Remembering, Forgetting and City Builders (Re-materialising Cultural Geography)

We use cookies to give you the best possible experience. By using our website you agree to our use of cookies. Dispatched from the UK in 10 business days When will my order arrive? Alasdair John Howard Jones. Home Contact Us Help Free delivery worldwide. Remembering, Forgetting and City Builders. Description Remembering, Forgetting and City Builders critically explores how urban spaces are designed, planned and experienced in relation to the politics of collective and personal memory construction.

Bringing together case studies from North America, South Asia, Eastern Europe and the Middle East, the book analyzes how contested national, ethnic and cultural sentiments clash in planning and experiencing urban spaces. Going beyond the claim that such situations exist in many parts of the world because communities construct their 'past memories' within their current daily life and future aspirations, the book explores how the very acts of planning and urban design are rooted in the existing structures of hegemonic power.

With contributors from the fields of architecture, geography, planning, anthropology and sociology, urban studies and cultural studies, the book provides a rich, interdisciplinary view into the conflicts over memory and belonging which are spatially expressed and mediated through the official planning apparatus. The Best Books of Check out the top books of the year on our page Best Books of Product details Format Hardback pages Dimensions x x Looking for beautiful books?

Visit our Beautiful Books page and find lovely books for kids, photography lovers and more. Other books in this series. Cities and Fascination Wolf-dietrich Sahr. Geographies of Muslim Identities Peter Hopkins. The Perspective of Experience london: University of Chicago press. Chapter 2 naming as norming: Berg and robin a. Kearns Introduction the naming of places is a key component in the relationship between place and the politics of identity in contemporary societies. Between and Biblical and talmudic place names were introduced by the ruling right-wing likud bloc to project israel as the rightful heir to the holy land Cohen and Kliot , —6.

We argue that naming places reinforces claims of national ownership, state power, and masculine control. We make an important distinction here between men and a hegemonic white masculine subject. Just as not all men will it the mold of the masculinist ideal, some women former British prime minister margaret thatcher, for instance have strongly masculine and masculinist subjectivities Donaldson Naming as Norming 21 Winston peters, for example, seems to cross back and forth between maori and pakeha subjectivities, although he appears to do so by articulating a strongly masculinist subject position.

Civilization, for example, is the other side of savagery. We acknowledge that this is a rather too ambitious project, given the nascent body of literature discussing such issues in new Zealand. Finally, we also recognize our own problematic relationship, and articulation with, these discursive positions. With this in mind, the following section discusses our approach to analysing the rhetorics of submissions to the new Zealand Geographic Board nZGB.

We analysed submissions to the nZGB concerned with an attempt to change three place names in the otago Murihiku region of the south island Te Waipounamu of new Zealand. We outline the details of the case itself later in the chapter. Black masculinities are acceptable to white males because they are hyper-masculine or fearsome in white construction.

By contrast, asian masculinities are unacceptable to white males, because asian men are constructed as feminine, and they are undervalued. However, the concept of discourse is much broader than language alone. Discourse can thus be seen as a signiication system that governs, controls, and produces knowledge in a culture Foucault Place Names and the Social Construction of Place as Cohen and Kliot have observed, place names are integral to the process by which people attach meanings to place. Kolodny notes, for example, how the american rural landscape—associated as it is with nature not culture —has usually been coded as feminine.

Clearly, these kinds of gendered rhetorics exist in new Zealand cities. But these kinds of hegemonic constructions are never uncontested. First, there exists a revisionist, subaltern history of aotearoa. Belich ; orange ; Walker ; Ward , this subaltern history holds more validity for us than the dominant history, which we briely sketch later in this section.

Belich ; orange ; Walker ; Ward Between and , the proportion of new Zealand land controlled by maori dropped from per cent to just 11 per cent pawson , 21; also see orange ; stone ; Walker ; Ward Hegemonic History the above story of maori-pakeha relations stands in sharp contrast to the hegemonic discourse circulating in new Zealand. Place Names and the Politics of Identity the discoverers and original inhabitants of aotearoa were polynesian peoples who probably migrated from the region that encompasses the present-day Cook, society, and marquesas islands Davidson Mana, based as it was upon lineage systems, involved both men and women equally: Naming as Norming 31 From her perspective as a member of the nZGB, evelyn stokes provides a comprehensive description of the organization and its activities.

However, should signiicant objection ensue, the minister of survey and land information becomes involved in accepting or declining the proposal. However, as part of his submission mclachlan cited his whakapapa genealogy which linked him to ngaihuirapa, a hapu sub-tribe of the ngai tahu tribe long-resident in the area where the names were to be changed. However, in this discourse of citizenship, community and difference are mutually exclusive terms, because community is constructed as a bounded essence, inhabited by rational, reasonable beings having shared beliefs, a common culture, and unity of purpose yeatman ; young a, b.

Welfare state discourse is predicated on a dualism of independence and dependency, where dependency is the other against which independence is gauged yeatman , 4—6. Western discourses of citizenship and community thus require the production of an other to bear responsibility for the substantive, private, and particular of social life.

Naming as Norming 35 to the elements associated with farming. By the end of the statutory three-month period for raising objections to its decision the Board had received 95 written objections purporting to represent the views of people lawrence n. We shall now discuss a few of these in more detail. Historic events should not be erased from nomenclature.

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Naming as Norming 37 Feminine. We would like to suggest, however, that there is something more at work here. Changing the names of these two otago beaches to their previous maori counterparts would take us one step closer to the separate development of individual races which is the hallmark of apartheid, so is to be avoided. Culture becomes a psychological need Wetherell and potter While this might be a less derisive way of conceptualizing culture, it still has its dangers for maori, who can be discursively produced as non-persons.

We suggest that were the foregoing narrative to have unfolded in a region such as northland where maori representation and pakeha sympathies are stronger, a different outcome and story could be told. We have tried to illustrate some of the ways that place names are important signiiers of meaning, providing symbolic identity to people, place and landscape. Barber ; Belich ; Kelsey ; mcCreanor a, b; nairn and mcCreanor , ; pawson ; Ward We have used the contested politics of naming places in otago to illustrate some of our argument.

Studies in Cultural Geography melbourne: Racial discourse in Canada, — montreal: A Geography of Restructuring Christchurch: George allen and Unwin. University of Canterbury and ngai tahu maori trust Board. An Essay in Spatial History london: Naming as Norming 47 Cohen, s. The Voyage of the Endeavour —, ed. Society and Space 11, — How Anthropology Makes its Object.

Feminism, Nature and Difference london: University College london press. Historical Origins of Racism in the United States new york: Studies of a Changing Institution oxford: Labour and the Treaty, — Wellington: Naming as Norming 49 King, m. University of north Carolina press. Masculinities in Britain since london: Western Conceptions of the Orient london: Masculinity and Social Theory london: Naming as Norming 51 stokes, e. A Colonial Business Community and its Fall auckland: Struggle Without End auckland: White Women, Racism and History london: Discourse and the Legitimation of Exploitation london: Chapter 3 naming the past: When used for commemorative purposes, street names and the version of history they introduce into the public sphere belong to the semiotic makeup of local and national identity and to the structures of power and authority.

However, since these are not the prevailing urban structure in many cities, street names abound. Geographical street names cities, rivers, mountains etc. Commemorative street naming demonstrates the effect that administrative- political processes have on semiotic procedures. A General Framework When used for commemorative purposes, street names and the version of the past they introduce into the public sphere belong to the symbolic makeup of local and national identity and to the structures of power and authority.

From the perspective of those in charge of molding the symbolic infrastructure of society, of primary importance is the integration of representations of the ruling sociopolitical order into networks of social communication. The Signiicance of Commemorative Street Names 55 messages and the meanings encoded in them. He distinguishes between two levels of signiication: However, memorials also trigger low-voltage transfer of meaning that occurs in the context of the myriad of random encounters between individuals and memorials, especially those woven into the urban fabric.

Unlike memorials that are architectural ediices, street names have a well- deined utilitarian function: However, as a conventional element of the urban texture, street names are constantly evoked in contexts that are commonly detached from the sphere of ideology and the realm of politics. Political Signiicance Naming the Past traditionally, street names were vernacular and descriptive: Following the example set by the French revolution, commemorative street naming has become a common feature of modern political culture.

The Signiicance of Commemorative Street Names 57 appeared in stockholm in the late nineteenth century commemorated swedish national history pred For instance, street-naming in post-independence singapore was an aspect of molding a sense of national identity yeoh ; this volume. Founded as a Jewish settlement in , tel aviv soon emerged as the political and cultural centre of Jewish palestine. Umm el Fahm was declared a town in ; in the islamic Front won the municipal elections.

The Signiicance of Commemorative Street Names 59 of commemorative street naming. Where political opposition is legitimate, the rejection of commemorative names becomes part of public debate. When continuity and stability are considered a priority, a possible solution is the commemorative naming of streets in newly built neighbourhoods to compensate for alleged or real past commemorative deiciencies.

Re-Naming the Past that commemorative street names belong to the symbolic foundations of the ruling sociopolitical order makes them, together with other symbolic expressions of power, vulnerable to changes in the course of a revolutionary phase of national history. Henri lefebvre , 54 observed that a revolution that does not produce a new space has not realized its full potential […] a social transformation, to be truly revolutionary in character, must manifest a creative capacity in its effects on daily life, on language and on space. When conducted in the context of a regime change, the act of renaming streets, together with the more spectacular pulling-down of monuments, the renaming of streets is an act of political propaganda with immense declarative value and public resonance.

When regime-change is construed in terms of restoration, commemoration may assume the form of re-commemoration, namely, the re-institution of names that had been removed by the former regime. However, the dual procedure of de-commemoration and commemoration may involve different ideological emphases and political priorities that relect speciic interests and needs as well as power constellations that inluence the actual pattern and direction of the renaming process azaryahu With the collapse of the imperial regime in France in some 50 streets in paris were renamed.

De-commemorating the communist past signiied the transition to a post-communist era. Historical Signiication Semantic Displacements the primary function of street names is to denote a location. Contested as they may be politically, and despite the inherent instability of their meanings in the course of time and for different audiences, the oficial names provide a ixed point of reference in the geography of the city. When invested with a commemorative function, the name given to a street also associates the street with the oficial meaning assigned to the particular historical referent.

However, as the result of the semantic displacement that underlies the conversion of history into geography, the geographic denotation takes over while the historical referent becomes increasingly obscure to most users of the city.

When names are transported from history to geography, they clearly become susceptible to sharing the fortunes of their location. The Signiicance of Commemorative Street Names 63 streets gain in urban signiicance, their namesake heroes gain in prominence and fame. When, in , the east German authorities renamed the street, a traditional symbol of German imperialism was erased from the map of the east German capital. Constantly written and eventually overwritten, city-text is the sum of additions and erasures; in this sense it is a palimpsest Ferguson , ; Crang Writing a city-text is a prolonged process that conlates urban contingencies, ideological concerns and political interests.

For instance, former communist majorities are still relected in the street names of parisian suburbs and italian towns. However, the semiotic structure of a city-text offers a measure of historical analysis that is pertinent to reading a city-text. The Signiicance of Commemorative Street Names 65 discourse of history. Commemorations relect prevailing notions of the period concerning the historical signiicance and greatness of events and persons, respectively. Unless renamings were undertaken, a city-text would conserve notions and attitudes that prevailed in different stages of its emergence.

Urban dynamics is a factor to be reckoned with whenever the relative status of commemorations is deduced from the signiicance of the thoroughfare in the urban fabric. Historical igures and events coexist simultaneously, and one cannot make a distinction between before and after.

But the country has as yet no idea of itself. Concluding Remarks When invested with commemorative function, street names are constitutive elements of particular geographies of public memory and an oficially sanctioned vision of history. Unlike commemorative monuments, street signs do not induce pathos and are not charged with the sacred.

The Signiicance of Commemorative Street Names 67 spheres of social and spatial practices of everyday life that seem to be totally detached from political contexts or communal obligations. However, things are different when the authorities in charge of naming streets consider the commemorative function as the primary one. However, orientation refers to both the geographical and commemorative functions of street names. Commemorative street names denote both local geography and a version of history and in this capacity offer a twofold orientation: Mythography of a City syracuse: An Introduction to Urban Semiotics new york: Berliner Geschichtswerkstatt, nishen Verlag.

Chapter 4 street-naming and nation-building: Aims in this chapter, i am concerned with the way in which toponymic inscription in the landscape relects and is shaped by broader socio-political conditions in post-independence singapore. Context one hundred and ifty years of colonial rule in singapore conferred on its landscape an oficial network of street and place names which relected the mental images and ideological purposes of the dominant culture yeoh Rewriting the Toponymic Text: Inscriptions of Nationhood Malayanizing the Colonial Landscape in mounting a programme of nation-building, one of the projects was a concerted effort to sever colonial apron strings and foster and assert a sense of local identity, a sense of place, through a rewriting of the everyday landscape.

Changes in street-naming policies clearly relected these imperatives. Conversely, street- names which perpetuated colonial imagery were avoided at all cost. Developers of private housing estates and residents protested against the proliferation of malay street names for example, names after birds such as Jalan Chiak padi, Jalan Chiak raya etc. For example, there were differences of opinion as to how multiracialism was best represented toponymically.

Standardization, Pinyinization and Bilingualism the power of landscape text to render ideology more concrete and therefore more real and unquestioned will only have maximum effect if people actively encountered and drew upon the text in daily practice. For the majority of the population unschooled in english, romanized street-names were not comprehended and in fact often transliterated beyond recognition. While the Committee achieved a measure of standardization in Chinese street-names, this did not close the debate as to how street-names could be made more meaningful within a multilingual society.

Conclusion in as much as the landscape under colonial rule was racialized yeoh , the landscape of nationhood also bore the imprint of equally salient ideologies such as multiracialism since all systems of authority draw on some form of landscape text to legitimize their rule Duncan Bringing together Geographical and Sociologic Imaginations Boston: Relections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism london: Cambridge University press , 1— Society in Transition Kuala lumpur: The Political Economy Perspective, vol. Unwin Hyman , — Studies in the Historical Geography of Taiwan Honolulu: University press of Hawaii , — UCl press , 1— Street-naming and Nation-building 83 Kong, l.

Society and Space 11, 23— Society and Space 6, — UCl press , 27— An Ethnography of Street Administration manchester: Ethnicity, Social Networks and Situational Analysis london: The Moulding of Modern Singapore singapore: History, Community and Identity in Singapore singapore: From Detroit to Disney World Berkeley: Chapter 5 naming and placing the other: Place Names and Power intersections between geography and power have been on the minds of geographers lately, as have questions of geographic language agnew and Duncan ; Barnes and Duncan ; Cosgrove ; Duncan Debates on place, space, power and language have occurred on a fairly abstract plane of philosophical inquiry, punctuated by forays into empirical analysis.

But their analysis is an account of how names have been used to reinforce Zionism; little is made of palestinian resistance. Othering the Other Side Zanzibar is an urban area of nearly , people on the island of Unguja called Zanzibar island by Westerners off the east african coast. Clove, coconut and spice production, based on Unguja and neighbouring pemba island, supplemented the large inlow of cash to the city from duty collection control over ports from mogadishu to mozambique sheriff Hence it is crucial to analyze colonial naming and placing in some detail.

Colonial building and planning laws.

Regulating the Night : Deborah Talbot :

Building rules, in Zanzibar as in mombasa Cooper , Cairo mitchell , or Cape town Western , were about deining who could be where. For many older residents especially, this boundary is alive in the city today even without its legal foundations. Few records exist of how boundaries between divisions were drawn. Power and the Urban Landscape in Zanzibar 89 were areas settled by african isherfolk and poor outsiders.

Unfortunately for Dutton, underneath the surface of oficial names, nicknames emerge which often convey markedly different place meanings from oficial ones. Khalifa stadium became mao tse tung stadium oficially, and was supplanted by the new amani peace stadium. Mtaa boundaries, like those of neighbourhoods worldwide, can be lexible; other authors have used the vagueness of distinctions to dismiss the signiicance of mitaa for analysis of spatial organization Horton , p.

Here, the mtaa bears the name of both the tree and the activity: For example, the large mtaa Kikwajuni By the small tamarind is actually subdivided by older residents into more than 10 mitaa. What binds these mitaa into one is an area known as mzimuni By the spirit. Under colonialism, many sardonic nicknames became oficial.

Power and the Urban Landscape in Zanzibar 93 colonial owner made certain the story of colonial inaction would endure. Urusi derives from the distance, both perceived and real, between this mtaa and downtown: Power and the Urban Landscape in Zanzibar 95 were pushed aside by local oficials —convey similar collective responses to impoverishment. But once again the place names on the oficial maps do not adequately give the lavor of these places in the way names people really give them do.

Acknowledgements this chapter is the product of research made possible by grants from the social science research Council, the Fulbright-Hays Doctoral research program, the UCla isop Center, and the UCla Geography Department. Dr leo van Grunsven, edward soja and several anonymous reviewers made helpful comments on earlier drafts. Naming and Placing the Other: Power and the Urban Landscape in Zanzibar 97 Barton was responsible for the original cartography.

Darin Grauberger did the cartography for this version. Integrating Sociological and Geographical Imaginations Boston: Deutsche UnesCo-Kommission , — Verlag von Duncker und Humblot. City, Island and Coast london: Selected Writings of J. Prospects and Problems Chicago: An African Mercantile Civilization new Haven: Power and the Urban Landscape in Zanzibar 99 mofse, r.

Woodrow Wilson Center press. Hidden Transcripts new Haven, Ct: Preliminary Report Dar es salaam: Zanzibar protectorate , A Handbook of Zanzibar Zanzibar: Zanzibar national archives Files: Hamoud sic asp Branch, — Chapter 6 the aloha state: But the comments by residents above indicate the ongoing struggle over identity that is at the heart of the postcolonial condition. While this relationship is a complex and often subtle one—its true magnitude easily overlooked—this study excavates ways in which american hegemony is embedded in the place name code. Both processes involved acquisition, and together they helped form what became a dominant worldview and world order, both geographically and politically.

Within the resultant texts, there is always an implied respect for the integrity of the Hawaiian names. Before embarking on an analysis of Hawaiian place names and colonialism, it is worthwhile to consider why anti-conquest occurs, which will shed greater light on how it works, and what broader contexts and interactions are involved. Unlike most forms of colonialism, anti-conquest is never a conscious process. Hawaiian place names, and Hawaiian language, have come to play this role and no more.

Her words form a pleasant background noise. He placed moku under the supervision of other high chiefs, who further subdivided administrative responsibility to lesser, warrior chiefs or supervisors [konohiki]. Within the complex, diverse, and variable materials from which Hawaiian world-views may be drawn Dudley , 71 , it is possible to identify an overall analogic character that differs critically from a generalized modern worldview. Gods become nature, and humans become demigods, which in turn become nature. Gestures, vocal inlections, and facial expressions also contribute to the meaning.

But these contexts do not translate into writing, which poses a text abstracted from its real-life situation. Hawaiian place names further demonstrate the intimate relationship between people and the environment. Commoners had to claim the land they used in order to maintain rights to it. Wise , 87—8 explains that Hawaiians were accustomed for generations to communal rights land and sea, and could not imagine life on another basis. By the mids, taxes had to be paid in cash, forcing people from remote areas to seek employment in the port towns to earn money ralston , Kuleana land claims by commoners might be rented to a large plantation, only to have them disappear under a transformed landscape: By , over half the House of nobles was foreigners, including Cleghorn, Castle, Dominis, isenberg, martin, mott- smith, and Wilder—all of whom have at least one street to their names.

By , shortly before the overthrow of the monarchy, 23 out of 25 nobles were of foreign ancestry, as were 24 of 33 representatives and all eight ministers. But this loss of Hawaiian family names is another aspect of colonization and the name of the Father. Fifteen names on this list are Hawaiianized versions of haole names. A Paper Trail While existing Hawaiian place names were not overlaid or eradicated by a new code, annexation heralded their subjugation to the Western geographic grid of knowledge.

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Finally, the luidity associated with Hawaiian names is lost by establishing an oficial, unambiguous designation. Hawaiians are placed outside the discourse of knowledge regarding their own culture. With selected meanings provided for curiosity only, the authority of meaning inherent in the place names is itself unimportant.

Hawaiian Islands, published by the Hydrographic ofice, United states navy Department Burkland, during his supervision of the United states Geological survey … chose the more important features to be named on the topographic sheets and the most authentic names. Decisions on Names in Hawaii: Cumulative Decision List No. Where part of a decision is underscored, the use of the nonunderscored part is optional. Burns established the Hawaii state Board on Geographic names in the Department of planning and economic Development. But such marks are not compatible with Gis.

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The Language of Anti-Conquest as Clark mentions, it became custom during the territorial period to name streets with Hawaiian words. But the inal blow came with the replacement of Hawaiian altogether with english as the language of the islands. With the impending death of Hawaiian sovereignty just prior to annexation, the alleged near-death of the Hawaiian language was seen as a positive indicator of progress by american travel writers: Whitney was even more positive about the change: But there were nonetheless more than a hundred Hawaiian- language newspapers in print at the end of the 19th century.

Hawaiians constituted one of the most, if not the most, literate populations of its time—in its own language Kimura , Hawaiian was the language of low-order government service and the courts, low-order internal business, working-class jobs, and the subsistence life of the country districts; while english was the language of the high-paying, upper administration jobs and big business Kimura , For decades after the law, speaking Hawaiian was strictly forbidden anywhere on the school grounds, and physical punishment was often used on those who spoke it.

Despite some grassroots efforts to perpetuate the language, by the s the number of native speakers was estimated at less than two thousand. Hawaiian place names became a commodity intended to develop a unique sense of place for the islands, to differentiate them symbolically from the unifying mainland cultural economy, and to create a local identity for the predominantly non-Hawaiian population.

But the Hawaiian names tell a different story: But now, as Hawaiian language makes its resurgence, the backlash to the new politics of language points out that the cultural capital of Hawaiian language and place names is mutually exclusive with real Hawaiian power. The Adornment of the Land language emerges from the direct human interaction and relationship with the physical, social, and spiritual environment; it is, as lopez puts it, a dialogue with the land. But the loss of Hawaiian language goes much further, breaking up social and cultural relations as well, and imposing a language of an industrial society from someplace else.

While Hawaiian place names preserve part of that geographic code, that code is meaningless to all but a few. For refusing to allow Hawaiians this one small bit of rejuvenated culture, smyser was strongly condemned for what many saw as advocating racism and cultural imperialism. But showing the eficacy of over years of cultural imperialism, Hawaiians themselves fell on both sides of the argument.

But then, with Hawaiians as a group as the most socially and economically marginalized population in the islands,25 it was hard to see that there was anywhere to go but up. Star Bulletin columnist Charles meminger disagreed with the notion that attaching a Hawaiian name to something helps the culture: Hawaiian music, characterized primarily by use of Hawaiian language, has moved from being merely a charming backdrop to being an increasingly political vehicle for pro-sovereignty sentiments.

Hula, once outlawed by the missionary- inspired government, then co-opted in a banal form for the tourism industry, has made a strong comeback among Hawaiian youth, and includes instruction in language and traditional culture. Hawaiian chanting, a nearly lost art that invokes the deities and the landscape, is slowly coming back into vogue. But what does it mean? But its meaning escapes into the ethers. With the damage overwhelmingly done— an astoundingly american built-environment dominating the landscape—one wonders how much recapturing the language can do to revive traditional Hawaiian culture.

While Hawaiian sovereignty movements are literally gaining ground, Hawaiian language is on the resurgence. Harper and Brothers, publishers. University of Hawaii press. Colonial and Postcolonial Geographies new york: City and County of Honolulu , ordinance no. Journal of Women in Culture and Society 7, 41— Feminism, Critique, and Political Theory london: A History of the Hawaiian Islands Honolulu: Department of public instruction, territory of Hawaii , regulations re Foreign language schools.

Man, Gods, and Nature Honolulu: A Feminist Introduction london: Malaysia and the Paciic Archipelagoes, 2nd edn, revised by a. Ethnography and Philology philadelphia: Their Life, Lore, and Environment, Bernice p. Bishop museum Bulletin Honolulu: Headquarters Hawaiian Department, Fort shafter. Hydrographic ofice, United states navy Department , Gazetteer No.

United states Government printing ofice. The Hawaiian Hymn of Creation Honolulu: Us army printing plant. The People of Old, trans.

The Works of the People of Old, trans. A Search for Hawaiian Values Honolulu: University of Hawaii press and Waiaha Foundation. Imagination and Desire in a Northern Landscape london: Alaska and Hawaii, ed. The Imprint of the Mother london: Penal Laws of the Hawaiian Islands , Honolulu: Travel Writing and Transculturation london: Revised and Enlarged Edition Honolulu: The Anthropology of History in the Kingdom of Hawaii ed. University of Wisconsin press. Department of the interior. Ritual and Society in Ancient Hawaii Chicago: However, there are places in northern ireland where irish versions of these names have been included in street signs, where local place names feature on roadside plaques and where place names in Ulster scots are included on local road signs.

Getting rid of prominent colonial place names after independence asserts the value and validity of the culture denigrated under colonialism. While this interdisciplinary and public critical engagement with colonialism highlights the issues common to societies that have been subject to european colonization, recent approaches have become more attentive to the speciic dimensions of different post-colonial locations.

Considering questions of identity and belonging in ireland and northern ireland through a post-colonial perspective points to the particular implications of ideas of being indigenous in these contexts. Post-colonial Locations colonial naming practices but overlook the complex implications of discourses of cultural de-colonization.

Encountering Urban Places : Visual and Material Performances in the City

However, these changes were relatively minor compared to the toponymic transformation of the mid-nineteenth century. Post-colonial Locations for the restoration of our place names on something like a rational basis. But even before independence the introduction of local government to ireland in had allowed some urban local authorities to introduce place name policies in sympathy with irish cultural nationalism.

How for example, can Catholicism, the irish language and Gaelic traditions be envisaged as part of but not the strictly deining characteristics of irishness and the only basis of belonging in ireland? How can a commitment to holding on to cultural distinctiveness in the face of wider forces of change avoid a defensive idea of culture as ideally static and ixed? For some at least, the existence of place names that relect the colonialization of ireland are part of the diverse heritage of the island rather than emblems of cultural corruption. However, rejecting the idea of national racial or cultural purity in relation to place names does not mean relinquishing any claim that place names should bear some meaningful relationships to the places they name.

Post-colonial Locations circulars to local authorities, followed by guidelines in , recommending that local authorities should try to ensure that these new names are historically linked to the area being developed and that traditional local names are used wherever possible. Post-colonial Locations deined in contrast to protestant Britishness in turn informed the coupling of protestantism, Unionism and Britishness in Ulster.

Despite centuries of intermarriage between those initially descended from Gaelic inhabitants and scottish and english settlers, the idea of two separate communities of descent in Ulster divided by differences of culture, religion and political persuasion developed in the late nineteenth century. However, in spite of the politicization of the irish language in northern ireland it was argued that the shared sense of the signiicance of townland names, whose origins mostly lie in earlier irish versions, displaced or superceded political, class and cultural differences as people united against a shared threat.

For pat loughrey, the second great threat to the communal identity of rural northern ireland after mechanized agriculture was coming from the new post ofice address policy: For the countless generations who had no written literature, townland names became the index-cards upon which memories are stored. While the irish language has been caught up in arguments like this and used as a symbol of an exclusive nationalist culture, the argument put forward about these local names was that they belonged to all people in northern ireland.

For the poet seamus Heaney, writing in support of the campaign for the Federation for Ulster local studies, the local is precisely the scale of an identity that is located but un-antagonistic. Heaney , xi the townland name for Heaney connotes a totally uninsistent sense of difference, a freely espoused relation to an idiom and identity that are regional, authentic, uncoerced and acknowledged. Post-colonial Locations talks … it is both gutsy and non-sectarian in an unself-congratulatory way. Heaney , xi Here townland names are pointers to authenticity and pluralism, to identity and dialogue.

For Heaney, the townland Campaign expressed the possibilities of recognizing shared concerns across conventional political divisions. For tony Canavan, writing as the Development oficer for the Federation: For they are not only part of a past which we all share but are a living part of the present too. Canavan , 51—2 this emphasis on cultural diversity has become a signiicant theme in attempts to address questions of identity and division in northern ireland and now runs through public discourse, government policy as well as community relations strategy where it was strongly articulated from the s nash b.

Work on celebrating and encouraging interest in local names and local histories still continues. However highlighting the ways townland place names were the inspiration for and focus of innovative and important explorations of constructive and potentially conciliatory approaches to identity and belonging is not to suggest that the townland Campaign exempliies the nature of identity politics in northern ireland.

Post-colonial Locations culture and heritage are being mobilized in defensive and antagonistic as well as relective and progressive ways. Ulster scots language and traditions can been seen as another strand of the shared cultural diversity of Ulster. Combining language, history, culture and location, place names can be mobilized in the diverse ways in which conigurations of identity and belonging are imagined and put to work. Conclusion approaches to place names are particularly telling indicators of wider concerns about and understanding of cultural purity, pluralism, heritage, authenticity and change.

Acknowledgements the chapter is an abridged and revised version of a journal article of the same name published in in the Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers A History of the Ordnance Survey of Ireland oxford: A Celebration of the Townland in Ulster Belfast: Federation for Ulster local studies.

Post-colonial Locations Flanagan, D. Proceedings of a Seminar 28th February Dublin: Capitalism and Symbolic Dissent new Brunswick, nJ: Global Studies in Culture and Power Marking Boundaries in Ulster Downpatrick: Ulster local History trust. Chapter 8 proclaiming place: We irst review recent scholarship on place naming and situate this literature within the framework of cultural politics.

We argue that there has historically been a largely atheoretical approach to toponymic classiication and that this approach has effectively neglected struggles over the politics of place that often underlie naming processes. We follow recent explorations in cultural geography that have moved beyond the written and the visual to consider a wider sensory spectrum, including the inluence of sound in constituting place smith ; rodaway We end by relecting on the ways that culture, place and identity are connected through variability in pronunciation, with sympathetic usages being associated with solidarity with indigenous struggle by pakeha white, of european ancestry , as well as with a reassertion of identity by maori.

Naming and Power in the Landscape We contend that the reinscription of place names on the map through historical research by toponomists has tended to overlook the struggles for place that underlie the actual socio-cultural processes involved in naming itself. With respect to question one, geographers and others have collected and analysed the names of places to provide clues as to the historical and cultural heritage of places and regions.

By analogy, therefore, names are seen by Gelling to be akin to the particulate matter within stratigraphic sequences that fascinate geomorphologists. Towards a Geography of Place Name Pronunciation constitutive component of landscape itself. However, the linkage between place names and power is more readily apparent in a contested and postcolonial setting such as new Zealand.

However, there is a contemporary and growing literature that is beginning to engage in a more theoretically informed discussion of the cultural politics of place naming all of the essays in this volume provide examples. His work on naming in Zanzibar considers ways in which groups constructed as other create alternative toponomies and thereby resist oficial naming practices. We contend that resistance to naming can occur on at least two levels: With this in mind, and given the everyday character of contested cultural politics of identity in new Zealand, it seems apposite to study the production of identity inherent in the pronunciation of place names.

Pro claiming Place Names Before proceeding further, we now consider the processes involved in the otherwise taken-for-granted process of place naming. We contend that, through the performance of speaking, naming is appropriated into the frequently contested contemporary context. Drawing on this sense of the performative, we can see that the speciic pronunciation of names can be more than a descriptive act.

Remembering, Forgetting and City Builders

While he speciically refers to the selectivity employed by collectors and classiiers of names, we can build on this remark to signal the creativity employed by speakers in their choice of how to pro claim a place. We contend that pronunciation can potentially be a form of resistance. First, this is because speaking, in almost all circumstances, is a social act. What would be the point?

Towards a Geography of Place Name Pronunciation spoken word. We wish to move, metaphorically, from the map to the moment and read the resistance within speech as a creative and assertive act that can operate independently from and contradictorily to the forces of hegemony and dominant discourse. We contend that within performance, there is room for resistance and the creation of alternative realities. Naming and Narrating Identity the importance of speech and language in place-making and place naming cannot be underestimated. Further, the story will involve a striving, not only for a formally satisfying narrative or a coherent version of events, but also for a version of the self that can be lived with in relative psychic comfort Dawson , While some conservative speakers passively recite learnt and largely relexive pronunciations, other speakers are more actively searching for certain kinds of responses, or seeking to endorse politicized positions, when they pronounce places.

Towards a Geography of Place Name Pronunciation contradictory aspects of social life, they are more often than not fractured and contradictory. British desire to acquire maori land drove them to armed conlict in order to establish their dominance Belich While the British troops were never able to inlict any decisive military defeat, they managed to grind maori resources down to the point where they were unable to organize effective and sustained resistance to pakeha colonization nairn and mcCreanor Belich ; orange ; Walker Between and , the proportion of new Zealand land controlled by maori dropped from percent to just 11 percent pawson ; also see orange ; Walker Conversely, the european settler population increased from a few hundred individuals in to more than , in pool Contemporaneous with language politics and the renegotiation of actual ownership of resources, there is contest over the symbolic ownership of place.

Cumulatively, this situation presents a threatening and uncertain environment for members of the status quo. We claim that rather than there being scientiically correct pronunciations, there might be politically correct versions of pronunciation which are supportive of the aspirations of maori people.

Towards a Geography of Place Name Pronunciation vantage points born out of colonialism. Pronunciation of Maori Place Names it is time, or rather well past the time, that tauiwi [non-indigenous new Zealanders] took a leaf out of its own book and made the effort to pronounce maori names and place names properly. Brian edwards, new Zealand national radio, 10 august We see the politics of pronunciation as derivative of a wider politics of naming that we have previously explored with respect to the south island of new Zealand Berg and Kearns this volume , but is equally prevalent in north island localities.

We also acknowledge the dificulties for anyone attempting to pronounce maori words, whether they are native speakers or not. We must … listen to speakers who know how to pronounce them. Biggs implicitly suggests that there might be ways to identify a singular correct pronunciation for maori names. However, we are not so much interested in identifying true or correct pronunciations, as we are in identifying forms of pronunciation that articulate particular positions in the cultural politics of place naming but see appendix for some indicative pronunciation guidance.