Cultural Heritage Management in China

Preserving the Cities of the Pearl River Delta

Hilary Du Cros, Yok-shiu F. Lee

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2007
• Print ISBN: 9780415666428
• eBook ISBN: 9781134153404
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Ethnic Studies
• Index: Social Sciences

Cultural Heritage Management in China presents a thematic examination of the development of cultural heritage management (CHM) in an Asian context. It challenges assumptions of the primacy of community-sponsored action and heritage authority based on Western-derived ideals and practices that fit with democratic models for civil action. The multidisciplinary team of international contributors analyze four key case studies of cities along the Pearl River Delta examining their administrative characteristics, economic growth and their relationship with cultural identity and human relationships.

Providing an innovative study of cultural heritage management, this book will be of interest to students of Asian and cultural studies, as well as offering valuable insights into Asian culture and society itself.

1 Introduction

Yok-shiu F. Lee, Hilary du Cros, Lynne DiStefano and William Logan

Why reflect on cultural heritage management?

Cultural heritage management (CHM)¹ is a term used most commonly amongst heritage professionals who are responsible for the care of such assets as heritage places, sites, artefacts, cultural property, and other tangible heritage items in a society. For the purposes of this book, the process of undertaking activities to care for such heritage items will be termed ‘cultural heritage management’ and the word ‘resource’ will pertain to cultural heritage assets in general. Caring for cultural heritage assets is important, because our society has a responsibility towards present and future generations to manage such heritage assets to the best of our ability. CHM has also become increasingly intertwined with other principal objectives of sustainable development, an ecological framework that considers such precious resources as important cultural capital.

CHM is now a global phenomenon. A series of internationally recognized charters and conventions, such as the Venice Charter (ICOMOS, 2006) and the UNESCO World Heritage Convention (UNESCO, 2006a), dictate its core principles. These principles are embodied in formal heritage protection legislation or accepted heritage management policies for most localities. The best evidence for claims of maturity in heritage conservation in any country is when cultural heritage management has acquired its own past. In some countries, formalized management started with such overarching themes as: ‘cultural resources’ and their management (in the 1970s in America and Europe); the ‘historic environment’ with its emphasis on human interaction with the surroundings (in the 1980s internationally) and, more recently, ‘sustainability’ with its explicit acknowledgement of the need for grassroots support from local and indigenous communities (in the 1990s) (Baker, 1999).

It could be argued here that, while CHM is a global phenomenon, its practitioners have no real sense of being a part of it. When reviewing the professional literature and related internet sites, it is evident that there are many practitioners who concentrate on regional or local-level disciplinary and thematic issues. However, this level of work rarely addresses CHM as a multidisciplinary, multicultural activity that transcends borders. If those who work for international heritage bodies, such as ICCROM, ICOMOS and UNESCO, had more time and resources they would no doubt be able to generate a series of relevant publications. However, it has been left to academics, who are mainly geographers by training, to come closest to this objective in recent years (Askew and Logan, 1994; Tunbridge and Ashworth, 1996; Hall and McArthur, 1998; Logan, 2002).

However, despite some fuzzy notions of CHM as part of the globalization of professional management practice, concerns at the local level are being raised every day about other aspects of globalization. The preservation of heritage assets in relation to threats (real or imaginary) brought by the globalization of culture and transnational investment is becoming increasingly a concern of many CH stakeholders and CH agencies at all levels, particularly at the local level where day-to-day CH actions play out. As such, we need to ask the following questions: To what extent, and why, should heritage managers and related stakeholders be interested in how local CHM relates to practices elsewhere? Is it good to have purely international or locally adapted ‘best practices’ evident in CHM? Will reflecting on this issue actually assist in the better management of heritage assets for present and future generations? The authors of this book believe that such a reflection is crucial to the resolution of tensions being experienced by CHM practitioners in many localities. These tensions frequently reduce the effectiveness of even the most passionately caring cultural heritage managers and stakeholders. The major issues currently facing CHM in many countries are those relating to understanding heritage and how best to protect the heritage values embedded in specific assets. More specifically, how can one create a shared understanding of local history and local heritage? Who should be responsible for defining heritage? How can dissonant views be addressed and resolved? What are the issues revolving around private versus public heritage? What is meant by ‘authenticity’ and how can the authenticity of heritage assets be retained? How can heritage values be protected in an environment under pressure from economic rationalist imperatives?

CHM literature reviewed over the past two decades indicates that many analysts tend to view cultural heritage assets as: power; an integral element to a good quality of life; a resource that requires specialist and community care; and a commodity and educational resource.

Power

Tensions in cultural heritage management are known to arise in regard to issues of control over heritage activities. Although heritage cannot be easily accorded a set of economic values, it is part of everyone’s life in some way and a part that people increasingly have an opinion about. Depending on local circumstances, changing the definition of what constitutes heritage can be fraught with power struggles. Some governments prefer to keep definitions tightly in line with existing heritage protection legislation and heritage experts’ opinions. Others may encourage debate in order to ensure that site inventories, collections and archives reflect public opinion more fully by including heritage assets such as historic places that have high current social value.

Conflict over cultural heritage assets can trigger a power struggle between stakeholder groups that can go beyond the initial heritage issues. For instance, the controversy over the creation of the Southwest Tasmanian World Heritage Area in order to save ancient archaeological sites assisted the Australian Labor Party to power in the 1983 federal election (du Cros, 2002b). Issues of authority over heritage assets can flow on into other realms of politics, e.g. colonialism and repatriation of cultural property (Hillier, 1981; Wilson, 1985; Lowenthal, 1988; Hitchens, 1988; Palmer, 1989; AusAnthrop, 2006) and human remains (Fforde, 1992; Mulvaney 1991; Pardoe, 1991) as well as indigenous autonomy and land rights (Lilley, 2000). Some of the earliest explorations of such power issues were examined by heritage analysts in the New World, particularly Canada and Australia, with archaeologists and anthropologists taking on some of the most challenging issues in this area (Langford, 1983; McBryde, 1985; Layton, 1989; Marrie, 1989; Trigger, 1989; du Cros, 1996).

Quality of life

Heritage has been viewed in both negative and positive lights throughout human history. There is concern in CHM circles that ‘heritage assets’ can be seen as a burden, the ‘dead hand of the past’ in the eyes of some members of society. Certain government officials, architects and developers still find that the sheer mass of the past’s tangible remains can limit the opportunity for modern creative enterprise and is overly expensive to conserve (Clark, 1982:7; Tunbridge and Ashworth, 1996). On the other hand, its proponents assert that ‘loving the ancient’ is essential for validity and reaffirmation of individuals, groups and nations (Wang, 1985; Lowenthal, 1985; Koshar, 1998). For instance, land use planning conflicts over development schemes, which could start by conservationists citing heritage concerns as the rationale for stopping or modifying the projects, can have detrimental economic effects for the project proponents in the short term. However, in the longer-term perspective, conserving heritage assets can contribute to a higher degree of creativity and economic development as well as a better quality of life for society as a whole (Ashworth and Tunbridge, 2002; Hall, 2002; Throsby, 2000). In other words, as American conservation architect Arthur Cotton Moore (1998) puts it, problems of quality of life associated with the community’s use of heritage assets could arise if the economic rights of a few should predominate over the social benefits accrued to the many (Moore, 1998). David Lowenthal (2003:43), for instance, notes that the United States has accepted ‘free enterprise and private property rights as American articles of faith, [and] conservation leaders have habitually forsworn general programs of land reform as unworkable’. Hence, only selected key areas of public land have become ‘special places worth conserving’ and, as a consequence, making ‘the rest of the country undeserving of attention’. Most Western countries are, to varying degrees, guilty of this.

Many authorities see cultural heritage assets as ensuring a higher level of quality of life through the broadening of heritage-significance assessment criteria to include assets of social value. This means that the incorporation of some items representative of everyday life, not just monuments and ancient relics in public parks, is becoming more important to many societies. For instance, concerns about the impacts of growing globalization on heritage assets have been raised recently (Logan, 2002). In particular, an increasing number of researchers have focused on the question of how CHM could be fully integrated within the general framework of sustainable development, particularly in relation to that most global of all industries – tourism (Boniface and Fowler, 1993; Bramwell and Lane, 1993; Mowforth and Munt, 1998; UNESCO and the Nordic World Heritage Office, 2000; Page and Hall, 2003). Debates about tourism impacts within cultural heritage management discourse have been going on since the 1970s at the international level.² However, a similar debate has taken place only fairly recently in some regions, such as Asia, particularly in countries that urgently require the economic benefits that tourism can sometimes bring (Harris, 2003; Spearritt, 1991; Johnston, 1994; Mason and Avrami, 2000; Klosek-Kowzlowska, 2002; Taylor, 2004).

Specialist and community care

Specialist knowledge and community involvement are both important for the comprehensive care of heritage assets. However, conflict can sometimes arise between and among stakeholder groups about who knows best regarding what criteria and principles should be followed (Fowler, 1981; Mallam, 1989; Stone, 1992; du Cros, 1996; Cotter et al., 2001). As with town and urban planning (Hall, 2002), cultural heritage professionals may be more capable and more experienced than the average person at conducting this kind of work, but they are not necessarily uniquely expert. For instance, what if heritage managers do not have the support from the community or sufficient resources to manage heritage assets properly? Very often, the best examples of heritage management are recorded when a community group engages heritage professionals to advise on or facilitate its work (Pearson and Sullivan, 1999; Lowenthal, 2003; Council for British Archaeology, 2004). To this end, a number of publications have been and are being developed by cultural heritage managers and non-governmental organizations to help facilitate the public’s participation in the process (see Australian Heritage Commission, 1998; Ancient Monuments Society, 2005; National Trust for Historic Preservation, 2005). Moreover, leading onfrom this development, archaeology and history in some countries have generated new sub-disciplines of community-focused areas of expertise. Examples of this phenomenon are known as ‘public archaeology’ and ‘public history’ respectively, and often occur complete with their own professional organizations and degree programmes (Davison, 1991; Kass and Liston, 1991; Binghamton University, 2004; New Mexico State University, 2004).

Commodity and educational resource

In the past ten years or so, many analysts have written on the impact of commodification on cultural heritage assets and have examined the questions of how, and to what extent, heritage assets, through commercial use, have been transmuted to feed the consumption needs of specific audiences (Lowenthal, 1992; Jokilehto, 1995; Jafari, 1996; Hall and McArthur, 1998; McKercher and du Cros, 2002; Page and Hall, 2003). Cultural heritage managers aim to encourage these publics or audiences, to ‘need’ heritage as an important aspect of their lives. Towards this end, the presentation of heritage assets has to include a pluralistic narrative approach, a wide array of activities and a special sensitivity to broader issues (Tunbridge and Ashworth, 1996; Ballantyne, 1998; Baker, 1999).

Viewing cultural heritage management as a system and framework

The debate outlined above has tried to cover many aspects of how we think, feel, care for and consume the past. What still needs to be explored is how a group of related disciplines (such as those that refer to heritage assets as a common resource) might develop an all-embracing management system or framework that includes research, planning, care and interpretation for heritage assets. It should be applicable to different places in order to distinguish global and local factors about how a culture or tradition of CHM has eventuated in that place. To be useful and relevant, such a framework should help us recognize the factors influencing change over time as well as the dynamics of processes relating to the adoption, rejection and accumulation of ideas and practices. Of course, during such changes, there are those concepts and tools that have not been totally transformed but have been merely refined in a series of shifts in the general approach to CHM. Change in any disciplinary culture, even a multidisciplinary one like CHM, will witness some ideas being carried forward and others falling by the wayside.

Understanding the history and development of cultural heritage management as a series of shifts of this nature is crucial to heritage professionals who have come from a wide variety of disciplines. Such an understanding could assist them in devising ways to move towards an integrative and strategic system for managing cultural heritage assets that suits local conditions, while taking into consideration lessons drawn from praxis external to their individual heritage professions. Self-reflexivity of this kind is not just useful for heritage professionals in order to hone their effectiveness, but it also helps ensure that the care of heritage assets could become a constant, conscious and central concern in the utilization of heritage assets by society.

The essential elements of the current Western-based international framework of CHM (and its historical antecedents) are identified and discussed in the following section as a first step in comparing a Western-derived notional model with Eastern CHM approaches in three major cities within the Pearl River Delta. It has also been applied to assist in the understanding of the operation of local and global factors and the similarities and differences that they generate amongst the three cities in how CHM is practised.

The Western-derived notional CHM framework and its rationale

Cultural heritage management can be understood as a multidisciplina...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Plates
• Figures
• Tables
• Acknowledgements
• Abbreviations
• Contributors
• Preface
• 1 Introduction
• 2 The Pearl River Delta One region, three systems
• 3 The rise of professionalism
• 4 Economic growth and cultural identity
• 5 The human factor and cultural affinity
• 6 Conclusion
• Glossary of common heritage terms
• References