Heritage Politics in China

Heritage Politics in China
Author: Yujie Zhu
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 225
Release: 2020-01-02
Genre: History
ISBN: 0429821654

Heritage Politics in China: The Power of the Past studies the impact of heritage policies and discourses on the Chinese state and Chinese society. It sheds light on the way Chinese heritage policies have transformed the narratives and cultural practices of the past to serve the interests of the present. As well as reinforcing a collective social identity, heritage in China has served as an instrument of governance and regulation at home and a tool to generate soft power abroad. Drawing on a critical analysis of heritage policies and laws, empirical case studies and interviews with policymakers, practitioners, and local communities, the authors off er a comprehensive perspective on the role that cultural heritage plays in Chinese politics and policy. They argue that heritage-making appropriates international, national, and local values, thereby transforming it into a public good suitable for commercial exploitation. By framing heritage as a site of cooperation, contestation, and negotiation, this book contributes to our understanding of the complex nature of heritage in the rapidly shifting landscape of contemporary China. Heritage Politics in China: The Power of the Past is essential reading for academics, researchers and students in the fi elds of heritage studies, cultural studies, Asian studies, anthropology, tourism and politics.

Cultural Heritage Politics in China

Cultural Heritage Politics in China
Author: Tami Blumenfield
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
Total Pages: 303
Release: 2013-05-14
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1461468744

​This volume explores China’s cultural heritage ideology and policies from three interrelated perspectives: the State and World Heritage tourism; cultural heritage tourism at undesignated sites, and the cultural politics of museums and collections. Something of a cultural heritage designation craze is happening in China. This is new within even the last five to ten years. Officials at many levels now see heritage preservation as a means for commoditizing their regions. They are devoting new resources and attention to national and international heritage designations. Thus, addressing cultural heritage politics in a nation dedicated to designation is an important project, particularly in the context of a rapidly growing economy. This volume is also important because it addresses a very wide range of cultural heritage, providing an excellent sample of case studies: historic vernacular urban environments, ethnic tourism, scenic tourism, pilgrimage as tourism, tourism and economic development, museums, border heritage, underwater remains, and the actual governance and management of the sites. This volume is an outstanding introduction to cultural heritage issues in China while contributing to Chinese studies for those with greater knowledge of the area.

The Politics of Heritage Tourism in China

The Politics of Heritage Tourism in China
Author: Xiaobo Su
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 350
Release: 2009-09-11
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1135256217

This volume unravels the politics surrounding behind China’s hegemonic project of heritage tourism development in Lijiang. It provides a compelling study of the dialectical relationships between global and domestic capital, the state, tourists and locals as they collude, collaborate and contest one another to ready Lijiang for tourist consumption. Using rich material from insightful interviews and quantitative data, the authors show how complex tourism development can be even as it strives to do good for the community. Su and Teo investigate the practices of contestation and negotiation of identity within Lijiang; analyze the negotiations that transform material and vernacular landscapes; and suggests strategies that will enable sustained tourism interest in this location. Linking Gramsci’s theory on hegemony to the cultural politics of space, this book has two major strengths: it establishes a theoretical framework to conceptualize power relations in tourism space and provides critical insights into the rapidly shifting socio-political landscape of contemporary China. Comparisons with other Chinese heritage sites are also provided. By addressing the power struggles inevitable in the process of tourism development, The Politics of Heritage Tourism in China provides an innovative understanding of China’s dynamic politics in a period of transition. As such, it will address the needs of students and academic scholars working in the fields of China studies, tourism, cultural studies, urban studies, sociology, geography, political science and heritage studies.

World Heritage Craze in China

World Heritage Craze in China
Author: Haiming Yan
Publisher: Berghahn Books
Total Pages: 242
Release: 2018-03-28
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1785338056

There is a World Heritage Craze in China. China claims to have the longest continuous civilization in the world and is seeking recognition from UNESCO. This book explores three dimensions of the UNESCO World Heritage initiative with particular relevance for China: the universal agenda, the national practices, and the local responses. With a sociological lens, this book offers comprehensive insights into World Heritage, as well as China’s deep social, cultural, and political structures.

Chinese Heritage in the Making

Chinese Heritage in the Making
Author: Marina Svensson
Publisher: Asian Heritages
Total Pages: 288
Release: 2018-03-07
Genre: History
ISBN: 9789462983694

The Chinese state uses cultural heritage as a source of power by linking it to political and economic goals, but heritage discourse has at the same time encouraged new actors to appropriate the discourse to protect their own traditions. This book focuses on that contested nature of heritage, especially through the lens of individuals, local communities, religious groups, and heritage experts. It examines the effect of the internet on heritage-ization, as well as how that process affects different groups of people.

Politics of Scale

Politics of Scale
Author: Tuuli Lähdesmäki
Publisher: Berghahn Books
Total Pages: 189
Release: 2019-01-02
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1789200172

Critical Heritage Studies is a new and fast-growing interdisciplinary field of study seeking to explore power relations involved in the production and meaning-making of cultural heritage. Politics of Scale offers a global, multi- and interdisciplinary point of view to the scaled nature of heritage, and provides a theoretical discussion on scale as a social construct and a method in Critical Heritage Studies. The international contributors provide examples and debates from a range of diverse countries, discuss how heritage and scale interact in current processes of heritage meaning-making, and explore heritage-scale relationship as a domain of politics.

Heritage Movements in Asia

Heritage Movements in Asia
Author: Ali Mozaffari
Publisher: Berghahn Books
Total Pages: 216
Release: 2019-11-04
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1789204828

Heritage processes vary according to cultural, national, geographical, and historical contexts. This volume is unique in that it is dedicated to approaching the analysis of heritage through the concepts of social movements. Adapting the latest developments in the field of social movements, the chapters examine the formation, use and contestation of heritage by various official, non-official and activist players and the spaces where such ongoing negotiations and contestation take place. By bringing social movements into heritage studies, the book advocates a shift of perspective in understanding heritage, one that is no longer bound by (at times arbitrary) divisions such as those assumed between the state and people or between experts and non-experts.

Grassroots Values and Local Cultural Heritage in China

Grassroots Values and Local Cultural Heritage in China
Author: Harriet Evans
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
Total Pages: 291
Release: 2021-10-06
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 179363274X

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.

Reconsidering Cultural Heritage in East Asia

Reconsidering Cultural Heritage in East Asia
Author: Akira Matsuda
Publisher: Ubiquity Press
Total Pages: 173
Release: 2016-09-27
Genre: Art
ISBN: 1909188891

The concept of ‘cultural heritage’ has acquired increasing currency in culture, politics and societies in East Asia. However, in spite of a number of research projects in this field, our understanding of how the past and its material expressions have been perceived, conceptualised and experienced in this part of the world, and how these views affect contemporary local practices and notions of identity, particularly in a period of rapid economic development and increasing globalisation, is still very unclear. Preoccupation with cultural heritage - expressed in the rapid growth of national and private museums, the expansion of the antiquities’ market, revitalisation of local traditions, focus on ‘intangible cultural heritage’ and the development of cultural tourism - is something that directly or indirectly affects national policies and international relations. An investigation of how the concept of ‘cultural heritage’ has been and continues to be constructed in East Asia, drawing on several case studies taken from China, Japan and Korea, is thus timely and worthwhile.