Sculptures in captivity and monkeys on megaliths: Observations in zoo archaeology

Abstract

This paper reconsiders some aspects of displays at archaeological open-air museums and heritage sites by looking in some detail at how wild animals are presented in zoological gardens. Topics discussed include the historic and current functions of collecting ancient artefacts, the various appeals of different artefacts and displays, trends in attracting visitors, the significance of systematics and typology, narratives reflected in the overall exhibition design, and the role of displaying artefacts in a specific ‘culral’ context. I argue that we should learn from zoos by placing a stronger emphasis on sensory experiences and visitor satisfaction in order to convey the ‘magic’ of the past.     

Teaching Global and Social Justice as Transgressive Spaces of Possibility

Abstract: In this article I reflect on introducing critical pedagogy into social justice teaching in an elite UK university as part of the Nottingham Critical Pedagogy Project. I de‐essentialise Freire's conceptualisation of the human subject and her desire for transcendence with the introduction of Deleuze and Guattari's politics of desire. This enables an adaption of critical pedagogy from its original context of popular politics to the individualised elite setting of our project. Our pedagogical objectives become the opening of spaces of possibility which decentre the dominant regime of truth of the neoliberal university and enable imagining and becoming “other”. This involves disrupting normal patterns of classroom performativity in terms of student as consumer and lecturer as producer of commodities, transgressing dualisms between mind/body, intellectual/emotional and teacher/student. Our pedagogical praxis is therefore inherently political as by radically disturbing commodified subjectivities we foster processes that lead to unanticipated, maybe even unspeakable, transgressions.     

传统教育与网络教育的差异性分析

教育不是从来就有的社会现象,而是人类进化和社会发展到一定历史阶段的产物。自近代以来,传统教育几乎成为我国正规教育的唯一形式,而网络教育的兴起却突破了这一传统的模式。传统教育与网络教育在教育理念和方法等诸多方面有其差异性及特点。通过对其特点及差异性的分析研究,能够使传统教育与网络教育发挥各自的优势并实现有机融合,以优化和促进教育发展。     

‘Unclaimed territory’: childhood and disordered space(s)

This paper explores adult discourses in literary references which revolve around the relationship between childhood and disordered space. This association is often constructed as a positive expression of the romantic innocence of childhood and nature, but it can also be construed as negative in cases where ‘little devils’ are let loose in hazardous urban settings. The complex dynamics of disorder relating to childhood are discussed in terms of the disorders both of nature and of injustice. The paper argues that childhood needs to be conceptualized less in terms of innocence and more in terms of otherness. Disordered spaces in these terms represent territories of becoming-other, where rhizomatic scrambling of adult-ordered striated space makes room for upwellings of the immanent othernesses of children.     

Being a tourist as a chosen experience in a proximity destination

ABSTRACT

Being a tourist is not a passive attitude. It is the result of a conscious decision essentially based on how individuals build what they perceive as unknown and how they decide to get to know it. In other words, tourists deliberately create a distance with the destination which allows them to enjoy the tourist experience as something exceptional. This paper is part of ongoing research and focuses on the subjective construction of the otherness, since this process determines what is left to be discovered. First, a theoretical overview will introduce the concepts of usual environment, proximity and tourist. Then, we will focus on guided tours as a mechanism of mediation between individuals and places. Finally, we will move on to the case of Barcelona's walking tours and the local participants’ experience as a way to adopt a tourist's approach. Preliminary results show, first, four categories of experience of proximate guided tours: educational, expert, recreational and tourist. Then, they focus on the proximity tourist experience using Urry and Larsen's notion of the ‘tourist gaze’ and Tuan's theory on the tourist and the resident's points of view. According to these theories, participants’ motivations and their individual frame of reference define a tourist's point of view. Based on that, results show that proximity tourists and traditional tourists share curiosity as motivation but do not have the same points of reference. In spite of that, the feeling of proximity with the destination does not constitute a barrier to become a tourist. It is the conscious adoption of the tourist's role which makes the individual gaze upon the visited areas like a tourist, regardless of the proximity with the environment. This approach of proximity tourism constitutes a way to enhance familiar places and develop tourism in an environmentally concerned context where proximate destinations are being promoted.     

Introduction: proximity and intraregional aspects of tourism

ABSTRACT

Tourism research often tends to overlook both the mundane of the exotic and the exotic of the everyday. However, when acknowledging that exoticism is not necessarily linked to geographical distance, it is similarly possible to attribute touristic otherness to and experience unfamiliarity in a geographically proximate environment. This entails a need to rethink the intertwining relationships of meanings of the exotic and the mundane, as well as the ways people make meaning of their everyday environment through processes of territorialization and identification in a tourism context. Following this idea, these articles focus on the intraregional scale level and on the concept of proximity as a way of studying meanings and practices of tourism near home. In an attempt to strengthen the momentum of proximity tourism research, a double session (sponsored by the Geography of Leisure and Tourism Research Group) was organized during the Royal Geographical Society (RGS)-IBG (Institute of British Geographers) Annual International Conference which took place in September 2015 at the University of Exeter (UK). The sessions form the basis of this collection of articles, in which various aspects of proximity and intraregional tourism are discussed.     

Re‐evaluating otherness in genocidal ideology

Ideas of otherness in both nationalism and genocide studies do not sufficiently explain genocidal levels of policy and ideological development, nor do they help identify groups that may be selected in the future for this particular kind of destruction. This article sets out to introduce the typology of ‘anti‐nation’ to the dialogue of nationalism studies in order to more aptly identify prospective groups at risk of future possible genocidal aggression. This article looks to the Armenian genocide to provide analysis for a greater understanding of the way radicalising ideology evolves regarding the anti‐nation during the early years of identity development in states radicalising towards genocide.     

Grasslands as transitional spaces of play: Mongol children’s reimagination of the world in cinematic representation

ABSTRACT

This article examines children’s geographies in cinematic representation. It argues that cinematic landscape that intimates what D. W. Winnicott conceives as ‘transitional space’ contributes to a cinematic rendering of the otherness of childhood. Taking the Chinese movie Mongolian Ping-Pong (2005, dir. Ning Hao) as a case study, this article illustrates how the cinematic space of the grasslands is transformed into multiple transitional spaces of play for the Mongol child protagonists owing to the filmmaker’s employment of cinematic landscape, while a ping-pong ball discovered by one of the children becomes their ‘transitional object’. In transitional spaces, the children safely and creatively manipulate cultural resources of diverse scales to understand the social-cultural identity of the ball. Consequently, their unique vision of the world unfolds. The filmmaker’s cinematic treatment reveals his celebration of the children’s creativity. He sympathises that they cannot escape from acculturation once they start formal schooling in a Han-dominated society.