Counterheritage

Religions

By failing to document popular belief in the supernatural attributes of religious sites and by drawing up conservation management plans that fail to attend to such beliefs, current heritage regimes effectively perform a secular translation of them. I argue that the posthuman turn in the humanities and social sciences, and in particular its openness to forms of agency, vibrancy and vitality in the object world, offers prospects for a kind of heritage practice newly comfortable with the vibrancy that belief in the supernatural lends to the things of popular religion. Focusing on the material heritage of popular religion in Asia—in particular in China and Southeast Asia—attitudes of devotees to the rebuilding of temples and shrines are examined. Practices of rebuilding and restoration come to be seen as a form of worship. While ontological differences between worshipers and heritage practitioners remain, it is possible to be positive about the prospects for a postsecular heritage pract...

International Journal of Heritage Studies, 2016

American Anthropologist, 2017

The Journal of Asian Studies, 2013

Sites, here the eighth-century Buddhist shrine Borobudur and other remains of the Hindu-Buddhist past located in colonial (predominantly Islamic) Java, are in this article our analytical tool to provide insight into the local and transnational dimensions of heritage politics and processes of in- and exclusion in Asia and Europe around 1900. Because we recognize these “sites” as centers of multiple historical, political, and moral spaces that transgress state boundaries, we take this concept beyond the nation-state-centered lieu de mémoire. By exploring how site-related objects traveled from temple ruins in Java to places elsewhere in the world (here: Siam, the Netherlands, France, and Great Britain) and back to Java, we show the transformation of heritage engagements around 1900 at multiple locations, and we make clear why, despite professionalizing state-centered heritage politics, state control was limited. We argue that the mechanisms of exchange and reciprocal interdependence, a...

HERITAGE MOVEMENTS IN ASIA Cultural Heritage Activism, Politics, and Identity, 2020

Heritage processes vary according to cultural, national, geographical, and historical contexts. This volume is unique in that it is dedicated to approaching the analysis of heritage through the concepts of social movements. Adapting the latest developments in the field of social movements, the chapters examine the formation, use and contestation of heritage by various official, non-official and activist players and the spaces where such ongoing negotiations and contestation take place. By bringing social movements into heritage studies, the book advocates a shift of perspective in understanding heritage, one that is no longer bound by (at times arbitrary) divisions such as those assumed between the state and people or between experts and non-experts. REVIEWS “This book significantly contributes to our understanding of the complexities of heritage in Asia. It broadens our horizons to look at issues of governance, state-society relations, and the institutional ways memory and material culture are politically negotiated. It reveals heritage as a series of movements, unpacking, elaborating and critiquing what that term means in different social settings. An exciting contribution to the examination of heritage in Asia.” • Tim Winter, University of Western Australia, Professor of Critical Heritage studies, Author of Geocultural Power: China’s Quest to Revive the Silk Roads for the Twenty First Century “The book is a wake-up call for heritage practitioners who still too easily think of the material past as a static and unmediated record of times past. Heritage Movements in Asia reminds us that the heritage expert is only one among numerous players competing to inscribe meaning on the traces of the past embedded in the ground we all live on. As this book vividly illustrates, heritage activism, whether in the form of mass mobilisation or more intimate engagements, is what gives the material past its dynamism.” • Denis Byrne, Author of Counterheritage: Critical Perspectives on Heritage Conservation in Asia “Looking at heritage processes through the lens of social movements, this volume adds a meaningful contribution to the growing literature of critical heritage studies.” • Neel Kamal Chapagain, Director of the Centre for Heritage Management, Ahmedabad University

This Handbook is the first major volume to examine the conservation of Asia’s culture and nature in relation to the wider social, political and economic forces shaping the region today. Throughout Asia rapid economic and social change means the region’s heritage is at once under threat and undergoing a revival as never before. As societies look forward, competing forces ensure they re-visit the past and the inherited, with the conservation of nature and culture now driven by the broader agendas of identity politics, tradition, revival, rapid development, environmentalism and sustainability. In response to these new and important trends, the twenty three accessible chapters here go beyond sector specific analyses to examine heritage in inter-disciplinary and critically engaged terms, encompassing the natural and the cultural, the tangible and intangible. Emerging environmentalisms, urban planning, identity politics, conflict memorialization, tourism and biodiversity are among the topics covered here. This path-breaking volume will be of particular interest to students and scholars working in the fields of heritage, tourism, archaeology, Asian studies, geography, anthropology, development, sociology, and cultural and postcolonial studies.

This Handbook is the first major volume to examine the conservation of Asia’s culture and nature in relation to the wider social, political and economic forces shaping the region today. Throughout Asia rapid economic and social change means the region’s heritage is at once under threat and undergoing a revival as never before. As societies look forward, competing forces ensure they re-visit the past and the inherited, with the conservation of nature and culture now driven by the broader agendas of identity politics, tradition, revival, rapid development, environmentalism and sustainability. In response to these new and important trends, the twenty three accessible chapters here go beyond sector specific analyses to examine heritage in inter-disciplinary and critically engaged terms, encompassing the natural and the cultural, the tangible and intangible. Emerging environmentalisms, urban planning, identity politics, conflict memorialization, tourism and biodiversity are among the topics covered here. This path-breaking volume will be of particular interest to students and scholars working in the fields of heritage, tourism, archaeology, Asian studies, geography, anthropology, development, sociology, and cultural and postcolonial studies.

Asian Ethnology, 2020

This special issue is structured around six case studies from China, India, Japan, and Malaysia, conducted by scholars from Asia, Europe, and America, with interdisciplinary training in folklore, anthropology, and ethnomusicol-ogy. We combine both top-down and bottom-up approaches to illuminate various discourses and practices surrounding the definition, listing, and safeguarding of intangible cultural heritage (ICH) within particular social, political , cultural, and economic contexts in Asia. The key themes that emerge across the six case studies include: (1) an Asian paradigm of the safeguarding of ICH; (2) listing, nationalism, and the reification process of ICH; (3) international , national, and local politics surrounding ICH; (4) the interplay of ICH, tourism, and economic development; and (5) ICH and communities in discourse and in practice. This special issue will contribute to a broader understanding of the intersection of global policies and on-the-ground practice in cultural transmission and heritage protection as well as vernacular perspectives and ideas of tradition and heritage within local communities in Asia.