Global Iconoclasm Contesting Official Mnemonic Landscapes

Geographers – and others – have been long aware that landscapes are neither natural or neutral. This is particularly true of landscapes of memory. Powerful groups inscribe such landscapes with both a preferred vision of the past and with sets of idealized societal values, and morays. Yet, and despite the authoritative weight such landscapes carry, they can be challenged. Even before the monument topplings of 2020, groups across the globe were challenging official memory discourses. This volume offers case studies of what might be considered global iconoclasm. Drawing upon original international case studies, this monograph critically engages with and reveals the dynamics of landscape contestation. From the Tsunami Museum of Banda Aceh to the echoes of Mussolini’s Fascist Italy by way of the decolonization of sites in Australia, New Zealand, Colombia and Africa the processes of landscape contestation are innovatively teased out by established and newly emerging scholars. This book should be of interest to any scholar interested in the politics of mnemonic landscapes.

Explores Byzantine perceptions of creation and different types of natural environments, and the principles underpinning such perceptions.

Global Social Archaeologies contributes to the active engagement of contemporary social archaeology through addressing issues such as postcolonialism, community heritage, and Indigenous rights. It addresses the major challenge of breaking down global divides, especially in relation to fundamental human rights, inequality, and inequities of wealth, power, and access to knowledge. This authoritative volume, authored by the current and past presidents of the World Archaeological Congress, introduces readers to the various theoretical and methodological tools available for the investigation of the past. Taking into account the implications for contemporary societies, it offers a new framework for social archaeologies in a globalised world. By combining new data from their research with an innovative synthesis and analysis of leading research by others, the authors have developed fresh conceptualisations and understandings of archaeology as a social practice, and of the ways in which it simultaneously straddles the past, present, and future. Exploring a range of case studies and enhanced by a wealth of illustrations, Global Social Archaeologies highlights a new approach to archaeology, one that places human rights at the core of archaeological theory and practice.

Though we live in a time when memory seems to be losing its hold on communities, memory remains central to personal, communal, and national identities. And although popular and public discourses from speeches to films invite a shared sense of the past, official sites of memory such as memorials, museums, and battlefields embody unique rhetorical principles. Places of Public Memory: The Rhetoric of Museums and Memorials is a sustained and rigorous consideration of the intersections of memory, place, and rhetoric. From the mnemonic systems inscribed upon ancient architecture to the roadside acci

Landscapes generate meaning and impact on three major areas of scholarly interest: language and visual discourse, spatial practices and global capitalism.

Winner of the International Lannan Literary Award for Nonfiction Animal tracks, word magic, the speech of stones, the power of letters, and the taste of the wind all figure prominently in this intellectual tour de force that returns us to our senses and to the sensuous terrain that sustains us. This major work of ecological philosophy startles the senses out of habitual ways of perception. For a thousand generations, human beings viewed themselves as part of the wider community of nature, and they carried on active relationships not only with other people with other animals, plants, and natural objects (including mountains, rivers, winds, and weather patters) that we have only lately come to think of as "inanimate." How, then, did humans come to sever their ancient reciprocity with the natural world? What will it take for us to recover a sustaining relation with the breathing earth? In The Spell of the Sensuous David Abram draws on sources as diverse as the philosophy of Merleau-Ponty, Balinese shamanism, Apache storytelling, and his own experience as an accomplished sleight-of-hand of magician to reveal the subtle dependence of human cognition on the natural environment. He explores the character of perception and excavates the sensual foundations of language, which--even at its most abstract--echoes the calls and cries of the earth. On every page of this lyrical work, Abram weaves his arguments with a passion, a precision, and an intellectual daring that recall such writers as Loren Eisleley, Annie Dillard, and Barry Lopez.

Forges innovative connections between monastic archaeology and heritage studies, revealing new perspectives on sacred heritage, identity, medieval healing, magic and memory. This title is available as Open Access.