Reconciliation of the Spirits and Fusion of the Interests. “Ottomanism” as an Identity Politics
The history of the different national traditions of social and political thinking in Southeastern Europe is usually examined in their relationship with the developments in the leading European nation states. This is certainly a legitimate approach, but it should be added that beside the multiple interactions between the “marginalized,” “small nations” in the “periphery” and the “European core” there was one more major actor—the multinational empires in the Eastern part of the continent. They ...
The vocabulary of Muslim nationalism
This article is about the language of politics and religion in the Middle East. It argues that the national struggle of the Ottomans after the defeat of the Ottoman Empire in World War I was not aimed at the establishment of a Turkish state, as later Turkish historiography has claimed. A careful analysis of the terminology employed by the leadership of the national movement in its official documents during the early phase (1918-1920) shows that instead it based itself on a corporate identity that was primarily religious, that of the Ottoman Muslims. The adoption of secular Turkish nationalism as corporate political identity underlying the state was a later development, which took place after the establishment of the Republic of Turkey in 1923. The vocabulary then changed accordingly, and even where the vocabulary stayed the same, the meaning changed, as in the case of the central term milli national'
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.