The social life of ruins: sites of memory and the politics of a Zimbabwean periphery

This article explores conflicts over a series of ruins located within Zimbabwe's flagship National Park. The relics have long been regarded as sacred places by local African communities evicted from their vicinity, and have come to be seen as their ethnic heritage. Local intellectuals' promotion of this heritage was an important aspect of a defensive mobilization of cultural difference on the part of a marginalized minority group. I explore both indigenous and colonial ideas about the ruins, the different social movements with which they have been associated and the changing social life they have given the stone relics. Although African and European ideas sometimes came into violent confrontation – as in the context of colonial era evictions – there were also mutual influences in emergent ideas about tribe, heritage and history. The article engages with Pierre Nora's notion of ‘sites of memory’, which has usefully drawn attention to the way in which ideas of the past are rooted and reproduced in representations of particular places. But it criticizes Nora's tendency to romanticize pre-modern ‘memory’, suppress narrative and depoliticize traditional connections with the past. Thus, the article highlights the historicity of traditional means of relating to the past, highlighting the often bitter and divisive politics of traditional ritual, myth, kinship, descent and ‘being first’. It also emphasizes the entanglement of modern and traditional ideas, inadequately captured by Nora's implied opposition between history and memory.     

Social sustainability of urban regeneration led by industrial land redevelopment in Taiwan

Abandoned industrial sites, usually contaminated by hazardous substances, create social injustice in the surrounding communities. Redevelopment of industrial land has brought prospects of sustainable development to the communities that live in and around them. This research is to identify the critical factors facilitating urban regeneration and particularly social sustainability in Kaohsiung, an industrial city of Taiwan which experienced deindustrialization in recent decades, resulting in several abandoned industrial sites and decay of the adjacent urban communities. Two different industrial land redevelopment projects were examined; (1) Jhongdou Wetland Park, which focuses on environmental sustainability, and (2) Pier-2 Art Centre, which focuses on economic sustainability. Measured by the social sustainability indicators developed by the Oxford Institute for Sustainable Development and through findings from a questionnaire survey of community members, this study found that the redevelopment project of the Pier-2 Art Centre has a higher level of social sustainability than the Jhongdou Wetland Park, performing better in six out of nine themes. Critical dimensions resulting in the better performance in social sustainability of the Pier-2 Art Centre included rental affordability, heritage conservation, community image, cultural activity, community association, public space, local organization and higher accessibility to facility.     

“After the Black Gold”: A View of Mining Heritage from Coalfield Areas in Britain

The concept of industrial heritage, specifically coalmining heritage, from a popular perspective, has not been addressed previously. The coalmining communities in a post-industrial society address it in terms of what has been lost, what needs to be retained, and what needs to be preserved to benefit future generations. While many official institutions have gathered written records, industrial equipment and artefacts, all of which are honoured in the former coalmining communities, their own understanding of heritage involves not only these physical remains but the “community spirit” and the ways in which it has enabled members of this large industrial group to interact in their localities and to relate to the wider society.     

Toward a Cultural Landscape Atlas: Representing all the Landscape as Cultural

Many government and non‐statutory registers utilise point datasets to represent cultural heritage places. An effect of this approach is to emphasise that cultural heritage comprises a series of spatially discrete material remains or ‘sites’, suggesting discrete locations which are somehow disconnected from their broader historical and landscape contexts. We advocate an alternative in which spatial representation of heritage is set within a cultural landscape framework, acknowledging that all parts of the landscape have inter‐connected cultural histories, associations and meanings resulting from long‐term and ongoing human–environmental interactions. Results from a collaborative cultural heritage research project undertaken at Culgoa National Park in Australia demonstrate the advantage of this approach. The mapping products produced by the work comprise an interactive electronic DVD Atlas and hard copy maps. Both focus on meeting the management needs of field‐based park staff.     

From folk history to empathy: contesting heritage values in Chinchero,Peru

In the small Peruvian, Quechua-speaking town of Chinchero, processes of heritagization of the Pre-Hispanic legacy encouraged by the State and supported by the tourist industry have been trying to create among the population an obligation of historical and emotional identification with their Inca ancestors. This operation has been mainly effected through the territorial transformation of the vernacular space of the Inca ruins into an archaeological site for tourism consumption. The operation has left out other histories grounded in grassroots events, like the struggle for the land against the abusive landowners that took place during colonial times. More than the distant history of the Incas, it is this kind of more recognisable and meaningful folk history what people remember the most and what largely constitutes the fabric of social memory in Chinchero. It is precisely folk history what forms the basis for local heritage values that, unlike what happens with the Inca remains, express intense affective ties with the physicality of other non-archaeological spaces. In light of these developments, the author explores how the people of Chinchero are contesting official versions of heritage and history by foregrounding the emotional power of their own heritage values.     

The paradox of ‘Incompiuto Siciliano Archaeological Park’ or how to mock heritage to make heritage

During the last 50 years, and due to the dilapidation of public funds, hundreds of unfinished public works have been erected Italy. In 2007, the group of artists Alterazioni Video declared these ruins a formal architectural style – ‘Incompiuto Siciliano’ – and, in doing so, their aim is to change the buildings’ dark side and turn it into something positive. One of the tangible outcomes within the artists’ proposal is the eventual creation of the ‘Incompiuto Siciliano Archaeological Park’ in Giarre, a Sicilian medium-sized village that has the highest density of unfinished public works in Italy. This article analyses how such a provocative project contains serious implications in terms of heritage. It is stated that, in order to forge a positivized ‘unfinished heritage’, Incompiuto Siciliano Archaeological Park builds bridges between aspects that, in principle, seem to be the opposite of each other. This opens the possibility of putting traditional heritage assumptions in question through the production of a critical heritage whose novelty lies in the constructive use of irony, sarcasm and double meaning.     

The Contested Landscapes of World Heritage on a Tourist Island: the case of Garajonay National Park,La Gomera

This paper considers the World Heritage Site of Garajonay National Park on the island of La Gomera (Canary Islands). It is based on a research project carried out during 1999-2000 that explored the circumstances surrounding its declaration as a National Park and inclusion into the World Heritage List, in conjunction with the consequences for local communities which ensued. The proximity of Garajonay National Park to a large concentration of mass coastal tourism constitutes a further source of potential conflict which may have a wider relevance to other sites of a similar and indeed diverse nature. This paper, therefore, examines the configurations of space and social relations occasioned by the processes of social change, conservation and tourism development in and adjacent to this protected forest. In doing so it elucidates the manner in which these processes are locally mediated in and through contested values over the meaning and purpose of nature conservation in this 'world heritage space'. It argues that a sense of the forest as a place of cultural belonging has been marginalised in favour of its intrinsic ecological value.     

‘Let’s find out’: the historian laureate and participatory heritage discovery

ABSTRACT

Developing modes of engagement in the construction of public heritage knowledge emphasize participatory media and active collaboration with citizens. The City of Edmonton created the first historian laureate position in Canada in 2010, and related programs are still rare. This article considers the interaction of narrative content with social and technological contexts of production, viewing the role of the historian laureate as amateur historian and professional storyteller. The historian laureate operates primarily in accessible contexts of leisure, mediated in part through digital technologies, and can respond relatively directly to community interests as a heritage coordinator rather than expert. Rather than representing oppositional or disruptive power to official heritage discourses, the project enables the production of ‘small heritages’ through a series of story episodes. These stories focus on events, people, places and artifacts that typically fall outside the meta-narratives and monuments of a city’s heritage landscape. The historian laureate, embodying or articulating local experience in ways amenable to leisure activity, demonstrates capacities to produce largely indeterminate, diverse and porous ideas of place and histories as part of a bottom-up social generation of knowledge.     

Public folklore dialogism and critical heritage studies

Abstract

Public folklore’s dialogic engagement with communities incorporates methodologies for sharing representational and interpretive authority, collaborative programme development, mutually constructed modes of presentation and stakeholder participation in policy-making. While recognising that heritage interventions inevitably involve power asymmetries, public folklore seeks to mitigate and diminish these imbalances as it develops approaches to enable communities to present their culture on their own terms. This paper explores dialogic public folklore practice through community self-documentation projects, folklife festivals, government folk arts funding programmes and a project promoting places of local cultural significance. It provides examples of the integration of multiple roles of public folklorists as scholars, administrators, producers of folklore presentations and government heritage officers. Public folklore praxis achieved through the integration of these roles is seen as a potential model for critical heritage studies praxis for scholars who are advisors and researchers in intangible cultural heritage (ICH) initiatives. Critical heritage scholars involved with ICH can learn from how public folklorists engage with communities and foster cultural self-determination. For public folklorists, collaboration and increased dialogue with critical heritage scholars could foster greater awareness of hegemonic discourses, reconceptualisation of the social base of ICH and recognition of the pitfalls of fostering economic development through heritage.     

Tourism global production networks and uneven social upgrading in Kenya and Uganda

This paper addresses how the growth of tourism global production networks (GPNs) based in Kenya and Uganda created uneven social upgrading outcomes for workers and communities. A tourism GPN and social upgrading framework follows a global political economy approach to analyzing tourism development and labor in diverse tourism geographies. Two tourism GPNs are investigated: Mombasa, Kenya, and Murchison Falls National Park, Uganda. Four main findings emerge: (1) governance relationships between tour operator and accommodation firms directly impacted social upgrading outcomes for hotel workers and indirectly for excursion workers; (2) excursion workers and community members had precarious connections to tourism GPNs; (3) public governance and collective power were key components to social upgrading while supporting its unevenness; and (4) societal embeddedness constructions around gender and regional space influenced worker and community social upgrading potential. Social upgrading is shaped by a confluence of firm, institution, geography, and labor conditions that differentially materializes in specific tourism GPN arrangements.     

THE ROLT MEMORIAL LECTURE 2011

Abstract

The Pawtucket Dam in Lowell is a key site in the interpretation of the city’s industrial heritage and a potent symbol of corporate determination to alter the natural environment for textile production and profit. It is both a certified National Landmark and the most dramatic feature of a National Park, the first one to be located in an American industrial city. Without a great dam at Pawtucket Falls, Lowell would never have become a renowned example of manufacturing prowess and attractive urban design. Every dam built across the Merrimack River since 1825 at that site has been controversial. They have blocked fish migrations, overflowed farmland, backed water into the wheelpits of upstream mills, halted log drives, and made floods more destructive. The existing Pawtucket Dam of 1847 and 1875 is now the focus of a heated debate between preservationists and a hydroelectric power company that wants to alter it.     

Memorial soliloquies in post-colonial Rhodes and the ghost of Mediterranean cosmopolitanism

This paper is based on a close reading of Greek and Rodesli (Rhodian Jewish) narratives focusing on the time when Rhodes was under Italian (1912–1943) and then German (1943–1945) rule, the last period when religiously diverse communities coexisted in the island. While Greek historiography seeks to vindicate the island’s final integration into the Greek national space, Rodesli memory is meant to preserve the heritage of a community destroyed by the Nazis. Notably, these corpuses make no references to one another. This phenomenon of soliloquy, the article argues, is illustrative of a competitive memory characteristic of recollections of the past in the eastern Mediterranean and challenges nostalgic invocations of a pre-national, “cosmopolitan” Mediterranean. Broadening the discussion to other post-Ottoman settings, the article draws attention to property redistribution in the aftermath of ethnic cleansing as a major factor in the separation of memory along communal lines. Noting the omnipresence of the figure of the “ghost” in the literature on the region, the paper finally explores the heuristic potential of hauntology to conceive histories of the region that would be inclusive and yet attentive to the differences in the nature, purpose and reciprocal indifference of the sources and of the asymmetrical relations of power in which they were produced.     

物联网在金沙国家考古遗址公园运用的思考

从物联网在文化遗产信息化建设的全局出发,立足于金沙国家考古遗址公园的个性特点和独特需求,描绘了物联网在金沙国家考古遗址公园可能实现的运用,包括内部信息管理系统、园区公共服务展示系统、网络信息传播和服务系统,并对物联网在文化遗产信息化建设中的必要性、长期性、重要性等方面进行了深入的思考。     

The Langkawi Global Geopark: local community’s perspectives on public education

The study reported in this paper represents one of the first attempts at exploring the perspectives of the local communities on the designation of Langkawi Island in Malaysia as a UNESCO Global Geopark. It is premised on the widely acknowledged assertion that the local communities constitute an important group of stakeholders in the planning and implementation of development activities. Hence, the communities living in the geopark areas in Langkawi are considered important stakeholders who play a crucial role in the development of heritage tourism in Langkawi Global Geopark. This paper examines their views on their appreciation of the geopark as heritage, the interpretation of their shared values, the benefits and opportunities afforded by the geopark, and the extent of their involvement in the implementation of geopark activities. The findings point to the need for more support for public education programmes, and awareness initiatives aimed not only at ensuring community engagement with the development of Langkawi Geopark but also at generating stewardship actions from the community.     

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.     

Historicizing the present: Brussels attacks and heritagization of spontaneous memorials

This research article traces the process of transition from spontaneous to ‘official’ memorialisation of the 2016 Brussels terrorist attack by questioning which factors trigger the heritagization process of spontaneous memorials and their contents. With a view to critically assess the significance of heritage values in relation to terrorism, this article scrutinises how these values are grasped, narrated and articulated by the local authorities, government and archival institutions in the preservation, conservation and heritagization of spontaneous memorials. There is an emphasis on the two facets of heritagization: how meanings attached to a memorial and its objects are created and expressed by the community of bereavement, and how the transformation of places, practices, objects into diverse forms of ‘heritage’ evolves. This article brings a new perspective on the heritagization of spontaneous memorials, seen as important in determining how a traumatic event such is a terrorist attack will settle in the collective memory on the long term, by becoming historicized.     

建构主义视角下工业遗产的功能置换和意义诠释——广州红专厂的案例研究

从建构主义的角度,研究广州红专厂的空间功能置换和游客感知,空间功能的置换具体表现为物质载体工业建筑和机器设备的外观改造及用途变化,而游客感知则通过分析游客对工业遗产空间的感知情况,探讨空间置换后产生和传达出的意义。通过比较这些意义与工业遗产价值的关系,可以更好的理解工业遗产空间的消费主义改造方式,也可以更好的理解创意产业空间所体现的当今社会对工业遗产的态度。研究发现,游客将红专厂理解为一个文化艺术和休闲消费的场所,而不是工业文明的记忆空间。红专厂工业空间的创意产业园式改造,传递出的已经不是工业文化的内涵,而是新的消费意义,实际上是工业文化向消费文化转变的过程。这种再利用方式与真正意义上的工业遗产保护是有所偏离的。     

Participation in the reuse of industrial heritage sites: the case of Oberschöneweide,Berlin

In recent years, the significance of the debate concerning the participation of local communities in the reuse and management of industrial heritage sites has grown considerably. However, the question of how participation takes place in practice has received little attention. This article shows how participation in the reuse of industrial heritage sites has functioned in the planning process in Berlin-Oberschöneweide. The article is theoretically grounded on debates on labour and community heritage. The field of planning, which is closely interwoven with that of heritage management, provides another important theoretical horizon. The qualitative investigation consisted of interviews with different actors. The findings show that Oberschöneweide’s industrial heritage site is important to the local community. Thus far, the community has been able to participate in the reuse and development process in a number of ways. In addition to the provisions made for community participation by the relevant authorities, and local initiatives have exerted an influence on the development of the area. Nevertheless, this participation has been limited and is in some respects problematic. Furthermore, the participation process referred not only to the industrial zone itself, but to the development of the district as a whole.     

Distancing and Rapproching: Local Communities and Monuments in the Aegean Sea — A Case Study from the Island of Naxos

Abstract

This paper argues that the distancing of the Greek public from its archaeological heritage and the omnipresence of superficial, touristic narratives is an issue not efficiently addressed by the relevant dialectics of cultural heritage management. In order to understand the roots and dynamics of this phenomenon, its theoretical and practical manifestations are approached, mainly in the context of the communities of the Aegean. Within this context and drawing from the author’s experience of working for the Greek non-profit organization of MONUMENTA on the island of Naxos, this paper examines the aims and methodologies of the programme ‘Local Communities and Monuments’; a public outreach programme with objectives to examine the bonds between local communities and the cultural heritage that surrounds them and raise awareness.     

Shadows on the landscape: an inquiry into the value of some Australian places

In 1922, Australian places connected with a solar eclipse were of world‐historical significance as they were associated with empirical confirmation of Einstein's general theory of relativity. They also formed a major part of Australian national consciousness, although they have since reverted to lost geographies. An exploration of Australian reception of eclipse science leads to questions of official heritage construction and stereotypical national identity. An argument is presented for the importance of intangible heritage at national, communal, and individual levels. At the complex intersection between memory and identity, place value is investigated within wider social‐political formations with emphasis on participation across perceived boundaries of social class, gender, and ethnicity, including the valuable role of Aboriginal peoples.