Museum Development and Cultural Representation critically examines the development of a museum and cultural heritage centre in the indigenous Kelabit Highlands in Sarawak, Malaysia. Building on their direct involvement in the development of the project, the authors appraise the process in retrospect through a thematic analysis. Themes covered include the project’s local and international contexts, community involvement and agency, the balance of tourism and authenticity, and the role of non-local partners. Through their analysis, the authors unpack the complexities of cultural representation and identity in heritage design practice, and investigates the relationship between capacity building and agency in cultural heritage management. Situating the project within international trends in museology, Museum Development and Cultural Representation offers a valuable case example of a heritage-making process in an indigenous community. It will be of interest to scholars and students studying cultural representation, as well as communities and museum professionals looking to develop similar projects.

Museum Representations of Chinese Diasporas is the first book to analyse the recent upsurge in museums on Chinese diasporas in China. Examining heritage-making beyond the nation state, the book provides a much-needed, critical examination of China’s engagement with its diasporic communities. Drawing on fieldwork in more than ten museums, as well as interviews with museum practitioners and archival study, Wang offers a timely analysis of the complex ways in which Chinese diasporas are represented in the museum space of China, the ancestral homeland. Arguing that diasporic heritage is highly ambivalent and introducing a diasporic perspective to the study of cultural heritage, this book opens up a new avenue of inquiry into the study and management of cultural heritage in China and beyond. Most importantly, perhaps, Wang sheds new light on the dynamic between China and Chinese diasporas through the lens of the museum. Museum Representations of Chinese Diasporas takes a transnational perspective that will draw attention to the under-researched connections between heritage, mobility and meaning in a global context. As such, this cross-disciplinary work will be of interest to scholars and students working in the museum and heritage studies fields, as well as those studying Asia, China, migration and diaspora, anthropology, history and culture.

The 'visual' has long played a crucial role in forming experiences, associations, expectations and understandings of heritage. Images convey meaning within a range of practices, including tourism, identity construction, the popularization of the past through a variety of media, and the memorialization of events. However, despite the central role of 'the visual' in these contexts, it has been largely neglected in heritage literature. This edited collection is the first to explore the production, use and consumption of visual imagery as an integral part of heritage. Drawing on case studies from around the world, it provides a multidisciplinary analysis of heritage representations, combining complex understandings of the 'visual' from a wide range of disciplines, including heritage studies, sociology and cultural studies perspectives. In doing so, the book provides a comprehensive overview of the theoretical and methodological tools necessary for understanding visual imagery within its cultural context.

While many claims are made regarding the power of cultural heritage as a driver and enabler of sustainable development, the relationship between museums, heritage and development has received little academic scrutiny. This book stages a critical conversation between the interdisciplinary fields of museum studies, heritage studies and development studies to explore this under-researched sphere of development intervention. In an agenda-setting introduction, the editors explore the seemingly oppositional temporalities and values represented by these "past-making" and "future-making" projects, arguing that these provide a framework for mutual critique. Contributors to the volume bring insights from a wide range of academic and practitioner perspectives on a series of international case studies, which each raise challenging questions that reach beyond merely cultural concerns and fully engage with both the legacies of colonial power inequalities and the shifting geopolitical dynamics of contemporary international relations. Cultural heritage embodies different values and can be instrumentalized to serve different economic, social and political objectives within development contexts, but the past is also intrinsic to the present and is foundational to people’s aspirations for the future. Museums, Heritage and International Development explores the problematics as well as potentials, the politics as well as possibilities, in this fascinating nexus.

The collection, interpretation and display of art from the People’s Republic of China, and particularly the art of the Cultural Revolution, have been problematic for museums. These objects challenge our perception of ’Chineseness’ and their style, content and the means of their production question accepted notions of how we perceive art. This book links art history, museology and visual culture studies to examine how museums have attempted to reveal, discuss and resolve some of these issues. Amy Jane Barnes addresses a series of related issues associated with collection and display: how museums deal with difficult and controversial subjects; the role they play in mediating between the object and the audience; the role of the Other in the creation of Self and national identities; the nature, role and function of art in society; the museum as image-maker; the impact of communism (and Maoism) on the cultural history of the twentieth-century; and the appropriation of communist visual iconography. This book will be of interest to researchers and students of museology, visual and cultural studies as well as scholars of Chinese and revolutionary art.

Museums face the task of representing the similarities and differences that exist between groups, such as national identities and indigenous and minority voices, material and intangible heritage, and current status and past history. In order to achieve this aim, a complex and not always easily compatible set of interests have to be taken into account, from those of the museum itself, to those of its main audiences, sources of support, and the groups that are, or wish to be, represented. The approach taken by Scandinavian museums in response to this challenge highlights a very active concern for forms of cultural diversity and how they are interrelated. By bringing together debates and discussions of diversity, this volume offers insight into the Nordic region and its diverse peoples, from the Sámi and the Inuit to newer immigrants. It presents a set of historical reviews on the formation of national museums and emerging and contested perceptions of national identity. Furthering the general debate on representations of diversity and museums, it also offers museum curators possible ways forward.

Combining a rigorous and academic theoretical framework with practical case studies and real-life examples, initiatives and projects from both the developed and developing world, this wide-ranging yet detailed book examines the phenomenon of cultural tourism in its broadest sense. It explores many issues including, amongst others: the development of cultural tourism and its impacts sustainable cultural tourism policies the role of cultural tourism in urban regeneration the organizational framework of European cultural tourism. In addition, individual chapters make reference to the problems of exclusion and discrimination. Drawing on post-modern perspectives, this informative text emphasizes the importance of popular cultural tourism, alternative or ethnic tourism, and that of working class heritage and culture. It focuses on the role cultural tourism plays in the globalization process and the impacts of global development on culture, traditions and identity, especially for regional, ethnic and minority groups. It argues that the future development and management of cultural tourism relies on a greater degree of mutual understanding between the sectors involved in its development, and on further communication, if it is to be sustainable, integrative and democratic.

The Kelabit people are the least populous of the indigenous tribes of Borneo and were the last to encounter western colonialism; they are predominately Christians in a country where Islam is the state religion. This community has undergone immense social change that has ended some aspects of their culture and endangered others, resulting in Kelabit leaders calling for safeguards. The authors of this book address local agency and participation in the processes of conservation via the development of a museum and cultural centre in the Kelabit Highlands. They had privileged access to the community and they document concerns, aspirations and the development strategies of the museum all within historical, political, cultural, theoretical and practical dimensions. With continuing threats to the diversity of natural and cultural heritage in Asia, the widespread importance of local agency highlighted in this book has relevance to current and future practices in museology, cultural heritage management, and social and economic development.

This collection discusses and illustrates how educational research is affected by the economic, institutional and physical contingencies of its time, and in our time even increasingly is driven by them. It is argued that the antidote to this is, however, not to aspire to ‘thought itself’, but instead to do justice to its own rootedness in the ‘material’, including textuality. From an historical point of view such an innovative approach can itself revamp the material scholarly culture and the way it is represented. The chapters address a variety of topics such as the cultural heritage of the school desk, the significance of images for research into long-term educational processes, the way iconic signs function, and how modes of enquiry relate to the materiality of education. Attention is also given to standards for reporting on educational research studies and how these limit the scope and communication and moreover shape researchers, to the forms of citation practices as substantially influencing methods and content, and to the centrality of conversation not just as the means to an end but as what matters; further to representational and to non-representational theories for educational research. Some examples are drawn from the area of arts-based educational research, from mathematics education, and from the discourse on universities.

Exploring how global changes affect education today, in the classroom and in local, national, and international contexts, this book explores the future of education's capacity for effectiveness in multicultural and multilingual contexts. The chapters deal with lifelong learning (a critique), immigration, antiracist education, parental involvement in schools, national curricula, Paulo Freire's legacy, insights from the work of Lorenzo Milani and the School of Barbiana, and Gramsci's writings on the school. There are both theoretical and empirically grounded chapters in this volume.