Political Culture Soft Interventions And Nation Building

This book raises questions about cultural interventions, an area of investigation somewhat overlooked in place of developing a critique of political interventions. Whilst political interventions are more explicit, coercive, and have a wide-reaching impact, it is important also to examine the way culture is used in attempts to reconstruct society and peoples - the ‘soft’ side of statebuilding, where heritage is utilised to play a role in the construction of the nation and the people, in memory and identity. For it can play a role in legitimizing myths and identifying symbolic, historic events, and implicitly informs the construction of infrastructure, institutions, and other aspects of civic life. Contributors from the fields of politics, anthropology, archaeology, and sociology examine interventions in state and nation building through cultural methods, the ‘soft’ side of statebuilding, including the preservation and promotion of certain heritage, the politics of remembrance and monument building, and the repatriation of human remains and artefacts to communities in the name of making reparations for past atrocities. These are timely contributions. Heritage and cultural is too often considered in terms of how tourism might contribute to the economy post-conflict, neglecting the construction of meaning and memory through decisions about is what is preserved or not. It will be of special interest to those in the field of cultural studies, archaeology, and politics as well as international relations. This book was published as a special issue of the Journal of Intervention and Statebuilding.

This book focuses on transformations of political culture from times past to future-present. It defines the meaning of political culture and explores the cultural values and institutions of kinship communities and dynastic intermediaries, including chiefdoms and early states. It systematically examines the rise and gradual universalization of modern sovereign nation-states. Contemporary debates concerning nationality, nationalism, citizenship, and hyphenated identities are engaged. The authors recount the making of political culture in the American nation-state and look at the processes of internal colonialism in the American experience, examining how major ethnic, sectarian, racial, and other distinctions arose and congealed into social and cultural categories. The book concludes with a study of the Holocaust, genocide, crimes against humanity, and the political cultures of violation in post-colonial Rwanda and in racialized ethno-political conflicts in various parts of the world. Struggles over legitimacy in nation-building and state-building are at the heart of this new take on the important role of political culture.

This book raises questions about cultural interventions, an area of investigation somewhat overlooked in place of developing a critique of political interventions. Whilst political interventions are more explicit, coercive, and have a wide-reaching impact, it is important also to examine the way culture is used in attempts to reconstruct society and peoples - the ‘soft’ side of statebuilding, where heritage is utilised to play a role in the construction of the nation and the people, in memory and identity. For it can play a role in legitimizing myths and identifying symbolic, historic events, and implicitly informs the construction of infrastructure, institutions, and other aspects of civic life. Contributors from the fields of politics, anthropology, archaeology, and sociology examine interventions in state and nation building through cultural methods, the ‘soft’ side of statebuilding, including the preservation and promotion of certain heritage, the politics of remembrance and monument building, and the repatriation of human remains and artefacts to communities in the name of making reparations for past atrocities. These are timely contributions. Heritage and cultural is too often considered in terms of how tourism might contribute to the economy post-conflict, neglecting the construction of meaning and memory through decisions about is what is preserved or not. It will be of special interest to those in the field of cultural studies, archaeology, and politics as well as international relations. This book was published as a special issue of the Journal of Intervention and Statebuilding.

For introductory and intermediate undergraduate courses in political science.

This landmark book unveils the history of defending Australia's natural environment and examines the subject's legal and political contexts from the birth of the nation in 1901 until the advent of the so-called modern era of environmental regulation in the late 1960s. It rejects the mythology that Australia lacked environmental law before the late 1960s in revealing how many of today's environmental laws, from pollution control to nature conservation, emerged from precedents or events much earlier in the 20th century. This history however reveals a discrepancy between lawmakers' greater efficacy to exploit rather than protect the environment, a discrepancy that grew as nature's backlash intensified in a rapidly degrading continent colonised to build the Australian nation. In exploring these dynamics, the book offers a rich tapestry of case studies illustrated with historic photographs that show the origins of Australia's environmental laws and how they borrowed from international precedents or furnished lessons for other nations. Through its multi-disciplinary enquiry, the book offers scholars and students of environmental law, legal history and the environmental humanities a unique story about the failures and successes in the making of environmental law.

The Routledge Companion to Popular Music History and Heritage examines the social, cultural, political and economic value of popular music as history and heritage. Taking a cross-disciplinary approach, the volume explores the relationship between popular music and the past, and how interpretations of the changing nature of the past in post-industrial societies play out in the field of popular music. In-depth chapters cover key themes around historiography, heritage, memory and institutions, alongside case studies from around the world, including the UK, Australia, South Africa and India, exploring popular music’s connection to culture both past and present. Wide-ranging in scope, the book is an excellent introduction for students and scholars working in musicology, ethnomusicology, popular music studies, critical heritage studies, cultural studies, memory studies and other related fields.

The first comprehensive examination of the Catholic Church's role in the genocide against the Tutsi and its attempts at reconciliation From April to July 1994, more than a million people were killed during the genocide against the Tutsi in Rwanda. Tutsi men, women, and children were slaughtered by Hutu extremists in churches and school buildings, and their lifeless bodies were left rotting in these sacred places under the deep silence of church authorities. Pope Francis's apology more than twenty years later presents the opportunity to reimagine the essence of the Church, the missionary enterprise, theology in its multiple dimensions, the purification of memory, and the place of human dignity in the Catholic faith. Reinventing Theology in Post-Genocide Rwanda critically examines the Church's responsibility in Rwanda's tragic history and opens the dialogue to construct a new theology. Contributors to this volume offer moving personal testimonies of their journeys to reconciling the evil that has marred the Church's image: bystanders' indifference to the suffering, despite their claim as members of the Church. The first volume of its kind, Reinventing Theology in Post-Genocide Rwanda is a necessary step toward the Rwandan Catholic Church and humanity's restoration of fundamental peace and lasting reconciliation. Catholic clergy, lay people, and human rights advocates will benefit from this examination of ecclesial moral failure and subsequent reconciliatory efforts.