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.     

Towards a countertopography of intimate war: contouring violence and resistance in a South Sudanese diaspora

Recent feminist geographic scholarship insists we rethink domestic violence as ‘intimate war’. Using this concept I analyze narratives of violence and resistance articulated by U.S.-resettled South Sudanese women and collected in the wake of a fatal incidence of domestic violence in 2005. One of a spate of intimate partner murders that shook the community at this time, this tragic event spurred debates about shifting gender norms, the stresses and opportunities of life in the diaspora, and the irradicable legacies of war. Bringing Pain and Staeheli's ‘intimacy-geopolitics’ to bear on this particularly violent, momentary and publicized aggression, I situate it within a more complex, quotidian, and dynamic terrain of power. In line with feminist political geography, this analysis complicates scalar distinctions of body, home and nation-state, demonstrating the common foundations of ‘private’, domestic and ‘public’, state-sanctioned violences. Inspired by Katz’s countertopographical approach, I extend our understanding of intimate war by contouring moments of violence and resistance in a diasporic context, over the lifecourse of refugee women, and across their sites of flight, displacement and resettlement. Tracing the mobilities of intimate war in this way productively reveals the spatial and temporal, as well as scalar, folds that may form part of its foundation.     

El purgatorio de un dictador: Crisis,memoria y narrativas iconoclastas

ABSTRACT

In the autumn of 2005, the museum of Vilafranca del Penedès (Catalonia, Spain) programmed a cycle of cultural events in order to commemorate the thirtieth anniversary of Francisco Franco's death. Among them, the performative one-piece exhibition Listen, Franco! The Purgatory for a Dictator showed a bronze sculpted bust of the dictator (belonging to the museum collection) and invited citizens to freely participate and “tell to him” all they would have liked to say if they had had the opportunity to. The unusual shape of the event and the high level of participation made the exhibition become a media success. However, a last-day surprising performance experience—as a result of which the bust was “vandalized” or, should I better say, “re-signified”—became a source of reflection about the boundaries between preservation and transmission of cultural heritage, as well as about museums as places for collective elaboration of public memory. This case appears as a catalyzer of a cultural crisis that exploded after 2008, and a prefiguration a new exhibition around another sculpture of the dictator, which took place in Barcelona in 2016.     

Linked (im)mobilities and the relational politics of movement in post-earthquake Nepal

ABSTRACT

This article highlights the importance of various (im)mobilities that were induced by the massive 7.8-magnitude earthquake that struck Nepal on 25 April 2015. It analyzes over 120 news articles published in the immediate aftermath of the earthquake, arranging these into a mobility-centric narrative that highlights the politics of movement in the disaster’s wake. Drawing on the theoretical and methodological “mobilities turn”, I introduce the concept of linked (im)mobilities to demonstrate the complex dialectics structuring (im)mobilities after the disaster. More specifically, Nepal’s post-earthquake (im)mobilities intersected with one another and with a variety of geographic and political factors to produce a mutually constitutive web of contingent movements. Attending to these not only underscores the centrality of (im)mobilities themselves. By raising questions of scale, inequality, bordering, and “islanding”, the approach advanced here widens our analytical frame. It offers a conceptual architecture capable of encompassing more factors (beyond mobility), thereby facilitating a broader understanding of the disaster event and its various outcomes.     

Towards Culture 3.0 – performative space in the public library

The aim of this article is to analyse and discuss the development of performative spaces in public libraries from a cultural policy perspective. First, a framework of three concepts of culture, 1.0–3.0, is used as a tool to analyse the overall development of public libraries. Against this background, we introduce the notion of performative spaces in public libraries by highlighting Nordic examples. The tendency can also be seen on a broader level in European and North American libraries, where a ‘performative turn’ can be seen as the relationship between the library and its users, especially the younger ‘digital natives’. The rationales behind the emergence of performative spaces in public libraries are analysed and discussed: democratisation, empowerment and economic impact. This article concludes that the performative spaces are legitimized by multiple rationales in the same way as cultural policies and cultural institutions are legitimised today.     

Economics and freedom of navigation in East Asia

Public calls for a more aggressive regional response to China’s pressing of its territorial claims in the South China Sea are typically couched in terms of the threat posed to freedom of navigation. Yet this invites an obvious question: If freedom of navigation, a vital interest for nearly every country in the region, is at risk, why has the regional response to China’s actions to date been so limited? This article argues that one compelling explanation lies in the economics of freedom of navigation in East Asia. Put simply, the risks of freedom of navigation being impeded are frequently overstated, and a more sober assessment of these risks can reduce the incentive that countries have to take more dramatic action.     

Brutalism Redux: Relational Monumentality and the Urban Politics of Brutalist Architecture

Brutalism is an architectural form that is experiencing somewhat of a revival of late. This revival focuses almost purely on its aesthetics, but there is an ethical dimension to Brutalism that often gets overlooked in these narratives. This paper therefore reanalyses the original concepts and ethics of brutalist architecture with a reaffirmation of the original triumvirate of brutalist ethics as articulated by Raynar Banham as monumentality, structural honesty and materials “as found”. The paper then articulates these through the literature on architectural affect to argue that brutalist ethics are continually “enacted” via a relational monumentality that brings the building and its inhabitants together in the practice of inhabitation. Using the case study of Robin Hood Gardens in London, the paper posits that a “brutalist politics” comes into light that can help catalyse a broader critique of contemporary neoliberalism.     

The equally “bad” French and English farmers of Quebec: New TFP measures from the 1831 census

New TFP estimates drawn from the neglected census of 1831 for Lower Canada are used to test the controversial (but still dominant) traditional “poor French farmers” explanation for a prolonged economic crisis. The new evidence shows that French-speaking areas were equally as productive as English-speaking areas, something that upturns the established consensus and reinforces the minority viewpoint that culture had little to do with the crisis. Using a broad range of controls, the researchers find that this conclusion is robust and that other variables such as settlement recency, environment, and economic structure were much more significant determinants of TFP. These results warrant the abandonment of the cultural explanation and a shift toward other explanatory channels.     

Struggling with child domestic work: what can a postcolonial perspective offer?

Majority World working children's voices have attained some prominence in debates over their well-being. Many have defended their right to work, challenging Minority World understandings of children's ‘best’ interests. Yet employers' voices remain sidelined, raising questions over the extent to which the discursive and material spaces of children's work have been decolonised. A postcolonial perspective on children's work challenges suggestions that Majority World adults (and societies) need western guidance on how children ought to be raised. It also creates opportunities to look beyond western discourses of economic exploitation, to the potential for more-than-economic relationships between working children and their employers.