Local Heritage, Global Context


Book Description

'Sense of place' has become a familiar phrase, used to describe emotional attachment to a particular location. As heritage management policy and practices increasingly attempt to draw on the views and expressions of interest amongst local communities, it is important to have a better grasp of what people mean by this concept, and to assess its uses and implications. Here, a range of practitioners from NGO, agency, cultural heritage and archaeological backgrounds review the meanings of 'sense of place', and where it is useful in the context of heritage management practice. This volume breaks new ground in specifically addressing place attachment from a cultural heritage perspective, and drawing on local and national interests from a diversity of cultural situations. Illustrated with case studies from around Europe and Australia, the book addresses key themes, including the rootedness amongst communities in the past; policy-making for accommodating senses of place within planning and management, for land- sea- and city-scapes; official versus unofficial views; and the often difficult balance between planning policies that extend from regional to global scale, and local actions and perceptions.




Cultural Tourism


Book Description

Cultural tourism is not only a major industry but also a support for national identity and a means for preserving heritage. Interdisciplinary explorations of cultural tourism, with essays about tourism between globalization and authenticity, township tourism in Soweto, South Africa, tourism in the culturally regenerated city, the new tourism areas in London, cultural routes, in the footsteps of Goethe, Humbert and Ulysses, tourism in inland Spain, indicators and qualitative observatories of heritage tourism, ecotourism and religious tourism in the North of Portugal, the festivalization of society, the consequences of the European Capitals of Culture, the economic impact of festivals, the future of cultural tourism: grounds for pessimism or optimism? Review in: Journal of cultural economics. 32(2008)3(.231-236).




Asian Heritage Management


Book Description

The prevalent global heritage discourse has been primarily Euro-centric in its origin, premise, and praxis. Diverse cultural, historical, and geographical contexts, such as that of Asia, call for more context-specific approaches to heritage management. This book explores this complexity of managing the cultural heritage in Asia. Case studies include sites of Angkor, Himeji Castle, Kathmandu Valley, Luang Prabang, Lumbini, and Malacca, and the book uses these to explore the religious worldviews, heritage policies, intangible heritage dimensions, traditional preservation practices, cultural tourism, and the notion of cultural landscape that are crucial in understanding the cultural heritage in Asia. It critiques the contemporary regulatory frameworks in operation and focuses on the issues of global impact on the local cultures in the region. The book goes on to emphasize the need for integrated heritage management approaches that encompass the plurality of heritage conservation concerns in Asian countries. Themes are discussed from the vantage point of heritage scholars and practitioners in the South, Southeast, and East Asia. This book thus presents a distinctive Asian perspective which is a valuable source for students and practitioners of heritage within and beyond the Asian context.




Cultural Heritage Ethics


Book Description

Theory without practice is empty, practice without theory is blind, to adapt a phrase from Immanuel Kant. The sentiment could not be truer of cultural heritage ethics. This intra-disciplinary book bridges the gap between theory and practice by bringing together a stellar cast of academics, activists, consultants, journalists, lawyers, and museum practitioners, each contributing their own expertise to the wider debate of what cultural heritage means in the twenty-first century. Cultural Heritage Ethics provides cutting-edge arguments built on case studies of cultural heritage and its management in a range of geographical and cultural contexts. Moreover, the volume feels the pulse of the debate on heritage ethics by discussing timely issues such as access, acquisition, archaeological practice, curatorship, education, ethnology, historiography, integrity, legislation, memory, museum management, ownership, preservation, protection, public trust, restitution, human rights, stewardship, and tourism. This volume is neither a textbook nor a manifesto for any particular approach to heritage ethics, but a snapshot of different positions and approaches that will inspire both thought and action. Cultural Heritage Ethics provides invaluable reading for students and teachers of philosophy of archaeology, history and moral philosophy – and for anyone interested in the theory and practice of cultural preservation.




Uses of Heritage


Book Description

Examining international case studies including USA, Asia, Australia and New Zealand, this book identifies and explores the use of heritage throughout the world. Challenging the idea that heritage value is self-evident, and that things must be preserved, it demonstrates how it gives tangibility to the values that underpin different communities.




Heritage Tourism


Book Description

Heritage tourism has become an increasingly significant component of the global tourism industry, particularly in countries striving to diversify away from sea, sand and sun. This growth has had profound influences on the presentation and representation of both tangible and intangible heritage within tourism context. The concept of heritage continues to evolve with its fast-changing political, economic and socio-cultural surroundings. Therefore it is essential that heritage tourism engages with the new form of globalised communities and societies, which have become more assimilated to each other but yet strive to sustain their own distinctive locality. This book aims to offer a thorough critical examination and systematic evaluation of the unique dynamics of heritage and tourism development from both social sciences and management perspectives. It incorporates both global and local perspectives in theorising and managing heritage tourism. While focusing on reviewing and analysing key academic concepts and debates including authenticity, commodification, globalisation and heritage interpretation, this book also discusses and evaluates topical issues such as sustainable development, marketing strategies and digital technologies including social media. It theoretically locates heritage discourses in the analysis of heritage tourism development and management drawing on various perspectives, from tourism, heritage studies, sociology, anthropology, politics and geography to management and marketing studies. Including case studies of topical concerns, controversies and challenges it will encourage readers to develop a new and insightful understanding of the dialectical relationship between heritage and tourism development. This book is essential reading for students studying tourism, heritage studies, cultural studies as well as related disciplines.




Transcending the Culture–Nature Divide in Cultural Heritage


Book Description

While considerable research and on-ground project work focuses on the interface between Indigenous/local people and nature conservation in the Asia-Pacific region, the interface between these people and cultural heritage conservation has not received the same attention. This collection brings together papers on the current mechanisms in place in the region to conserve cultural heritage values. It will provide an overview of the extent to which local communities have been engaged in assessing the significance of this heritage and conserving it. It will address the extent to which management regimes have variously allowed, facilitated or obstructed continuing cultural engagement with heritage places and landscapes, and discuss the problems agencies experience with protection and management of cultural heritage places.




Grassroots Values and Local Cultural Heritage in China


Book Description

The recent heritage boom in China is transforming local social, economic, and cultural life and reshaping domestic and global notions of China's national identity. Based on long-term ethnographic fieldwork conducted largely by young anthropologists in China, Grassroots Values and Local Cultural Heritage in China departs from the dominant top-down UNESCO-influenced narrative of cultural heritage preservation and approaches the local not as a fixed definition of place but as a shifting site of negotiation between state, entrepreneurial, transcultural, and local community interests. The volume takes readers along an unusual trajectory between a disadvantaged neighborhood in central Beijing, metropolitan centers in Anhui and Sichuan, Quanzhou in the southeast, and Yunnan in the southwest before finally ending at the great Samye Monastery in Tibet. Across these sites, the contributors converge in apprehending the grassroots as an arena of everyday life and belonging underpinning ordinary social interactions and cultural practices as diverse as funeral rituals, Tibetan Buddhist pilgrimages, and encounters between young contemporary artists and the Bloomsbury Group. In examining the diversity of local cultural practices and knowledge that underpin ideas about cultural value, this volume argues that grassroots cultural beliefs are essential to the liveability and sustainability of life and living heritage.




World Heritage on the Ground


Book Description

The UNESCO World Heritage Convention of 1972 set the contemporary standard for cultural and natural conservation. Today, a place on the World Heritage List is much sought after for tourism promotion, development funding, and national prestige. Presenting case studies from across the globe, particularly from Africa and Asia, anthropologists with situated expertise in specific World Heritage sites explore the consequences of the World Heritage framework and the global spread of the UNESCO heritage regime. This book shows how local and national circumstances interact with the global institutional framework in complex and unexpected ways. Often, the communities around World Heritage sites are constrained by these heritage regimes rather than empowered by them.




World Heritage Sites


Book Description

This book reviews the important interrelations between the industry, local communities and conservation work, bringing together the various opportunities and challenges for a destination. Proper heritage management and conservation activities are always vital. Reviewing new areas of development, such as Historic Urban Landscapes, Intangible Cultural Heritage, Memory of the World and Global Geoparks, it Includes global case studies to relate theory into practice and covers a worldwide industry of over 1,000 cultural and natural heritage sites.