Heritage Formation and the Senses in Post-Apartheid South Africa

Heritage Formation and the Senses in Post-Apartheid South Africa
Author: Duane Jethro
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 170
Release: 2020-05-11
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1000182185

In this book, Duane Jethro creates a framework for understanding the role of the senses in processes of heritage formation. He shows how the senses were important for crafting and successfully deploying new, nation-building heritage projects in South Africa during the postapartheid period. The book also highlights how heritage dynamics are entangled in evocative, changing sensory worlds.Jethro uses five case studies that correlate with the five main Western senses. Examples include touch and the ruination of a series of art memorials; how vision was mobilised to assert the authority of the state-sponsored Freedom Park project in Pretoria; how smell memories of apartheid-era social life in Cape Town informed contemporary struggles for belonging after forced removal; how taste informed debates about the attempted rebranding of Heritage Day as barbecue day; and how the sound of the vuvuzela, popularized during the FIFA 2010 Football World Cup, helped legitimize its unofficial African and South African heritage status.This book makes a valuable contribution to the field of sensory studies and, with its focus on aesthetics and material culture, is in sync with the broader material turn in the humanities.

Sense and Essence

Sense and Essence
Author: Birgit Meyer
Publisher: Berghahn Books
Total Pages: 350
Release: 2018-07-01
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1785339419

Contrary to popular perceptions, cultural heritage is not given, but constantly in the making: a construction subject to dynamic processes of (re)inventing culture within particular social formations and bound to particular forms of mediation. Yet the appeal of cultural heritage often rests on its denial of being a fabrication, its promise to provide an essential ground to social-cultural identities. Taking this paradoxical feature as a point of departure, and anchoring the discussion to two heuristic concepts—the "politics of authentication" and "aesthetics of persuasion"—the chapters herein explore how this tension is central to the dynamics of heritage formation worldwide.

Visual Redress in Africa from Indigenous and New Materialist Perspectives

Visual Redress in Africa from Indigenous and New Materialist Perspectives
Author: Elmarie Costandius
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Total Pages: 299
Release: 2023-06-20
Genre: Art
ISBN: 1000890988

Through an indigenous and new materialist thinking approach, this book discusses various examples in Africa where colonial public art, statues, signs and buildings were removed or changed after countries’ independence. An African perspective on these processes will bring new understandings and assist in finding ways to address issues in other countries and continents. These often-unresolved issues attract much attention, but finding ways of working through them requires a deeper and broader approach. Contributors propose an African indigenous knowledge perspective in relation to new materialism as alternative approaches to engage with visual redress and decolonisation of spaces in an African context. Authors such as Frantz Fanon, Ngugi Wa Thiong’o and George Dei will be referred to regarding indigenous knowledge, decolonialisation and Africanisation, and Karen Barad, Donna Haraway and Rosi Braidotti regarding new materialism. The book will be of interest to scholars working in art history, visual culture, heritage studies, African studies and architecture.

Rethinking Heritage in Precarious Times

Rethinking Heritage in Precarious Times
Author: Nick Shepherd
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Total Pages: 270
Release: 2023-07-14
Genre: Art
ISBN: 1000913813

Rethinking Heritage in Precarious Times sets a fresh agenda for Heritage Studies by reflecting upon the unprecedented nature of the contemporary moment. In doing so, the volume also calls into question established ideas, ways of working, and understandings of the future. Presenting contributions by leading figures in the field of Heritage Studies, Indigenous scholars, and scholars from across the global north and global south, the volume engages with the most pressing issues of today: coloniality, the climate emergency, the Covid-19 pandemic, structural racism, growing social and economic inequality, and the ongoing struggle for dignity and restitution.Considering the impact of climate change, chapters re-imagine museums for climate action, explore the notion of a world heritage for the Anthropocene, and reflect on heritage and posthumanism. Drawing inspiration from the global demonstrations against racism, police violence and authoritarianism, chapters explore the notion of a people’s heritage, draw on local and Indigenous conceptualizations to lay out a notion of heritage in the service of social justice and restitution, and detail the precariousness of universities and heritage institutions in the global south. Analysing the ongoing impact of the Covid-19 pandemic, chapters also explore the changing nature of life under lockdown, describe its effects on theories of urbanity, and reflect on emergent Covid socialities and heritage-in-the-making. Rethinking Heritage in Precarious Times argues that we need the deep-time perspective that Heritage Studies offers, as well as its sense of transgenerational conversations and accountabilities, in order to respond to these many challenges—and to craft open, creative, and inclusive futures. It will be essential reading for academics and students engaged in the study of heritage, anthropology, memory, history, and geography.

Design and Heritage

Design and Heritage
Author: Grace Lees-Maffei
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 297
Release: 2021-12-29
Genre: Art
ISBN: 1000528790

Design and Heritage provides the first extended study of heritage from the point of view of design history. Exploring the material objects and spaces that contribute to our experience of heritage, the volume also examines the processes and practices that shape them. Bringing together 18 case studies, written by authors from the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, Brazil, Norway, India, South Africa, Australia and New Zealand, the book questions how design functions to produce heritage. Including provocative case studies of objects that reinterpret visual symbols of cultural identity and buildings and monuments that evoke feelings of national pride and historical memory, as well as landscapes embedded with trauma, contributors consider how we can work to develop adequate shared conceptual models of heritage and apply them to design and its histories. Exploring the distinction between tangible and intangible heritages, the chapters consider what these categories mean for design history and heritage. Finally, the book questions whether it might be possible to promote a truly equitable understanding of heritage that illuminates the social, cultural and economic roles of design. Design and Heritage demonstrates that design historical methods of inquiry contribute significantly to critical heritage studies. Academics, researchers and students engaged in the study of heritage, design history, material culture, folklore, art history, architectural history and social and cultural history will find much to interest them within the pages of the book.

The Sound of Architecture

The Sound of Architecture
Author: Angeliki Sioli
Publisher: Leuven University Press
Total Pages: 306
Release: 2022-05-18
Genre: Architecture
ISBN: 9462703213

How sound and its atmospheres transform architecture Acoustic atmospheres can be fleeting, elusive, or short-lived. Sometimes they are constant, but more often they change from one moment to the next, forming distinct impressions each time we visit certain places. Stable or dynamic, acoustic atmospheres have a powerful effect on our spatial experience, sometimes even more so than architecture itself. This book explores the acoustic atmospheres of diverse architectural environments, in terms of scale, program, location, or historic period—providing an overview of how acoustic atmospheres are created, perceived, experienced, and visualized. The contributors explore how sound and its atmospheres transform architecture and space. Their essays demonstrate that sound is a tangible element in the design and staging of atmospheres and that it should become a central part of the spatial explorations of architects, designers, and urban planners. The Sound of Architecture will be of interest to architectural historians, theorists, students, and practicing architects, who will discover how acoustic atmospheres can be created without complex and specialized engineering. It will also be of value to scholars working in the field of history of emotions, as it offers evocative descriptions of acoustic atmospheres from diverse cultures and time periods.

Methods and Methodologies in Heritage Studies

Methods and Methodologies in Heritage Studies
Author: Rachel King
Publisher: UCL Press
Total Pages: 201
Release: 2024-07-15
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1800083793

Methods and Methodologies in Heritage Studies offers succinct, easily accessible analyses of the disciplinary debates, intellectual legacies, and practical innovations that have led to understandings of heritage value today. Through a diverse collection of expert voices, this volume invites readers to embark on their own journeys through appropriate methodologies for research and public engagement. Readers can draw on analyses of key problem areas and argumentative interventions to create a roadmap for the many disciplinary approaches that converge on heritage studies. Oriented specifically towards learning and teaching heritage across archaeology, anthropology, history, and geography, this textbook is designed to support critical, ethical heritage students, researchers, and practitioners. Praise for Methods and Methodologies in Heritage Studies 'This excellent volume fills a substantial gap for those looking for a single course book with which to teach a range of interdisciplinary methods to both undergraduate and postgraduate heritage studies students and should be seen as the ‘go to’ on heritage research methodologies for students, teachers and professionals alike. It will have a significant impact in shaping the field of critical heritage studies for years to come.' Rodney Harrison, Professor of Heritage Studies, UCL 'This textbook gathers a group of experienced specialists to discuss transformations of the field over time and present the latest trends and innovative debates, based on their own experiences in various international contexts. This volume will be of great interest for teachers, students and for the general public.' Andrés Zarankin, Professor of Archaeology, Federal University of Minas Gerais

A Sensory Education

A Sensory Education
Author: Anna Harris
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 211
Release: 2020-12-10
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1000182150

A Sensory Education takes a close look at how sensory awareness is learned and taught in expert and everyday settings around the world. Anna Harris shows that our sensing is not innate or acquired, but in fact evolves through learning that is shaped by social and material relations. The chapters feature diverse sources of sensory education, including field manuals, mannequins, cookbooks and flavour charts. The examples range from medical training and forest bathing to culinary and perfumery classes. Offering a valuable guide to the uncanny and taken-for-granted ways in which adults are trained to improve their senses, this book will be of interest to disciplines including anthropology and sociology as well as food studies and sensory studies. The Open Access version of this book, available at https://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/9781003084341 has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 4.0 license.

Doing Ethnography in the Wake of the Displacement of Transnational Sex Workers in Yokohama

Doing Ethnography in the Wake of the Displacement of Transnational Sex Workers in Yokohama
Author: Ayaka Yoshimizu
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 161
Release: 2021-11-23
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 100047111X

Doing Ethnography in the Wake of the Displacement of Transnational Sex Workers in Yokohama reflects on the politics, poetics, and ethics of remembering the lives of transnational migrant sex workers in postcolonial Japan. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork in the port city of Yokohama, the book focuses on the “water trade” in the Koganecho neighbourhood where exploitative and stigmatised labour took place, involving sexual services performed by migrant women. In recent years the city has sought to rebrand Koganecho, evicting transnational migrant sex workers who had been integral to postindustrial development and erasing their past presence. The author explores Yokohama’s memoryscapes in the aftermath of displacement through embodied knowledge, engaging her senses and ethics as a colonizer-researcher as she navigates the elusive past through traces that remain in the present. She examines the city’s built environment, official historical narratives, films, and photographic works. With few brothels and workers remaining, Yoshimizu fills the gap with her own interactions, encounters, and imaginings. Yoshimizu also writes through the imagery of water in ways that are informed by the local usage and imaginations—the ocean, flowing rivers, swamps, humidity, alcohol, the fluidity of relationships, and transient lives. The water also offers a way to sense the “ghost”, or the displaced lives and the effects of displacement, that, like humid air, stick to those who occupy or inhabit the site of displacement today. This interdisciplinary work makes a valuable contribution to sensory studies, memory studies, migration studies, and Asian studies.