The Arabism Debate and the Arab Uprisings
This article explores how the Arab Uprisings have affected academic debates over the importance of Arab identity in regional and domestic politics. Does the spreading of protest from one Arab state to another in 2011 indicate Arabism's continued salience, or does the subsequent rise of regional sectarianism represent its death-knell? Are older debates between ‘New Arabists’ and ‘post-Arabists’ still relevant or is a new framework needed that better reflects the post-2011 Arab world?
The Arabic language and political ideology
This chapter addresses the symbolic function of Arabic in the political sphere by focusing on its role as a proxy for political ideologies in the Arabic-speaking world. The chapter is divided into two main parts. The first part highlights the inherently political nature of language standardisation and presents evidence from Egypt to demonstrate how standard language ideology is challenged. The second part focuses on the role of Arabic in identity politics and how it has been deployed – or rejected – in a range of nationalisms in the Arab world with a particular focus on Lebanon and Egypt. This part also addresses the role of language ideologies in inter-state relations through a discussion of the Maghreb-Mashreq language ideology.
Negotiating the cultural and economic outcomes of sport heritage attractions: the case of the National Baseball Hall of Fame
ABSTRACT Contemporary museums must balance their roles as commercial entities and repositories of various, and often dissonant, heritages and histories. Sports museums in particular often have clear commercial and nostalgic aims, particularly through tourist visitation, though the extent to which they represent more challenging narratives remains unclear. This paper examines how one of the most famous sports museums in the world, the National Baseball Hall of Fame (NBHF) in Cooperstown, New York, balances its dual role as tourist attraction and repository of baseball's sometimes checkered past. It was found that different sections of the museum provide greater or lesser degrees of engagement with more controversial issues, although the commercial outputs and appeal of the museum remains clear throughout. Utlimately, the NBHF demonstrates that balancing veneration and critique in collections can be commercially prosperous, and can provide a template for other sport and popular culture museums who may be wary of incorporating more challenging narratives in their exhibits. Furthermore, the symbiotic relationship between the Hall of Fame and the village of Cooperstown, particularly in creating and maintaining cultural and economic outputs, requires further exploration.