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Despite the widespread acknowledgement of the role of local communities in heritage co-production and management, conservation approaches often remain top-down, 'expert' driven and state-centred. This paper considers the pragmatic manner in which heritage conservation policies affect local understandings of heritage. Focusing on the lived Greek heritage of traditional settlements, this paper interrogates the underexplored experienced angles to heritage conservation in conjunction with the official narratives. Expanding our knowledge on the impacts of conservation on heritage values, the paper argues that conservation policies can negatively affect local notions of heritage if the living aspect is not tactfully addressed and balanced against preservation priorities. The research furthers our understanding on the damaging impact of the AHD, problematising the disjunction between authorised and grassroots stances to living and lived heritage and providing a point of reference in respect to the dependent relationship between heritage conservation approaches and local community's understanding of heritage. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Tooro Nagashi is a cultural practice performed by groups of Japanese descendants in the Ribeira Valley in Brazil. Based on the notion of 'friction', the paper describes the encounter between the Brazilian policy of intangible cultural heritage and the celebration. It identifies points of engagement through which new accounts and unsuspected silences involving the performance and its history emerge, revealing how historical traumas associated with global war and state repression inform the experience of these groups of Japanese descendants. In acknowledging this sensitive history, the analysis also discloses the complexities of the celebration of Tooro Nagashi challenging the standards of the Brazilian intangible cultural heritage. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Heritage studies is yet to have a debate about its theorisation at the global level. Many of the core ideas that shape the field are rooted in the contexts of Europe and the USA and geographically rolled out in normative ways. This paper argues it is important we embark on pluralising how heritage is studied and theoretically framed, in ways that better address the heterogeneous nature of heritage, for both the West and the non-West. The themes of modernity, cities and international cultural policy provide evidence of why we need to better position the academic study of heritage in relation to the rapid geo-political and geo-cultural shifts now taking place. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this paper is to determine how socially excluded visitors to two museum exhibitions and two museum‐based community development projects use that experience to construct individual and social identities. In order to do this it will determine the ways in which the contexts of the exhibitions and community development projects were constructed and how and why visitors and participants make meaning in these contexts. To do this it uses the ‘circuit of culture’ as the basis of an analysis, the moments of which are representation, production, consumption, regulation and identity. The paper concludes that the process of defensive identity activity provides the mechanism through which participants and visitors mitigate their experience of exclusion and provides the basis upon which UK government policy using museums as agents of social inclusion might act. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper focuses on an important Austrian development, which on closer examination enables consideration to be given to: (1) Austrian government cultural-sector policy, ­practice and funding attitudes; (2) the nature of the structures, organisation, stakeholders, and legal relationships chosen to manage and market the MuseumsQuartier; (3) the tension between the individual autonomy of institutions and a state-imposed umbrella organisation; (4) the characteristics of creativity in comparison with the requirements for conformity; and (5) the compatibility of facility and programming management. There is no pretence in providing a survey of museum cultural or creative quarters throughout the world or analysis of the theoretical and conceptual frameworks that may be associated with this approach to urban regeneration. It is unashamedly a detailed analysis of a major cultural development, which may have value for the future management of similar projects. Perhaps more significantly it provides a useful insight into the Austrian approach to arts policy and management. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Museums, archives and libraries in Britain operate within an outcomes-driven political climate, as do cultural institutions elsewhere. The need to demonstrate accountability and social value has led to a demand to measure the impact and outcome of learning. How can the complex and unpredictable character of learning be 'measured'? This paper sets out the policy context and the conceptual framework that underpins the development of a new approach to the measurement of the outcomes of cultural learning. It has been developed by the Research Centre for Museums and Galleries (RCMG) at the University of Leicester for the Museums, Archives and Libraries Council (formerly Resource). The use of five generic learning outcomes (GLOs) enables both the quantification and the in-depth ­analysis and description of the results of learning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper describes research that was designed to examine the assertion that historic designation of properties, under the heritage legislation in Canada's largest province, has a negative impact on the values of those properties. The actual selling price of subject properties was used to establish their value history trends, which were then compared to ambient market trends within the same communities. Almost 3,000 properties in twentyfour communities were investigated, in what is believed to be the largest study of its kind ever undertaken in North America. It was found that heritage designation could not be shown to have a negative impact. In fact there appears to be a distinct and generally robust market in designated heritage properties. They generally perform well in the market, with 74% doing average or better than average.The rate of sale among designated properties is as good or better than the ambient market trends and the values of heritage properties tend to be resistant to downturns in the general market. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although participatory heritage has become a 'buzzword' of cultural policy, it remains a challenging field for related practice. Set at Naxos Island, Greece, the research presented in this article forms part of a bigger project exploring the values and meaning-making processes in rural landscape, currently at risk of neglect and over-tourism. Here, we test the usability of the Nominal Group Technique (NGT) as a tool for allowing citizens to deliberate and devise community desirable actions for the protection and invigoration of rural monuments. As we discuss, apart from enriching our participatory 'toolbox', NGT can offer some insight into bottom-up processes of valuing the past and producing its historicity. Furthermore, our workshop participants initiate a dialogue, wherein they advocate for 'hands-on' solutions, which although fit largely with standard heritage management practice, are rearranged in alternative hierarchies; an atypical organisation of actions that reflects community aspirations to preserve a yet unsettled type of heritage that is currently 'in-the-making'. This supports our main theoretical argument that participatory approaches shall not be treated instrumentally but positioned as part of a wider prefigurative politics project to resist dominant conservative and positivist processes of heritagisation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Popular protests in 2015 in South Africa around statues and memorials, sparked off by the #RhodesMustFall campaign, drew attention to heritage policy and practice in the country since the advent of democracy in 1994. The protests and commentary in social and other media revealed the extent of polarisation along racial fault lines in South African society. They also exposed the apparent failure of official policy implemented for more than 20 years of promoting heritage for the purposes of nation building and social cohesion. Numerous writers have analysed heritage in South Africa since the transition to democracy, but none has traced the details of the evolution of heritage policy within the ruling party and government. This study seeks to shed light on the current debates on the politics of heritage in South Africa by examining the various policy processes and practices within the ruling African National Congress and the government. It argues that many of the heritage practices and policies in South Africa are rooted in the apartheid past and that failure, especially by decision-makers, to critically interrogate these has led to the stunted transformation of society and the current ferment. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Since the 2001–2005 Proclamations of Masterpieces and the highly successful 2003 Convention, the UNESCO paradigms of intangible cultural heritage (ICH) and safeguarding have become influential concepts in international, national and local cultural policy. But the thinking employed in the ICH model – where practitioners are ‘bearers’ of reified, bounded heritage practices – neglects the lived realities of practitioners, ultimately safeguarding little and potentially exacerbating existing inequalities. While the ICH model contains promises of community empowerment, its actual execution can in fact disempower many, merely replicating existing inequalities in the new context of ICH management. While existing literature addresses the theoretical shortcomings of UNESCO’s approach, the purpose of this article was to examine the ways in which they unfold in real life. As a practical case study, it is based on fieldwork among the performers at the Jemaa el Fnaa Square in Marrakech, a site addressed in the earliest rounds of the UNESCO ICH project. Using this case study, I discuss ways in which the issues of power inherent in the ICH paradigm have real consequences for those affected and implications for the success of the projects developed under its umbrella. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The aim of the article is to map Slovenian popular music heritage (PMH) and to critically assess the prospects of its future development. The article supplements the constructionist perspective on heritage with the Foucauldian concept of regime(s) of truth, which enables a better understanding of the complex processes of the social construction of heritage and the power struggles related to it. It then uses this framework to critically examine the current situation of PMH in Slovenia with the emphasis on the tensions between different PMH practices, discourses and the producers of heritage. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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

This article traces the emergence of a digital imperative - the belief in the necessity of digitising cultural expressions - in a particular heritage project in the Dutch city of Maastricht. The main reason for doing so is to contribute to the growing body of literature on digital cultural heritage, a perspective that pays analytical attention to the organisational and institutional dynamics of heritage innovation. Such a perspective complicates the popular assumption that digitisation will be beneficial to participation and instead puts forward - by drawing on institutional theory and the sociology of expectations - a less technology-centric and more contextual understanding of digital heritage. The conclusion highlights the potential of institutional analysis and the sociology of expectations for digital heritage studies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Melaka is represented in Malaysia's tourist and heritage industries as the place 'where it all began'. This article examines the meaning of this slogan in the context of the cultural policies of the Malaysian state in the 1970s and 1980s when constructions of the political and religious traditions of the pre-colonial feudal Melakan Sultanate were presented as emblematic of the modern nation. The images of the Sultanate, of colonial rule and of Malaysian nationalism in Melaka's museums are analysed.The emphasis on ethnic Malay heritage also indigenised that of other Melakan inhabitants, such as the Portuguese Eurasians or the Peranakan, and ignored that of the majority, later Chinese immigrants. Finally the article questions the future of these representations with the shift in Malaysian cultural representations in the 1990s to those of a modernising, multi-ethnic nation in which a feudal past plays a lesser role. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]