scholarly journals Post-socialism and “ordinary” tourism: New Belgrade

2019 ◽  
Vol 5 (3) ◽  
pp. 307-325
Author(s):  
Milos Nicic ◽  
Sanja Iguman
Keyword(s):  
Large Scale ◽  
Cultural Practice ◽  
Second World War ◽  
Capital City ◽  
World War ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Tourism Organization ◽  
The City ◽  
Second World ◽  
Cultural Monuments

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to examine the emerging practices of the “tourism of the ordinary” in the wider frame of post-socialist transformation of Serbia’s capital city – Belgrade. By sourcing the inspiration in cultural studies and classics of the studies of the ordinary, focus is directed to the patterns of tourism consumption of practices, places and people that do not fall in the category of tourism attraction. The attention is drawn to New Belgrade (Novi Beograd in Serbian), residential part of Belgrade built predominantly after the Second World War. New Belgrade lacks proper tourism infrastructure, commoditized attractions and consumerable tourism experiences on a large scale. Nevertheless, this part of the city is slowly becoming explored by tourists individually or in organized walking or cycling tours. Visits to New Belgrade are most often connected to alternative or hip visitors and have the allure of both urban exploration and cultural practice, as the tours are offered by specialist architectural organizations or individual guides. By introspecting the case of New Belgrade, this paper attempts to address the prospect that ordinary exist only in relation to the attraction and that its appeal comes from the fact that what is ordinary to someone is attraction to another. Design/methodology/approach As far as specific approach is concerned, some archival and librarian materials have been analyzed in order to map the territory that is being researched (New Belgrade) and to frame the significance of potential heritagisation (Harrison, 2013) on the built environment and its territory. Further, relevant websites and both primary and secondary resources have been consulted. This mostly refers to the websites of Tourist Organization of Belgrade (TOB) and the Institute for the Protection of Cultural Monuments in Belgrade as two most relevant bodies connecting the urban fabric of the city and its tourism valorization. Findings In this paper, the authors have tried to demonstrate how tourism of the ordinary might be conducted in urban environment that lacks no tangible resources, whose physical physiognomies are not insignificant and which, in another, alternative tourism regime might be considered attractions. However, in the specific set of characteristics spanning from contested past to ambiguous contemporary valorization, New Belgrade remains an uncharted part of the city for much of the mainstream tourism, leaving its charms for very few visitors, most often engaged in interest of the “ordinary.” Originality/value Although Belgrade is experiencing steady rise in numbers regarding tourist arrivals, length of stay and on-site expenditure, New Belgrade is nowhere to be seen on the map of tourism offer, as per Belgrade’s Tourism Organization. TOB’s official web page, at the time this piece is written, in the section Attractions, mentions nothing regarding New Belgrade. Among 13 entries – 12 are historic sites of more than a century behind them and one is a lake and outdoor destination.

African Americans in Los Angeles

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Keenan Norris
Keyword(s):  
Los Angeles ◽  
Civil Rights ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Second World War ◽  
World War ◽  
Alta California ◽  
The Pacific ◽  
Mexican State ◽  
The City ◽  
Second World

The word “California” derives from Spanish novelist Garci Rodríguez de Montalvo’s bastardization of the Arabic “khalifa.” Montalvo’s use is probably a relic of the Moorish occupation of Spain. Calafia, the black warrior queen of Montalvo’s 1510 novel Las sergas de Esplandián, ruled the mythic island of California. The mythos of an island populated solely by black Amazons persisted among the conquistadors, who brought with them a contingent of actual Africans, enslaved persons whose free mestizo descendants would one day help to found El Pueblo de Los Angeles, the settlement that would become Los Angeles, California. While African-descended people today make up less than 10 percent of Los Angeles’s population and have, in the city’s iteration as American territory, never comprised more than 20 percent of Los Angeles citizens, Black Angelenos have played a remarkably centrifugal role in the city’s history. In 1931, while a University of Southern California graduate student, Jessie Elizabeth Bromilow published a thesis on a man little recognized in American annals, the black mestizo Pio Pico, the last governor of the Mexican state of Alta California. Based in Los Angeles, heir to a leading family un Mexican California, Pico nevertheless died forgotten. The scholarship of historians concerned with California’s black history has recovered his story and the stories of other black mestizos of Mexican California. In the 20th century, large-scale African-American migration from Arkansas, Louisiana, Oklahoma, and Texas to work in the Second World War defense industries reshaped the city. Scholarship that has focused on post–Second World War Black Los Angeles’s music, jazz and hip-hop, and its gang violence has garnered great attention. Yet, equally important is the record of the civil rights struggles in the city, which spurred changes in local and national law. Emerging from an era of widespread protest, Tom Bradley attracted a multiracial constituency and became the city’s most impactful mayor, maneuvering Los Angeles to the center of the Pacific Rim’s economic network, bringing the Olympics and an international airport to the global mega-city. But Bradley’s tenure has long come under criticism from scholars and cultural commentators on multiple fronts, not least for the disenfranchisement of the black working class and the concurrent rise of Los Angeles’s black gang culture that it witnessed. The record of Black Los Angeles is, thus, a record of its manifold complexities, racial, spatial, political, cultural.

scholarly journals Kanchanaburi and the Thai-Burma railway: disputed narratives in the interpretation of war

2018 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 140-155 ◽  
Author(s):  
John Lennon
Keyword(s):  
Second World War ◽  
Critical Element ◽  
World War ◽  
Dark Tourism ◽  
Content Type ◽  
The Past ◽  
Political Economic ◽  
The City ◽  
Second World

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to consider the history and dark tourism attractions associated with a case study of the Thai-Burma Railway in the city of Kanchanaburi, Thailand. The paper considers how history has been abridged and distorted at a number of attraction sites in order to exploit the dark tourism commercial potential. The role of film media is considered as a critical element of the site narrative and the reality of the tragic past of this place is discussed within the context of Thailand’s role in the Second World War. Kanchanaburi, through the urban attractions that constitute the primary motivations for visitation, distorts and exploits its dark history for commercial and ideological purposes. Where accurate the Second World War interpretation was identified, it was maintained by balancing the requirements of national governments and institutions with acceptable levels of ambiguity and non-controversial perspectives on this urban location’s dark past. Design/methodology/approach The paper draws on literature, historical documents and tourism publications related to the Second World War and the incarceration and forced labour associated with the Thai-Burma Railway and the city of Kanchanaburi. Fieldwork incorporating tourist attraction and commemorative site visitation was undertaken in Northern Thailand in January 2017. Curators, managers, operators and tourist authorities were contacted in advance of the fieldwork by e-mail to request interviews. The sites identified were the primary sites visited by tourists, and no related Second World War site in the area was excluded. For those interviewed in relation to the subject area, a standard questionnaire based on a rolling database, relevant to particular sites was utilised. Interviews were taped and transcribed. Findings The city of Kanchanaburi is defined by a heritage that has changed over time. Many factors imbue the meanings and content of place. This is a function of a plethora of competing Influences and agendas; political, economic, cultural, demographic and historical. Yet, this destination is defined by the dark history of the Second World War which is associated with this place. The visitor attraction sites considered in Kanchanaburi provide multiple narratives around the Second World War events. They offer a range of content driven by influences as diverse as simple commercial gain to the complex interaction of political, economic and ideological agendas (cf. Gegner, 2012). In each case, the interpretation is used to articulate heritage through objects, artefacts, audio recording, place or imagery. These elements exist in environment(s) of their creation; the Second World War heritage of Kanchanaburi is developed in a nation that has only a partial and selective acceptance of its role in this conflict. The visitor attractions examined in this research and their content have all re-constructed and re-represented the past. Historical memorialization remains embedded in interests that are global, commercial, ideological but rarely neutral. The interpretation of the Thai-Burma Railway and the narrative of the many victims is associated with the construction merit respect, commemoration and consideration that is value free and not distorted by ideology or commercial imperatives. Practical implications This paper provides a foundation for further consideration of how such contested dark heritage is viewed not least by visitors and users. Development of research in this area would provide a valuable source of data on: consumer profiles, motivations and orientation. Relating this data to nationality and origin would provide useful comparative data to that offered by operators and managers of key attractions. Furthermore, the prevalence of social and digital media as primary tourist information source could be measured against the continued (and possibly declining) importance of the filmic narrative. Furthermore, deeper evaluation of nature and content of interpretation is merited, given the range of approaches and content observed. At a political and policy level, the treatment of this part of Thai history and the degree of sensitivity around interpretation is linked to how a nation confronts its difficult past. More thorough evaluation of treatment in national media and education curriculum also merits review. Urban heritage is an important element of urban destination marketing and evaluation based around core themes of transparency, openness, respect for the past, and sensitive treatment of tragic events offer direction for application and evaluation in other urban contexts. Originality/value This is the first time the heritage of this city has been considered in the context of dark tourism and the role of Thailand in the Second World War. It incorporates an analysis of all of the relevant attractions in the city and provides through the fieldwork conducted an original contribution to the tourism literature in this field. It draws on historical record, original documentation, interview analysis and tourism data. It provides further evidence of the dark tourism phenomena in a South East Asian context linked to a conflicted and selective appraisal of the past.

Jozef Duysans gevecht met den engel. Schermutselingen rond het graf van Paul Van Ostaijen

2012 ◽  
Vol 71 (4) ◽  
pp. 299-328
Author(s):  
Armand Van Nimmen
Keyword(s):  
Crucial Role ◽  
Second World War ◽  
World War ◽  
Nineteen Thirties ◽  
Public Monuments ◽  
Deep Waters ◽  
Original Idea ◽  
The City ◽  
Second World

Deze bijdrage handelt over de perikelen in de jaren dertig rond het plan om het lichamelijk overschot van de Vlaamse dichter Paul Van Ostaijen over te brengen uit het klein Waals dorp waar hij in vergetelheid begraven lag onder een houten kruis naar zijn geboortestad Antwerpen. Daar zou hij herbegraven worden op de stedelijke begraafplaats Schoonselhof onder een gepaste denksteen. Zoals meermaals het geval is bij het oprichten van publieke monumenten, verliepen – wegens onderling gekibbel en gebrek aan financiële middelen – meer dan zes jaren vooraleer de oorspronkelijke idee kon verwezenlijkt worden.Aandacht in dit artikel gaat naar Jozef Duysan, bewonderaar van de dichter en uitgesproken flamingant, die een cruciale rol speelde in de conceptie en uitvoering van het initiatief. Ten slotte beschrijft het artikel hoe deze nu bijna totaal vergeten man tijdens de Tweede Wereldoorlog in het vaarwater geraakte van de collaboratie, fungeerde als directeur van het Arbeidsamt in Antwerpen, na de oorlog veroordeeld werd en jaren lang ondergedoken leefde in die stad.________Jozef Duysan’s battle with the angel: Skirmishes around the tomb of Paul Van OstaijenThis contribution reports the vicissitudes concerning the plan dating from the nineteen thirties to transfer the mortal remains of the Flemish poet Paul Van Ostaijen from the small Walloon village where he was buried in oblivion under a wooden cross to Antwerp, the city of his birth. He was to be reburied there on the municipal cemetery Schoonselhof under a fitting memorial headstone. As frequently happens on the occasion of creating public monuments, more than six years passed before the original idea could be carried out – because of internal bickering and lack of financial means. This article focuses on Jozef Duysan, an admirer of the poet and an explicit Flemish militant, who played a crucial role in the concept and realisation of the initiative. In conclusion the article recounts how this man who has been practically completely forgotten now,  ventured into the deep waters of the collaboration during the Second World War, how he acted as director of the Arbeidsamt in Antwerp and how he was convicted after the war and lived for many years in hiding in that city.

Pioneers in International Administration: A Prosopography of the Directors of the League of Nations Secretariat

2019 ◽  
Vol 13 (2) ◽  
pp. 190-227 ◽  
Author(s):  
Torsten Kahlert
Keyword(s):  
International Organizations ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Second World War ◽  
League Of Nations ◽  
World War ◽  
Clear Trend ◽  
Organizational Contexts ◽  
Career Trajectories ◽  
Second World ◽  
Over Time

AbstractThis article investigates interwar internationalism from the perspective of the highest personnel of the first large-scale international administration, the League of Nations Secretariat. It applies a prosopographical approach in order to map out the development of the composition of the group of the section directors of the Secretariat over time in terms of its social and cultural characteristics and career trajectories. The analysis of gender, age, nationality, as well as educational and professional backgrounds and careers after their service for the League’s Secretariat gives insight on how this group changed over time and what it tells us about interwar internationalism. I have three key findings to offer in this article: First, the Secretariat was far from being a static organization. On the contrary, the Secretariat’s directors developed in three generations each with distinct characteristics. Second, my analysis demonstrates a clear trend towards professionalization and growing maturity of the administration over time. Third, the careers of the directors show a clear pattern of continuity across the Second World War and beyond. Even though the careers continued in different organizational contexts, the majority of the directors remained closely connected to the world of internationalism of the League, the UN world and its surrounding organizations. On a methodological level, the article offers an example of how prosopographical analysis can be used to study international organizations.

Urban commemoration and literature in post-Soviet L'viv: a comparative analysis with the Polish experience

2014 ◽  
Vol 42 (4) ◽  
pp. 637-654 ◽  
Author(s):  
Uilleam Blacker
Keyword(s):  
Comparative Analysis ◽  
Second World War ◽  
World War ◽  
Diverse Range ◽  
Memory Culture ◽  
Polish Experience ◽  
The City ◽  
Second World

This article analyzes how the Poles and Jews who disappeared from the western Ukrainian city of L'viv as a result of the Second World War are remembered in the city today. It examines a range of commemorative practices, from monuments and museums to themed cafes and literature, and analyzes how these practices interact to produce competing mnemonic narratives. In this respect, the article argues for an understanding of the city as a complex text consisting of a diverse range of mutually interdependent mnemonic media produced by a range of actors. The article focuses in particular on the ways in which Ukrainian nationalist narratives interact with the memory of the city's “lost others.” The article also seeks to understand L'viv‘s memory culture through comparison with a range of Polish cities that have faced similar problems with commemorating vanished communities, but have witnessed a deeper recognition of these communities than has been the case in L'viv. The article proposes reasons for the divergences between the memory cultures of L'viv and that found in Polish cities, and attempts to outline the gradual processes by which L'viv‘s Polish and Jewish pasts might become more widely integrated into the city's memory culture.

Roman Inscriptions in the City of Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery

1976 ◽  
Vol 44 ◽  
pp. 28-43
Author(s):  
J. J. Wilkes
Keyword(s):  
United Kingdom ◽  
Second World War ◽  
World War ◽  
Art Gallery ◽  
The United Kingdom ◽  
Small Collection ◽  
The City ◽  
Second World

The nineteen stones described below form a small collection of Latin inscriptions now housed in the City of Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery. They have been acquired since the Second World War from older collections assembled at various places in the United Kingdom. With the exception of two, all are recorded as found in Rome and sixteen have been published in volume VI of the Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum (CIL). The findspot of one (no. 6) is not recorded, while that of another (no. 13), although not attested, was almost certainly Rome. The publications in CIL were based in most cases on manuscript copies made between the fifteenth and ninetenth centuries; in the case of eight stones this republication (nos. 2, 3, 5, 9, 11, 12, 17 and 18) provides corrections or amendments to the relevant entries in CIL. All measurements are metric.

Bar-Dancing, Palm Wine, and Letters

2019 ◽  
Vol 3 (2) ◽  
pp. 123-154
Author(s):  
Danielle Porter Sanchez
Keyword(s):  
Alcohol Consumption ◽  
Social Life ◽  
Second World War ◽  
Sense Of Control ◽  
World War ◽  
Palm Wine ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Will ◽  
The City ◽  
Second World

Abstract This article focuses on the militarization of social life and leisure in Brazzaville during the Second World War and argues that efforts to instill a sense of control over the city could only suppress life so much, as many Congolese people were unwilling to completely succumb to the will of the administration in a war that seemed to offer very little to their communities or their city as a whole. Furthermore, drinking and dancing served as opportunities to engage with issues of class and race in the wartime capital of Afrique Française Libre. The history of alcohol consumption in Brazzaville is not simply the story of choosing whether or not to drink (or allow others to drink); rather, it is one of many stories of colonial control, exploitation, and racism that plagued Europe’s colonies in Africa during the Second World War.

scholarly journals “Making Nonsense of the Little Categories”: Slaughterhouse-Five and The Memoirs of a Survivor as autobiographical science fiction

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Georgia Hight
Keyword(s):  
Science Fiction ◽  
Second World War ◽  
Living Room ◽  
World War ◽  
Time And Space ◽  
Traumatic Memories ◽  
Non Fiction ◽  
Southern Rhodesia ◽  
The City ◽  
Second World

<p>Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse-Five (1969) and Doris Lessing’s The Memoirs of a Survivor (1974) are both novels that blend autobiography with science fiction. In a review of Vonnegut’s Mother Night, Lessing writes that he “makes nonsense of the little categories”. The same applies to Lessing. These two novels live in the porous borders between genre—between fiction and non-fiction.  Vonnegut writes that he can’t remember much of his experiences in the firebombing of Dresden in the Second World War. The war novel he writes about them has a protagonist who is “unstuck in time”. I frame my discussion of Slaughterhouse around problems of temporal and narrative ordering. Through use of fractured time, repetitions, and the chronotope, Vonnegut finds a way to express his missing and traumatic memories of the war.  Lessing’s memories are of her early childhood in Persia and Southern Rhodesia. These memories are warped, claustrophobic, and difficult to articulate. Like Slaughterhouse, Memoirs fractures time and space. I organise my discussion of Lessing’s novel around the latter, focusing on a literalised porous border: her dissolving living room wall. Borders and portals between spaces in Memoirs blend the dystopian, science-fiction world of the city with the world of Lessing’s memories; dreams with reality; and the static with the dynamic.  I pose several answers to the question of why science fiction and autobiography. A shared occupation of the two authors was a concern for the madness and dissolution of society, and science fiction engages in a tradition of expressing these concerns. Additionally, Vonnegut and Lessing use the tools of a genre in which it is acceptable for time and space to be warped or fractured. These tools not only allow for the expression of memories that are fragmented, difficult, and half forgotten, but produce worlds that mirror the form of these personal memories.</p>

scholarly journals Pedagogic Alternatives in Italy after the Second World War: the Experience of the Movimento di Cooperazione Educativa and Bruno Ciari’s New School in Bologna

2020 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 69-87 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mirella D’Ascenzo
Keyword(s):  
Educational Innovation ◽  
Teaching Profession ◽  
Second World War ◽  
World War ◽  
New School ◽  
School Renewal ◽  
The Social ◽  
The City ◽  
Second World ◽  
And Training

This contribution explores the historical and educational context in Italy after the Second World War, focusing on the pedagogical and educational innovation of the Movimento di Cooperazione Educativa (Educational Cooperation Movement, MCE), founded to promote the techniques of Freinet, and in particular Bruno Ciari, teacher, politician and driving force behind national school renewal in Italy. Using printed sources and archives from the period, the paper looks at the social and pedagogical experiment developed by Bruno Ciari between 1966 and 1970 and promoted in the city of Bologna through «Pedagogic Februaries»; these involved a series of events, conferences and training initiatives, organised with the cooperation of key universities, targeting teachers and families in order to develop an innovative, shared school culture. From the egodocuments of a preschool teacher who worked with Bruno Ciari in the city of Bologna, we enter the heart of the renewal of teaching practices, highlighting the tormented process of change in the teaching profession, in favour of a school that would be a true alternative to the traditional model and open to the democratic demands of all society. 

scholarly journals At home with New Zealand in the 1960s

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Richard Thomson
Keyword(s):  
New Zealand ◽  
Cultural Landscape ◽  
Cultural Practice ◽  
Second World War ◽  
Advanced Technology ◽  
World War ◽  
European Settlement ◽  
The Gift ◽  
Second World ◽  
At Home

<p>Published by A H & A W Reed to immediate success late in 1961, New Zealand in Colour was the first of many large-format books of colour photographs of New Zealand. While they belonged to a tradition of scenic reproduction as old as European settlement, technological changes and the social and economic disruptions of the Second World War intensified the importance of the image in print culture. Drawing on recent historiographic approaches that seek to decentre New Zealand across transnational and city-hinterland relationships, this thesis argues that reproduction, through photography but also as a cultural practice, was intrinsic to a Pakeha conception of place. Looking at scenery was an activity thought to be peculiarly suited to New Zealand, but it was also a prime form of tourist consumption and was therefore essential to New Zealanders’ successful participation in modernity, which required ‘seeing ourselves’ but also awareness of recognition from other moderns. During the decades after the Second World War, modernity took on a more international character with greater mobility of people and goods and a strengthening consumer culture. The complex kinds of looking involved in being modern were increasingly expressed as a tension between modern and anti-modern impulses. The colour pictorial displayed New Zealand as a cultural landscape of cameras, cars, and holidays, but also as a refuge from modernity. The ‘coffee table book’ was a luxury consumer object of advanced technology, but the gift was the preferred method for its circulation. To be at home with this New Zealand may require a move to the suburbs, but it offers a view of nation and nationalism in which mobility, leisure, and consumption have become the chief explanatory tools.</p>

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