From icons to institutions: Heritage conservation in Sydney

Over the course of the twentieth century, the Identification of heritage values in the urban environment has undergone a slow but in recent years quite dramatic shift from an elite emphasis on individual landmarks to a more inclusive appreciation also characterised by bureaucratisation, institutionalisation and commodification. Heritage is no longer an ‘add on’ to the planning system, although management, financial and philosophical problems remain. This paper traces the evolution of urban heritage consciousness and policy in Australia from the late colonial period to the postmodern era, focussing on Sydney.     

Routeing Heritage for Tourism: making heritage and cultural tourism networks for socio-economic development

Heritage routes and itineraries are mechanisms being used towards tourism needs and objectives. This paper defines these routes, reviews their context, and considers some examples in Europe. It looks at the 'why' and 'how' of heritage routes being established, and shows the inputs that tourism causes and needs. The particular dimensions to routes and what they bring and require are discussed. The associated demand of networks and networking is discussed and the potential beneficial aspects are described. The especial capacity of itineraries to bring about cross-boundary dialogue and interaction are highlighted and the wider potential of this feature for global society is alluded to. The need is suggested for more research into the use, outcomes and effects of routes.     

Cultural heritage management: a possible role for charters and principles in Asia

A number of countries now have charters or principles to underpin approaches to conserving and managing cultural heritage resources. Notably, there is growing interest in their adoption in the Asia‐Pacific region. Paralleling this is the development of university courses in heritage management and tourism in the region. Charters help to define the critical notion of significance which must try to embrace both the tangible and the intangible. Critical to the existence of charters and conventions is the process of establishing and assessing values. In Asia, integrity of heritage places and their continuing authenticity are fundamental concerns, particularly as the notion of heritage embraces traditions, and everyday places. This paper sets out to review current interest in cultural heritage and the various charters we use to assess significance and to offer comment on them with particular reference to heritage management in Asia.     

Cultural Tourism: Marketing Challenges and Opportunities for German Cultural Heritage

Because of the generally precarious state of public finance in Germany, at federal, state and community levels, expenditure for cultural purposes is being reduced constantly. Therefore, cultural institutions such as heritage sites are virtually compelled to find additional sources of funding to improve their financial situation and ensure their long‐term survival. One of the more suitable means of increasing the revenue situation on an ongoing basis is to improve and expand the cultural tourism offerings. Despite this significance of cultural tourism, an empirical study established that German heritage sites have by no means exploited the real potential of cultural tourism in a comprehensive manner. Thus, the objective of this paper is, on the basis of a well‐founded delineation of the concept and demand‐side situation, to demonstrate the potential success factors for developing cultural tourism and to do so from a marketing perspective.     

Footsteps and memories: interpreting an Australian urban landscape through thematic walking tours

This article is concerned with the currently common deployment, under the rubric of cultural planning, of place‐making and local cultural heritage awareness projects. Such exercises sometimes seek to accommodate the impacts of de‐industrialisation and urban transformation by identifying and marking places of contemporary and historical significance, and interpreting them and their broader connections to people and to place. The article critically reflects upon a project conducted by the authors that developed two interpretive heritage walks in a large, working‐class suburb in Australia. This interpretive exercise afforded a valuable opportunity to investigate the contours of the place‐making process and its determinants. By tracing the development of the walks and their accompanying interpretive brochures, the article identifies and discusses a number of emergent key issues relating to social class, gender and ethnicity. In particular, it considers the interpretive opportunities and constraints presented by contracted cultural heritage research and its applications.     

Caring for Country: History and Alchemy in the Making and Management of Indigenous Australian Land

This paper traces the history of ‘caring for country’ tropes in writing about indigenous Australian land and land management. While ‘caring for country’ initially referred to dynamic land use and ownership practices, it progressively became a less historical, more primordial, conception of indigenous land ownership, use, and management. In reviewing constructions of ‘land’ in scholarly literatures and policy debates, I seek to explain how they interact with local indigenous practices and idioms. Drawing on examples from the cultural and linguistic fields of A?angu, speakers of Pitjantjatjara and Yankunytjatjara, I examine a variety of concurrent uses of ‘country’, ‘caring’, or ‘nurturance’ and ‘caring for country’. A cross‐linguistic perspective on these objectifications – in English, Aboriginal English, and central Australian indigenous languages – shows how they may attend selectively to the historical specificity of indigenous experience. But this, I argue, may be the key to their efficacy in intercultural projects. Coded messages in bilingual documents reflect a kind of agency whereby A?angu choose to leave equivocal histories unstated and thereby reconstitute government projects in terms that work for them. The referential flexibility around idioms of land and nurturance is a kind of alchemy in language and social life that is the condition of the success of actual land management activities. Terms including ‘country’ and ‘caring for country’ elide the socio‐political dynamics that otherwise complicate actual rights and uses of land. That is why they can form the social basis of common activities, the production of ‘congeniality’ both within A?angu social life and at the interface with outsiders, in land management and other fields.     

The Broad Spectrum Revolution at 40: Resource diversity,intensification, and an alternative to optimal foraging explanations

More than 40 years ago Kent Flannery coined the term Broad Spectrum Revolution (BSR) in reference to a broadening of the subsistence base of Late Pleistocene hunter–gatherers in the Near East that preceded and helped pave the way for the domestication and plants and animals and the emergence of agriculture. Set within a demographic density model that projected differential rates of population growth and emigration in different resource zones of the Near East, Flannery’s BSR quickly became a global construct linking resource diversification and intensification to imbalances between population and environmental carrying capacity. In recent years the BSR has proven especially attractive to researchers working within an optimal foraging theory (OFT) framework in which diversification and intensification of subsistence only occurs within the context of resource depression, caused by either demographic pressure or environmental deterioration. This OFT perspective, that situates human societies in a one-way adaptive framework as they are forced to adapt to declining availability of optimal resources, however, is increasingly being called into question. Numerous examples of diversification and intensification are being documented in contexts of resource abundance shaped, in part, by deliberate human efforts at ecosystem engineering intended to promote resource productivity. An alternative approach, framed within a newer paradigm from evolutionary biology, niche construction theory (NCT), provides a more powerful explanatory framework for the BSR wherever it occurred.