Marking Time, Making Community in Medieval Schools

This article examines the nature of school days and school years in later medieval Western Europe and considers the societal functions of the temporal cultures that emerged. The forms of the school day and year in elementary and grammar schools—alongside school- and youth-centered festivals—were replete with meaning and possessed utility beyond simple responses to environmental factors such as seasonal and meteorological changes. School authorities—whether ecclesiastical or municipal—saw the temporal cultures of medieval schools as a means to socialize children and to create and maintain collective community identities. By exploring a range of different traditions and regional variations, it is clear that the experience of the passage of time was imbued with meaning and social significance for medieval schoolchildren and their communities.

A Maya Migrant: A Journey of No Return

After years of listening to Maya migrants in the United states and listening to migrants forced back to Guatemala, the novella’s author Gaspar Pedro González created the story of Palas and Malkal, man and wife. The story begins with a discussion of the causes behind migration, and then proceeds to Palas while he arranges his trip with the coyote, makes his goodbyes to his family and community, makes the overland passage through Mexico, and when finally in the United States finds some hopes and plans unobtainable. Palas, and his family left behind in Guatemala, will encounter challenges to their cultural traditions, their personal and community identities, their values and the way they see the world and life, and their personal, family and community relations. The original Spanish version was published in Maya America in Volume 2 Number 2 (2020).

The Struggle Against the Ebola Epidemics in Guinea, and the Hardships Related With Professional and Community-Based Identities

International audience This article describes the interactions among different social actors involved in the fight against the Ebola epidemic in Guinea, focusing on their professional and community identities. It shows how the epidemic has contributed to create new identities, grouped into two different semantic fields: the “Ebola people” and the “communities”, but also new professional identities. In the theoretical framework of Olivier de Sardan’s socio-anthropology of development, the article tries to provide a better knowledge about the experts of the “Riposte,” belonging to different disciplinary fields and on their representations of local people. Cet article décrit les interactions entre les différents acteurs impliqués dans la lutte contre l’épidémie d’Ebola en Guinée, en se focalisant sur leurs identités communautaires et professionnelles. Il montre comment l’épidémie a contribué à forger de toute pièce des identités inédites, regroupées en deux camps opposés, « les gens d’Ebola » et les « communautés », ainsi que de nouvelles figures professionnelles. Dans une perspective de la socio-anthropologie du développement de Jean-Pierre Olivier de Sardan, l’article cherche à contribuer à une meilleure connaissance des opérateurs de la « Riposte », des interactions entre les spécialistes de disciplines différentes et de leurs représentations sur les populations locales. L’articolo descrive le interazioni tra i vari attori impegnati nella lotta contro l’epidemia di Ebola in Guinea, concentrandosi sulle loro identità professionali e comunitarie. Mostra in che modo l’epidemia abbia contribuito a creare delle identità inedite, raggruppate in due campi opposti: la “gente di Ebola” e le comunità, ma anche a determinare la nascita di nuove figure professionali. Richiamandosi alla socio-antropologia dello sviluppo di Jean-Pierre Olivier de Sardan, l’articolo cerca di fornire una migliore conoscenza degli esperti della “Riposte”, delle interazioni tra specialisti di diverse discipline et delle loro rappresentazioni sulle popolazioni locali.

Chat to Mi Back: Meditation on body archive

This article addresses the concept Body as Archive in the context of contemporary Jamaica, a nation simultaneously grounded in Christian Religiosity and rooted in African Cosmology. Body as Archive is identified here as an understanding of the body that recognizes bodily artefacts as stored in individual and collective bodies for future generations to excavate, critically interrogate, re-craft and/or restore and deploy in the fashioning of present-day individual and community identities, life possibilities and future world imaginings. At its core Body as Archive is the work of the imagination to manifest the body as both archive and artefact, both a space for the collection and recording of historical memory and remembrance and itself an expression of memory and re-membrance. In contemporary Jamaica Body as Archive encompasses notions of beauty, the role of dance, and the significance of performance around and about the Jamaican female body. Embedded in this current exploration is an interrogation of the ways in which the bio-political imagination of past generations inform the excavation and deployment of bodily artefacts in the present.

Norbert Elias’s extended theory of community: From established/outsider relations to the gendered we–I balance

Norbert Elias and John Scotson’s analysis of the interconnection between positive and negative community identities in The Established and the Outsiders is well-known. Elias’s subsequent writing about community offers a more rounded analysis, going beyond established/outsider configurations by exploring community’s gendered character and the forces involved in the ‘we–I balance’ that counteract the pervasive process of individualization. Elias’s use of personal pronouns to reveal how community identity (‘we’) relates not only to outsiders (‘they’) but also to an individual member (‘I’) of communities is central to his extended theory of community.

“Sovereignty Has Lost Its Rights”

Echeverrí’s contribution to the volume, alone among the essays, crosses the temporal divide separating colonial from independence Latin America. She argues that liberal elites pushed for a notion of law and justice rooted in a principle of formal equality and sovereignty, one at odds with colonial ideas of vassalage and ideas of justice rooted in protection of the vulnerable from the powerful. In effect, Colombian elites articulated a vision undercutting indigenous collective rights in favor of individual rights as citizens. Natives, by contrast, continued to assert collective tribute obligations and to demand the king’s substantive justice in protecting corporate and community identities, as they had done for centuries prior to independence. Nevertheless, elites’ reliance on sovereignty to ground law redistributed power within the legal system in ways that challenged intelligibility and made it more difficult for people to defend communal rights.

On the Need for a Nuanced Understanding of “Community” in Heritage Policy and Practice

The alleged benefits of community participation in cultural resource management has been an article of faith in the international heritage community since the early 1990s, yet the ambiguous and multi-layered concept of community is commonly deployed uncritically. This chapter argues that “community” should be seen as an open-ended, never complete process rather than end-product. It suggests that heritage practitioners inevitably contribute to the creation of a sense of community at scales ranging from the local to the national. The projection of community identities can enhance or undermine social cohesion at and across geographic scales and the chapter argues that heritage practitioners need to work with a nuanced understanding of their role in the creation of community identities. The link between heritage values and community formation remains powerful but the power needs to be unleashed with due diligence.