Chinese Heritage Sites and their Audiences
Chinese Heritage Sites and their Audiences

Author: Rouran Zhang

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2020-03-17

Total Pages: 228

ISBN-13: 042986339X

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Chinese Heritage Sites and their Audiences provides a Chinese perspective on tourists’ relationship to heritage. Contributing to ongoing debates within heritage and tourism studies, the book offers insights into how and why visitors engage with such sites. Drawing on interviews with domestic tourists, local residents and heritage officials at the World Heritage sites of West Lake, Xidi and Hongcun, Zhang argues that tourists have agency: when they visit heritage sites, they are doing cultural, social and emotional work, whilst also negotiating cultural meanings. Providing an examination of the complex interactions between locals and tourists, the author then considers how tourists navigate and interpret heritage sites. Finally, Zhang examines whether the government or locally controlled tourism enterprises are more effective in facilitating meaningful cultural interaction between tourists and locals. Overall, the book demonstrates the interrelation between tourism and heritage, and the tensions that are created when the ways in which sites are used differ from the expectations of UNESCO and national or regional site managers. Chinese Heritage Sites and their Audiences pays particular attention to ongoing debates about heritage performances, the importance of emotions and the agency of tourists, and will thus appeal to academics and students engaged in the study of heritage, tourism, landscape architecture and anthropology.

Management Planning for Cultural Heritage
Management Planning for Cultural Heritage

Author: Ken Taylor

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2021-12-30

Total Pages: 282

ISBN-13: 1317513126

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Management Planning for Cultural Heritage challenges traditional perceptions of and about the heritage planning process while also presenting a comprehensive analysis of the ever-widening field of Cultural Heritage Conservation. Drawing on the authors’ experience in teaching and involvement in international practice, the book examines the changes that are taking place in modes of thinking about heritage as part of increasingly complex urban transformations, and considers how these must engage with, and inform, professional practice. The book also acknowledges that international best practice has developed a great deal over the last 40 years and needs to be adapted, applied and refined through the recognition and application of regional values – tangible and intangible – based on cultural attitudes and practices. Emphasising the critical role of heritage planning and management in guiding change, Taylor and Verdini argue that this is especially critical if we are to safeguard values, identity and significance. In this sense, heritage is understood not only as a technical process but also as a social construct. The book therefore promotes a people-centred approach to cultural heritage management. Management Planning for Cultural Heritage will be of interest to students, scholars and practitioners working in heritage studies and conservation. While the text has professional application, it also sets out to present a sound theoretical foundation relevant to the body of knowledge associated with management of cultural heritage places.

Sacred Heritage in Japan
Sacred Heritage in Japan

Author: Aike P. Rots

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2020-04-02

Total Pages: 288

ISBN-13: 1000045633

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Sacred Heritage in Japan is the first volume to explicitly address the topics of Japanese religion and heritage preservation in connection with each other. The book examines what happens when places of worship and ritual practices are rebranded as national culture. It also considers the impact of being designated tangible or intangible cultural properties and, more recently, as UNESCO World or Intangible Heritage. Drawing on primary ethnographic and historical research, the contributions to this volume show the variety of ways in which different actors have contributed to, negotiated, and at times resisted the transformation of religious traditions into heritage. They analyse the conflicts that emerge about questions of signification and authority during these processes of transformation. The book provides important new perspectives on the local implications of UNESCO listings in the Japanese context and showcases the diversity of "sacred heritage" in present-day Japan. Combining perspectives from heritage studies, Japanese studies, religious studies, history, and social anthropology, the volume will be of interest to scholars and students who want to learn more about the diversity of local responses to heritage conservation in non-Western societies. It will also be of interest to scholars and students engaged in the study of Japanese religion, society, or cultural policies.

The Heritage Corridor
The Heritage Corridor

Author: Denis Byrne

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2021-10-14

Total Pages: 165

ISBN-13: 1000508781

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The Heritage Corridor argues for a transnational approach to investigating and recording heritage places that emerge from histories of migration. Addressing the material legacy of migration, this book also relates it to issues of contemporary importance. Presenting an image of the built environment of migration as one shaped by the ongoing flows of people, ideas, objects and money that circulate through migration corridors, Byrne proposes that houses and other structures built by migrants in their home villages in China over the period 1840–1940 should be seen as crystallisations of the labour, aspirations and longings enacted and experienced by their builders while overseas. Demonstrating that the material world of the migrant is distributed across transnational space, the book calls for an approach to the heritage of migration that is similarly expansive. It proposes and illustrates new methods and strategies for heritage practice. The Heritage Corridor is a book for scholars and students in the fields of critical heritage studies, migration studies and Chinese diasporic mobilities. It is designed to be accessible to heritage practitioners, readers with an interest in the material worlds of migration, past and present, and to all those with an interest in the ‘archaeology’ of transnational migration.

Home Beyond the House
Home Beyond the House

Author: Wei Zhao

Publisher: Taylor & Francis

Published: 2022-11-17

Total Pages: 350

ISBN-13: 1000786757

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Based on extended fieldwork conducted between 2007 and 2019, this book aims to answer a simple question: What is the meaning of home for people living in vernacular settlements in rural China? This question is particularly potent since rural China has experienced rapid and fundamental changes in the twenty-first century under the influences of national policies such as "Building a New Socialist Countryside" enacted in 2006 and "Rural Revitalization" announced in 2018. Drawing upon ethnographic fieldwork, building surveys, archival research, and over 600 photographs taken by residents along with their life stories, this book uncovers the meanings of home from rural residents’ perspectives, who belong to a social group that is underrepresented in scholarship and underserved in modern China. In other words, this study empowers rural residents by giving them voice. This book links the concepts of place, home, and tradition into an overarching argument: The meaning of home rests on the ideas of tradition, including identity, consanguinity, collectivity, social relations, land ownership, and rural lifestyle.

Emotional Heritage
Emotional Heritage

Author: Laurajane Smith

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2020-07-20

Total Pages: 307

ISBN-13: 1317497503

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Emotional Heritage brings the issues of affect and power in the theorisation of heritage to the fore, whilst also highlighting the affective and political consequences of heritage-making. Drawing on interviews with visitors to museums and heritage sites in the United States, Australia and England, Smith argues that obtaining insights into how visitors use such sites enables us to understand the impact and consequences of professional heritage and museological practices. The concept of registers of engagement is introduced to assess variations in how visitors use museums and sites that address national or dissonant histories and the political consequences of their use. Visitors are revealed as agents in the roles cultural institutions play in maintaining or challenging the political and social status quo. Heritage is, Smith argues, about people and their social situatedness and the meaning they, alongside or in concert with cultural institutions, make and mobilise to help them address social problems and expressions of identity and sense of place in and for the present. Academics, students and practitioners interested in theories of power and affect in museums and heritage sites will find Emotional Heritage to be an invaluable resource. Helping professionals to understand the potential impact of their practice, the book also provides insights into the role visitors play in the interplay between heritage and politics.

Folk Literati, Contested Tradition, and Heritage in Contemporary China
Folk Literati, Contested Tradition, and Heritage in Contemporary China

Author: Ziying You

Publisher: Indiana University Press

Published: 2020-02-11

Total Pages: 256

ISBN-13: 0253046378

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“Ground-breaking . . . has implications for recognizing the existence and value of local, grass roots intellectual agency elsewhere in China and the globe.” —Mark Bender, the Ohio State University In this important ethnography Ziying You explores the role of the “folk literati” in negotiating, defining, and maintaining local cultural heritage. Expanding on the idea of the elite literati—a widely studied pre-modern Chinese social group, influential in cultural production—the folk literati are defined as those who are skilled in classical Chinese, knowledgeable about local traditions, and capable of representing them in writing. The folk literati work to maintain cultural continuity, a concept that is expressed locally through the vernacular phrase: “incense is kept burning.” You’s research focuses on a few small villages in Hongtong County, Shanxi Province in contemporary China. Through a careful synthesis of oral interviews, participant observation, and textual analysis, You presents the important role the folk literati play in reproducing local traditions and continuing stigmatized beliefs in a community context. She demonstrates how eight folk literati have reconstructed, shifted, and negotiated local worship traditions around the ancient sage-Kings Yao and Shun as well as Ehuang and Nüying, Yao’s two daughters and Shun’s two wives. You highlights how these individuals’ conflictive relationships have shaped and reflected different local beliefs, myths, legends, and history in the course of tradition preservation. She concludes her study by placing these local traditions in the broader context of Chinese cultural policy and UNESCO’s Intangible Cultural Heritage program, documenting how national and international discourses impact actual traditions, and the conversations about them, on the ground. “One of the most important and far-reaching books of folklore scholarship today.” —Amy Shuman, author of Other People’s Stories

A Representation of Nationhood in the Museum
A Representation of Nationhood in the Museum

Author: Sang-hoon Jang

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2020-01-20

Total Pages: 94

ISBN-13: 0429753969

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A Representation of Nationhood in the Museum examines how the National Museum of Korea, as a national repository of material culture and the state’s premier exhibition facility, has shaped and been shaped by Korean nationalism. Exploring the processes by which the museum has discovered and interpreted material culture, using concepts of ethnic nationalism in the historical and political contexts of South Korean society, the book analyses how this nationalist interpretation has regulated South Koreans’ understanding of their material culture. Issues considered include: cultural and political relations with China; Japanese colonial rule, cultural imperialism and its legacy; the division of Korea since 1945; the Korean War and nation building since liberation in 1945; and domestic political upheavals, including military coups in 1961 and in 1979. Demonstrating that authoritarian regimes’ emphasis on the promotion of national unity drove national museums to establish national identity through material culture, Jang argues that international political and diplomatic factors also affect the process of the formation of national identity in a specific political context. Concerning itself with issues such as the relationship between politics and identity, museums and authoritarian regimes, this book should be essential reading for academics, researchers and postgraduate students in museum studies, nationalism studies, Asian studies and history departments.

Digital Immersive Art in China
Digital Immersive Art in China

Author: Xinyang Zhao

Publisher: Anthem Press

Published: 2024-10-08

Total Pages: 132

ISBN-13: 1839993049

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China has been stereotypically perceived as a place of backwardness. However, the 21st century has been a transitional period for China to express its cultural power. This book explores how digital technology, in particular virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR), is playing a role in China’s rejuvenation, especially in relation to cultural displays, performances and art exhibitions. It examines how audiences, both in China and globally, respond to Digital China through digital immersive art. Drawing on the author's anthropological research and empirical studies on stakeholders and audience reception, this book provides a comprehensive understanding of transformative power of digital technology and its impact on cultural experience in contemporary China. The ‘reform of the cultural system’ over the past two decades in China has fostered a techno-cultural imaginary mixed with the celebration of Chinese civilisation and advanced by digital technology and entrepreneurs. Such a hybrid imaginary influences how people view and consume digital immersive art. Much digital immersive art within China is thus viewed within the framework of modernisation, as the case studies in this book will show. Outside China, however, the dominant narrative of techno-orientalism prevails, constructing a different image of Digital China, a technocratic state.

Routledge Handbook of Cultural Landscape Practice
Routledge Handbook of Cultural Landscape Practice

Author: Steve Brown

Publisher: Taylor & Francis

Published: 2023-02-14

Total Pages: 646

ISBN-13: 1351787063

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Cultural landscapes, which in the field of heritage studies and practice relates to caring for and safeguarding heritage landscapes, is a concept embedded in contemporary conservation. Heritage conservation has shifted from an historical focus on buildings, city centres, and archaeological sites to encompass progressively more diverse forms of heritage and increasingly larger geographic areas, embracing both rural and urban landscapes. While the origin of the idea of cultural landscapes can be traced to the late-19th century Euro-American scholarship, it came to global attention after 1992 following its adoption as a category of ‘site’ by the UNESCO World Heritage Committee. Today, cultural landscape practice has become increasingly complex given the expansion of the values and meanings of heritage, the influence of environmental challenges such as human induced climate change, technological advancements, and the need to better understand and interpret human connections to place and landscapes. The aim of this handbook is to strike a balance between theory and practice, which we see as inseparable, while also seeking to achieve a geographical spread, disciplinary diversity and perspectives, and a mix of authors from academic, practitioner, management, and community backgrounds.