Beyond eurocentrism? Heritage conservation and the politics of difference

There is a long-standing debate concerning the suitability of European or ‘western’ approaches to the conservation of cultural heritage in other parts of world. The Cultural Charter for Africa (1976), The Burra Charter (1979) and Nara Document on Authenticity (1994) are notable manifestations of such concerns. These debates are particularly vibrant in Asia today. This article highlights a number of charters, declarations and publications that have been conceived to recalibrate the international field of heritage governance in ways that address the perceived inadequacies of documents underpinning today’s global conservation movement, such as the 1964 Venice Charter. But as Venice has come to stand as a metonym for a ‘western’ conservation approach, intriguing questions arise concerning what is driving these assertions of geographic, national or civilisational difference in Asia. To address such questions, the article moves between a number of explanatory frameworks. It argues declarations about Asia’s culture, its landscapes, and its inherited pasts are, in fact, the combined manifestations of post-colonial subjectivities, a desire for prestige on the global stage of cultural heritage governance and the practical challenges of actually doing conservation in the region.

A review of “Raj Rhapsodies: tourism, heritage and the seduction of history”

A book review of - Raj Rhapsodies: tourism, heritage and the seduction of history, edited by Carol Henderson and Maxine Weisgrau, Aldershot, Ashgate, 2007, xiv + 236 pp., ISBN 13: 9780754670674

Photosharing on Flickr: intangible heritage and emergent publics

This paper argues that Flickr, a popular ‘photosharing’ website, is facilitating new public engagements with world heritage sites like the Sydney Opera House. Australian heritage institutions (namely libraries and museums) have recently begun to employ Flickr as a site through which to engage communities with their photographic archives and collections. Yet Flickr is more than an ‘online photo album’: it is a social and cultural network generated around personal photographic practices. Members can form ‘groups’: self‐organised communities defined by shared interests in places, photographic genres, or the appraisal of photographs. These groups are public spaces for both visual and textual conversations – complex social negotiations involving personal expression and collective identity. For one group, the common interest is the Sydney Opera House, and their shared visual and textual expressions – representations of this building. This paper argues that such socio‐visual practices themselves constitute an intangible heritage. By drawing on the work of scholars Jose Van Dijck and Nancy Van House, Dawson Munjeri and Michael Warner, the paper proposes that this enactment of intangible heritage is implicated in the broader cultural value of the Sydney Opera House