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Books > Social sciences > Sociology, social studies > Anthropology > General
This book documents and interprets the trajectory of ethnographic
museums in Tunisia from the colonial to the post-revolutionary
period, demonstrating changes and continuities in role, setting and
architecture across shifting ideological landscapes. The display of
everyday culture in museums is generally looked down upon as being
kitsch and old-fashioned. This research shows that, in Tunisia,
ethnographic museums have been highly significant sites in the
definition of social identities. They have worked as sites that
diffuse social, economic and political tensions through a vast
array of means, such as the exhibition itself, architecture,
activities, tourism, and consumerism. The book excavates the
evolution of paradigms in which Tunisian popular identity has been
expressed through the ethnographic museum, from the modernist
notion of 'indigenous authenticity' under colonial time, to efforts
at developing a Tunisian ethnography after Independence, and more
recent conceptions of cultural diversity since the revolution.
Based on a combination of archival research in Tunisia and in
France, participant observation and interviews with past and
present protagonists in the Tunisian museum field, this research
brings to light new material on an understudied area.
This stimulating and timely collection examines the Taino revival
movement, a grassroots conglomeration of Puerto Ricans and other
Latinos who promote or have adopted the culture and pedigree of the
pre-Columbian Taino Indian population of Puerto Rico and the
western Caribbean. The Tainos became a symbol of Puerto Rican
identity in the 19th century, when local governments and
intellectuals began to appropriate the Tainos for the conception of
a socially and racially balanced Puerto Rican society. Modern
critics now claim that the Taino heritage has been canonized
through state-sponsored institutions, such as festivals, museums,
and textbooks, at the expense of blacks. In the past, officials,
alarmed at the black majorities on other the Caribbean Islands,
tried to ""whiten"" Puerto Rican society by calling all people of
color Tainos. Others complain that the Taino revival lost its
fervor, evolving from an anti-colonialist movement to a mere
fashionable trend.
Agrarian social movements are at a crossroads. Although these
movements have made significant strides in advancing the concept of
food sovereignty, the reality is that many of their members remain
engaged in environmentally degrading forms of agriculture, and the
lands they farm are increasingly unproductive. Whether movement
farmers will be able to remain living on the land, and dedicated to
alternative agricultural practices, is a pressing question. The
Political Ecology of Education examines the opportunities for and
constraints on advancing food sovereignty in the 17 de Abril
settlement, a community born out of a massacre of landless
Brazilian workers in 1996. Based on immersive fieldwork over the
course of seven years, David Meek makes the provocative argument
that critical forms of food systems education are integral to
agrarian social movements' survival. While the need for critical
approaches is especially immediate in the Amazon, Meek's study
speaks to the burgeoning attention to food systems education at
various educational levels worldwide, from primary to postgraduate
programs. His book calls us to rethink the politics of the possible
within these pedagogies.
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