Cultural effects of authenticity: contested heritage practices in China

Abstract

In this study, I analyse how the Chinese Government imposes the concept of authenticity on local heritage practices in the process of heritage nomination, conservation and management. Rather than discussing authenticity as an objective criterion, I approach authentication as a social process in the heritage discourse that impacts on local cultural practice. Through illustrating two cases in China, I propose three cultural effects of authentication on local heritage practices, namely spatial separation, emotional banishment and value shifting. Moreover, the heritage practices in China have created space for dynamic negotiations between local and global value systems. When the concept of authenticity is imposed on local heritage practices by heritage agencies, local communities are not passive recipients; rather, they consume, contest and negotiate the concept of authenticity in various ways.

Keywords:

• authenticity
• authentication
• heritage practice
• cultural effects
• China

Acknowledgement

This research has been supported by Australian Centre on China in the World, Australian National University and ANU ECR Research Grant. Thanks to Elisa Nesossi, Jinghong Zhang and three anonymous reviewers for their valuable comments. The author is especially grateful to Anna Li for her continuous support.

Notes

1. The Venice Charter has developed since 1960s as one of the foundational texts for the conservation and preservation movements. It underlines a philosophical basis of heritage conservation that was initiated in most European countries as a legal and policy-making process.

2. In China, cultural sites are mainly managed by the State Administration of Cultural Heritage (SACH). Natural sites and national scenic areas are managed by the Ministry of Housing and Urban-Rural Development.

3. Cohen and Cohen (2012) proposed two types of authentication of attractions, ‘cool’ and ‘hot’. ‘Cool’ authentication is conceptualised as certification of object as original or real, contrasting with a copy or fake. Contrasting with ‘cool’ authentication, ‘hot’ authentication lacks an authorised agent. It is an affective self-reinforcing process, in which the genuineness of sites, objects or events is confirmed or reinforced.

4. The Cultural Revolution is a cultural movement that imposes Maoist orthodoxy and removes all capitalist and feudalistic elements from the Chinese society.

5. This is another UNESCO cultural programme. By creating a compendium of the world’s documentary heritage – manuscripts, oral traditions, audio-visual materials, library and archive holdings – the programme aims to tap on its networks of experts to exchange information and raise resources for the preservation, digitisation and dissemination of documentary materials.

6. The word ‘dongba’ is of Tibetan origin, meaning wise man and teacher. Local community regarded the dongbas as a group of village-based, part-time religious specialists (McKhann 2010). By memorising the scripts, they were able to perform varied religious rituals and rites by chanting and dancing.

7. As suggested by Michael Herzfeld from his term of ‘spatial cleansing’, the proposed newly built environment creates ‘the intrusive presence of regimentation and aesthetic domination’.