Inconvenient Heritage

The major international recognition of a World Heritage Site designation can bring important preservation efforts and a wealth of tourist dollars to an impoverished area—but it can also have destructive side effects. In a revealing study with lessons for tourism and preservation projects around the world, this book examines the redevelopment and packaging of Luang Prabang, Laos, as one of UNESCO’s World Heritage Sites that “belong to all peoples of the world, irrespective of the territory on which they are located.” It tells the story of how the world’s most prestigious preservation initiative led to a management plan designed to attract tourists and global capital, which in turn developed the most “appealing” parts of the city while destroying or neglecting other areas. This book makes a valuable contribution to tourism and heritage studies and international development.

The discussion about objects, ancestral remains and archives from former colonial territories is becoming increasingly heated. Over the centuries, a multitude of items - including a cannon of the King of Kandy, power-objects from DR Congo, Benin bronzes, Javanese temple statues, Maori heads and strategic documents - has ended up in museums and private collections in Belgium and the Netherlands by improper means. Since gaining independence, former colonies have been calling for the return of their lost heritage. As continued possession of these objects only grows more uncomfortable, governments and museums must decide what to do. How did these objects get here? Are they all looted, and how can we find out? How does restitution work in practice? Are there any appealing examples? How do other former colonial powers deal with restitution? Do former colonies trust their intentions? The answers to these questions are far from unambiguous, but indispensable for a balanced discussion.

One of the most salient forms of modern-day tourism is based on the heritage of humankind. The majority of all global travel entails some element of the cultural past, as hundreds of millions of people visit cultural attractions, heritage festivals, and historic places each year. The book delves into this vast form of tourism by providing a comprehensive examination of its issues, current debates, concepts and practices. It looks at the social, physical and economic impacts, which cause destinations, site managers and interpreters to consider not only how to plan and manage resources but also how to portray the past in ways that are acceptable, accurate, accessible and politically relevant. In the process, however, the depth of heritage politics, the authenticity and inauthenticity of place and experience, and the urgent need to protect living and built cultures are exposed. The book explores these and many other current issues surrounding the management of cultural resources for tourism. In order to help students relate concepts to real-world situations it combines theory and practice, is student learning oriented, is written accessibly for all readers and is empirically rich.

Haunted Heritage is a fascinating scholarly examination of the dynamics of ghost or paranormal tourism. Michele Hanks explores how this phenomenon allows for the re-articulation and re-configuring of ideas of heritage, epistemic authority, nation, and belonging. Drawing on long-term ethnographic fieldwork, Hanks delves into the anthropological, sociological, political, historical, and cultural factors that drive this burgeoning business. Using York, England, said to be “the most haunted city in the world,” as the base for her research, Hanks focuses on three forms of ghost tourism: ghost walks, commercial ghost hunts, and non-profit ghost hunts and paranormal investigations, comparing the experience of York with other sites of ghost tourism globally. This book will appeal to scholars interested in tourism, heritage, the paranormal, visual cultural, British studies, or popular religion.

In this textbook we see heritage in action in indigenous and vernacular communities, in urban development and regeneration schemes, in expressions of community, in acts of nostalgia and memorialization and counteracts of forgetting, in museums and other spaces of representation, in tourism, in the offices of those making public policy, and in the politics of identity and claims toward cultural property. Whether renowned or local, tangible or intangible, the entire heritage enterprise, at whatever scale, is by now inextricably embedded in “value”. The global context requires a sanguine approach to heritage in which the so-called critical stance is not just theorized in a rarefied sphere of scholarly lexical gymnastics, but practically engaged and seen to be doing things in the world.

This Handbook is the first major volume to examine the conservation of Asia’s culture and nature in relation to the wider social, political and economic forces shaping the region today. Throughout Asia rapid economic and social change means the region’s heritage is at once under threat and undergoing a revival as never before. As societies look forward, competing forces ensure they re-visit the past and the inherited, with the conservation of nature and culture now driven by the broader agendas of identity politics, tradition, revival, rapid development, environmentalism and sustainability. In response to these new and important trends, the twenty three accessible chapters here go beyond sector specific analyses to examine heritage in inter-disciplinary and critically engaged terms, encompassing the natural and the cultural, the tangible and intangible. Emerging environmentalisms, urban planning, identity politics, conflict memorialization, tourism and biodiversity are among the topics covered here. This path-breaking volume will be of particular interest to students and scholars working in the fields of heritage, tourism, archaeology, Asian studies, geography, anthropology, development, sociology, and cultural and postcolonial studies.

Using the example of China’s Wutai Shan—recently designated both a UNESCO World Heritage site and a national park—Robert J. Shepherd analyzes Chinese applications of western notions of heritage management within a non-western framework. What does the concept of world heritage mean for a site practically unheard of outside of China, visited almost exclusively by Buddhist religious pilgrims? What does heritage preservation mean for a site whose intrinsic value isn’t in its historic buildings or cultural significance, but for its sacredness within the Buddhist faith? How does a society navigate these issues, particularly one where open religious expression has only recently become acceptable? These questions and more are explored in this book, perfect for students and practitioners of heritage management looking for a new perspective.

This book focuses on the balance between protecting human rights and protecting world heritage sites. It concerns itself with the idea that the management of heritage properties worldwide may fail to adequately respect traditional entitlements and rights of individuals and communities living within or being affected by changes in the use of these spaces. It also explores the concept that the international heritage field has limited knowledge and awareness of this challenge. The volume argues that the dilemmas in question result from different conceptualisations of the key terms of 'rights', 'heritage' and 'community' among different groups and across political and cultural boundaries. In so far as 'culture' is what enables us to read the meanings involved, the ultimate questions are those that ask whose power is contested when one meaning is ‘fixed’ and the heritage of one group of humans is given the right to have its symbolic representation enjoyed and protected. The included case studies give vivid examples of this. This book was originally published as a special issue of the International Journal of Heritage Studies.