Ethics of heritage: locating the punitive state in the historical penal landscape of Taipei

Research into prison tourism and prison heritage has not taken enough time to understand how historical change has left impacts in urban contexts, which sometimes continues even after the prisons are decommissioned. This paper discusses the punitive state in the context of the historical penal landscape of Taipei through an exploration of how an historical prison was designed, built, partially demolished, preserved and redeveloped under three political regimes. It draws attention to the neglected relationships between punishment, colonial modernity and heritage. Drawing on the literature of dissonant heritage and dark tourism it argues that the way in which the government erased the heritage and evicted squatters without regard for colonial histories and large-scale, post-war migration is yet another way of writing imprisonment into the landscape and ‘othering’ the punished. Furthermore, in tracing the place memories, both within and outside of the high prison walls, it demonstrates the possibilities offered by ethics of heritage, with which we may counter the culture of punishment in the remaking of cities.     

Promoting productivity in the National Health Service, 1950 to 1966

In the 1950s, the Ministry of Health, supported by interested groups outside government, recognised the political importance of productive efficiency. For leadership, organisational models and techniques the Ministry looked to the movement for industrial productivity. The NHS was receptive, but private-sector approaches were modified and dampened as they were imported. NHS management was to be the provider of technical expertise, but the deployment of this expertise was limited by clinical autonomy and de-coupling from financial incentives. This article casts new light on the history of productivity policy, NHS management and the moving frontier between state and civil society.     

Cultural participation in Europe: shared problem or shared problematisation?

Europe has a ‘problem’; it is becoming a ‘less cultural continent’ as fewer Europeans are ‘engaging in cultural activities’. This conclusion has been reached due to the findings of the latest cross national cultural participation survey. This paper questions the existence of this ‘problem’ and instead suggests that there is a shared problematisation across Europe sustained by common discursive archaeology that employs various discursive strands in relation to a dominant institutional discourse. The argument is that the ‘problem’ of ‘non-participation’ legitimates a ‘solution’ that predates its emergence: the state subsidy of arts organisations. The paper recaps the comparable problematisations that the researchers have previously identified in the policy texts of their respective countries. It progresses to consider three distinct but interwoven discursive strands upon which the problem representation in both countries, and potentially across Europe, appears to rely.     

Beach Boys Do It Too: Subculture and Commoditised Desire in a Transnational Tourist Site in Kerala,South India

This article is based on an ethnographic study of a group of Scheduled Caste (SC) male youth in a globalised tourist site in Kerala, South India, who participate in situational sexual and romantic relationships with predominantly tourist women from the global north. We first aim to expand on the “sex and romance tourism” literature of such encounters to provide an Indian context. Secondly, we aim to highlight how young men involved in such encounters undertake complex mediations of localised and global forms of consumption and commoditisation to participate in the neoliberal tourist market place. Mainly by way of a subculture known as the Jungees, we describe how young men utilise the former processes to seek economic and social mobility for themselves and their families but also to valorise and re-imagine their identity along racial, gendered, caste and class-based dimensions. Finally, we explore the young men’s articulation of a hierarchy of preferred encounters that draws on gendered, sexualised and racialised local and global imaginaries of commoditised desire(s) of tourist women from the global north. We highlight the ways in which participants actively utilise the neoliberal context to engage in a range of self-generated livelihood strategies and to contest their marginality.     

Southern Pennine Brass Bands and the Creation of Northern Identity,c. 1840–1914: Musical Constructions of Space,Place And Region

In spite of being a national form of music-making, the brass band movement is accepted — almost without question in the popular imagination — as working class and northern. Hence, in 1974, Peter Hennessy described a band contest at the Albert Hall: ‘A roll call of the bands is like an evocation of industrial history. From Wingates Temperance and Black Dyke Mills to more modern conglomerates .... Grown men, old bandsmen say, have been known to cry at the beauty of it all …. Of all the manifestations of working-class culture, nothing is more certain than a brass band to bring on an attack of the George Orwells. Even the most hardened bourgeois cannot resist romanticising the proletariat a little when faced with one.(The Times, 11 Oct. 1974) This stereotype, which emerged in the nineteenth century, generated the following questions about northern identity: what elements in the brass band movement created this reportage of northern bandsmen and how did bands, which thrived in large numbers in the Southern Pennines, emerge as a musical and cultural metonym of the industrial landscape? This article explores notions of music-making and the creation of a musical space, place and region through the reporting of brass bands c. 1840–1914.     

Tourism–conservation enterprises as a land-use strategy in Kenya

Since the early 1990s, nature conservation organizations in Eastern and Southern Africa have increasingly attempted to integrate their objectives with those of international development organizations, the land-use objectives of local communities and the commercial objectives of tourism businesses, in order to find new solutions for the protection of nature and wildlife outside state-protected areas. The increased inclusion of the market in conservation initiatives has led to diverse institutional arrangements involving various societal actors, such as private game reserves, conservancies and conservation enterprises. The Koija Starbeds ecolodge in Kenya – a partnership between communities, private investors and a non-governmental organization – serves as a case study for emerging institutional arrangements aimed at enabling value creation for communities from nature conservation. Based on a content analysis of data from individual semi-structured interviews and focus group interviews, as well as a document and literature review, this article reveals a range of benefits for community livelihood and conservation. It also identifies a range of longer term governance challenges, such as the need to address local political struggles, the relations between partners and transparency and accountability in the arrangement.     

An investigation of factors determining cycling experience and frequency

A bicycle tourism destination is composed of complexes of different attributes that are crucial for the determination of tourist satisfaction levels. However, the relative impact of sector-specific destination attributes on bicycle touring and leisure cycling experience and frequency has been both poorly understood and studied. This study is an attempt to fill this literature gap by exploring a demand-side perspective on the important contributors of overall satisfaction with cycling experience and the key determinants of cycling frequency. The 28 sector-specific destination attributes were drawn from the relevant literature, and then modified by a panel of industry experts. Using exploratory factor analysis, three destination-specific attribute-level satisfaction factors were identified in descending order of satisfaction degree: ‘provision of signage services,’ ‘provision of safety and emergency services,’ and ‘quality of bicycle routes.’ Among these factors, ‘provision of safety and security services’ and ‘provision of signage services’ were found to be the most important contributors to overall satisfaction. Finally, ‘monthly income’ was proven to be a significant predictor of cycling frequency. This study is of great importance as there is a growing body of evidence that the use of bicycle for leisure, recreation, and tourism is undergoing a resurgence worldwide. The findings of this study may be of interest to scholars in Western countries where bicycle tourism is mature and highly developed and in Asian countries where the sector is at an early stage of development. Since bicycle touring and leisure cycling experience and frequency can be increased by modifying destination marketing and management practices, the government and industry sectors should focus more attention on ensuring the provision of multi-functional grocery and convenience stores along designated bicycle routes, developing an informative and visible signage system for designated bicycle routes, and targeting middle- to high-income bicyclists with diverse bicycle touring and leisure cycling experience options.     

Perceptions of trekking tourism and social and environmental change in Nepal's Himalayas

The Himalayas are among the world's youngest mountain ranges. In addition to the geologic processes of mountain building and erosion, they are also highly vulnerable to human influenced change, occurring at local, national, regional, and international scales. A photo-elicitation methodology is employed to show how residents perceive those changes from historical perspectives, as well as their current conditions and impacts on their daily lives. Nepal's Khumbu region has undergone major social and environmental transformations since the 1960s when international trekking first began to influence the area's economy. The current perceptions of Khumbu residents of these changes are assessed through photo-elicitation interviews. Their responses are placed in the historical context of: (1) institutional and political changes, most of which have been driven by national government policies; (2) social and economic changes, for which the tourism economy has been central; and (3) environmental changes, reflecting the impacts of resource management and climate change. The mostly positive perceptions of Khumbu residents toward how their region has changed reflects general improvements in the physical and cultural landscapes of the Khumbu over time, as well as its continuing geographic isolation, which has helped to slow the rate of globalization, while also keeping the region a dynamic and popular tourist destination.     

Cultural impact of modernization and tourism on Dai villages in Xishuangbanna,China

The development of tourism can have a considerable sociocultural impact on ethnic communities, but few studies have attempted to separate the unique impact of ethnic tourism from the overall impact of modernization and describe its mechanism clearly. This paper describes a quasi-natural experiment performed in three typical Dai villages in different stages of tourism development. A crosswise and longitudinal comparative study was performed on Dai village culture. The study indicates the following: (1) spiritual culture has been transmitted relatively unchanged across generations in three Dai villages, but material culture has undergone various degrees of change. (2) The changes in material culture and some parts of institutional culture have been caused primarily by the pressure of overall social modernization. (3) Currently, the overall thrust of modernization in mainstream Chinese society has driven some ethnic cultural practices out of use, while the endogenous driving force of tourism development in ethnic communities has pulled them back into use. (4) Under the influence of modernization, the issue of whether ethnic tourism communities can be developed in a sustainable way depends on both bottom-up and top-down factors: the leading role played by community elites internally, developing useful parts of ethnic culture and discarding useless parts during repeated games in the tourism field, and government policy and guidance facilitating planning.     

Isotopic Composition of Lead in Copper Ores and a Copper Artefact from the La Profunda Mine (León,Spain)

This paper continues the characterization of the lead isotopic fingerprint of ancient copper mines in the north‐west of Spain. In this work, the lead isotopic compositions found in copper ores from the La Profunda mine are presented. Azurites and malachites sampled from this deposit were subjected to lead isotope analysis by multicollector ICP–MS. The results showed a clear radiogenic lead signature compatible with the presence of uranium‐rich minerals (such as zeunerite) in the same mining complex. Moreover, a rare copper artefact, found in the galleries of the mine during its modern exploitation, was also analysed and showed that local mineral was used for its manufacturing.