Politics of scale: Cultural heritage in China (original) (raw)
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Crouching the tiger, or hiding the dragon? scale in China’s heritage production
Built heritage, 2024
In the built heritage studies, the intricate web of social and selective processes that define heritage is evident. These processes are, in many cases, intertwined with the notion of scale, examplified through the production of heritage sites at the local, national, and transnational scales. While heritage and geography scholars have articulated the role played by scale in heritage-making and argue against a rigid, fixed, and hierarchical understanding of scale, they highlight the constant reproduction of scale. There is, so far, limited explanation of how the perception of scale gets reproduced and how crucial actors manipulate scalar power and resources for heritage making and the reproduction of scale. To fill this gap, this paper delves into mainland China's heritage-making, using the southern Anhui historical villages as an example. Based on intensive 5-month field research, this paper has three findings: 1) The nomination process for a World Heritage Site is notably influenced by politics and selectivity; 2) Diverse stakeholders are pivotal in shaping heritage narratives; 3) Individual contributions to heritage creation directly interact with, and subsequently reshape, 'scale' , an entity that is simultaneously discursive and tangible. By integrating the notion of 'scale' into heritage discussions, we illuminate two concurrent processes: creating hierarchies through rule assimilation by interpreting the UNESCO standard internally and evolving socio-spatial dynamics via the manifestation of individual agency with resource manipulation, scale jumping, and reproduction of scale. This approach aligns with the material orientation in human geography and repositions 'scale'. Here, it's not just an epistemological framework but also a tangible force that steers individual perceptions and actions and yields measurable material impacts.
Scholarly research of cultural heritage has faced paradigmatic changes during the past few decades. These changes have occurred in part as a reaction to diverse social, political, economic and cultural transformations of societies and traditional foundations of nation states. Today's world, characterized by networked agencies, global cultural flows, cultural hybridity and movement of people within and across borders, contextualizes the idea of heritage in new ways. It challenges its previous core function as a bedrock of monocultural nation-building projects, a continuation of elitist cultural canons, and as upholding Eurocentric cultural values. As a part of this transformation, consensual heritage narratives about the nation and national identity have been questioned and contested through various identity claims below and above the national narrativeand within it (e.g. Ashworth, Graham and Tunbridge 2007, Labadi 2007; Smith 2006). A range of communities, defined either geographically or by cultural, social, economic, ethnic, religious, or linguistic experiences, have increasingly asserted the legitimacy of their collective identities and of their heritage as this identity's manifestation (Smith 2006). These developments have brought heritage research into a new critical phase. 2 During the last decades of the twentieth century, academic fields within humanities and social sciences took increasing interest in uneven power relations, hierarchical power structures, explicit and implicit politics of dominance and oppression, silenced narratives and alternative, emancipatory and empowering identity projects. Critical research stemming from postmodernism, poststructuralism and Foucauldian perspectives on power gave ground to and strengthened new academic disciplines of Postcolonial, Racial, Gender, New Museology and
INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF HERITAGE STUDIES
For the last two decades, the polysemous notion of ‘scale’ has drawn an increasing amount of attention among scholars studying heritage policies and practices, often with regard to UNESCO conventions. Significantly, in many of these works, terms such as ‘global’, ‘national’ and ‘local’ are connected to categories of ‘scale’ or ‘level’ that are taken for granted by the scholars who use them to guide their analysis. This paper, in contrast, promotes a different, constructivist understanding of the notion of scale. From our perspective, there is an added value to be found in focusing—without using any preconceived or external conception of scale—on the ways in which stakeholders conceive of and use scale throughout the processes of heritage making. Using the case of alpinism and the creation of its file for submission to the Intangible Cultural Heritage list, we show that the interest of this approach lies in its comprehensive ability to highlight how people define, elaborate and use scale in order to qualify their practices or to achieve specific goals.
4 Reconceptualizing Heritage in China Museums, Development and the Shifting Dynamics of Power
Heritage, as both discourse and practice, is a recent European import into China, but it already has powerful appeal across offi cial and public domains, transforming the social, economic and cultural life of localities and reshaping domestic and global notions of China’s national identity. Heritage construction is a core feature of regional development strategies, especially in the historically poor and ethnically diverse regions of the southwest. Heritage tourism is promoted in diverse forms, from the ‘red’ sites commemorating the Communist Party–led revolution before the founding of the People’s Republic to the exotic ‘ocean of song and dance’ city of Kaili, Guizhou’s main city of Miao culture. However, between government policies and local communities whose claims to their own cultural past are being appropriated by political, developmental and commercial interests, heritage is a problematic term and practice, involving competition, confl ict and new hierarchies of power in local communities. Articulated by international and national agendas and integrated into local development strategies, heritage is something that local communities fi nd themselves obliged to engage with. But how? With what implications for local communities’ perceptions of their own cultural pasts and values, and for their transmission to future generations? What new conceptions and practices of heritage are emerging to contest the top-down imposition of heritage models that deny the possibility of locally embedded cultural renewal? And with what effects on the changing relationship between local communities and the state?
Heritage Politics in China: The Power of the Past. London: Routledge
Heritage Politics in China: The Power of the Past, 2020
Heritage Politics in China studies the impact of heritage policies and discourses on the Chinese state and Chinese society. It sheds light on the way Chinese heritage policies have transformed the narratives and cultural practices of the past to serve the interests of the present. As well as reinforcing a collective social identity, heritage in China has served as an instrument of governance and regulation at home and a tool to generate soft power abroad. Drawing on a critical analysis of heritage policies and laws, empirical case studies and interviews with policymakers, practitioners, and local community, the authors offer a comprehensive perspective on the role that cultural heritage plays in Chinese politics and policy. They argue that heritage-making appropriates international, national and local values, thereby transforming it into a public good suitable for commercial exploitation. By framing heritage as a site of cooperation, contestation, and negotiation, this book contributes to our understanding of the complex nature of heritage in the rapidly shifting landscape of contemporary China. Heritage Politics in China is essential reading for academics, researchers and students in the fields of heritage studies, cultural studies, Asian studies, anthropology, tourism and politics.
The Constitution and Mechanics of the 'Scales' of Heritage: Sociopolitical Dimensions
2005
This paper discusses the constitution and mechanics of the 'scales' of heritage: local heritage, national heritage and World Heritage, and draws attention to the differences between the ways in which these scales relate to one another in theory and in practice. A case study from Australia is used to illustrate the tension and interaction between the three heritage scales. Particular emphasis is given to how certain ideas drawn from postcolonial thought and theories of globalisation can help archaeologists and heritage managers to understand better these complex interactions, and to how this knowledge can contribute to theorising archaeological heritage management.
50 Years World Heritage Convention: Shared Responsibility – Conflict & Reconciliation
50 Years World Heritage Convention: Shared Responsibility – Conflict & Reconciliation
In rapidly transforming Asian environments, traditional agricultural heritage systems struggle with increasing development pressure and out-migration. Drawing on the Chinese cultural landscape of the Honghe Hani Rice Terraces as a case study, the paper investigates how the concepts of scale and “politics of scale” can be fruitfully mobilised for critical heritage theory and provide practical solutions to overcome conservation–development tensions. In processes of ethnic tourism development and cultural commodification, government authorities pursue different scalar strategies to harness natural and cultural resources for heritage-led regeneration schemes. Such strongly tourism-oriented agendas, as prevailed in the initial stages of development, privilege natural and selected cultural values over social values, thereby contrasting with local inhabitants’ aspirations to improve their living conditions. To encourage participation and sustainable cultural landscape management, the study...
Reconceptualising Heritage in China
Museums,Heritage and International Development, 2014
Heritage, as both discourse and practice, is a recent European import into China, but it already has powerful appeal across official and public domains, transforming the social, economic and cultural life of localities and reshaping domestic and global notions of China’s national identity. Heritage construction is a core feature of regional development strategies, especially in the historically poor and ethnically diverse regions of the southwest. Heritage tourism is promoted in diverse forms, from the ‘red’ sites commemorating the Communist Party–led revolution before the founding of the People’s Republic to the exotic ‘ocean of song and dance’ city of Kaili, Guizhou’s main city of Miao culture. However, between government policies and local communities whose claims to their own cultural past are being appropriated by political, developmental and commercial interests, heritage is a problematic term and practice, involving competition, conflict and new hierarchies of power in local communities. Articulated by international and national agendas and integrated into local development strategies, heritage is something that local communities find themselves obliged to engage with. But how? With what implications for local communities’ perceptions of their own cultural pasts and values, and for their transmission to future generations? What new conceptions and practices of heritage are emerging to contest the top-down imposition of heritage models that deny the possibility of locally embedded cultural renewal? And with what effects on the changing relationship between local communities and the state?