoted through slow, evolutionary forms such as designed landscapes, parks and gardens. Drawing on international parallels, this paper examines in detail two community gardens in central London. Each owes its origins to radical local agendas set within the political climate of the Cold War of the 1980s, but both were born out of grand visions for world peace, multilateral disarmament, and global accord. Twenty years after their creation, the author explores their current condition and examines their value as sites of political value and heritage.     

A Framework for Sustainable Heritage Management: A Study of UK Industrial Heritage Sites

In 2002, the World Heritage Committee declared heritage to be ‘an instrument for the sustainable development of all societies’. The term ‘sustainable development’, however, is inscribed with a complex economic, environmental and social agenda that challenges contemporary World Heritage management practice. This paper draws on a content analysis of six industrial UK World Heritage Site management plans. The analysis focuses on the extent that each plan integrates four key sustainability dimensions. Findings indicate that the planning frameworks and collaboration processes in operation at each site ensure conservation of the historical physical fabric but limit the development of a sustainable local cultural economy. A sustainable heritage management framework is presented based on the adoption of a long‐term strategic orientation and extensive local community participation in decision making. The framework is relevant to other complex heritage sites such as historic towns and cultural landscapes.     

The Challenges of Managing an Archaeological Heritage Site in a Declining Economy: The Case of Khami World Heritage Site in Zimbabwe

Abstract

This paper explores the case of the Khami archaeological site, whose degradation by the local communities in recent years was as a result of socio-economic problems caused by the collapse of the Zimbabwean economy combined with the inability of the Zimbabwean government to support the site. We argue that the negative attitude by the local communities towards the management of cultural heritage sites is embedded in the colonial history of the country, and has been driven by the socio-economic difficulties emanating from the collapse of the Zimbabwean economy in recent years. We begin by explaining the history of Khami, its architecture, and the local communities residing around it. We then show and assert that the subsequent degradation of Khami and the landscape around it by the local communities is linked to the socio-economic problems of the country and poverty, which emanated from the collapse of the Zimbabwean economy. In the end, we contend that the economic constraints are part of the reasons why the local communities have from time to time failed to respect the importance of protecting cultural heritage sites in the country.     

World Heritage as a Model for Citizenship: the case of Cyprus

This paper explores the imaginative spaces in which world heritage is constructed and consumed: on the one hand, as the landmarks of a 'global landscape' mediated through the virtual mobility of cyberspace, essentially freed from 'place' or location; on the other hand, as the place-bound focus of nation-building projects, where the narratives of 'destiny' of nationalist mythology confront the serendipity of modern state boundaries. The paper links these two aspects of 'World Heritage' to two contrasting models of citizenship, one of which is rooted in the ideal of an inclusive democratic world citizenry, whilst the other is tied to more exclusive notions of citizenship attached to membership of specific nation-states and riven by boundaries of ethnicity, religion, state and class. Taking the case of Cyprus, the paper examines the ways in which these discourses of the global and the national, of heritage and citizenship, are mobilised by different groups as symbolic resources in the politics of this divided island.     

Cultural Landscapes of Britain

'Britain' and 'cultural landscape' as used here are defined. The World Heritage categorisation provides the basis for a brief review of the range of such landscapes in Britain, with specific examples being named and briefly characterised. Relict landscapes are particularly noted. 'Threats to cultural landscapes are identified as of both development and decrepitude. A short discussion of the purpose and viability of cultural landscapes in Britain, for national and global purposes, concludes by noting a number of British cultural landscapes recognisable in World Heritage terms and potentially relevant to the European Landscape Convention 2000.     

Muted violence: Italian war crimes in occupied Greece

This article considers the myth of Italians as ‘good people’ that has dominated post-war historiography as well as the public and institutional discourse, and analyses the connection between the judiciary paradigm and the historical narrative of the Second World War. It presents an account of Italian war crimes in occupied Greece and suggests a possible interpretation regarding the military violence towards the civilian population. War crimes are considered within the context of the general orientation of the fascist policy of occupation and the structures of conflict that emerged in the occupied territories. In particular, it discusses the turning point in Italian repressive action, from the logic of reprisal to a policy of massacre.     

Armed and unarmed: struggles without weapons in Europe and in Italy

Abstract

The starting point for this article is the concept of civil resistance formulated by the French historian Jacques Semelin to describe the forms of unarmed and often non-violent resistance adopted during the Nazi occupations. These included strikes, protests against high food prices, refusal to join Nazi professional associations, the moral isolation of the enemy, actions to rescue Jews, the organisation of clandestine schools (in Poland) as well as support for armed struggle. While historians have looked on these struggles merely as secondary to or supportive of armed restsitance, the concept of civil resistance shows instead how they were autonomous social responses to Nazi dominion. After showing how since the 1990s there has been much closer dialogue between these two apparoaches, the article examines the ways in which the forms of civil resistance in Italy differed from countries such as Denmark, with greater emphasis on private actions and indivdual intiatives and informal networks in which women were always especiallly active and influential. In Italy, civil resistance seems to have been less ‘political’ and more ‘female’ than in northern Europe. The article concludes by examining the realtionship between the struggles in which women were involved and the concept of civil resistance, which although extremely important is only one step towards a fuller evaluation of the role of women in civil resistance.     

The Italian resistance between history and memory

Abstract

Since the 1960s the Resistance has held pride of place in public ceremonial, political debate and to a point also in historcial writing in Italy. The emphasis on its popular and national character transformed the Resistance into the struggle of the whole country to rid Italy of the German invaders and the small number of Italian fascists who remained their allies, but in ways that took no account of the complexity of people's reactions and the different ways in which Italians experienced the years immediately after the fall of fascism. In the last decade, however, numerous accounts have been published that contradict the images of the Resistance that for 30 years have constituted the ‘official’ memory of the Italian Republic. As a result, the Resistance offers a classic example of the ‘public use of history’, in which historical interpretation has served primarily to justify party political, instutitional and idelogical ends. It is now clear, however, that the supposed unity against fascism was more the result of agreement that there were limits beyond which political differences could not be pressed rather than of a deeper political unity that might have provided the basis for the political and institutional reform of the Italian Republic. The contrasting memories and interpretations of that period that have recently re-emerged for the same reason make it more difficult to project a new Italian democracy for the future.