Restoration of Tangible and Intangible Artefacts in the Tunisian Landscape: ‘Boutique Hotels’ and the Entrepreneurial Project of Dar Ben-Gacem

2019 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 22-35
Author(s):  
Majdi Faleh
Keyword(s):  
Cultural History ◽  
Small Businesses ◽  
Theoretical Study ◽  
Historical Context ◽  
Cultural Challenges ◽  
Doctoral Research ◽  
Guest House ◽  
Boutique Hotel ◽  
History Of ◽  
Cultural Entrepreneurship

This research stems from a theoretical study of the Medina of Tunis, as a continuity of the author’s doctoral research. The broader study from which the concepts are drawn is part of a PhD project, in architecture and humanities, focused on the effects of globalization on the Medina of Tunis. Studies and publications of the houses of the Medina of Tunis are lacking from the literature, in the Anglo-Saxon world, thus the interest of the author is to build a new body of knowledge examining historical restoration projects in Tunisia. This research article traces the challenges faced by the Medina of Tunis in the twenty-first century. It does so by evaluating a restoration and conversion project of seventeenth century Dar Ben-Gacem into a boutique hotel or ‘Hotel de Charme’. The project is unique as it reflects an architectural and entrepreneurial initiative of its owners aiming to work alongside the Medina’s small businesses, local artisans and the community at large. In this context, this research examines the architectural and socio-cultural challenges faced by the owners as well as the architects to preserve the identity of the building while diversifying the use of its spaces. This study first examines the history of Dar Ben-Gacem and the transition of the traditional courtyard house into a ‘cosmopolitan’ guest house that attracts visitors and tourists from all cultures and nationalities. Later, it explores the motivations and commitments of the owners to revive tangible and intangible artefacts through architecture as well as the social and cultural entrepreneurship of Tunisia’s rich cultural history. Ultimately, this theoretical study evaluates the challenges faced in such projects to revive the cultural heritage of the house while shaping a ‘story’ of a generation. Restoration projects in the Medina vary in scale and purpose. The consideration of both tangible and intangible artefacts in this historical context is highly important as it delves into the question of heritage in the age of tourism and globalization.

The symbol of Saint Gióng and the Gióng festival in the historical context of Vietnam

2019 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 37-45
Author(s):  
Hai Hong Dinh
Keyword(s):  
Cultural History ◽  
Cultural Context ◽  
Design Methodology ◽  
Historical Context ◽  
Modern Society ◽  
Core Element ◽  
Content Type ◽  
History Of ◽  
Gradual Transformation ◽  
Practical Implications

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to trace the way in which a popular ritual became one of Vietnam’s most important festivals, elevated as a celebration of national heroism and charts its gradual transformation in modern society. Design/methodology/approach This research focuses on the combination of a fertility rite and narratives of St Gióng based on nationalism or heroism created a special festival reflecting many traditional cultural characteristics of Vietnam and the Việt people and the transformation of St Gióng from a mythological to a national symbol of heroism in anti-invader history was recorded in texts. Findings The paper casts light on the mythologization and historicization of St Gióng in Vietnam’s particular historical context by decoding the Gióng symbol as a core element of the folktales and myths about St Gióng to understand the formation and development of St Gióng in the cultural history of Vietnam. Research limitations/implications The paper is not exploring the Gióng symbol within a larger cultural context of nationalism and ethnosymbolic approach in a comparison of national symbolism and heroism. Practical implications The paper includes implications for advised scholars to conduct further exploration of the symbol and myth of not only St Gióng in Vietnam but also Kubera in India and Vaisravana in China to connect Kubera, Vaisravana and St Gióng under the connection of literal myth and heroic symbol. Social implications The paper shows how processes of historicizing myth and mythologizing history are important features of Vietnamese socio-historical research. Originality/value The paper shows how a fertility rite became a historical festival and the figure of St Gióng became a symbol of patriotic heroism.

Introduction

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-18
Author(s):  
Alex Dowdall
Keyword(s):  
Cultural History ◽  
Historical Context ◽  
Local Communities ◽  
World War ◽  
Nation States ◽  
The First World War ◽  
History Of ◽  
The One ◽  
Twentieth Century Europe ◽  
First World

The introduction sets out the main lines of argument of the book, and introduces the four case studies—Nancy, Reims, Arras, and the coal-mining region of the Pas-de-Calais. It provides relevant historical context and situates the work within the existing historiography. It pays particular attention to the new cultural history of the First World War, and the literature surrounding the relationships between local communities and nation states in nineteenth- and twentieth-century Europe. It introduces the main civilian experiences of war discussed in the book—artillery bombardment, military occupation, and forced displacement. It concludes by outlining the main aims of the book, which are to explore how, on the one hand, war placed these civilian populations at the forefront of a broad process of militarization and how, on the other, it shaped their attitudes towards their bombarded home towns and the wider national community.

The Life and Travels of Xavier Marmier (1808-1892)

2007 ◽  
Author(s):  
Wendy S Mercer
Keyword(s):  
Literary Criticism ◽  
Cultural History ◽  
Travel Writing ◽  
French Literature ◽  
Historical Context ◽  
Private Life ◽  
Intellectual Life ◽  
Literary Critic ◽  
History Of ◽  
Headline News

This is the first critical biography of Xavier Marmier. The celebrity of Marmier was such that his death made headline news in most major newspapers in France. Marmier earned his reputation by being a traveller, travel writer, translator, literary critic, comparatist, journalist, novelist, poet, lecturer, linguist, ethnologist, social historian, and latterly as an outspoken member of the Académie Française. His work had a great deal of influence, both direct and indirect, on literary and intellectual developments in France, and also had a significant impact in a number of the countries he visited. Although his name still figures in studies of comparative literature or the history of travel writing, Marmier's innovations have gradually been eclipsed by his successors in various fields, resulting in the neglect of his overall achievements. Marmier's numerous and diverse achievements are assessed in their intellectual and historical context, and within the framework of his colourful and somewhat controversial private life. This book will be of interest to scholars and students of the history of nineteenth-century French literature and intellectual life, the history of literary criticism, travel writing, the introduction of foreign literature to France, and those with an interest in the intellectual, social, and cultural history of the regions Marmier visited.

Introduction

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stefanie Van de Peer
Keyword(s):  
Cultural History ◽  
Theoretical Approach ◽  
Film Studies ◽  
Arab World ◽  
Historical Context ◽  
New Approach ◽  
Third Cinema ◽  
Production Distribution ◽  
History Of ◽  
Feminist Film

The introduction to the book identifies the female pioneers of documentary in the Arab area. It paints the historical context in which these women have been making documentaries, looking across borders within the Arab World and across transnational regions, within the form, in the seventies and eighties, nineties and two thousands. The theoretical approach is rooted in feminist film studies and Third Cinema theory. Using Ella Shohat’s writings on women making films in a post-Third Worldist and feminist reality, the chapter specifies those aspects of Third Cinema that have been neglected. Painting a socio-political and historical context for the films under discussion, it looks at the cultural history of documentary as well as thematic and stylistic tendencies in the Arab world. From an examination of Third Cinema and its focus on documentary the chapter moves on to New Arab Cinema (or ‘Cinema Chabab’) and its attitude towards melodrama and realism. This ‘new’ approach to the transnational documentary includes a clearer, perhaps more practical look at developing ideas of production, distribution and spectatorship.

From Bataille to Badiou

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Adrian May
Keyword(s):  
Political Culture ◽  
Cultural History ◽  
Historical Context ◽  
Maurice Blanchot ◽  
Counter Narrative ◽  
History Of ◽  
French Theory ◽  
Political Value ◽  
French Intellectuals ◽  
Financial Capitalism

This book provides an exhaustive reading of the significant yet understudied intellectual review Lignes, from 1987 to 2017, to demonstrate how it has managed to preserve and develop the legacy of French radical thought often referred to as ‘French Theory’ or ‘la pensée 68’. Whilst many studies on intellectual reviews from the 1930s to the 1980s exist, this book crucially illuminates the shifting intellectual and political culture of France since the 1980s, filling a major gap in contemporary debates on the continued relevance of French intellectuals. This book provides a strong counter-narrative to the received account that, after the anti-totalitarian ‘liberal moment’ of the late 1970s, Marxism and structuralism were completely banished from the French intellectual sphere. It provides the historical context behind the rise of such internationally renowned thinkers such as Alain Badiou, Jacques Rancière Jean-Luc Nancy, whilst placing them within an intellectual genealogy stretching back to Georges Bataille and Maurice Blanchot in the 1930s. The book also introduces the reader to lesser known but nonetheless significant thinkers, including Lignes editor Michel Surya, Dionys Mascolo, Daniel Bensaïd, Fethi Benslama, Anselm Jappe and Robert Kurz. Through the review’s pages, a novel cultural history of France emerges as intellectuals respond to pressing contemporary issues, such as the fall of Communism, the European migrant crisis and rising nationalist tensions, the globalisation of financial capitalism and the 2008 economic crisis, scandals surrounding paedophilia and the return of religious thought to France, as well as debates on literature and the political value of art.

The Journal Korall and Hungarian Social History: Between International and National Contexts

2008 ◽  
Vol 34-35 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 327-353
Author(s):  
Anders Blomqvist
Keyword(s):  
Cultural History ◽  
Environmental History ◽  
Social History ◽  
Review Essay ◽  
Demographic History ◽  
Historical Context ◽  
Research Programme ◽  
Historical Sociology ◽  
The Social ◽  
History Of

This review essay evaluates the evolution of the Hungarian journal of social history, Korall társadalomtörténeti folyóirat (Coral: A journal of social history), founded in 1999 as a new forum of social history research. Korall promoted two distinct understandings of social history, stated only implicitly in the first years of the journal, but later elaborated more explicitely by the editors, as core definitions of their research programme. A first, narrow acceptation places social history within the field of (historical) sociology and favours structural approaches and concepts specific to the social sciences rather than the actual historical context. A second definition is wider, including a variety of topics such as environmental history, cultural history, economic, and demographic history, being meant to function as a powerful counter-discourse against positivistic, traditional and political-orientated history, still dominant in contemporary Hungarian historiography. Based on a combination of qualitative and quantitative content analysis, the review essay argues that, during its eight years of existance to date, Korall has undergone a process of internationalization. Although most articles published in the journal continue to focus on topics pertaining to the history of Hungary—especially during the “dualist period,” 1867-1918—references to international events, authors, and theories have lately acquired a greater importance.

scholarly journals Arhiivimaterjalide juurdepääsu ja konteksti küsimused Õpetatud Eesti Seltsi käsikirjakogu näitel / Issues of Access and Context of Archival Materials: Explorative Database of the Manuscript Collection of the Learned Estonian Society

2020 ◽  
Vol 21 (26) ◽  
Author(s):  
Larissa Leiminger ◽  
Aija Sakova
Keyword(s):  
Cultural History ◽  
Historical Context ◽  
Power Dynamics ◽  
Special Role ◽  
Colonial History ◽  
Dublin Core ◽  
The Public ◽  
Additional Information ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Russian Empire

Artikkel uurib Eesti riiklikes arhiivides asuvate mitte-eestikeelsete käsikirjakogude juurdepääsu ja konteksti küsimusi. Juhtumiuuring keskendub baltisaksa estofiilide 1938. aastal asutatud Õpetatud Eesti Seltsi käsikirjakogudele Eesti Kirjandusmuuseumis, mis on jagatud Eesti Kultuuriloolise Arhiivi ja Eesti Rahvaluule Arhiivi vahel. Käsikirjakogude asukohtadest ülevaate saamine osutus keeruliseks aja- ja töömahukaks ülesandeks, mida komplitseeris veelgi fakt, et uurija ei valda eesti keelt. Täiendavaks takistuseks osutus seegi, et kättesaadavaid digihoidlaid oli võimalik kasutada ainult eesti keeles. Ühe võimaliku lahendusena neile probleemidele pakuti välja avastusliku relatsioonandmebaasi loomine, mis toob kokku mõlemas arhiivis hoitavad materjalid. Käesolevas artiklis kirjeldatakse selle andmebaasi teostamist: erisuguste metaandmete ühtlustamist ja andmebaasi täiendamist isikuregistriga, ning arutletakse, kuidas seda andmebaasi mugava kasutajaliidese abil edasi arendada.   Access to archival sources is often determined by the cultural-historical context of the archive where it is preserved. The Estonian state funded archives’ provenance is largely shaped by the Estonian Baltic-German colonial history, the earlier belonging of the Estonian territory to the Swedish Empire (1583–1721) and its later incorporation into the Russian Empire (1721–1917); as a result, archives contain very multi-layered and multi-language archival materials. This article is dedicated to the issues of access and context of German archival materials from the nineteenth century and the first half of the twentieth century in Estonian archives. It is based on the manuscript collection of the Learned Estonian Society (LES), located at two different archives of the Estonian Literary Museum: The Estonian Folklore Archives and the Estonian Cultural History Archives. The access to this collection is obstructed for non-Estonian speakers by a complex Estonian archival system. However, without the public being able to interact with materials and re-evaluate and re-figure their contents (Hamilton, Harris, and Reid 2002, 7), the relevance of materials to be preserved in an archive diminishes. The questions of what, how, and when materials can be made accessible, especially through digitisation processes, are convoluted and carry a lot of weight. Every decision made in this regard by the custodians can reflect and perpetuate power dynamics in archives, favouring certain groups of materials and dismissing others. The article discusses how an archive’s special role as a memory institution should influence these decisions about accessibility. Therefore, the relations between memory, history and institutions are reflected in the light of Aleida Assmann’s and Juri Lotman’s theories of memory.  The article also proposes the building of a new explorative database as one possible solution helping to overcome some of these issues connected to access and context. It thus presents the Master’s Project by Larissa Leiminger (2020a) and the resulting website “Sammlungen der Gelehrten Estnischen Gesellschaft” (accessible via https://galerii.kirmus.ee/GEG/) (2020b), which explored and implemented this solution. The database is constructed on the basis of the Omeka Classic software and displays metadata according to the Dublin Core Metadata Initiative (DCMI). It currently contains 931 objects, (717 manuscript items and 214 individuals), which can be explored via two different search options as well as by a tag word system and the implicit relations between items and creators. At the same time, it provides some additional information on the context of the collections and the persons connected with the shaping of these collections. A short history of the LES, its collections and secondary literature can be found on the pages “Die Gesellschaft” and “Die Sammlungen”. To follow the principles of transparency and to reflect the archival practices involved, the website also holds information about the scope, intention, and shortcomings of this Project on the “Das Projekt” page. The “F&A” page further clarifies some of the website’s functions and provides some details on how the archival materials can be accessed either digitally or in person. As a newly established resource, the website and the incorporated database could pave the way to a multitude of different research questions.

The Debate about the Rechtsstaat in Nazi Germany, 1933–1936

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jens Meierhenrich
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Final Section ◽  
Theoretical Study ◽  
Historical Context ◽  
Third Reich ◽  
Public Law ◽  
Early Nineteenth Century ◽  
The Third ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Third Reich

This chapter provides the legal and historical context necessary for appreciating the contribution of Fraenkel’s ethnography of Nazi law. I begin with a brief history of the idea of the Rechtsstaat in Germany. I trace the term’s evolution from its emergence in the early nineteenth century until 1933. In the second section I overview the most important Nazi critiques of the liberal Rechtsstaat, with a particular focus on the theoretical study of public law. The focus is on the major intellectual faultlines in the legal subfield of Staatsrechtslehre, from which Jewish protagonists were purged. In the third section, I focus on intellectual efforts inside the Nazi academy to “racialize” the Rechtsstaat, to bring it in line with the racial imaginary. The final section explains why, and when, the concept of Rechtsstaat was abandoned by legal theorists in the “Third Reich,” and the consequences for the practice of law.

A Women’s History of the Beatles

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christine Feldman-Barrett
Keyword(s):  
Cultural History ◽  
Historical Context ◽  
Women's History ◽  
Cultural Impact ◽  
Face To Face ◽  
Female Figures ◽  
Women's Lives ◽  
Fresh Perspective ◽  
History Of ◽  
Women’S History

A Women’s History of the Beatles is the first book to offer a detailed presentation of the band’s social and cultural impact as understood through the experiences and lives of women. Drawing on a mix of interviews, archival research, textual analysis, and autoethnography, this scholarly work depicts how the Beatles have profoundly shaped and enriched the lives of women, while also reexamining key, influential female figures within the group’s history. Organized topically based on key themes important to the Beatles story, each chapter uncovers the varied and multifaceted relationships women have had with the band, whether face-to-face and intimately or parasocially through mediated, popular culture. Set within a socio-historical context that charts changing gender norms since the early 1960s, these narratives consider how the Beatles have affected women’s lives across three generations. Providing a fresh perspective of a well-known tale, this is a cultural history that moves far beyond the screams of Beatlemania to offer a more comprehensive understanding of what the now iconic band has meant to women over the course of six decades.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document