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World Heritage serial properties are groupings of several heritage component parts that share common themes and values. This paper examines how these serial properties, as well as their individual component parts, are influenced by serial interpretive dynamic, and how this dynamic affects on-site interpretation. We demonstrate these issues through the Israeli serial property inscription of the Biblical Tels – Megiddo, Hazor, Beer-Sheba (2005). We chart the revisions along the inscription process to point out the presence of an interpretive dynamic. We describe interpretive dynamic as the effect of the justifications of the nomination over heritage significance and interpretation, both within the realm of World Heritage and in each heritage property locally. This paper concludes that interpretive dynamic is an inevitable part of the serial process. We argue that the dynamic represents a gap between the frequent use of series as an inscription catalyst and their essence as value-oriented constructs. Considering this, we criticise the overuse of serial inscriptions and call for a revised definition that re-addresses the important place of interpretation in this process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Based on the view that community participation can be defined as the continuous trans-local mobility and localisation of not only organisations and individuals but also various nonhuman elements such as information and events, this paper explores how the community participation of Hong Kong in the conservation of Pokfulam Village is understood as socially extrospective and introspective processes. This paper is aimed to reveal how the knowledge of Treasure Hill in Taipei has been adapted (or not) to the community participation of Hong Kong's Pokfulam Village's heritage conservation. This provides insights into how the global flow of people, information, discourse, and technology has influenced the community participation in heritage conservation, especially across the Pacific Rim cities. Finally, the research discusses how local community can play a role in the dynamic local social structure of conserving their heritage, as well as 'whose heritage' in the mobility of global knowledge. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

During the COVID-19 lockdown, cultural heritage institutions responded promptly to this difficult time by launching a series of digital collections of traces of this historical moment. Due to the limitations of the lockdown, such collections have generally focused on the intimate dimension of the pandemic, representing represented the outside world (streets, shops, cultural venues, etc.) as a site of emptiness. This paper examines the 'Windows in lockdown' initiative, which aimed to collect photographs of the messages displayed in physical locations during the lockdown period. The collection was carried out through an action research approach based on a participatory platform and social media. A collection of 1,224 photos taken in France between March and May 2020 was built. This paper analyses this collection through a social semiotics approach. The analysis highlights the role played by the outside world as a generator of an alternative collective memory during COVID-19. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Across Eastern Germany, many castles and stately homes were used as shops, schools or community buildings during the GDR. Since the 1990s, many of them have been turned into museums. This paper discusses the challenges of dealing with the history of socialist reuse in East-German heritage buildings comparing the former Prussian castles of Schönhausen (Berlin) and Rheinsberg (Northern Brandenburg). The comparison is based on five in-depth semi-structured interviews providing insights into the considerations of curatorial decision makers. It shows that there is still a high sense of uncertainty in how to address the GDR past, in particular when the role of the building was not clearly political. Personal recollections of the recent past lead to uneasiness in addressing this part of history. At the same time, the paper shows how attitudes have changed over time. Today, the GDR past is increasingly seen as an opportunity to connect to a wider audience and foster a more participatory and democratic memory culture. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

UNESCO's Convention Concerning the Protection of the World Cultural and Natural Heritage (1972) (Convention) provides the highest level of international recognition for outstanding universal heritage places. While the Convention has been instrumental in aiding heritage preservation, arguably it has also reinforced a problematic 'culture' and 'nature' division in protected area management. This is not a new observation. One solution that attempted to address this issue was the introduction of the World Heritage (WH) 'Cultural Landscape' category in 1992. Yet, as of 2023, there are only 127 Cultural Landscape properties of the total 1157 properties on the WH List (10.9%). Poor recognition of the category appears particularly acute in some regions, such as Australia-Oceania, and in this paper, we consider this apparent under-utilisation with a systematic review of the literature about the category. Our analysis reveals significant and concerning regional variations in both use of the cultural landscape category and in research about it. In our current era, when better recognition of First Nation heritage is demanded, and when greater protection of heritage assets is required, further uptake of the Cultural Landscape category has the potential to redress these pressing societal concerns. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper calls for a maritime turn in critical heritage theory. Drawing on recent work on ocean and maritime ontologies, it takes up the idea of the 'ocean in excess' to argue for a maritime imagination that overcomes the separation of land from water, culture from nature. The paper begins by sketching out the terracentric norms that have come to underpin critical theory around cultural heritage. From there, recent insights on ocean ontologies are cited to show how they can open up new ways of thinking about existing strands of critical heritage work. The second half of the paper turns to the issue of ocean governance and the complex politics that arise from competing ontologies. This provides the foundation for a discussion of the transoceanic heritage discourses that are now emerging, as countries seek regional, come global influence in world affairs. Understanding these and other developments requires moving beyond the earthly, such that we more robustly engage with a multivalent heritage politics that operates across air, water and land. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Implemented in the early 2000s by the Ave Basin Regional Development Agency (ADRAVE), the Ave Basin Industrial Heritage Route (IHR) was deactivated without fully establishing a lasting circuit to showcase the region's industrial history. This paper aims to identify and critically analyse the contributing factors to the IHR's inability to create a sustainable industrial heritage circuit. Drawing insights from industrial heritage tourism studies and examining academic papers produced by members of ADRAVE during the IHR implementation to publicise the route, as well as an urban intervention in one of its hubs (Sampaio, Ferreira & Co. Riba d'Ave), the study reveals missed opportunities and challenges in the IHR's implementation, calling for a revaluation of strategies to effectively preserve and promote industrial heritage in Portugal. The analysis highlights the impact of dominant memory narratives shaped by local political and economic powers, hindering community engagement, and discouraging local involvement. The findings extend beyond Ave Basin, emphasising the importance of more inclusive approaches that involve local communities in heritage conservation initiatives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Heritage is a cultural process that is constantly exposed to contestation and therefore to reconstruction, resignification and repositioning. This paper goes beyond anthropocentric interpretations and recognises that heritage often involves other species in human-defined heritage practices. Based on an ethnographic approach, this study examines how contemporary practitioners of Charrería – a Mexican equestrian sport – embrace their intangible cultural heritage and problematise some of the interactions between the species involved. It evidences how Charrería participants navigate tensions between national identity and pride in their cultural heritage, on the one hand, and the ethics of involving other animals in sport and human heritage, on the other. The animal ethics issues involved threaten not only the social licence to operate of Charrería as a sport, but also the status and preservation of Charrería as heritage. This paper concludes that international and national organisations that institutionalise heritage play important roles in guiding efforts to protect and maintain intangible cultural heritage while addressing the changing ethical demands of interspecies relationships. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the contemporary Greek Cypriot popular music scape, we witness various and varying instances that feature cultural heritage elements: the frontman of a hard rock band performing in a vraka, the traditional male trousers; a trap song making references to lefkaritiko, a traditional lace; a metal band opening their album with an acapella tsiattisto, a traditional oral poetic style. This paper discusses these and other instances by placing them in the wider historical and political framework of the Republic of Cyprus. Distinguishing between tradition and heritage, as well as place and space, it suggests that the creative turn to the cultural past of Cyprus can be interpreted as a redefinition of the modernisation and decolonisation process of the Republic of Cyprus, which is accomplished through an inward look that emphasises the geographical and cultural particularities of the island. This inward look, it is argued, speaks back to the historical process of decolonisation that was defined by external references (attachment to the motherland(s), desire for Westernisation, and opposition to the 'Other'). The decolonisation process, itself the cause and effect of conflict and sentiments of ethno-nationalism, defined the identity of postcolonial Greek Cypriot subjects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper employs the concept of multidimensional heritage to examine colonial statues in Africa since the era of independences through transnational, diachronic, and multi-thematical perspectives. Colonial statues are viewed as transnational phenomena, with a focus on the African continent, emphasising the complex and evolving connections to former colonial powers in Europe. To capture the complexity of heritage uses, which is often best comprehended over an extended period, a diachronic approach is employed, and three periods are considered: colonial statues at independence (1950s to 1980); revival of (neo)colonial statues (1990s-2000s) and renewed contestations (since the 2010s). The paper also delves into various ways in which the past is used and interpreted through colonial statues, discussing aspects such as public memory, identities, diplomacy, aid, and justice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper provides a historical analysis of the peak and demise of the international view on cultural heritage. In the 1980s, cultural internationalism emerged as a conservative reaction against the adoption of the 1970 UNESCO Convention, which organises the restitution and return of stolen cultural properties. Internationalist and cosmopolitan scholars who have claimed that cultural heritage 'belongs to humanity', generally condemned restitution, and pushed back against the ratification of the Convention. The international view on cultural property became traditionally dominant in milieus such as universal museums, antiquity markets and some academic disciplines. However, over the past half-decade, the growing importance of research on provenance has challenged cultural internationalism in two areas. Firstly, research on provenance focused on art and archaeological crime has shown that artefacts allegedly excavated in the past are often the proceeds of recent looting, especially in conflict zones. Secondly, recent studies on historical provenance have revealed that many objects were collected using colonial violence. As a result, developments in criminology, postcolonial history, and indigenous peoples' rights have generally led to the retreat of cosmopolitan narratives on cultural property. Ultimately, this paper highlights that cosmopolitanism in cultural heritage has historically hinged on the imperialist past. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper discusses the role of the menhu in the protection of Wushu Intangible Cultural Heritage (WICH) and the possibility of developing it as part of WICH community, based on the analysis of the concepts of community in sociological theory, community in the Convention of Intangible Cultural Heritage. Menhu members master skills and enact their inheritance and reproduction for a long time and have a stable and continuous sense of identity in their inherited skills and cultural identity, thus constructing them as a cultural community. Menhu members always actively participate in the recognition, protection, and inheritance of WICH. However, due to the unclear identification of community entities and the criticism of the menhu as a negative culture in folk martial arts, its status and value have not been recognised in the protection of Intangible Cultural Heritage (ICH), and the identity of its community entity has not been clarified. This paper argues that respecting the complexity of folk martial arts cultures, and establishing a community recognition system that aligns with the realities of WICH, expressing approval and emphasising the subjectivity of the menhu is of practical significance for ensuring the continuous inheritance and dissemination of WICH. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, I explore negotiations of heritage in heritage forests from three case studies in southern Mozambique using oral history, field walking, video documentation and conversations. I argue that at local level there are processes of negotiation, authorisation, and legitimacy of heritage in forests. Such local forms of heritage negotiation and heritage discourse are authoritative and need to be recognised in both the planning of heritage conservation, and also in nature conservation. This recognition can strengthen local custodians to safeguard forest patches as locally protected areas, and opening room for heritage practitioners to be engaged by local people in the process of cultural heritage management. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Long considered a cultural contact zone, the Mediterranean has become a weaponised border zone keeping refugees from Africa and the Middle East away from 'Fortress Europe'. The Mediterranean has become excessively dangerous to cross, leading many commentators to call this maritime space a 'massive graveyard'. The widespread indifference and enmity towards migrants in Europe is, amongst other things, countered by documentary and commemorative projects by artists drawing attention to the suffering of drowned refugees. In this paper, I zoom in on documentary and memorial artistic projects by Mimmo Paladino, Jason deCaires Taylor, Christoph Büchel, Ai Weiwei and Đỉnh Q. Lê. In the frequent absence of dead bodies and specific grave sites on the 'high seas', they make claims regarding the humanity, singularity and memorability of the human lives of refugees drowned at sea. Based on a description of the artworks and their public, I make two interlinked theoretical arguments. First, the commemorative materialisations by contemporary artists are temporal claims to constitute the cultural heritage of the future. Second, given the sea's aquatic materiality, the commemorative claims of these art projects require that commemorative materialisations must spatially move from the flux of the sea to the fixity of the land. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This Introduction makes the case for a more critical engagement with oceans and the maritime within critical heritage theory. We lay out a research agenda that more consciously foregrounds aquatic domains in debates about conservation, sovereignty, governance, state power, and the politics of memory. In laying the ground for the papers that follow, we portray oceanic geographies and maritime heritage as politically and culturally charged arenas in order to argue that oceans are far from neutral or culturally egalitarian spaces and are subject to human-imposed hierarchies and competing ontologies. We scrutinize the dynamic interplay between maritime and marine realms to challenge conventional understandings of space, territory, and ownership, advocating for a reimagined approach to heritage that recognizes the ocean's pivotal role in shaping human history and culture. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In an era of species extinction, ecological destruction and uncertain futures, the separation of nature and culture within conceptualisations of heritage has become increasingly untenable. Although the limitations – and even damage – caused by the separation of these ontological categories is widely accepted within heritage studies, scholarly interventions calling for more connected ontologies are commonly framed within the context of the terrestrial. This article departs from these terra-centric approaches to instead consider the potential of an oceanic imaginary to problematise and even dismantle these dualist categories. With a specific focus on the Belitung, an ancient shipwreck found in Indonesian waters, this paper dwells on the wreck's submerged interlude between loss and discovery. It considers the impact of this millennia-long extended period underwater in terms of marine ecosystems and more-than-human growth and destruction. By attending to the process by which ship becomes wreck becomes reef, this article thus draws necessary attention to the ways in which wreck becomes heritage, thus offering insights into how values are ascribed to underwater cultural heritage, and how this both perpetuates, and disrupts, the nature-culture binary. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines how monumental preservation at the Taj Mahal leveraged the broader goals of national and international agencies including UNESCO and other UN bodies, the World Bank and the Asian Development Bank, to address the wicked problems of pollution, pro-poor tourism, and sustainable development. I suggest that the Taj, and more specifically its future preservation, is bound up in a set of conflictual connectivities and centrifugal forces that far exceed normative heritage and conservation practice. Thus the Mughal tomb became 'the critical receptor' and nodal site for an onslaught of international technical, economic, developmental and conservation schemes attempting to link cultural conservation with environmental concerns, in concert with social and economic uplift, well-being and urban resilience. What remains after decades of foreign studies, consultancies, technical reports, preservation monitoring and novel technologies? And how might we disentangle those wicked problems encircling monumental preservation in an era of environmental and political toxicity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Increasingly there is an understanding of the complexities of heritage within UK research, practice and policy. This has contributed to a growing recognition of intangible heritage, however there remains low awareness, and lack of sustained support, for Intangible Cultural Heritage (ICH). This paper outlines a case study - 'The Man Engine Pilgrimage' a popular performative heritage event in 2016 that celebrated the ten-year anniversary of Cornwall as a WHS, designated 'Outstanding Universal Value'. Central to this heritage performance was a twelve metre tall mechanical puppet, replicating parts of the mining process, which made a pilgrimage across the Cornish landscape, visiting old mining sites as an act of community remembrance, spatial identity and celebration. These events called attention to ways that 'heritage' was used and celebrated through formal and informal processes and practices. The study in particular provided insight into structural changes in official heritage processes in Cornwall that facilitated bridging processes or entry points for 'from-below' voices and intangible heritage. The latter included performing Cornishness, which is explored as the living, sensorial embodied performance of heritage in public. This is a reflexive cultural process, where values and symbolic meanings are seen in action – a 'loose' space. Within this performativity meanings and values are created, negotiated, confirmed or refuted in this process of heritage making. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Landscapes are composed of physical places, affording meaning-making and value creation from everyday heritage based on personal experiences, life histories, memories, traditions and heritage practices. Individually held values form the basis for attachment and connection between people and places. Place attachment develops into a sense of place, belonging and identity. Despite the Burra Charter and Faro Convention's aspiration to include people in the assessment process, individual, subjective or emotional connections to place are often overlooked within heritage decision-making. When places are altered, neglected or damaged, such connections can be lost, and the quality of place diminished. Most changes to landscapes happen as part of the planning process, which is not currently able to account for individual connections but based on views expressed in the language of the Authorised Heritage Discourse (AHD). This paper presents a method to meaningfully integrate insider or individual knowledge into the framework of local planning and decision-making while at the same time addressing subtleties and fluidity of such personal views. The people and place-centred method of Social Landscape Characterisation collects, analyses and visualises invisible or hidden value communities based on the same meaning (category value) or location (place value) as shared values across wider landscapes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The growing outrage over the continued stewardship of artefacts acquired through nefarious means has compelled cultural institutions to explore their role in marginalising cultures through misrepresentation. Indigenous communities around the globe are seeking the repatriation of sacred objects often collected through colonial violence. Though many museums have collaborated with communities to repatriate these artefacts, many have also avoided or refused repatriation requests, leaving communities without recourse. This paper will explore repatriation in the digital world through the lens of Cercle d'Art des Travailleurs de Plantation Congolaise's (CATPC) the quest for the return of an important Balot Pende sculpture from the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, and whether creating a digital iteration, like an Non-Fungible Token (NFT) of a sacred object, offers a potential activist tool to reclaim an alternate form of ownership when physical repatriation is not available. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores cultural heritage pedagogical practices in architectural curricula. A comprehensive mixed-method research approach was implemented on a national scale to examine the curricula of architecture departments in all Jordanian universities. This investigation encompassed qualitative and quantitative analyses, including the development of Standard and Compulsory Affinity Index ratios to assess the level of heritage integration in these curricula. To further enhance findings from both analyses, purposive criterion sampling was used for semi-structured interviews with 20 architectural professors, alongside a participatory workshop involving 25 academics, heritage professionals, and organisations. The research contributes to the limited existing literature on cultural heritage education in architectural curricula. It also introduces a model for assessing cultural heritage education at the BSc level, uncovering disparities in its presence within architectural curricula. The role of the Accreditation & Quality Assurance Commission for Higher Education Institutions in promoting heritage education is found to be limited, and inconsistencies in terminology and approaches across institutions are observed. While the primary focus is on the Jordanian context, this research offers practical recommendations that can be applied more broadly to architectural education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite the ongoing efforts towards Cold War heritage-making in Europe, the ambiguities in meaning and the cultural status of certain materialities from the second half of the 20th century across different national contexts highlight a heritage dissonance at play. Focusing on the case of the Baltic states, we analyse the engagements with Soviet military remnants since the early 1990s in the context of changing political regimes. We approach the prevailing practices of disinheritance along the same conceptual lines as heritage-making and highlight how disinheritance has contributed to shaping national identities and future-oriented landscape relations. We argue that disinheritance can be a legitimate alternative strategy for dealing with difficult legacies. In addition, we shed light on how the fragmented attempts to preserve and re-narrativize certain Soviet military remnants reflect the constrained relations between the political agendas of post-1990s nationalism and European integration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Informed by critical heritage studies, Pacific theory-building scholarship and Indigenous research methodologies, this article introduces Aa Norf'k Wieh – a Pitcairn descendant epistemology for understanding the experience and management of living heritage in Kingston and Arthur's Vale Historic Area (KAVHA), Norfolk Island. Central to Aa Norf'k Wieh is storytelling, reflecting the oral traditions of Pitkern-Norf'k. Aa Norf'k Wieh is captured in the article through the Indigenous research methodology of storywork, with personal family narratives revealing different ways of knowing, being, feeling, and doing heritage. Based on the storying of Aa Norf'k Wieh, the article proposes that, as a Pacific epistemic practice, Aa Norf'k Wieh has the potential to reconfigure how heritage value is understood by heritage managers, consultants, and scholars to produce more culturally just heritage management for KAVHA. The article posits that attention to this epistemology supports a shift from material- and values-based approaches to heritage management on Norfolk Island to a living heritage approach that centres Pitcairner descendants as the core community of KAVHA. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Rights to heritage are often understood in heritage scholarship to derive from aspects of cultural identity, such as descent or affiliation, but other registers are also available to rights claimants. Centring around a campaign to 'save' a museum made of a former sugar plantation in St. Croix, US Virgin Islands, this article explores a different mode of staking claims to heritage rights. Attending to the discourses used by the two primary factions in conflict over the right to manage this site, the article examines legitimising arguments about care, labour, and sacrifice, as well as delegitimising arguments about exploitation. Underlain by issues of race, class, and migration, these discourses are also shaped by histories of extraction, both past and present. Taken together, they suggest a register of heritage rights claims that focuses not only on the value of heritage to a group but rather on the group's value to heritage itself. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

By zeroing in on the term 'heritage' in the most important international legal instrument on oceans – the 1982 Convention on the Law of the Sea (LOSC), this article explores how the concept of the Common Heritage of [Hu]mankind and maritime heritage are produced and deployed in the global legal project of ocean-ordering and the implications thereof. The Common Heritage of [Hu]mankind concept embodies and enacts a dominant resource-centric framing of the ocean. This framing prioritises and valorises the material and economic value of the deep seabed, thereby transmuting it into an oceanless exploitable common. The LOSC, with minimal cultural preoccupation, also conceptualises and confines maritime heritage within a narrow land-based and material-centric understanding of heritage that often prioritises state control and claims. This is because the LOSC is constrained and shaped both by the metaphysical, geographical, and legal tendency of ocean parcelisation and by the authorised heritage discourse that conditions how heritage is understood and practiced. We conclude by suggesting taking the Middle Passage as an analytical provocation, that is to recognise the mutually constitutive and constituting relationship between the Middle Passage and the (Atlantic) Ocean, to enable critical reflections and alternative perspectives on heritage-making in ocean environment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With the emergence of critical heritage studies, scholars show that 'bottom up' initiatives that blur the boundaries between private, civil, and state have arisen not as a modernising vision to legitimise national authority but as 'rooted in identification with local community', linking past and future. In China, such studies demonstrate the emergence of a different kind of museology – with 'private' heritage initiatives on behalf of individuals and groups – tolerated by the state authorities through investments that link heritage tourism to development. However, when a maritime vision of national history is at stake, the central state would co-opt 'private' heritage initiatives to subsume them under the wider, sanitised narrative of Chinese maritime civilisation that requires a different relation to the past and its extraction from the localities that do not inscribe their heritage into these universalised visions. Zooming in on three museums in Hainan related to the South China Sea (SCS), I reveal the contradictory claims made by different actors regarding the use, representation and ownership claims of historical seafaring in terms of cultural heritage. Therefore, I argue that heritagisation of seafaring in the SCS represent proprietary and thus territorial claims for China's rhetoric of maritime ecological civilisation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores dance improvisation as an alternative mode of understanding the archaeological heritage site beyond representational knowledge. Drawing on projects undertaken on Liangzhu Archaeological Site over the past five years (2018–2023), we have employed dance improvisation as a method for participants to explore here and now interactions with the heritage site, focusing on their sensing, feeling and thinking. Using an A/r/tography methodology, this study considers how intersections of art-making and writing allow new meanings and bodily interpretation to emerge during the improvisation process. Participant reflection notes reveal how embodied encounters create space for rhizomatic interpretations of the archaeological site, transcending power dynamics embedded in existing politically-sacred and archaeologically-authoritative knowledge systems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article considers some of the opportunities increased visitation to recreational areas presents in terms of engaging residents and visitors with local heritage in the form of Historic Environment Records (HERs). There are countless potential 'hidden stories' related to cultural heritage sites and artefacts within palimpsest landscapes. These sites and artefacts present opportunities for alternative narratives of place to be negotiated, creating links to the past in the present, and between the exotic and the familiar. The changing approach to landscape practices resulting from COVID-19 restrictions presents new opportunities to engage people with these hidden stories, linking places near with far-off lands across time and space. It also encourages new connections with place that have the potential to (co-)create new narratives; increasing engagement, as well as correlating with pressing issues centred around the climate crisis and the urgent need to reduce travel to achieve Net Zero targets. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Former asylums are often significant heritage sites for their architecture and what they can tell us about mental health care practices. One example is the historic Mayday Hills asylum in Beechworth, Victoria, Australia. Built in Italianate style and set in extensive grounds, it is under National Trust protection for its heritage and historical significance. In this article, we outline the creation of a pilot online virtual tour of Mayday Hills and the nearby Beechworth Cemetery. We used curation as a methodology, informed by the concept of crystallisation. Innovative digital imagery was crafted through drone footage and virtual technology. The website includes narratives and reminiscences from former staff and others associated with the institution, along with a blog written by the research team. Maydayhills.org.au demonstrates the feasibility of using virtual technology to depict how mental illness was once treated in Australia. The website is available to anyone unable to travel to Beechworth and to enrich the experience of those visiting in person. This online digital space is now essential for the preservation of history, memories and material culture given that many original buildings are being repurposed. It complements the built and natural environment of Mayday Hills asylum and Beechworth Cemetery. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The anthracite coal mining landscape of northeastern Pennsylvania is in ruin, a by-product of two centuries of unchecked capitalism. Much of the land is stripped of its timber and surface mines lay abandoned. The industry began its decline after WWI and virtually collapsed during the post-WWII era. Waste piles of coal litter the landscape, and the streams and rivers are considered dead because of the minerals and high acid content of water draining from abandoned mines. Many scholars have written about the extreme work conditions the coal workers faced, the demise of the coal industry, and the impact of deindustrialization on the region's people. Often overlooked is how members of the mining communities had a radical hope. Radical hope helps oppressed people to see that another condition and another world is possible, although not guaranteed. Re-examining oral histories from the anthracite region recorded in the 1970s, when the industry was in its great decline, demonstrates how these mining communities anticipated a future good, understanding the struggle to attain it. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 1937, for a period of six weeks, the Imperial Japanese murdered approximately 300,000 people, including civilians, in Nanjing, China. This historical event is known as the Nanjing Massacre. As few survivors remain, studies on memory consumption can clarify how modern Chinese individuals remember this event. By writing the individual back into collective memory, this study identifies the importance of the Chinese state in fashioning individual remembrance of the Nanjing Massacre from the audience's perspective. Specifically, drawing on the theoretical frameworks of remembrance and sites of memory, we analysed the interaction between memory consumers, memory representations, and memory makers. We focused on the relationship between visitors and the Memorial Hall of the Victims in Nanjing Massacre by Japanese Invaders and how the state permeated this process. This study adds to the literature by offering an empirical study of memory consumption. Through participant observations and 23 semi-structured interviews with visitors, we found that education systems and media constructed visitors' pre-existing memories of the Nanjing Massacre. During their visit, the prosthetic memories of the interviewees were reproduced and re-verified. After they left the Memorial Hall, visitors' reshaped memories awaited arousal at a future time. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this study is to explore the competing claims of two tourism stakeholders, local residents and tourists, for the best possible interpretation of the cultural landscape of Jiufen, a mining heritage destination in Taiwan, using the social representation theory. The study uses the conceptual tool of social landscape connectivity to examine the linkages among various levels of access to cultural landscapes for residents and tourists in its current state of tourism development. In-depth interviews were conducted with 18 local residents and 16 tourists using purposive and snowball sampling. Results indicated that representations of cultural landscape consist of four interconnected themes: memory linking the past to the present, collective identity, belongingness, and mass tourism destinations. However, opinions regarding precisely what representations comprised the best possible cultural landscapes for tourism were inconsistent. The ramifications of value co-creation in a mining heritage destination's sustainable development are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Provenance research in museums has traditionally been reactive and focused on singular objects with dubious histories, such as colonial-era acquisitions, Nazi-looted art, and objects with active ownership claims; the 'crimes' we expect to see. But what if what we think we know prevents us from seeing the bigger picture within and across museum collections? We argue that a machine-learning approach to provenance could allow the detection of broader patterns of unethical or even criminal behaviour that are embedded in the relationships underpinning museum collections. To demonstrate the potential of a machine-learning approach, we present a computer-assisted model that predicts plausible patterns and connections, 'leads' or 'hot tips', derived from a dataset of unstructured texts concerning the antiquities trade. Preliminary results have revealed what may have been a multi-decade scheme involving the donation of low-value Latin American antiquities to museums as a form of 'reputation laundering' potentially in advance of criminal fraud. We believe that such patterns could not be identified by an approach to museum provenance that is restricted to known problems within individual institution, demonstrating the need for innovative provenance tools and approaches that consider the complex networks within which museum objects exist. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Imaginaries arerepresentational assemblages of the past, ways to understand and(re)create history and projections of the self and others that ground ever-changing identities. They are embedded in the cultural meaning-making systems of each society. However, researchers and practitioners within the heritage field have not directly analysed heritage as a product-producer of imaginaries or conceived heritage itself as an imaginary. This conceptual article proposes imaginaries as a useful analytical lens to critically study heritage. Imaginariesenable us to uncover how people assume and signify heritage from various positions and experiences. Furthermore, this article aims to shed light on how alternative imaginaries grounded in non-western ontologies enable us to rethink heritage meaning and practice in the encounters and conflicts between different systems of meaning in daily life. More concretely, we identify three significant contributions of using imaginaries as a lens for the study of heritage. To illustrate our theoretical propositions, we incorporate empirical examples from ethnographic fieldwork conducted in the Ecuadorian Andes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Globalised technological advancements have radically transformed how intangible cultural heritage (ICH) is inherited in contemporary society. Despite being recognised as a Human ICH by the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organisation, Cantonese opera is facing existential crises attributed to an ageing demographic and shrinking audience base. To survive in a rapidly changing sociocultural landscape, Cantonese opera performances in Hong Kong have embraced modern technologies, including artificial intelligence, holographic projection, and virtual reality. By exploring the perspectives of 86 Cantonese opera practitioners, this study critically examines the perceptions, experiences, and challenges associated with technology adoption as a safeguarding strategy for ICH transmission. This study revealed the complex interplay between technology use and cultural transmission, adding to heritage literature by shedding new light on audience reach, content enhancement, value creation, and funding strategies in the context of technology adoption, and the corresponding negotiation of tradition and modernity within ICH communities. The findings emphasise the importance of preserving traditional core values, identity, and artistry inherent in the performing arts of ICH, even as technology adoption becomes radically widespread, shedding light on a cautious integration of technology in ICH in this technology-focussed era. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article deals with the question of how communities relate to their heritage in Estonia by focusing on four case studies, two of which represent archaeological sites and two dark heritage sites, and the respective communities involved with these places. The main objective is to understand the dynamics of how heritage communities preserve, use and remember their heritage. Another aim is to explore contemporary community-based and participatory heritage management practices in Estonia and how they relate to the ideals described in the Faro Convention. We examine how the location, the contribution of researchers and personal connections to historic places motivate local people, enthusiasts and the state to care for the sites. It is demonstrated that community-based heritage management is most effective when people are emotionally attached to historic sites, have a sense of ownership and want others to engage with and experience them. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The management of cultural heritage is no longer exclusive to heritage professionals. The engagement of various stakeholders, particularly underrepresented groups in communities, is crucial to promote inclusiveness in heritage management practices. As future decision-makers, youth are vital to be engaged, yet their participation remains at a low level due to the underestimation of youth capacities and a lack of motivation among youth. Little research has been done to comprehensively conceptualise youth participation and frame it in the context of cultural heritage management. To fill this gap, an integrative literature review was conducted using academic and grey literature from participatory urban planning, design, governance, and heritage management fields. The results show that existing theories have made valuable insights into approaching youth participation by identifying the definition and roles of youth, levels of participation, and methods of engagement. However, they have so far failed to fully address the fluid nature of youth engagement and lack reflections from youth perspectives towards their initiatives to participatory practices. Drawing on the results, we propose a new conceptual framework consisting of four dimensions: purpose, positioning, perspectives, and power relations, which define youth participation theoretically and methodologically in cultural heritage management. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Drawing on collages created by residents in Great Yarmouth – a coastal location in the East of England, characterised by a prominent history of fishing and current high levels of socioeconomic deprivation – we use a participatory arts-based approach to explore how individuals and communities participate in the making of heritage. Through the process of creating collages that represent the history of the town, and their own history within it, participants choose how to materialise and communicate what we understand as intangible (the stories) and tangible (the collages) heritage, where a sense of place and belonging is preserved or restored. We found that, first, the non-linear nature of collaging, which we see as cultural practice, allowed participants to reconnect with the history of which they are proud to be a part yet felt was 'lost' in the transformations that have occurred in the town. Through collage, they were able to layer and juxtapose the different elements of the story in unique ways, with a focus on time, politics and affects. Second, the collages themselves – and their dissemination in various exhibitions through the course of one year – contributed to validate their key role in the creation and communication of heritage. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A growing number of traditional agricultural systems around the world have been designated Globally Important Agricultural Heritage Systems (GIAHS), as they are exemplars of the accumulated wisdom of human communities and their close relationship with the local ecology. Heritage inscription is a strategy used to conserve and increase awareness of this inheritance. However, the role of scientists in the construction and inscription of the agricultural heritage has been understudied. Through a qualitative methodology and participatory-observation research, this study examines biocultural heritage construction in a GIAHS in the Kunisaki Peninsula of Oita, Japan. Drawing on actor-network theory and based on the experience of scientists who specialise in traditional log-cultivated shiitake farming, this study demonstrates the role of non-human actors – a fungus-covered chip and shiitake, in particular – in the heritagisation process and the role of scientists in stabilising and destabilising the heritage network. I find that the heritage inscription process of the tradition of log-cultivated shiitake farming has created a new form of identity and moral capital associated not only with the conservation of Japanese food and agricultural heritage but also with the continued existence of local rural villages, protection of national food security and global environmental health. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Roca Barea's Imperiofobia y Leyenda Negra (Empirephobia and Black Legend) has been a bestseller in Spain since it was published in 2016. However, this historical essay has also provoked intense controversy regarding the veracity of data presented and the ambivalence, or even incoherence, of its arguments. This article analyses Imperiofobia from a different point of view: as a heritage product with a strong narrative dimension. A heritage product can enable an individual story to be inserted into a collective mythological narrative, as in the case of this book. Imperiofobia encourages the reader to become involved in an epic war against the enemies of empires, as well as against the enemies of Spain (mainly the eurozone's most powerful countries and progressive or left-wing intellectuals). This involvement dimension is essential to understand how, in general, ambivalent and even incoherent narratives about the past can be functional in socio-political dynamics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Anthropology and critical heritage studies share a rather negative view of the role of bureaucracy in heritage management as utilised by the international community in post-conflict regions. However, fieldwork findings among ethnologists working as expert bureaucrats in four Western Balkan states (Serbia, Croatia, Montenegro, Bosnia and Herzegovina) suggest that the ongoing process of the 'bureaucratisation' of collective identities, based on UNESCO principles, holds more promise for successful conflict management than relying solely on day-to-day politics or a purely academic critique. The safeguarding of intangible cultural heritage has emerged as a powerful tool for redirecting identity-based conflicts towards abstract concepts such as 'elements', 'lists', and 'registers'. These abstractions are less susceptible to suffering than real individuals. Consequently, this approach offers a greater chance of success in mitigating conflicts. Anthropology's most significant contribution to the global implementation of the heritage-for-peace paradigm could be to reconcile with ethnology, despite any disciplinary incongruity that may arise. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]