The Orient Strikes Back by Joy Hendry

Author:Joy Hendry [Hendry, Joy]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: History, Civilization
ISBN: 9781859733332
Google: tQjGzgEACAAJ
Publisher: Berg Publishers
Published: 2000-10-01T04:09:04+00:00

Summary and Theoretical Implications

The examples of cultural display considered in this chapter have ranged from a self-professed museum to an out-and-out theme park. They have expressed national themes from history, through contemporary attempts at unity, to resistance to the same. All concerned in one way or another with leisure, some locations seek to divert, others to create calm and harmony. Together, the places looked at suggest that the association of culture with leisure and fun is more complicated than might at first have been thought, and this is a subject to which we shall return in Chapter 8. They also force us to think anew about ideas of authenticity in the preservation of culture, and we will return to consider this theme in more detail in Chapter 6.

These Asian parks have mostly been self-representational, but it is clearly sometimes a highly contested matter who chooses the form and content of the representation, and how it is carried out. We have seen different interpretations of the forms of representation too, from the apparent 'putting-down' of the Chinese minorities to the 'upliftment' of the tribal peoples of Nepal, and the commercial inducement for craftwork in India and Korea, which also happens to preserve the skills. These interpretations can sometimes be related to a contemporary political or economic situation; but it is important to be aware too of the influence of Western political history on the way that visitors from the West seek to interpret the behaviour of others.

The last example of this chapter gave two representations of Thai heritage, including some intercultural influences, that quite blatantly depict history in a manner at odds with more conservative Western versions. In the next chapter, assumptions about Western ideas will be replaced by an examination of the views of history represented by parks such as open-air museums and heritage centres found in Western countries, to see how much they do indeed differ from the Asian cases. We will then be in a position to return to Japan and make an assessment of the various influences on cultural display, both those we have seen, and others that are more obviously parallel to the cases outlined in this chapter.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.