In this chapter, Valeria Catalani, a research student, interviews Dave Croslands, a former professional bodybuilder who is now actively involved in the harm reduction sector, providing online support and educational services to the bodybuilding community. In the course of the interview he describes in detail his journey with the use of performance-enhancing drugs (PEDs), from his initial teenage experiences, when no information about PEDs was available, to his later, more informed years. His aim is not to stop people using PEDs, but to educate them about responsible consumption and usage. He emphasizes his belief that knowledge will reduce the harm and severe side effects caused by using PEDs. He also explains why he does not think that bodybuilding or indeed other sports disciplines can ever be separated from performance-enhancing practices.

Introduction

THIS CHAPTER IS concerned with the notions of and the relationship between intangible cultural heritage and cultural identity, in relation to displaced individuals, and in the context of contemporary Europe. The starting point is that people's movements have at their heart the encounter between newcomers and local communities. These encounters translate into situated stories and new cultural discourses about resilience, which, in the longer term, are likely to contribute to the formation of a shared European heritage.However, amongst newcomers, and especially those who, like refugees, experience displacement, the idea of heritage is particularly problematic, due to personal struggles with cultural and physical belonging. In order to be part, eventually, of a body of shared cultural practices, the heritage of displaced individuals needs first to “die” so that it can be revalued and rearticulated through an osmotic and yet aspirational process, generated by its perceived absence. Therefore, this chapter aims to consider exactly this, by addressing the following questions: Can we speak, at all, of an absence of (intangible) heritage during displacement? If heritage does (not) die, how is it then revalued and redefined during displacement? What cultural discourses are developing around the idea of “heritage” during forced migration?

In order to answer these questions, this chapter has been organized into four sections. In the first section, I consider the notions of displaced people and intangible cultural heritage (during displacement), the latter understood as a non-fixed concept subject to constant reinterpretations. In the second section, I explore the pairing “absence— presence” and I define it as a phased, emotional rupture with cultural traditions and heritage practices. The third section focuses on the “capacity to aspire,” as defined by Arjun Appadurai, and on the ways in which it triggers amongst displaced individuals, through a perceived absence of heritage, the aspiration to revaluate and rearticulate their cultural traditions. In the final section, I present some critical reflections on “resilient heritage,” that is to say those forms of intangible heritage that survive trauma, which are reshaped through selective remembering and which foster a sense of cultural worth and belonging, especially in the earlier stages of resettlement.

THIS VOLUME CONSISTS of seven chapters and one afterword by leading and up-andcoming academics who work on cultural identity and heritage. Significant research has already been done in the field of heritage studies highlighting, for example, meanings, experiences, and discourses in heritage, history, and nationalism, diaspora and migration, and cosmopolitanism and globalization. The aim of this volume is to expand on this by analyzing the role of cultural heritage and by especially focusing on the intersection between identity, memory, mobilities, and sociocultural agency.

Underpinned by neoliberal orthodoxies, today's matters— such as population flows, economic dynamics, environmental changes, and media politics— are becoming worldwide concerns that can no longer be managed and addressed solely within a national context. In order to avoid perpetuating postcolonial inequalities and unsustainable environmental circumstances, these issues require a “glocal” approach, that is to say, both a global and a local modus operandi. This glocal perspective offers new scenarios with regards to cultural representations, cultural heritage, and identity formation. Most nation-state discourses, indeed, no longer offer people a clear guide to understanding who belongs together and in what way they relate to each other. A lack of solid narratives about social belonging drives groups and individuals either to look for security in traditional cultural discourses of identity (that only reinforce old narratives of “we,” “home/ homeland,” and “the other”) or to explore new forms of cultural identity in solidarity (that in turn generate other forms of togetherness and engagement in the community). Both discourses and new forms of cultural identity, though, are not necessarily defined by citizenship, passports, or geographical origins and hence are more fluid in their characterization, shaping, and understanding.

According to the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), the world is facing the highest level of displacement ever experienced, with an unprecedented 65.3 million people forced from their homes because of war, internal conflicts, environmental crises, or poor economies. Amongst these, 21.3 million are refugees; the rest are economic migrants and internally displaced persons.

1. From the land of Mogan came three kings to worship the Lord.

2. And in a certain place there, which is called Bacu, are pits dug, whence is extracted and drawn a certain oil, which is called naft; and it is a very warm oil of medicinal virtue, and it burneth passing well.

1. Now I will mention in a brief statement the distances of the countries. Know ye, then, that from this place to Constantinople 'tis about three thousand miles or more.

2. From Constantinople to Tanan or Tartary is a thousand miles, going always towards the east, and by sea.

3. The empire of Persia beginneth at Trebizond, which is a city of the Greeks, situated in the furthest bight of the Moorish Sea. And that empire extendeth far; for it includeth Lesser Asia, Cilicia, Media, Cappadocia, Lycia, Greater Armenia, Caldea, Georgiana, part of the Caspian Hills and Mogan,–whence came those three kings to worship Christ,–even to the Iron Gates, and all Persia, with some part of Lesser India; so that the empire extendeth across from the Black Sea to the Indian Sea, and so great is the distance as to equal lxxxx days of ordinary journey with cattle, or more.

4. Then Lesser India extendeth four-square over LX days' journey, and is entirely level.

5. But the Greater India extendeth over more than CLXX days' journey, excluding the islands, of which there be more than XII thousand inhabited, and more than VIII thousand uninhabited, as those say who navigate that sea. And [this India also] is nearly all a plain.

6. But the vessels of these Indies be of a marvellous kind. For although they be very great, they be not put together with iron, but stitched with a needle, and a thread made of a kind of grass.

1. In Persia, however, I saw a very marvellous thing: to wit, that in Tabriz, which is a very great city, containing as many as two hundred thousand houses, dew never falls from heaven; nor doth it rain in summer as in most parts it doth, but they water artificially everything that is grown for man's food. There also, or thereabouts, on a kind of willows, are found certain little worms, which emit a liquid which congeals upon the leaves of the tree, and also drops upon the ground, white like wax; and that excretion is sweeter than honey and the honeycomb.

2. There we have a fine-enough church, and about a thousand of the schismatics converted to our faith, and about as many also in Ur of the Chaldees, where Abraham was born, which is a very opulent city, distant about two days from Tabriz.

3. Likewise also at Sultania we have five hundred, or five hundred and fifty. This is eight days' distant from Tabriz, and we have a very fine church there.

4. In this country of Persia are certain animals called onagri, which are like little asses, but swifter in speed than our horses.

5. This Persia is inhabited by Saracens and Saracenized Tartars, and by schismatic Christians of divers sects, such as Nestorians, Jacobites, Greeks, Georgians, Armenians, and by a few Jews. Persia hath abundance of silk, and also of ultramarine, but they wot not how to prepare it.

1. Of India Tertia I will say this, that I have not indeed seen its many marvels, not having been there, but have heard them from trustworthy persons. For example, there be dragons in the greatest abundance, which carry on their heads the lustrous stones which be called carbuncles. These animals have their lying-place upon golden sands, and grow exceeding big, and cast forth from the mouth a most fetid and infectious breath, like the thickest smoke rising from fire. These animals come together at the destined time, develope wings, and begin to raise themselves in the air, and then, by the judgment of God, being too heavy, they drop into a certain river which issues from Paradise, and perish there.

2. But all the regions round about watch for the time of the dragons, and when they see that one has fallen, they wait for lxx days, and then go down and find the bare bones of the dragon, and take the carbuncle which is rooted in the top of his head, and carry it to the emperor of the Æthiopians, whom you call Prestre Johan.

3. In this India Tertia are certain birds, which are called Roc, so big that they easily carry an elephant up into the air. I have seen a certain person who said that he had seen one of those birds, one wing only of which stretched to a length of eighty palms.

Of the Caspian Hills I say that there they sacrifice sheep upon a cross, and they call themselves Christians, though they are not so, and know nothing of the faith. Among those mountains are more than fifteen different nations.