‘Archaeologizing’ Heritage and Transcultural Entanglements: An Introduction

Abstract

The appropriation of the past by actors in the present is subject to multiple dynamics. These span a field of forces composed of nation states, transnational organisations, and local communities, each concerned with preserving the remains of the past in order to emblematize identities, to protect and project a nation’s patrimony, or alternatively to construct a notion of world heritage. There are many facets to the study of heritage in modern societies; the concept is part of a transcultural order that has emerged in the last two centuries. A child of the European Enlightenment, it circulated under the aegis of colonialism across the globe where it was harnessed to the civilizing programme of the colonial state and at the same time appropriated by the agenda of nation building to wrest locality from the global constellation of empire. In the contemporary world, heritage has become increasingly enmeshed with modern media, tourism, and the spectacle, which in turn has led to the creation of a veritable ‘heritage industry.’ Today’s global heritage industry does not flatten cultural difference; rather, it exploits the particularity of the local and re-packages the exotic as a commodity for the world bazaar in ways that are reminiscent of the Orientalist fabrications in the world exhibitions of the nineteenth century. Yet the globalization of ethnicity ought not to detract from the observation that the varied national and local articulations of identity and its tangible anchors make heritage a contested issue and often a site of tension and violent conflict.