Politics Of Cultural Heritage Research Articles

The symbolic politics of cultural heritage: a view from Portugal

This paper highlights the centrality of the social representation of cultural heritage for the symbolic legitimization of a regime and the foundation of its social and cultural policies. The relevance attributed to history, its codification into heritage and the formation of a collective memory are indeed arenas of social practice, power and hegemony. The Portuguese example is a good one, because one can compare contrasting visions of the authoritarian regime of Salazar and those of the new and current democratic order. We examine how the Portuguese democracy has reconstructed a national consensus regarding the interpretation of national history and identity; we consider the role of the new interpretation in the redefining of the Portuguese placement in the world system; and some conclusions will be tentatively drawn from this case study.

Creating Cultural Heritage for a Better Future. The case of the “District of Mutual Respect” in the Polish city of Wrocław

ABSTRACT 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.

From Ruptures to Continuities: Czechoslovak Cultural Heritage in Non-Fiction Cinema 1948-1956

The article examines the post-war trajectory of the Czechoslovak politics of cultural heritage, its public presentation and circulation through the medium of non-fiction film. Specifically, it investigates the genres of ethnographic, geographic, and art films released after the political transformation in 1948 that brought the country under the direct influence of the Soviet Union. It describes the professional infrastructure and networks within which the fields of cultural heritage preservation and non-fiction cinema were operating and analyses their interactions in the realm of film production. Through the analysis of the film production background, audio-visual content itself, and related period visual ­culture, it finds a set of different narrative strategies used for public presentation of cultural heritage. These narratives are then placed in the context of the official cultural ideology. It exposes continuities that can be traced between the communist cultural politics introduced after the communist takeover in 1948 and the pre-WWII Czechoslovak cultural politics. The analysis shows the diversity within the film production whose primary goal was to celebrate and represent the national cultural heritage in and outside the country, and therefore understands these films as important tools of national and international cultural politics.

New media and cultural heritage politics: the intertwining of official authorised heritage discourse, folk decentralisation, and internet positivity in Chinese women’s scripts

ABSTRACT Although heritage in the digital age and heritage digitisation have received increasing scholarly attention, critical reflection on new media heritage politics as individuals, communities and institutions transmit heritage remains an unexplored area. This paper aims to fill this gap in the literature by exploring the representation of Chinese Nüshu (literally women’s scripts) on new media platforms, paying particular attention to the centralised nature of Chinese AHD and its decentralisation through digital, democratic grassroots practices on heritage new media. Using a mixed-method approach combining qualitative and quantitative techniques, this study conducted a digital ethnography on several Nüshu social media communities from 2017 to 2022 and more than fifty in-depth interviews with twenty-three Nüshu stakeholders including official and unofficial transmitters, local officials, heritage experts, and local residence. The study finds dynamic negotiations in terms of cultural (re)production, power transformation, actors’ empowerment, and identity construction between the local authorised heritage discourse (AHD) and folk heritage discourse on new media. Furthermore, as a form of decentralisation of local AHD, the study demonstrates the presence of digital heritage democratisation in China through new media. However, this creates the potential for new discursive hegemony in folk heritage society. Recently, short-form content’s popularity has rapidly risen; the study reveals the complex politics of ‘positivity’ in relation to the representation of heritage on short-form video platforms in China.

Heritage for identity and as diplomacy: the case of Korean martial arts

ABSTRACT In the context of the legitimacy battle between the two Koreas, a tension exists between utilising cultural heritage to serve the interests of the two respective national-identity projects, and, at times, negotiating it to express the single Korean nation. The theoretical framework we adopt to explore this condition relies on two ideas: heritage as a building block of national identity and ‘heritage diplomacy’. By analysing the interplay between the place of martial arts in constructing identities and their ‘heritage as diplomacy’ practice, we make three contributions: we offer a hitherto unexplored angle on Korean identity-formation processes and inter-Korean relations; we introduce a unique case study pertaining to the involvement of non-Western states in heritage diplomacy; and, we contribute to the scant literature on intangible heritage in heritage diplomacy. More than a sports-diplomacy tool, the case of martial arts reveals the seemingly paradoxical nature of inter-Korean cultural heritage politics: the struggle to reinforce separate Korean national identities by resorting to the same heritage concomitantly contributes, in several ways, to the idea and sense of Korean ‘oneness’. The paper also maintains that such inter-Korean collaborations are advantageous in the growing competition among Asian nations for UNESCO’s recognition of cultural heritage.

Digital heritage politics from the perspective of relational sociology: the case of Nüshu culture in China

ABSTRACT In proposing a new conceptual framework that systematises and comprehends the complex dynamics of cultural heritage politics in China, the study takes its inspiration from Chinese scholars who have explored the relevance of Guanxi beyond its immediate business context. While current discourse theory acknowledges that heritage-making entails complex relationships that structure this making, there is as yet no systematic theoretical account of how these relationships co-exist, mediate and transform heritage-making. In developing a relational sociological framework based on the work of John Dewey, the analysis of digital heritage-making includes a case study of Nüshu, the dominant language and culture in villages on the southwestern frontier of China’s Hunan Province. Using netnography, the study analyses a range of online accounts and websites that form part of the heritage-making process. Drawing on rich digital material that includes online competitions, virtual conversations or comments and digital certificates, the findings highlight the need for a more dynamic relational perspective that acknowledges the mutuality of heritage producers and the process of heritage-making. The findings contribute to a sociological account of heritage-making in China and to a more generalist theory of relational sociology.

Chinese Heritage with European Characteristics: International and Domestic Dimensions of the China’s Cultural Heritage Politics

The discussion on Chinese cultural heritage started to emerge as a result of inspiration coming from foreign travels of Chinese scholars-officials and as protective measures against looting of artifacts in the 19th and 20th centuries. The most spectacular robberies were carried out by Anglo-French forces in the Old Summer Palace (Yuanming Yuan) during the Second Opium War in 1860. That event became one of the cornerstones of the “century of humiliation” (bainian guochi) in the Chinese historical narrative. Even though the Communist Revolution classified historical sites as remnants of feudalism, today the Communist Party of China has assumed the role of a defender of the Chinese heritage. In contemporary China, its cultural heritage is a phenomenon of both domestic and international significance. The Chinese emphasize the antiquity of the Chinese nation, pointing to the origins of Chinese civilization as early as five thousand years ago. In contemporary China, recovering cultural treasures is important for the political legitimacy of a government and for erasing the national humiliation.

Europeana, EDM, and the Europeanisation of Cultural Heritage Institutions

Abstract Over the past two decades, the European Commission has mobilised cultural heritage to bolster a European identity. One of the main flagship initiatives promoted to this end has been Europeana, the most extensive digital cultural project financed by the EU. At the core of the project stands europeana.eu, a digital cultural portal aggregating metadata provided by national and local heritage institutions. Central in our analysis is the Europeana Data Model (EDM). Using standardised thesauri and vocabularies, EDM offers the possibility to create a semantic contextualisation for objects, allowing semantic operations on the metadata and their enrichment with Linked Open Data on the web. Due to its overarching nature, EDM cannot deliver the granularity that cultural heritage institutions need when documenting their resources. Nonetheless, heritage institutions accept to sacrifice accuracy to have their information represented in a Europewide collection. We study how this digital heritage infrastructure was designed to enact a sense of Europeanness amongst national and local institutions. Policy documents, ethnographic research and a systematic survey amongst the European heritage institutions enabled us to trace how a standardised European metadata structure plays a role in governing local and national heritage institutions. The EDM might enable heritage stakeholders to benefit from Europeana’s online exposure while enacting a European mindset. Ultimately, this study of the metadata model enriches the debate on the EU’s cultural heritage politics, which has not fully explored the role of the digital. At the same time, it also taps into debates about infrastructure and digital governmentality.

Cultural heritage as status seeking: The international politics of Turkey’s restoration wave

This article explores the relationship between cultural heritage politics and international status-seeking. We advance a two-fold typology of status-seeking that explains why states engage in cultural heritage restoration practices at home and abroad. First, cultural heritage restoration can be an easy way to signal state respect of its multicultural past while providing cover for continuing anti-multicultural policies of the present. States with uncertain, challenged, or liminal international status use cultural heritage projects as a ‘standard of civilization’ of democracy, displaying themselves on the international stage as worthy of status and respect. Cultural heritage here is used as a strategy for international status affirmation. Second, states may engage in cultural heritage restoration beyond their borders, supporting or directly managing renovation of these sites in order to expand their imagined national cultural, political, and economic domain. Cultural heritage restoration projects here serve as a backdrop for powerful international economic alliances that can be used for status substitution—replacing one status-generating benchmark of ‘standard of civilization’ with another—economic prosperity. We illustrate these arguments with two recent cases of cultural heritage restoration that involve Turkey: the ‘Akdamar’ Church in Van, Turkey and the Tomb of Gül Baba in Budapest, Hungary.

Tradition: Politics of cultural heritage, Stanbulite Greeks, and the Patriarchate of Constantinople in the late nineteenth century

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.

Polarization and the Limits of Politicization: Cordoba’s Mosque-Cathedral and the Politics of Cultural Heritage

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.

Revitalisation of Cultural Heritage in Mongolia

Abstract 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.

Reflecting on evaluation in public archaeology

As heritage professionals, our community-facing projects are embedded in the politics of cultural heritage, and reverberate throughout the communities where we work. The only way to know if archaeological outreach and community engagement are working is to ask stakeholders. Yet undertaking formal evaluation is difficult, with differing expectations and definitions of success, depending on the requirements of funders, the willingness of the participants, and the needs of the practitioners. What do we mean when we discuss successful progress and outcomes for public engagement with archaeology, and how do we analyse these? Are we working towards assessments of our own satisfaction with work done, the satisfaction of the dominant political forms of cultural value, the formal procedures of our funding streams, or the experiential and educational needs of the non-professional with whom we engage?

Letting Nature Swallow the Past: Politics, Memory, and Abandoned Monuments in Postwar Bosnia and Herzegovina

AbstractDuring the 1992–1995 war in Bosnia and Herzegovina, the built physical landscape and places of cultural heritage were deliberately targeted and destroyed as part of the strategy of ethnic cleansing. The 1995 Dayton Peace Agreement recognized the potential for cultural heritage to contribute to postwar reconciliation and rebuilding; Annex 8 established a commission to preserve national monuments. This paper examines the politics of cultural heritage in post-Dayton Bosnia and the ways in which it has been (ab)used to propagate a narrow, exclusivist identity. It focuses on the struggles to control the Commission to Preserve National Monuments as well as the fates of two monuments in particular—Vraca Memorial Park and the Partisans’ Memorial Cemetery—whose abandonment signifies the wider struggles over memory and identity in Bosnia and Herzegovina.

‘Kakube has come to stay’: the making of a cultural festival in Northern Ghana, 1989–2015

AbstractIn Ghana, cultural festivals, usually initiated and organized by the chiefs, provide public arenas where local and regional political elites voice demands vis-à-vis central government, and where national politicians canvass for support. Festivals offer commercial opportunities, forums to promote ‘development’, and occasions for entertainment. Yet advocating for ‘our own culture’ stands out as their very raison d’être, offering a frame for cultural entrepreneurs to organize performances that express and reconfigure local styles of music and dance to fit national formats. In this article, we examine such processes of cultural creation for the Kakube Festival in Nandom, a paramount chiefdom in north-western Ghana. We analyse the cultural building blocks and their evolution during the festival's history as well as the context of changing national politics of cultural heritage in which the festival developed. We discuss the invention of a cultural festival to create local alliances and stake claims at the regional and national political level, and how the desire to assert a presence in the national political and cultural arena has transformed the ways in which local culture is defined and presented. We examine the tensions at the heart of such an event, where traditions of chiefly patronage and allegiance meet the requirements of modern political and bureaucratic systems of funding, and the criteria of excellence in cultural performance. Music and dance are essential components and we analyse the evolution and adaptation of these elements alongside the critical path management of the event that has led to its local and national profile.

Cultural Heritage Politics in China, edited by Tami Blumenfield and Helaine Silverman. New York: Springer, 2013. xviii + 297 pp. £90.00/US$129.00 (hardcover), £72.00/US$99.00 (eBook).

<i>Cultural Heritage Politics in China</i>, edited by Tami Blumenfield and Helaine Silverman. New York: Springer, 2013. xviii + 297 pp. £90.00/US$129.00 (hardcover), £72.00/US$99.00 (eBook).

Tami Blumenfield and Helaine Silverman (eds), Cultural Heritage Politics in China,

Tami Blumenfield, cineaste et ethnologue des Na au Yunnan, s’est associee a Helaine Silverman, anthropologue des Andes, specialiste des politiques culturelles, pour editer ce volume sur les politiques patrimoniales en Chine. Ce theme fait echo a une realite incontournable des dernieres decennies, devenue l’objet d’innombrables reflexions academiques. Par ces 15 contributions, les editrices proposent une discussion axee sur la maniere dont, en Chine, le patrimoine protege est administre, et en...

Occupying the Past: Colonial Rule and Archaeological Practice in Israel/Palestine

Scholars working on issues of cultural heritage politics have repeatedly argued that archaeological sites in Israel/Palestine serve as grounds for the creation of a nation-state narrative that erases other histories. Expanding on this view, my paper first explores a set of spatio-political strategies that Israeli settlers use to carve out a national space within a larger colonial landscape. Second, as I trace those strategies into the realm of archaeological work, it is my goal to highlight how practices of heritage management and colonial rule in Israel/Palestine are co-constitutive. In this context, I also consider how the occupation, confiscation, and demolition of archaeological sites take place before the background of a modernist discourse that references a universal or global heritage.

A Study on Timber Structural Elements of a Traditional Turkish House

Preservation of traditional settlements is an important issue of sustainable cultural heritage politics and this is an ongoing research to raise an argument on concept of restoration works going on in small scaled residential wooden structures in Turkey. Authors have had several analysis studies that identify the architectural and structural features as well as damage assessment of the house stock in Kula district. The main concept of the restoration work of selected cases is replacing the old timber structural elements with the new one, instead of treating them. In this study it is aimed to evaluate this renovation process by focusing the wooden elements. Destructive testing methods have been used on wooden elements that were obtained from Goldeliler House during the fieldwork to make a mutual evaluation for the quality of old and new samples.

The Contested White Lady: A Critique of New Zealand Cultural Heritage Politics

This article critiques New Zealand’s cultural heritage politics by positing that vernacular items, like an iconic eatery called the White Lady, does not meet the legislative criteria enabling cultural heritage status. If vernacular artefacts, including ‘kiwiana’, are to be integrated within cultural heritage, then changes within legislation, definitions and participant preconceptions are necessary. This study argues that cultural heritage is dominated by artefacts and historic places; that ‘kiwiana’ and other vernacular items of social history, practice and tradition are relegated. Items of ‘kiwiana’ act as touchstones of identity for New Zealanders. Therefore, their omission distorts the view of New Zealand’s cultural heritage. The application of cultural heritage status to the White Lady is important because of its transcendence of time and social change, its aesthetic, and also because of its present-day hospitality offering.