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Politics of Scale: A New Approach to Heritage Studies II

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What:
Regular session
When:
9:00, Monday 6 Jun 2016 (3 hours 30 minutes)
In recent decades, the growth of the World Heritage industry has necessitated the reconsideration of scale. Formerly dominated by nation-states, some influential international organizations such as UNESCO and its advisory bodies (ICOMOS and IUCN) are now taking a strong role in decision-making through policy-making and implementation. Despite the power of the transnational organization and its relation with states parties, there is a growth of regionalism and “localism” in the heritage industry. The 2003 Intangible Cultural Heritage Convention has strong support from several Asian countries and, to some extent, reflects their wills and interests. Regional organizations have sprung up in South Asia, Africa and Caribbean, promoting regional heritage identities against the hegemonic value stemming from European heritage discourse. These phenomena indicate that the power structure of the heritage industry is not fixed; rather, it refers to a process of reconfiguration and contestation along different scales.
We believe the concept of “politics of scale” is crucial in critical heritage studies by tracing the “power geometries” (Massey 1996) of how heritage works. We also criticize how the European-dominant language of heritage affects local traditions, cultural practices and daily life in the form of authorized heritage discourse (Smith 2006). Although the seminal work “A Geography of Heritage” (Graham, Ashworth and Tunbridge 2000) brings the concept of “scale” to heritage studies, the concept of “politics of scale” is not yet well developed to analyze the social construction of heritage scales through socio-political contestation. Recently, David Harvey encouraged heritage studies to take the understanding of scale into account for further theorization of heritage. As he stated, “to understand how heritage works, we must examine what scale does, and how heritage and scale interact” (2015:3).
In this session we echo Harvey’s call, and seek to investigate the interrelation between the re-theorization of scale and heritage. This session will not only examine scale as a fixed unit and exiting category with certain spatial boundary such as “local, regional, national and international,” but also explore how scale works as a process of “hierarchization and re-hierarchization.” We will also deploy the pluralistic meanings of “politics of scale” (Brenner 2001) to analyze the power struggle during the process of production, reconfiguration and contestation within and among heritage scales.
With these issues in mind, we invite papers looking into the following themes:
• How scale is used by heritage institutions to legitimate their authority and produce hierarchies among scales;
• How heritage discourse is reinforced and affects other scales based on the power structure and uneven development between scales;
• How local struggles emerge to negotiate with the discourse through moving between and along scales.
We encourage papers from different approaches or disciplines, since we believe the plural form of “heritage studies” makes it a multi- inter-disciplinary area that benefits from communication, collaboration or even contestation. Each discipline is embedded in one scale or many (such as individual, local, regional, national and global), and we hope the critical interaction of these approaches will generate new insights into heritage studies.

Sub Sessions

9:00 - 9:30 | 30 minutes

This paper will addresse the politics of scale in issues regarding the ICH-ization of popular religion in recent China. Popular religion, symbolized political incorrectness in Mao’s era, has gone through a revival period since the late 1970s and some of the Chinese beliefs and practices have been inscribed as ICH on provincial, national, or UNESCO’s lists. The ICH-ization of popular religion in China, this paper will argue, is a phenomenon that emerged in the post-Mao context where the neo...

Ming-chun Ku

Participant
9:00 - 9:30 | 30 minutes

This paper will investigate the interrelation between heritage and scale. It will not only examine scale as a fixed unit and existing category with certain spatial boundaries such as local, regional, national, and international, but also study how scale works as a process of hierarchization and re-hierarchization. I will also deploy the pluralistic meanings of “politics of scale” to analyze the power struggle during the process of production, reconfiguration, and contestation within and am...

Dr Yujie Zhu

Participant
9:00 - 9:30 | 30 minutes

Within the last ten years, open-access web-based technologies have provided new methods for fostering engagement between cultural heritage organizations and their audiences. At the most basic level, this might include utilizing social media to tag, share, or comment on cultural content. Increasingly, there is also an emphasis on re-using, re-mixing, and distributing content, which signals a shift in the positioning of audiences from cultural consumers to cultural producers. The logic of pa...

9:00 - 9:30 | 30 minutes

The earliest bronze drums in Asia date back over two thousand years and symbolized great wealth and spiritual power. Of the 2400 bronze drums found throughout the world, the HeChi Red River Basin in Northwest Guangxi, China possesses the largest number, with 1400. The bronze drum is one of thousands of tangible heritage, or “cultural relics,” inscribed on China’s national heritage registry. Launching a massive campaign for nation-wide heritage protection, China has created a three-tier her...

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