A Bolin
Biographic Data
| ID | 6709 |
|---|---|
| NAME | A Bolin |
| GIVEN NAMES | A |
| FAMILY NAME | Bolin |
| SIGNATURE | BOLIN A |
| AFFILIATIONS | Linnaeus University |
| ORCID | 0000-0003-1639-8976 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 14 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 32 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 14 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2012 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 4 |
Building Peace at Sites of Memory: Community Relationships with Unesco World Heritage in Post-Genocide Rwanda
In 2023, Rwanda inscribed a set of genocide memorials on UNESCO’s World Heritage List, based in part on the memorials’ value to peace. Considering the importance of communities to the sustainability of heritage-based peacebuilding projects, this article examines the management plan for the newly listed Rwandan sites in terms of its framework for community engagement and participation. It argues that while the plan for these sites reflects a shift…
They don't care about Crucian culture: Legitimising claims to heritage rights in St. Croix, US Virgin Islands
Rights to heritage are often understood in heritage scholarship to derive from aspects of cultural identity, such as descent or affiliation, but other registers are also available to rights claimants. Centring around a campaign to ‘save’ a museum made of a former sugar plantation in St. Croix, US Virgin Islands, this article explores a different mode of staking claims to heritage rights. Attending to the discourses used by the two primary faction…
A day without Global North researchers: Making space for equitable collaboration after Covid-19
What happens when researchers based in the Global North are suddenly unable to access research sites, especially those in the Global South? In 2020, COVID-related public health measures and travel restrictions made clear how dependent certain categories of researchers in the North are on easy access to research sites in the South. The space opened up by their pandemic-imposed retreat and the solutions devised in response have provoked both challe…
Our monuments: Reclaiming St Croix's elite heritage for descendants of the enslaved
Sites of plantation slavery that are now interpreted as heritage frequently spatialize their narratives by emphasizing White elites in monumental spaces and associating the Black enslaved with smaller, less-imposing and frequently worse-preserved elements. In the contemporary present, as heritage spaces increasingly push to focus on the enslaved instead of the elite, the preservation of elite monumentality can be viewed as honouring enslavers. Th…
Rural Radicalisms and the Politics of Order: Authority, Precarity, and Globality in Africa
Decolonizing Heritage: Time to Repair in Senegal by Ferdinand de Jong
The idea of decolonization has come to the fore in recent years’ scholarship on cultural heritage. Not that the concept is a new one: but with Black Lives Matter and Rhodes Must Fall protests roiling the (haltingly) postcolonial world, it is entirely expected that heritage studies publications on the topic would grow. Not, either, that heritage scholars who are interested in the question of the past in the present had utterly failed to consider d…
Heritage futures: A conversation
Purpose This article explores the concept of “heritage futures”, the role of heritage in managing relations between present and future societies. It assesses how thinking strategically about the future changes, complicates and contextualises practices of heritage. What might an attention to the future bring to work in heritage, and simultaneously, what challenges—both practical and ethical—arise? Design/methodology/approach This article takes the…
Rwandan solutions to Rwandan problems: Heritage decolonization and community engagement in Nyanza District, Rwanda
Highlighting the rural district of Nyanza in Rwanda, this article examines community relations to heritage resources. It investigates the possibilities for more ethical, engaged models of heritage management which can better deliver on agendas of decolonization and development. Our research finds that Nyanza's heritage stakeholders highly value heritage's social and economic roles, but communities are also significantly alienated from heritage re…
The strategic internationalism of Rwandan heritage
Heritage, a practice shot through with political forces, is mobilized by states within their international relationships through methods such as heritage diplomacy. Focusing on the connections between Rwanda and Germany, this article traces how heritage serves as a technique of foreign relations for the Rwandan state. The uses of heritage are shaped by the state's higher-level political orientations, especially the project of agaciro, which pursu…
Imagining genocide heritage: Material modes of development and preservation in Rwanda
The Rwandan government has undertaken ambitious development projects resulting in major changes to the country's built environment, including the materiality of genocide heritage. This article focuses on the genocide memorials of Nyamata and Ntarama, arguing that these sites demonstrate how globally-circulating discourses of development and preservation are vernacularized, instantiated, and transformed in their encounter with the national imagina…
Practicing Heritage Means Life or Death in Rwanda
Dignity in Death and Life: Negotiating Agaciro for the Nation in Preservation Practice at Nyamata Genocide Memorial, Rwanda
The ideal of agaciro, or dignity, is foundational for the contemporary Rwandan nation-state. More than two decades after genocide, the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) government seeks to make dignity a core characteristic of the new, post-conflict nation. At the same time, the state uses heritage sites, especially genocide memorials, to establish the nation’s history and identity. Focusing on the intersection of the dignity imperative and the value…
A Ghost Map of Kigali
This piece stems from the effort to understand how to move about the Rwandan capital, which has its own navigational logic. This attempt to establish a ghost map of the city in order to move through it dovetails with my research into how the visible materiality of the past holds the invisible: meaning, memory, significance. In Rwanda, this history, particularly of violence, lies underneath the everyday, demanding to be encountered both in daily l…
On the Side of Light: Performing Morality at Rwanda’s Genocide Memorials
In Rwanda, numerous memorials have arisen to remember the 1994 genocide and its victims. This paper considers the effect of the national genocide memorials on Western tourist visitors, in the context of research on ‘dark tourism’ and Western attitudes toward death and the dead. It draws on the idea that, in a Western context, viewing the remains of violent death can be a kind of ‘soft murder’, and on the concept that the act of witnessing violenc…
Rwandan solutions to Rwandan problems: Heritage decolonization and community engagement in Nyanza District, Rwanda
Highlighting the rural district of Nyanza in Rwanda, this article examines community relations to heritage resources. It investigates the possibilities for more ethical, engaged models of heritage management which can better deliver on agendas of decolonization and development. Our research finds that Nyanza's heritage stakeholders highly value heritage's social and economic roles, but communities are also significantly alienated from heritage re…
Dignity in Death and Life: Negotiating Agaciro for the Nation in Preservation Practice at Nyamata Genocide Memorial, Rwanda
The ideal of agaciro, or dignity, is foundational for the contemporary Rwandan nation-state. More than two decades after genocide, the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) government seeks to make dignity a core characteristic of the new, post-conflict nation. At the same time, the state uses heritage sites, especially genocide memorials, to establish the nation’s history and identity. Focusing on the intersection of the dignity imperative and the value…
On the Side of Light: Performing Morality at Rwanda’s Genocide Memorials
In Rwanda, numerous memorials have arisen to remember the 1994 genocide and its victims. This paper considers the effect of the national genocide memorials on Western tourist visitors, in the context of research on ‘dark tourism’ and Western attitudes toward death and the dead. It draws on the idea that, in a Western context, viewing the remains of violent death can be a kind of ‘soft murder’, and on the concept that the act of witnessing violenc…
Imagining genocide heritage: Material modes of development and preservation in Rwanda
The Rwandan government has undertaken ambitious development projects resulting in major changes to the country's built environment, including the materiality of genocide heritage. This article focuses on the genocide memorials of Nyamata and Ntarama, arguing that these sites demonstrate how globally-circulating discourses of development and preservation are vernacularized, instantiated, and transformed in their encounter with the national imagina…
The strategic internationalism of Rwandan heritage
Heritage, a practice shot through with political forces, is mobilized by states within their international relationships through methods such as heritage diplomacy. Focusing on the connections between Rwanda and Germany, this article traces how heritage serves as a technique of foreign relations for the Rwandan state. The uses of heritage are shaped by the state's higher-level political orientations, especially the project of agaciro, which pursu…
Rural Radicalisms and the Politics of Order: Authority, Precarity, and Globality in Africa
They don't care about Crucian culture: Legitimising claims to heritage rights in St. Croix, US Virgin Islands
Rights to heritage are often understood in heritage scholarship to derive from aspects of cultural identity, such as descent or affiliation, but other registers are also available to rights claimants. Centring around a campaign to ‘save’ a museum made of a former sugar plantation in St. Croix, US Virgin Islands, this article explores a different mode of staking claims to heritage rights. Attending to the discourses used by the two primary faction…
On the Side of Light: Performing Morality at Rwanda’s Genocide Memorials
In Rwanda, numerous memorials have arisen to remember the 1994 genocide and its victims. This paper considers the effect of the national genocide memorials on Western tourist visitors, in the context of research on ‘dark tourism’ and Western attitudes toward death and the dead. It draws on the idea that, in a Western context, viewing the remains of violent death can be a kind of ‘soft murder’, and on the concept that the act of witnessing violenc…
Practicing Heritage Means Life or Death in Rwanda
Dignity in Death and Life: Negotiating Agaciro for the Nation in Preservation Practice at Nyamata Genocide Memorial, Rwanda
The ideal of agaciro, or dignity, is foundational for the contemporary Rwandan nation-state. More than two decades after genocide, the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) government seeks to make dignity a core characteristic of the new, post-conflict nation. At the same time, the state uses heritage sites, especially genocide memorials, to establish the nation’s history and identity. Focusing on the intersection of the dignity imperative and the value…
A Ghost Map of Kigali
This piece stems from the effort to understand how to move about the Rwandan capital, which has its own navigational logic. This attempt to establish a ghost map of the city in order to move through it dovetails with my research into how the visible materiality of the past holds the invisible: meaning, memory, significance. In Rwanda, this history, particularly of violence, lies underneath the everyday, demanding to be encountered both in daily l…
Imagining genocide heritage: Material modes of development and preservation in Rwanda
The Rwandan government has undertaken ambitious development projects resulting in major changes to the country's built environment, including the materiality of genocide heritage. This article focuses on the genocide memorials of Nyamata and Ntarama, arguing that these sites demonstrate how globally-circulating discourses of development and preservation are vernacularized, instantiated, and transformed in their encounter with the national imagina…
The strategic internationalism of Rwandan heritage
Heritage, a practice shot through with political forces, is mobilized by states within their international relationships through methods such as heritage diplomacy. Focusing on the connections between Rwanda and Germany, this article traces how heritage serves as a technique of foreign relations for the Rwandan state. The uses of heritage are shaped by the state's higher-level political orientations, especially the project of agaciro, which pursu…
Heritage futures: A conversation
Purpose This article explores the concept of “heritage futures”, the role of heritage in managing relations between present and future societies. It assesses how thinking strategically about the future changes, complicates and contextualises practices of heritage. What might an attention to the future bring to work in heritage, and simultaneously, what challenges—both practical and ethical—arise? Design/methodology/approach This article takes the…
Rwandan solutions to Rwandan problems: Heritage decolonization and community engagement in Nyanza District, Rwanda
Highlighting the rural district of Nyanza in Rwanda, this article examines community relations to heritage resources. It investigates the possibilities for more ethical, engaged models of heritage management which can better deliver on agendas of decolonization and development. Our research finds that Nyanza's heritage stakeholders highly value heritage's social and economic roles, but communities are also significantly alienated from heritage re…
Decolonizing Heritage: Time to Repair in Senegal by Ferdinand de Jong
The idea of decolonization has come to the fore in recent years’ scholarship on cultural heritage. Not that the concept is a new one: but with Black Lives Matter and Rhodes Must Fall protests roiling the (haltingly) postcolonial world, it is entirely expected that heritage studies publications on the topic would grow. Not, either, that heritage scholars who are interested in the question of the past in the present had utterly failed to consider d…
They don't care about Crucian culture: Legitimising claims to heritage rights in St. Croix, US Virgin Islands
Rights to heritage are often understood in heritage scholarship to derive from aspects of cultural identity, such as descent or affiliation, but other registers are also available to rights claimants. Centring around a campaign to ‘save’ a museum made of a former sugar plantation in St. Croix, US Virgin Islands, this article explores a different mode of staking claims to heritage rights. Attending to the discourses used by the two primary faction…
A day without Global North researchers: Making space for equitable collaboration after Covid-19
What happens when researchers based in the Global North are suddenly unable to access research sites, especially those in the Global South? In 2020, COVID-related public health measures and travel restrictions made clear how dependent certain categories of researchers in the North are on easy access to research sites in the South. The space opened up by their pandemic-imposed retreat and the solutions devised in response have provoked both challe…
Our monuments: Reclaiming St Croix's elite heritage for descendants of the enslaved
Sites of plantation slavery that are now interpreted as heritage frequently spatialize their narratives by emphasizing White elites in monumental spaces and associating the Black enslaved with smaller, less-imposing and frequently worse-preserved elements. In the contemporary present, as heritage spaces increasingly push to focus on the enslaved instead of the elite, the preservation of elite monumentality can be viewed as honouring enslavers. Th…
Rural Radicalisms and the Politics of Order: Authority, Precarity, and Globality in Africa
Building Peace at Sites of Memory: Community Relationships with Unesco World Heritage in Post-Genocide Rwanda
In 2023, Rwanda inscribed a set of genocide memorials on UNESCO’s World Heritage List, based in part on the memorials’ value to peace. Considering the importance of communities to the sustainability of heritage-based peacebuilding projects, this article examines the management plan for the newly listed Rwandan sites in terms of its framework for community engagement and participation. It argues that while the plan for these sites reflects a shift…
Law (11 works) · Political science (11 works) · Sociology (11 works) · Cultural Heritage Management and Preservation (10 works) · History (7 works) · Archaeology (6 works) · Environmental ethics (6 works) · Middle East and Rwanda Conflicts (6 works) · Archaeological Research and Protection (5 works) · Law (5 works)