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The Cultural Politics of New Built Heritage in Emerging Economies

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What:
Regular session
When:
9:00, Sunday 5 Jun 2016 (3 hours 30 minutes)
Themes:
Heritage Changes the Living EnvironmentHeritage Changes Politics
Tags:
Heritage changes the environmentHeritage values
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 brings together papers that study the particular ways new built heritage occurs, and that analyze the purposes behind such allusions to built artefacts of the past, and also probe the effects on various users and audiences of these projects.
The desire to attract foreign investment and join the global economy has led on the one hand to the adoption of placeless corporate styles, and on the other hand to the manufacturing of new built heritage. The ongoing revival of heritage is curious considering it was the relatively austere idiom of Architectural Modernism that was widely adopted by newly independent states in the decades following colonialism. Architectural Modernism signified a break with the past, and therefore, demonstrated aspirations of "modernity." It was disassociated from "empire" and colonial architecture with its appropriation of the vernacular (e.g., Saracenic in India), but still, its key ideas had emerged from European and American metropoles to be tested abroad. In the case of new built heritage projects, however, scholars are increasingly observing South-South flows of ideas, urban policies and aesthetics.
Builders of new urban projects are increasingly prioritizing "local" culture and "authentic" architectural idioms, and even opting for curated simulacrum in secular projects ranging in scale from kiosks to government buildings, resorts, royal palaces, housing developments, shopping centres, and the planning of new urban areas. There has been a surge in the revival of historic styles, often from non-local sources, in high-profile public and private projects. What often results is a carefully edited version of the past that serves the agendas of the ruling elite.
In this session, we aim to explore the cultural politics of this new heritage revival trend in all of its facets, scales and flows, the forces driving it, and the ways in which hegemonic narratives are being challenged or resisted. Some of the questions our session explores are:
• Whose heritage is being revived, by whom, and for what purpose?
• What narratives are included in new-built "heritage" and who is excluded?
• To what extent is the phenomenon of new-built heritage revival a strategy for empowerment? To what extent is it a strategy for domination?
• What role does economic competitiveness play? To what extent are cities and urban projects using heritage as a branding technique to attract investment and compete in the global or regional marketplace?
• How are nation-building efforts entangled in state-driven newly built heritage projects?
• What role do interpretations of Islam currently play in inspiring new-built heritage in Muslim-dominated countries?
Our session examines case studies in the United Arab Emirates, Turkey, Morocco, Vietnam and Indonesia, and draws on theoretical developments in several disciplines, including geography, architecture and cultural studies.

Sub Sessions

9:00 - 9:30 | 30 minutes

Dubai’s explosive growth over the past several decades and the proliferation of its urban spectacles have been well documented. The population has grown from 120,000 in the late 1960s to over two million today as the Emirate first discovered oil and subsequently developed banking and finance, manufacturing, trade, tourism, real estate, and other sectors in recent decades. Urban development in Dubai has been ambitious, generally unrestrained and frequently ostentatious, with many projects s...

9:00 - 9:30 | 30 minutes

Vietnam has one of the most dynamic emerging economies in the world, and heritage tourism plays a significant role in this regard. Tourism in Vietnam has exploded since the beginning of the doi moi (open door) policy instituted in 1986. The number of international visitors has grown from one million in 1994 to 6.8 million in 2012 and 7.8 million in 2014, and accounted for 52% of spending for travel and tourism gross domestic product (GDP) in 2014. At the same time, domestic tourism has gro...

Hazel Hahn

Participant
9:00 - 9:30 | 30 minutes

In April 2011, in the middle of an election campaign, the then prime minister (and current president) of Turkey, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, announced “Kanal Istanbul,” an artificial canal to be dug between the Black Sea and the Marmara Sea, parallel to the west of the natural straight, the Bosphorus, that already connects these two seas. Announced as a “crazy” project, the audacity of this project was a key pillar of the successful election campaign. The awe-inspiring project received heated co...

9:00 - 9:30 | 30 minutes

Since the 1990s, hundreds of new master planned cities have been springing up across the global South, namely in Asia and the Middle East, but also in Latin America and Africa. With its fifteen on-going new master planned city projects, Morocco is one of the African nations most actively taking part in this city-centric development trend. Focused on attracting global attention and investment, whilst fostering economic growth and addressing some of the social challenges related to rapid urb...

9:00 - 9:30 | 30 minutes

After struggling from over three hundred and sixty years of colonialism, Indonesia, similarly to many newly independent states, attempted to reconstruct its national identity through the adoption of cultural and heritage revival programs aimed to unify the nation. Since Indonesia is comprised of over three hundred different ethnic groups, this nationalist project relied on centralization and consolidation of political power, which resulted in tension between the central state and certain o...

Alyssa Wilbur

Participant
9:00 - 9:30 | 30 minutes

In a context of globalization, cities compete to be distinguished internationally for their specific peculiarities. Cities utilize their historic heritage or use iconic projects to enhance their attraction. Identity is often associated with an image and the image-making or identity-making of cities is used as branding strategy. In the United Arab Emirates the branding of the cities of Dubai and Abu Dhabi is mainly based on megaprojects and the signature of starchitects. Nevertheless there ...

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