Verband stadsontwikkeling en vervoer- en verkeerssysteem
Vervoer- en verkeerssystemen voor de onderlinge verbindingen tussen steden bestaan al heel lang. Deze waren en zijn nodig om staten te kunnen beheren dan wel te beheersen. Een heel oud voorbeeld vormen de heerbanen die dienden om het Romeinse Rijk bijeen te houden. Niet alleen gaat het daarbij om verkeersinfrastructuur zoals wegen en kanalen, maar ook om vervoerdiensten. Hierbij is bijvoorbeeld te denken aan diensten van postkoetsen en trekschuiten. In de negentiende eeuw kwamen daar de spoorwegen bij. Binnen de steden had in het verleden de verkeersinfrastructuur hoofdzakelijk een ontsluitings- en verblijfsfunctie. Opstallen en terreinen moesten voor voetgangers, rijtuigen en karren met goederen bereikbaar zijn, maar er was geen noodzaak binnen de steden lange afstanden snel te kunnen overbruggen. Afgezien van wat (huur)rijtuigen gingen nagenoeg als verplaatsingen van personen te voet.
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The Missionaries and the Belgian Congo: Preparation, Ideas and Conceptions of the Missionaries
Primitive School, Mission area MSC, location and date unknown
“I have been interested in the Congo all my life, because I always wanted to be a missionary in the Congo, even as a little child. And so in a way I paid some attention to it, but only the achievements of my heroes at the time – a number of family members were missionaries and the mission exhibitions, the missionary action. The Congo came to us through missionary work and it was very heroic. …I remember the moment to the minute when I discovered the background or the ‘depths’ of the colonisation of the Belgian Congo. And then I got the feeling, which I still have today, that during my training, my education, I had been deceived about the Congo.“[1]
Flemish and, by extension, Belgian missionaries left for the Belgian Congo in droves. The Statistical Yearbook of the N.I.S., which had a separate section for the colony, recorded a few tables with data about the ‘white’ population. As well as divisions on the basis of nationality, gender and place of residence, for a number of years it also included a “class division“. In this table, the population was divided into three categories: ‘civil servant’, ‘missionaries’ and ‘general public’. The presence of a separate category for missionaries points to the fact that they were very important in colonial society. On the basis of the available figures it can be posited that during the interbellum period, religious workers comprised 10 to 15% of the white population. This percentage was certainly not only men, the proportion of female religious workers was fairly stable throughout the colonial period and amounted to over 40%.[2]
Telkens weer op zoek. In de sporen van de Recherche van Proust
Marcel Proust 1871 - 1922 Illustration by Ingrid Bouws
De grote werken uit de Modernistische periode nodigen wellicht des te meer uit tot navolging en imitatie omdat ze zelf vaak variaties zijn op oudere kunstwerken. Ulysses en De dood van Vergilius zijn sprekende voorbeelden die bewijzen dat mimicry en citationisme blijkbaar niet voorbehouden zijn voor een postmoderne aanpak. In deze bijdrage willen we aantonen dat het inhaken op beroemde voorbeelden om deze op eigen wijze te verwerken ook tot een soort ‘vormdwang’ kan leiden (of sterker gezegd – met een lacaniaanse ondertoon – dat deze dwang inherent is aan zo’n onderneming). In ons geval zal het daarbij – in het kader van de voorliggende bundel – vooral gaan om aan te tonen dat kunstwerken die tijdens de laatste decennia als voorbeeld, oriëntatiebron of uitgangspunt Op zoek naar de verloren tijd van Marcel Proust hebben gekozen, als vanzelfsprekend karaktertrekken van het modernisme hebben overgenomen. Uiteraard gaat het hier om complexere processen dan alleen vormdwang, zoals bijvoorbeeld een ‘terugkeer naar het modernisme’ of, genuanceerder, een innige verstrengeling van modernistische en postmoderne componenten.
From Big Brother to Radical Decentralization
In the past centuries governing has become more centralized, out of necessity and because it made the most sense. The state and its organizations, national as well as international, will not disappear as sources of power and government. However, they can no longer govern alone.
Many things will have to be radically re-organized. Districts organize their own waste collection and every home is energy supplier. The adage for the next decennium will be: Radical Decentralization.
Sun and waste
Governed from Beijing and in its well-known particular brand of go getting, China is creating giant fields full of solar panels in the Gobi desert. The European Union has found the spirit after the accession of 10 new countries in 2004 and is getting ready to accept the rest of former Yugoslavia (Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Serbia, Montenegro, Kosovo and Macedonia) after the accession of Slovenia. The role of centralized government is far from played out. And yet a different trend marks the second decennium of this century: Radical decentralization, meaning organizing general interest issues on a micro scale. The size of the scale varies, and ends with the individual. Currently, individualism is not a popular term and brings to mind images of self-enriching bankers. That is one side of the coin. Thanks to the high level of education of for instance Western societies and ongoing technological advancements, we are more than ever capable of shaping our own lives, which creates great opportunities for the individual as well as for society at large. It does require changes from bureaucrats and administrators. In the next decade they will either have to adjust or make room for new ones.
Farid Tabarki at the 2008 Berlin Conference “A Soul For Europe
Farid Tabarki at Berliner Konferenz 2008 from A Soul for Europe on Vimeo.
(Berliner Konferenz 2008 from A Soul for Europe on Vimeo).
Farid Tabarki in the Rozenberg Quarterly: From Big Brother to Radical Decentralization
Van Linschoten’s Itinerario 1598, First Book, Chapter One: Discours of Voyages into y East & West Indies
Frontispiece: Gerard Mercator’s map of the Arctic, published in his atlas of 1595. This map explains why the Dutch, discovering Spitsbergen, believed they had run into Greenland.
Being young and living idly in my native country, sometimes applying myself to the reading of histories and strange adventures, wherein I took no small delight, I found my mind so much addicted to see and travel into strange countries, thereby to seek some adventure, that in the end to satisfy myself I determined and was fully resolved for a time to leave my native country and my friends (although it grieved me). Yet the hope I had to accomplish my desire together with the resolution taken in the end overcame my affection and put me in good comfort to take the matter upon me, trusting in God that he would further my intent. Which done, being resolved, I took leave of my parents who as then dwelt at Enkhuysen, and being ready to embark myself I went to a fleet of ships that as then laid before Texel, weighing the wind to sail for Spain and Portugal. I was determined to travel to Sevilla, where as then I had two brothers that had gone there several years before; so to help myself the better and by their means to know the manner and customs of those countries and also to learn the Spanish tongue.
