The concept of heritage evokes a community that shares similar history, culture, and landscape. However, in the last 50 years or so, heritage has been used to organize larger society that breaks cultural, state, and territorial boundaries. The concept has also been used to develop a sense of national identity to unite (or assimilate) a heterogeneous entity into a nation.
As such, heritage is a complex notion that can be used to either empower or disempower groups. The Heritage Movements in Asia explores these intricacies by problematizing and theorizing heritage studies. The volume focuses on issues of inclusiveness in an environment where national identity and enlightenment philosophy dominate state heritage conservation policies.
The book contextualizes how heritage is used by government entities to strengthen the state, on one hand, and global homogenization, on the other hand. Mozaffari and Jones clearly argue that heritage is an expression of inequality between the Global North and the Global South. They, therefore, utilize volume to advance a redefining of the heritage concept that intersects with other issues, such as “human rights, climate change, issues of development, sustainability, poverty alleviation, and urban regeneration” (p. 3).
To advance this thinking, the editors emphasize that engagement is the key to make heritage more meaningful. Although not mentioned in the text, this is similar to the UNESCO/ICOMOS/ICCROM Nara Document on Authenticity. The book, however, goes beyond the Nara Declaration by advocating for a bottom-up approach to change the dominant heritage paradigm. Using six case studies from Asia, the authors promote activism and social movements as crucial to fore fronting local meanings and the emotions that the meanings elicit from local communities.
The emotions elicited by heritage discussions are exemplified by nostalgia as illustrated by a social media group in Indonesia, Bol Brutu. The chapter argues that Bol Brutu promotes a shift in heritage engagement, one that is defined and understood through online and face-to-face elements. The authors stress that this new kind of heritage arrangement is like an open system, where conservatism, and/or progressivism can take control, depending on the type of engagement.
Bol Brutu is a social movement that has garnered a significant mass in Indonesia that it has become an influential group. It is an example of how heritage can bring together people from various backgrounds to (re)define their identity through nostalgia. The case study from Dali, China, on the other hand, exemplifies how an individual can participate in heritage movement. This chapter highlights the political and economic foundation to which heritage is entangled with.
This entanglement is also underscored in the attempt to save the Bukit Brown Cemetery (Chinese Cemetery) in Singapore. The chapter explored how the planned dismantling of the cemetery brought together heritage activists to come up with a national narrative (p. 116) that highlights the contributions of immigrants in the building of modern Singapore. This movement thus, contravened the state-sponsored narrative of economic development, but at the same time, reframed Singapore heritage activism asway from “antidevelopment” or “antiprogress” because of their focus on “national identity and culture” (p. 120).
If the Bukit Brown Cemetery was used by heritage activists in Singapore as a national symbol, the case of the Indigenous group, the Sonaha in Nepal, underscored how heritage movements can empower marginalized Indigenous groups. The Sonaha are not recognized by the Nepalese government as an Indigenous group and they are impacted by restrictive government policies. The local movement was spurred by these state policies to assert their collective identity. At the same time, the Sonaha movement is an intersection of their resistance to state conservation regime, reassertion of their history and relationship with their ancestral territory, counter discourse to statutes on Indigenous (Janajati) rights, and politics of ethnic identity and biocultural heritage.
Engagement with state parties is reprised in the chapter that discusses ownership and control of weaving technology in Redigama, Sri Lanka, known for Dumbara Rata designs. This essay reinforces one of the main messages in this volume that heritage is, more often than not, impacted by economic forces. These pressures have also infiltrated caste relationships in the region since weaving was traditionally a caste-based occupation. The chapter illustrates how the lower caste Berava weavers have since employed higher caste neighbors in producing textiles because of national policies. This has resulted in the contestation of who owns the intellectual property of the Dumbara Rata weaves.
The final chapter of the volume explores how heritage activism employed mass media to reach a larger audience. Focusing on two instances of state-sanctioned heritage activities, the author maintains that heritage is pervaded by power relationships among multiple players. Various forms of media become the dominant venues where these power dynamics are played out. Activism in this sense requires the ability to access and control news and social media.
The six case studies presented in this volume is a response to the concept of heritage that is still based on privilege – the ability to think about heritage in itself is a benefit provided by better access to resources. Most heritage programs and/or policies are based on the concept of Outstanding Universal Value (OUV) as applied in the UNESCO nomination process. This becomes problematic because OUV is based on the Enlightenment philosophy. The OUV emphasizes cross-cultural generalizations to establish universal laws of culture, but in practice OUV had the effect of erasing variability, reducing humanity to a set of standardized themes.
Accordingly, heritage activism aims to level the playing field and provide opportunities for local issues to be recognized, which this volume addresses. However, an explicit discussion on how taking control of their own heritage can empower marginalized populations could strengthen the volume. Activism, as advanced by scholars, offer an initial step to facing policies or discourses that influence those policies. But, the involvement of heritage practitioners in activism results in sustainable and meaningful change.
In general, this book highlights the need to question generalizing ideas about heritage. It props up the various ways in which we can counter the assimilationist emphasis of most state-sanctioned heritage policies. With an overtly structural approach, the chapters present translational applications to real-world problems.
