Struggles over the meaning of the past are common in postcolonial states. State cultural heritage programs build monuments to reinforce in nation building efforts—often supported by international organizations and tourist dollars. These efforts often ignore the other, often more troubling memories preserved by local communities—markers of colonial oppression, cultural genocide, and ethnic identity. Yet, as the contributors to this volume note, questions of memory, heritage, identity and conservation are interwoven at the local, ethnic, national and global level and cannot be easily disentangled. In a fascinating series of cases from West Africa, anthropologists, archaeologists and art historians show how memory and heritage play out in a variety of postcolonial contexts. Settings range from televised ritual performances in Mali to monument conservation in Djenne and slavery memorials in Ghana.
"A timely and groundbreaking take on the roots of the Christian church and its place in the entirety of God's kingdom. . . . There is no better time than now to learn about and become firmly grounded within your spiritual heritage." —from the foreword by Perry Stone The early church was made up of Jewish and Gentile followers of Jesus, and the church's culture was rooted in Judaism and a Jewish understanding of God's relationship to His people. Over time, however, Christianity became increasingly more Roman than Jewish, and the church lost its identity. Rabbi Curt Landry's personal story is remarkably similar. Born to a Jewish mother and a Catholic father, Landry was put up for adoption, and for more than thirty years he had no understanding of his heritage, his roots, or who his parents were. But when he discovered the truth of his story, his life changed completely. The key to a life of power and purpose is understanding who you are. In this revelatory book, Curt Landry helps Christians discover their roots in Judaism, empowering them to walk in the revelation of who they really are and who they are born to be. Reclaiming Our Forgotten Heritage reveals the mysteries of the church, letting Christians grasp the power that comes from connecting with their true identity.
With a basis in environmental history, this groundbreaking study challenges the idea that a meaningful attachment to nature and the outdoors is contrary to the black experience. The discussion shows that contemporary African American culture is usually seen as an urban culture, one that arose out of the Great Migration and has contributed to international trends in fashion, music, and the arts ever since. However, because of this urban focus, many African Americans are not at peace with their rich but tangled agrarian legacy. On one hand, the book shows, nature and violence are connected in black memory, especially in disturbing images such as slave ships on the ocean, exhaustion in the fields, dogs in the woods, and dead bodies hanging from trees. In contrast, though, there is also a competing tradition of African American stewardship of the land that should be better known. Emphasizing the tradition of black environmentalism and using storytelling techniques to dramatize the work of black naturalists, this account corrects the record and urges interested urban dwellers to get back to the land.
Reclaiming the Past examines the post-antique history of Argos and how the city's archaeological remains have been perceived and experienced since the late eighteenth century by both local residents and foreign visitors to the Greek Peloponnese. The first western visitors to Argos—a city continuously inhabited for six millennia—invariably expected to encounter landscapes described in classical texts—yet what they found fell far short of those expectations. At the same time, local meanings attributed to ancient sites reflected an understanding of the past at odds with the supposed expertise of classically educated outsiders. Jonathan M. Hall details how new views of Argos emerged after the Greek War of Independence (1821–1830) with the adoption of national narratives connecting the newly independent kingdom to its ancient Hellenic past. With rising local antiquarianism at the end of the nineteenth century, new tensions surfaced between conserving the city's archaeological heritage and promoting urban development. By carefully assessing the competing knowledge claims between insiders and outsiders over Argos's rich history, Reclaiming the Past addresses pressing questions about who owns the past.
And he issues a clarion challenge to this nation's political leaders to return to the fundamental tenets that have always undergirded the land-grant system as we fulfill the rational initiatives for higher education prescribed for the twenty-first century.
Senegal's cultural heritage sites are in many cases remnants of the French empire. This book examines how an independent nation decolonises its colonial heritage, and how slave barracks, colonial museums, and monuments to empire are re-interpreted to imagine a postcolonial future.
Critical Perspectives on Cultural Memory and Heritage focuses on the importance of memory and heritage for individual and group identity, and for their sense of belonging. It aims to expose the motives and discourses related to the destruction of memory and heritage during times of war, terror, sectarian conflict and through capitalist policies. It is within these affected spheres of cultural heritage where groups and communities ascribe values, develop memories, and shape their collective identity.
Archaeology has been an important source of metaphors for some of the key intellectuals of the 20th century: Sigmund Freud, Walter Benjamin, Alois Riegl and Michel Foucault, amongst many others. However, this power has also turned against archaeology, because the discipline has been dealt with perfunctorily as a mere provider of metaphors that other intellectuals have exploited. Scholars from different fields continue to explore areas in which archaeologists have been working for over two centuries, with little or no reference to the discipline. It seems that excavation, stratigraphy or ruins only become important at a trans-disciplinary level when people from outside archaeology pay attention to them and somehow dematerialize them. Meanwhile, archaeologists have been usually more interested in borrowing theories from other fields, rather than in developing the theoretical potential of the same concepts that other thinkers find so useful. The time is ripe for archaeologists to address a wider audience and engage in theoretical debates from a position of equality, not of subalternity. Reclaiming Archaeology explores how archaeology can be useful to rethink modernity’s big issues, and more specifically late modernity (broadly understood as the 20th and 21st centuries). The book contains a series of original essays, not necessarily following the conventional academic rules of archaeological writing or thinking, allowing rhetoric to have its place in disclosing the archaeological. In each of the four sections that constitute this book (method, time, heritage and materiality), the contributors deal with different archaeological tropes, such as excavation, surface/depth, genealogy, ruins, fragments, repressed memories and traces. They criticize their modernist implications and rework them in creative ways, in order to show the power of archaeology not just to understand the past, but also the present. Reclaiming Archaeology includes essays from a diverse array of archaeologists who have dealt in one way or another with modernity, including scholars from non-Anglophone countries who have approached the issue in original ways during recent years, as well as contributors from other fields who engage in a creative dialogue with archaeology and the work of archaeologists.
Recent events in the Islamic world have brought to our attention the formidable potency of the classical Islamic tradition. Debates over reform, revival, and change in the Islamic world, whether of a political, religious, or economic nature, revolve around an engagement with Islamic history, thought, and tradition. This book examines such debates by exploring modern texts, groups, and figures that stake out some sort of claim to pre-modern traditions in disciplines as diverse as Islamic law, Qur'anic exegesis, politics, literature, and jihad. It challenges the tendency to locate modern scholars and groups in the Islamic world on an ideal spectrum running in a linear way from 'modernism' to 'Islamism.' It provides new insights into the complex religious landscape of the Islamic world, drawing attention to important scholars and intellectuals, some of whom have received little or no attention in western scholarship. It provides an examination of how the classical Islamic heritage functions in today's Islamic world in regions as diverse as the Middle East, Iran, and the Indian subcontinent. In its scope and coverage, this book transcends an increasing tendency towards bifurcation between classical and contemporary Islamic and Middle Eastern Studies.
Tasoula Hadjitofi was only a child when her homeland, Cyprus, was invaded. As bombs fell and soldiers marched through the streets, her mother stood guard, reminding her children to not be afraid—not of the bombs or anything else that may follow. They would always have their family and their faith. Soon thereafter, Tasoula found herself homeless and nation-less. A refugee. Decades later, she's a successful entrepreneur and the honorary Cypriot consul to The Netherlands. But family and faith remained her touchstones—and she never lost her longing for "home." She often thought of the gorgeous Cypriot churches and their icons. One day, an art dealer offers her a chance to buy Cyprian icons stolen during the war. Icons hold a special place in the hearts of many Greek Cypriots. They are not just masterpieces—they are artistic manifestations of faith and a gateway to the divine.Outraged, Tasoula sets out on a quest to repatriate these artifacts. An immensely difficult task as icons often lack provenance in the eyes of the law. But she is determined. Yet the road to “The Munich Case”—the largest art trafficking sting in European history—is filled with mind games, subterfuge, global politics, and a shady figure named Van Rinj, whose motives are never entirely clear...
