The Cultural Turn in International Aid is one of the first volumes to analyse a wide and comprehensive range of issues related to culture and international aid in a critical and constructive manner. Assessing why international aid is provided for cultural projects, rather than for other causes, the book also considers whether and how donor funded cultural projects can address global challenges, including post-conflict recovery, building peace and security, strengthening resilience, or promoting human rights. With contributions from experts around the globe, this volume critically assesses the impact of international aid, including the diverse power relations and inequalities it creates, and the interests it serves at international, national and local levels. The book also considers projects that have failed and analyses the reasons for their failure, drawing out lessons learnt and considering what could be done better in the future. Contributors to the volume also consider the influence of donors in privileging some forms of culture over others, creating or maintaining specific memories, identities, and interpretations of history, and their reasons for doing so. These rich discussions are contextualised through a historical section, which considers the definitions, approaches and discourses related to culture and aid at international and regional levels. Providing consideration of manifold manifestations of culture, The Cultural Turn in International Aid will be of great interest to scholars, students and practitioners. It will be particularly useful for those engaged in the study of heritage, anthropology, international aid and development, international relations, humanitarian studies, community development, cultural studies, politics or sociology.

The contemporary fields of the study of culture, the humanities and the social sciences are unfolding in a dynamic constellation of cultural turns. This book provides a comprehensive overview of these theoretically and methodologically groundbreaking reorientations. It discusses the value of the new focuses and their analytical categories for the work of a wide range of disciplines. In addition to chapters on the interpretive, performative, reflexive, postcolonial, translational, spatial and iconic turns, it discusses emerging directions of research. Drawing on a wealth of international research, this book maps central topics and approaches in the study of culture and thus provides systematic impetus for changed disciplinary and transdisciplinary research in the humanities and beyond – e.g., in the fields of sociology, economics and the study of religion. This work is the English translation by Adam Blauhut of an influential German book that has now been completely revised. It is a stimulating example of a cross-cultural translation between different theoretical cultures and also the first critical synthesis of cultural turns in the English-speaking world.

This book investigates the relationship between heritage and development from the global visions articulated by UNESCO and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) to local activism, livelihood innovations and political strategies employed in diverse countries of the Global South. In recent years, as culturally informed approaches to international development have become increasingly important, engaging with heritage has been seen as a way to draw on practices and meanings from the past to help build future development. This book gathers researchers and practitioners from across disciplines to address important themes such as health, the environment, sustainability, peace, security, tourism and economic growth. In doing so, the book asks us to consider whose past and whose future is ultimately at stake in efforts to use heritage for development. Key topics explored include histories and legacies of colonialism and calls for decolonisation, and related questions of expertise, ownership and agency. Students, practitioners and researchers from across the broad areas of history, heritage, education, archaeology, geography and development studies will find this book an invaluable guide to dynamic and contested understandings of heritage and development and the relationship between them.

The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) adopted by the UN in 2015 have influenced the actions of international and intergovernmental organisations and governments around the world, and have dictated priorities for international aid spending. Culture, including heritage, is often presented as fundamental to addressing the SDGs: since 2010, the United Nations has adopted no fewer than five major policy recommendations that assert its importance as a driver and enabler of development. Yet, heritage is marginalized from the Sustainable Development Goals. Rethinking Heritage for Sustainable Development constitutes a substantial and original assessment of whether and how heritage has contributed to three key dimensions of sustainable development (namely poverty reduction, gender equality and environmental sustainability) within the context of its marginalisation from the Sustainable Development Goals and from previous international development agendas. Sophia Labadi adopts a novel, inclusive, large-scale and systematic approach, providing the first comprehensive history of the international approaches on culture (including heritage) for development, from 1970 to the present day. This book is also the first to assess the negative and positive impacts of all the international projects implemented in sub-Saharan Africa by a consortium of UN organisations that aimed to provide evidence for the contribution of heritage for development in time for the negotiation of the SDGs. The book’s conclusions provide recommendations for rethinking heritage for development, while reflecting on the major shortcomings of the selected projects.

Fredric Jameson, a leading voice on the subject of postmodernism, assembles his most powerful writings on the culture of late capitalism in this essential volume. Classic insights on pastiche, nostalgia, and architecture stand alongside essays on the status of history, theory, Marxism, and the subject in an age propelled by finance capital and endless spectacle. Surveying the debates that blazed up around his earlier essays, Jameson responds to critics and maps out the theoretical positions of postmodernism’s prominent friends and foes.

Traditionally social science treated culture as a peripheral issue, but the last twenty years have witnessed a cultural turn throughout the social sciences. Culture is now at the core of debate. Culture and Economy After the Cultural Turn examines the impact of the cultural turn for the social sciences in relation to the decline of interest in economic aspects of society. It presents a number of responses to the changing relationship between culture and economy, and to the way in which the cultural turn has sought to understand it. Contributors from a wide range of disciplines present differing views oon these matters in relation to issues of political sensibilities and movements, equality and recognition, `cultural manageme

This handbook offers a comprehensive analysis of peacebuilding in ethnic conflicts, with attention to theory, peacebuilder roles, making sense of the past and shaping the future, as well as case studies and approaches. Comprising 28 chapters that present key insights on peacebuilding in ethnic conflicts, the volume has implications for teaching and training, as well as for practice and policy. The handbook is divided into four thematic parts. Part 1 focuses on critical dimensions of ethnic conflicts, including root causes, gender, external involvements, emancipatory peacebuilding, hatred as a public health issue, environmental issues, American nationalism, and the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic. Part 2 focuses on peacebuilders’ roles, including Indigenous peacemaking, nonviolent accompaniment, peace leadership in the military, interreligious peacebuilders, local women, and young people. Part 3 addresses the past and shaping of the future, including a discussion of public memory, heritage rights and monuments, refugees, trauma and memory, aggregated trauma in the African-American community, exhumations after genocide, and a healing-centered approach to conflict. Part 4 presents case studies on Sri Lanka’s postwar reconciliation process, peacebuilding in Mindanao, the transformative peace negotiation in Aceh and Bougainville, external economic aid for peacebuilding in Northern Ireland, Indigenous and local peacemaking, and a continuum of peacebuilding focal points. The handbook offers perspectives on the breadth and significance of peacebuilding work in ethnic conflicts throughout the world. This volume will be of much interest to students of peacebuilding, ethnic conflict, security studies, and international relations.