Contrary to popular perceptions, cultural heritage is not given, but constantly in the making: a construction subject to dynamic processes of (re)inventing culture within particular social formations and bound to particular forms of mediation. Yet the appeal of cultural heritage often rests on its denial of being a fabrication, its promise to provide an essential ground to social-cultural identities. Taking this paradoxical feature as a point of departure, and anchoring the discussion to two heuristic concepts—the "politics of authentication" and "aesthetics of persuasion"—the chapters herein explore how this tension is central to the dynamics of heritage formation worldwide.
Contrary to popular perceptions, cultural heritage is not given, but constantly in the making: a construction subject to dynamic processes of (re)inventing culture within particular social formations and bound to particular forms of mediation. Yet the appeal of cultural heritage often rests on its denial of being a fabrication, its promise to provide an essential ground to social-cultural identities. Taking this paradoxical feature as a point of departure, and anchoring the discussion to two heuristic concepts—the "politics of authentication" and "aesthetics of persuasion"—the chapters herein explore how this tension is central to the dynamics of heritage formation worldwide.
Arvustused
This is an extensive and influential collection that whilst reviewing I took with me to the field, twice! It is a book to ponder and to return to. It is cohesively edited, volume nine in Berghahns Material Mediations series and a fantastic and stimulating additionthis powerful and detailed volume on the affective nature of heritage needs to be read and re-read, digested and extensively travelled with. Journal of Heritage Tourism
Considering that we all know the world we live in is a construct, how are we convinced to accept it as real and act accordingly? And how is heritage, which is always a social construct, made real through aesthetics of persuasion and politics of authenticity? By addressing these questions in richly varied ethnographic case studies, this volume not only makes a significant contribution to an issue that is of wider interest to the social sciences, it also makes heritage studies as a field highly relevant to the social sciences. Ferdinand de Jong, University of East Anglia
List of Figures
Preface
Introduction: Heritage Dynamics: Politics of Authentication, Aesthetics of
Persuasion and the Cultural Production of the Real
Mattijs van de Port & Birgit Meyer
Chapter
1. Aesthetics as Form and Force: Notes on the Shaping of Pataxó
Indian Bodies
André Werneck de Andrade Bakker
Chapter
2. Intangible Heritage, Tangible Controversies: The Baiana and the
Acarajé as Boundary Objects in Contemporary Brazil
Bruno Reinhardt
Chapter
3. Swinging between the Material and the Immaterial: Brazilian
Cultural Politics and the Authentication of Afro-Brazilian Heritage
Maria Paula Fernandes Adinolfi
Chapter
4. 'Reporting the Past': News History and the Formation of the
Sunday Times Heritage Project
Duane Jethro
Chapter
5. Scaffolding Heritage: Transient Architectures and Temporalizing
Formations in Luanda
Ruy Llera Blanes
Chapter
6. Corpo-Reality TV: Media, Body, and the Authentication of African
Heritage
Marleen de Witte
Chapter
7. Heated Discussions Are Necessary. The Creative Engagement with
Sankofa in Modern Ghanaian Art
Rhoda Woets
Chapter
8. Iconic Objects: Making Diasporic Heritage, Blackness and
Whiteness in the Netherlands
Markus Balkenhol
Chapter
9. Ascertaining the Future Memory of Our Time: Dutch Institutions
Collecting Relics of National Tragedy
Irene Stengs
Concluding Comments
Chapter
10. Heritage Under Construction: Boundary Objects, Scaffolding and
Anticipation
David Chidester
Chapter
11. Can Anything Become Heritage?
David Berliner
Chapter
12. Heritage as Process
Ciraj Rassool
Index
Birgit Meyer is Professor of Religious Studies at Utrecht University. She is co-editor of Material Religion. Her recent publications include Aesthetic Formations: Religion, Media and the Senses (ed., Palgrave 2009), Things: Religion and the Question of Materiality (ed. with Dick Houtman, Fordham 2012), Sensational Movies: Video Vision and Christianity in Ghana (University of California Press, 2015), and Creativity in Transition: Politics and Aesthetics of Cultural Production Across the Globe (ed. with Maruka Svaek, Berghahn, 2016).
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