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ABSTRACT
This article challenges the claimed gulf between ‘Eastern’ and ‘Western’ concepts and approaches to heritage conservation through an analysis of the common complexities surrounding authenticity. The past few decades have witnessed an important critique of ‘Eurocentric’ notions of heritage conservation, drawing on ‘non-Western’, particularly Asian, contexts. Authenticity has been a core principle and defining element in this development. Endorsed by a series of charters and documents, a relativistic approach emphasising the cultural specificity of authenticity has been introduced alongside the European-originated materialist approach in international policy and conservation philosophy. However, the promotion of Asian difference has also contributed to an increasingly entrenched and unproductive dichotomy between ‘Eastern’ and ‘Western’ approaches to heritage. This article reveals common complexities surrounding authenticity in two countries crosscutting this dualism – China and Scotland. Drawing on a number of ethnographic projects, our analysis identifies themes that characterise the experience of authenticity across different cultural contexts. It contributes to a more nuanced understanding of the evolving relationships between heritage conservation and contemporary societies with important implications for global heritage discourses and collaborative ventures crosscutting ‘Eastern’ and ‘Western’ contexts.
Acknowledgments
We would like to thank our many research participants in China and Scotland for supporting the projects discussed in this article. Without their participation and insights our analysis of the experience of authenticity would not have been possible. The article involves a comparative analysis based on a number of independently-funded projects. We are grateful to the funding bodies for their support: the British Academy, the Arts and Humanities Research Council, Historic Scotland, AGAUR (Generalitat de Catalunya), and the University of Stirling. We have presented this paper at a number of conferences, including a conference on Global Challenges in Cultural Heritage at the University of Stirling, Scotland, the 4th Biennial Conference of the Association of Critical Heritage Studies in Hangzhou, China, and the 25th Annual Meeting of the European Association of Archaeologists in Bern, Switzerland. We would like to thank the session organisers and audiences for their questions and comments. Finally, we would like to thank our anonymous peer reviewers for their constructive feedback.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.
Correction Statement
This article has been republished with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.
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Notes on contributors
Qian Gao
Qian Gao is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow in Heritage at the University of Stirling. She has a MA in Archaeology from Durham University (UK) and a PhD in Management of Culture and Heritage from the University of Barcelona (Spain). She is currently undertaking a three-year Anniversary Fellowship funded by the University of Stirling. Her research focuses on the inter-relationships between heritage and contemporary societies, and deals with topics including conservation, authenticity, value, heritage tourism, World Heritage in China, and rock art.
Siân Jones
Siân Jones is Professor of Environmental History and Heritage and Director of the Centre for Environment, Heritage and Policy at the University of Stirling. She is an interdisciplinary scholar with expertise in cultural heritage, as well as on the role of the past in the production of power, identity and sense of place. Her recent projects focus on the practice of conservation, the experience of authenticity, replicas and reconstructions, approaches to social value, and community heritage.