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ABSTRACT
Modernisation brings the decline of traditional crafts and practices and thereby of their old, linked communities. Memories of these communities might survive though only for a time. A public policy dilemma presents – whether to conserve communities and their crafts as ‘living museums’ (akin to a milieu de mémoire in Pierre Nora’s terms) for tourist titillation; alternatively to merely retain the traces of that culture, as a museum more conventionally understood (lieux de mémoire); or, alternatively again, to accept the ephemerality of culture and its metamorphosis? And, if the last, then how is that to be presented to the discerning tourist? The paper mostly uses the case of the ancient goldsmith community of Wat Koh in Phetchaburi city, Thailand, to reflect on this dilemma. At stake academically are two sets of dialectic opposites: history against memory, and memory against nostalgia – also the contingent dichotomy of tourism and memory.
Disclosure Statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.
Notes on contributors
Ross King is a professorial fellow in the Faculty of Architecture Building and Planning at the University of Melbourne, Australia. His research focuses on the cities of Southeast an East Asia. His most recent books are Heritage and Identity in Contemporary Thailand (NUS Press, 2017) and Seoul: Memory, Reinvention and the Korean Wave (University of Hawaii Press, 2018).
Winita Kongpradit completed her PhD in the Architectural Heritage and Tourism Management program of Silpakorn University, Bangkok, where she now teaches in the Jewelry Design Department. Ross King was her thesis supervisor.