Indigenous Cultural Relocation in Desmond Kharmawphlang’s Poems

Aboriginal cultural heritage protection, and the legislative regimes that underpin it, constitute important mechanisms for Aboriginal people to assert their rights and responsibilities. This is especially so in Victoria, where legislation vests wide-ranging powers and control of cultural heritage with Aboriginal communities. However, the politics of cultural heritage, including its institutionalisation as a scientific body of knowledge within the state, can also result in a powerful limiting of Aboriginal rights and responsibilities. This paper examines the politics of cultural heritage through a case study of a small forest in north-west Victoria. Here, a dispute about logging has pivoted around differing conceptualisations of Aboriginal cultural heritage values and their management. Cultural heritage, in this case, is both a powerful tool for the assertion of Aboriginal rights and interests, but simultaneously a set of boundaries within which the state operates to limit and manage the challenge those assertions pose. The paper will argue that Aboriginal cultural heritage is a politically contested and shifting domain structured around Aboriginal law and politics, Australian statute and the legacy of colonial history.

PART I: INTRODUCTION 1. Cultural Heritage Politics in China: An Introduction Helaine Silverman and Tami Blumenfield 2. Does the Institution of Property Rights Matter to Heritage Preservation? Evidence from China TANG Zijun PART II: Local, Regional, National and International Interests in a World Heritage Era 3. Chinese Cosmopolitanism (tianxia he shijie zhuyi) in China's Heritage Tourism Margaret Byrne Swain 4. Groping for Stones to Cross the River: Governing Heritage in Emei Yujie ZHU and Na LI 5. Local versus National Interests in the Promotion and Management of a Heritage Site. A Case Study from Zhejiang Province, China Wei ZHAO 6. Tourism, Migration and the Politics of Built Heritage in Lijiang, China Xiaobo SU 7. Dancing in the Market: Reconfiguring Commerce and Heritage in Lijiang Heather Peters PART III: CULTURAL HERITAGE AND TOURISM IN UNDESIGNATED SITES 8. Good Fences Make Good Neighbors: Claiming Heritage in the Longji Terraced Fields Scenic Area Jenny T. CHIO 9. Re-constructing Cultural Heritage and Imagining Wa Primitiveness in the China/Myanmar Borderlands LIU Tzu-kai PART IV: THE POLITICS OF MUSEUMS AND COLLECTIONS 10. Beijing's Museums in the Context of the 2008 Olympics Curtis Ashton 11. Community Empowerment at the Periphery? Participatory Approaches to Heritage Protection in Guizhou, China William Nitzky PART V: ROUTES AS HERITAGE - BRANDING SPACE IN A GLOBAL[IZED] CHINA 12. The Ancient Tea Horse Road and the Politics of Heritage in Southwest China: Regional Identity in the Context of a Rising China Gary Sigley 13. Branding Tengchong: Globalization, Road Building and Spatial Reconfigurations in Yunnan, Southwest China ZHOU Yongming 14. The Role of Underwater Archaeology in Framing and Facilitating the Chinese National Strategic Agenda Jeff Adams PART VI. AFTERWORD 15. China's Tangled Web of Heritage Stevan Harrell

This article explores the notions of tradition and innovation as perceived and discursively employed by the Stanbulite Greek Orthodox concerning their ritual music in the second half of the nineteenth century. At a more general level, focusing on the sacred music of the Greek Orthodox Church in the late nineteenth century, it argues for a blurred boundary between tradition and invention (or innovation). By investigating the discourses of tradition used by the spiritual leaders, musicians, and European musical experts, it tackles the manifestations of ethnic and religious identity in the largest non-Muslim minority group within a multi-ethnic and multi-religious empire. Some of the major issues which concerned the patriarchs, cantors, and the participants of the musical commissions in Istanbul were the amelioration of choral singing, the notation of ecclesiastical chants, and the problems of intonation. This article explores the reformist intentions and acts of the Stanbulite cantors, scholars, and patriarchs, in view of their assertions of their cultural identity, the discourses of the West that they subscribed to, and their individual responses to certain Western European scholars’ convictions on the origins and continuity of the Greek musical tradition. Furthermore, by providing examples from the long history of the Eastern Orthodox Church, the article contributes to our understanding of the processes of the making of myths and traditions in contemporary Greek culture.

‘Something New in the Present’ The Politics of Cultural Heritage in Postcolonial Mauritius

In contemporary Mongolia—a country with 29 years’ history of international development policy—the conventional interpretation regarding the oppression of and liberation from the Soviet regime is no longer valid for understanding its politics of cultural heritage. Today, development projects and associated environmental, social and cultural assessments play a central role in safeguarding cultural heritage. Therefore, alternative interpretations are necessary to comprehend current and further processes of cultural heritage politics. This paper introduces two case studies of new cultural heritage politics involving Mongolia’s two ‘megaprojects’: Oyu Tolgoi gold and copper mining, and River Eg hydroelectric station.

This article examines United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) cultural heritage policies and Chinese state-directed tourism policies in contemporary Tibet. It begins with a brief overview of the tourism industry in Tibet, and moves to a discussion of UNESCO's focus on the preservation of world cultural sites in the name of universal values, noting how this aids state claims to authority over culture as a tool in state-building in places such as Tibet and Indonesia. The article then examines the effects state tourism policies have had on specific Tibetan sites, based on field visits to Lhasa and Shigatse in 2001 and 2002 and Xiahe (Gansu Province) in 2004. In a word, the Potala Palace, as a world cultural heritage and a place of religious activities, has drawn the attention of the world. With the deepening of the reform, opening and modermization drive and along with the implementation of the going-west strategy, the Potala Palace has become a treasure of the world. - Potala Palace Management Office (2002)

Many constitutions of the world contain special provisions for indigenous communities, granting them particular rights and regulating their traditional political institutions and customary law. Building on rational theories of constitution-making, we employ a demand and supply framework to explain the constitutionalization of such provisions. To test our hypotheses, we code the presence of indigenous provisions in the current constitutions of 193 United Nations member states. We find full democracy and previous conflict to stimulate the inclusion of indigenous group rights but not of customary law and traditional institutions. Customary law and traditional institutions are more likely constitutionalized in countries with high ethnic fractionalization. Low levels of modernity affect particularly the constitutionalization of traditional political institutions, while low levels of development correlate with provisions on customary law. Former British colonies are more likely to constitutionalize customary law.

This article explores the relationship between children’s visual and material cultures and the official cultural heritage of terrorism. Drawings and cuddly toys have become a significant, yet overlooked, part of ‘difficult’ heritage of impactful violent events. The focus is on two museum collections dedicated to the 2017 terrorist attack in Stockholm – the active contributions of young people (8–25 years old) to the collections, and their presences constituted by artefacts. Examining both provides insights into the politics of cultural heritage and how heritage can be produced and presented.

Travelling Pasts, edited by Burkhard Schnepel and Tansen Sen, offers an innovative exploration of the issue of heritage in the Indian Ocean world. This collection of essays demonstrates how the heritagization of the past has played a vital role in processes and strategies related to the making of socio-cultural identities, the establishing of political legitimacies, and the pursuit of economic and geopolitical gains. The contributions range from those dealing with the impact of UNESCO’s World Heritage Convention in the Indian Ocean world as a whole to those that address the politics of cultural heritage in various distinct maritime sites such as Zanzibar, Mayotte, Cape Town, the Maldives, Calcutta and Penang. Also examined are the Maritime Silk Road and the Project Mausam initiatives of the Chinese and Indian governments respectively. The volume is an important contribution to the transdisciplinary fields on Indian Ocean Studies.

China is not a country but an idea, which was reformulated in the twentieth century to fit with the hegemonic world nation-state system. This involved a reformulation not only of the idea of the Chinese Empire, but also of the remains of its past – including artifacts that once served as the mystified insignia of power of mighty rulers, or as the tokens of refinement and civilization, or simply as the ostentatious playthings of the wealthy; and also objects previously unknown unearthed by modern archaeology, that is, artifacts left by people living in “China” long before China became China. Similar to what has happened in other “countries,” these objects have been recast as “national cultural heritage,” and are believed to carry the essence of a Chineseness reaching back “5000 years” – a claim inseparable from the new contemporary global politics of representation in the arena of competing nation-states (where, one might say, modern China competes especially in the fields of “civilizational antiquity” and “unbroken continuity”).

This article examines a recent controversy over the Catholic Church’s registration of Cordoba’s iconic Mosque-Cathedral as official Church property in 2006. In analyzing the controversy, we take up broader theoretical questions regarding the politicization and contestation of national cultural heritage, and the sociology of public controversy more generally. Drawing upon Alexander’s work on civil discourse and practice, we focus on the importance of performative aspects of civic debate. We argue that effective performances of “publicness” involving the conscientious suppression of visible signs of particularity, especially those related to Islam, have been critical to the successful politicization of the Mosque-Cathedral’s ownership and management. Politicization, however, has not produced any significant movement toward consensual resolution. In explaining this failure, we offer a more nuanced account of the conditions that limit the potential for consensus and “civil repair” as an outcome of public controversy in deeply divided societies. Our findings also have implications for understanding the growing role of international institutions and declarations in shaping the contours of localized controversies surrounding national cultural heritage.

Archaeological Theory and the Politics of Cultural Heritage. Laurajane Smith. New York: Routledge, 2004. 260 pp.

By applying the sociological concept of ‘emplacement’, this article analyses the creation of the ‘District of Mutual Respect’ in the old, neglected part of Wrocław (former German Breslau), a city which became Polish and lost its German population due to their forced migration after the Second World War. The District has in the last 20 years been transformed from slum to attractive environment and an important symbol of Wrocław’s new identity and image. The District showcases the local authorities’ new politics of cultural heritage and memory that emphasises intercultural dialogue and multiculturalism after decades of nationalist memory narratives and suppression of the German heritage. The authors outline a ‘biography’ of the District and analyse its functions. Furthermore, they apply Knudsen’s and Kølvraa’s concepts of repression, removal, reframing and re-emergence to evaluate to what extent that the District can be seen as a largely successful example of creating cultural heritage for a more cosmopolitan, inclusive future.

Archaeological Theory and the Politics of Cultural Heritage

This chapter explores the multiple uses of cultural heritage as related to the “ancient tea horse road” (ATHR) of Southwest China, a network of trading routes linking tea producing regions of Yunnan and Sichuan with consumption markets in Tibet, Guangdong, Beijing and beyond. Cultural tourism, nostalgia and romance, ethnic unity and regional identity connect the “tea road,” identified by Yunnanese scholars as a concept in the early 1990s, to explicit and implicit governmental agendas. Preserving and revitalizing the road reaffirms the importance of Southwest China’s culture and history to the Chinese center and to regions and nations on China’s southern periphery.