Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- List of Figures
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction: (Un)Authorised Heritage Discourse and Practice in China
- Section 1 (Re)constructions, (Re)inventions, and Representations of Heritage
- Section 2 Creating Identities: Constructing Pasts, Disseminating Heritage
- Section 3 History, Nostalgia, and Heritage: Urban and Rural
- Section 4 Appropriations and Commodifications of Ethnic Heritage
- 10 ‘Even if you don't want to Drink, you still have to Drink’: The Yi and Alcohol in History and Heritage
- 11 ‘Ethnic Heritage’ on the New Frontier: The Idealisation and Commodification of Ethnic ‘Otherness’ in Xinjiang
- Afterword: Historicising and Globalising the Heritage Turn in China
- Index
- Publications / Asian Heritages
9 - Local Voices and New Narratives in Xinye Village: The Economy of Nostalgia and Heritage
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 21 November 2020
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- List of Figures
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction: (Un)Authorised Heritage Discourse and Practice in China
- Section 1 (Re)constructions, (Re)inventions, and Representations of Heritage
- Section 2 Creating Identities: Constructing Pasts, Disseminating Heritage
- Section 3 History, Nostalgia, and Heritage: Urban and Rural
- Section 4 Appropriations and Commodifications of Ethnic Heritage
- 10 ‘Even if you don't want to Drink, you still have to Drink’: The Yi and Alcohol in History and Heritage
- 11 ‘Ethnic Heritage’ on the New Frontier: The Idealisation and Commodification of Ethnic ‘Otherness’ in Xinjiang
- Afterword: Historicising and Globalising the Heritage Turn in China
- Index
- Publications / Asian Heritages
Summary
Abstract
The present chapter is influenced by critical heritage scholars who understand heritage as a ‘process’ rather than a particular object, place or practice, or, differently put, understand heritage as a verb and as something that both discursively and materially transforms places and practices. It illustrates the complex and changing rural heritagescape in China through a case study of Xinye village in Zhejiang province. The focus is on how the heritagisation process has involved and given rise to multiple stakeholders and actors with different social and cultural capital in and outside the village, and the different ways they engage with and make sense of heritage. It pays particular attention to how the heritage is mediated and visualised on film, analysing a range of different TV productions, and how performance and entertainment are essential aspects of the heritagisation process.
Keywords: heritagisation, mediatisation, performance, film, rural heritage
Introduction
This chapter is influenced by the work of critical heritage scholars who pay particular attention to issues of power and agency in heritage work and understand heritage as a ‘process’ rather than a particular object, place or practice, or, differently put, understand heritage as a verb and as something that both discursively and materially transforms places and practices (e.g., Harrison 2013; Harvey 2001; Smith 2006). The heritagisation process almost inevitably puts heritage on display and draws our attention to issues of performance, mediatisation, and entertainment/spectacle (Haldrup & Bærenholdt 2015). The chapter will illustrate the complex and changing rural heritagescape in China through a case study of Xinye village in Zhejiang province, which the author has regularly visited since 2003. The focus is on how the heritagisation process has involved and given rise to multiple stakeholders and actors with different social and cultural capital in and outside the village, and the different ways they engage with and make sense of heritage. The chapter addresses both top-down and bottom-up processes and interactions as well as changes over time. It pays particular attention to how the heritage is mediated and visualised on film, analysing a range of different TV productions, and how performance and entertainment has come to constitute an essential aspect of the heritagisation process.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- The Heritage Turn in ChinaThe Reinvention, Dissemination and Consumption of Heritage, pp. 239 - 258Publisher: Amsterdam University PressPrint publication year: 2020