Authenticity and heritage conservation: seeking common complexities beyond the ‘Eastern’ and ‘Western’ dichotomy

ABSTRACT

This article challenges the claimed gulf between ‘Eastern’ and ‘Western’ concepts and approaches to heritage conservation through an analysis of the common complexities surrounding authenticity. The past few decades have witnessed an important critique of ‘Eurocentric’ notions of heritage conservation, drawing on ‘non-Western’, particularly Asian, contexts. Authenticity has been a core principle and defining element in this development. Endorsed by a series of charters and documents, a relativistic approach emphasising the cultural specificity of authenticity has been introduced alongside the European-originated materialist approach in international policy and conservation philosophy. However, the promotion of Asian difference has also contributed to an increasingly entrenched and unproductive dichotomy between ‘Eastern’ and ‘Western’ approaches to heritage. This article reveals common complexities surrounding authenticity in two countries crosscutting this dualism – China and Scotland. Drawing on a number of ethnographic projects, our analysis identifies themes that characterise the experience of authenticity across different cultural contexts. It contributes to a more nuanced understanding of the evolving relationships between heritage conservation and contemporary societies with important implications for global heritage discourses and collaborative ventures crosscutting ‘Eastern’ and ‘Western’ contexts.     

Merchant identities,trading nodes,and globalization: Introduction to the Special Issue

ABSTRACT

The contributors to this Special Issue are concerned by the nature of transregional Asian interactions taking place in the field of commerce. They explore this concern through an examination of the experiences, activities, and histories of commodity traders whose life trajectories criss-cross Asia. The articles share a common geographic point of reference: Yiwu – an officially designated ‘international trade city’ located in China’s eastern Zhejiang province. The introduction to the Special Issue analytically locates the individual papers in relationship to a long-standing body of work in anthropology and history on port cities and trading nodes. In so doing it suggests the importance of considering multiple historical processes to understanding Yiwu and its position in China and the world today, as well as, more generally, for the anthropology of ‘globalization from below’.     

Chinese Aid in the South Pacific: Linked to Resources?

Abstract

China’s emergence as a global development actor has implications for developing countries and “traditional” donor agencies. Its current provision of foreign aid and other forms of development assistance to developing countries throughout the world presents both opportunities and challenges for all actors. At the same time, China’s growing need for natural resources and its policy of securing access through state-led “resource diplomacy” are causing concern. While most scholars and commentators are focused on the “China in Africa” dimension, China’s engagement in the South Pacific region has also been growing rapidly over the past decade and offers some interesting and unique insights. This article examines the dynamics of China’s provision of foreign aid and its quest for natural resources in the South Pacific region, with comparative references to other regions. Drawing particularly upon interviews and site visits in Fiji and Papua New Guinea, it argues that although major commercial resource contracts do appear to be supported by Chinese Government assistance, resources deals are not explicitly part of Chinese foreign aid in the region.     

The new ‘Pacific Century’ and the rise of China: an international relations perspective

The re-emergence of the ‘Pacific Century’, or ‘Asia-Pacific Century’, discourse centred on the rise of Chinese power raises important questions in the discipline of international relations (IR). These questions relate to the conceptualisation of the Pacific Century discourse, its application to the contemporary empirical case, and its relationship and amenability to IR theories. In order to address these questions, the article subjects the concept of a ‘Pacific Century’ to critical analysis through the synergy of three pertinent ‘debates’. First, it creates a novel analytical framework to define and codify the parameters of the Pacific Century debate; a discourse that has until now remained diffuse and inchoate. Second, it engages with the present ‘great debate’ in IR between the traditional/rationalist and critical/reflectivist approaches, applying them in juxtaposition to the notion of a ‘new’ Pacific Century, led by China. Thirdly, then, the article speaks to the ‘rising China’ debate, which currently captivates commentators both in academic and policy-making circles. The article explores how the ‘Pacific Century’ concept is a compound of both ideational and material factors: it is at once both a political/ideological project and a reified intellectual frame of reference. Through this multidimensional analysis, the article aims to shape the re-emerging debate on the Pacific Century, affirm the enduring value of the term, and demonstrate the efficacy of IR theories in deconstructing conceptual problems.     

The Turtle Garden: Tan Kah Kee’s last spiritual world

Abstract

This paper explores the role of diasporic subjects in China’s heritage-making through a case study of the Turtle Garden built by Tan Kah Kee in Xiamen, China. Tan is the first person with Overseas Chinese background who built museums in the P.R. China and has been regarded as a symbol of Overseas Chinese patriotism. This paper argues that the Turtle Garden, conceptualised as a postcolonial ‘carnivalesque’ space, is more than a civic museum for public education. It reflects the owner’s highly complex and sometimes conflicting museum outlook embedded in his life experience as a migrant, his encounter with (British) colonialism in Malaya, and integrated with his desire and despair about the Chinese Communist Party’s nation-building project in the 1950s. Rather than a sign of devotion to the socialist motherland as simplistically depicted in China’s discourse, the garden symbolises Tan’s last ‘spiritual world’ where he simultaneously engaged with soul-searching as a returned Overseas Chinese and alternative diasporic imagining of Chinese identities and nation. It brings to light the value of heritage-making outside centralised heritage discourses, and offers an invaluable analytical lens to disentangle the contested and ever shifting relationship between diasporic subjects, cultural heritage and nation-(re)building in the Chinese context and beyond.     

Hierarchies of trade in Yiwu and Dushanbe: The case of an Uzbek merchant family from Tajikistan

ABSTRACT

This article focuses on the trading trajectory of an Uzbek family of merchants from Tajikistan. This family runs businesses in both Tajikistan’s capital, Dushanbe, and China’s famous international trading city: Yiwu. The analysis is centred on the accounts placed by Tajikistan’s Uzbek merchants about their historically sustained experience, often across several generations, in trading activities. These merchants’ claims of belonging to a ‘historical’ trading community rather than being ‘newcomers’ to long-distance commerce are articulated in relation to notions of ‘hierarchies of trade’ as they evolve in a twofold relational model linking Yiwu’s Changchun neighbourhood and Dushanbe. I suggest that the forms of conviviality enacted in Yiwu’s Changchun neighbourhood need to be understood in terms of the historical, multinational and transregional contacts that have occurred within the spaces of the former Soviet Union, as well as along the China-Russia and China-Central Asian borders. Equally, the hierarchies of trade of Uzbek merchants from Tajikistan in Yiwu’s Changchun neighbourhood cut-across markers of identity that juxtapose the roles of Tajik and Uzbek communities in Tajikistan’s contemporary politics and economics.     

The south pacific ‘experiment’: Reflections on the origins of regional identity

Abstract

When colonial administrators decided to encourage a sense of unity among the members of the emergent élite of their Pacific Island territories in the late 1940s, they regarded their project as novel. Rather than a sense of tapping a pre‐existing affinity, it seemed that what was being attempted was social engineering on a grand scale. The first South Pacific Conference of Pacific Island representatives held at Nasinu, Fiji, in April‐May 1950, was seen by European officials and observers as an ‘experiment’.

The attempt to forge a sense of regional unity was seen as pushing against the perceived gulf between Melanesian and Polynesian cultures and as expecting too much in the way of conference skills from ‘undeveloped’ societies. But the ‘experiment’ was considered necessary for other important post‐war goals. Although the Nasinu conference is to be seen broadly as an experiment in the promotion of trusteeship, or ‘native welfare’, principles, there was by no means agreement on its ultimate purposes. For some it offered the best (if risky) chance of minimising United Nations interference in the continuation of colonial control, for others a way of ensuring the demise of empire by serving the needs of self‐determination. Finally, the promotion of a sense of region among Pacific Islanders was seen by some as part of an experiment in keeping the region from Communist influence.     

Pacific Studies in China: Policies,Structure and Research

ABSTRACT

The expansion of Chinese influence in the Pacific has aroused growing attention from academics and policymakers. Although China has established six main Pacific research centres, there has been little investigation into what motivates this increasing interest. Building on the author's recent interviews with 39 Chinese mainstream scholars on the subject of Pacific Studies, this paper aims to fill this gap by providing an in-depth analysis of Pacific Studies in China, especially how centres are structured and what motivated their establishment. It is argued that the initiation, structure and scholarly focus of academic research on the Pacific in China has been largely driven by government policies, but also that government interest has fluctuated under President Xi Jinping. Government policy dependence is a double-edged sword that both promotes and hinders Pacific scholarship.     

Hamashita Takeshi's research on regional Chinese history

ABSTRACT

Challenges to the historical rise of “Western-centrism” in non-Western countries are surfacing: the Japanese scholar Hamashita Takeshi, who supports a “regional concept of China,” is one of the strongest voices in this movement. Hamashita suggests that the theories of the “Asian economic circle” and the “tributary system” can be combined to form a theory of a “regional Asia,” thus reconstructing the perspective of research on Chinese and Asian history. The regional Asia model is a composite of the network model, maritime model, and the regional model. Based on the regional concept of China, Chinese history can be studied from various perspectives, such as China as a network, maritime China, and regional China; one can thus develop a long-term view on Chinese, Asian and global history from a spatial perspective, a peripheral perspective, and an Asian perspective.     

Kamapim gutpela man: Papua New Guinean and Chinese refinery workers' changing understandings of becoming a good man

This article adds to research on emerging masculinities in the Pacific by analysing how Papua New Guinean and Chinese male employees' intercultural work experiences impact their perceptions of becoming a good man. The idea of a good man acts as a benchmark for assessing the adaptability of Papua New Guinean employees to new work environments and determining if Chinese colleagues are their desired partners. I illustrate this point by first considering ‘becoming’ as an alternate framework to the binary framework reflected in earlier research. I next describe how Papua New Guinean workers impress their Chinese supervisors through negotiations and concessions about industrial and subsistence farming time, as well as how working with Papua New Guinean workers alters Chinese employees' perceptions of work. Finally, I demonstrate how employment practices foster Papua New Guinean workers' evolving perspectives on becoming a gutpela man (‘good man’) and Chinese employees' evolving perspectives on becoming a good person, a vital route to becoming a chenggong man (‘successful man’). This article proposes characterizing emerging masculinities as hybrid identities that are context-dependent, interculturally exchanged and temporal by presenting two parties' new thoughts on becoming a good man. This article demonstrates modulatory power dynamics in the Chinese refinery based on a two-way narrative as opposed to portraying Chinese management as the dominating force.     

The Capture and Curation of the Cannibal ‘Vendovi’: Reality and Representation of a Pacific Frontier

ABSTRACT

The United States Exploring Expedition into the Pacific launched in 1838 was marked, like the continental expansion westward, by violent encounters with Native peoples. By examining the record of the expedition's kidnapping of the Fijian Ro Veidovi, the fate of his body after death, and the ways his story came to be invoked in the official narrative of the expedition, the popular press, the ‘National Gallery’ and, more recently, the Fijian press, this paper demonstrates how violent contacts on the Pacific frontier were remembered, effaced, and reconceived. The changing story of Ro Veidovi permanently bridged distant locales in an emerging ‘Pacific World’, setting in motion transcultural negotiations that continue to this day.     

Politics or profits along the “Silk Road”: what drives Chinese farms in Tajikistan and helps them thrive?

Abstract

China’s influence in neighboring Central Asian states is growing at a fast pace. Since the launch of the One Belt, One Road (OBOR) initiative to accelerate China’s engagement in Central Asia and beyond, nearly all Chinese activity in this region has been gathered under OBOR. OBOR now seems to cover a plethora of spatially and temporally expanding state and privately driven projects. In this paper, I discuss large- and small-scale Chinese farm enterprises in Tajikistan, in which discussions around China’s “global land investments” and OBOR intersect. Beneath abstract conceptualizations of OBOR and the Chinese presence in Central Asia, my analysis shows that Chinese land investments in Tajikistan are shaped by Chinese dynamics of agrarian change and are contingent upon country-specific conditions. Rather than state-led endeavors as is often assumed, the main Chinese actors in Tajik agriculture are capitalist yet partially state-embedded enterprises driven by profit-oriented goals. Chinese farm enterprises tap into specific market demands that are either unanswered or underdeveloped in Tajikistan, or which have emerged due to the growing number of Chinese consumers in Tajikistan. The nature and drivers of Chinese land acquisitions in Tajikistan shed light on the various, sometimes competing, factors driving China’s broader foreign “land rush,” in Central Asia (and beyond).     

Aleppo in Asia: Mercantile networks between Syria,China and post-Soviet Eurasia since 1970

ABSTRACT

Indian Ocean and Mediterranean studies have highlighted the limitations imposed on our understanding of the dynamics of West Asia by the paradigm of area studies and the category of the ‘Middle East’. But less attention has been paid to how expansive perspectives that do not invoke an explicitly maritime geography might enrich our understanding of the region's formative connections. This article seeks to locate the modern city of Aleppo in a trans-regional Asian geography by tracing the shifting history of mercantile networks that connected Aleppo to other parts of Eurasia – notably, parts of the formerly Soviet world and the city of Yiwu in Southeast China. It highlights the importance of trans-regional flows of Soviet patronage, and then Chinese state subsidies and credit, in embedding Aleppo into these expansive circuits. It also argues that these flows have fostered the emergence of a hitherto-unstudied business class in Syria.     

Disseminating the policy narrative of ‘Heritage under threat’ in China

ABSTRACT

Originating from within the UNESCO, narratives on ‘heritage under threat’ tell the story of how and why intangible cultural heritage (ICH) practices are valuable, why are they disappearing, and how they can be protected from destruction. Focusing on PR China, this paper conducts a frame analysis to identify narratives on ‘heritage under threat’ as employed by the UNESCO, the Chinese party-state, and academics. The study argues that while policy narratives in any country undergo a process of congruence-building, circulation, and implementation, these processes take distinctive forms in authoritarian countries due to the states’ discursive and political monopoly: While non-state actors are involved, the state primarily steers the appropriation process. Nevertheless, once established, the policy narrative transforms across time and space, enabling local actors to use it to pursue their own interests.     

On Skin and Bone: Samoan Coconut Oil in Indigenous Practice

ABSTRACT

International promotional material on coconut oil commonly references its centuries of use as a beauty and health aid by Pacific Islanders. However, this gesture towards Indigenous Pacific use of coconut oil is rarely accompanied by substantive information. This paper explores the topical application of coconut oil in three Indigenous Samoan practices: fofō, or massage by taulāsea and other forms of customary healers or medical attendants; samaga, the anointing with coconut oil of the newly inked pe‘a or malu to mark the completion of these customary tattoos; and liutofaga, the ritual ‘washing’ of the bones of a deceased relative with coconut oil prior to reinterment. This paper argues that there are interrelated practical, medicinal, and spiritual dimensions to Samoan uses of coconut oil, and that these are usefully understood through reference to Samoan conceptions of sociospatial relationship, or vā.     

Establishing the Prehistoric Cultural Sequence for the Lopburi Region, Central Thailand

This study comprises the first archaeologically-defined chronological and cultural sequence for central Thailand. Based on collaborative research between the Thai–Italian Lopburi Regional Archaeological Project and the Thai–American Thailand Archaeometallurgy Project, the results of excavations at seven pre- and protohistoric sites that witnessed three millennia of local cultural development, from the early second millennium BC onward, are synthesized herein. This study fills a significant gap in Thailand’s prehistory, also identifying important cultural interactions ranging into southern China and Vietnam that led to the formation during the second millennium BC of a ‘Southeast Asian Interaction Sphere’. This interaction sphere, at the close of the second millennium BC, facilitated the transmission of the knowledge of copper-base metallurgy from southern China into Thailand, where it reached the communities of the Lopburi Region who took advantage of their ore-rich environment. At the end of the first millennium BC, strong South Asian contacts emerge in Southeast Asia. Among this study’s salient contributions is the characterization of these critical prehistoric antecedents, which culminated in a process of localization of exogenous elements, usually termed ‘Indianization’. The impact of this dynamic process was initially felt in central Thailand in the late first millennium BC, leading over time to the rise there, by the mid first millennium AD, of one of Southeast Asia’s first ‘state-like’ entities.     

Engaging China’s new foreign policy in the South Pacific

China’s declared foreign policy of ‘non-interference’ is contradicted by its actions in recent times. Beyond activities in the East and South China Seas, the involvement of China in negotiations on the Korean Peninsula, the evacuation of Chinese citizens from various crises, and the deployment of Chinese combat troops to peacekeeping missions in Africa have indicated China’s growing interests in the shape of world affairs, coinciding with a growing economic and military capacity to influence them. Much attention has been given to the potential consequences of great-power competition between the USA and China, but little focus has been given to the impact these trends may have in the outlying regions of Chinese foreign policy. One such place is Melanesia in the South Pacific—a subregion where a small influence from a Chinese perspective can have a significant impact on Pacific Island Countries. This article postulates that, over time, there is potential for the consequences of Chinese interests to lead to accidental friction, and suggests that this risk can be mitigated through increased cooperation.     

Applied Anthropology and Interwar Internationalism: Felix and Marie Keesing and the (White) Future of the ‘Native’ Pan-Pacific

ABSTRACT

This paper concerns transnational and international debate about the function of education as a progressive force in modernising colonial and race relations. It focuses on aspects of the published work and careers of New Zealanders Felix and Marie Keesing in the interwar and early post-war years in order to investigate the role these debates played in imagining new processes of adaptation and cohabitation in the settler/colonial Pacific. The paper argues that transnational networks were crucial to that project: as internationally recognised anthropologists, during the interwar years the Keesings were involved in the Institute of Pacific Relations and the Pan-Pacific Women's Association, operating out of Honolulu. Through these communities of expertise, the couple sought to promote and ultimately popularise the contemporary idea that ‘applied anthropology’ would be essential to modernising the norms of governance between ‘native peoples’ and Western citizen-subjects.     

From a Tahitian Point of View: Comment on Guillaume Alevêque, ‘Remnants of the “Wallis Maro ‘Ura” (Tahitian Feathered Girdle) History and Historiography’

ABSTRACT

This Comment offers a response to Guillaume Alevêque’s ‘Remnants of the “Wallis Maro ‘Ura”” (Tahitian Feathered Girdle): History and Historiography’, The Journal of Pacific History, 53:1 (2018). The response is from a specialist, Tahitian perspective. While Alevêque is applauded, the paper disputes many English terms applied to maro ‘ura, places maro ‘ura in a wide Polynesian context and insists on the enduring mystic and political power of maro ‘ura for the people of Tahiti. The Comment also discusses the materials used in the ‘remnants’ described by Alevêque.     

Producing multiple imaginations of the Silk Road in Xi’an,China’s urban development

ABSTRACT

This paper looks at how the Chinese government’s recent national project, ‘the Belt and Road Initiatives’ (the BRI), is played out at the local level in the context of cultural cities. Scholarship on the BRI focuses less on how the official narratives of the BRI have impacted the ongoing process of urbanization in China. This paper contextualizes the BRI by examining how both official and alternative imaginations of the Silk Road contribute to municipal-level urban plans that visualize the Silk Road in the urban built environment. Specifically, this paper suggests understanding the Silk Road in the local context, which entails a constellation of convergent and divergent interpretations by different actors involved in the official urban theming plans. These actors, both experts involved in the implementation process and members of marginalized ethnic communities, specify the vaguely defined ‘Silk Road’ in contexts that are within and beyond the original settings.