The Turtle Garden: Tan Kah Kee’s last spiritual world

This paper explores the role of diasporic subjects in China’s heritage-making through a case study of the Turtle Garden built by Tan Kah Kee in Xiamen, China. Tan is the first person with Overseas Chinese background who built museums in the P.R. China and has been regarded as a symbol of Overseas Chinese patriotism. This paper argues that the Turtle Garden, conceptualised as a postcolonial ‘carnivalesque’ space, is more than a civic museum for public education. It reflects the owner’s highly complex and sometimes conflicting museum outlook embedded in his life experience as a migrant, his encounter with (British) colonialism in Malaya, and integrated with his desire and despair about the Chinese Communist Party’s nation-building project in the 1950s. Rather than a sign of devotion to the socialist motherland as simplistically depicted in China’s discourse, the garden symbolises Tan’s last ‘spiritual world’ where he simultaneously engaged with soul-searching as a returned Overseas Chinese and alternative diasporic imagining of Chinese identities and nation. It brings to light the value of heritage-making outside centralised heritage discourses, and offers an invaluable analytical lens to disentangle the contested and ever shifting relationship between diasporic subjects, cultural heritage and nation-(re)building in the Chinese context and beyond.

Masonic Notes: a publication to encourage and facilitate intercommunicatioon between Masonic students in all parts of the world. (1918)

Acquired with funds provided by Heritage Lodge No. 730 and Grand Lodge of Canada A.F. and A.M. in the Province of Ontario, 2009.

Masonic Notes: a publication to encourage and facilitate intercommunicatioon between Masonic students in all parts of the world. (1918)

Acquired with funds provided by Heritage Lodge No. 730 and Grand Lodge of Canada A.F. and A.M. in the Province of Ontario, 2009.

Pica 13: Newsletter of the Mackenzie Heritage Printery Museum, 2001

The Mackenzie Heritage Printery Museum in Queenston, Ontario, is Canada’s largest working printing museum. The museum is housed in the 19th century home of William Lyon Mackenzie, a journalist and politician who published the Colonial Advocate and was instrumental in the Rebellion of 1837. The museum contains a Louis Roy Press, the oldest in Canada and one of the few original wooden presses remaining in the world.

Doctrines and practices of the Burhaniya Sufi Order in the arab world and in the west between 1938 and 2012 : a decolonial and transdisciplinary analysis from an insider perspective

Ce mémoire présente une exploration décoloniale et transdisciplinaire des doctrines et pratiques de la confrérie soufie transnationale Burhaniya, dans le monde arabe et en Occident. Il traite principalement de la période s’étendant de la fondation de la confrérie en 1938 jusqu’en 2012. Pour bien contextualiser les particularités de l’émergence de cette confrérie moderne, ce mémoire présente tout d’abord son ancrage historique par l’étude de ses racines en lien avec l’histoire du soufisme en Afrique du Nord et en Asie de l’Ouest. Puis, ce mémoire offre une analyse comparative de certains des principaux contextes nationaux où s’est disséminée cette confrérie, à partir du Soudan, vers l’Égypte, la France, l’Allemagne, les États-Unis et le Canada. Suite à ses recherches, l’auteur conclut que les cheikhs de la Burhaniya ont facilité l’expansion de la confrérie en occident et ont perpétué un héritage soufi plutôt traditionnel au sein du monde moderne. Ils ont su le faire en préservant les doctrines fondamentales de leur tradition tout en adaptant leurs pratiques à divers contextes.

Streetwise Asia, a practical guide for the conservation and revitalisation of heritage cities and towns in Asia.

This is a practical and accessible guide for residents and professionals concerned to preserve and revitalise heritage cities in Asia. Heritage cities (many listed by UNESCO) are of course of major interest to one of the world's largest industries, tourism. Using inset colour photographs to complement the text, the realities of destructive and constructive development, repairs, restoration and usage are made clear. Legal, financial, administrative, historical and educational aspects of conservation policies, incentives and implementations are discussed. With outlines for strategy, goals and bibliography.

Villages that never were : the museum village as a heritage genre

Villages of relocated buildings now constitute a phenomenon of the world's repertoire of heritage. They go by a multitude of names depending on particular inflection: open air museum, folk museum, living history museum, heritage village, museum village and so forth. 1 This paper reviews the context of the form of the genre's manifestation in Australia, where it is often known as the `pioneer village'. They are the fruit of a populist vision of national history which celebrates white rural settlement as its central theme. In practice, the villages manifest a deep commitment to collecting and saving old buildings as the meaningful construction of a favourite historical identity. But the generation that established Australia's villages has been overtaken. Today, the intersection of museum villages with the managerialist pressures of local economy enhancement and modern professional standards of heritage management challenge most villages' survival.

Limiting the list : human rights and intangible cultural heritage

UNESCO's Convention for the Safeguarding of Intangible Heritage came into force in April 2006, signalling a major expansion of the global system of heritage protection from the tangible to the intangible. It is an expansion that some heritage professionals see as opening up a Pandora's box of confusions and complexities. The conservation of inanimate objects tangible sites and monuments and artefacts - is difficult enough; but the protection of heritage embodied in people raises new sets of ethical and practical issues. The paper canvasses these concerns and focuses on how the notion of human rights must be used as a way of limiting and shaping the Intangible List. In particular it outlines the ways in which the protection and preservation of cultural heritage is linked to 'cultural rights' as a form of human rights. This linkage is not clearly recognised by cultural heritage practitioners in many countries, who view their work merely as technical, or even by human rights workers, despite the abundance of opportunities around the world to witness people struggling to assert their cultural rights in order to protect their heritage and identity.

Whose identity? Valuing the culture built heritage in diverse and tensioned societies

The UNESCO declaration on cultural diversity in 2002 has raised more questions than answers. More recent events around the World have highlighted the immediate need for legislative actions to protect cultural built heritage in tensioned societies. This paper discusses the potential global risks that face cultural built Heritage. The paper argues that such risks are not only limited to regions where military operations are taking place but also to nations where questions of identity and cultural diversity are raised. The paper questioned the reasons and the impact of the rise of ethno nationalism on the protection of cultural built heritage. The different discourses of these groups that will lead to destruction of cultural artefacts are also explored. In order to properly legislate means for the protection of vulnerable cultural built heritage in conflict areas, the underline value system should be clarified and the values under threat identified. The paper concludes with a plea to move our understanding and definition of culture from the previous 'old' definition with relation to "people' to a 'new' one which is more relevant to context.

Valuing local built heritage in a global setting : identity & visual perceptions of cultural built heritage in Northern Ireland

‘In these troubled times with the world in search of its bearings and way ward minds using the terms “culture” and “civilization” in an attempt to turn human beings against one another, there is an urgent need to remember how fundamental cultural diversity is to humanity itself’ (UNESCO 2002). The progressive idea of culture can be used in regressive ways by extremists who used it occasionally to pursue the politics of xenophobia and exclusion. The hypothesis that different communities can share the same culture but have different visual perception of their built environment might seems contradictory. It is essential to describe what is meant by the ‘same culture’. The ever evolving changes of definition and re-definition of the word has not yet settled. This paper adopts the descriptive definition of culture while challenging its interpretation. The descriptive definition refers to ‘all the characteristics activities by a people’. While this description is generally accepted, the interpretation of what ‘a people’ means is divisive. It is not clear how Eliot defines ‘a people’. Is the term genetically prescribed or is ‘a people’ place related? And what about the moral and religious orientation? This paper argues that culture is basically place related and the forces that shape a culture of a ‘people’ are deeply embedded in the environmental forces that also shape other aspects of the place making and its identity. The paper addresses the questions of conflicts, value systems, and culture definitions and the inseparable links with architecture aesthetics.

Local built heritage in Northern Ireland is taken as a case study. Unlike many parts of the world, visual perceptions in Northern Ireland is well recognised with iconic as well as formal representations. The population is well aware of the signified as well as the signifiers. The boundaries between iconology and formalism theories are very blurred in the Northern Ireland context. This paper examines how the two communities visually perceive their shared built heritage and the extent of overlapping between the understanding of iconic and formalist visual representations in the built environment. The paper takes the buildings of the successful economic ventures of the shirt industry in the 19th century as a case study. The case study provides an insight of how a signified value of a successful economic regeneration initiative that is deeply imbedded in the social structure and within the urban fabric can overcome divisive visual perception. The paper examines the possibility of building upon the historical success of the shirt industry to promote architectural cultural dialogue in which cultural built heritage in Derry is able to facilitate knowledge creation and social capital in different arenas.

Highlights from the tennis Australia heritage collections : mini-exhibition in the player cafe, Rod Laver Arena

Summary : This 'mini-exhibition' arose as an opportunity to showcase recent acquisitions as well as established holdings of significant items of tennis related heritage within the Tennis Australia Heritage Collections. In general, the Collections have two main strengths, and the mini-exhibition was designed to communicate these. The first strength is the ability to show the evolution of tennis technology and practices over time, from the beginnings of modern tennis in the 1860s, to today. This evolution is a result of tennis being influenced by changes in the wider world, such as the Industrial Revolution. The second strength of the Collections is in showing the impact and influence of tennis on society. Many items in the Collections are evidence of the immense and enduring popularity of the sport across the world. The Collections contain many beautiful, rare and fascinating items of decorative arts, fashion, literature and social history which feature tennis as a motif. These items show the reverse influence - the deep impression tennis has made outside of the sport itself.  This mini-exhibition focuses on these two themes. Some displays focus on the first theme. They demonstrate the evolution of tennis racquets, tennis balls, instructional publications and other tennis related equipment over the past century and a half. Other displays focus on the second theme. There are cases which examine tennis' influence upon global popular culture, in board games, fashion and decorative arts from around the world.  The mini-exhibition includes items from the U.s, U.K., Germany, France, Austria, Japan and Australia, demonstrating the global phenomenon that tennis quickly became, and showcasing the international scope of the Collections.  Each case contains text panels listing the objects and their specifications, and panels providing contextual information about the display. The miniexhibition is expected to be on display until November 2009. A case-bycase breakdown of objects, with images and a layout map follows.

"Old Man" : Australian battalion commanders in the Second World War

Examining the background, training and conduct of Australian Second World War battalion commanders, this thesis rejects the notion of a single Australian command style. Rather, it shows command practice was a product of the interaction between terrain, tactics, technology and training, and that increasing professionalisation was central to battlefield success.

Climate change and heritage : responding to the crisis

Climate change poses a major threat to heritage of all kinds. Yet much of the work so far on climate change and heritage replicates aspects of the global heritage system, tending to emphasise a European perspective and focusing on the preservation of tangible heritage. We call for a broader understanding of climate change, particularly as it affects heritage in the developing world, especially that of indigenous peoples and small Island states. This is also a call for political engagement by heritage practitioners. We argue that in the struggle against climate change heritage practitioners can make a worthwhile contribution by arguing for a de-commodified form of heritage practice emphasizing the involvement of local communities and recognition of their cultural resources; that resists being coopted into economic growth strategies unless they supplant other forms of unsustainable development; that focuses on heritage as an alternative way of viewing resources and their use.

Green planning heritage/industrial nature : the park lands or 'regeneration reserves' of Broken Hill

Freestone (1989+) has extensively surveyed town planning visions and model communities for Australia, but one settlement has been forgotten. The significant mining settlement of Broken Hill in far western New South Wales does not figure in his thematic and historical analyses yet its park lands are so integral to its physical cultural legacy and human health that it warrants enhanced standing. In the last 2 years the Commonwealth has been considering the potential nomination of the municipality of Broken Hill for inclusion onto the National Heritage List principally due to its mining, social and economic contributions to Australia’s heritage and identity. A component in their deliberations is the Park Lands, or ‘Regeneration Reserves’, that encompass this urban settlement and its mine leaseholds. Within these Regeneration Reserves, international arid zone ecological restoration theory and practice was pioneered by Albert and Margaret Morris in the 1930s that serves as the method for all mining revegetation practice in Australia today. This paper reviews the theory and evolution of the Broken Hill Regeneration Reserves, having regard to the Adelaide Park Lands and Garden City discourses of the 1920s-30s, arguing that the Broken Hill Regeneration Reserves have a valid and instrumental position in the planning and landscape architectural histories of Australia.

Heritage of war

The Heritage of War is an interdisciplinary study of the ways in which heritage is mobilized in remembering war, and in reconstructing landscapes, political systems and identities after conflict. It examines the deeply contested nature of war heritage in a series of places and contexts, highlighting the modes by which governments, communities, and individuals claim validity for their own experiences of war, and the meanings they attach to them.

From colonizing violence in South America to the United States’ Civil War, the Second World War on three continents, genocide in Rwanda and continuing divisions in Europe and the Middle East, these studies bring us closer to the very processes of heritage production. The Heritage of War uncovers the histories of heritage: it charts the constant social and political construction of heritage sites over time, by a series of different agents, and explores the continuous reworking of meaning into the present.

What are the forces of contingency, agency and political power that produce, define and sustain the heritage of war? How do particular versions of the past and particular identities gain legitimacy, while others are marginalised? In this book contributors explore the active work by which heritage is produced and reproduced in a series of case studies of memorialization, battlefield preservation, tourism development, private remembering and urban reconstruction. These are the acts of making sense of war; they are acts that continue long after violent conflict itself has ended.