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Mapping the Art Trade in South East Asia: From Source Countries via Free Ports to (a Chance for) Restitution
No full textIs there a major international crime that the general public has never heard of or even thought about? The answer to this question might be surprising—it is the illicit art trade. The purpose of this article is to analyse the criminal aspect of the global art trade with a special focus on the region of South East Asia. In the first part of the paper, which acts as a backdrop for the rest of the article, the author explains the history and general issues regarding the trade of cultural artefacts, briefly explaining the stages in the illicit antiquities trade, with a special focus on the question of international law regulations, of which he provides a critical overview. The second and third parts of the paper are devoted to a more profound analysis of the antiquities journey from illicit to licit. In the second part of the paper the author provides a case study of the first part of the voyage of Cambodian, Vietnamese and Indian antiquities, i.e. from the source country to the port of first shipment, examining the places and the middlemen they pass on their way. The third part of the paper is devoted to the analysis of legal provisions regulating the art trade in Hong Kong—a global art hub—notably the ‘market overt exception’, which allows buyers in good faith to keep the illicitly obtained cultural objects in spite of any claims made by the previous owners. In the fourth part of the paper the author shows why restitution of looted antiquities is so difficult, analysing a number of successful and unsuccessful attempts. The concluding part of the paper is devoted to the author’s critical overview of the various attempts and suggestions on the curtailing of the illicit international art trade. In the coda the author provides a case study of the journey undertaken by Cambodian antiquities.</p
Urban megaprojects and water justice in Southeast Asia: Between global economies and community transitions
No full textWithin the Southeast Asian context, urban megaprojects are often delivered in aquatic or semi-aquatic contexts, transforming local hydrological systems used for sanitation, agriculture, sustenance, resource use and cultural purposes by the local populations. This paper addresses a key knowledge gap on the impacts of urban megaprojects on water security and water-related human rights in Southeast Asia through a literature review, field observations and digital earth observation. Three case studies in Cambodia, Vietnam and Myanmar were used to develop a picture of urban megaproject impacts on urban water landscapes and the human rights of local communities. The paper adapts recent human rights frameworks developed specifically for megaproject life cycles and applies them to the selected urban megaproject case studies. The seven stages in the megaproject life cycle are linked with specific accountability measures for duty bearers. Current challenges and opportunities for the global urban development community are developed in relation to water justice and megaprojects. Further the question of a just urban transition is developed to mediate between megaproject proponents and local communities in the Global South.</p
Flow and flood: mobilities, life in roads and abiotic actors of the <em>(m)ôtô</em>-cene
No full textTraffic in mega-urban Ho Chi Minh City (HCMC) demonstrates the transformative powers of vehicles and transport infrastructures. Like eddies of a river, traffic flows are abiotic actors – other-than-human physical phenomena that influence how traffic makes its way. But the liquid sense of flow in Vietnamese imaginings has unique qualities that challenge singular conceptualisations of the Anthropocene. Moving beyond human-centredness, this paper re-imagines traffic of metropolitan HCMC as the (m)ôtô-cene. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork, I examine transformations of diurnal patterns of banal journey-making where infrastructure routinely fails and ask how abiotic actors shape ways of inhabiting the Anthropocene and living with roads.</p
Triple understanding of Guanzhong Narrow Courtyard and its house space
No full textArchitecture itself is a witness to social and cultural development, so the study on it should not only focus on the material symbols but also pay more attention to the multiple roles played by its material space in a specific social–cultural construction from multiple perspectives, residential buildings are no exception. Based on the dialectical analysis of Levi Strauss’s house society concept and Lefebvre’s spatial ternary theory, this paper attempts to sort out the triple theory of the house space; taking Chinese well-preserved Guanzhong Narrow Courtyard in the Ming and Qing Dynasties (1368–1912) as an example, it starts from the three aspects of housing space which are material presentation, reconstruction and innovation, and potential circulating capital in the social production and reproduction to explore a qualitative research of the house space, and tries to reappear the metaphorical relationship between housing space of Chinese Guanzhong Narrow Courtyard and social–cultural construction in a historical period of social and cultural development, and explain its profound connotation; from the perspective of sociology, it provides inspiration and lays a foundation for the research on the design of the house space in the transition from the traditional society to the modern society in the specific area.</p
Speculative cities: housing and value conversions in Maputo, Mozambique
No full textBased on ethnographic research carried out in Maputo, Mozambique, in this article I explore the significance of housing in an urban context infused by spectacular speculation. As I will argue, in order for different everyday rationalities to become commensurable through speculative investments, they may have to manifest and activate unique and even opposing horizons of value and economic orientations. By thus considering housing beyond conventional dichotomies – Global South vs. Global North, informality vs. formality, global vs. local – we may acquire a more nuanced understanding of those manifold forms of urban engagements that make housing a way of establishing a sense of order and belonging by activating often contradictory moral orientations and hierarchies of value.</p
Infrastructural citizenship: conceiving, producing and disciplining people and place via public housing, from Cape Town to Stoke-on-Trent
No full textThis paper examines public housing as an art of government to conceive, produce and discipline a normative ideal of ‘good’ citizenship through people and place. Using the framework of infrastructural citizenship, case studies from state-subsidised homeownership programmes in Cape Town (South Africa) and Stoke-on-Trent (UK) demonstrate how public housing provides a physical mediator for the politicisation of citizenship. Infrastructural citizenship is explored through both state expectations (of housing, of citizens) and citizens’ everyday practices, revealing state-society contestation and conformity in how ‘order’ and ‘decency’ materialise. In bridging the global south/north the paper not only generates new knowledge from two rarely contrasted contexts, but also illuminates and challenges the dominance of global north examples in public housing debates. By juxtaposing contemporary case studies where neither is the dominant lens for analysis, the paper argues that difference is particularly illuminating for knowledge production, and that housing theory and policy need to embrace postcolonial perspectives to ensure global relevance and legitimacy.</p
A research on the applicability of the Mandalay model to other historical capital cities of the Burmese Kingdom
No full textThe author proposed a city model for Burmese capital cities based on the analysis of the spatial structure of Mandalay, the last capital city of the Burmese kingdom1. This paper discusses the applicability of the Burmese city model to other historical capital cities of the Burmese kingdom.
This research first examines and discusses the spatial structure of the historical capital cities of the Burmese kingdom from documents, maps, and satellite imagery in terms of shape, orientation, size, land use, and disposition of important devices. The historical capital cities dealt with, from the oldest to the newest are: 1) Sri Ksetra, 2) Bagan, 3) Toungoo, 4) Pegu, 5) Shwebo, 6) Inwa (Ava), 7) Amarapura, and 8) Mandalay. Most of the capital cities were rectangular- or square-shaped with a moat; in most cases they were aligned to the four directions; and that the size of the walled city ranged between 1 to a little less than 2 km on each side.
It can be seen from the analysis that the city model proposed for Mandalay may be applicable to the capital cities of Inwa and Amarapura in several aspects, including the square or rectangular shape of the capital city surrounded by a moat, and basically three gates on each side and the eastward orientation. In close scrutiny of Burmese historical capital cities, there is yet another model with five gates on each side instead of the three on each side as in Mandalay. The proposed Burma models are to be positioned as subsidiary models of the ancient India model.
1. Yamada, K. : Research on the spatial structure of outer city of Burmese capital cities - from an analysis of Mandalay, the last royal city of Burma, Urban and Regional Planning Review (URPR), Vol. 6, pp. 22-44, 2019.
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Designing for Cultural Revival: African Housing in Perspective
No full textCulture and tradition are essential components of the traditional architecture. However, in the era of globalization and modernization, traditional architecture is fast disappearing in most part of Africa due to neglect and lack of understanding of its importance. A reconsideration becomes necessary as traditional architecture can be a source of inspiration even in contemporary times. Through a systematic literature review, this article takes a critical look at how culture affects architecture in Africa with Nigeria as a case study. It explores various traditional architectural accomplishments across Africa revealing the disappearance of cultural identity and the weak connection between traditional and contemporary architecture. It then concludes with strategies toward survival and revival of indigenous African architecture with clear direction on architects’ key roles in persevering the Africans endangered culture.</p
Variable kinship patterns in Neolithic Anatolia revealed by ancient genomes
No full textThe social organization of the first fully sedentary societies that emerged during the Neolithic period in Southwest Asia remains enigmatic, mainly because material culture studies provide limited insight into this issue. However, because Neolithic Anatolian communities often buried their dead beneath domestic buildings, household composition and social structure can be studied through these human remains. Here, we describe genetic relatedness among co-burials associated with domestic buildings in Neolithic Anatolia using 59 ancient genomes, including 22 new genomes from Aşıklı Höyük and Çatalhöyük. We infer pedigree relationships by simultaneously analyzing multiple types of information, including autosomal and X chromosome kinship coefficients, maternal markers, and radiocarbon dating. In two early Neolithic villages dating to the 9th and 8th millennia BCE, Aşıklı Höyük and Boncuklu, we discover that siblings and parent-offspring pairings were frequent within domestic structures, which provides the first direct indication of close genetic relationships among co-burials. In contrast, in the 7th millennium BCE sites of Çatalhöyük and Barcın, where we study subadults interred within and around houses, we find close genetic relatives to be rare. Hence, genetic relatedness may not have played a major role in the choice of burial location at these latter two sites, at least for subadults. This supports the hypothesis that in Çatalhöyük,, , and possibly in some other Neolithic communities, domestic structures may have served as burial location for social units incorporating biologically unrelated individuals. Our results underscore the diversity of kin structures in Neolithic communities during this important phase of sociocultural development.</p
