AFTER HERITAGE: CRITICAL PERSPECTIVES ON HERITAGE FROM BELOW

1. Rethinking heritage, but ‘from below’
2. Official memorials, deathscapes, and hidden landscapes of ruin: material legacies of the Cambodian genocide
3. Motorbikes as ‘aspirational’ heritage: rethinking past, present and future in Vietnam
4. The Bruce Lee statue in Mostar: ‘heritage from below’ experiments in a divided city
5. Death camp heritage ‘from below’? Instagram and the (re)mediation of Holocaust heritage
6. Unfinished geographies: women’s roles in shaping Black historical counter narratives
7. Stolpersteine and memory in the streetscape
8. Adoption, genealogical bewilderment and biological heritage bricolage
Afterword
Index

Drawing upon international case studies, and building upon Iain J.M. Robertson’s work on ‘heritage from below’, After Heritage sheds critical light on heritage-making and heritagescapes that are, more frequently than not, located in virtual, less conspicuous and more everyday spaces.

The book considers the highly personal, often ephemeral, individual – vis-à-vis collective – experiences of (in)formal ways the past has been folded into contemporary societies. In doing so, it unravels the merits of examining more intimate materializations of heritage not only as a check against, but also complementary to, what Laurajanne Smith refers to as ‘Authorized Heritage Discourses’. It also argues against the tendency to romanticize the fleeting and largely obscured means through which alternative forms of heritage-making are produced, performed and patronized. Ultimately, this book provides a clarion call to reinsert the individual and the transient into collective heritage processes.

Researchers in human and cultural geography, heritage studies and tourism studies will find this strong contribution to the developing field of Critical Heritage Studies an insightful read. Policy makers and heritage practitioners will also develop a deeper understanding of how heritage practices may benefit from the ‘heritage from below’ approach.