Zionism and Irish Nationalism: Ideology and Identity on the Borders of Europe

This paper is a comparative cultural history of Zionism and Irish nationalism, focusing on themes of race, gender and identity. It seeks to highlight the strong similarities of both nationalist projects: to show how Zionists and Irish nationalists were both heavily invested in state-building projects that would disprove European racist stereotypes about their respective nations and yet, paradoxically, were also part of the general history of European nationalism. Both Zionism and Irish nationalism sought to create idealised images of the past and claimed to be rebuilding a glorious ancient society in the future as a means of escaping a degraded present. Both movements saw language revival as a key means of carrying out this ‘return to history’. And both emphasised martyrdom as a way to build up prideful ideals of devotion to the nation and used sport, militaries and agriculture as forms of nationalist social engineering. Despite their claims to the contrary, neither national movement was truly unique.     

Chinese popular music as a musical heritage and cultural marker of the Malaysian Chinese

Chinese popular music, inspired by pre-war Shanghai music known as ‘shidai qu’ (时代曲) (songs of the era) and evolving to include Canto pop and Taiwanese Mandarin songs, has always been popular among the Chinese in Malaysia. This music is featured on radio, television, karaoke, and performed by orchestras such as the Dama Chinese Orchestra (大马) to enthusiastic reception. The songs have a broad appeal that transcends time, generation, and place. Of significance is the observation that the music has become a cultural marker and musical heritage for Chinese in Malaysia and in the region. The paper looks at factors behind this development.     

Villagers’ agency in the Intangible Cultural Heritage designation of a Korean village ritual

This paper examines how the villagers of Pams?m village in Seoul acted as agents in configuring their own cultural identity which explores issues concerning Korea’s Intangible Cultural Heritage (ICH) designation system. It delves in detail how villagers practice their ritual of Pams?m Pugundang kut ? amidst the complex process of continuity and change as a way of sustaining and promoting collective village identity. By examining the implications of this cultural practices in contemporary society, this paper ultimately raises the question of who constitutes the true legatee of traditional culture of Pams?m village. The cultural practice of the Pams?m Pugundang kut carried out by the villagers of Pams?m can be interpreted not merely as a critique of the dynamics of political and cultural heritage, but the reconstruction of villager’s identity through the creation and continuation of their long village history. This study provides a useful case in examining a village community which describes in detail how the subject of this study constructs their cultural identity and faces the complex issues concerning Korea’s ICH designation system.     

Adopting ‘things of the little’: intangible cultural heritage and experiential authenticity of place in the Jewellery Quarter,Birmingham

The paper discusses notions and experiences of authenticity of place in relation to intangible cultural heritage. Drawing on qualitative informant interviews with representatives of traditional and new businesses in the Jewellery Quarter in Birmingham (UK), it analyses authenticity of place with regard to three key dimensions: the experience of origins, the experience of continuity and the experience of potentiality and actuality. Findings suggest that intangible cultural heritage activates and facilitates experiences of authenticity, often related to people’s individual identity constructs and associated benefits or detriments. Some heritage concepts have evolved from their narrowly defined historic context and inform experiences of authenticity in the present.     

Everyday nationalism and international hockey: contesting Canadian national identity

This paper examines how hockey is used to construct and demarcate the Canadian national community from external others, namely, the USA, Europe and Russia/USSR. The paper suggests popular nationalist narratives around the sport of hockey construct difference from external others in ways that place them in tension with state and corporate interests. Drawing on the concept of everyday nationalism, this article explores how the interplay between international competition, national identity and commercial sport has made hockey an ambiguous and contested national symbol in Canada.     

My neighbour,the criminal: how memories of the 1991–1995 conflict in Croatia affect attitudes towards the Serb minority

This paper investigates how Croats view the minority Serb population in Croatia. It is based on focus groups, dyads and interviews conducted in Croatia in 2014 and 2015. Serbs constitute the ‘other’ to Croatian identity, which is defined primarily through language and religion. The analysis finds that the predominant war narrative related to the 1991–1995 conflict, one of defence against a larger Serbian aggressor, influences both of these notions of identity, as well as perceptions of the Serb minority in the state. Participants displayed contradictory attitudes in a discourse that featured many key facets of the war narrative. Most respondents agreed that Serbs should be equal members of Croatian society, but they also did not believe Cyrillic signs should be put up in Vukovar. The introduction of bilingual signs both reduced trust in government institutions and was interpreted as a continued threat against the Croatian people and state.     

The nation‐state in its state‐istics (Belgium, 1846–1947)

Statistics are, as the etymology of the term suggests (state‐istics), intimately connected with the construction or administration of the nation‐state. This paper addresses the genesis and development of the nation‐state by studying one of the main instruments that states use to ‘embrace’ their populations, viz. population statistics. More particularly, the paper presents a critical analysis of the conceptual and ‘scientific’ representations of modes of belonging to the nation‐state as produced in the Belgian (Queteletian) population censuses from the mid‐nineteenth until the mid‐twentieth century. It is shown how the analyses of the statisticians' interests, techniques and classification schemes shed light on the various ways in which inclusion in, or exclusion from, the Belgian nation‐state have been articulated in its population censuses. It is argued that these shifting interests and classification schemes also inform us about the construction and administration of the contemporary nation‐state.     

Heritage spectacles: the case of Amphipolis excavations during the Greek economic crisis

This article explores the ways in which the archaeological excavations at Amphipolis, Northern Greece, were transformed into a ‘heritage spectacle’ during the summer of 2014. The article argues that the spectacularisation of Amphipolis excavations constituted a powerful, political medium for dis-orientating the wider Greek public from issues related to the severe economic crisis of the country. Although the practice of heritage spectacularisation is not new, the media spectacle of Amphipolis introduced an advanced mechanism for spectacularizing archaeological research and the past. The article deconstructs this mechanism through a thematic content analysis of about 100 newspaper articles published in the Greek press, filtered through the lenses of spectacle theory. As it is demonstrated, the spectacularisation process of Amphipolis excavations is embodied by emotive dramatisation, banal cultural symbols, escapism and power imbalances. The article concludes with an interpretive framework for heritage spectacles while highlighting ethical and practical implications regarding the role of archaeologists and heritage practitioners towards political ‘abuse’ of heritage in times of socio-economic and political crises.     

Marketing health education: advertising margarine and visualising health in Britain from 1964–c.2000

During the post-war period, margarine was re-conceptualised as a value-added product with distinct health benefits. This article contextualises the advertising of margarine as a healthy food, focusing on Unilever’s Flora brand as an important case study in legitimising the emergent role of disease prevention as a marketing tool. It uses the methodology of visual culture to examine how advertising employed chronic disease prevention as a selling tool. This article assesses how the post-war environment gave rise to new ways of visually advertising food, and how these promoted innovative visualisations of food, the body and their interactions with health.     

Towards transnational feminist queer methodologies

This article introduces the possibilities of transnational feminist queer research as seeking to conceptualise the transnational as a methodology composed of a series of flows that can augment feminist and queer research. Transnational feminist queer methodologies can contest long-standing configurations of power between researcher and researched, subject and object, academics and activists across places, typically those which are embedded in the hierarchies of the Global North/Global South. Beginning with charting our roots in, and routes through, the diverse arenas of transnational, feminist, participatory and queer methodologies, the article uses a transcribed and edited conversation between members of the Liveable Lives research team in Kolkata and Brighton, to start an exploration of transnational feminist queer methodologies. Understanding the difficult, yet constructive moments of collaborative work and dialogue, we argue for engagements with the multiplicities of ‘many-many’ lives that recognise local specificities, and the complexities of lives within transnational research, avoiding creating a currency of comparison between places. We seek to work toward methodologies that take seriously the politics of place, namely by creating research that answers the same question in different places, using methods that are created in context and may not be ‘comparable’. Using a dialogue across the boundaries of activism/academia, as well as across geographical locations, the article contends that there are potentials, as well as challenges, in thinking ourselves through transnational research praxis. This seeks complexities and spatial nuances within as well as between places.