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612-822-4611
Written in Stone: Public Monuments in Changing Societies

Written in Stone: Public Monuments in Changing Societies

Paperback

Series: Public Planet Books

Anthropology

ISBN10: 082232220X
ISBN13: 9780822322207
Publisher: Duke University Press
Published: Aug 7 1998
Pages: 160
Weight: 0.45
Height: 0.46 Width: 5.23 Depth: 8.02
Language: English
Is it Stalinist for a formerly communist country to tear down a statue of Stalin? Should the Confederate flag be allowed to fly over the South Carolina state capitol? Is it possible for America to honor General Custer and the Sioux Nation, Jefferson Davis and Abraham Lincoln? Indeed, can a liberal, multicultural society memorialize anyone at all, or is it committed to a strict neutrality about the quality of the lives led by its citizens?

In Written in Stone, legal scholar Sanford Levinson considers the tangled responses of ever-changing societies to the monuments and commemorations created by past regimes or outmoded cultural and political systems. Drawing on examples from Albania to Zimbabwe, from Moscow to Managua, and paying particular attention to examples throughout the American South, Levinson looks at social and legal arguments regarding the display, construction, modification, and destruction of public monuments. He asks what kinds of claims the past has on the present, particularly if the present is defined in dramatic opposition to its past values. In addition, he addresses the possibilities for responding to the use and abuse of public spaces and explores how a culture might memorialize its historical figures and events in ways that are beneficial to all its members.

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Anthropology