Communication and dialogue between civilizations |
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Collection title
Dialogue and exchange
Source
Bibliotheca Alexandrina (EG)
First broadcast date
12/26/2004
Abstract
Professor Tom Selwin comments the common spaces exhibition that asks people to communicate , live together and exchange experiences. He also talks about the history of Alexandria.
Production companies
-
Library of Alexandria - Own production
Broadcaster
Bibliotheca Alexandrina
Audiovisual form
Interview
Primary theme
Human and social sciences
Secondary themes
- Historical heritages
- Tourism and cultural sites / Archaeological sites
Map locations
- Egypt - Lower Egypt - Alexandria
Original language
English
Context
Communication and dialogue among civilisations
Cyril Isnart
The short interview of the Professor Tom Selwyn (School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, UK) is an introduction to one of the first exhibitions of the new Bibliotheca Alexandrina, "Shared Spaces in Times of Crisis" (Dec. 2004 - Jan., 2005), dedicated to the memory of the multifaith inhabitants of the historical city centers of the Mediterranean shores.
The exhibition recalls the various souvenirs and different ways of living of several communities in a common space, from ethnographic surveys of Oral Med-Voices project among the inhabitants of Alexandria, Ancona City, Beirut, Bethlehem, Chania City, Grenada, Istanbul, Las Palmas, Marseille, Palma de Mallorca, north and south Nicosia, Split and Valletta. Med-Voices was a research and documentation project supported by the Euromed Heritage II program (2002-2007) of the European Commission, aiming at promoting the cultural heritage, mainly intangible, of the Mediterranean populations.
Exploring the many ways of anchoring in a territory, researches have focused on the themes of conflict and post-conflict time, port cities, towns receiving exogenous populations, events or historical dynamics that involve unique urban development, demographic and economic evolution. In fact, the role of the history, the intersection of memories, the importance of the heritage and legacy in the civil and political society, and an approach to sustainable development of tourism and cultural policies have all been analyzed. The Professor Tom Selwyn, anthropologist specializing in the Mediterranean topics, insisted however on the double aspect of the Mediterranean Coexistence, the sharing and the exclusion, the neighborhood and expulsion, noting that if the tradition of coexistence is still alive today, several places of the Mediterranean are still living this forced cohabitation painfully.
The new Bibliotheca Alexandrina, with main purpose to reconnect with the Mediterranean intellectual and cultural vocation of the prestigious Library of Alexandria in ancient times, exploits the themes of the minorities’ memory and the multicultural coexistence that characterize the Mediterranean, so to enroll in a long temporality of this area’s history shared by several denominations and ethnic groups. Even though the scholar was enthusiastic in regards of the exposure, he reminded, however, that a too angelic vision of the Mediterranean societies can sometimes hide contemporary issues of domination, which are an integral part of social and cultural region.
Albera D., Blok A. et Bromberger C. 2001, the anthropologie of the Méditerranean, Paris, Maisonneuve and Larose.
The website of Mediterranean Voices Association, which took over Med-Voices project : http://medvoices.org/
The short description of the exhibition : http://www.bibalex.org/alexmed/events/Details.aspx?ID=8637a6ab-4563-4fae-88bf-23f11c55f42c
