Multiple Voices of the Past: (Hi)stories and Memories from the Ethnically Mixed Neighbourhoods in Pristina

Multiple Voices of the Past: (Hi)stories and Memories from the Ethnically Mixed Neighbourhoods in PristinaUsing the Bakhtinian term heteroglossia developed by Andrea L. Smith, this article analyses the multiple and sometimes internally contradictory narratives, memories and stereotypes articulated in everyday talk about the common past in Pristina that could be heard nowadays in post-war Kosovo (mostly among Kosovo Albanians) and among the people who used to live in Kosovo prior to 1999 (mostly Kosovo Serbs) and then left the country for Serbia (Belgrade, Niš, etc.) or went abroad. The study explores the existing memories, images and stereotypes shared among the current and former citizens of Pristina (Kosovo) – both Albanians and Serbs – about each other and their city. It relies on the basic tools of cultural memory studies and applies them to the analysis of existing local narratives in the present-day Albanian and Serbian communities that used to be parts of one and the same city of Pristina. The article offers a discussion of the opposition between urban and rural models of mindset in changing Pristina and its importance in understanding some of the factors of ethnic conflict in Kosovo. The basic social unit selected for analysis is ethnically mixed neighbourhood and its memory due to the fact that this social and spatial entity functioned as the primary condition and source of interaction, mutual familiarity and cooperation both during peace and war. The empirical data for the study were collected in 2010–2020 during short visits to Pristina (Kosovo) and Niš (Serbia).Множественные голоса прошлого: история и память в этнически смешанных районах ПриштиныАннотация: Используя термин гетероглоссия, предложенный М. Бахтиным и разработанный А. Смитом, в данной статье я про- анализирую многочисленные и иногда внутренне противоречивые нарративы, воспоминания и стереотипы, сформулированные в повседневных разговорах об общем прошлом в Приштине, которые сегодня можно услышать в послевоенном Косово (в среде косовских албанцев) и среди людей, живших в Косово до 1999 г. (в основном косовские сербы), а затем уехавших из страны в Сербию (Белград, Ниш и т. д.) или за границу. Моя статья направлена на изучение существующих воспоминаний, образов и стереотипов, разделяемых нынешними и бывшими гражданами Приштины – как албанцами, так и сербами – по отношению друг к другу и своему городу. В работе используются основные инструменты исследования культурной памяти, в их применении к анализу существующих местных нарративов в современных албанских и сербских общинах, которые когда-то были частью одного и того же города Приштина. В своей статье я буду обсуждать противостояние между городской и сельской моделями мышления в изменении Приштины и его важность для понимания некоторых предпосылок этнического конфликта в Косово. В качестве базовой социальной единицы для своего анализа я выбрал этнически смешанный район и его память в связи с тем, что эта социальная и пространственная сущность функционировала как основное условие и источник взаимодействия, взаимного знакомства и сотрудничества как в периоды мира, так и во время войны. Эмпирические данные были собраны в 2010-2020 годах во время моих коротких визитов в Приштину и Ниш.Różnorodne głosy przeszłości: historia i pamięć w zróżnicowanych etnicznie dzielnicach PrisztinyOdwołując się do terminu polifoniczności, zaproponowanego przez Michaiła Bachtina i opracowanego przez Anthony’ego Smitha, w niniej­szym artykule przeanalizuję liczne i czasem wewnętrznie sprzeczne narra­cje, wspomnienia i stereotypy, sformułowane w codziennych rozmowach o wspólnej przeszłości w Prisztinie, które dziś można usłyszeć w powo­jennym Kosowie (w środowisku kosowskich Albańczyków) oraz pośród ludzi mieszkających w Kosowie do 1999 roku (przede wszystkim wśród kosowskich Serbów), którzy wyjechali do Serbii (Belgrad, Nisz itd.) lub za granicę. Mój artykuł ma na celu zbadanie wspomnień, obrazów i ste­reotypów, podzielanych przez obecnych i byłych obywateli Prisztiny, za­równo Albańczyków jak i Serbów, w stosunku do siebie nawzajem oraz do samego miasta. W pracy nad analizą lokalnych narracji we współczesnych wspólnotach albańskich i serbskich, które kiedyś były częścią tego samego miasta – Prisztiny, wykorzystuję podstawowe instrumenty badawcze dla dziedziny pamięci kulturowej. W artykule będę omawiać sprzeczność mię­dzy miejskim a wiejskim modelem myślenia na temat przemian Prisztiny, akcentując jego istotną rolę w rozumieniu niektórych przesłanek konflik­tu etnicznego w Kosowie. Jako podstawową jednostkę społeczną dla mo­jej analizy przyjąłem etnicznie różnorodną dzielnicę wraz z jej pamięcią, ze względu na to, że ta społeczna i przestrzenna jednostka funkcjonowała jako podstawowe źródło wzajemnych wpływów, znajomości i współpracy, zarówno w czasie pokoju, jak i wojny. Dane empiryczne zostały zebrane w latach 2010-2020 w czasie moich krótkich wizyt w Prisztinie i Niszu.

Japanese Garden Houses: Strategies for creating an interface with nature in New Zealand's urban dwellings

<p>New Zealanders have a proud tradition of living close to nature (clean and green). This high interface with nature in traditional New Zealand dwellings is referred to as the “quarter-acre dream” by Mitchell (1972). However, the recent intensification of New Zealand cities has resulted in higher-density, multi-unit dwellings that have little interface with nature. As Auckland alone is expected to require an additional 400,000 homes within the next 30 years, a medium-density housing model that has a high nature-dwelling interface is potentially useful in reducing urban sprawl. In contrast, many Japanese houses are effectively integrated with nature. The number of case studies available through books, journals and on websites suggests that it is possible to group these dwellings under the heading “garden houses”. For the purpose of this research, the term “Japanese Garden House” refers to Japanese houses in which the garden is an integral part of the architecture, as opposed to a separate spatial entity. New Zealand walk-up apartments are analysed to show how this New Zealand housing model relates to nature in addition to revealing typical design elements. Thereafter, the adaptation of the Japanese Garden House for the New Zealand context is proposed as a mechanism to further connect urban dwellings with nature, thus increasing the interface between nature and inhabited space. The significant benefits this mechanism provides, including a positive effect on psychological and physiological wellbeing, are discussed. In order to adapt the features of Japanese Garden Houses to the New Zealand context, a detailed analysis of Japanese Garden Houses is undertaken to reveal design principles and strategies that characterise this type of dwelling. The analysis is limited to houses built in the last 15 years. An investigation, through design, is carried out to determine whether the Japanese Garden House models could be used to reconnect walk-up apartments with nature. The investigation is tested on a typical Auckland site. In a case study design, principles and strategies discovered through analysis of Japanese Garden Houses are applied and, adapted to fit walk-up apartments and the New Zealand context. The outcome is a valuable new New Zealand housing model and a set of guidelines presented as a matrix including key principles, strategies and a menu of solutions with the potential to be applied more broadly by other architects, developers and city councils.</p>

Japanese Garden Houses: Strategies for creating an interface with nature in New Zealand's urban dwellings

<p>New Zealanders have a proud tradition of living close to nature (clean and green). This high interface with nature in traditional New Zealand dwellings is referred to as the “quarter-acre dream” by Mitchell (1972). However, the recent intensification of New Zealand cities has resulted in higher-density, multi-unit dwellings that have little interface with nature. As Auckland alone is expected to require an additional 400,000 homes within the next 30 years, a medium-density housing model that has a high nature-dwelling interface is potentially useful in reducing urban sprawl. In contrast, many Japanese houses are effectively integrated with nature. The number of case studies available through books, journals and on websites suggests that it is possible to group these dwellings under the heading “garden houses”. For the purpose of this research, the term “Japanese Garden House” refers to Japanese houses in which the garden is an integral part of the architecture, as opposed to a separate spatial entity. New Zealand walk-up apartments are analysed to show how this New Zealand housing model relates to nature in addition to revealing typical design elements. Thereafter, the adaptation of the Japanese Garden House for the New Zealand context is proposed as a mechanism to further connect urban dwellings with nature, thus increasing the interface between nature and inhabited space. The significant benefits this mechanism provides, including a positive effect on psychological and physiological wellbeing, are discussed. In order to adapt the features of Japanese Garden Houses to the New Zealand context, a detailed analysis of Japanese Garden Houses is undertaken to reveal design principles and strategies that characterise this type of dwelling. The analysis is limited to houses built in the last 15 years. An investigation, through design, is carried out to determine whether the Japanese Garden House models could be used to reconnect walk-up apartments with nature. The investigation is tested on a typical Auckland site. In a case study design, principles and strategies discovered through analysis of Japanese Garden Houses are applied and, adapted to fit walk-up apartments and the New Zealand context. The outcome is a valuable new New Zealand housing model and a set of guidelines presented as a matrix including key principles, strategies and a menu of solutions with the potential to be applied more broadly by other architects, developers and city councils.</p>

Expressing prospective location in French: rethinking Vandeloise’s ‘principle of anticipation’

Vandeloise’s (1987, 2017) principle of anticipation proposes that French verbs of motion can enable prospective readings of static locative prepositions. However, it has little to say about verbs of motion that do not have a prospective verbal reference place (VRP): that is, to what extent are verbs of initial polarity like partir and s’enfuir able to trigger prospective readings of prepositions? This article argues that each verb must be analysed individually and that prospective readings of prepositions depend on the interaction of verbal and prepositional semantics: for example, the movement away from a viewer expressed by partir favours a prospective reading of derrière but not of devant: this is due to differences regarding access to perception. The animacy of the Ground and its status as a material or spatial entity (Vandeloise, 2017) is also a key factor (e.g. partir près de + spatial entity). This suggests that verbs of initial polarity participate in synergistic verb/preposition/Ground interpretations that help to overcome their lack of a VRP. The prospective reading of the preposition depends on the choice of verb and Ground, thus supporting a distributed view of spatial semantics (Sinha and Kuteva, 1995; Zlatev, 1997, 2003, 2007; Evans and Tyler, 2004).

Geographical queries reformulation using a parallel association rules generator to build spatial taxonomies

Geographical queries need a special process of reformulation by information retrieval systems (IRS) due to their specificities and hierarchical structure. This fact is ignored by most of web search engines. In this paper, we propose an automatic approach for building a spatial taxonomy, that models’ the notion of adjacency that will be used in the reformulation of the spatial part of a geographical query. This approach exploits the documents that are in top of the retrieved list when submitting a spatial entity, which is composed of a spatial relation and a noun of a city. Then, a transactional database is constructed, considering each document extracted as a transaction that contains the nouns of the cities sharing the country of the submitted query’s city. The algorithm frequent pattern growth (FP-growth) is applied to this database in his parallel version (parallel FP-growth: PFP) in order to generate association rules, that will form the country’s taxonomy in a Big Data context. Experiments has been conducted on Spark and their results show that query reformulation using the taxonomy constructed based on our proposed approach improves the precision and the effectiveness of the IRS.

Geographical query reformulation using a geographical adjacency taxonomy builder and word senses

Purpose Geographical query formulation is one of the key difficulties for users in search engines. The purpose of this study is to improve geographical search by proposing a novel geographical query reformulation (GQR) technique using a geographical taxonomy and word senses. Design/methodology/approach This work introduces an approach for GQR, which combines a method of query components separation that uses GeoNames, a technique for reformulating these components using WordNet and a geographic taxonomy constructed using the latent semantic analysis method. Findings The proposed approach was compared to two methods from the literature, using the mean average precision (MAP) and the precision at 20 documents (P@20). The experimental results show that it outperforms the other techniques by 15.73% to 31.21% in terms of P@20 and by 17.81% to 35.52% in terms of MAP. Research limitations/implications According to the experimental results, the best created taxonomy using the geographical adjacency taxonomy builder contains 7.67% of incorrect links. This paper believes that using a very big amount of data for taxonomy building can give better results. Thus, in future work, this paper intends to apply the approach in a big data context. Originality/value Despite this, the reformulation of geographical queries using the new proposed approach considerably improves the precision of queries and retrieves relevant documents that were not retrieved using the original queries. The strengths of the technique lie in the facts of reformulating both thematic and spatial entities and replacing the spatial entity of the query with terms that explain the intent of the query more precisely using a geographical taxonomy.

Building the Nation: Sovereignty and International Law in the Decolonisation of South Asia

The position of the territorially sovereign nation-state as the fundamental building block of the contemporary world order has come under increasing challenge. Historians have long focused on social, cultural, economic, and technological factors to examine the constructed nature of the nation-state. In this article, I explore the role of law, and specifically the concept of sovereignty, in the creation of the unified spatial entity constituting the nation-state. I focus in particular on the decolonisation of South Asia and analyse legal arguments made in two international disputes (over Hyderabad and the river Indus) to understand the process through which the Indian nation-state came into being.

A Non-Spatial Reality

It is generally assumed, and usually taken for granted, that reality is fully contained in space. However, when taking a closer look at the strange behavior of the entities of the micro-world, we are forced to abandon such a prejudice and recognize that space is just a temporary crystallization of a small theatre for reality, where the material entities can take a place and meet with each other. More precisely, phenomena like quantum entanglement, quantum interference effects and quantum indistinguishability, when analyzed attentively, tell us that there is much more in our physical reality than what meets our three-dimensional human eyes. But if the building blocks of our physical reality are non-spatial, what does it mean? Can we understand what the nature of a non-spatial entity is? And if so, what are the consequences for our view of the world in which we live and evolve as a species? This article was written having in mind one of the objectives of the Center Leo Apostel for Interdisciplinary Studies, that of a broad dissemination of scientific knowledge. Hence, it addresses a transversal audience of readers, both academic and nonacademic, hoping to stimulate in this way the interdisciplinary dialogue about foundational issues in science.