Heritage Assemblages. The Heritage Site of Borobudur (Indonesia) as a Cultural Landscape

Abstract

This paper interrogates the recent designation of the Borobudur heritage site (Central Java, Indonesia) as saujana budaya by a network of Indonesian activists and academics. Saujana budaya is a newly coined compound term that serves as a translation of the international heritage concept of “cultural landscape”. I argue that this translation, far from representing a perfect correspondence between the source and the target language, entails the assemblage of a localised version of the cultural landscape with Indonesian characteristics. In the context of the Reformasi, which facilitated the emergence of new forms of cultural localism in Indonesia, activists and academics assume that the power to translate, and therefore to produce heritage concepts, empowers heritage advocates, giving them further agency in the heritage arena. Hence, translation is an act of political defiance, representing a critique of the narrowness of governmental approaches to heritage. It also seeks to transform heritage management practices, making them more inclusive and representative of the sacred, spiritual, and religious legacies of the syncretic Hindu-Buddhist traditions linked with the Borobudur Temple and the surrounding territory.