Challenging a Discourse of Difference: Heritage in Asia and Europe
My Session Status
As the interface between past and present, heritage is deeply involved in articulations of personal and group identity, working to unite and harmonize group relations, and, simultaneously causing frictions, fractions, and violence. Critical heritage theory reveals that values and approaches to heritage are articulated both within and across regions (such as Asia, or Europe). A vital, and as yet unanswered, question centres on the degree to which heritage in Asia fundamentally differs from those conservation regulations and practices based on European notions of time, materiality and aesthetics, which have been internationalised as a set of ‘standards’. Attempts to challenge the European hegemony in global heritage practice has led to an overly simplistic dichotomization between ‘Asian’ and ‘Western’, where Europe is reduced to linearity, rigidity and permanence, and Asia spirituality and impermanence. With little serious, long-term humanistic and social science research undertaken on the complexities of Asian approaches to heritage in relation to European ones, policy-makers and international heritage programmes too often resort to this East-West dichotomy and re-establish these socially constructed (or imagined) communities in attempts to express multicultural sensitivity. Critically, a paradigm of difference and opposition undermines more robust understandings of shared approaches and inter-regional dialogue, and risks contributing to situations of conflict or violence. Securing grounded, nuanced understandings of the complex entanglements and inter-connections between heritage, its care, and its governance in Asia and Europe is therefore an urgent task. The widespread politicisation of heritage today, both at the local and national level means a more open, intra-regional, cross-cultural dialogue around the cultural past, and its links to identity is of global concern.
This session includes papers that challenge this discourse of difference. It proposes research and debates that move beyond statements of essential difference, transcend nationalism, flesh out the complexities of regional heritage, and unpack ideas of Asian-European dichotomy. It also includes contributions that examine, through a comparative lens, the actual foundations for valuing and approaching heritage in Asia and Europe.
Sub Sessions
Lao People’s Democratic Republic (PDR) is 134th on the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) Human Development Index. In other words, in terms of the way UNDP measures human development, there are 133 nations ahead of the Lao PDR. This is one of the critical and crucial aspects of international tourism in a World Heritage city like Luang Prabang. Poverty alleviation coupled with economic development is a powerful tourism incentive/driver. World Heritage, in this context, “merely” provi...
Historically, the study of heritage has been dominated by European, or Western scholars and approaches, privileging the material, the linear, the grand. One of the main driving forces within critical heritage studies has been to open up new ways of thinking about and doing heritage and not only include but also put the interests of the marginalized and excluded to the forefront. In line with this, “Asian” approaches to heritage have been identified as important to include, since they repre...
The supplier, or looter link, is the least researched part of the chain of illicit artefact trade. Understanding the local dimensions of looting in Asia and Europe is a major challenge for international law and heritage management. Previous research has mostly been mapping activities in parts of the trade chains. Based in criminology, law, or archaeology, it has operated within a legal and moral discourse where looting is primordially defined as a crime and judged as immoral and site destr...
Depuis vingt années, une nouvelle mode s’est répandue en Chine : l’imitation architecturale de bâtiments européens et américains. Le phénomène, toujours perçu en Occident comme une fantaisie néolibérale, a même pris en certains endroits une ampleur absurde, allant jusqu’à copier des sites patrimonialisés. On peut ainsi penser au promoteur chinois qui a reproduit le village autrichien d’Hallstat inscrit au Patrimoine mondial de l’UNESCO ou encore au petit Paris de Hangzhou avec ses immeuble...
For decades the international heritage regime has increasingly been criticized as following a Western notion of and approach to cultural heritage safeguarding, leading to Western hegemony over how heritage is internationally discussed and safeguarded in practice. Following substantial criticism, East Asian countries such as Japan and South Korea, in particular, pushed for a change in international heritage safeguarding, promoting their own safeguarding models and leading to a significant d...
Over the past two and a half decades, a new type of museum dedicated to representing violent pasts through the lens of human rights has emerged in Europe, Asia, and North America. The aims and uses of the concept of human rights within the realm of museum exhibitions across these regions differ significantly due to the unique cultural, political, and social settings that shape public history. However, current research does not consider these varied approaches to heritage. In fact, the Euro...
The notion of cultural heritage is predominantly a European-based concept as it can be perceived through a scan of the literature and the international documents, both conventions and/or recommendations. A good example of this Eurocentric approach is represented by the UNESCO World Heritage List which is characterized by an unbalance in favour of the European countries dominated by a more tangible notion of cultural heritage. The shift toward the intangible dimension of cultural heritage a...
Only in 2014 did Myanmar receive its first World Heritage inscription. But for several years now, “heritage” has been a key word of the social transformation often considered an “opening up” of a long-isolationist country: increasingly, in what can be called “heritage creep,” it supersedes cognate terms like culture/cultural, archaeological, or tradition. Even earlier, it was already one of the main “social objectives” of the military government of the 1990s to preserve “national character...
