scholarly journals Religio-cultural heritage of libation, memory and Obang cultural history, Northwest Cameroon

2020 ◽  
Vol 76 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Felix K. Esoh ◽  
Chammah J. Kaunda
Keyword(s):  
Social Change ◽  
Cultural Heritage ◽  
Cultural History ◽  
Cultural Memory ◽  
Cultural Resilience ◽  
Traditional Societies ◽  
History Of ◽  
Northwest Region

This article argues that libation, often associated with the ancestors, artefacts, images and pre-Christian religious devotions, constitutes sources for articulating authentic African cultural history of Obang community in the Northwest Region of Cameroon. It highlights that among traditional memory carriers, the ritual of libation remains trust worthy and pervasive, even among communities challenged by globalisation and colonising effects of Christianity. The article demonstrates the immense potentials of libation as an epitome and stabiliser of cultural memory, and a maxim in cultural resilience in contemporary Africa. Thus, the article calls for revisiting this ancient ritual to expose its potentials as a veritable memory repertoire in cultural–historical studies, especially at a time when social change and modernism continue to challenge the memories of traditional societies.

scholarly journals A Review of Hope in the Dark: Untold Histories, Wild Possibilities by Rebecca Solnit.

2020 ◽  
Vol 29 (1) ◽  
pp. 67
Author(s):  
Julianne Burgess
Keyword(s):  
Social Change ◽  
Cultural History ◽  
Social Action ◽  
History Of

Rebecca Solnit's book makes the case for hope as a commitment to social action in an uncertain world. The author draws from her own history of activism and her study of environmental, political and cultural history, to shine a light on long forgotten transformative victories. Solnit argues that we are living in a time of exciting, unprecedented social change.

A Cultural History of Memory in Antiquity

2020 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Cultural History ◽  
Cultural Memory ◽  
Ancient World ◽  
Collective Memories ◽  
The Past ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Many ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
The Right ◽  
Remote Past

The ancient world is a paradigm for the memory scholar. Without an awareness that collective memories are not only different from individual memories (or even the sum thereof) but also highly constructed, ancient research will be fundamentally flawed. Many networks of memories are beautifully represented in the written and material remains of antiquity, and it is precisely the ways in which they are fashioned, distorted, preserved or erased through which we can learn about the historical process as such. Our evidence is deeply characterized by the fact that ancient ‘identity’ and ‘memory’ appear exceptionally strong. Responsible for this is a continuing desire to link the present to the remote past, which creates many contexts in which memories were constructed. The ancient historian therefore has the right tools with which to work: places and objects from the past, monuments and iconography, and textual narratives with a primary purpose to memorize and commemorate. This is paired with our desire to understand the ancient world through its own self-perception. With the opportunity of tapping into this world by way of oral history, personal testimonies are a desideratum in all respects. Memory of the past, however, is profoundly about ‘self-understanding’. This volume surveys and builds on the many insights we have gained from vibrant research in the field since Maurice Halbwachs’ and Jan Assmann’s seminal studies on the idea and definition of ‘cultural memory’. While focusing on specific themes all chapters address the concepts and expressions of memory, and their historical impact and utilization by groups and individuals at specific times and for specific reasons.

Violence and Risk in Medieval Iceland

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Oren Falk
Keyword(s):  
Prospect Theory ◽  
Cultural History ◽  
Cultural Memory ◽  
Power Analysis ◽  
The Past ◽  
Authorial Intent ◽  
Historical Authenticity ◽  
History Of ◽  
Interdisciplinary Study ◽  
Future Status

This interdisciplinary study of violence in medieval Iceland pursues three intertwined goals. First, it proposes a new cultural history model for understanding violence. The model has three axes: power, signification, and risk. Analysis in instrumental terms, as an attempt to coerce others, focuses on power. Analysis in symbolic terms, as an attempt to manipulate meanings, focuses on signification. Analysis in cognitive terms, as an attempt to exercise agency over imperfectly controlled circumstances, focuses on risk. The axis of risk is the model’s major innovation and is laid out in detail, using insights from prospect theory, edgework, and the calculus of jeopardy. It is shown that violence, which itself generates risks, at the same time also serves to control uncertainties. Second, the book tests this model on a series of case studies from the history of medieval Iceland. It examines how violence shapes present circumstances, future status, and past memories, and how it transforms uncertain reality into socially useful narrative, showing how Icelanders’ feud paradigm blocked the prospects of warfare and state formation, while their idiom of human violence domesticated the natural environment. Third, the book develops the concept of uchronia, the hegemonic ideology of the past, to explain how texts modulate history. Uchronia is a motivated cultural memory which vouches for historical authenticity (regardless of factual reliability), maintains textual autonomy from authorial intent, and secures a fit between present society and its own past. In medieval Iceland, as often elsewhere, violence played a key role in the making of uchronia

scholarly journals Freedom of Culture in and after Yugoslavia. An Interview with Branka Prpa

Südosteuropa ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 67 (1) ◽  
pp. 110-128
Author(s):  
Jacqueline Nießer
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Heritage ◽  
Eastern Europe ◽  
Cultural History ◽  
21St Century ◽  
Historical Archives ◽  
History Of ◽  
Cultural Freedom ◽  
State Socialist ◽  
Opening Up

Abstract The historian Branka Prpa was the director of the Historical Archives of Belgrade after Slobodan Milošević’s regime ended in 2000. Jacqueline Nießer spoke to Prpa about how she set about reforming Belgrade’s Historical Archives during Serbia’s democratic opening-up under Zoran Djindjić. Prpa has fostered preservation of the cultural history of socialist Yugoslavia, so the focus of the interview was cultural freedom in and after Yugoslavia. The historian elaborates on how culture both then and now has been in conflict with politics, her remarks leading on to a discussion about how a future may be imagined in the 21st century. The interview was conducted during the COURAGE project, which between 2016 and 2019 has researched the cultural heritage of dissent in the former state socialist countries of Eastern Europe.

scholarly journals Popular Music in Southeast Asia

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bart Barendregt ◽  
Peter Keppy ◽  
Henk Schulte Nordholt
Keyword(s):  
Social Change ◽  
Southeast Asia ◽  
Popular Music ◽  
Cultural History ◽  
Vantage Point ◽  
Modern Life ◽  
Mass Audience ◽  
History Of ◽  
Societal Changes ◽  
Hybrid Forms

From the 1920s on, popular music in Southeast Asia was a mass-audience phenomenon that drew new connections between indigenous musical styles and contemporary genres from elsewhere to create new, hybrid forms. This book presents a cultural history of modern Southeast Asia from the vantage point of popular music, considering not just singers and musicians but their fans as well, showing how the music was intrinsically bound up with modern life and the societal changes that came with it. Reaching new audiences across national borders, popular music of the period helped push social change, and at times served as a medium for expressions of social or political discontent.

scholarly journals Social Change in Eleventh-Century Armenia

2020 ◽  
pp. 196-219
Author(s):  
Tim Greenwood
Keyword(s):  
Social Change ◽  
Cultural History ◽  
Land Tenure ◽  
Eleventh Century ◽  
Fourth Century ◽  
The Social ◽  
Monastic Community ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Creation ◽  
Byzantine Church

Although the Byzantine annexation of Armenian territories in the later tenth and eleventh centuries has been studied from a number of perspectives, little attention has been paid to the subsequent history of those districts, and in particular the circumstances and the responses of the communities who stayed put. This chapter explores the social and cultural history of the district of Tarōn in the century after its incorporation as a theme. Through comparison with the annexation of Vaspurakan in 1021, it argues that both the lay and clerical elite left Tarōn in 966. This affected land tenure in several ways, including the creation of stratiotika ktemata and the imposition of the demosion. Evidence from an Armenian Gospels manuscript indicates that the land tax was still being collected—and the registers updated—as late as 1067. A new network of episcopal sees was established across the former Armenian see of Tarōn. Finally the History of Tarōn, a composition completed in the 980s, shows how one monastic community took advantage of the recent turmoil to promote its claim to foundation and endowment by St Grigor the Illuminator at the start of the fourth century. It also forged multiple links between the activities of St Grigor and the metropolitan see of Caesarea, associating the conversion of Tarōn, and by implication of Armenia, with the Byzantine Church.

scholarly journals FICTION AND CULTURAL MEMORY: WRITING FROM CEAUSESCU’S ROMANIA

2021 ◽  
pp. 328-333
Author(s):  
Claudia MOSCOVICI ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Social Change ◽  
Cultural Memory ◽  
Future Generations ◽  
Human Suffering ◽  
Cautionary Tale ◽  
History Of

To write about the history of totalitarianism, be it through nonfiction or fiction, as I have in my novel Velvet Totalitarianism, means to undertake the task of preserving for future generations a cultural memory of social change, of trials and tribulations and of unspeakable human suffering. It means to pay homage to those who sacrificed, or were sacrificed, by the totalitarian machine. Writing the history of totalitarianism is simultaneously a discovery of the suppressed truth; a eulogy to the victims; an homage to those who had the courage to fight against it and a cautionary tale to those who never want to experience it.

scholarly journals Methodology for Documentation and Sustainability of Cultural Heritage Landscapes: The Case of the Tajos de Alhama (Granada, Spain)

2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (23) ◽  
pp. 12964
Author(s):  
María del Carmen Vílchez-Lara ◽  
Jorge Gabriel Molinero-Sánchez ◽  
Concepción Rodríguez-Moreno
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Heritage ◽  
Public Space ◽  
Cultural History ◽  
21St Century ◽  
Urban Spaces ◽  
Urban Edge ◽  
Heritage Site ◽  
History Of ◽  
The City ◽  
Industrial Economic

This research aims to start the process of the revitalization of peri-urban spaces with high landscape and cultural potential, dotted with a series of heritage landmarks that allude to the recent industrial, economic and cultural history of the region, currently semi-degraded or abandoned, as is the case with the impressive and steep miller landscape of the Tajos de Alhama de Granada. To achieve this, it is proposed to carry out a comprehensive documentation (historical, cartographic, planimetric, photographic and photogrammetric) of the study area since, until now, there were no similar research studies. The application of an organized and structured method of work, documentation and diagnosis using the tools and graphic techniques of the 21st century has offered extensive results that have been turned into a rigorous and systematic catalog. This catalog will serve as the basis for the promotion of integrated action plans for the recovery of this urban edge, with the triple objective of the rehabilitation of buildings of architectural interest, rehabilitation of the surrounding public space and consolidation of the historic complex that makes up the mills, the river, the landscape and the city. We conclude that the enhancement of the cultural heritage landscape of the Tajos and the guidelines provided for the rehabilitation of its historic water mills, with possible compatible uses (tourist, cultural or administrative), will favor the conservation and sustainable revitalization of such an exceptional heritage site.

scholarly journals The value of museum communication: the cases of the Paper and Watermark Museum in Fabriano and the Ascoli Piceno Papal Paper Mill Museum in Ascoli Piceno

2018 ◽  
Vol 16 (4) ◽  
pp. 049-058
Author(s):  
Patrizia Dragoni
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Heritage ◽  
Cultural History ◽  
Paper Mill ◽  
Heritage Management ◽  
External Effects ◽  
The Public ◽  
Artistic Value ◽  
History Of ◽  
Landscape Value ◽  
Production Value

Guaranteeing the survival of cultural heritage, increasing its accessibility, both physical and intellectual, and the creation of countless benefits for different categories of stakeholders depends both on a perfect comprehension of the interests and abilities of users to take advantage of what is offered and, above all, on identifying and analysing the various types of value that can be attributed to it. According to Montella, there are three types of value that may be analysed for this purpose: a presentation value, informative in nature and inherent in the historical, cultural and possibly artistic value implicit in the heritage; a landscape value, extended to the context, inherent in the factual information services aimed at supporting policies of preventive and programmed conservation: and a production value, commercial in nature, which concerns the external effects generated by cultural heritage management to qualify the products and the images themselves of the businesses in order to make them stand out from the competition. The aim of this article is to inquire into whether, in what way and to what extent the communication of the Paper and Watermark Museum in Faabriano and the Ascoli Piceno Papal Paper Mill Museum in Ascoli Piceno creates presentation value and therefore leads the public to understand how far paper production has influenced the economic and socio-cultural history of the area in which they are located.

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