An Unwanted Past: contemporary tourism and the heritage of communism in Romania

This paper considers how the legacy of communism and revolution has become the focus of interest among Western tourists in post-communist Bucharest. It argues that 'communist heritage' tourism - the consumption of key sights and sites associated with the Ceausescu regime and its overthrow - has emerged as a particular form of cultural or heritage tourism for special interest tourists. However, this is a heritage which is defined and constructed entirely outside Romania. Within Romania itself there is understandably little desire to remember the period of communist rule, and the legacy of this period is powerfully dissonant with the country's post-communist aspirations. Consequently, as a consideration of two case studies illustrates, there is no concern to interpret the legacy of communism for tourists; instead there is an attempt to deny or airbrush out this period of the country's history.     

Editorial: new moves in Britain

Melaka is represented in Malaysia's tourist and heritage industries as the place 'where it all began'. This article examines the meaning of this slogan in the context of the cultural policies of the Malaysian state in the 1970s and 1980s when constructions of the political and religious traditions of the pre-colonial feudal Melakan Sultanate were presented as emblematic of the modern nation. The images of the Sultanate, of colonial rule and of Malaysian nationalism in Melaka's museums are analysed.The emphasis on ethnic Malay heritage also indigenised that of other Melakan inhabitants, such as the Portuguese Eurasians or the Peranakan, and ignored that of the majority, later Chinese immigrants. Finally the article questions the future of these representations with the shift in Malaysian cultural representations in the 1990s to those of a modernising, multi-ethnic nation in which a feudal past plays a lesser role.     

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.     

Say What You Like: Dress,Identity and Heritage in Zanzibar

The paper considers the significance of dress to identity and power among women living on the island of Zanzibar. Drawing on her own preliminary fieldwork in Zanzibar (June 2004) and on the work of Laura Fair (2001 Fair, L. 2001. Pastimes & Politics: Culture, Community, and Identity in Post‐abolition Urban Zanzibar, 1890–1945, Oxford: James Currey.  [Google Scholar]), the author discusses the ways in which dress (in general), and the wearing of kanga fabrics in particular, offers women a means of communication in an image conscious and historically stratified society. It is argued that kangas are still an integral part of ritual and social activities in Zanzibar and that they shed light on the complex history of the Swahili coast. Placing the ethnography in a broader and contemporary context, the author states that kangas contribute to the intangible heritage of Zanzibar in their encapsulation of the island's oral history, art, social commentary and concepts of beauty. The author concludes by outlining some of the challenges that heritage regimes face in the Indian Ocean region and potential strategies for preserving or managing its mixed cultural resources.     

Examining the Olympics: heritage,identity and performance

A major aspect of Ireland's history is the continual problems of a sectarian nature, yet the issue of 'the troubles' gets scant consideration in the permanent exhibitions mounted in Northern Ireland's museums, and is only beginning to emerge in more temporary exhibitions and statements about museums. In addition, the belief that cultural heritage plays a significant part in conflict resolution in Northern Ireland has long been expressed in statements on education policy and local government programmes. However, the concept of using museums for exploring this history for a positive outcome has not, despite the scale of the political problem, been a high-profile issue in Northern Ireland's museums nor has it had a great deal of academic attention. This paper is a contribution to this gap. It assesses the role that Northern Ireland's museums play in the current political context. It evaluates the reasons why, since their foundation, museums in Northern Ireland have largely chosen to avoid controversial issues in their displays. It considers how attitudes are changing and how museum professionals are tentatively beginning to engage with political issues and enter into dialogue on subjects such as cultural and political identities in Northern Ireland.     

Heritage,Identity and Tourism in Hong Kong

Once a part of the Chinese Empire, Hong Kong then became a British colony and changed its status again in 1997 to that of a Special Administrative Region of the People's Republic of China. The implications of this history for heritage and cultural identity are discussed with particular reference to their representation and promotion as tourist attractions. Hong Kong is seen to be using its unique heritage in a time of transition and uncertainty to assist in defining a distinct identity that is partly expressed through tourism. There are, however, certain potential conflicts of meaning and interpretation amongst the interested parties that have still to be resolved. The experience of Hong Kong provides an insight into the dynamics of the relationship between identity, heritage and tourism that are especially complex within the context of decolonisation.     

The Eco-museum: innovation that risks the future

Among the reasons for the development of the eco-museum concept, largely in France in the 1970s, was that of encouraging economic advance in areas which had suffered serious reverses of fortune. The paper examines the current position of some important early eco-museums, at Le Creusot (intended to assist development in a former industrial area) and two in the Cevennes (designed to stabilise the culture of a remote rural area). The relationship with the local people, one of the critical features of the eco-museum, may suffer severely as generational change occurs.The takeover of such developments by institutions for different purposes, or for the benefit of visitors rather than locals, can make them victims of their own success in stimulating economic growth, with the risk of consequent unintended shifts in society and economy.     

Tracing the Line of Europa: Migration,Genealogy, and the Power of Holy Origins in Ancient Greek Narrative Knowledge and Cultural Memory

This essay explores the place of the mythical heroine Europa in the narrative knowledge and cultural memory of ancient Greece and modern Europe. Early Greek sources make reference to several women named Europa, only one of whom is Agenor's (or Phoenix's) daughter abducted by Zeus who made her the member of a divine lineage. However, during the fifth-century BCE, the diverse “Europa” figures came to be identified with the Phoenician princess; and the foundations were laid for the abduction story to take on its modern notion as founding myth of Europe. This elevation to founding myth can, in part, be attributed to Europa's membership in a family of eponymous founders. From the Archaic through the Hellenistic periods, Europa's kin gradually grew as various myths were integrated with each other—myths, which shaped identities by creating memory through storytelling. Mythical family bonds came to be seen as biological facts and served both to consolidate local identities and to affirm a Panhellenic identity in times when inner and outer boundaries had to be negotiated as a consequence of migration, colonization, or warfare. The high degree of migration and the dense genealogical network in the narratives of Europa's kin allowed many different groups to lay claim to this narrative knowledge and in doing so, created new myths and cults, interpretations and evaluations of a family well-established in the Greek mind on account of its holy origins. Thus foundation myths surrounding Europa helped to define cultural and ethnic space shaped by migration and the dialectics of unity and plurality. As such, these myths remain relevant to Europe today.     

Mimetic Structuration: Or,Easy Steps to Building an Acceptable Identity1

Since their settlement two millennia ago the Comoro Islanders have been subjected to a diversity of external influences that have provoked significant and often radical social change. This article develops the concept of mimesis to explain how the Comoros have deal with these influences, incorporating and developing them to create cultural and social structures that may appear eclectic but which have equipped the islanders to negotiate these changes quite effectively. As a result of their mimetic praxis, Comorians confront and manage influences both internal and external with the minimum of social upheaval, maintaining a society that is both highly heterogeneous and remarkably enduring.     

“The Balkans’ Other within”: Imaginings of the West in the Republic of Macedonia

Using the case study of the Republic of Macedonia, I explore how people who live in a realm conventionally cast as insufficient of “the European Self” imagine “the West”. Such imaginings are important because they are intertwined with negotiations of nationhood and citizenship. I argue that in local constructions of the global social order, Macedonia emerges in an interstitial position between “the Balkans” and “the West” as “the Balkans’ Other Within”. Social actors craft this position out of Western hegemonic constructions of the Balkans as a socio‐political anomaly and portray “the Other within” (Macedonia) as the engulfed land of promise. The case study of Macedonia allows us to refine the concepts of “Balkanism” by underlining local perspectives on the promise that “the West” carries for the Balkans and “Orientalism” by emphasizing the possibilities that the construction of the Orient charts for the future advancement or demise of the Self.