The case of Asialink’s arts residency program: towards a critical cosmopolitan approach to cultural diplomacy

This paper explores the ways in which one of Australia’s cultural diplomacy initiatives aimed at bringing Australia closer to Asia – the Asialink Arts Residency Program – may provide valuable insights for reimagining cultural diplomacy with a revised understanding of the national interest that reflects the increasingly transnational realities of the contemporary world. Drawing on extensive data gained from interviews and an online survey, the author found that program participants are engaging in exceptionally complex and at times unintended activities, and that policy concerns, such as positive image projection abroad, are rarely high on the residents’ list of priorities. However, these experiences are of particular value for the national interest, in ways not yet formulated by or included in existing cultural diplomacy discourses. With the findings in mind, the author takes a critical cosmopolitan approach to reconceptualising cultural diplomacy.     

Pop-culture diplomacy in Japan: soft power,nation branding and the question of ‘international cultural exchange’

This paper critically examines the development of what is known as ‘pop-culture diplomacy’ in Japan. In the postwar era, the country’s cultural diplomacy was propelled by the necessity to soften anti-Japan perceptions, notably in Southeast Asia. In the late 1980s, the popularity of Japanese media culture in Asia began to attract the attention of policy makers, while subsequent globalized practices of soft power and nation branding gave greater emphasis to the use of media culture to internationally enhance the image of the nation, which has meant the promotion of ‘pop-culture diplomacy’ and, more broadly, ‘Cool Japan’. It is argued that pop-culture diplomacy goes no further than a one-way projection and does not seriously engage with cross-border dialogue. The Japanese case also shows that pop-culture diplomacy hinders meaningful engagement with internal cultural diversity and suggests the necessity of taking domestic implications of cultural diplomacy seriously.     

Heritage transactions at the Festival of Pacific Arts

The Festival of Pacific Arts, hosted by a different Pacific Island state once every four years, is a prime site for the reproduction of the global discourse on heritage. Drawing on ethnographic research conducted at the festival, this paper focuses on how the concept of heritage is employed at the festival as both an instrument of statecraft and a tool for the assertion of grass-roots political and economic agency. We conclude that heritage in the context of the festival is a form of cultural practice involving relationships of power and inequality, expressed in transactions of ownership and value transformations that have become over determined by economic logic and the concept of property.     

“Ceci n’est pas un fragment”: Identity,Intertextuality and Fictionality in Sappho’s “Brothers Poem”

In this article, Sappho’s Brothers Poem is re-evaluated and analysed from various perspectives that have not been addressed sufficiently in scholarship so far. First, some questions of principle regarding the role of the brothers and the Sapphic speaker are discussed. Secondly, the poem’s communicative situation is examined, and different options for the identification of the person addressed as “you” are considered. Thirdly, it is demonstrated how the poem establishes an intertextual dialogue with the Homeric Odyssey on various levels, and how this dialogue affects the general understanding of the poem. Finally, the commonly held view that the five transmitted stanzas do not represent the entire poem is challenged. The article concludes with some wider considerations about some of the most common assumptions regarding the nature and the fragmentary state of the Brothers Poem.     

Chronotopes of study abroad: the cultural Other,immersion, and compartmentalized space–time

Study abroad offers a specific configuration of encountering cultural Others: in a demarcated “abroad” space in a compartmentalized time period. Informed by Bakhtin's notion of chronotopes, this article investigates narratives of American college students who studied in Paris, France and Bilbao, Spain in June–July 2011 based on an ethnographic fieldwork of their stay. I identify two chronotopes held in tension in their narratives that reflect tenets of the discourse of immersion: of homogeneous space where every minute students spend in the host society is “local” time full of learning, which risks portraying the host society as frozen in the time of the students’ stay; and of heterogeneous space where local space–time and outsider (e.g. American students and tourists) space–time co-exist hierarchically, where students strive to show their engagement with the former. This article calls for encouraging students to examine the effects of these chronotopes on their experiences and for viewing study abroad not as an encounter of two cultures but as diverse students joining in the ongoing production of heterogeneous host society space with a compartmentalized yet expanding notion of time.     

Negotiating time and space on a study abroad program in South India

This paper investigates the context of student learning in study abroad programs, drawing on ethnographic research on a semester long study abroad program in South India. We show how students use multiple constructions of time and space as a framework for understanding cultural differences and for understanding what it means for them to “experience” India. We argue that students' conceptualization of space and time in the study abroad location also impacts what kinds of activities they consider to count as valuable forms of learning. Students' ideas about India shape their expectations of what the pace, workload, and activities of the study abroad program in India should entail. Their concepts of Indian time and space lead them to privilege “experience”-based learning over classroom-based or scholarship-based learning. In conclusion, we show how these insights have implications for study abroad pedagogy. Here, we suggest that student learning that is entirely based on “experience” outside the classroom is inherently limited and that students need to contextualize their field-based learning experiences with insights from critical, historical and social science research.     

传承和共享:文化遗产保护的双重伦理向度

遗产本质上具有伦理性,在历史主义保护传统中隐含着以传承为中心的伦理向度;同时,当代遗产保护运动中"人类遗产"理念和传承共同责任,又提升了遗产的公共性,揭示出了遗产保护中的当代共享向度。在历史主义保护占据主导地位的情况下,当代人在遗产面前的主体共享诉求相对不足,近些年国际国内对这种现象有较多的批评和反思。在需要满足当代人共享愿望又不能废弃传承伦理向度的情况下,创新保护理念和方式,在利用中实现"文化再生产"也许是文化遗产保护的有效途径。     

国外文化遗产基金制度及其借鉴

文化遗产基金制度或与文物保护相关的艺术基金制度在西方发达国家已基本完善。基金会通过多渠道广泛地筹集资金,并有效地进行战略管理和再投资;同时,基金会的日常运作公正透明,具有完善的内外部监督机制。这些贯穿于基金运作各层面的制度及运作经验十分值得我国借鉴。     

Inclusive partnership: enhancing student engagement in geography

Partnership is currently the focus of much work within higher education and advocated as an important process to address a range of higher education goals. In this paper, we propose the term inclusive partnership to conceptualise a non-selective staff–student relationship. While recognising the challenges of inclusive partnership working for institutions, staff and students, this paper outlines the opportunities it offers and provides detailed case studies of inclusive partnerships within the geography curriculum. We conclude with some guiding principles to inform the development of inclusive partnerships in a range of settings.     

Overcoming barriers to institutional integration in European second-tier urban regions

Within the debates about the socio-economic advantages of cohesive urban regions, several barriers to institutional integration are said to exist, especially when a metropolitan government is absent and integration relies on inter-municipal cooperation. Some barriers are associated with different urban region structures, such as the asymmetric power relations and sociocultural contrasts between municipalities in systems with dominant core cities, or the lack of a leading city to overcome fragmentation and provide a shared identity in polycentric urban regions (PURs). This paper investigates whether urban regions formed around second-tier cities, whose features depart from both dominant core and PUR models, are able to mitigate these barriers when pursuing integration strategies. The analysis relies on interviews with municipal leaders in three representative European case studies, examining how they perceive the barriers to inter-municipal relations in second-tier urban regions. The findings show that perceptions vary not only between regions, with the three cases following different trajectories of integration, but also within regions, according to the geographical and socio-economic context of municipalities and the legacy of past relations. In general, barriers to integration are not minimized without explicit efforts to rebalance power relations, approach political cultures, mobilize core city leadership and develop a metropolitan identity.