Reconceptualizing Heritage in China: Museums, Development and the Shifting Dynamics of Power

Abstract

Heritage, as both discourse and practice, is a recent European import into China, but it already has powerful appeal across offi cial and public domains, transforming the social, economic and cultural life of localities and reshaping domestic and global notions of China’s national identity. Heritage construction is a core feature of regional development strategies, especially in the historically poor and ethnically diverse regions of the southwest. Heritage tourism is promoted in diverse forms, from the ‘red’ sites commemorating the Communist Party-led revolution before the founding of the People’s Republic to the exotic ‘ocean of song and dance’ city of Kaili, Guizhou’s main city of Miao culture. However, between government policies and local communities whose claims to their own cultural past are being appropriated by political, developmental and commercial interests, heritage is a problematic term and practice, involving competition, confl ict and new hierarchies of power in local communities. Articulated by international and national agendas and integrated into local development strategies, heritage is something that local communities fi nd themselves obliged to engage with. But how? With what implications for local communities’ perceptions of their own cultural pasts and values, and for their transmission to future generations? What new conceptions and practices of heritage are emerging to contest the top-down imposition of heritage models that deny the possibility of locally embedded cultural renewal? And with what effects on the changing relationship between local communities and the state?

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