REACHING ACROSS THE DIVIDE – THE ROLE OF CULTURAL EVENTS IN PEACEBUILDING

Author(s):  
Adrian Devine ◽  
Bernadette Quinn ◽  
Frances Devine

This paper assesses whether or not a cultural event can play a peacebuilding role during the post violence phase of conflict. Cultural expression has long been a contentious issue in Northern Ireland, no more so than in Derry/Londonderry, the city at the centre of this study. Adopting a qualitative approach, the authors used the city’s Fleadh Cheoil (2013) event as a case study and found that it served three of the seven-peacebuilding functions outlined by Paffenholz and Spurk (2010): social cohesion, in-group socialisation and intermediation/facilitation. The findings suggest that the event enabled positive change by building ‘bridges’ and developing intercommunal trust and cross culture understanding. This did not happen by chance and nor was it unproblematic. However, inclusivity was a core objective and the event was planned and managed accordingly. This required strong leadership, risk taking, sensitivity and a willingness to negotiate and compromise. In turn, this created the conditions for cross community dialogue that had ramifications beyond the cultural realm. Whilst this paper has demonstrated how a cultural event can play a role in peacebuilding, it does not suggest that culture events are a panacea for sectarianism, bias or conflict in Northern Ireland or elsewhere. However, if planned properly they can contribute to the peacebuilding process by providing an opportunity for people to navigate difficulties and develop shared experiences in complex and challenging conditions. These can help build trust, tolerance, understanding and confidence that enable divided societies to co-exist more peacefully.

Author(s):  
Alessandro Portelli

This article centers around the case study of Rome's House of Memory and History to understand the politics of memory and public institutions. This case study is about the organization and politics of public memory: the House of Memory and History, established by the city of Rome in 2006, in the framework of an ambitious program of cultural policy. It summarizes the history of the House's conception and founding, describes its activities and the role of oral history in them, and discusses some of the problems it faces. The idea of a House of Memory and History grew in this cultural and political context. This article traces several political events that led to the culmination of the politics of memory and its effect on public institutions. It says that the House of Memory and History can be considered a success. A discussion on a cultural future winds up this article.


2019 ◽  
Vol 11 (9) ◽  
pp. 2509 ◽  
Author(s):  
Uroš Radosavljević ◽  
Aleksandra Đorđević ◽  
Kseniјa Lalović ◽  
Jelena Živković ◽  
Zoran Đukanović

Using heritage as a cultural artifact in city development is not new, but little has been explored about how urban heritage can be utilized as new generative value and a new planning instrument for the revival of cities. The purpose of this paper is to show the creative and the generative use of urban heritage, both for the extension of cultural and tourist offer of the city and for the improvement of the quality of life in physical, social and economic terms for the community. The case study method was used for the adaptive reuse of projects for heritage buildings and urban revival in Kikinda. We argue that urban heritage has to be used, bearing in mind its spatial, economic and social sustainability aspects, and become a generator of urban revival. We go beyond recognition of the value of heritage as a cultural artifact that should solely be preserved and used as a static element in urban development, and view it more as a dynamic asset for city revival processes. We found that for the heritage nodes to be utilized as the new generative value for the revival of cities, they have to be perceived from the network perspective, thus influencing the urban environment in a sustainable way.


2019 ◽  
Vol 8 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Gholam Reza Mirie ◽  
Mohsen Sadeghi

The purpose of the present study was to determine the performance of responsible organizations in urban affairs administration as an important factor in the development of the city of Pars Abad. The statistical population of this research includes inhabitants of Parasabad city and managers and experts of urban affairs in 1396. The method of this study is descriptive-practical study. For data collection, library and field method is used for urban data and questionnaire. These data are analyzed using SPSS software and also used to test the hypothesis of T-test. The results of this study show that the performance of the responsible unit in the affairs of the city has a significant relationship with the management and organization of the physical-space development process, equipping the service space and organizing facilities and facilities in the city of Parsabad. While the responsibility of the responsible authority in affairs of the city is not significantly related to the development of the employment and business environment and the establishment of effective communication channels with citizens and the development of popular participation


Author(s):  
Brian Walker

This article looks at the role of religion in politics. Northern Ireland provides not only a good case study for this issue but also an opportunity to see how the subject has been approached in academic literature over the last forty years. It is argued here that religion can be a modern day, independent factor of considerable influence in politics. This has been important not only in Northern Ireland but also elsewhere in Western Europe in the twentieth century. This reality has been largely ignored until recently, partly because the situation in Northern Ireland has often been studied in a limited comparative context, and partly because of restrictive intellectual assumptions about the role of religion in politics.


2019 ◽  
Vol 24 (02) ◽  
pp. 1950008
Author(s):  
CHONNATCHA KUNGWANSUPAPHAN ◽  
JIBON KUMAR SHARMA LEIHAOTHABAM

This study examines the relationship between entrepreneurial orientation of female entrepreneurs and business performance, and analyzes the moderating role of institutional capital on the entrepreneurial orientation-performance link. The results of the study highlight the important role of entrepreneurial orientation, including proactiveness, innovativeness and risk-taking, in directing business performance of female entrepreneurs and the complex interplay among entrepreneurial orientation variables. It also indicates that accessibility to institutional capital, through regulative, cognitive and normative dimensions, encourages female entrepreneurs to be more entrepreneurially oriented, thus leading to better business performance. In addition, this research proposes an integrated framework to guide policy makers on how institutional capital can play a crucial role in helping female entrepreneurs, stressing the importance of becoming entrepreneurial oriented and thus, achieving superior business performance.


2019 ◽  
Vol 30 (2) ◽  
pp. 219-237 ◽  
Author(s):  
David W. Mixter

To remain in place in the immediate aftermath of the ninth-century Maya collapse, Maya groups employed various resilient strategies. In the absence of divine rulers, groups needed to renegotiate their forms of political authority and to reconsider the legitimizing role of religious institutions. This kind of negotiation happened first at the local level, where individual communities developed varied political and ideological solutions. At the community of Actuncan, located in the lower Mopan River valley of Belize, reorganization took place within the remains of a monumental urban centre built 1000 years before by the site's early rulers. I report on the changing configuration and use of Actuncan's urban landscape during the process of reorganization. These modifications included the construction of a new centre for political gatherings, the dismantling of old administrative buildings constructed by holy lords and the reuse of the site's oldest ritual space. These developments split the city into distinct civic and ritual zones, paralleling the adoption of a new shared rule divorced from cosmological underpinnings. This case study provides an example of how broader societal resilience relies on adaptation at the local level.


2014 ◽  
Vol 23 (3) ◽  
pp. 405-428 ◽  
Author(s):  
MARKUS EIKEL ◽  
VALENTINA SIVAIEVA

AbstractDuring the occupation of Ukraine, city mayors, raion chiefs and village elders played a substantial role in implementing occupation policies. Based in large part on primary sources from regional archives in Ukraine, the current article analyses the role of these local administrators, so far largely neglected in research on the occupation of Ukraine. Whatever their original motives were for joining the local administration (Hilfsverwaltung) – economic, nationalistic, or ethnic reasons, or a desire for better governance, local administrators nevertheless supported forced labour measures and the murder of the local Jewish population by identifying the local Jewish inhabitants, by administering the property of the murdered Jews or by facilitating Jewish forced labour duties. The article treats the city administration in Kamenets-Podol’sk in Podolia as a case study of the involvement of the local administration in the crimes committed under the occupation regime.


2018 ◽  
Vol 22 (4) ◽  
pp. 387-404
Author(s):  
Jeroen Stevens ◽  
Bruno De Meulder

This article will unfold a longe durée spatial biography of the urban area of Bixiga (São Paulo, Brazil) to probe the particular role of space in the conflation of different cultural practices and territorial claims. The extended case study bridges indigenous, colonial, and postcolonial urbanization as they amalgamated an intricate assemblage of material and cultural strata. Combined historical urban analysis and fieldwork allow to uncover how the resulting urban milieu integrates discrepant urban worlds, perpetually iterating between centrality and marginality, innovation and degradation, oppression and resistance. Building on Foucault’s (1984) conception of heterotopia, Bixiga will surface as an allotopia, a place that accommodates, cumulates, and celebrates a multitude of differences. It sheds light, this way, on more insurgent histories of urbanism, where urban space is piecemeal forged through contentious struggles over space in the city.


2017 ◽  
Vol 21 (05) ◽  
pp. 1740006 ◽  
Author(s):  
LISA CALLAGHER ◽  
PETER SMITH

This paper draws on a detailed case study of an innovation awards-giving scheme in a professional service firm to consider the role of discretionary awards in encouraging and displaying innovation capabilities. Because of their association with competition, it might seem that awards are likely tools in pluralistic contexts such as professional service firms where risk-taking and collaboration require deep relationships with clients and with professionals from different specialisations. We intend to show how managers and professionals mobilised around the scheme using the rewarding, recognising, and ritualising of innovation through awards, as a platform to initiate and promote other organisational processes that foster innovation capabilities.


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document