Conserving Hong Kong’s Heritage: The Case of Queen’s Pier

The case of Queen’s Pier in Hong Kong provides the context for a discussion of conceptions of heritage, the purposes it serves and the dilemmas surrounding conservation in modern Asian societies committed to economic growth. Efforts to save the historic pier from destruction are recounted and the perspectives of those with an interest are examined. Built heritage is shown to have socio‐cultural, political and economic functions and its contribution to defining identity is especially important in times of change and uncertainty. Circumstances in Hong Kong reflect its unique history and current status, but the issues emerging from the analysis have a wider relevance. The fundamental tension between development and conservation is highlighted, together with the challenges of reconciling these two forces in a satisfactory manner.     

What’s in a name? A Geography of Heritage revisited

This article is a comment on: Tubridge et al., 2012. Decennial reflections on a ‘geography of heritage’ (2000). International Journal of Heritage Studies, DOI: 10.1080/13527258.2012.695038     

‘Heritage talks. Heritage calls’: some instances of the canonisation policy of John Paul II in Italy

During his long pontificate, John Paul II pursued a wide and carefully articulated policy of canonisations whose aim was to underwrite his magisterium by presenting hagiographical models that would convey well-defined pastoral teaching and contain both ecclesiastical and ecclesiological messages for the faithful. The high number of Italians declared blessed and/or made saints analysed in the present article is proof of the special interest the Pope showed in Italy and specifically in the sanctity of the country. The high concentration of beatifications and canonisations of hagiographical figures from Italy can be explained only in part by the canonical system, which regulates the process of canonisation and which makes it easier to open and support a cause, above all from a financial point of view, if the pressure group behind the candidate for sainthood is located near the Vatican. More precisely, what emerges is both the attempt to create a specific public image of Italy as a nation which has been a historic stronghold of Catholicism and is still capable of reacting to secularisation, and the objective of laying down more effective guidelines and robust directives for civil society. In other words, by proposing Italian hagiographical models, John Paul II was striving to mould Italy's national identity in a Christian form, conferring on the country the role of model for other European states.     

Villagers’ agency in the Intangible Cultural Heritage designation of a Korean village ritual

This paper examines how the villagers of Pams?m village in Seoul acted as agents in configuring their own cultural identity which explores issues concerning Korea’s Intangible Cultural Heritage (ICH) designation system. It delves in detail how villagers practice their ritual of Pams?m Pugundang kut ? amidst the complex process of continuity and change as a way of sustaining and promoting collective village identity. By examining the implications of this cultural practices in contemporary society, this paper ultimately raises the question of who constitutes the true legatee of traditional culture of Pams?m village. The cultural practice of the Pams?m Pugundang kut carried out by the villagers of Pams?m can be interpreted not merely as a critique of the dynamics of political and cultural heritage, but the reconstruction of villager’s identity through the creation and continuation of their long village history. This study provides a useful case in examining a village community which describes in detail how the subject of this study constructs their cultural identity and faces the complex issues concerning Korea’s ICH designation system.     

Archaeological Heritage in Guatemala: Indigenous Perspectives on the Ruins of Iximche’

In Guatemala local perspectives on heritage often remain unheard. In this paper a case study is presented to show the complex relationship between the highland site of Iximche’ and Tecpán, an Indigenous community nearby. Although Iximche’ is of little importance to the local economy, its significance is derived from its role as a field for different kinds of social and religious interactions. Traces of a spiritual relationship to this place can be dated back to the colonial period and today Maya from all over Guatemala go there to perform ceremonies. The place has also become a focal point of identity constructions for locals, Pan Mayan activists and the nation itself. The ruins of Iximche’ play an important role in the construction of collective memory which also includes ideas coming from external players such as Christian churches, the national government, Mayan activists, and archaeologists as well.     

‘PastPort’: Reflections on the Design of a Mobile App for Citizen Heritage in Port Melbourne

This article reports the authors’ design and evaluation of a web-based app called PastPort for the locality of Port Melbourne. Created through an interdisciplinary collaboration between architectural history, planning, cultural heritage and human–computer interaction, PastPort allows local citizens and history groups to post and share historic materials, and is designed to be used by residents and visitors in situ as a mobile guide. We reflect on our design of PastPort, together with evidence from a study of early users, to explore how digital heritage tools quickly become inscribed with historiographic tendencies for how the past might be constructed, communicated and experienced.     

The Hadrian’s Wall Major Study: a test for participatory planning in the management of a World Heritage Site

Abstract

Values-based systems of heritage management have developed hand-in-hand with the role of the stakeholder in successful management. It has become increasingly apparent that, just as in concurrent movements in Western governments to invigorate democratic society, success lies not just in consultation, but also in participation. The next stage, of participatory planning, has moved heritage management theory finally from government to governance. But does the ideal work? Vulnerabilities appeared in an established system of site management through participatory planning on Hadrian’s Wall, England, when it came under pressure from the attentions of two regional development agencies keen to find ways to make the Wall contribute better to the local economy. The economic, historical and institutional background to the resulting Major Study is examined, and the events of the consultation, publication and implementation of the report are followed and analysed, in order to draw out some broader lessons for the challenging task of managing such large and complex sites.     

Community,Connection and Conservation: Intangible Cultural Values in Natural Heritage—the Case of Shirakami‐sanchi World Heritage Area

Intangible cultural heritage, according to a UNESCO definition, is ‘the practices, representations, expressions as well as the knowledge and skills that communities, groups and in some cases individuals recognise as part of their cultural heritage’. Using a case study of Shirakami‐sanchi World Heritage Area, this paper illustrates how the local community's conservation commitment was formed through their long‐term everyday interactions with nature. Such connectivity is vital to maintaining the authentic integrity of a place that does not exclude humans. An examination of the formation of the community's conservation commitment for Shirakami reveals that it is the community's spiritual connection and place‐based identity that have supported conservation, leading to the World Heritage nomination, and it is argued that the recognition of such intangible cultural heritage is vital in conservation. The challenge, then, is how to communicate such spiritual heritage today. Forms of community involvement are discussed in an attempt to answer this question.     

Towards a Language of ‘Europe’: History,Rhetoric, Community

From Herder to Benedict Anderson, language and nation have been at the centre of ideas about (imagined) community. This hypothesis, however, poses a problem for analysing ideas about Europe. How can we understand “Europe” as a concept or form of identity when language and nationality are considered the foundation of imagined communities and loyalties? This article addresses this difficulty. It uses J. G. A. Pocock’s definition of “sub-languages” to suggest that one can investigate the rhetorical strategies, images and vocabularies with which texts articulate ideas about Europe. These sub-languages evoke imagined communities, most obviously when texts name and identify particular groups of people as “Europeans.” But by using images and rhetorics about Europe, these texts also appeal to a readership that comprehends—even if it does not fully accept—certain assumptions about the continent. In this way, texts evoke an imagined community of readers who purportedly share a similar way of understanding Europe, or who can perhaps be persuaded to think about it in similar terms. These processes are historically particular, and so the article concludes with concrete examples. It focuses on how early-nineteenth-century philhellenes evoked a European imagined community to solicit support for the Greek Revolution (1821–32).     

Rome’s Uncomfortable Heritage: Dealing with History in the Aftermath of WWII

Rome is a city famed for its outstanding cultural heritage stretching back two and a half thousand years. However, the events of the Second World War raise particular problems in dealing with this patrimony. This article examines the issues raises by the monuments built during the Fascist period and the Roman remains excavated by the Fascists. It also examines how commemoration throughout the city since 1945 reflects the changing attitudes to the war. The article argues that Rome has not yet come to terms with its Fascist past and that this constitutes a barrier to a sustainable heritage plan.     

Locating Home in a “Digital Age”: An Ethnographic Case Study of Second-Generation Iranian Americans in LA and their Use of Internet Media

This paper explores how children of Iranian immigrants engage with internet media in processes of identity formation. It conceptually centralizes places of home in order to bring together literatures on diaspora and digital media in order to understand the case of the second-generation immigrant home. It argues that this partially mediated home is both connected/mobile and emplaced/embodied. It is in this sense that the article discusses processes of locating home, in the sense of both a narrated discovery and a materially situated formation. The findings are generated from ethnographic fieldwork among second-generation Iranian Americans in Los Angeles carried out over a period of twelve months as part of an ongoing doctoral project with a focus on respondents' everyday practices of internet usage.     

Metropolitan Governance in Sydney: A Case of ‘Joint Decision-Making’

This article analyses metropolitan governance arrangements in contemporary Sydney. Debate about the efficacy of these arrangements typically degenerates into an argument about the pros and cons of institutional consolidation. The article moves beyond this dispute, drawing on the concept of ‘actor-centred institutionalism’ to argue that Sydney's urban sprawl, combined with its rigid institutional setting, has produced what can be described as a ‘joint decision system’ of governance. Effective metropolitan governance in Sydney mainly depends on the ability to reach negotiated agreements within this system. However, a rising level of conflict between the New South Wales State government and local councils located within metropolitan Sydney increases the likeliness of undesirable blockades within the joint decision system. The article concludes that a cautious exercise of new overriding powers by the State government is crucial to promoting more effective metropolitan governance in Sydney.     

Pioneer Living 1963 Style: Imaginations of Heritage in a Post‐war Canadian Suburb

This article connects the origins of a Canadian living history museum to the cultural and social developments of 1960s suburban Canada. Although there exists a strong literature on heritage and commemoration in Canada (and around the world), few scholars have looked explicitly at museums in that country. The literature on history museums elsewhere in the world is stronger. However, despite the strengths of this international literature, its focus has been on the use of museums in the present. An important aspect of the use of heritage, the historical contexts in which past museum visitors interpreted museum themes and displays, has not received much attention. This article argues that museum patrons of the 1960s, the decade in which many living history museums were founded, saw pioneer villages in the context of their own modernising lifestyles. However much Black Creek Pioneer Village might reflect anxiety about the direction of modernity, it also framed the past in ways that legitimated modern, suburban living.     

‘To Make a New Tongue’: Natural and Manufactured Language in the Late Fiction of William Morris

The paper considers William Morris's belief that modern language was ‘degraded’, and explores how his late fiction tried to resist this degradation. Morris was influenced by the romantic philology of the mid-Victorian period which depicted languages as living organisms. Philologists such as Max Müller claimed that modern civilization had arrested this growth, mechanizing language into conventional signs; and Morris adapted the idea into a critique of industrial capitalism. He conceptualized modern English as manufactured external forms, sundered from organic history. His late prose fictions trace the ‘natural’ meanings of words which he imagined feudalism and capitalism had suppressed. However, this narrative of organic origins existed in tension with Morris's socialist ideals, which sought an objective language above local or national perspectives. The older Morris was writing at a time when romantic philology was coming under attack from a new generation of scholars. These proto-linguists regarded meaning as conventional and narratives of organic ‘roots’ in the distant past as mere mythology. Morris's struggles to reconcile the contradictions in his philosophy of language reflect wider tensions in romantic philology. His imaginary worlds in which everyone spoke the same relied upon myths of original linguistic unity and stasis which new research and theories were undermining. Ironically, Morris's attempts to re-organicize English inadvertently demonstrated the conventionality and perspectivism of language, relying upon common cultural frames of reference.     

Heritage Management and Aboriginal Australians: Relations in a Global,Neoliberal Economy—A Contemporary Case Study from Victoria

Cultural Heritage Management in Victoria has bonded archaeologists and Aboriginal people to the logic of profitability. In this article, I argue that this approach to heritage neutralises and/or discourages any political or social interpretations relevant to aboriginal peoples, and undermines subsequent protest movements. I advocate that archaeology, as it is framed in Victoria, is participating in making the heritage ‘industry’ a profitable activity for Aboriginal communities, giving them an illusion of empowerment, ironically achieved through the destruction of their own non-renewable heritage. This process of commodification is consented to in exchange for financial compensation, presented as the key to emancipation. I intend here to demonstrate that this belief might in reality be detrimental to Aboriginal Australians.     

Malta’s Unintentional Consequences: Archaeological Heritage and the Politics of Exclusion in the Netherlands

Abstract

We argue that the apparently successful implementation of the European Malta Convention (1992) in the Netherlands resulted in a relatively closed archaeological policy system, which separates ordinary people from experts. As a result, citizens were increasingly excluded from the archaeological process. The process of closure and exclusion is made visible by investigating Dutch amateur archaeologists and their changing roles within Dutch archaeology. Amateur archaeologists are a group of semi-experts often deemed essential to the quality of research and policy regarding archaeological heritage. Their marginalization after Malta caused discussion and frustration, undermining public support for the initial policy goal of the Malta Convention: conservation of archaeological heritage. Our analysis draws on recent academic debates concerning the policy-practice nexus in processes of Europeanization. Reducing negative side effects and re-targeting policies for greater efficacy and democracy requires insight into the pathways of implementation.     

Archives and Heritage in Singapore: The Development of ‘Reflections at Bukit Chandu’, a World War II Interpretive Centre

On 15 February 2002 a new World War II interpretive centre was opened in Singapore. A colonial bungalow was redeveloped by the National Archives of Singapore to commemorate the Malay Regiment and particularly the officers and soldiers who made a heroic stand against Japanese forces in one of the last battles before the fall of Singapore. This centre, Reflections at Bukit Chandu, has significance in terms of local heritage development, public memory of war, national education initiatives, and also in relation to the changing role of archives in Singapore. This paper serves as an exploration of this heritage site and uses this as a starting point for considering public history in Singapore and importantly a new direction for the National Archives of Singapore, as it played the key role in developing this site.