Old objects, new media: Historical collections, digitization and affect

2012 ◽  
Vol 17 (3) ◽  
pp. 287-306 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jenny Newell

Digital resources mobilized by museums, archives and other cultural heritage institutions are opening up collections and vistas onto the past from an increasing variety of perspectives. Digitization is enabling the juxtaposition of material from far-flung repositories and creating new ways of presenting historical insights as well as new types of historical engagements. New media can allow the assemblage of a multiplicity of voices, accounts, songs, and artworks, among other things – layers of meaning that are hard to capture and present in other formats, and which can be especially helpful in uncovering and accommodating non-Western perspectives. At the same time, the relationship of digital objects to ‘actual artefacts’ requires further consideration. This article investigates the implications of digitizing objects in cultural institutions, and the advantages and disadvantages of this process for those with differing interests in such objects. What are the effects for historical researchers, museum visitors or clan members with special ties to a museum artefact of viewing it on a screen rather than being in the object’s presence, holding, seeing, smelling and hearing it, and connecting with the ancestors or relationships it embodies? Case studies from the UK, Australia and the Pacific are explored to address aspects of the impact of digitization initiatives on museum practice and on people’s engagements with the past, with a focus on the affective qualities of digital objects.

2020 ◽  
Vol 30 ◽  
pp. 77-96
Author(s):  
Sujit Sivasundaram

AbstractThe Pacific has often been invisible in global histories written in the UK. Yet it has consistently been a site for contemplating the past and the future, even among Britons cast on its shores. In this lecture, I reconsider a critical moment of globalisation and empire, the ‘age of revolutions’ at the end of the eighteenth century and the start of the nineteenth century, by journeying with European voyagers to the Pacific Ocean. The lecture will point to what this age meant for Pacific islanders, in social, political and cultural terms. It works with a definition of the Pacific's age of revolutions as a surge of indigeneity met by a counter-revolutionary imperialism. What was involved in undertaking a European voyage changed in this era, even as one important expedition was interrupted by news from revolutionary Europe. Yet more fundamentally vocabularies and practices of monarchy were consolidated by islanders across the Pacific. This was followed by the outworkings of counter-revolutionary imperialism through agreements of alliance and alleged cessation. Such an argument allows me, for instance, to place the 1806 wreck of the Port-au-Prince within the Pacific's age of revolutions. This was an English ship used to raid French and Spanish targets in the Pacific, but which was stripped of its guns, iron, gunpowder and carronades by Tongans. To chart the trajectory from revolution and islander agency on to violence and empire is to appreciate the unsettled paths that gave rise to our modern world. This view foregrounds people who inhabited and travelled through the earth's oceanic frontiers. It is a global history from a specific place in the oceanic south, on the opposite side of the planet to Europe.


2016 ◽  
Vol 64 (8) ◽  
pp. 643 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christopher N. Johnson

Since the 1960s, Australian scientists have speculated on the impact of human arrival on fire regimes in Australia, and on the relationship of landscape fire to extinction of the Pleistocene megafauna of Australia. These speculations have produced a series of contrasting hypotheses that can now be tested using evidence collected over the past two decades. In the present paper, I summarise those hypotheses and review that evidence. The main conclusions of this are that (1) the effects of people on fire regimes in the Pleistocene were modest at the continental scale, and difficult to distinguish from climatic controls on fire, (2) the arrival of people triggered extinction of Australia’s megafauna, but fire had little or no role in the extinction of those animals, which was probably due primarily to hunting and (3) megafaunal extinction is likely to have caused a cascade of changes that included increased fire, but only in some environments. We do not yet understand what environmental factors controlled the strength and nature of cascading effects of megafaunal extinction. This is an important topic for future research.


1967 ◽  
Vol 71 (677) ◽  
pp. 344-348
Author(s):  
J. V. Connolly

During the past two years, there has been a sharp acceleration to the interest which industry has displayed in the subject of management education. This can be attributed to these factors: —(a) A more widespread realisation of the gap developing between the UK and a number of foreign economies, as manifested by diverging rates of the major economic indicators.(b) The attainment of top-management responsibilities by a younger generation of managers, many of whom had been given some earlier training and who were more conscious of its value than the incumbents of the job from earlier generations.(c) The publication of the Franks, Robbins and (in the aerospace industry) the Plowden reports.(d) The impact of the Industrial Training Boards making it manifest, in terms of serious levies, that training was an economic necessity and therefore must be investigated thoroughly.Notwithstanding the widespread awakening of interest, it is very belated and sets numerous problems. The problems are in two areas—scale and quality.


AJIL Unbound ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 113 ◽  
pp. 262-266
Author(s):  
Rebecca Hamilton

Journalists have traditionally played a crucial role in building public pressure on government officials to uphold their legal obligations under the 1948 UN Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of Genocide. But over the past twenty years there has been radical change in the media landscape: foreign bureaus have been shuttered, young freelance journalists have taken over some of the work traditionally done by experienced foreign correspondents, and, more recently, the advent of social media has enabled people in conflict-affected areas to tell their own stories to the world. This essay assesses the impact of these changes on atrocity prevention across the different stages of the policy process. It concludes that the new media landscape is comparatively poorly equipped to raise an early warning alarm in a way that will spur preventive action, but that it is well-positioned to sustain attention to ongoing atrocities. Unfortunately, such later stages of a crisis generally provide the most limited policy options for civilian protection.


2020 ◽  
pp. 003232172092277 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lauren McLaren ◽  
Anja Neundorf ◽  
Ian Paterson

The question of whether high immigration produces anti-immigration hostility has vexed researchers across multiple disciplines for decades. And yet, understanding this relationship is crucial for countries dependant on immigrant labour but concerned about its impact on social cohesion. Absent from most of this research are theories about the impact of early-years socialisation conditions on contemporary attitudes. Using the British sample of the European Social Survey (2002–2017) and two innovative approaches to modelling generational differences – generalised additive models and hierarchical age‒period‒cohort models – this paper shows that rather than producing hostility to immigration, being socialised in a context of high immigrant-origin diversity is likely to result in more positive attitudes to immigration later in life. This implies that through generational replacement, countries like the UK are likely to become increasingly tolerant of immigration over time. Importantly, however, a context of high-income inequality may diminish this effect.


2002 ◽  
Vol 33 (4) ◽  
pp. 1-12 ◽  
Author(s):  
D. Harker ◽  
S. Cassim

The regulation of advertising is a controversial and difficult process, and many schemes around the world opt for a self-regulatory approach to curb unacceptable advertising. However, when schemes are established or reformulated, most countries learn from other, more established, regimes. Whilst Australia and South Africa commenced the advertising self-regulation (ASR) process at similar times and based their systems on the UK model, two attempts have been made in Australia over the past three decades to produce more acceptable ads, whilst South Africa’s system has endured in its original form. This paper reviews the ASR systems in these three countries, using a macro framework for analysis which contextualises advertising in society. The systems have the fundamental process of handling complaints about advertising in common, however there are advantages and disadvantages of each and these are discussed with a view to providing some guidance for Australia’s fledgling, reformulated, system. Important insights for the development of regulation of advertising are presented.


1986 ◽  
Vol 18 (4-5) ◽  
pp. 193-202 ◽  
Author(s):  
J. E. Thain ◽  
M. J. Waldock

Laboratory and field experiments carried out during 1982–84 confirmed that some UK estuaries contained sufficient organotin compounds to cause reduced meat yields and shell thickening in the Pacific oyster, Crassostrea gigas. Historically the European flat oyster, Ostrea edulis, has been the basis of an important fishery on the east coast of England but the population has recently declined to an all-time low. Laboratory experiments have been carried out to compare larval survival, growth of spat and the development of gametes in adult O. edulis, and the growth of spat of four other bivalve species in the presence and absence of organotin toxins. The results from these experiments are discussed in relation to the concentrations of organotin compounds in samples of water and oyster tissues, from several sites in the UK, and the reproductive behaviour of adult oysters from natural stocks in the Crouch/Roach estuary system. The data strongly suggest that TBT is at least a contributory factor and probably a major cause of the failure in recent years of O. edulis to reproduce naturally in the Crouch Estuary. The UK Government has proposed legislation to control and reduce organotin emissions into the marine environment and this is briefly outlined.


Author(s):  
Katarzyna Gorak-Sosnowska ◽  
Monika Bartoszewicz

This paper is a non-conventional academic paper based on a live discussion organized by the Polish expert on Saudi women’s issues, Professor Anna Odrowaz-Coates (2015, 2016), which took place in The Maria Grzegorzewska University in Warsaw, in June 2018. Two participating experts are known for their conflicting points of view on issues of security and integration of Muslims in Europe. In this exchange of viewpoints, they focussed on the issue of conversion to Islam in Poland and the UK, drawing upon multiple field research experiences they encountered. The main points of reference deal with the conversion of British prisoners whilst in prison and that of Polish women of diverse backgrounds. The impact of new media on the formation of public opinion, dissemination of faith and radicalization is also considered. The expert debate makes a significant contribution towards the socio-cultural and political discussion on culture clash versus coherence, integration and stability in a European context. It also concerns the use of new communication technology for the preservation of peace, radicalization and the elevation of moral panic


2012 ◽  
Vol 201 (3) ◽  
pp. 169-171 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter Rice ◽  
Colin Drummond

SummaryThe UK has seen a dramatic increase in alcohol consumption and alcohol-related harm over the past 30 years. Alcohol taxation has long been considered a key method of controlling alcohol-related harm but a combination of factors has recently led to consideration of methods which affect the price of the cheapest alcohol as a means of improved targeting of alcohol control measures to curb the consumption of the heaviest drinkers. Although much of the evidence in favour of setting a minimum price of a unit of alcohol is based on complex econometric models rather than empirical data, all jurisdictions within the UK now intend to make selling alcohol below a set price illegal, which will provide a naturalistic experiment allowing assessment of the impact of minimum pricing.


2017 ◽  
Vol 71 (1) ◽  
pp. 44-57
Author(s):  
Kim Knott

Abstract How has the study of religion in the UK been shaped by its institutional contexts? Consideration is given to the Christian and secular foundations of universities and higher education colleges, the relationship of theology and religious studies, and the impact of institutional structures and drivers associated with teaching and research. The formation of ‘TRS’ as an instrumental and contested subject area is discussed, as is the changing curriculum. Research on religion is examined in relation to new institutional pressures and opportunities: the assessment of university research and the public funding of research. The importance of the impact agenda and capacity building are illustrated.


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