Between Defeat and Victory: Finnish memory culture of the Second World War

The article focuses on five essential phenomena in the Finnish memory culture relating to the three Finnish wars fought in 1939–1945, namely, (1) the memory of the fallen; (2) the influential work by author Väinö Linna; (3) the contested memory politics and veteran cultures in the 1960s and 1970s; (4) Germany and the Holocaust in the Finnish memory culture; and (5) the ‘neo-patriotic’ turn in the commemoration of the wars from the end of the 1980s onwards. The Finnish memory culture of 1939–1945 presents an interesting case of how the de facto lost wars against the Soviet Union have been shaped into cornerstones of national history and identity that continue to play a significant role even today. Using the growing research literature on the various aspects of the Finnish war memories and memory politics, the article aims, first, at outlining a synthesis of the memory culture's central features and, second, at challenging the common contemporary conception, according to which the Finnish war veterans would have been forgotten, neglected and even disgraced during the post-war decades, to be ‘rehabilitated’ only from the end of the 1980s onwards.     

UNESCO World Heritage Site of Lenggong Valley,Malaysia: A Review of its Contemporary Heritage Management

This article reviews contemporary heritage management through a systematically coded content analysis at one of Malaysia’s UNESCO World Heritage Sites: the Archaeological Heritage of the Lenggong Valley (AHLV). It evaluates the competency of the preliminary Conservation Management Plan (CMP) of AHLV by looking at the accuracy of five distinctive dimensions of the CMP in conveying the information about the sites and management objectives: the legislation related to the heritage conservation and management; the action and implementation of the management strategies; the level of stakeholder’s participation; and, finally, how the CMP integrates local values and ideas into management planning. The results show that contemporary heritage management planning at Lenggong Valley tends to prioritize the conservation of the archaeological values of the sites over other values (i.e. social, historical, and aesthetic values), and that planning has largely been in the hands of governmental agencies with limited involvement from local communities in the decision-making process.     

The role of the museum in interpretation: The problem of context

The key questions in interpreting objects in museums are: What are they doing there? and Where did they come from? National and local importance are not mutually exclusive: the critical difference is between intrinsic value, and value through context or association. Context is an integral part of interpretation. Experts can visualise an original location or environment; ordinary museum visitors need the context of people, or place, or familiar activities, to be able to relate to unfamiliar objects. Is seeing a good replica as good as seeing the original?     

Setting Moon and Rising Nationalism: Lugou Bridge as Monument and Memory

This paper examines Beijing’s Lugou Bridge (Marco Polo Bridge) in terms of monument and memory. With 800 years of history to its credit, this structure carries with it a select set of textual memories passed down from one dynasty to the next, and finally into the 20th century when its traditional associations of architectural and natural beauty were supplemented by its modern association with the beginning of the Anti‐Japanese War of Resistance (Second World War in China). With the opening of Sino‐Japanese diplomacy in the 1970s, the Chinese authorities began to accredit further significance to the bridge as a site of Chinese indignation over Japan’s perceived refusal to take responsibility for its wartime aggression. This point was driven home most forcefully through the construction of the Anti‐Japanese War Memorial Hall in 1985, and the continuing use of the site as a tool of diplomacy. Lugou Bridge, therefore, serves to demonstrate how political authority and cultural nationalism are constructed through the continuing appropriation of monumental artefacts and traditions.     

The Conservation of English Cultural Built Heritage: A Force for Social Inclusion?

Debates about the socially inclusionary potential of heritage have to date focused principally on heritage sites and museums. Relatively little attention has been paid to the wider Cultural Built Heritage (CBH) that surrounds us in our everyday lives. This paper starts with a brief theoretical exploration of the social role of heritage and the key policy background. Then, based on an understanding of policy and action in England, this paper sets out a framework for considering how this wider CBH might contribute to social inclusion. A fundamental binary divide is made between the role of CBH as historic places and opportunity spaces in which regeneration may occur. However, in neither case is action necessarily socially inclusive. The paper concludes that a greater clarity of objectives and definitions is necessary if CBH is to meet its potential to be socially inclusionary.     

The rise of cultural landscapes

The new interest in cultural landscapes is forcing a reappraisal of concepts of countryside heritage. First the traditional split between cultural and natural values is challenged. Second, modern landscape studies emphasise the subjectivity of landscape assessment, and this is subverting the former tendency to aspire to objectivity in evaluation. The acceptance of ‘associative’ value in landscape is an indicator of this. Modern landscape studies also emphasise the interrelationships between processes and aspects of value, and this is encouraging specialists to communicate across disciplinary frontiers. The desire by ecologists in the mid‐1980s to have cultural landscapes inscribed on the World Heritage list caused a re‐assessment of the World Heritage Criteria, and an initiative by ICOMOS brought this process to a conclusion in 1992. However the reappraisal of concepts of countryside value imply that there are many other philosophical and practical matters still to be resolved.     

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.     

Architects Creating a Landscape

This article is derived from a research project designed to establish a better understanding of the nature of professional architectural activity in the State of Victoria, Australia, in the second half of the 19th century. It posed the following question: why is the activity in rural areas not acknowledged by the traditional approaches to studying architectural history? Part of the conclusion is that our understanding of urban cultural landscapes/townscapes will be improved if we look beyond the limitations of separate disciplines such as architectural and social history or historical geography. The landscape is built from many layers and they all need to be acknowledged if we are to understand what we find important about it. The reasons for seeking the conservation of our urban environment cannot be related solely to the peculiar interests of one discipline alone. Over the past 30 years the Australian community has developed a substantial interest and appetite for heritage conservation and along with that has grown a broadening interest in how the importance of the urban environment is defined.     

Communism,Heritage and Tourism in East Asia

This study examines the linkages which connect Communism, heritage and tourism with reference to selected East Asian states which are governed by Communist regimes or have recent experience of Communist rule. Aspects of the heritage of Communism are seen to be of interest to tourists, but related visitor attractions also have a wider social and political significance and illustrate how tourism can be employed as a hegemonic tool and propaganda vehicle. Heritage, including that of Communism itself, thus serves as economic, social and political capital within a Communist context where the defining characteristics of government give rise to a distinctive relationship between political systems, heritage and tourism.     

Tourism and Tragedy: The Memorial at Belzec,Poland

In 1942, within in a period of 10 months, 500,000 people were systematically murdered in a specially built death camp at Belzec, Poland. When it had served its purpose the Nazis demolished it, and to hide its existence, grassed the site over, allowing the atrocities performed there to remain virtually hidden from public view for over 60 years. In 2004 an important new Holocaust memorial, covering the whole death camp area, was opened. Visually striking, this conceptual art/architectural artwork affectively elicits strong visitor responses. I explore ways in which the materiality of the reconfigured site makes the invisibility of such horror and collective loss paramount. My interpretation and visual analysis shows how ‘memory work’ can operate through viewer experience. This paper locates Belzec within its historical context and includes a related discussion about Polish–Jewish relationships up to the present. As a significant heritage site, Belzec’s new role in Polish Holocaust tourism is examined.