Remembering trees as heritage
Guji discourse and the meaning-making of trees in Hangzhou, Qing China
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 5701412 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Song Hou (0000-0001-5233-2419, Guangdong University of Foreign Studies, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2019 |
| Volume | 25 |
| Issue | 5 |
| Pages | 455-468 |
| Publication date | 2019-05-04 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | International Journal of Heritage Studies (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 1352-7258 • E-ISSN: 1470-3610 |
| Publisher | Informa UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1080/13527258.2018.1509229 |
| OpenAlex | W2889703502 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 4 |
| References cited | 21 |
This article explores local-historical ways of remembering trees, physically traceable or not, in the Chinese discourse of guji (古迹, ancient vestige), focusing on the city of Hangzhou during the Qing Dynasty (1636–1911). By analysing guji documentation of trees in five local gazetteers of the focal region and timeframe, I foreground a fourfold apparatus of meaning-making that effectuates the transformation of trees from natural existence to culturally significant heritage. That is, to frame and transmit trees as (1) rare or most beautiful jing (景landscape), (2) site of poetics, (3) site of memory, and (4) place name. These intersecting, subaltern ways of meaning-making and remembering help us further critique the culture-nature dualism rooted in Western Cartesian epistemology, which still prevails in contemporary heritage research and practice in China and the wider world. It also allows us to see the culturalisation of nature within the framework of an alternative discourse of heritage from China. This nature-to-culture transformation, I argue, is not just adding ‘intangible cultural values in natural heritage’ or making ‘intangible natural heritage’; it is constructing natural existence as what is analogous to cultural or cultural landscape heritage
Aesthetics · Archaeology · Art · China · Cultural heritage · Cultural heritage management · Cultural landscape · Environmental ethics · Epistemology · Geography · Intangible cultural heritage · Literature · Natural heritage · Poetics · Sociology · Tourism · Anthropological Studies and Insights · Anthropology · Cultural Heritage Management and Preservation · Geographies of human-animal interactions · History · Philosophy
The Representation of the Past
How Modernity Forgets
The Mnemonic Imagination
Uses of Heritage
The T’u-mu Incident of 1449
Intangible Natural Heritage
Beyond “Natural” and “Cultural” Heritage
Language and the Making of Place
Nature as heritage
Community, Connection and Conservation
Integrating natural and cultural heritage
Transcending the Culture-Nature Divide in Cultural Heritage
Heritage Pasts and Heritage Presents
World Heritage listing and changes of political values
Cultural landscapes
Let fragments speak for themselves
Between Memory and History
| Unique citing works | 4 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 0,57 |
| Citation span | 2019 - 2026 (8) |
| Citation velocity | current |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 4 |