Drawing on anthropological fieldwork, this book presents case studies illustrating the re-conceptualization of heritages and traditions in selected locations in Africa, Asia, Australia and Europe. The authors review the importance of oral traditions as markers of identity and consider competing narratives of heritage in postcolonial societies.
Dancing at the crossroads used to be young people ́s opportunity to meet and enjoy themselves on mild summer evenings in the countryside in Ireland - until this practice was banned by law, the Public Dance Halls Act in 1935. Now a key metaphor in Irish cultural and political life, ́dancing at the crossroads ́ also crystallizes the argument of this book: Irish dance, from Riverdance (the commercial show) and competitive dancing to dance theatre, conveys that Ireland is to be found in a crossroads situation with a firm base in a distinctly Irish tradition which is also becoming a prominent part of European modernity. Helena Wulff is Associate Professor of Social Anthropology at Stockholm University. Publications include Twenty Girls (Almqvist & Wiksell International, 1988), Ballet across Borders (Berg, 1998), Youth Cultures (co-edited with Vered Amit-Talai, Routledge, 1995), New Technologies at Work (co-edited with Christina Garsten, Berg, 2003). Her research focusses on dance, visual culture, and Ireland.
The Coach Fellas are known to almost all tourists who traverse the Irish countryside. Ostensibly bus drivers, they are also the tour guides who provide the crucial component in the branding of “people, place, and pace” upon which Irish heritage tourism depends. Kelli Costa’s ethnography of these highly trained and informed working class men highlights a previously ignored component of the tourism industry. She also demonstrates their importance in providing a visitor-specific vision of heritage that contrasts with the realities of contemporary economic development.
Analysing the transformation of Berlin’s former Allied border control point, "Checkpoint Charlie," into a global heritage industry, this volume provides an introduction to, and a theoretically informed structuring of, the interdisciplinary international heritage debate. This crucial case study demonstrates that an unregulated global heritage industry has developed in Berlin which capitalizes on the internationally very attractive – but locally still very painful – heritage of the Berlin Wall. Frank explores the conflicts that occur when private, commercial interests in interpreting and selling history to an international audience clash with traditional, institutionalized public forms of local and national heritage-making and commemorative practices, and with the victims’ perspectives. Wall Memorials and Heritage illustrates existing approaches to heritage research and develops them in dialogue with Berlin’s traditions of conveying history, and the specific configuration of the heritage industry at "Checkpoint Charlie". Productively integrating theory with empirical evidence, this innovative book enriches the international literature on heritage and its economic and political contexts.
An integrative Heimatkunde – defined as the holistic study of localities and regions – has been a core interest in Ullrich (aka Ulli) Kockel’s research since he first graduated with a double primary in 1984. Frequently described as an interdisciplinary – and sometimes undisciplined – academic, his research draws liberally on art, geography, human ecology, philosophical anthropology, political economy, and social anthropology, with its primary focus located in the field of Empirical Cultural Science / European ethnology. The contributions to this collection celebrate Ulli’s explorations of place and belonging at different junctures on his quest for Heimatkunde. Laid out in four thematic sections – Borders, Regions and Frontiers; Human Ecology; Creative Ethnology; and, Memories – they feature creative work along with research essays. Given Ulli’s love of cooking and food, we describe our offering as a ‘feast-script’.
This volume provides a key analysis of Asian children’s literature and film and creates a dialogue between East and West and between the cultures from which they emerge, within the complex symbiosis of their local, national and transnational frameworks. In terms of location and content the book embraces a broad scope, including contributions related to the Asian-American diaspora, China, India, Indonesia, Iran, Japan, Malaysia, the Philippines, South Korea, Sri Lanka, and Taiwan. Individually and collectively, these essays broach crucial questions: What elements of Asian literature and film make them distinctive, both within their own specific culture and within the broader Asian area? What aspects link them to these genres in other parts of the world? How have they represented and shaped the societies and cultures they inhabit? What moral codes do they address, underpin, or contest? The volume provides further voice to the increasingly diverse and fascinating output of the region and emphasises the importance of Asian art forms as depictions of specific cultures but also of their connection to broader themes in children’s texts, and scholarship within this field.
Planning is described as being increasingly sidelined by the impacts of neo-liberal restructuring. At the same time, 'culture' is nowadays seen as the world's key intellectual resource possessing new creative weight in sociological, economic and environmental terms. This book argues that, in the light of this cultural turn, there is the opportunity to re-position planning and proposes an original, practical and robust system of 'culturisation'. Culturisation is defined as the ethical, critical and reflexive integration of culture into planning and potentially other areas such as public administration, corporate strategy and development thinking. Cultural theory, planning theory, global governance policy and recent, innovative culturised practices are all explored to this end. The new theoretical and practical approach put forward shows how deeper, richer and more relevant ideas about culture can be utilized in planning, and is illustrated with international examples and two major case studies detailing new vistas for a refurbished planning.
The negotiation of expectations in tourism is a complex and dynamic process – one that is central to the imagination of cultural difference. Expectations not only affect the lives and experiences of tourists, but also their hosts, and play an important part in the success or failure of the overall tourism experience. It is for this reason, the authors argue, that special attention should be given to how expectations constitute and sustain tourism. The case studies presented here explore what fuels the desires to visit particular places, to what degree expectations inform the experience of the place, and the frequent disjunctions between tourist expectations and experiences. Careful attention is paid to how the imagination of the visitor inspires the imagination of the host, and vice-versa; how tourists and host communities actively imagine, re-imagine, and shape each other’s lives. This realization, has profound consequences, not solely for academic analysis, but for all those who participate in and work within the tourism industry.
This book contributes to the growing scientific literature on ‘intangible cultural heritage’ – determined by UNESCO to be particularly worthy of safeguarding and transmission – by advancing a theoretical-analytical framework for the (in)tangible cultural heritage of dance. By exploring the potential of the ‘intangible materiality’ of dance practice the book argues that implementing the concept of a ‘performative dance-archive’ creates a new analytic field: research in praxis. The concept of the ‘performative dance-archive’ draws out the potential for safeguarding and transmission of dance heritage, but also the challenges of the opposition between living heritage and the codifying of cultural inventories. This book uses the formal and contextual transformation of Argentine tango and German modern dance to discuss this ambiguity of intangible heritage and how the “performative dance-archive” creates a cognitive, empractical approach to determine, archive, and distribute dance knowledge. This is a timely methodological intervention in the context of the increasing importance of the intangible cultural heritage. It enables us to re-revise the concept of (im)materiality and the specific knowledges within cultural practice as a necessary fundamental category for research-processes and societal growth. This book is directed both to researchers in the field of intangible cultural heritage and to practitioners and researchers searching for new ways of investigating methods and perspectives to understand 'immaterial materialities'.
As globalization proceeds at an ever increasing and more unrelenting pace, relations among the world’s religions are taking on both a new visibility and a new urgency. Christian theologians and others intent on innovative formulations in the theology of religions are making interreligious dialogue with non-Christians a priority. One way to promote creative scholarship in this quest is to tap into interdisciplinary resources, and the author of this volume is uniquely qualified to do so since he holds graduate degrees in both theology and cultural anthropology. Refuge in Crestone: A Sanctuary for Interreligious Dialogue elucidates how the praxis of interreligious dialogue, as outlined in key Vatican documents in the Catholic Church, could be better served by attending to the qualitative ethnographic methods of sociocultural anthropology. Because the material, behavioral, and cognitive aspects of dialogue—as revealed in daily life, common social and political action, religious experience, and theological exchange—are embedded in culture, they are amenable to ethnographic analysis. Using the unique, multi-religious Colorado site of Crestone and its environs as a fieldwork “laboratory” and self-described “Refuge for World Truths,” the ethnographic data gleaned from this project exemplify the creative interdisciplinary contributions of anthropology to theologizing. It seeks to demonstrate, using an empirical, multi-religious community as its focus, how anthropology can support interreligious dialogue. The results of such dialogue could not only assist the scholarly community by helping theologians arrive at new formulations in the burgeoning area of the theology of religions, but might also serve the more practical goal of promoting peace—as an alternative to violence—in today’s complex and sorely troubled world.
