Decolonising heritage
My Session Status
How might we move beyond, or untangle complex colonial histories with respect to heritage practices and policies?
This session seeks to envision the combination of these concepts of heritage, specifically, in examining inspiring and innovative practices.
Sub Sessions
Colonial heritage and industrial heritage are two of the most frequently-researched themes in the field of heritage studies. Yet people hardly reflect on the interrelationship between these two heritage themes and tend to examine those currently successful cities, which actually overlook some typical, interesting and inspiring cases. Harbin, the capital city of Heilongjiang Province, China, is exactly one of these overlooked cities. Harbin was not a human settlement until the ear...
This paper examines how alternative heritage discourses and practices are produced in marginalized communities in Chile. Focusing on three heritage sites, the author will explore how people subjected to the governance of authorized heritage are also active agents that use heritage in multiple ways. Through their memorialization and preservation practices, they destabilize the normalized relations between communities and cultural authorities, exercising their right to citizenship and inclus...
Through a case study of the indigenous Ainu's practice of their intangible heritage (listed in UNESCO as upopo and rimse) in Japan, this paper will offer an alternative paradigm on heritage production that simultaneously traverses and unsettles binaries of authority and disempowered, authenticity and change, global and local, producer and consumer, discourse and practice, East and West. The Ainu and their traditional performances are strategica...
In this paper, I examine memory’s relation to history and heritage, and its socio-cultural and political roles as portrayed within memorial spaces and sites of memory, drawing on theoretical insights from Connerton, Halbwachs, Hirsch, Nora, Ricoeur and Winter, among others. By exploring the architectural composition, curatorial, educational and ritual practices at the Australian War Memorial, I highlight the complex ways in which forms of remembrance are articulated to Australian and Int...