Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- List of Figures
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction: (Un)Authorised Heritage Discourse and Practice in China
- Section 1 (Re)constructions, (Re)inventions, and Representations of Heritage
- Section 2 Creating Identities: Constructing Pasts, Disseminating Heritage
- Section 3 History, Nostalgia, and Heritage: Urban and Rural
- Section 4 Appropriations and Commodifications of Ethnic Heritage
- 10 ‘Even if you don't want to Drink, you still have to Drink’: The Yi and Alcohol in History and Heritage
- 11 ‘Ethnic Heritage’ on the New Frontier: The Idealisation and Commodification of Ethnic ‘Otherness’ in Xinjiang
- Afterword: Historicising and Globalising the Heritage Turn in China
- Index
- Publications / Asian Heritages
11 - ‘Ethnic Heritage’ on the New Frontier: The Idealisation and Commodification of Ethnic ‘Otherness’ in Xinjiang
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 21 November 2020
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- List of Figures
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction: (Un)Authorised Heritage Discourse and Practice in China
- Section 1 (Re)constructions, (Re)inventions, and Representations of Heritage
- Section 2 Creating Identities: Constructing Pasts, Disseminating Heritage
- Section 3 History, Nostalgia, and Heritage: Urban and Rural
- Section 4 Appropriations and Commodifications of Ethnic Heritage
- 10 ‘Even if you don't want to Drink, you still have to Drink’: The Yi and Alcohol in History and Heritage
- 11 ‘Ethnic Heritage’ on the New Frontier: The Idealisation and Commodification of Ethnic ‘Otherness’ in Xinjiang
- Afterword: Historicising and Globalising the Heritage Turn in China
- Index
- Publications / Asian Heritages
Summary
Abstract
This chapter aims to explore conceptually the commodification of ‘heritage’ in ‘ethnic’ tourist sites, focusing upon a so-called ‘traditional Kazakh village’ commercial tourist attraction near Tianchi Lake in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (XUAR). Taking an interdisciplinary approach which combines ethnographic methods with theoretical analysis, we consider tourism's role in representing the cultural heritage of ethnic groups, but simultaneously consider how such representations also tie into wider social discourses in which ethnic groups are themselves represented as ‘heritage’ in being associated with ‘traditional cultures’ rather than modernity. Drawing on a ‘toolbox’ of theoretical concepts, we consider the village as a depiction of idealised/idyllised ethnicity, how it functions as a visual ‘sight/site’, and how Said's concept of ‘imagined geographies’ might also encompass ‘imagined ethnicities’. We finish with a discussion of this tourist site in relation to Michel Foucault's concept of ‘heterotopia’.
Keywords: ethnic heritage, ethnic tourism, Xinjiang, imagined geographies, heterotopia
Introduction
This chapter aims to explore conceptually the commodification of ‘heritage’ in ‘ethnic’ tourist sites, by focusing upon a so-called ‘traditional Kazakh village’ commercial tourist attraction near Tianchi Lake in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region. Taking an interdisciplinary approach which combines ethnographic methods with theoretical analysis, our aim here is to consider tourism's role in representing the cultural heritage of ethnic groups, but simultaneously to consider how such representations also tie into wider social discourses in which ethnic groups are themselves represented as ‘heritage’ in being associated with ‘traditional cultures’ rather than modernity. Beginning with a background discussion of the official social discourses which define ‘ethnicity’ within the Chinese context, as well as other scholars’ work around the intertwining of tourism and commodification, we go on to explore this particular site through a number of theoretical ‘lenses’. Drawing on a ‘toolbox’ of varied scholars’ work, we consider the village as a depiction of idealised/idyllised ethnicity, how it functions as a visual ‘sight/site’, and how Said's concept of ‘imagined geographies’ might also encompass ‘imagined ethnicities’. We finish with a discussion of this tourist site in relation to Michel Foucault's concept of ‘heterotopia’.
Tourism itself might be understood as a process of commodification, making people, places, ‘culture’, purchasable as ‘experiences to be had’ and also through being rendered into objects as souvenirs (including through the process of photography).
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- Information
- The Heritage Turn in ChinaThe Reinvention, Dissemination and Consumption of Heritage, pp. 277 - 296Publisher: Amsterdam University PressPrint publication year: 2020
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