Heritage at the Interface: Interpretation and Identity 9780813056579

Table of contents :
Cover
Heritage at the Interface
Title
Copyright
Dedication
Contents
List of Illustrations
Foreword
Introduction
1. Heritage as a Social Practice
2. “An Inconvenient Truth”: The Use of Federal Policy to Erase American Indians, Indian Tribes, and Indigenous Heritage
3. Consuming the Contested Heritage of War: Tourism, Territoriality, and the Memorial Landscapes of the Western Front
4. Historic Preservation in Nazi Germany: Practices, Patterns, and Politics
5. Displaying Independent India Abroad: Nationalism, Cultural Diplomacy, and Collaboration at the Nehru Memorial Exhibition, 1965–2015
6. The Negotiation of Identity and Belonging in Kakadu National Park
7. Knowing Subjects in an Unknown Place: Producing Identity through Tourism and Heritage in Niru Village, Southwest China
8. Religious Cultural Heritage: The Law and Politics of Conservation, Iconoclasm, and Identity
9. Beyond the Nation: Making Heritage Inclusive
10. Unstable Foundations? The Role of Identity in Heritage Management in Mauritius
11. Shared Identities through Cross-Border Cultural Tourism
12. The Place of History: Heritage, Tourism, and Community in Derry/ Londonderry
13. Imagining the Next Day: Music, Heritage, and Hope
Afterword: On Behalf Also of Gregory Ashworth
Select Bibliography
List of Contributors
Index

Citation preview

Heritage at the Interface Cultural Heritage Studies

University Press of Florida Florida A&M University, Tallahassee Florida Atlantic University, Boca Raton Florida Gulf Coast University, Ft. Myers Florida International University, Miami Florida State University, Tallahassee New College of Florida, Sarasota University of Central Florida, Orlando University of Florida, Gainesville University of North Florida, Jacksonville University of South Florida, Tampa University of West Florida, Pensacola

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HERITAGE at the Interface � Interpretation and Identity

Edited by Glenn Hooper Foreword by Paul A. Shackel

University Press of Florida Gainesville / Tallahassee / Tampa / Boca Raton Pensacola / Orlando / Miami / Jacksonville / Ft. Myers / Sarasota

Copyright 2018 by Glenn Hooper All rights reserved Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper This book may be available in an electronic edition. 23 22 21 20 19 18

6 5 4 3 2 1

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Hooper, Glenn, 1959– editor. | Shackel, Paul A., author of foreword. Title: Heritage at the interface : interpretation and identity / edited by Glenn Hooper ; foreword by Paul Shackel. Other titles: Cultural heritage studies. Description: Gainesville : University Press of Florida, 2018. | Series: Cultural Heritage Studies | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2017018510 | ISBN 9780813056579 (cloth) Subjects: LCSH: Historical sociology—Cross-cultural studies. | Communication—Cross-cultural studies. Classification: LCC HM487 .H47 2018 | DDC 302.2—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017018510 The University Press of Florida is the scholarly publishing agency for the State University System of Florida, comprising Florida A&M University, Florida Atlantic University, Florida Gulf Coast University, Florida International University, Florida State University, New College of Florida, University of Central Florida, University of Florida, University of North Florida, University of South Florida, and University of West Florida. University Press of Florida 15 Northwest 15th Street Gainesville, FL 32611-2079 http://upress.ufl.edu

In Memoriam: Gregory Ashworth

Contents

List of Illustrations ix Foreword xi Introduction 1 Glenn Hooper

1. Heritage as a Social Practice 11 Bella Dicks 2. “An Inconvenient Truth”: The Use of Federal Policy to Erase American Indians, Indian Tribes, and Indigenous Heritage 25 Kathleen Brown-Pérez 3. Consuming the Contested Heritage of War: Tourism, Territoriality, and the Memorial Landscapes of the Western Front 39 Jennifer Iles 4. Historic Preservation in Nazi Germany: Practices, Patterns, and Politics 56 Joshua Hagen 5. Displaying Independent India Abroad: Nationalism, Cultural Diplomacy, and Collaboration at the Nehru Memorial Exhibition, 1965–2015 72 Claire Wintle 6. The Negotiation of Identity and Belonging in Kakadu National Park 90 Emma Waterton 7. Knowing Subjects in an Unknown Place: Producing Identity through Tourism and Heritage in Niru Village, Southwest China 106 Jundan (Jasmine) Zhang and Hazel Tucker 8. Religious Cultural Heritage: The Law and Politics of Conservation, Iconoclasm, and Identity 121 Lucas Lixinski

9. Beyond the Nation: Making Heritage Inclusive 136 Johanna Mitterhofer 10. Unstable Foundations? The Role of Identity in Heritage Management in Mauritius 148 Rosabelle Boswell 11. Shared Identities through Cross-Border Cultural Tourism 161 Lee Jolliffe 12. The Place of History: Heritage, Tourism, and Community in Derry/ Londonderry 176 Glenn Hooper 13. Imagining the Next Day: Music, Heritage, and Hope 195 Roshi Naidoo Afterword: On Behalf Also of Gregory Ashworth 209 John Tunbridge Select Bibliography 215 List of Contributors 223 Index 227

Illustrations

Figures 1.1. 3.1. 3.2. 4.1. 4.2. 4.3. 5.1. 5.2. 5.3. 5.4. 6.1. 6.2. 7.1. 11.1.

Three categories of social practice involved in heritage-making 14 Military cemetery 45 Military cemetery 45 Before and after maps illustrating the changes accompanying the renewal of Cologne’s Rhine Quarter 61 Before and after images giving a general impression of the restoration efforts in Stralsund 65 Drawing illustrating the basic layout of the Museum Village Cloppenburg 68 Wedding pavilion at the Jawaharlal Nehru: His Life and His India exhibition 77 Members of the Eames Office team and Gautam and Gira Sarabhai 82 NID workshop with models of the Nehru exhibition’s layout 83 Detail of “History Wall” in progress 84 View from Nadab lookout at Sunset, Kakadu National Park 94 Rock art, Kakadu National Park 95 Niru Village 107 Culture Pass Land Map 165

Table 11.1. Institutional initiatives in cross-border cultural tourism 166

Foreword Heritage Development on a Global Scale

In this edited volume, Heritage at the Interface: Interpretation and Identity, Glenn Hooper has done an exceptional job gathering a wide range of emerging as well as prominent scholars who provide extraordinary case studies relating to the many heritage issues found in different cultures and regions. However, their scholarship goes beyond mere descriptions of their case studies, for they ground their research in theory and provide a larger context for their work. Several of the essays examine cross-cultural similarities and cover important topics related to the struggle of heritage development in various contexts, such as colonialism, heritage mobility, identity, nationalism, tourism, and economic development. A number of essays are concerned with difficult histories and provide a cautionary tale about how heritage can be manipulated for political gain, while several others discuss different forms of contested heritage surrounding issues of multivocality and representation. Rather than chronicle the dominant heritage, a number of authors provide an alternative perspective and focus on heritage from the bottom-up. All of these studies examine the complexity of heritage work and demonstrate how competing factions struggle to become part of the official public memory. A particular strength of this collection lies in the practical examples it presents, several of which may serve to inform those heritage managers who may face similar and sometimes difficult situations related to heritage development. An important theme of this volume is the dynamic nature of the meaning of heritage. It can suggest different things to different people, communities, and nations. Some parts of the past are remembered, while other parts are forgotten. Heritage implies integrity, authenticity, and stability, and is often used to clarify the past so that it may be deployed in the present. Therefore, heritage is based on a community’s shared values, becoming legitimized through a process of formalization and/or ritualization by referring to or recognizing a particular past. By developing a continuum with the past, these traditions reinforce a

xii · Foreword

community’s values and behavior and reproduce existing power relations. The celebration of this past is important for sustaining identity and a sense of place, and it needs to be reaffirmed in order to remain a significant place in public memory. Places and events that are commemorated and ritualized become part of a naturalized landscape, and thus they become reified and part of the local or national public memory. Allowing traditionally muted viewpoints to share in the development of heritage makes the process of developing a mutually agreed upon heritage much more complicated. Heritage at the Interface: Interpretation and Identity provides innovative and exciting insights into the meaning of heritage and the concept of heritage identity. It approaches heritage from a global perspective, and it provides a wide array of circumstances that heritage managers will face when making decisions about communities and how those groups value heritage and make decisions about which heritage to preserve and which heritage to promote. This volume provides a welcome addition to the growing heritage literature that shows the complexity of heritage development. Paul A. Shackel Series Editor

� Introduction

GLENN HOOPER

While the term “heritage” conjures up for many people an almost bewildering range of impressions, some of them a little vague, many of them comforting and pleasurable, the meanings conveyed can provoke various and often unexpected outcomes. Associated with identity, ownership, or possibly a sense of belonging, heritage can sometimes work like an opiate, a balm to be clung to in times of social, technological, or political upheaval. Although this benign interpretation of heritage can certainly act in the interests of social cohesion, focus communal energies, and distil complicated and often contested histories into manageable units, there are times when heritage can also appear more divisive and threatening. When clothed in the language of public history, for example, heritage suggests accessibility, tolerance, and inclusivity, and connects not just with the thoughtful care of a nation’s visual and material culture but also with a form of narrative healing.1 Yet for all the reassurance engendered by this particular interpretation—the idea of a widespread and collective enterprise to which all are invited—not everyone is convinced. Indeed, in the case of British heritage it is often suggested that while many people associate heritage with a set of traditions and an identifiable belief system, there are many others who connect it with unapologetic triumphalism and detect in the term a sense of privilege, complacency, and power. In the 1980s, at the height of the British heritage boom, writers such as Robert Hewison were scathing in their view of heritage as a reactionary sop promoted by local councils as a way of either compensating for lost glories or endorsing recent ones in the South Atlantic.2 Unsurprisingly, many detected in this interpretation of heritage an almost tribal identity from which they felt excluded, while their alternative histories and cultures remained unacknowledged, vilified, or worse. Throughout the 1980s heritage was often seen as a way of cordoning off and defining cultural limits,

2 · Glenn Hooper

putting in place barriers that made a sense of belonging available to some, while simultaneously keeping it firmly out of the reach of others.3 Heritage at the Interface is an essay collection that engages with many of the issues raised by critics over the past thirty-odd years, drawing on heritage examples in the United States and Canada, Europe and Australia, and including case studies from Mauritius, China, Turkey, and India. Unsurprisingly, no overriding impression that might turn the multiplicity of heritage sites into a palliative, no identifiable model to which all may subscribe, emerges from these pages. Heritage as construed in a Tibetan village is markedly different from the version espoused on the former battlefields of the Somme; the drivers behind heritage tourism in Derry are distinct from the motivations governing heritage development in Mauritius; the complexities of heritage identity implemented in Northern Italy are rather differently constructed in South Wales. That said, several transnational themes do materialize, revealing commonalities and connections across cultures and jurisdictions, and suggesting that the lively controversies alluded to above have played out in many countries where heritage has been discussed, promoted, and commodified. Gathered here are the sensitivities of local communities in Northern France, in Chinese-occupied Tibet, in the South Tyrol, and along sections of the Maine–New Brunswick border, some of whom must deal with the complexities of dark heritage, the frustrations and disappointments of UNESCO listing, and the challenges of accommodating minority groups into already intricate local narratives. Although in each of these essays heritage is rather differently conveyed and analyzed, shared experiences nevertheless arise; the dynamic interplay of identity, the complexities of (be)longing and place, and the fluid network of classifications beset by the demands of tourism are common to the work of several chapters. Of the various charges laid before heritage in the 1980s and 1990s one criticism in particular seemed to stand above all others. Described by Tom Paulin as a “loathsome collection of theme-parks and dead values,” a kitsch and unsavory debasement of historical accuracy, Paulin’s association of heritage with industry made its already established insufficiencies all the more appalling.4 Not only did heritage lack an intellectual edge, happily engaged in popular interpretations that demanded little intellectual engagement from its audience, it aligned historical and cultural heritage with advantageous money-making and profit, taking something of substance and making it tawdry and debased.5 The gallery and museum, the stately home and castle, as well as the visual arts, architecture, and design—all were consumed by the heritage industry, to be steadily commodified, marketed, packaged, and sold. While such criticisms were presented with feelings of mounting despair and a level of incredulity not often seen within the

Introduction · 3

museum and wider cultural sectors, not everyone was disheartened. Although Raphael Samuel agreed that it “seemed quite plausible” to think of heritage as reactionary, to see it as “Thatcherism in period dress,” he also insisted that heritage “was one of the few areas of national life in which it is possible to invoke an idea of the common good.” Since it was capable of appealing to different political and ideological factions, heritage was better understood as a sort of “chameleon . . . constantly metamorphosing into something else” rather than a fixed and knowable entity focused exclusively on profit.6 Yes, it was relatively easy to dismiss and vilify heritage, he conceded, but its contribution to a more inclusive interpretation of national culture was in little doubt. The modest initiatives that have recently emerged, including the small-scale and community efforts at reviving forgotten or disregarded histories, the contemplation of industrial heritage, the museums that emphasize labor rather than aesthetics—all of these projects bring something new and vibrant to the heritage story.7 Something of the promise identified by Samuel—the local and popular heritage initiatives, the improved levels of inclusion and engagement—may be found in several of the chapters presented here, though they are especially emphasized by Bella Dicks, Roshi Naidoo, and myself. For example, in the course of Dicks’s chapter we are reminded that heritage is frequently validated by institutions and individuals who have attributed to it cultural value, an acceptance that is subjective and often negotiated, and which can lead to a sense of empowerment and renewal. However, such approval, argues Dicks, is established less on the basis of an acknowledged and widespread agreement about a known thing, site, or narrative, but rather is the result of a complicated nexus of contemporary needs and demands, and of a process of selection that can be both potentially conflictive and exclusive. Whether in state-sponsored museums or local heritage centers, heritage is made rather than simply identified, an idea that positions heritage as constantly evolving, and as part of a negotiated rather than settled process. In the classificatory and literal transformation of a site from “history” to “heritage,” from “past” to “cultural visitability,” we discover heritage to be an enabling but also fluid, partial, and provisional process. Like Dicks, Roshi Naidoo also sees heritage as a complex process of negotiation, and in a review of contemporary music heritage she considers the ways in which music contains not just the ability to entertain but to offer fundamental insights into theories of identity, belonging, and tribalism. These tangled emotions and allegiances, so often a part of heritage nomenclature, are interrogated as sites of agency and as possible instances of radical subjectivity. Where British heritage has steadily consumed popular music and its protagonists into a historical appreciation frequently shorn of political possibility, Naidoo reinstates the potential of agency

4 · Glenn Hooper

and subjectivity, seeing in popular music heritage an ongoing and developmental rather than consensual narrative. Whether in a South Wales mining center, in a deprived Portuguese village, or among the once youthful visitors to a popular music exhibition, Dicks and Naidoo demonstrate how heritage is actively constructed and invested, something also developed in my own chapter on local developments in Derry/Londonderry. In a discussion of recent museum and heritage initiatives in what was once one of Ireland’s most troubled cities, I acknowledge the difficult but still necessary ways in which heritage has contributed to the ongoing peace process and to improving community relations. Emanating from among working-class constituencies as often as from council- and government-approved museum departments, I argue that such developments demonstrate the potential of heritage to engage and stimulate. I share Dicks’s view that heritage is to be made, is propulsive, and is ongoing; with Naidoo I concur that heritage has the capacity to enable agency, subjectivity, and a more fluid sense of identity. Throughout this volume national identity issues are discussed in relation to a number of conservation and heritage management concerns drawn from experiences in Mauritius, Turkey, and Germany. In these case studies we read about communities who feel marginalized, or whose belief systems go unacknowledged, or who find themselves in the midst of a drive for moral and racial purity. These are the moments where interface takes on a quite literal, often confrontational hue. Even if it is not foregrounded in these chapters it forms a steady backbeat to the main narrative, especially where identity is sometimes contested and complicated by myriad management, legal, and conservation systems. In many of these instances the interface is distinct, impermeable, resistant, and even physical. For example, in Johanna Mitterhofer’s chapter attention is focused on a small German-speaking town in Northern Italy where heritage had once stimulated dissension and suspicion, but has more recently been used to increase understanding among communities where historical wariness has frequently predominated. Despite the ongoing problems facing citizens, Mitterhofer highlights the potential of heritage to heighten dialogue among culturally heterogeneous societies, thereby demonstrating the advantages of a more pluralistic approach that emphasizes heritage communities and the people-centered initiatives of the Faro Convention.8 Like Mitterhofer, Emma Waterton also focuses on the relationship between identity and heritage and, via a series of structured and semistructured interviews based around the Australian Kakadu National Park, seeks to understand the processes by which past narratives become normalized by way of the experience of heritage tourism. From Waterton’s research, including follow-up interviews conducted some months later, we read

Introduction · 5

of visitors who not only connect the site to contemporary notions of national identity but also—though not always unproblematically—to the wider history of colonial contact. As with the residents of Mitterhofer’s Tyrolian town who are currently negotiating a path through the thicket of heritage interaction, Waterton’s visitors recognize in the term “heritage” both a sense of belonging and a simultaneous disavowal of others. Nevertheless, in the narrative interstices, between “us” and “them,” both essayists see in recent heritage developments the possibility for recognition, acceptance, and greater levels of understanding. Whatever the challenges, and despite being validated and excoriated in equal measure, heritage has become an increasingly important part of public discourse. Moreover, the steady absorption of heritage in the form of community museums and interpretive centers has helped alleviate unemployment, engender greater levels of social inclusion, and contribute to the regeneration of landscapes, urban and rural both. Heritage has also become increasingly central to the tourism offer, and may now just as easily be seen as a set of opportunities for self-expression, as an integral part of the wider leisure industry rather than an amalgam of historical facts and classifications.9 In Lee Jolliffe’s chapter we read about the development of cultural tourism along the eastern North American transborder Passamaquoddy region of Maine and New Brunswick, a region where there are often cultures and communities in common, and where heritage is being creatively combined so as to produce greater insights into binational and other shared forms of identity. In her analysis of the cross-border partnership of cultural projects across the US-Canada border Jolliffe highlights an example of the kind of collaboration that is required for binational heritage initiatives, as well as the sorts of advantages they can bring. Moreover, from the examples she cites heritage increasingly appears as a multiplicity of artistic forms and expressions, as a more loosely defined, inclusive, and evolving process rather than something obsessively focused on an agreed set of historical and cultural referents. Indeed it might truthfully be argued that it is precisely this loosening up of the term, a reorientation of what it might be and allude to, that has led to the official recognition of intangible heritage, with UNESCO formally establishing a list of intangible cultural sites in 2008, and thereby heralding a complete reassessment of heritage values.10 No longer an automatic reference to landscapes or examples from the built environment, many of which are of a Euro-American cast, heritage is now presented as more inclusive and diverse, and much more evenly distributed around the globe. Dance and song, puppetry and falconry, crafts and oral culture, the opportunities for global communities to feel part of the celebration of heritage have been transformational and radically inventive.11

6 · Glenn Hooper

Despite such innovative thinking around intangible concepts, even here in the midst of diversity and transition there have been problems and misunderstandings. In Hazel Tucker and Jundan Zhang’s chapter we hear of the efforts made by residents of a Tibetan village to secure support for World Heritage Site listing, a site that UNESCO inspectors were initially enthusiastic about and which they almost unanimously regarded as a place of genuinely authentic cultural values. While Zhang and Tucker’s chapter analyses the application made by the villagers for World Heritage listing, it also details the wider drawbacks associated with such approval, including the internal controversies and conflicts that sometimes arise. In an examination of the consequences of what they regard as an overly simplistic and singular promotion of “universal values,” the authors show how tensions have emerged among various community members, a situation that has produced neither World Heritage listing nor even greater understanding among locals, but rather created a “state of complexity and ambiguity” that continues to rankle and disturb. For Lucas Lixinski, who also focuses on the application of UNESCO policy, the argument is made that the promise of emancipation through heritage listing is often overhyped and its potential limited. To explore this position he places religious cultural heritage in the context of the multiple instruments for the protection of cultural heritage under UNESCO and reconsiders the relationship between religion and heritage, taking religion as the starting point, but using a US Supreme Court case as a means of emphasizing several of these tensions. After an analysis of the various legal arguments Lixinski turns to the case study of Hagia Sophia, in Istanbul, which he uses by way of demonstrating the pressures of secularism and iconoclasm, two notions that are vitally important but also closely intertwined in Turkish political history. Although heritage has developed a more defined public profile in the last thirty to forty years, and an academic one over a period that is even shorter than that, the actual preservation of heritage has been regarded in most jurisdictions since the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries to be of singular importance. Various international commissions, councils, and associations have now been formed, particularly since the early 1970s, but an understanding of the uses to which heritage could be put has been recognized in many countries for much longer. For example, in Kathleen Brown-Pérez’s chapter on American Indian heritage she focuses upon the commodification of American Indian identity, a process that she suggests derives much of its potency from outdated Hollywood portrayals as well as from the amalgamation of American Indian heritage by the federal government and the policies subsequently developed. In a sustained critique of policy designed to undermine American Indian heritage, BrownPérez shows how programs that were once derogatory presentations of either

Introduction · 7

misunderstood or misrepresented “facts” are now being challenged, and where institutional disregard that was once rife is being steadily replaced with greater levels of tolerance. With outreach and education a central element, and with American Indian involvement at its core, Brown-Pérez assesses the complexity of a heritage that must still fight for visibility amid sometimes outdated perceptions and policies. The historical uses of heritage alluded to by Brown-Pérez are also explored by both Josh Hagen in his discussion of heritage conservation in 1930s Nazi Germany and Claire Wintle in her analysis of the emphasis placed upon cultural heritage by the Indian government after independence, and especially after the death of Jawaharlal Nehru, the country’s first prime minister. Hagen offers a critical examination of historic preservationist practices by way of expanding our understanding of the Nazi regime’s ideologies and objectives regarding historic places and national heritage. In a chapter that focuses on the cultural politics animating the regime’s efforts to construct its vision of national history and heritage, Hagen reveals the strenuous efforts that were developed to preserve three generalized German spaces: the city, the town, and the village. In a wide-ranging essay Hagen demonstrates how the conservationist efforts of certain Nazi ideologues eventually fed into Germany’s expansionist territorial ambitions, provided the basis for deciding which buildings and locations would have a place in the new Nazi empire, and created a rationale for the destruction of heritages deemed unimportant and unworthy. Meanwhile, Claire Wintle examines the exhibition Jawaharlal Nehru: His Life and His India, which was first inaugurated in 1965 and which is discussed in relation to the various registers of association and identity present in the construction of exhibitions that cross international borders. In an analysis that engages with nationalism, decolonization, nonalignment, and Cold War politics, Wintle explores how cultural heritage, and exhibitions in particular, not only support but also contradict other statements of national identity, independence, and international political and economic affiliation. Although there is potential and the possibility of goodwill being engendered in a number of instances, all three contributors—BrownPérez, Hagen, and Wintle—demonstrate the degree to which heritage may be also harnessed for political and ideological reasons, and frequently mobilized in the interests of the state rather than its citizenry. As has been often noted, the complexities of modern tourism can be both a boon and an absolute burden, alleviating poverty and creating opportunity on the one hand, while compromising cultures and landscapes on the other. These twin and diametrically opposed consequences are evidenced in several of the chapters here included but are especially pronounced in the case of Jenny Iles’s

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contribution. Although the site of some of the greatest casualties of the First World War, the Somme lay undeveloped by tourism agencies for several decades until it gradually reemerged as an attractive short-break tourist destination in the 1970s. In an analysis of the Somme region, for many years one of the most popular areas of the former front lines for battlefield tourists, Iles explores how the complex notions of British and English national identities are bound up with tourists’ emotional attachments. However, while the Somme represents for English and British tourists a hallowed site, redolent of memory and longing, for the present-day inhabitants of the old front lines the heritage of the First World War remains omnipresent, and the touristic venues now developed around several French villages have for them an everyday familiarity. More important, the wider environmental concerns, including the effects of mass tourism and the lack of visitor provision, have many guides predicting that the increasing numbers will eventually take their toll on the very landscape visitors are there to see. It is hardly surprising, then, that antagonism toward tourists “typically surfaces when proposals are made to provide additional facilities,” and when the locals are made to feel unwelcome, or under siege, in their own homes. The demands of tourism also pose problems in the course of Rose Boswell’s chapter. In an investigation of the interface between identities and management in Mauritius she suggests that the fundamental instability of identity on the island means that heritage management can be a contradictory process, not only cementing identity and community but also obscuring creolization and cosmopolitanism. Less a struggle between hosts and guests than among local community and business as well as wider political groupings, Boswell argues that a more responsive heritage approach is urgently needed, one that offers nuanced, dynamic, and engaged representations that articulate the unstable premise upon which heritage is frequently based. Whatever the generally positive associations of the term, Boswell suggests that reproducing heritage in places of overt inequality and violent history risks calcifying narratives of oppression, solidifying discourses of identity, and stifling evidence of dynamism in cultural process. Writing in 1957, the American heritage and national park expert Freeman Tilden suggested that while the public might temporarily withhold support from academics and researchers, preferring the human story to analytical complexity, there was nevertheless a compelling need for their input, and for the variety of their roles. “The work of the specialist, the historian, the naturalist, the archaeologist, is fundamental,” suggested Tilden, because “without their research the interpreter cannot start.”12 In bringing together a mix of practitioners and academics drawn from law and management, the arts and humanities, this collection suggests that the heterogeneity of heritage requires nothing less than the sort of

Introduction · 9

layered, multidisciplinary response envisaged by Tilden. Indeed, one might suggest that the diversity of topics and theoretical approaches here presented reflects a sort of mandatory profusion, a diverse assembly drawn to the rich complexity of heritage. However, while the contributions gathered here engage with debates concerning definitions of heritage, questions over its purpose and objectives, not to mention the myriad sites, both tangible and intangible, that now constitute heritage in any number of locales, one thing is clear: the interface around which many heritage sites are positioned can be catalysts for change and positivity as much as conflict. While an interface may exist as a site of interaction and engagement and, it is true, often an instance of potential conflict, this collection suggests that it can just as easily engender an exchange of information or an increased level of understanding, or bring about more abundant considerations of self and other. For sure, where fault lines exist there is much to be considered and to be mindful of, but from a recognition of shared identities and heritages, and from a desire to better grasp the complexities of contestation and its attendant fears, greater things may emerge.

Notes 1. For analysis of the sometimes tangled relationship that exists between public history, heritage, and “traditional” history, see P. Ashton and H. Kean, People and Their Pasts: History Today (London: Macmillan, 2009); and A. R. Green, History, Policy and Public Purpose: Historians and Historical Thinking in Government (London: Palgrave, 2016). 2. See also David Lowenthal, The Past Is a Foreign Country (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985), as well as his Possessed by the Past (London: Free Press, 1996). An excellent overview of much of the theoretical development and controversy surrounding heritage studies may be found in D. C. Harvey, “Heritage Pasts and Heritage Presents: Temporality, Meaning and the Scope of Heritage Studies,” International Journal of Heritage Studies 7, no. 4 (December 2001). For a balanced critique of Hewison and Lowenthal, see Tony Gilmour, Sustaining Heritage: Giving the Past a Future (Sydney: Sydney University Press, 2007). 3. On 1980s heritage and the complexities of identity, ownership, and belonging, see P. Wright, On Living in an Old Country (London: Verso, 1985), especially the chapter “Coming Back to the Shores of Albion.” 4. T. Paulin, “Question of Real Value,” Independent (5 October 1993). 5. On heritage commodification, see P. Howard, Heritage: Management, Interpretation, Identity (London: Continuum, 2003). 6. R. Samuel, Theatres of Memory: Past and Present in Contemporary Culture (London: Verso, 1994), 290, 292, 307. 7. For an early example of the role of industrial heritage, including its cultural potential, value to local communities, and the various site-specific challenges to be faced, see the practitioner-academic volume by J. Alfrey and T. Putnam, The Industrial Heritage: Managing Resources and Uses (London: Routledge, 1992). See also B. West, “The Making of the English

10 · Glenn Hooper

Working Past: A Critical View of the Ironbridge Gorge Museum,” in The Museum Time Machine, ed. R. Lumley (London: Routledge, 1988). 8. See the text of the Faro Convention here: http://conventions.coe.int/Treaty/EN/Treaties/ Html/199.htm. 9. The interconnections between heritage and tourism have been extensively explored. For a flavor of work done from a largely management point of view, see D. J. Timothy and S. W. Boyd, Heritage Tourism (London: Pearson, 2003). 10. The Convention for the Safeguarding of Intangible Cultural Heritage was drafted by UNESCO in 2003 and went into effect in 2006. 11. Charged with being still limited—and by others as being indistinct and incorporating too fluid a set of categories—the growth of intangible heritage has not been an easy one. Despite the initiatives and many positives identified, and despite even the widespread institutional support it has received, controversies still arise. 12. T. Freeman, Interpreting Our Heritage (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1977 [1957]), 23.

1 � Heritage as a Social Practice

BELLA DICKS

Heritage as a Social “Valuing” Practice The ethnologist Regina Bendix affirms that “segments of culture acquire cultural heritage status once particular value is assigned to them.”1 This practice of assigning value is the focus of this chapter. Heritage points out a piece of the infinite available canvas of the past and makes it an object of the gaze, a stop on an itinerary, a photo on a postcard, an item in a catalogue. It also, in the process, becomes the recipient of (often) public funds. In order to be realizable, this value must have cultural purchase, or symbolic power (it must mean something to key groups of actors), as well as economic potential. Its economic value arises from its cultural purchase, and vice versa. But how does this cultural value become established, and by whom? How is it exchanged into economic and other types of value, and with what effects? Why are certain pieces of the canvas valued by some and others forgotten? Do the values displayed resonate with those accorded to the past by ordinary people? Such questions, I suggest, demand a social practice approach to heritage. This means examining how cultural value is created in concrete social contexts. Different practices create different types of value, and understanding these can shed light on the contingencies of heritage—not as an entity, but as a dynamic network of often uneasy relations. The question of interests is key to understanding heritage practices. New values and interests are always added to purely cultural ones of preserving the past. For example, Bendix and colleagues discuss the famous annual Palio horse contest in Siena, Italy, where one strand of motivation behind attempts to gain UNESCO “intangible cultural heritage” listing is the silencing of internal dissent over animal rights issues.2 The cultural value of the historic horse race, already circulating, is now accruing new value serving new political interests. In the mining heritage center I studied in Wales in the 1990s, constructed in a con-

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verted local colliery, a particular cultural discourse of “laborism”—which valued a vanishing working-class industrial and industrious community—informed the heritage representations that were selected, influencing visitors’ perceptions. Although not uncontested, this discourse provided symbols that were sufficiently resonant to establish and secure local allegiances and impel the heritage project forward—yet at the same time not so parochial that it short-circuited the more entrepreneurial ambitions of actors operating at wider scales.3 It was not a freefloating set of stories and images, but one anchored and variably depicted, in local social and political solidarities and divisions, regional political realities, and wider economic compulsions. Visitors subsequently engaged with it in ways that corresponded with their own experiences and biographies. It was only through exploring how these layered and scalar processes of “encoding” related to micropractices of “decoding” that I came to understand how this particular set of values informed this heritage site, and how “Welsh coal-mining” thus gained a distinctive cultural value.4 This social nature of heritage has long been recognized but is only now becoming widely studied.5 It reflects five characteristics suggested by research. First, heritage-making is motivated by present-day purposes and capacities, it being impossible to re-create the past within its own terms.6 Second, following from this, only certain elements of the past are made into heritage, and it is important to explore how elements get forgotten as well as remembered.7 Third, these present-day purposes play out within contexts that tend to exclude and include different social groups, reproducing existing power relations.8 Fourth, heritage is a process that unfolds over time, rather than being a temporally confined production or entity.9 Finally, heritage is produced in situated contexts where social identities are far from homogeneous, and therefore is likely to reflect differentiated solidarities and potentially activate “dissonance.”10 Therefore, we can now talk of heritage as made—through present-oriented, selective, power-inflected, temporally evolving practices that are as likely to produce conflict as unity. What a social practice approach reminds us is that such processes involve the active attribution of value, something that is accomplished over time in practical social contexts. Value does not inhere in things, but is accorded to them. The value itself may be economic, political, or cultural, but the processes through which it is established and communicated are social. By recognizing this social grounding of value, we can explore how people’s engagements with the past via heritage are shaped by already-existing social fields that attribute value differentially—to some things more than others. Importantly, this is not only the value that is conferred on the past by heritage experts and professionals but also the everyday value-making practices of individuals, situated in mun-

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dane social worlds, who may never visit but nevertheless construct the past via “cultural tools” in wider cultural circulation.11 It is Bourdieu who has given us deep insight into these everyday valuing practices. For him, human beings’ propensity to value things (such as aspects of the past) is necessarily adjusted to the already-given social “fields” (for example, schooling, leisure) they habitually experience in everyday life.12 These establish hierarchies of value: they communicate that some things “naturally” have more cultural value than others. Those whose “habitus”—generated through family and educational socialization—is attuned to dominant values can make symbolic capital and accrue social advantage. For example, visiting an art museum means engaging with a professionally curated expression of artistic taste that requires high levels of cultural capital to decipher. Some visitors possess the key; for others, it is a test they fail, often rejecting it as uninteresting.13 Only those with higher levels of cultural capital are likely to decipher the codes of the art museum in a way that matches the curators’, as empirical studies have found.14 An industrial heritage museum, by contrast, celebrates a “way of life” rather than artistic taste, and studies suggest this is more accessible to working-class visitors.15 However, not all such visitors will bestow the same value on it, since their inevitably different life experiences and “habitus” will generate different dispositions toward it.16 For Bourdieu, cultural value is created and apportioned within, not outside of, everyday practical contexts or “fields.” Cultural value is in fact a type of social communication. It provides the means by which groups distinguish themselves from each other in accordance with their prior, embodied dispositions (habitus) and the levels and types of capital they have been able to accrue. Seeing heritage as a discursive17 or cultural practice18 does not convey this social grounding of cultural value sufficiently clearly. When Waterton and Weston argue “the commodification of heritage is really no more than heritage revealed as a social practice,” they suggest the “social” dimension produces only economic value, as distinct from its cultural value.19 Rather, following Bourdieu, we can see cultural value as generated within the social: as much by/within everyday micro engagements with cultural forms as within wider fields (for example, markets, leisure environments, policy frameworks, and institutions). This insight helps to clarify why certain heritage narratives come to dominate in one site as opposed to another, and why some groups may identify with certain heritage forms more intensely than others. In particular, as Lowenthal has argued, heritage suggests we value something about the past that speaks to the self: unlike history, it is someone’s or some place’s or some people’s past, not disinterested knowledge.20 This invokes the idea of the heritage legatee. Taking up this self-interested stance, or position, toward the past can be expected to generate heritage values that are

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quite particular, and which will not necessarily correspond with other investments in heritage generated by different interests. A useful way of understanding heritage is therefore through examining how specific practices generate different types of value. There are multiple practices that constitute the “nexus” of heritage-making, but this chapter focuses on two principal ones: how practices of production relate to those of “consumption,” and how these in turn link to people’s feelings of inheriting, or identifying with, a particular past. Figure 1.1 suggests how these three practices are separate and yet may overlap. Producers are the agents who fund, design, and make heritage projects. They can theoretically be legatees in the case of small-scale or “home-made” heritage constructed by those who have a personal investment in it. But in resourcehungry, “visitable” heritage, exhibited in public sites with wider interests at stake—such as political claims, tourism, or economic regeneration—it is unlikely that production professionals are also legatees. However, visitors often are. Indeed, if all visitors feel the history on display is their history, as in—potentially at least—a national museum, the bottom two circles could theoretically merge. But there will always be legatees—logically a majority—who do not visit. This is one reason why legatees are often ignored or sidelined by producers, whose interests tend to focus on “the consumer experience,” and why many people who do not visit heritage may feel their past goes unrecognized. Just as important, there will also be visitors who are not legatees, who feel it is “their” history, not “mine.” Their stake in that history will differ from that of legatees. And there will always be gradations in different legatees’ memories of that past and their sense of generational connection to it (for example, through precise, firsthand memories or more general handed-down family stories). Finally, the extent to which producers communicate with, accommodate, and value legatees will vary. In the coal-mining museum I studied, producers harvested the memories of

Figure 1.1. Three categories of social practice involved in heritage-making.

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local coal miners to bring the machines, workplaces, and occupational history to life, without according them meaningful participation in the production of displays.21 In other projects, legatee participation is actively sought.22 In many long-existing heritage sites, however, such as medieval castles or streetscapes, legatees are more difficult to discern. Those who gain participation as historical enactors, volunteers, “friends,” or fund-raisers will not necessarily see themselves, or be seen by professionals, as having a stake in the history presented. It may remain quite “other”—an object of fascination or study rather than personal identification. There is, therefore, a potential gap (temporal, spatial, affective, cultural, and socioeconomic) in public heritage between visitors, legatees, and producers, and this can be the source of much of the disquiet over authenticity and representativeness that it arouses.

Social Practices of Producing Heritage Heritage environments are produced rather than simply existing; they are interpreted for the visitor in accordance with inherited ideas of what constitutes appropriate content and modes of display. Producers, who include planners, architects, designers, researchers, interpreters, curators, enactors, and guides, are those who mark out that particular section of the past as deserving of public attention and money. They invest considerable resources in representing the past in a way that will be “consumable” by large numbers of unknown people, and, in the process, they “make publics.”23 Quite different from more private, unofficial kinds of social and communicative memory-practices engaged in by all, these are ratified institutions and agents (whether public authorities, private companies, cultural institutions, or third-sector associations and charitable foundations) who have the power to legitimize, or attempt to legitimize, particular histories and to represent them in a way that is visitable. That this demand for visitability often conflicts with people’s lived experiences of their own connection to the past is not surprising, since it stems from the particular arrangement of power and interests at stake in production practices, drawing on cultural values mobilized for purposes of display. Silva, for example, discusses the economically impoverished village of Sortelha, part of Portugal’s Historic Village Programme in which residents are located in a very different social space to that of visitors or producers.24 Producers—for example, those professionals tasked with ensuring the village’s inclusion in the state’s “recovery program” of historic villages—have clear interests staked in the “heritagization” of the village.25 As the local agents of state programs—funded, designed, and coordinated at municipal, national, and European levels—their efforts

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are directed at rescuing and sustaining “desertified” rural economies through encouraging tourism. They see their task as creating “an authentic medieval village . . . without dissonant modernisms.”26 This requires “aesthetic authenticity,” eliminating modern and industrial materials in favor of stonework, wood, and other “natural” materials, thus separating off the modern, devalued, pragmatic housing beyond the village walls from the visitable antiquity inside them.27 This is reflected in social divisions between residents, whose past has become revalued as cultural capital for visitors and for producers seeking to protect and nurture this capital. Similarly, Guttormsen and Fageraas examine discourses of “attractive authenticity” produced at the Norwegian copper mining town of Røros.28 There, industrial-era streetscapes and historic buildings, together with the surrounding area of abandoned mine-works, have been conserved as a UNESCO World Heritage Site, creating “a vernacular image of historical place.”29 Yet this memorializes industry through “forgetting” its dirt and dust. The various types of knowledge-production that anchor this place-image stem from different interests (educational, commercial, residential) that are often in conflict, the authors found. Nevertheless, they combine to intervene in the town’s material fabric in apparently coherent ways, influencing town planning to maintain the aesthetic value of a “correct” streetscape and its prominent motifs. Both these case studies and my own suggest that production practices are oriented to interests of visitability, in which value is created through received understandings of authenticity.

Social Practices of Visiting Heritage Neither of these studies directly addresses how such carefully crafted authenticity is received by those who visit, but it would be fascinating to know more. How do visitors position themselves in relation to these spaces, and what role do their own memories and experiences play in this? We actually know very little about the complex relationships constructed between social beings who arrive at heritage sites and the environments produced to address them. Studies of museum visitors, to take a well-researched area, have shown that they respond to exhibitions in ways strongly conditioned by their prior social and cultural experiences.30 But what is this conditioning, and how does it manifest itself? Studies usually focus on the visit as an “event,” trying to factor in how visitors’ social identities and knowledge influence them in “responding to” exhibitions. Yet this pays insufficient attention to the complexities of “identity.” More ethnographically informed research explores how meaning emerges through social interactions and cultural frames originating beyond the visit itself.31 Taking this further, Bourdieu’s concept of “the logic of practice” suggests we focus on heritage visiting as a moment in a person’s

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life, rather than a set of “responses” to be captured. This raises the question of how individuals draw on their memories and experiences in interacting with heritageproductions, and how far the latter speak to these “position-takings.”32 Heritage visiting necessarily takes place within designated fields of action, whose practical coordinates reproduce the social divisions (of class, place, generation, ethnicities, gender, age) of other fields. Bourdieu’s argument is that the more socially advantageous positions available in such a field are attuned to a middle-class habitus. Studies suggest that working-class people with lower cultural capital may not feel equipped, or disposed, to appreciate stately homes and galleries, for example, that present rarefied values of ancestry and art.33 Bourdieu would add that groups with higher cultural capital can profit most from the heritage visit—for example, by turning a family day out into an opportunity to bolster children’s extracurricular learning. Heritage settings therefore launch symbolic appeals, values, and “calls” that envisage the visitor, as it were, as a particular type of person (for example, a middle-class tourist, a local resident, and so forth) and invite his or her active response and attention through cultural frames that are already established in other fields, and which challenge the visitor actively to relate them to the self. To the extent that it often invites identification with elite figures and symbols, leaving the experiences of more marginalized populations less visible, heritage is a classed practice. Bourdieu underlines that we can only make sense of the symbolic environments we encounter to the extent that we apply what we already know—our cultural capital, memories, life experiences, and social conditionings. In interpreting heritage, visitors will bring to bear their own lived experiences of belonging/ not belonging within its cultural frame of value, and also their own emotional investments in it. As Halbwachs affirms, memories are formed through membership of different groups over the lifetime.34 One’s (geographical and social) mobility in relation to primary groups in the hometown is inevitably shaped by class relations (for example, moving to enhance career progression versus moving simply to find work). In my research, many working-class visitors to the Welsh heritage center located their own histories within the cultural frame of mining (even where many of their families had long since left coalfield communities), which seemed to exert a strong “pull” on their identities. They appeared to value it as shedding light on their own past—even though this did not necessarily involve emotional affinity with it. Middle-class visitors could less easily envisage the working-class lives on display as relevant to their sense of who they were. They tended to hold the story at a greater distance, objectifying it as an item of intellectual and educational value. Nevertheless, again, this did not prevent some from expressing emotional affinity with it, especially in the

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case of those voicing political solidarity with miners’ struggles. The physical environment and displays of the preserved colliery were oriented by producers to a widely circulating imaginary of the industrial working class as a heroic yet vanishing traditional community; visitors were taking up active and affective positions in relation to this imaginary that stemmed from the self and the habitus, their life-experiences and accumulated cultural capital, rather than from the exhibitions themselves.35 As Fyfe and Ross suggest in their study of heritage in the Staffordshire potteries, habitus is both collective, shaping the experiences of those who share the same class-position through “placing and displacing strategies,” and uniquely individual.36 Habitus generates the grounds wherein heritage can be actively aligned with, or distanced from, the self, and, in the process, how the self can be aligned with the collective.

Social Practices of “Inheriting” a Past: Legatees Taking such a perspective suggests there are different degrees to which heritage provides an affirmation of value for the self in relation to the collective. Potentially, as Lefebvre puts it, “monumentalized” buildings, objects, and spaces offer “each member of that society an image of that membership, an image of his or her social visage,” and a “collective mirror.”37 This is where Lowenthal’s idea of “legatees” comes in.38 While he suggests we are all legatees, it is clear that the past does not stimulate identification equally on the part of all groups. This prompts the question of which groups feel the most self-invested in which past. A recognition of the self as inheritor of a particular past often seems to develop, as in the Welsh miners I studied, where a group’s way of life is economically and/or culturally under threat. In fact, coal miners in the United Kingdom have accrued a cultural value, which means that even though (and plausibly because) they are economically marginalized, their occupation is designated a “culture” worth preserving. But as Smith and others argue, it is more often “authorized” elites (that is, those with power, fame, or influence) who tend to dominate public heritage at the expense of others.39 Further, since heritage makes use of a particular material space (invariably the case even for intangible heritage), legatees’ claims may be far from uniform, or contested by others.40 It is perhaps useful to distinguish between potential and actual legatees. Actual legatees can be thought of as those who, when presented with a particular past on display, see it as speaking to their own sense of self, however successfully, partially, or ineptly. However, this does not imply they routinely partake in heritage-making practices such as visiting. Although we are all potential legatees in that our various social roles, occupations, and identities can all theoretically

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become the subject of heritage’s pointing-stick, it is likely that most of us will never encounter any public expression of a specific past we would potentially recognize as our own, beyond the most general global and national designations. We may be unaware of having any kind of significant past until some heritage production points it out to us. Heritage can therefore be said actively to create legatees. When this happens, a new cultural value is generated for us, attached to a particular past. We are invited to reenvisage what we took for granted as something worthy of public display. As Kirshenblatt-Gimblett observes, heritage gives perfectly ordinary sites “a second life as exhibition,” where “a place such as Salem, Massachusetts, may be even more profitable as an exhibition of a mercantile center than it was as a mercantile center.”41 What, then, of the inheritors of the “first life”—the people whose past it is? How do they respond to this call to value their own present and past life in the terms set by heritage? In the transformation from first to second life, the previously mundane becomes marked as valuable in a new field and co-opted into what I have termed a “cultural economy of visitability.”42 The past thus metamorphosizes from its ordinary, unnoticed first life to emerge as an object of the tourist gaze, complete with a roll call of now-iconic sites, key details, and rediscovered traditions. Legatees may start to develop interests (cultural, political, economic) in the place and its past that differ from those of straightforward residence. They will now have to contend with others’ interests in it, too, especially those of visitors and of powerful heritage agents and tourist mediators. To explore this further, let us return to Sortelha, the historic village studied by Silva. Sortelha’s residents were not oriented, it seems, to this “second life.” They were living in a village that was mundane in the sense that it was a home, not “an exhibition of itself.”43 Here, the “ordinary” village houses were devalued by producers, who invested resources only in those conforming to the established imaginary of how a historic village should look, sound, feel, and “be.” However, Silva describes how residents themselves attributed value to other things—such as having spacious modern housing outside the old village walls. It was heritageproduction that schooled them in the practice of assigning value to things they had previously devalued. As one resident remarked, “we thought we just had stones, but these stones are very valuable, as they are very ancient and tell part of the history of Portugal.”44 In my own research at the Welsh mining heritage center, ex-miners I spoke to wanted to preserve hauls of machinery, tools, and equipment in danger of being buried in the government’s pit-closure program. Designers and interpreters, however, devalued this rusty industrial machinery and instead installed cobblestones and stone walls in the colliery yard, not wanting to “spoil” it, as they said, with unattractive “clutter.” They valued an aesthetic

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of “naturalness” and wanted to keep spaces “open” to favor views of the buildings and visitor through-put. But the ex-miners I spoke to valued the “paraphernalia we were used to”—the precise, familiar, and well-used tools and machines that were intrinsic to the value of the job itself. “Clutter” versus “cleanness” seems to be a key dividing line in the production of heritage value. Herzfeld, for example, has documented how state-sponsored heritage in less-developed countries often promotes a purist Western-derived “civilisation” or colonial aesthetic that favors open spaces, concealing the “embarrassing” details of local vernacular lifestyles in their messy hybridity.45 His account shows how memorials and monuments may be imposed on areas in ways that actively disinherit local people—such as in the Thai community he studied. Heritage therefore does not simply accord value; it separates objects, environments, traditions, and, ultimately, people into those that have value and those that do not. One potential outcome of these practices of apportioning heritage value is the sharpening of social divisions. People whose “ordinary” past becomes marked out as valuable through heritage are—to borrow Bourdieu’s terms—encouraged to see it as a form of cultural capital. Often, producers suggest that this can be transformed into economic capital that will secure their futures. This promise is unlikely to be widely fulfilled, though, since economic capital is first required (for example, by buying property, setting up a bar, investing money, or renting out one’s house) to convert cultural capital into economic profit. Logically only a minority of residents in poor areas can do so—with wealthier outsiders being more likely contenders. In Sortelha, envy of each other’s craft sales was common among local women, and one visitor found when he opened a bar there that some locals’ attitudes changed and he reported feeling “threatened.”46 Nevertheless, Silva also found a sense of pride in the village on the part of many locals, who saw its cultural value as something they could share. This was the same in the Welsh case study, where some local people I interviewed were keen to conserve the colliery—as one said, not as “a great big metal gravestone, but to tell the story of coal for future generations.” Heritagization in both cases inspired some legatees to recognize their “own” cultural value, to feel both pride in and heightened identification with their history. This suggests there is a potential shared motivation between legatees, visitors, and heritage producers. Yet economic value is often monopolized by the heritage producers or by other wellplaced investors. In Sortelha, locals found themselves socially and economically in competition with each other, since the (more meager than promised) profits were a scarce resource and unevenly distributed. In the Rhondda, local residents expressed skepticism about the heritage center’s material benefits for them; they liked that their local colliery and its towering chimneystack were preserved but

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felt excluded from its new owners’ tourist-oriented concerns.47 Others expressed the desire to demolish the colliery altogether, along with its (for them) negative memories, declaring the space could be better used for present-oriented amenities such as a leisure center. Heritage can therefore be socially divisive as well as integrative.48 So, while legatees would potentially include all residents of a “heritagized” neighborhood, they may exclude those who dis-identify with, or are indifferent to, that legacy. Heritage does not necessarily, of course, involve alienating local legatees, given the will of producers to encourage their active participation. Watson’s study of a community archaeology project in Norfolk that was deliberately sited in a neglected and run-down area in order to encourage working-class participation found evidence of considerable enthusiasm for historical discovery on the part of local residents.49 Indeed, middle-class fears that local “youth” would vandalize the dig were not only unfounded, but working-class residents accorded it “great respect,” even forming the majority of those participating in digging work and related historical events.50 This suggests that participation in archaeology is not necessarily experienced as a test of cultural capital. Most of these working-class participants had never been to a museum. What they appeared to value was taking part in a variety of hands-on experiences and active learning. In this respect, they differed little from middle-class participants. What seemed decisive in this study was that the dig offered accessible, practical activities and stimulated a sense of personal local connections to the history being excavated. Local people seemed to have an interest in the dig and its results. Rather than acting as a showcase or spectacle for “pure” forms of cultural capital or aesthetic authenticity, disconnected from everyday life, local residents valued its potential to shed light on their own area and its past.

Conclusion Exploring how value is produced in these three social practices of heritage underlines how complex are the various interests and power relations it potentially mobilizes. Heritage speaks to local and extralocal interests and investments, in which social divisions and their realities of status, hierarchy, and affect are always in play. As with other types of cultural value, heritage enables these to be offset into the cultural realm. Symbols, as Bourdieu observes, enable values to be established and communicated indirectly, out of which social groups can make and exchange different types of capital (social, political, economic, cultural) and deploy this within a differentiated social order. Yet heritage as finished “product” obscures the processes of its own social provenance and appears to contain

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and guarantee its own innate natural value. As Isnart suggests, it “often erases its own modalities of constitution by softening hierarchy, inequality and power issues.”51 Nevertheless, as discussed above, research can render these power issues visible by attending to social practices, and in the process foreground the contingency of heritage-making. By uncovering how values are related to stakes and interests, we can ask what different groups gain, and lose, from the production of different types of value. The discussion has suggested that legatees are likely to be more affectively engaged in heritage than either producers or visitors (except where the latter are also legatees). It is legatees who have a personal interest in heritage insofar as it possesses the potential to speak to their own identities, habitus, and collective selves. Yet it is often through outsiders’ judgments that legatees come to recognize the value of their own “first life” cultural practices, environments, and artifacts. In economizing and materializing this value via its “second life” as heritage, where assets are often appropriated by those in advantageous positions, local divisions can sharpen and solidarities dissolve. Although producers may value heritage in purely instrumental terms, they may find themselves mired in these divisions. Visitors, meanwhile, may or may not be legatees themselves. In interacting with heritage, they enter into relations with it that are shaped by their habitus, with varying degrees of closeness to and distance from it. The extent to which the meanings they make match those intended by producers and legatees, respectively, will depend on the “fit” between the different types of value generated in each of these practices. It could be surmised that memorial practices in small, less-developed societies might involve a unity of symbolic and material space, where those who raise memorials also own them and worship at them. Heritage, as a thoroughly modern project, is quite different. It seems to be made in the gaps between producers, visitors, and legatees, giving it far shakier foundations.

Notes 1. R. Bendix, “Heritage Between Economy and Politics,” Intangible Heritage (2008): 258. 2. R. Bendix, F. Aditya Eggert, and Arnika Peselmann, Heritage Regimes and the State (Göttingen: Universitätsverlag, 2012), 8. 3. B. Dicks, “Heritage, Governance and Marketization: A Case-Study from Wales,” Museum and Society 1, no. 1 (2003). 4. B. Dicks, “Encoding and Decoding the People Circuits of Communication at a Local Heritage Museum,” European Journal of Communication 15, no. 1 (2000). 5. See, for example, N. Merriman, “The Social Basis of Museum and Heritage Visiting,” in Museum Studies in Material Culture, ed. S. Pearce (Leicester: Leicester University Press, 1989). 6. D. Harvey, “Historical Geography and Heritage Studies,” Area (1 December 1988); B. Gra-

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ham and P. Howard, “Heritage and Identity,” in The Ashgate Research Companion to Heritage and Identity, ed. B. Graham and P. Howard (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2008). 7. P. Connerton, “Seven Types of Forgetting,” Memory Studies 1, no. 1 (2008); A. Huyssen, Present Pasts: Urban Palimpsests and the Politics of Memory (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2003). 8. E. Waterton and S. Watson, Heritage and Community Engagement: Collaboration or Contestation? (London: Routledge, 2011); L. Silva and P. M. Santos, “Ethnographies of Heritage and Power,” International Journal of Heritage Studies 18, no. 5 (2012); L. Smith, Uses of Heritage (London: Routledge, 2006). 9. D. C. Harvey, “Heritage Pasts and Heritage Presents: Temporality, Meaning and the Scope of Heritage Studies,” International Journal of Heritage Studies 7, no. 4 (2001). 10. J. E. Tunbridge and G. J. Ashworth, Dissonant Heritage: The Management of the Past as a Resource in Conflict (New York: J. Wiley, 1996); B. Dicks, Heritage, Place and Community (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 2000). 11. J. V. Wertsch, Voices of Collective Remembering (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002). 12. P. Bourdieu, The Logic of Practice, trans. Richard Nice (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1990). 13. P. Bourdieu, A. Darbel, and D. Schnapper, The Love of Art: European Art Museums and Their Public (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1991). 14. Bourdieu, Darbel, and Schnapper, Love of Art; G. Fyfe, “Sociology and the Social Aspects of Museums,” in A Companion to Museum Studies, ed. S. MacDonald (Chichester: WileyBlackwell, 2006); M. Grenfell and C. Hardy, Art Rules: Pierre Bourdieu and the Visual Arts (London: Berg, 2007). 15. Smith, Uses of Heritage; Dicks, Heritage, Place and Community. 16. B. Dicks, “The Habitus of Heritage: A Discussion of Bourdieu’s Ideas for Visitor Studies in Heritage and Museums,” Museum and Society (2016). 17. Zongjie Wu and Song Hou, “Heritage and Discourse,” in The Palgrave Handbook of Contemporary Heritage Research, ed. E. Waterton and S. Watson (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2015). 18. E. Waterton and S. Watson, “The Ontological Politics of Heritage; or How Research Can Spoil a Good Story,” in Waterton and Watson, Palgrave Handbook of Contemporary Heritage Research. 19. Ibid., 8 20. D. Lowenthal, The Heritage Crusade and the Spoils of History (London: Viking, 1996). 21. B. Dicks, “The View of Our Town from the Hill: Communities on Display as Local Heritage,” International Journal of Cultural Studies 2, no. 3 (1999). 22. For example, S. Watson, “‘Why Can’t We Dig Like They Do on Time Team?’: The Meaning of the Past within Working Class Communities,” International Journal of Heritage Studies 17, no. 4 (2011). 23. R. Simon and S. Ashley, “Heritage and Practices of Public Formation,” International Journal of Heritage Studies 16, no. 4–5 (2010). 24. L. Silva, “The Two Opposing Impacts of Heritage Making on Local Communities: Residents’ Perceptions: A Portuguese Case,” International Journal of Heritage Studies 20, no. 6 (2013). 25. Y. Poria and G. Ashworth, “Heritage Tourism: Current Resource for Conflict,” Annals of Tourism Research 36, no. 3 (2009).

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26. Silva, “Two Opposing Impacts of Heritage Making,” 12. 27. Ibid., 5. 28. T. S. Guttormsen and K. Fageraas, “The Social Production of ‘Attractive Authenticity’ at the World Heritage Site of Røros, Norway,” International Journal of Heritage Studies 17, no. 5 (2011). 29. Ibid., 453. 30. For example, J. H. Falk and L. D. Dierking, Learning from Museums: Visitor Experiences and the Making of Meaning (New York: AltaMira Press, 2000); L. J. Rennie and D. J. Johnston, “The Nature of Learning and Its Implications for Research on Learning from Museums,” Science Education 88, Suppl. no. 1 (2004). 31. K. M. Ellenbogen, From Dioramas to the Dinner Table: An Ethnographic Case Study of the Role of Science Museums in Family Life (Nashville, TN: Vanderbilt University Press, 2003). 32. Bourdieu, Logic of Practice. 33. See T. Bennett et al., Culture, Class, Distinction (London: Routledge, 2009), 199. 34. M. Halbwachs, On Collective Memory, trans. L. A. Coser (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992 [1950]). 35. S. Rowbotham and H. Beynon, Looking at Class: Film, Television and the Working Class in Britain (London: Rivers Oram Press, 2001). 36. G. Fyfe and M. Ross, “Decoding the Visitor’s Gaze: Rethinking Museum Visiting,” Sociological Review 43, no. S1 (1995). 37. H. Lefebvre, The Production of Space (Oxford: Blackwell, 1991), 220. 38. Lowenthal, Heritage Crusade and the Spoils of History. 39. Smith, Uses of Heritage. 40. Graham and Howard, “Heritage and Identity.” 41. B. Kirshenblatt-Gimblett, Destination Culture: Tourism, Museums, and Heritage (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998), 7. 42. B. Dicks, Culture on Display: The Production of Contemporary Visitability: Issues in Cultural and Media Studies (Maidenhead: Open University Press, 2003). 43. Kirshenblatt-Gimblett, Destination Culture, 7. 44. Silva, “Two Opposing Impacts of Heritage Making,” 12. 45. M. Herzfeld, “Whose Rights to Which Past? Archaeologists, Anthropologists, and the Ethics and Aesthetics of Heritage in the Global Hierarchy of Value,” Archaeology and Anthropology: Past, Present and Future 48 (2012). 46. Silva, “Two Opposing Impacts of Heritage Making.” 47. B. Dicks, “Heritage, Governance and Marketization: A Case-Study from Wales,” Museum and Society 1, no. 1 (2003). 48. N. Leite and N. Graburn, “Anthropological Interventions in Tourism Studies,” in The Sage Handbook of Tourism Studies, ed. T. Jamal and M. Robinson (London: Sage, 2009). 49. Ibid. 50. Ibid., 374. 51. I. Isnart, “The Mayor, the Ancestors and the Chapel: Clientelism, Emotion and Heritagisation in Southern France,” International Journal of Heritage Studies 18, no. 5 (2012): 490.

2 � “An Inconvenient Truth” The Use of Federal Policy to Erase American Indians, Indian Tribes, and Indigenous Heritage

K AT H L E E N B R O W N - P É R E Z

When I was first asked to write an essay on American Indian heritage, I was reluctant. “American Indian” is a broad classification, including hundreds of tribes, cultures, and traditions.1 I had to give considerable thought to how to write about American Indian heritage while clarifying there are several hundred culturally distinct groups. In this respect, one could compare the term “American Indian” to the broad terms “European” or “Asian.” Providing no specifics, each gives people only the vaguest of ideas about the individual being referenced. As William Hughes Rollings noted, “Indian is a generic term. . . . It disguises the incredible cultural diversity of the [tribes]. . . . They do not speak the same languages, share the same values, worship the same gods, or have the same political structure. They are and wish to remain separate and distinct.”2 I had to consider how “heritage” relates to these groups that were first misidentified as “Indians,” then, for hundreds of years, referred to collectively as “American Indians,” then, more recently, as “Native Americans.” In the United States, November is “National Native American Heritage Month.” While this is better than being ignored entirely or relegated to the past, there is a problem with the use of the singular word “heritage,” rather than “heritages.” The misnomer gets the attention of so few in mainstream America that I began to ponder the evolution of thought that has led many people in the United States and around the world to combine the several hundred tribes and their diverse cultures and histories into one homogenous group. Yet, when I am asked the name of my tribe, some people are surprised that I am a citizen of a tribe they have not heard of. I do not believe they should know all (800+) tribes, but

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they should know that there are more than a handful of tribes. It is a sad commentary on the study of American history that many cannot imagine Indian Country beyond the Cherokee, Navajo, Apache, and Sioux, or beyond glitzy casino advertisements. If I were to ask many people to describe what American Indians look like, I would undoubtedly hear they have brown skin and black hair. They wear headdresses over their long, braided hair; war paint on their brown faces; beaded moccasins on their feet; and buckskin clothing on their lean and physically fit bodies. And, of course, they live in teepees . . . which are on reservations . . . in the deserts of the American Southwest . . . where they hunt buffalo and run casinos. According to Ron His Horse Is Thunder, “America has this romance with Native American people and the way we were. They do not let us come forward into contemporary America.”3 Much of the misinformation—the commodification of American Indian identity—comes from outdated Hollywood portrayals, but a good deal of the amalgamation of American Indians comes from the federal government and its policies.4 The US government is a settler-colonial state,5 and as such it has instituted numerous policies that further its primary goal: “destroy to replace.”6 This goal is more attainable if the government and the general population see the Indigenous peoples and their tribes as part of one large (disappearing) group. The 17 January 2017 Federal Register listed 567 “Indian Entities Recognized and Eligible to Receive Services from the United States Bureau of Indian Affairs,” but that recognition includes only a limited sovereignty and does nothing to diminish the plenary power Congress retains over them.7 Initially, the concept of destroying Indigenous peoples meant physical eradication. As time passed and genocide became less politically correct, economical, or convenient, federal policies were put in place to “destroy” by means other than physical destruction. This essay asserts that these policies had one goal: assimilation. Assimilation was to be the means by which the federal government would control American Indians by eliminating distinct cultures and heritages. When Indigenous peoples are fully assimilated into the dominant culture, their own cultures are significantly diminished or entirely erased. When they can no longer be distinguished from the dominant culture, not just physically but culturally, physical destruction is not necessary. To a certain extent, the government has erased legal distinctions between tribes by wording laws and policies in a way that lumps tribes together. This blurring of tribal distinctions impedes each tribe’s ability to assert and maintain its own distinct heritage in an increasingly homogenized United States. While individual Indians know their heritage, this knowledge is lacking in the general population. Schools have put little effort into changing this situation in part because many do not realize anything

The Use of Federal Policy to Erase American Indians and Indigenous Heritage · 27

is amiss. Why does it matter that a significant proportion of the general population learns about American Indians from Disney films, the goal of which is to increase earnings rather than relay historically accurate portrayals? Because some of the children that watch Disney’s Pocahontas and Peter Pan grow up to be government workers or teachers. They are elected, appointed, or hired, then fulfill their duties, with virtually no accurate knowledge about the Indigenous peoples of this land. This serves to perpetuate our homogeneity, which is just a step before invisibility.

The Impact of Federal Indian Policy on Heritage The US government has crafted various federal Indian policies over the years to further settler-colonial goals, particularly Indigenous assimilation. Generally, federal Indian policy includes government actions that are instituted to deal with the Indian “problem.” For a settler-colonial society, the problem stems from the fact that Indians were not entirely destroyed and replaced. Many white settlers saw their presence as impeding national progress. Early on, that progress included transnational railroads and settlement by those who were encouraged to move west to replace the American Indians. More recently, American Indians were seen as being so antiquated that they had no important or relevant role in postmodern America. Scholars portray early policies, from first contact with Europeans until the formation of the US government, as a time during which the sovereignty of still independent tribes was recognized.8 Countries and colonies recognized tribes’ distinct and self-governing character and the fact that, like foreign nations, they could be allies or enemies. These foreign nations, however, were mischaracterized in the Declaration of Independence as “merciless Indian savages, whose known rule of warfare is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes, and conditions.” This idea, cemented in the minds of gullible settlers, justified destructive federal Indian policies. The policies have had many names: removal, relocation, reservations, allotment, assimilation, termination, reorganization, and even self-determination. The names barely masked that each policy was about decreasing the Indigenous population. Eventually tactics would change from direct, physical violence to structural violence, but the ultimate goal remained the same: get rid of Indians and their tribes.9 Various methods served this goal: wipe them from the landscape with warfare; eliminate their heritages by assimilating them into mainstream culture until they are no longer distinct and recognizable in the melting pot; take control of the definitions of “Indian” and “tribe,” and define them out of existence. This type of definitional violence is at the core of structural violence. The goal of

28 · Kathleen Brown-Pérez

this type of violence is to suppress the rights of individuals and tribes through a system of structures that are designed to prevent them from achieving agency and their full potential as a society. Each of these types of violence falls along a spectrum of government actions. The generative schemes have been consistent: decrease the number of American Indians.10 During the American Revolution (1775–1783), some tribes sided with the rebels, but many had good reason to side with the British. Aware of this, the rebels asked the tribes to remain neutral.11 In July 1787 the new republic, concerned about tribal allegiance, enacted the Northwest Ordinance. The Ordinance included a statement that the “utmost good faith shall always be observed towards the Indians; their land and property shall never be taken from them without their consent; and, in their property, rights, and liberty, they shall never be invaded or disturbed, unless in just and lawful wars authorized by Congress, but laws founded in justice and humanity, shall from time to time be made for preventing wrongs being done to them, and for preserving peace and friendship with them.”12 As the United States expanded west, the promises of the Northwest Ordinance would be forgotten, and “preserving peace and friendship” with the Indigenous peoples who lived on that land for thousands of years would not be an objective. As President Andrew Jackson stated: Humanity has often wept over the fate of the aborigines of this country. . . . In the monuments and fortresses of an unknown people, spread over the extensive regions of the West, we behold the memorials of a once powerful race, which was exterminated or has disappeared to make room for the existing savage tribes. . . . What good man would prefer a country covered with forests and ranged by a few thousand savages to our extensive Republic, studded with cities, towns, and prosperous farms . . . and filled with all the blessings of liberty, civilization, and religion?13 An overview of the three US Supreme Court cases known as the Marshall Trilogy is necessary to understand the basis of most federal Indian policies, including removal.14 In Johnson v. M’Intosh (21 U.S. 543 [1823]), the Court held that Indians have the right of occupancy in the land but not title to it; as the conqueror, the US government holds the title. The second case in the trilogy is Cherokee Nation v. Georgia (30 U.S. 1 [1831]). The Court held that an Indian tribe is neither a state nor a foreign nation, but rather a domestic dependent nation. In the final case in the trilogy, Worcester v. Georgia (31 U.S. 515 [1832]), the Court held that state law has no force in Indian Country. The Marshall Trilogy provides the foundation for modern federal Indian law, and federal courts continue to cite these cases, along with the US Constitution, to support

The Use of Federal Policy to Erase American Indians and Indigenous Heritage · 29

everything from Congress’s plenary power over Indians and tribes to policies that advance relocation and termination. The presidency of Andrew Jackson (1829–1837) was the beginning of an especially awful time for American Indians. In addition to being a successful land speculator, merchant, and slave trader, Jackson was the most aggressive enemy of the Indians in early American history.15 Jackson spearheaded passage of the Indian Removal Act of 1830 to open up more land to white settlement.16 During this turbulent time, the US government forcibly removed several tribes to less desirable land in the West. This type of “progress” was as much about eliminating Indians and tribes as it was about westward expansion. In 1867 General Sherman wrote to General Grant that “we are not going to let thieving, ragged Indians check and stop the progress.”17 By definition of settler-colonialism, their decreasing numbers—whether achieved by warfare, assimilation, or redefinition—were indicative of national success. And it did not matter whether the Indians called themselves Cherokee or Mohegan, or whether they lived in wigwams or hogans, as each tribe was equally capable of stalling American “progress.” As the United States inched closer to the twentieth century, it was clear that removing Indians would not, by itself, fully open up land to white settlement. Clashes between whites and Indians would continue. Since disease, warfare, and removal had failed to eradicate Indians, another method would be needed: assimilation on a grand scale. In 1871 Congress ended treaty-making with tribes. It could then pass federal laws that applied to all tribes, making no distinction between cultures, locations, or needs. In time, this would discourage mainstream America from discerning between tribes with any level of specificity beyond “friendly” or not. If Indians were assimilated and acculturated into mainstream culture, tribes would dissolve, and the United States would be left with a portion of the population that had heard family tales of Indigenous ancestry—for example, the greatgrandmother who was a “Cherokee princess”—but did not necessarily have contact with fellow tribal members or know anything about their ancestors’ culture. One of the first large-scale attempts at assimilation were the Indian boarding schools. The most infamous of these schools was the Carlisle Indian School, which was founded in 1879 and supervised by Lieutenant Richard Pratt. Pratt’s goal was to eradicate those traits that make one “Indian”: “A great general [Sherman] has said that the only good Indian is a dead one. In a sense, I agree with the sentiment, but only in this: that all the Indian there is in the race should be dead. Kill the Indian in him and save the man.”18 By 1887 there were over 200 Indian boarding schools under federal supervision,19 and 20,000 to 30,000 children (10 percent of the total Indian population) in attendance.20 Staff at the Indian boarding schools cut the long hair of Indian boys and dressed children in American-style clothing.

30 · Kathleen Brown-Pérez

They were punished for speaking their native language or practicing their traditional religion. The assimilation tactics of boarding schools included elimination of many aspects of Indigenous heritage, including language, religion, dress, culture, food, and anything else that made them Indian: If you can’t change them, absorb them until they simply disappear into the mainstream culture. . . . In Washington’s infinite wisdom, it was decided tribes should no longer be tribes, never mind that they had been tribes for thousands of years. It is analogous to the federal government mandating that black Americans can no longer be black.21 Assimilation was about absorbing Indians into mainstream culture until they disappeared. In keeping with this goal, Congress enacted the General Allotment Act (GAA) in 1887. While Indian boarding schools could assimilate children, something needed to be done about their parents. The GAA eliminated several reservations, allotted land to individual Indians, and opened up excess land for white settlers. Indians who accepted allotments would be given US citizenship if they disassociated themselves from their tribes. The goals of the GAA “were simple and clear cut: to extinguish tribal sovereignty, erase reservation boundaries, and force the assimilation of Indians into the society at large.”22 In four decades, the GAA decreased the amount of Indian land from 150 million acres to 50 million acres.23 The act’s primary proponent, Massachusetts politician Henry Dawes, “expressed his faith in the civilizing power of private property with the claim that to be civilized was to ‘wear civilized clothes . . . cultivate the ground, live in houses, ride in Studebaker wagons, send children to school, drink whiskey [and] own property.’”24 In 1924 Congress passed the Indian Citizenship Act.25 This conveyed something less than the citizenship extended to whites. For example, because states controlled voting, most Indians still could not vote. Utah did not grant Indians the right to vote until 1957.26 Citizenship also did not confer the right to testify in court (even on one’s own behalf), serve on juries, attend public schools, or purchase alcohol.27 In 1928 the Meriam Report declared the GAA an unqualified disaster. It pointed out two glaring problems with Indian administration: the exclusion of Indians from managing their own affairs, and the substandard quality of public services rendered by public officials, particularly in health and education.28 In 1933 John Collier, a sociologist, was appointed commissioner of Indian Affairs and attempted to redress the many issues outlined in the Meriam Report. He would support the Indian Reorganization Act of 1934 (IRA) and its principal goal to reverse the destructive allotment policy of the GAA. That year Collier, recognizing that earlier policies were put in place to destroy Indians by way of

The Use of Federal Policy to Erase American Indians and Indigenous Heritage · 31

assimilation, declared, “No interference with Indian religious life or expression will hereafter be tolerated. The cultural history of Indians is in all respects to be considered equal to that of any non-Indian group.”29 The IRA could not undo all of the assimilationist practices of the decades that preceded it, but, for the next twenty years, there was a federal Indian policy in place that did not have the express goal of eliminating Indians through assimilation. The IRA stopped the allotment process, shut down many Indian boarding schools, supported Indian religious freedom, and offered limited self-determination to Indian tribes.30 Sadly, the positive aspects of the IRA would be short-lived. In 1948 a Hoover Commission report recommended the “complete integration” of Indians into white society.31 Drawing on the Hoover Commission’s recommendation, the federal Indian policy that would follow IRA became known as “termination.” In July 1952 the House of Representatives resolved to develop legislative proposals “designed to promote the earliest practicable termination of all federal supervision and control over Indians.”32 On 1 August 1953 Congress enacted House Concurrent Resolution No. 108, better known as the Termination Act. Just like earlier policies, the goal was mass assimilation: In 1953 certain decisions [Indian Termination Act] were made to grant to the Indians the same rights and privileges as other citizens. . . . The difficulty about such legislation, however, is that nowhere is it required that the Indians affected should be asked to give their consent, much less even be consulted, before the proposed action is taken. . . . I am afraid that the talk of “freeing” Indians and making them full citizens is a cloak to make it possible to take a little more away from them.33 Between 1954 and 1964, Congress terminated 109 tribes and bands, which accounted for 12,000 American Indians, or 3 percent of the Indian population. When a tribe was terminated, its reservation was eliminated. By the time the Termination Era ended, an additional 2.5 million acres of land was available to settlers.34 In conjunction with terminating tribes and eliminating reservations, the individual Indians who were citizens of now-terminated tribes were no longer “Indian” according to the US government. A person of American Indian descent who is not a citizen of a federally acknowledged tribe is not an American Indian under US law. This conundrum is possible because the US government has determined that American Indian is not a “race,” but rather a political classification.35 Also during the Termination Era, Congress passed the Indian Relocation Act of 1956, which encouraged Indians to leave their tribes, acquire vocational skills, and assimilate into urban areas such as Chicago, Minneapolis, and Los Angeles. By 2000, 79 percent of all Indians lived in cities.36

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In 1968 President Lyndon Johnson proposed “a new goal for our Indian programs: A goal that ends the old debate about ‘termination’ of Indian programs and stresses self-determination [as] a goal that erases old attitudes of paternalism and promotes partnership and self-help.”37 Eventually, most of the 109 tribes that were terminated had their status restored by Congress. In 1970 President Richard Nixon repudiated the termination policy: “This, then must be the goal of any new national policy toward the Indian people: to strengthen the Indian sense of autonomy without threatening his sense of community.”38 Throughout the 1970s and 1980s, several acts were passed to support tribal self-determination. In 1994 Congress formally repudiated its termination policy in the Federally Recognized Indian Tribe List Act.39 That year, President Bill Clinton issued an executive order mandating all federal agencies to conduct business with tribes on a government-to-government basis, respectful of sovereignty.40 Regardless of later repudiations of policies that harmed Indians and tribal governments, such repudiations cannot truly undo the negative and far-reaching effects of such policies. Indians who long ago assimilated at federal encouragement, regardless of the policy era, negatively impacted their descendants’ Indian heritage. Five hundred years of immigration and 200 years of policies that sought to “destroy [American Indians] to replace [with immigrants]” have had extensive and ongoing negative effects on Indigenous peoples. Assimilation via federal policies has had devastating impacts on tribal heritages. There comes a point at which personal knowledge of your family, tribe, and heritage cannot withstand centuries of pressure from the federal government and mainstream society. Despite numerous federal repudiations of destructive policies and an announcement that this is the era of “self-determination,” conditions continue to deteriorate for Indian people and in Indian Country. Despite advancements in the area of civil rights for others, American Indians continue to exist as unwanted outsiders on land they have occupied for tens of thousands of years. Only in the most recent 230 years have they found themselves in the way of another country’s progress. This has put them in the position of no longer fighting for physical survival, but survival of their cultures, their histories, and their heritages.

Museums, Heritage Centers, and Outreach The fight for cultural survival continues, and hope prevails. There are a number of US museums that include or focus exclusively on Native Americans or American Indians. From the Museum of Native American History in Bentonville, Arkansas, to the several dozen museums in California, there is no shortage of facilities that provide an opportunity to learn more about the Indigenous peoples

The Use of Federal Policy to Erase American Indians and Indigenous Heritage · 33

of the United States. Sadly, some focus on histories from the perspective of those who have studied Indigenous peoples, such as historians and anthropologists, and fail to inform visitors of the continuing existence of or contributions by such peoples. Additionally, some fail to include any information that puts the US government—or the American colonies—in a less than favorable light, ignoring actions that aimed to wipe Indigenous peoples from this landscape of violence. In all fairness, many museums have been working to change this outdated way of presenting Indigenous peoples in a museum setting. This includes asking for Indigenous input and including Indigenous peoples on museum boards of directors. As can be expected, the speed at which the many museums address issues varies greatly from one facility to the next. The National Museum of the American Indian (NMAI), which opened in Washington, DC, in September 2004, is part of the Smithsonian Institution. The NMAI is the first national museum in the United States dedicated exclusively to Native Americans. Additionally, unlike earlier museums that excluded Indigenous peoples except as displays or historical artifacts, Native Americans have been instrumental in the design and operation of the museum. The Mitchell Museum of the American Indian, near Chicago, is a regional museum that opened in 1977 and is dedicated to art, history, and cultures of Native Americans and First Nations peoples from the United States and Canada, and there are several American Indians on the museum’s board of directors. The Heard Museum, located in Phoenix, Arizona, is an internationally renowned American Indian art and history museum that opened in 1929. According to its website, the Heard is “dedicated to the sensitive and accurate portrayal of Native arts and cultures.” The mission of the museum’s American Indian Advisory Committee is to ensure that “tribes actively participate in, feel a part of, and are very pleased with how they are represented by the Heard Museum.” One action that has put a spotlight on less than acceptable portrayals of Native American and American Indian in mainstream museums is the expanded creation of tribally run museums. For example, the Mashantucket Pequot Museum and Research Center is a tribally owned and operated facility that opened in 1998. It is an impressive 308,000-square-foot complex that “seeks to further knowledge and understanding of the richness and diversity of the Indigenous cultures and societies of the United States and Canada.” The Mashantucket Pequot had the goal of addressing the portrayal of both their own tribal history and culture and that of other tribal nations. In 1931 Mohegan Medicine Woman Gladys Tantaquidgeon cofounded the Tantaquidgeon Indian Museum in Uncasville, Connecticut, with her father (John) and her brother (Harold). Harold believed that “you can’t hate someone

34 · Kathleen Brown-Pérez

that you know a lot about.” The museum is filled with treasures, many of which were donated by tribal members. It is the oldest Indian-owned and -operated museum in the United States. Many tribes have followed in Tantaquidgeon’s footsteps. A few of the many tribally owned and operated museums are the George W. Brown Jr. Ojibwe Museum and Cultural Center, the Fond du Lac Cultural Center and Museum, the Forest County Potawatomi Cultural Center, and the Ziibiwing Center of Anishinabe Culture and Lifeways. While each museum is different, there does appear to be more awareness of the problems with inaccurate or incomplete portrays of Indigenous peoples. Some are going beyond merely changing displays but are also providing educational resources for patrons. The Kentucky Native American Heritage Museum was founded in 1999 “to promote understanding of North America’s Indigenous People from both historic and contemporary perspectives, through collection and dissemination of information about their histories, cultures, beliefs, and expressive arts; their existing communities, lifestyles, occupations and ways; and their past and ongoing contributions to Appalachia’s and out nation’s cultural weave.” Its website provides teacher/educator resources and links to assist educators in providing accurate information to students. Similarly, the Alaska Native Heritage Center, which opened in 1999, provides information on Native traditions and customs of the past and the present. It allows visitors to experience Alaska’s diverse Native cultures at one location. A thirty-member committee of elders and tradition bearers assisted the Heritage Center staff in program and building design. While museums and heritage centers alike are taking notice of problematic displays and information, it is clear that this is an area in which many are working to improve the information that is being shared with visitors. Indigenous peoples are often involved in the planning of facilities and the ongoing shaping of public perceptions. Heritage centers play an important role in this, as their focus is often not just on the historic aspects of Indigenous peoples but also on contemporary issues, cultures, and contributions. Like many things, it begins with education. Looking at mainstream museums in the United States, the Denver Art Museum stands out as an example of working to increase the recognition of contemporary American Indian art. It currently devotes more space to Indian art than any other mainstream art museum. The museum also hosts an Indian artist in residence who speaks with visitors and creates new art. Alternatively, a 2015 display at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City entitled “The Plains Indians: Artists of Earth and Sky” was criticized: “Weighted down by centuries of misrepresentation, cultural appropriation, and false narratives, encyclopedic institutions still struggle to present Native art in a respectful, honest

The Use of Federal Policy to Erase American Indians and Indigenous Heritage · 35

way.”41 While mainstream museums are slowly moving in the right direction, the exclusion of the Indigenous voice in facilities that mainstream Americans trust to disseminate accurate information is problematic.42 There are a number of museums and heritage centers that have outreach programs to inform the general public about Indigenous issues. For example, the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History provides a list of books on various Native American topics on its website. It is unclear how (or if) these books were vetted prior to providing this information online. The general public tends to trust the Smithsonian, so the information it provides must be thoroughly scrutinized for accuracy. The NMAI also does outreach via its website and on-site programs. Its conservation outreach also includes internships and training opportunities for those interested in conservation. The NMAI also provides educational opportunities for students and teachers. The Museum of Indian Arts & Culture in Santa Fe, New Mexico, has provided a Native Arts and History Outreach Project since 2001. Its focus is not to educate non-Indians, however. Rather, it focuses on the underserved American Indian children and teachers in the area. It offers resources and education staff to work in collaboration with schools to develop projects and curriculum of cultural significance and relevance in the American Southwest. As the number of outreach programs grows, their influence, as well as the number of those with whom they are coming in contact, increases. In addition to simply speaking up about inaccurate or otherwise damaging portrayals of Indigenous peoples, American Indians are becoming personally involved in working with (and for) mainstream museums that wish to include information and/or displays about Indigenous peoples. This provides an important perspective at such museums. There are also a number of tribally run museums and heritage centers. These allow individual tribes to focus on their own culture and heritage. Non-Indian visitors gain a more thorough understanding of individual tribes and, by default, learn that tribes and Indians do not fit into the small boxes and cupboards into which mainstream America has long attempted to conceal them. Some of the change in US museums and heritage centers can be credited to efforts of pan-Indian organizations, including, but certainly not limited to, the National Congress of American Indians, the Native American Rights Fund, the Society of American Indians, the American Indian Movement, and the InterTribal Environmental Council. While their purpose has been for people from different tribes to work together toward a common goal, they were not established to blur the distinctions between tribes or their cultures. Rather, the one characteristic shared by all tribes, that of being the colonized in a settler-colonial society, has brought tribes together to deal with lingering issues.

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Hope for the Future Recent advancements in recognizing and respecting American Indian heritages give many of us hope that we are on the road to an improved situation. Staying on this road requires improving the teaching of American history by expanding curriculums to include the Indigenous peoples of the United States. For most students, history classes are limited to conveying information that provides only the most glowing opinion of the United States. This is confirmed by those museums that keep American Indians firmly entrenched in the past, like centuriesold artifacts, as if they all conveniently disappeared to make way for European immigrants. Fortunately, Indigenous peoples are becoming more involved in museums, heritage centers, and academia, and non-Indigenous academics are becoming more interested in providing accurate and complete information to students. The ripple effect of simply making sure that such information is available is likely to have a positive effect in many facets of American life, including how the federal government decides to work with Indigenous peoples and tribes. As Harold Tantaquidgeon said long ago, “You can’t hate someone that you know a lot about.” Knowing a lot about someone also makes it hard to enact ineffective or harmful policies. And this is what we hold out hope for.

Notes 1. I use the terminology “American Indian” or “Indigenous” in this essay. Besides my personal preference for these terms over “Native American,” “American Indian” is more appropriate in this context. This narrower subcategory of “Native American” includes the Indigenous peoples of the forty-eight contiguous states and some of the Indigenous peoples of Alaska. “Native American,” a broader term, also includes Native Hawaiians, Native Alaskans, and others. The distinctions between “American Indian” and “Native American” are relevant when referring to two or more people from different tribes. However, rather than using this broad terminology for individuals, it is best to refer to them by their tribal affiliation. 2. W. H. Rollings, “Citizenship and Suffrage: The Native American Struggle for Civil Rights in the American West, 1830–1965,” Citizenship and Suffrage 5 (Fall 2004): 127–128 (126–140). 3. A. Fischer, “Many Nations, Many Cultures: Native American Tribal Leader Ron His Horse Is Thunder Presented the Keynote Address for the Library’s Celebration of Native American Heritage Month in November,” Library of Congress Information Bulletin 65, no. 12 (2006): 287, http://www.loc.gov/loc/lcib/0612/culture.html. 4. For additional details on federal Indian policy, see K. A. Brown-Pérez, “‘A Reflection of Our National Character’: Structurally and Culturally Violent Federal Policies and the Elusive Quest for Federal Acknowledgment,” Landscapes of Violence 2, no. 1 (2012). 5. “Definition,” Settler Colonial Studies Blog, http://settlercolonialstudies.org/about-this-blog/. 6. P. Wolfe, “Settler Colonialism and the Elimination of the Native,” Journal of Genocide Research 8, no. 4 (2006): 388.

The Use of Federal Policy to Erase American Indians and Indigenous Heritage · 37

7. Of the 566 federally acknowledged tribes, “approximately 229 of these ethnically, culturally, and linguistically diverse nations are located in Alaska; the other federally recognized tribes are located in 33 other states.” “Tribal Nations & the United States: An Introduction,” National Congress of American Indians, http://www.ncai.org/about-tribes. 8. See S. Pevar, The Rights of Indians and Tribes (New York: Oxford University Press, 2012), 4–6. 9. Here, the idea of structural violence is being drawn from Galtung’s idea of systemic sociopolitical inequality legitimized by the state, along with Farmer’s concept of “structural violence” and Scheper-Hughes’s ideas of “everyday violence.” J. Galtung, “Cultural Violence,” Journal of Peace Research 27, no. 3 (1990): 291–305; P. Farmer, “An Anthropology of Structural Violence,” Current Anthropology 45, no. 3 (2004): 305–325; P. Farmer, B. Nizeye, S. Stulac, and S. Keshavjee, “Structural Violence and Clinical Medicine,” PLoS Medicine 3 (2006): 1686–1691; N. Scheper-Hughes, Death without Weeping: The Violence of Everyday Life in Brazil (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992). 10. D. Miller, “Definitional Violence and Plains Indian Life: Ongoing Challenges to Survival,” in Violence, Resistance, and Survival in the Americas: Native Americans and the Legacy of Conquest, ed. William B. Taylor and Franklin G. Y. Pease (Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1994), 226–248. 11. Continental Congress, A Speech to the Six Nations, Mohawks, Oneidas, Tusscaroras, Onandagas, Cayugas, Senekas, from the Twelve United Colonies, convened in Council in Philadelphia, 13 July 1775, http://avalon.law.yale.edu/18th_century/contcong_07–13–75.asp. 12. The Northwest Ordinance, 13 July 1787 (National Archives Microfilm Publication M332, roll 9), Miscellaneous Papers of the Continental Congress, 1774–1789, http://www. ourdocuments.gov/doc.php?flash=true&doc=8. 13. Andrew Jackson, in his second annual message to Congress, Messages and Papers of the Presidents, vol. 2, in Native American Voices: A History and Anthology, ed. S. Mintz (St. James, NY: Brandywine Press, 1995), 115–116. 14. John Marshall (1755–1835) was the fourth chief justice of the Supreme Court of the United States (1801–1835). During his tenure as the longest-serving chief justice, he played a substantial role in the expansion of the US legal system, including now presumed legal standards regarding judicial review and the supremacy of federal law over state law. This cemented the Supreme Court as an influential and independent branch of government. 15. H. Zinn, A People’s History of the United States (New York: Harper, 1980), 98. 16. 14 Stat. 411. 17. G. King, “Where the Buffalo No Longer Roamed,” www.smithsonianmag.com. 18. C. Bear. “American Indian Boarding Schools Hurt Many,” National Public Radio, http:// www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=16516865. 19. S. Pevar, The Rights of Indians and Tribes (New York: Oxford University Press, 2012), 7. 20. PBS, “Indian Boarding Schools,” Indian Country Diaries, http://www.pbs.org/indiancountry/history/interactive_map.html. 21. Ben Nighthorse Campbell, “Opening Keynote Address: Activating Indians into National Politics,” in American Indian Nations: Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow, ed. George P. Horse Capture, Duane Champagne, Chandler C. Jackson, and Ben Nighthorse Campbell (New York: Rowman Altamira, 2007), 2–3. 22. Cobell qtd. by S. Pevar, The Rights of Indians and Tribes (New York: Oxford University Press, 2012), 9.

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23. Pevar, Rights of Indians and Tribes, 9. 24. “New Perspectives on the West: The Dawes Act,” http://www.pbs.org/weta/thewest/ resources/archives/eight/dawes.htm. Henry Dawes (1816–1903) was a Republican politician from western Massachusetts and the primary proponent of the General Allotment Act. 25. The 1790 Naturalization Act gave citizenship to any “free white person” who had resided in the United States for two years. For additional details on the Indian Citizenship Act, see Brown-Pérez, “‘Reflection of Our National Character,’” 2. 26. W. H. Rollings, “Citizenship and Suffrage, The Native American Struggle for Civil Rights in the American West, 1830–1965,” Citizenship and Suffrage 5 (Fall 2004): 139 (126–140). 27. Ibid., 127. 28. Ibid., 348. See D. E. Wilkins and S. Lightfoot, “Oaths of Office in Tribal Constitutions: Swearing Allegiance, but to Whom?,” American Indian Quarterly 32, no. 4 (Fall 2008): 390 (389–411). See generally E. R. Rusco, “John Collier: Architect of Sovereignty or Assimilation?,” American Indian Quarterly 15, no. 1 (Winter 1991): 49–54. 29. Commissioner of Indian Affairs, Annual Report (1934), 90. 30. B. Tong and R. A. Lutz, The Human Tradition in the American West (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 2001), 111. 31. Comm’n on Organization of the Executive Branch of Government, Indian Affairs: A Report to Congress, H.R. Doc. No. 81-1, at 53 (1949). 32. H.R. Rep. No. 82-2503, 82d Cong., 2d Sess. (1952). 33. Eleanor Roosevelt, “My Day,” The Eleanor Roosevelt Papers Project, 31 December 1954, http://www.gwu.edu/~erpapers/myday/displaydoc.cfm?_y=1954&_f=md003054. 34. D. E. Wilkins and H. Kiiwetinepinesiik Stark, American Indian Politics and the American Indian Political System, 3rd ed. (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 2010). 35. Morton v. Mancari, 417 U.S. 535 (1974). 36. PBS, “The Urban Relocation Program,” Indian Country Diaries, http://www.pbs.org/ indiancountry/history/relocate.html. 37. Lyndon Johnson, Special Message to Congress, 6 March 1968, in Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: Lyndon Johnson, 1968–69, 1 Pub. Papers 336. 38. Message from the President of the United States, 1970, “Recommendations for Indian Policy,” H.R. Doc. No. 91-363, 91st Cong., 2d Sess. (8 July 1970), reprinted in Francis Prucha, ed., Documents of United States Indian Policy, 2nd ed. (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1990), 256–258. 39. Public Law 103-454. 40. “Government-to-Government Relations with Native American Tribal Governments,” Presidential Memorandum of 4 April 1994, 59 Fed. Reg. 22951 (1994). 41. S. Regan, “In Mainstream Museums, Confronting Colonialism While Curating Native American Art,” Hyperallergic, 26 June 2015, http://hyperallergic.com. 42. See A. Lonetree, Decolonizing Museums: Representing Native America in National and Tribal Museums (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2012).

3 � Consuming the Contested Heritage of War Tourism, Territoriality, and the Memorial Landscapes of the Western Front

JENNIFER ILES

The First World War of 1914–1918 has now slipped beyond the horizon of living memory, and yet nearly a hundred years after the guns fell silent reverberations of the conflict are still being felt. As Bremer observes, its heritage has lived on and become woven into the fabric of British society.1 Remembrance Sunday remains an important day in the national calendar. Hundreds of words and phrases, such as “cushy” and “over the top,” that came into common parlance during the conflict still occupy our daily speech. The causes of the war, the qualities of British military leadership, and the shortcomings of military justice continue to be subjects of serious debate, with each aspect engendering controversy.2 Although popular understanding of the conflict assumes that it constitutes “history’s prime example of war as horror and futility,”3 over the past three decades there has been a growing stream of pioneering academic research that has offered fresh perspectives on its complexity, conduct, and meaning, fueling the public appetite to know more about what happened, and why. Predictably, the centenary of the First World War is being observed with particular intensity. Over the four years of 2014 to 2018 it will be marked nationally and abroad by a host of remembrance services, cultural events, research projects, and exhibitions. Also during this period, millions of visitors are expected to travel to the battlefields, cemeteries, memorials, museums, and heritage sites of the Western Front in France and Belgium. According to a spokesperson for the Commonwealth War Graves Commission (CWGC), the body responsible for maintaining the military cemeteries and memorials to the missing, the task of ensuring that their sites are ready for the unprecedented numbers of people

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anticipated at this time “is perhaps the biggest single operational challenge we have faced since the end of the Second World War.”4 The Western Front, which consisted of a meandering line of parallel trenches, mine craters, and tunnels stretching from the North Sea to the Swiss frontier, was the most important and decisive theater of fighting during the conflict. Today most British tourists gravitate toward two specific regions, the Ypres Salient in Flanders, Belgium, and the Somme in France, the areas that remain associated with some of the most costly and tragic battles of the war. The Flemish tourism authority, Westtoer, reports that battlefield visits to Flanders in 2014 have been estimated at 750,000, which is more than double the annual average, with the British making the highest number of visits.5 The same picture emerges on the Somme, where it was recorded in 2014 that the Thiepval Memorial and Visitor Centre had attracted an unprecedented 214,000 visitors, of which over 140,000 were British tourists.6 Yet even before the centenary surge, the Western Front had long been a target destination for tourists, with inquiries being made about tours before the fighting had ceased.7 War and tourism are closely entwined, and battlefield tourism, typically located within the larger grouping of touristic experiences commonly referred to as dark tourism8 (also known as thanatourism9), has materialized as an important form of tourist activity. Warfare itself can be an important stimulus to tourism through the creation of various forms of heritage such as battlefields, military weaponry, and even ruins,10 and in its aftermath through nostalgia, memorabilia, and reunions.11 Although tourism to the battlefields remained buoyant throughout the 1920s and 1930s, for the first two decades after the Second World War the former front lines remained largely neglected. It appeared the prediction made by the veteran Stephen Graham that “there must be a time when no more visit the burial-places of the great war [sic] than visit now the cemeteries of the Crimea” had been realized.12 His prophesy, though, was premature, and from the early 1970s the Western Front gradually reemerged as an attractive short-break tourist destination. For both past and present-day visitors, however, the picturesque countryside reveals little of the murderous, industrial warfare once fought out across the trenches. Yet despite the banishment of the ugly sights and stenches of combat, the unimaginable scale of carnage during the four years of fighting imbued the battlefields with the qualities of sacred, hallowed ground. The thousands of cemeteries and memorials constructed since the end of the war are perceived as the equivalent of shrines and holy sites, a process that began during the conflict. An early Michelin Guide to the 1914 Marne battlefields published in 1917, for example, categorized itself as a memorial, bearing the following dedication on its title page: “In memory of the Michelin workmen and employees who died gloriously for their country.”13

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Today, many of the more contemporary guides and touring books continue to represent the areas of the Somme and Ypres Salient as sacred spaces, with visits defined as acts of homage and spiritual pilgrimage.14 These unchanging sentiments give the impression that the Western Front is a terrain frozen in time. Yet the remembrance landscape is not a static, fossilized background to military engagement, nor is it simply a setting for commemorative activities, but is constantly evolving, worked on, and altered.15 Bodies are still being recovered and reinterred in cemeteries; unexploded ordnance, “the iron harvest,” continues to break through the topsoil; and archaeological digs expose all kinds of artifacts and materials of war, from cap badges to whole trench systems.16 In addition, memorials and military cemeteries are still being constructed, new museums and visitor centers are opening, and new ceremonies to honor the dead continue to be devised. However, as Saunders points out, it is useful to see the battlefields not just as an ongoing process, but as a palimpsest of superimposed, multivocal landscapes, each of which speaks to different groups of people who interact with them in different ways.17 This chapter, which is based on a continuing ethnographic study of battlefield tourism that began in 1997, focuses on the remembrance landscapes of the Western Front and explores some of the opportunities and constraints raised by the different stakeholders who interact with its sites and who may be at odds regarding their historical associations, heritage management, and future development during a period of unprecedented visitor numbers. For all those who visit the former war zones, such as tourists, tour guides, military historians, enthusiasts, and archaeologists, it is their landscape from which they derive a sense of place and belonging.18 The battlefields, however, are also lived in and exist for local landowners, residents, and farmers, and constitute their everyday working environments. Visitors, in the pursuit of their historical, military, and archaeological interests, as well as the performance of their commemorative rituals, may be unaware that for some locals the heritage of the war is now perhaps of little significance in the spaces in which they reside and earn a living. My study looks specifically at the Somme region, which for many years has remained one of the most popular areas of the former front lines for battlefield tourists. I begin by exploring how the complex notions of British and English national identities are bound up with tourists’ emotional attachments toward the battlefields, and then move on to discuss collective remembrance of the war and the ongoing dialectic between the need to remember and the need to forget wartime experience.19 Due to changes in social priorities over the generations, many memories are forgotten, some are rekindled, and a few never fade.20 The

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piecemeal nature of collective remembrance is evident on the Somme, where some groups demonstrate an enduring fascination with the difficult struggle experienced by their troops, while for others, their popular memory dwells elsewhere on the Western Front. My discussion then examines concerns regarding the number of visitors to the memorial landscape, before focusing upon the small village of La Boisselle, which lies at the heart of the battlefields. La Boisselle contains two significant British sites of memory, the Lochnagar Crater, which has become a focal point for services of remembrance, and the hidden underground landscape of a nearby site, known as the Glory Hole, which was recently subject to a highly publicized and ultimately contentious archaeological study.

Memory and Belonging Before the war the Somme was an unremarkable, little-known river in Northern France.21 During the years of the conflict, however, it gave its name to a battle that has become a byword for British military failure and the futility of armed struggle. The offensive began on a summer’s day on 1 July 1916 and ended as an often forgotten victory four months later in rain, sleet, and snow.22 The human costs of the campaign were enormous; on the opening day alone there were 60,000 British casualties, of which nearly 20,000 were killed.23 Yet it was not only the heavy losses suffered by the British troops that has made the Somme such an iconic and poignant battlefield but also the composition of the groups that fought and died there.24 It was the first major battle that involved the bulk of the mass volunteer army raised in response to Lord Kitchener’s call made shortly after the outbreak of war in 1914. The highly localized citizen force was decimated, and thousands of men still lie undiscovered beneath the soil. Families throughout the length and breadth of Britain became the guardians of their memories, and today, with the ever-increasing span of time that has elapsed since the Armistice was declared, the level of family connection has widened considerably. The military historian Gary Sheffield notes how he has been struck by just how many British people know something about relatives that served in this conflict. Some have meticulously researched the wartime career of a grandfather or a great-grandfather. . . . Others still have a vague folk memory: he was on the Somme, in the artillery, I think.25 Still woven into the landscape of the Somme battlefields is a sense of shared ownership between Britain and France that began during the war. In Mottram’s

Tourism, Territoriality, and the Memorial Landscapes of the Western Front · 43

memoir of his wartime experiences on the Front, he wrote that it “became a part of Britain, to be defended.”26 Intensifying this perception of possession is the presence of the military cemeteries interspersed among the fields and villages, which act as visible aide-mémoires to the enormous investment and destruction of British manpower. Not only that, but the dead are buried in a landscape that has marked similarities to parts of the southern English countryside. In 1930 Maskell wrote in his guide to the Picardy region that the Somme “was a typical Wealden landscape.”27 The foreign countryside of the Western Front has become a kind of “home away from home,” and established in what Anderson has termed an “imagined community” of British national identity.28 It is, though, a nationhood that is English rather than British in character. Furthermore, as Lowenthal contends, the English landscape has become the leitmotif of British national identity: “Nowhere else does the very term suggest not simply scenery and genres de vie, but quintessential national virtues.”29 Moreover it was not just the countryside but actual English soil that embodied the essence of what soldiers were fighting for. When the writer Edward Thomas was asked in 1915 why he had enlisted, he picked up a handful of English earth and replied, “Literally, for this.”30 The image of a piece of foreign soil that was to be “forever England” was carried through in the design of the military cemeteries, immaculately kept by the CWGC gardeners. Under the direction of Sir Frederic Kenyon, the adviser to the Commission, it was recommended that the cemeteries should, out of the quagmire of no-man’s-land, re-create a dignified, peaceful, pastoral idyll, reminiscent of a combination of an English country garden and a village churchyard. Comments in the visitor books of the military cemeteries indicate that even today many visitors remain appreciative of the Commission’s intentions, as this typical observation illustrates: “A little corner of France forever England. God bless.” Nevertheless, a remark left by a South African visitor at the Talbot House Museum in Poperinge, Flanders (a key site for British soldiers behind-the-lines), which reads, “Thank you for letting us feel English in a way,” reveals the ambiguity that not only surrounds the conflated and interchangeable terms of “British” and “English” but also the often complex way that people experience ideas of national identity and the collective past. As Franklin notes, the practice of tourism often reinforces ideas of nationhood, but the relationship between tourist experience and nationalism can be messy and contested.31 Despite the ideas of an imagined Englishness and homeland that permeate much of the remembrance landscape, the difficulty of untangling Englishness from the wider cultures of Great Britain has led to a distinct lack of an English place on the battlefields, which, as Gough has observed, is particularly noticeable in the Somme area.32 Although

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there are several national symbols of Scottish, Welsh, and Irish participation on its battlefields, as well as regional and local sites of memory, such as Sheffield Memorial Park and its preserved trench dedicated to the Accrington Pals, there are no sites and emblems dedicated to the contribution made by English soldiers.33 Ironically, this situation remains unchanged at a time when a growing number of English people have decided to move to the Somme and make a living through offering services, such as guided tours, bed and breakfast establishments, and battlefield visitor–friendly tearooms. Inevitably, this dearth has led to a “bundle of grievances”34 accumulated by English battlefield visitors, guides, and residents alike who, it might be argued, have perceived a whittling away of their distinctive national identity since the wave of devolution that began in the late 1990s.35 This sense of frustration was conveyed to me by an English resident and tour guide on the Somme who, on hearing that in 2014 a further memorial to the Welsh troops had been unveiled on the battlefields, complained that “there is still nothing anywhere for us—we fought here too.”36 However, whatever part of the country British tourists may come from, many visitors display what is, according to the nineteenth-century American essayist Ralph Waldo Emerson, a typically deeply insular English trait of being “provokingly incurious about other nations.”37 Although, as Kempshall asserts, it is understandable that the British focus of attention on the battlefields would be on the actions of their own nation, there is little curiosity about the role of the French forces on the Western Front, despite their troops bearing the heaviest share of fighting and losses.38 On the Somme sector, too, such is the fixation on the British casualties on 1 July 1916 that the French successes south of the river on that day are often overlooked at the expense of gaining a full appreciation of the battle. Similarly disregarded are the campaigns fought by the French prior to the British occupation of the sector in 1915. Even the presence of the 300 French graves that lie alongside the 300 British Commonwealth graves situated behind the Thiepval Memorial, a focal point for most visitors to the Somme, has left little impact on British recognition of France’s wartime military role beyond that of remaining part of the “supporting cast.”39 The itineraries of many coach tour companies reflect this trend. Typically, in their tours of the Somme area, few include a visit to the National Cemetery at Rancourt, the largest French war cemetery in the region with over 8,500 burials and a key commemorative site. On personalized tours, too, visits to French cemeteries or their 1916 battle zones are rarely requested by British tourists.40 Yet the French themselves routinely show little interest in the fighting on the Somme. Although, as Shields points out, places and landscapes are archival and “become a memory bank for societies,”41 memory is vulnerable to decay.

Figure 3.1. Military cemetery. Photo copyright J. Iles.

Figure 3.2. Military cemetery. Photo copyright J. Iles.

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Winter and Sivan’s analysis of collective remembrance suggests that while certain memories endure, “forgetting and fade-out are usually the rule.”42 For the French, the Battle of Verdun remains the main focus of their memory of the war, because almost every Frenchman in the army served there. In contrast, only a handful of French units were at the Somme, and, as a result, its battlefields are, as a tourist guide pointed out, “almost completely off the French radar.”43 According to a staff member of the Historial de la Grande Guerre Museum in Peronne, a French tourist would more usually go to the museum, which provides a general overview of the conflict, than explore the area’s war landscape because “their interest about the Somme battles does not exist.”44 A long-term resident of a village that lay close to the front lines stated that even though she had lived there since birth, she had never really noticed the military cemeteries. It was only recently that she had learned of the intense fighting in the area during the last year of hostilities and that it had been liberated by Australian troops.45 But as an English resident explained, by necessity the French place an emphasis on looking forward and “getting on” with their lives: For them the war is over, they have to earn money, grow crops to feed their families. And this is not the first time the Somme has been invaded by the Germans. It happened in the Franco-Prussian War in 1870; in 1914 when the First World War broke out; and again in 1940.46 In tandem with the “fade-out” of French memory of the Somme battles, the local tourist office in Albert has, until recently, placed greater emphasis on marketing the area for its fishing, hunting, and camping attractions than promoting its war heritage. Nevertheless, the recent appearance of French guides to the battlefields, a scenario that, according to a British guide, “was unheard of a few years ago,”47 indicates that there has been an escalation in French tourism to the former combat zones, possibly in response to “the centenary effect.”48 Up until this time there was the sense that when the last of the Allied veterans died, interest in the Western Front sites would die with them and battlefield tourism would come to a gradual end.49 The opposite has occurred, and the seemingly inexorable increase in the number of people traveling to the region has “overwhelmed the local tourist authorities who seem unsure of how to capitalize on it or how to manage it at times.”50 The combination of the effects of mass tourism and lack of visitor provision on the Somme has been of concern to a number of guides, who are anxious that the volume of visitors will take its toll on the physical landscape. As one of the guides indicated: “How will the Somme cope with the excess demand? These tiny rural roads already suffer with the double-decker buses each year and it is only going to get worse.”51 The memo-

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rial landscape is also considered to be in jeopardy. For the guides, an important element of their role is to enable their clients to construct an imaginative and emotional engagement with the remembrance landscape, and to achieve, according to the geographer Relph, an “empathetic insideness” that allows them to appreciate “the essential elements” of a site’s identity.52 Although the current demand is good for business, there is disquiet that during the centenary years the presence of school parties and large groups from coach tours will erode the brooding mournfulness of the battlefields. There is also the perception that more visits will be made for recreational rather than commemorative purposes, as this comment on the Thiepval Memorial Facebook page reveals: Such a shame the vast majority of visitors have little regard for the true meaning of the place and show little in the way of deference. . . . I question the motives of most of the visitors to sites like this, bearing in mind this is not a tourist attraction but a site of Remembrance.53 Others, however, appreciate that tourism is a complicated, diverse activity and that tourists behave in many different ways, which can range from, as Edensor argues, unreflexive, taken-for-granted responses to displays of “calculated intentionality.”54 The following observation made in the ensuing discussion on the Facebook page makes the point that it is important that people should, for whatever reason, make the effort to visit the Western Front, even if they are not able at the time to appreciate the costly sacrifices made during the hostilities: “We should be grateful that they come—even if it is ‘our’ place and ‘our’ understanding of the ‘true meaning.’”55 Yet there has always been disquiet about the presence of insensitive sightseers on the former front lines. In 1919 a journalist for the Daily Express complained that visitors were little more than “morbid seekers after sensation.”56 This sense of unease about the touristification and commodification of the battlefields clearly remains. Antagonism toward tourists, particularly mass tourists, typically surfaces when proposals are made to provide additional facilities, such as visitor centers. The initial suggestion made in 1998 to construct a center at the Thiepval Memorial, for example, was met with a chorus of dismay from guides and travel writers alike who were concerned that the site would become “yet another themed heritage experience.”57 One travel writer was even moved to suggest that a replica battlefield should be constructed elsewhere so that “all the coach-loads of visitors in search of a comfort stop could be accommodated in style and the Somme battlefield left alone.”58 The notion that authors who have themselves helped to create the demand for visits to places such as the Somme do not then expect their readers to follow them is, as Dann suggests, “the enduring paradox of travel and tourism.”59

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La Boisselle The management, conservation, and interpretation of significant commemoratives spaces can be a complicated matter because various sets of stakeholders endeavour to exert their own, and sometimes mutually exclusive, interpretations of their heritage and meaning.60 Tensions regarding differing perceptions of the remembrance landscape on the Somme have brought about a series of challenges in the small village of La Boisselle, which has become a requisite port of call for the many thousands of visitors traveling to the area. Most people will make a brief stop at the Lochnagar Crater; few today, however, will take a look at the nearby Glory Hole. The once well publicized archaeological excavation of its network of tunnels that began in 2011 abruptly ceased at the end of 2013 due to a dispute between the site owner and the archaeological team. The field has now been returned to a quiet, and once again relatively undisturbed, cratered, broken patch of land. Both sites are the result of intense subterranean warfare that took place in La Boisselle. The opposing front lines in the village were very close, and when the British troops took over the sector from the French in the summer of 1915, the ground had already been subject to heavy fighting and mining activity from both sides. As part of the British offensive on 1 July 1916 several mines were detonated under the German front lines at 7:28 a.m., two minutes before the infantry was given the order to advance over no-man’s-land and attack the German trenches. The explosion of the Lochnagar mine, which was one of the largest of the war, propelled debris almost a mile high and formed an immense hole with a diameter of approximately 300 feet and a depth of 70 feet.61 A serving British officer with the Lincolnshire Regiment recalled the scene: “The ground rumbled, the trenches trembled and the mine went up and the earth was up in the air and it blackened out the sun.”62 Since the Armistice, though, craters have been used as handy dumping sites by local communities and farmers, and many have been lost under a mélange of mattresses, derelict cars, and farm refuse. The Lochnagar Crater, too, was destined for oblivion, and at the time of its purchase in 1978 by an Englishman, Richard Dunning, the farmer was in the process of applying for permission to have it filled. Dunning’s intention was to preserve the crater as a memorial and to ensure that the site would commemorate “the memory, the courage, the sacrifice of the lads who were there.”63 Over the years, it has gradually evolved as a major site of tourism and commemoration and receives an estimated 200,000 visitors each year. Many thousands more are expected during the centenary period. The long-standing lack of basic tourist infrastructure, however, has brought

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about tensions in the village, which mainly center upon the absence of adequate visitor parking space. Lochnagar lies on a hill up a single track road, and although it is suitable for coaches, the tarmac ends a few meters from the crater’s entrance. As Dunning commented, every year “a quarter of a million people are sent up a cul-de-sac,” and many drivers have difficulty in turning their vehicles around.64 It is not unusual to have at least six coaches parked at the crater at any one time, and on exiting the site they have on occasion been forced to reverse the length of the road, causing havoc in the village streets. For many years the farmer who rented an adjacent field was happy to allow a section of the land to be used as a parking and turning area, but due to a dispute between his successor and the local commune, the area was closed off with barbed wire and plowed over. Dunning himself was approached to allow part of the land belonging to the crater to be used, but was reluctant to give his consent because, for him, “every blade of grass at Lochnagar is sacred—why destroy a piece of First World War battlefield for a parking area?”65 While for some the site has deep spiritual and cultural significance, for others it is “just a hole in the ground” that has not been woven into their sense of memory and national belonging. As Waterton and Watson point out, locals may be aware of the significance of a touristic place, but “may even despise that significance for the way it blocks up their footpaths [and] congests their traffic.”66 While the farmer’s decision has been widely blamed for exacerbating the parking problems, the crater is set within a working, rural landscape, farmed by people who are often under considerable financial pressure to make use of every square inch of land. According to a village resident, the farmer is “tired of being knocked up by coach drivers asking him to tow their coaches out of the ditch by his tractor. He is tired that his efforts have been taken for granted.”67 Because of the anticipated large numbers during the centenary of the Somme Offensive in 2016, the commune is aware of the urgent need to avert possible chaos, and plans are now under way to settle the problem. The road is going to be widened, a permanent car park is to be constructed, and Dunning has agreed to provide part of the land at Lochnagar to accommodate a turning place for the coaches. Despite these proposals, the project could yet run into complications as recent reports suggest that there may be a collapsed German bunker beneath the earmarked section of the crater.68 As a former resident of La Boisselle recognized, although most of the villagers “are not aware of their own history and have no idea about the importance of the area during the war,”69 the recent excavations launched at the nearby Glory Hole sparked much local interest about the early battles around the village and the landscape that lay concealed beneath the streets. However, this

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hazardous parcel of ground has been a contested site for a number of years and, like the Lochnagar Crater, was in danger of disappearing “beneath the bulldozers of economic progress.” In 2005 one of the proprietors, who was unaware of the site’s significance, sold a section of it for urban housing development. When the owners were informed of its importance a halt to any further building was put in place, and at their invitation a team of archaeologists, military historians, geophysicists, surveyors, and volunteers, collectively known as La Boisselle Study Group (LBSG), were invited to carry out an archaeological investigation of the area, which commenced in January 2011. The leader of the team, Peter Barton, considered the Glory Hole to be the “holy grail” for historians because the land contained the “complete evolution” of trench warfare and also one of the most important tunnel systems on the Western Front, with evidence of French, British, and German occupation.70 In addition, it was estimated that the bodies of at least thirty men still lay entombed in the passages that once led beneath no-man’s-land, killed by tunnel collapses and explosions. Over a period of nearly three years, the ruins of farm buildings were unearthed; trench systems and tunnels were uncovered; artifacts such as drink bottles and identity discs, together with graffiti, poetry, and drawings left on the tunnel walls, were revealed; and the bodies of several British, French, and German soldiers were located. To date the recovered remains of three French and two British combatants have been named and interred in their respective national cemeteries. The work carried out by the team drew intense media interest, with widespread coverage in newspapers, in magazines, and on the television news programs. In May 2013 a BBC documentary, “The Somme: Secret Tunnel Wars,” written and presented by Barton, was broadcast. From the outset the LBSG aimed to inform the villagers about its work and discoveries, and to this end open days were held and a film was shown to highlight the progression of the dig. Visitors were made welcome, and thousands were taken around the site by the team members. It was also envisioned that the Glory Hole would become “one of the prime focal points for education, commemoration and memorialisation” throughout the centenary period.71 It had been widely predicted that the excavations could last for more than ten years, but to the surprise of those who had been following the team’s progress, the original three-year contract made with the LBSG was not renewed. Instead, the project came to a sudden halt in December 2013 and the excavations were backfilled overnight, leaving little trace of the workings. Today the site is managed by the Association des Amis de l’îlot de La Boisselle (the “îlot,” or “Island,” is its French name), with Claudie Llewellyn-Lejeune, one of the landowners, as its president.

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Because landscapes are always in flux and are, as Bender contends, political, appropriated, contested spaces, they can become the focus of intense disagreements.72 At the Glory Hole, the excavations became entangled in a struggle between two groups who were at odds over their meaning and management. During the following months, claims and counterclaims were made by the LBSG and Llewellyn-Lejeune in the local press and social media regarding the process of their mutual estrangement and the conduct of the excavation. Among the concerns of the proprietor was the growing sense that she was losing control of the site. Llewellyn-Lejeune states that when she initially agreed to the project, what she expected was “a little excavation and a film.”73 She did not anticipate the extent of the venture or the large number of visitors, with the resulting heavy traffic and complaints from neighbors that tourist coaches were blocking their drives: “It’s difficult—local people want quiet, they don’t want coaches all over the place.” In addition, the lack of any clear, long-term vision for the future of the site troubled her.74 This point was also made by one of the volunteers, who complained that “we were treated like mushrooms—kept in the dark.”75 The LBSG, in turn, strongly refuted all the allegations and accused the proprietor of conducting “a campaign of disinformation” against it.76 It appears however, as one local guide commented, that unless battlefield archaeology is tightly regulated, it can bring with it a mix of local politics and competing groups that can unfortunately result “in conflict in its own right.”77 The excavation was, he added, “a victim of its own success” and suggested that some of the problems were also caused by “a lack of understanding between the two cultures, particularly if one side lacks the language skills of the other.”78 Although some villagers expressed the hope that the excavation would continue, including the mayor, who for some months was optimistic that the dispute between the proprietor and the LBSG could be resolved, the difficulties have remained, and the project is at an end.79 The proprietor, meanwhile, has indicated that at some point in the future she would like to have one of the tunnels reopened and perhaps construct a small museum on the site to house the various artifacts that have been unearthed. But for the moment the Glory Hole remains open to the public for guided tours by appointment and is also used as a venue for commemorative events.

Conclusion Almost a century after the Armistice was declared, the tumultuous history of the Western Front and its heritage still haunts the British popular consciousness.80 Its legacies have not yet left us, and perhaps they never will. Yet in the

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multivocal landscapes of war, not everyone’s history can find “its proper place.”81 British tourists, consumed by the exclusive memory of their own social identities and losses and their need to “find out” what happened to their troops, make Anglocentric journeys to the old front lines and may overlook the role of the French and their experiences of battle. For the French, though, the Somme does not play a significant part in their collective remembrance of the war. Notwithstanding the recent efforts that have been made to revive interest in the French sectors of the battlefield, their symbolic site of memory lies elsewhere on the former combat zones. The places and landscapes of the Somme, however, do not simply act as containers of memory. They are also required to embrace the competing demands of different groups of people who often claim these places simultaneously and have varying needs regarding site access, development, and management.82 At the Glory Hole, the struggles to define and control the archaeological excavations triggered tensions that ultimately led to the cessation of the dig. For the present-day inhabitants of the old front lines, the heritage of the First World War remains omnipresent, and the touristic sites in the village have for them an everyday familiarity. As such, the significance of these places for tourists may at times exasperate the villagers as they find their lives routinely impeded by coaches trundling through the narrow roads and parking on their land. Ironically, exasperation regarding the increasing popularity of the battlefields is also felt by some tour guides, who sense that commemoration is spinning out of control. For them, the days when “the Somme used to be our little secret” have passed, and they fear that the ambience of the area is being eroded by the ever-increasing volume of tourists seeking out its memorials and cemeteries.83 Yet while there may be an increase in superficial, recreational touristic encounters, undoubtedly for many of the thousands of visitors to the Somme, its “simultaneously blessed and blasted”84 battlefields, both above and below ground, remain deeply meaningful places still touched by a poignant and “terrible beauty.”85

Notes 1. J. Bremer, C. S. Lewis, Poetry, and the Great War 1914–1918 (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2012), xviii. 2. R. Prior and T. Wilson, “The First World War,” Journal of Contemporary History 35 (2000): 320 (319–328). 3. Ibid., 319. 4. A. Stillman, comment on “Blogspot with 14–18 Project Manager, Andy Stillman.” 5. Westtoer, press conference WWI-tourism, 7 October 2014. 6. Thiepval Visitor Centre, e-mail message to author, 20 January 2015.

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7. D. Lloyd, Battlefield Tourism: Pilgrimage and the Commemoration of the Great War in Britain, Australia and Canada (Oxford: Berg, 1998), 23. 8. See J. Lennon and M. Foley, Dark Tourism: The Attraction of Death and Disaster (London: Continuum, 2000), 3. 9. See A. V. Seaton, “Guided by the Dark: From Thanatopsis to Thanatourism,” Journal of International Heritage Studies 22 (1996): 234 (234–244). 10. R. Butler and W. Suntikul, “Tourism and War: An Ill Wind?,” in Tourism and War, ed. R. Butler and W. Suntikul (Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge, 2013), 5. 11. N. Salazar, “‘Building a Culture of Peace’ through Tourism: Reflexive and Analytical Notes and Queries,” Universitas Humanistica 62, no. 2 (2006): 325 (319–333). 12. S. Graham, Challenge of the Dead: A Vision of the War and the Life of the Common Soldier in France, Seen Two Years Afterwards between August and November (London: Cassell, 1921), 96–97. 13. Michelin and Cie, The Marne Battlefields 1914: An Illustrated History and Guide (Clermont-Ferrand, France: Michelin and Cie, 1917), 1. 14. R. Wilson, Landscapes of the Western Front: Materiality during the Great War (London: Routledge, 2012), 3. 15. N. Saunders, “Material Culture and Conflict: The Great War, 1914–2003,” in Matters of Conflict: Material Culture, Memory and the First World War, ed. N. Saunders (London: Routledge, 2004), 7. 16. Wilson, Landscapes of the Western Front, 4. 17. N. Saunders, Killing Time: Archaeology and the First World War (Stroud, Glos.: Sutton, 2007), 65. 18. Ibid. 19. J. Winter and E. Sivan, “Setting the Framework,” in War and Remembrance in the Twentieth Century, ed. J. Winter and E. Sivan (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), 18. 20. Ibid., 31. 21. A. Seaton, “‘Another Weekend Away Looking for Dead Bodies . . . ’: Battlefield Tourism on the Somme and in Flanders,” Tourism Recreation Research 25, no. 3 (2000): 63 (63–77). 22. P. Reed, Courcelette (Battleground Europe) (Barnsley, South Yorkshire: Pen and Sword, 1998), 6. 23. P. Simkins, “Introduction,” in C. McCarthy, The Somme: The Day-to-Day Account (London: Arms and Armour Press, 1993), 8. 24. M. Middlebrook and M. Middlebrook, The Somme Battlefields: A Comprehensive Guide from Crécy to the Two World Wars (London: Penguin, 1991), 7. 25. G. Sheffield, Forgotten Victory: The First World War—Myths and Realities (London: Review, 2002), 212. 26. R. Mottram, Through the Menin Gate (London: Chatto and Windus, 1932), 72. 27. H. Maskell, Soul of Picardy (London: Ernest Benn, 1930), 13. 28. B. Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism (London: Verso, 1983). 29. D. Lowenthal, “British National Identity and the English Landscape,” Rural History 2, no. 2 (1991): 213 (205–230). 30. R. Mabey, “Landscape: Terra Firma?” in N. Alfrey et al., Towards a New Landscape (London: Bernard Jacobson, 1993), 63.

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31. A. Franklin, Tourism: An Introduction (London: Sage, 2003), 130. 32. P. Gough, “‘Contested Memories: Contested Site’: Newfoundland and Its Unique Heritage on the Western Front,” Round Table 96, no. 393 (2007): 699 (693–705). 33. Ibid. 34. Ibid., 700. 35. C. Leddy-Owen, “Reimagining Englishness: ‘Race,’ Class, Progressive English Identities and Disrupted English Communities,” Sociology 48, no. 6 (2014): 1123–1124. 36. David Lees, personal communication, 7 August 2014. 37. R. Emerson, English Traits (Boston: James R. Osgood, 1876), 838. 38. C. Kempshall, comment on “Forgetting the French,” World War 1 Centenary: Continuations and Beginnings Blog, 3 October 2012. 39. Ibid. 40. Julia Maassen, personal communication, 3 March 2015. 41. R. Shields, “Political Tourism: Mapping Memory and the Future of Québec City,” in Mapping Tourism, ed. S. Hanna and V. Del Casino (Minneapolis: University of Minneapolis Press, 2003), 9. 42. Winter and Sivan, “Setting the Framework,” 31. 43. Colin Miller, e-mail message to author, 14 September 2014. 44. Caroline Fontaine, personal communication, 20 February 2015. 45. Sophie Bernard, personal communication, 7 August 2014. 46. David Lees, personal communication, 6 August 2014. 47. Diane Piuk, personal communication, 10 November 2014. 48. The Thiepval Visitor Centre reports that nearly 45,000 French tourists visited Thiepval in 2014, an increase of over 13,000 from 2013; personal communication, 20 January 2015. 49. Richard Dunning, personal communication, 15 July 2010. 50. Colin Miller, e-mail message to author, 14 September 2014. 51. Diane Piuk, e-mail message to author, 19 August 2013. 52. E. Relph, Place and Placelessness (London: Pion, 1976), 49. 53. Neil, 25 May 2014 (6:41 p.m.), comment on Thiepval Memorial Facebook page, https:// www.facebook.com/centre.dethiepval. 54. T. Edensor, “Performing Tourism, Staging Tourism: (Re)producing Tourist Space and Practice,” Tourist Studies 1, no. 1 (2001): 71 (59–81). 55. Ken, 25 May 2014 (7:06 p.m.), comment on Thiepval Memorial Facebook page, https:// www.facebook.com/centre.dethiepval. 56. Lloyd, Battlefield Tourism, 41. 57. Tony Holt and Valmai Holt, personal communication, 17 December 1998. 58. G. Gliddon, “Letters to the Editor,” Bulletin of the Western Front Association 56 (2000): 31. 59. G. Dann, “Writing Out the Tourist in Space and Time,” Annals of Tourism Research 26, no. 1 (1999): 161 (159–187). 60. P. Gough, “Commemoration of War,” in The Ashgate Research Companion to Heritage and Identity, ed. B. Graham and P. Howard (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2008), 222 (215–229). 61. Middlebrook and Middlebrook, Somme Battlefields, 123. 62. A. Dickinson, interview with Martin Middlebrook, 1976, BBC Radio 4, IWM Sound Archives, Catalogue No. 13674. 63. R. Dunning, Friends of Lochnagar Newsletter 37 (2000): n.p.

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64. Richard Dunning, personal communication, 15 July 2010. 65. Ibid. 66. E. Waterton and S. Watson, Semiotics of Heritage Tourism (Bristol: Channel View Publications, 2014), 104. 67. John Hastie, personal communication, 7 August 2014. 68. Richard Dunning, personal communication, 23 February 2015. 69. Claudie Llewellyn-Lejeune, personal communication, 2 March 2015. 70. H. Samuel, “Western Front Battlefield Sees Most Detailed Ever Study,” Telegraph, 11 June 2011. 71. D. Wombell, “Secret Underground War Site Revealed!,” Leger Holidays Blog, 5 October 2012. 72. B. Bender, “Stonehenge—Contested Landscapes (Medieval to Present-day),” in Landscape, Politics and Perspectives, ed. B. Bender (Oxford: Berg, 1993), 276 (245–279). 73. Claudie Llewellyn-Lejeune, personal communication, 2 March 2015. 74. Ibid. 75. Tony Watson, personal communication, 25 October 2014. 76. CIRAS, comment on “Fin des Fouilles au Glory Hole sur fond de brouille,” Somme Blog, 26 January 2014. 77. Colin Miller, e-mail message to author, 17 September 2014. 78. Ibid. 79. Christian Bernard, personal communication, 2 March 2015. 80. R. Wilson, “The Popular Memory of the Western Front: Archaeology and European Heritage,” in Culture, Heritage and Representation: Perspectives on Visuality and the Past, ed. E. Waterton and S. Watson (Farnham, UK: Ashgate, 2010), 80. 81. J. Clifford, Routes: Travel and Translation in the Late Twentieth Century (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1997), 38. 82. W. Porter and N. Salazar, “Heritage Tourism, Conflict, and the Public Interest: An Introduction,” International Journal of Heritage Tourism 11, no. 5 (2005): 362 (361–370). 83. Diane Piuk, personal communication, November 10, 2014. 84. P. Gough, A Terrible Beauty: British Artists in the First World War (Bristol, UK: Sansom, 2010), 319. 85. An extract taken from W. B. Yeats’s poem “Easter 1916.”

4 � Historic Preservation in Nazi Germany Practices, Patterns, and Politics

J O S H UA H A G E N

In October 1933 conservators, architects, planners, and academics from across Germany gathered in Kassel for a major conference dedicated to historic preservation. Germany’s economy continued to be racked by high unemployment, and the political scene remained volatile as the fledgling Nazi regime consolidated its grip on power. In contrast, the atmosphere among conference attendees appeared decidedly optimistic and conciliatory as they gathered under the theme of “historic preservation and protection of the homeland in the rebuilding of the nation.” Burkhard Meier, the newly installed editor of the government’s flagship journal on historic preservation, counterpoised this to the last conference in 1930, which featured heated debates and acrimony. Following the Nazi seizure of power, however, the Kassel conference was “remarkable for a rare unanimity, an all-around, strongly held declaration of belief in the tasks of historic preservation in the Third Reich—a true reflection of the finally attained Reich unity.”1 Indeed, the conference signaled new directions and new missions for historic preservation under the new Nazi regime. Historic preservation was one of several activities subsumed under the rubric of Heimatschutz, which translates literally as “homeland protection,” but does not carry the military-security implications carried by the phrase today. Instead, Heimatschutz encompassed a range of activities involving the protection, conservation, restoration, and documentation of places, spaces, relics, and customs believed to have historical or environmental significance. So a more accurate translation might be “heritage protection.” These diffuse activities typically unfolded at local or provincial levels yet were simultaneously positioned within broader frameworks of national belonging.2 Among these activities,

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English-speakers commonly distinguish between heritage/historic preservation, which focuses on physical artifacts associated with human activity, and nature/environmental protection, which focuses on wilderness, wildlife, and rustic landscapes.3 In Germany, these two branches were often intertwined, but this chapter focuses on the practices, patterns, and politics of heritage/historic preservation during the Nazi period. Germany’s Heimatschutz movement began in the late nineteenth century as a grassroots movement concerned that rapid industrialization, urbanization, and social change were eroding time-honored traditions and values. The destruction of historical buildings often served as a catalyst for action, but progress was slow and uneven, largely due to a lack of funding and resistance from property owners. Opinion across the political spectrum soon coalesced around the idea that Germany’s cities, towns, and countrysides were becoming “sick” and needed to be restored to health. The Nazi regime built upon these preexisting concerns intertwining public health and social ills as it quickly absorbed the country’s myriad Heimatschutz organizations into its cultural policy apparatus. Conversely, the regime pressured those organizations deemed irredeemable, most notably the modernist Bauhaus academy, to close. Many professionals advocating more internationalist approaches faced the stark choice between emigration, retirement, or accommodating themselves to the regime. Yet the Nazi regime never established a centrally coordinated program to create and manage places of heritage and memory. Instead, the period spawned a jumble of initiatives reflecting the regime’s polycentric character with competing power centers vying for authority, resources, and prestige. As a result, local, regional, and national actors had considerable room to maneuver. Preservationists in some regions continued largely as they had since the turn of the century, but most regions witnessed ambitious new programs that more directly tied historic preservation to the cultural and political objectives of the Nazi state.4 The rhetoric of historic preservation was commonly framed in terms of Sanierung and Gesundung. These words translate roughly as “renovation” and “recuperation,” respectively, but derive from root words meaning “to clean up” and “to make healthy.” The tropes of cleanliness and health extended even further to link the individual, the place, and the nation with Nazi ideologies of racial purity and social Darwinism. This chapter offers a critical examination of these historic preservationist practices to expand our understanding of the Nazi regime’s ideologies and objectives regarding historic places and national heritage. Rather than catalogue the actual techniques of historic preservation, this chapter focuses on the cultural politics animating the regime’s efforts to construct its vision of national history,

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heritage, and memory. To do so, the chapter surveys the Nazi regime’s efforts to “preserve” three generalized places: the city, the town, and the village.

The City German cities generally centered on a medieval quarter that included the city hall on the main square, the largest church, and the homes of prominent merchants and guilds. Rapid urbanization during the nineteenth century occasioned spiraling population densities, worsening sanitation, and deteriorating housing stock in these historic districts. These unprecedented changes spawned ambivalent, if not hostile, attitudes toward cities among many conservators, Nazi officials, and the general public. These anti-urban sentiments eventually found expression through quite destructive preservationist projects that often focused on widespread demolition and historicized reconstruction. Conservationists and party officials were quite explicit that restoring historic neighborhoods was not the sole objective. Preservation projects were also mechanisms to redeem neighborhoods plagued by high concentrations of crime, welfare recipients, socialists, Communists, or others deemed “asocial.” The Nazi regime would harness historic preservation to order urban life and thereby counter these real and perceived threats. Gottfried Feder, one of the Nazi movement’s leading theorists, stated emphatically: “We rehabilitate old towns and historical districts, and break up large cities as such, to destroy the breeding grounds of Marxism.”5 The regime soon launched urban renewal campaigns in most cities as part of its work-creation programs. By the end of 1933 Labor Minister Franz Seldte announced that “the pickaxe will swing into action in the slums of so many large cities in order to eliminate rotten neighborhoods which are the breeding grounds of criminal attitudes and various endemic diseases.”6 Beyond restoring historic neighborhoods, these projects contributed to several regime priorities, including jumpstarting the construction sector, punishing political opponents, and more generally taming Germany’s turbulent cities. Invariably, party propaganda touted how the Nazi regime was acting decisively to reawaken and redeem places integral to national heritage and history after decades of neglect while simultaneously addressing critical social, moral, political, and public health dangers. Each project had its own unique dynamic reflecting varied levels of popular support for the Nazi regime, the density of historical buildings and their condition, the costs of renovation versus new construction, the sociodemographic profile of residents, and the priorities of local officials. It is hardly surprising, then, that a review of these disparate projects noted “strong

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irregularity” from city to city.7 It is, therefore, difficult to speak of a single model, although it is possible to identify something approximating a median case for historic preservation in larger cities, in this case the Rhenish metropolis of Cologne. Cologne’s downtown was largely medieval in character but was interspersed with many later buildings. The Rhine Quarter possessed an especially dense concentration of historical buildings, including some of Cologne’s oldest homes. Combined with its Rhine frontage and famed Romanesque church, Great St. Martin, the Rhine Quarter constituted a distinctive portion of the city’s skyline and was revered as an icon of “Romantic Germany.” Through the 1800s, though, most middle-class households and traditional businesses left as the neighborhood gradually evolved into a low-income district. Single-family homes were repeatedly subdivided and rear courtyards built over until the neighborhood resembled a typical nineteenth-century tenement district distinguished by overcrowding, inadequate sanitation, and a variety of social problems. The renovation of Cologne’s historic center garnered significant publicity partially due to frequent reports by city conservator and architect Hans Vogts. Cologne’s city planners were able to draw upon preparatory work dating back to 1927 when the city began documenting the downtown’s buildings and demographics. Little came of these efforts due to funding problems, resistance from property owners, and weak building and preservation ordinances.8 The Nazi seizure of power and the availability of work-creation funding finally allowed officials to launch a substantial effort. Officials drew up a multiyear program that would encompass much of the downtown, eventually including around 145,000 people in approximately 38,000 residences.9 The Rhine Quarter was the initial focus, although it is not entirely clear why. Living conditions there were undoubtedly difficult and services lacking, but that was true for much of Cologne. The decision likely reflected a combination of factors, including a high concentration of historical buildings. The neighborhood also purportedly contained “a large amount of harmful or doubtful elements, disreputable houses, and fence shops,” that is, polite terms for brothels and businesses trafficking in stolen goods.10 Vogts later avoided niceties and simply labeled the area a former “prostitute and criminal district.”11 He tied this directly to the fate of the buildings as “the sanitary, economic, and social conditions correspond to the sick condition of the buildings.”12 Not only did Vogts see correspondence, he later asserted causality: “The cause of the sickness of the district lay not with the houses but rather with the people who had nested in it.”13 The project’s main goals were to retain the existing street layout, clear out inner courtyards, improve public services, lower population densities, renovate

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historical buildings to fit contemporary residential/commercial needs, and, in cases where buildings were deemed unsalvageable or too modern, design replacements mimicking vernacular forms, proportions, and scale. The goal was not simply to preserve, restore, or renovate buildings. Rather, historic preservation and urban renewal incorporated socioeconomic engineering as a guiding priority. As one unnamed author, possibly Vogts, explained: “The recuperation of this historic quarter is in no way to be achieved through structural actions alone; a very important role is also played by the social and economic revitalization and restructuring of the inhabitants.”14 Vogt provided several different characterizations of this process, but “restructuring” involved two seemingly straightforward steps. First, it entailed a “cleansing of asocial and degressive elements” from the area.15 Vogt interchangeably referenced “unwanted elements,” “immoral persons,” “unclean elements,” and “asocial businesses.”16 These “undesirables” would be replaced by “a rooted population that retains its good elements” or simply “decent elements,” by which Vogts meant traditional familyowned retailers, restaurateurs, artisans, and the like.17 Vogts reasoned that only these new, “healthier” residents could guarantee the continued preservation of the buildings entrusted to them. Construction work began by the end of 1935 and was reportedly 90 percent complete by 1942.18 Reports differed concerning the exact number of buildings, residences, and businesses renovated, demolished, rebuilt, and even relocated. The project area also expanded over time, but a rough estimate would be that the Rhine Quarter originally contained approximately 178 buildings. Somewhere around 40 percent of these were demolished and around half of those were replaced or relocated, dropping the total number of buildings to a little over 100.19 Vogts and his colleagues regularly tried to beautify the district by reusing older building parts, including exterior decorations and doorways on new buildings. This recycling enhanced the overall medieval ambiance of the neighborhood, as did new ordinances requiring the district’s signage, benches, fountains, and so forth to convey a traditional aesthetic. It is hardly surprising that neon signs were banned in favor of wrought iron. The cumulative impact of these measures—the restoration of historical buildings, the mimicking of vernacular styles, the recycling of older decorative elements, the enforcement of aesthetic ordinances, and finally the new socioeconomic profile evoking associations with medieval burghers—was to blur the distinctions, especially for visitors, between old and new, past and present. Vogts made explicit the motivations for this rather expansive approach to historic preservation. Despite having proud histories and storied monuments, many German cities had lost their sense of unity, place, and history. They had lost the

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feel of a historical city, Vogts explained, “therefore also the ethical impact of that tradition, the historical connectedness, the sense of homeland, and self-vigor are low and naturally become lower. . . . The protection of the living historical value of an important city is because of this connection a national interest that goes beyond urban planning or architectural interests.”20 Preserving this sense of history and heritage took primacy over the needs of the original residents or the preservation of individual buildings, despite whatever historical value they might possess. Vogts could support only “the preservation of old houses, insofar as they are artistically valuable and they condition the character of the streetscape and the cityscape.”21 Cologne represented something of a median case in terms of historic preservation and urban renewal in larger cities in two senses. First, the actual project featured a mixture of renovation and demolition-reconstruction. This contrasted with projects in other cities, most notably Hamburg, which flattened entire city

Figure 4.1. These before (left) and after (right) maps illustrate the changes accompanying the renewal of Cologne’s Rhine Quarter. Hans Vogts, “Gesundungsmassnahmen im kölner Rheinviertel,” Deutsche Kunst und Denkmalpflege (1936): 298 (298–303).

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blocks and replaced them with apartment buildings, or Kassel, which required a broad swath of property owners to tear down and push back the front of their buildings so a street could be widened through the city center. Other cities, such as Nuremberg, Mainz, and Trier, contented themselves with relatively superficial alterations, like replacing any flat roofs with more traditional forms. Other cities, such as Braunschweig, Frankfurt, and Hannover, pursued a middle course that entailed a fair amount of demolition, especially clearing out overbuilt courtyards, and combining cramped tenement apartments into larger residences. Cologne fits rather well in this middle category. The rhetoric surrounding Cologne’s restoration efforts was also fairly typical. Nearly every project of this type across Germany referenced some sort of social engineering objective that aimed to replace “undesirable” populations with those deemed compatible with Nazi conceptions of health, purity, and race. But again, this rhetoric varied in intensity. Some cities, like Kassel and Breslau, reported their efforts in rather technical language that generally avoided the hateful hyperbole that characterized so much of the regime. Vogts and his colleagues certainly put Cologne toward the other end of the spectrum, but it is noteworthy that explicit anti-Communist rhetoric was not prevalent in the published record, as it was in Hamburg or Frankfurt. Regardless of these variations, it is evident that conservators, architects, planners, and officials regarded historic preservation and urban renewal as mechanisms to achieve wide-ranging political, socioeconomic, and cultural goals. The regime and its enablers still faced a variety of practical challenges translating their visions into reality. One report from Cologne, probably authored by one of Vogts’s associates, noted that three “offensive businesses” had refused to leave the Rhine Quarter. Local officials could not remove these property owners because their buildings were in good condition. Additionally, the city did not have, or did not want to pay, compensation to dispossess them. Regardless, officials believed the renewal process would eventually expel these holdouts. “The former visitors of these bars, who sought risqué adventures, will however,” explained the writer, “because of the social and structural reorganization of the entire district, no longer get their money’s worth and therefore stay away.”22 Given the nature of the regime, local officials would have likely prevailed over resistance here and in other cities eventually, but it is unclear if the results would have been lively historical neighborhoods bustling with commercial and social interaction or more staid museumlike districts. Either way, Germany faced a wave of demolition as part of Hitler’s grandiose plans to redesign major cities through the addition of new party forums and triumphal boulevards. Germans had been given an early glimpse of this when Hitler ordered the remodeling

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of Munich’s historic Königsplatz plaza. Many locals were reportedly shocked upon learning that the relatively open, green space of this venerable and popular locale would be paved over and enclosed to create a forum of the Nazi movement, replete with new party office buildings and temples where the martyrs of the 1923 putsch were interred. Hitler’s redesign plans would have entailed much deeper interventions in Germany’s historic cityscapes, hence planning proceeded in great secrecy. Germany’s most iconic neighborhoods, buildings, and spaces would have probably survived, albeit incorporated into a new Nazi urban hierarchy, but widespread demolition would have befallen countless other areas deemed to have marginal historic value, especially those postdating the Middle Ages.

The Town Germany’s smaller towns also experienced a burst of preservationist activity, albeit with some key differences. First, the impact of industrialization and modernization was less evident in these communities, so they commonly contained a higher percentage of older buildings and retained more of their historical character. As a result, officials pursued less complicated renovations and alterations. Second, these communities tended to be more conservative politically and culturally and lacked the concentrations of leftist support common in larger cities. Finally, small towns and their medley of small-scale shopkeepers, artisans, and other assorted traditional vocations stood to benefit economically from the regime’s promotion of tourism to places consistent with approved notions of a national history and heritage. Political calculation remained a paramount influence on the rhetoric and practice of historic preservation. More than in larger cities, the creation and presentation of national heritage in smaller towns focused on creating a traditional “old German” aesthetic modeled on idealizations of life in the Middle Ages. Local officials in Rothenburg ob der Tauber, for example, sought to enhance the Franconian town’s charms by uncovering half-timbering wherever possible, as well as removing anything that could be considered a “building sin” of recent decades, especially blatantly modern architectural elements and advertising. This “cleansing of the streetscapes” was lauded in prominent venues and deemed “exemplary for all German cities.”23 Other municipalities followed suit with their own beautification campaigns. City officials in Meisenheim am Glan launched a six-year “conservation action,” for example, while officials in Hildesheim pursued a “thorough cleansing of the cityscape.”24 Stralsund in Pomerania was the scene of one of the most comprehensive pro-

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grams. The program was framed around the term Entschandelung, which roughly means the process of undoing an act of desecration, violation, or disfigurement.25 The closest English equivalent might be “re-consecration.” As clumsy as that sounds, Nazi rhetoric and pageantry borrowed quite freely from establishment religions and routinely imbued concepts like nation, community, and culture with quasi-sacred properties. In these communities, officials, conservationists, and their supporters lamented how once harmonious rows of proud burgher homes had deteriorated in recent decades as everybody felt they could do what they wanted with their property with “hardly any consideration of the community and therefore also no consideration of the overall image of a street.”26 The remedy was readily available in a common Nazi slogan, “common good before private good,” with Nazi officials making the final determination on what constituted the common good in matters of historic preservation, heritage, and most everything else. In fall 1936 the mayor called a major meeting featuring an address by Werner Lindner, a prolific writer and prominent conservationist, outlining Stralsund’s path to a “desirable re-consecration” through the “brutal annihilation” of everything tasteless and crass that could contradict the suggestion of a traditional, rooted, and unified community.27 The mayor soon announced a ten-year campaign to beautify the town and the creation of a working group to oversee the effort. As the provincial conservator explained, “the cityscape shall be cleaned little by little in its most important districts of disfiguring additions and renovations, coloration, advertising signs, etc.”28 The restoration began with Semlower Street, a relatively short road linking the main cathedral, town hall, and market square with the harbor. The street occupied a prominent position and also possessed a number of old buildings in relatively good condition, allowing a great deal of progress to be made quickly and cheaply. Work began in early 1937 targeting “building sins” that would be purged “until someday all signs of an unfortunate past have disappeared.”29 In contrast to other towns where events seemed to proceed in a rather ad hoc fashion, officials in Stralsund, in close consultation with Lindner, developed relatively comprehensive guidelines for appropriate colors, street signs, advertising, windows, doors, and nearly all exterior elements. As in cities, preservation here was not simply about restoring buildings but rather, as Lindner explained, “ideally to remodel them [the residents] into a solid and conscious community of people.”30 As work proceeded, the idea soon emerged to create a traveling exhibition featuring the Semlower project as a model for other communities to emulate, or, as Lindner formulated it, to demonstrate how “to put valuable old town cohesion in order architecturally and socially.”31 Coordinated by Lindner, the exhibition garnered broad support, most importantly money, from local and regional

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officials, as well as the active involvement of various professional organizations. The exhibition, titled The Beautiful Town: Its Re-Consecration and Styling, was first displayed in Stralsund in summer 1938. The exhibition relied heavily on before-and-after comparisons illustrated through over 100 photographs, models, and other displays. By early 1939 the exhibition had expanded to include around 250 components, mostly large posters. Requests to book the exhibition were so great that three copies were made and soon traveling across Germany, beginning in Düsseldorf in early 1939, with around a dozen cities scheduled to follow.32 The exhibition was evidently very popular, but by its very nature temporary, so Lindner augmented his crusade with the 1939 book The Town: Its Care and Styling.33 Lavishly illustrated and featuring before-and-after and good-example/bad-example comparisons, the book began with a basic history of German cities leading to Lindner’s guidelines for

Figure 4.2. These before (left) and after (right) images give a general impression of the restoration efforts in Stralsund. Alfred Dorn, “Die Semlowerstraβe,” in Stralsund: Entschandelung und Gestaltung (Berlin: Alfred Metzner, 1940), 25.

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restoring towns to their former upright, healthy, and authentic traditions. The traveling exhibition appears lost to history, but Lindner’s book presumably provides a good sampling of the exhibition’s overall content and message. All these labors did not mean that preservationists and party officials could effortlessly remake Germany’s towns into open air museums. Lindner and his colleagues seemed to recognize as much and acknowledged that their exhortations were commonly met by widespread indifference and even resistance from property owners objecting to the costs. As a result, in addition to the standard Nazi slogans, they invariably augmented their justifications with promises that investments in restoration projects would generate economic returns in the end, specifically through tourism. In the case of Stralsund, Lindner and the mayor argued that the regime’s construction of a massive seaside resort on the adjacent island of Rügen would bring thousands of visitors to Stralsund, so long as the town first cleaned up its act. Even then, property owners often balked at the initial costs, while business owners additionally feared less obvious signage would attract fewer customers. The situation was exacerbated by the fact that many of the historical structures most in need of repair belonged to lower-income households lacking the means to undertake renovations. Local officials would have also been hard-pressed to make good on their promises of revenue from future tourism as Hitler had already decided upon a policy of rearmament and eventual war. The resulting restrictions on wages and consumer goods would have placed severe limits on tourism beyond a few privileged locations.

The Village It was logical that the regime also moved to protect, restore, or even create idyllic rural landscapes of fields, farms, and villages. The Nazi Party’s German Labor Front spearheaded preservationist efforts in these areas with the determination that “the village, the home of millions of German people, must be clean, orderly, and beautiful, ideologically, social-politically, economically, and culturally exemplary.”34 To achieve this goal, the Labor Front launched a variety of initiatives, the most prominent of which were basically beauty contests to earn the moniker of “model village.” This competition, drawing over 5,000 participating villages by 1938, was the closest the regime came to a coordinated, nationwide campaign. In practice, efforts focused on removing modern advertising, promoting halftimbering and other forms of vernacular architecture and craftsmanship, and ensuring modern elements, like electrical lines or gas stations, were as inconspicuous as possible. Lindner was also a central figure in these rural initiatives. Indeed, they flowed

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rather seamlessly from his efforts in small towns. Lindner even noted that he planned to collaborate with the Labor Front to create “a true paragon of village beautification” near Stralsund.35 Somewhat predictably, Lindner organized a companion book, titled The Village: Its Care and Styling. Much like The Town, this book was richly illustrated with “good” and “bad” examples. In many respects, Lindner and his collaborators produced a detailed instruction manual for properly staging a model Nazi village. As one contributor explained, “the first prerequisite for every village is cleanliness. Nothing despoils landscape and village more than filth, neglect, urban kitsch in architectural character, and an inordinate amount of outdoor advertising.”36 Much effort focused on restoring and renovating existing buildings and communities, but the regime also harnessed historic preservation to create new places of national heritage and memory. The creation of Heimat museums was one manifestation of this impulse. There was no set formula, but these museums were generally located in small towns and focused on displaying artifacts of local folk culture in a converted historical building. It is an exaggeration to claim that “the Heimat museum was born out of the spirit of National Socialism,” since local grassroots movements supporting their establishment can be traced to the nineteenth century, if not earlier.37 Yet proponents often struggled to make headway. The Nazi regime seized power and looked to incorporate these movements into its “blood-and-soil” propaganda, resulting in a wave of new museums. The Museum Village Cloppenburg, southwest of Bremen, is one of the more striking cases. Locals began collecting antiques in the early 1920s to document traditional farm life. Heinrich Ottenjann, a local teacher, headed the effort. The collection grew steadily, but the group lacked a suitable building to display the artifacts. The idea gained unexpected momentum when the regional Nazi boss, Carl Röver, visited Cloppenburg in 1933 and, upon hearing of the problem, pledged his full support. It is unclear when or where the idea emerged, but the plan soon emerged to relocate old farming buildings in the vicinity that were obsolete, derelict, or slated for demolition to an open marshy area in Cloppenburg. The transplanted structures would be staged as a little peasant village, in effect creating an open-air museum. Work commenced almost immediately, and by 1944 the museum encompassed twenty structures, including farmhouses, various types of barns, storehouses, and sheds, and finally an eighteenth-century windmill, as well as approximately 10,000 objects.38 The project accomplished two main goals. First, the regime could tout the preservation of historical buildings. Second, the mock village portrayed an idealized rural heritage of agrarian community, hard work and craftsmanship, and rootedness in the land. The party press featured the museum on a regular basis,

Figure 4.3. This drawing illustrates the basic layout of the Museum Village Cloppenburg. Heinrich Ottenjann, Das Museumsdorf in Cloppenburg (Oldenburg: Gerhard Stalling, 1944), n.p.

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and a variety of party organizations visited or held special events there. The museum enjoyed considerable popularity, recording a peak of around 35,000 visitors in 1938.39 Ottenjann, now director of the museum, had grand hopes that “the museum village would become a Reich training facility. From it must emanate a renewal of the entire rural culture. That must be the last and highest goal so that the museum village, even if only in a modest measure, contributes to the building of the new Reich of the Germans, to make it again glorious and beautiful, and also in the countryside.”40 The Nazi regime’s campaigns to preserve, restore, and re-create places of national heritage and history also followed Hitler’s conquests beyond Germany. Lindner’s traveling exhibitions, for example, went on hiatus in fall 1939 but by June 1940 were again on display rotating through locations in annexed Poland, France, and Czechoslovakia.41 Lindner also published The East in 1940 as a guide for restoring what he and his colleagues perceived to be the intrinsic Germanic heritage underlying superficially Polish territory.42 The East followed the same basic format as its predecessors, albeit with more consideration given to new construction. Unlike areas back in Germany, much of the East was considered a blank slate where numerous buildings, neighborhoods, and even entire cities would be wiped away, along with any residents who did not conform to the Nazi racial hierarchy and the regime’s dreams of a new Germanic East. Planners and preservationists quickly fanned out across the occupied territories to inventory any and all markers of Germanic cultural heritage while simultaneously documenting the supposed degeneracy of Polish and Slavic heritage. These studies provided a veneer of legitimacy for Germany’s expansionist territorial ambitions and, as a practical matter, provided the basis for eventually deciding which buildings and locations would have a place in the new Nazi empire and which would be discarded.

Conclusion This chapter has examined the role of historic preservation in Nazi Germany. Only a few examples could be included, but the general contours of Nazi policy and practice are discernible. First, historic preservation in Nazi Germany strove toward a simplified, vernacular aesthetic intended to align the nation’s heritage with the values of clarity, honesty, and decency. Second, these aesthetic impulses were intrinsically entangled with concerns over cleanliness, health, and, at the broadest scale, the moral and racial purity of the national community. Third, Nazi officials and their collaborators conceived of historic preservation as an inherently political endeavor that not only represented this new aesthetic and community but also helped to produce and maintain them. Finally, the Nazi

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regime’s disparate preservationist campaigns relied on varying degrees of consent, persuasion, coercion, and aggression, despite rhetoric painting a veneer of totalitarian uniformity. Nazi propaganda continually positioned the movement as rescuing and restoring Germany’s heritage to its rightful standing, but the regime’s brutality and hatred would eventually lead to unmitigated disaster and destruction of historical buildings and objects across Germany and beyond.

Notes 1. B. Meier, “Der Denkmalpflegetag in Kassel,” Die Denkmalpflege no. 6 (1933): 193–194 (193–209). 2. See A. Confino, The Nation as a Local Metaphor: Württemberg, Imperial Germany, and National Memory, 1871–1918 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1997). 3. On nature conservation, see T. M. Lekan, Imagining the Nation in Nature: Landscape Preservation and German Identity, 1885–1945 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2004). 4. See R. Koshar, Germany’s Transient Pasts: Preservation and National Memory in the Twentieth Century (Chapel Hill, University of North Carolina Press, 1998); J. Hagen, “Historic Preservation in Nazi Germany: Place, Memory, and Nationalism,” Journal of Historical Geography 35, no. 4 (2009): 690–715. 5. Quoted in D. Schubert, “Gesundung der Städte: Stadtsanierung in Hamburg 1933–1945,” in “ . . . ein neues Hamburg entsteht . . .”: Planen und Bauen von 1933–1945, ed. M. Bose et al. (Hamburg: VSA-Verlag, 1986), 73. See also U. von Petz, “Urban Renewal under National Socialism: Practical Policy and Political Objectives in Hitler’s Germany,” Planning Perspectives 5, no. 2 (1990): 169–187. 6. Quoted in V. Noack, “Verheissung und Hoffnung im Kampf gegen das Wohnungselend,” Deutsche Bauzeitung 68, no. 41 (1934): 800 (800–801). 7. V. Noack, “Fünf Jahre Altstadtsanierung: Ergebnisbericht der Deutschen Gesellschaft für Wohnungswesen,” Zentralblatt der Bauverwaltung 60, nos. 43/44 (1940): 715 (713–715). 8. H. Vogts, “Altstadtsanierung,” in Tag für Denkmalpflege und Heimatschutz Dresden 1936: Tagungsbericht (Berlin: Deutscher Kunstverlag, 1938), 112 (110–118). 9. “Kölner Altstadtsanierung,” Bauen Siedeln Wohnen 15, nos. 5/6 (1935): 123. 10. “Die kölner Altstadtgesundung,” Bauamt und Gemeindebau 17, no. 7 (1935): 81 (80–82). 11. H. Vogts, “Neue Wohnungen,” Bauen Siedeln Wohnen 20, no. 2 (1940): 43–53. 12. H. Vogts, “Die kölner Altstadtgesundung,” Zentralblatt der Bauverwaltung 57, no. 41 (1937): 1022–1023 (1021–1032). 13. Vogts, “Neue Wohnungen,” 43–53. 14. “Die kölner Altstadtgesundung,” 80. 15. H. Vogts, “Gesundungsmassnahmen für das kölner Rheinviertel,” Deutsche Kunst und Denkmalpflege (1935): 106 (105–109). 16. Ibid., 108; Vogts, “Altstadtsanierung,” 111, 113. 17. Vogts, “Gesundungsmassnahmen,” 108; H. Vogts, “Die kölner Altstadtgesundung als Aufgabe der Denkmalpflege,” Jahrbuch der rheinischen Denkmalpflege 16 (1939): 434 (432–466). 18. R. Brandes, “Die Altstadtgesundungsmassnahme ‘Gross-St.-Martin’ in Köln,” Der soziale Wohnungsbau in Deutschland 2, no. 4 (1942): 106 (106–117).

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19. Vogts, “Die kölner Altstadtgesundung,” 432–466; Vogts, “Neue Wohnungen,” 43–53; Regine Schlungbaum-Stehr, “Das Martinsviertel,” in Architektur der 30er und 40er Jahren in Köln: Materialien zur Baugeschichte im Nationalsozialismus, ed. H. Krier, K. Liesenfeld, and H. Matzerath (Cologne: Emons, 1999), 35–46. 20. Vogts, “Die kölner Altstadtgesundung,” 432. 21. Ibid., 434. 22. E. Füllenbach, “Die kölner Altstadtgesundung,” Bauamt und Gemeindebau 19, no. 24 (1937): 248–249 (247–249). 23. J. Hagen, “The Most German of Towns: Creating an Ideal Nazi Community in Rothenburg ob der Tauber,” Annals of the Association of American Geographers 92, no. 1 (2004): 207–227. 24. Hornemann, “Die Erhaltungsaktion der Stadt Meisenheim am Glan,” Jahrbuch der rheinischen Denkmalpflege 16 (1939): 470 (467–473); Trost, “Vom ersten Abschnitt der Hildesheimer Altstadtsanierung,” Deutsche Bauzeitung 75, nos. 49/50 (1941): 837 (837–840). 25. W. Lübbeke, “Entschandelung: Über eine ästhetisch-städebaulichen Begriff der ‘Denkmalplfege’ im Nationalsozialismus,” Die Denkmalpflege 65, no. 2 (2007): 146–156. 26. A. Dorn, Die Semlowerstraβe in Stralsund: Entschandelung und Gestaltung (Berlin: Alfred Metzner, 1940), 17. 27. W. Lindner, “Die Säuberung des Stadtbildes von Stralsund als Beispiel von grundsätzlicher Bedeutung,” in Tag des Denkmalpflege und Heimatschutz Münster i. W. 1937: Tagungsbericht (Berlin: Deutscher Kunstverlag, 1938), 54–55 (53–59). 28. P. Viering, “Pommersche Denkmalpflege (1936–1937),” Baltische Studien 39 (1937): 374 (374–378). 29. Dorn, Die Semlowerstraβe, 150–151. 30. W. Lindner, “Der Wert der Arbeit an der Semlowerstraβe vom Standpunkt des Deutschen Heimatbundes,” in Dorn, Die Semlowerstraβe, 155 (153–158). 31. W. Lindner, “Aufgaben des Heimatpflegers in der klein-und Mittelstadt,” Zentralblatt der Bauverwaltung 59, no. 3 (1939): 72 (72–74). 32. A. Wiese, “‘Entschandelung und Gestaltung’ als Prinzipien nationalsozialistischer Baupropaganda Forschungen zur Wanderausstellung ‘Die schöne Stadt’ 1938–1943,” Die Denkmalpflege 69, no. 1 (2011): 37–38 (34–41). 33. W. Lindner and E. Böckler, eds., Die Stadt: Ihre Pflege und Gestaltung (Munich: Georg D. W. Callwey, 1939). 34. F. Gutsmiedl, “‘Kraft durch Freude’ gestaltet das schöne Dorf,” in Das Dorf: Seine Pflege und Gestaltung, ed. W. Lindner, E. Kulke, and F. Gutsmiedl (Munich: Georg D. W. Callwey, 1938), 111 (111–114). 35. Lindner, “Die Säuberung,” 59. 36. Gutsmiedl, “‘Kraft durch Freude,’” 112. 37. H. Ottenjann, “Das Cloppenburger Heimatmuseum in seiner Entwicklung zum Museumsdorf,” Museumskunde 7–9 (1936): 72 (63–73). 38. H. Ottenjann, Das Museumsdorf in Cloppenburg (Oldenburg: Gerhard Stalling, 1944), 35. 39. Ibid., 30. 40. Ibid., 117–118. 41. Wiese, “Entschandelung,” 37–39. 42. J. Schulte-Frohlinde, W. Kratz, and W. Lindner, eds., Der Osten (Munich: Georg D. W. Callwey, 1940).

5 � Displaying Independent India Abroad Nationalism, Cultural Diplomacy, and Collaboration at the Nehru Memorial Exhibition, 1965–2015

CLAIRE WINTLE

Government-commissioned exhibitions designed to tour abroad would come to play a significant role in the promotion of India’s outward-facing identity following the nation’s independence in 1947. Of all such events, the exhibition Jawaharlal Nehru: His Life and His India, first inaugurated in 1965, shortly after the death of India’s first prime minister, can be seen as one of the most explicitly politicized, ideological exhibitions of its type. The memorial exhibition articulated the story of India’s fight for freedom and the glory of its independence and modernity. As it toured Europe, Africa, Asia, the Americas, and the USSR throughout the second half of the twentieth century, the geographical perimeters of the exhibition’s travels aligned closely with India’s political and economic vision for the postcolonial future: the various destinations on its itinerary seemed designed to support broader diplomatic considerations as the new nation sought pragmatic but nonaligned economic transactions with both East and West, and hoped to build new relationships within the decolonizing world. Yet despite this political role on behalf of the nation, the design of the exhibition necessitated collaboration and communication with organizations far beyond India. Nehru’s valedictory performance was in fact designed by the office of American design duo Charles and Ray Eames in association with India’s first design school, the National Institute of Design, Ahmedabad (NID); it required close cooperation and collaboration between the Indian government, NID, the Eames Office, and those based at the various international venues it visited. The nationalist and nonaligned messages of the exhibition, particularly, seem reframed by the practicalities of its production. The importance of cultural forms and their impact on processes of nation-

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alism, decolonization, and diplomacy has increasingly been emphasized in scholarly work: evidence is mounting of the reflective but also active role that images, objects, and literary cultures have in the political and economic realm.1 Perhaps one of the most important lessons of this scholarship has been the need to recognize the human contradictions inherent in the actions of nation-states and in government policies.2 Arguably, attention to the material culture and the creative professionals at the heart of cultural diplomacy programs is one such way to understand and acknowledge the different perspectives, attitudes, and agendas of those involved in such projects. Jawaharlal Nehru: His Life and His India is distinctive for its wide geographical reach, political ambition, and physical endurance, but it is representative in its link with diplomatic agendas and the involvement of government officials and creative professionals.3 Its genesis, development, and reception are especially well documented in government papers, the Charles and Ray Eames papers at the Library of Congress, NID’s archive, and now in a series of interviews conducted with some of the designers who were involved in the process. Taking this indicative exhibition as its central case study, this chapter seeks to do two things: first, it probes both the function of cultural diplomacy in nationalism, decolonization, nonalignment, and Cold War politics, exploring how cultural heritage and exhibitions in particular act to support but also contradict other statements of national identity, independence, and international political and economic affiliation; second, it argues for attention to the various registers of association and identity present in the construction of exhibitions that cross international borders, arguing that the intentions and actions of designers, especially, require equal interrogation to that of the governments that instruct them.

Jawaharlal Nehru: His Life and His India Following Jawaharlal Nehru’s death in May 1964, his daughter, Indira Gandhi— then India’s minister of information and broadcasting—set about planning a touring exhibition in his memory.4 The resultant show centered upon a chronological biography of Nehru’s life, but panels on his childhood, schooling, and marriage were interspersed with others detailing the fast-paced political events that framed his life. A combination of three-dimensional, object-rich “pavilions” and two-dimensional panels comprising photographs and text (drawn from the speeches, private letters, and published works of Nehru himself) covered subjects such as “The India into which he was born,” “The tenth anniversary of the Republic,” and “An independent foreign policy.” The exhibition also included a separate “History Wall,” a multilayered horizontal timeline progressing from

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1880 to 1964, where events in Nehru’s life were juxtaposed with Indian and international political and cultural events in order to demonstrate their simultaneous and interrelated nature. In Gandhi’s original conception, four exhibitions were envisioned as opening simultaneously in Delhi, New York, Moscow, and “some place in Africa.”5 As plans developed, given the practicalities of organizing such a major undertaking, an initial, single exhibition was designed for the Union Carbide Building in New York and ran between January and March 1965. The original exhibition later traveled to London’s Royal Festival Hall (June 1965), the Smithsonian Institution’s Museum of History and Technology in Washington, DC (October 1965–January 1966), Los Angeles’s California Museum of Science and Industry (March–April 1966), the UNESCO headquarters in Paris (March–April 1967), and NID’s temporary accommodation at Le Corbusier’s Sanskar Kendra museum in Ahmedabad (1968). Over time, new versions of the exhibition were produced, mostly by NID designers and Indian government officials, without the involvement of the Eames Office: one iteration toured to Tokyo (Seibu Department Store, March 1968), Melbourne, Australia (Royal Exhibition Building, October 1968), and Santiago, Chile (National Museum, from January 1973); another was formed to tour various cities across Africa (probably Nairobi, Cairo, and Lagos, in 1965);6 another traveled to Russia as part of the Festival of India in 1987;7 and yet another was designed in 1972 for long-term display at the Pragati Maidan exhibition complex in New Delhi, where it was remade in 1981 after the original was removed in the late 1970s. A final version was made for display in Bombay as part of the permanent Discovery of India exhibition at the Nehru Centre, inaugurated in November 1991, where it was interwoven with exhibits covering two thousand years of cultural change on the subcontinent.8

Nehruvian Nationalism on Display Memorials and monuments are always imbued with political resonance,9 and the ideological liabilities of a government-sponsored exhibition concerning the first prime minister of independent India were recognized at the time: Charles Eames, for example, based on discussions with Indira Gandhi, was determined to avoid presenting the exhibition as “a sales promotion for the new India or for Indian government.”10 This concern was echoed in the development of later versions of the exhibition too, when the desire “not to let ‘publicity’ creep in” remained a key priority.11 Writing shortly after the New York show, H. Y. Sharada Prasad, editorial consultant to the exhibition, described the tendency of government exhibitions to replicate “recognisable features including standardized

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sentiment [and] overmuch respect for the official image”; for him, “entrusting the Nehru Exhibition to NID and to Charles Eames . . . saved it from this pattern and the deadening stamp of publicity.”12 Yet the exhibition was not entirely divorced from government influence: an exhibition organizing committee included representatives from the Ministries of External Affairs, Information and Broadcasting, and Commerce. Indeed, Indira Gandhi herself regularly flew to Ahmedabad to work with the NID team, eventually recommending that the designers receive further “political guidance”;13 Sharada Prasad was a close colleague of Gandhi and worked for the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting at the time. B. K. Nehru, the Indian ambassador to the United States, and S. K. Roy and Nirmal Jit Singh, both of the Indian consulate in New York, were also closely involved. While each of these administrators had their own interpretation of the Indian nation and the purpose of the project, the exhibition was nevertheless constructed at a time when Nehru’s legacy was of paramount importance. For Indira Gandhi, it was of great personal significance that appropriate tribute be paid to her father, but additionally, on a professional level, both Gandhi’s political credibility and that of the Indian National Congress Party—which Nehru had led—were closely linked to future perceptions of the man. Charles Eames described how his team had sought to avoid casting the exhibition “all on the side of the angels,” yet even he acknowledged that in 1965 events were too recent for the exhibition to be truly critical of Nehru’s role in modern India and the country’s response to its socioeconomic challenges.14 Developed by people who were deeply committed to Nehru and the way in which he would be remembered, the exhibition was necessarily a celebration of his life. Despite contemporary praise of the exhibition’s ability to “depict [the] failures and contradictions as well as victories” of Nehru’s premiership,15 some Indian critics at the time noted how it “glossed over issues of difference and dissent.”16 Just as all exhibitions have a dominant narrative, the memorial exhibition had a strong ideological message, and it both “left the viewer in awe of Nehru’s heroic leadership”17 and performed an explicit, if complex, exercise in consolidating his brand of Indian nationalism. The content of the exhibition drew on nationalist themes, working to unify the Indian nation, as Nehru himself had done, through an emphasis on the country’s cultural diversity and secular tolerance. The demographic complexity of India was evoked through the display of a wall of newspapers in the country’s many different languages, and the physical diversity of India’s population was conjured without hierarchy in photographs of the adoring masses that Nehru encountered on his travels. A range of textiles was deployed, as one press re-

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lease explained, to illustrate “the rich variety” of “skill from all parts of India.”18 In 1972, when the Indian government solicited the Eameses’ advice about the design of a building to house the exhibition in New Delhi, Charles noted his preference for something that was “not regional.”19 Although the eventual architect of the Nehru Pavilion, Raj Rewal, found inspiration in the Buddhist stupas (burial mounds) of Nepal,20 his choice of symbolism echoed Nehru’s own selection of the Buddhist emperor Asoka’s chakra (wheel) for the design of the Indian flag and his Sarnath lion capital as the official emblem of India, both intended to evoke the inclusive, secular tolerance that the twentieth-century premier envisioned for the Indian nation.21 Science, a central aspect of Nehruvian nationalism, was well represented in the exhibition through photographs of fertilizer factories, iron ore mines, and steelworks. New York’s Union Carbide Building, the Smithsonian’s Museum of History and Technology, and Los Angeles’s Museum of Science and Industry were all venues valued for their links to the scientific world.22 The Union Carbide Corporation, the American chemical giant investing heavily in India’s “Green Revolution” during this period, may have secured a public-relations coup in hosting the exhibition in its New York headquarters,23 but for the Indian government, the affiliation of Nehru and “his India” with technical innovation was entirely in line with its desire to project a successful modernizing image of the nation to the world. Of course, the involvement of Charles and Ray Eames, famed for their contributions to modernist design, also progressed this narrative. Not all nationalist aspects of the Nehru exhibition fostered the trope of scientific nationalism: craft and design were also present as emblems of the Indian nation. The panel devoted to “Indian Weddings,” introduced as part of a pavilion festooned with silverware, fabrics, and jewelery, evoking Nehru’s marriage to Kamala (see Figure 5.1), has been read as the product of the Eameses’ Western “anthropological gaze.”24 Yet while the Western designers’ attentions to the artistic splendors of the Subcontinent built upon a tradition of objectifying India from afar, the romanticization of village craftsmanship was also a central component of nationalist agendas designed to boost a self-sufficient Indian economy and root a “denationalized population” in the imagined traditional, collective values of “India.”25 Charles and Ray Eames undoubtedly directed the development of the exhibition, and American textile designer Alexander Girard further advised on object selection, but staff at NID also shaped the components of the exhibition that focused on craft in significant ways. Founding NID faculty member Dashrath Patel and research assistant Haku Shah, for example, both contributed their extensive knowledge of Indian craft production and their own

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Figure 5.1. Wedding pavilion at the Jawaharlal Nehru: His Life and His India exhibition, installed at Los Angeles’s California Museum of Science and Industry (March–April 1966). © 2016 Eames Office, LLC (eamesoffice.com).

photographs to the project.26 Patel and Shah, as well as the many others who worked with the Eames Office on the exhibition, habored their own sense of the value that craft and design held for the development of the Indian nation. Patel, for instance, became involved in NID because of “a dream of national and self-reliant industrial design,”27 while Shah’s Gandhian philosophies fed into his passionate devotion to supporting rural craftspeople.28 NID was itself a product of a Nehruvian desire to create an autonomous Indian economy and cohesive Indian national identity through socially responsive design. The attention to the creative productivity of Indian artisans and designers, both in the exhibits and in the exhibition design of Nehru’s memorial, was thus also an indigenous, nationalist tribute to the Indian nation. Deborah Cherry has argued that all monuments have “afterlives” and that they necessarily respond—physically and conceptually—to the political, economic, and social demands of the changing times through which they endure.29

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Indeed, concepts of nationalism and accounts of national identities are neither uniform nor fixed,30 and despite its relative tenacity, the Nehru exhibition was also responding to ideological shifts in its milieu. The remarkable state of Indian politics whereby a single family governed the country between 1947 and 1989 (with a brief interlude in the 1970s), and the socialist and secular approaches that were broadly shared by Nehru and his daughter (if not his grandson, Rajiv), meant that the celebration of Nehru and even the Nehruvian nationalism of the exhibition remained relevant from the 1960s to the late 1980s, facilitating the exhibition’s regular resurrection during this time. Yet if memorials are concerned with projecting the future,31 at moments when the political and economic climate of India has changed more radically, visions of India’s future have also appeared out of step with the messages of the exhibition. After Indira Gandhi’s temporary exit from power in 1977, for example, the 1972 New Delhi exhibition was removed amid apparent concern with the difficulties of commemorating Nehru—an icon of the Congress Party—during the rival Janata Party’s period in office. Following Rajiv Gandhi’s demise in 1989, the 1981 New Delhi exhibition, rebuilt after Indira Gandhi’s return, slowly gathered dust, perhaps mirroring the Indian peoples’ increasing disinterest in policies and dynasties past. Today, it is again under threat from the reigning Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party, for whom the exhibition’s emphasis on Nehru and his secular India presumably holds a continuing threat.32

Decolonization, the Cold War, and Cultural Diplomacy While carefully crafted statements of nationalism permeated Nehru’s memorial, the exhibition also tapped into wider agendas rooted in the politics of decolonization and the Cold War. The exhibition was an exercise in cultural diplomacy, and those involved were well aware of the potential of the exhibition for cementing or challenging international political realities. The government committee for the exhibition influenced the locations to which the exhibition traveled, with some opening dates selected to coincide with major political events such as the Commonwealth Prime Ministers’ Conference in London, in June 1965.33 The original proposal to open two versions of the Nehru exhibition in New York and Moscow on the same date was designed to avoid “adverse political repercussions,”34 while T. N. Kaul’s planned speech for the opening of the exhibition in Moscow in February 1965 offered gratitude for the “unselfish assistance, the friendly cooperation, and the technical aid” offered by Russia, but pointedly emphasized that “there are no strings attached to this aid—except the strings of friendship.”35 Politicians in the countries that received the exhibition also

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raised contemporary political issues and articulated their hopes for future collaborations: at the opening of the exhibition in New York in January 1965, the US vice president, Hubert Humphrey, stressed India’s democratic process and the American stake in it; the British prime minister’s opening speech in London in June later that year was criticized for its “Kiplingesque” references to the United Kingdom’s continued investment in India’s geographic and political integrity.36 The exhibition’s representation of the end of British colonial rule caused some anxiety both for the organizers and for British audiences in London. Charles Eames saw this as a crucial issue, warning of the “need for [a] clear statement on [the] British colonial panel” and that “many people will have eyes on this show ready to spot a ‘con’ job.”37 Pratap Kapur of the Indian Ministry of Information and Broadcasting explained that “my own feeling is that we should ensure that the display does not in any way go against the susceptibilities of the British Government or people.”38 Certainly politicians in London expressed concern over the limited representation of the Atlee government in the independence process, and memoranda between staff in the Commonwealth Relations Office betray apprehension over whether “the Prime Minister would be asked to open and the Queen to visit an exhibition which was directly offensive to us.”39 When it was finally inaugurated, the London exhibition seems to have included an additional panel, “The Indian Cause in England,” perhaps designed to placate British audiences. Certainly, at the opening show concerns were allayed, and it was observed by Labour MP Tony Benn that the occasion was “treated by the British as an opportunity for a flood of self-congratulation about our greatness in giving freedom to India.”40 Though this aspect of the British reception was probably the product of a certain self-delusion, to some extent the development of the exhibition facilitated this positive response, both in Britain and in other host countries. Planning documents for the exhibition designed to tour Egypt, Kenya, and Nigeria, for example, suggest that the intention was to create an exhibition with “an entirely different orientation” that stressed “the role of India in the anti-colonial struggles of these countries.”41 Two sections of the exhibition were to detail the freedom movement and the story of independent India, but a third section would focus more strongly on “India and the world.”42 This, L. K. Jha, secretary to the prime minister, argued, would “yield better results in terms of favourable publicity for us.”43 The conception and production of the exhibition thus followed the contours of India’s foreign policy in significant ways. However, as will be clear from the various voices documented so far, the Nehru exhibition was hardly the product of an abstract, anonymous government agenda. Arguably, exploring the contents

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of and intentions behind exhibitions and other forms of heritage interpretation is necessary in order to recognize the multiple registers in which such creative outputs work, as well as the complex personal agendas that are invested in this type of event. As we have seen, individual government officials had varying ideas for the role of the exhibition in India’s projection abroad. One government appointee expressed concern about the “dubious” nature of touring the exhibition to other countries, especially if the artistic and intellectual integrity of the exhibition were to be compromised.44 Indeed, those who became particularly involved in the physical production of the exhibition—especially the Indian and American designers, researchers, and students who spent time making, handling, selecting, and perfecting its design at various points in its history—would respond to the exhibition’s brief and understand its significance in very different ways from the political and economic frameworks explored above.

Collaboration and Design The nationalist and Cold War contexts for the exhibition were both explicitly understood by and implicitly influenced the designers of the Nehru exhibition. During the design process, the Eames team sought advice from highly politicized individuals who reminded them of the potential sensitivities of, for example, “conforming to a certain bloc and leaving out another” in the material they were presenting.45 Charles and Ray Eames’s long-standing involvement in the development of independent India’s small industries, and the NID project itself, had largely been financed by the American Ford Foundation. Although the ways in which US Cold War ideology infused these funds is complex and merits further research, the link between strategic American investment in India’s economic stability, the Eameses, NID, and the Nehru exhibition is difficult to ignore. Yet Nancy Adajania has argued that in this project and in the many others in which they were involved, both the Eameses and the NID designer Dashrath Patel negotiated the “tricky balance between artistic freedom and political complicity” with their creative integrity largely intact.46 It is certainly the case that for the Eames Office designers, as well as Patel’s colleagues and students at NID (and indeed for some of the government officials working on the project as well), the Nehru exhibition was envisioned as a collaborative, transcultural product that transcended the realms of political posturing.47 While Charles and Ray Eames greatly admired Nehru and hoped to facilitate a design culture in India that worked with indigenous needs and skills,48 their complicity in the construction of a Nehruvian nationalist vision on behalf of the Indian government seems largely to have been unwitting, and led by the words

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of Nehru rather than a deep understanding of postindependence nationalism, or even a firm grasp of American interest in these themes.49 At NID, the exhibition helped to build the institute’s capacity and status as a convincing center for Indian design that would contribute to the nation’s economic self-sufficiency; yet for those involved, the exhibition seems to have been valued most highly as an opportunity to develop new professional and personal knowledge, and a unique chance to work alongside world-renowned experts in the global discipline of design. The Nehru exhibition was one of NID’s first major commissions in its young life and acted as “the practical laboratory” for NID’s future activities, training its first generation of designers.50 Vikas Satwalekar, who worked on the project as a student, has spoken about the applied lessons he learned when members of the Eames Office compassionately rescued his early mistakes in the trade of which he was to become an expert; others have described their own education in the importance of attention to detail, photographic darkroom techniques, and the multidisciplinary approach to developing exhibitions that would later inspire NID’s own exhibition design program.51 Again, that these skills were developed in a climate of international influence chimed well with Nehru’s original intentions for NID as a site of national industrial progress mindful of global innovation, but at the level of everyday experience, this was about individual professional development and personal connections fostered within the discipline of design rather than affiliations between nations and the articulation of national ideologies. In 1973, when Dashrath Patel, B. V. Mistry, and M. P. Ranjan transported the Nehru exhibition to Chile at the behest of Salvador Allende’s socialist government, and returned to India via New York as guests of the Rockefeller Foundation, the three NID designers were shadowing the lines of their country’s policy of nonalignment with remarkable accuracy. Yet, for Ranjan, then in his early twenties, the experience was divorced from the ideological significance of the exhibition: the unique opportunity to gain insight into the president of Chile’s own design agendas and to meet with creative professionals in New York provided the young designer with “a roller coaster ride of exposure and a rites of passage” in design “that changed the course of my life.”52 His experiences were memorable for forging a passion for an internationalist design world and connecting him with some of its most eminent authorities.53 While part of the reason for assembling the exhibition at NID was related to the Eameses’ desire to impart their knowledge to and progress the skills of their Indian colleagues,54 the practicalities of producing an exhibition in India meant that the design process relied on the specific environment, materials, and people they encountered there. Accordingly, the American designers also

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gleaned new knowledge and honed their skills along the way. The exhibition’s subject matter meant that much of the required expertise was located in India: as noted, the Eameses sought advice from those who had worked alongside Nehru, and relied heavily on H. Y. Sharada Prasad, who led the research into and editing of Nehru’s written word for display. The informal, interactive space of the design school meant that serendipitous conversations with many of those at NID, ranging from managers, designers, and students to visiting politicians and individuals who had experienced India’s freedom movement and Nehru’s premiership, may well have directed the American team in influential ways. Photographs now in the NID’s archives demonstrate how working models of the exhibition’s layout and panels covered the tables and walls of the workshop (Figures 5.2 and 5.3): models are classically iterative devices, and they were regularly used in Eames Office projects as experimental and interactive tools allowing various members of the office to “try an idea on for size.”55 The wall panels and “History Wall” appear to have begun their lives as empty mock-ups to be slowly layered with potential photographs, names of events, and quota-

Figure 5.2. Members of the Eames Office team Deborah Sussman and Glen Fleck discussing the Nehru project with Gautam and Gira Sarabhai, with wall panel mock-ups being inspected in the background, ca. December 1964. Reproduced with kind permission of the National Institute of Design, Ahmedabad.

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Figure 5.3. NID workshop with models of the Nehru exhibition’s layout and mock-up of the “History Wall” in the background, ca. December 1964, Ahmedabad. Reproduced with kind permission of the National Institute of Design, Ahmedabad.

tions. The dynamic nature of the information, temporarily positioned, removed, rearranged, and finalized as research progressed (and as visitors and designers moved through the workshop), and the potential for multiauthor influence and collaboration, is hinted at in Figures 5.2–5.4. The original Eameses’ “History Wall” designed for their Mathmatica exhibition in 1961 clearly acted as the inspiration for the timeline produced for the Nehru exhibition, but toward the end of the design process the NID team was allocated final responsibility for the text, images, layout, and mounting.56 The very process of working on this—only the second example of the much-repeated interpretative device—would have honed the skills of the Eames Office team in this area. The Eames team may have relocated to India for three months to design the exhibition, but local conditions necessarily informed and influenced their usual practice. Deborah Sussman, a graphic designer with the Eames Office at the time, has described the ways in which she and her colleagues had to come to terms with the production capabilities, communications systems, and pace of life found in India in the 1960s, setting up makeshift letterpress printing facilities in order to

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Figure 5.4. Detail of “History Wall” in progress, NID workshop, Ahmedabad, ca. December 1964. Reproduced with kind permission of the National Institute of Design, Ahmedabad.

produce a type otherwise unavailable in Ahmedabad.57 On her return to NID in 1979, Ray Eames spoke of the way in which “the relations of our people” to those in Ahmedabad “had a profound influence on our work because we knew how difficult it was, how it could be done, and how the relations of people became so important.”58 Indeed, the personal relationships forged between the Indian and American designers, undoubtedly shaped by the time-intensive nature of their craft and cemented through the social dimension and connective potential of making,59 remained strong for both parties. The Eameses’ archive contains many warm letters between Charles and Ray and those involved in the Nehru exhibition at all levels of its production; the Eames Office in Los Angeles hosted several NID designers during the 1960s and 1970s, and, in turn, NID welcomed both Charles and Ray back to Ahmedabad on multiple occasions with great enthusiasm. The new knowledge and relationships that characterized the designers’ experiences of the Nehru exhibition pay tribute to the collaborative nature of an exhibition that is sometimes understood implicitly as an “Eames project.”

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Here we see the “mutuality of benefit from the process and outcome” and “a willingness to share and act on one another’s ideas” that curator Lesley Millar has characterized as essential components of collaboration in exhibition development.60 Arguably, the event even strayed into the “atopic space” of the transcultural in which, as Julie Codell describes, official national cultural relations are permeated by local-level intercultural creative moments not solely determined by political and racial tensions.61 Scholars of transculturalism, like those of its conceptual cousin, hybridity, have recognized the instabilities, conflicts, and imperfections that accompany the tropes of “accommodation and facilitation” in such cross-cultural creative outputs, and the pervasive contexts of the hegemonic power relations involved.62 Robyn Thomas and colleagues have argued that cross-cultural collaborative projects are always influenced by hierarchies of power (and not only those related to cultural difference).63 Indeed, despite the personal relationships between the creative practitioners involved, their commitment to the internationalist discipline of design,64 and the potential of these things to rupture the ideological persistence of the Nehru exhibition, the influence of Cold War funding loomed even at the local level in NID’s own financial framework. Student/ teacher, client/designer, and designer/manufacturer hierarchies also framed the everyday work of the exhibition’s design team throughout its long trajectory. Heritage and design do have political agency, and the political potency of the Nehru exhibition is clear. It delivered a classic Nehruvian nationalist agenda, and the trajectory of the exhibition traced India’s nonaligned foreign policies with remarkable accuracy; it was certainly understood by some of those involved as speaking to the political realities of independence and the Cold War period. Yet these assertions, important as they are, need to be qualified by the quotidian and personal experiences of the creative practitioners involved. Attending to the everyday practice of those at the heart of the Nehru exhibition’s development reframes our understanding of the national and diplomatic significance of this and other forms of cultural heritage. Exhibitions of the nation are not necessarily compliant ambassadors of national ideologies.65 Here we see the importance of attending to the multiple registers of personal, professional, and national affiliation inherent in the producers of and audiences for cultural heritage, and the complex and contradictory agendas embodied in apparently unified government actions. Through our attention to the formation of cultural heritage, we see the ways in which nationalism in India, in particular, was infused with transnational connections, and how alternative versions of the nation were imagined, even by those who created the most potent tools of nationalism and diplomacy.

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Notes 1. For example, see Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism (London: Verso, 1991); Christopher Pinney, “Photos of the Gods”: The Printed Image and Political Struggle in India (London: Reaktion, 2004); Penny M. Von Eschen, Satchmo Blows Up the World: Jazz Ambassadors Play the Cold War (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2004); Ruth Craggs and Claire Wintle, “Introduction: Reframing Decolonisation,” in Cultures of Decolonisation: Transnational Productions and Practices, 1945–1970, ed. Ruth Craggs and Claire Wintle (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2016). 2. Andrew Jon Rotter, “Culture, the Cold War, and the Third World,” in The Cold War in the Third World, ed. Robert J. McMahon (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), 159. 3. For other examples of exhibitions as cultural diplomacy, see Robert A. Haddow, Pavilions of Plenty: Exhibiting American Culture Abroad in the 1950s (Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1997); Eva Cockroft, “Abstract Expressionism, Weapon of the Cold War,” Artforum 12, no. 10 (1974): 39–41; Ted M. G. Tanen, “Festivals and Diplomacy,” in Exhibiting Cultures: The Poetics and Politics of Museum Display, ed. Ivan Karp and Steven D. Lavine (Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1991); Michael L. Krenn, “‘Unfinished Business’: Segregation and US Diplomacy at the 1958 World’s Fair,” Diplomatic History 20, no. 4 (1996): 591–612. 4. Letter from Indira Gandhi to L. R. Nair, Principal Information Officer, Ministry of Information and Broadcasting, 5 July 1964, XPP/305/7/64, Extra Publicity Section, Records Management Section, Ministry of External Affairs, National Archives of India (hereafter cited as NAI). 5. Ibid. 6. This version of the exhibit seems to have been produced not by NID, but by M/s Araish of New Delhi. Record Note of the 10th Meeting of the Organising Committee for the Jawaharlal Nehru Exhibition, 30 March 1965, XPP/305/1/64, NAI. 7. Vikas Satwalekar, former NID executive director, in an interview with the author, 4 April 2015, Mumbai. 8. The exhibition was removed to make way for a new library in 2013. 9. Benjamin Hufbauer, Presidential Temples: How Memorials and Libraries Shape Public Memory (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2006); Deborah Cherry, “The Afterlives of Monuments,” South Asian Studies 29, no. 1 (2013): 1–14. 10. Cable from Charles Eames to Ray Eames, n.d., Nehru 1964 India Trip Correspondence file, Box 45, Charles Eames and Ray Eames papers, Manuscript Division, Library of Congress, Washington, DC (hereafter cited as Eames, LOC). 11. Letter from H. Y. Sharada Prasad to Charles Eames, 20 July 1965, Box 45, Eames, LOC. 12. H. Y. Sharada Prasad, “Making of the Nehru Exhibition,” 1965, reproduced in National Institute of Design, 50 Years of the National Institute of Design, 1961–2011 (Ahmedabad: National Institute of Design, 2013), 77. 13. Undated notes on a meeting between L. R. Nair, I. Gandhi, and I. J. Bahadur Singh, XPP/305/2/64, Vol. II, NAI. 14. Charles Eames cited in “London Letter: Nehru and His India,” Guardian, 11 June 1965, 12. 15. Ashoke Chatterjee, “The Nehru Memorial Exhibition,” Illustrated Weekly of India, 29

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May 1965, cited in Pat Kirkham, Charles and Ray Eames: Designers of the Twentieth Century (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1995), 288. 16. Kirkham, Charles and Ray Eames, 288. 17. Saloni Mathur, “Charles and Ray Eames in India,” Art Journal 70, no. 1 (2011): 49. 18. “A Note on the Exhibition: Jawaharlal Nehru: His Life and His India,” XPP/305/4/64, Vol. I, NAI. 19. Charles Eames, handwritten note of recommendations for the redevelopment of the Nehru exhibition in Delhi, ca. July 1972, File 2, Box 45, Eames, LOC. 20. Raj Rewal and Mahendra Raj, “Hall of Nations and Nehru Pavilion, Pragati Maidan, New Delhi,” Architexturez, New Delhi, 1972, http://architexturez.net/doc/az-cf-123722. 21. Nehru’s secularism implied neutrality toward religion, and, at this point, following the Hindu and Muslim nationalism that had fuelled the mass violence of partition, a Buddhist symbol was seen as a less antagonistic choice. 22. Record Note of a meeting of the Organising Committee for the Jawaharlal Nehru Exhibition, 5 August 1964, XPP/305/1/64, NAI. 23. Mathur, “Charles and Ray Eames in India,” 49. 24. Ibid. 25. Abigail McGowan, Crafting the Nation in Colonial India (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009), 2, 7, 199–200. 26. See various working documents in Eames, LOC. 27. Sadanand Menon, “Apology for a Curator’s Note,” in In the Realm of the Visual: Five Decades 1948–1998 of Painting, Ceramics, Photograph, Design by Dashrath Patel, ed. Sadanand Menon (New Delhi: National Gallery of Modern Art, 1998), 20. 28. On Shah, see Eberhard Fischer, ed., Invisible Order: Tribute to Haku Shah (New Delhi: Art Indus, 1999). 29. Cherry, “Afterlives of Monuments.” 30. Rhiannon Mason, Museums, Nations, Identities: Wales and Its National Museums (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 2007), 33. 31. Cherry, “Afterlives of Monuments,” 4. 32. “Petition: Save Hall of Nations, Halls of Industries and Nehru Pavilion . . . ,” 31 March 2015, http://architexturez.net/pst/az-cf-168153–1427785454. 33. Record Note of the 7th Meeting of the Organising Committee for the Jawaharlal Nehru Exhibition, 6 January 1965, XPP/305/1/64, NAI. 34. Record Note of the 5th Meeting of the Organising Committee for the Jawaharlal Nehru Exhibition, 30 September 1964, XPP/305/1/64, NAI. 35. “Ambassador T. N. Kaul’s speech at the opening of the Nehru Memorial Exhibition at 11 am on 9th February 1965,” T. N. Kaul papers, I–III Instalments, Private Papers, Subject File, no. 15, Nehru Memorial Museum and Library, New Delhi. 36. Note from S. K. Roy, Indian Consul General, New York, to I. J. Bahadur Singh, Joint Secretary, Ministry of External Affairs, on the opening of the exhibition in New York, 29 January 1965, XPP/305/4/64, Vol. I, NAI; Paul McGarr, The Cold War in South Asia: Britain, the United States and the Indian Subcontinent, 1945–1965 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013), 270. 37. Cable from Charles Eames to Ray Eames, n.d., Nehru 1964 India Trip Correspondence file, Box 45, Eames, LOC.

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38. Letter from Pratap Kapur to S. Singh, Director of External Publicity, New Delhi, n.d., XPP/305/5/64, NAI. 39. Communications between Sir Arthur Clark and T. J. Hughes, 21 May 1965, DO163/97, National Archives, London. 40. Tony Benn, Out of the Wilderness: Diaries, 1963–67 (London: Hutchinson, 1987), 272. 41. L. K. Jha, Secretary to the Prime Minister, Record Note of the 8th Meeting of the Organising Committee for the Jawaharlal Nehru Exhibition, 25 January 1965, XPP/305/1/64, NAI. 42. Letter from Sharada Prasad to Eames, 20 July 1965, Box 45, Eames, LOC. 43. Jha, Record Note of the 8th Meeting of the Organising Committee for the Jawaharlal Nehru Exhibition. 44. H. Y. Sharada Prasad, cited in letter from Nirmal J. Singh, Embassy of India, Nepal, to Ray Eames, 26 December 1967, “India General Correspondence” file, Box 45, Eames, LOC. 45. “Notes from Mridula [Sarabhai] critique, History wall,” 13 October 1964, Nehru Project Documents file, Box 45, Eames, LOC. 46. Nancy Adajania, “Dashrath Patel’s Non-Aligned Alignments,” Seminar 659 (July 2014): 79. 47. Nancy Adajania makes a similar point regarding Indian participation in contemporary art biennales in the 1960s: Nancy Adajania, “Globalism before Globalisation: The Ambivalent Fate of Triennale India,” in Western Artists and India: Creative Inspirations in Art and Design, ed. Shanay Jhaveri (Mumbai: Shoestring Publisher, 2013), 180. See also Adajania, “Dashrath Patel’s Non-Aligned Alignments,” 81. 48. Charles Eames and Ray Eames, “The Eames [or India] Report,” 1958, reproduced in Design Issues 7, no. 2 (1991): 63–75. 49. Saloni Mathur has also highlighted the difficulties the Eameses faced in engaging with the political consequences of their work. Mathur, “Charles and Ray Eames in India,” 50. 50. Ashoke Chatterjee, former NID executive director, in an e-mail interview with the author, 14 April 2015; National Institute of Design, 50 Years, 75. 51. Satwalekar, interview; M. P. Ranjan, “Charles and Ray Eames: A Legacy of Durable Impact on Design Thinking and Action in India” [blog entry], 24 August 2007, Design for India, http://design-for-india.blogspot.co.uk, 2015; Ashoke Chatterjee, I. S. Mathur, and Mahendra C. Patel, cited in National Institute of Design, 50 Years, 75–76; Chatterjee, interview. 52. M. P. Ranjan, “I Walked with Dashrath Patel,” Pool 6 (2010): 3. 53. This is a theme that emerged in several of the interviews I conducted with former NID designers. 54. H. Kumar Vyas, “Rock Solid: Foundation of Industrial Design,” Pool 12 (2011): 12; Eames Demetrios, An Eames Primer (London: Thames & Hudson, 2001), 31. 55. Demetrios, Eames Primer, 206. 56. “Minutes of Meeting with Mr. Charles Eames on December 2, 1964,” Nehru Project Documents file, Box 45, Eames, LOC. 57. Deborah Sussman, in a telephone interview with Maggie MacTiernan and Elise Hodson, January 2008, transcribed in Maggie MacTiernan, “‘The India Photographs’: A Case Study in Eames Photography” (Master’s thesis, Bard Graduate Center for Studies in the Decorative Arts, Design and Culture, 2009), 92–99. 58. Ray Eames, address to the National Institute of Design, 1989, cited in National Institute of Design, 50 Years, 74. 59. Amanda Ravetz, Alice Kettle, and Helen Felcey, “Introduction: Collaboration through

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Craft,” in Collaboration through Craft, ed. Amanda Ravetz, Alice Kettle, and Helen Felcey (London: Berg, 2013), 7; David Gauntlett, Making Is Connecting: The Social Meaning of Creativity, from DIY and Knitting to Youtube and Web 2.0 (Cambridge: Polity, 2011), 2. 60. Lesley Millar, “Collaboration: A Creative Journey or a Means to an End?,” in Ravetz, Kettle, and Felcey, Collaboration through Craft, 24. 61. Julie F. Codell, “The Art of Transculturation,” in Transculturation in British Art, 1770– 1930, ed. Julie F. Codell (Farnham, UK: Ashgate, 2012), 11. 62. Ibid., 3, 11; Annie E. Coombes, “The Recalcitrant Object: Hybridity and the Question of Culture-Contact,” in Colonial Discourse/Postcolonial Theory, ed. Francis Barker, Peter Hulme, and Margaret Iversen (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1994). 63. Robyn Thomas, Janne Tienari, Annette Davies, and Susan Meriläinen, “Let’s Talk About ‘Us’: A Reflexive Account of a Cross-Cultural Research Collaboration,” Journal of Management Inquiry 18 (2009): 314, 321. 64. Here I refer to Adajania’s conception of internationalist as “a dynamic, unpredictable process based on mutual transcultural curiosity, in which one engages with the cultural other in a meaningful manner.” Adajania, “Globalism before Globalisation,” 180. 65. See Mason, Museums, Nations, Identities, 2, on this argument for national museums.

6 � The Negotiation of Identity and Belonging in Kakadu National Park

E M M A WAT E R T O N

In 2013 I had the good fortune of undertaking qualitative research in Kakadu National Park. During my fieldwork, I can recall few things more startling than seeing a two-masted sailing ship sketched onto the surface of a rock-shelter, towing a small dinghy and fitted with a looping anchor chain. The image, which depicts a non-Indigenous watercraft, was sandwiched between extensive collections of traditional Aboriginal “x-ray” art that catalogued fish and other animals with their internal organs displayed. The juxtaposition was both surprising and mesmerizing. Standing in that rock-shelter, confronted by clear references to a process of cross-cultural exchange that would have irrevocable consequences for Aboriginal Australians, I was brought into relation with the body of an artist who years earlier had carefully sketched the details of that ship out of white pipe clay. I found myself simultaneously in two places—or rather the same place in two different times—trying to imagine the bewilderment and violence of colonial contact. My analysis of tourists’ engagements with heritage sites in the park was momentarily halted as I gazed at the careful reproduction and tried to visualize a past I was grateful I had not been forced to experience. I had gone to Kakadu to examine the formative processes via which narratives of Australia’s past become known and familiar to its subjects.1 My project carried an exclusive focus on heritage tourism and an interest in the tendency of such spaces to produce essentialized and disempowering representations of Aboriginality. Chiefly, I wanted to understand how those representations were negotiated, made knowable, and/or rejected within the affective encounters of everyday lives. In other words, I was interested in the ways in which heritage tourism spaces were used by “ordinary” visitors to understand and vivify

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their own position within larger collective identities. My interest in these issues stemmed from the fact that heritage sites are regularly understood to be one of the social spaces within which people construct and negotiate identities; Kakadu National Park easily qualified as such a site, having found its way onto both Australia’s National Heritage List in 2007 and the World Heritage List in 1981. It thus appeared to be a useful site through which to examine both comfortable and challenging notions of national belonging and identity, including how they are mediated and ultimately accepted or resisted. To make my case in this chapter, I draw from a combination of structured visitor interviews carried out on-site at two of the main rock art galleries within Kakadu National Park—Ubirr and Nanguluwurr—and in-depth, semistructured interviews undertaken with a selection of visitors some months after their initial visit. The questions participants were asked centered upon eliciting an understanding of how they understood Kakadu as an Australian heritage site, identifying in particular how they used the messages contained within the park to negotiate their own identities and shape their conduct toward others.

A Theoretical Framing for an Affective Identity The relationship between heritage and identity can hardly be doubted; indeed, identity has been central to the field of heritage since its inception. This is the case whether we are thinking in terms of research, policy, or popular engagements. To this end, countless legislative instruments, conventions, charters, and policies have been devised with this relationship in mind, and although the term does not appear in the most prominent heritage policy in operation—the World Heritage Convention—it does form a core element of the more recent Convention for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage, thus illustrating the continuing centrality of the concept. The potency of the heritage/identity dyad is particularly visible when one considers the symbolic power heritage lends to political activism, becoming, as it so often does, the “battle-banner[s]” for modern ethnic groups and nations.2 But as Billig famously pointed out,3 the national and international levels are in no case the only place to look for identity—in those monumental occasions, crises, or moments of national fanfare; rather, identity appears and reappears, “bobbing about,”4 on ordinary days through the formulation and transmission of the everyday. Since the powerful work of scholars such as Stuart Hall, identity has scarcely been seen as unproblematic or unquestionable, and instead has been characterized as mobile, fluid, hybrid, and fleeting, producing what we might refer to as a provisional status of identity.5

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Without detailing the ground already covered by countless scholars on the topic, in this chapter I want to spend a short moment dwelling on the notion of a “provisional status” and proposing what I term an “affective identity,” conjured in the ordinary moments of living. To make my case I draw primarily from literatures that intersect with more-than-representational thinking and related lines of research on affect. These approaches resonate with attempts to get to grips with the interweaving of the social, biological, material, political, and cultural so as to distinguish “processes of their co-joint figuring and articulation.”6 With an emphasis on bodily rather than cognitive thinking, such approaches instruct attention toward the ways in which heritage users move and engage with their surroundings, including with places, people, and things.7 This introduces a much-needed sense of agency, affectivity, and subjectivity, with the “body” at the center of such constellations understood as sensuous, expressive, agentive, and always in process. In other words, the bodily practices of everyday life cannot be turned off, but continue to respond and negotiate feelings of identity. Identity thus becomes one of a number of fleeting themes that mark life out as coherent in particular moments. It is not so much a fixed subject position, but the stuff of intimate moments in which one “imagines, senses, takes on, performs and asserts not a flat and finished truth but some possibilities (and threats) that . . . come into view in the effort to become attuned to what a particular scene might offer.”8 Following this line of thinking, visitors to a heritage site may reflect upon an awareness they feel in relation to both themselves and the spaces before them: what they feel, how they move, and how they respond. Those feelings and responses may not always be easy, or possible, to articulate, and different visits on different days will prompt and mediate different sets of emotions, movements, and responses. My visit to Auschwitz, by way of example, realized a multisensual and affecting encounter I had not imagined before being there: the way I felt, the way I moved, and the responses I acted upon were as much a part of the experience as was my historical knowledge of its atrocities, harbored within the brutal physicality of its buildings. It was a complicated and tense encounter, one that I only came to understand later through my work on embodied experiences and, significantly, in my own terms. At times, my responses were unformulated and inarticulate, but in acknowledging and testing them, I was simultaneously acknowledging and testing a sense of my own identity. Likewise, in observing the reactions and responses of those around me, I was acknowledging (and in some cases judging) the performances and fluidity of other people’s identities. What, then, do I mean by affective identities? In this essay I take up a hard theorization of affect as transpersonal, mobile, and communicable, and thus

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in flow from one body to another in response to atmosphere, mood, matter, the senses, and so forth. In the field of heritage, this means understanding the uses of the past as being registered and moderated through processes of feeling, sensation, and moments of intensity. Heritage places and objects, by this token, come to be understood as “transmitters of affect.”9 Accepting this position on heritage has prompted, for me, a focus on those legible interfaces between atmosphere and experience, those that are proximate enough to trigger a reflection upon given social meanings. In the context of this chapter, such social meanings refer to shared understandings of the past and related identities co-constituted by visitors in concert with the spatial surroundings of Kakadu National Park. This channelling of attention toward notions of belonging and identity is not confined solely to the ways in which those intensities are sensed, received, understood, and felt; rather, a “politics” of affect requires that they are also considered in terms of their simultaneous subjection to official manipulation and control in order to produce particular collective responses.10 To think of an affective identity, then, is to think of the ways in which we sensorily labor to position ourselves, all the while noting that specific bodies carry “(representational) burdens of meaning, expectation and ability.”11 Thus, in Kakadu, while I was interested in people making their way around the park, responding and reacting to the sights, touches, smells, movements, and noises before them, I was also interested in those moments in which they were pulled out of a space of possibilities by what Katrinka Somdahl-Sands has termed “self talk,” or an awareness of identity classifications at the moment of cognition.12 That is, I was interested in understanding how visitors define themselves in relation to their experiences in the park and in terms of shared identity constructions, and whether the ways in which they have always thought about themselves were ruptured in that movement between action and cognition.13

Kakadu National Park: Context and Methodology In the Top 10 Destinations to Visit in Australia in 2015 compiled by Tourism Australia, Kakadu National Park was granted poll position as part of a suite of places found within an area called Arnhem Land in the far northeast of Australia’s Northern Territory, or Australia’s “Top End.”14 Finding Kakadu on such a list is by no means an isolated occurrence; to the contrary, it is a regular selection, and has been included on those compiled by the Australian Traveller, Lastminute. com, and Trip Advisor, to name a few, as well as making a prominent appearance in the Lonely Planet’s recently published Ultimate Travelist, where it is ranked 56 out of a possible 500 places to see in the world.15 Yet it is impossible to pinpoint

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only one thing that resonates with the name “Kakadu,” for it is famous for so many, such as its floristically diverse wetlands, towering sandstone escarpments, low-lying plains and tidal flats, weathered surfaces, waterfalls, monsoon rain forest, saltwater crocodiles, freshwater fish, and almost one-third of Australia’s bird species.16 These elements sit alongside gallery upon gallery of important and iconic rock art sites consisting of engravings, paintings, and designs in wax, which collectively sit within a culturally powerful landscape punctuated with numerous sacred sites, many of which depict the movements of two particular Creator figures: Bula and the Rainbow Serpent.17 The land contained within the boundaries of the national park is Aboriginal owned, associated particularly with Bininj/Mungguy traditional owners. Under conditions of lease it is jointly managed as a national park—Australia’s biggest, covering an area of 19,804 square kilometers—in a process negotiated between Aboriginal landowners and Parks Australia.18 Because of this, visitors to the park are offered an interpretative strategy that incorporates some of the meanings and stories that imbue the landscape for Aboriginal people, includ-

Figure 6.1. View from Nadab lookout at Sunset, Kakadu National Park. Photo copyright E. Waterton.

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Figure 6.2. Namarrgon (Lightning Man) at Anbangbang gallery, Nanguluwurr Rock Art, Kakadu National Park. Photo copyright E. Waterton.

ing narratives that describe the ways in which relationships are negotiated between individuals, the wider community, and their nonhuman surroundings. In addition to carrying the mantel of a national park, Kakadu has also been granted World Heritage status, a process that occurred in three stages— commencing in 1981, with extensions added in 1987 and 1992—based on both natural and cultural criteria, making it one of only a few mixed sites on the list. Its original inscription was based on satisfaction of natural criteria iii (now vii) and iv (now x), and cultural criterion iii (still iii). Including those changes reviewed and approved in 1987 and 1992, and using the new criteria adopted by the World Heritage Committee in 2004, this has since been amended to an inscription that reflects criteria i, vi, vii, ix, and x. This complexity is captured in the park’s sixth management plan, Kakadu National Park Management Plan, 2016–2026, published in 2016:

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The vision for Kakadu National Park is that it continues to be one of the great World Heritage areas, recognized internationally as a place where: The cultural and natural values of the park are protected and Bininj/ Mungguy culture is respected; Bininj/Mungguy guide and are involved in all aspects of managing the park; Knowledge about country and culture is passed on to younger Bininj/ Mungguy, and future generations of Bininj/Mungguy have the option to stay in the park to look after country; World-class visitor experiences are provided, and tourism is conducted in culturally, environmentally, socially and economically sustainable ways; Disturbed areas are rehabilitated and reintegrated into the park; Bininj/Mungguy gain sustainable social and economic outcomes from the park. The park currently receives around 170,000 visitors each year, which is about 60,000 less than it did in the 1990s, a decline that is most often explained as a consequence of the global financial crisis.19 My visit to Kakadu took place in August 2013, over a period of two weeks. Although there are many visitor areas and activities within the park, I confined my fieldwork to two specific rock art sites, Ubirr and Nanguluwurr (Nourlangie Rock), both of which include walking tracks, lookouts, shelters, rock art galleries, boardwalks, interpretative materials, and daily Ranger talks. August in Kakadu falls on the cusp of the Wurrgeng (or cold weather season) and Gurrung (or hot, dry weather season), with daytime temperatures reaching into the mid30s Centigrade. During my visit, each day arrived in much the same fashion as the previous, with cooler mornings, a rising warmth, and endlessly blue skies not once blemished by clouds. The dry heat was intimately tied to the mood of the park, weaseling its way into the earth, the grass, the trees, the air, and the sun as it angled out the shade. Even the low buzz of insects was dry; and I could feel in it a bushfire gathering itself together, readying to rip through the area. Yet it was also a landscape full of life, and in no time at all I was attuned to its rhythms and movements as well as to its residents: the Lesser Wanderer butterflies dancing in the shade, a shy short-eared rock-wallaby tucked into the rock-face, and the slyest swarm of mosquitos lurking in the dusk. During my time in Kakadu, I, with the aid of a research assistant, spoke formally with a sample of sixty-eight domestic and international tourists to whom I administered short surveys for demographic purposes followed by a series of open-ended interview-style questions (twenty-four questions in total). I gave

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those with cameras secure digital (SD) memory cards (8GB) and asked them to photograph their own experiences, interpretations, and personal views of the site, with the results uploaded to a dedicated project website. I undertook follow-up interviews—three months later—with a smaller subsample of visitors, either in-person or using web-conferencing software. These interviews were semistructured in nature and explored a collection of participants’ own photos and the memories/feelings they conjured. The process of inspecting photographs “post-visit” involved more than simply “looking” at the images, however; they were used to trigger a bodily engagement or corporeal enactment, through memory, of that period of travel.20 In addition, I also adopted a visual/performative component that combined participant observations with autoethnography and the “go-along” as a means of capturing what bodies do at tourism sites.21 These were supplemented by the keeping of a diary (photographic and textual) that was used to document my attempts at copresent immersion, through which I, as researcher, moved with the researched in order to talk about how touristic experiences were being embodied. While there was an expected and fulsome range of responses to my conversations, which moved from the mundane to the expressive, there was nonetheless a strong theme of identity-making and deep personal emotion articulated while onsite. These articulations form the core of my discussion, which focuses on engagements with domestic tourists only.

“A Little Bit Might Stay in Your Hearts” While a popular tourist destination and place of national pride, those arriving into Kakadu are greeted with a gentle reminder that it is also a deeply sacred Aboriginal landscape, punctuated with stories, histories, knowledge, cosmogonies, and moralities: “Pay attention to stories. Get the feeling of peacefulness so that when you leave Ubirr, you will have learnt something.”22 The sentiments captured in the above quote are actively and imaginatively inclusive, and I was interested in their—and the wider park’s—ability to influence public feeling on Australia’s contentious history and ongoing patterns of racism and exclusion toward Aboriginal people. In the following extracts, I explore various affective responses to those stories and feelings as they emerged in situ in instances of “self talk.” In such moments, the affective sensations of being in Kakadu (and all that that entails), along with associated domains of feeling, were processed and “named” as visitors took stock of the world. In conversations with visitors, I found little outright resistance (though there was some) to the request to visitors by the Traditional Owners to “pay at-

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tention” and “feel” while visiting the park; that said, there was inevitable variation and creativity in terms of how willing a visitor was to engage in critical reflections on broader historical and contemporary issues in Australia. I thus begin my analysis with the more muted engagements with Kakadu, in which a vein of ambivalence toward Australia’s history is notable, before building to examine those more compelling: I don’t have any, I guess, patriotism to Australia in a way so there’s . . . the whole Australiana and the pioneering stuff doesn’t really mean that much to me. (KB 41: female, 25–34) For me, I guess my parents were both immigrants so I’m first generation. I’m interested in it [Australia’s heritage] but I don’t feel like it’s me. (KB 42: male, 25–34) Just because we live here in the NT and I’ve been here all my life. I grew up in Palmerston, so I just call it home. I think it’s got a little bit to do with me, just because I’m from here, so I feel a bit of a connection with that. But that’s about it. (KB 51: female, 25–34) What became apparent in these utterances, and others in a similar vein, was the slightest attunement to the park as a space of national identity, but one that did not inform a particularly strong sense of engagement or participation, nor one that spoke to any sort of transformative encounter. For participant KB 51, cited above, it is simply the tracks of recognition that register, or a flickering sense of familiarity with an area that has always “been there,” for all of one’s life. For others, there are spaces of affect within Kakadu that step up and intensify feelings of national identity, as well as a sense of connection with the Australian nation, with numerous visitors uttering sentiments such as: “Because I think it’s part of Aussie; it’s a part of Australia” (KB 23: female, over 65), and “Yeah, proud to be Australian, absolutely” (KB 19: male, 35–44). Here, we see positive feelings aroused by Kakadu that are cognitively aligned with feelings of pride vested in the nation, which simultaneously affirm a positive self-identity and belief in Australia. There was something reassuring in these affective spaces, then, something that could be acquired from national heritage sites such as Kakadu in order to highlight a sense of belonging and conform to positive representations of the Australian nation. Such a sense of commonality and belonging was on occasion expressed in conjunction with a reflection on Aboriginal people and histories of dispossession, thereby bringing visitors into relation with the violence of colonial contact. This implies the cross-temporal capacities of affect to reach into either the past

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or future, or both. In some instances, the interplay between affectivity and cognition, in processes of “self talk,” resulted in the search for a way to return to a feeling of comfort and continuity, or to shape meaning in a way that invariably looped back to a positive self-identity: I believe that the white people, they did displace the Aborigines, and that’s sad. A lot of wrong things were done. A lot of Aborigines were shot by these red-neck, white graziers, and that’s shocking. It was criminal. But I didn’t do it. I didn’t do it. I haven’t killed any Aborigines. We’re all born into this wonderful country. I just think we shouldn’t dwell on the horrors of the past, and submerge ourselves in guilt. It’s like asking the present day Japanese exchange student to apologise for the atrocities of Japanese soldiers in World War II. They would have had nothing to do with it. I just think we’re all lucky to be here. I often think about those who have given up their lives so that we can enjoy our precious freedoms, so I guess I often think about the soldiers and the sailors and the airmen, not just on ANZAC Day, but I think often throughout the year how lucky I am that I’m here in this country. (KB 08: male, over 65) This sort of reflection details an attunement to some of the political aspects of Kakadu’s history and wider processes of colonialization in Australia, specifically with regard to subsequent questions of racial inequalities. But it also speaks to a field of cultural negotiation through which different renditions of a nation’s history are granted priority over others. What is significant here is the power available to some visitors to accept the parts of history that they want to accept, achieved through the mustering of energies to activate particular national memories. Clearly, the affective capacity of Kakadu to press upon or sense the more negative aspects of Australia’s history matters; but those affective qualities can be dulled by the voluntary acceptance of only some elements of that history and some of its consequences. Significantly, many visitors to the park can do this without recourse to the vulnerabilities that those without such power have to endure. In that moment, when asked to make sense of the way the park had made them feel, such visitors worked to attach themselves to a singular and less problematic narrative of Australia’s history—an affective moment that for one visitor might translate into strong feelings of sympathy or shame is for others pacified or reduced. Thus, there is a sense of cultural intimacy present in this retelling, along with an elaborate critique, with visitors affectively moved to reconcile feelings of shock with feelings of guilt, and in reflection adopt strategies that move to disown any wrongdoing. Interestingly, a complex and problematic affect is implied, irrespective of whether or not it accorded with the individual’s

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opinion. While uttered in quite a different context, Anderson’s observation that to “protect, care for and sustain valued lives is to abandon, damage and destroy other lives” nonetheless rings true.23 So, while there was an emergent and embodied account of social difference across many visitors, rarely did it pulse with any sense of anxiety in terms of the consequences of those differences. Particularly repetitive in my conversations with visitors was a sense of pride, which underscored and overscored so many experiences in the park: I take a sense of pride because I bring family and friends here and I feel like it’s my backyard. I feel proud when I bring them back here and show them this because for a lot of people who lead busy lives coming here . . . they go “wow.” It’s something to compare your own life to. (KB 48: female, 35–44) It makes me a bit prouder to be an Australian. I am a first generation Australian and it really does make me proud to be part of this. I really feel glad that people from Europe are coming through and seeing this and being taught about it a bit more and I heard a woman explaining it, which is really good. They’re not just breezing through. They’re being explained a lot of stuff which is why I’m really appreciative of all these bits and pieces here. They almost all learn English so they do understand a fair bit of it. So that’s really good, and it makes me really proud! (KB 61: female, 45–54) Well, I think it’s when you’ve seen something for the first time, you know, and you haven’t seen it before, obviously. It’s just nice being an Aussie and seeing our country. You know, to me, I think a lot don’t see our country. They go overseas and it’s such a beautiful, vast country. We’ve just enjoyed every part of it. I mean we’ve travelled quite a bit in Western Australia but nothing anywhere else, so it’s lovely. It’s just great to see. (KB 23: female, over 65) In these, one could argue for the emergence of a counternarrative—or an “ideal” narrative—to that of displacement and disempowerment, and this fundamentally has to do with how Australia’s history is constructed and articulated in the public realm, and what these constructions and contours afford. As with earlier discussions, here again is a reminder that these potentialities are implicated by those people who “read” them and their own histories. Indeed, as Fortier points out, “affect operates differently on different bodies—that is, that affect is differently distributed between different kinds of group formations, and some affects are favoured over others as desirable bases or outcomes of meaningful interaction.”24 As Crang and Tolia-Kelly argue, it is precisely in these moments that people come to identify themselves as “included”/“excluded”/ or

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“insider”/“outsider.”25 This sort of binary was rendered explicit by a number of visitors encountered during my fieldwork: No, I don’t feel like this is my country, no. I don’t think so. I think I’m a visitor into it. If they were coming into my home they would be a visitor into my home. No, I think it primarily is theirs and we’re able to see it and use it. That’s good, I think it should be shared, and I think we should respect them and they should respect ours, and then we’d all be able to get on and maybe live a bit more peacefully, and better lives for them as well. I think they get a bit of a rough deal at times. But yeah, no, when I come to a place like this, I feel like I’m in their space, I’m definitely in their space. (KB 13: female, 55–65) The construction of Kakadu as a national icon, and prioritized as such for tourist consumption, is complicit, then, in a dialogue of belonging that runs between individuals and a much larger, and imagined, collectivity: it becomes, as Anderson pointed out so long ago, a site for “an imagined community.”26 Nonetheless at Kakadu conventional power structures and dominant discourses were unsettled and displaced by some visitors, and this created space for alternative responses and allowed for a more broadly inclusive and affective register than conventional representations might allow. For the most part, these were built around a notion of respect: It’s special to—I mean, it’s special to me but it’s also special to the Aboriginal people and I think its sacred land and you need to be respectful. It’s like someone going into a church and throwing something in there. (KB 19: male, 34–44) I grew up in the Territory. I was a kid around Indigenous people and respected their culture from a very young age and I’ve seen it in different ways and different parts so I always have a healthy respect for that. I think it’s the way I grew up. I think my respect was always there. So yes, it speaks to my own identity. . . . Yes, I feel connected because I was born in the Territory and I feel a connection to the land and to the Territory and growing up with the people that respected the land, you know, I have a similar respect and appreciation. (KB 12: male, 55–64) Respect, in these measured utterances, required a direct linking of the past with recognition of ongoing struggles for equality, principles of cultural diversity, and an understanding of social differences as shaped by a sacred connection to the landscape. Identity in these extracts has been stripped of the

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patriotic qualities of the nation and replaced with a quieter register that points to being actively engaged in an ontological reasoning of “who we are” and “who we want to be.” There is a sympathy present in the feelings of connection intimated by these visitors, and a clear cognitive refusal to participate in the erasure of Indigenous history. For some visitors, this type of engagement was transformative: Because while I’m fundamentally an urban Australian and I don’t think that can be changed, I think this is good for me. It’s good for my spirit or whatever you want to call it. Not that I have a sense of, you know, an afterlife in that sense, but while I’m here I think it’s not just about the rational, there is something more that’s going on. I think Aboriginal history teaches me a lot about that. That there is some wisdom that doesn’t just come out of the scientific model, you know, the enlightenment period and that? Where we’ve got, yes, some very wonderful things that we’ve learnt from that but there’s a wisdom that goes back further. I think that’s—by coming here, I think I can see the two of them can come together in better ways than they are. To dismiss one or the other is unwise because that’s not the reality. (KB 24: male, 55–64) Spaces of possibilities were opened up by this particular visitor, who was prompted to reflect on what Kakadu’s history could say about, and do for, contemporary Australia. This is in contradistinction to the way those spaces were slammed shut for some visitors to the park, who I observed receiving a deeply troubling and clearly racist guided tour that was organized around narratives of “good” and “bad” Aboriginal people, with the latter spatially confined to urban environs where they live as “outcasts” and “troublemakers”: “we only see the worst, guys,” the tour guide imparted, thereby issuing forth a stark reminder of the continued and brutal prejudice that persists in Australian society. But in terms of the visitors we spoke to, the above quote is one of the more elaborate responses to the park, in which feelings, cultural histories, and clear affective experiences commingled and provoked an acknowledgment that understandings of the world are lived, embodied, and inevitably transformative, tangled up as they are with doings and experiences in any given moment. In this extract, there is a palpable attempt to hold on to, or recover, meaning and a desire, as David Crouch puts it, “for openness, becoming: of ‘going further,’ forward or elsewhere.”27 It is an intimate moment, and deeply personal and reflective, and in it there is a melding of cognitive and affective knowledge that emerges in a sophisticated articulation of both self- and world-making. There is also a moment in which the participant points out that there is “something more that’s

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going on,” a sensation prompted by his being there in the park, something that he knows as a body through his corporeal engagement. For this participant, that “something more” afforded him a different set of actions and sensations compared to many of the other visitors we talked to, and allowed him to rethink and reshape his understanding of present societal relationships. Particularly striking across the examples used here are the subtle changes to the ways in which a sense of ownership is felt and negotiated by visitors to the park. For the visitors with which this analysis starts, the issue of ownership is muted, a sort of background noise with little import, distanced but not in a way that implies any political or socially significant muscle. Later extracts point to a sense of ownership that flows more freely and without trouble, but in the final four visitors one can feel a pull toward a more critical engagement that points to the richly textured nature of social life. There is no easy acceptance of Kakadu as a site of national pleasure in these utterances, as this is disrupted by a more sharply defined understanding that there is still a “them” and “us,” or a contrast between the stillness of the park and the turbulences and tensions that pervade its history. The final extract above elegantly points to this disjuncture, activating a reflection on ongoing processes of reconciliation within Australia.

Conclusion This chapter has examined the articulation of heritage and identity within the specific case study area of Kakadu National Park, using data collected during fieldwork undertaken in August 2013. The project was designed using a morethan-representational framework and was driven by an interest in those moments when visitors emerge from spaces of possibilities with an awareness of identity classifications that merge affective registers with moments of cognition. Heritage, in this example, was a solid and substantial landscape imbued with culturally constructed stories and memories of both Aboriginal relationships with their nonhuman surroundings and the brutality of colonial contact. It was also a cognitive prompt to think, however fleetingly, about issues of identity and belonging. Adopting a more-than-representational bent meant examining the quieter moments in which “self talk” occurred, thus revivifying an emphasis on everyday life and drawing attention to the corporeality of bodies, as well as acknowledging the multisensuous places in which we find ourselves. It also triggered a move away from the dominant—and somewhat obdurate—notion that heritage can be captured and understood as a thing to be seen and gazed upon. Perhaps most important of all, the short extracts included herein imply that there is sometimes something else going on between visitors and heritage

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landscapes: that is, the way people interacted—routinely and creatively—with what they encountered during their visits to Kakadu shook them up a little, albeit to varying degrees. Kakadu is a landscape that involves a full range of sensory experiences: it is not only visual, but textured and resonating with smells, sounds, and tastes. Taking a fuller account of the ways such a place can “shake up” a person suggests that we ought to turn our attention to the way animate and inanimate things and places force us to think—through contexts, prompts, and familiarity. Indeed, the urging of more-than-representational theorists to give weight to objects and the inanimate means that, to borrow from Thrift, we as researchers have to be prepared for heritage to “answer back.”28

Acknowledgments The research upon which this chapter reports was supported under the Australian Research Council’s Discovery Early Career Researcher Award (DECRA) funding scheme [DE120101072]. I am also grateful to Emily Burns for all her research assistance on this project.

Notes 1. R. Lane and G. Waitt, “Authenticity in Tourism and Native Title: Place, Time and Spatial Politics in the East Kimberleys,” Social and Cultural Geography 2, no. 4 (2007): 381–405. 2. L. Zimmerman, “Human Bones as Symbols of Power: Aboriginal American Belief Systems towards Bones and ‘Grave-Robbing’ Archaeologists,” in Conflict in the Archaeology of Living Traditions, ed. R. Layton (London: Unwin Hyman, 1989); N. A. Silberman, “Promised Lands and Chosen Peoples: The Politics and Poetics of Archaeological Narrative,” in Nationalism, Politics and the Practice of Archaeology, ed. P. L. Kohl and C. Fawcett (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995). 3. M. Billig, Banal Nationalism (London: Sage, 1995). 4. Ibid., 8. 5. S. Hall, “Cultural Identity and Diaspora,” in Colonial Discourse and Post-Colonial Theory: A Reader, ed. P. Williams and L. Chrismas (Essex: Pearson Education, 1994). 6. M. Wetherell, “Affect and Discourse—What’s the Problem? From Affect as Excess to Affective/Discursive Practice,” Subjectivity 6, no. 4 (2013): 349–368. 7. D. Crouch and R. Grassick, “Amber Films, Documentary and Encounters,” in The Media and the Tourist Imagination: Converging Cultures, ed. D. Crouch, R. Jackson, and F. Thompson (London: Routledge, 2005), 49. 8. K. Steward, Ordinary Affects (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2007), 5. 9. D. Byrne, “Love and Loss in the 1960s,” International Journal of Heritage Studies 19, no. 6 (2013): 596; see also E. Waterton and S. Watson, “Framing Theory: Towards a Critical Imagination in Heritage Studies,” International Journal of Heritage Studies 19, no. 6 (2013): 546–561; E. Waterton and S. Watson, “A War Long Forgotten: Feeling the Past in an English Country Village,” Angelaki: Journal of the Theoretical Humanities 20, no. 3 (2015): 89–103.

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10. S. Sumartojo, “On Atmosphere and Darkness at Australia’s Anzac Day Dawn Service,” Visual Communication 14, no. 3 (2015): 267–288. 11. K. Somdahl-Sands, “Non-Representational Theory for the Uninitiated: Come JUMP With Me!,” Geography Compass 7, no. 1 (2013): 1–6. 12. Ibid. 13. Ibid. 14. Tourism Australia is the Australian government agency tasked with attracting international visitors to the country. See http://www.tourism.australia.com/home.aspx. 15. Lonely Planet, Lonely Planet’s Ultimate Travel List 2015, http://www.lonelyplanet.com/ ultimate-travel. 16. T. Press, J. Brock, and A. Anderson, “Fauna,” in Kakadu: Natural and Cultural Heritage and Management, ed. T. Press, D. Lea, A. Webb, and A. Graham (Darwin: The Australian Nature Conservation Agency and the North Australia Research Unit, 1995), 167–216. 17. S. Brockwell, R. Levitus, J. Russell-Smith, and P. Forrest, “Aboriginal Heritage,” in Press et al., Kakadu, 15–63. 18. Director of National Parks, Kakadu National Park: Management Plan 2007–2014 (Darwin: Parks Australia North, 2007). 19. Director of National Parks, Kakadu National Park: Draft Management Plan 2014 (Canberra, Director of National Parks, 2014), https://www.environment.gov.au/system/files/ resources/28dfa7a7–1058–416c-86de-e1812100a34e/files/knp-draft-management-plansmallversion-jan15_0.pdf. 20. After C. Scarles, “Becoming Tourist: Renegotiating the Visual in the Tourist Experience,” Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 27, no. 3 (2009): 465–488. 21. M. Kusenback, “Street Phenomenology: The Go-Along as Ethnographic Research Tool,” Ethnography 4, no. 3 (2003): 455–485. 22. Ibid. 23. B. Anderson, “Affect and Biopower: Towards a Politics of Life,” Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers 37 (2012): 28–43. 24. Anne-Marie Fortier, “Proximity by Design? Affective Citizenship and the Management of Unease,” Citizenship Studies 14, no. 1 (2010): 17–30. 25. M. Crang and D. P. Tolia-Kelly, “Nation, Race, and Affect: Senses and Sensibilities at National Heritage Sites,” Environment and Planning A, 42, no. 10 (2010): 2315–2331. 26. B. Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origins and Spread of Nationalism (London: Verso, 1983). 27. D. Crouch, “Affect, Heritage, Feeling,” in The Palgrave Handbook of Contemporary Heritage Research, ed. E. Waterton and S. Watson (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015), 185. 28. N. Thrift, Non-Representational Theories (London: Routledge, 2008), 9.

7 � Knowing Subjects in an Unknown Place Producing Identity through Tourism and Heritage in Niru Village, Southwest China

J U N DA N ( JASM I N E ) Z HA NG A N D HA Z E L T U C K E R

In 2003 the Three Parallel Rivers of Yunnan Protected Areas (hereafter TPR) was listed as a UNESCO natural World Heritage Site, a 1.7-million-hectare region consisting of fifteen protected areas, grouped into eight clusters.1 Although it is known that China has been active in securing numerous World Heritage Sites since the 1978 reform, the effort put into the application to have TPR listed was extraordinary.2 In 1993 a committee had been formed from the local, prefectural, provincial, and central levels to work on the TPR application. The application process involved a series of decisions regarding its evaluation, designation, and selection, and in 2002 the committee accompanied a team of UNESCO personnel touring the proposed area before the final decision was made. One of the points of particular interest on the UNESCO team’s visit was Niru Village, a Tibetan village that is located 60 kilometers east of Shangri-La central town. Niru Village was selected by the local committee for the tour because of its “authentic Tibetan culture” and its “intact natural environment.”3 The UNESCO team received a warm welcome from the Niru villagers, who had prepared for the UNESCO visit for some months beforehand. During the team’s stay the villagers performed their traditional dances and folksongs, and offered food and drinks. Niru Village impressed the UNESCO team so much that Jim Thorsell, the then International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) senior adviser, declared that “Niru is the China of my dreams, the real Shangri-La!” Thorsell also coined Niru Village “The No. 1 village in the world.”4 With such expression, one could be almost certain that Niru Village had played an important role in

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Figure 7.1. Niru Village. Photo copyright J. Zhang.

affirming the “outstanding universal values” of the proposed World Heritage Site listing. However, the “outstanding value” approved and asserted by UNESCO onto the TRP is a singular “natural value.” According to the UNESCO Convention concerning the protection of the world’s cultural and natural heritage, established in 1972, a listed site benefits from a clear planning structure, following the UNESCO Operational Guidelines, and this continues to help to preserve the “outstanding universal values” as well as improve the “property’s social and economic development.” Yet this “universal value” identified for World Heritage Site listing has been criticized for its inflexibility5 and singularity.6 In a similar line of argument, and focusing on the complex situation caused by a distinction made between cultural and natural “values” in the UNESCO Convention, in this chapter we consider the case of Niru Village. To do so we examine observations and narratives from Niru villagers, collected by one of the authors (Zhang) during her fieldwork in 2013. Through staying with a local villager’s family and working with the villagers for three months, Zhang conducted the ethnography with critical reflexiv-

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ity, and paid close attention to emerging narratives and tensions wherever they arose. Conversations and interviews were mostly conducted in Mandarin, and occasionally in local Tibetan dialect, with the help of local villagers’ translation. Drawing on these narratives, this chapter discusses some of the consequences of the singular universal value as it relates to the villagers’ understanding of the World Heritage Site and tourism, and how the villagers, as “knowing subjects,” are producing their own identities in the “unknown place,” Niru Village.

Critiques of “Outstanding Universal Values” While heritage is commonly seen as tied to locality and thus identity,7 UNESCO World Heritage Sites are selected for listing, according to UNESCO, based on “their merits as the best possible examples of the [world’s] cultural and natural heritage.”8 The purpose of the World Heritage List is ostensibly to protect the aspects of “outstanding universal values” pertaining to these sites. However, Meskell has recently argued that World Heritage listing “is not so much about protection anymore, but instead about branding, marketing, and promoting new nominations in an increasingly acquisitive heritage economy.”9 Inevitably, also, the listing selection process affects the ways in which sites become framed and presented for tourism. In assigning value, World Heritage Sites support what Williams terms “temporal fixidity,” as ideas, attitudes, and “truths” that have been framed in a moment of time.10 As Di Giovine has argued, “Framing each World Heritage site in such a way as to underscore its particular universal value, the heritage-scape’s meta-narrative often seeks to ‘forget’ or underplay contentious aspects of the place’s own life-history and attendant narrative claims.”11 Similarly, Bianchi and Boniface argue that a site’s “incorporation onto the World Heritage List accentuates tensions around universal values of cosmopolitanism, discourses of citizenship, patterns of exclusion and the symbolic meanings attached to these sites.”12 De Cesari also notes that “the 1972 Convention in fact authorizes not only experts but also the nation-state and its representatives as the proper subjects of World Heritage. Other interested parties are not only excluded by default, but silenced in the process.”13 Increasingly, scholars are turning to critique these “excluding” aspects of UNESCO’s World Heritage Site listing processes. For example, Winter has argued that the World Heritage listing process inevitably “resists pluralism and thus, by implication, excludes those views and parties that fall outside the dominant paradigm.”14 More recently, Tucker and Carnegie have argued that “the World Heritage authoritative emphasis on ‘universal value’ thus might be said to promote sin-

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gularity by cutting out alternative interpretations, framings and contestations.”15 Labadi, too, argues that the content of World Heritage nominations “contains the seeds to fuel controversies, conflicts and the marginalization of whole sectors of populations.”16 In this vein, the present study manifests such tensions and controversies in the process of World Heritage Site listing of the TPR.

The Singularity of World Heritage Site Listing of the Three Parallel Rivers of Yunnan Protected Areas The northwestern area of Yunnan Province features the rugged terrain from the Himalayas’ movement. Three big rivers—Nujiang River (upper reach of Saerwen River), Lancang River (upper reach of Mekong River), and Jinsha River (upper reach of Mekong River)—run in parallel with one another in this area and divide the region into valleys and peaks, which create varied microclimates. Such a topology makes this area a habitat for humans and a variety of nonhuman species, therefore resulting in a highly rich biological and cultural diversity. However, since the beginning of the 1950s the natural resources in this region have been overused, and thus degraded.17 As a consequence of the environmental degradation, as well as a response to international sustainable development discourse, the Three Parallel Rivers Scenic and Cultural Resort Provincial Management Office (PMO) was set up in 1995 to work on the development and management of this region, including the inscription of this area into a World Heritage Site.18 As one of the team members who was closely involved in the process of inscription, Yang records comprehensively the story from the governmental and institutional perspective of the successful application of the TPR.19 According to Yang, the purpose of making the area a natural World Heritage Site is to share the significant nature and culture of the TPR with people who care about the natural environment and associated ecological culture, and at the same time to draw more attention from intellectuals and decision makers to this region in order to reposition its value in the regional strategy for economic and social development.20 Yang believes that it is possible to “seek an internal harmony and external balance between humans and nature, to build the authentic Shangri-La with the Shangri-La cosmological ideals,” through making it a natural World Heritage Site.21 After the IUCN’s fieldsite evaluation, in 2003, the decision was made by UNESCO to inscribe TPR as a natural World Heritage Site, with the fulfillment of criteria i, ii, iii, and iv, stating, “The site is an epicentre of Chinese biodiversity” and is a most outstanding region for plant, fungi, lichens, and animal diversity.22

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Adding to the above-outlined critiques of the notion of “outstanding universal value,” the case of TPR highlights a further layer of singularity of UNESCO’s narratives regarding “what is valuable,” which is the division between “nature” and “culture” in the designated values.23 The TPR site was recognized for its values in all four criteria of natural “universal values” of World Heritage Sites, namely criterion i, earth’s history and geological features; criterion ii, ecological processes; criterion iii, superlative natural phenomena or natural beauty and aesthetic importance; and criterion iv, biodiversity and threatened species.24 Reser and Bentrupperbäumer argue that the language and management discourse used in UNESCO’s descriptions of “environmental values” of natural World Heritage Sites have reinforced the separation between cultural and natural “values,” which raises questions of “where value resides.”25 The scientific measurement upon which these criteria are based is in turn built upon a Eurocentric value and culture system that is essentially biased in its process of listing, especially for non-European sites.26 Pocock points out that UNESCO’s practice throughout the 1960s, with regards to international achievements of protection for historical buildings and monuments, was paralleled with the IUCN’s efforts to establish a system of protected areas.27 This split symbolizes the separation of “humankind” and “nature” that is deeply embedded in Enlightenment thinking.28 While trying to integrate the concerns for both cultural and natural heritage, the definition of “natural heritage” in the World Heritage Convention is: Natural features consisting of physical formations or groups of such formations, which are of outstanding universal value from the aesthetic or scientific point of view; Geological and physiographical formations and precisely delineated areas which constitute the habitat of threatened species of animals and plants of outstanding universal value from the point of view of science or conservation; Natural sites or precisely delineated natural areas of outstanding universal value from the point of view of science, conservation or natural beauty.29 The singularity in this definition is that the “outstanding universal values” from the point of view of “aesthetics,” “natural beauty,” and “conservation” are equally described in a scientific manner, thus ignoring the role of culture in creating these values. What is valued here, therefore, is a “nature” that has almost no material interaction with humans. Such discourse plays an important role in constructing narratives among the actors who are involved in the process of inscription. In the case of TPR, while it is well known that the environmental degradation in TPR is a direct result of the earlier timber industry in the

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region, the official discourse “accuses” traditional ways of farming and local people’s lack of environmental education.30 In the evaluation report prepared by the IUCN for the nomination, concerns were voiced that “the ‘naturalness’ of the nominated area, mostly at lower elevations and plateaus, has been reduced by several thousand years of human use.”31 Although the “cultural values” of residents’ cultural heritage in the “property” were acknowledged in the report, the IUCN expressed concerns over “the nature and extent of future tourism, the resident human population, and hydro development that may affect the nominated site.”32 The report thus recommended the “continued refinement of the boundaries of the site, including the addition of other areas of equally high natural value, expansion of core zones, control over the size of resident populations and discussion of transboundary issues with neighbouring jurisdictions.”33 In such narratives, local residents, their sociocultural activities, and their future development are automatically assumed to be a threat to the protected area. The singularity and rigidity of the definition of “natural values” further exclude local residents’ involvement in the kinds of tourism the listed World Heritage Sites are able to develop. Ironically, while tourism has been commonly introduced as a clean and “benign” industry, identified as solving conflicts between “environmental values” and “human use” in areas such as Shangri-La, the congruence of World Heritage Site status and tourism sometimes escalates tensions between residents, governments, and international organizations. For instance, Yang argues: “We need to think rationally about how to keep a relatively authentic and original ecological and cultural environment as well as pursuing a modern lifestyle.”34 In Shangri-La, the argument of using tourism to decrease what is viewed as harmful “human use” in protected areas has had a direct effect on residents’ lives. For example, tourism activities initiated by villagers in the late 1990s, such as selling horse-riding and barbecuing, were forced to stop entirely after the listing of TPR, and later the establishment of Pudacuo National Park, because they were regarded as bringing adverse ecological impacts to grasslands and wetlands.35 It is through the singularity of UNESCO’s “outstanding universal values” that tensions between binaries such as culture/nature and traditional/modern stir up ambivalence and contradictions in terms of what is in fact valuable, and consequently how local residents may evaluate and identify themselves.

The Underdeveloped Tourism Dream in Niru Village The question of whether tourism development and campaigns such as World Heritage Site nomination or national park proclamation merge with one another well is further problematized in the remoter areas of Shangri-La. On 12

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October 2002, IUCN experts and other governmental officials came to Niru Village as part of the evaluation for the proposed listing of TPR. The provincial officials selected Niru, a Tibetan-populated village located 60 kilometers east of Shangri-La’s central town, as one of the sites through which to showcase “the ecological value, the authenticity of ethnic customs and environmental management model that could represent the whole region of TPR.”36 Before 2002 there was no road to the village, so Niru therefore fell within the ideal of “heritage” in World Heritage Site status in that the ecological environment still held some originality and “authenticity,” for “the more remote the spot is located from the air of ‘modernity,’ the better can we show the primitive status of Nature.”37 Riding on horses and being welcomed by villagers who walked through mountains to meet them, the IUCN team was impressed by the “natural beauty” of the landscape and the genuine hospitality of the Tibetan villagers. The UNESCO team’s visit to Niru Village in 2002 and their positive feedback regarding the villagers’ engagement, predominantly through showcasing their cultural heritage, gave the villagers the impression that to be listed as a World Heritage Site is equivalent to being given a more “authorized” identity, not only as “Tibetans” but also as “Niru Tibetans.” At the same time, the local government’s rhetoric in promotion of the application has always been closely linked with future development, especially tourism development. After all, visits to most World Heritage Sites increase dramatically after listing,38 and Ryan and colleagues argue that UNESCO World Heritage Site listing has always been deployed in China as a tourism development strategy to generate revenue.39 While stating that the initiation of applying for TPR listing was to preserve the unique and undisturbed biodiversity and ecosystem of the area, Yang described in his report how the listing may promote tourism development, which is vital for the peasants/villagers in the poorer areas of the region, such as Niru Village: We are all peasants, and the only way out of poverty for peasants is agriculture, rural development. To put it clearly, it is to grow our own crops, and cash crops, graze our own livestock, that’s the key and reliable resource for generating profits. When harvesting biological products or offfarm labouring, our “fate” is controlled by others. . . . From recent years’ experience, the tourism industry has been a significant force in driving not only economic development, but also evoking new ideas, new culture and new information. Therefore, tourism is like a “hatching machine” that completes the transformation from “the egg” to “the chicken.” Tourism upgrades our products and circulates our trades, so as to better adapt to the market-economy.40

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After the seemingly successful visit of the UNESCO team to Niru Village, a hope for further development and a desire for an increase in the numbers of tourists were aroused among the villagers. “Uncle Luosang” was one of those villagers whose hope for tourism development was “hatched”; he started to rebuild his family house very soon after the UNESCO team’s visit. “Tourism will be a big thing,” he said. “I knew it back then.” However, in 2013 the annual tourist visitor numbers in Niru were still only around 500–700. The majority of these tourists stayed at Uncle Luosang’s guest house, which had built up business over many years through word of mouth. A small proportion of the tourist visitors also went to another guest house operated by an American man and a local family. In addition, during the peak season, such as national holidays in May and October, tourists also stayed with families who had relatively good housing facilities in the village when the other guest houses were full. Overall, though, the villagers have not received much benefit from tourism. Throughout this period of gradual tourism development, some confusion developed regarding the region’s World Heritage Site status. After ten years of the listing of TPR the majority of the villagers in Niru Village remained unaware that they were part of the World Heritage Site area. While still talking about the “glorious days” when they were performing to and helping the UNESCO personnel who visited the village, the villagers were clearly discouraged and disappointed that it had led to nothing like they were “promised.” A simple exhibition room was set up in the village office to exhibit the local Tibetan traditional culture, displaying photos of festival dances, clothes, the setting in a traditional house, and kitchenware and other daily wares. A young man from the “culture office” of nearby Luoji Town explained that the room was set up after the listing of TPR because the villagers were hoping to receive a large number of tourists. The exhibition, he said, would provide them with information about Niru’s unique Tibetan culture. During the fieldwork in Niru Village, however, it was noticed that the door to the exhibition room was always closed, and one had to request to enter the room. Moreover, the poor lighting and dust in the room indicated that it was neither presented to tourists nor appreciated by locals. The exhibition therefore explains something of the confusion experienced by local people who believed that the listing of TPR would revive their local Tibetan culture through tourism, which the emphasis on “environmental values” had overlooked. Meanwhile, other villagers wondered why the village had not “passed,” as they saw it, UNESCO’s test, despite the positive feedback regarding “their culture” that they had received from the original visiting UNESCO team. During

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Zhang’s fieldwork in the village, there were discussions among the villagers over a plan for a copper mine near Niru Village. According to some villagers, planning for the mine had started in the early 2000s but was kept on hold due to an environmental impact evaluation. They therefore reasoned that the plan for mining might have affected Niru’s inclusion as a World Heritage Site: “It is because of the copper mine up in the mountain. It is polluting the environment.” Such a narrative is obviously influenced by UNESCO’s and the government’s official discourse and appears to be more informative of the “nature” of TPR as a natural World Heritage Site. In 2014 the World Heritage Committee requested that the Chinese government clarify the maps and mining licenses in the region of TPR and urged the Chinese government to “ensure no mining activities, including prospecting and illegal mining, shall take place within the property or in adjacent areas if this would impact the Outstanding Universal Values of the property.”41 While the villagers’ narratives might also reflect their own worries about the negative impacts from the mining on the water system, another possibility is that they have consciously started producing knowledge and identity as a direct response to the powerfully defined criteria of UNESCO’s “outstanding universal values.”

Producing Identity in Ambivalence If we return to our critiques of UNESCO’s “outstanding universal values,” the confusion of the Niru villagers sheds additional light on a situation whereby the different systems and contexts of “value” confront one another. For the villagers in Niru Village, who have lived in the area within TPR for generations, how they value “nature” is unlikely to be as scientific and managementoriented as that of the language employed in UNESCO’s Convention. Yet this does not mean that the villagers do not have their own system of “guarding” nature. An elderly man who has taken the role of local priest as well as folklore keeper told some stories of how, in the ancient Bon religion that Niru villagers’ respect, people make sense of the ecosystem: “The Lu God is the most important one. It lives everywhere, in the clouds, rivers, underground, in the air. It is controlling the water. The clouds are most important among the entire medium for the Lu God, because they give back rains and snows to the land. Everything is good if the Lu God is happy.” While managing to explain the water cycle, such narratives regarding “nature” in an emotional, spiritual, and intangible manner can also take the form of cultural performance, such as folksong, dance, food, and clothing. The beliefs of the ancient Bon religion regard mountains and rivers as places where gods and

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spirits reside, and these beliefs bond people’s everyday life to their natural environment, their mountains and rivers. Within such a belief system, the tangible (mountains and rivers) and the intangible (spirits and gods) are intertwined and inseparable, as are natural heritage and cultural heritage, and rituals and rules are carried out through daily practices, such as story-telling, handicraft, and household chores. However, during the fieldwork in the village, a growing concern regarding the potential loss of their heritage was noticed. For example, while trying to record oral history from two elderly priests, an official from the “cultural office” encountered difficulties in understanding their language; in the past fifty years the local dialect of Tibetan has changed significantly. In addition, the woman who hosted Zhang during her stay in the village broke down in tears when she talked about how sad she felt that young people did not know how to do traditional dancing any more. Not only is it difficult to separate the villagers’ worries over their “cultural heritage” from their worries for their “natural heritage,” but it raises the question of why a division between culture and nature exists at all. Nonetheless, the attempt at managing the natural resources and heritage through tourism development is political at the local, national, and international level, and the villagers who are caught in this ambivalent context try to negotiate with such political representations in their own way. For instance, several elderly villagers in Niru Village were recalling the UNESCO and the IUCN investigation team’s visit when one of them said: UNESCO came here. They were happy. They said Niru was beautiful, we know that. It [the listing] is a good thing that they came, so people would know us, and come here. But . . . there are no tourists here still. Do you think there will be more tourists? Can you talk to UNESCO [about it]? Another villager who currently works in Pudacuo National Park as a bus driver said: “We have protected these mountains for generations. But we cannot do it for much longer if there is still no development here. We are so behind (economically).” On the face of it, Niru villagers’ narratives about UNESCO, World Heritage Site status, and tourism development appear to be confused and conflicted. However, if we look deeper into these narratives, they in fact present the villagers’ wish for a future that has a close relationship with their past, and which functions in a system that challenges the singularity of UNESCO’s “outstanding universal values.” Second, the narratives speak loudly of the villagers’ doubts and questioning toward the power relations during the process of evaluation and inscription of World Heritage Site, in particular regarding the question of “Whose heritage?” it is.42 Finally, these narratives illuminate the villagers’ awareness of

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the ambivalent situation they are in regarding the conflicting “values,” as well as their willingness to negotiate those conflicting values. One of the ways for villagers to negotiate with other actors in this ambivalent situation is to produce an identity that fits with the discourse of UNESCO’s “outstanding universal values” while also maintaining their own systems of values and beliefs. While for the villagers Niru Village has become wrongfully “unknown,” or even “forgotten,” it is still the village with which they are strongly associated and identified. While the UNESCO team’s visit in 2002 hugely encouraged their identity as “Niru Tibetans,” they have had to produce other identities for themselves. The process of such transitional identification indeed parallels their awareness and knowledge of the singularity of UNESCO’s “outstanding universal values”: while the emphasis was placed upon preserving and promoting the TPR’s “natural value” for being a natural World Heritage Site, the cultural heritage aspects of Niru Village were merely “used” as a tool to enchant UNESCO’s visiting team. For the villagers who do not share the same division of value between “culture” and “nature,” as is the case with the World Heritage Convention, their identity of being the “real Shangri-La” and the “No. 1 village in the world” rendered it incomprehensible. Moreover, the praise and recognition they received from the UNESCO team failed to result in any real and practical action by way of promotion for culture and tourism development. Therefore, the “cultural identity” of “Niru Tibetan” constructed in the beginning by the rhetoric and discourse in the UNESCO Convention later shifted into an “environmental identity” that was concerned with an understanding of the destruction that mining brings to the “value of nature heritage.” Such a shift is perhaps therefore best understood as a result of the production of “identity” through heritage as discourse, as well as being the result of the paradoxes within World Heritage Site listing processes, especially the separation of values of “nature” and “culture.”43 This is not to say that Niru villagers’ identity is unified and singularly determined by external authorities such as the Chinese government or UNESCO. Instead, it seems that the villagers, as “knowing subjects,” consciously make and remake their identities to fit with the broader heritage discourse so as to gain more support and benefit from the World Heritage Site system. In this process of negotiation and renegotiation, the villagers remain highly aware of the power issues involved in the presentation of heritage and “the past.” As Orwell put it, “Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past.”44 Such awareness is shown in that, although the villagers lamented over the phenomenon of a “disappearing heritage,” as mentioned earlier, they learned to adopt and adapt to the reasoning of preserving “nature” as a separate entity outside of their

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sociocultural system. Therefore, it can be argued that the “Niru Tibetans” are slowly adapting to a new environmental identity, and becoming increasingly known as “Green Tibetans.”45 Although the notion of “Green Tibetans” aims to integrate Tibetan Buddhism and rural landscapes to help reach an “integrity”46 of heritage, it nevertheless underlines another “authorized heritage discourse”47 in the context of global environmentalism.48 Notwithstanding the remaining contradictions and tensions in the villagers’ producing a new “environmental identity,” such action indicates a highly conscious and energetic engagement and interaction between subject formation and discourse. Furthermore, in this ambivalent situation tourism becomes the point of intersection for different values regarding nature, and provides the platform for the villagers to realize this transition of “self-identification.” While most of the villagers are waiting for UNESCO or some other “big company” (for example, Pudacuo National Park) to come to the village to develop tourism and “bring tourists,” some villagers have slowly started to build their own “ecotourism service.” This activity is further challenging the singular measurement used in evaluating “environmental value” in the UNESCO Convention. Although the “universal value” of natural World Heritage Sites functions within an objectbased epistemology, remote areas such as Niru Village provide insights into the complex cosmologies that view the intangible and cultural values of nature as being inseparable from tangible and environmental values. The villagers’ narratives of tourism, the changing environment, and the values represented by World Heritage Site status and UNESCO must be seen as part of the environmental discourse. Therefore, instead of viewing such cosmologies as timeless and unchanging, which reinforces the notion of a singular value, we need to acknowledge they are in fact ever-changing, as the villagers’ identity-making is ongoing all of the time.

Conclusion In this chapter we have argued that the UNESCO Convention divides natural values and cultural values as separate “outstanding universal values.” To highlight how policies and definitions of “environmental values” made regarding World Heritage Sites could have political, sociocultural, and environmental implications, we have used the case of Niru Village as an illustration. Through consideration of Niru villagers’ narratives, we have discussed the consequences of what we regard as an overly simplistic and singular promotion of “universal values” as enacted through the listing of TPR as a World Heritage Site. First, the villagers have developed a narrative to explain why the World Heritage Site application was not

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successful; for them, there are two very logical and obvious reasons for the failure of the application. One is that tourism has not been promoted or enhanced since 2003, the year of the listing of TPR. The other explanation is that the cultural heritage in the village has been simply neglected after UNESCO’s investment. Later on, another explanation that a mining site had been opened close to Niru Village was also given by some as the reason why the village was not included in the listing. The process of reasoning on the part of Niru Village in relation to the World Heritage Site listing reflects a need to make sense of the “outstanding universal values” adopted by UNESCO, as well as a wish to make sense of who they are according to their own “authorized heritage.” The narratives from Niru Village do not fit neatly into a linear storyline, but rather are racked with tensions and contradictions. Such tensions mark the process of local residents’ sense-making, meaning-making, and identity-making processes, against the separation of “natural values” and “cultural values” in the UNESCO Convention. In this chapter we have suggested that the shift of identities from “Niru Tibetans” to “Green Tibetans” in Niru Village can be better understood as an ongoing process whereby local villagers are negotiating with what is produced through the authorized heritage discourse, although neither the authorized heritage discourse nor the identities produced are fixed. Instead, tensions have emerged from the interactions among them that may challenge the taken-for-granted ideas of universal values. Like most others, therefore, this “heritage” situation remains, and is likely to continue to remain, in a state of complexity and ambiguity.

Notes 1. UNESCO, United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization: Convention Concerning the Protected of the World Cultural and Natural Heritage (Paris: UNESCO Headquarters, 2003). 2. G. Zhang. “China’s Tourism since 1978: Policies, Experiences, and Lessons Learned,” in Tourism in China, ed. A. Lew (New York: Haworth Hospitality Press, 2003). 3. S. Yang, Connected with the Three Rivers: An Account of the Application Process for the Three Parallel Rivers of Yunnan Protected Area Qingxi Sanjiang: “Sanjiang Bing Liu” Shen Bao Shijie Ziran Yichan Jishi (Kunming, Yunnan Province: Yunnan People Publishing, 2012). 4. Y. Lu, Meili Nizu: Laizi Xianggelila Zangzu Shengtai Wenhua Cun de Baodao (Beijing: Ethnic Publishing House, 2005), 28. 5. T. Winter, Post-conflict Heritage, Postcolonial Tourism: Culture, Politics and Development at Angkor (London: Routledge, 2007). 6. H. Tucker and E. Carnegie, “World Heritage and the Contradictions of ‘Universal Value,’” Annals of Tourism Research no. 47 (2014): 63–76. 7. G. Ashworth, “From History to Heritage—From Heritage to Identity: In Search of Con-

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cepts and Models” in Building a New Heritage: Tourism, Culture and Identity in the New Europe, ed. G. J. Ashworth and P. J. Larkham (London: Routledge, 1994). 8. UNESCO, “Convention on the Protection and Promotion of the Diversity of Cultural Expressions” (2005), http://unesdoc.unesco.org/images/0014/001429142919e.pdf. 9. L. Meskell, “States of Conservation: Protection, Politics, and Pacting within UNESCO’s World Heritage Committee,” Anthropological Quarterly 1, no. 87 (2014): 237. 10. P. Williams, Memorial Museums: The Rush to Commemorate Atrocities (Oxford: Berg, 2008), 102. 11. M. Di Giovine, The Heritage-scape: UNESCO, World Heritage, and Tourism (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2009), 124. 12. R. Bianchi and P. Boniface, “Editorial: The Politics of World Heritage,” International Journal of Heritage Studies 8, no. 2 (2002): 80. 13. C. De Cesari, “World Heritage and Mosaic Universalism: A View from Palestine,” Journal of Social Archaeology 10 (2010): 308. 14. Winter, Post-conflict Heritage, Postcolonial Tourism, 15. 15. Tucker and Carnegie, “World Heritage,” 65. 16. S. Labadi, UNESCO, Cultural Heritage and Outstanding Universal Value (Lanham, MD.: AltaMira Press, 2013), 150. 17. J. Studley, “Forests and Environmental Degradation in SW China,” International Forestry Review 1, no. 4 (1999): 260–264. 18. United Nations Environment Programme, The UNEP 2008 Annual Report (2008), http://www.unep.org/PDF/AnnualReport/2008/AnnualReport2008_en_web.pdf. 19. Yang, Connected with the Three Rivers. 20. Ibid. 21. Ibid., 2–3. 22. UNESCO, “World Heritage Nomination—IUCN Technical Evaluation: Three Parallel Rivers of Yunnan Protected Areas (China) ID N.1083” (Paris: UNESCO, 2003), 2. 23. Tucker and Carnegie, “World Heritage.” 24. UNESCO, Three Parallel Rivers of Yunnan Protected Areas (2012), http://whc.unesco. org/en/list/1083. 25. J. Reser and J. Bentrupperbäumer, “What and Where Are Environmental Values? Assessing the Impacts of Current Diversity of Use of ‘Environmental’ and ‘World Heritage’ Values,” Journal of Environmental Psychology 2, no. 25 (2005): 125–146. 26. M. Alivizatou, Intangible Heritage and the Museum: New Perspectives on Cultural Preservation (Walnut Creek, CA: Left Coast Press, 2012). 27. D. Pocock, “Some Reflections on World Heritage,” Area 3, no. 29 (1997): 260–268. 28. Ibid. 29. UNESCO, Convention Concerning the Protection of the World Cultural and Natural Heritage (Paris: UNESCO World Heritage Center, 1972), 2 (emphasis added). 30. Xiaokun Ou, “The Yunnan Great Rivers Project,” Woodrow Wilson Center China Environment Series 5 (2002), 74–76. 31. UNESCO, “World Heritage Nomination,” 8. 32. Ibid., 10. 33. Ibid. 34. Yang, Connected with the Three Rivers, 3.

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35. Y. Zhang, J. Sun, Y. Tang, and G. Yang, “Investigation on Community Eco-Compensation of Pudacuo National Park,” Issues of Forestry Economics 4, no. 32 (2012): 301–332. 36. Yang, Connected with the Three Rivers, 80. 37. Ibid., 81. 38. J. Thorsell and T. Sigaty, “Human Use in World Heritage Natural Sites: A Global Inventory,” Tourism Recreation Research 1, no. 26 (2001): 85–101. 39. C. Ryan, C. Zhang, and Z. Deng, “The Impacts of Tourism at a UNESCO Heritage Site in China: A Need for a Meta-narrative? The Case of the Kaiping Diaolou,” Journal of Sustainable Tourism 6, no. 19 (2011): 747–765. 40. Yang, Connected with the Three Rivers, 60–61. 41. World Heritage Committee, Committee Decisions 37 Com 7B. 12 (Paris: UNESCO, 2014). 42. B. Graham, G. Ashworth, and J. Tunbridge, A Geography of Heritage: Power, Culture, and Economy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000). 43. L. Smith, Uses of Heritage (London: Routledge, 2006). 44. G. Orwell, 1984 (New York: Harcourt, 1949), 32. 45. T. Huber, “Green Tibetans: A Brief Social History,” in Tibetan Culture in the Diaspora, ed. F. Korom (Vienna: Verlad der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, 1997). 46. P. Gullino and F. Larcher, “Integrity in UNESCO World Heritage Sites: A Comparative Study for Rural Landscapes,” Journal of Cultural Heritage 5, no. 14 (2013): 389–395. 47. Smith, Uses of Heritage. 48. E. T. Yeh, “The Rise and Fall of the Green Tibetan: Contingent Collaborations and the Vicissitudes of Harmony,” in E. T. Yeh and C. Coggins, Mapping Shangri-La: Contested Landscapes in the Sino-Tibetan Borderlands (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2014).

8 � Religious Cultural Heritage The Law and Politics of Conservation, Iconoclasm, and Identity

LU C A S L I X I N SK I

Religious practice is intimately connected with social life and, as such, also becomes an important part of cultural life, contributing to a community’s or people’s identity. Religion is also enduring, either in its built element, which is often monumentally beautiful and associated with outstanding examples of architecture, or in its intangible characteristics, since many religious rites tend to be passed from one generation to the next with little to no modification. Due to its centrality to social life, religion’s association with cultural heritage seems easy and obvious, and often indicative of the way heritage is institutionalized and protected. UNESCO estimates, for example, that about 20 percent of 1,000-plus monuments and sites on the World Heritage List have important religious aspects connected to them and contribute to a monument’s or site’s “outstanding universal value.”1 However, many heritage management practices (which Lowenthal refers to as “The Heritage Crusade”)2 are fundamentally different from religion, which can make an otherwise easy relationship fraught with difficulties. For instance, heritage management often requires a fluid and superficial consumption of photo opportunities, whereas religion requires paced, meditative, and long-term commitment. While religious heritage sites develop identity through spiritual enlightenment,3 many heritage practices are geared at developing economies through the influx of outsiders.4 Heritage is also predominantly secular, bridging between different civilizations in the interests of humanity and peace; as a result, it is accessible to all, sanitized5 and authorized.6 However, religious practice is often incompatible with these goals: not only has a version of religion been used historically to justify warfare, but oftentimes religion requires the exclusion of others from its sacred practices, which is incompatible with heritage’s idea of being accessible to all. This chapter explores some of the convergences and divergences between

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religion and cultural heritage, and international law’s place in attempting to mediate these tensions. I argue that, in the event of conflict, heritage values tend to prevail over religious ones, at least inasmuch as heritage is a proxy for secularism and cosmopolitanism, whereas religion can still be seen as a slippery slope toward fundamentalism and division. Thus, privileging religion is incompatible with a worldview of peace and dialogue among nations, which international law tends to privilege. Such a position, of course, is to be expected from international cultural heritage law, inasmuch as these instruments and frameworks have a clear mandate to protect cultural heritage, but not a mandate to protect religion. International human rights law, on the other hand, seems to have dual duties, to protect cultural identity and freedom of religion, although even the international human right to freedom of religion can admit limitations in favor of secularism. In privileging heritage over religion when there is any incompatibility, international heritage law reasserts structures that privilege the global over the local, and thus runs the risk of excluding communities from their own heritage. Religion becomes a site of resistance against the normalizing and authorizing power of heritage discourse. But it can also be a site of resistance against something else. When minority culture is at stake, and religion is part of minority identity, heritage listing can be a limited way of gaining recognition in spite of the nation-state. However, the promise of emancipation through heritage listing is often overhyped, and its potential limited.7 In order to further explore these tensions, this chapter places religious cultural heritage in the context of the multiple instruments for the protection of cultural heritage under UNESCO, thus considering the possible relationships from the perspective of heritage. It reconsiders the relationship between religion and heritage, but takes religion as the starting point, and uses a US Supreme Court case as a means of emphasizing some of those tensions. Finally, having outlined these two positions, the World Heritage system and Hagia Sophia, in Istanbul, will be introduced by way of a case study, and the pressures of secularism and iconoclasm, two notions that are closely intertwined in Turkish political history, analyzed.

Religious Cultural Heritage in International Law One of the problems with the regulation of religious heritage is the multiple and different layers of regulation. While this chapter focuses on the regulation under state-centric international law, I am fully aware that there are a number of background rules that affect the possible effectiveness of international law. Many of these implementation problems arise from the fact that religion has a separate

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status in many jurisdictions (such as tax-exemption status), which is not accommodated by international law, and which sees the state as unitary. Furthermore, many religions are in themselves also transnational networks not fully accommodated within the confines of state territoriality, which is the basis for the majority of international law, particularly international heritage law.8 According to Alessandro Chechi, the definition of religious heritage encompasses heritage that meets two out of three criteria: (1) current religious value; (2) symbolic or profane value, related to associations of value to people not affiliated with that faith, which can be a living or dead religion; and (3) artistic or cultural value, embodying the idea that many religious buildings are also masterpieces of a certain architectural style. This framework helps explain why religious heritage can be valued as such by believers and nonbelievers alike.9 Most heritage classified as religious seems to be valued by believers (in spite of the growing closure of churches as places of worship in countries like England),10 and therefore religious heritage is made fundamentally different from secular heritage by its living character. Living religious heritage, by ensuring the continuity of forms, ends up elevated above the documentary and historical values of heritage, and the continuity of religious practices becomes the primary goal of conservation, from the perspective of those living with it.11 In terms of conservation, the most important difference is that religious heritage was born with its associated values clearly defined, whereas we require time and distance to be able to attribute value to secular heritage.12 Therefore, the need to involve communities is much more present in dealing with religious heritage, as it is the original source of values needed to justify conservation efforts.13 There are a number of issues that need to be addressed in reconciling faith and conservation in the heritage context. These include dealing with the changing liturgical and functional needs of religious sites; the competing requirements of coexisting faiths (to be explored in the discussion of the Hagia Sophia below); the fluctuating interest in religion by society at large; growing secular pressures on religious places; the museification of religious places and objects; and the competing interests of scientific conservation and religious rules (for instance, the need in some religions for decay of wooden structures).14 These issues lead to potential solutions, such as more dialogue between religious communities and conservators (not always successful, particularly with respect to natural heritage, where scientific interests tend to prevail above all others, often to the detriment of the site),15 and the reconciliation of conservation rules and religious laws (such as, for instance, a ban on the use of pig skin in the conservation of Jewish or Muslim artifacts).16 The primary care for religious heritage, thus, should lie with religious communities themselves, and conservation pro-

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fessionals should be experts at the service of those communities.17 But are these solutions enshrined in conservation practice, particularly the prominent role of religious communities, and are they reflected in the specific international legal regimes around cultural heritage? As far as the existing treaties under UNESCO for safeguarding cultural heritage go, most of them can be seen as applying in some way to religious heritage, even if that connection is not always openly made in the conventional texts. The first UNESCO treaty in this area, the 1954 Hague Convention for the Protection of Cultural Property in the Event of Armed Conflict, draws its inspiration from International Humanitarian Law (IHL) rules, particularly as codified in the 1949 Geneva Conventions. And the Geneva Conventions do treat religious buildings and sites as a particular type of protected property. Thus, even if the Hague Convention was created to specify the rules for one specific type of protected property (cultural), IHL still relies on the same rules that apply to religious monuments and sites. Therefore, analogical application is natural, if not required, even if it is up to each state to determine what heritage is to be considered as protected under the specific regime during wartime. The 1970 Convention on the Means to Prevent and Prohibit the Illegal Import, Export and Transfer of Ownership of Cultural Property mentions religious heritage specifically in its text, but it defers to states in deciding what heritage is worthy of protection.18 The 1972 World Heritage Convention (WHC) does not mention religion in its text either. However, the Operational Guidelines for the Implementation of the World Heritage Convention (2015) do mention religious or spiritual significance as a ground upon which to assess the “outstanding universal value” of monuments and sites up for inscription on the World Heritage List.19 And religious elements are seen in a number of sites listed on the Word Heritage List, as a result of the initiative of expert bodies and other organizations working with UNESCO on the implementation of the WHC. In thinking about religious communities as stakeholders, the view of the World Heritage Center’s “Initiative on Heritage of Religious Interest” (launched in 2010) is that specific policies are required in order to protect and manage those sites in a way that accommodates their distinct nature. More specifically, the concern is to avoid clashes between the views of the conservation or expert community (to whom international heritage law has traditionally and primarily catered, alongside nation-states)20 and the views of the religious communities still using the site, given that they are the people who will in effect undertake most of the conservation and management efforts. By including religious communities in the process, the World Heritage sys-

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tem opens itself up to incorporating the views of nonstate actors other than experts in what is a remarkable development in the system. The “Statement on the Protection of Religious Properties within the Framework of the World Heritage Convention” recognizes the role that communities play in the “creation, maintenance, and continuous shaping of sacred places, and the custodial role played by them in caring for these as living heritage.”21 The same statement also commits to “enhancing the role of communities and the avoidance of misunderstandings, tensions, or stereotypes.”22 By putting religious communities in the forefront, it seems that the World Heritage system is willing to bridge the schism between the interests of conservation and the imperatives of interacting with heritage. It is still to be seen how these strategies are developed within the World Heritage system, and whether they will spread to other regimes under UNESCO. It also remains to be seen how states will respond to these intended changes, especially in the context of minority religions. The discussion on the Hagia Sophia, below, attempts to engage with some of these ideas in the context of a staunchly secular state that sees certain manifestations of religion as challenging the country’s integrity. The last major treaty under UNESCO for our purposes—the 2003 Convention for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage (ICHC)—is also important for thinking about the relationship between heritage and religion. More broadly, the ICHC was conceived as a means to challenge many of the traditional tenets of heritage conservation and management, and to include communities more centrally in safeguarding processes, even if this promise has not always been fulfilled.23 When it comes to religious heritage, the definition of Intangible Cultural Heritage (ICH) in the convention mentions that belief systems can be considered intangible heritage.24 But the drafting history of the treaty indicates a consensus that religion itself is not part of intangible heritage, at least with respect to their canons. The rituals of religion can be considered ICH, but not religion itself.25 That way, the ICHC avoids passing judgment on the validity of religious practices, and embraces diversity in a more open way, allowing religious communities to ultimately control the meaning of their own practices. A remaining question with respect to ICH is to what extent, if any, the relationships between heritage and religion are changed by this new way of thinking about heritage. If religion is quintessentially a living culture, and rituals such as processions have been added to the ICH lists, how separate can heritage mechanisms really be from religion? After all, ICH listing has a commodifying effect that, albeit smaller than in other regimes, still has the power to fix meaning and, most important, establish control. So, even if the ICHC system does not pass judg-

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ment on the religious canon, it still has effects on, for instance, the political uses of heritage. Depending on how control over the meanings and uses of ICH is configured through the listing process, religion can be stripped of its political content, which is often central to a religion’s mandate and social relevance,26 or it can become a tool of resistance.27 Taken together, the international legal framework around cultural heritage seems to have promoted an important shift in allowing for more community control over a community’s own heritage. Thus, religious sensitivities can be more easily accommodated, even if they are necessarily sanitized in their translation for, and through, the other nonstate stakeholders, namely experts and conservators. But heritage is still placed front and center, which presumably means that when a religious community fundamentally diverges from the views of heritage managers about the uses of a religious site, the conservator’s view will prevail. Perhaps a framework that puts the protection of religion center stage will lead to a different result. International human rights law, and the right to freedom of religion under it, is one such framework. The next section explores the view from that area of law.

The Human Right to Freedom of Religion and Conservation International human rights law is a fairly developed framework, and cultural identity and heritage matters have often been adjudicated under it. The 1966 International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) is particularly important for our present purposes, as it is the most widely ratified international human rights treaty of general application, and also because it contains a specific provision protecting freedom of religion (Article 18), in addition to a provision protecting minority cultures (Article 27). With respect to Article 27, very little of its jurisprudence relates to religious practices, since it mostly focuses on other practices such as language, economic activities, and indigenous law. Commentators also indicate that matters generally relating to religious minorities would be dealt with under Article 18 and subsumed under that article’s protection.28 That absorption would therefore place the interests of minorities under the “public morals” limitation to freedom of religion, inasmuch as that clause is read as meaning the views of the majority. However, the Human Rights Committee has made it clear that “public morals” measures must reflect a pluralistic view of society, and not that of the majoritarian culture.29 Furthermore, the provision on minority rights is fairly unique to the ICCPR, and other comparable international human rights treaties do not have a specific provision on minority protection, and would therefore deal with religious heritage issues under the right to freedom of religion. Because not all cultural heritage is minority-related, this

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section focuses primarily on the right to freedom of religion as a means through which religious heritage can be interpreted in international human rights law. More specifically, the question of whether religious community interests can be accommodated in the event of a clash with heritage protection will be fully explored. Within the framework of the ICCPR’s freedom of religion provision, protection is extended not only to religious practices themselves but also to the very right to have or adopt a religion.30 Limitations are, however, permissible to this right, based on a number of grounds and subject to a standard proportionality analysis (that is, that the limitation is required by law and connected to a specific governmental goal, and ultimately that the impingement on the freedom is proportionate to the benefit of the government’s goal).31 Public morals are a permissible ground applicable in the context of religious minorities, as seen above. However, in order to make a case that heritage protection measures impinge on freedom of religion (for instance, curtailing a religious community’s ability to change the interior of a heritage-listed temple), the religious community will have to make a case that the infringement on their ability to change the interior of the temple curtails their ability to practice a specific and essential tenet of their religion. In other words, the protection of freedom of religion is not possible for all religious practices within a certain belief system; rather, the religious practice needs to be essential to the belief system, as the jurisprudence on conscientious objection shows.32 When it comes to cultural heritage protection, this means that a certain degree of latitude is given to the state to protect the heritage-based interests of nonbelievers. Therefore, even the protection of freedom of religion can be seen as protecting heritage interests above religious interests in most cases, unless a compelling case can be made for why the heritage protection measure will affect a fundamental tenet of religion. The case law of the European Court of Human Rights seems to confirm the same ideas. In the Case of the Jewish Liturgical Association Cha’Are Shalom ve Tsedek v. France,33 for example, the European Court was presented with a case on the regulation the of ritual slaughter of animals for consumption. In this particular case, the European Court determined that the practice was essential for Judaism, but it did not enter into the question of whether ritual slaughter could be impinged upon by law; instead, it focused on a system of governance and certification of kosher meat. Thus, human rights law can also sometimes sidestep the core belief and thus allow states to regulate it indirectly, with more leeway.34 A similar issue, but with respect to built heritage, was the subject of a case before the US Supreme Court. In Boerne v. Flores,35 a local congregation in Boerne,

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Texas, wanted to expand their church to accommodate their growing numbers. The church was at the time unable to accommodate all those coming to services, but it was also listed under local regulations protecting the historical district. The case therefore served as an important test of the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA), which protected religious practices by requiring the government to prove a compelling interest in order to justify an interference substantially burdening religion and, moreover, that the interference is the least restrictive means of furthering that interest (a threshold very similar to the proportionality test adopted by international human rights bodies). The RFRA had been passed in order to reestablish the compelling government interest test, which had been watered down with respect to religion in a previous case. That case, Employment Div. Dept. of Human Resources of Ore. v. Smith, held that government should not be required to prove a compelling interest to limit religious practices, and that laws of general application were subject to less strict scrutiny.36 The RFRA rejected those cases, going back to previous case law on the compelling government interest test,37 but adding the least restrictive means part of the test. The US Supreme Court decided that the RFRA exceeded governmental authority, and thus struck it down. It said that the RFRA was a federal intrusion into states’ rights to regulate for the health and welfare of their citizens (“welfare” being the category under which heritage protection falls),38 and that it was not designed to identify and counteract laws that were likely to be unconstitutional because of their treatment of religion. Because the RFRA was too broad, it was struck down in its totality. Therefore, the necessity of proving that a practice was essential to a belief system was also done away with, making the law under the US Constitution less protective of religion, and giving more leeway to cultural heritage protection. But states can choose to regulate differently and exempt religious buildings from historic preservation laws, even if these exemptions could be seen as favoring certain religions, thus violating the separation between church and state and the Constitution overall.39 The main decision of Boerne v. Flores, in this context, is that the federal government cannot make those decisions for communities. Laws of general applicability (such as cultural heritage laws) with incidental burdens on religion are to be protected,40 and the RFRA’s sweeping application would impair a government’s ability to create laws of general application. Persons affected by heritage protection laws (assumed to be neutral)41 are not more affected because of their religious beliefs; geography is the determining factor (that is, living in a specific protected area), rather than religion itself, at least insofar as built heritage is concerned.42 This was characterized by the US Supreme Court as an “attempt [at] substantive change in constitutional protec-

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tions,”43 by allowing religious beliefs to displace the needs of a secular society, thereby opening the way for certain religions to intrude on the lives of practitioners of other faiths. Religious protection went too far under the RFRA, an act that was supposed to prohibit government impingement on religion, instead of allowing religious impingements on government, which seemed to be one of its effects. After all, claims that a law burdens the exercise of religion are difficult to contest,44 and the logic of international human rights law of requiring that the religious practice be central to the belief system is very subjective. Therefore, even human rights law, a field of law that is meant to protect religion before protecting heritage, seems to still privilege, in many instances, heritage protection. That logic can be seen in international human rights cases in which there is a burden on the religious community to prove that the religious practice being impaired by heritage protection is essential to the belief system. Such a decision is ultimately made by the human rights body, and removes from religious communities the ability to enforce the parameters of their own religion against others. And in the US domestic case the communities themselves do not even get the chance to argue that their religious belief system is disproportionately burdened: as long as the heritage protection law is neutral and of general applicability, it can burden religion. The position under human rights law (and US constitutional law) is thus that secularism (and heritage as a symbol of it) takes precedence over religion, even if the two can coexist if religious communities are willing to accommodate heritage protection norms. But what happens when heritage protection is used as a means to drive religion out of the equation altogether, and there is a backlash from religious communities? The example of Hagia Sophia in Turkey is a means to flesh out some of these tensions.

Hagia Sophia: World Heritage Laicism as a Means to Overcome Iconoclasm Heritage and the processes under it have political uses.45 Indeed, cultural heritage can be used as a weapon to further competing claims by various faiths, and the role of the state seems to be to reconcile competing claims, while the guise of neutrality vis-à-vis religion is one means of going about this task.46 It has been argued that positive secularism is needed for the protection of cultural heritage. An indifferent state is not capable of effectively protecting religious heritage; its neutrality has to mean positive accommodation of various religious traditions.47 However, that does not seem to be the case in the examples discussed above, particularly in the US legal landscape, where no accommodation for any religion is a means of achieving neutrality. Yet another way is to demonstrate

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a strong defense of secularism at the expense of religion, which seems to be the case in Turkey. Turkey has a complicated relationship with religion, and its capital, Istanbul, is at the center of this relationship. Historically, Constantinople has been the seat of Orthodox Christianity, and was besieged by Catholics during the Fourth Crusade. It eventually fell to the Ottoman Empire, which ruled Constantinople/Istanbul until the fragmentation of the Ottoman Empire, when it became contemporary Turkey. During the early years of the Turkish Republic, historical preservation of buildings, monuments, and sites was caught between the competing demands of history and modernity. In the early years of the republic, historical moments inscribed on the city’s architecture were coded and recoded to suit prevailing ideological priorities, and “acts of construction, restoration or destruction became powerful visual manifestations of cultural politics, addressing the religious and national sentiments of the public.”48 The Hagia Sophia was always a central structure in the history of the city. It was originally built in the sixth century as a Christian basilica by Roman emperor Justinian I, and remained as such until the fall of Constantinople in 1453, when it became a mosque. In 1935, when modern Turkey was founded, the Atatürk converted the Hagia Sophia into a museum, and today it is part of a World Heritage Site—“Historic Areas of Istanbul”— which was added to the World Heritage List in 1985.49 Throughout each phase of its history, several changes were made to the Hagia Sophia in the name of accommodating the new religion. These changes were not all irreversible, and many of them consisted of simply hiding away certain features under plaster, which was removed when Hagia Sophia was turned into a museum. The preservation of the mosaics by the Ottoman sultan led to diplomatic attempts by Britain to redeem the building for Christendom by turning it into heritage, in what was one of the early instances of the international preservationist movement, and potentially a testament to the potentials of international cooperation.50 But international cooperation meant acknowledging the multiple religious layers of the site, and therefore in some sense finding a compromise that put preservation interests above religious dogma. However, not all religious buildings successively occupied by different religions enjoy the same privileged treatment. In historical terms, iconoclasm, and the destruction of religious heritage with it, has been the norm rather than the exception. Iconoclasm is closely tied to religious fundamentalism, and means an intentional act to dishonor a belief system.51 It is a fundamental tenet of Christian orthodoxy, and thus something that happened in Byzantium itself after the schism of the Christian church.52 But it also happened as a result of changing the main use of Hagia Sophia in its conversion into a mosque. And,

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as it was turned into a museum, the Muslim elements were displaced to recover the Christian elements, but in a secularized, museum version. The museification of the Hagia Sophia that followed was applauded by some as an important step in modernizing Turkey, but many decry it as having been dictated by imperialist forces, and a renewed attempt to reclaim the building to Christianity.53 The fact remains that this process deterritorialized and reterritorialized the Hagia Sophia, shifting its meaning away from any specific religion by displaying both religions at once (the uncovered Christian mosaics next to the Islamic calligraphy), and therefore dispersing its religious force.54 Moreover, the epistemological shift undertaken here plays not only into the hands of modernity but also internationalism, and, as a proxy for both these ideas in the Turkish Republic, secularism. At stake in this latest iteration is the secularity of Turkish society, a secularism that is staunchly defended to this day by the government, even before international courts, as the cases about the prohibition of religious parties55 and Islamic headscarves in universities56 show. This secularism is now threatened by proposals to turn the Hagia Sophia back into a mosque.57 Proponents of the reconversion say that the Hagia Sophia is a symbol of Istanbul’s conquest, and its use as a mosque is needed to honor the memory of the Ottoman ruler who conquered the city, and consequently the Ottoman history of Istanbul and Turkey. This imperial past has, however, been largely scorned by Western-oriented Turks as a means to promote closer relations to their European neighbors. The reconversion into a mosque would recall and embrace that past.58 One of the possible results of renewing the religious use of that heritage site is to re-create tensions that destabilize Turkey’s diplomatic relations, in addition to domestically endorsing religion-based politics that are seen as threatening the legacy of the Atatürk. Further, and for the purposes of heritage protection, the conversion of the Hagia Sophia into a mosque would choose one of its historical layers over all others.59 Such a move would be seen as compromising the monument’s status before UNESCO, especially considering that the Historic Areas of Istanbul have demonstrated their outstanding universal value on the basis of, among others, its overlap of different civilizations.60 UNESCO is reportedly aware of the religious tensions around the site, and it has said that a change of its use could undermine its value.61 But the periodic discussions of the World Heritage Committee about the site have so far not mentioned the religious context, and have chosen to focus on the potential threat caused by the construction of a bridge in Istanbul.62 Therefore, in spite of its promise to involve community stakeholders in the management of religious heritage, it seems that UNESCO is unwilling to involve communities when the site is not religious

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at the moment of listing, in spite of community opinion to the contrary. Perhaps most important, UNESCO is here seen to defer to the member state (Turkey) in the determination of whether a site is religious, with considerable consequences arising from that denomination. It would thus seem that the promise of engagement with religious heritage is short-lived, or at least it is not robust enough to confront political uses of heritage that are authorized and endorsed by the nationstate (in this case, the political use of Hagia Sophia as a symbol of the secular Turkey). The Hagia Sophia therefore remains almost as a transitional justice device, and its multiple architectural layers bear testimony to multiple religious communities more neutrally, as opposed to making a choice for one religion over the other. The interests of heritage once more trump religion, for the protection of a cosmopolitan version of harmony and peace at the expense of local communities.

Conclusion By not protecting one specific religion over another—heritage law around the Hagia Sophia—the World Heritage system privileges the nation-state and cosmopolitanism, which fits easily with the WHC’s lack of a specific mechanism for giving voice to community concerns and involving communities in choices made about heritage safeguarding. When compared to the ICH and its commitment to living cultures, it would seem that a new way of thinking about heritage would disallow many of these mechanisms, even if the practice under the ICH has yielded mixed results to date. In terms of religion’s standing visà-vis cultural heritage, religious heritage has acted as an important means to challenge the conservation paradigm and make heritage management and governance more inclusive. When there are tensions between the interests of the conservation community and those of the religious community, though, heritage prevails. Even the language of international human rights law, which has a specific right to protecting freedom of religion, still easily allows for limitations to religious freedom based on the neutrality and generality of restrictions for the sake of cultural heritage. While it would seem that, overall, society at large wins, and a larger number of people end up benefiting from the outcomes, one of the consequences is to have created the means through which the political meanings and uses of religion can be excluded from a broader social conversation, which can be harmful to minorities. The example of Hagia Sophia and attempts to reintroduce religious use to the site attest to this fact, while at the same time highlighting the possibilities of heritage neutrality and reinforcing the need for peaceful coexistence of various religions, even at the cost of some of the sharper edges of identity.

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Notes 1. UNESCO World Heritage Center, Initiative on Heritage of Religions Interest, http://whc. unesco.org/en/religious-sacred-heritage/. 2. D. Lowenthal, The Heritage Crusade and the Spoils of History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005). 3. R. P. B. Singh, “The Contestation of Heritage: The Enduring Importance of Religion,” in The Ashgate Research Companion to Heritage and Identity, ed. B. Graham and P. Howard (London: Ashgate, 2008), 135. 4. Some authors do not see the two developmental goals as incompatible. See, for instance, T. Tsivolas, Law and Religious Cultural Heritage in Europe (Berlin: Springer, 2014), 178. 5. Ibid., 134. 6. L. Smith, The Uses of Heritage (Abingdon: Routledge, 2006). 7. For an in-depth discussion in a different context, see L. Lixinski, “Heritage Listing as a Tool for Advocacy: The Possibilities for Dissent, Contestation and Emancipation in International Law through International Cultural Heritage Law,” Asian Journal of International Law 5, no. 2 (2015): 387–409. 8. A. Chechi, “Protecting Holy Heritage in Italy: A Critical Assessment through the Prism of International Law,” International Journal of Cultural Property 21 (2014): 397 (397–421). 9. Ibid., 401. 10. Tsivolas, Law and Religious Cultural Heritage, 2–3. 11. H. Stovel, “Introduction,” in Conservation of Living Religious Heritage: Papers from the ICCROM 2003 Forum on Living Religious Heritage: Conserving the Sacred, ed. H. Stovel, N. Stanley-Prive, and R. Kilick (Rome: ICCROM, 2005), 1; G. Wijesuriya, “The Past Is in the Present: Perspectives in Caring for Buddhist Heritage Sites in Sri Lanka,” in ibid. 12. Wijesuriya, “Past Is in the Present,” 31. 13. Stovel, “Introduction,” 2. 14. Ibid., 3–5. 15. For a case study of failure, see P. Nyathi and Chief B. Ndiweni, “A Living Religious Shrine under Siege: The Njelele Shrine/King Mzilikazi’s Grave and Conflicting Demands on the Matopo Hills Area of Zimbabwe,” in Stovel et al., Conservation of Living Religious Heritage; cf. D. Whiting, “Conserving Built Heritage in Maori Communities,” in ibid. 16. See A. H. Zekrgoo and M. Barkeshli, “Collection Management of Islamic Heritage in Accordance with the Worldview and Shari’ah of Islam,” in ibid.; and M. Maggen, “The Conservation of Sacred Materials in the Israel Museum,” in ibid. 17. Stovel, “Introduction,” 10. 18. Chechi, “Protecting Holy Heritage in Italy,” 400. 19. Ibid. 20. For a critical discussion, see L. Lixinski, “International Cultural Heritage Regimes, International Law and the Politics of Expertise,” International Journal of Cultural Property 20, no. 4 (2013): 407–429. 21. Statement on the Protection of Religious Properties within the Framework of the World Heritage Convention, para. 4. 22. Ibid., para. 9. 23. For a fuller exploration, see L. Lixinski, Intangible Cultural Heritage in International Law (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013).

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24. ICH, Article 2. 25. Chechi, “Protecting Holy Heritage in Italy,” 400. 26. See, for instance, B. Aykan, “How Participatory Is Participatory Heritage Management? The Politics of Safeguarding the Alevi Semah Ritual as Intangible Heritage,” International Journal of Cultural Property 20 (2013): 381–405. 27. See, for instance, A. Xue, “Religion, Heritage, and Power: Everyday Life in Contemporary China” (Ph.D. diss., Edith Cowan University, 2014). Manuscript on file with the author. 28. S. Joseph, J. Schultz, and M. Castan, The International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights: Cases, Materials, Commentary, 2nd ed. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), 789. 29. Ibid., 510–511. 30. Ibid., 504. 31. Ibid., 507–508. 32. For the ICCPR, see ibid., 511–512; for the European Convention of Human Rights, see Lixinski, Intangible Cultural Heritage, 166–167. 33. Case of the Jewish Liturgical Association Cha’Are Shalom ve Tsedek v. France (Application No. 27417/95), judgment of 27 June 2000. 34. For more commentary on this case, see Lixinski, Intangible Cultural Heritage, 167– 168. On the European approach in general, see J. Temperman, “Recognition, Registration, and Autonomy of Religious Groups: European Approaches and Their Human Rights Implications,” in State Responses to Religious Minorities, ed. D. Kirkham (London: Ashgate, 2013); J. Temperman, “Of Crosses and Homophobia: The European Court of Human Rights on Which Manifestations of Religion One May Bring to Work,” http://ssrn.com/abstract=2316736; and J. Temperman, “Religious Symbols in the Public School Classroom,” in The Lautsi Papers: Multidisciplinary Reflections on Religious Symbols in the Public School Classroom, ed. J. Temperman (Leiden: Brill, 2012). 35. City of Boerne v. Flores, 521 U.S. 507 (1997) (6–3 decision). 36. Employment Div. Dept. of Human Resources of Ore. v. Smith, 494 U.S. 872 (1990). 37. In Sherbert v. Verner, 374 U.S. 398 (1963); and Wisconsin v. Yoder, 406 U.S. 205 (1972). 38. See generally E. C. Williamson, “City of Boerne v. Flores and the Religious Freedom Restoration Act: The Delicate Balance between Religious Freedom and Historic Preservation,” Journal of Land Use & Environmental Law 13, no. 1 (1997): 107–159. 39. E. Guiffre, “If They Can Raze It, Why Can’t I? A Constitutional Analysis of Statutory and Judicial Religious Exemptions to Historic Preservation Ordinances,” Scholarship @ Georgetown Law (2007), http://scholarship.law.georgetown.edu/hpps_papers/20. 40. City of Boerne v. Flores, 521 U.S. 507 (1997), 531. 41. R. B. Hatcher Jr., “City of Boerne v. Flores: Defining the Limits of Congress’s Fourteenth Amendment Enforcement Clause Power,” Mercer Law Review 49 (1998): 565–588. Heritage protection laws, however, are not necessarily neutral; they are just assumed to be so in this case vis-à-vis religious protection laws. 42. Ibid., 535. 43. Ibid., 532. 44. Ibid., 534. 45. Lixinski, “Heritage Listing.” 46. Stovel, “Introduction.” 47. Tsivolas, Law and Religious Cultural Heritage, 24.

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48. Nur Altinyildiz, “The Architectural Heritage of Istanbul and the Ideology of Preservation,” Muqarnas 24 (2007): 281 (281–305). 49. UNESCO World Heritage Convention, “Historic Areas of Istanbul,” http://whc.unesco. org/en/list/356. 50. E. Goldstein, “Redeeming Holy Wisdom: Britain and St. Sophia,” in Towards World Heritage: International Origins of the Preservationist Movement 1870–1930, ed. Melanie Hall (London: Ashgate, 2011). 51. J. A. González Zarandona, “Towards a Theory of Landscape Iconoclasm,” Cambridge Archaeological Journal 25, no. 2 (2015): 467 (461–475). 52. Ibid. 53. N. Ozlu, “Hagia Sophia and the Demise of the Sacred,” Design Philosophy Papers 8, no. 1 (2010): 19–20 (11–24). 54. Ibid., 22. 55. European Court of Human Rights, Case of the Refah Partisi (The Welfare Party) and Others v. Turkey (App nos. 41340/98, 41342/98, 41343/98 and 41344/98), judgment of 13 February 2003. 56. See, for example, European Court of Human Rights, Leyla Sahin v. Turkey (Application no. 44774/98), judgment of 10 November 2005. 57. A. J. Yackley, “Muslims Pray to Turn Turkey’s Greatest Monument Back into a Mosque,” Reuters, 30 May 2014, http://www.reuters.com/article/us-turkey-hagiasophia-idUSKBN0EA1QE 20140530. 58. Ibid. 59. Ibid. 60. UNESCO World Heritage Convention, “Historic Areas of Istanbul—Outstanding Universal Value,” http://whc.unesco.org/en/list/356. 61. Yackley, “Muslims Pray.” 62. UNESCO World Heritage Convention, “Historical Areas of Istanbul—Documents,” http://whc.unesco.org/en/list/356/documents/.

9 � Beyond the Nation Making Heritage Inclusive

JOHA N NA M I T T E R HOF E R

Heritage is an indispensable instrument in the toolbox of identity formation, boundary drawing, and nation-state making, “a shared source of remembrance, understanding, identity, cohesion and creativity.”1 Far from being a relic of times long passed, with a fixed, neutral, and universally accepted meaning, heritage is an ongoing process of meaning making, selective remembering, and forgetting. The role of nation-states in the production of heritage, and the central function of heritage in the legitimization of national ideologies, identities, and hegemonies, has been outlined by numerous scholars.2 Monuments, traditions, historical sites, heroes, and common values are shown to be carefully selected and interpreted to become part of the national fabric, which binds “each member individually into the larger national story.”3 But while providing a shared narrative and a sense of belonging to those who find themselves represented within it, “those who cannot see themselves reflected in its mirror cannot properly ‘belong.’”4 In such instances heritage “foreshortens, silences, disavows, forgets and elides many episodes which—from another perspective—could be the start of a different narrative.”5 Frequently, heritage is thus only “for those who ‘belong’— a society which is imagined as, in broad terms, culturally homogeneous and unified.”6 Since societies are rarely, if ever, culturally homogeneous and unified, heritage’s claim for an inclusive universality can make it, in fact, highly exclusive, destructive, and divisive.7 John Tunbridge and Gregory Ashworth write that “all heritage is someone’s heritage and therefore logically not someone else’s: the original meaning of an inheritance implies the existence of disinheritance and by extension any creation of heritage from the past disinherits someone completely or partially, actively or potentially.”8 Their concept of “dissonant heritage” highlights the fact that while heritage discourses and practices often tend

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to present a group’s heritage as cohesive and unproblematic, in practice those excluded or marginalized constantly challenge, and often transform, heritage and its claim to authority and authenticity. In this chapter I explore the effects of the exclusive potential of heritage in culturally heterogeneous European societies and investigate initiatives that seek to make heritage more inclusive and pluralistic. How do minority groups negotiate heritage practices and discourses formulated by the dominant national population? From a war monument in South Tyrol, an Italian province inhabited by a large German-speaking minority, to the role of migrant memories in the making of national heritage discourses, the chapter focuses on processes that seek to include minority voices and contrasting heritage interpretations in what Laurajane Smith terms the “Authorized Heritage Discourse.”9 Such an inclusive framing of heritage does not need to rewrite heritage in order to only include elements important to, and accepted by, all members of society. Instead, it may focus on allowing and recognizing the existence of “parallel stories told by currently irreconcilable voices,”10 while seeking to revise mainstream versions of heritage by rewriting “the margins into the centre, the outside into the inside.”11 This chapter engages with these dialogical and pluralistic approaches to heritage, which allow different, even contrary interpretations of the past to coexist, and thus contribute to the successful construction of societies inclusive of difference and diversity.12

The Victory Monument in Bozen/Bolzano, South Tyrol South Tyrol in Northern Italy is home to a large German-speaking minority and a smaller Ladin minority. Of the approximately 450,000 inhabitants, 70 percent of the population is affiliated or aggregated to the German-speaking group, 26 percent to the Italian-speaking group, and 4.5 percent to the Ladin group.13 A growing number of residents—8.9 percent in 2014—were born outside of Italy.14 The large percentage of German-speakers living in South Tyrol is the result of shifting borders after the First World War: South Tyrol was part of the Austrian land of Tyrol until 1919, when it was annexed by Italy.15 During Fascist rule, an intensive Italianization campaign was carried out, which included the prohibition of German, the Italianization of names, and the substitution of local administrators with personnel from other parts of Italy. In 1939 Hitler and Mussolini signed the South Tyrol Option Agreement: South Tyroleans had to decide whether to retain the right to speak German but emigrate to the Third Reich or to stay and accept the Fascist Italianization program. As a result, 86 percent of South Tyroleans voted for leaving; only about 37 percent actually left.16

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After the Second World War, the Italian foreign minister, Alcide De Gasperi, and the Austrian foreign minister, Karl Gruber, signed an agreement that assured the nondiscrimination of the German-speaking inhabitants and established the autonomy of the region of Trentino–South Tyrol. However, many German-speaking South Tyroleans considered the agreement inadequate, and from the late 1950s to the 1970s separatist activists targeted symbols of the Italian state such as Fascist monuments, police stations, state-funded housing projects, and power plants. In 1971 the Italian and Austrian governments adopted the Second Autonomy Statute, which has since provided one of the most comprehensive autonomies worldwide. Yet Italians and Germans continue to live next to, rather than with each other; schools and party affiliation are mostly divided along language lines; and support for right-wing nationalist or ethnoregionalist parties has been on the increase over the last decade. Considering this sociopolitical background, it may not be surprising that Fascist monuments throughout the region continue to be used to assert group identities and stake out political claims.17 As the historian Thomas Pardatscher writes, these monuments have become the “parade-ground for the political disputes of opposing groups.”18 They embody two highly dissonant interpretations of the past, on the one hand representing “the Fascist conquest through architecture” and the “symbolic colonization” of South Tyrol by Italy, and, on the other hand, the victory of Italy against the Austrian enemy.19 The most (in)famous of South Tyrol’s Fascist monuments is the Victory Monument in South Tyrol’s capital, Bozen/Bolzano. Inaugurated by King Vittorio Emanuele III in 1928, the Victory Monument was originally dedicated to Italian soldiers who died in the First World War. However, the monument soon came to symbolize the victory of Fascist Italy over Austria and, by extension, over the South Tyrolean population.20 Built in neoclassical style, the Victory Monument of Bolzano celebrates the classical foundations of Italy idealized by the Fascist regime. The columns are sculpted in the shape of fasces, the key symbol of Italian Fascism; goddess Victoria points her arrow toward the Austrian enemy in the North. A Latin inscription claims that Fascism brought language, law, and art to the region, a clear demonstration of the Fascist perception of Italian cultural supremacy.21 An Austrian war memorial was destroyed to build the Victory Monument, further underlining the highly symbolic function of the monument.22 The architecture and location of the Victory Monument clearly mark the divide between “us” (Italians) and “them” (Austrians/South Tyroleans). The monument “delineate[d] the boundaries and parameters of Italianization,” reasserted

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Fascist Italy’s claims to South Tyrol, and constituted a unifying symbol for the Italian population in the region.23 For the local German-speaking population, many of whom had fought on the Austrian side against Italy during the war, the monument obliterated their wartime sacrifice. It became a symbol of the oppression and discrimination during Fascism and, after the fall of Mussolini, of the Italian state more generally.24 Because of its deeply symbolic nature, the monument emerged as an important site of protest and display of power during the 1960s and the 1970s, a period of great political tension in the region. An explosion in 1978 nearly caused the monument to collapse; a political activist carried out a hunger strike in front of the monument in 1979. Until the late 1990s, the Italian army celebrated Italy’s victory of the First World War in front of the monument. While this celebration has since moved to less controversial places, Italian and German right-wing activists continue to use the iconic location for demonstrations.25 The controversial nature of the Victory Monument resulted in ongoing discussions about the monument’s future.26 The Italian right wing viewed the monument as an important part of the Italian national heritage and thus worthy of protection and preservation. By contrast, right-wing parties representing German-speaking South Tyrol have called for its demolition. In recent years, a more moderate position gained popularity, holding that the monument was neither to be removed nor to be kept in its current condition, as both options would reinforce the divides between two groups—the Italian national majority and the German-speaking minority—and their seemingly mutually exclusive approach as to what constitutes “their” common heritage. In 2011 a commission composed of both Italian- and German-speaking historians was established and given the task to elaborate a concept for the explanation and historical contextualization of the Victory Monument. The aim was not to substitute existing dissonant interpretations and discourses about the monument with a single new cohesive and coherent interpretation. Instead, the historians set out to open up a dialog between the different and differing interpretations of the monument’s role in South Tyrol’s heritage by critically reflecting on the monument, the political-social context in which it was created, and the role it played since its conception. The Historical Commission’s composition of members from the two main cultural groups in South Tyrol was certainly a reflection and symbolic expression of this aim, underscoring right from the beginning the dialogic nature of the new approach to heritage.27 In 2014 the commission’s work was presented to the public with the opening of a permanent exhibition in the subterranean spaces of the Victory Monument. Titled “BZ 18—45. One Monument. One Town. Two Dictatorships,” the exhibi-

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tion explored the monument’s history against the backdrop of the historical context of 1918–1945 within and beyond the region. Importantly, the exhibition explored both Italian Fascism and the Nazi Occupation in South Tyrol—the latter a period often ignored in the local historical imaginary.28 The Victory Monument was built to demarcate territorial rule; it was a physical manifestation of Fascist Italy’s claims over the local population, and embodied the regime’s aim to eradicate any other language and culture but the Italian. In direct contrast to this homogenizing aim, the exhibition embraces South Tyrol’s heterogeneity by allowing and openly exploring the pluralistic, often divergent interpretations of South Tyrol’s past and heritage. The fact that members of both the Italian and the German political right have criticized the exhibition’s concept is, according to one of the historians in the commission, testimony to the success of the exhibition.29 Indeed, the South Tyrolean right-wing party of the Freiheitlichen continues to call for the demolition of the monument, while the Italian right wing criticizes the red neon ring installed on one of the monument’s columns—the only exterior modification of the monument—as an unneeded intervention on a protected building.30 In general, however, reactions to the exhibition and its “critical historization” of heritage have been by and large positive, and point to an increasing understanding that interpretations of the past do not necessarily have to be homogenous, but that different voices can coexist.

Heritage from Roots to Routes Seventy percent of the South Tyrolean population belong to the German-speaking group, 26 percent belong to the Italian-speaking group, and about 4 percent belong to the Ladin community. Missing from this overview are, however, the approximately 9 percent of people with a migration background. While a number of national and international instruments safeguard the right and duty to protect the heritage of so-called national minorities (such as the Germanspeakers of South Tyrol),31 the protection of the culture, language, and heritage of migrants is less well regulated.32 This lack of a recognized right to heritage anchored in national or international instruments is reflected in the widespread absence of migrant memories and heritage interpretations in official heritage discourses. In dominant heritage discourses linked to notions of national ancestry, (imagined) pasts, and mythical heroes, migrants’ (presumed) rootlessness and in-betweenness between multiple states, cultures, and societies have no place. This is particularly true for sites like the Victory Monument, which play a

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key role—whether positive or negative—in the common heritage and collective identity of a community. The intimate relationship of these heritage sites with a circumscribed, territorially rooted past exclude a priori those whose pasts are rooted elsewhere and for whom the monuments may carry little, if any, significance. As the example of the Victory Monument in South Tyrol showed, even initiatives seeking to pluralize heritage by presenting dissonant but coexisting narratives of the past often continue to frame heritage territorially, without addressing the role of the monument (or its absence) for the growing number of migrants living in the region. Old lieux de mémoire such as the Victory Monument may have lost “much of their power to forge and sustain a single vision of the past.”33 They do, however, “remain useful as sites where people with very different memories of the same events can communicate, appreciate and negotiate their respective differences.”34 As “most aspects of heritage can accommodate different, divergent or even competing demands,”35 traditional heritage sites like the Victory Monument can indeed continue to play a role in more inclusive approaches to heritage—but only if access to them is opened to new members of society and alternative perspectives and interpretations taken seriously. As policymakers and politicians continue to assign great importance to the role of shared heritage for the creation of a cohesive society, ensuring such open and inclusive access should be a central goal. Over the last decade, museums, exhibitions, and oral history projects, which were launched in many towns and countries, focused on providing spaces for, and making visible, memory narratives of migrants.36 While their existence is paramount in diversifying heritage and bringing the experiences of minorities to the attention of the majority, they also risk portraying migrant memory and heritage as something that exist independently of the memory and heritage of the majority—and vice versa: that the heritage of the majority is untouched by that of minority groups. In the next section, I explore how dominant heritage structures and practices are transformed from the margins,37 through the example of three heritage initiatives from Austria and Germany. The initiatives seek answers to questions such as: How can heritage be framed in such a way as to include those members of society who have only recently arrived in a territory and who may not be able, or willing, to immediately relate to monuments or remembrance days in the way others do? Is it possible to decouple heritage from its close relationship with nationalism to create a post- or pluri-national heritage? In other words, can heritage shift from a focus on common roots to an awareness of routes and migration or migrant experiences?38 Using events and sites traditionally associated with the “majority” (the Nazi period, a townscape, a street) as starting points,

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the initiatives avoid the construction of parallel minority discourses and unveil instead the presence and active role of minority groups in making and shaping discourses and practices usually considered as those of the majority. By blurring the dichotomy of minority/majority heritage, they highlight how migrant experiences and memories introduce new perspectives and interpretations that may challenge dominant, nation-centric heritage discourses, and expose the subjective, invented nature of dates, facts, and narratives often presented as “neutral” or “objective.” Finally, they contribute to the creation of a type of heritage that all members of society can access—ideally even identify with—independent of their and their family’s roots.

Challenging Dominant Heritage How can transnational perspectives challenge, broaden, and add to national perspectives on the past? How does migration change the perception of the history of National Socialism and the Holocaust in Austrian schools, and in Austrian society in general? The Austrian initiative “Und was hat das mit mir zu tun: Transnationale Geschichtsbilder zur NS-Vergangenheit (So, what does this have to do with me, anyway? Transnational Perceptions of the History of Nazism and the Holocaust)” seeks to answer these and other questions.39 Working with teachers and high school students, the initiative challenges traditional discourses and images related to the time of National Socialism in Austria. The pupils, many of whom have a migration background, are encouraged to explore the time period by creating connections between their current home and that of their parents or grandparents. What was the role of Turkey in World War II? What connections exist between the Balkan wars and World War II? Questions such as these establish interlinkages between life worlds, which far too often are portrayed as neatly divided and clearly different. Seeking answers to them requires the pupils to explore parallel narratives of history that are rarely explored in history classes, and encourages alternative, pluralistic perspectives that go beyond national boundaries. By encouraging questions that otherwise may be never asked in an institutional setting, the initiative provides space for the plurality of interpretations so central to our heterogeneous societies, but which are rarely given a voice or listened to. By exploring historical events considered central to the heritage of a state, dominant heritage discourses can be challenged and questioned and their close relationship to nationalism critically exposed. The initiative encourages and actively creates new approaches to events central to a national heritage in order to weaken the link between heritage and nation.

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According to a group of scholars, activists, and cultural practitioners campaigning for the creation of an Archive of Migration in Austria, the lack of minority discourses is a “consciously created gap in the memory culture of a nation-state” that needs to be closed urgently.40 The heritage of migrants does not exist independently of, or parallel to, the heritage of the society within which they live; they are part of that society, and thus their heritage is part of that society’s shared heritage. The exhibition Route of Migration in Berlin draws on this insight as it aims to make visible key places over a 300-year period of migration history, including religious spaces, museums, monuments, and “places of arrivals and departure” such as train stations and airports but also spaces of daily life, including apartment blocks, markets, and parks.41 By mapping these places, the initiative suggests that the city of Berlin would not exist without migration—at least not in the way the city looks and feels today. Rather than rewriting the history of Berlin, Route of Migration expands it by consciously and actively writing the physical heritage of migration into that of the “mainstream” and by highlighting the fact that one cannot be separated from the other. “Town is migration. It has always been. Without migration, a town does not exist. A town is those who are there. . . . But many of them are made invisible,” explains the project Hall in Motion—Traces of Migration in Tyrol.42 Similar to the exhibition Route of Migration, this initiative also seeks to “look for the traces of those often described as ‘different’ and ‘foreign,’ but who are an integral part of this town.”43 An entire street of the small town of Hall in Tyrol is transformed into an open-air exhibition that tells the town’s history of migration. The visitor can listen to the life history of a migrant from Turkey who became a famous local musician or explore why the post office was such a central location for newcomers to the town. Local town history thus becomes intertwined with the transnational history of migration, highlighting the precarious and arbitrary nature of the ways in which the boundaries between what is part of a community’s history and heritage and what is not are so frequently drawn. While the initiatives in Berlin and Hall focus on rendering visible the memories, history, and heritage of migration, they do not want to create a parallel account of the past. The heritage the initiatives seek to promote is inclusive and dialogical. Indeed, by bringing forgotten or ignored places to the awareness of the mainstream, they expand the heritage of the town and its inhabitants, rendering it more plural and democratic. Both initiatives take the town as a shared space of people with diverse roots, whose experiences, practices, and discourses of heritage intersect and overlap, making it impossible to clearly distinguish between “theirs” and “ours.”

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Conclusion Traditionally, heritage has been closely linked to the conservation and preservation of historical artifacts and monuments deemed to be of significance to a particular nation’s history. The 2005 Council of Europe’s Framework Convention on the Value of Cultural Heritage for Society (Faro Convention) moves away from these previous place-centered understandings of heritage toward a people-centered perspective.44 With its emphasis on the idea of “heritage communities,” understood as groups that “may not be linked by language, an ethnic tie or even a shared past, but are linked by a purposive commitment to specific heritages,”45 the Faro Convention promotes heritage as an inclusive, creative, and transformative process. Focusing on the creation of a “common heritage of Europe,” the Faro Convention also challenges the exclusive nature of national heritage. Whether at the supranational or infranational level, heritage can exist within, beyond, and across nations.46 The case studies discussed in this chapter are examples of how the ideas the Faro Convention seeks to promote might be implemented. All four of them create heritage communities across linguistic or cultural boundaries and bypass the traditional emphasis on imagined shared “roots” to a particular territory as the basis of a heritage community. By doing so, they emphasize that heritage is not always inherited but can also be adopted.47 This is an important insight gained from the conceptual shift beyond the idea of a single, national heritage. It opens up the possibility for people, be they pupils of Turkish descent in Vienna, Italian-speakers in South Tyrol, or new inhabitants of the town of Hall, to engage with heritage in fluid, ever-changing ways, shifting between different heritage communities to which they belong “sequentially or at the same time, as they move through topographical and social space, for these communities are not exclusive.”48 Moreover, as Graham Fairclough writes, “migrating peoples bring their own heritage, and will sometimes share it, and they will adopt specific attitudes to the heritage they find on their arrival which in some cases have the effect of changing how that heritage is used and valued.”49 In today’s heterogeneous societies, such encounters of different heritage traditions, perspectives, and practices happen on a daily basis. The transformative potential of these encounters may be considered dangerous by some; yet ignoring them by clinging to an idea of a national heritage rooted in an imagined common past carries the risk of excluding, a priori, a large part of society. And if a shared heritage is indeed central to the construction of a shared identity necessary for cohesive societies—as the continued importance given to heritage processes by states, substate territories, and the European Union suggests—it is fundamental that this heritage be as inclusive to people with diverse backgrounds as possible.50

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Notes A version of this chapter was first presented at the International Lecture “Gedächtnisund Erinnerungsdiskurse im Alpen-Adria-Raum,” University of Klagenfurt, 4 November 2015. 1. Council of Europe, Framework Convention on the Value of Cultural Heritage for Society, https://wcd.coe.int/ViewDoc.jsp?id=975977, Art. 3a. 2. N. Abu El-Haj. “Translating Truths: Nationalism, Archaeological Practice and the Remaking of Past and Present in Contemporary Jerusalem,” American Ethnologist 25, no. 2 (1998): 166–188; B. Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origins and Spread of Nationalism (London: Verso, 1991); L. Breglia, Monumental Ambivalence: The Politics of Heritage (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2006); L. Meskell, “Negative Heritage and Past Mastering in Archaeology,” Anthropological Quarterly 75, no. 3 (2002): 557–574; L. Smith, The Uses of Heritage (London: Routledge, 2006); C. De Cesari, “World Heritage and Mosaic Universalism: A View from Palestine,” Journal of Social Archaeology 10, no. 3 (2010): 299–324. 3. S. Hall, “Whose Heritage? Un-settling ‘the Heritage,’ Re-imagining the Post-nation?,” Third Text 13, no. 49 (1999): 3–13. 4. Ibid., 4. 5. Ibid., 5. 6. Ibid., 6. 7. For example, H. Anheier and Y. Raj Isar, eds., Cultures and Globalization: Heritage, Memory and Identity (London: Sage, 2011); C. De Cesari, “Memory Voids and the New European Heritage: A Proposal for Studying Transnational Heritage,” Journal of Museum Ethnography 25 (2012): 152–162. 8. J. Tunbridge and G. Ashworth, Dissonant Heritage: The Management of the Past as a Resource in Conflict (New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1996), 21; see also G. Ashworth, B. Graham, and J. Tunbridge, A Geography of Heritage: Power, Culture and Economy (London: Hodder, 2000); and A. Assmann, Das neue Unbehagen an der Erinnerungskultur: Eine Intervention (Munich: C. H. Beck, 2013). 9. Smith, Uses of Heritage. 10. W. Logan, “Cultural Diversity, Heritage and Human Rights,” in The Ashgate Research Companion to Heritage and Identity, ed. B. Graham and P. Howard (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2008), 499 (439–454). 11. Hall, “Whose Heritage?,” 10. 12. Y. Raj Isar, D. Viejo-Rose, and H. Anheier, “Introduction,” in Cultures and Globalization: Heritage, Memory and Identity, ed. H. Anheier and Y. Raj Isar (London: Sage, 2011), 1–21. 13. ASTAT, “Census 2011. Berechnung des Bestandes der drei Sprachgruppen in der Autonomen Provinz Bozen-Südtirol,” Astatinfo 38 (2012), http://www.provinz.bz.it/astat/de/ bevoelkerung/439.asp?demographischestruktur_action=4&demographischestruktur_article _id=198728. 14. ASTAT, “Ausländische Wohnbevölkerung—2014, “ Astatinfo 29 (2015), http://www.provinz. bz.it/astat/de/bevoelkerung/404.asp?aktuelles_action=4&aktuelles_article_id=499734. 15. For further information on the history of South Tyrol, refer to A. Alcock, The South Tyrol Autonomy: A Short Introduction (2001), http://www.european-journalists.eu/The South Tyrol Autonomy.pdf; and R. Steininger, South Tyrol: A Minority Conflict of the Twentieth Century (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers, 2003).

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16. G. Grote, I bin a Südtiroler: Kollektive Identität zwischen Nation und Region im 20. Jahrhundert (Bozen: Athesia, 2009), 138. 17. See, for instance, H. Obermair and S. Michielli, “Erinnerungskulturen des 20. Jahrhunderts im Vergleich / Culture della memoria del Novecento a confronto,” Quaderni di storia cittadina/Hefte zur Bozner Stadtgeschichte 7 (2014). 18. T. Pardatscher, Das Siegesdenkmal in Bozen (Bozen: Athesia, 2002), 174. Translation by author. 19. G. Mair, “Monumente, die uns prägen,” ff(06) 2011. Translation by author. 20. Pardatscher, Das Siegesdenkmal, 14. 21. “Hic patriae fines siste signa. Hinc ceteros excoluimus lingua legibus artibus.” 22. B. Niven, “War Memorials at the Intersection of Politics, Culture and Memory,” Journal of War and Culture Studies 1, no. 1 (2008): 43 (39–45). 23. See, for instance, W. Kurth and J. Berghold, “Gruppenfantasien im Umfeld des ‘Siegesplatz’-Konfliktes in Bozen: Eine Auseinandersetzung über einen zentralen symbolischen Ort,” Jahrbuch für Psychohistorische Forschung 7 (2006): 99 (97–138); Pardatscher, Das Siegesdenkmal, 59; R. Pergher, “Borderlines in the Borderlands: Defining Difference through History, ‘Race,’ and Citizenship in Fascist Italy,” EUI Working Paper (Florence: European University Institute Florence, 2009), 4. 24. Pergher, “Borderlines in the Borderlands.” 25. Kurth and Berghold, “Gruppenfantasien.” 26. For a discussion on the diverging public discourses about the Victory Monument, see J. Mitterhofer, “Competing Narratives on the Future of Contested Heritage: A Case Study of Fascist Monuments in Contemporary South Tyrol, Italy,” Heritage & Society 6, no. 1 (2013): 46–61. 27. Obermair and Michielli, Erinnerungskulturen. 28. Konzept zur Gestaltung der Dokumentations-Ausstellung im Siegesdenkmal Bozen, www.siegesdenkmal.com/fileadmin/user_upload/pdfs/GGG_MaV_Konzept-DE.pdf. 29. G. Mumelter, “Faschistisches Siegesdenkmal in Bozen entpolitisiert,” in Der Standard, 25 July 2014, http://derstandard.at/2000003507187/Faschistisches-Siegesdenkmal-in-Bozenentpolitisiert. 30. G. Mumelter, “Liktorenbündel mit Rotring,” in Salto Magazin, 23 July 2014, www.salto. bz/article/23072014/liktorenbuendel-mit-rotring. 31. International minority protection instruments include, for instance, the CoE Framework Convention for the Protection of Regional and Minority Languages; the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages; and the OSCE High Commissioner on National Minorities. 32. R. Medda-Windischer, Old and New Minorities: Reconciling Diversity and Cohesion: A Human Rights Model for Minority Integration (Baden-Baden: Nomos, 2009). 33. Anheier and Raj Isar, Cultures and Globalization, 9. 34. Ibid. 35. Council of Europe, Heritage and Beyond (Strasbourg: Council of Europe Publishing, 2009), https://www.coe.int/t/dg4/cultureheritage/heritage/identities/PatrimoineBD_en.pdf. 36. For example, Migration Museum Project, UK (http://migrationmuseum.org); DOMiD—Dokumentationszentrum und Museum über die Migration in Deutschland, Germany (www.domid.org); Museu d’història de la immigració de Catalunya, Spain (www.mhic.net); Musée national de l’histoire de l’immigration, France (www.histoire-immigration.fr). 37. De Cesari, “World Heritage and Mosaic Universalism,” 317.

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38. See also K. Buciek and K. Juul, “‘We Are Here, Yet We Are Not Here’: The Heritage of Excluded Groups,” in Graham and Howard, Ashgate Research Companion to Heritage and Identity, 4, 11; L. Malkki, “National Geographic: The Rooting of Peoples and the Territorialization of National Identity Among Scholars and Refugees,” Cultural Anthropology 7, no. 1 (1992): 24–44. 39. Trafo.K, “Und was hat das mit mir zu tun?,” www.trafo-k.at/en/projekte/undwashatdasmit mirzutun. 40. Archiv der Migration, “Konzept,” http://archivdermigration.at/de/projekt/konzept. 41. Der Beauftragte des Berliner Senats für Integration und Migration, ed., Stadt ist Migration. Die Berliner Route der Migration—Grundlagen, Kommentare, Skizzen (2011), www.berlin. de/imperia/md/content/lb-integration-migration/publikationen/dokus/route_der_migration_ bf_neu.pdf?start&ts=1442503243&file=route_der_migration_bf_neu.pdf. 42. Hall in Bewegung—Spuren der Migration in Tirol, www.hall-in-bewegung.at. 43. Ibid. 44. Council of Europe, Framework Convention, Art. 2b. 45. R. Palmer, “Preface,” in Council of Europe, Heritage and Beyond, 10. 46. G. Fairclough, “New Heritage frontiers,” in Council of Europe, Heritage and Beyond, 35. 47. Ibid. 48. G. Dolff-Bonekämper, “The Social and Spatial Frameworks of Heritage,” in Council of Europe, Heritage and Beyond, 71. 49. Fairclough, “New Heritage Frontiers,” 34. 50. See, for instance, the EU’s discourse on the promotion of a common heritage, http:// ec.europa.eu/culture/policy/culture-policies/cultural-heritage_en.htm.

10 � Unstable Foundations? The Role of Identity in Heritage Management in Mauritius

ROSABELLE BOSWELL

In contemporary times individuals are emboldened to imagine that with the right opportunity and requisite expertise it is possible to succeed against great odds. Many are encouraged to subject the complexity of situations at hand to rigorous analysis, mapping, evaluation, and strategic planning in the pursuit of a “logical” path to desired results. The dynamism of social existence, the longue durée of inequality, and the effects of increasing commodification are set aside in the bid to achieve a predetermined and desired goal. Part of the blame for this response to complexity (and the rush to simplify) must be laid at the feet of those pursuing grand narratives of development. The specificity of each context and the particularity of people embedded in certain histories and locales are ignored. This chapter considers the legacy of grand narrative thinking in Mauritius, insofar as heritage management is concerned. Mauritius, an island of the southwest Indian Ocean, has a long history of colonization and marginalization. Thus the experience of heritage and heritage management there is valuable to global discussions on heritage “at the interface,” because the place provides examples of the intersection between a globalized and grand narrative of heritage management and a rapidly evolving, multicultural, and unstable space in which identity is continuously being constructed. What one finds is that while global heritage management practice and ethos have been adopted in Mauritius, the implementation of heritage management is not faring well. It is hypothesized that just as the legacy of slavery and colonization continues in many ways in the island society, so do the perception and treatment of those historically marginalized. In the case presented here, one finds that it is still the Creoles, publicly described as slave descendants, who bear the brunt of generalized heritage man-

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agement practices. Government leaders and national policymakers advance the view that diversity can and must be managed, that particularities should not be overemphasized, and that it is economically imperative to maintain an admirable level of national happiness and harmony. Second (and not overtly articulated), the past is to be reproduced to feed the phantasmagorical desires of a wealthy and empowered international tourism community. Third, and as consolation, it seems that the reproduction of the past is being offered as salve to those affected by the violence of colonization. Thus one has to agree, as Lowenthal argues, that in domesticating the past we enlist [heritage] for present causes . . . [it] clarifies pasts so as to infuse them with present purposes, one result being that “heritage vice becomes inseparable from heritage virtue while under the aegis of national patrimony looms a multinational enterprise.”1 Insofar as the “multinational enterprise” is concerned, it is evident that international tourism shapes the form, content, and expression of heritage on the island. However, any ordinary observer would be inclined to argue that it is impossible to meaningfully achieve heritage management in Mauritius because of the reality that identities are multiply constituted, hybrid, temporal, contested, and constructed.2 It is also impossible to not notice that those who are historically marginalized continue to experience marginalization in the present. Thus one might argue that reproducing heritage in places of overt inequality, diversity, and violent history risks calcifying narratives of oppression, solidifying discourses of identity, and stifling evidence of dynamism in cultural process. In this stultifying context, ethnic boundaries are cemented and perceptions of cultural exchange and creolization obscured.3 Last (and to be elaborated upon in this chapter), as a country for whom tourism is a major source of income, a narrative of the identified other stultifies visitor experience. This is of major concern because, even if tourism destinations cultivate a dominant narrative to effectively market themselves, they must remain competitive in a globally dynamic international market. In that context, the malleability, subjectivity, and particularity of identity is accepted and desired. How will the nation maintain this freshness of self if it uses heritage to museumify the present? This chapter investigates heritage at the interface between identities and management. It argues that the fundamental instability and ongoing construction of identity in Mauritius means that heritage management can be a contradictory process, cementing identity and community, obscuring creolization and cosmopolitanism. In addition, the pervasiveness of a global “heritage management” dis-

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course and the persistence of a nationally hegemonic politics of identity mean that marginalized communities may not be in a position to express alternative ways of being or to respond meaningfully and subjectively to heritage and its “management.”

Identities in Motion Recent theorizations of identity confirm that human beings are adept at creating and re-creating identities and meaningfully inscribing place. There is substantive scholarship on how humans are embedded in, and are subject to, their natural environment, as well as the ways landscapes contour consciousness, articulating diverse senses of self. In a context of multilayered histories, changing political leadership, fragile global economies, and claims to particularistic rights, identities are always in “motion,” contracting as the boundaries of community are politically circumscribed, or expanding and becoming more porous to accommodate diverse articulations of solidarity. Detailed accounts as to why identity and physical landscapes are moulded are also evident. Space and place are shaped and politicized by those in power, providing opportunities to establish belonging, rootedness, and access to ancestral worlds, sacred ritual, history, and memory.4 In early anthropology and the historical, scholarly theorization of heritage, identity was conceptualized as a primordial possession. From this perspective identity and cultural loss were deemed to be disastrous and the retention of culture much publicized via careful curatorship and faithful transmission of cultural values/practices from one generation to the next.5 “Cultures” required “salvaging,” reinstatement, and protection for the benefit of current and future generations. Following this conceptualization of culture, current heritage management still supports the possibility and necessity of commemorating and preserving culture and identity. Claims regarding the instability and constructiveness of identity, its politicization, the vulnerability of the heritage management process to regime change, and the fact that heritage is, as Kirshenblatt-Gimblett argues, the “symbolic capital of the powerful,” remain unheard.6 Although serious attention has been dedicated to the issue of heritage in postcolonial spaces, in Mauritius little has changed where heritage management practice is concerned, despite decades of anthropological theorization and comment, on the problem of top-down management processes.7 The situation is especially perplexing when one considers that identities and human relations remain notoriously complex, and publicly so. People in Mauritius, and more broadly in the island societies of the southwest Indian Ocean,

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hold multiple identities.8 Those identities are overtly creolized, that is, inherited cultural forms and practices in those geographical spaces have coalesced and now articulate new, locally embedded and responsive identities. In the same context, efforts are made to cultivate and maintain distinct identities. Shifts along the continuum between distinct and creolized identity are an ongoing, temporary, subjectively and objectively defined process. Also on this uncertain terrain are new sources of identification emerging in social media. Generationally defined, these offer possibilities for a transnational community, rendering national efforts to achieve a cohesive nationhood redundant.9 The spaces in which such identities are articulated are layered with diverse opportunities, imperatives, and desires. The identities themselves are hierarchical, differently unequal, diversely gendered, and multiply raced. By the last I mean that caste specificity/economic opportunity, ability to speak French/English, articulations of multiple sexualities, and internalization of different race codes bring a bewildering complexity to identity in Mauritius. The complexities mean that it is nearly impossible to decide whose heritage should be commemorated and preserved, how chosen heritage should be managed, what the core motivation for managing heritage should be, and how a landscape ought to be reconfigured to offer meaningful representation. Identity scholars offer detailed commentary and debate on the discursiveness of identity in the late twentieth century. They dismiss the historical conceptualization of identity and culture as inalienable possession, confirm the fact of identity construction, and indicate the necessity of paying attention to context. The entrenchment of hegemonic heritage management ethos and practice must be yielding benefits, for it would seem that the voices of those still marginalized are not being heard.

Heritage in Mauritius It is difficult to fully apprehend the breadth and depth of heritage and heritage management in Mauritius. This is mainly because the process has been in place for a very long time, and local cultural relations are complex. Viewed from postcolonial10 and postmodern11 perspectives (potentially offering the possibility of a wider lens to scrutinize “reality”), it would seem that there are many efforts at heritage management on the island, ranging from a purely aesthetic use of the term, which lends a patina of history and gravitas to ostensibly touristed spots, to the practical invocation of the word “heritage” to describe historicized landscapes. Also, in pursuing a politics of authentication, some heritage sites do not use the word “heritage.” Instead the identity of the place is linked to its cultural roots via use of language. Thus official heritage management contributes to dias-

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pora identity, regularly reminding inhabitants of their origins elsewhere. A brief overview of Mauritian history is necessary for orientation and an unraveling of the situation. Contemporary historians of Mauritius concur that the island, situated some 800 kilometers from the east coast of Madagascar in the southwest Indian Ocean, was originally terra nullius (empty land).12 The population arrived voluntarily or forcibly from the mid-1600s as settlers, slaves, and later (from 1835) as indentured laborers and merchants. The “arrival” was traumatic for many. Settlers had to become accustomed to a tropical environment in which there were many privations and hardships, in particular, hurricanes, tropical illnesses, and isolation. For the slaves, life was particularly horrific. Separated from their families and land, given new names, forced to adopt new cultural practices and beliefs, subjected to ongoing physical and psychological violence, including maiming, slaves were often treated as possessions to be sold and dealt with according to their masters’ desires. Important to note at this stage of the discussion is that not all African-descended peoples were slaves. There were a few Malagasy (Madagascarborn) slave owners in the island society, and there were also manumitted slaves and maroons (or escaped slaves) living independently in the forested hills of the island. In general, though, slaves lived and worked on the sugar plantations, and the manner in which they were treated by those who “owned” them ensured that their mortality rate was very high, both on the island and elsewhere in the southwest Indian Ocean region.13 Today, slave descendants are often associated with Creoleness or Creole identity. The space here is too limited to expand on the complexity of this identity, except to say that Creoles are people of mixed “racial” and cultural identities but are distinct from other Mauritians in their religious beliefs (most of them are Christian). Creoles, as suggested further on, also produced the Sega dance, its associated musical traditions, a maritime social existence, and, together with other Mauritians, the Kreol dialect. Arriving on the island to “replace” slave labor after abolition in 1835, indentured laborers from India also experienced extreme deprivation and hardship. Their only advantage was that many came as members of particular villages and lineages, a situation that fostered possibilities for cultural exchange as well as social continuity. Religious diversity added to the complexity. Among the Indian indentured laborers were diverse facets of Hinduism, and among the Muslim merchants there emerged several paths to Islam. African descendants, bereft of community and family, salvaged knowledge of/reverence for the ancestral world.14 They also forged new bonds and forms of celebration, and produced new cuisine derived from an aqua-culture that emerged after their exodus to the coastal areas after abolition.

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This early history left an indelible mark on the Mauritian landscape and its society. Today, the slave baths (bagnes), the slave cemetery, the slave landing place at Pointe Cannon, and the African names (such as camp Yolof) given to historically black quarters in the historical French colonial town of Mahebourg on the east coast of the island, along with the naval forts, cannons, squares, and monuments in the same town and Port Louis, offer physical evidence of a slave and military past. Again, on the northwest coast, in the capital of Port Louis, the Aapravasi Ghat (Landing Place of the Indian Immigrants and Indentured Labourers), les Jardins de la Companie (the Company Gardens), the soldier barracks, the prison, and Koenig Tower also offer evidence of the island’s slave and colonial past. The scope of this chapter does not permit an overly detailed analysis of the particular ways in which each site of tangible heritage has been articulated in official heritage discourse to offer relatively uncritical accounts of Mauritian heritage. However, an effort is made to provide a global analysis, as the sites are pertinent to the thesis for complexity. Insofar as the social impact of early migrations to the island is concerned, historians and anthropologists studying Mauritius, in particular Vaughan and Eriksen, confirm that there was and has since been substantial intercultural communication and creolization.15 Both argue that identities were and are forged in the broader context of globalization and deterritorialization.16 This is most evident today in the lingua franca of Kreol, a dialect consisting of linguistic inputs from seventeenth-century and contemporary French, Malagasy, Swahili, Portuguese, and English. There are, interestingly, variations of Kreol across the southwest Indian Ocean, and a linguistic anthropologist would be able to trace the dialect’s various iterations by exploring historical migrations/ movements between the islands. Other languages and dialects abound in Mauritius: Urdu, Bhojpuri, and Mandarin are a few of many spoken by the islanders. As can be imagined, this adds to diversification, since languages articulate intellectual, moral, cultural, and historical distinctions that cannot easily be delinked from other “sources” of identity. Contemporary evolutions of language (again, generationally influenced) compound the matter, since younger people tend to “borrow” from a range of languages/dialects to form their own responsive and meaningful linguistic contribution. The contribution defines them as unique and yet part of a collective whose identity “sits” across previously defined ethnic boundaries. Then there is the culturally blended cuisine of Mauritius and the local dance of Sega, which combines East African and Arabic instruments (in the drums and ravanne), Indian dress (sans the overlay of the Sari), and Nguni call-andresponse technique in song composition. One might also argue that the Sega is

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a continuation of the Malagasy’s high regard for orality, evident in their speech making, or Kabary. Sega involves spontaneous composition and delivery of incisive social commentary, rhyme, and deployment of metaphor, humor, knowledge, and nostalgia.17 In essence, the historical and cultural overview offered here suggests that there is a deeply interwoven, mutually influencing, creolizing and globalizing set of identities in Mauritius. The process resulting in this heady mix is neither stable, linear, predictable, nor bounded. And yet, as I argue next, heritage managers in the national and international (that is, UNESCO) space continue to operate as if identity is delineable, manageable, and predictable, nominating and inscribing an ever-increasing number of World Heritage Sites (WHS) on UNESCO’s World Heritage List (WHL) and determining from afar how these sites should be “properly” managed in order to safeguard their “universal” value.

Managing Tourism, Heritage, and Identities Reflecting on the evolution of tourism in the global context and its relevance to the African continent, it has already been argued elsewhere that Western globalization has contributed to a rise in the number of international tourists seeking to relax and learn about new cultural practices and other forms of leisurely pursuits. In 2014 Mauritius earned US$1.45 billion from tourism.18 Initial investment in the industry in the 1970s came from a South African magnate, Sol Kerzner, who introduced his brand, Sun International, to the island. At this historical point, South Africa was buckling under the weight of an oppressive apartheid regime. International sanctions on the South African population in the 1980s, however, did not seem to deter a mostly wealthy white minority from holidaying in Mauritius. What is astonishing is that in the very period that South Africa (and in particular, black South Africa) was experiencing significant hardship and violent oppression, the Mauritius tourism board used the marketing tagline of “No Problem in Mauritius.” Looking back, it could be argued that the marketing campaign achieved two objectives. One was to highlight the fact that white South Africans (and other European descendants) could come to Mauritius knowing that it was not afflicted by the political troubles affecting other African countries. The other was to create the impression that Mauritius had solved its diversity management problems. It is not presently known exactly how white South Africans contributed to the shaping of the tourism experience in Mauritius, but what is clear is that further research on this will be necessary. However, a different perspective assists in alignment with contemporary,

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or at least recent perspectives on tourism. Although this literature is also vast, current thinking on the subject emphasizes the hierarchical nature of the business; the tendency for tourism to reproduce historical, colonial relations; and the effort of tourism authorities to control the gaze of tourists in a touristed landscape.19 The literature also reveals the profound contestation of heritage and its endurance into the present aestheticization of place for artistic and nostalgic consumption.20 Writing on the politics and geography of heritage, scholars argue that heritage is definitely a reinterpretation of the past. Ashworth reminds us that heritage is a delusion and that for the present its purpose is to achieve that warm, fuzzy feeling and space of comfort in an era of economic and political volatility.21 Scholars also argue that “the contents, interpretations and representations of the heritage resource are selected according to the demands of the present and, in turn, bequeathed to an imagined future.”22 Today there is recognition of the intersubjective nature of tourism and tourist places and the fact that tourists are reflective, politically inscribed, and historicized individuals engaging with tourist landscapes not only for recreational purposes but also for aesthetic appreciation, response to trauma, the evocation of nostalgia and learning about the past. Thus there may be an empowered minority, as alluded to in the introduction to this chapter, and this group would ostensibly contribute to the hierarchical and unequal process of tourism, searching for a phantasmagorical experience on the “magical” island.23 However, there would also be politically conscious, environmentally sensitive, and socially aware tourists. The literature recognizes and foregrounds evidence for this. Of relevance to this discussion is the fact that the same level of consciousness, engagement, particularity, and subjectivity is not afforded to those embedded in touristed landscapes in which world heritage has been identified. The temporality of their identity, the impact of globalization on perceptions of self, their situation as transnational subject citizens, and the unstable foundations upon which their identity is constructed are not taken into account. Instead, from the 1980s to the present day, the Mauritius Tourism Promotion Authority (MTPA) has foregrounded the recreational aspect of tourism on the island, and it, together with the government, continues to advance a multicultural, mosaic view of Mauritian society. By this I mean that the creolization mentioned earlier, so evident in the early history of Mauritius, seems to be conveniently forgotten. Instead, focus is placed on the role of tourism in generating Foreign Direct Investment and achieving diversification; focus is also placed on the systematic and judicious, logical planning and implementation of heritage management.

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Le Morne—Another Glimpse Today Mauritius consists of some 1.3 million people who speak many languages and share in four major religions. The Creoles mentioned previously live in various parts of the island, but a significant number (not established but observed) live along the west and south coasts in the shadow of the WHS of Le Morne mountain. In the same space and especially along the west and south coasts, one finds old French colonial homes that have been turned into opulent private hotels. There is also the invocation of a French colonial aesthetic, which is becoming useful to the recasting of colonialism as an ostensibly grand, brave enterprise by noble and strategic men. This endeavour is coupled with high-end and expensive Integrated Resorts Schemes (IRS) that are increasingly diminishing local access to the beach and sea. Le Morne village forms part of a WHS (inscribed in 2008) of natural and cultural significance in this corner of the island. It is described thus in the documentation prepared by Bakker and Odendaal in 2008: Le Morne Cultural Landscape is an exceptional testimony to maroonage or resistance to slavery in terms of the mountain being used as a fortress to shelter escaped slaves, with physical and oral evidence to support that use. Le Morne represents maroonage and its impact, which existed in many places around the world, and was demonstrated so effectively on le Morne mountain. It is a symbol of slaves’ fight for freedom, their suffering, and their sacrifice, all of which have relevance beyond its geographical location, to the countries from which the slaves came from—in particular the African mainland, Madagascar, India and South-east Asia—and represented by the Creole people of Mauritius and their shared memories and oral traditions.24 For decades after the abolition of slavery in 1835, the inhabitants worked in aqua-culture (fishing, trap-making, collecting seafood) and/or worked as laborers on the regional sugar plantations. As the “traditional” single-crop economy became redundant and a significant number of tourists came to the island from the European subcontinent, the Creoles in Le Morne sought to benefit from the industry. Indeed, nationally, from the 1980s, the industry grew tremendously, reaching the point where Mauritius was receiving in excess of one million tourists per year. The year-on-year increases in tourist arrivals produced the desired increase in tourism across other parts of the island, enabling a range of social development projects across the island. Along with the increase in tourism numbers came the requisite need to provide adequate infrastructure. Again, the scope of this chapter does not permit

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a much-desired foray into the implications of emergent tourism infrastructure and its impact on identity, community, exclusion, and hierarchy. Suffice it to say that the Mauritian government emphasized what it calls “high-end” tourism, which targets the wealthy and provides them with exclusive experiences in excluding settings. Along with this development came an emphasis on the need to revisit the past, review history, and restore justice. This, as has already been mentioned, led to the identification, nomination, and inscription of tangible heritages as a means of commemorating the past. In July 2015 the state of “development” in Le Morne was as it appeared in 2000 when I did my PhD fieldwork in Mauritius. Other than the inscription of Le Morne on the WHL and the presence of dedicated heritage personnel at the Le Morne Heritage Trust Fund (LMTF) seeking to map the mountain so as to culturally inscribe it (in order to maximize its earning potential), there were little or no visible developments in the town. And yet, beyond the village, in a clearing across the public beach, UNESCO and the government of Mauritius have erected a monument to commemorate slavery. One is able to look up from this site to view the imposing mountain of Le Morne itself. Part of what one sees in this part of the island dates back to historical events. After the election of the Mauritius’ Militant Movement (MMM) in 1982 on the votes of an emergent, aspirant younger generation of Mauritians, increased competition from emerging textile markets in Thailand and Korea, a downturn in the global price of sugar, increased environmental awareness, and (in 1999) a national riot that laid bare the ongoing reality of racial marginalization/segregation and poverty, Mauritians were forced into a nationwide introspection on the nature of identities on the island. Following this there was a call for the recognition, commemoration, and public articulation of slave and indentured history. Not everyone accepted or endorsed these courageous conversations. What ensued at the time was a series of government-initiated and -funded projects to identify, revalorize, reinstate, and reprofile cultural heritage. While the intentions of the many skilled revisionist historians, anthropologists, religious persons, and social commentators were in many ways noble, and attempted to diversify government rhetoric on tourism, heritage, and history, the results have not been entirely satisfying. Part of the dissatisfaction arises from the unprecedented attention and energy put into tangible heritage and monument preservation, and what appears to be a lamentable disregard for intangible cultural heritage, ironically (or perhaps not so ironically) a certain disregard for heritages “belonging” to those of slave descent. To be fair, heritage and the narrative of slavery were recognized and accounted for in the tangible commemoration of the past. But again, this was

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done in such an aesthetically pleasing manner that it obscured the true and traumatic narrative of enslavement. Second, conversations with people in Le Morne in 2015 revealed untapped talent, creativity, and profound integration in and understanding of the marine and social landscape. This part of the story, to be expanded elsewhere, suggests that a large part of the heritage narrative has been “managed” away, or filtered by experts. As intimated at the start of the discussion, the very particularities, complexities, contradictions, and richness of an integrated creolized heritage are nowhere to be found. What I saw even in the endeavour of the hardworking LMTF was emphasis on the mapping and charting of the physical landscape, almost as if it is inscribed space and place, the physical inscription of locality that establishes where one belongs.

Conclusion: Eloge à la Creolité It is said that historical experience informs/influences future action.25 In the case of Mauritius, one does not have to pinpoint or overly elaborate on what has happened in particular areas of the island. What one observes across the island generally offers significant insight into the particular challenges posed by hundreds of years of slavery and colonization. As has been briefly shown for Le Morne, historical circumstances, management choices, location, and the needs of the powerful determine how heritage is perceived, circumscribed, and represented. One can be certain that similar arguments have been made before, insofar as local/global politics of heritage are concerned. However, the argument is worth reiterating because a well-known saga of historical relations of power is being played out in Mauritius and continues to affect people’s meaningful engagement with their sense of self. If tourists experience the monument at Le Morne as yet another representation of the past, something they need to “tick off ” on their itinerary around the island (or perhaps in their bid to encounter World Heritages), the site where slaves committed suicide in the hope of securing freedom will be meaningless. However, that site remains deeply meaningful to Mauritians, and especially those recognizing their slave ancestry. Thus heritage and its management in Mauritius must be much more than the creation of monuments to commemorate and evoke a supposedly mutually agreed upon past. A more responsive heritage approach is needed, one that offers more nuanced, dynamic, and engaged representations that articulate the unstable, ever-changing, and creolized premise upon which heritages are based. The challenge is always at the interface, for it is there that things get messy and are contested, fought over, and obscured. Sys-

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tematically and continuously working at the interface, either in scholarship or in practice, is of course difficult to achieve, but as someone once said, nothing easy to achieve was ever worthwhile.

Notes 1. D. Lowenthal, Possessed by the Past: The Heritage Crusade and the Spoils of History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 5. 2. G. Marcus, “Ethnography in/of the World System: The Emergence of Multi-sited Ethnography,” Annual Review of Anthropology 24 (2005): 95–117. 3. L. Haring, “African Folklore and Creolization in the Indian Ocean islands,” Research in African Literatures 33, no. 3 (2003): 182–199. 4. I. Amadiume and A. An-N’aim, The Politics of Memory: Truth, Healing and Social Justice (London: Zed Books, 2000); S. Evers, “Expropriated from the Hereafter: The Fate of the Landless in the Southern Highlands of Madagascar,” Journal of Peasant Studies 33, no. 3 (2006): 413–444; M. Lambek, The Weight of the Past: Living with History in Mahajanga, Madagascar (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2002); R. Werbner, Memory in the Postcolony (London: Zed Books, 1998); D. Graeber, Lost People: Magic and the Legacy of Slavery in Madagascar (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2007). 5. F. Barth, Ethnic Groups and Boundaries: The Social Organisation of Culture Difference (Bergen: Universitetsforlaget, 1969); N. Garcia-Canclini, Hybrid Cultures: Strategies for Entering and Leaving Modernity (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1995). 6. B. Kirshenblatt-Gimblett, “Intangible Heritage and the Metacultural Production of Heritage,” Museum International 56, nos. 1/2 (2004): 52–66. 7. G. J. Ashworth, B. J. Graham, and J. E. Tunbridge, Pluralising Pasts: Heritage, Identity and Place in Multicultural Societies (London: Pluto, 2007). 8. R. Boswell, Representing Heritage in Zanzibar and Madagascar (Addis Ababa: Eclipse Press, 2011). 9. N. Ngomezulu, Nosipho, “Alter/native Nationhoods: How Digital Natives in Mauritius Construct Boundaries of belonging,” paper presented at the Current Anthropology Research Seminars (CARS), 6 May 2014, Rhodes University Grahamstown. 10. A. Mbembe, On the Postcolony (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001). 11. N. Papastergiadis, The Turbulence of Migration, Globalization, Deterritorialization, and Hybridity (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2000); M. Fischer, “Emergent Forms of Life: Anthropologists of Late or Postmodernities,” Annual Review of Anthropology 28 (1999): 455–479. 12. R. Allen, “Licentious and Unbridled Proceedings: The Illegal Slave Trade to Mauritius and the Seychelles during the Early 19th Century,” Journal of African History 42 (2001): 91–116; E. Alpers, “Indian Ocean Africa: The Island Factor,” Emergences 10, no. 2 (2000): 73–86; V. Teelock, Bitter Sugar, Sugar and Slavery in 19th Century Mauritius (Réduit: Mahatma Gandhi Institute, 1998). 13. R. Allen, “Licentious and Unbridled Proceedings: The Illegal Slave Trade to Mauritius and the Seychelles during the Early 19th Century,” Journal of African History 42 (2001): 91–116. 14. L. Sharp, “Playboy Princely Spirits of Madagascar: Possession as Youthful Commentary and Social Critique,” Anthropological Quarterly 68, no. 2 (1995): 75–88. 15. M. Vaughan, Creating Creole Island: Slavery in Eighteenth Century Mauritius (Durham,

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NC: Duke University Press, 2005); T. H. Eriksen, “Tu dimunn pu vine Kreol,” in Revi Kiltir Kreol (Bell Village, Port Louis: Nelson Mandela Centre for African Culture, 1999). 16. A. Appadurai, “The Production of Locality,” in Counterworks: Managing the Diversity of Knowledge, ed. R. Fardon (London: Routledge, 1995), 204–225; M. Augé, An Anthropology for Contemporaneous Worlds (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1999). 17. R. Boswell, Le Malaise Creole: Ethnic Identity in Mauritius (Oxford: Berghahn, 2006). 18. http://www.statista.com/statistics/261754/international-tourism-receipts-of-african-countries/. 19. J. Urry, The Tourist Gaze: Leisure and Travel in Contemporary Societies (London: Sage, 1990). 20. D. Timothy and G. P. Nyaupane, “The Politics of Heritage,” in Cultural Heritage and Tourism in the Developing World (London: Routledge, 2009), 42–56. 21. G. J. Ashworth, “Heritage: Definitions, Delusions and Dissonances,” Keynote lecture, Heritage 2008, International Conference: World Heritage and Sustainable Development, 7–8 May 2008, Foz Coa, Portugal. 22. Ashworth, Graham, and Tunbridge, Pluralising Pasts, 8. 23. R. Boswell, “Integrating Leisure: The Case of Integrated Resorts Scheme in Mauritius,” Africa Insight 38, no. 1 (2008): 11–23. 24. K. Bakker and F. Odendaal, The Le Morne Cultural Landscape, 2, http://www.international.icomos.org/quebec2008/cd/toindex/77_pdf/77-nv6H-63.pdf. 25. J. Bernabé, P. Chamoiseau, and R. Confiant, Éloge à la Créolité (Paris: Gallimard, 1989).

11 � Shared Identities through Cross-Border Cultural Tourism

LEE JOLLIFFE

Cultural tourism is alive in the eastern North American transborder Passamaquoddy region of Maine, USA, and New Brunswick, Canada. Incorporating examples of binational arts and tourism-related projects, this chapter examines how heritage is being employed to celebrate the area’s shared identity through cultural tourism. In areas where partnership is encouraged, a trend is for authorities in bordering jurisdictions to collaborate on the development of tourism.1 The promotion of a border destination region requires the involvement of actors from all relevant jurisdictions.2 The cross-border partnership of international parks along the US-Canada border is an example of the kind of collaboration that is required for binational heritage initiatives.3 This chapter extends previous research that has focused on various aspects of border tourism, and it does this by studying cultural tourism and identity in a specific cross-border region. Such regions often have similar cultures and heritages, yet the nature of border crossings and regulations can often inhibit joint initiatives. Partnerships, on the other hand, can be aimed at breaking down these barriers. The methodology for this chapter includes a literature review, identification of instances of cross-border cultural tourism, and several descriptive case studies in the chosen Passamaquoddy region of Maine and New Brunswick. The literature review provides a context for the study of cross-border cultural tourism, identifying issues and concerns in developing this type of tourism across borders. The initial review of cultural tourism here identifies issues in the development of cultural tourism across the border in terms of experiences, product types, and partnerships. The case studies of Two Countries One Bay: The Artsipelago Studio Tour and the International Sculpture Trail further explore the issues that emerged through the identification cases of cross-border cultural tourism in the region. The case studies were developed through documentary review, interviews, and

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participant observation. The case study methodology is particularly appropriate here as the topic is broadly defined, covers contextual conditions, and relies on multiple, not singular sources of information.4 The aim of using the case studies on a comparative basis is to develop new insights into the phenomenon of crossborder cultural tourism and shared identities. Although a border can be defined as a boundary between two sovereign nations, the term “border communities” refers to those who work and live around the border.5 Collectively, the communities grouped around a border may be considered a cross-border region, and the place itself, a destination. Border communities could also be termed as binational settlements that mirror each other across an international boundary, as they very often have shared histories, geographies, and cultural characteristics. While sometimes acting as attractions,6 borders can also be characterized as gateways or entry points, and, in terms of tourism borders, borderlands are what Dallen Timothy has termed “unlikely tourism destinations.”7 Certain types of tourism activity tend to take place around borders. Some border tourism is encouraged by the lure of either a price or regulatory advantage—for example, as in the case of cross-border shopping between Canada and the United States,8 fuel tourism in Switzerland,9 prostitution in Southern Thailand,10 or border casino developments at a number of locations.11 In other cases border tourism is more culturally motivated, or encouraged by shared heritage resources, such as international parks and historic sites—for instance, along the US-Canada border12—or the clustering of heritage resources along a border, such as exists along the US-Mexican border.13 Border tourism is defined as consisting of intensive patterns of tourism visitation between adjoining countries, with a number of academics noting that this phenomenon requires more attention by scholars, given that it is an important sociological, anthropological, and spatial phenomenon.14 Some authors have identified tourism as becoming more important to border areas, but suggest that the subject deserves more attention from academics and practitioners if it is to be effectively planned and promoted.15 Indeed, Wachowiak and Engels go further and suggest that the relationship between borders and tourism had been largely ignored in earlier tourism research, with much of the work focused on opportunities and problems related to border situations in tourism destinations.16

Cross-Border Tourism Timothy addressed the recognition of the nature of cross-border tourism, indicating that the more traditional role of boundaries as barriers has been

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breached in both the material and conceptual/mental sense, and that tourism studies are moving to join other disciplines in reassessing the role(s) of borders in the new globalized world.17 Sofield further provided an overview of border tourism and communities, suggesting that the term “cross-border” is very often employed in studies of tourism around the border and/or involves crossing the border.18 Related studies have varied in focus—for example, crossborder shopping between Canada and the United States examined by Timothy and Butler,19 and by Di Matteo and Di Matteo,20 or the management of international parks along the US-Canada border profiled by Timothy.21 In terms of tourism, borders are often viewed by authors as constraints, although there is considerable potential for the development of cross-border tourism regions and destinations.22 Studying heritage tourism clusters along the Mexico-US border Blasco et al. found five main factors influencing cross-border destination making, including institutional similarity, bridging actors, leadership and entrepreneurial capabilities, close relationships, and serendipity.23

Cultural Tourism Timothy and Boyd consider the terms “cultural tourism,” “heritage tourism,” and “arts tourism” to be almost interchangeable.24 Their concept of the heritage spectrum encompasses the various forms of heritage landscapes (natural/ rural/cultural/urban), heritage tourism (heritage tourism/ecotourism/cultural tourism/urban tourism), and heritage attractions (parks/historic sites/architecture/theme parks).25 In addition, both tangible and intangible forms of cultural expression, including the fine and performing arts, need to be assembled into products in order to be experienced by tourists.26 Methods of bundling can include festivals, events, performances, tours (guided and self-guided), exhibitions, and courses; these assembled products can encourage forms of crossborder cultural tourism. Also essential for the development of cultural tourism is the concept of cultural routes, which includes cultural paths, trails, and itineraries that may occur irrespective of national borders.27

Heritage Identity Frew and White examined the overlapping areas between the domains of tourism and identities in a national context, showing how tourism authorities in different parts of the world have used national identity to promote their regions.28 The authors conclude that the connection between tourism and national identity is apparent via the promotional activities of tourism authorities in relation to both cultural and heritage activities. The authors suggest:

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The strategic development of such tourism products may have the potential to enhance a region both economically and socially and to create high levels of post-trip satisfaction among visitors, leading to repeat visits and positive word of mouth recommendations.29 In a cross-border binational situation there may be differing national identities, from which there are common characteristics that combined provide the identity of the destination region or area. These are the “borderlands” referred to by Timothy.30

Place Narrative The unique story of a place can have local appeal, developing a sense of community around a shared history, and can in addition play a role in destination development and marketing. A number of authors have acknowledged the power of narrative in shaping places as tourist destinations. Jamal and Hill31 discuss the role of place, or placeness, in developing authenticity in cultural and heritage tourism, while Graham and Howard32 observe that heritage is one of the main means of establishing identity. Tourism destinations have shared meanings and identities, and in terms of cultural tourism border communities and regions offer a thought-provoking subject of study. These cross-border regions, located in differing political jurisdictions, often have cultures, communities, and heritage assets that are similar, yet different, and can potentially be bundled together to create tourism experiences that give visitors insights into binational identities. As Saxena and Ilbery indicate in their study of tourism along the Wales-England border, some cross-border situations can be described as having a fluid place identity.33 The authors also observe that in cross-border situations locally embedded cultural events can reinforce a sense of collective identity and can also become a part of the tourism product.

Innovation In border situations there is the possibility of innovation in tourism, discussed by Weidenfeld, as being influenced by cross-border contexts.34 In terms of cultural tourism, innovation could be reflected in new ways of communication or in the assembly of new products. Knowledge diffusion leading to innovation can be found either on a geographical or a sectorial basis. Tourism innovation requires the participation of a number of interdependent actors from various sectors, including the government and volunteer and business groups.35 This refers back to the necessary ingredients for the development of cross-border tourism

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regions that include institutional similarity, bridging activities, and entrepreneurship.36 Both governments and not-for-profit groups in border regions can initiate agreements and projects that encourage the bridging of the initiatives of the various actors whose involvement is necessary for the creation of crossborder cultural tourism products and experiences. Some cross-border tourism destination regions have found that the promotion of their region requires actor involvement from all relevant authorities.37

Study Context The Canadian province of New Brunswick and the American state of Maine span, in part, the St. Croix River and Passamaquoddy Bay at the mouth of the river. The border is what Sofield refers to as a material geopolitical boundary, marked as it is by the natural feature of the 71-mile-long (114 km) St. Croix River, which flows into Passamaquoddy Bay.38 A Culture Pass Land Map shows the close proximity of the two bordering jurisdictions in Maine and New Brunswick (Figure 11.1). The river is both historically and culturally important, as it was part of an early trade route to the interior of both Maine and New Brunswick from the Atlantic Ocean. The cultural context of the border communities is therefore intertwined, due to this shared history.

Figure 11.1. Culture Pass Land Map. Reproduced courtesy of the Tides Institute and Museum of Art, Eastport, Maine.

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On both sides of the border art and culture are recognized as being of benefit to the community, and a 2010 Maine–New Brunswick cultural agreement included the objective of increasing business, including cross-border cultural tourism.39 A study of the economic impact of Maine museums indicates that they are significant economic drivers, with one in five visitors surveyed indicating that the museum visit was the reason for their trip and associated spending.40 The Two Nation Vacation initiative of the Maine Office of Tourism and New Brunswick Tourism, Heritage and Culture is aimed at increasing visitation, in both directions, across the border.41 Institutions at the subnational (state/province) levels on both sides of the border play a role in developing cross-border cultural tourism. An example is the Tides Institute and Museum of Art in Eastport, Maine, whose collection and interpretation mandate includes the entire cross-border region, as embodied in its mission of strengthening cultural ties within the greater Passamaquoddy region, between New England and the Atlantic Provinces, and to the wider world.42 Centers such as the Tides Institute can serve to reinforce cultural identity. Other cross-border initiatives related to cultural tourism in the region are listed in Table 11.1.

Table 11.1. Institutional initiatives in cross-border cultural tourism Site and Location

Initiative

Operators/Partners

Roosevelt Campebello, Campebello Island, Canada

International Park

Joint USA/Canada commission

La Croix Island, Maine

International Park

National Parks Service (USA) and Parks Canada (Canada)

Two Nation Vacation: Visit Maine and New Brunswick, Maine and New Brunswick

Tourism Product Development/ Promotion

Maine Office of Tourism (USA) and New Brunswick Tourism, Heritage and Culture (Canada)

International Sculpture Trial, Maine and New Brunswick

Sculpture Trail

Schoodic International Sculpture Symposium, Maine (USA) and Sculpture Saint John, New Brunswick (Canada)

Artsipelago Project and Two Countries One Bay: Artsipelago Studio Tour

Cultural Calendar and Signature Studio Tour Event

Tides Institute, Eastport Maine (USA) and partners across the region.

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The cases of the two international parks as cross-border partnerships have been previously examined in the literature in some detail.43 From the list of cases in Table 11.1 two cultural tourism products that span the border have been selected for detailed case study development in this chapter, Two Countries One Bay: The Artsipelago Studio Tour and the International Sculpture Trail. The two cases chosen share a number of criteria. They both provide an interactive cultural tourism experience that spans both sides of the border, involving both artists and cultural institution partners across the border with the support of cultural and/or tourism agencies. In addition, they represent two differing types of bundled cultural tourism products, a studio tour and a sculpture trail. These projects also share the characteristic of acting as communication venues and places of expression for the shared identity of the cross-border region.

Two Countries One Bay: The Artsipelago Studio Tour The Two Countries One Bay Art Studio Tour was initially established in 2007. By 2015 the name had transitioned to the Two Countries One Bay: The Archipelago Studio Tour, in line with the larger Artsipelago project described later within this case. The route for this studio event encompasses the shores of Passamaquoddy Bay, where the St. Croix River that divides Maine and New Brunswick enters the Bay of Fundy. This annual self-guided studio tour allows the visitor to explore the artist studios of the cross-border region and to meet the artists as they work, and throughout much of the tour in this coastal area, it is possible to view the other country across the river. A brochure produced for the Third Annual 2009 Two Countries One Bay Art Studio Tour also extended the reach of the studio tour by providing a year-round guide, also describing the tour as “an international adventure not to be missed.”44 This 2009 brochure promoted travel by land and sea to visit more than forty-five American, Canadian, and Passamaquoddy artist studios and cultural organizations. As Wallace later indicated,45 to visit more than fifty artists visitors one must take a ferry, cross an international bridge, and drive over 200 kilometers. However, according to Wallace,46 the tour provides a different perspective of the now high-security USCanada border as the artists are connected by their creativity, passion, isolation, and love of the land. This is surely reflective of the shared cultural identity that is transmitted to visitors through the studio tour as a cultural tourism product. The bundling of opportunities for visitors to experience art in an event means that some extra activity is promised beyond the everyday experience of viewing art, for example, in a gallery setting.47 Products, such as studio tours, therefore offer tourists an opportunity to meet artists at their workplace, during a

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prescribed period, and with the use of a studio tour map visitors may follow the map or pick and choose locations to visit, creating their own routes. Wallace suggests that studio tours allow people to see art created by artists in their studio settings, which is a more informal way of viewing and experiencing art, allowing for dialogue between the artists and visitors.48 Being able to experience art on both sides of the border reflects the fluidity of place identity inherent in some cross-border situations, such as is the case with integrated rural tourism in the English-Welsh border region.49 The potential for a place-based narrative experience is mapped out for visitors, contributing to the authenticity of the cross-border cultural tourism experience. For the establishment of the Two Countries One Bay event in 2007, the role of partners on both sides of the border was critical, including cultural agencies, artists, as well as sponsoring restaurants and accommodations. The Maine Office of Tourism, the Maine Arts Commission, the province of New Brunswick, and East Coast Ferries Ltd. (which links several of the islands in the region) were also sponsors. In 2015 the Two Countries One Bay event as part of the Artsipelago project had an impressive list of sponsors, according to information on the project’s website.50 This represents the participation of different types of actor groups found in cross-border situations consisting of tourists, gatekeepers (individuals/agencies that develop the message, and market and promote information to tourists), businesses (artists), resource controllers (not-for-profit sector), and residents (artists).51 The geographic spread of sponsors of the event across the border seems to be quite comprehensive and balanced. However, on closer examination there appears to be more distinct support from the Maine side of the border, for example, with the involvement of local Chambers of Commerce and a community college, with parallel organizations on the New Brunswick side not on the sponsor list. This perhaps also reflects the fact that the leadership for the project is based in Maine. The Two Countries One Bay event now exists as a part of the larger Artsipelago project. According to the organizers, the name of the project refers to the “distinctive arts and culture” of a group of islands, peninsulas, and adjacent areas located on the international Maine–New Brunswick border region, historically known as the Passamaquoddy region.52 The overall goal of the Artsipelago project is to act as an information source for the cultural activities of the crossborder region. In 2012 Artsipelago received a US$250,000 grant from ArtPlace America, a funding program that is a ten-year collaboration of a number of agencies (foundations, federal, and financial) working to centrally position arts and culture as a core sector of community planning and development. ArtPlace has the objective of helping to strengthen the social, physical, and economic

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fabric of communities.53 The Artsipelago project therefore has a number of components, including the Two Countries One Bay: The Artsipelago Studio Tour. The larger Artsipelago project (spearheaded by the Tides Institute) provides a Culture Pass (Guide) (see Figure 11.1) to the international Passamaquoddy region of Maine and New Brunswick. The Artsipelago Passport aspect of the project is essentially an online calendar/guide (Culture Pass) that gathers together information on the cultural events in the cross-border region and thus makes it available for locals and visitors. In the geographically dispersed crossborder region rural coastal area, such an online diary is a valuable tool for event planners, as in the similar case of dEALAN, a project in the Isle of Skye and the neighboring Lochalsh area, Scotland, which included an “Anti-clash Diary,” an event booking calendar designed to avoid clashes in events.54 The role of cultural agencies in encouraging cooperation among art-related entities is thus vital in rural coastal regions such as the Passamaquoddy that express their identities through the arts.

The International Sculpture Trail The International Sculpture Trail is a partnership of the Schoodic International Sculpture Symposium (SISS) in Maine and Sculpture Saint John (SSJ) in New Brunswick, which, by linking together the sculptures created by these events and installed at public sites, has created a trail of sculptures that spans the international border. The partners have very successfully employed the technique of bundling together heritage products into a cultural tourism product.55 The first map for the International Sculpture Trail was issued in 2013 and incorporated the twenty-seven sculptures that had been produced as of that date by the SISS (Maine), together with the seven sculptures that had been produced by SSJ (New Brunswick).56 Funding assistance for map production was secured from the province of New Brunswick. Diana Alexander, of SSJ, indicated: We believe the international sculpture trail, of 33 impressive works of public art, has significant tourism potential, for both Maine and New Brunswick and will continue to grow as more sculptures are added. Based on this we hope to start marketing this exciting trail beginning with a traditional fold out map and an app for smart phone or tablet users. This will tie in nicely to a concept being promoted as the Two Nation Vacation.57 A second map for the project, with an expanded list of sculptures (the total is now fifty, made up of thirty-four in Maine and sixteen in New Brunswick), is in preparation as of 2015, and an app for the trail has been developed.

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This initiative demonstrates the cross-border influence in the arts as well as cooperation in promoting and marketing the arts for tourism. The SISS was in fact a major influence in the establishment of a similar type of event in New Brunswick, marketed as SSJ but incorporated as the New Brunswick International Sculpture Symposium. In an interview Diana Alexander acknowledged that SISS was the inspiration of the SSJ event, noting that advice had been provided to them by the artistic director of SISS, Jesse Salisbury. The influence of the SISS on the establishment of the SSJ event could be therefore seen as a successful case of cross-border innovation.58 Leadership for the production of the International Sculpture Trail maps has come from the New Brunswick International Sculpture Symposium Incorporated; the province of New Brunswick supported the organization that operates the SSJ event and the print run for the first map. The New Brunswick organization has subsequently developed an app that will parallel the sculpture trail map brochures. The director of SSJ has acknowledged that the cross-border nature and appeal of the trail have been an asset in terms of attracting funding and sponsorship for the project. From the perspective of the provincial tourism department (New Brunswick) the International Sculpture Trail is also an asset in terms of building products within the joint (Maine–New Brunswick) Two Nation Vacation initiative. Plans are in place to increase the number of sculptures on the trail as a result of future sculpture symposiums. On the Canadian side the SSJ organization has an aim of having over thirty-five sculptures in place by 2020. In addition to the joint map for the International Sculpture Trail, the Mainebased SSIS symposium also has its own Sculpture Tour map/brochure, which acts as a self-guided tour of the thirty-four stone sculptures created during the five symposiums that were held from 2007 to 2014. Locations and descriptions are also found online linked to Google Maps. The sculptures on the International Sculpture Trail reflect the physical geography and the natural resources of the region. The sculptures produced during the sculpture symposiums are placed in local communities that have sponsored the creation of these works. Granite that is used for the sculptures is one of the natural resources of the cross-border Passamaquoddy area, and had traditionally been used for buildings and tombstones. For example, Saint George, New Brunswick, is known as “The Granite Town” for its once-thriving granite industry in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. However, although Maine still has operating quarries, New Brunswick does not, although stones are still available through a disused quarry. Maine now has the Maine Granite Industry Historical Society, which aims to promote the history, practices, and trade of the traditional granite quarry industry. The use of granite in the sculptures on both the Maine and New

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Brunswick sides of the border is a way of acknowledging, and celebrating, the shared heritage of quarrying and production from granite.

Discussion Visitors are experiencing the shared identity of the cross-border Passamaquoddy region through a variety of types of cultural tourism products (ranging, for example, from events to tours to trail visits) that are created and facilitated by collaboration and partnerships across the border. The examples above embody aspects of the principles of cultural tourism partnerships outlined by McKercher and du Cros,59 and cross-border interaction described by Saxena and Ilbery.60 These principles are also reflected in the Maine–New Brunswick cultural initiative memorandum of understanding (2010) in which the two jurisdictions agreed to cooperate on cultural initiatives.61 This agreement is the foundation for a number of initiatives, including the Two Nation Vacation, which promotes cross-border tourism. However, the logistics of crossing the border may in some instances act as a barrier for the further development of the types of cross-border cultural tourism profiled here. Visitors to Maine from Canada must comply with the regulations of US Customs and Border Protection, and those entering Canada from Maine must obey the regulations of the Canada Border Services Agency. In both cases passports are required, and for visitors from some countries visas may be also necessary. The currencies are different: Maine uses the US dollar and New Brunswick the Canadian dollar. The fluctuation in the exchange rate between the two currencies may also at particular points in time either encourage or discourage cross-border visitation and spending in either direction. There is also a time difference, as Eastern Time (ET) in Maine is one hour behind Atlantic Time (AT) in New Brunswick. For those purchasing arts and crafts as souvenirs, there are also differing customs requirements—for example, artworks may be taken from Canada into the United States on a duty-free basis, but when taken from Maine into New Brunswick they must be declared and may be subject to duty. In this region, which identifies itself with a common geography and cultural characteristics, to some extent the agreements and partnerships outlined in this chapter can contribute to diminishing or overcoming the barrier effect of the US-Canada border. In particular, the 2010 Maine–New Brunswick cultural agreement has had the specific objective of “simplifying and streamlining border-crossing processes for artists, performers, cultural institutions and cultural businesses.”62 It is evident that the identity of the cross-border Passamaquoddy

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region is expressed and reinforced through the cultural initiatives and experiences that have been developed by a number of specific projects. These products often connect the producers (artists) with the consumers (locals and visitors) in either experiential or natural settings. However, the geographical locale is also important, in that while frequently isolated due to weather for part of the year, the region has attracted many artists, and the work they produce can be experienced throughout the year to provide a framework for connecting both artists and consumers.63 The two cases presented of the Two Countries One Bay: The Artsipelago Studio Tour and the International Sculpture Trail share certain characteristics in terms of partnerships, bundling of resources and experiences, and geography. Partners have been able to share resources, drawing on various funding sources, often from one side of the border that benefits cultural tourism initiatives across the border. Experiences in developing cultural products have therefore been certainly shared across the border, reflecting the place fluidity that other authors have found in such situations.64 Geographically, both the studio tour and the sculpture trail are linear cultural routes that link resources to each other, making up a bundled cultural tourism product that is accessible to both locals and visitors.65 Accessibility is, however, not comparable; the studio tour is only accessible when artists’ studios are open (either on a dedicated annual open week-end of using the tour map by chance or appointment at other times), although the existence of a studio tour map may encourage visitors to seek out artists at other times. However, the two cases also differ somewhat in terms of the influence and drivers of these cross-border identity projects. The Two Countries One Bay event (and the subsequent Artsipelago project) appears to be more driven from the Maine side, with the International Sculpture Trail led from the New Brunswick side, although the SSJ has been greatly influenced by the Maine SISS event, both in terms of establishment and development of the event. The situation of both the Two Countries One Bay event and the International Sculpture Trail certainly reflects cross-border innovation in tourism that would be worthy of future study.66 Through cultural tourism initiatives it is evident that ideas and identities are being shared across an international border, creating experiences whereby these identities can be shared with locals and visitors, and then successfully disseminated to others.

Conclusion This chapter has provided some insights into how heritage identities are developed and reflected in cultural tourism in a cross-border region. It has been

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found that the key factors of identity making in the binational region studied are the role of institutions and partners in the formation of effective partnerships. The heritage identity of the region studied is expressed in the initiatives that have resulted in cross-border cultural tourism products and experiences, such as the Two Countries One Bay Studio Tour and the International Sculpture Trail. There are also cross-border influences in terms of the development of these projects that create cultural tourism products, with cultural projects and institutions in either jurisdiction taking the lead or providing an example or model (as in the case of the SSIS event). The fluidity of place across the border provides a nurturing climate for the emergence of distinctive cultural tourism products, such as the two profiled in this chapter, which represent and convey the identity of the cross-border region. In addition, a key factor in the success of these products is that the governments of both Maine and New Brunswick, at least from the policy perspective, and the initiatives of their respective tourism departments, are united in their support for cross-border cultural tourism initiatives. In this they are no doubt influenced by the potential they see for developing the cross-border region as a tourism destination, attracting increasing numbers of cultural tourists, and increasing visitor revenue across the border region as reflected by their Two Nation Vacation initiative.

Notes 1. D. J. Timothy, “Political Boundaries and Tourism: Borders as Tourist Attractions,” Tourism Management 16, no. 7 (1995): 525–532. 2. T. Studzieniecki and T. Mazurek, “How to Promote a Cross-Border Region as a Tourism Destination: The Case Study of the Bug Euroregion,” Tourism Review of AIEST—International Association of Scientific Experts in Tourism 62, no. 1 (2007): 34–38. 3. D. J. Timothy, “Cross-Border Partnership in Tourism Resource Management: International Parks along the US-Canada Border,” Journal of Sustainable Tourism 7, nos. 3/4 (1999): 182–205. 4. Ibid. 5. T. H. B. Sofield, “Border Tourism and Border Communities: An Overview,” Tourism Geographies 8, no. 2 (1 May 2006): 102–121. 6. Timothy, “Political Boundaries and Tourism.” 7. D. J. Timothy, “Borderlands: An Unlikely Tourist Destination,” IBRU Boundary and Security Bulletin 8, no. 1 (2000): 57 (57–65). 8. D. J. Timothy and R. W. Butler, “Cross-Border Shopping: A North American Perspective,” Annals of Tourism Research 22, no. 1 (1995): 16–34. 9. S. Banfi, M. Filippini, and L. C. Hunt, “Fuel Tourism in Border Regions: The Case of Switzerland,” Energy Economics 27, no. 5 (2005): 689–707. 10. M. Askew and E. Cohen, “Pilgrimage and Prostitution: Contrasting Modes of Border Tourism in Lower South Thailand,” Tourism Recreation Research 29, no. 2 (2004): 89–104.

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11. H. Wachowiak and D. Engels, “Academic Contributions on Cross-Border Issues in Tourism around the World: A Commentary International Literature Bibliography,” Tourism and Borders: Contemporary Issues, Policies and International Research (2006): 149–265. 12. Timothy, “Cross-Border Partnership in Tourism Resource Management.” 13. D. Blasco, J. Guia, and L. Prats, “Heritage Tourism Clusters along the Borders of Mexico,” Journal of Heritage Tourism 9, no. 1 (2013): 51–67. 14. Askew and Cohen, “Pilgrimage and Prostitution.” 15. Sofield, “Border Tourism.” 16. Wachowiak and Engels, “Academic Contributions on Cross-Border Issues in Tourism.” 17. Timothy, “Political Boundaries and Tourism.” 18. Sofield, “Border Tourism.” 19. Timothy, “Cross-Border Partnership in Tourism Resource Management.” 20. L. Di Matteo and R. Di Matteo, “An Analysis of Canadian Cross-Border Travel,” Annals of Tourism Research 23, no. 1 (1996): 103–122. 21. Timothy, “Cross-Border Partnership in Tourism Resource Management.” 22. Ibid. 23. Blasco, Guia, and Prats, “Heritage Tourism Clusters.” 24. D. J. Timothy and S. W. Boyd, Heritage Tourism (London: Pearson Education, 2003). 25. Ibid. 26. B. McKercher and H. du Cros, Cultural Tourism: The Partnership between Tourism and Cultural Heritage Management (London: Haworth Hospitality Press, 2002). 27. D. J. Timothy and S. W. Boyd, Tourism and Trails: Cultural, Ecological and Management Issues, vol. 64 (Bristol: Channel View, 2014). 28. E. Frew and L. White, Tourism and National Identity: An International Perspective (London: Taylor & Francis, 2011). 29. Ibid., 211. 30. Timothy, “Borderlands.” 31. T. Jamal and S. Hill, “Developing a Framework for Indicators of Authenticity: The Place and Space of Cultural and Heritage Tourism,” Asia Pacific Journal of Tourism Research 9, no. 4 (1 December 2004): 353–372. 32. B. Graham and P. Howard, “Heritage and Identity,” in The Ashgate Research Companion to Heritage and Identity, ed. B. Graham and P. Howard (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2008), 1–15. 33. G. Saxena and B. Ilbery, “Developing Integrated Rural Tourism: Actor Practices in the English/Welsh Border,” RUST Journal of Rural Studies 26, no. 3 (2010): 260–271. 34. A. Weidenfeld, “Tourism and Cross Border Regional Innovation Systems,” Annals of Tourism Research 42 (July 2013): 191–213. 35. Ibid. 36. Blasco, Guia, and Prats, “Heritage Tourism Clusters.” 37. Studzieniecki and Mazurek, “How to Promote a Cross-Border Region as a Tourism Destination.” 38. Sofield, “Border Tourism.” 39. State of Maine and Province of New Brunswick, Memorandum of Understanding between The State of Maine and The Province of New Brunswick to Enhance the Mutual Benefits of Maine/New Brunswick Cultural Relations, 2010, http://www.gnb.ca/0131/pdf/a/Signed_MaineNB_MOU.pdf.

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40. C. Lawton and L. Rowe, “Maine Museums: An Economic Impact Study, 2010,” n.d. 41. “Two Nation Vacation,” n.d., http://www.two-nation-vacation.com/. 42. Ibid. 43. Timothy, “Cross-Border Partnership in Tourism Resource Management.” 44. Tides Institute and Museum of Art, “Third Annual 2009 Two Countries One Bay Art Studio Tour Map and Year Round Guide,” 2009. 45. J. Wallace, “Art Off the Grid,” Saltscapes (September/October 2010). 46. Ibid. 47. H. du Cros and L. Jolliffe, “Bundling the Arts for Tourism to Complement Urban Heritage Tourist Experiences in Asia,” Journal of Heritage Tourism 6, no. 3 (2011): 181–195. 48. Wallace, “Art Off the Grid.” 49. Saxena and Ilbery, “Developing Integrated Rural Tourism.” 50. “Tides Institute and Museum of Art,” n.d., http://tidesinstitute.org/home.html. 51. Saxena and Ilbery, “Developing Integrated Rural Tourism.” 52. State of Maine and Province of New Brunswick, Memorandum of Understanding. 53. ArtsPlace, “Artsipelago,” Tides Institute of Art: Artsipelago, 12 December 2013, http:// www.artplaceamerica.org/grantee/artsipelago/blog/tides-institute-museum-art-artsipelago. 54. L. Jolliffe and T. Baum, “Event Tourism Partnership Evolution: Evidence from the Highlands of Scotland,” Tourism Today 4 (2004): 7–20. 55. Weidenfeld, “Tourism,” 191–213. 56. D. Alexander, “International Sculpture Trail,” Schoodic International Sculpture Symposium Newsletter (Spring 2013). 57. Ibid., 2. 58. Weidenfeld, “Tourism.” 59. McKercher and du Cros, Cultural Tourism. 60. Saxena and Ilbery, “Developing Integrated Rural Tourism.” 61. State of Maine and Province of New Brunswick, Memorandum of Understanding. 62. Ibid. 63. Wallace, “Art Off the Grid.” 64. Saxena and Ilbery, “Developing Integrated Rural Tourism.” 65. Timothy and Boyd, Tourism and Trails. 66. Weidenfeld, “Tourism.”

12 � The Place of History Heritage, Tourism, and Community in Derry/Londonderry

GLENN HOOPER

While periodic disturbances and acts of violence have peppered the Northern Irish landscape since the Good Friday Agreement was signed on 10 April 1998, the peace has held, and indeed certain cultural transformations have not only gained traction, but have had a significant impact upon translating community isolation into something approximating regeneration and uplift. What is especially interesting about these changes is that it is within the heritage and museum sectors, often regarded as a repository of cultural capital and therefore the natural preserve of the professional and the educated, that such changes are most evident. In the city of Derry, known for its politics and its conflicts, a place that has been walled and besieged and a somewhat unlikely cultural venue, heritage has been liberating, sometimes literally so. At the height of the Troubles the city had its fair share of no-go areas and barricades, checkpoints and cordons, all of which stifled movement and access. Soldiers were often sequestered within barracks, and police within stations, but for the people themselves the sense of containment was even greater: segregated within streets, often unable to leave their homes, these were communities that existed in a state of intergenerational confinement. While it would be both naive and misleading to suggest that the city is now free of discordance, that there is smooth and open movement, there is a nevertheless definite sense of heightened circulation. Where previously there was stasis, there is now mobility. Where it once seemed as though residents moved little beyond the limits of their estate or local area, there is evidence to suggest elevated levels of exploration, and also greater degrees of confidence about the dynamics of urban engagement. This chapter examines the development of heritage and tourism attractions in Derry/Londonderry, but it considers them in the context of community par-

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ticipation and regeneration and, just as important, as part of a renewed strategy of narrative reengagement in a postconflict society. Drawing on heritage-frombelow critiques as appropriate, this chapter discusses a number of sites, some recently refurbished, some closed, some awaiting the move to new premises, but all of which have contributed to a steadily emergent heritage and tourism narrative of considerable import for the city and its citizens. The chapter begins by discussing a number of regeneration efforts that have taken place in the city, before considering the emergence of current tourism strategies, largely developed in response to the establishment of the Tower Museum, which opened in 1992 and which has been facilitated since that date by the city council. Following this I explore the wider heritage offer that has been subsequently developed by the council and attempt to situate it within the context of the rise of the heritage industry more generally. A particular emphasis in this final section also focuses on the ways in which local communities have responded to this upsurge of interest in heritage, what facilities they have put in place by way of sharing their own stories and interpretations, and their reasons for doing so.

City Regeneration The decline of British and Irish cities throughout the 1970s and 1980s has been attributed to a number of factors, including globalization and increasingly competitive markets, growing labor unrest, as well as unsuitable and deteriorated sites and industries. Throughout these difficult decades, argues Andrew Tallon, “the older industrial cities of the UK experienced a sharp downturn in manufacturing,” a period that saw the “biggest 20 cities [lose] 2.8 million manufacturing jobs,” followed by rising levels of poverty, growing inequality, and social unrest.1 While the job losses in places like Clydebank and Teesside affected communities in obvious ways, by polarizing citizens and creating sites of postindustrial decline and loss, such transformations were less keenly felt in places such as Derry. While the 1970s was a decade of economic contraction, the sudden and dramatic job losses experienced in other parts of Britain were absent in the city for the simple reason that there was no heavy industry to lose, and because unemployment figures in Northern Ireland’s northwest were already the worst in the United Kingdom. The city’s employment lay largely in light engineering and in the shirt- and garment-making industry, the latter with an almost exclusively female, non-unionized, and parttime workforce. The city was therefore less a casualty of postindustrial decline as a victim of unceasing economic dysfunctionality, where a historic lack of opportunity and the realities of emigration prevailed, and where myriad political, social, and cultural grievances led ultimately to the Troubles themselves. Derry didn’t so

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much require being regenerated, as just developed, and work of any sort would have been gratefully received by many who felt both physically as well as economically isolated, from Partition onward, but with increasing urgency from the 1960s, a decade of radicalization, frustration, and growing political dissatisfaction.2 While social and cultural developments in Derry had their own dynamic throughout these decades, responding to evolving political circumstances and therefore very much a product of its own time and place, it would be naive to assume that the city sat in some sort of vacuum or time warp, unaffected by changes that were taking place in other parts of Britain and Ireland. One of the primary urban initiatives of the Conservative government in the 1980s, for instance, had been to follow the example of the German Bundesgartenschau, an urban regeneration initiative developed after the Second World War aimed at taking derelict and often economically challenged urban locales and improving their profile through the establishment of Garden Festivals. A British scheme for tackling some of the most notoriously blighted postindustrial landscapes began with the Liverpool Garden Festival in 1984, and ended in 1992 with a similar event at Ebbw Vale, which was obviously crucial for the cities in question but was equally important in terms of bringing the idea of urban regeneration into the public domain. Rather than see cities as despairing, economically troubled black spots, the city was being steadily redefined, even—and in some instances, especially—those associated with postindustrial blight, unemployment, and chronic levels of inequality and social exclusion. And when the European Union (EU) decided on a strategy of increasing integration and cultural exchange by appointing Athens as the first City of Culture in 1985, even greater emphasis was placed on urban spaces and what they could offer, to tourists and locals alike. Reinforced by the development of regional airports and a proliferation of lowcost airlines that were specifically geared toward urban tourism destinations, many cities were being promoted, energized, and transformed throughout the 1980s and 1990s, both culturally as well as physically, and museums and the rise of the heritage industry were generally at the forefront of these initiatives.3 That urban regeneration was much in the air throughout these decades should not detract, however, from local efforts, and while this wider context is important in understanding the shift toward a reappraisal of urban locales, momentum in Derry was building. Indeed, it would seem that after the success of the Tower Museum, opened in 1992 and described in greater detail below, the city council decided on a proactive policy of cultural engagement, and saw the development of a dedicated museum sector as one of several ways forward. Museums, after all, were in the process of being reconfigured, increasingly regarded as visitor attractions as much as places of educational and spiritual well-being, while the growth

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of the heritage industry itself accelerated throughout the 1980s and 1990s. That said, whatever the policy and managerial thinking behind these initiatives, despite the boosterism and funding strategies subsequently developed, not everyone was impressed. As Waterton and Watson attest, although heritage boomed throughout the 1980s, this was also a decade that saw the publication of three texts that forcefully questioned the development of a heritage sector at all, particularly one that was increasingly allied to tourism and city marketing initiatives. In Patrick Wright’s On Living in an Old Country (1985), David Lowenthal’s The Past Is a Foreign Country (1985), and Robert Hewison’s The Heritage Industry (1987), heritage developments were progressively read in terms of a buoyant nationalism and growing conservativism, where feelings about heritage were largely seen in terms of identity, patriotism, and pride. Texts such as these, contended Waterton and Watson, “variously examined the transformations of museums into attractions and the nature of the artefactual display and even began to question the status of interpretation as a fully achieved account of the past.”4 In view of these criticisms, one might wonder if such a regeneration policy, especially in a city associated with mature and ongoing civil unrest, was really the answer for Derry. Could a genuine appetite be detected among residents, many of whom were much too distracted by contemporary conflicts, for the cultural niceties of heritage discourse?5 More important, could heritage and tourism initiatives truly be the key in a city that had seen its largest public library and its Guildhall bombed, while its famous walls continued to remain a British army no-go area? Research would suggest that there was indeed a growing and ready audience only too willing to hear about local history and heritage, and, as Bill Maguire astutely noted in 1998, while much of it was quite possibly the result of a growing appreciation of all things heritage-related, there were some who wondered if the “remarkable growth of interest in local history and heritage” was not in some way related to the Troubles.6 When we add to this heady mix the fact that the 1980s and 1990s were also years of mounting interest among the public, not just professional historians, in historiographical method, and much debate and dissension circulated around revisionist historiography in particular, we can see there were any number of developments that could be said to have contributed to the rising interest in cultural heritage. Indeed, it might truthfully be also argued that the emergence of the Field Day Theatre Company, formed in Derry itself in 1980, and including Seamus Heaney, Brian Friel, and Seamus Deane as board members, was another part of the heritage and public history jigsaw. Plays by Friel, including Translations (1980) and Making History (1988), dealt with the story of Irish and Anglo-Irish conflict(s), but did so within an emphatically historicized setting, thereby providing the city’s residents with yet more material to interrogate, consider, and respond to.7

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The Inner City Throughout the 1970s and 1980s, despite the fact that violence continued to escalate, there were still those who recognized in urban regeneration initiatives an opportunity to restore hope and possibility. One such agency, the Inner City Trust, formed in 1981, and the body behind the development of the Tower Museum, was particularly proactive in this regard. Driven by necessity to tackle issues relating to unemployment, education, and training, and often without a great deal of support, the Trust was actually ahead of many other British and Irish organizations. It predates, for example, the Labour government’s urban regeneration initiatives of the late 1990s, and indeed even the much-respected Prince’s Regeneration Trust, formed in 1996. Since its foundation, the Inner City Trust has offered practical training to many young people, saved buildings in a city that has already lost a good deal of its Victorian architectural legacy from bombing, raised morale, and supported the work of conservation activists and practitioners. More than this, the work of the Trust laid the groundwork, not just for the development of heritage attractions in the city, many of which have far-reaching implications for the city’s wider tourism offer, but in terms of improving community relations. From the outset it became involved in cross-community work and liaised with bodies within the museum, heritage, and tourism sectors, in the city and beyond. With the help of such agencies change not only began to take hold in the city, but the socioeconomic interplay of regeneration, heritage, and the emergence of a stronger and more identifiable tourism offer was increasingly seen by a number of activists as a possible way forward. Building partnerships and connections on an ad hoc basis, and learning—like many of the trainees on their program—on the job, was how much of the early work by the Trust was done, a role that emerged less from urban regime theory of the sort described by Jonathan Davies than from a simple demand for improved standards, better opportunities, and equal rights.8 Although recent research has demonstrated the varied and complex nature of urban regeneration, one issue appears time and again in the literature. Given that the early demands among many residents, irrespective of locale, centered on better facilities and housing, it is perhaps no surprise that the built environment should materialize so readily, and that the physicality of place should so naturally arise among community activists, planners, and politicians. As we become more attuned to the complexity of regeneration, however, and look beyond the physical and the infrastructural, we can better grasp the significant social and cultural impacts that are also key factors in any renewal program. For example, in Tallon’s Urban Regeneration in the UK, regeneration is discussed in

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relation to several strands, including culture, retail, housing, and community, although the need for citizens in their totality to benefit from regeneration (the “suburban fringe; the suburbs; the rural-urban fringe”) constitutes an interesting shift, one that significantly adds to our conception of urban identity.9 Healthy cities and healthy citizens require basic amenities, such as facilities for the old and young, including parks and recreation areas, access to education, and medical and welfare services. Research has shown that from improved infrastructure can come greater social benefits, improved levels of engagement, and an altogether more productive and cohesive sense of community. Derry’s Inner City Trust has consistently addressed all of these issues, of course, and built upon training as a way of boosting morale as well as providing practical skills to unemployed adults. But there are other agencies in the city that have also committed themselves to the processes of regeneration and community participation, including the Dove House Community Trust, established in the city’s Bogside area in 1984, an institution dedicated to community development and self-sufficiency, with a specific focus on the needs of low-income groups. Another organization, the Holywell Trust, established in 1988, is specifically dedicated toward improving cross-community relations, establishing partnerships, and celebrating diversity as a way of initiating change. With an emphasis on history, heritage, and culture, the Holywell Trust’s original aim was to facilitate dialogue, something it continues to do by creating enabling spaces wherein discussion and debate can take place among all of the city’s residents. With a commitment also to cross-border links (since many would regard Donegal as Derry’s natural hinterland) the Holywell Trust has been consistently in the forefront of cross-community dialogue and social innovation, partnership, and collaboration. Indeed, along with the Inner City Trust and the Dove House Trust, all of these agencies confirm that regeneration has not only been a part of the development of the city for over thirty years, originally promoted by community activists as a way of encouraging local enterprise, but that their broader ambitions continue to benefit both the city and its citizens. While much of their work still focuses on the practicalities of housing and health, exclusion and unemployment, Derry has relied heavily on their energy and initiative, not just as a way of dealing with specific social and cultural challenges, but in terms of developing the city and its potential more widely, and in reconfirming the place as worthy in, and of, itself.

Tourism Narratives Only twenty years ago Derry didn’t have tourists, or at least if they did they were most likely journalists who were covering the Drumcree and other Orange pa-

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rade controversies of the mid- and late 1990s and traveling to Derry for further updates, looking to gauge the feelings of the Maiden City as tempers and properties flared across the North. But quite apart from the obvious dangers of visiting the city, there were also significant challenges that faced the international visitor to Derry, several of which remain to this day. For one thing, infrastructure was less than impressive, indeed had hardly developed from the position it had occupied before the Troubles began in the late 1960s. Although the City of Derry airport had opened a new terminal in 1994, the airport only began to properly develop from late 1999 with the arrival of budget airlines Ryanair, and even today is a modestly developed regional fixture with a limited range of routes and carrying capacity. The train between Derry and Belfast was slower in the 1990s than it had been in the 1890s, while the M2 motorway leading out from Belfast stopped after only 22 miles at Randalstown and left the motorist to contemplate the two-way prospect of the Glenshane Pass and the Sperrin Mountains alone, a worthy consolation no doubt, but hardly conducive to tourism and business development. In the city center itself there was not one single hotel, little in the way of conventional hospitality, and paltry inward investment; only when the Good Friday Agreement was felt to have bedded in did significant development on the part of British retailers emerge. Yet things were stirring nonetheless. A tentative normality was returning, political stability was building, and for some there was identified a sense of growing pride in the city, despite its setbacks and inefficiencies. Moreover, it might truthfully be argued that the heritage industry was at the forefront of regeneration efforts, and those early attempts to both trace and critically engage with the social and political history of the city were an indication of a growing maturity and confidence. Conceived and developed by the combined energies of the Derry City Council and the Inner City Trust, the Tower Museum was officially opened on Tuesday, 20 October 1992, and although Jacques Delors, then president of the European Commission, pulled out of attending at the last minute, the invitation list was extensive and the sense of goodwill enthusiastic and widespread; John Hume and Ian Paisley were both in attendance, and both fulsome in their praise. A facility that had been funded by the European Development Fund and the International Fund for Ireland, the internal design and layout of the Tower Museum had been assigned to the renowned Australian-born museum designer Robin Wade, in partnership with Pat Read in London. Wade was an exceptional designer, having trained at the RCA and with Børge Mogensen in Copenhagen, before joining R. D. “Dick” Russell’s practice in the late 1950s. Wade would later design for the Ironbridge Gorge Museum, the Science Museum London, and the National Railway Museum in York, and to have secured his services for what

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was to be the city’s first museum was a real coup.10 However, the final outcome was a collaborative effort that involved the input of many, not just in design and layout, but in construction and planning, and engaged diverse trades, skills, and individuals, including artists and theatrical set-makers, audiovisual producers, and model makers, as well as Inner City Trust and Derry City Council staff at all stages of the development. “Derry’s magnificent museum opens its doors” extolled the Derry Journal on 23 October 1992, the correspondent going on to quote Sir Robert Atkins, then Northern Ireland Office’s Minister for the Environment and the Economy, who spoke about the useful collaboration between private and public sectors in bringing the museum about, of the cooperation of the various political factions within the city council, but especially of how this “flagship” museum represented a golden opportunity for tourist development, not just within the city, but across Northern Ireland. Willie Mc Carter, head of the International Fund for Ireland, also spoke; he reminded the audience of the opportunities that now arose for job creation and economic revitalization, but drew particular attention to the opportunities that would soon emerge within the hospitality and tourism sectors in particular. While those responsible for a lot of the behind-the-scenes heavy lifting remained somewhat modest in their various roles, preferring the shadows to the limelight, their contribution was also widely acknowledged: “Mr. Lacey, Inner City Trust chief Paddy Doherty, and museum designer Robin Wade did not address the opening ceremony—but were applauded every time their names were mentioned.”11 While it is important to recognize the significance of the museum to the city and its residents, it is also crucial to acknowledge the existence of another narrative that lies behind the celebration of the opening of the Tower Museum, a far less tangible one than those identified by the guest speakers. Very simply, the museum was applauded and celebrated to the extent that it was not just because it was associated with a high standard of finish, some innovative architectural features, and an imaginative use of exhibits and display, or even because of the potential boost it offered to jobs and tourism, but because it provided many people in the city with a different narrative about both themselves and the place in which they lived. For too long the city had been trapped in a story of bitter and divisive battles, of incidents of truly appalling inhumanity, and yet there was a growing sense that this somehow misrepresented the common decency of its citizens, what they stood for, and what they hoped for themselves and their children. The Tower Museum, then, provided people with an opportunity to present a more imaginatively positioned, outwardly engaged, inclusive narrative that had at its core a commitment to equality, balance, and respect, especially with regard to the interpretation of local and national histories.

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While today the Tower Museum is at the heart of the heritage offer in the city, holding a prime spot within the city walls, and directly facing the Guildhall, those early days of celebration and goodwill were to continue for some time. A letter sent from the Commission of the European Communities to Brian Lacey, curator, thanked him and his staff for the warm reception offered to Jacques Delors, who, now fully recovered from a brief illness, visited the city and its museum in November 1992. That same month the British Council wrote to congratulate staff at the museum for hosting the American Folklorists’ Study Tour, emphasizing the quickening nature of international respect for the museum and the professionalism of its staff, while Sir Patrick Mayhew, then secretary of state for Northern Ireland, wrote a letter of thanks for the courtesy extended to him on his trip to the facility, wished the venture well, and hoped that it would “prove a magnet for tourists to the area over the coming months and years.”12 Since 1992 the Tower Museum has won four major awards, including the Irish Museum of the Year Award, the British Airways Tourism Endeavour Award, the National Heritage IBM UK Museum of the Year award, and a special commendation European Museum of the Year award in 1994, all of which are testimony to the efforts of museum and heritage staff, of course, but are also indicative of a newly confident, potentially regenerated city. Neither has it stood still; in 2005 it opened a second permanent exhibition, The Spanish Armada, to complement its Story of Derry exhibition, while it continues to host traveling exhibitions and liaise with other museums in Britain and Ireland, doing today what it set out to do over twenty years ago.

The Visitor Experience But what of the actual visitor experience at the Tower Museum, a place that must deliver an enjoyable experience while at the same time presenting the complexity of historical events, some of which are far from palatable? In what ways do the exhibits and their composition, as well as the narrative structure that has been implemented, satisfy contemporary visitors who are perhaps more used to the thematic challenges of many modern exhibitions? More specifically, how does the serpentine passage that draws the eye steadily and compellingly away toward the rear of the building and The Story of Derry impact upon its viewers and listeners? These questions are important, because to visit the Tower Museum today is to become aware of something much more than a visitor attraction or the tangible result of regenerative ambitions, but to engage, at least partly, with a restorative tourism narrative that is also concerned about wider forms of restoration, growth, and reengagement.

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Perhaps it is with something of this in mind that the low-level lighting, partly a response to the conservation needs of certain items on display, partly a mood enhancer and theatrical device, prepares the visitor for an introduction to the city’s early Christian and prehistoric origins. The council’s refurbishment here has been thoughtfully planned, and the cobbled alley with its red brick wall and barrel vault roof, suggestive of both medieval architecture and Victorian building materials, has been carefully arranged. What then follows are distinct areas that deal with what might be called Ireland’s historical high points: conquest and colonization, plantation and the later 1641 Rebellion, the war of the “Three Kingdoms,” and the arrival of Cromwell in August 1649. Some exhibits stand rather passively in large glazed areas, somewhat segregated and distant, while others are animated with the use of screens and video. However, the replica costumes, life-size figures, and 15-foot effigy, as well as the narrative extravagance of early modern and seventeenth-century Ireland that accompanies it, soon give way to Georgian order and refinement. In some museums chronological ordering can seem too systematic and patterned, too much a reminder of the school history curriculum and therefore a presentational disincentive to the visitor, but here it helps to keep shape on a potentially untidy and ungovernable site. Moreover, there are other reasons for such an arrangement of materials and narratives, as Bill Maguire has noted: The safest way of relating the tangled tale of Derry or any other divided community is to tell it chronologically, allowing the story to focus on facts rather than feelings. There are two justifications for doing so. One is that an understanding of the historical sequence is essential to a proper understanding of the most recent contemporary situation. The second is that feelings are no proper basis for a public display; visitors will bring their own beliefs, perceptions and emotions to what they see, and must be allowed to draw their own conclusions.13 That the museum must adopt a conventional approach to storytelling and deal with some difficult topics with tact and sensitivity goes without saying. It received some 45,000 visitors in its first year, testament to the widespread appeal and public support it received in those early years. Indeed, it is important that we also recognize that despite the difficult and contested histories with which it had to work, in addition to the wider heritage and tourism challenges of the late 1990s, that it flourished as well as it did.14 As suggested above, the boom in heritage-related tourism really took off in the 1980s and led Hewison to allege that a new museum was opening, on average, every two weeks throughout that decade. But as recent research has shown, by the mid-1990s interest in heritage

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was waning, and when a Labour government known for its modernity and reformism came to power in the late 1990s, things were set to change. As Duncan Light suggests, “the election of Tony Blair’s New Labour government in 1997 marked a symbolic end to the 1980s heritage boom, since there was no place for heritage in Blair’s agenda to rebrand Britain as a young country.”15 Fortunately for the Tower Museum and its visitors, not to mention the residents of the city, there was still some way to go before history—and heritage—could conveniently be forgotten in Ireland’s North-West.

Community Narratives Much has been written about the role of the museum in recent years, especially about the need for greater inclusion, and therefore for a wider set of narrative approaches and interpretations to be considered and implemented.16 More important, from the late 1980s, and with mounting, multidisciplinary urgency, there have been articles and books on the very purpose of the museum itself: what it is for and who it is aimed at, not to mention issues that relate to funding and future objectives, the role of technology, and the sometimes troubled relationship the museum sector has to tourism. In 1989 Peter Vergo made the very telling observation that rather than seeing museums as specialized if intellectually diffused institutions, all-encompassing storehouses of information that are sometimes as redolent of history as the exhibits they display, that we should see them as “a field of enquiry so broad as to be a matter of concern to almost everybody.”17 Museums, it is argued, are vitally important repositories, many of which have hugely significant collections, and in addition to offering a service to the public, provide valuable training in management and curatorship, conservation and care. Not only are they crucial for training purposes, as educational and outreach facilities or as visitor attractions, but they are also important for the very messages they transmit: Beyond the captions, the information panels, the accompanying catalogue, the press handout, there is a subtext comprising innumerable diverse, often contradictory strands, woven from the wishes and ambitions, the intellectual or political or social or educational aspirations and preconceptions of the museum director, the curator, the scholar, the designer, the sponsor.18 That a reappraisal should emerge regarding the purpose of publicly funded institutions, especially in response to queries over their use and future development, is hardly surprising. However, while many feel that such questions are both necessary and useful, fostering debate and critical self-examination in the face of radical

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technological and economic change, the questions surrounding interpretation are much more problematic. Although budgets can be trimmed or enlarged, grants applied for and training opportunities improved, when it comes to the trickier and myriad questions that surround interpretation there arise if not greater, then certainly more challenging issues. Interpretation is more weighted and altogether more associated with a chosen position and attendant loyalties, less objective than operational and management-related matters, and because of that very complexity a much more difficult area to police, quantify, and assess.19 It is worth bearing in mind that although these questions have undoubtedly fed into the development of museum policy in Northern Ireland as a whole, and the Derry City Council’s museum and heritage service more specifically, that there are other issues that attend the Irish, and especially the Northern Irish museum. Museums are places of historical and heritage interest, where exhibits and, more important, interpretations must be skillfully managed and presented. But in a place where conflict is either ongoing or only recently ceased, issues connected with balance and objectivity, historical appraisal and perspective, naturally arise. The heritage and museum department of the Derry City Council therefore faced a particular test throughout the 1990s: how best to develop a tourism sector, an important strategy in terms of alleviating unemployment and aiding urban regeneration and growth, while at the same time telling a story that most people, visitors and locals alike, could accept. Some of the council’s early efforts at presenting aspects of the city’s history through heritage—the Amelia Earhart Heritage Centre, the Foyle Valley Railway Museum—were certainly less challenging: a combination of unthreatening curiosities, or industrial heritage of a sort that failed to fully engage visitors, both facilities were eventually wound down. Even the Workhouse Museum, opened by the council in 1998, was closed in 2014, allegedly because of falling numbers and a disinclination of visitors to travel from the city center to its Waterside district. Partly in response to these recent closures, partly in response to what it sees as opportunities with which it now feels a greater confidence, the council’s museum service would appear in recent years to have decided upon a proactive policy of engaging with the specificities of the city’s history, including its more contentious and troublesome elements. For example, the Guildhall, once synonymous with Unionist authority, bombed by the IRA in 1972, but now a grade A listed site of political transformation and power-sharing, hosts the permanent Plantation Exhibition. Merging new technologies with early modern narratives, the Guildhall exhibition complements the Tower Museum’s The Story of Derry, although where the latter is somewhat static, the Plantation Exhibition is interactive and forthright, and requests far greater levels of involvement from its visitors. Where The Story

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of Derry exhibition offers a narrative that is comprehensive and wide-ranging, the Plantation Exhibition presents a more focused and personalized perspective, an experience that is at once informative, participatory, and theatrical (“Try on the clothes of a Planter or Irish person for size!”). Yet despite the discrepancies that exist, despite even the differences that continue to remain at community level, an insistence on shared history underlines both council ventures. This is history as an interrogative, yet also healing process, where the future of the city lies at least partly in building a tourism industry out of acceptance, tolerance, and political understanding. With the passing of time, and a greater commitment to the sort of economic and political stability afforded by the Good Friday Agreement, things have undoubtedly changed in the city, especially in terms of what people could say and where they could go. Where a more enforced sense of territorial ownership once prevailed, and residents were less mobile, there is now greater and more fluid interaction, as is evidenced by the number of tourist-related activities that are orientated around walks, tours, and trails: the Inner City Walking Tour, the Walled City Heritage Trail, the Historic Walking Tour, the Shipyard Heritage Trail, all of which are indicative not just of a growing tourism product, but of increasing ease with which residents and tourists engage with the place. In addition, there has developed in the last decade or so additional museum and heritage products that have contributed greatly to our understanding of local history, in addition to further developing the city’s tourist image. But while the city council moves ahead with plans to establish a new maritime museum and genealogical center, local communities have developed their own narratives, and though the historical perspective might be said to depart from the council’s heritage and museum agenda, the narratives that these constituencies have presented need to be heard. The Londonderry Apprentice Boy’s Museum (now the Siege Museum), the St. Columba Heritage Centre, the Gasyard Heritage Centre, the First Derry Presbyterian Church and Bluecoat School, as well as the Free Derry Museum, all offer complementary, and in some instances alternative, narratives to those presented by the city council. Some of these recently opened heritage and museum establishments have arisen from a particular moment or out of a historical crisis; all of them are indicative of a community need for narrative reengagement and representation.

Multiple Voices Over twenty years ago Richard Prentice wrote persuasively about the “heterogeneity of heritage,” the surprising diffusions and variations it included, em-

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bracing landscape, built environment, industrial heritage, and so on.20 Right now, in the city of Derry there also exists a heterogeneity of heritage, but one that stems more from differences of interpretation and perspective rather than actual product or form. That such a situation should exist should come as no surprise: as Uzzell and Ballantyne suggest, it “would be strange if heritage did not have an effect upon us. This surely is the point about heritage—it is value laden.”21 The newly developed Siege Museum (2015), set over three floors and the recent recipient of a grant from the Northern Ireland Tourist Board, focuses on plantation and the arrival of settlers from the city of London and the Scottish lowlands, much like the Plantation Exhibition in the city’s Guildhall. However, the Siege Museum is much more concerned with the famous Siege of Derry of 1688, the defense of the city, the relief fleet that eventually broke the boom across the River Foyle, and the effects of this upon local residents. The emphasis, historically documented and supported by a range of panels as well as an imaginatively produced video, appears to follow quite distinct themes: heroism, remembrance, and religious liberty, but also sacrifice, the effects of overcrowding upon the 30,000 people then residing within the city’s walls, disease, and death. Within this museum history is not only explained or invoked but quite literally named: Reverend Walker, Colonels Mitchelburne and Murray, Captain Browning, Henry Campsie, an approach that is in some ways reflected by the First Derry Presbyterian Church and Blue Coat School only a few hundred yards away, both centers symbolically located within the city walls. The present church, recently renovated, stands on the same site as the original church. Subsidized by Queen Mary in recognition of the Presbyterian sacrifice made in the defense of Derry, it focuses on the nonconformist contribution to the city, a story of great significance to the small, working-class community of Protestants still resident on the city’s west bank, in the Fountain Street area, and a therefore necessary and visible part of their history, role, and sense of place. Just as symbolically located, and just as important to the needs of that community, stands the Gasyard Heritage Centre, on Lecky Road, within the heart of the city’s Bogside. Established by the Gasyard Development Trust in 1996 by local community activists, this is a purpose-built facility that delivers services to an area with significant economic, social, and educational deficiencies. Although the Centre has a regeneration and community emphasis, with a particular focus on the disadvantaged, it is also a heritage center, and presents a particular emphasis on the history of the Troubles and the experience of prison life in particular. Here are large storyboards that contain factual information on the detention centers of Armagh and Magilligan, but also much more

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graphic analysis of Internment and mistreatment, of interrogation tactics and criminalization. The Tower Museum covers the period of the Troubles, and incorporates paramilitary uniforms and propaganda literature by way of visually reinforcing the realities of conflict, but some visitors have found it too brief and, ideologically speaking, too sanitized. While the same can’t be said about the Gasyard Centre, with its extensive discussion of the Dirty Protests and the 1981 Hunger Strikes, this is no isolated operation without support or recognition of the positive community contributions it has also made. It has received funding from Northern Ireland’s Office of the First Minister and Deputy First Minister, the Heritage Lottery Fund, and the EU PEACE III program, and is presently engaged in cross-community dialogue and reconciliation projects, especially with the Protestant residents of the Fountain Street area.22 There is no doubting that heritage is a complicated subject, the very term itself loaded with meaning, and the various efforts to present it in centers and museums, especially in places associated with trauma and conflict, make it all the more unsettling. Greg Ashworth suggests that the “most important use of all public heritage, and the main reason for its intentional creation by public authorities, is the creation and strengthening of group identity.”23 In the case of Derry, although we find that group identity is important, what we also see is that it is an accepted but also contested term, and the city itself a place where divisions might be said to remain, but might just as easily be identified as existing within constituencies as between them.24 For these communities, heritage is not just about narration and identity, nor is it necessarily about commodification and a successfully developed tourist product, although all these elements are obviously present in their efforts and outputs. Heritage is being established here as a means of self-understanding and self-development, as an important part of coming out of conflict, and as a way of articulating grief, attachment, solidarity, and awareness. Tunbridge and Ashworth suggest that “it is evident that conflicting ideas about what museum collections are for exist, both between those responsible for such collections, and also between the curators and those outside these institutions,” a view that points to the difficulties and realities of ensuring “balance” within any institution.25 Museums and heritage centers, as visitor attractions and sites of historical importance both, continue to seesaw between any number of competing claims, ideological positions, and multidisciplinary demands. The concerns of conservationists and heritage officers, the relationship with local communities, the commitment to outreach and educational policies, indeed even the management complexity of such sites alone are evidence of responsibility writ large.26

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Beyond the Walls The Museum of Free Derry, established by the Bloody Sunday Trust, opened its first phase of development somewhat temporarily in 2006 in the Bogside’s Glenfada Park, and followed this the following year, the thirty-fifth anniversary of Bloody Sunday, with a permanent exhibition.27 Its commitment has always been primarily toward explaining the events that took place on 30 January 1972, when the British army’s elite Parachute Regiment shot dead thirteen unarmed civilians who were taking part in a Civil Rights Association march through the city. It is that event, that single day, spread over not more than a couple of acres of ground, that is now actively re-created through sound and image, text and object. Although the museum is very much a part of the local community, located within yards of the historic events themselves, it is also an employer, provides an active educational outreach program, and has developed a sophisticated international profile. Its still primary purpose, however, is to give voice to those events and to provide a narrative and interpretive framework, not all of which has met with universal approval or acceptance. For example, although Elizabeth Crooke generously acknowledges the benefits to the community provided by the museum in terms of facilitating local knowledge and forms of identity to be expressed, she also suggests that the story of Bloody Sunday “has been isolated as the key event to represent the people of the city and is told by a group with a certain political agenda.” More important, perhaps, her view that the museum perspective on Bloody Sunday “is exhibited unchallenged,” and is a therefore potentially one-sided interpretation of a key historical moment, reminds us forcefully that the contested nature of heritage does not end with activists and local communities, or indeed even with curators and guides, but is an ongoing process of critical evaluation that extends to critics, authors, and academics.28 Perhaps the Free Derry Museum, in its bold assertion of political independence and in the manner of its presentation, is simply more honest than others. It is certainly true that it presents a particular view of the events of 30 January 1972 and broaches no other, a point made emphatically by the director of the museum before the Northern Ireland Assembly’s Committee for Culture, Arts and Leisure on 2 October 2008. When asked by the chairperson about his views on the development of a museums policy for Northern Ireland, the director replied: “The Museum of Free Derry is unashamedly subjective: it tells the story of free Derry from a free Derry point of view. We do not tell that story in a jingoistic or party-political way. We tell the entire story, and

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we do not ignore parts of the story that are uncomfortable.”29 In response to further inquiries about the perspective adopted, especially the idea that the museum adopts a position that some people may find objectionable, another representative remarked that “the Museum of Free Derry . . . is not the story as told by academic historians, and it is certainly not the story that is told by politicians on any side. We tell the story from the bottom to the ordinary people. That is very important to us. An official policy might almost automatically become a policy from the top where people are told how to tell their story and how to fit it into a particular narrative.”30 If we leave aside the issue of whether historical truth and a pure and unadulterated form of objectivity are ever possible and just concentrate on this from the point of view of the local community perspective, then this is an honest admission. One of the greatest hurts among people of the Bogside and the city more generally after Bloody Sunday was the outcome of the Widgery Tribunal, produced within months of the shootings by an ex-brigadier in the British army, a report that exonerated the army actions and was therefore seen by many as an appalling cover-up. Only when Tony Blair announced in 1998 the setting up of the Saville Inquiry, which declared the killings unjustifiable as recently as 2010, did the local community feel finally exonerated and vindicated. These facts are absolutely crucial to any interpretation of the Free Derry Museum that might be offered, and a stark lesson to practitioners, activists, and community representatives anywhere, whether they are engaged in tourism and hospitality, conservation and regeneration, or the museum and heritage sectors more widely. Whatever the niceties of museological method or policy, given that the Bogside had to wait thirty-eight years before their version of events was fully accepted, it should come as no surprise to anyone that interpretation would be the last thing that these representatives, and this particular museum, would be prepared to negotiate. In other parts of Britain and Ireland heritage might readily bring to mind the image of middle-aged men in period costume, castles, and stately homes, the day-tripping fantasies of suburbanites as they drift around a wash of stabling and parkland, the sorts of places that can afford to deal playfully and imaginatively with narrative. However, in Derry heritage is part of an ongoing historical process, still fractured, still discordant, but a nevertheless necessary element in the regeneration of communities that have only recently emerged out of conflict. While the untidiness of all this will appear disquieting to the policymakers and politicians, it can only be hoped that a greater understanding—of a people and their legacy—will be the lasting outcome.

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Notes 1. A. Tallon, Urban Regeneration in the UK (London: Routledge, 2013), 12. 2. For detailed discussion of these decades in particular, see E. McCann, War and an Irish Town (London: Penguin, 1974); and F. Curran, Derry: Countdown to Disaster (Dublin: Gill & Macmillan, 1986). For a flavor of 1960s planning issues as well as wider community and local politics generally, see G. McSheffrey, Planning Derry: Planning and Politics in Northern Ireland (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2000). 3. For further discussion, see J. Heeley, Inside City Tourism: A European Perspective (Bristol: Channel View, 2011). 4. E. Waterton and S. Watson, “Heritage as a Focus of Research: Past, Present and New Directions,” in The Palgrave Handbook of Contemporary Heritage Research, ed. E. Waterton and S. Watson (London: Palgrave, 2015), 5. For useful analysis of 1980s heritage debates, see J. Littler and R. Naidoo, “White Past, Multicultural Present,” in Cultural Heritage: Critical Concepts in Media and Cultural Studies, vol. 2, ed. L. Smith (London: Routledge, 2007). 5. See B. Lacey, “A Museum Service in Northern Ireland,” Scottish Museum News 8, no. 4 (1992); B. Lacey, “The Derry Museum Service and the Regeneration of the City,” Museum Ireland 3 (1993); B. Lacey, “Untangling the Knots of Myth and History: Developing a Museum Service for Derry,” Causeway 1, no. 4 (1994). 6. B. Maguire, “City Museums and Their Role in a Divided Community: The Northern Ireland Experience,” in Making City Histories in Museums, ed. G. Kavanagh and E. Frostick (London: University of Leicester Press, 1998), 45. 7. For discussion of various heritage debates, including those relating to authenticity, war, and conflict, see D. J. Timothy and S. W. Boyd, Heritage Tourism (London: Pearson, 2003). 8. J. S. Davies, Partnerships and Regimes: The Politics of Urban Regeneration in the UK (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2001). 9. A. Tallon, Urban Regeneration (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2001), 256. See also P. Jones and J. Evans, Urban Regeneration in the UK (London: Sage, 2013), especially the chapter entitled “Regeneration beyond the City Centre.” 10. Børge Mogensen (1914–1972) was a significant presence in the world of European design throughout the 1950s and 1960s, and a sometime colleague of Kaare Klint, both of whom helped popularize the “Danish Modern” aesthetic. R. D. “Dick” Russell (1903–1981), brother of Gordon Russell, trained as an architect, was heavily involved in the Festival of Britain (1951), and was later appointed professor of architecture at the RCA. 11. Derry Journal, 23 October 1992. 12. Correspondence Box, Tower Museum 1992, Derry City Council Records. 13. Maguire, “City Museums,” 48–49. 14. For further discussion of the tourism-heritage connection, see R. Staiff, R. Bushell, and S. Watson, eds., Heritage and Tourism: Place, Encounter, Engagement (London: Routledge, 2013). 15. D. Light, “Heritage and Tourism,” in Waterton and Watson, Palgrave Handbook of Contemporary Heritage Research, 147. 16. On matters relating to community, reconciliation, and inclusion, see R. Sandell, ed., Museums, Society, Inequality (London: Routledge, 2002).

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17. P. Vergo, “Introduction,” in The New Museology (London: Reaktion, 1989), 1. 18. Ibid., 3. 19. For further analysis of the complexity of interpretation, see P. Howard, Heritage: Management, Interpretation, Identity (London: Continuum, 2003), especially the author’s discussion of the Battle of Sedgemoor (247). 20. R. Prentice, Tourism and Heritage Attractions (London: Routledge, 1993), 31. 21. D. Uzzell and R. Ballantyne, “Heritage That Hurts: Interpretation in a Postmodern World,” in The Heritage Reader, ed. G. Fairclough, R. Harrison, J. Schofield, and J. H. Jameson (London: Routledge, 2007), 503. 22. For further information, see http://www.visitbishopstreetandthefountain.com/. 23. G. Ashworth, “The Memorialization of Violence and Tragedy: Human Trauma as Heritage,” in The Ashgate Research Companion to Heritage and Identity, ed. B. Graham and P. Howard (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2008), 238. 24. For a wide-ranging discussion of heritage, including its connection to issues of identity, public commemoration, and contestation, see T. Benton, ed., Understanding Heritage and Memory (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2010). 25. J. E. Tunbridge and G. J. Ashworth, Dissonant Heritage: The Management of the Past as a Resource in Conflict (Chichester: Wiley, 1996), 36. 26. For a very full analysis of heritage studies, including the myriad theoretical and managerial issues that arise, see G. Aplin, Heritage: identification, Conservation, and Management (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002). 27. For further discussion, see P. Pringle and P. Jacobson, Those Are Real Bullets, Aren’t They? (London: Fourth Estate, 2000); and A. Kerr, Free Derry: Protest and Resistance (Derry: Guildhall Press, 2013). 28. E. Crooke, “An Exploration of the Connections among Museums, Community and Heritage,” in Graham and Howard, Ashgate Research Companion to Heritage and Identity, 422–423. See also E. Crooke, Museums and Community: Ideas, Issues and Challenges (London: Routledge, 2007). 29. http://archive.niassembly.gov.uk/culture/2007mandate/inquiry/minutes/081002.htm. 30. Ibid.

13 � Imagining the Next Day Music, Heritage, and Hope

RO SH I NA I D O O

Heritage Moments It is May 2015 and the National Museum Wales (NMW) has an exhibition of work by photographer Chalkie Davies.1 Between 1975 and 1979 Davies worked for the magazine the NME (New Musical Express) and produced arresting images of many of the faces that represented punk and new wave cultural and political rebellion in Britain of the late 1970s and early 1980s. Portraits of John Lydon, Chrissie Hynde, The Specials, and Elvis Costello adorn the walls, and artifacts in cases, from magazines to album covers, conjure up the feel of the era, evoking sensations of recognition and pleasure. However, like all heritage moments, this “past in the present” is shaped by a series of complex interactions between differing narratives, representations, subjectivities, emotions, texts, cultural values, and political discourses that take in things both inside and outside of this room. Davies is featured here as a Welsh artist from Sully, a small area of South Wales on the outskirts of Cardiff—he is the local boy made good. It is also the half-term school holidays, and parents have brought their children. This is a common scene at the places where heritage and popular music meet—intergenerational cultural conflict that was the norm a few decades ago has been replaced with intergenerational cultural consensus, as parents provide narrative context to their children, who they also take to concerts of artists they enjoyed as youngsters themselves. Often at such events one cannot help overhearing the self-conscious, and sometimes self-aggrandizing, commentary provided by people who “were there,” and one wonders what heritage “work” is being done in these places.

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Back to September 2014, and I am at The Garage in North London for a gig by Holy Holy, the all-star band that will be paying homage to David Bowie’s 1971 album The Man Who Sold the World. The band includes Bowie’s legendary producer Tony Visconti as well as the only surviving member of The Spiders from Mars—Bowie’s backing band from his Ziggy Stardust years—Woody Woodmansey. The other members are from famous 1970s and 1980s bands themselves, adding layers of nostalgia to the event that is about Bowie and also his legacies via the people who developed their music in his wake.2 I think a lot about what collective experience is being shared here and the moments from which I am both included and excluded. Heritage moments such as this (re)define the borders of both past and present belonging, allowing some to enter a world of collective reminiscences while layers of gate-keeping determine whose memories can be legitimized and whose can be ignored. I can’t be totally sure because of the darkness, but I am probably only one of a few black women in the room, and almost certainly the only one alone. At such gigs the politics of gender, race, bodies, and space cannot always be comfortably negotiated. I adopt my usual stance to ensure my personal space is not invaded, but invariably I end up with beer poured down the back of my neck. Bowie, of course, is not actually there, and as a figure both resists and orchestrates his own “heritagization,” as I discuss later, but this is nevertheless a transcendent moment for band and audience. Forward again to June 2015, and The Guardian reports that “Virgin Money, the bank backed by Sir Richard Branson, has launched a series of Sex Pistols credit cards, including two featuring the artwork for the band’s 1977 album Never Mind the Bollocks, Here’s the Sex Pistols, in its full uncensored glory.”3 Rock music and high finance have been twinned in this way before, as those who remember The Who’s Roger Daltrey talking about his credit card in an advertisement for American Express in 1985 will attest to, but this piece of corporate heritage leaves a particularly unpleasant taste in the mouth. The article continues: Virgin Money said it was “time for consumers to put a little bit of rebellion in their pocket.” Michele Greene, the bank’s director of cards, said: “In launching these cards, we wanted to celebrate Virgin’s heritage and difference. The Sex Pistols challenged convention and the established ways of thinking—just as we are doing today in our quest to shake up UK banking.”4 Now, an ordinary Friday night, and those of us of a certain age settle in for the regular slot of music heritage television on BBC4, very aware of how we are the target market for this. These documentaries tell and retell the histories

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of punk, new wave, soul, synthesizer music, rock and roll, and so forth, and, like the content of magazines such as Uncut and Q, convince us that liking Pink Floyd or The Smiths is still somehow cutting edge. We avidly consume these texts and narrate and exaggerate our personal histories in relation to the cultural histories from the recent past being played out before us. Music critic Simon Reynold’s question about the phenomena he terms “retromania” often comes to mind at these times, when he asks what will happen “when we run out of past? Are we heading towards a sort of cultural-ecological catastrophe, when the seam of pop history is exhausted? And out of all the things that happened this past decade, what could possibly fuel tomorrow’s nostalgia crazes and retro fads?”5 These examples hint at the vast landscape of music heritage in circulation in the twenty-first century. How can we make sense of these phenomena, which in varied combinations make appeals to identity, belonging, tribalism, nationalism, subcultural capital, collective generational memory, nostalgia, and difference? It requires many analytical tools—from theories of representation and audiences; to research on memory; to the place of heritage within a political economy of culture; to the rapidly developing area of heritage in the field of affect and emotion. These moments present nostalgia as a resource that can accommodate both reactionary and progressive ways of understanding the past in relation to the present “state we’re in.” I am interested in how these moments navigate the pasts of cultural radicalism, activism, resistance, and rebellion. If popular culture shapes subjectivity in an individualized and collective sense, popular music heritage must affect “meaning-making” in the present. How does this relate to the politics of subversion, collective action, and the possibility of radical subjectivity facilitating future personal and social liberation? In these spaces there seems to be a recurring pining for a time when subjects had agency to “be themselves,” to “shake things up,” to affect the zeitgeist or trouble an existing dominant order—to actually create the moments where one could say proudly “I was there,” or to feel as though something might actually change in relation to equality, justice, and quality of life. I am also interested in how agency circulates here, and how heritage events can capture those intangible moments of radical subjectivity and create spaces that allow people to reclaim their identity as creative citizens, rather than passive consumers. In examining the battle for meaning within music heritage displays, I will consider two things. First, how and why subversion, resistance, creative dissent, and the imaginative possibilities of identity are reconfigured within a consensual national narrative. Second, how some heritage expressions resist

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such containment by signaling the power of identity to facilitate both present and future rebellion. Here I will look at three things. First the Victoria and Albert Museum’s (V&A) blockbuster show David Bowie is,6 which presented multilayered narratives of the subject as subversive artist, as well as ideas around the instability of “heritage” itself; second, the exhibition A Riot of Our Own, about Rock Against Racism (1976–1981), a curatorial collaboration between Carol Tulloch, Syd Shelton, and Ruth Gregory charting the story of a movement that offered the possibility of breeching racialized identity boundaries;7 and third, Kraftwerk Consolation Night,8 a local heritage event at an arts center in Cardiff organized in response to the difficulties faced in getting tickets for the band’s residency at Tate Modern’s Turbine Hall in London in 2013. This involved local bands interpreting and performing Kraftwerk songs in a variety of styles and featured the work of visual artists who used their music to create interpretive pieces about futures from the past.

Talk about Pop Music Music heritage can present past cultural conflicts as resolved, resistance as a brief historical blip, and pop music as a youthful preoccupation that one grows out of. Yet these suggestions have to be cautiously proposed as people’s attachment to pop music and its attendant attitudes, ideas, fashions, and modes of identity negotiation are very vivid and present, ironically because of the amount of music heritage in circulation. The fact that past moments of cultural radicalism can be tamed and commodified still has the power to shock, and given the history of pop music it is interesting that it still does. Popular music and youth culture have always been, as Iggy Pop says, “the same old commercial and industrial forces,” looking for ways to “identify the most defenseless consumer.”9 Of course it is also a space in and through which disaffection, countercultural lifestyles, and political opposition have expressed themselves. Cultural studies as a discipline has been pivotal in analyzing the contradictory effects of mass culture and has theorized subjects as simultaneously passive consumers ingesting dominant class values, and active agents reading and subverting texts for their own ends. Meanings are never located within the texts themselves but are determined by the relations of power around them. As Stuart Hall noted: “Popular forms become enhanced in cultural value, go up the cultural escalator—and find themselves on the opposite side.”10 As pop music becomes “British heritage,” what happens to the spaces of resistance they represented as they are circulated within differing regimes of power? Hall again:

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The meaning of a cultural form and its place or position in the cultural field is not inscribed inside its form. Nor is its position fixed once and forever. This year’s radical symbol or slogan will be neutralised into next year’s fashion; the year after, it will be the object of a profound cultural nostalgia. Today’s rebel folk-singer ends up, tomorrow, on the cover of The Observer colour magazine. The meaning of a cultural symbol is given in part by the social field into which it is incorporated, the practices with which it articulates and is made to resonate.11 Arts, heritage, and media workers of all descriptions have some power to frame the meanings attached to objects and remembrances of past rebellion in ways that present them as either twee examples of a bygone era or as the impetus for reigniting collective anger, frustration, political impotence, as well as hope. Jim McGuigan discusses the ways in which capitalism embraces the subversive to reinvigorate itself: “Cool capitalism is the incorporation of disaffection into capitalism itself” (his emphasis).12 In reference to the counterculture in America, he notes: “Seen in retrospect, the 1960s’ rebels were the saviours, turning over redundant shibboleths, instead of gravediggers of corporate America.”13 Given this context perhaps the appearance of a punk credit card is less shocking as various constituencies fight over its legacies.14 If meanings of subversion are not fixed, then jarring contradictions can be resolved within heritage representations. Robert Burgoyne, in his chapter on the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum in Cleveland, looks at the ways in which public memory emerges out of the interplay between “the official, the vernacular, and the commercial cultural viewpoints”15 to create meanings about the history of rock music that appear to accommodate dissident voices, local memory, and established national narratives, noting that “it thus provides a powerful example of the way public memory can be simultaneously multivocal and hegemonic.”16 However, the complex spaces around the history of rock and roll mean that it is not that straightforward to embed the counterculture of the 1960s and 1970s into a consensual past. It may be that the “settling of all disputes” is figured in one reading of the Hall: But on the other hand, the Rock Hall also narrates, in a minor key, as it were, another kind of story about the music and the period, situating it persuasively and movingly in the context of history as “what hurts,” of history consisting of conflict, loss, and promise unfulfilled, a narrative that resists the imagery of reconciliation and consensus.17 Burgoyne’s point shows that there is space within these histories to place other readings, and that “loss” itself can be harnessed to reactivate a relationship be-

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tween audience and agency, but this can be hard to achieve when repetition in historical narratives seems to constrict the places available for such imaginative heritage work. In an episode of The Simpsons newsreader Kent Brockman says: “For those of you too young to remember the 1960s here’s our stock montage.”18 To the music of the Jimi Hendrix Experience’s “All along the Watchtower” we see hippies, the Black Power salute at the 1968 Olympics, the moon landing, Richard Nixon, and images from the Vietnam War and the television series Batman. This cleverly parodies how repetition sets the cultural and political meaning from this era in stone. Repetition helps to secure in the popular imagination the notion that resistance is a “thing of the past” at the level of political discourse and popular ideology. For example, student protests are rarely positioned in news narratives as a modern expression of revolts against contemporary neoliberal economics and the privatization of education, but figured through student protests of the 1960s—this trace from the past imbues protesting as always “old fashioned” in a similar way to being a trade unionist. Media interpellation of activism is often refracted through the lens of 1960s radicalism. Repetition may facilitate “forgetting” rather than remembering. Bill Schwarz discusses the ways in which images and memories of empire constantly circulated through film, television, and advertisements obscure, rather than illuminate, historical memory. He says: To this day there is a repertoire of such images of empire around about us, always ready for recycling at a moment’s notice. Their very familiarity ensures their longevity. They evoke not a historical past, but a past already fabricated by other commodified media. There is good reason to think that the relentless circulation of such signs does indeed carry deep within itself a kind of amnesia, in which the historical past moves out of reach of the present and where, in the words of Luisa Passerini, “memory can turn into a form of oblivion, between nostalgia and consumerism.”19 Schwarz’s point can be applied to many popular social and political histories that contextualize music from the 1950s to the present day. Repeated images, songs, and motifs can become crude pegs on which to hang received wisdom about what defined the era, and before even entering the narrative space of an exhibition or a television program, the interpretive landscape is already established. For example, the industrial actions of Britain’s “winter of discontent” in 1978/79 are figured so often I now have trouble remembering whether I actually witnessed bags of uncollected rubbish on the streets of London as a teenager or have just remembered it from heritage music television. This contextual nar-

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rative for punk, new wave, and 2 Tone can be presented as indicative of the widespread social and economic disaffection of the time, which would crystallize around resistance to both Thatcherism and the growth of the Far Right. Another reading though can give credence to the idea that Margaret Thatcher’s freemarket economics was an inevitable “new broom” and a justifiable response to “greedy” unions. This moment can become established as not about the possibility of workers taking a fairer share of the profits of industry, but as unions being unreasonable, being old fashioned, and exercising disproportionate power over the British Labour Party, discourses that continue to inform media representation of labor disputes.20 Pop music histories can be places where the retelling of the neoliberal revolution in the United Kingdom is fashioned. The more unchallenging cultural histories also tend to overplay the peculiar ways in which pop music is British. A typical example can be found in the BBC program “Oh You Pretty Things—The Story of Music and Fashion,” which starts with the assertion that “British rock and pop music is our great gift to the world—at the heart of the irrepressible creative brilliance of Britain,” and also talks about the “thrilling” message it conveyed about being British.21 Specific geographies, political conjunctures, and cultural encounters did create unique musical cultures on these shores that impacted across the globe. However, the language of lazy patriotism can be overlaid in this narrative allowing music and rebellion in general to be commodified as an essentially British export, tied to products and ultimately to reactionary national values. It is possible that national chauvinism has shape-shifted from mourning a lost “Great” Britain to an overweaning pride in British pop culture—a place of legitimate patriotism for those uncomfortable with its attachments to militarism and monarchy. Dissent can be “resolved” at the level of the national within this discourse despite the glaring contradiction at its heart. The idea that there is an inherent national rebelliousness, which gave rise to punk and other antiestablishment cultural expressions, is logically scuppered by the fact that there must have been Britons against whom people were rebelling. Another contradiction is this. The conditions for the subversion, creativity, and resistance now celebrated as definitive national heritage are being systematically dismantled as it becomes harder and harder to protest; as the neoliberal revolution in our universities and colleges makes them unlikely places for the ferment of cultural experimentation (British art schools are historically inextricably linked to the history of pop music); as the youth support structure that influential bands have cited as being crucial in learning their craft dwindle; and as that most important resource for artists and musicians, the welfare state, is being dismantled and privatized. Reynold’s point about the cultural/ecological

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seam of pop music being overmined is a relevant metaphor as capitalist economic forces ignore cultural sustainability in favor of immediate profits. Liberal nation-states can narrate some forms of protest and conflict into the story of the nation, as long as they are disconnected from contemporary inequalities. To do this they must be made over in innocuous forms, their past and present meanings must be fixed, and “resolution” must be heavily signposted. Imogen Tyler’s book Revolting Subjects analyzes the cultural and political discourses of abjection, pollution, and disgust that construct certain outsiders as less than human—for example, asylum seekers, those identified as the underclass, Gypsies and Travellers.22 Although the subjects of youth cultural rebellion I am discussing here are not of the same order, they were, in various ways, the objects of similar moral panics in their time. However, heritage narratives can reframe outsiders from the past. Here you can be impoverished, on benefits, edgy and subversive, yet typically “British” and completely compatible with the economic and cultural mores of neoliberalism. Abject subjects from recent history can be transformed through the processes of heritage into acceptable subjects, often figured through the notion of “youthful indiscretion”—a phase through which the subject, and by extension, the nation, must pass. Neoliberalism as a cultural discourse takes this a step further by brazenly celebrating subversion as part of our corporate heritage. Capitalism as rebellion and freedom, particularly espoused by free-market libertarians, is the counternarrative that is pitted against the progressive, anti-neoliberal worldview, a battle waged on the level of cultural politics.

Futures from the Past I now want to turn to three heritage events where subversion, rebellion, and creative agency did signpost a hopeful, radical, and engaged future. Though very different from each other, they illustrate the various ways of “making meaning” available in popular music heritage and the wealth of available spaces in these histories to ignite passionate attachment to the idea of change. They include a major international touring exhibition, a small touring exhibition, and a local heritage event. I also bring them together for the very personal reason that all three, in different ways, reminded me that I once had faith that cultural politics could change the world. The V&A’s David Bowie is sell-out exhibition may seem an unlikely place to make a case for subversive cracks in heritage narratives, given the museum’s place in the mainstream and the exhibition’s high-profile corporate sponsors. I would argue, though, that Bowie’s unique position in popular culture as a sym-

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bol of the creative and political possibilities of malleable subjectivity mitigates against the view that this show could be dismissed as commercial and therefore hegemonic. However, another caveat is my awareness of recent challenges laid down by cultural studies scholars concerning the need to reanimate the relationship between culture and actual politics, rather than make overly broad claims for consumption as the site of resistance, at the expense of thinking about production, circulation, and the economics of cultural practices more thoroughly.23 I do not have the space here for a thorough reading of these exhibitions, but want to simply connect heritage display with political and creative consciousness, and the spaces where people’s “past” identities as active subjects can resonate with the impetus for societal change in the present. Exhibitions and events can play around with linear time—the past need not be a distant echo of empty nostalgia, but an active map where clear paths and connections to the present and the future can be traced. This is not a prescriptive position, but a reminder for audiences of the possibilities of cultural expression to forge new identities, to revive forgotten ways of locating the subject in history, and to instigate new ways of thinking about creativity and agency.24 Before the opening of David Bowie is an event informed the exhibition and complicated the reading of it as “heritage.” On 8 January 2013 David Bowie released a single and announced a forthcoming new album. This was with no prepublicity or fanfare and after ten years of no new material from him and rampant rumors that he had in effect retired. The poignant and wistful single “Where Are We Now?” looked back on his years in Berlin in the late 1970s, a time associated with one of the high points of his creativity, and had journalists clamoring to comment on Bowie drawing on his own past and the heritagizing of the self, predicting that his time as a totemic figure of future possibilities was over. The next two things that happened both evaded and played with this construction of “Bowie as British heritage icon.” The first was that the rest of the album was in no way “retro,” either in sentiment or musical ambition. The second was the album cover, designed by Jonathan Barnbrook.25 Entitled The Next Day, and with artwork that was a reworking of the cover of the 1977 album “Heroes” with a large, white square over the main part of the photograph, the album cover gave visual context to the idea of the past as traces on the outside, which inform, but do not predetermine, the blank canvas of the future. As his contemporaries embraced their status as heritage icons with greatest hits tours, this taking control of and playing around with the notion of being the subject of heritage within one’s own lifetime was intriguing, as was its subtle evocation of agency. David Bowie is as an exhibition took as its organizing principle the fluidity of

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subjectivity and meanings attached to Bowie as musician, performer, composer, actor, innovator, artist, aesthetic role model, and so forth, and the instability of knowing an artist’s “real” identity or fixing meanings around them. Each section of the exhibition started with the prefix “David Bowie is . . . ,” adding a different subtitle, such as “blowing our minds.” The idea of identity as a place to challenge the limitations of the political, social, or cultural universes one is placed in was a recurring theme. Part of the appeal of Bowie has been his role as a conduit for everyday intellectualism, especially embraced by aficionados from working-class backgrounds for whom thinking conceptually and being interested in artistic movements in Europe and beyond requires an audacious leap. The exhibition revelled in the range of domestic and international influences from Little Richard, Japanese kabuki theater, the cabarets of Berlin, mime, George Orwell, etc., etc.—culture as dialogue between the local (suburban) and the transglobal is difficult to tie to regressive nationalism. The amount of material—costumes, handwritten lyrics, artworks, photographs, videos, films, instruments, and a range of other heritage ephemera—was at times overwhelming, but the saturation had a particular effect. David Bowie is demanded a fully immersive “aesthetic surrender” and acted as a reminder that creativity is time consuming, that it involves attention to detail and trial and error.26 The weight given to the early parts of his career in the exhibition narrative allowed the viewer to be clear that he did not “fall to earth” fully formed. This may seem like a minor observation and not politically charged but relates to the limitations placed on us in a hyperaccelerated culture where we become used to skimming for information and avoiding slow, artistic and intellectual immersion. As the “creative and cultural industries” tie creative practice to their instrumentalist ends, “success,” as an ideology, is written into project narratives and failure is not an option.27 The David Bowie who emerges from the exhibition acted as a reminder of what being creative actually entails. Explaining to people not working in heritage that your primary interest is not in the past per se can seem counterintuitive. It can be hard to express how unearthing historical moments of new identities and fresh collaborations can refresh the spirit in ways that are both tangible and intangible. Such an energizing past could be found at the exhibition A Riot of Our Own at the Chelsea Space in London. This exhibition told a history of Rock Against Racism (RAR) (1976–1981), the movement where musicians, artists, and activists pursued a defiant antiracist agenda, producing en route a distinctive design aesthetic and a blueprint for popular protests that followed. The exhibition used the archives of Syd Shelton and Ruth Gregory, who were part of the collective group that created the visual impact of the movement, helping shape the political, creative,

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and boundary-breaking identity of RAR. The bringing together of music, art, photography, graphics, design, and grassroots activism explored the possibilities of creative engagement with a political issue. Shelton has spoken about RAR emerging from concern about the growing influence of the far-right National Front, especially in parts of East London, where they were getting substantial amounts of votes. He notes: “there was a real chance that punk music as it arrived and youth culture could have moved easily to the right and become nihilistic and racist and fascist.”28 The exhibition included Shelton’s photographs of bands such as The Clash, who played at the now famous antiracist gigs in Victoria Park in London; pictures of working-class youth and moments of activism; as well as covers of the RAR magazine Temporary Hoarding, campaign ephemera, and more prosaic pieces such as Gregory’s diary, which records both the everyday and extraordinary moments in an activist’s life. What all the pieces exuded was the possibility to make something happen by using whatever individual creative talents you had as an active means to a collective end. Tulloch describes her ambition for the exhibition in an article entitled “A Riot of Our Own: A Reflection on Agency”: This article relates how a curatorial-telling of RAR can illustrate the power of agency from human, material and visual perspectives. It is a reflective text by me, the instigator of the exhibition idea, co-curator and collaborator, in order to convey the edge of reason that a curatorial-telling of activism can produce, that is, a space where different personal experiences, yet similar socio-political perspectives, connect.29 Tulloch explores how RAR created a different dialogue between “black” and “white” and reflects on how curatorial practice in exploring such moments can capture histories that upset the prescribed places assigned for them. This not only challenges what David Morley refers to in another context as the “taxonomic pressures of various state authorities” but also conveys differing creative and political possibilities.30 Tulloch’s exploration of “difference” and “unity” as compatible is crucial. As she notes: “I wanted to extend my research investigations into inter- and cross-cultural connections, not only as a sphere of conflict due to difference, but difference as unity between black and white people. This partially stems from personal experience.”31 As she continues: “In my own lived experience, I have witnessed the sting of racism and the energy of unity through difference.”32 Riot of Our Own also provided an important visual and aesthetic counternarrative to the popular ideology that being political is not fun, but requires a sourfaced, dour earnestness. As new feminist movements emerge, this narrative will

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surely resurface, even though what most old activists remember fondly is the joy, camaraderie, and creativity of campaigning. With its images of youthful exuberance, arresting visuals, exciting gigs with iconic bands, and cross-racial connection, the exhibition reminded audiences that although RAR did not shy away from confronting terrible events such as racist murders, solidarity and standing up to racism could be an enjoyable and positive identity position to occupy. Shelton has talked about the ways in which RAR wanted to capture a festival spirit at its antifascist concerts, and the exhibition strongly conveys this sentiment.33 There were many active paths from this past to the present that created moments of conversation between the two. Shelton’s compelling photo of Darcus Howe speaking at a march organized to confront a racist “antimugging” march, the “Anti Anti-Mugging March,” in Lewisham, South London, in 1977, for example, was not a relic of past activism on an issue now resolved, but a living, up-to-date, and potent reminder of British racism. This allowed the audience to view histories of oppression and resistance as active and ongoing, pointing both forward and backward, and inextricably linked to the pleasures and possibilities of pop music. The idea of a future over which we have no control creates a certain cultural malaise. While discourses of creating “resilience” circulate in all sorts of sectors, the idea of resistance and agency is less prevalent, as is the idea of actually impacting on the future. In this context the remembering of a future from the past that was expressed at Kraftwerk Consolation Night was very potent. Kraftwerk themselves are emblematic of pop music heritage as complex and multilayered, with “nostalgia” focused not on regressive longing for ways of life long gone, but for a past of imaginative “looking to the future.” As innovators who have lived to see their music become integral to a whole host of musical genres, their place as heritage icons is assured, but this was not a hollow celebration of their iconic status as much as it was about resurrecting the future they represent(ed). The idea of a future to hope for, to imagine, to paint, to write about, and to conceptualize, as well as a nostalgia for the everyday intellectualism inspired by a whole manner of things from electronic music, to Afrofuturism, to science fiction literature that the music, video, and artwork of the event explored, drew attention to the potential of creative agency. Like David Bowie is and A Riot of Our Own, it revelled not only in the popular theorizing that these cultural texts provided but also in the role of creative practice to change perceptions of what is actually possible to change. One of the most interesting moments was from the art collective Soda Jerk with their piece entitled Astro Black: We Are the Robots (2010), which they describe as follows: “This episode of the Astro Black video cycle considers the impact of German electronic music on Afrofuturist sonic

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culture. . . . This jam session—between the original and sampled versions of Kraftwerk’s music—points toward a transnational conception of cultural production that unsettles linear conceptions of time.”34 Kraftwerk Consolation Night called on different kinds of audience engagement, ones that were less passive. Tyler notes that “it is often not events of protest or resistance themselves, many of which barely register within the public domain or are quickly forgotten or suppressed, but rather the storying of revolts—and the forms of aesthetics this affects which matters most.”35 Music heritage can point towards resistance, rebellion, and the creative possibilities of identity, not as simply markers on the road to consensus, but part of a continuous process in a genuinely democratic society. The notion that the relationship between music, radical creativity, and social change is a relic from the past is not a fact but a matter of perspective. Music heritage can invoke feelings of impotent nostalgia, but it can also reignite a longing for hope, liberation, and, most important, agency.

Notes This chapter was written before the death of David Bowie on 10 January 2016. 1. C. Davies: The NME Years, National Museum Wales (NMW), Cardiff, 9 May –6 September 2015, http://www.museumwales.ac.uk/cardiff/whatson/7844/Chalkie-Davies-the-NME-years. 2. Band members included Glenn Gregory, Marc Almond, Glen Matlock, and Steve Norman. 3. R. Jones, “Punk Rock Brand: The Sex Pistols to Feature on a Range of Credit Cards,” Guardian, 9 June 2015, http://www.theguardian.com/music/2015/jun/09/punk-rock-brand-the-sexpistols-to-feature-on-a-range-of-credit-cards. 4. Ibid. 5. S. Reynolds, Retromania: Pop Culture’s Addiction to Its Own Past (London: Faber and Faber, 2011), xiv. 6. David Bowie is, The Victoria and Albert Museum (V&A) 23 March–11 August 2013, http://www.vam.ac.uk/content/exhibitions/david-bowie-is/about-the-exhibition/; V. Broackes and G. Marsh, eds., David Bowie Is (London: V&A Publishing, 2013). 7. A Riot of Our Own, CHELSEA Space Gallery, London, 2 July–2 August 2008, http://www. chelseaspace.org/archive/riot-pr.html. 8. Kraftwerk Consolation Night, Chapter Arts Centre, Cardiff, 1 March 2013, organized by Daniele Procida, http://consolationnight.org.uk/. 9. Iggy Pop interviewed on Forever Young: How Rock ’n’ Roll Grew Up (BBC4, 2 July 2010). 10. S. Hall, “Notes of Deconstructing ‘the Popular’ (1981),” in Cultural Theory: An Anthology, ed. I. Szeman and T. Kaposy (Oxford: Wiley Blackwell, 2011), 76 (72–80). 11. Ibid., 77. 12. J. McGuigan, “From Cultural Populism to Cool Capitalism,” Art & the Public Sphere 1, no. 1 (2011): 11 (7–18). 13. Ibid., 14. 14. R. Adams, “The Englishness of English Punk: Sex Pistols, Subcultures, and Nostalgia,” Popular Music & Society 31, no. 4 (2008): 469–488.

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15. R. Burgoyne, “From Contested to Consensual Memory: The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum,” in Memory History Nation—Contested Pasts, ed. Katharine Hodgkin and Susannah Radstone (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers, 2007), 209 (208–220). 16. Ibid., 210 17. Ibid. 18. “My Mother the Carjacker,” The Simpsons (2003), http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0701188/. 19. B. Schwarz, Memories of Empire, vol. 1, The White Man’s World (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), 195. 20. There are interesting and important critical points to be made about, for example, the oppressive attitudes of the musicians’ union to the burgeoning electronic music of the late 1970s, but these are not usually the subtle points that much heritage music television engages with. 21. BBC4, Oh You Pretty Things: The Story of Music and Fashion, 17 September 2014, http:// www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b04j1wxw. 22. I. Tyler, Revolting Subjects: Social Abjection and Resistance in Neoliberal Britain (London: Zed Books, 2013). 23. McGuigan, “From Cultural Populism to Cool Capitalism”; J. Littler, “Cultural Studies and Consumer Culture,” in Ethics and Morality in Consumption: Interdisciplinary Perspectives, ed. D. Shaw et al. (London: Routledge, 2016). 24. C. Tulloch, “A Riot of Our Own: A Reflection on Agency,” Open Arts Journal 3 (Summer 2014): 25–59. 25. http://www.vam.ac.uk/content/videos/j/jonathan-barnbrook-david-bowie-is/. 26. Reynolds, Retromania, 71. 27. See The Festival of Failure, Chapter Arts Centre, 29–30 June 2012, especially the contribution of the Elbow Room arts cooperative. Its website explains: “Artists and groups were invited to contribute to the event by designing activities that tested participants’ ability to fail.” Participant philosopher Phil Cole notes: “And so the Elbow Room event is a radical intervention in the capitalist rush to impact and outcomes. It’s the carving out of a space and time where people can fail to find the answer or reach an artificial agreement that lets some bureaucrat tick a box and say, ‘We’ve got a policy!’ So—no answers, no impact, no outcomes. But we might just all learn something valuable.” http://elbowroom.org.uk/2012/06/30/ festival-of-failure-june-2012/. 28. S. Shelton, http://autograph-abp.co.uk/exhibitions/rock-against-racism. 29. Tulloch, “Riot of Our Own,” 30. 30. D. Morley, Home Territories: Media, Mobility and Identity (London: Routledge, 2000), 43. 31. Tulloch, “Riot of Our Own,” 39. 32. Ibid. 33. Shelton. 34. http://www.sodajerk.com.au/video_work.php?v=20120921063741. 35. Tyler, Revolting Subjects, 12–13.

� Afterword On Behalf Also of Gregory Ashworth

JOHN TUNBRIDGE

This collection has made a wide range of contributions to the growing ferment of ideas on one of the most influential, if sometimes ethereal, concepts of recent decades. It augments further the understanding of heritage issues that are steadily compounding from the growing literature in the field, and does so from the perspective of heritage at the interface: specifically, the contact interface between diverse cultures, value systems, and identities, which holds the potential for confrontation but also presents opportunities for cross-cultural communication and mutual inclusion, as reflected in various chapters above. In this context a recurrent theme in the collection is the interface between indigenous populations and immigrating or visiting strangers; the cases discussed are a useful reminder that indigenes are not only the frequently documented recipients of external colonization in the global “South” but also the established residents of countries of the “North” who are contending with tourists motivated by discordant values. The diverse multidisciplinary scope of the chapters above also engages with a great many other critical issues and debates relating to heritage; and heritage is well recognized as a dynamic process of selective remembering and forgetting, commonly involving appropriation by some and concomitant disinheritance of others, creating the challenges of its omnipresent dissonance potential. It falls to me to draw together some concluding thoughts that may provide further broad cohesion to the many insights and illustrations in the preceding chapters, and to do so from the perspective of one who, rather inadvertently, finds himself an “elder statesman” in the field. My involvement goes back to the 1970s, when the geographical implications of what was becoming interpreted as heritage in the built environment first occurred to me. It seems much less than

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forty years since a geography journal editor turned away a youthful heritage manuscript of mine with a well-meaning comment to the effect that the historians had already done it; they hadn’t, of course, any more than anyone else, not at least at that time. But we’ve come a long way since, in multidisciplinary journeys; and as my colleagues’ contributions above testify, we’re still going there— to a heritage future, or futures, meriting some further comment in the following paragraphs. This Afterword is written, however, with the particular contribution of another “elder statesman” in mind: my friend and close collaborator of over thirty years, Sir Gregory Ashworth, whose name appears liberally in bibliographies above and elsewhere, and who was active in the heritage field (among others) almost until his death in November 2016. My comments below largely reflect the joint development of our heritage thinking, reactively of course with the wisdom of our academic peers. Greg several times remarked that our work in heritage and related fields had become a common resource, to be selectively mined and progressively refined as heritage studies advanced. This common currency developed through some fifty collaborations of many kinds, notably five books. It was my particular privilege to help facilitate Greg’s attendance at a Heritage Futures symposium at Brighton University, United Kingdom, in October 2016, where he gave his final presentation a few days before he died; despite the mental blur in the wake of these events, I recall his concluding thoughts that specifically color the comments below on the future of heritage. As the above chapters widely attest, heritage is a concept focused upon the present, for which it has a variety of uses; and among them the most potent are political, as in the interests of established or rival nationalisms (well exemplified by British versus Scottish); and economic, most obviously tourism, widely cited as the world’s leading industry and motivation for human movement, with all its equivocal social and environmental ramifications. If heritage were uncontested as a mainspring of these political and economic phenomena it would be important enough, but as this book further demonstrates—and as Ashworth and Tunbridge, among others, have frequently discussed—it is anything but uncontested. As Hooper’s present Introduction acknowledges, heritage at the interface of human diversity is commonly a focus of contention, though (as noted earlier) we may indeed hope to cultivate it as a focus of constructive engagement and mutual understanding, by the recognition of shared values. In the political context of heritage, the varying extents to which national administrations have sought to structure such constructive engagement has been discussed by Ashworth, Graham, and Tunbridge in Pluralising Pasts. With particular respect to the economic and political uses of heritage, it may

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be difficult now for young scholars to appreciate the impact of the end of the Cold War upon the course of heritage studies. Both the tourism and ideological implications of heritage suddenly acquired a potency beyond previous conception, or at least beyond previous personal experience when freedom of travel and inquiry beyond the Iron Curtain had been so severely constrained. Therein, as Hartmann has astutely noted, lay much of the genesis of concepts of dark and death-related heritage and tourism and, for myself and Greg Ashworth, Dissonant Heritage, and later A Geography of Heritage, with Brian Graham also. For us, the ideas were not new, but the resource material flowed in hitherto unimagined abundance from 1990 onward; and the influence of that seismic shift pervades heritage studies a quarter of a century later, albeit through subsequent and often derivative overlays that may at times obscure it. Despite the wealth of resource material now accessible—and in part because of it—a stumbling block in heritage studies is what, when you examine it closely, does “heritage” actually signify? Academic writing on the subject may be sufficiently detached from detail that the precision of interpretation may pass unquestioned; but this is by no means always so. To most heritage practitioners, and among layers of officialdom right up to UNESCO and its World Heritage Sites, heritage refers to the “stuff ” of relevant resource materials, be they tangible or, indeed, intangible. But to a growing number of academic commentators, heritage refers to the “meaning of the stuff ”—and thus is entirely intangible and invariably plural, since different people as individuals will inevitably attach different meanings to the “stuff ” (that is, to heritage resources), maybe slightly— but maybe radically, with the potentially negative consequences variously alluded to in the chapters above. From heritage meanings it is but a short step to heritage values, perhaps implying a scale of values and therewith a particularly pointed question, according to whom? Differences of interpretation inevitably confront us with questions regarding where heritage is heading as the twenty-first century progresses. If the definition of heritage finds agreement, or if different interpretations can coexist through general acceptance of interpretation according to context, then we can continue to advance a field of study that is essentially unified, or at least a “broad church” to which all participants can loosely subscribe. However, there is a clear risk that the many disciplines that engage with heritage—which have proliferated as its broad popularity has promised academic and/or financial advantage—will interpret it divergently and cause heritage studies to disintegrate into pillars of mutual solitude. If this should happen, will upcoming generations continue to value what has ceased to be a coherent intellectual concept—and if not, will there be a future, or even plural futures, for heritage?

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In his final symposium presentation, Gregory Ashworth posed the question: has the “heritage crusade” of which Lowenthal wrote been won, or lost? Have we achieved a wide-ranging societal respect for inheritances derived (albeit selectively) from the past, or have we in the process so debased the currency of heritage by confused, if not trivial or even perverse, usage that we have contrived to turn gain into loss? After weighing the arguments he concluded on a note of cautious optimism, which he saw in the current “critical heritage” movement formalized within the Association of Critical Heritage Studies, founded in 2012. While it has yet to achieve full internal agreement on the nature and direction of heritage studies (according to informal reports on its Montreal conference in 2016), it seeks to promote a body of heritage theory in which a central concern is to bring the “outside in”: to elevate the voices of heritage claimants hitherto marginalized by official agencies’ preoccupation with what Smith has famously called the “Authorized Heritage Discourse” (AHD—favoring Western, elite visions of “stuff ”). For Greg, and perhaps for me, this institutional formalization of a “critical” goal that he, I, and others had in fact long pursued less formally offers a positive step toward a sustainable future for heritage studies. In light of past experience, and particularly of my post–Cold War comments above, it is, however, worth remembering that the future of our field cannot be isolated from world events. We may be forced by war, insurgency, or climate change, most notably, to confront the question: does heritage (or rather do heritages) exist when the material resources to which the label has been officially ascribed—even as World Heritage Sites—no longer exist? Indeed, have new heritage layers been added by that very fact? These questions are among others perhaps presently unknown that the trajectory of world affairs will bring to the attention of those who broadly subscribe to our field, as active conservationists, critical heritage theorists, or otherwise. Many of the readers of this book will participate in the interplay between vicissitudes of world events and evolving perspectives on heritage during the course of their careers. I only wish the long Ashworth-Tunbridge partnership could continue to contribute to the heritage debates that will undoubtedly ensue. Meanwhile we must deal with the world at this point in the early twentyfirst century. It is not the brave new world that seemed to dawn in 1990, to Ashworth and Tunbridge among many others (even Berlin, which symbolized that new dawn, has fallen victim to terrorist attacks as I write this). It is a world of problems and tensions that are riven with heritage issues, however defined, beyond the scope of any single publication. The present essays, however, have advanced current understanding across a wide selection of topics and thematic approaches, both tangible and intangible as commonly defined, and across a

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broad spectrum of disciplines. As geographers, Greg and I would, as I do, appreciate their global range both of case studies and of contributor origins and associations. Whatever sense the future makes of heritage studies will depend critically upon moving not just their rhetoric but their reality farther away from the North Atlantic academic core, to benefit the places less studied and the voices less heard. Heritage at the Interface both enhances the present breadth and depth of the field and furthers the movement of heritage studies in this right geographical direction, as we attempt to chart that challenging future course.

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Contributors

Rosabelle Boswell is professor at Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University and vice president of the national association of anthropology in southern Africa (ASNA). She is the author of Le Malaise Creole: Ethnic Identity in Mauritius. Kathleen Brown-Pérez is assistant professor in Commonwealth Honors College at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. An enrolled member of the Brothertown Indian Nation, her most recent publications include “A Right Delayed: The Brothertown Indian Nation’s Story of Surviving the Federal Acknowledgment Process” in Recognition, Sovereignty Struggles, and Indigenous Rights in the United States: A Sourcebook and “‘A Reflection of Our National Character’: Structurally and Culturally Violent Federal Policies and the Elusive Quest for Federal Acknowledgment” in Landscapes of Violence. Bella Dicks is professor in the School of Social Sciences, Cardiff University. She has published two books, Heritage, Place and Community and Culture on Display. In 2016 she was appointed to a three-year secondment as head of research for the National Museum Wales. Joshua Hagen is dean of the College of Arts and Sciences at Northern State University. He has published widely on issues related to urban planning, historical preservation, and nationalism, including Borders: A Very Short Introduction and Borderlines and Borderlands: Political Oddities at the Edge of the Nation-State. Glenn Hooper is lecturer in tourism and heritage at Glasgow Caledonian University. Author of Travel Writing and Ireland, 1760–1860 and editor of Landscape and Empire, 1770–2000, he has been a contributor to, among others, the Canadian Journal of Irish Studies, the Journal of Design History, the Journal of Scottish Historical Studies, the Journal of the Decorative Arts Society, and West 86th: A Journal of Decorative Arts, Design History, and Material Culture.

224 · Contributors

Jennifer Iles is honorary Research Fellow in sociology at the University of Roehampton, London. Her publications are concerned with the present-day collective remembrance of the First World War and tourism to the battlefields of the Western Front. Lee Jolliffe, professor of hospitality and tourism at the University of New Brunswick (Canada), is the editor of Tea and Tourism: Tourists, Traditions and Transformations and Coffee Culture, Destinations and Tourism. Lucas Lixinski is senior lecturer at the University of New South Wales and writes primarily in the areas of public international law, international cultural heritage law, and international human rights law. He is the author of Intangible Cultural Heritage in International Law. Johanna Mitterhofer is a researcher in the Institute for Minority Rights, the European Academy (EURAC), Bozen. She is author of “Border Stories: Negotiating Life on the Austrian-Italian Border,” in A Land on the Threshold. Roshi Naidoo is an arts and heritage consultant specializing in education work and cultural policy. She is coeditor (with Jo Littler) of The Politics of Heritage: The Legacies of “Race” and a member of the editorial collective for the journal Soundings. Hazel Tucker is associate professor in the Department of Tourism, University of Otago. She is the author of Living with Tourism and coeditor of Tourism and Postcolonialism. John Tunbridge is professor emeritus from Carleton University. He is coauthor of The Tourist-Historic City (with Greg Ashworth) and Dissonant Heritage (with Greg Ashworth), and his research is concerned with the various dimensions of the geography of heritage. Emma Waterton is associate professor at Western Sydney University in the Institute for Culture and Society. A prolific writer, she has authored Politics, Policy and the Discourses of Heritage in Britain and two coauthored monographs, Heritage, Communities and Archaeology (with Laurajane Smith) and The Semiotics of Heritage Tourism (with Steve Watson).

Contributors · 225

Claire Wintle is senior lecturer in the history of art and design at the University of Brighton. She authored Colonial Collecting and Display: Encounters with Material Culture in the Andaman and Nicobar Islands and coedited (with Ruth Craggs) Cultures of Decolonisation: Transnational Productions and Practices, 1945–1970. Jundan (Jasmine) Zhang is a postdoctoral researcher at Umeå University, Sweden, and contributor to Political Ecology of Tourism (Routledge). She is currently researching the relationship between tourism development and environmental discourse.

Index

Adajania, Nancy, 80 Affective identity, 18, 90–93, 97, 99, 102–3 Agency, 3, 4, 28, 85, 92, 197, 200, 202–3, 205–7 Alaska Native Heritage Center, 34 American Indian, 6–7; American Indian museums and, 33–35; assimilation and, 30–32; culture and heritage and, 25–27; Indian Removal Act of 1830 and, 29 Ancestry, 29, 140, 158 Architecture, 2, 66, 121, 130, 138, 163, 185 Artsipelago, 161, 166–69, 172 Ashworth, Gregory, 136, 190, 209–13 Association of Critical Heritage Studies, 212 Atatürk, 130–31 Australia, 2, 4, 90–91; identities, 99–103 Authenticity, 14–16, 21, 112, 137, 164, 168 Barnbrook, Jonathan, 203 Battlefield tourism, 40–41, 46 Bauhaus, 57 Believers, 123–27 Bendix, Regina, 11 Benn, Tony, 79 Berlin, 143, 203–4, 212 Binational, 5, 161–62, 164, 173 Biodiversity, 109–10, 112 Blair, Tony, 186, 192 Bloody Sunday, 191–92 Bogside, Derry, 181, 189, 191–92 Borders, 73, 137, 161–63 Borders, as gateways, 162, 196; cross-border tourism and, 73, 162–63; moved, 137 Bourdieu, Pierre, 13, 16–17, 20–21 Bowie, David, 196, 198, 202–4, 206 Buddhism, 117 Burgoyne, Robert, 199 Cherry, Deborah, 77 Chichi, Alessandro, 123

China, 106; Niru village and, 108, 112–17; ShangriLa, 109, 111–12, 116–17 Clinton, Bill, 32 Cloppenburg, 67–68 Coal mining, 11, 14–15 Codell, Julie, 85 Cold War, 7, 73, 78, 80, 85, 211 Collier, John, 30 Colonial aesthetic, 20, 156 Commodification, 6, 13, 26, 47, 148, 190 Congress, United States, 26, 28–32 Conservation, 35, 63–64, 110, 123–32, 190 Constantinople, 130 Consumption, 14, 101, 121, 155, 203 Counternarrative, 100, 202, 205 Crafts and craftsmanship, 5, 66–67, 76, 77, 171 Creoles, 148, 152, 156 Creolization, 8, 149, 153, 155 Crooke, Elizabeth, 191 Crouch, David, 102 Cultural value, 3, 11–13, 19–21, 111, 117, 150, 195, 198 Curatorship, 13, 15–16, 150, 186, 190–91, 205 Dance, 106, 113–14, 152–53 Dann, Graham, 47 Dark tourism, 40 Davies, Chalkie, 195 De Cesari, Chiara, 108 Derry/Londonderry, 4, 176; regeneration and Trusts and, 180–82; Siege Museum, 189; Tower Museum and, 182–88 Dialogical heritage, 137, 143 Dissonant heritage, 16, 136, 139, 141, 211 Edensor, Tim, 47 Enlightenment, the, 102, 110 Ethnography, 97, 107 Eurocentric, 110 European Court of Human Rights, 127

228 · Index Fairclough, Graham, 144 Faro Convention, 4, 144 Fascism, 137–40 Feder, Gottfried, 58 Field Day Theatre Company, 179 First World War, 8, 39, 46, 49, 52, 137–39 Flanders, 40, 43 Forgetting, 16, 46, 136, 200, 209 Fountain Street, Derry, 189–90 France, 2, 39. See also Somme Fundamentalism, 122, 130 Gasyard Heritage Centre, 188–90 Gaze, The, 11, 19, 76, 155 Geopolitical, 165 Germany, 4, 7, 56; Cologne and, 59–63; Nazi historic preservation, 56–58 Ghandi, Indira, 73–75, 78 Global heritage, 122, 148–49 Globalization, 153–55, 177 Good Friday Agreement, 176, 182, 188 Grand narrative legacies, 148 Green Tibetans, 117, 118 Guildhall, Derry, 179, 184, 187, 189 Habitus, 13, 17, 22 Hague Convention for the Protection of Cultural Property, 124 Hall, Stuart, 91, 198 Heard Museum, 33 Heimatschutz, 56–57 Heritage attractions, 163, 180 Heritage management, 4, 8, 121, 132, 148–52 Heritagization, 15–16, 20–21, 196 Hewison, Robert, 1, 179, 185 Himalayas movement, 109 History Wall, 73, 82–84 Hitler, Adolf, 62–63, 66, 69, 137 Hughes Rollings, William, 25 Humphrey, Hubert, 79 Hybridity, 20, 85, 91, 149 Iconoclasm, 6, 121–22, 129–31 Identity making, 97, 117–18, 173 Imagined community, 43, 101 Industrial heritage, 3, 13, 187, 189 Industrialization, 57, 63 Inheritance/disinheritance, 136, 209, 212 Intangible Cultural Heritage, 5, 11, 91, 125, 157

Interface, 4, 8, 9, 93, 148, 158, 209–10 International law, 122–23 International Sculpture Trail, 161, 167, 169–73 International Union for Conservation of Nature, 106, 109–12, 115 Istanbul, 130–31; Hagia Sophia, 129–32 Jackson, Andrew, 28–29 Johnson, Lyndon, 32 Kapur, Pratap, 79 Kentucky Native American Heritage Museum, 34 Kirshenblatt-Gimblett, Barbara, 19, 150 Kitsch, 2, 67 Kraftwerk, 198, 206–7 Lacey, Brian, 183–84 Le Morne, 156–58 Lefebvre, Henri, 18 Legatee, 13–15, 18–22 Light, Duncan, 186 Lindner, Werner, 64–67, 69 Lochnagar Crater, 42, 48–50 Lowenthal, David, 13, 18, 43, 121, 149, 179, 212 Maguire, Bill, 179, 185 Maine, 2, 5, 161; cross-border cultural tourism, 166–69 Marginalization, 109, 148–49, 157 Mauritius, 2, 4, 8, 148; ethnicity and, 152–54; multiple identities, 150–51 McGuigan, Jim, 199 Meier, Burkhard, 56 Memory, sites of, 8, 42, 44, 48, 52, 57, 67 Meriam Report, 30 Monuments, 20, 74, 77, 110, 121, 124, 130, 136, 138, 141, 143 Morley, David, 205 Munich, 63 Museification, 123, 131 Museum of Free Derry, 188, 191–92 Mussolini, Benito, 137, 139 National Institute of Design, Ahmedabad (NID), 72–77, 80–85 National Socialism, 67, 142 Nationalism, 43, 73–76, 78, 85, 141–42, 197, 204, 210 Nehru, Jawaharlal, 72; Eames’ Office and, 74–84;

Index · 229 nationalism and, 75–77; reception and, 79–80; touring exhibition, 73–74 Neoliberalism, 202 New Brunswick, Canada, 2, 5, 161; cross-border cultural tourism, 166–69 New Delhi, 74, 76, 78 New wave, 195, 197, 201 Nostalgia, cultural, 196–97, 199–200, 203; music, 206–7 Orwell, George, 116, 204 Outreach, 7, 32, 35, 186, 190–91 Palio horse contest, Siena, 11 Participant observation, 97, 162 Passamaquoddy, 5, 161, 165–71 Patel, Dashrath, 76, 80–81 Patriotism, 179, 201 Paulin, Tom, 2 Performing arts, 163, 179 Portugal, 15–16, 19 Postcolonial, 72, 150, 151 Postmodern, 27, 151 Prasad, Sharada, 74–75, 82 Pratt, Richard, Lt., 29 Prentice, Richard, 188 Public history, 1, 179 Punk rock, 195, 197, 199–200 Reactionary values, 197, 201 Rebellion, cultural, 195–98, 202, 207 Reconciliation, 103, 190, 199 Religion, 6, 30, 114, 121–32 Resistance, sites of, 122, 126, 156, 197–98, 200 Reynold, Simon, 197, 201 Rhine Quarter, 59–62 Rock Against Racism (RAR), 198, 204 Rock art, 91, 64–66 Samuel, Raphael, 3 Satwalekar, Vikas, 81 Schwarz, Bill, 200 Secularism, 122, 129–31 Self-talk, 93, 97, 99, 103 Settler-colonial, 26, 27, 29, 35 Sheffield, Gary, 42 Shields, Robert, 44 Slavery, 148, 156–58; slaves, 152, 156, 158

Smithsonian, the, 33, 35, 74, 76 Social Darwinism, 57 Social engineering, 62 Social mobility, 17 Somme, 8; casualties and, 42; La Boisselle, 48–51; landscape and identity and, 43–44 Sortelha, 15–16, 19–20 South Africa, 154 South Tyrol, 5; ethnicity and, 137; Italianization and, 137–38; Victory Monument, 138–40 Subjectivity, 142, 150, 151, 155, 191 Subversion, cultural, 197, 199, 201–2 Supreme Court, U.S., 6, 28, 122, 127–28 Tallon, Andrew, 177, 180 Tangible/intangible heritage, 153, 157, 163, 197, 211 Tantaquidgeon, Harold, 33–34, 36 Termination (American Indian), 27, 29, 31–32 Thanatourism, 40 Thatcher, Margaret, 3, 201 Thiepval, 40, 44, 47 Tibet, 2, 6, 106–8; culture and identity, 112–17. See also UNESCO Tides Institute, Maine, 166, 169 Tilden, Freeman, 8 Timothy, Dallen, 162 Transcultural, 80, 85 Transformative heritage, 98, 102, 144 Troubles, the, 176–77, 179, 189–90 Tunbridge, John, 136, 190, 210, 212 Turkey, 2, 4, 129–32, 142–43. See also UNESCO Two Nation Vacation, 166, 169–73 UNESCO, 2, 6, 11, 16, 74; Convention and, 107, 116–18; Tibet and, 106–18; Turkey, 131–2 Union Carbide Building, 74, 76 Universal values, 6, 107–8, 110–11, 114–17 U.S. Constitution, 28, 128–29 U.S. Supreme Court, 6, 28, 122, 127–28 Vergo, Peter, 186 Vernacular, 16, 20, 60, 66, 199 Visconti, Tony, 196 Wade, Robin, 182–83 World Heritage Convention, 91, 110, 116, 124–25 World heritage list, 6, 91, 108, 121, 124, 130, 154 Wright, Patrick, 179

Cultural Heritage Studies Edited by Paul A. Shackel, University of Maryland The University Press of Florida is proud to support this series devoted to the study of cultural heritage. This enterprise brings together research devoted to understanding the material and behavioral characteristics of heritage. The series explores the uses of heritage and the meaning of its cultural forms as a way to interpret the present and the past. Books include important theoretical contributions and descriptions of significant cultural resources. Scholarship addresses questions related to culture and describes how local and national communities develop and value the past. The series includes works in public archaeology, heritage tourism, museum studies, vernacular architecture, history, American studies, and material cultural studies. Heritage of Value, Archaeology of Renown: Reshaping Archaeological Assessment and Significance, edited by Clay Mathers, Timothy Darvill, and Barbara J. Little (2005) Archaeology, Cultural Heritage, and the Antiquities Trade, edited by Neil Brodie, Morag M. Kersel, Christina Luke, and Kathryn Walker Tubb (2006) Archaeological Site Museums in Latin America, edited by Helaine Silverman (2006) Crossroads and Cosmologies: Diasporas and Ethnogenesis in the New World, by Christopher C. Fennell (2007) Ethnographies and Archaeologies: Iterations of the Past, by Lena Mortensen and Julie Hollowell (2009) Cultural Heritage Management: A Global Perspective, by Phyllis Mauch Messenger and George S. Smith (2010; first paperback edition, 2014) God’s Fields: An Archaeology of Religion and Race in Moravian Wachovia, by Leland Ferguson (2011; first paperback edition, 2013) Ancestors of Worthy Life: Plantation Slavery and Black Heritage at Mount Clare, by Teresa S. Moyer (2015) Slavery behind the Wall: An Archaeology of a Cuban Coffee Plantation, by Theresa A. Singleton (2015; first paperback edition, 2016) Excavating Memory: Sites of Remembering and Forgetting, edited by Maria Theresia Starzmann and John R. Roby (2016) Mythic Frontiers: Remembering, Forgetting, and Profiting with Cultural Heritage Tourism, by Daniel R. Maher (2016) Critical Theory and the Anthropology of Heritage, by Melissa F. Baird (2017) Heritage at the Interface: Interpretation and Identity, edited by Glenn Hooper (2018)