70 Sozialwissenschaften allgemein
Those who ask how social entities relate to the past, enter a field defined by competing interpretations and contested practices of a collectively shared heritage. Dissent and conflict among heritage communities represent productive moments in the negotiation of these varying constructs of the past, identities, and heritage. At the same time, they lead to omissions, the overwriting and amendment of existing constructs. A closer look at all that is suppressed, excluded or rejected opens up new perspectives: It reveals how social groups are formed through public disputes upon the material foundations of heritage constructs.
Taking the concept of censorship, the volume engages with the exclusionary and inclusionary mechanisms that underlie the construction of heritage and thus social identities. Censorship is understood here as a discursive strategy in public debates. In current debates, allegations of censorship surface primarily in cases where the handling of a certain heritage constructs is subjected to critical evaluation, or on the contrary, needs to be protected from criticism or even destruction. The authors trace the connection between heritage and identity and show that identity constructs are not only manifested within heritage but are actively negotiated through it.
Ausgehend von der Bemerkung des Philosophen Jacques Derrida, dass Erbe immer auch eine Aufgabe sei, widmet sich der dritte Band der Schriftenreihe des Graduiertenkollegs „Identität und Erbe“ den sozialen und kulturellen Praktiken der Bezugnahme auf Vergangenheit(en) und Identität(en). Mit einem (kulturellen) Erbe soll und muss etwas getan werden, um es überhaupt hervorzubringen. Es konstituiert sich erst im Akt des (Nicht-)Erbens, das heißt im Wechselverhältnis mit den mit und an ihm ausgeführten Praktiken. Gleichwohl ermöglicht erst deren Verbindung mit den materiellen Überresten und Überlieferungen des Erbes eine Aneignung oder Ablehnung der Vergangenheit sowie die Fort- und Umschreibung eines bereits bestehenden Erbes. Diese Vorgänge sind nicht willkürlicher Natur: Die Möglichkeiten zur Interpretation und Deutung werden durch die sozialen, politischen, kulturellen, ökonomischen und technischen Bedingungen der Gegenwart sowie durch die Geschichte und Materialität des Erbes beschränkt, erweitert und gelenkt. Erbe und Erbeprozesse müssen deshalb notwendigerweise miteinander in Beziehung gesetzt werden.
Mit Beiträgen von Simone Bogner und Michael Karpf, Stefan Willer, Giorgia Aquilar, Jörg Springer, Bernd Euler-Rolle, Elizabeth Sikiaridi und Frans Vogelaar, Verena von Beckerath, Alexandra Klei, Oluwafunminiyi Raheem, Ronny Grundig, Özge Sezer, Anna Kutkina, Inge Manka, Karolina Hettchen und Monique Jüttner sowie Julian Blunk.
Housing estates were fundamentally conceived upon state socialist utopia ideas to provide standard housing for citizens. While former state socialist housing estates have been extensively researched in the field of architecture, urban and sociology studies, there is still a gap in identifying how production processes affect morphological changes during the post-socialist era. This thesis compares the processes in the production of the largest housing estates of Marzahn in GDR and Petržalka in Czechoslovakia from 1970 to 1989 through contextual analysis of primary and secondary sources, which include visual maps, diagrams from professional architecture and planning journals, government documents and textbooks, as well as academic journals, books and newspaper articles. Then it discusses how these processes inadvertently created conducive conditions affecting their development in the market economy after 1989. It then interprets the results through application of Actor-Network Theory and Historical Institutionalism, while conceptualising them through David Harvey’s dialectical utopianism theory. Harvey (2000) delineates two types of utopia, one of spatial form and one of process. The former refers to materialised ideals in physical forms whereas the latter refers to the ongoing process of spatializing. The thesis aims to show how the production of Marzahn in GDR was more path dependent on policies established in 1950s and 1960s whereas Petržalka was a product of new Czechoslovakian policies in 1970s, changing aspects of the urban planning process, a manifestation of a more emphatic technocratic thinking on a wider scale. This ultimately influences the trajectories of development after 1989, showing more effects in Petržalka.
Living heritage sites are strongly connected to their historical, geographical, socio-political and cultural context. A descriptive narrative of the evolutionary process of the living heritage site of a Sufi shrine is undertaken in this research. It focuses on the changing relationship between the spatial and socio-cultural aspects over time. The larger or macro regional context is interrelated to the micro architectural context. The tangible heritage is defined by and intimately tied to the intangible aspects of the heritage. It is these constituting macro and micro elements and their interrelationships particularly through space and architecture that the research thesis explores in its documentation and analysis.
The Sufi shrine in the South Asian Pakistani context is representative of a larger culture in the precolonial era. It is an expression of an indigenous modernity, belonging to a certain time period, place and community. The Sufi shrine as a building type has evolved from the precolonial time period, particularly starting at the golden ages of the Muslim Empire in the world (9th – 12th century), through the colonial age when western modernity arrived until the current neoliberal paradigm within the post independence period. Continued and evolved use of space, ritualistic performances, multiple social groups using the site are various elements whose documentation and analysis can establish the essential co-relations that contribute to continuity of its historical living. Physical and social relation of the historic site to its immediate settlement context is also a significant element that preserves the socio-cultural context.
The chosen case of the Shrine of Shah Abdul Latif Bhitai, situated in the small town of Bhitshah in the province of Sindh, Pakistan forms a unique example where the particular physical and socio-cultural environment forms the context within which the Sufi heritage lives and survives. It is well integrated within its context at multiple levels. What are these levels and how do the constituting elements integrate is a major subject of research? These form the background to defining some of the basic issues and questions addressed in this doctoral thesis.
Given that living heritage sites are unique due to their particular association to the context, the case study method was used to gain deeper insight and understanding on the topic.
Since the end of the 1950s, Italy has focused part of its modernization on the erection of public works. Due to corruption, mafia, and further malpractice, this form of development has occasionally failed, producing a high number of constructions that have remained unfinished for decades. In 2007, the group of artists Alterazioni Video constructed an informal survey in the form of an on-line tool open to public contributions, which revealed that there are 395 unfinished public works in Italy from which 156, approximately 39.5%, are located in Sicily alone. In view of such a statistic, Alterazioni Video opted to coin the term ‘Incompiuto Siciliano’ – literally ‘Sicilian Incompletion’ – to refer to unfinished public works as a formal architectural style. This re-interpretation, which aims to convey the recovered dignity of these ‘modern ruins’, considers unfinished public works a type of heritage with the potential to represent the entirety of Italian society. Furthermore, it goes as far as to say an unfinished public work is ‘Incompiuto Siciliano’ despite being located in another of the Italian regions.
This doctoral dissertation embraces the artists’ argument to develop a complete study of Incompiuto Siciliano by embedding this architectural style/artistic project within the main debates on modern ruins at present. This is important because it is expected to contribute to the revalorization and eventual recommissioning of unfinished sites by validating Incompiuto Siciliano in the realm of academia. Furthermore, this work aspires to be a worthwhile source of information for future investigations dealing with cultural interpretations of incompletion in any other context – a not unreasonable goal considering how unfinished works are one of the key urban topics after the 2008 financial crisis. Hence, this doctoral dissertation uses Incompiuto Siciliano to discuss a different perspective in each of the five chapters and, though these can be read as independent contributions, the objective is that all chapters read together, form a clear, concise, continuous unit. And so it must be said this is not a dissertation about unfinished public works in Italy; this is a dissertation about Incompiuto Siciliano as an artistic response to unfinished public works in Italy – which clearly requires an interdisciplinary analysis involving Urban Studies, Cultural Geography, Contemporary Archaeology, Critical Heritage and Visual Arts.