All posts tagged Nationalism

• February 24, 2014

  The Postbox: History, Nationalism and novelty

  Postboxes, once essential pieces of communications infrastructure which connected villages, crossroads and neighbourhoods to the rest of the world, are still noticeable features of landscapes and roadsides. Public postboxes in the Republic of Ireland, administered by the semi-state organisation An Post, are green. While more recent boxes tend to be more functional, older ones had distinct designs such as the hexagonal-sided Penfold or the familiar small box attached to a telegraph pole.

  

  VR for Victoria Regina 1837 – 1901 Greenmount Cork

  

  ER for Edward Rex
  1901 – 1910 Douglas Cork

  Postboxes also have symbols, representative of the time of their production. Previous to the current An Post there was P&T (Dept. of Post and Telegraphs) and  Saorstát Eireann (Irish Freestate). However, there are even older boxes, still in use, which feature the royal insignia from the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, when all of the island of Ireland was part of the UK.  You can still find boxes with ER (Edwardus Rex) or VR  (Victoria Regina) which date from the period 1901 – 1910 and c.1850s-1901 (although Queen Victoria’s reign was 1837 – 1901, postboxes didn’t come to Ireland until at least the c.1850s) respectively. Although rather solid and simple devices, it still is marvelous, if not surprising, that they have survived so long. It is nice to consider the thousands of letters (with the intentions, news, connections and emotions they contained)  that would have passed through them.

  It is noteworthy that these very clear, albeit ordinary, symbols of the British Monarchy survived in places through times when such things were readily destroyed. While statues, flags and buildings were attacked for nationalistic reasons, these objects survived, possibly being saved because of their very ordinariness or usefulness. Also, when the majority of Ireland transitioned to becoming a Free State, these boxes did pose an issue; however, a rather straightforward, yet clever, and utterly Irish, solution was to paint the red British boxes green. This transformation has lasted for over ninety years. The symbol of British Monarchy, covered over by green paint can be a metaphor for so many features in the Irish state, from Primary Schools to Common Law.

  On your travels throughout Ireland, and even in your own neighbourhood, check the postbox, you may find an interesting piece of heritage, geography, symbolism and materiality. However, make sure you get there before 4.30pm .

  For more:

  Irish Postal History site

  An Post: History and Heritage: The Post Box

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• January 13, 2013

  ‘Other’ Pilgrimages

  As someone who is researching pilgrimage practices, I am predisposed to paying attention to how, when and why the term is used. This ranges from everyday conversations to newspaper articles to twitter hashtags (#pilgrimage). It becomes quickly evident that the term is evoked in numerous and different ways beyond its original religious meanings, with all manner of journeys being referred to as pilgrimages.

  An earlier post discussing the characteristics of pilgrimage, highlighted the roles of movement, place, meaning, transformation and embodiment in defining the activity. That piece was particularly focused on traditional spiritual-religious pilgrimage, although references were made to different types of pilgrimage, such as cultural, nationalistic or personal ones. Here, I wish to tease out some of these ideas in more detail.

  

  Nakamise Street Sensoji Asakusa Taito-ku Tokyo. Pilgrims and tourists have flocked to the Sensoji (a Buddhist temple) for centuries, with many shopping for souvenirs at shops. Source: commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Nakamise1411

  A point which is frequently made concerns the closeness and blurring between pilgrimage and tourism, particularly heritage or spiritual based tourism. It is apparent that not everyone who visits religious pilgrimage sites is a believer, and simultaneously not all pilgrims endure to traditional arduous and challenging aspects of pilgrimage. With increased personal mobility in parts of the world, the lines between tourist and pilgrim are not as clear cut as they were once conceived as being; indeed, it was probably a fallacy to think of them as ever being entirely discrete.

  The nature and structures of different places, and the practices performed there, equally illustrate the complex and fluid nature of pilgrimage. Both in terms of manifestations and practices, religious sites and secular/popular locations have shared elements, some of which are more typically only attributed to one or other. Major pilgrimage sites have all the facilities and services associated with tourist destinations, while secular places, such as Graceland or the Vietnam War Memorial in Washington, feature practices with religious connotations  including processions and the leaving of small objects.

  Indigenous or ancient sites also play a role in these discussions, as they are sites that are visited by not only tourists, but also ‘New Age’ groups or others in search of spirituality. Stonehenge and Machu Picchu, and other similar locations, are seen as being spiritual, non-modern places, and therefore attract those seeking otherworldly experiences as much as tourists. These places can be seen to occupy a curious middle-ground between the established religious locations and the tourist destinations.

  

  Machu Picchu: houses in the Western Urban Sector, Sacred Square. Source: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Machu-picchu-c07.jpg Issued under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.5 Spain license.

  The most significant factor in all of this lies in the idea of fluidity and a willingness to applying the characteristics of pilgrimages to all manner of journeys. In conceiving and treating of pilgrimage and other journeys an openness to individual and group motivations and experiences need to be a guiding idea, so we can gain a better and more accurate understanding of these human behaviours.

   

   

   

  Suggested Reading: 

  Campo, J.E., 1998. American Pilgrimage Landscapes. Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 558, pp.40-56.

  Ivakhiv, A. 2003. Nature and Self in New Age Pilgrimage. Culture and Religion, 4 (1), pp.93-118.

  Plate, S.B., 2009. The Varieties of Contemporary Pilgrimage. Cross Currents, 59(3), pp.260–267.

  Reader, I. & Walter T. eds, 1993. Pilgrimage in Popular Culture. Hampshire: Macmillan.

   

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