Heritage as theatre: Reconceptualizing heritage-making in urban China

Abstract

Since China’s signing of UNESCO’s World Heritage Convention in 1985, cultural heritage in China has become a booming industry and a key area of scholarly investigation. The mainstream literature on China’s heritage and urbanization tends to view heritage as a civilizing agent to regulate and improve the urban population. Drawing on Clifford Geertz’s notion of ‘theatre state’ and through a case study of Jiangmen, this article reconceptualizes China’s urban heritage industry as ‘theatre’. It shifts the focus away from neat political rationalities to messy ‘magical assemblages’, such as dramatic museum representation, monumental architecture and expressive ceremonies, in state-led heritage-making processes. It argues that the Chinese government makes heritage by using not only the means of political rationalities but also, and perhaps more importantly, the power of spectacle, sensation and awe. China’s heritage industry is thus as much ‘a technique of enchantment’ as ‘a technique of government’, revealing complicated processes of China’s negotiation with the Western-centred conceptualization of modernity and cultural heritage. Additionally, it draws attention to diasporic resources in urban heritage-making, broadening the existing research that has predominantly focused on the employment of nostalgic and/or exotic appeal for city branding and development.