"Hot Issue" Critical Review: The "Culture Wars" and Social Polarization: Effects on Historical Monuments and Tourism

Abstract

This hot issue article examines the convergence in experience between the "developing" world's post-colonial experience during the 20th century and the "developed" world's liberal/progressive social agenda in the 21st century. In it, Tan and Mura highlight the role of the "culture wars" in creating new "minority" groups based not on ethnicity or social class but on social ideology, whose disagreements with dominant majority groups threatens to unleash a new round of heritage destruction worldwide. Citing the public display of monuments to the Confederate States of America as an example of this new sensitivity, the reviewers conclude that although tourist consumption, the passage of time, and the absence of "living communities" can each act collectively to remove the stigma of ideology from monumental constructs, it remains to be seen which monuments will survive this period of social change to be appreciated as memorials to their time. Tan and Mura nevertheless identify the tourism industry as being uniquely empowered to preserve even monuments to "inconvenient" histories that are still important as place-makers for their cities or as works of public art for their host countries. (Abstract by the Critical Reviews Editor)