Inside the Museum: Nothing is going to change? Adaptation of the Jewish Pre-Burial House in Gliwice

This article discusses the architectural conversion of the historical Gliwice Pre-Burial House into the Museum of Upper Silesian Jews. It describes the former function of the building in the context of the specific history of Upper Silesian Jews, the Haskalah movement, and funeral rites in Judaism. The main part of the paper is devoted to the presentation of the architectural design and the functional division of the planned museum as proposed by the architectural collective that the author is part of. Special attention is given to a discussion of the conceptual framework of the design which tries to reveal the continuity of unformatted architectural memory. The features of proposed design, such as the central installation of The Cloud, merge commemorative aspects with new functions related to hosting public events and historical display. In this way, the design negotiates between remembrance of the Jewish community and the needs of the new inhabitants and users of the space. Thus, the paper contributes to the larger discussion about the adaptation of former Jewish facilities for new public functions.     

Reflections on Strangeness in Context: The Case of Russian–Jewish Immigrants in the Kibbutz

This article elucidates and elaborates upon the contextualized meaning of strangeness and the experience of being a stranger. Our empirical study of strangeness embarks simultaneously from the three leading theories of the stranger—as cultural reader (Schuetz 1944), as demarcator of social boundaries (Simmel 1950), and as trespasser of social categories (Bauman 1990, 1991)—and at the same time criticizes these theories for artificially divesting strangeness of social context. Our thesis about strangeness-in-context is grounded in in-depth interviews we conducted with Jewish–Russian immigrants (twenty-one university students) who have lived in kibbutzim. Our assumption is that the kibbutz as a communal home is a suitable case study to illuminate the manyfold dimensions of strangeness, as it intensifies the tension between insiders and outsiders. In explicating the immigrant's sense of strangeness we claim the local context of the kibbutz interacts with the Israeli national definition of the immigrant as a homecomer.     

Present in the World Economy: The Coalition of Immokalee Workers (1996–2007)

To think through what new, perhaps transformative, way of life and struggle might be in the process of being invented by social forces moving on the terrain of the world economy, we must look into real concrete organizations binding people together. Only then can we begin to see what might be most radical about contemporary social movements: the putting into dialectical relation of two relatively autonomous, spatially specific, modes of struggle: a local ‘wars of position’ and a ‘war of movement’ that takes place on the terrain of the world economy. This article deals with the Coalition of Immokalee Workers (CIW), which has just won a 10-year-long campaign to raise the income and better the living conditions of tomato pickers in Southwest Florida. For all its specificity, this campaign presents us with a concrete organizational experience from which we can think more generally about the political significance of what has been variously and vaguely termed ‘the new internationalism of social movements’, ‘the anti-globalization movement’, or ‘globalization from below’.     

The heritage machine: the neoliberal order and the individualisation of identity in Maragatería (Spain)

Since the inception of modernity, minority and majority identities have been constructed in a twofold process involving the parallel generation of representations of difference and the obliteration of alterity, that is, of other modes of existence. The exacerbation of the modern period in the supermodern era has furthered this process, adapting it to the new forms of neoliberal and post-political governmentality. This is paralleled by a shift from real to symbolic and metacultural forms of interaction that serve to negotiate identity and hegemony in the social sphere. Heritage has become a fundamental trope for the negotiation of identity, access to resources and power, as its production is not anymore bounded to the State but is rather ‘dispersed’ in society. This article explores the way cultural heritage has become a ‘machine’ for the production of dominant and individualised identities interacting in a deregulated market environment in Maragatería (Spain).     

The arrival of Jewish refugee children in England, 1938–1939

Between December 1938 and the outbreak of World War II in the following September over 9,300 children were brought to England from Nazi occupied territories, under the auspices of the Movement for the Care of Children from Germany. The event which precipitated this exodus was Kristallnacht (9–10 November 1938). This paper examines the background to the formation of this organization, how it operated, and the problems which it faced. Attention is also given to the disquiet which was voiced in various quarters about the Movement's work.     

Jews in the News – Representations of Judaism and the Jewish Minority in the Norwegian Contemporary Press

This article provides an analysis of how Jewish rituals and Jews as a minority group are represented and debated in the Norwegian press: How is “news about the Jews” framed by the media? Which discourses dominate the debates? Are notions of what it “takes to be Norwegian” put forward in these cases? The article is also an analysis of Jewish voices in the press, and based on the fact that Jewish advocates refer to minority-based legal rights suggests that the Jewish minority benefits from the use of a broader international human rights discussion in the press. I claim that a multicultural discourse provides the Jewish minority with language that makes it possible to argue for cultural rights without referring to Jewishness; offering protection against a general fear of anti-Semitism.     

Constructing merit in the civil service: The French Ministry of Culture (1880–1980)

Merit-based procedures for evaluation and grading in the French Civil Service have often been studied with the idea that concepts and practices circulate between public and private sectors, domestic and foreign organizations. Less attention has been afforded the in-house origins of procedures for assessing the work of civil servants. This article focuses on the procedures gradually built up to evaluate government employees in the French Ministry of Culture. Light is shed on the difficulties of making good the Republic's promise to base merit on differences in talent alone. How is a civil servant's work to be measured? Are qualifications evaluated while seeing to it that as many employees as possible can be promoted? Focusing on procedures – imagined or actually implemented – for grading, evaluating and promoting museum personnel shows that the process follows a timing and modality that vary depending on one's position in the hierarchy. The evaluation process nevertheless creates ties between socio-occupational groups that all else separates. Ways to measure civil servants’ activity existed before the neomanagerial objection to bureaucratic rules and regulations of the 1960s; the French system for evaluating merit is, thus, not simply an importation of anglo-saxon managerial methods.     

‘The Sunshine of Manly Sports and Pastimes’: Sport and the Integration of Jewish Refugees in Britain, 1895–1914

In the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, Jewish refugees arriving in Great Britain were exposed to an ‘anglicisation’ campaign designed to aid their integration into British society and their assimilation of British character traits and cultural values. Within this campaign, especially the element focusing on the children of the migrants, interest and participation in sport was consciously ‘transferred’ through the medium of youth and sporting organisations in order to help in their ‘anglicisation’. This essaywill show how physical recreation was promoted by the English Jewish establishment and how participation in sport amongst young Jews grew.     

Caveat Venditor? Museum Merchandising, Nonprofit Commercialization, and the Case of the Metropolitan Museum in New York

This paper reviews some of the underpinnings of the current commercialization debate in the nonprofit sector, based on an analysis of Metropolitan Museum of Art data from 1960 to 2002. The case suggests at least two avenues for additional research: First, while analysts tend to see the origins of the commercialization phenomenon in the fiscal setbacks of the 1980s, the economic crisis of the 1970s and the resulting erosion of endowment funds may also have been an as of yet unexplored driving force behind the commercialization trend. Second, current conceptual frameworks of the phenomenon adequately explain the motivations behind the observable rise of the museum's commercial activities. However, the changing rationales as well as economic fortunes of commercial activities in this case highlight the need for a better understanding of the long-term effects and consequences of commercial activity by nonprofit organizations, particularly in light of the current push for increased entrepreneurialism.