Faith in Heritage

Displacement, Development, and Religious Tourism in Contemporary China

Robert J Shepherd

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• eBook ISBN:
  9781315428635
• Print ISBN:
  9781611320732
• Subtopic: Buddhism

Using the example of China's Wutai Shan—recently designated both a UNESCO World Heritage site and a national park—Robert J. Shepherd analyzes Chinese applications of western notions of heritage management within a non-western framework. What does the concept of world heritage mean for a site practically unheard of outside of China, visited almost exclusively by Buddhist religious pilgrims? What does heritage preservation mean for a site whose intrinsic value isn't in its historic buildings or cultural significance, but for its sacredness within the Buddhist faith? How does a society navigate these issues, particularly one where open religious expression has only recently become acceptable? These questions and more are explored in this book, perfect for students and practitioners of heritage management looking for a new perspective.

Chapter I

WHAT MAKES A PLACE “HERITAGE”?

Since ratification of the 1964 International Charter for the Conservation and Preservation of Monuments and Sites, more commonly known as the Venice Charter, “heritage” has been the subject of more than forty international and regional conventions. Though this accord limited heritage to archeological sites and monuments, the definition of this term has steadily expanded to include buildings, gardens, entire urban and rural spatial zones, natural sites such as mountains and valleys, and, most recently, intangible cultural practices (Ahmad 2006:294). In defining this wide variety of sites, objects, and practices as part of a shared world heritage, the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) provides guidelines for preservation efforts aimed at maintaining and fostering global cultural diversity.

Heritage preservation and the notion of “world heritage” as emblematic of a global community are by-products of the emergence of “globalization” as a transnational category for academics, policymakers, and state authorities. Having been produced by a post-WW II shift toward a transnational order, both heritage and various campaigns to preserve this are premised on the assumption that globalization directly threatens both the tangible cultural products of the past and the intangible cultural practices that remain in the present. The UNESCO list of World Heritage Sites, which now numbers 936 sites in 153 countries and territories, is the most well-known product of this campaign. Although UNESCO lacks enforcement power to preserve and protect sites, a wide range of governments cooperate with it to identify, classify, and preserve examples of tangible world heritage. The aura of UNESCO status is sufficient to evoke international criticism and anger when heritage sites are destroyed or threatened. For example, the looting of Iraq’s National Museum after the occupation of Baghdad by American military forces in 2003 provoked international outrage, with UNESCO and the British Museum leading a consortium of museum professionals to protect what remained in the collection. Similarly, when Serb forces bombarded the Croatian city (and UNESCO heritage site) of Vukovar in 1992 and Taliban forces destroyed ancient Buddha statues at an undesignated site in Afghanistan’s Bamiyan Valley in 2000, both incidents garnered widespread media attention in Europe and North America and have since come to symbolize transgressions against world heritage. And in both cases UNESCO has provided funding for restoration, citing these sites’ global cultural importance (Sulc 2001:164; Baker 2008). Setting aside issues related to this quest to re-create these material sites, a set of fundamental questions remain: Whose heritage is being preserved and managed, by whom, for what purposes, and with what political implications?

Cultural heritage programs, such as national museums and monuments, are profoundly political activities, given that they seek to shape accepted narratives about the past for political purposes in the present. Rather than being simply straightforward attempts to preserve and remember one’s own past, heritage projects have also functioned as a vital element in the larger project of modernization and consequently the appropriation of other people’s pasts. But modernization is premised on a profound contradiction. Within this process, the past has simultaneously been portrayed as a repository of a collection of traditional practices to be overcome and as source materials for a state-directed and state-constructed story about the present in the service of the nation. This can be seen in, for example, the former Shah of Iran’s promotion of Persepolis as the ancient birthplace of the modern Iranian state and the intense focus in Nazi Germany on documenting alleged cultural ties with Aryan India (Silverman and Ruggles 2007b:11). In these cases, a modernizing regime sought to assert links with an historical past to boost its own political legitimacy. But many more such examples exist, spanning the spectrum of political ideologies and geographic locations. In some cases, state authorities have highlighted the past to distinguish this from contemporary political realities. Thus for example, between 1898 and 1901, colonial authorities in Burma (the United Kingdom), Vietnam and Cambodia (France), and the East Indian archipelago (the Netherlands) established local archeological institutions to survey, document, map, and restore sacred sites. These included Angkor Wat in Cambodia, Borobudur on the island of Java, and Pagan in Burma (Anderson 2006:179). In each case, colonial authorities emphasized their benevolent role in the restoration of a (glorious) lost past, not as a model for the present, nor as a way to lay claim to cultural roots, but as a contrast to what they viewed as the degenerate status of their colonial subjects (181). In the postcolonial era, these same sites have served as symbols for starkly different regimes. Angkor Wat was displayed on the flag of the Kymer Rouge regime in Cambodia, while the New Order government of President Suharto in Indonesia used Borobudur as a symbolic marker of the ancient roots of Indonesia, despite the fact that contemporary Indonesia is a secular republic with an overwhelmingly Muslim population. Ironically, of these three Buddhist sites, only Pagan has not become a world heritage site, a situation which UNESCO authorities have raised repeatedly with the military regime that rules Myanmar.

Sacred sites are not the only type of material space to intersect with politics. For example, along with its ongoing economic modernization drive, Chinese authorities are conducting a national heritage campaign to create as much as to preserve the past. As part of this effort, authorities in dozens of Chinese cities have constructed historic “old towns” (fanggu, “copies of ancient places”), thematic neighborhoods built to resemble Ming or Qing Dynasty streets that suggest a utopian premodern China of small shops and street vendors (cf. Anagnost 1997:107). In the United States, similar old towns and festival marketplaces have become increasingly common since the 1980s (Shepherd 2008). These examples illustrate that cultural heritage is not synonymous with history; it is instead a selective and highly controlled process of portraying the past (Logan 2007:34).

Even in situations in which an ostensibly new approach is offered, as in the design and management of the Museum of the American Indian in Washington, D.C., politics is ever-present. In this case, the presence of what museum authorities term the “survivance” of indigenous groups in the contemporary Americas is celebrated while the violence done against these groups in the past is quietly ignored (Silverman and Ruggles 2007b:14).

Despite this ever-present political element, cultural heritage proponents often begin a discussion of this issue by asserting that what constitutes “heritage” and what role this plays in human action is widely agreed upon across political, cultural, and structural lines. Heritage, it is claimed, is “essential to personal and collective identity and necessary for self-respect” (Lowenthal 2005:81). It is presented as timeless, transcending both historical and cultural contexts, and the glue that ties peoples together:

Heritage is our legacy from the past, what we live with today, and what we pass on to future generations. Our cultural and natural heritage are both irreplaceable sources of life and inspiration. Places as unique and diverse as the wilds of East Africa’s Serengeti, the Pyramids of Egypt, the Great Barrier Reef in Australia and the Baroque cathedrals of Latin America make up our world’s heritage. What makes the concept of World Heritage exceptional is its universal application. World Heritage sites belong to all the peoples of the world, irrespective of the territory on which they are located. (UNESCO 2008a)

If heritage belongs not to the communities, societies, or states in which specific sites are located but to all the peoples of the world, its maintenance and preservation logically are the responsibility of all as well. Following from this, it is logical to assume that the identification of and support for heritage sites is primarily a technical process aimed at preserving the most important material aspects of the past and the cultural diversity of contemporary societies from the dangers posed by market forces in an era of globalization. For example, Valery Patin of the International Council on Monuments and Sites (ICOMOS) has warned of “heritage supermarkets” filled with copies of “authentic heritage” (2002:138–139). Deciding what to preserve is a matter of using “objective and neutral scientific evidence to avoid the politicization of decision-making processes and to enhance compliance” (Maswoud 2000:357). Yet by foregrounding technical issues of preservation and management issues of conservation, UNESCO authorities and other supporters of world heritage downplay the political and social impact heritage projects have on local residents. In this sense, this project bears a strong resemblance to the apolitical claims of so much done under the guise of “development.” As James Ferguson (1994) demonstrates in his analysis of a Canadian-funded rural development project in Lesotho, perceived development needs often serve as an entry point for increased bureaucratic control in communities defined as development project targets. Rather than being unintended consequences or mere side effects that can be explained away by resorting to the good intentions of actors, these results are in actuality instrumental effects (1994:255). Yet development actors, whether multilateral, bilateral, or NGOs, invariably define themselves as not engaging in political acts. For Ferguson, what results is a process he calls the “anti-politics machine,” in which the political basis of any development intervention is submerged beneath a universal discourse of modernization, progress and development, with the result that local voices are erased and agency suppressed. After all, who can be against “development” and progress? Carried to a logical extreme, this process might lead to the collapse of social structures, the growth of oppressive state institutions, or in the case of Rwanda, genocide (Uvin 1998). In most cases, however, the net result is more business as usual: a seemingly endless cycle of development projects carried out by outside actors who, although often acting with the best of intentions, replicate the logic of colonialism. With little focus on the depoliticizing effects of development interventions and a profound faith in universally applicable plans of action, development actors mainly succeed in facilitating increased bureaucratic intrusions into the everyday lives of targeted subjects, not necessarily in increasing state capabilities or in making life either qualitatively or quantitatively better for intended recipients. The net result is that, for many subjects of development, life today is no better, and in some cases actually worse than life was for their grandparents (cf. Englund 2006).

Of course, this does not mean there is some sort of conspiracy at work to keep people in poverty, whether in terms of development in general or heritage projects in particular. Far from it; institutions such as UNESCO, the World Bank, and the United Nations Development Program (not to mention the dozens of bilateral development organizations and countless nongovernment organizations involved with heritage) are staffed by people who undoubtedly do not aim to harm the disadvantaged and oppressed. Nor is it possible to say that all of these groups, working on a range of projects at multiple levels of engagement, do not understand history or are bad researchers, managers, or planners. Instead, as Ferguson notes, the point is to try to understand how particular perspectives come to be seen as normal, as “just the way things are” (Ferguson 1994:28; see also Elychar 2005:33). How does it become normal for people to accept as fact what, from any practical perspective, seems quite ambiguous, such as the claim that “legacies of both nature and culture belong not simply to their places and peoples of origin but to all the earth and its inhabitants” (Lowenthal 2005:85)? To give this claim context, what would it mean for citizens of, say, France, or Japan, or Fiji, to claim partial ownership over the Great Wall of China or Machu Picchu in Peru? In what sense does the Potala Palace in Lhasa “belong” to the world at large? More broadly, how and why has the preservation of certain material cultural sites, natural sites, and more recently, intangible cultural practices come to be accepted as not just desirable but a necessary duty of right-thinking international citizens?

Though interest in cultural heritage preservation initially focused on preserving tangible aspects of culture from the destructive impact of modernization and development, this project is increasingly viewed as a viable aspect of development. Indeed, rather than only protecting “culture” from the hegemonic power of “the market,” cultural heritage programs are now increasingly linked to economic development, as a UNESCO Administrative Council member described:

Long considered a luxury of the affluent, heritage has asserted itself, in the course of the past two decades, as a recognized component of development. From now on heritage will be taken into account when anyone reflects on new strategies of development. (Musitelli 2002:327)

Redefined as a cultural resource, heritage is now viewed much like other resources, as a product that can either be used up in the process of being exploited in the name of development or (productively) conserved under a form of stewardship. This transformation of culture into a resource that either is to be exploited for development or protected from the corroding effects of the market process mirrors environmentalist debates between preservationists, conservationists, and market proponents. This also has given UNESCO a central role as arbitrator of what counts as world heritage and global protector of this. Coincidentally or not, this reinvention of UNESCO as global custodian of culture has occurred in the wake of its near collapse in the 1980s and 1990s. Under the leadership of its then Director-General Amadou-Mahtar M’Bow (1974–1987), UNESCO was strongly criticized by United States and United Kingdom leaders for a perceived anti-European and anti-American stance and its support for a new world communications order. This conflict reached its apex after publication of the 1980 UNESCO Report, Many Voices, One World, more commonly known as the McBride Report after its chairman, Sean McBride. This report criticized the influence of an international media situated largely in Northern states and called for stronger national media development, a position that critics argued implicitly questioned freedom of the press. Critics also pointed to how UNESCO money was allocated; in the early 1980s, approximately 80 percent of UNESCO’s staff was employed at its headquarters in Paris, and only 18 percent of its annual budget reached the field (Dutt 2002:33). The withdrawal of the United States from UNESCO in 1984 followed by the United Kingdom in 1985 resulted in a budget crisis, a revamping of the organization, and a scaling back of UNESCO activities. It also coincided with a new UNESCO focus on preserving global heritage through the application of a standardized planning model that emphasizes spatial segregation.

This planning vision is the product of a historically specific aesthetic perspective, High Modernist ideals of the mid-twentieth century that embraced functional segregation as a foundational organizational principle (cf. Scott 1998). But its roots go further back, to the late nineteenth century American wilderness movement led by figures such as the naturalist John Muir and city planner Frederick Law Olmstead, both of whom believed that physically separating contemporary built space from nature would ensure the preservation of the latter (Nash 1967; Graber, 1976). Muir, Olmstead, and their colleagues in turn drew on the insights of eighteenth century Romanticism, particularly the rei-magining of mountains into sites to ponder in awe, not fear in terror (Nicolson 1959).

A SHORT HISTORY OF WILDERNESS

For much of European history, wilderness, forests, and mountains have been foreboding places to avoid, the antithesis of a Biblical paradise (Nash 1967:8–9). Only with the popularization of Romanticism among newly emergent urban elites in the eighteenth century did an idealized untamed nature became a subject of contemplation. The Industrial Revolution, new forms of technology, and increased scientific knowledge about the world stimulated an aesthetic appreciation of the infinite, ironically as a reaction to the revolutionary transformation of material life that had created the conditions needed for a leisure class. The concept of infinity displaced the seventeenth-century assumption, born of an uneasy alliance between Biblical history and Cartesian logic...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Dedication
• List of Illustrations
• Preface
• Introduction
• Chapter I: What Makes a Place “Heritage”?
• Chapter II: Tourism, Heritage, and Moral Education in China
• Chapter III: “Four Peaks, One River, Five Buddhist Places, and One White Pagoda”: Wutai Shan as a Sacred Site
• Chapter IV: Heritage from Below: Displacement, Construction, and Reconstruction
• Chapter V: Chao Xiang, Bai Fo, & Lü You: Pilgrimage, Worship, and Tourism
• Conclusion
• Notes
• Chinese-English Glossary
• References
• Index
• About the Author