Destruction Of Culture Research Articles

“Rooted in Demographic Reality”: The Contribution of New World Censuses to Indigenous Survival

One of the most powerful narratives deployed by colonists in the nineteenth century was that the colonized natives were inherently too weak to survive contact with those who were colonizing them—the Dying Native story. I argue that to understand the history of this story, we should differentiate between three senses in which it could be taken as true or false: physical destruction, genetic adulteration and loss of distinct culture. The physical destruction version of the “Dying Native” was contested by some settler-colonial governments as they developed the capacity to manage and measure the numbers of those whom they classified as “Indian” or “Māori” or “Aboriginal”. However, the “Dying Native” story persisted as a narrative of these peoples' loss of genetic and/or cultural distinction. One strategy of Indigenous intellectuals has been to assert that they have survived as “populations” by adapting as “peoples”. In this paper, I show how an authoritative demography of colonized Indigenous populations in North America and New Zealand afforded discursive opportunities to some Indigenous intellectuals.

Gabriel García Márquez and Ovid. Magical and Monstrous Realities by Lorna Robinson (review)

Reviewed by: Gabriel García Márquez and Ovid. Magical and Monstrous Realities by Lorna Robinson Liliana Wendorff Robinson, Lorna. Gabriel García Márquez and Ovid. Magical and Monstrous Realities. Rochester: Tamesis, 2013. 188pp. In this book Lorna Robinson takes Gabriel García Márquez’s Cien años de soledad as a basis for exploring magical realism in Ovid’s Metamorphoses. In her introduction, Robinson gives an excellent lengthy history of the term “magical realism,” from the arts to a modern technological world. Robinson is aware that applying this term to the Metamorphoses, many centuries before it becomes a literary phenomenon, might seem anachronistic, but she argues that both the Metamorphoses and Cien años de soledad reveal a blending of the magical and the real; an intricate plotting of mythical worlds; and powerful storytelling. The first chapter, “Telling Tales,” establishes the basic elements for generating magical realism. With copious examples, Robinson demonstrates how García Márquez and Ovid produce the effect of magical realism in their respective works. The outcome, she argues, arises from confusion, which in turn creates doubt and disorientation in the reader. The combination of both magical and mundane events produces “strangeness” in the texts. This sense of oddness is further developed in the second chapter, “Points of View,” in which the author points out that both texts show sympathy towards the beliefs and behaviors of their characters. These worldviews are tied to the characters’ psychology and include animism and natural phenomena with its own powers –i.e. time as a human entity, sentient rain, anthropomorphic deities. While Ovid’s pseudo-credulous exposition of various popular myths generates the discomfort of a magical realist work, García Márquez incorporates the convictions of Indian communities to show their primitive supernatural conceptions of the world. [End Page 143] In fact, the critic argues, both the insomnia plague (with biblical allusions) in Cien años de soledad and the melting women in the Metamorphoses embody accounts of magical realism. In the third chapter, “Fertile Ground,” Robinson responds to Latin American scholars who have asserted that the peculiarity of their nations, history and landscape are the cause of magical realism. She points out that García Márquez’s use of the plague is in fact a metaphor for the destruction of Indian cultures by the Spanish and criollo population. Certainly, this episode can also be read as the loss of an oral culture, which García Márquez experienced when he left his grandparents’ household in Aracataca, in order to study in the highlands. The insomnia plague, the critic argues, also represents preoccupation with the instability of memory. On the other hand, the liquefied females of the Metamorphoses, according to Robinson, manifest Ovid’s desire to merge his characters with nature, and the episode shows a clash between the uneducated oral culture of most ancient Romans and a literary world. In the last chapter, “More Than Words Can Say,” the author investigates the aesthetic effects of magical realism. Following Franz Roh’s assertion that “the new form of realism lay in its attitude of wonder at the world” (128), Robinson postulates that inside this realism there is an attempt to locate infinity in small things, while not illuminating the inner mechanism of magic realism’s formula. By drawing comparisons between the characters from the Metamorphoses and Cien años de soledad, the author concludes that Ovid’s adoption of extreme imagery as a way of transmitting an emotional response tends to narrow the presentation of a character at the sacrifice of realism, while García Márquez’s magical realism allows us to understand reality free from the chains of traditional realism. With these and other arguments, Robinson crafts a convincing analysis of a well-studied topic that will certainly attract the attention of scholars interested in magical realism, in a new globalized era. Liliana Wendorff Queens University of Charlotte Copyright © 2014 Department of Romance Languages, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

From an Agency of Cultural Destruction to an Agency of Public Health

Most medical histories maintain that missionary doctors in imperial Africa were agents of Western cultural imperialism. This scholarship, informed by the writings of Michel Foucault, projects mission-based healers as agents of imperial power who played a major role in emasculating African therapeutic systems and in reinforcing colonial hegemony. This scholarship partly derives its support from the fact that across Africa, mission doctors and nurses cast themselves as cultural conquistadors whose ultimate goal was no less to undermine local medical culture than to supplant it with biomedical comprehensions of disease, healing and medicine. Convincing as this scholarship may be, it over-simplistically locks Christian medical missions in a distant/static past, erroneously portraying them as monolithic entities, and largely obscuring how missionary discourses and praxis surrounding disease and medicine metamorphosed in the aftermath of colonialism. This paper may be read as a corrective to such scholarship. The paper insists that, in conformity with the expectations and demands of the post-colonial regime in Zambia, Catholic medics reconfigured their medical discourse and practice. Consequently, their medicine lost its imperial/hegemonic pretensions and became an agency through which the newly-independent Zambian state implemented its public health reforms.

New Futures for Older Ports: Synergistic Development in a Global Urban System

Port cities are on the front-line of a changing global urban system. There are problems from restructuring of trade, logistics and ship-building, creating economic dependency, social exclusion and cultural destruction. Meanwhile, there exists new opportunities in heritage tourism, cultural industries and ecological restoration, but these opportunities often have negative impacts. This paper addresses the question of how port cities can steer from negative to positive development paths and outcomes. It sets out a way of working with inter-connected economic, social, political and technological factors—a ‘synergistic’ approach to mapping of problems and design of policy responses. Looking at three contrasting examples of port cities—Liverpool, Dubai and Mauritius—we can compare the inter-connected dynamics of growth and decline. Then we can understand the inter-connected factors of successful regeneration and sustainable prosperity, not as linear ‘policy fixes’, but more like synergistic processes of learning, innovation and capacity building. These call for new models for creative innovation in social and community enterprise: cultural heritage both old and new; new social finance and investment; socio-ecological restoration with participative governance, etc. Such pathways and opportunities are now emerging in many different locations; this paper provides methods and tools to understand them and promote them.

Left Behind? Cultural Destruction, the Role of the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia in Deterring it and Cultural Heritage Prevention Policies in the Aftermath of the Balkan Wars

The present article deals with the phenomenon of willful destruction of cultural heritage during armed conflicts: more particularly, the article focuses on the Balkan region, a zone that many conflicts ravaged along the centuries, and more specifically, during the Balkan wars, using two iconic cases of destruction of cultural heritage during the above-mentioned conflict: on one hand, the destruction of the Vijecnica in Sarajevo; on the other, the shelling of Dubrovnik, a case that gave rise to the prosecution and judgments of Pavle Strugar and Miodrag Jokic, among others, by the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY). Using official reports, journalistic accounts, and documents from the ICTY and the Global Heritage Fund, the article assesses how even though there is no shortage of instruments (international tribunals) and policies (both local, national and international) to prevent cultural destruction during war times, in the case of the Balkans, these fall short of reaching their objective, and lack of funding and other motives block effective restoration of the damaged cultural heritage. Also, there is no effective law enforcement and punishment for these crimes, denying thus a deterring effect for the perpetrators. All these problems are further enhanced due to the lack of consensus and research on the criminal categorization of the destruction of cultural property during wartimes.

Non-Destructive Assessment of Growth Performance of Embryogenic Suspension Culture of Pinus kesiya (Royle ex. Gord.) in Shake-Flask and Self-Designed Bubble Bioreactor and Successful Regeneration of Plantlets from the Culture Systems

Embryogenic suspensions of Pinus kesiya (Khasi pine) derived from embryogenic cultures obtained from immature zygotic embryos (intact megagametophytes) of Pk-04 genotype were grown in shake-flasks and self-designed bubble bioreactors. Conifer somatic embryogenesis could find its utility for rapid mass propagation if grown as suspension cultures. To minimize the destruction of embryogenic cultures during study, a few growth characteristics viz., sedimented cell volume and number of stage-I (early stage) and -III (cotyledonary) embryo formation in suspensions were determined over a 21-day period. Compared to shake-flasks, proliferation in bioreactors resulted in increased biomass. The suspension culture showed a mixture of freely suspended as well as aggregates of stage-I (early stage) embryos. Maturation of somatic embryos was done on gelled medium and in submerged culture where gelled solid medium was covered with a layer of liquid medium. The number of stage-III (cotyledonary) embryos formed in bubble bioreactor were significantly higher than shake-flask cultures with both solid medium and submerged cultures. The cotyledonary embryos germinated successfully producing plantlets on germination medium.

Chinese Avant-Garde Art: Body and Spirit Struggle for a New Cultural Identity

Chinese avant-garde art exploded onto the art world in 1989, a few months before the student protest and the brutal crack down at Tian An Men Square. After decades of cultural repression, deep national humiliations by the West, and the catastrophic destruction of lives, property, and culture from Mao's Cultural Revolution, the Chinese avant-garde was a movement that was searching for a new cultural identity. I call this continuing movement, where artists whose art challenged authorities and shook up the collective malaise, the third phase of the Cultural Revolution. I chose to write about two artists with very different artistic visions, yet both succeeded in expressing the tension and struggle of the opposites between tradition and modernity, body and spirit. Xu Bing created a monumental work named Book from the Sky. Xu carved thousands of woodblocks of “pseudo” Chinese characters that are unreadable and meaningless. They were then printed and exhibited elegantly in printed scrolls. In his attacking and making the Chinese written word meaningless, Xu was questioning the traditional definition of “Chineseness.” The second artist, Zhang Huan, used body, often his own body, as the artistic medium. From his early performance art to photographic images and then self sculpture, Zhang moved from body, to culture, to spirit, from personal to transpersonal.

Quaker ideology, colonialism and American Indian education

William Penn, the Quaker who founded Pennsylvania, set out to found a ‘Holy Experiment’ based on Quaker ideals. While he regarded the Native American Indians whose land he purchased as spiritual equals, he still expected them to convert to Christianity and live under British law. Later, Quakers continued to follow this goal, eventually becoming leaders, under President Grant, in the residential school system for Native American Indian children. They supported assimilation, contributing to the destruction of native culture and society, in contradiction to their principles of equality and integrity. This paper explores the process by which Quakers came to feel it necessary to pursue such measures in spite of their egalitarian beliefs.

“Are There Any Children for Sale?”: Genocide and the Transfer of Armenian Children (1915–1922)

The forced transfer of children from one group to another is considered an element of the crime of genocide, yet this subject has attracted little scholarly attention. Using the history of the mass transfer of Armenian children during the Armenian Genocide of 1915–1922 as a case, this article argues that the study of child transfer and recovery is critical to both the history of human rights and a more sophisticated understanding of genocide, including the forms of genocide accompanying the colonial encounter. The experience of transferred children and their recovery or loss can help better clarify the historical relationship between the concepts of the rights of the child and individual human and minority rights as these have evolved before and immediately after World War II. Moreover, this article also contends that it is important to characterize child transfer as genocide, as opposed to colonial assimilation or acculturation as a feature of modernization, when explaining the broader social impact of mass violence, forced migration, and cultural destruction on victim/survivor and perpetrator communities.

“We eat more than kangaroo tail or dugong you know…”: Recent Indigenous Australian Cookbooks

This paper focuses on a series of cookbooks published by Indigenous Australian groups. These cookbooks are typically produced with government funding, and are developed by nutritionists, dieticians, and health workers in consultation with local communities. They are designed to teach Indigenous Australians to cook healthy, nutritious, low-cost meals. In this paper, Fredericks and Anderson identify the value of these cookbooks as low-cost, public health interventions. However, they note that their value as health interventions has not been tested. Fredericks and Anderson question the value of these cookbooks within the broader context of the health disadvantage faced by Indigenous Australians. They argue that the cookbooks are developed from a Western perspective of health and nutrition that fails to recognise the value of traditional Indigenous foodways. They suggest that incorporating more Indigenous food knowledge and food-related traditions into cookbooks may be one way of improving health among Indigenous peoples and revitalising Indigenous knowledge.

Long-term investigations on Toxoplasma gondii-infected primary chicken macrophages

Toxoplasma (T.) gondii is known to infect various cell types including macrophages. In the present study, we generated monocyte-derived macrophage cultures from chicken blood. By flow cytometrical analysis, 84.5% of the cultivated cells showed typical macrophage properties. Macrophage cultures were cultivated at either 37 °C or 40 °C, respectively, and were infected 72 to 96 h post isolationem with tachyzoites of the T. gondii type II strain ME49 at a rate of 7.5 tachyzoites per host cell. Light microscopical investigations revealed incorporation of tachyzoites into the macrophages and gradual destruction of the infected macrophage culture. Parasite multiplication was observed by a quantitative real time PCR (qPCR) based on the 529-bp fragment specific for T. gondii. Samples were drawn 1 h post infectionem (p.i.), as well as 12, 24, 36, 48, and 72 h p.i. The parasite replication curve showed a transient decrease of parasite stages 12 h p.i. followed by a tachyzoite multiplication. The comparison of different culture conditions showed a significantly higher replication rate of T. gondii at 37 °C (median value 48 h p.i., 289.2% of the initial tachyzoite number) compared to cultures incubated at 40 °C (median value 48 h p.i., 73.1% of the initial tachyzoite number) throughout the observation period (P < 0.05). In general, replication rates were significantly lower than in a standard VERO cell cultures at 37 °C (P < 0.05). The observed differences were attributed to the physiological chicken macrophage reaction at 40 °C probably approximating the situation in vivo.

Raphael Lemkin, Cultural Destruction, and the Armenian Genocide

Using an interdisciplinary, cultural studies approach, this article explores Raphael Lemkin's often overlooked concept of cultural destruction in the case of the Armenian Genocide. Lemkin's thinking was significantly shaped by the Armenian Genocide, as seen here in his newly published autobiography and other documents in the collection of his papers held at the American Jewish Archives. The author considers the Ottoman government's vandalism and destruction of Armenian cultural monuments, the mass killing of Armenian intellectuals, torture using crucifixes, and forced conversion to Islam. In deepening the idea of culture and its relationship to genocide, the author draws upon several models in the social sciences and humanities. The conclusion assesses the long-term impact of cultural destruction on Armenians in the diaspora and the Republic.

Protecting Endangered Cultures from Harms of Globalization: Where Current Public Action and Private Product Certification Systems Fail

Today, at roughly a price 1 to 2 percent higher than other products, most of us can buy certified organic coffee or "fair trade" handicrafts that help the environment and improve labor standards for workers in certain industries. Yet, we may be committing genocide (in the form of cultural destruction and disintegration) at the same time. The "organic" product may be cashcropped on land stolen from vulnerable peoples or produced by workers coerced into working as laborers for a foreign export product of little or no local or foreign benefit in ways that are destroying a culture. The "handicraft" may actually be a foreign design and produced in a local factory, or in villages where toxic runoff has made the water unfit to drink, in ways that irreparably transform, if not poison, a community.

On the So-Called “Middle-Class Citizens” as the Power of Social Change

This article, looking at the middle-class citizens of today who have grown into the majority of the population in developed countries and who are gradually becoming the majority in emerging countries too, argues that none other than such citizens might retain the power of social change in this phase of capitalism. This article, by tracing the different aspects of citizens' features along with capitalist development, reveals the complicated characteristics of contemporary middle-class citizens who though usually supporting of the capitalist system, sometimes turn into influential opponents of the system where they feel themselves betrayed or abandoned by it. This article insists on the distinct meaning of the Worldwide Comprehensive Consumption Reduction Movement, which is effective not only for preventing the destruction of nature, culture and human health but also for the middle-class citizens to develop into constructive reformists, not simply opponents, of the very same capitalist society.

산악형 생태탐방로 개발계획에 대한 지역주민 태도분석 - 소백산 자락길을 대상으로 -

본 연구는 지역주민들의 의견을 수렴한 산악형 생태탐방로 개발계획 수립을 위한 기초자료를 제공하는 것이 목적이다. 사회교환이론을 적용하여 소백산 자락길 개발계획에 대한 지역주민들의 의식분석 및 태도분석을 실시하였다. 이를 위해 7개 마을 주민 150명을 대상으로 자기기입방식 및 개인면접으로 설문조사를 실시하였다. 먼저, 주민 의식분석 결과, 소백산 자락길 개발계획에 대해서는 대부분의 지역주민들이 인식하며, 또한 찬성하는 것으로 나타났다. 다음은 주민 태도분석 결과, 성별에 따른 태도는 탐방객과의 교류 및 전통문화재 발굴에서 남성보다 여성이 높게 기대하였으며, 연령별 태도는 마을의 환경오염 증가, 범죄 증가, 문화 파괴, 주민갈등 유발 등에서 60세 미만 집단에서 우려하는 것으로 나타났다. 직업군에 따른 태도는 농업 종사자가 생태계 파괴 부분을 우려하고 있었으며, 지역적 특성 및 경관 훼손에서는 모든 지역주민들이 우려하는 것으로 나타났다. 그리고 개발계획의 찬성집단은 경제적, 환경적, 사회 문화적 측면 대부분의 항목에서 기대하는 것으로 나타났으나, 반대집단은 환경적 측면의 경관훼손, 환경오염 증가와 사회 문화적 측면의 주민갈등 유발 등 개발로 인한 부정적인 측면에 대해서 우려하는 것으로 나타났다. This study analyzed the consciousness and attitudes of local residents to the development plan of Sobaeksan Jarackgil by applying the social exchange theory to provide basic data for the establishment of the Mountainous Ecology Trail Development Plan, collecting opinions of local residents. For this, we conducted a self-administered questionnaire survey and personal interview targeting 150 residents of seven villages. Summarizing the results, first, because of analyzing the consciousness of the residents, most of the local residents turned out to be aware of the Sobaeksan Jarackgil development plan and agreed on it. Second, as a result of analyzing the consciousness of residents, for attitudes according to gender, females expected more than males of exchanging with visitors and excavation of cultural assets. Furthermore for attitudes according to age, groups aged under 60 turned out to be concerned about the increase of environmental pollutions, rise in crimes, destruction of cultures, and the induction of conflicts among residents. For attitudes according to occupations, farm workers were worried about the destruction of ecology, and for local characteristics and damages to the landscape, all of the local residents turned out to be concerned. It was shown that groups that agreed on the development plan expected positively on most of the items of economic, environmental, and sociocultural aspects, while those that disagreed on the plan were anxious for negative effects such as landscape damages and the increase of environmental pollutions from the environmental point of view, and the induction of conflicts among residents from the point of sociocultural perspective.

Tracing a survey: Some doubts about values in Serbian cultural policy

After clarification of some basic notions, the text moves towards analysis of the results of one of the very few empirical studies dedicated to explicit attitudes of Serbian citizens about cultural policy. This is a survey conducted by the Institute of Sociology of the University of Niš in the period from 2002-2005, by collecting empirical material in five districts of southeastern Serbia (Nišavski, Toplički, Pirotski, Jablanički and Pčinjski). The results are indicative for the period after the democratic changes in Serbia, and allow a comparison with other findings and future research. After the implosion of socialism and dramatic events at the end of the last century in former Yugoslavia, which were primarily caused by the fear of destruction of national culture and national identity, it appears that the cultural policy largely depends on the overall social processes, economic power of society, position of citizens in the political system, historical heritage and prevalent cultural values. New developments have drawn attention to some important cultural questions, like how to profile the cultural policy of Serbia, what it should be oriented at, what is the stand of the national culture (of Serbs) in comparison to cosmopolitanism, whether citizens are scared of European or American values (and to what extent), whether the answers to the such questions make Serbia specific in the Balkans, and to what extent is Serbia internally divided on these issues - given the standard socio-demographic characteristics of its population? The text is looking for the answers to these and other dilemmas in the responses of Serbian citizens in the aforementioned survey.

Interrogating Social Justice in Early Years Education: How Effectively Do Contemporary Policies and Practices Create Equitable Learning Environments for Indigenous Australian Children?

This article examines some of the contemporary policies and practices in Australian early years education to provide an insight into why social justice is such a critical element in preparing Australia's Indigenous children to engage in learning experiences in ways that will enable them to establish sound foundations for their future learning journeys. In order to understand why social justice and equity are central to delivering quality early years education to Indigenous children, it is vital that the modern educator has some knowledge of educational history, in particular the role of education in promoting and maintaining the status quo, thus ensuring the continuing dominance of those who occupied positions of power. Viewing the expectations of contemporary early years education against the backdrop of past realities serves to highlight the way in which education sets the scene for the cultural destruction and dispossession that has, in too many parts of the world, been the long-term outcome of education for Indigenous peoples. Examining the themes and forms of discourse that have informed the theorising and practice underpinning the development of concepts around social justice demonstrates the importance of addressing diversity in early years education contexts.

Small doses, big troubles: Modeling growth dynamics of organisms affecting microalgal production cultures in closed photobioreactors

The destruction of mass cultures of microalgae by biological contamination of culture medium is a pervasive and expensive problem, in industry and research. A mathematical model has been formulated that attempts to explain contaminant growth dynamics in closed photobioreactors (PBRs). The model simulates an initial growth phase without PBR dilution, followed by a production phase in which culture is intermittently removed. Contaminants can be introduced at any of these stages. The model shows how exponential growth from low initial inocula can lead to “explosive” growth in the population of contaminants, appearing days to weeks after inoculation. Principal influences are contaminant growth rate, PBR dilution rate, and the size of initial contaminant inoculum. Predictions corresponded closely with observed behavior of two contaminants, Uronema sp. and Neoparamoeba sp., found in operating PBRs. A simple, cheap and effective protocol was developed for short-term prediction of contamination in PBRs, using microscopy and archived samples.

Semi-Detached Empire: Suburbia and the Colonization of Britain, 1880 to the Present (review)

Reviewed by: Semi-Detached Empire: Suburbia and the Colonization of Britain, 1880 to the Present Kathleen Maloney Kuchta, Todd . Semi-Detached Empire: Suburbia and the Colonization of Britain, 1880 to the Present. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2010. 264 pp. Cloth $59.50; Paper $24.50. The title and the introduction of Todd Kuchta's Semi-Detached Empire provide a clear description of the argument that follows by playing on the idea of a semidetached home in order to communicate the sense of how suburbs replicate empire. The cleverness of the title and the image it creates are used as the guiding metaphor throughout the book. The metaphor also works as a description of the book itself; [End Page 250] whether intentionally or not, Kuchta's text is also semi-detached from the main argument, considering white male writers with the postcolonial writers confined to the epilogue. In the introduction, Kuchta explains why there are few female authors considered in the book: "As this description of suburban male degeneration suggests, my study takes up a distinctly masculine problematic" (15). So although the body of the text studies this "masculine problematic" in the works of H.G. Wells, Arthur Conan Doyle, Joseph Conrad, E.M. Forster, and George Orwell, the discussion of commonwealth writers is ghettoized in the epilogue, which gives a reading of Hanif Kureishi's The Buddha of Suburbia in the context of a range of commonwealth writers and popular culture representations. Kuchta also mimics his topic in the sense that like the Victorians who lived in the suburbs in the 1880s, the book is acquisitive and does not confine itself to one type of collection. Instead, Kuchta examines literature, culture, architecture, ethnography, psychology, population studies, language, and economic practices in order to make his point. The endnotes and the bibliography are excellent and reveal an amazing variety of sources. While each of these topics is fascinating on its own and the combination is enticing, there is not enough depth to any of the exploration to make it feel foundational. But perhaps if you are writing about semi-detachment, the point may be to make it difficult to find a footing. The book is separated into sections: "Foundations," "Facades," "Semi-Detachment." And like a work of architecture, this book works to build and scaffold its own argument. In the "Foundations" section of the book, Kuchta sets out his argument and begins a reading of H. G. Wells that he continues later in the book. This first section introduces the argument: that imperialism is central to both real and imagined suburbs. The relationship of the city and the country as a kind of semi-detachment and the idea that suburbs work to intervene between city and country is overlaid with the idea that the suburbs become the new slums as the slums become totally unlivable. The complications of the spatial identity of the suburbs are further explicated in the sense that the suburb is simultaneously seen as the new wall/fort around the metropolis and also often inhabited by colonial peoples new to England. Therefore, the suburb is both English and not English. This introduction leads to the first argument about literature, Wells's The War of the Worlds, where Kuchta makes a nice argument about reverse colonization and the role of the suburbs in the destruction of culture; "Fusing the novel's instantaneous rural decimation and reverse colonization tropes with an optical illusion of residential growth, the tripods serve as otherworldly surrogates for the suburban development invading Britain" (47). Kuchta suggests that Wells' novel and, I would add, the argument in Semi-Detached Empire, call for a new theory of the suburb. The "Facades" section of the book examines the work of Arthur Conan Doyle, Joseph Conrad, and E. M. Forster in an effort to depict the struggles with defining and describing colonization and the after effects of imperialism once the previously colonized become citizens. The suburb becomes the location of overexposure to colonization and to foreign influence and therefore becomes a danger to Englishness. In the analysis of The Sign of Four, suburban degeneracy links "physical degeneracy to bodily, architectural, and economic problems of circulation" (79). As in...

Traditional culture of slovak colonists in the lowland — socialand cultural adaptation issue

The process of cultural adaptation of the Slovak colonists to the new living conditions in Lowland did not result in the cultural destruction. There was a selective transfer of cultural information that corresponded with the Slovak enclaves’ current needs in the new environment. However, the Slovak material culture did not lose its previous role of the main symbol of ethnic identification. Interaction between Slovaks, the majority community and other ethnic minorities, was reflected in the material culture. Social conditions in Lowland were favourable for the Slovak colonists’ efforts to negotiate the differences between their original material culture and the new one that they were building in the process of construction of their new living environment. The Slovak enclaves in Lowland manifested a high degree of “cultural literacy” — the ability to exist in certain material and social environment. Their cultural competencies that were acquired in the native cultural environment in Slovakia (socialization) were effectively implemented in the multiethnic and multicultural environment. The ability of ethnic community to adapt to the changed living conditions which does not have significant impact on ethnic identification is known as cultural adaptability.