Tim Winter

Clarifying the critical in critical heritage studies

This paper considers the term critical in the unfolding formulation of critical heritage studies. It argues for a shift in emphasis from the subject of our effort to the object of attention, in other words focusing primarily on the critical issues that face the world today, the larger issues that bear upon and extend outwards from heritage. To that end, the paper presents two key directions. It suggests much is to be gained from tackling the uneasy relationship that currently exists between social science and humanities-based approaches to heritage and the professional conservation sector oriented by a scientistic materialism. Second, there is a need for heritage studies to account for its relationship to today’s regional and global transformations by developing post-western understandings of culture, history and heritage and the socio-political forces that actualise them.

Beyond Eurocentrism? Heritage conservation and the politics of difference

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.

An Uncomfortable Truth: Air-Conditioning and Sustainability in Asia

Over the coming two decades Asia will be the main driver of a 40% increase in global energy consumption. Ambitions for a more sustainable future in the region are severely compromised by the widespread and rapid take-up of energy-intensive methods for cooling the built environment. For the majority of Asias countries buildings account for more than 50% of all national greenhouse gas emissions. With around half that energy consumption typically associated with cooling or heating interior spaces, national carbon footprints have increased dramatically in recent decades through the introduction of electronic air-conditioning. This paper argues such trends are unsustainable and low-carbon alternatives for environmental comfort are required urgently. It traces shifts in how air has been ‘materially imagined’ over the last century or so in Asia and how this bears upon the future of sustainable urbanism. Air-conditioning is seen as pivotal to transformations in urban design and living, such that two phases of modernity are identified: preconditioned and conditioned. By foregrounding the need for low-carbon alternatives, the paper advocates for an alternative, low-carbon regime of thermal governance.

Heritage studies and the privileging of theory

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.

Critical Heritage Studies

This special issue, dedicated to the theme of ‘critical heritage studies’, is in part one of the outcomes of the inaugural conference of the Association of Critical Heritage Studies, which took place in Gothenburg, Sweden, 5–8 June 2012. Four of the articles included here are reworked versions of papers presented at that conference. The fifth, authored by Denis Byrne, we have included because it directly aligns with the aims of the conference for developing new theoretical avenues for heritage studies. This special issue also speaks to the Editorial written by Laurajane Smith for Volume 18, Issue 6 of IJHS, which provided a comprehensive overview of the aims and directions of both the Association and the Gothenberg conference. Here, we take as our point of departure Smith’s call in that Editorial for the ongoing development and articulation of a ‘critical heritage studies’. The papers contained herewith address that call in different, though complementary, ways. The first three, penned by Winter, Waterton & Watson, and Witcomb & Buckley, were written in the immediate aftermath of the conference and are thus in many ways a set of responses to the debates, discussions and talks that took place over the four days. The latter two papers by Harrison and Byrne focus on themes that currently lie at the heart of debates about heritage, such as those that seek to redefine the role played by processes of remembering/forgetting, as well as that played by material culture, in our interactions with the past in everyday life. The issue opens with Winter’s call for a more robust and ambitious response to the critical challenges and shifts that define the global condition today. His article is underpinned by the belief that those working in the social sciences and humanities have much to offer for making sense of the complex issues which enmesh heritage in the twenty-first century, and are thus well placed to help cultivate the conceptual architecture needed by those working in the conservation profession as they attempt to better respond to these challenges and shifts. If we look at those regions outside the West, such as Asia, the Middle East, Latin America and the African continent, what we often see is a widespread use and abuse of heritage – due to either major conflict or rapid economic development and massive social transformation – that often reaches a level of intensity, pace and impact that has few parallels in Western Europe or North America. Noting that western social theory can often be predisposed towards critique and criticism, Winter suggests there is a risk that those working in the space of critical heritage studies will further alienate the profession and close down much needed cross-sector dialogues at a ‘critical’ time. Like Winter, the paper offered by Waterton & Watson argues for a closer inspection of some of the work already developing within the social sciences and humanities, but pushes towards those theoretical emergences specifically associated with cultural and social geography. With the aim of opening up some new conceptual orientations, they begin by historicising what they see as the key theoretical International Journal of Heritage Studies, 2013 Vol. 19, No. 6, 529–531, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13527258.2013.818572

Going places; challenging directions for the future of heritage studies

This article is a comment on: Tubridge et al., 2012. Decennial reflections on a ‘geography of heritage’ (2000). International Journal of Heritage Studies, DOI: 10.1080/13527258.2012.695038

Auto-exoticism: Cultural display at the Shanghai Expo

For many postcolonial countries, articulating a sense of identity and cultural nationalism has involved negotiating those histories and identities constructed and ascribed upon them by others. Indeed, such themes have long troubled many postcolonial intellectuals and been the subject of intense debates. Shanghai Expo 2010 brought this issue into focus once again, an event where national identities were performed to an audience of 73 million. This article examines the objects and architecture of cultural nationalism in relation to questions of sovereignty and enduring colonialities for a number of Asian and African countries participating in previous world’s fairs and at Shanghai. It draws on the ideas of Partha Chatterjee to interpret why they embraced a language of tradition and heritage, reproducing the same geo-cultural hierarchies familiar to the age of European empire. The author argues that, within the cultural economies of globalization today, such countries engage in a form of auto-exoticism.

Caught between nationalism and internationalism: replicating histories of Antarctica in Hobart

Abstract In December 2013, a replica of ‘Mawson’s Hut’ (a historic structure in Antarctica) joined a growing list of polar tourist attractions in the Australian city of Hobart, Tasmania. Initially promoted as the city’s ‘latest tourist hotspot,’ the ‘replica museum’ quickly took its place in Hobart’s newly redeveloped waterfront, reinforcing the city’s identity as an ‘Antarctic Gateway’. The hut forms part of a heritage cluster, an urban assemblage that weaves together the local and national, the past and present, the familiar and remote. In this article, we examine the replica hut in relation to the complex temporal and spatial relations that give it meaning, and to which it gives meaning. Our focus is the hut as a point of convergence between memory, material culture and the histories – and possible futures – of nationalism and internationalism. We argue that the replica hut, as a key site of Hobart’s Antarctic heritage tourism industry, reproduces and prioritises domestic readings of exploration and colonisation over a reading of Antarctic engagement as a transnational endeavour. However, like other ‘gateway city’ heritage sites, it has the potential for aligning with a larger trend in international heritage conservation and heritage diplomacy, that of prioritising narratives of the past that weave together transnational connections and associations.

Heritage, Culture and Politics in the Postcolony

This new monograph by Daniel Herwitz joins a rapidly burgeoning field of critical heritage theory that casts its attention on colonial and postcolonial contexts. As a philosopher of aesthetics, Her...