Critical Perspectives on Cultural Memory and Heritage
Construction, Transformation and Destruction
Veysel Apaydin (Editor)
Critical Perspectives on Cultural Memory and Heritage focuses on the importance of memory and heritage for individual and group identity, and for their sense of belonging. It aims to expose the motives and discourses related to the destruction of memory and heritage during times of war, terror, sectarian conflict and through capitalist policies. It is within these affected spheres of cultural heritage where groups and communities ascribe values, develop memories, and shape their collective identity.
Chapters in the volume address cultural memory and heritage from six global perspectives and contexts: first, the relationship between cultural memory and heritage; second, the effect of urban development and large infrastructure on heritage; third, the destruction of indigenous heritage; fourth, the destruction of heritage in relation to erasing memory during sectarian violence and conflict; fifth, the impact of policymaking on cultural heritage assets; and sixth, a broad reflection on the destruction, change and transformation of heritage in an epilogue by Cornelius Holtorf, archaeologist and Chair of Heritage Futures at UNESCO.
The range of sites discussed in the volume – from Australia, Brazil and Syria, to Bosnia, the UK and Taiwan – make it essential reading for researchers in Museum and Heritage Studies, Archaeology and History seeking a global, comprehensive study of cultural memory and heritage.
Praise for Critical Perspectives on Cultural Memory and Heritage
‘A ‘go-to’ volume for conservators working with various sites and objects from and in ‘the field’, who are interested to understand the politics of heritage making, management and protection.’
Journal of the Institute of Conservation
Introduction: why cultural memory and heritage?
Veysel Apaydin
Part I: Conceptualizing Cultural Memory and Heritage
1. The interlinkage of cultural memory, heritage and discourses of construction, transformation and destruction
Veysel Apaydin
Part II: Urban Heritage, Development, Transformation and Destruction
2. Mega-structural violence: considering African literary perspectives on infrastructure, modernity and destruction
Rachel King
3. Competing for the past: the London 2012 Olympic Games, archaeology, and the ‘wasteland’
Jonathan Gardner
4. Covert erasure and agents of change in the heritage city
Colin Sterling
5. Heritage, memory and social justice: reclaiming space and identity
Veysel Apaydin
6. Amnesia by design: building and rebuilding in a Mediterranean small island state
Reuben Grima
7. Vanishing heritage, materialising memory: construction, destruction and social action in contemporary Madrid
Jaime Almansa-Sánchez & Nekbet Corpas-Cívicos
Part III: Indigenous Heritage and Destruction
8. Considering the denigration and destruction of Indigenous heritage as violence
George Nicholas and Claire Smith
9. Indigenous Latino heritage: destruction, invisibility, appropriation, revival, survivance. Images from Central America.
Paul Edward Montgomery Ramírez
10. Rescuing’ the ground from under their feet? Contract archaeology and human rights violations in the Brazilian Amazon
Bruna Cigaran da Rocha
11. Order and disorder: Indigenous Australian cultural heritages and the case of settler-colonial ambivalence
Amanda Kearney
Part IV: Conflicts, Violence, War and Destruction
12. Cultural memory as a mechanism for community cohesion: the case study of Dayr Mar Elian esh-Sharqi, Qaryatayn, Syria
Emma Loosley Leeming
13. Bosnia and the destruction of identity
Helen Walasek
14. ‘Bombing Pompeii!!! Why not the Pyramids?’ Myths and memories of the Allied bombing of Pompeii.
Nigel D. Pollard
Part V: Heritage, Identity and Destruction
15. Reclaiming the past as a matter of social justice: African American heritage, representation and identity
in the United States
Erin Linn-Tynen
16. Alternating cycles of the politics of forgetting and remembering the past in Taiwan
Nicolas Zorzin
17. A glimpse into the crystal ball: how do we select the memory of the future?
Monique van den Dries & Jose Schreurs
Part VI: Epilogue
18. ‘Cultural heritage is concerned with the future’. A critical epilogue.
Cornelius Holtorf
Index
DOI: 10.14324/111.9781787354845
Number of pages: 336
Number of illustrations: 29
Publication date: 18 February 2020
PDF ISBN: 9781787354845
EPUB ISBN: 9781787354876
Read Online ISBN: 9781787354845
Hardback ISBN: 9781787354869
Paperback ISBN: 9781787354852
Veysel Apaydin (Editor)
Veysel Apaydin is Associate Professor in the Department of Culture, Communication and Media at the UCL Institute of Education. He is the author of Narrating Heritage. Rights, Abuses and Cultural Resistance (2023), Heritage, Education and Social Justice (2022), and editor of Critical Perspectives on Cultural Memory and Heritage (2020).
‘A ‘go-to’ volume for conservators working with various sites and objects from and in ‘the field’, who are interested to understand the politics of heritage making, management and protection.’
Journal of the Institute of Conservation
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