scholarly journals No news is better than evil news. Clearing up the way to face Alternative Archaeologies

2016 ◽  
Vol 2 ◽  
pp. 122
Author(s):  
Jaime Almansa Sánchez

While Archaeology started to take form as a professional discipline, Alternative Archaeologies grew in several ways. As the years went by, the image of Archaeology started being corrupted by misconceptions and a lot of imagination, and those professionals that were claiming to be scientists forgot one of their first responsibilities; the public. This lack of interest is one of the reasons why today, a vast majority of society believes in many clichés of the past that alternative archaeologists have used to build a fictitious History that is not innocent at all. From UFOs and the mysteries of great civilizations to the political interpretation of the past, the dangers of Alternative Archaeologies are clear and under our responsibility. This paper analyzes this situation in order to propose a strategy that may make us the main characters of the popular imagery in the mid-term. Since confrontation and communication do not seem to be effective approaches, we need a change in the paradigm based on Public Archaeology and the increase of our presence in everyday life.

2001 ◽  
Vol 9 ◽  
pp. 22 ◽  
Author(s):  
Adriana Chiroleu ◽  
Osvaldo Iazzetta ◽  
Claudia Voras ◽  
Claudio Diaz

Although university autonomy was apparently protected during Carlos Menem's government (1989-1999), actually it was gradually undergoing substantial changes. "Intrusive" devices had been prepared by the executive power, thus causing the restriction of its objectives. This kind of state participation was less explicit than in the past, being now associated with the establishment of a system of "punishment and reward," in which financing is subordinated to "performance," evaluated according to the parameters of multilateral credit organizations . In this work, we analyse the way in which this conflict took place under Menem's government, contrasting the meanings given to the idea of autonomy by the government and by the public institution; attentin focuses on the case of the National University of Rosario.


2006 ◽  
Vol 13 (1) ◽  
pp. 55-67 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gavin Lucas

Archaeology in South Africa has always been political and no one has articulated this relationship better than Martin Hall in a career that has spanned both the political upheavals in South Africa and the theoretical transformations in archaeology over the past four decades. In research that has traversed the Iron Age to the Internet, he has explored the multifarious ways in which material culture operates in everyday life and how power is mobilized through materiality. He is also an example of a scholar who thoroughly embodies the very modern duality of the local and the global through his work, which is both highly engaged within the context of South Africa (and Africa in general), while also clearly international in its scope and relevance.


2008 ◽  
Vol 30 (4) ◽  
pp. 9-27 ◽  
Author(s):  
Cary Carson

Abstract Are historic sites and house museums destined to go the way of Oldsmobiles and floppy disks?? Visitation has trended downwards for thirty years. Theories abound, but no one really knows why. To launch a discussion of the problem in the pages of The Public Historian, Cary Carson cautions against the pessimistic view that the past is simply passéé. Instead he offers a ““Plan B”” that takes account of the new way that learners today organize information to make history meaningful.


2020 ◽  
Vol 8 (4) ◽  
pp. 389-397
Author(s):  
Meghan J. Dudley ◽  
Jenna Domeischel

ABSTRACTAlthough we, as archaeologists, recognize the value in teaching nonprofessionals about our discipline and the knowledge it generates about the human condition, there are few of these specialists compared to the number of archaeologists practicing today. In this introductory article to the special section titled “Touching the Past to Learn the Past,” we suggest that, because of our unique training as anthropologists and archaeologists, each of us has the potential to contribute to public archaeology education. By remembering our archaeological theory, such as social memory, we can use the artifacts we engage with on a daily basis to bridge the disconnect between what the public hopes to gain from our interactions and what we want to teach them. In this article, we outline our perspective and present an overview of the other three articles in this section that apply this approach in their educational endeavors.


2006 ◽  
Vol 22 (1) ◽  
pp. 131-152 ◽  
Author(s):  
Raúúl Beníítez Manaut ◽  
Andrew Selee ◽  
Cynthia J. Arnson

Mexico's democratic transition has helped reduce, if not eliminate, the threat of renewed armed conflict in Chiapas. However, absent more active measures from the government and the Ejéército Zapatista de Liberacióón Nacional (EZLN) to seek a permanent peace agreement and come to terms with the legacies of the past, the conflict will linger on in an unstable déétente, which we term ““armed peace.”” While this situation is far better than the open hostilities of the past, it also belies the promise of a fully democratic society in which all citizens are equally included in the political process. La transicióón democráática en Mééxico ha contribuido a reducir, si no eliminar, la posibilidad de que el conflicto armado en Chiapas se reanude. Sin embargo, sin esfuerzos mas activos por parte del gobierno y del Ejéército Zapatista de Liberacióón Nacional (EZLN) para buscar un acuerdo de paz permanente y saldar cuentas con el pasado, el conflicto permaneceráá en un estado inestable que llamamos ““paz armada””. Aunque esta situacióón es mucho mejor que las tensiones y agresiones del pasado, no cumple los requisitos de una sociedad plenamente democráática en que todos los ciudadanos participan en condiciones de igualdad en el proceso políítico.


2005 ◽  
pp. 45-74 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ivana Spasic

The paper offers an analysis of the interview data collected in the project "Politics and everyday life: Three years later" in terms of three main topics: attitudes to the political sphere, change of social system, and the democratic public sphere. The analysis focuses on ambivalences expressed in the responses which, under the surface of overall disappointment and discontent, may contain preserved results of the previously achieved "social learning" and their positive potentials. The main objective was to examine to what extent the processes of political maturation of citizens, identified in the 2002 study, have continued. After pointing to a number of shifts in people?s views of politics which generally do not contradict the tendencies outlined in 2002 (such as deemotionalization and depersonalization of politics, insistence on efficiency of public officials and on a clearer articulation of positions on the political scene), it is argued that the process of rationalization of political culture has not stopped, but it manifests itself differently in changed circumstances. The republican euphoria of 2002 has been replaced by resignation, with a stronger individualist orientation and a commitment to professional achievement.


2016 ◽  
Vol 16 (1) ◽  
pp. 100-108
Author(s):  
Sofie Møller

In Kant’s Politics in Context, Reidar Maliks offers a compelling account of Kant’s political philosophy as part of a public debate on rights, citizenship, and revolution in the wake of the French Revolution. Maliks argues that Kant’s political thought was developed as a moderate middle ground between radical and conservative political interpretations of his moral philosophy. The book’s central thesis is that the key to understanding Kant’s legal and political thought lies in the public debate among Kant’s followers and that in this debate we find the political challenges which Kant’s political philosophy is designed to solve. Kant’s Politics in Context raises crucial questions about how to understand political thinkers of the past and is proof that our understanding of the past will remain fragmented if we limit our studies to the great men of the established canon.


Author(s):  
Kathrin Deventer

Festivals have been around, and will always be around; no matter the political context they are embedded in, supported by, or hindered by. Why? Simply because society develops, it transforms, it is dynamic and it needs space for reflection and inspiration. Festivals are platforms for people to meet, and for artists to present their work, their creations. This gives festivals an enduring, quite independent mission and reason to exist: as long as festivals strive to offer a biotope for artists and audiences alike and point to questions which concern the way we live and want to live, they will be a fertile ground for a meaningful development of society – and an offer for serving the public wellbeing. What are the challenges festivals are facing today? There are a series of very complex questions related to festivals’ positioning us as human beings in an interconnected, global society, our relation to nature and the immediate surroundings, our stories of life so that as many citizens as possible can be part of the societal discourse, can be enriched, can be touched, can be heard, can be moved. Individuals, interest groups, nationalities, countries, even continents are interconnected. What does this mean for a festival? Travelling across Europe for work and pleasure and meeting citizens from all walks of life has taught me that citizens, a term that connects individuals to some larger constructed community, are just people, everyday people, going about their lives. People connect with other humans and their human stories, real life encounters. Abstract theory and jargon are meaningless when they lack real life connections. Meaningful festivals of the future will offer possibilities for new connections among people: they invite people to travel in time and in space; they inspire to connect human stories, enriching them with new, unexpected, colourful stories!


Author(s):  
Trine Flockhart

This chapter outlines a historical conceptual framework for understanding how liberal order came to be what it is today and how it has been imagined under different conditions and contexts across four centuries of intermingled liberal ordering practices and liberal ideas about world order. It asks ‘what is “the liberal” in liberal world order?’ and points to the use of narrativity and shared knowledge for constituting otherwise neutral concepts as liberal concepts. The aim is to increase our understanding of the political present by imbuing the past with historical meaning and political interpretation. For this purpose the chapter incorporates insights from constructivist and critical thinking, as well as from historical sociology and practice theory.


Author(s):  
POLLY LOW

This chapter discusses one of the best-known instances of classical commemoration: the public funeral and collective burial and commemoration of the Athenian war dead. Its particular aim is to explore the various contexts in which Athenian practice might be understood. How do these monuments fit into the wider picture of Athenian burial and commemoration, in terms of both form and physical location? How do they relate to the political system and ideology of the city that created them? And how might these contexts shape the way in which the monuments were used and understood by contemporary and later viewers?


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