Predicaments in the Management of Religious Heritage Buildings and Sites in Nigeria

Perhaps the most challenging heritage management issue since the beginning of the modern conservation movement relates to religious buildings and sites. This paper investigates approaches to the management of religious heritage buildings and sites in Osogbo, a multireligious Nigerian city, through the perspectives of various stakeholders. These stakeholders include the State, and its role in formal legislation and enforcement, the religious authorities as heritage owners and decision-makers, local communities’ understanding of heritage, and expert opinions about the properties. Drawing on physical observations, ethnographic assessment methods and secondary literature, the paper demonstrates how decisions taken by political leaders to construct a secularised national heritage have shaped the community’s cultural heritage perceptions, alienated from religious connotations. This selective use of the past gave heritage owners a free hand in decision-making about conservation, without taking into consideration historic and architectural/artistic values. It has also rendered expert judgment marginal.     

Book Reviews

While recognised for advancing historical scholarship on collecting in the colonial Netherlands East Indies, the Netherlands-Indonesia Shared Cultural Heritage Project of 2003–2006 merits analysis in its own right as a ‘heritage process’. From the perspective of heritage studies theory, this article demonstrates how the project both illustrates and contradicts several influential conceptions of heritage. It also reveals that such heritage negotiations can benefit states dealing with the legacy of the colonial past in European museums, when they forgo competition in the interest of a workable consensus. However, the project also offers counterpoints and paradoxes connected to remembering and forgetting, between its orientation to the present and to the past, and in its relationship to the tangible and intangible heritage of Dutch colonialism.     

Heritage erasure and heritage transformation: how heritage is created by destruction in Bahrain

This article suggests that heritage erasure is also heritage transformation. The article is an analysis of alternative contemporary heritage processes in the Arab Gulf state Bahrain. I use three cases to illustrate the diversity of what heritage means in Bahrain and how heritage is transformed through erasure. First, I discuss the vast burial mound fields of ancient Dilmun, which in the process of their destruction due to modern development have been appropriated as some of the most significant national heritage of the Bahrain state. Secondly, I point to a heritage allegedly neglected by the state, the religious shrines of the Shia community, which to this group signify an alternative heritage and history of the islands. Finally, I discuss a potential heritage of the future, based on the recent destruction by Bahraini authorities of the Pearl Monument, which was the centre of the 2011 uprising in Bahrain as part of the so-called Arab Spring. Besides their political differences, the three cases are three different modes of engaging the past, either as past preserved, as a living past in the present or as a past that will change the future.     

Preservation between empire,nation and nationalisms: the problem of history and heritage in India

This article looks at the problematic questions of heritage and history in a postcolonial nation‐state such as India. It looks at the colonial past of the preservation of historical buildings and relates this to the postcolonial history of the use of heritage and history for both nation‐building and also to assert the claims and counterclaims of postcolonial identity politics. The article shows how the state and its bureaucracy historically acquired the right to be the custodian of culture, history and heritage, and it also argues that the state nevertheless was and remains circumscribed by subnational and communitarian claims to heritage and the past.     

Networked practices of intangible urban heritage: the changing public role of Dutch heritage professionals

This study examines the changing roles of heritage professionals by focusing on the participatory practices of intangible urban heritage. Developments towards democratisation in the heritage sector led to a growing expectation that heritage professionals would work with local publics. This democratisation is manifested in (1) the use of digital media for grassroots heritage practices, (2) the broader scope of what is defined as heritage, and (3) a focus on communities in UNESCO’s Convention for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage. Heritage professionals are thus challenged to develop inclusive heritage practices, particularly in cities, which are characterised by a dynamic nature and cultural diversity. In this article, I analyse how urban heritage organisations and professionals have responded to these developments. Drawing on interviews and a qualitative content analysis of these organisations’ policy documents, I examine the ways in which heritage professionals reconsider their public role through what I define as networked practices of intangible heritage. This concept captures the networked structure in which heritage professionals increasingly work, and also demonstrates how heritage is given meaning through public practices that take place in both the physical and virtual realms of contemporary cities.     

A vernacular way of “safeguarding” intangible heritage: the fall and rise of rituals in Gouliang Miao village

This paper documents a vernacular method of interpreting and safeguarding intangible heritage in an ethnic Miao village in China. Tracing the conflicting discourses of ritual in different stages of the past and the present, it shows how ritual practices were transformed by imperial Qing officials in the mid-nineteenth century, demonised and denounced as feudal superstition during the Cultural Revolution (1966–1976), exploited as cultural resources for ethnic tourism since the early twentieth century and involved in the evaluation system of intangible cultural heritage in the twenty-first century. Based on ethnographic materials collected in 2008 and 2009, this paper argues that it is the inherited vernacular narratives and ritual performances that are negotiating with the state’s constant effort of shaping the ritual through various discourses, constructing the meaning of inheritance and safeguarding the intangible heritage within the community.     

Reflecting on heritage and power: dynamics,strategies and appropriations in the Catalan Pyrenees and the French Alps

In this article we will explore the way in which different agents appropriate and use heritage to compete in specific power scenarios. We approach heritage discourses and practices as defining specific political arenas within which power relations are reconfigured. The protection of spaces and places as well as the processes of patrimonialisation that take place inside specific localities give rise to the emergence of new ways of exercising power. We will examine two ethnographic cases from South European mountain areas: the Parc National des Écrins in the French Alps and a Romanesque church in the Catalan Pyrenees. An analysis of both the protected area and the constructed heritage will enable us to focus on heritage as being produced, identified and valued within specific logics and value systems. We examine the dynamics that heritage and heritage policies produce in each context as well as the interest they promote. Heritage both organises different fields of forces and is appropriated by politicians, experts, and economic actors. We will discuss the entanglements, forces and dynamics that are activated and played out as a result of heritage processes in the larger process of contemporary political transformations.     

Transformations of cultural heritage in Melanesia: from kastam to kalsa

In this article, I look at the reverberations of the global discourse about heritage at the margins of the global system in the Pacific. To this end, I analyse the development of indigenous concepts of cultural heritage on Baluan Island, in Manus Province, Papua New Guinea. I discuss how over the past 50?years two different heritage concepts have developed on the island, which have been used to reflect upon and direct cultural and social change. Further I show how the genesis and transformation of this local discourse about heritage is driven by local concerns and politics, as well as national and international developments.     

Identifying heritage values in local communities

Preservation of cultural heritage is often carried out by voluntary workers in local communities, especially when the objects are not of major national interest, not listed, and not preserved by heritage authorities. The motivation for local preservation, and for spending time and money on objects belonging to the community, is not primarily to preserve cultural heritage objects for the future, but to establish and maintain common social institutions in the local society, institutions of vital importance to the local identity. The aim of this paper is to investigate how the local understanding of heritage relates to its official understanding in a Norwegian context. The paper will also examine to what degree the Norwegian heritage authorities have managed to implement the emphasis on local participation and the social dimensions of heritage, given strong articulation in later international conventions. Criteria for value assessment, as defined by national heritage authorities, do not seem to play a vital role in the local heritage field. The central authorities’ focus on professionalism, qualified management, and predefined criteria appears to meet limited resonance in local communities.     

Taboo and sensitive heritage: labour camps,burials and the role of activism in the Channel Islands

In this article we propose the concept of taboo heritage as a way to describe a legacy of war so sensitive that it never undergoes heritage creation. Attempts at creation, such as heritage listing, renovation or excavation, are blocked by local authorities. We also examine the transition from taboo heritage to sensitive heritage, the next step along the ‘heritage continuum’, which we propose can only occur through the combined efforts of the passage of time, the role of activists and official authorisation. We take as our case study two of the British Channel Islands of Jersey and Alderney, occupied by German forces from 1940 to 1945. Labour camps were built in both islands, where the dead were also buried locally. We explore how the existing legacy of these events is still taboo heritage in Alderney, but has achieved partial progress in the transition to sensitive heritage in Jersey.     

Heritage and ethnic identity: preserving Chinese cemeteries in the United States

This paper critically examines the role of ethnic community in the process of heritage management and preservation. Drawing on two heritage projects dedicated to historic Chinese American cemeteries – the nineteenth-century Chinese Memorial Shrine in Los Angeles, California and Concordia Chinese Cemetery located in El Paso, Texas – this study examines how heritage serves as a central referent in constructing a collective identity that gives continuity and political unity to an ethnic community. Heritage preservation, as a practice connecting the past and present, provides us with insight not only into the historic meanings attached to heritage, but also the contemporary values and ideologies of communities with regard to their efforts in interpreting the past. This paper highlights the relationship between identity politics and heritage, suggesting that heritage becomes a vital means of identity formation which helps articulate cultural traditions in the face of a dominant national culture that essentialises ethnic pasts.     

论遗产的价值

肇始于法国的遗产保护运动已有两百余年的历史,而遗产价值却一直是个近乎扑朔迷离的话题。与一般商品相比,遗产有何特殊的价值与使用价值,遗产价值如何衡量及其对对现代社会的意义都有待于思考。从某种意义上看,过去之于现在,是古为今用的过程,亦是遗产价值从神圣走向世俗的关键缘由。无论是遗产保护热、遗产研究热,还是遗产旅游热,都在判断、建构、计算与赋予这四个面相上论证着遗产的价值,进而揭示遗产价值表象下人类集团的精神实践活动。     

遗产学视角下的“遗产”讨论

遗产学或遗产旅游学的"遗产"名称来源于一般生活常规的"遗产"名称,实物形态为财产,两者之间既有相同及重迭的部分,又有不同的特征。遗产学或遗产旅游学并不仅仅着眼于其权属、经济价值和使用价值,而是着眼于遗产的历史、艺术、科学和审美等文化价值,关注遗产的保护和传承,从不同的视角和标准可对遗产作不同的分级和分类。遗产学专家的长期论证表明,"遗产"一词较为贴近遗产学或遗产旅游学学科的特点和研究的对象。     

Re-using ‘uncomfortable heritage’: the case of the 1933 building,Shanghai

This paper opens up a discussion over the processes of forgetting and remembering that occur in the adaptive reuse of quite commonplace buildings that, nevertheless, have been classified as ‘heritage’. For most buildings survival depends upon finding a new economic use once original use has ceased. At this point decisions are also made about what stories are carried forward from the building’s past. The principal case study discussed in this paper is the former Shanghai Municipal Abattoir, a modernist concrete sculpture now branded 1933 Shanghai. The paper delineates how a process of ‘strategic forgetting and selective remembrance’ has been undertaken, negotiating the bloody nature of the building’s past, in its reuse as an upscale commercial venue. Reuse is further considered within the wider frames of a 1920–1930s Shanghai urban branding ‘imaginary’ and as a ‘building of control and reform’ – a category of buildings developed from the eighteenth-century European Enlightenment-thinking. In reflecting upon this negotiation in the heritage making process with potentially difficult past events, we propose the category of ‘uncomfortable heritage’, as part of a wider spectrum of ‘dark heritage’, and conclude with a final reflection upon 1933 Shanghai as a heterotopic space.     

The heritage practices in a Chinese historic neighbourhood: the manifestation of traditional Feng Shui in Langzhong,China

By describing different voices, practices, and understandings centred on Langzhong’s Feng Shui, this research explores a vernacular way of manifesting, practicing and valuing the past. The analysis shows that as a living heritage, Feng Shui still exists in Langzhong in both a physical and social sense. The study of Feng Shui demonstrates how a non-western discourse of narrating the historic urban form could be deployed in Chinese heritage practice to interweave the past and present. Through this study, a vernacular way of practicing and conceptualising heritage is established. Moreover, it is argued that Feng Shui as a locally meaningful heritage, which has spiritually enriched the historic neighbourhood, should be cherished and utilised for contemporary heritage conservation and cultural construction in China.     

Endangerment-driven heritage volunteering: democratisation or ‘Changeless Change’

This article is the product of prolonged wrestling with the question of how heritage professionals and researchers can facilitate and sustain public agency in caring for heritage in the UK during austerity without exploiting volunteers or devaluing professionals. It offers critical perspectives on efforts made to democratise heritage in the UK by increasing public participation through a critique of neoliberalism and the rise of neoliberal approaches in the heritage sector. It argues that the adoption of neoliberal approaches, such as crowdsourcing, that profess to democratise yet reinforce existing power structures, is the inevitable result of insisting on protecting material culture from harm, despite the continuing accumulation of more ‘heritage’. Drawing on critical perspectives on participation from a number of disciplines, it is suggested that efforts to increase public participation in heritage cannot hope to avoid exploiting volunteers, devaluing professionals and marginalising traditionally underrepresented demographics unless they also let go of the perceived need to protect the materiality of the past. Drawing on Sarah May’s archaeology of contemporary tigers, this article argues that the application of endangerment narratives to heritage reinforces uncritical understandings of both heritage and volunteering that preclude heritage from fulfilling its potential function as a contemporary social process.     

Whose Heritage? Immigration and Place Narratives in Denmark

Questions of heritage, of ownership of discourses of past and present are important elements in present‐day struggles over identity and belonging, not least those related to immigration policy. None the less, the perspective of immigrant groups is often overlooked when decisions are taken concerning preservation of heritage sites. Since the late 1960s the area around Frederiksværk, Northern Zealand has become the home of large numbers of immigrants, notably from ex‐Yugoslavia, who were brought to Denmark to serve as rank and file in the then booming steel industry. In spite of their undeniable contribution to the development of the town, the cultural heritage of this relatively large immigrant population takes up very little space in the official branding of the town as a key site in the industrial history of Denmark. This article discusses the various place narratives in relation to immigrants in the case of Frederiksværk. We take as our point of departure the Danish notion of kulturmiljø (cultural milieu), which is more material than the notion of heritage. This discussion focuses on the ability of kulturmiljø to capture and incorporate the multiple and often contradictory cultural practices of different groups of actors and not the least to transgress the often rather static and confined view on local history, which often results from the heritage perspective. We analyze how different actors, notably the Yugoslavs, are represented in the narratives of the town, and how Yugoslav immigrants themselves perceive their position in Frederiksværk. Furthermore, we attempt to register some of the imprints made by immigrants on the material and cultural fabric, possibly useful to include in a kulturmiljø of Frederiksværk. The conclusion assesses the potentials and limitations of the kulturmiljø approach with regard to making visible the place narratives of immigrants.     

Linking Heritage Preservation and Community Development: An Assessment of Grassroots Heritage Based Projects as Vehicles for Socio-Economic Development and Sustainable Heritage Preservation in Zimbabwe

This paper engages the practical aspects of linking heritage, in particular, archaeological heritage, with both individual and community economic development. In recent years, there has been growing realisation that culture, inclusive of cultural heritage, can be both a driver and an enabler of economic development, especially in developing countries. However, few documented examples demonstrate the validity of such arguments. The paper explores some practical examples of how, at the grassroots level, individuals and communities are attempting to exploit archaeological heritage sites as well as other cultural and natural heritage resources for income generation in Zimbabwe. The major thrust of the paper is to assess the manner of use and the viability of such ventures. Since the ability of archaeological heritage to generate revenue and support people around the sites has a direct effect on long-term survival of such heritage, ultimately, the paper contributes to the discourse on linking heritage and economic development as well as the theme of sustainable heritage preservation.     

Heritage destruction in context: the case of the Roman mosaics from Zeugma,Turkey

Needs for protecting cultural manifestations marked as ‘heritage’ are often claimed when they are at the risk of destruction or when they are being destructed. Considering destruction as opposed to protection, groups concerned with heritage, such as the state agencies, archaeologists, and the locals, tend to emphasise the value of heritage. Focusing on the case of the Roman mosaics discovered in Zeugma, southeast Turkey, this paper explores the ways in which the destruction of heritage is perceived and understood, and what aspect of destruction is emphasised to claim its significance for heritage. Analysing in what way destruction of the Zeugma mosaics is problematised, this paper also considers the political aspects of presenting the destruction of heritage, in particular, in campaigns for heritage preservation. Through this, the paper examines how stories of destruction work to produce and enhance the distinction between protection and destruction, and suggests how the fragmentary or ruined state of heritage objects can be alluring.     

Caught between nationalism and internationalism: replicating histories of Antarctica in Hobart

In December 2013, a replica of ‘Mawson’s Hut’ (a historic structure in Antarctica) joined a growing list of polar tourist attractions in the Australian city of Hobart, Tasmania. Initially promoted as the city’s ‘latest tourist hotspot,’ the ‘replica museum’ quickly took its place in Hobart’s newly redeveloped waterfront, reinforcing the city’s identity as an ‘Antarctic Gateway’. The hut forms part of a heritage cluster, an urban assemblage that weaves together the local and national, the past and present, the familiar and remote. In this article, we examine the replica hut in relation to the complex temporal and spatial relations that give it meaning, and to which it gives meaning. Our focus is the hut as a point of convergence between memory, material culture and the histories – and possible futures – of nationalism and internationalism. We argue that the replica hut, as a key site of Hobart’s Antarctic heritage tourism industry, reproduces and prioritises domestic readings of exploration and colonisation over a reading of Antarctic engagement as a transnational endeavour. However, like other ‘gateway city’ heritage sites, it has the potential for aligning with a larger trend in international heritage conservation and heritage diplomacy, that of prioritising narratives of the past that weave together transnational connections and associations.