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Conventional Narratives (conventional + narrative)
Selected AbstractsAmericans in the Dark?GOVERNMENT AND OPPOSITION, Issue 2 2003Recent Hollywood Representations of the Nation's History This article examines how Hollywood blockbuster movies made since the 1970s have commonly presented a distorted and conventional narrative of American history, in respect both to domestic incidents and to engagements abroad. Equally distorting is the image of America as a highly homogeneous society projected through popular television shows. These patterns are investigated in the following way. First, the article presents an overview of how early Hollywood movies dealt with the country's immigrant and racial diversity. Secondly, the effect of mobilization in both the Second World War and the cold war in inducing a narrow sense of national identity in movies is examined. Thirdly, these two sections provide a prelude to the analysis of historical distortion and ideology in selected major Hollywood blockbusters. [source] "SCENOPHOBIA", GEOGRAPHY AND THE AESTHETIC POLITICS OF LANDSCAPEGEOGRAFISKA ANNALER SERIES B: HUMAN GEOGRAPHY, Issue 3 2007Karl Benediktsson ABSTRACT. Recent critiques of the nature,culture dualism, influenced by diverse theoretical stances, have effectively destabilized the "naturalness" of nature and highlighted its pervasive and intricate sociality. Yet the practical, ethical and political effects of this theoretical turn are open to question. In particular, the emphasis on the sociality of nature has not led to reinvigorated environmental or landscape politics. Meanwhile, the need for such politics has if anything increased, as evident when ongoing and, arguably, accelerating landscape transformations are taken into account. These concerns are illustrated in the paper with an example from Iceland. In its uninhabited central highland, serious battles are now being fought over landscape values. Capital and state have joined forces in an investment-driven scramble for hydropower and geothermal resources to facilitate heavy industry, irrevocably transforming landscapes in the process. Dissonant voices arguing for caution and conservation have been sidelined or silenced by the power(ful) alliance. The author argues for renewed attention to the aesthetic, including the visual, if responsible politics of landscape are to be achieved. Aesthetic appreciation is an important part of the everyday experiences of most people. Yet, enthusiastic as they have been in deconstructing conventional narratives of nature, geographers have been rather timid when it comes to analysing aesthetic values of landscape and their significance, let alone in suggesting progressive landscape politics. A political geography of landscape is needed which takes aesthetics seriously, and which acknowledges the merit of engagement and enchantment. [source] Narratives of nationalism in Eritrea: research and revisionism*NATIONS AND NATIONALISM, Issue 2 20052003), Dedicated to the memory of Alex Naty (195 Eritrean politics is increasingly captured in competing narratives of nationalism. ,Official' narratives emphasize Eritrea's purported stability, orderliness, and uniqueness. This discourse defends and supports the current government's policies. In contrast, recent research challenges those policies, and contributes to a nationalist counter-narrative. This article seeks to investigate the discursive power of conventional narratives and the implications of new research for accounts of state and nation-building in Eritrea. The Eritrean case , one of the newest states in the world , intersects with and informs a number of broader debates on nationalism and nation-building: the impact of globalization, secessionism, and war as well as the relationship between ethnicity and nationalism. The penetration of state and nation-building projects into every sector of Eritrean life means that all social research is deeply politicised. Journalists and researchers have long been key players in the contested process of conceptualising Eritrean nation-hood, and this continues in the post-liberation period. Research thus both buttresses and challenges official discourses, even where it is not explicitly framed in terms of nationalism. [source] LÉVI-STRAUSS AND THE POLITICAL: THE ELEMENTARY STRUCTURES OF KINSHIP AND THE RESOLUTION OF RELATIONS BETWEEN INDIGENOUS PEOPLES AND SETTLER STATESTHE JOURNAL OF THE ROYAL ANTHROPOLOGICAL INSTITUTE, Issue 3 2005Michael Asch This article addresses the contribution of Lévi-Strauss's The elementary structures of kinship to resolving political relations between indigenous peoples and the settler states. To this end, it explores his discussion of the origins of society within the context of Enlightenment-inspired political thought and concludes that he provides a unique, counter-hegemonic alternative to conventional narratives. It then shows how this argument thwarts the presumption in Canadian jurisprudence that indigenous peoples were automatically incorporated into the state through European settlement, and fosters an understanding that a relationship based on the concept of ,Treaty' as understood in indigenous political thought promotes a political relationship that affirms the integrity of all parties. [source] | ||||||||||