Transnational Railway Cultures

Transnational Railway Cultures
Author :
Publisher : Berghahn Books
Total Pages : 249
Release :
ISBN-10 : 9781789209198
ISBN-13 : 1789209196
Rating : 4/5 (98 Downloads)

Synopsis Transnational Railway Cultures by : Benjamin Fraser

Since the advent of train travel, railways have compressed space and crossed national boundaries to become transnational icons, evoking hope, dread, progress, or obsolescence in different cultural domains. Spanning five continents and a diverse range of contexts, this collection offers an unprecedentedly broad survey of global representations of trains. From experimental novels to Hollywood blockbusters, the works studied here chart fascinating routes across a remarkably varied cultural landscape.

If Cars Could Walk

If Cars Could Walk
Author :
Publisher : Berghahn Books
Total Pages : 264
Release :
ISBN-10 : 9781805390329
ISBN-13 : 1805390325
Rating : 4/5 (29 Downloads)

Synopsis If Cars Could Walk by : Ger Duijzings

In the last twenty-five years, the explosive rise of car mobility has transformed street life in postsocialist cities. Whereas previously the social fabric of these cities ran on socialist modes of mobility, they are now overtaken by a culture of privately owned cars. If Cars Could Walk uses ethnographic cases studies documenting these changes in terms of street interaction, vehicles used, and the parameters of speed, maneuverability, and cultural and symbolic values. The altered reality of people’s movements, replacing public transport, bicycles and other former ‘socialist’ modes of mobility with privatized mobility reflect an evolving political and cultural imagination, which in turn shapes their current political reality.

Railroads and the Transformation of China

Railroads and the Transformation of China
Author :
Publisher : Harvard University Press
Total Pages : 417
Release :
ISBN-10 : 9780674368170
ISBN-13 : 0674368177
Rating : 4/5 (70 Downloads)

Synopsis Railroads and the Transformation of China by : Elisabeth Köll

As a vehicle to convey both the history of modern China and the complex forces still driving the nation’s economic success, rail has no equal. Railroads and the Transformation of China is the first comprehensive history, in any language, of railroad operation from the last decades of the Qing Empire to the present. China’s first fractured lines were built under semicolonial conditions by competing foreign investors. The national system that began taking shape in the 1910s suffered all the ills of the country at large: warlordism and Japanese invasion, Chinese partisan sabotage, the Great Leap Forward when lines suffered in the “battle for steel,” and the Cultural Revolution, during which Red Guards were granted free passage to “make revolution” across the country, nearly collapsing the system. Elisabeth Köll’s expansive study shows how railroads survived the rupture of the 1949 Communist revolution and became an enduring model of Chinese infrastructure expansion. The railroads persisted because they were exemplary bureaucratic institutions. Through detailed archival research and interviews, Köll builds case studies illuminating the strength of rail administration. Pragmatic management, combining central authority and local autonomy, sustained rail organizations amid shifting political and economic priorities. As Köll shows, rail provided a blueprint for the past forty years of ambitious, semipublic business development and remains an essential component of the PRC’s politically charged, technocratic economic model for China’s future.

Transnational Mobilities in Action Sport Cultures

Transnational Mobilities in Action Sport Cultures
Author :
Publisher : Springer
Total Pages : 337
Release :
ISBN-10 : 9780230390744
ISBN-13 : 0230390749
Rating : 4/5 (44 Downloads)

Synopsis Transnational Mobilities in Action Sport Cultures by : H. Thorpe

This book contributes to recent debates in transnationalism, mobilities and migration studies by offering the first in-depth sociological examination of the global phenomenon of action sports and the transnational networks and connections being established within and across local contexts around the world.

Culture Paves The New Silk Roads

Culture Paves The New Silk Roads
Author :
Publisher : Springer Nature
Total Pages : 248
Release :
ISBN-10 : 9789811685743
ISBN-13 : 9811685746
Rating : 4/5 (43 Downloads)

Synopsis Culture Paves The New Silk Roads by : Sophia Kidd

This book approaches Silk Road studies from within the microcosm of China’s Southwest avant-garde arts sector in order to approach the macrocosm of China’s cultural heritage and creative industry influence worldwide. While reading China’s cultural hegemony and its attendant ideologies as ‘shaping’ memory and history throughout New Silk Road regions, the book includes new regional research from within China's borders, as well as throughout New Silk Road regions. With twenty years of experience in China, Sophia G. Kidd fills a void in discussions of the New Silk Roads (NSR) which fail to underscore the importance of the initiative’s people-to-people component. Cultural diplomacy aids cooperation between New Silk Road Regions by reducing ‘cultural discount’ of Chinese cultural exports, i.e., ideas and values, creating a shift of geo-cultural thinking to come. This book will prove illuminating for students of the arts and soft power in greater China.

International Heritage and Historic Building Conservation

International Heritage and Historic Building Conservation
Author :
Publisher : Routledge
Total Pages : 344
Release :
ISBN-10 : 9781136185908
ISBN-13 : 1136185909
Rating : 4/5 (08 Downloads)

Synopsis International Heritage and Historic Building Conservation by : Zeynep Aygen

The majority of books in English on historic building conservation and heritage preservation training are often restricted to Western architecture and its origins. Consequently, the history of building conservation, the study of contemporary paradigms and case studies in most universities and within wider interest circles, predominantly in the UK, Europe, and USA focus mainly on Europe and sometimes the USA, although the latter is often excluded from European publications. With an increasingly multicultural student body in Euro-American universities and with a rising global interest in heritage preservation, there is an urgent need for publications to cover a larger geographical and social area including not only Asia, Australia, Africa and South America but also previously neglected countries in Europe like the new members of the European Community and the northern neighbour of the USA, Canada. The inclusion of the ‘other’ in built environment education in general and in building conservation in particular is a pre-requisite of cultural interaction and widening participation. International Heritage and Historic Building Conservation assesses successful contemporary conservation paradigms from around the world. The book evaluates conservation case studies from previously excluded areas of the world to create an integrated account of Historic Building Conservation that crosses the boundaries of language and culture and sets an example for further inclusive research. Analyzing the influence of financial constraints, regional conflicts, and cultural differences on the heritage of disadvantaged countries, this leading-edge volume is essential for researchers and students of heritage studies interested in understanding their topics in a wider framework.

The European Illustrated Press and the Emergence of a Transnational Visual Culture of the News, 1842-1870

The European Illustrated Press and the Emergence of a Transnational Visual Culture of the News, 1842-1870
Author :
Publisher : Routledge
Total Pages : 264
Release :
ISBN-10 : 9781000767223
ISBN-13 : 1000767221
Rating : 4/5 (23 Downloads)

Synopsis The European Illustrated Press and the Emergence of a Transnational Visual Culture of the News, 1842-1870 by : Thomas Smits

This book looks at the roots of a global visual news culture: the trade in illustrations of the news between European illustrated newspapers in the mid-nineteenth century. In the age of nationalism, we might suspect these publications to be filled with nationally produced content, supporting a national imagined community. However, the large-scale transnational trade in illustrations, which this book uncovers, points out that nineteenth-century news consumers already looked at the same world. By exchanging images, European illustrated newspapers provided them with a shared, transnational, experience.

The University in a Corporate Culture

The University in a Corporate Culture
Author :
Publisher : Yale University Press
Total Pages : 263
Release :
ISBN-10 : 9780300087062
ISBN-13 : 0300087063
Rating : 4/5 (62 Downloads)

Synopsis The University in a Corporate Culture by : Eric Gould

Over the past century, higher education in the United States has developed an increasingly powerful corporate ethos, as institutions compete for students, faculty, and funding. This book examines how the liberal democratic principles driving higher education often conflict with market pressures to credential students and offer knowledge that has a clear exchange value. Eric Gould, who has been both academician and college administrator, argues that the failure to structure the curriculum so that it integrates responsible social idealism and humanism with economic and cultural needs constitutes the moral crisis of the university. Gould analyzes the economics and politics of higher education, showing how student consumerism, culture wars, faculty alienation, trustee activism, and a split between the concepts of "culture" and "society" have all resulted from the unholy alliance between pragmatism, corporatism, and liberalism in higher education. He asserts that what is needed is a general education for undergraduates that promotes the ability to critique power relations (including those within higher education) so that students can understand how social forces--and their embodiment of ideas, ideologies, and claims for truth--shape contemporary public philosophy.

Place/Culture/Representation

Place/Culture/Representation
Author :
Publisher : Routledge
Total Pages : 353
Release :
ISBN-10 : 9781135860356
ISBN-13 : 1135860351
Rating : 4/5 (56 Downloads)

Synopsis Place/Culture/Representation by : James S. Duncan

Spatial and cultural analysis have recently found much common ground, focusing in particular on the nature of the city. Place/Culture/Representation brings together new and established voices involved in the reshaping of cultural geography. The authors argue that as we write our geographies we are not just representing some reality, we are creating meaning. Writing becomes as much about the author as it is about purported geographical reality. The issue becomes not scientific truth as the end but the interpretation of cultural constructions as the means. Discussing authorial power, discourses of the other, texts and textuality, landscape metaphor, the sites of power-knowledge relations and notions of community and the sense of place, the authors explore the ways in which a more fluid and sensitive geographer's art can help us make sense of ourselves and the landscapes and places we inhabit and think about.