This session explores the different ways late modern states control and translate heritage, both their own and that of others. While modern governments have always played a role in the production and authorization of heritage, late modern states have unprecedented command over the heritage landscape. Coinciding with the postwar economic boom, globalization, and most recently neoliberalism, the state has come to dominate the most vital aspects of heritage, ranging from research (heritage produ...

Much is being made of the perceived breakdown of the nation-state, which was historically configured as a “container” of heritage formations, adopting and perusing local traditions where possible but oppressing them where deemed unsuitable. Migration is seen as eroding the rigid boundaries of this configuration, potentially liberating identities and heritages in the process. This session addresses the relationship between critical heritage and redefinitions of self, other, community and place...

Since the beginning of the 19th century religious buildings and artefacts of the West have been involved in a continuous process of musealization. In the time-period subsequent to the Second World War, the general forces of secularisation increasingly turned religious buildings, most of them churches, into heritage and substantial parts of Christian practices into history. On a global scale (Western), conservation and heritage practices have been applied on tangible and intangible expressions...

Much is being made of the perceived breakdown of the nation-state, which was historically configured as a “container” of heritage formations, adopting and perusing local traditions where possible but oppressing them where deemed unsuitable. Migration is seen as eroding the rigid boundaries of this configuration, potentially liberating identities and heritages in the process. This session addresses the relationship between critical heritage and redefinitions of self, other, community and place...

With sustainable development gaining momentum as a priority of UNESCO heritage policies, an increasing number of food-related nominations are being submitted for inscription on the lists of the Convention for the safeguarding of the intangible cultural heritage. The Mediterranean diet, traditional Mexican cuisine and the Japanese dietary culture of washoku are just some examples of this booming phenomenon. Since food and foodways are powerful references for self-representation and ident...

This session explores the different ways late modern states control and translate heritage, both their own and that of others. While modern governments have always played a role in the production and authorization of heritage, late modern states have unprecedented command over the heritage landscape. Coinciding with the postwar economic boom, globalization, and most recently neoliberalism, the state has come to dominate the most vital aspects of heritage, ranging from research (heritage produ...

In many emerging economies of the Global South, new urban mega-projects are strategically reviving heritage into simulacra, copies without originals, intended to sell places. We refer to these projects collectively as "New Built Heritage." This type differs from earlier constructions of heritage by canonical state institutions such as museums and ministries of culture in the way its main goal is to differentiate and market places rather than solely to shape collective identities. This session...

Space plays a crucial role in the production and meaning-making of cultural heritage. Although space has often been discussed in heritage studies, further critical analysis of the constructive and performative nature of space, in particular that of scale and territoriality, is needed in order to understand the power hierarchies and mechanisms of power in cultural heritage and in various conflicts related to its meanings, ownership, preservation and management. The idea of cultural herit...

Questions about the repatriation of cultural property, issues of access and exclusion in the World Heritage system, intangible heritage practices in conflict with human rights norms, or the ways in which the international human rights regime is interpreted as a form of cultural heritage itself: rights are now considered relevant in a broad variety of heritage situations. This is reflected in the incorporation of references to human rights in a series of key international heritage-relate...

Heritage processes vary according to cultural, national, geographical and historical contexts. Since the late 1980s, the phenomenon of contestation in heritage has been increasingly recognized. However, there is still little detailed and situated knowledge about the range of actors present in contestations, the variety of strategies they pursue, the reasoning behind their choices, the networks they develop, and how, from all this, heritage has been and is constructed. More often than not, con...

Cities are growingly being faced by social, economic, cultural and environmental challenges imposing health and social risks. Rapid urbanization, population growth, climate change are only some of the major global challenges that a 21st century city needs to respond to. The current challenging global environment has led to the development of new approaches to the concept of "sustainable city" a city that caters for current and future generation. For instance, the idea of smart city (a city th...

This session seeks to explore the role of urban heritage in mediating and contesting political conflict in the context of divided cities. We take urban heritage in a broad sense to include places left, scarred or transformed by geo-political dispute, national and ethnic division, violence and war. The case studies can include tangible spaces such as elements of border architecture, historic sites, ruins and urban traces of the conflict, and memorials; as well as intangible elements of city, i...

Private sector cultural heritage evaluation, protection, and management in Ontario exists at the nexus of academic theory, legislative direction, and land-use planning. Heritage work in this context follows a conservation approach to mitigate the loss of identified resources due to urban and infrastructure development. Ideally, the process balances ‘expert knowledge’ with regular and protracted engagement with government agencies, communities, and individuals to create evaluation criteria,...

This session discusses the ways in which early public housing from the 1950s to 1960s in Hong Kong, China, and Singapore have emerged recently as an arena for the critique of national, elite or dominant notions of heritage and history. The contexts of the development of public housing in the early post-Second World War era and the background to their recent reappraisal as significant sites for the edification of cultural identity or socio-political struggle provide grounds for exploration of ...

Cities are growingly being faced by social, economic, cultural and environmental challenges imposing health and social risks. Rapid urbanization, population growth, climate change are only some of the major global challenges that a 21st century city needs to respond to. The current challenging global environment has led to the development of new approaches to the concept of "sustainable city" a city that caters for current and future generation. For instance, the idea of smart city (a city th...

In exploring the broader question “What does heritage change?” this session presents work that is extending heritage policies and practices beyond elite cultural narratives. Using diverse disciplinary perspectives and drawing from case studies around the world, the presenters explore contexts in which stakeholders’ perspectives and choices have been catalysts for change, democratized knowledge, or exposed gaps in contemporary heritage practices. The case studies reveal complex and often conte...

Among other aims, the Critical Heritage Studies (CHS) Movement, most exemplified by the promotional efforts of the Association of Critical Heritage Studies (ACHS), seeks to push heritage studies beyond its more traditional, longstanding "borders" of investigating the progress, as well as shortcomings, of the museum and heritage enterprise. Indeed, in the manifesto for ACHS, it is noted that heritage studies ought to expand to include a broader range of disciplinary (and interdisciplinary) the...