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Heritage in Action pp 183–200Cite as

Heritage on the Go: Abbreviated Heritage in a Mobile World

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Abstract

This chapter explores the airport as a new space for the exhibition and performance of cultural heritage, drawing on Zygmunt Bauman’s discussion of liquid modernity and John Urry’s mobilities paradigm. Suvarnabhumi Airport in Bangkok and Incheon Airport in Seoul each offer “heritage on the go” to their domestic and international tourists in the form of selective displays of iconic elements of national heritage. Acts of “heritage on the go” are a response to globalization’s hypermobility. The territorialized countries (Thailand, South Korea) undertake an abbreviated heritage scripting of their airports that is readily consumed and easily transported into new territories, for by virtue of being travel venues there is inadequate time for the tourist to more deeply engage the subject matter. “Heritage on the go” opens a new critical inquiry into tourism and heritage. It recognizes two interacting domains of heritage production—institutional actors and the tourists themselves—as makers, not just consumers of heritage. The “heritage on the go” concept can be applied to other officially sanctioned, elementally distilled, intended-to-be-rapidly-consumed performances or installations of heritage. Of particular interest is where these rapid displays take place and who authorizes them.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Even the color scheme of the official airport logo—gold and blue—was chosen in consideration of cultural ideas. Gold is the symbol of prosperity in Thailand, reiterating the “Golden Land” or Suvarnabhumi and the prosperity intended for its modern-day descendant, the airport. Blue is the symbol of prudence, carefulness, and friendship, representing the ethos of the airport organization itself. The official promotional video of the airport can be watched at this url:

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W_vk-XohISU&feature=relmfu (last accessed 9 July 2014).

  2. 2.

    Suvarnabhumi is outstanding but Singapore’s Changi Airport was ranked first in 2014 and 2015 followed by Korea’s Incheon Airport in the second position according to Skytrax’s World Airport Awards, whose decision is based on the participation of airline customers in a survey. (http://www.worldairportawards.com/Awards/airport_award_winners_2014.html; http://www.worldairportawards.com/Awards/world_airport_rating.html).

  3. 3.

    The video can be watched at

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YpZxaCdYq-w (last accessed 9 July 2015).

  4. 4.

    For this and the other KCHF quotes which follow, see http://www.airport.kr/iiacms/pageWork.iia?_scode=C2605010200 (last accessed 15 May 2015).

  5. 5.

    See http://english.seoul.go.kr/gtk/news/reports_view.php?idx=1275 (last accessed 1 May 2015).

  6. 6.

    See http://english.seoul.go.kr/gtk/news/reports_view.php?idx=1275 (last accessed 1 May 2015).

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Acknowledgments

As always, I am indebted to the generosity of my colleague, Alexandra Denes, in all matters pertaining to Thailand. I also thank Robyn Bushell, William Logan, Russell Staiff, and Emma Waterton for their suggestions on an early version of this chapter. I am solely responsible for its final form.

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  1. Department of Anthropology, University of Illinois, 109 Davenport Hall, 607 S. Mathews Avenue, Urbana-Champaign, IL, 61801, USA

    Helaine Silverman

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  1. Helaine Silverman
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Correspondence to Helaine Silverman .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Anthropology, University of Illinois, Urbana, Illinois, USA

    Helaine Silverman

  2. Institute for Culture and Society, Western Sydney University, Penrith, New South Wales, Australia

    Emma Waterton

  3. Business School, York St. John University, York, United Kingdom

    Steve Watson

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Silverman, H. (2017). Heritage on the Go: Abbreviated Heritage in a Mobile World. In: Silverman, H., Waterton, E., Watson, S. (eds) Heritage in Action. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-42870-3_13

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-42870-3_13

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