Heritage conservation in Alexandria,Egypt: managing tensions between ownership and legislation

This paper examines the realities facing the heritage conservation system in Egypt, with a special focus on the relationship between heritage conservation legislation and the ownership of listed buildings in Alexandria. The objective of this paper is to identify the reasons for owners’ objections to the heritage conservation law and their motivation to exclude their properties from the heritage list. The ways in which owners have made use of gaps found in the legislation to exclude their buildings from the list were also examined. Furthermore, channels of communication between heritage conservation authorities and landlords, the exclusion of owners in the decision-making process, the legal aspects of heritage legislation and the assessment of their success are explored.     

A history of conservation of built heritage sites of the Swahili Coast in Tanzania

The interaction between the Swahili Coast of the present-day Tanzanian coast and other parts of the Indian Ocean world dates back to the first millennium AD. This commercial communication resulted in the rise of several coastal city-states (stonebuilt towns), some of which date back to the tenth century. Unfortunately, some of these states started to collapse during the second half of the second millennium and the majority of them is in a ruinous state. These material remains, which according to the Tanzania’s Antiquities Act of 1964 deserve legal protection, have not been studied comprehensively mainly to establish their conservation history. The current article addresses this problem, and by analysing documents, it establishes the conservation history of monuments and historic buildings of the Swahili Coast in Tanzania. Research results indicate that some built heritage sites started decaying during the fourteenth century AD. Because of recognising the importance of these built heritage sites, communities of the region embarked on strategies to care these built heritage sites. This observation contradicts the European conventional wisdom maintaining that, in Africa, conservation of built heritage sites such as monuments and historic buildings began in the nineteenth century and was propagated by European colonialists.     

Rethinking the global heritage discourse – overcoming ‘East’ and ‘West’?

This article illustrates how Japan’s involvement in international heritage discourse, in particular since the Nara Conference in 1994, played an important role in the development of a global understanding of heritage and what it constitutes. It explores the way the Ise Shrine came to be represented as an iconic example of an ‘Eastern approach’ to heritage to become central in the paradigm shift within global heritage discourse towards acknowledging cultural diversity. In this article, however, I argue that the presentation and understanding of the Ise Shrine has perpetuated a number of misconceptions about an Eastern approach to heritage conservation. In particular, its presentation and interpretation as a cultural site devoid of its distinct religious and political significance, limits what can be learned from it. This article argues that without full recognition of the religious beliefs intimately embedded in the traditional social structures, practices and attitudes related to heritage sites, recognition of cultural diversity would remain limited.     

UNESCO World Heritage Site of Lenggong Valley,Malaysia: A Review of its Contemporary Heritage Management

This article reviews contemporary heritage management through a systematically coded content analysis at one of Malaysia’s UNESCO World Heritage Sites: the Archaeological Heritage of the Lenggong Valley (AHLV). It evaluates the competency of the preliminary Conservation Management Plan (CMP) of AHLV by looking at the accuracy of five distinctive dimensions of the CMP in conveying the information about the sites and management objectives: the legislation related to the heritage conservation and management; the action and implementation of the management strategies; the level of stakeholder’s participation; and, finally, how the CMP integrates local values and ideas into management planning. The results show that contemporary heritage management planning at Lenggong Valley tends to prioritize the conservation of the archaeological values of the sites over other values (i.e. social, historical, and aesthetic values), and that planning has largely been in the hands of governmental agencies with limited involvement from local communities in the decision-making process.     

Cultural tourism between local and transnational identities: Jewish heritage in Syracuse,Italy

Abstract

This article focuses on the management of heritage and cultural tourism related to the complex identity of minority groups, where different components tend to produce different visions and practices. It highlights the impacts of globalized transnational networks and influences on political, cultural and religious identities and affiliations over long distances. In fact, diverse views, approaches, perceptions and representations may lead to disagreement and conflicts even within apparently compact ethnic or religious communities. The issues related to dissonant heritage management strategies and the related authorized heritage discourse, in terms of unbalanced power relations and diverging narratives, are considered. The theme of Jewish heritage tourism (J.H.T) is analysed, with a focus on the case of Syracuse, Italy. This historically cosmopolitan and multicultural city specializes in cultural tourism and tends to develop niche products, including J.H.T, in order to strengthen and diversify its international cultural destination status. Different components of the Jewish world, as well as non-Jewish stakeholders, practice different approaches to heritage tourism. Actors, discourses and reasons behind Jewish culture management and promotion will be highlighted and the reactions, perceptions and suggestions by the various stakeholders and groups involved will be portrayed, with the aim of contributing to the discussion about the complexity of niche heritage tourism processes in a multi-ethnic site.     

Buddhist buildings in England: the construction of ‘under-represented’ faith heritage in a multicultural and post-Christian setting

Until recently the ‘heritage industry’ in England overlooked buildings of minority faith traditions. Little has been written about this ‘under-represented’ heritage. Drawing on data from the first national survey of Buddhist buildings in England, we examine the ways in which Buddhist heritage is beginning to be incorporated into the state-funded ‘heritage industry’ as well as how Buddhist communities in England construct heritage through these buildings. First, we draw upon spatial theory in the study of religion to examine three dimensions of minority faith buildings in England and what this tells us about the communities involved: ‘location’ (i.e. the geographical location of the buildings); ‘space’ (i.e. what the buildings are used for and their relationship to local, national and transnational scales); and ‘place’ (i.e. what types of buildings are selected by different communities and why). We then turn to theories of memory that have become popular within the study of religion as well as heritage studies. Religion understood as ‘a chain of memory’ plays an important role in heritage construction via faith buildings, and an analysis of faith buildings, their spatial dimensions and role in ‘memorywork’, helps us think through the dynamics of modern religious belief in a multicultural and post-Christian setting.     

从“原真性”实践反思中国遗产保护——以宏村为例

原真性是一个建构的概念,中国遗产保护在与国际接轨过程中,没有基于中国文化背景对其加以操作细化。本文通过宏村案例研究发现,在政府以"原真性"为指导思想的自上而下的遗产保护行动中,一直未能就原真性概念本身与社区自下而上的内生力量形成有效的社会互动和共同建构,这导致了原真性概念突出地表现出国际化、行政化、精英化的特征,本土声音特别是当地社区居民的话语权缺失,最终造成了文化遗产保护趋向于表面化、静态化、无机化、旅游化。因此,在遗产保护和管理中,要将原真性理解成一种建构性的标准,充分尊重居民所具有的权力,以确保原真性实践的有效性。     

生态旅游与世界遗产教育策略拟定之研究

世界遗产促进了旅游,旅游带来了发展.然而,不当的旅游行为也破坏和污染了遗产地独特的环境,对当地的资源构成了威胁,降低了遗产地的特色.因此实施可持续发展策略是世界遗产旅游的必需选择.世界遗产教育有助于促使人们保护世界遗产地生态系统的完整性、尊重当地社区的文化,并使当地居民积极分享社会和经济利益.本文将生态旅游作为世界遗产旅游的一种可持续发展方式,并将生态旅游计划制定的相关权益关系人,依照其影响力和重要性分群,根据每一个分群的特性,拟定生态旅游与世界遗产教育策略,让这些权益关系人了解世界遗产的相关知识和保护世界遗产的重要性,进而唤醒他们对于遗产保育的积极性,从而制定出最佳的生态旅游计划.     

Postcolonial cultural governance: a study of heritage management in post-1997 Hong Kong

This paper seeks to unpack the politics of heritage preservation in post-1997 Hong Kong. Referring to international frameworks on heritage preservation, it seeks to position Hong Kong’s cultural resource management on par with international discourses for the advancement of heritage governance. Debates surrounding heritage are indeed a part of the wider picture of Hong Kong’s cultural and identity politics and the Hong Kong-China relationship. By examining various contested cases of heritage conservation, and by linking those debates back to the government’s responses within the context of cultural governance, we suggest that heritage management has become a hot stove for cultural politics in post-colonial Hong Kong with deep repercussions in the political, social and economic spheres. The paper examines the rising social debates concerning the removal and conservation of built heritage, and the various government attempts to address these debates. It argues that the current heritage governance mechanism has failed to meet social needs and provide an articulated heritage policy. We propose that a coherent organisational structure is required to better accommodate diverse and contradictory views and discourses surrounding heritage and cultural governance and to tackle the various cultural challenges in postcolonial Hong Kong.     

World Heritage listing and changes of political values: a case study in West Lake Cultural Landscape in Hongzhou,China

World Heritage themes and frameworks, as well as the criteria for assessing the ‘outstanding universal values’ (OUV) of World Heritage sites, have been extensively criticised for being Eurocentric. Asia is a region of extraordinary levels of cultural, religious and ethnic diversity, which often comes into conflict with UNESCO understandings of heritage. Due to the influence of UNESCO, and the persuasiveness of the heritage discourses it authorises, Asian nations tend to utilise assessments and management ideologies that derive from a European viewpoint. This paper explores the changes in the political role of heritage during the process of World Heritage listing of a Chinese cultural heritage site, West Lake Cultural Landscape of Hangzhou. The study is based on three and a half months of fieldwork in Beijing, Shanghai and Hangzhou. Firstly, I examine how the government officials and experts formulated the nomination dossier, and explore their purposes in seeking World Heritage listing and their understanding of heritage. In addition, tensions between governments’ understanding of the values of the site and those of UNESCO and ICOMOS will be mapped. Secondly, I examine how the Chinese government used the World Heritage ‘brand’ and policies to construct national and local narratives during and after the World Heritage listing. In this paper, I argue that both national and local governments are quite cynical about the listing process, in that they not only recognise they are playing a game, but that the game is ‘played’ under Eurocentric rules and terms. They know some Chinese values do not fit into UNESCO’s conception of ‘outstanding universal value’ (OUV), and they have ‘edited out’ those Chinese values, which could not be explained to Western experts, and utilised the discourses of international policy and expertise. Ultimately, these values and ‘rules’ frame the management of the sites to some extent, as the Chinese government must not, in order to maintain the WH listing, deviate too much from the rules of the game.     

Empowerment,transformation and the construction of ‘urban heritage’ in post-colonial Hong Kong

In recent years, there have been many political and economic debates in Hong Kong, and heritage conservation has been used as a political and economic weapon by some members of the community. Based on participant observation and in-depth interviews, this paper analyses how buildings of a small street built in the 1950s were constructed as ‘heritage’, and how a community heritage discourse was used by a group of local residents (Kiefang), university students and professionals to object to the urban renewal project led by the Hong Kong government. In this context, heritage was used to obtain political rights and to express anger against the increasing gap between the rich and poor of Hong Kong. Though the immediate objectives of this group were not achieved, the protest process empowered a group of local residents, and has marked the commencement of a politicalized heritage conservation movement in post-colonial Hong Kong.     

Managing,Valuing, and Protecting Heritage Resources in the Twenty-First Century: Peatland Archaeology,the Ecosystem Services Framework,and the Kyoto Protocol

Abstract

This paper argues that the development of the Ecosystem Services framework, which has recently emerged as an internationally recognized framework for valuing ‘the ‘natural capital’ of ecosystems, presents a number of opportunities for heritage management and the archaeological record, arguing that the inclusion of archaeological and palaeoenvironmental ‘value’ within this framework presents an opportunity to incorporate heritage alongside a range of other critical ‘services’. It presents a short case study focusing on the problems facing the preservation of peatland archaeological sites and deposits in situ alongside developments within peatland conservation and restoration initiatives partly driven by the ability of healthy, functioning peatlands to sequester carbon and hence mitigate climate change. It is argued that this drive towards peatland re-wetting may bring both positive benefits and opportunities for heritage management but also presents a number of practical issues, which now require active engagement from the archaeological community.     

Competing discourses of built heritage: lay values in Irish conservation planning

Built heritage conservation has traditionally been shaped by professionals through an ‘authorised heritage discourse’, emphasising expert knowledge and skills, universal value, a hierarchy of significance, and protecting the authenticity of tangible assets. However, while the purpose of built heritage conservation is widely recognised to be broad, encompassing cultural, social and economic benefits, it takes place in the presence, and on behalf, of a wider public whose values and priorities may differ starkly from those of heritage power-players. Drawing on the perspectives of a range of built heritage actors in three small towns in Ireland, this paper contributes to these debates, exploring the competing values and priorities embedded within lay discourses of heritage. Based on critical discourse analysis of interviews with local actors, the paper identifies that collected memory and local place distinctiveness, contributing to a sense of local identity, are of central importance in how non-experts construct their understanding of built heritage. In the Irish context, this is particularly important in understanding social and cultural statutory categories of heritage interest. The paper concludes on the implications for policy and practice and, in particular, the need to more effectively take account of non-expert values and priorities in heritage and conservation decision-making.     

‘No more road to walk’: cultures of heritage and leprosariums in Singapore and Malaysia

This paper examines how the state, social activists and former sufferers of leprosy participate in an international heritage discourse and how they construct the history of leprosy in contemporary Singapore and Malaysia. This paper finds both dissonances but also convergences between these different interests. The emergence of such entangled narratives is taking place at a time when the leprosariums are threatened by redevelopment and while social activists are calling for their conservation as heritage sites. The paper finds that both the state and social activists, in different ways, have selectively appropriated the history of leprosy to fit an international heritage discourse. Meanwhile aspects of that history, which are deemed incompatible, are discarded to fall in between the cracks of the discourse. By contrast, the oral history accounts of the leprosariums’ residents, as a possible source for intangible and radical heritage, are ambivalent about the sites’ heritage values. They reveal that while many residents reject the heritage discourse that seeks to save their homes from demolition, others have created a unique culture of heritage that appropriates the international discourse, but also expresses their own needs and perspectives. Cultures of heritage are, however, themselves fluid and liable to change like the memories on which they are based.     

Archaeological Ethnography,Heritage Management,and Community Archaeology: A Pragmatic Approach from Crete

This article examines the introduction of archaeological ethnography as an approach to establish positioned research and bring context-specific and reflexive considerations into community archaeology projects. It considers recent critiques of heritage management in archaeology and the role of archaeologists as experts in it, contending that smaller and less prominent sites exist in different contexts and pose different problems than large-scale projects usually addressed in the literature. We describe how the ‘Three Peak Sanctuaries of Central Crete’ project, investigating prehistoric Minoan ritual sites, involves communities and stakeholders and what demands the latter pose on experts in the field. Archaeological work is always already implicated in local development projects which create and reproduce power hierarchies. It is therefore important that archaeologists maintain their critical distance from official heritage discourses, as they are materialized in development programmes, while at the same time engaging with local expectations and power struggles; they also have to critically address and position their own assumptions. We use examples from our community archaeology project to propose that these goals can be reached through archaeological ethnographic fieldwork that should precede any archaeological project to inform its methodological decisions, engage stakeholders, and collaboratively shape heritage management strategies.     

Community Engagement in Historical Site Protection: Lessons from the Elmina Castle Project in Ghana

Abstract

Engaging communities in the protection of heritage means that the communities living around the heritage sites are involved in the process of identifying issues that affect the conservation of these sites and can propose ways by which they can be addressed. In Ghana, the Elmina Castle project shows close collaboration between the communities living around these slave forts and castles, the legal custodians, and other stakeholders. This case study unpicks the process to show how the existing traditional systems were approached and involved. The result of this participatory collaboration is a strategic document which will be implemented to ensure proper protection of these sites in the wake of development and modernization.     

Book Reviews

Heritage is important for the social and cultural health of communities, whilst local stewardship of cultural heritage has the capacity to empower and recover cultural identity. This paper describes a recent project in Lakhnu – a small rural village in Uttar Pradesh, India – to restore a nineteenth century villa formerly used as the village school as an educational facility. In this discussion, we draw attention to the right of groups to manage their culture. The loss of cultural heritage is linked to a loss of identity. We argue that heritage projects have the capacity to empower communities to sustain their heritage and identity and provide useful places for social and material advancement through the concept of a shared ‘symbolic estate’. At Lakhnu, we plan to evoke grass-root conservation where local communities become the rightful stakeholders and decision-makers who are encouraged and facilitated in the realisation of their right to cultural heritage and to stimulate growth and build capacity for the community.     

文化遗产和旅游的可持续发展

旅游业给遗产保护与遗产地管理带来了机遇与挑战。旅游业对维护文化和自然遗产价值,对社会、当地群众及非物质文化遗产均有影响,也给当地遗产设施发展与保护带来机遇。联合国教科文组织始终致力于文化与自然遗产的保护与弘扬工作,开创有前瞻性的旅游业,承认文化多样性原则,强调旅游业在促进遗产保护等方面的有效作用。其创意城市网络主推的"善行旅游",严格遵循原真性与完整性的原则,通过对世界文化遗产、纪念碑、历史建筑、国家公园、博物馆等各类景区定期评估,提升公众关于新旅游产品及旅客稀少遗址的意识,提升参观者体验感受等多种行动,改善人群福利,保护自然和文化遗产,促进经济和社会发展,从而有利于文化遗产保护与旅游业可持续发展。     

Pilgrimage,devotional practices and the consumption of sacred places in ancient Egypt and contemporary Syria

Pilgrimages are often messy affairs, not only leaving all sorts of material detritus behind, but also in many cases severely damaging or even destroying the sites that are visited as part of journeys to a sacred place. As such, this immensely popular religious tradition constitutes a social practice that is deeply tied to the landscapes and places that are considered to be holy and thus principally worthy of preservation (at least by many definitions of heritage), but which also in many cases ultimately consumes them over time, sometimes in very direct ways that immediately affect their physical state. This paper explores the contemporary and historical dimensions of this paradox, and considers the wider implications of seemingly destructive uses of sacred space by investigating the social and religious significance of so-called ‘pilgrims’ gouges’ observable at numerous pilgrimage sites in the Eastern Mediterranean. It, thereby, sheds light on the connections between the religious experience of pilgrimage and the material consumption of sacred places by juxtaposing cases from contemporary Islamic Syria and ancient Egypt, providing a long-term perspective on the use and consumption of sacred places. Lastly, it discusses the potential ramifications of the gouges for current approaches to heritage management and conservation.     

Improving heritage impact assessment: an analytical critique of the ICOMOS guidelines

ABSTRACT

In 2011, ICOMOS published its Guidance on Heritage Impact Assessment for Cultural World Heritage Properties. By 2016, over 100 Heritage Impact Assessments (HIAs) had been requested by UNESCO. This paper provides an analytical critique of the HIA Guidelines focusing on their implicit assumptions. We argue that the assumptions in the HIA Guidelines derive from the ‘preservation’ discourse in heritage management, rather than from the ‘conservation’ or ‘heritage planning’ discourses. This is important because the discourse affects the way impacts and their severity are assessed within HIAs, thereby potentially affecting the conclusions reached. We also argue that this framing results in miscommunication and misunderstanding amongst the different stakeholders, about: (1) their perceptions of the nature of heritage value; (2) the perceived purpose of HIA; (3) the way impacts are assessed; and (4) the differing agendas of stakeholders. We recommend that HIA practitioners acknowledge the existence of the various discourses. This could make HIA a more effective heritage management tool. We also consider that for HIAs to be more robust that they be conducted by a multidisciplinary group and with a peer-review mechanism.