Asian Heritages - Böcker

This ethnography explores how Balinese citizens produce postcolonial intimacy-a complex interaction of claims to proximity and mutuality between themselves and the Dutch under colonialism that continues today. Such claims, Ana Dragojlovic explains, are crucial for the diasporic reconfiguration of kebalian, or Balinese-ness, a concept that encompasses the personal, social, and cultural complexities involved in Balinese identity in Dutch postcolonial society. This identity enables Balinese migrants to see themselves as carriers of unique cultural traditions both promoted by and in disagreement with Dutch cultural values.

The Chinese state uses cultural heritage as a source of power by linking it to political and economic goals, but heritage discourse has at the same time encouraged new actors to appropriate the discourse to protect their own traditions. This book focuses on that contested nature of heritage, especially through the lens of individuals, local communities, religious groups, and heritage experts. It examines the effect of the internet on heritage-isation, as well as how that process affects different groups of people.|This book focuses on the contested nature of heritage through the lens of individuals, local communities, religious groups, and heritage experts.

1. Explores heritage from a prehistoric perspective that combines cultural and historical material 2. Combines contexts of looting and faking with excavated material from a single site 3. Provides an example of symmetry analysis on prehistoric painted pottery.

The essays in this volume explore crucial intellectual and cultural exchanges between Asia and Europe in the first half of the twentieth century. Examining the increased mobility of people and information, scientific advances, global crises, and the unravelling of empires, Eurasian Encounters demonstrates that this time period saw an unprecedented increase in a transnational flow of politically and socially influential ideas. Together, the contributors show how the two ends of Eurasia interacted in artistic, academic, and religious spheres using new international and cosmopolitan approaches.

The drums beat, an old man in a grand robe mutters incantations and three brides on horseback led by their grooms on foot proceed to the Naxi Wedding Courtyard, accompanied, watched and photographed the whole way by tourists, who have bought tickets for the privilege. The traditional wedding ceremonies are performed for the ethnic tourism industry in Lijiang, a World Heritage town in southwest China. This book examines how heritage interacts with social-cultural changes and how individuals perform and negotiate their identities through daily practices that include tourism, on the one hand, and the performance of ethnicity on the other. The wedding performances in Lijiang not only serve as a heritage 'product' but show how the heritage and tourism industry helps to shape people's values, dreams and expectations. This book also explores the rise of 'romantic consumerism' in contemporary China. Chinese dissatisfaction with the urban mundane leads to romanticized interests in practices and people deemed to be natural, ethnic, spiritual and aesthetic, and a search for tradition and authenticity. But what, exactly, are tradition and authenticity, and what happens to them when they are turned into performance?

The Lao People’s Democratic Republic is nearly fifty years old, and one of the few surviving one-party socialist states. Nearly five decades on from its revolutionary birth, the Lao population continues to build futures in and around a political landscape that maintains socialist rhetoric on the one hand and capitalist economics on the other. Contemporary Lao politics is marked by the use of cultural heritage as a source of political legitimacy. Researched through long-term detailed ethnography in the former royal capital of Luang Prabang, itself a UNESCO-recognized World Heritage Site since 1995, this book takes a fresh look at issues of legitimacy, heritage, and national identity for different members of the Lao population. It argues that the political system has become sufficiently embedded to avoid imminent risk of collapse but suggests that it is facing new challenges primarily in the form of rising Chinese influence in Laos.

The Heritage Turn in China: The Reinvention, Dissemination and Consumption of Heritage focuses on heritage discourse and practice in China today as it has evolved from the 'heritage turn' that can be dated to the 1990s. Using a variety of disciplinary approaches to regionally and topically diverse case studies, the contributors to this edited volume show how particular versions of the past are selected, (re)invented, disseminated and consumed for contemporary purposes. These studies explore how the Chinese state utilises heritage not only for tourism, entertainment, educational and commercial purposes, but also as part of broader political strategies on both the national and international stage. Together, they argue that the Chinese state deploys modes of heritage governance to construct new modernities while strengthening collective national identity in support of both its political legitimacy and its claim to status as an international superpower. The authors also consider ways in which state management of heritage is contested by some stakeholders whose embrace of heritage has a different purpose and meaning.

Already celebrated as a busy entrepôt and the most glorious of the Malay kingdoms of the past, Melaka has been on the UNESCO World Heritage List (together with George Town) since 2008 on the strength of its multi-ethnic and multi-religious urban fabric. Yet, contrary to the expectations of heritage experts and aficionados, the global mission of safeguarding cultural heritages has become a tumultuous issue on the ground. In World Heritage and Urban Politics in Melaka, Malaysia: A Cityscape below the Winds how the World Heritage 'label' has been, and continue to be used by different actors, such as international organizations, nation states, and society at large, to generate new economic revenues as well as to attract tourists and investments for large-scale real estate development projects is analyzed, revealing the complex and often contradictory stories behind heritage designations in urban milieus.

Since it first mesmerized Western audiences in the early 20th century, Balinese masked dance–drama (Topeng) has drawn sustained scholarly attention. Yet until now, much of that attention has been filtered through non-Balinese perspectives. Telling Other Tales seeks to redress this imbalance by presenting Topeng as a living, plural tradition—one whose meaning is co-created by Balinese and non-Balinese performers, scholars and other observers alike. In these essays, academic rigor and personal testimony sit in rich dialogue. Historians, anthropologists and theatre scholars engage alongside Balinese priests, musicians and Topeng practitioners, weaving together formal analysis with evocative reflections. Together, they illuminate how this ancient theatrical form is not only studied, but lived, acted and re-imagined in the everyday. This volume will appeal to scholars of performance, Asian studies and cultural anthropology—or to anyone curious about how traditional forms both shape and are shaped by the many people who carry them forward.

A case study which examines how the end of elephant catching has affected the heritage and identity of the Kui Ajiang, offering an analysis that calls for close attention to the broader currents of Thai history and the development of Thai environmental and cultural heritage policies.

The essays in this volume explore crucial intellectual and cultural exchanges between Asia and Europe in the first half of the twentieth century.

This ethnography explores how Balinese citizens produce postcolonial intimacy-a complex interaction of claims to proximity and mutuality between themselves and the Dutch under colonialism that continues today.

This book focuses on the contested nature of heritage through the lens of individuals, local communities, religious groups, and heritage experts.

This book examines China's heritage practices since the 1990s heritage turn through diverse case studies using multiple disciplinary approaches

This book examines how heritage interacts with social-cultural changes and how individuals perform and negotiate their identities through daily practices that include tourism, on the one hand, and the performance of ethnicity on the other.

World Heritage and Urban Politics in Melaka analyses how the World Heritage 'label' is being used by different actors to generate new economic revenues and to attract investment for large-scale real estate development projects. In doing so, it reveals the complex and often contradictory stories behind heritage designations in urban milieus.

Researched through long-term detailed ethnography in the former royal capital of Luang Prabang, itself a UNESCO-recognized World Heritage Site since 1995, this book takes a fresh look at issues of legitimacy, heritage, and national identity for different members of the Lao population.

The prehistoric site of Ban Chiang in northeast Thailand challenges the narrative of Thai origins, while at the same time appealing to the public's vision of Thailand as an early centre of civilization. This text explores heritage from a prehistoric perspective that combines cultural and historical material.