Cultural Geography

El Interés en explorar la ciudad como una fuente ¡cónica del sentido es posible rastrearlo a partir del libro "a la búsqueda del sentido", escrito por el filósofo chileno Cristóbal Holzapfel, en cuyo texto se pueden leer ideas provocadoras y sugerentes para ser abordadas desde otras disciplinas. En consecuencia aproximarse al fenómeno urbano desde un enfoque transdisciplinario, contribuye a entender la multidimensionalidad de su naturaleza. Entonces, ¿por qué no invocar a la filosofía -con su preocupación por el sentido- y por qué no a la geografía y el sentido de lugar, al examinar la ciudad de Valdivia y sus lugares icónicos? La metodología propuesta se basa en entrevistas en profundidad a informantes claves dentro de la disciplina geográfica de Valdivia. Geógrafos, que hayan desarrollado una observación no participante de los lugares seleccionados. Estableciéndose como resultado una relación entre los lugares escogidos y la identidad cultural local.

Japan's emergence into the mainstream of world history has been an extended transition between the ascriptive pre-modern Tokugawa settlement and a new global hybrid modernity that is now in the process of formation around the world. This period can be divided into two phases, with the Second World War as their divide.

The article aims at analysing the cartography in the Netherlands during the XVIIth century, starting from a comparison with the artistic production in the same period. Art and cartography will be shown as results of the same economic, social and political context, deeply changed since the independence of the late XVIth century. The contacts and interactions between the two areas of interest will be studied, in order to investigate the causes and peculiarities of the cartographic development occurred in the Netherlands in the XVIIth century, which was defined as an «happy industry» in the Golden Age. The article is based on Vermeer’s and other Dutch artists paintings, hosted in the exhibition Vermeer. Il Secolo d’Oro dell’arte olandese [Vermeer. The Golden Age of the Dutch art]. In many of those artworks, the artists exemplary reproduced maps and globes, giving a clear idea of which role the geographical elements have had in the Dutch development and the article will try to explain why they were distributed that much.

"This book observes inscription as method through a range of critical and creative presentations. My aim, to prospect the shore of M.R. James’ 1904 supernatural short story Oh, Whistle, and I’ll Come to You, My Lad as a suggestive yet speculative proposition on how to approach the production and reception of contemporary art writing, examining where meaning might take
place and reasoning backwards. Edited by Maria Fusco.  Contributors include: Giles Eldridge, Beatrice Gibson & George Clark, Jennifer Higgie, Craig Martin and Alexandre Singh.

ISBN 978 1 873352 10 6 - published by Article Press, Birmingham"

"This dissertation uses an empirical study of the lifetime employment system in four large Japanese corporations and the principal work values of their core white-collar university graduate male employees to inform a theoretical discussion on the nature of modernity and capitalism in contemporary Japan. As such, therefore, it lies within the academic disciplines of sociology and Japanese studies.

For some time now the lifetime employment principle has been the ideological and functional basis of the Japanese management system. However, due to the steadily accumulating stresses exerted by the further intensification and globalisation of economic competition, coupled with changes in Japanese society stimulated by the achievement of material abundance, Japanese corporations feel they are under increasing pressure to implement fundamental changes to the system of employment. For their part, employees are adopting a more independent, critical, and reflexive employment orientation.

Making use of both Western and Japanese theoretical representations, and contrasting the post-war paradigm of employment security and stability within a rapidly growing economy with the present period of corporate restructuring and economic stagnation, the dissertation posits a hypothesis that Japanese society is undergoing a period of systemic and cultural transformation that lies between a post-war “transitional” and a global “hybrid” modernity. That is to say, the post-war Japanese company can be said to have possessed both modern and fictive pre-modern attributes and was thus a “trans-modern” corporation. Moreover, the present period of corporate rationalisation, together with the progressive modernisation of the Japanese salaryman’s work and career consciousness, signifies that the Japanese corporation is entering an age characterised by a global hybrid form of capitalist modernity."

""The paper is a comparative study on the aristocrats of eastern England, eastern Normandy, western Flanders and central Norway. This comparison will specifically investigate the aristocratic understanding of territory between the mid-tenth and mid-eleventh centuries.

Currently in English historiography a ‘maximum view’ prevails promoting strong centralised states centred on powerful kings. However, this paper intends to challenge the ‘maximum’ paradigm through a comparative framework of North Sea Europe. This approach not only promotes the presence of regional identity but also emphasises how comparative studies allow historians to debate national historgraphical theories.

Therefore to understand aristocratic perception of territory research centres on regional texts and aristocratic homes. The outcome will highlight that central institutional ties were weak outside of traditional land holdings. Furthermore, it will stress that the localities did not subscribe to national identities or borders. In contrast, these areas maintained their own cultural provinces and central places based on the landscape and cultural memory. Finally, it was this regional identity that the aristocracy of North Sea Europe attached itself to so that they could perpetuate their right to rule a locality, as well as strengthen their position against the interventions of central powers.

The conclusions presented will highlight a regionally focussed aristocracy that provides evidence against centralised states. Moreover, it will show how further comparative research will illuminate the possibility of a North Sea network in the Early Medieval period.""

Information and place have always been linked. From prehistoric forest and hydraulic empire to canal network and the networked knowledge economy, the space of flows gives rise to the way human beings perceive the world as well as to the objects they perceive. The historical relationship between information and place is important in understanding Cyberspace as a space of information that reshapes our engagement with the physical world.

In most heritage studies, it is often argued that the commoditisation of culture leads to the loss of authenticity, and its inherent meanings and values. Through the case study of the retail products made by MuseumLabel, a heritage retail consultancy operated by the National Heritage Board of Singapore, which also manages the National Museums in Singapore, this presentation argues that ‘souveniralisation’ – the making of thoughtful memorabilia - from museum collections can lead to the preservation of the traditional meanings and values associated with museum objects, and a re-enactment of situated authenticity associated with the objects. Rather than portraying the museum as a final destination to an object’s social life, a museum object can be re-invented into a new object form, which takes on a new social biography on its own through the process of souveniralisation.  The creation of thoughtful memorabilia from museum objects that retain the object meanings subtly in its new form, can be far more powerful in conveying the object’s intangible properties, than its portrayal in the museum setting. Using examples of products created by MuseumLabel such as the National Day Tote Bag, the Walter the Rabbit series of memorabilia, I demonstrate how museum objects take on a new life form through souveniralisation, and how such an extension-substitution of its object properties into a museum souvenir can make art, heritage and culture more relevant and interesting to museum audiences today.