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.     

Reactionary modernism: Technology,culture, and politics in Weimar and the Third Reich

Scholarship on European imperialism in the Americas has become increasingly prominent in the historiography of early America after a long period when the subject was hardly discussed. Historians have come to see that local experience in the Americas needs to be placed in a wider, comparative Atlantic context. They have realised that what united most peoples’ experiences in the Americas was that they lived as colonial subjects within colonies that were part of imperial polities. This article examines recent writings on European empires in the Americas, relating imperial history to related developments in fields such as Atlantic history. It suggests that renewed attention to imperialism allows historians to discuss in a fruitful fashion the relationship between power and authority in the formation of colonial societies and draws attention to the continuing importance of metropolitan influence in the articulation of colonial identities.     

Enthusiasm,craft and authenticity on the High Street: micropubs as ‘community fixers’

The retail recession has left a legacy of vacant shops on many shopping streets, with closures having significant consequences for local populations. But several new ‘pop-up’ formats are bucking this trend by bringing community-oriented forms of consumption back to the High Street. The micropub is a notable example, a small-scale venue selling real ale that has taken over a vacant shop premise, usually in smaller and struggling town centres. The rapid take-up of the micropub concept has attracted considerable attention, suggesting a model for retail regeneration based on community-mindedness and a close relationship between owner and customer. Based on ethnographic research in micropubs, alongside interviews with landlords, this paper suggests that their success is dependent upon the enthusiasm of landlords and customers alike, with such ‘cultures of enthusiasm’ encouraged via the nostalgic motifs of craft, tradition and Britishness that inform the curation of these seemingly ‘authentic’ spaces. The paper concludes that the micropub offers a form of socially-connective consumption highly valued by some, but stresses that there are clear limits to the ability of such spaces to be ‘community fixers’ given enthusiasm for real ale remains a distinctly white, male, and middle-aged pursuit.     

Unfolding various academic mobility experiences of Southeast Asian women

This article draws on data from a qualitative research study undertaken with the main aim of investigating the issue of the gender dimension of the academic mobility of Southeast Asian women. Our research describes Southeast Asian women’s experiences of mobility, narrating why they choose to be mobile, how the experience of going abroad was responded to and/or rejected by their family, how they experienced life in a different country, and what evaluations they make about these experiences in personal, familial, and professional terms. The article stresses the need to improve the understanding of the factors that are still determining the chances of women to be mobile and obtain fruitful gains from these experiences. For this to be attained, the article follows through an intersectional approach to mobility, considering it is of much use as it allows to comprehend that the disadvantages associated with gender are cumulative, multi-layered, resulting from effects of several variables, including of the emotional, social, economic, and political contexts.     

循环消费与可持续发展

循环消费作为循环经济的重要组成部分,是可持续发展的必然要求,又表现出对可持续发展的重大意义。循环消费还没有成为人们的消费习惯,是因为还有消费产品、消费意识等方面的障碍,问题的解决,要从循环消费作为一个动态的过程去解决。     

Developing External Links through Teaching and Learning in Geography and Environmental Science: The use of the mini-conference

A student-led mini-conference has been used as a means of developing employer links. The one-day conference forms part of a final-year module in the Department of Geography at Edge Hill and involves the participation of external agencies. Links with the world of work, the enhancement of student learning and the promotion of regional research are reported. It is suggested that the conference could be used successfully in a variety of subject disciplines.     

The atomic meal: The cold war and irradiated foods, 1945–1963

Following World War II, food technologists in the US participated in an Army‐led program to develop food irradiation technology. The program involved over 120 military, government, industrial, and academic institutions. Focusing on the MIT Department of Food Technology, I trace the networks that formed between these groups and their motivations for developing the technology. I argue that food irradiation was Cold War science directed towards the development of a consumer product, and that it highlighted the links between large‐scale military‐funded research and consumers' everyday lives. I suggest that researchers advocated for irradiation not because the technology produced better processed food, but because the development of the technology produced a number of valuable benefits for the researchers. These included increases in funding, materials, and prestige.     

越南“中国改革开放30年的成就与经验”国际研讨会综述

2008年12月16日,由越南社会科学院中国研究所主办的"中国改革开放30年的成就与经验"国际研讨会在越南河内举行。来自越南、日本以及中国内地和香港地区的专家学者共向研讨会提交论文21篇。与会者就中国改革开放30年的基本经验,以及改革开放在中国经济特区发展、地方经济建设、社会、文化、教育和对外关系等领域取得的成就与经验进行了广泛的交流。     

‘The languor of the hot weather’: everyday perspectives on weather and climate in colonial Bombay, 1819–1828

This study provides an historical perspective on everyday experiences of weather and climate, through an analysis of the diaries of two colonial figures in Bombay, western India, in the 1820s: Mountstuart Elphinstone (the then Governor) and Lucretia West (the wife of the Chief Justice). The paper explores the ways in which climate impacted upon their daily routine and health, and discusses evidence for the influence of wider climatic narratives within their writings. Climate played a dominant and complex role within colonial discourse, providing both a barrier to colonisation, and a justification for European governance over populations that had become ‘degenerate’ through their exposure to tropical climates. Both of the diaries evidence this influence of climate within the colonists’ daily lives, but demonstrate the differing responses to climate based on the two diarists’ social positions. Mountstuart Elphinstone, in particular, had a strong sense of the impact of climate upon his health, in keeping with contemporary medical beliefs equating climate with physical wellbeing. The paper provides evidence of the evolution of acclimatisation discourse during the early nineteenth century, and suggests that European beliefs concerning tropical climates were changing simultaneously within both the medical establishment and the wider colonial community. The paper also explores the medical excursions that the diarists took to towns in the Western Ghats. It is apparent that their experiences of the climate in such towns were influenced by their prior expectations, a theme which resonates with discourses of climate in our own times.     

In here and out there: Sensations between Self and landscape

Early childhood experience of Self in relation to Other may profoundly influence subsequent perception and experience of landscape as an adult. Yet, these past and present spatial relationships are often held in unconscious levels of the psyche, which are difficult to articulate when approached by conventional qualitative methods. Engaging with psychotherapeutic methodologies has proved highly productive in facilitating adults to connect with and articulate their perception of landscape. In this paper I demonstrate the application of object relations psychoanalytic theory in qualitative research undertaken to explore the complexities of the influence of gender identity on landscape perception in adults. I draw on D.W. Winnicott's theory of 'potential space', as the location of culture, to develop a methodology that focuses on sensory experience, in particular the tactile. In this way participants were facilitated to access early regressed spaces whilst staying connected with present experience. Reporting on a series of practical workshops, used alongside in-depth interviewing techniques, I show how it is possible to examine the complex conscious and unconscious relationships at different sensory levels between Self and landscape.