Beyond the Acronyms: Sport Diplomacy and the Classification of the International Olympic Committee

Diplomacy often finds itself reduced to actions centred on states. However, after the Cold War, international relations and diplomacy have expanded with different actors growing into significant roles, particularly in the increase of diplomatic relations in the context of sport. The classification and significance of other actors remains under-researched in relation to sport, with literature focusing more on the growth of new and varying practices of diplomacy. This analysis contends that there is a need to interrogate fundamental components of modern diplomacy—with the actor being the focus—more specifically the classification of sports organisations in diplomacy. It is relevant as a more accurate understanding of sports organisations will contribute to how diplomatic studies can analyse and evaluate modern diplomacy within the context of sport. The International Olympic Committee is the actor used to illustrate how problematic classifications currently in the academic literature translate into weak and reduced analysis and evaluation of its role and significance in diplomacy. As counterpoint, this analysis proposes an analytical framework of socio-legal theory that harnesses legal regulation as a benchmark to classify an actor’s capacity within a society. In consequence, the IOC is as an active and significant contributor to the ever expanding and complex diplomatic environment and wider society.

Iowa Scenic/Heritage Byway Evaluation, 2000

This report documents the results of the field inventory and evaluation of the nominated routes. Data is provided describing the visual and heritage character of the nominated routes and locations important to this character. Graphs, displays and maps were produced using the rating system described in the Iowa Scenic Byway Designation Guide. Discussions of specific inventory procedures and evaluation techniques can be found in two reports, Iowa Scenic Byway Evaluation, December 1992, and Iowa Scenic Byway Evaluation, November 1995.

Iowa Scenic/Heritage Byway Evaluation, 2001

This report documents the results of the field inventory and evaluation of the nominated routes. Data is provided describing the visual and heritage character of the nominated routes and locations important to this character. Graphs, displays and maps were produced using the rating system described in the Iowa Scenic Byway Designation Guide. Discussions of specific inventory procedures and evaluation techniques can be found in two reports, Iowa Scenic Byway Evaluation, December 1992, and Iowa Scenic Byway Evaluation, November 1995.

Contrived Dereliction: Employing an aesthetic of decay at mining heritage sites

Conventional descriptions place conservation activities between the two poles of active restorative intervention and passive abandonment. This paper proposes that site stewards at mining heritage sites often follow presentation strategies that sit outside this neat dualism. Drawing on material presented in the form of three case studies, this paper identifies the actions these strategies entail and considers the results in terms of an aesthetic of decay. To consolidate the argument, a new overarching term is introduced to describe this strategy: contrived dereliction, in order to foreground its essential features. The paper then outlines the advantages, limitations and requirements of contrived dereliction as a heritage management and presentation practice.

Shakespeare and the Re/Vision of Indian Heritage in the Postcolonial British Context

As part of the 2012 World Shakespeare Festival, the Royal Shakespeare Company staged a production of Much Ado About Nothing set in India. Shakespeare’s Messina in sixteenth century Italy was transposed to twenty-first century Delhi and with a company of actors who were all of Indian heritage. The casting of individual British Asian actors in mainstream UK productions of Shakespeare is no longer unusual. What was unprecedented here, however, was that not only was the entire cast ‘Asian’ but the director was not, as is standard practice, a leading member of the white British theatrical establishment. Instead the director, Iqbal Khan, is the son of a Pakistani father who migrated to England in the 1960s. I use the term ‘Indian heritage’ with great caution conscious that what began under the British Raj in nineteenth century India led through subsequent economic imperatives and exigencies, and political schism to a history of migratory patterns which means that today’s British Asian population is a complex demographic construct representing numerous different languages and cultural and religious affiliations. The routes which brought those actors to play imagined Indian Shakespeare in Stratford-upon-Avon in July 2012 were many and various. I explore in this chapter the way in which that complexity of heritage has been brought to bear on the revisioning of Shakespeare by British Asian theatre makers operating outside the theatrical mainstream. In general because of the social, economic and institutional challenges facing British Asian theatre artists, the number of independent professional companies is comparatively small and for the most part, their work has focused on creating drama which interrogates thorny questions of identity formation and contemporary cultural practices within the ‘new’ British Asian communities. Nevertheless for artists born and/or educated in the UK the Western classical canon, including of course Shakespeare, is as much part of their heritage as the classical Indian narratives and performance traditions which so powerfully evoke collective memories of the lost ‘home’ of their elders. By far the most consistent engagement with Shakespeare has been seen in the work of Tara Arts which was the first British Asian theatre company set up in 1977. The artistic director Jatinder Verma brings his own ‘transformed and translated’ heritage as an East African-born, Punjabi-speaking, English-educated, Indian migrant to the UK to plays as diverse as A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Troilus and Cressida , The Tempest and The Merchant of Venice. I discuss examples of Tara productions in the light of the way Shakespeare’s plays have been used to forge both creative synergies between parallel cultures and provide a means of addressing the ontological ruptures and dislocations associated with the colonial past.

Culture in Transit: Digitizing and Democratizing NYC’s Cultural Heritage

Presentation from the MARAC conference in Pittsburgh, PA on April 14–16, 2016. S4 - Culture in Transit: Digitizing and Democratizing NYC’s Cultural Heritage.

Nonprofit brand heritage its ability to influence volunteer retention, engagement, and satisfaction

Volunteer organizations operate in a challenging environment and their management practices toward volunteers have become increasingly influenced by the private sector. This case study explores the impact of brand heritage on the experience of volunteering in such managed environments. We use data from the U.K. Scouts to show that brand heritage has a positive bearing on the level of engagement volunteers experience and on their reported attitude to the way(s) in which they are managed within the volunteer organization. We then use these findings to establish the salience of brand heritage to both long established and recently formed organizations, extending current volunteer management theory; consequently, we suggest volunteer managers utilize the power of brand heritage through unlocking its ability to retain engaged and satisfied volunteers.

Visitors' engagement and authenticity: Japanese heritage consumption

Understanding the sense of authenticity of heritage attractions is important for tourism management and marketing because presentation, interpretation and verification has a direct bearing on motivations to visit and engage with heritage tourism sites. This paper establishes relationships among the concepts of culturally specific motivation, perception of authenticity, engagement and attendant behavioral consequences based on domestic visitors' experiences at Japanese heritage sites. It further extends Kolar and Zabkar's (2010) model of authenticity by including concepts of serious leisure, heritage related behaviors, self-connection and their effects over engagement using Partial Least Square, whereby both formative and reflective scales are included. The structural model is tested with a sample of 768 visitors in a culturally specific setting of Japanese heritage sites. The empirical validation of the conceptual model supports the research hypotheses. These findings contribute to a better understanding of visitors' perceptions and valuation of authenticity in Japanese tourist attractions. Several implications can be drawn from the study findings and interesting directions for future research are provided.

POWKist: visualising cultural heritage linked datasets.

A collaboration between dot.rural at the University of Aberdeen and the iSchool at Northumbria University, POWkist is a pilot-study exploring potential usages of currently available linked datasets within the cultural heritage domain. Many privately-held family history collections (shoebox archives) remain vulnerable unless a sustainable, affordable and accessible model of citizen-archivist digital preservation can be offered. Citizen-historians have used the web as a platform to preserve cultural heritage, however with no accessible or sustainable model these digital footprints have been ad hoc and rarely connected to broader historical research. Similarly, current approaches to connecting material on the web by exploiting linked datasets do not take into account the data characteristics of the cultural heritage domain. Funded by Semantic Media, the POWKist project is investigating how best to capture, curate, connect and present the contents of citizen-historians’ shoebox archives in an accessible and sustainable online collection. Using the Curios platform - an open-source digital archive - we have digitised a collection relating to a prisoner of war during WWII (1939-1945). Following a series of user group workshops, POWkist is now connecting these ‘made digital’ items with the broader web using a semantic technology model and identifying appropriate linked datasets of relevant content such as DBPedia (an archived linked dataset of Wikipedia) and Ordnance Survey Open Data. We are analysing the characteristics of cultural heritage linked datasets, so that these materials are better visualised, contextualised and presented in an attractive and comprehensive user interface. Our paper will consider the issues we have identified, the solutions we are developing and include a demonstration of our work-in-progress.

Heritage Language Maintenance and Biliteracy Development for Immigrants' Children: A Study of Chinese Immigrants' Family Language Policy and Biliteracy Practices

This study reports on research that examines the family language policy (FLP) and biliteracy practices of middle-class Chinese immigrant families in a metropolitan area in the southwest of the U.S. by exploring language practices pattern among family members, language and literacy environment at home, parents’ language management, parents’ language attitudes and ideologies, and biliteracy practices. In this study, I employed mixed methods, including survey and interviews, to investigate Chinese immigrant parents’ FLP, biliteracy practices, their life stories, and their experience of raising and nurturing children in an English-dominant society. Survey questionnaires were distributed to 55 Chinese immigrant parents and interviews were conducted with five families, including mothers and children. One finding from this study is that the language practices pattern at home shows the trend of language shift among the Chinese immigrants’ children. Children prefer speaking English with parents, siblings, and peers, and home literacy environment for children manifests an English-dominant trend. Chinese immigrant parents’ language attitudes and ideologies are largely influenced by English-only ideology. The priority for learning English surpasses the importance of Chinese learning, which is demonstrated by the English-dominant home literacy practices and an English-dominant language policy. Parents invest more in English literacy activities and materials for children, and very few parents implement Chinese-only policy for their children. A second finding from this study is that a multitude of factors from different sources shape and influence Chinese immigrants’ FLP and biliteracy practices. The factors consist of family-related factors, social factors, linguistic factors, and individual factors. A third finding from this study is that a wide variety of strategies are adopted by Chinese immigrant families, which have raised quite balanced bilingual children, to help children maintain Chinese heritage language (HL) and develop both English and Chinese literacy. The close examination and comparison of different families with English monolingual children, with children who have limited knowledge of HL, and with quite balanced bilingual children, this study discovers that immigrant parents, especially mothers, play a fundamental and irreplaceable role in their children’s HL maintenance and biliteracy development and it recommends to immigrant parents in how to implement the findings of this study to nurture their children to become bilingual and biliterate. Due to the limited number and restricted area and group of participant sampling, the results of this study may not be generalized to other groups in different contexts.

Exploration of portuguese-bengal cultural heritage throught museological studies

The Portuguese came to Bengal in the early 16th century for trading. Between 1575 and 1600, they established many colonies on the banks of river Ganga, like Chinsura, Hooghly (Porto Pequeno), Satagaon, Gopalpur and Bandel, covering the eastern part of India. During their stay, Portuguese built many churches, schools and charitable institutions. Churches of Augustinians and Jesuits became popular tourist destinations until today. Although by the 18th century, the Portuguese presence had almost disappeared from Bengal with the emergence of British imperialism, the 500 years old (approx.) Portuguese culture is still living in modern Bengal, in the form of tangible and intangible heritage. Traces of the Portuguese impact could be seen in Bengali language, literature, folk-tales, folksongs, cuisines, agriculture, religion, cinema and trade. Some of these are included in the academic curriculum of history at school, college and university levels. In this context, research has been undertaken in the past and is still ongoing in several universities. However, heritage studies under a museological point of view have not yet been initiated at the university level. Though Goa, Panaji, Calicut, Chennai and Nagapattanam were the Portuguese centers for long periods and research has been conducted there along with the establishment of some museums,

New Jersey Coastal Heritage Trail, Absecon & Cape May regions /

Shows points of interest along southern part of the N.J. Heritage Trail.