Politics of Scale

New Directions in Critical Heritage Studies

Tuuli Lähdesmäki, Suzie Thomas, Yujie Zhu, Tuuli Lähdesmäki, Suzie Thomas, Yujie Zhu

• Publisher: Berghahn Books
• Year: 2019
• Print ISBN: 9781785339974
• eBook ISBN: 9781789200171
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Cultural Policy
• Index: Social Sciences

Critical Heritage Studies is a new and fast-growing interdisciplinary field of study seeking to explore power relations involved in the production and meaning-making of cultural heritage. Politics of Scale offers a global, multi- and interdisciplinary point of view to the scaled nature of heritage, and provides a theoretical discussion on scale as a social construct and a method in Critical Heritage Studies. The international contributors provide examples and debates from a range of diverse countries, discuss how heritage and scale interact in current processes of heritage meaning-making, and explore heritage-scale relationship as a domain of politics.

PART I

SCALED CONCEPTUALIZATION OF HERITAGE

CHAPTER ONE

Politics of Scale

Cultural Heritage in China

Yujie Zhu

Since Graham, Ashworth and Tunbridge (2000) introduced the concept of scale into cultural heritage in their seminal work A Geography of Heritage, scale has been widely used in heritage studies. Their critical view of heritage studies has stimulated increasing research on politics of cultural heritage. Scholars illustrate that heritage making is not only embedded in the nation state but has extended to stakeholders at different scales, such as UNESCO and its advisory board (Meskell et al. 2014), the regional heritage government (Cheung 2003) and the local community (Brumann and Berliner 2016; Perkin 2010).

However, most of the studies examine scale as a fixed unit or existing category with certain spatial boundary such as ‘the local, regional, national and international’. Such an approach fails to investigate the nature of cultural heritage phenomena as a process of ‘scale jumping’ and social relations of empowerment and disempowerment (Swyngedouw 1997). Scale should not be treated within certain boundaries but is constituted and reconstituted around relations of capitalist production, social reproduction and consumption (Marston 2000: 221). For instance, despite the power of transnational organizations and their relations with state parties, there is also a growth of regionalism and ‘localism’ in the cultural heritage industry. Regional organizations have sprung up in South Asia, Africa and the Caribbean and promoted their regional heritage identity against the hegemonic European conception of cultural heritage. The adoption of the 2003 UNESCO Convention for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage demonstrates another example: several Asian countries were able to jointly exert influence on the World Heritage Committee, impose new ideas of heritage conservation in the texts, and create heritage categories according to their own local practices (Labadi 2013). These phenomena indicate that the power structure of the cultural heritage industry is not fixed; rather, it refers to a process of reconfiguration and contestation among different scales.

This chapter deploys the notion of ‘politics of scale’ to examine the nature of cultural heritage phenomena as a sociopolitical process of contestation. The concept was initiated by Neil Smith (1990) in Uneven Development and later was widely used by radial geographers in a broader range of social activities and struggles, such as capital accumulation, state regulation and social strategies (Herod 1997; Swyngedouw 1997). Neil Brenner (2001: 599) defined this notion as ‘the production, reconfiguration or contestation’ both within one scale (the singular) and among different scales (the plural). As Brenner defined, the singular form indicates a struggle or contestation in a boundary setting, such as a place, a locality, a region or a nation. The plural form, which he rephrased as a ‘process of scaling’, does not focus on a production of a unit as such but rather on hierarchization among multiple spatial units through interscalar transformation and mobilization (Brenner 2001).

I believe Brenner’s definition and usage of ‘politics of scale’ (particularly the plural form) effectively captures the dynamic of politics of cultural heritage as sociopolitical processes and transformations. One step further, I use the notions of ‘upscaling and downscaling’ to illustrate how global cultural values and norms are internalized towards national, community and personal forms of cultural heritage and how local or grass roots actions are externalized and become national and even international actions. Such an approach will facilitate a deeper investigation of politics of cultural heritage through the mobilization of scalar narratives and practices.

This chapter examines in detail the case of China to illustrate how politics of scale contribute to heritage studies as a critical approach. Examining the production, governance, practice and consumption of cultural heritage in China, I will address the following perspectives of scalar effects on cultural heritage: 1) how scale is used by cultural heritage institutions to legitimize their authority and produce hierarchies among scales; 2) how global heritage discourses affect national and local scales through the process of downscaling; and 3) how local struggles emerge to negotiate with heritage authorities through jumping among scales.

This chapter is based on long-term research on Chinese heritage policy and ethnographic study at the Old Town of Lijiang, a World Heritage Site. In the following discussion, I argue that the Chinese administrative system facilitates the reinforcement of the structure of heritage governance. The adoption of the World Heritage System in China establishes the hierarchy among current spatial units based on the administrative levels (local, provincial, national and international). Due to the uneven power relations among different scales, the Chinese government effectively adopts the authorized heritage discourse and implements policies in lower scales without substantive challenges. In other words, the state-led heritage institutionalization has crystalized the system into a scalar fix by creating new hierarchies of cultural heritage.

Through the case study of Lijiang, I further illustrate how heritage officials construct and legitimize their commercial-led heritage discourse, where ethnicity is manufactured and stimulated for tourism promotion and marketing. As the dominant force in designing heritage projects, the state and the commercial agents produce and disseminate the legitimacy of official narratives without considering voices from other participants. Local ethnic communities deploy the idea of World Heritage to increase their bargaining power to negotiate such authorized discourse. However, the scalar political strategies are temporary and embedded in its certain spatial form – a place, a region or a nation. The decision making of cultural heritage polices are thus still based on the existing interrelation among heritage institutions. These contestations cannot reshuffle the hierarchy among different scales or rescale the state spatiality.

Hierarchies in Heritage Governance

Since China joined the 1972 UNESCO Convention Concerning the Protection of the World Cultural and Natural Heritage (World Heritage Convention), nominating World Heritage sites has become a national strategy to construct a national identity that fosters social solidarity, control of ethnicity and economic growth (Zhu 2018b: 22). By designating ‘traditional culture’ (chuantong wenhua) as a national or even a World Heritage, the Chinese government emphasizes the significance of the nation as a distinct group deserving world recognition and respect.

China’s cultural heritage is administered by a strong hierarchical and centralized state administration (Blumenfield and Silveman 2013), although heritage agencies have undergone a process of reframing and reorganizing in recent decades. Since the foundation of People’s Republic of China (PRC) in 1949, the Ministry of Culture (wenhuabu) has taken up the responsibility of creating cultural policies, including managing national museums and archives. The State Bureau of Cultural Relics (guojia wenwuju), another state-level department, was established in 1988 (and later changed its name to the State Administration of Cultural Heritage or SACH¹). As an institution focusing on the conservation of cultural relics, SACH is in charge of tangible cultural heritage. The World Heritage nominations are prepared by the SACH and approved by the World Heritage Committee of UNESCO. Concurrently, the Ministry of Construction (which later changed its name to the Ministry of Housing and Urban-Rural Development) manages natural and mixed heritage sites. All of these departments are directly under the State Council (guowuyuan) of PRC. More recently, since China joined the Convention for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage (ICH Convention) in 2004, the Ministry of Culture established a new department to take charge of intangible cultural heritage in 2008.

To understand heritage governance, we must address the current administrative system in China (see Figure 1.1). The country runs on a Leninist party-state political system: each national level institution has its counterparts on the provincial (sheng), municipal/prefecture-city (shi/dijishi) and county (xian) level. For instance, the counterparts of the Ministry of Culture include the Provincial Department of Culture (sheng wenhuating), the Municipal Bureau of Culture (shi wenhuaju) and the County Bureau of Culture (xian wenhuaju).

After the PRC adopted the World Heritage Convention and the ICH Convention, China quickly learned and applied the inscription system to different administrative levels. For instance, the national list of Intangible Cultural Heritage (ICH) was established and approved by the Ministry of Culture. In addition to the national ICH List, there are also lists of ICH at the provincial, municipal and county level. The ICH Lists of provincial, city and county levels are supervised by the Provincial Department of Culture.

Figure 1.1 Heritage administrative system in China (designed by Yujie Zhu).

At the local level, most heritage sites set up heritage offices to prepare the nomination procedures. Once they have been enlisted as World Heritage Sites, these offices will become the authorized administrative body that manages heritage sites and oversees the conservation and promotion. My studies of such local heritage institutions in Lijiang (Zhu 2016a), Xi’an (Zhu 2018a) and Emei (Zhu and Li 2013) demonstrate that these local heritage institutions integrated administrative functions that were formerly regulated by different heritage-related agencies, such as the local bureaus of cultural heritage, construction and tourism. All the institutions at low levels have a dual reporting system: one is the horizontal – they need to report to the local government on their respective level, as they are part of the administration; and the other is the vertical – they also report to the corresponding body at the level above; for instance, the municipal to the provincial.

Downscaling: The China Principles

Heritage institutions in China have adopted international heritage concepts and applied them to their own system. The current administrative structure established a scalar fix to legitimize the national control over the heritage industry’s different heritage sites. In other words, the hierarchical power structure gives agency to state heritage institutions to transfer heritage concepts and values from international through national to lower levels. The top-down approach reinforces the capability of heritage governance to implement heritage practices such as inventorization, the establishment of criteria for inclusion and heritage nominations as well as legal conservation and management.

In 2000, China ICOMOS and The Getty Conservation Institute jointly adapted the international conservation laws (particularly the Burra Charter) to Chinese national policies on the basis of links with Chinese culture and history and published the Principles for the Conservation of Heritage Sites in China, known as the China Principles² (Zhu 2016b). Approved by the Chinese State Administration of Cultural Heritage, the China Principles link the international conservation concepts with present legislations and national guidelines of heritage conservation. For instance, the China Principles advocate a minimum of intervention in the conservation process, a concept aligned with the Venice Charter and the Burra Charter (Qian 2007).

The China Principles have become a cultural-political tool to establish heritage discourses through training and implementation (see Figure 1.2). For instance, to be listed as a regional or national heritage or to get funds from central heritage institutions, local heritage institutions have to address how they incorporate the official interpretation of ‘authenticity’ from the Principles in local conservation and management. Local authorities also use this concept to legitimate their heritage practices and fulfil their political and economic agenda (Zhu 2015).

Figure 1.2 Heritage policies and regulations at diff erent administrative levels (designed by Yujie Zhu).

The transformation of conservation knowledge into practices is often associated with academic support from research institutions and heritage experts at related levels to legitimize policymaking. For instance, the Chinese Academy of Arts and the Chinese Academy of Cultural Heritage works with the Ministry of Culture and SACH on tangible and intangible cultural heritage. At the provincial level, heritage institutions get support from the provincial Academy of Social Sciences or local universities/colleges. At the local level, in Lijiang, for instance, the Naxi Culture Research institution works closely with the Lijiang World Heritage Conservation and Management Bureau.³ This government-led, scholar-supported approach justifies the heritage practices of the local authorities to search for maximal political and economic interests.

In addition, national institutions often organize ‘trainings sessions’, such as conferences, in order to transmit international heritage knowledge and best practices to lower levels. These conferences are often organized by one or two international organizations, such as UNESCO, ICOMOS, IUCN or the World Tourism Organization. Depending on the theme of the conference, heritage institutions at the national level (e.g. SACH, Ministry of Construction or China National Tourism Administration) normally act as the co-organizer. The conferences are also sponsored by related administrative institutions at the provincial level and directly hosted by local heritage offices. The conference programmes exhibit similar structures: they start with an opening ceremony conducted by representatives from the organizers. According to the scalar hierarchy, the opening speeches usually take this order: international representatives then officials from national, provincial and local levels. At the end of the opening ceremony, conference participants are positioned to take a group photo based on the hierarchy of scales and the Chinese administrative ranks: international experts and officials from national and provincial institutions sit in the first row, and other participants from local heritage offices stand behind. The main contents of the conference are presentations in a similar scalar structure: international speakers start first as keynotes, following with presentations by invited Chinese heritage experts from renowned universities and, last, case studies by local officials from different cultural heritage sites. Additional panels or group discussions may take place after these presentations. International heritage experts participate in different panels to lead discussions with the assistance from the Chinese experts. On this occasion, it is often the local officials who ask questions about their practices of heritage conservation and management; and the international experts answer questions by mainly introducing international heritage concepts and experiences like sustainable development and community participation. The scalar hierarchy influences the whole conference, including the order of seats in the official dinner, the way of toasting and name card exchanging, and the overall setting of the conference room.

At the end of these meetings, the host organization, with the assistance of international experts, often adopts a local heritage declaration (such as Beijing Declaration in 2007 or Xi’an Declaration in 2005) to reinforce or echo the China Principles. The exception was the Declaration of Qufu – a ‘Consensus on the China-specific Conservation Theory and Practices of Historic Buildings’ written in 2005 by a number of conservation practitioners. Instead of complying with the international conventions, the Qufu declaration encourages a localization approach in which ‘experiences and concepts need to be analysed, digested, and absorbed according to the actual situation in China’ (Qufu Declaration 2005).

Scalar Mobilization: Old Town Lijiang, World Heritage Site

Located in the south west of China, the prefecture level city of Lijiang lies in the north of Yunnan Province. In 1997, Lijiang Old Town (lijiang gucheng) became the first ethnic minority area in China to be inscribed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site. As the main ethnic group living in this region, the Naxi people still maintain a number of traditional cultural activities in their daily life. Since the inscription of the town, the local heritage office, the ‘Lijiang Old Town Conservation and Management Bureau’, has been put in charge of implementing the conservation law and the master plan, facilitating marketing and business development. This new agency in Lijiang has become the exclusive authority on heritage governance (Zhu 2016a).

As in other municipalities, the bureau is to follow the China Principles on heritage conservation and management. As part of their work, the two officials submit reports to the municipal ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• List of Figures and Tables
• Foreword
• Introduction. Heritage and Scale
• Part I. Scaled Conceptualization of Heritage
• Part II. Scale in Heritage Institutions and Policies
• Part III. Scale in Heritage Practices
• Afterword. The Politics of Scale for Intangible Cultural Heritage: Identification, Ownership and Representation
• Index