Middle of nowhere: contesting rural heritage at the World Famous Gopher Hole Museum

Abstract

The World Famous Gopher Hole Museum in Torrington, Alberta, Canada, is a rural museum located in a relatively isolated hamlet of less than 200 people. Inside the museum, small diorama boxes feature taxidermied gophers dressed in tiny clothing and posed as townspeople dining in restaurants, shooting pool and chatting at a beauty parlour, among other activities. Drawing on methods stemming from critical museum theory, critical rural studies and critical heritage studies, this article analyzes the ways in which both local residents and visitors from outside the region understand the museum, considering why it is indeed world famous, attracting over 5000 international tourists each year. It argues that the Gopher Hole Museum succeeds in part because its organisers are active agents who take pride in the museum without attempting to refute the sometimes negative responses to it, or control the ways in which outsiders interpret it. The museum in Torrington is a complex ‘open text’ that both employs and critiques the conventional methods used in natural history and heritage museums to offer multiple narratives about childhood, heritage and rural life, addressing local people as well as tourists.     

Student experiences of multidisciplinarity in the undergraduate geography curriculum

This paper explores the student experience of multidisciplinarity within the undergraduate Geography curriculum. It considers the drivers that have underpinned this development before considering the findings of research into student experiences in two universities in the south of England. The results suggest that most students view this development positively and recognize a number of advantages that it brings, citing expanded opportunities for learning, working with people from other disciplines, expansion of perspectives and perceived benefits to employability. However, for a minority this development is more problematic. The research points here to issues with specialist knowledge and disciplinary pedagogies, social issues within the classroom and class organization and some reservations regarding groupwork. The paper concludes with a series of recommendations.     

Guerra civile: experience,memory and contrasting histories of the Resistance in Italy

This article examines the disagreement between two partisans turned historians, Nuto Revelli and Claudio Pavone, on the legitimacy of the term ‘civil war’ to describe the Italian Resistance of 1943–1945. ‘Civil war’ is a controversial term in Italian and European discussions of World War II. Accordingly, ‘civil war’ provokes a study of the intersection of ideology and ethics, experiential memory and history in postwar Europe. But why should Revelli and Pavone, two men who had been on the same side during the Resistance, see things so differently? This article demonstrates that each historian’s experience before and during World War II shaped their participation in the Resistance and their subsequent representation of it. Consequently, their divergent experiences offer an explanation as to why Pavone argues that the Resistance was a civil war and Revelli argues that it was not, without relativizing in political and ethical analysis.     

博物馆电化教育的功能和作用

本文在阐述博物馆教育职能与社会公众受教群体紧密相关的基础上,对博物馆电化教育、电教技术以及现代电化教育媒体进行讨论分析,阐明了博物馆目前应该如何有效利用传统视听媒体和计算机网络等,充分发挥博物馆的宣传教育职能,为历史唯物主义和爱国主义教育做出更大贡献.     

旅游人力资源发展——21世纪的一项艰巨任务

重视旅游人力资源的规划,发展旅游业生力军,将是我国旅游业迈入新世纪的一项,艮巨任务。本就此分析了旅游人力资源发展的动因并提出对策。     

我对区域经济地理学的认识与几点实践体会

本文介绍了作者近半个世纪从事经济地理,尤其是区域经济地理学习、教学和科学研究实践的历程,对区域经济地理学科理论与实践的探索,是作者一生的主要学术活动领域。文中介绍了作者在区域经济地理研究中五个方面的贡献,总结了在教学与科学研究实践中的四点切身体会。科学的事业是万古长青的,建设具有中国特色的区域经济地理学科理论体系和方法论体系,还任重而道远,还须有志者进行长期艰苦的努力。作者的学习、教学与科学实践经历对青年学者或许有一定的借鉴作用。     

The Honours Year—A Reflection on the Experience from Four Former Students

An honours year is an introduction to new relationships with supervisors, fellow students, research participants and, importantly, yourself. This paper is based upon the experiences of four former Australian honours students who felt there was a distinct lack of guidance for first-time researchers in the available academic literature. In this paper, we explore the research experiences, processes and relationships that characterize the honours year including, working with theoretical frameworks and the student–supervisor relationship, providing examples from our own experience. We conclude by considering the ethical implications of the research and the power and ethical obligations of the researcher.     

湖北省博物馆观众行为调查报告

博物馆观众行为,主要是指观众在博物馆环境中带有目的性的行动的连续集合。观众行为的跟踪调查和定点观察,是博物馆观众研究的重要手段。湖北省博物馆"曾侯乙墓展览"的观众行为、参观时间、展品参观率、博物馆标识利用率等的调查研究和统计分析,折射出博物馆在展线安排、服务设施等对外服务方面的大致情况,可以为我国博物馆开展观众服务提供可资借鉴的参考数据和建议。     

Foucault and museum geographies: a case study of the English ‘Renaissance in the Regions’

This paper explores the subject of museum geographies, focusing particularly on the development of museum policies in a changing political context. The empirical focus is the emergence and transformation of the museum programme Renaissance in the Region, which is linked to the concepts of primary, secondary and tertiary spatialisations presented by Michel Foucault. The paper discusses the development of the programme and how it transformed aspects of the primary, secondary and tertiary spatialisations of museums in England, before focusing attention on the geography of school visits to museums. The results of two extensive studies of school visits to museums in the programme suggest that large numbers of visits come from schools located in areas with high indices of multiple deprivation and income deprivation affecting children. It is argued that this social geography reflects the tertiary spatialisation of museums linked to their emergence in areas of past industrial development, although practices linked to reconfigurations of the primary and secondary spatialisation as part of the Renaissance in the Regions programme may also have played some role. The paper concludes by discussing recent changes in government policy and the degree to which the ‘New Renaissance’ policy may signify reductions in the social reach of museums into areas of social deprivation and exclusion.     

Ova collection in Japan – making visible women's experience in male spaces

The role of women is essential in embryo creation and donation, as they undergo in vitro fertilisation (IVF) treatment for ova collection. Yet, it has often been pointed out that in the process of embryo donation women's role is largely neglected, as if embryos come from nowhere. The procedure of embryo donation in Japan is a case in point. During field research in Japan, we found that women were of the view that the procedures of embryo donation are inhuman, cold and harsh, while specialists said that no value is attached to embryos in Japan and that women have no scruples about donating them. This article explores the cause of the gap in the perception of experiences of ova collection between women and IVF specialists. Our primary source of data was interview narratives with women undergoing IVF, IVF specialists, nurses, counsellors and policy makers. Field research was conducted in 2006–2008. We analysed the process and the ways in which women's experiences of ova collection become invisible in Japanese socio-cultural contexts, including marriage, households and motherhood values in Japan. Our analysis critically draws on Marxist feminist theories, which enabled us to discuss the link among the production of embryos and ova, reproduction, ownership and gender. This theoretical framework also enabled us to view the case of Japan, paying particular attention to historical perspectives and specific cultural forms.