The challenge and response to global tourism in the post-modern era: the commodification, reconfiguration and mutual transformation of Habana Vieja, Cuba

There is a growing literature on the symbolic and cultural meanings of tourism and the ways in which cities are increasingly competing for tourists through the promotion of cultural assets and different forms of spectacle in the `tourist bubble'. To date, research on the role and impact of tourism in cities has largely been confined to those in Western, post-industrial economies. This paper examines the growth of cultural tourism in the central area of Havana, Cuba, and explores the range of unique, devolved, state-owned enterprises that are attempting to use tourism as a funding mechanism to achieve improvements in the social and cultural fabric of the city for the benefit of residents. The paper concludes with an assessment of the implications of this example for our understanding of how the pressures for restructuring and commodification can be moderated at the city level. Copyright 2008 SAGE Publications. All rights reserved. Not for commercial use or unauthorized distribution.

The metamorphosis of authority: a case study of the Aga Khan Development Network and the Ismaili Imamate

This research is a study of modern developments of the institutions of the Nizārī Ismaili imamate during the time of the present Ismaili Imam, Shāh Karīm al-Ḥusaynī, Aga Khan IV, as the 49th hereditary living Imam of Shiʿi Nizārī Ismaili Muslims, particularly addressing the formation of the Aga Khan Development Network (AKDN) and the functions of the Community institutions. Using the case study of the Aga Khan Development Network and the Nizārī Ismaili imamate, this research demonstrates that the three ideal types of authority as proposed by Weber, namely the traditional, charismatic and legal-bureaucratic types, are not sufficient to explain the dynamics of authority among Muslims. This is partly due to Weber’s belief in the uniqueness of Western civilisation, which is a product of his thesis on Protestant Ethics and partly because his ideal typical system does not work in the case of the Muslim societies. The Ismaili imamate with its multifarious institutions in contemporary times is the most suitable counter-example by which to powerfully demonstrate that Weberian models of authority fail to explain this phenomenon and it would indeed appear as a paradoxical institution if viewed with Weberian theses. The Ismaili imamate in contemporary times represents a paradigm shift and a transmutation not only as regards the Weberian models but also when viewed from inside the tradition of Shiʿi Muslim history. This evolutionary leap forward, which has been crystallised over the course of the past half a century, in the Ismaili imamate suggests the development of a new form of authority which is unprecedented. There are clearly various elements in this form of authority which could be discerned as rooted in tradition and history; however the distinctive elements of this new form of authority give it a defining and exciting dimension. There are several qualities which are peculiar to the contemporary condition of the Ismaili imamate and its style of leadership which are distinctive. Most importantly, while some central features, like succession by way of designation (naṣṣ) has not changed, there is one overarching quality which can best capture all these elements and that is the transmutation of the Ismaili imamate from the person of the Imam into the office of imamate and thus we are now facing the institutionalisation of the imamate and the office being the embodiment of the authority of the Imam. I have described this new development as a metamorphosis of the authority because it gives an entirely new form and content to the previously familiar concept of authority in the Shiʿi Ismaili Muslim tradition.

Twentieth Century Modern Architecture and the Countryside: Ludwig Mies van der Rohe's design for a country gold clubhouse for the Krefeld Golf Club Association

This paper investigates relationships between modernity and monumentality in the architecture of Ludwig Mies van der Rohe. In his Modern Architecture, the critic and historian Kenneth Frampton separated Mies’ work into two historical periods, 1921-1933 and 1933-1967; the first he entitled ‘Mies van der Rohe and the significance of fact,’ the second ‘Mies van der Rohe and the monumentalisation of technique.’ The two historical periods correspond to two different geopolitical phases of Mies’ career, the first in Weimar Germany the second in the United States. By looking at a number of designs and texts made by Mies in the 1930’s and 1940’s, this essay questions the validity of separating Mies’ architecture into such clear-cut categories, where each one can enjoy a seeming independence from the other. The fulcrum for the discussion is Mies’ design of 1930 for a country golf clubhouse for the industrial town of Krefeld in north-western Germany. Our attention to the golf clubhouse design was prompted by the recent installation (2013), in which a 1-1 model of the design, made primarily from plywood, was erected in a field close the the site of Mies' original proposal.

Transmitting Chinese Medicine: Changing Perceptions of Body, Pathology, and Treatment in Late Imperial China

Historians of Chinese medicine acknowledge the plurality of Chinese medicine along both synchronic and diachronic dimensions. Yet, there remains a tendency to think of tradition as being defined by some unchanging features. The Chinese medical body is a case in point. This is assumed to have been formalised by the late Han dynasty around a system of internal organs, conduits, collaterals, and associated body structures. Although criticism was voiced from time to time, this body and the micro/ macrocosmic cosmological resonances that underpin it are seen to persist until the present day. I challenge this view by attending to attempts by physicians in China and Japan in the period from the mid 16th to the late 18th century to reimagine this body. Working within the domain of cold damage therapeutics and combining philological scholarship, empirical observations, and new hermeneutic strategies these physicians worked their way towards a new territorial understanding of the body and of medicine as warfare that required an intimate familiarity with the body’s topography. In late imperial China this new view of the body and medicine was gradually re-absorbed into the mainstream. In Japan, however, it led to a break with this orthodoxy that in the Republican era became influential in China once more. I argue that attending further to the innovations of this period—commonly portrayed as one of decline—from a transnational perspective may help to go beyond the modern insistence to frame East Asian medicines as traditional.