Engaging with the future of ‘critical heritage studies’: looking back in order to look forward

This article engages with the Association for Critical Heritage Studies Manifesto which argues that heritage studies is in need of a complete renovation. We do so by looking back to two earlier moments. The first when museum studies also called for a renovation, drawing on those experiences as potentially instructive for the immediate future of heritage studies. The second a debate within cultural studies on the value of engagement with the world outside of academia to achieve the discipline’s political aims. Thus, while agreeing with the questions posed by the Manifesto, we argue that rather than casting the terms of the debate in a way that positions the professional field as needing renovation from without, we might do better by fostering a more ‘organic’ sense of intellectual work, one that values engagement and collaboration rather than critique for its own sake. Our conclusion points to the importance of the teaching of heritage studies as a potential site for such a practice as well as more collaborative models of research practice.     

Clarifying the critical in critical heritage studies

This paper considers the term critical in the unfolding formulation of critical heritage studies. It argues for a shift in emphasis from the subject of our effort to the object of attention, in other words focusing primarily on the critical issues that face the world today, the larger issues that bear upon and extend outwards from heritage. To that end, the paper presents two key directions. It suggests much is to be gained from tackling the uneasy relationship that currently exists between social science and humanities-based approaches to heritage and the professional conservation sector oriented by a scientistic materialism. Second, there is a need for heritage studies to account for its relationship to today’s regional and global transformations by developing post-western understandings of culture, history and heritage and the socio-political forces that actualise them.     

Beyond Eurocentrism? Heritage conservation and the politics of difference

There is a long-standing debate concerning the suitability of European or ‘western’ approaches to the conservation of cultural heritage in other parts of world. The Cultural Charter for Africa (1976), The Burra Charter (1979) and Nara Document on Authenticity (1994) are notable manifestations of such concerns. These debates are particularly vibrant in Asia today. This article highlights a number of charters, declarations and publications that have been conceived to recalibrate the international field of heritage governance in ways that address the perceived inadequacies of documents underpinning today’s global conservation movement, such as the 1964 Venice Charter. But as Venice has come to stand as a metonym for a ‘western’ conservation approach, intriguing questions arise concerning what is driving these assertions of geographic, national or civilisational difference in Asia. To address such questions, the article moves between a number of explanatory frameworks. It argues declarations about Asia’s culture, its landscapes, and its inherited pasts are, in fact, the combined manifestations of post-colonial subjectivities, a desire for prestige on the global stage of cultural heritage governance and the practical challenges of actually doing conservation in the region.     

Critical heritage studies and the legacies of the late-twentieth century heritage canon

ABSTRACT

In recent years an interest in ‘critical heritage studies’ (CHS) has grown significantly – its differentiation from ‘heritage studies’ rests on its emphasis of cultural heritage as a political, cultural, and social phenomenon. But how original or radical are the concepts and aims of CHS, and why has it apparently become useful or meaningful to talk about critical heritage studies as opposed to simply ‘heritage studies’? Focusing on the canon of the 1980s and 1990s heritage scholarship – and in particular the work of the ‘father of heritage studies’, David Lowenthal – this article offers a historiographical analysis of traditional understandings and approaches to heritage, and the various explanations behind the post-WWII rise of heritage in western culture. By placing this analysing within the wider frames of post-war historical studies and the growth of scholarly interest in memory, the article seeks to highlight the limitations and bias of the much of the traditional heritage canon, and in turn frame the rationale for the critical turn in heritage studies.     

“Killing time” in rural Ireland,c.1881–2013

This article explores the way in which episodes that took place during the “long” land war of 1879–1909 have been remembered or forgotten in Craughwell, Co. Galway, between 1881 and 2013. By exploring those episodes and individuals that are remembered locally in monuments, published oral histories and in oral histories conducted by the author, this article explores the complex patterns of remembering in rural Irish communities. The article concludes by reflecting on the implications of this study for how we interpret oral histories, and on how a culture of remembering and not remembering might have affected twentieth-century Irish society.     

浅论汉代历史理论及特点

汉代历史理论很丰富,可以说有了一些体系。在形式上,不仅体现于史书的序、论、赞以及"寓论断于序事",还有专篇史论、诸子书中的一些相关史论、一些奏疏中的相关史论和政论中的史论,等等;同时,史书的史论在形式上又有一个变化发展过程。在内涵上,不仅对历史中的根本问题作了深入、连续的思考与理论概括,而且还对现实中出现的重大问题作了探讨和理性回答。在方法与特点方面,不仅从天地人参合的思维来探究人类历史演变,显示出汉代人宏阔的理论视野;同时把握历史与现实的联系,使史学形成了通变的分析传统和"为世典式"的致用传统。     

论东林学派高攀龙与孙慎行性善论中的道教因素

东林学派站在纠正阳明后学流弊的立场上,反对性无善无恶说.东林学派的重要学者高攀龙与孙慎行都主张性善说,而援引道教中的善恶果报与忠孝成仙思想为他们性善说作补充.两人思想中的道教因素,与吴会地域的道教文化影响,以及当时的政局和残酷的政治纷争有关.     

浅析近世误读进化论所产生之负面效应

本文分别从个人主义的泛滥与新道德和民主政治构建的难产、理想主义的滥觞与激进主义者实践道路的迷惘、唯科学主义思潮的横行与国人人生观的困惑等视角发掘出误读进化论所产生的近代社会转型问题,希望唤起学界对进化论展开深刻反思,审视它在近代所带来的负面效应.     

‘A Beautiful Fiction of Law’: Rhetorical Engagements with Terra Nullius in the British Periodical Press in the 1840s

This paper analyses two critiques of the jurisprudential basis of settler colonialism in Australia published in the early Victorian periodical press. Review articles in the North British Review and Fraser's Magazine in the 1840s deployed claims of legal sophistry to dispute the fiction that Australian colonies were settled, rather than conquered, and that the country was a terra nullius. By examining the politics and rhetoric of each article, the significance of legal ideology for both literature promoting colonization and humanitarian critiques of colonial policy is assessed. Through a combination of discourse analysis and intellectual history, the North British Review article is read as fusing Scottish Enlightenment concepts of social evolution with the rhetoric of sensibility to defend the existence of Indigenous rights to land and to argue for the degenerative implications of colonial social practices. Similarly, the Fraser's Magazine article offers an epitome of the place of law in colonial policy-making by invoking utilitarian and pragmatic approaches to law to rationalize doctrines of sovereignty and jurisdiction, minimizing legal protections for Aborigines while maximizing the legal powers of colonists. By tracing the use of jurisprudential rhetoric in reviews published in two leading metropolitan journals, the paper offers evidence that the literary sphere contributed to the emergent culture of colonial legality.     

Making time for national identity: theoretical concept and empirical glance on the temporal performance of national identity

Despite global, economic, technological and social transformations, nationality has remained an influential identity category. It still forms the basis for collective self‐determination, political sovereignty and sense of belonging. This article puts forward the concept of ‘Chrono‐Work’ to offer a critical approach to national identity. Employing temporal and performative perspectives, the concept addresses the conditions for establishing and constructing national identity. Drawing on Judith Butler's performance theory, it is suggested that performance of national acts loads national identity with meaning through the construction of a chronological narrative. To complete the theoretical picture, a case study of ‘Chrono‐Work’ among the Jewish settlers on the Golan Heights in Israel is offered. It is shown that national identity is constantly performed through temporal strategies that aim at achieving a chronological order. Therefore, it is suggested that national identity is not given, but rather is the result of continuous ‘Chrono‐Work’.