Maps,Mapping, Modernity: Art and Cartography in the Twentieth Century

While the history of cartography has freed itself from debilitating debates over the scientific and artistic status of maps, considerations of the relationship between art and cartography have continued to focus largely on pre‐modern maps, avoiding critical examination of twentieth‐century art and science in cartography and leaving intact the impression that these followed distinct paths in the modern period. In this paper, however, I have drawn on theoretical work in Science Studies and taken account of modern art's separation from aesthetics to suggest that an examination of art and cartography in the twentieth century should focus on mapping practices rather than on maps as such. A summary overview of modern‐art movements and selected works indicates a continued, if critical, engagement of avant‐garde artists with cartography, and the examination of more popular newspaper artwork produced in the context of the intensely modern visual culture of mid‐twentieth century Los Angeles indicates a similarly close connection between modernity, art and cartography.     

Afghanada,or How to be a Good (Canadian) Soldier

The CBC radio show Afghanada, a “grunt’s-eye” view of the Canadian Forces’ deployment in Afghanistan (2006–2011), is one of the few fictionalized engagements with the conduct and consequences of the war. Despite its significance, Afghanada has only received limited critical attention and was usually interpreted as a symptom of the “militarization” of Canadian culture. This article argues that Afghanada is more adequately conceptualized as a cultural site where the most important issues brought up by war were negotiated and new boundaries of legitimacy and acceptability drawn. Afghanada tackles the question of combat versus peacekeeping as the primary task of the Canadian military, cooperation with the United States, and national unity. While the show extends the boundaries of societal acceptability by portraying combat as necessary, it also negotiates new limits within which combat is legitimate and enables multiple interpretations regarding the desirability and costs of the evolution of Canada’s military.     

Cultures of Incomprehension?: The Legacy of the Two Cultures Debate at the End of the Twentieth Century

This paper considers the impact of Snow's Two Culture's thesis on debates about the place of science and scientists in society in the latter part of the twentieth century. Debates concerned with the public understanding of science and the ‘science wars’, both of which relied to some extent on the dividing of society into ‘two cultures’, are contextualised within longer efforts by scientists to popularise definitions of science and society and their relationship with other epistemic communities. This paper argues that we should think about all these episodes as part of ongoing rhetorical boundary work, reflective of strains and stressors on science as an institution. The two cultures debate has provided one powerful rhetorical device, amongst many, for ongoing boundary work to establish or question science as the dominant form of knowledge in society and delineate who is allowed to speak for it, and wield its power.     

Women’s magazines and socioeconomic change: Para Ti,identity and politics in urban Argentina

Popular media plays an important role in the production and reproduction of hegemonic cultural norms, as well as in the construction of class and gender identities. Periods of economic crisis generate struggles over ways of understanding social reality that can destabilize or reinforce different identities. The media often plays an important role in the reconfiguration of identities. Expanding on these ideas, I conduct a discourse analysis of a women’s magazine to examine how popular media reflected and influenced shifting gender and class identities in Buenos Aires, Argentina between 1995 and 2008, a period of major socioeconomic change. By drawing attention to supposedly ‘non-political’ actors and spaces, I argue for expanding the range of sites we investigate in order to make sense of changing class and gender subjectivities during times of socioeconomic crisis.     

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.     

For the love of cuddly toys

ABSTRACT

This essay reflects upon a particular moment at the end of Chris Philo’s Children’s Geographies lecture [see Philo 2016. “‘Childhood is Measured Out by Sounds and Sights and Smells, Before the Dark Hour of Reason Grows’: Children’s Geographies at 12.” Children’s Geographies 14 (6): 623–640. doi:10.1080/14733285.2016.1187896], when discussion turned to cuddly toys. I recall a particular mood constituted in and by this moment: of apparent bashfulness, hesitancy, things-left-unsaid, and disinclination to discuss cuddly toys within the formal space of an academic conference. I suggest that this incident might be understood as indicative of three sets of silences which, still, characterise a great deal of work within the fantastically vibrant sub-disciplines of Children’s Geographies and Cultural Geographies. This argument is accompanied by photographic portraits of three particular toys: Angus, Arnold and the B.B.D. I hope that the presence of these portraits helps bring to the surface something of the often-silenced geographies – of memories, affects, intimacies and vulnerabilities, of play, fun and care, and of material and popular cultures – upon which my argument is focused.     

Cultural attraction, ‘soft power’ and proximity: the popularity of Japanese language in Hong Kong since the 1980s

This paper discusses the cultural attraction, ‘soft power’, and importance of cultural proximity to the popularity of the Japanese language in Hong Kong over the last three decades. Exploration of both primary and secondary sources constitutes the main research methodology employed. Email surveys and face-to-face interviews were undertaken to ascertain the nature and degree of the cultural attraction that stimulates local people's interest in learning Japanese language and culture. The paper concludes that Japan's ‘soft power’, i.e., popular culture and cultural products, are the most influential driving forces behind the popularity of Japanese language in Hong Kong. Also, the Japanese cultural proximity to the Chinese is another factor that excites local people's interest in learning Japanese as a foreign language. In the Hong Kong context, geopolitical and national identity factors do not seem to detract from the popularity of the Japanese language.     

I Watussi

The article reflects on the ‘absent connection’ between the fictional Watussi of the Italian hit song of 1963 and the real Tutsi, many of whom had fled Rwanda at that time to escape violence from the ascendant Hutu majority in the last years of Belgian rule. It considers the song's long afterlife and the stubborn persistence, decades later, of comic stereotypes of ‘Africans’ in Italian popular culture despite the growing number of African migrants and their children in Italian society.     

Material Culture and the Politics of Personality in Early Victorian England

This article uses the insights of material culture studies to explore the role of objects in the development of a politics of personality in the first half of the nineteenth century. Political objects were part of a broader material culture of fame and recognition in this period, encompassing a wide range of public figures such as royalty, military heroes and authors. These artefacts acquired agency, playing an important role in the construction of their subjects as recognizable public figures: an asset for popular politicians whose primary constituencies lay beyond the ranks of the enfranchised. By representing key moments in the public narrative of a politician's career, objects and other representations helped to cement the connection between individuals and the causes with which they were chiefly associated. Some objects, including jugs, teapots and other practical items, may have been used in the public performance of rituals of loyalty to a particular figure. Others, including the famous Staffordshire figurines, were designed for display in the home, becoming vehicles for the domestic re-enactment of public narratives and the performance or construction of personal loyalties and identities. The article concludes by considering the way in which objects associated with famous political figures, including autograph letters, signed prints or even more intimate objects such as locks of hair, could be used to forge real or imagined relationships between politicians and individual members of their wider public.     

寓乐于会:近代博览会与大众娱乐

近代博览会的兴起固然主要是源于商品经济与科技传播的需要,但大众娱乐文化又始终与各类博览会形影相随,成为其不可或缺的构成要素。大众娱乐是将博览会传播科技、文化功能与群众"找乐子"心态连接起来的最好形式之一,并使博览会能够吸引成千上万民众参与其中。近代中国举办的博览会充分借鉴了西方博览会的做法,加入了大量的娱乐活动,寓乐于会,寓教于乐。大众娱乐活动不仅丰富了博览会的内涵,增强了博览会对大众的吸引力,而且使博览会本身成为研究近代城市大众文化时不容忽视的重要内容之一。