scholarly journals Memories and reflections on the “socialist” urban center

2021 ◽  
Vol XXII (2021) ◽  
pp. 87-103
Author(s):  
Zlatina Bogdanova

Based on empirical research in Asenovgrad, this paper discusses socially constructed spaces during socialism and how they were used to impose and legitimize power. It proposes alternate perspectives towards socialism and its material culture expressed in the creation of modern architectural ensembles in the town center. Socialist architecture was a power statement which imposed new values and ideas. These buildings were markers of state authority which sent a powerful message for the renewal of society by breaking away from older, pre-socialist traditions. Among the issues examined here is the significance of the urban square and its surrounding buildings for residents of Asenovgrad today; how is the town’s center perceived in the collective memory? The analysis concludes by exploring the relationship between architecture and ideology in the way social reality was constructed, instrumentalised and offering insight into how the socialist regime was legitimized through material culture, artifacts, and buildings.

2016 ◽  
Vol 20 (3) ◽  
pp. 207-216
Author(s):  
Andreas Luescher

This paper examines the museum dedicated to Pierre Soulages and its relationship with Soulages, the city of Rodez, the Forirail Garden (which is the site of the museum), and the ideas and practices realised by Catalan architects Rafael Aranda, Carme Pigem and Ramon Vilalta (RCR). The Musée Soulages is defined by the colour black and the luminous fluidity of steel as designed by RCR Arquitectes; it is also aligned with an environmental ecology that literally and figuratively represents the town of Rodez with its Notre-Dame Cathedral. The central thesis is that the Musée Soulages inducts the visitor into a role of active participation and exchange in an atmosphere of transcendental logic, and, ultimately, a new way to experience black as a colour rather than the lack of one. A visitor to the Musée Soulages becomes part of a theatrical event in which two actors —one French abstract painter, three Catalan architects—communicate in physical terms about the metaphysical environment, and the relationship between the scenographic and the tectonic in architecture. The Musée Soulages is a fascinating metaphorical representation of not only Pierre Soulages's character and his work, but also of the role of the built environment and material culture that is intertwined with the body of Soulages's expressive works. This essay focuses on the material and symbolic gestures created by Pierre Soulages and RCR Arquitectes to maintain and promote their particular world views, and examines the ways in which their expressive mediums and ideas are by turn harmonious and contradictory.


Author(s):  
Sarah Tahamont ◽  
Aaron Chalfin

This chapter presents empirical evidence regarding the (in)effectiveness of prisons for reducing crime. The authors begin with a brief discussion of the mechanisms through which incarceration affects crime, followed by a review of research that presents empirical evidence on the relationship between prisons and crime. This section separates empirical research on the total effect of prison on crime from empirical studies intended to isolate the deterrent or incapacitation effects of prison. Death penalty studies are also reviewed for insight into whether capital punishment has any short- or long-term effects on homicide rates. The chapter concludes with a brief discussion of the policy implications that follow from the empirical research on prison effects on crime.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ingrid Masak Mida

Christian Dior once said, “We invent nothing, we always start from something that has come before” (qtd. in Pochna 80). Historic garments can inform and inspire the present, offering up design potential for reinterpretations of styles of the past or serving as evidence of how fashion was worn and lived for material culture studies. Seeing a dress in a photo is a very different experience than feeling the weight of the fabric in hand, examining the details of cut, construction and embellishment, considering the relationship of the garment to the body or searching for evidence of how the garment was worn, used or altered over time. The Ryerson Fashion Research Collection is a repository of several thousand items acquired by donation since 1981, many of which are dresses and evening gowns dating from 1860 to 2000. For several years, this collection lay dormant behind an unmarked door and was largely unknown by the student body. This project was initiated to understand the nature of the artifacts contained therein and is a first step in the process of refocusing and rebuilding the Collection for the future. The title “Re-collection of the Ryerson Fashion Research Collection” encapsulates the organizing principle for this practice-led interdisciplinary project, encompassing the intersection of material culture, curatorial process and collective memory in the identification of one hundred key items from the archive that reflect the breadth and history of the Collection itself.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ingrid Masak Mida

Christian Dior once said, “We invent nothing, we always start from something that has come before” (qtd. in Pochna 80). Historic garments can inform and inspire the present, offering up design potential for reinterpretations of styles of the past or serving as evidence of how fashion was worn and lived for material culture studies. Seeing a dress in a photo is a very different experience than feeling the weight of the fabric in hand, examining the details of cut, construction and embellishment, considering the relationship of the garment to the body or searching for evidence of how the garment was worn, used or altered over time. The Ryerson Fashion Research Collection is a repository of several thousand items acquired by donation since 1981, many of which are dresses and evening gowns dating from 1860 to 2000. For several years, this collection lay dormant behind an unmarked door and was largely unknown by the student body. This project was initiated to understand the nature of the artifacts contained therein and is a first step in the process of refocusing and rebuilding the Collection for the future. The title “Re-collection of the Ryerson Fashion Research Collection” encapsulates the organizing principle for this practice-led interdisciplinary project, encompassing the intersection of material culture, curatorial process and collective memory in the identification of one hundred key items from the archive that reflect the breadth and history of the Collection itself.


Lampas ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 51 (4) ◽  
pp. 393-410
Author(s):  
Suzanne Adema ◽  
Sophie Dijkstra

Summary In this article we present teaching materials based on the concept ‘anchoring innovation’, meant for students in year three of secondary school. The purpose of the materials is to illustrate how ‘anchoring innovation’ worked in Antiquity and to illustrate that these principles are still relevant today. A secondary goal is to give students insight into Classics as an academic discipline. Within the context of the classroom ‘anchoring innovation’ helps students to understand the relationship between different historical events, texts and material culture. In this set of teaching materials we focus on Augustus and his big innovation: the principate. Students will discover how Augustus anchored this political change. After analyzing texts, coins, buildings and works of art, they will present their findings in an infographic. They will find out that Augustus used all types of media to secure his principate. At the same time they will see that Augustus is careful not to use the wrong anchor.


Author(s):  
Malkhaz Chokharadze

Chorokhi is the main river of historical southern Georgia. Interesting background knowledge about sailing on Chorokhi was preserved by the press and the records of travelers of the last quarter of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century, as well as by the collective memory of the population living by the edge of the river. Interestingly, the Chorokhi navigation area has almost never been reflected in fiction. Therefore, the work “Adjarians” by Arthur Zuttner is undoubtedly of great importance.Arthur Zuttner, an Austrian writer, lived in Georgia with his wife Bertha from 1876-1885. “Adjarians” was published in Germany in 1888, and the Georgian translation by Rusudan Ghvinepadze was published in 2007.“Adjarians” reflects the reality of southern Georgia before the Russo-Ottoman war of 1877-78. The action takes place mainly in the Chorokhi basin. The author describes the Chorokhi boat and sailing in only a few episodes, though, quite extensively. The work deals with the navigation images described by Zuttner in the novel, especially how the Chorokhi navigation area is reflected in the work and what is the relationship between the relevant episodes of the novel and the objective reality. It is obvious that the writer has deep insight into the life of the Chorokhi sailors and the local specifics of the river sailing. Obviously, Suttner's text is an artistic interpretation of reality, but it must also be noted that the navigational narrative in Suttner’s novel, with a few exceptions, accurately depicts a number of 19th century details of the Chorokhi navigation artery. Consequently, the images depicted in the novel are undoubtedly interesting for the literature lovers and the readers of fiction interested in the history or details of life.


Author(s):  
D. F. Blake ◽  
L. F. Allard ◽  
D. R. Peacor

Echinodermata is a phylum of marine invertebrates which has been extant since Cambrian time (c.a. 500 m.y. before the present). Modern examples of echinoderms include sea urchins, sea stars, and sea lilies (crinoids). The endoskeletons of echinoderms are composed of plates or ossicles (Fig. 1) which are with few exceptions, porous, single crystals of high-magnesian calcite. Despite their single crystal nature, fracture surfaces do not exhibit the near-perfect {10.4} cleavage characteristic of inorganic calcite. This paradoxical mix of biogenic and inorganic features has prompted much recent work on echinoderm skeletal crystallography. Furthermore, fossil echinoderm hard parts comprise a volumetrically significant portion of some marine limestones sequences. The ultrastructural and microchemical characterization of modern skeletal material should lend insight into: 1). The nature of the biogenic processes involved, for example, the relationship of Mg heterogeneity to morphological and structural features in modern echinoderm material, and 2). The nature of the diagenetic changes undergone by their ancient, fossilized counterparts. In this study, high resolution TEM (HRTEM), high voltage TEM (HVTEM), and STEM microanalysis are used to characterize tha ultrastructural and microchemical composition of skeletal elements of the modern crinoid Neocrinus blakei.


2019 ◽  
Vol 16 (3) ◽  
pp. 417-428
Author(s):  
Özgün Ünver ◽  
Ides Nicaise

This article tackles the relationship between Turkish-Belgian families with the Flemish society, within the specific context of their experiences with early childhood education and care (ECEC) system in Flanders. Our findings are based on a focus group with mothers in the town of Beringen. The intercultural dimension of the relationships between these families and ECEC services is discussed using the Interactive Acculturation Model (IAM). The acculturation patterns are discussed under three main headlines: language acquisition, social interaction and maternal employment. Within the context of IAM, our findings point to some degree of separationism of Turkish-Belgian families, while they perceive the Flemish majority to have an assimilationist attitude. This combination suggests a conflictual type of interaction. However, both parties also display some traits of integrationism, which points to the domain-specificity of interactive acculturation.


2019 ◽  
Vol 58 (2) ◽  
pp. 249-259
Author(s):  
Joseph Acquisto

This essay examines a polemic between two Baudelaire critics of the 1930s, Jean Cassou and Benjamin Fondane, which centered on the relationship of poetry to progressive politics and metaphysics. I argue that a return to Baudelaire's poetry can yield insight into what seems like an impasse in Cassou and Fondane. Baudelaire provides the possibility of realigning metaphysics and politics so that poetry has the potential to become the space in which we can begin to think the two of them together, as opposed to seeing them in unresolvable tension. Or rather, the tension that Baudelaire animates between the two allows us a new way of thinking about the role of esthetics in moments of political crisis. We can in some ways see Baudelaire as responding, avant la lettre, to two of his early twentieth-century readers who correctly perceived his work as the space that breathes a new urgency into the questions of how modern poetry relates to the world from which it springs and in which it intervenes.


2019 ◽  
Vol 48 (1) ◽  
pp. 83-101
Author(s):  
Cameron McKay

During the late nineteenth and early twentieth century penologists began to explore the possibility that environment and upbringing, as opposed to individual choice, were the causes criminality. The Prison Commissioners for Scotland, the devolved body who administered prisons north of the border, were not immune to this wider trend. Smith has argued that from the 1890s onwards the Commissioners began to accept that criminality was caused by social problems, namely alcoholism, but also parental neglect, poor education and poverty. In their efforts to test these new criminological theories, the Commissioners began to make more careful enquiries into the backgrounds of their charges. From 1896 to 1931 the Commissioners interviewed a sample of prisoners each year and included the findings in their annual report. Although the main focus of these interviews was on the upbringing and drinking habits of prisoners; by the 1900s the Commissioners seem to have added irreligion to the growing list of etiological causes of crime, and from 1903 onwards prisoners were asked to give details on their religious habits. Although it is debateable how much the Prison Commissioners revealed about the relationship between religion and crime, they did however provide a useful insight into the religiosity of the average prisoner.


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