After Authenticity at an American Heritage Site

This essay explores what happens to a heritage site "after authenticity." The site is Colonial Williamsburg, one of the most ambitious reconstruction projects ever undertaken and a place intended to be experienced as an objective correlate of an American national "identity." Because it makes such claims, throughout its history the site has been subject to critiques by those wishing to undermine its authority to speak as the voice of an all-encompassing America. Moreover, in the past 20 years, professional historians at Colonial Williamsburg have become articulate on-site critics of the epistemology of authenticity as they promulgate a historiography currently popular in history museums and in the academy.     

Nature,Natives, and Nations: Glorification and Asymmetries in Museum Representation,Fiji and Hawaii

The Fiji Museum and Hawaii's Bishop Museum research and represent local indigenes differently, and more extensively, than they do the culture and history of descendants of plantation laborers. While these museums connect Japanese-Hawaiians and Indo-Fijians to themes of economic struggle and multiculturalism, the erstwhile 'natives'are strongly, if implicitly, connected to 'nature.'Against Foucaultian approaches depicting museums as 'modern' institutions of classification, this argument locates museums with a liberal focus on nature, natives and nations (three conceptions, from the same Latin root, for self-constituting objects) as descendants of imperial museum projects, and finds not classification but glorification originally organizing museum representations. The politics of museum representation concern dilemmas in glorification, not classification. The asymmetries traced here follow local will as well as institutional design.     

Defining immigrant newcomers in new destinations: symbolic boundaries in Williamsburg,Virginia

Abstract

This article examines media representations of immigration in Williamsburg, Virginia, a ‘new immigrant destination’ in the USA. Through a content analysis of coverage in Williamsburg's local newspaper, we explore how reporters, columnists and readers draw on nationally and internationally circulating discourses to produce public interpretations of immigration issues and construct symbolic boundaries between and among in-groups and ‘others’ in the community. ‘National boundaries drawn locally’ captures how media actors use nationally recognizable frames to interpret local issues and define the parameters of community and national belonging. ‘Localized symbolic boundaries’ take their meanings from place-based, cultural understandings, specific economic conditions and demographics in the local setting. Newspaper discussions in Williamsburg distinguish between ‘deserving’ foreign student workers (primarily from Eastern Europe and Asia) and ‘undeserving’, racialized, Latino ‘others’. Our analysis advances theories of boundary construction and holds implications for the politics of belonging more generally in other immigrant-receiving contexts.     

South African Museums and the Creation of a New National Identity

Museums are important sites of national cultural production, collective memory making, and the construction of national narratives. Contemporary South Africa is a particularly interesting place to study these processes. With the demise of apartheid, South Africa faces the difficult challenge of creating a new national identity that incorporates an examination of past oppression yet leaves the way open for building a national identity that incorporates all its diverse groups. The museums reviewed below, the Robben Island Prison Museum, the District Six Museum in Capetown, and the Kwa Muhle local history museum in Durban all make important contributions to this process.     

The New History in an Old Museum: Creating the Past at Colonial Williamsburg

The New History in an Old Museum: Creating the Past at Colonial Williamsburg. Richard Handler and Eric Gable. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1997.260 pp.     

Museums, collections and biodiversity inventories

Natural history museums area at a turning point in their history. To play a central role in research on biodiversity, they must change their mode of operation and public image. Collections have grown in a haphazard manner, depending on the interests and preferences of successive curators. There is an urgent need to create international networks and standard practices among museums, to meet the challenge of the biodiversity crisis.     

Hoofbeats From the Currituck Outer Banks: A Study of the Corolla Wild Horse Fund Adoption Program

Research on the adoption and relinquishment of horses, both domestic and wild, remains limited. As a result, little is known about adopters, their adopted horses, and their adoption experience. This study surveyed and interviewed 17 adopters of Colonial Spanish mustangs through the Corolla Wild Horse Fund (CWHF). Together, they adopted 22 horses of varying ages and genders from 2002 to 2012. The participants, who had a range of previous experience with and knowledge of horses, were generally very satisfied with their horses and their adoption experience. Being able to adopt a gentled/trained mustang and receiving support from the CWHF during the adoption process played key roles in adoption success. Additionally, participants’ strong desire to preserve a perceived endangered species or national treasure appeared to be a major reason for adopting a Colonial Spanish mustang and served as motivation for making the adoption successful. The results of the study provide insights into ways to improve the number and success of adoptions through other equine programs, especially the Bureau of Land Management's wild horse and burro program.     

Awareness of Memory Deficits in Early Stage Huntington's Disease

Patients with Huntington''s disease (HD) are often described as unaware of their motor symptoms, their behavioral disorders or their cognitive deficits, including memory. Nevertheless, because patients with Parkinson''s disease (PD) remain aware of their memory deficits despite striatal dysfunction, we hypothesize that early stage HD patients in whom degeneration predominates in the striatum can accurately judge their own memory disorders whereas more advanced patients cannot. In order to test our hypothesis, we compared subjective questionnaires of memory deficits (in HD patients and in their proxies) and objective measures of memory dysfunction in patients. Forty-six patients with manifest HD attending the out-patient department of the French National Reference Center for HD and thirty-three proxies were enrolled. We found that HD patients at an early stage of the disease (Stage 1) were more accurate than their proxies at evaluating their own memory deficits, independently from their depression level. The proxies were more influenced by patients'' functional decline rather than by patients'' memory deficits. Patients with moderate disease (Stage 2) misestimated their memory deficits compared to their proxies, whose judgment was nonetheless influenced by the severity of both functional decline and depression. Contrasting subjective memory ratings from the patients and their objective memory performance, we demonstrate that although HD patients are often reported to be unaware of their neurological, cognitive and behavioral symptoms, it is not the case for memory deficits at an early stage. Loss of awareness of memory deficits in HD is associated with the severity of the disease in terms of CAG repeats, functional decline, motor dysfunction and cognitive impairment, including memory deficits and executive dysfunction.     

Contemporary Chinese TV Serials: Configuring Collective Memory of Socialist Nostalgia via the Cultural Revolution

Using China's Cultural Revolution as a representative historical event, this article examines how the collective memory and popular history revolving around it are manufactured and interpreted in televisual media narratives. The collective memory of the Cultural Revolution, as I will show, is constructed and not preserved, and the collective framework of memory, as the predominant thoughts and the governing ideological rhetoric of society, configures people's memories of past events. A textual analysis of the TV drama, The Place Where Dreams Start [Meng kaishi de difang, 1998], a typical revolutionary nostalgia text, will expose the process of collective memory concerning the Cultural Revolution for what it is—cultural amnesia that is misleading and regressive.     

Active Memory

Collective memory is a phenomenon that receives a different interpretation depending on the discipline within which it is examined. In my research, I will employ ideas and concepts developed within the framework of a sociocultural approach (Wertsch, 2002; Cole, 1996). In particular, I will proceed from the definition of collective memory developed by James Wertsch (2002), who treats collective memory as textually mediated memory, conditioned by various—mainly historical—narratives. Historical narratives (annals, chronicles, history textbooks, etc.) are considered to be cultural instruments promoting collective remembrance. A category I borrow from Wertsch's work (2002) is the concept of the "schematic narrative template," which I will apply as analytic tool in my investigation of the phenomenon of collective memory phenomenon.     

Fine-Grained,Local Maps and Coarse,Global Representations Support Human Spatial Working Memory

While sensory processes are tuned to particular features, such as an object''s specific location, color or orientation, visual working memory (vWM) is assumed to store information using representations, which generalize over a feature dimension. Additionally, current vWM models presume that different features or objects are stored independently. On the other hand, configurational effects, when observed, are supposed to mainly reflect encoding strategies. We show that the location of the target, relative to the display center and boundaries, and overall memory load influenced recall precision, indicating that, like sensory processes, capacity limited vWM resources are spatially tuned. When recalling one of three memory items the target distance from the display center was overestimated, similar to the error when only one item was memorized, but its distance from the memory items'' average position was underestimated, showing that not only individual memory items'' position, but also the global configuration of the memory array may be stored. Finally, presenting the non-target items at recall, consequently providing landmarks and configurational information, improved precision and accuracy of target recall. Similarly, when the non-target items were translated at recall, relative to their position in the initial display, a parallel displacement of the recalled target was observed. These findings suggest that fine-grained spatial information in vWM is represented in local maps whose resolution varies with distance from landmarks, such as the display center, while coarse representations are used to store the memory array configuration. Both these representations are updated at the time of recall.     

Collective Learning and Optimal Consensus Decisions in Social Animal Groups

Learning has been studied extensively in the context of isolated individuals. However, many organisms are social and consequently make decisions both individually and as part of a collective. Reaching consensus necessarily means that a single option is chosen by the group, even when there are dissenting opinions. This decision-making process decouples the otherwise direct relationship between animals'' preferences and their experiences (the outcomes of decisions). Instead, because an individual''s learned preferences influence what others experience, and therefore learn about, collective decisions couple the learning processes between social organisms. This introduces a new, and previously unexplored, dynamical relationship between preference, action, experience and learning. Here we model collective learning within animal groups that make consensus decisions. We reveal how learning as part of a collective results in behavior that is fundamentally different from that learned in isolation, allowing grouping organisms to spontaneously (and indirectly) detect correlations between group members'' observations of environmental cues, adjust strategy as a function of changing group size (even if that group size is not known to the individual), and achieve a decision accuracy that is very close to that which is provably optimal, regardless of environmental contingencies. Because these properties make minimal cognitive demands on individuals, collective learning, and the capabilities it affords, may be widespread among group-living organisms. Our work emphasizes the importance and need for theoretical and experimental work that considers the mechanism and consequences of learning in a social context.     

Dilemma of Dilemmas: How Collective and Individual Perspectives Can Clarify the Size Dilemma in Voluntary Linear Public Goods Dilemmas

Empirical findings on public goods dilemmas indicate an unresolved dilemma: that increasing size—the number of people in the dilemma—sometimes increases, decreases, or does not influence cooperation. We clarify this dilemma by first classifying public goods dilemma properties that specify individual outcomes as individual properties (e.g., Marginal Per Capita Return) and group outcomes as group properties (e.g., public good multiplier), mathematically showing how only one set of properties can remain constant as the dilemma size increases. Underpinning decision-making regarding individual and group properties, we propose that individuals are motivated by both individual and group preferences based on a theory of collective rationality. We use Van Lange''s integrated model of social value orientations to operationalize these preferences as an amalgamation of outcomes for self, outcomes for others, and equality of outcomes. Based on this model, we then predict how the public good''s benefit and size, combined with controlling individual versus group properties, produce different levels of cooperation in public goods dilemmas. A two (low vs. high benefit) by three (2-person baseline vs. 5-person holding constant individual properties vs. 5-person holding constant group properties) factorial experiment (group n = 99; participant n = 390) confirms our hypotheses. The results indicate that when holding constant group properties, size decreases cooperation. Yet when holding constant individual properties, size increases cooperation when benefit is low and does not affect cooperation when benefit is high. Using agent-based simulations of individual and group preferences vis-à-vis the integrative model, we fit a weighted simulation model to the empirical data. This fitted model is sufficient to reproduce the empirical results, but only when both individual (self-interest) and group (other-interest and equality) preference are included. Our research contributes to understanding how people''s motivations and behaviors within public goods dilemmas interact with the properties of the dilemma to lead to collective outcomes.     

中国陆地生态系统碳源/汇整合分析

国家尺度陆地生态系统碳收支及其循环过程的研究对于提升地球系统科学与全球变化科学的科技创新能力、提高我国参与应对全球气候变化国际行动和维护国家利益的话语权、保障国家生态安全和改进生态系统管理都具有重要意义。近年来,我国已经在气候变化与陆地生态系统碳循环领域开展了大量的研究工作,主要包括国家清查、生态系统模型模拟、大气反演等手段。然而,由于大尺度陆地生态系统碳源/汇的估算存在很大的不确定性,目前尚未形成国家尺度的陆地生态系统碳源/汇的整合分析。通过搜集已发表的关于中国陆地生态系统及其组分碳源/汇的59篇文献,整合国家清查、生态系统模型模拟、大气反演3种研究手段,分析中国陆地生态系统碳源/汇大小以及时间尺度上的动态变化。结果表明,在1960s-2010s期间中国陆地生态系统碳汇整体呈上升趋势,平均为（0.213±0.030）Pg C/a,其中森林、草地、农田和灌木生态系统碳汇分别为（0.101±0.023）Pg C/a、（0.032±0.007）Pg C/a、（0.043±0.010）Pg C/a和（0.028±0.010）Pg C/a。森林生态系统中的植被碳汇远大于土壤碳汇,然而这种格局在草地和农田生态系统却相反,而且1960s-2010s期间中国主要植被类型的生态系统碳汇总体上随时间呈增加趋势。融合多源数据（地面观测、激光雷达、卫星遥感等）、多尺度数据（样地尺度、站点尺度、区域尺度）以及多手段数据（联网观测、森林清查、模型模拟）,有助于全面准确地评估中国陆地生态系统碳源/汇及其对气候变化的响应。     

Waitangi Day,Okains Bay: Contest,Co-operation and the Construction of Place in a Local Commemoration of Nation in New Zealand

Local commemorations of nation, while indexing and taking place within the framework of a national imaginary, need to be understood within their own contexts and sets of relationships as these operate in specific places. This paper examines one such case, that of an annual Waitangi Day event at Okains Bay, a small rural settlement in New Zealand's South Island. Here, although the annual public ritual to mark Waitangi Day follows closely the model of the national commemoration at Waitangi itself, it has certain distinctive features and takes place within a context that gives it a specific meaning that is in some ways at odds with the meanings created at the national level. This has to do with the particular history of Okains and with the various relationships and interests associated with it, which the Waitangi Day event draws upon and enacts.     

When the past matters: memory politics and ethnic relations in Poland

This article identifies the conditions under which the interplay of past and present enables or constrains political action in the Polish public sphere. Using data from the Polish quality broadsheet Gazeta Wyborcza, I account for the puzzles in the Jewish, German and Ukrainian minorities' memory work. The study reveals that history empowers ethnic groups differently, in the function of the certification by external allies, diverse salience of the arguments raised and the state's distinct memory projects. Namely, the high resonance of the Jews' claims that seize on the Holocaust narrative and official acknowledgement of their past allow the group to escape the limits of their narrow organizational capacities. In contrast, the state's rejection of the Germans' and Ukrainians' interpretations of the past has the effect of channelling minority claims towards the fight for acknowledgement.     

Not just in the past: Racist and sexist biases still permeate biology,anthropology, medicine,and education

In the past decades, it has been increasingly recognized that some areas of science, such as anthropology, have been plagued by racist, Western-centric, and/or sexist biases. Unfortunately, an acculturation process to racism and sexism has been occurring for generations leading to systemic inequities that will take a long time to disappear. Here, we highlight the existence of current examples of racism, Western-centrism and sexism within: (1) the most popular anatomical atlases used in biological, anthropological and medical education; (2) prominent natural history museums and World Heritage Sites; (3) biological and anthropological scientific research publications; and (4) popular culture and influential children's books and educational materials concerning human biology and evolution.     

Activity: Structure,Genesis, and Unit of Analysis

One of the most notable phenomena in Soviet psychology since the late '70s has been discussion of the relationship between communication and activity [8,13,18,19,21,23]. I consider the following formulation of the problem, given here in its most general form, the most constructive: communication and activity are indubitably interrelated, but communication (in contrast to perception, memory, etc.) cannot, in any constructive way, be regarded as a type of activity and analyzed within the framework of Leont 'ev's paradigm (activity—action—operation; motive—goal—condition). This formulation of the problem is useful primarily in terms of the further progress of the theory of activity: it quite incisively focuses on one essential point that has been inadequately dealt with in the theory of activity, namely, an analysis of the social means and mechanisms of human activity, both collective and individual.     

New media and the digitized paranormal: instrumentation,affective atmospheres,and the production of history in Chile

In the last decade in Chile, an increasing amount of paranormal investigation companies have carried out ghost tours in patrimonial and historical places, using diverse technologies to penetrate into the history of sites. We ethnographically and analytically explore two related questions. First, we ask what paranormal instrumentation does to collective memory and to history. We argue that these ‘registers’ of the paranormal create ‘affective atmospheres’, namely from the forms of indeterminacy embedded in the functioning and performance of the apparatuses. Our argument is that these machines are mechanisms for the creation of a new history, one that is apprehended affectively. Second, in the context of an explosion of adherence in Chile to forms of new media, we employ the notion of ‘dark media’ to illustrate that online material posted by paranormal researchers appears to escape any form of mediational understanding, feeding at once the public's perceptive and affective dispositions.     

Death of phone service indicates Canadians not willing to pay for medical advice

The two physicians who started Canada''s first national pay-per-use medical-advice line closed the service after determining that Canadians are not willing to pay directly for their medical services. The issue of public versus private payments will likely be raised during the CMA''s annual meeting later this month.