Politics,Public Space,and Memorials: The Brawl on the Mall

This paper examines recent proposals for memorials and monuments on the National Mall in Washington, DC. Demands for memorials are increasingly at odds with the Mall's important role as open green space and public protest space. This article analyzes the broader issues embodied in the competing purposes of this highly visible public space by considering the recent controversy over the World War II Memorial. The controversy focused primarily on the location of the memorial. Opponents contended the World War II Memorial would interrupt or destroy the iconography of the National Mall. Supporters argued that the location selected for the memorial was consistent with its importance in U.S. history and that it deserved such a prized location in the central axis between the Lincoln Memorial and the Washington Monument. The article then analyzes the politics behind the site selection, and examines the debate about the impact of the memorial's location. It concludes that the location of the memorial was not accidental but intentional, and thereby reveals a purposeful re-writing of the Mall's symbolic space to suit a specific vision of the war and its meaning in American history. The article also contends that the location of the memorial represents an emerging social-political agenda that is prioritizing the Mall as a place of commemoration at the expense of open space, and, perhaps, at the expense of public protest space.     

Emerging Memorial Landscapes of Labor Conflict in the Cotton Textile South

While research into the formation of memorial landscapes in the American South has focused on those resulting from racial conflicts, a new landscape memorializing labor conflict and class consciousness is also emerging in the region's textile‐producing Piedmont. This memorialization poses significant challenges to dominant regional discourses of economic development and class mutuality in a region in which labor organizing and radical politics remain anathema. This paper examines this emerging landscape for what it can tell us about class relations in the region and the process by which memorial landscapes are formed.     

PUBLIC MEMORY AND POLITICAL POWER IN GUATEMALA'S POSTCONFLICT LANDSCAPE

ABSTRACT. Landscape interpretation, or “reading” the landscape, is one of cultural geography's standard practices. Relatively little attention, however, has been paid to reading landscapes transformed by insurgency movements or civil wars. Those landscapes can tell us a great deal about past and present political and social relationships as well as continuing power struggles. Guatemala presents a complicated postwar landscape “text” in which the struggle for power continues by many means and media, including how the war is portrayed on memorials, and in which the Catholic Church and the military/state are the two main competing powers. This essay explores some of the images and the text presented in Guatemala's postconflict landscape through contrasting landmarks and memorials associated with the country's thirty‐six‐year‐long civil war that formally ended in 1996.     

Emerging Memorial Landscapes of Labor Conflict in the Cotton Textile South

While research into the formation of memorial landscapes in the American South has focused on those resulting from racial conflicts, a new landscape memorializing labor conflict and class consciousness is also emerging in the region's textile-producing Piedmont. This memorialization poses significant challenges to dominant regional discourses of economic development and class mutuality in a region in which labor organizing and radical politics remain anathema. This paper examines this emerging landscape for what it can tell us about class relations in the region and the process by which memorial landscapes are formed.     

Interpreting the Civil Rights Movement: Place,Memory, and Conflict

Produced over the past decade, monuments and museums dedicated to the Civil Rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s have desegregated America's memorial landscape. Tracing a broad arc across the US South, the material elements of this landscape — historic markers, monuments, parks, registered buildings, and museums — present a distinct challenge to representations of an elite, white American past. This challenge, however, is offered in a distinctly gendered manner, inasmuch as the role of women in organizing and leading the movement is obscured. Further, the historical narratives concretized at these sites are mediated by conventions associated with civil rights historiography and the tourism development industry. The result is a complex, sometimes ironic landscape. Via the narratives they embed and the crowds they attract, these landscapes are co‐constitutive with contemporary politics of representing the past in the United States. This paper offers an overview of current memorial practices and representations of the Civil Rights movement found at the country's major memorial landscapes.     

食物景观对地方社会记忆的表征和塑造 ——以《舌尖上的中国》为例

以纪录片《舌尖上的中国》为数据来源,借助情感挖掘、语义网络分析以及扎根理论等方法探究食物景观对社会记忆的表征内容和塑造过程.研究结果表明:1)从情感分析结果来看,个体对食物景观的情感倾向总体呈现积极趋势,不同年龄、复杂的社会经历以及多元的社会角色是影响个体情感变化的重要因素,人们的情感认同形成了社会主流意识形态,并框定...     

PLACE,PUBLIC MEMORY,AND THE TOKYO AIR RAIDS

The one public memorial built to remember the many people killed in air raids directed against the civilian population of Tokyo during the Asia‐Pacific War bears traces of deeper stories related to a prior catastrophe, the effects of the U.S. occupation of Japan, war memory, political power at the municipal and national level, and the ability of citizens' groups to create public sites of exemplary memory. This article examines key chapters of those stories by tracing the dynamics of collective memory as related to the movement to remember the air raids and build a Tokyo Peace Museum. It concludes with an analysis of the existing memorial as a space of literal memory.     

Geomorphology, natural hazards, vulnerability and prevention of natural disasters in developing countries

The significance of the prevention of natural disasters is made evident by the commemoration of the International Decade for Natural Disaster Reduction (IDNDR). This paper focuses on the role of geomorphology in the prevention of natural disasters in developing countries, where their impact has devastating consequences. Concepts such as natural hazards, natural disasters and vulnerability have a broad range of definitions; however, the most significant elements are associated with the vulnerability concept. The latter is further explored and considered as a key factor in understanding the occurrence of natural disasters, and consequently, in developing and applying adequate strategies for prevention. Terms such as natural and human vulnerabilities are introduce and explained as target aspects to be taken into account in the reduction of vulnerability and for prevention and mitigation of natural disasters. The importance of the incorporation not only of geomorphological research, but also of geomorphologists in risk assessment and management programs in the poorest countries is emphasized.     

社会记忆的旅游开发分析——以淮南煤炭记忆为例

科技的发展和人们思维观念的转变,使得新形式的记忆承载物突破单一教育功能的限制,旅游开始介入社会记忆领域。运用社会记忆理论,使用质性分析软件NVivo8.0,对淮南煤炭记忆进行探析,指出淮南煤炭记忆实质上分为两部分,一是煤炭记忆之苦,二是忆苦思甜。最后,探讨了旅游和淮南煤炭记忆的关系,提出了具体的措施来建构煤炭记忆纪念物,包括加强煤炭记忆的档案建设、建设大型矿山公园、市井生活再塑造、多种业态并存。     

从公共纪念空间到公共休闲空间：广州起义烈士陵园的空间生产

转型期城市公共纪念空间从神圣空间向居民休闲空间的转变成为学界和社会的关注热点。以广州起义烈士陵园为例,运用空间生产理论以及观察法、访谈法等质性研究方法,探讨广州起义烈士陵园在城市转型中从神圣纪念空间向市民休闲空间的转变过程、空间主体所起的作用及其内在机制。研究发现：1）广州起义烈士陵园在发展过程中经历了2次空间转换,1954―1978年烈士墓园的空间生产阶段以及1978年到现在公共纪念与休闲空间生产的阶段。2）政府自上而下的主导作用和居民自下而上的休闲需求是推动烈士陵园空间生产的主要动力。3）政府和居民的共同作用,塑造了烈士陵园多样化空间局面。从政府角度来看,不论是空间规划还是符号化空间的建构都是为了更好地强化其神圣空间特质,公共休闲只是一种衍生功能。从居民角度看,休闲需求在居民生活中占据更为重要的位置,由此形成了混合公共空间。     

A FELT GEOGRAPHY*

In this article I revisit a literary‐audio work I created in collaboration with a Vancouver composer for Intersections, a new music series organized by the Western Front in Vancouver, Canada. We spliced together recorded interview material with composed music to craft a site‐specific acoustic landscape. This work is presented as a site in which to explore creative, experimental ways of restaging memory and of bringing experiential landscapes more fully to life, immersing public audiences in the felt histories of the city.     

Interpreting the Civil Rights Movement: Place,Memory, and Conflict

Produced over the past decade, monuments and museums dedicated to the Civil Rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s have desegregated America's memorial landscape. Tracing a broad arc across the US South, the material elements of this landscape — historic markers, monuments, parks, registered buildings, and museums — present a distinct challenge to representations of an elite, white American past. This challenge, however, is offered in a distinctly gendered manner, inasmuch as the role of women in organizing and leading the movement is obscured. Further, the historical narratives concretized at these sites are mediated by conventions associated with civil rights historiography and the tourism development industry. The result is a complex, sometimes ironic landscape. Via the narratives they embed and the crowds they attract, these landscapes are co-constitutive with contemporary politics of representing the past in the United States. This paper offers an overview of current memorial practices and representations of the Civil Rights movement found at the country's major memorial landscapes.     

McDonald's or Golani Junction? A Case of a Contested Place in Israel

This paper investigates the conflict that arose as the result of opening a McDonald's restaurant adjacent to a national shrine in Israel. This conflict transformed Golani Junction, previously associated with the meanings assigned to the Golani memorial, into a contested place and a controversial issue. The paper outlines the conflict and the attempts to reach a compromise solution. The main argument is that the conflict reflects the notion prevalent among those dedicated to the memorial site and to the values it enshrines that the restaurant defies the sacred character of the place and marginalized the memorial in the local landscape. The conflict of meaning is also associated with McDonald's being construed as a prominent symbol of the alleged Americanization of Israeli society and culture. With this, the controversial character of the Golani Junction is also an aspect of a wider debate concerning cultural identity in Israel. Beyond the local context and specific issues involved, the controversies that transform the Golani Junction into a contested place demonstrate how conflicting interpretations of place and the politics of its meaning are formulated in terms of landscape features and architectural details.     

THE MONUMENT AND THE BUNGALOW

ABSTRACT. Students of human landscapes often view those landscapes as documents and seek to “read” them for cultural and historical meaning. But how does one learn to read landscape? And how can students be taught to do it? After many years of teaching courses about commonplace American landscapes, I have discovered that students must learn two things before they can expect to read human landscapes. First, they must learn to pay attention to commonplace things which most Americans normally ignore. Second, they must master vocabularies that permit them to classify elements in the landscape and to connect small things with larger ideas. Two examples in the landscape of Bellefonte, Pennsylvania—the town's war memorial and a scattering of California bungalows-demonstrate how these ideas work.     

The Power of Naming: The Toponymic Geographies of Commemorated African-Americans

The importance of commemorative place-naming has been the focus of numerous studies that explore the relationship between memory and political representation. Few studies, however, have systematically examined regional geographical patterns of racial minorities in the United States. Using a variety of Internet-based mapping tools, I have collected a data set on the regional variation of the commemoration of thirty famous African-Americans (fifteen men and fifteen women). The research presented here explores how there are regional characteristics associated with where African-Americans are commemorated, particularly pertaining to cities. I also explore the geographic dispersal of these commemorations and whether there is a gender bias in the process of commemoration. Additionally, I focus on the duality of commemorations as an index of both African-American and the dominant white power structures.     

HUNGARY AFTER 1989: INSCRIBING A NEW PAST ON PLACE*

ABSTRACT. Since the fall of the Communist government in 1989, Hungary's political monuments and historical shrines have undergone great change. Although popular attention focused on the removal of overtly political monuments, new shrines were also created, and forgotten memorials were restored. In a departure from earlier political eras, decisions about contested places are issuing from local authorities and private citizens, rather than from the central government. The result is a sometimes subtle rearrangement of public memorials and shrines that interprets the national past by drawing symbolic and spatial parallels between some historical events while rejecting connections among others. The meanings of events and places, particularly those linked to twentieth‐century wartime and civil upheavals, remain contested.     

乡村文化记忆的场域认知、依恋与传承关系 ——以苏州金庭镇为例

以苏州金庭镇居民为研究对象,利用问卷及访谈数据,通过结构方程模型甄别场域认知、地方依恋和传承途径的维度差异,验证彼此的影响路径和作用关系.研究表明:1)居民对乡村文化记忆的场域认知包括纪念性场地、村落型场地、自然型场地和软记忆场等维度,其中,前三者对软记忆场有着正向显著影响;2)乡村文化记忆场域认知是居民地方依恋构建的...     

Where's the Fire? Co-Constructing Bushfire in the Everyday Landscape

This research studied factors that residents of a fire-prone Victorian community used when deciding whether to leave their homes on a day officially declared “Catastrophic,” the highest Fire Danger Rating. Taking a social constructivist perspective, we explore how the expert view of bushfire risk, represented by Fire Danger Ratings, is interpreted within the context of local understandings of the landscape and social memory of bushfire. Residents perceive a disconnection between the Fire Danger Rating and local reality. Their social construction of bushfire is related to social and ecological memory, which comprises physical experience of the landscape and local fire knowledge narratives. The exclusion of this social complexity from Fire Danger Ratings diminished their utility as a way of helping people make meaning of bushfire. We propose that fire management agencies work with communities to develop a co-constructed view of bushfire risk that incorporates local bushfire knowledge into Fire Danger Ratings.     

Monument in a landscape: the question of ‘meaning‘

Public monuments are of special interest as focal points of meaning in the landscape. Cultural geographers, in attempting to come to terms with questions of meaning, have begun in recent years to think in categories more typical of literary studies than of social science. In this paper the concept of ‘allegory’ is used as a device for illuminating the possible meanings of a monument. The affinities between monumental and allegorical works are discussed. A thirty‐year‐old memorial column in Armidale, NSW, is taken as a case study. The meaning of this structure to present‐day observers is particularly debatable. Several possible readings are proposed, formulated in allegorical terms. It is suggested that such an approach can produce insights that might not otherwise come to the surface.