Mephisto

This article explores the resonances of objects that travelled between continents and the entangled imaginaries tied to them – here a 30-tonne German military tank captured by Australian soldiers during the First World War in France and shipped to Brisbane to be exhibited at the Queensland Museum. The author ‘reads’ the tank, intriguingly named ‘Mephisto’, as the apotheosis of nature/culture divide entrenched in nineteenth-century colonialism, which exported the taxonomies of the Enlightenment to the antipodes and in return repatriated objects of flora and fauna all over Europe. Mephisto thus also marks the manifestation of a German–Australian modernity: developed from the agricultural tractor, the tank remains a brutal and clumsy device designed purely to subdue and conquer territory.     

Children as urbanites: mapping the affordances and behavior settings of urban environments for Finnish and Japanese children

Increasingly, children are residing in urban environments, yet little is known about the urban affordances for children. A place-based approach was employed to map the urban experiences of over 1300 children residing in Helsinki (Finland) and in Tokyo (Japan) in terms of meaningful places (affordances), travel mode and accompaniment to these places. Shared affordances were considered behavior settings, and audited on-site by trained experts for their main function, land use, openness, and communality. Significant differences were found between countries for all affordance categories. Although differences in behavior settings were observed between countries, a number of patterns emerged: outdoor settings and those with shared communality were the most prevalent behavior settings, traffic settings were predominantly evaluated negatively and commercial and indoor settings most positively. Findings suggest that although the context is important, independent mobility and the possibility to actualize environmental affordances seem to be fundamental in both contexts as the key criteria for environmental child-friendliness.     

博物馆经典藏品资源的文创产品开发——以曾侯乙编钟文创系列产品的开发为例

对博物馆经典藏品进行复制,或者萃取其文化元素开发衍生产品,一直为博物馆所重视。这类复制品从传播效应、经济效应、市场价值、文化价值和创意内涵诸方面都体现出"文创产品"的性质,应该纳入"文创产品"市场予以定位、规划。湖北省博物馆对馆藏经典藏品曾侯乙编钟开发了七大类百余个品种的文创系列产品,它们既体现了藏品原型的价值和精髓,也具有保护、研究和实用价值。目前我国博物馆文创事业还需要在经典藏品资源的研究、市场研发人才的培养、衍生品系列的完善、跨界同质资源的整合以及复制品制作单位资质的把控等方面加大推进的步伐。     

The importance of location and scale in rural and small town tourism product development: The case of the Canadian Fossil Discovery Centre,Manitoba, Canada

This paper begins with a review of the literature on tourism in rural economies, to establish a framework for analyzing large‐scale tourism products in rural and small town regions. The review is followed by the development of a typology of large‐scale attractions in rural and small town regions, including parks, casinos, events, heritage, and cultural products. The typology leads into the example of the Canadian Fossil Discovery Centre (CFDC) in Manitoba, Canada. Located in an agricultural region of south‐central Manitoba, the community of Morden is located 125 km from the provincial capital city, Winnipeg, which had a population of 811,900 in 2016. Morden is also located 35 km north of the border with North Dakota. Thus, while a small town in a traditionally rural region still dependent upon an agricultural economic base, Morden has been recently successful in diversifying its economy, including through manufacturing, services, hospitality, and tourism. In part, this success is due to a south‐central Manitoba location; however, it is also the result of innovative local leadership, including the prioritization of hospitality and tourism related to the CFDC. This paper describes the case study as an example of successful tourism development within an already economically and socially diversifying region.     

国外儿童独立活动性研究进展与启示

儿童独立活动性是衡量儿童自主活动能力的重要指标,提升儿童独立活动性对于增加儿童体力活动量、减少肥胖几率、促进社会交往等具有积极作用。本文梳理了国外学者对于儿童独立活动性的研究成果,介绍了儿童独立活动性的基本概念,从理论模型与实证研究两方面总结了儿童独立活动性的影响因素与作用机制,整理了其测量指标与具体方法,并归纳了相关实践研究。在此基础上,文章指出了现有研究在影响机制、测度方法以及理论向实践转化方面的不足,并提出了对我国的启示内容,以期为我国提供借鉴。     

Urban homesteading and intensive mothering: (re) gendering care and environmental responsibility in Boston and Chicago

In this article, we explore how normative ideologies of good mothering are being reproduced and contested through urban homesteading, a sustainable lifestyle that emphasizes household self-provisioning. Urban homesteading practices may include gardening and urban agriculture, canning, and pickling, and a variety of do-it-yourself and craft projects. Based on qualitative research with 19 urban homesteading households with children in the Boston and Chicago Metropolitan areas, we argue that urban homesteading discourses and practices reflect and align with intensive mothering ideologies in the United States. Intensive mothering ideologies encourage a selfless devotion of physical, emotional, and mental energy to childrearing, and are often associated with individualized, privileged, and gendered subjectivities. We find these intensive mothering ideologies especially visible in the ways that mothers perceive and respond to environmental risk by adopting and enacting urban homesteading labors. We also note that the choice to respond to risk by homesteading is often, but not always, mediated and animated by economic, temporal, and social privilege. In this way, urban homesteading and surrounding discourses may inadvertently raise the bar of ‘good’ motherhood in ways that demand more of women and marginalize or burden mothers with less resources and privilege. However, rather than dismiss homesteading entirely on these grounds, we suggest that it may be possible to harvest impulses of care, connection, and collectivity associated with homesteading in ways that benefit rather than burden all mothers.     

By the People,for the People. The Case of a Community Museum of Traumatic Greek Heritage

Abstract

This article will delineate the history and activities of the Museum of Political Exiles of Ai Stratis in Greece. The museum was founded in the 1980s by a group of former inmates who were banished in the North Aegean island of Ai Stratis, a site of political confinement between 1920s and 1960s. Since its inception, the museum has aspired to be a platform of communication, a place of healing that is by the people for the people. The aim here is to examine how this was achieved and what lessons have been learned from the endeavours of an organization that deals with a rather traumatic chapter of modern Greek history. Emphasis will be placed especially on what role the subjects of history have assumed in the design of the permanent exhibition and the educational and cultural activities.     

‘Born in an atomic test tube’: landscapes of cyclonic development at Uranium City,Saskatchewan

Drawing together insights from neo‐Innisian geography and environmental history, this paper explores the landscape and environmental changes engendered by ‘cyclonic’ patterns of development associated with uranium production at Uranium City, Saskatchewan. Strong postwar demand for uranium led to the establishment and rapid expansion of Uranium City on the north shore of Lake Athabasca as a ‘yellowcake town’, dedicated to producing uranium oxide concentrate to supply federal government contracts with the US military. In spite of optimistic assessments for the region's industrial future, the new settlement remained inherently unstable, tied to shifting institutional arrangements and external markets, and haunted by the spectre of resource depletion. The planning and development of the townsite at Uranium City reflected both neocolonial desires to open the north to Euro‐Canadian settlement and efforts by the state to buffer the stormy effects of resource dependency. Ultimately, however, quixotic government efforts to implant an outpost of industrial modernity in the Athabasca Region failed to forestall the inevitable winds of change, which left in their wake destructive legacies of social dislocation and environmental degradation, already evident with the near‐collapse of the uranium export market by the early 1960s.     

Palaeolithic engravings and sedimentary environments in the Côa River Valley (Portugal): implications for the detection,interpretation and dating of open-air rock art

The pre-Magdalenian phase of the Côa River Valley open-air rock art is mostly distributed at the boundary between the rocky valley slopes and the floodplain that correspond to the most favourable geomorphological setting for the preservation of pecked and deeply superposed engravings of the most famous artistic phase of the area. The natural vertical panels of the engraved art located at this geomorphological interface have suffered weathering during two cold events of the Lateglacial. They were buried by several colluvial and alluvial deposits. The reconstruction of the sedimentary and archaeological context of the CôaRiver Valley engraving permits a better assessment of the preservation processes and interpretation of Palaeolithic open-air rock art.     

博物馆与青少年教育

教育是博物馆的职能之一。博物馆在青少年教育方面具有独特优势。我国博物馆界在青少年教育方面发挥了重大作用,但总体还处于探索阶段和不平衡状态,在以人为本、网络宣传、志愿者组织及经费投入等方面还存在诸多不足,需要从完善服务、因人施教、鼓励参与、创新陈列展览、发展网络教育、拓宽资金来源渠道等方面着力加强与完善新时期博物馆的青少年教育职能。