Shared Heritage Revisited

This book explores the intersection of cultural heritage and nationality in societies that are characterized by national, multi-national, and post-national concepts.

Culture is constructed, negotiated, managed, and shared by various ideological, political, and moral reasonings which manifest themselves tangibly and intangibly in public monuments, architecture, memorial sites, theaters, museums, orchestras, and heritage associations. The contributions to this volume explore the intersection of cultural heritage and nationality in societies that are characterized by national, multi-national, and post-national concepts. They question the roles that cultural heritage plays in its various contexts, and the ways in which ideology functions to produce it.

There is a charm to Kyoto. Surrounded by lush green hills, the city feels alive with nature, history, culture—and tourists. At once ancient capital, modern city, and home to numerous cultural heritage sites, Kyoto looms large in the promotion of Japanese culture at home and abroad. In the wake of years of economic recession followed by the national promotion of “cool Japan” in popular culture and tourism of the twenty-first century, anthropologist Jennifer Prough sets out to examine how the city’s history and culture have been mobilized to create heritage experiences for today’s tourists. The heart of her book, Kyoto Revisited, centers on what it means to produce these for visitors, why seeing and feeling culture and tradition appeal to both domestic and international travelers, and the challenges faced by a heritage tourism city. As Prough’s study suggests, heritage has multiple meanings. It is created as interested parties—state and local, public and private—tell different stories about the past, which are marketed in response to tourists’ desire for face-to-face engagement in an experience economy. Her work examines several prominent features of Kyoto tourism, including promotion plans, heritage neighborhood renovation, the role of the seasons and traditional aesthetics in citywide events, the appeal of sites commemorating the Meiji restoration, and the trend of walking in the heritage district in a rented kimono. Throughout Prough brings together scholarship from Japanese studies, heritage studies, and the anthropology of tourism to highlight the interplay between the romantic desire for heritage tourism and the emphasis on “personal experience” (taiken) in the visitor industry today. Experience has long been an integral part of tourism—even as what counts as experience has shifted across time and place (from taking a photo to staying with locals to trying one’s hand at a traditional craft)—yet these touristic desires take on a new tinge in the experience economy. Kyoto Revisited demonstrates not only how the past has been used to construct the city’s identity and shape understandings of Japan for travelers, but also how these speak to broader trends in our contemporary moment.

Traditional literacy, usually defined as the ability to read print materials, is but one component in a connected series. In an effort to facilitate the concept of connections, this book has been divided into four main sections: The many faces of literacy; the land and people of Iceland; the lessons from Iceland, an examination of the results of 57 interviews with fish factory workers, educators, librarians, community leaders, publishers, and students. The interviews sought the reasons for the remarkable nearly-100% print literacy in Iceland. Numerous tables summarize the interview data; and implications for the future.

By improving our understanding of how the tangible and intangible dimensions of heritage are correlated, we could develop a relationship with heritage that goes beyond the mere act of conservation. This book argues that we need to recognize the historic monument as a tangible aspect of a holistic expression of culture that is rooted in specific spatio-temporal conditions. However, since the latter are constantly changing, it is vital to identify an implicit contradiction with the goals of conservation. As the intangible dimensions are more dynamic, driven by the transmission, reception, and advancement of knowledge, the reliance of the prevailing treatment of heritage today, conservation, ossifies this relationship. By examining three major heritage monuments - the Pantheon, Teotihuacan's Sun Pyramid and Alhambra - the book shows how these sites are the product of multiple strategies and unforeseen agents, accumulated through history. It emphasizes how these historical trends need to be better understood in order to attain a more 'organic' relationship with heritage and offers some recommendations that should be analyzed in participative processes of deliberation: the Pantheon's continuity could be extended; the Pyramid's loss, accepted; and Alhambra's exclusion, reversed. In this way, the book invites people to engage heritage from a historical understanding that is open to critical reassessment, dialogue, and cooperation.

Celebrating the theme ‘Shared heritage’, this volume presents the peer-reviewed proceedings from IKUWA6 (the 6th International Congress for Underwater Archaeology, Fremantle 2016). Papers offer a stimulating diversity of themes and niche topics of value to maritime archaeology practitioners, researchers, students, museum professionals and more.

The texts in this book examine the processes that are currently transforming maritime features into cultural heritage. More than the state of maritime culture per se, the book focuses on the way in which this heritage is being constructed and used today. The authors set out their respective approaches, based on ethnographic and historical case studies from all over the Iberian Peninsula (Catalonia, Galicia, Andalusia, and the Basque Country), and from Yucatan (Mexico) and Brittany (France). The aim of presenting these different outlooks on maritime culture as heritage is to help bring together the theory and the practice of maritime heritage.\n\n