Locality History Memory

Locality, History, Memory: The Making of the Citizen in South Asia was born out of the need to interrogate the tropes through which place, history and memory underpin notions of citizenship in present Southasia. Time as both time present and time past is framed here in two settings: as privileging both place (material or ideological site) and space. The latter refers to religion, oppression, marginalization and/or dalitisation. Time transcends both site/location and actual physical boundaries. Locality or location is therefore envisioned in terms of both actual place as well as a gateway to a larger space, in terms of a situation where historical memory negotiates the increasingly complex present. Agency and contingency therefore assume a critical importance here. Citizenship, far from being a discrete entity, is found to be multidimensional: it refers to formal status and the legal status of nationality and citizenship authenticated in the passport, but it also refers to rights and privileges; identity and solidarity, religious beliefs and a sense of belonging. Moving away from the role of the state, which has been at the centre of all inquiries on citizenship, we ask here the following questions in Locality, History, Memory: How does our history enforce or dilute the notion of the citizen? How far does memory strengthen or weaken it? What role does features not normally associated with citizenship such as access to natural resources, or ritual, faith and religion play in reinforcing such a status? History in the end is written by the historian and it was easy to map the changing methodologies used by the historians to essay the past but this is becoming increasingly difficult now. Another twist is the shift to hypertext at a popular level echoing what the late E H Carr had once called ‘bringing more and more people into history’. These so called alternative histories or people’s histories are becoming more and more popular because of the point at which we are located in time. Moreover, devices afforded by the new media enable these alternative histories to have an immediacy that the conventional historical format lacked. The collapse of state control over the new media has led to the resurgence of many archaic voices unimaginable just a decade ago.

Defining Memory uses case studies of exhibits from around the country to examine how local museums, defined as museums whose collections are local in scope or whose audiences are primarily local, have both shaped and been shaped by evolving community values and sense of history. Levin and her contributors argue that these small institutions play a key role in defining America's self-identity and should be studied as seriously as more national institutions like the Smithsonian and the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

This interdisciplinary volume explores the role of culture in single-industry communities facing the loss of their major industry. In a series of innovative case studies extending from New Zealand and Slovenia to the contemporary Nordic and Baltic States, the contributors address a wide range of topical issues. These include the role of the community’s past as a marker of its newly reconstructed identity and the importance of local traditions, landscapes, and place-related memories in post-industrial communities formerly dependent on one single employer or industry. The empirical case studies emphasise the role of cultural memory and local identity as communal strategies of survival and perseverance in such places and provide fresh perspectives into this turn to culture. The four parts of the book address such topics as the symbolic governance of change, tradition as capital, narratives as collective memories, and post-Soviet transition in comparative perspective. The team of international contributors hails from Australia, Estonia, Finland, Germany, and Slovenia and represents the fields of sociology, cultural policy, cultural history, landscape studies, and geography.

In historical studies, 'collective memory' is most often viewed as the product of nationalizing strategies carried out by political élites in the hope to create homogeneous nation-states. In contrast, this book asserts that collective memories develop out of a never-ending, triangular negotiation between local, national and transnational actors.

Place and Locality in Modern France analyses the significance and changing constructions of local place in modern France. Drawing on the expertise of a range of scholars from around the world, this book provides a timely overview of the cross-disciplinary thinking that is currently taking place over a central issue in French history. The contributed chapters address a range of subjects that include: the politics of administrative reform, decentralization, regionalism and local advocacy; the role of commerce in engendering narratives and experience of local place; the importance of ethnic, class, gender and race distinctions in shaping local connection and identity; the generation and transmission of knowledge about local place and culture through academia, civic heritage and popular memory. As a reconsideration of the 'local' in French history, Place and Locality in Modern France bridges the divide between micro- and macro-history for all those interested in ideas of locality and culture in modern French and European history.

By conversing with the main bodies of relevant literature from Migration Studies and Memory Studies, this overview highlights how analysing memories can contribute to a better understanding of the complexities of migrant incorporation. The chapters consider international case studies from Europe, North America, Australia, Asia and the Middle East.

This collection brings together local case studies of Britain’s history and memory of transatlantic slavery and abolition, including the role of individuals and families, regional identity narratives, sites of memory and forgetting, and the financial, architectural and social legacies of slave-ownership.

This book is a detailed account of the multi-faceted history of the Deccan. Beginning with its historical foundations it goes on to delineate how it is the key to understanding its social, economic, political and ideological evolution. Containing nine essays, this volume attempts to look at regional history from the perspective of given localities that provides the many facets of early Deccani society and culture. Hitherto, this was mainly articulated in terms of the broad categories of language and religion in the many historical studies of present-day linguistic states. In focussing on local spatial contexts as the primary layer of historical reality, the book has relied on multiple sources of information, largely extant archaeological material while also drawing information from inscri­ptions, textual material and oral memory. The book also reflects on the important events of various periods by placing them as part of larger social and economic processes emanating from the local. The essays in this collection have been presented thematically moving from general issues discussed in Part I to the more particular in Part II and finally, to reflect on the multiplicity and simultaneity of different kinds of processes in a constant state of negotiation, in Part III. The historical sensibilities of people in various locations right from Kotalingala and Dhulikatta to Phanigiri, Patancheru, Kondapur and Nanakramguda and from Thotlakonda to Nagarjunakonda, Amaravati, Vaddamanu and Shravan Belgola have been recounted. Please note: Taylor & Francis does not sell or distribute the Hardback in India, Pakistan, Nepal, Bhutan, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka.