Advancing culture’s role in sustainable development: social change through cultural policy

ABSTRACT

This paper examines the potential for cultural policy to shape sustainable development in the context of expectations arising from research and policy work on development. We use, as the basis of a critique, the categorisation of the relationship between culture and sustainable development proposed by a major study funded by the European Union, being emblematical of how researchers and policymakers understand this relationship. The critique highlights a need for multiscalar social change, towards revaluing relations with the natural world, and reforming social relations between producers and consumers. This paper locates cultural policy as an arm of governance, with the capacity to lead social change across several interdependent pathways (revaluing technological change; fostering an aesthetic appreciation and environmental ethical consciousness; and pro-social behaviour) alongside the development of more sophisticated governance frameworks. The paper further proposes that through (re)education, cultural policy can and should play a more active role in shaping social change.     

The quest for a traditional style: architecture and heritage processes in a Pyrenean valley

In this article, I focus on the construction and restoration of houses in the Catalan Pyrenees, on their materiality, and specifically on the relationship between architectural and heritage processes that shapes them. I provide an analysis of how architectural forms, norms and regulations, as well as building aesthetics and materials, were transformed in the past decades following a parallel process of changes in the region. The aim is to explore the relationship between the built environment and the cultural and economic shift of the area in recent times. Drawing on extensive ethnographic research conducted in a valley of the Catalan Pyrenees, I show how the material culture, architecture and built environment evolved in close relationship to the spread of heritage discourses leading to a mutually constituting association that helped shape the elements of the new social realities.     

A feminist-phenomenology of women’s activism against hydropower plants in Turkey’s Eastern Black Sea region

Taking a feminist-phenomenological perspective of the body, this article provides an empirically grounded analysis of the embodied subjectivity of women in the movement against hydropower plants (HPPs) in the culturally and spatially specific context of the Eastern Black Sea region of Turkey. Informed by a feminist engagement with Merleau-Ponty’s concepts of ‘the body-subject’, ‘the flesh’ and Einfühlung, the article places subjectivity within a relational ontology of sentience and intelligence in which corporeal experiences, senses and affects condition cognitive and agential processes. Bodily senses and affects are thus treated as media of subjectivity. The relationship between water and identity, established through memory, heritage and history, is also produced and/or conserved by the embodied relation between women’s bodies and bodies of water, within the connective ‘flesh’ of the physical world. The case of the Eastern Black Sea demonstrates how political subjectivity of women in the movement against HPPs is conditioned by an intimate embodied relationship with river waters that is sustained by a series of sensory-affective experiences. Their statements emphasize, over and over again, an interconnectedness with the rivers, which makes the cause of anti-HPP struggle vital and urgent for them. This feeling of urgency is a source of women’s radicalism in opposing HPPs. The article maintains the female subject as embodied and transversal, and stresses the centrality of corporeal experience, sense and affect in formation of political subjectivity. By developing a body-centred feminist-phenomenological approach to political subjectivity, it introduces a novel way of analysing women’s activisms within and beyond environmental movements.     

‘Culture’, ‘sustainable development’ and cultural policy: a contrarian view

Abstract

This essay offers a critical analysis of the ‘culture and sustainable development’ discourse, notably among cultural activists and in actually existing cultural policy. It interrogates the utility of the narrative, seeks to uncover the semantic manoeuvres it employs and challenges the conventional wisdom it represents. The essay first explores the itinerary of the ductile notion of ‘sustainability’, the ways in which it has been stretched far beyond the original intent of those who coined the term, and identifies the conceptual discontents that this semantic multiplication has entailed. It hypothesizes that precisely because the term ‘sustainable’ and its derivatives are so acceptable and malleable at the same time, they have been easy to yoke to the bandwagon of the many-faceted and totalizing process that is ‘development’, allowing many different actors to project their interests, hopes, and aspirations under this composite banner. The essay then analyses the campaign to make culture ‘the fourth pillar of sustainability’ under the banner of the movement called ‘Agenda 21 for Culture’. It concludes with a plea for a return to the original ecological focus of the term ‘sustainability’ – notably as regards climate change – and outlines some cultural policy responses such a focus can and should generate.     

The Past under the Shadow of the Present: The Case of the National Museum of Korean Contemporary History

The National Museum of Korean Contemporary History, which opened in 2012, has been the focus of a heated controversy between the progressive and conservative camps over the “proper” ways to represent South Korea’s turbulent history. I build on the relationship between heritage, collective memory and national identity, and argue that the division that typifies South Korean society has implications that extend beyond socio-political issues. Anchored within a broader discursive context, the museum became an important memory carrier involved in the process of debating the issue of national identity. Although no agreement has been reached regarding the “proper” historical narrative the site should exhibit, the museum has nevertheless offered an opportunity to shape a form of national identity that can embrace a more complex perspective on the country’s contemporary history. At present, though, this contentious site has demonstrated the extent to which the legacy of the conservative–progressive divide remains deep. I offer a discursive context that is useful for the study of current debates over heritage sites in South Korea, while the overall analysis illuminates the idea that the “present-centred” management of heritage in national museums can, potentially, play a part in the process of forming more intricate notions of national identity.     

故宫古建筑内温湿度问题初探

博物馆的环境应当相对稳定且有益于文物的保存。故宫博物院作为古建筑博物馆,其特殊性在于古建筑本身也是文物,虽然自身条件较差,但又不能随意改变其外观和结构,导致其保存环境往往不够理想。在研究中论述了故宫古建筑的环境特点,结合在古建筑内文物环境监测和控制方面的若干问题进行有益的探讨,对原状陈列的古建筑温湿度调控的应用效果进行了分析和评估,指出了存在的问题,并提出了对古建筑中环境控制的思考。采用密封性能优良的展柜配合适当的调湿材料可以很好地稳定相对湿度,减少温度变化对相对湿度造成的影响,这是当前国际上文物微环境控制的一个发展方向。     

经济行为与环境变化:清前期台湾野生鹿消失探析

鹿曾经是台湾数量最庞大的野生动物群之一。明末以来,随着台湾贸易交流的活跃,鹿成为大宗出口商品,土著居民由原先捕鹿作为民生用品逐渐发展至为市场服务;清前期大陆移民入台的农业垦殖又破坏了鹿原有的生态环境。人类经济行为引发的环境变化,最终导致了野生鹿在台湾渐趋消失。     

对古城自然-文化生态环境空间结构特质的研究--以青海省同仁(国家级)历史文化名城保护规划为例

本文研究的目标是以整体的观念、环境的观念、综合及多视角的观念为理论基础,运用系统(层次)构成分析法对特殊自然环境与文化背景下同仁历史文化名城的自然—文化生态环境空间结构特质进行研究,为古城的保护规划奠定基础,通过保护规划使古城的自然—文化生态环境空间结构特质得以保护与传承。     

出土青铜器是否带有原生“粉状锈”的探讨

“粉状锈”是一种危害性极强的锈蚀产物,本工作从铜的氯化物的生成和土壤环境两个方面入手,对其生成机理进行研究。研究结果表明,“粉状锈”并不是铜器在埋藏环境中直接形成的,而是在土壤中形成“病灶”———氯铜矿、氯化亚铜或两者的混合物放置于大气环境中逐渐转化而成。