Skip to main content
Built Heritage
Download PDF

Volume 1 Supplement 3

Global and Local Challenges in Non-Western Heritage Conservation

Past Is Not a Frozen Concept: Considerations about Heritage Conservation in a Fast Changing World

Built Heritage volume 1, pages 1–12 (2017)Cite this article

Abstract

The paper introduces seven essays from China, Europe, India, Japan, South Africa and South America included in issue No. 3 of Built Heritage. It focuses on the necessity of a critical review of Western principles and methods of heritage conservation and suggests an approach open to different cultural models and practices. Concepts of history, memory, authenticity are analysed and some new issues originated by massive migrations and urbanisation processes examined. Heritage conservation is seen as an opportunity for developing post-Western/non-Western theoretical models, methodologies and practices.

References

  1. Augé, Marc. 2003. Le temps en ruines [Time in Ruins]. 2003. Paris: Editions Galilée.

    Google Scholar 

  2. Benjamin, Walter. 1969. “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction.” In Illuminations, Hannah Arendt, ed. Translated by Harry Zohn. New York: Schocken Books.

    Google Scholar 

  3. Bernal, Martin, 1987. Black Athena: The Afroasiatic Roots of Classical Civilization. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  4. Boardman, John. 2002. The Archaeology of Nostalgia: How the Greeks Recreated Their Mythical Past. London: Thames and Hudson.

    Google Scholar 

  5. Borofsky, Robert. 1987. Making History. Pukapukan and Anthropological Constructions of Knowledge. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  6. Brenner, Neil, ed. 2014. Implosions/Explosions. Towards a Study of Planetary Urbanization. Berlin: Jovis Verlag GmbH.

    Google Scholar 

  7. Brenner Neil. 2017. Critique of Urbanization: Selected Essays. Basel: Birkhäuser Verlag.

    Google Scholar 

  8. Ceccarelli, Paolo. 2016. A Post-Western/Non-Western Approach to Urban and Architectural Issues. A Research Project Proposal. Ferrara: UNESCO Chair.

    Google Scholar 

  9. Chakrabarty, Dipesh. 2000. Provincializing Europe: Postcolonial Thought and Historical Difference. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  10. Comaroff, Jean, and John Comaroff. 2012. Theory from the South, or, How Euro-America Is Evolving toward Africa. Abingdon: Paradigm Press.

    Google Scholar 

  11. Connell, Raewyn. 2007. Southern Theory. The Global Dynamics of Knowledge in Social Sciences. Cambridge: Polity Press.

    Google Scholar 

  12. Crichton, Michael. 1999. Timeline. New York: Knopf.

    Google Scholar 

  13. Daly, Patrick, and Tim Winter. 2012. Routledge Handbook of Heritage in Asia. Abingdon: Routledge.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  14. Edwards, Walter. 2003. “Monuments to an Unbroken Line: The Imperial Tombs and the Emergence of Modern Japanese Nationalism.” In The politics of Archaeology and Identity in a Global Context, edited by Susan Kane, 11–30. Boston: Archaeological Institute of America.

  15. Enders, Siegfried R.C.T., and Niels Gutschow, eds. 1998. Hozon. Architectural and Urban Conservation in Japan. Stuttgart: Edition Axel Menges.

    Google Scholar 

  16. Fabian, Johannes. 2014. Time and the Other. How Anthropology Makes Its Objects. New York: Columbia University Press.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  17. Fanon, Frantz. 1967. Black Skin, White Masks. Translated by Charles Lam Markmann. New York: Grove Press.

    Google Scholar 

  18. Fanon, Frantz. 1961. Les Damnés de la Terre. [The Wretched of the Earth] Paris: François Maspero.

    Google Scholar 

  19. Freud, Sigmund. 1985. The Complete Letters of Sigmund Freud to Wilhelm Fliess, 1887–1904. Translated and edited by Jeffrey Mousalleff Masson. Cambridge: Belknap Press.

    Google Scholar 

  20. Halbwachs, Maurice. 1950. La mémoire collective [The Collective Memory]. Paris: Presses Universitaire de France.

    Google Scholar 

  21. Hamilakis, Yannis. 2003. “Lives in Ruins: Antiquities and National Imagination in Modern Greece.” In The Politics of Archaeology and Identity in a Global Context, edited by Kane, Susan, 51–78. Boston: Archaeological Institute of America

    Google Scholar 

  22. Handler, Richard. 1986. “Authenticity.” Anthropology Today 2(1): 2–4.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  23. Hobsbawm, Eric. 1983. The Invention of Tradition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  24. Jedlowski, Paolo. 2017. Memorie del futuro. Un percorso tra sociologia e studi culturali [Memories of the Future. A Path between Sociology and Cultural Studies]. Roma: Carocci editore.

    Google Scholar 

  25. Jeudy, Henri-Pierre. 2008. La Machine patrimoniale [The Patrimonial Machine]. Paris: Circé.

    Google Scholar 

  26. Jokilehto, Jukka. 2006. “Considerations on Authenticity and Integrity in World Heritage Context.” City & Time 2(1): 1–16. URL: http://wwwct.ceci-br.org

    Google Scholar 

  27. Joyce, Rosemarie A. 2003. “Archaeology and Nation Building: A View from Central America.” In The politics of Archaeology and Identity in a Global Context, edited by Susan Kane, 79–100. Boston: Archaeological Institute of America.

    Google Scholar 

  28. Jullien, François. 2015. De l’être au vivre. Lexique euro-chinois de la pensée [From Being to Living. Euro-Chinese Lexicon of Thought]. Paris: Éditions Gallimard.

    Google Scholar 

  29. Kane, Susan, ed. 2003. The Politics of Archaeology and Identity in a Global Context. Boston: Archaeological Institute of America.

    Google Scholar 

  30. Kilani, Mondher. 1994. L’invention de l’autre. Essais sur les discours anthropologique [The Invention of the Other. Essays on Anthropological Discourses]. Lausanne: Payot.

    Google Scholar 

  31. Le Goff, Jacques. 1992. History and Memory. New York: Columbia University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  32. Liakos Antonis. 2002 “The Construction of National Time. The Making of the Modern Greek Historical Imagination.” In Political Uses of the Past: The Recent Mediterranean Experience, edited by Jacques Revel and Giovanni Levi, 27–42. Frank Cass & Co Ltd Publishers.

  33. Lowenthal, David. 2008. “Authenticities Past and Present.” CRM: The Journal of Heritage Stewardship 1(1).

  34. Lowenthal, David. 1985. The Past is a Foreign Country. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  35. Macaulay, Thomas Babington. 1835. Minute on Indian Education. http://www.mssu.edu/projectsouthasia/history/primarydocs/education/Macaulay001.htm

  36. Meskell, Lynn. 1999. Remarks given in a paper at the AIA Annual Meeting, Dec., quoted by Susan Kane, Introduction to The Politics of Archaeology and Identity in a Global Context. Boston: Archaeological Institute of America.

    Google Scholar 

  37. Ministère de la Culture, Direction du Patrimoine. 1997. Actes des Entretiens du Patrimoine. Science et Conscience du Patrimoine (sous la direction de Pierre Nora). Paris: Fayard.

    Google Scholar 

  38. Ministère de la Culture, Direction du Patrimoine. 1998. Actes des Entretiens du Patrimoine. Patrimoine et Passions Identitaires (sous la direction de Pierre Nora). Paris: Fayard.

    Google Scholar 

  39. Morey, Sean and John Tinnell, eds. 2016. Augmented Reality: Innovative Perspectives Across Art, Industry and Academia. Anderson: Parlor Press.

    Google Scholar 

  40. Morris, Ian. 2000. Archaeology as Cultural History, Words and Things in Iron Age Greece. Malden: Oxford Blackwell.

    Google Scholar 

  41. Nehru, Lolita. 1989. Origins of the Gandhāran Style. A Study of Contributory Influences. Delhi: Oxford University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  42. Nora, Pierre. 1997. Realms of Memory: The Construction of the French Past: Traditions Vol. II. Translated by Arthur Goldhammer and edited by Lawrence Kritzman. New York: Columbia University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  43. Olivier, Laurent. 2008. Le sombre abîme du temps [The Dark Abyss of Time]. Mémoire et archéologie. Paris: Seuil.

  44. Pingree, David E. 1978. The Yavanjātaka of Sphujidhvaja. Cambridge: Harvard Oriental Series, Harvard University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  45. Potter, Andrew. 2010. The Authenticity Hoax. New York: Harper Collins Publishers.

    Google Scholar 

  46. Poulot, Dominique. 2006. Une Histoire du Patrimoine en Occident. XVIIIe-XXIe Siècle. Du monument aux valeurs [A History of Heritage in the West. XVIIIth -XXIth Century. From Monument to Values]. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  47. Revel, Jacques, and Giovanni Levi, eds. 2002. Political Uses of the Past. The Recent Mediterranean Experience. London: Frank Cass & Co Ltd Publishers.

    Google Scholar 

  48. Revel, Jacques, and Lynn Hunt. 1995. Histories: French Constructions of the Past. New York: The New Press.

    Google Scholar 

  49. Robinson, Jennifer. 2006. Ordinary Cities: Between Modernity and Development. Abingdon: Routledge.

    Google Scholar 

  50. Roy Ananya, and Aihwa Ong, eds. 2011. Wordling Cities: Asian Experiments and the Art of Being Global. Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell.

    Google Scholar 

  51. Rüsen, Jörn, ed. 2007. Time and History. The Variety of Cultures. New York: Berghahn Books.

    Google Scholar 

  52. Said, Edward. 1978. Orientalism. New York: Pantheon Books

    Google Scholar 

  53. Said, Edward. 1988. Nationalism, Colonialism, and Literature. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.

    Google Scholar 

  54. Sassen, Saskia. 1991. The Global City: New York, London, Tokyo. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  55. Sassen, Saskia, ed. 2002. Global Network, Linked Cities. Abingdon: Routledge.

    Google Scholar 

  56. Sassen, Saskia. 2014. Expulsions. Brutality and Complexity in the Global Economy. Cambridge, Ma: Harvard University Press.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  57. Simone AbdouMaliq. 2004. For the City yet to Come: Changing African Life in Four Cities. Durham & London: Duke University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  58. Stovel, Herb. 2007. “Effective Use of Authenticity and Integrity as World Heritage Qualifying Conditions.” City & Time 2(3): 21–36. URL: http://wwwct.ceci-br.org

    Google Scholar 

  59. Todorov, Tzvetan. 2004. Les abus de la mémoire [Abuse of Memory]. Paris: arléa.

    Google Scholar 

  60. UNESCO, WHC. 1994. Nara Document on Authenticity. Phuket: WHC-94/CONF.003/INF.008

    Google Scholar 

  61. Wallerstein, Immanuel Maurice. 2006. European Universalism: The Rhetoric of Power. New York: the New Press.

    Google Scholar 

  62. Watertown, Emma, and Steve Watson, eds. 2011. Culture, Heritage and Representation. Perspectives on Visuality and the Past. Farnham: Ashgate Publishing Ltd.

    Google Scholar 

  63. Waterton, Emma, and Steve Watson. 2015. The Palgrave Handbook of Contemporary Heritage Research. Houndmills, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  64. Winter, Tim. 2012. “Beyond Eurocentrism? Heritage conservation and the politics of difference.” International Journal of Heritage Studies 20(2): 123–137.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  65. Wu, Hung. 2012. A Story of Ruins, Presence and Absence in Chinese Art and Visual Culture. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

    Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Affiliations

  1. Department of Architecture, University of Ferrara, Ferrara, Italy

    Paolo Ceccarelli

Authors
  1. Paolo Ceccarelli
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Paolo Ceccarelli.

Rights and permissions

This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.

Reprints and Permissions

About this article

Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this article

Ceccarelli, P. Past Is Not a Frozen Concept: Considerations about Heritage Conservation in a Fast Changing World. Built Heritage 1, 1–12 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1186/BF03545671

Download citation

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1186/BF03545671

Keywords

  • conservation
  • memory
  • authenticity
  • cross-fertilisation
  • collective action
  • de-colonisation
  • post-Western/non-Western