Heritage and corruption

The Two Faces of the Nation-State

Bibliographic Data

ID5700282
AuthorsM Herzfeld (0000-0002-8080-2542, Harvard University Press, corresponding author)
Year2015
Volume21
Issue6
Pages531-544
Publication date2015-07-03
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueInternational Journal of Heritage Studies (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1352-7258 • E-ISSN: 1470-3610
PublisherInforma UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1080/13527258.2014.948486
OpenAlexW2097861743
LanguageEN
Citations received10
References cited41

Nation-states' investment in heritage supports Benedict Anderson's thesis that nationalism offers collective immortality in the face of individual mortality. By the same token, however, corruption - a metaphor based on the impermanence of the flesh - corrodes the official face of heritage, offering more covert and carnal understandings of urban life and of its architectural beauties while also affording opportunities for kinds of profiteering that damage the very fabric that heritage policies seek to celebrate. Both these aspects of social reality represent the 'cultural intimacy' that governments seek to deny or suppress but on which their citizens' loyalty often depends. It thus becomes imperative for scholars of heritage to recognise that heritage and corruption represent two closely interrelated dimensions of the management of the past in the present, and that theories of heritage therefore cannot afford to ignore the concomitant implications of local ideas about corruption and the practices on which they rest

Impermanence · Language change · Anthropological Studies and Insights · Cultural Heritage Management and Preservation · Memory, Trauma, and Commemoration

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