Cold War : a Transnational Approach to a Global Heritage

Although within living memory, many countries now consider their surviving Cold War architecture as part of their heritage. It can even be a priority for heritage managers given that significant buildings are often suitable for reuse while extensive ‘brownfield’ sites such as airfields can be used for large-scale redevelopment. In a number of countries whose work we refer to here (notably the United Kingdom and elsewhere in Europe), agencies responsible for managing their country’s heritage have approached this priority by creating national inventories of sites and buildings with a view to taking informed decisions on their future. This paper presents the argument that the wider international context of the Cold War provides a more appropriate (or additional, higher-level) framework for such decision making. Such a ‘transnational’ approach would allow the comparison of similar (e.g. European) sites not merely within national borders but across the full extent of their western NATO1 deployment in Europe and North America. Taking this approach would also allow comparison with related sites in countries that formed part of the eastern-bloc Warsaw Pact.2 After outlining some examples of how national agencies have approached their Cold War heritage, this paper presents the four stages of this transnational approach making provision for an improved understanding and management of Cold War heritage sites wherever they occur. With a specific focus on the direct comparison between England and Russia, and also referring to sites surviving elsewhere within the former NATO and Warsaw Pact regions, as well as the United States, we argue that this four-stage approach: provides new understandings of a complex archaeological and architectural record; gives fresh perspectives on significance; and (importantly in a time of geopolitical instability) does so in a spirit of cooperation and friendship

Out of this world : the advent of the satellite tracking of offenders in England and Wales

In September 2004, the Home Office established three pilot programmes to test the efficacy of the satellite tracking of offenders, a new form of electronic monitoring. Satellite tracking, and the monitoring of exclusion zones which it permits, had been legislated for in the Criminal Justice and Court Services Act 2000, but the Home Office waited until putatively reliable technology – more reliable than that initially used for tracking in the USA – was available before commencing the pilots. Its arrival was formally announced in the context of a major review of ‘correctional services’, in which electronic monitoring generally is given a clearer strategic role than it has had hitherto in England and Wales. Although snippets of information about satellite tracking were drip fed into the media in the run up to the launch of the pilots, this has been a most under-deliberated initiative. This article was completed just before the commencement of the pilots and aims primarily to open up debate about this new measure. It also argues that the emergence of satellite tracking – monitoring movement rather than just single locations – sheds light on the development of electronic monitoring more generally, whose implications for more humanistic approaches to offender supervision, such as probation, are still not fully appreciated