Gendering the military past: Understanding heritage and security from a feminist perspective

This article showcases how a feminist perspective provides novel insights into the relations between military heritage/history and national security politics. We argue that analysing how gender and sexualities operate at military heritage sites reveals how these operations dis/encourage particular understandings of security and limit the range of acceptable national protection policies. Two recent initiatives to preserve the military heritage of the Cold War period in Sweden are examined: the Cold War exhibits at Air Force Museum in Linköping and the redevelopment of a formerly sealed off military compound at Bungenäs, where bunkers have been remade into exclusive summer homes. By combining feminist international relations and critical heritage studies, we unpack the material, affective and embodied underpinnings of security produced at military heritage sites. A key conclusion is that the way heritagization incorporates the ‘naturalness’ of the gender binary and heterosexuality makes conceptualizing security without territory, or territory without military protection, inaccessible. The gendering of emotions and architectural and spatial arrangements supports historical narratives that privilege masculine protection and reinforce a taken-for-granted nativist community. A feminist analysis of military heritage highlights how gender and sexualities restrict security imaginaries; that is, understandings of what is conceivable as security.

Specifics of seasonal settlements in Moscow region according to the results of the Moscow Mayor elections 2018

Most of seasonal second homes of Russians are located in gardeners’ associations being a component of modern urbanized settlement. Now in Russia there are about 14 million garden plots, which are used at least by 40 million people. The greatest number of gardeners’ associations (over 11.5 thousand) is registered in Moscow region. Their seasonal population can make up to 4 million people, and some of them live in summer homes most of the year, thus turning them actually into places of permanent residence. This trend is supported by new laws regulating registration of gardeners’ associations. An indirect indicator of this is the number of voters who took part in the Moscow Mayor elections in suburban areas in September 2018. The importance of summer residents increases with the distance from the capital, and more than half of the «suburban» polling stations were located in the middle and far suburbs, or even in neighboring regions. The very fact of the organization of suburban polling stations indicates a change in the role of gardeners’ associations, which become an impetus of socio-economic development in Moscow region. This is especially important for areas that have lost major industries. It is clearly seen on the example of the «gardeners’ conglomerates» that have emerged on the former peat mine lands in Moscow region, where seasonal population now exceeds the number of permanent residents of the surrounding settlements. «Gardeners’ conglomerates» can provide local population with jobs that is particularly important for marginal areas of the region.

The Continuing Process of Restoration, 1948–Present

The process of restoration of the Shack lands did not end with Dad’s passing. Quite the contrary. It was picked up by several of his children and by some key neighbors and Wisconsin-based foundations, and ultimately by the Leopold Foundation staff, which continued by expanding the prairies. In this regard, some special recognition is due my sister Nina and her second husband, Charles Bradley, for their initial work developing new prairie areas in Sauk County. Their methods in building a prairie were novel additions to the work/technology that Aldo Leopold and John Curtis had started at the UW Arboretum in Madison. During the years 1940–1948, Dad continued to purchase more acres, so that by 1948 our holdings were about 350 acres in Fairfield Township, Sauk County. These acres were all contiguous with the original Shack lands. Nearby, Mother and Dad’s friends the Thomas Coleman family had over the years enjoyed the log cabin they had built on their land high above Lake Chapman overlooking the great marsh and floodplain. Reed Coleman, the younger son of Tom Coleman, with conservation in mind, in time wanted to expand the land holdings his father had purchased on the south side of the river road across from Lake Chapman. Reed and his colleague and friend Howard Mead laid a plan for the L. R. Head Foundation to gradually purchase nearby parcels of land as they became available from retiring farmers. The Head Foundation was able to compile a huge protected reserve surrounding the 350 or so acres that Dad had bought. It was a creative effort to protect the land of the region from being degraded by home developers and the like. Over the years from 1950 to the 1970s the Head Foundation succeeded in building what is now called the Aldo Leopold Memorial Reserve. This expansive project served indeed to stave off local development. Reed said that his effort was inspired by witnessing the subdividing of the old Gilbert farm along the river into slices of land for summer homes, and he did not want this to happen around either the Shack or the original Coleman land area.

MIESTŲ MEDINĖS ARCHITEKTŪROS IŠSAUGOJIMO GALIMYBĖS

Institutions for Lithuania’s heritage protection have been declaring the necessity of preserving wooden architecture since 2002; however, there have been very few realistic results. Although the Vilnius City Municipality initiated a strategic programme for saving wooden architecture, there have been no tangible results to date. The purpose of this article s to analyse the needs and opportunities for preserving wooden architecture in Kaunas. Wooden buildings such as small manor and garden estate houses, villas, cottages, summer homes, rental houses and residential military and railway complexes have survived in Kaunas. Representative buildings of all these types need to be preserved in all parts of Kaunas. These reflect the juncture of professional and ethnic traditions in cities, estates and villages. Therefore such buildings are exceptional at conveying local identity. The 2009 educational project carried out at the Faculty of Arts of Vytautas Magnus University revealed that the survival of wooden houses largely depends on the motivation of their owners. The most important condition for preserving wooden architecture is to attract the owners of these buildings to join with the supporters of this architectural heritage. Consultations on the maintenance of such buildings to retain the heritage must be organised. The community interested in rehabilitation of wooden structures could generate and share information in a virtual environment. Santrauka Paveldosaugos institucijos Lietuvoje nuo 2002 m. deklaruoja medinės architektūros išsaugojimo būtinumą, tačiau realių rezultatų pasiekta labai nedaug. Vilniaus miesto savivaldybės iniciatyva parengta medinės architektūros apsaugos strategijos programa kol kas nedavė apčiuopiamų rezultatų. Straipsnis skirtas Kauno medinės architektūros išsaugojimo poreikių ir galimybių analizei. Kaune išliko medinių dvarelių, sodybinių namų, vilų, kotedžų, vasarnamių, nuomojamų namų, kariškių ir geležinkeliečių gyvenamųjų kompleksų. Reikėtų išsaugoti šių tipologinių grupių architektūros reprezentantus visose miesto dalyse. Jie atspindi profesionaliosios ir etninės (miesto, dvaro, kaimo) tradicijų jungtį ir dėl to yra išskirtiniai lokalinio tapatumo perdavėjai. VDU Menų fakultete 2009 m. vykdytas edukacinis projektas atskleidė, jog medinių namų išlikimas daugiausia priklauso nuo savininkų motyvacijos. Savininkų patraukimas į medinio paveldo rėmėjų pusę laikytinas svarbiausia išsaugojimo sąlyga. Būtina organizuoti konsultavimą apie paveldui palankią namų priežiūrą ir tvarkymą. Medinių namų atgaivinimu suinteresuota bendruomenė galėtų kurtis ir dalintis informacija virtualioje aplinkoje.

ART AS OTHER COLLECTIVES

Art and nature, art in nature, share a common structure: that of excessive and useless production—production for its own sake, production for the sake of profusion and differentiation. (Grosz 2008: 9)In 1986, artist Lily Yeh was asked by her friend, acclaimed dancer Arthur Hall, to transform the abandoned lot next to his house. He had seen the indoor gardens that she had created in galleries, and asked if she could do a similar project outdoors. When Yeh first entered the North Philadelphia neighbourhood of Fairhill-Hartranft, it was nothing like the neighbourhood she would leave in 2004. Walking down the streets for the first time she saw many adults with suspicious faces staring at her as she made her way past abandoned lot, after abandoned lot. Broken glass in boarded up doorways were the gathering places for people with nowhere else to go. Children played with whatever was lying around; hollering mothers worried about what they were picking up. The lines of poverty and racism, the systematic marginalization and neglect of (primarily) black people in the United States, resulted in the overdetermined positioning of the so-called‘inner-city ghetto.’These lines of death were produced through the conjunctions of policy, brutality, racism and poverty that resulted in a territorialization of this place as a site of crime, violence, drug addiction and hopelessness. But at the beginning of the 20th century, this neighbourhood was the site of summer homes, known for its fields of strawberries. It was then refashioned into a bustling heart of manufacturing, the fields were paved over, and the taste of strawberries turned to burning plastics. The depression hit. Factories began to close, leaving nothing in their wake but a faint rancid smell and contaminated soil. The neighbourhood transformed, riding a wave of white flight and racial tension. People rose up, spoke out and refused to suffer any longer, but in the turmoil, in their anger, they burned the neighbourhood. More suffering, but this time there was simply a feeling of abandonment, hopelessness, stagnation. The policies of the Reagan years left their effect. Lots collected garbage. And so it was that Yeh found herself in North Philadelphia.

COASTAL CHANGES AT BETHANY BEACH, DELAWARE

The coastal processes affecting Bethany Beach, Delaware were studied and the short-term and long-term trends in coastal changes were determined in order to develop recommendations for protecting Bethany against coastal erosion (Dick and Dalrymple, 1983). Bethany Beach is located on the Delaware Atlantic coastline which is a wide sandy baymouth barrier beach distinguished by highlands at Rehoboth Beach and Bethany Beach. The shoreline is straight, with only minor bulges and indentations (see Figure 1). Bethany Beach is a residential and resort community. Privatelyowned properties front the publicly-owned beach. Construction of new motels and summer homes is anticipated along with the continued growth of commercial activities to accommodate the increased number of visitors. Bethany is protected by a series of nine groins built between 1934 and 1945. Many of these groins have deteriorated, and are flanked at the landward end. Winter storms severely erode the beach and damage shorefront property. The beach is generally narrow (approximately 45 m wide), especially along the southern portion, and is backed by low dunes (about 15-45 m above NGVD). A timber bulkhead extends along most of the backshore.