Heritage Movements in Asia

Ali Mozaffari is a Fellow of the Australian Research Council (DECRA) with the Alfred Deakin Institute, Deakin University, Melbourne. Through his research, Mozaffari seeks to understand the uses of the past in contemporary discourses of heritage and built environment in Iran and West Asia. His publications include Forming National Identity in Iran: The Idea of Homeland Derived from Ancient Persian and Islamic Imaginations of Place (IB Tauris 2014) and World Heritage in Iran; Perspectives on Pasargadae (Routledge 2016)

“Throughout the text, authors marvelously highlight unique cases, backed by compelling evidence, that portray a well-rounded story of heritage activism across countries such as Indonesia, China, Singapore, Nepal, Sri Lanka, and Iran. Libraries with extensive reserves focusing on Asian heritage, culture, and politics should have a copy of this work. – Highly Recommended.” • Choice“In general, this book highlights the need to question generalizing ideas about heritage. It props up the various ways in which we can counter the assimilationist emphasis of most state-sanctioned heritage policies. With an overtly structural approach, the chapters present translational applications to real-world problems.” • International Journal of Asian Studies (IJAS)“This book significantly contributes to our understanding of the complexities of heritage in Asia. It broadens our horizons to look at issues of governance, state-society relations, and the institutional ways memory and material culture are politically negotiated. It reveals heritage as a series of movements, unpacking, elaborating and critiquing what that term means in different social settings. An exciting contribution to the examination of heritage in Asia.” • Tim Winter, University of Western Australia, Professor of Critical Heritage studies, Author of Geocultural Power: China’s Quest to Revive the Silk Roads for the Twenty First Century“The book is a wake-up call for heritage practitioners who still too easily think of the material past as a static and unmediated record of times past. Heritage Movements in Asia reminds us that the heritage expert is only one among numerous players competing to inscribe meaning on the traces of the past embedded in the ground we all live on. As this book vividly illustrates, heritage activism, whether in the form of mass mobilisation or more intimate engagements, is what gives the material past its dynamism.” • Denis Byrne, Author of Counterheritage: Critical Perspectives on Heritage Conservation in Asia“Looking at heritage processes through the lens of social movements, this volume adds a meaningful contribution to the growing literature of critical heritage studies.” • Neel Kamal Chapagain, Director of the Centre for Heritage Management, Ahmedabad University“The manuscript fits well within the framework of collected essays on various aspects of heritage which have made recent appearance on themes such as contested and dissonant heritage, the impact of globalization upon multicultural societies and the increasing role of social media in mobilizing identity.” • Brian J. Shaw, School of Earth & Environment (Retired)

• List of illustrationsForewordAcknowledgementsIntroduction: Negotiation, Strategic Action and the Production of HeritageAli Mozaffari and Tod JonesChapter 1. Understanding Heritage Activism: Learning from Social Movement StudiesTod Jones, Ali Mozaffari, and James M. JasperChapter 2. ‘The Past is Always New’: A Framework for Understanding the Centrality of Social Media to Contemporary Heritage MovementsTod Jones, Transpiosa Riomandha and Hairus SalimChapter 3. The Exemplary Foreigner: Cultural Heritage Activism in Regional ChinaGary SigleyChapter 4. Heritage Activism in SingaporeTerence ChongChapter 5. Riverscape as Biocultural Heritage: A Local Indigenous Social Movement Contests a National Park in NepalSudeep Jana ThingChapter 6. Heritage for Whom? Caste and Contestation Among Sri Lanka’s Dumbara Rata WeaversAimée DouglasChapter 7. Heritage Activism and the Media (Framing) in IranAli Mozaffari