HERITAGE AS AID AND DIPLOMACY IN ASIA.

• Author: Hoadley, Stephen
• Position: Book review

HERITAGE AS AID AND DIPLOMACY IN ASIA

Editors: Philippe Peycam, Shu-Li Wang, Hui Yew-Foong, and Hsin-Huang Michael Hsiao

Published by: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, Yusof Ishak Institute, Singapore, 2020, 347pp, US$29.90.

This book adds to the growing challenge that 'low politics' is posing to the traditional predominance of 'high politics'. In an era of relative peace, military manoeuvring between countries is giving way to diplomacy and economics, and cultural co-operation and rivalry are beginning to supplement official negotiations and economic interactions.

However, the progressive re-framing of the meanings of 'culture', 'heritage' and 'aid', driven by heightened nationalism and local identity assertion, has begun to infuse traditional top-down heritage diplomacy with new priorities --and controversies. Third parties such as scholars, nongovernmental organisations and local leaders now intercede to challenge the traditional binary narratives of 'donors' and 'recipients'. International heritage institutions and experts are now revealed as partisan cultural actors despite their idealist intentions or even their awareness.

A new vocabulary has now emerged: 'hierarchy of cultural values', 'cultural imperialism', 'saturated discourse', 'intangible heritage', 'heritage regimes', 'pacting' and 'UNESCO-isation'. Central to all is the exploitation by governments of their countries' heritage to enhance their domestic and international influence. Heritage is not just inherited, revalued and conserved but also invented, inflated and mobilised for political ends. 'Low' heritage politics turns out to be 'high politics' by other means (to paraphrase Clausewitz).

Within this broad theme of politicisation of history, the case studies of this collection of essays fall into five subcategories:

* international heritage production;

* heritage as aid;

* the international relations of heritage policy;

* the expansion of 'heritage' to include performance traditions and historical events; and

* the impact of neoliberalism on heritage.

The radical flavour of the book is explicit in the chapter titles. For example, the chapter on the Preah Vihear probes for subliminal motives with the title 'Heritage Making--Aid for Whom?' even though its dominant theme is the long-running boundary dispute between Cambodia and Thailand. The...