{"title":"Anti-caste Memes as Cultural Archives of Resistance","authors":"M. Shivaprasad, Shubhangani Jain","doi":"10.3384/cu.3956","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3384/cu.3956","url":null,"abstract":"In this article, we make a case for looking at memes as potential digital cultural\u0000heritage artefacts to counter hegemonic narratives around the caste system\u0000in India. We reflect on this potentiality of memes by evaluating how three\u0000anti-caste Facebook meme pages responded to protests against the Indian\u0000Citizenship Amendment Act and the National Register of Citizens (CAA-NRC)\u0000from December 2019 to March 2020. These pages simultaneously archived and\u0000critiqued key moments of the protests as well as the anti-caste movement through\u0000memes, playing a significant role in amplifying the voices of the Bahujans, the\u0000marginalised caste groups in India. Focusing on the protest memes created by these\u0000pages, we look at the contexts in which the protest memes could be considered\u0000carriers, preservers, and transmitters of cultural knowledge. We argue that memes\u0000could be understood as cultural heritage,not only as objects but as processes and\u0000practices that constitute the building of cultural narratives. We illustrate how the\u0000protest memes hold and demonstrate potential to become digital cultural heritage\u0000as they simultaneously provided a much-needed alternative account of the way\u0000the resistance played out on the streets as opposed to how mainstream media\u0000portrayed them and archived and highlighted key moments of the protests and\u0000the anti-caste movement.","PeriodicalId":52133,"journal":{"name":"Culture Unbound","volume":"41 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-07-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"87008317","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Transforming Photographs into a Digital Catalogue","authors":"M. Gąsior","doi":"10.3384/cu.3971","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3384/cu.3971","url":null,"abstract":"In this article I focus on three aspects of the digitisation of photographic collections which I have had the opportunity to deal with professionally in two museums, in the UK and Poland. In 2014, the Imperial War Museum in London (IMW) implemented an online project of the portal/monument, Lives of the First World War, commemorating all citizens of the British Commonwealth who took part in the First World War (WWI), both in uniform and in civil services. Users registered on the portal could attach documents, photographs, reports to each commemorated soldier-keyword, thus expanding the database. One of the key elements of the project was a collection of portrait photographs bearing the title Bond of Sacrifice. These comprised over 16,000 photographs of soldiers of the British Commonwealth, handed over to the Museum by their families in the years 1917–1919. After nearly a hundred years, the Museum decided to comprehensively develop, digitize, and make the collection available in the form of an online catalogue. In the meantime, the Museum digitised a huge collection of WWI photographs, the so-called Q Series (ca. 115,000), the most important part of which was British official photography. By 2016, the entire collection was scanned and made available in an external catalogue of the Museum on the basis of a non-commercial license. Since then, the photographs have taken on a life of their own: they are used in academic works, press articles, TV productions, and in social medias. The second project includes numerous photographs of the Polish Armed Forces. This phenomenon is dealt with in the second part of this paper, which discusses the online photographic collection of the Silesian Museum in Katowice. The third and final part of this article is devoted to the impact of digitization and on-line accessibility on the making of temporary exhibitions. This is explained using the example of the author’s last exhibition at the museum about women in industry; based entirely on digital reproductions of photographs from the collections of many museums from Europe and the U.S., amongst others the US National Archives and the IWM. This is due to the fact that the author selected the entire material with the use of online catalogues of these very institutions.","PeriodicalId":52133,"journal":{"name":"Culture Unbound","volume":"26 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-07-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"80844886","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The musical legacy of the 1918 Finnish Civil War on YouTube","authors":"Anne Heimo, Aila Mustamo, Saijaleena Rantanen","doi":"10.3384/cu.3974","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3384/cu.3974","url":null,"abstract":"Conflicts such as wars, rebellions and revolutions often give rise to songs that pass on from one generation to another. This applies also to the bloody 1918 Finnish Civil War, which led to the death of nearly 37 000 people (about 1% of the population), of whom the majority 27 000 belonged to the defeated, the Reds, and affected Finnish society on every level and in long-lasting ways, some of which can still be acknowledged today. For decades after the war official and public commemoration of the war dead applied only to the winners, the Whites, whereas the Reds were forced to mourn and honour their dead in the private sphere. On both sides, songs were first a popular way of keeping up spirits and then after the war to commemorate the war. These songs were sung at funerals, parades as well as to mock the enemy. Today some of these songs as well as new ones on the topic are still popular and circulate in various versions on YouTube and other social media sites. These music videos are often remixes of original footage and photos used together with images from other sources. The most popular videos have been viewed hundreds of thousands of times. In this article, we explore the digital heritage of the 1918 Finnish Civil War by giving first an overview of the musical legacy of the war and then analyse how and why this musical legacy continues to flourish on YouTube.","PeriodicalId":52133,"journal":{"name":"Culture Unbound","volume":"36 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-07-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"85991992","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Multimedia Historical Parks and the Heritage-based “Regime of Truth” in Russia","authors":"Olga Zabalueva","doi":"10.3384/cu.3975","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3384/cu.3975","url":null,"abstract":"This article focuses on the 2013–2016 exhibitions in Moscow Manege which were later transformed into a network of entertainment centres (“historical parks”) Russia––my (hi)story. The exhibitions are built on multimedia technologies and include no authentic artefacts/museum objects. There is a growing network of such centres all over Russia, all organized in a similar manner, appealing to the visitor’s emotions and creating a relation of affect through the unravelling of a nationalistic historical narrative.\u0000Claimed to present “the objective picture of the Russian history” the exhibitions are following the recent developments in Russian cultural policies and history curricula. By analysing narratives presented at the “historical park” exhibitions, in policy documents and in media, this article follows the changes in public attitude towards history, which heritage is perceived as ‘difficult’ and ‘contested’ and how the digital representations influence these perceptions.\u0000Based on this analysis I argue that the reduction of the museum mechanism to only digital and multimedia form can bring along very serious issues in different political contexts. Russian historical parks enterprise, which combines the methods of fostering patriotism by the means of historical narrative templates both from the 19th and the 20th centuries, enhanced with the 21st-century technology in a form of “multimedia museums,” is only one of such examples.\u0000 ","PeriodicalId":52133,"journal":{"name":"Culture Unbound","volume":"16 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-07-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"88520588","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Transformative Heritage","authors":"Liron Efrat, Giovanna Graziosi Casimiro","doi":"10.3384/cu.3965","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3384/cu.3965","url":null,"abstract":"In this paper, we analyze some of the platforms and technologies that influence the manner in which we interact and experience historical sites and heritage. Acknowledging that history is a constructed narration of the past, this paper demonstrates how contemporary technologies have agency in reconstructing histories in the present via digital platforms. By comparing online platforms for digital heritage production like Google Heritage with Augmented Reality (AR) and Mixed Reality (MR) platforms, we demonstrate how digital heritage may undergo a process recontextualization or decontextualization from its originating settings. \u0000We also show that digital heritage’s reconstruction of history is done through the act of remediation: by turning actual remnants of the past into digital models or by replacing such remnants with virtual representation that are globally accessible, something new is created and alternative stories can be told. Within that, we consider some of the ethical issues that are raised by the migration of historical narratives into digital platforms, as we point towards a growing tendency in which history and its production can be subjected to major data companies.","PeriodicalId":52133,"journal":{"name":"Culture Unbound","volume":"7 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-07-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"77494982","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Migrant Life Stories as Digital Heritage","authors":"Malin Thor Tureby, Jesper Johansson","doi":"10.3384/cu.4411","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3384/cu.4411","url":null,"abstract":"Following the ambitions of international and national policy makers to digitalize the cultural heritage sector, a growing research field that deals with digitalization and cultural heritage has emerged. However, it has been argued that too much focus has been placed on technology and information policy issues and that research on how to achieve administrative effectiveness and preservation has taken precedence over studies of different actors’ engagement, participation and access to cultural heritage. Previous studies have also tended to problematize the “hows” rather than the “whys” of processes associated with digital heritage and digitalization. In addition, research has shown that collections documenting minorities and marginalized groups have been excluded from national strategies concerning the digitalization of cultural heritage. Therefore, the aim of this article is to investigate why and under what conditions digital heritage about and with migrants has been initiated, created and curated. We study the motives and the roles of different stakeholders in the digitization and patrimonialization processes of one collection containing life stories from migrants. Furthermore, in the article we understand stakeholders not only as decision makers, owners or managers, but also as any person or organization that feels affected by whatever happens to the object or piece defined as heritage. Consequently, a central element in the methodology of this research was the interviews conducted with crucial actors in relation to their engagements with the studied collection. During the interviews, we paid specific attention to the different motives of the involved stakeholders and why it was important to them that the collection was created and digitized.","PeriodicalId":52133,"journal":{"name":"Culture Unbound","volume":"1 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-07-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"76827053","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Culture-led urban regeneration and local expectations of urban void renewal in eastern Lisbon","authors":"J. Martins","doi":"10.3384/cu.1094","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3384/cu.1094","url":null,"abstract":"This article will analyze the ongoing culture-led regeneration processes of abandoned, informal and vacant areas, often considered by residents, local associations, and public officials to be urban voids. Our territorial framework is in Marvila, a semi-peripheral riverside area in Lisbon, strongly affected by informal activities, high levels of youth unemployment, an elderly population, and the existence of urban spaces with non-planned uses, seen as undesirable by the local ecosystem of stakeholders and particularly by residents.\u0000Our analysis will be centered around a social and spatial understanding of Lisbon’s municipal urban policy (funded by the 3.5.6. program of the European Union on Cultural Heritage), which has supported the reoccupation of some these so-called urban voids. We will focus on the use of a Pilot Project methodology, its exploratory and prototype nature, the local bureaucratic planning system, and the soft Planning techniques implemented as new ways of addressing long-term decayed and informal urban spaces.\u0000We will examine the regeneration results of two EU-H2020 funded pilot projects, under the ROCK project, which supports this research. The first pilot project “Loja Com Vida” (“store with life” or “store invites”), supports the municipal objective of creating a new urban centrality in Marvila, encouraging a diversification of its users, operationalizing the reuse of municipal ground floor spaces. The second project, “Jardim para Todos” (‘Garden for all’), corroborates a municipal urban policy on environmental sustainability goals, promoting, with the help of local agents, a learning and sharing process centered around green knowledge and the creation of a future agriculture hub and leisure area.\u0000The acknowledgment of these pilot project results will constitute an interesting case study for other urban areas with similar conditions, incorporating a better understanding of participative urban regeneration processes, outside the traditional and formal planning perspectives and achievements.","PeriodicalId":52133,"journal":{"name":"Culture Unbound","volume":"119 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-06-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"89358488","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"(Re-)Assembling Cultural Studies","authors":"Florian Cord","doi":"10.3384/cu.3986","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3384/cu.3986","url":null,"abstract":"This paper proceeds from the assumption that the Anthropocene is characterized by a profound impurity and ‘messiness’. It argues that in order to be able to better tackle the immense complexity of the contemporary world, Cultural Studies needs to be more fully posthumanized, that is, brought into an encounter with the various theoretical formations associated with the nonhuman turn (actor-network theory, new materialism, speculative realism, object-oriented ontology, etc.). Specifically, it proposes the concept of the ‘assemblage’ as an alternative onto-epistemic commitment for Cultural Studies and a very productive hinge for such an encounter. Primarily drawing on the work of the philosopher Manuel DeLanda, the article distils the most important features of this concept and then goes on to explore how it calls for a rethinking and revision of some of the central assumptions and categories of Cultural Studies once it is ‘translated’ into the discursive horizon of the discipline. In particular, the essay, availing itself of a wide range of theoretical resources, investigates how the three key concepts of culture, power, and identity undergo a reconceptualization, one that more strongly opens them up to the nonhuman.","PeriodicalId":52133,"journal":{"name":"Culture Unbound","volume":"89 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-06-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"80256087","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"A vehicle for positive acculturation","authors":"Eunice Pui-yu Yim","doi":"10.3384/cu.3106","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3384/cu.3106","url":null,"abstract":"Cultural diversity in Hong Kong has increased dramatically following a series of reforms in population and immigration policies after the unification of Hong Kong in 1997. Since then, cultural clashes between Hong Kong locals and mainland Chinese people have become one of the major social issues in Hong Kong. While intercultural clashes between people from different countries have been widely researched, those between people from different regions of the same country are rarely studied. Homogenizing and overlooking intergroup cultural clashes contribute to misunderstandings toward different cultures and resolving these clashes through social policies and services. Cultural research indicates that stereotyped beliefs are transmitted intergenerationally. Policy responses seek to nurture a harmonized society where perceived differences are respected and understood, rather than merely acknowledged. This study adopts narrative inquiry to examine the dynamics of acculturation, social identity, and intergroup contact among local and migrant parents and to explore avenues for promoting positive acculturation amid diversity. We observed four parents from mainland China and three local Hong Kong parents with children aged 4–13 who attended two discussion sessions about parenting. The findings revealed that promoting positive acculturation via parenting education is effective in promoting psychological adaptation at the individual level and reducing intergroup stereotypes at a cultural level. Training parenting educators in facilitating positive acculturation policies and programs for both sides are discussed.","PeriodicalId":52133,"journal":{"name":"Culture Unbound","volume":"7 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-06-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"81052383","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"“I try to tell myself that it’s a machine, but it doesn’t help”","authors":"Johan Hallqvist","doi":"10.3384/cu.1330","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3384/cu.1330","url":null,"abstract":"The Swedish sci-fi drama TV series Real Humans (original title in Swedish: Äkta människor) can be viewed as a playground for trying out imagined possible future human-robot relationships that can tell us something regarding ideas about possible futures for being human. In the paper, representations of ttranshumansexual relationships are explored, specifically how these representations reproduce and possibly challenge notions of being human. Three articulations of transhumansexual relationships are identified: authenticity, legal subjectivity, and failure of heterosexuality. The negotiations of being human take place in three different discourses – a heteronormative and humanonormative discourse on gender and sexuality, a biological discourse, and a citizenship discourse. Transhumansexuals and hubots in transhumansexual relationships are humanized – anthropomorphized – and made more intelligible as human(-like) beings. However, the quest to make transhumansexual relationships intelligible as something human tends to (hetero- and humano-)normalize the queer potential of transhumansexual relationships\u0000 \u0000 ","PeriodicalId":52133,"journal":{"name":"Culture Unbound","volume":"12 4","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-02-17","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"72467276","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}