This Handbook is the first major volume to examine the conservation of Asia’s culture and nature in relation to the wider social, political and economic forces shaping the region today. Throughout Asia rapid economic and social change means the region’s heritage is at once under threat and undergoing a revival as never before. As societies look forward, competing forces ensure they re-visit the past and the inherited, with the conservation of nature and culture now driven by the broader agendas of identity politics, tradition, revival, rapid development, environmentalism and sustainability. In response to these new and important trends, the twenty three accessible chapters here go beyond sector specific analyses to examine heritage in inter-disciplinary and critically engaged terms, encompassing the natural and the cultural, the tangible and intangible. Emerging environmentalisms, urban planning, identity politics, conflict memorialization, tourism and biodiversity are among the topics covered here. This path-breaking volume will be of particular interest to students and scholars working in the fields of heritage, tourism, archaeology, Asian studies, geography, anthropology, development, sociology, and cultural and postcolonial studies.

The Routledge Handbook of Cultural Landscape Heritage in the Asia-Pacific revisits the use, growth, and potential of the cultural landscape methodology in the conservation and management of culture-nature heritage in the Asia-Pacific region. Taking both a retrospective and prospective view of the management of cultural heritage in the region, this volume argues that the plurality and complexity of heritage in the region cannot be comprehensively understood and effectively managed without a broader conceptual framework like the cultural landscape approach. The book also demonstrates that such an approach facilitates the development of a flexible strategy for heritage conservation. Acknowledging the effects of rapid socio-economic development, globalization, and climate change, contributors examine the pressure these issues place on the sustenance of cultural heritage. Including chapters from more than 20 countries across the Asia-Pacific region, the volume reviews the effectiveness of theoretical and practical potentials afforded by the cultural landscape approach and examines how they have been utilized in the Asia-Pacific context for the last three decades. The Routledge Handbook of Cultural Landscape Heritage in the Asia-Pacific provides a comprehensive analysis of the processes of cultural landscape heritage conservation and management. As a result, it will be of interest to academics, students, and professionals who are based in the fields of cultural heritage management, architecture, urban planning, landscape architecture, and landscape management.

Recent years have witnessed the remarkable development of the cultural and creative industries (CCIs) in Asia, from the global popularity of the Japanese games and anime industries, to Korea’s film and pop music successes. While CCIs in these Asian cultural powerhouses aspire to become key players in the global cultural economy, Southeast Asian countries such as Malaysia and Thailand are eager to make a strong mark in the region’s cultural landscape. As the first handbook on CCIs in Asia, this book provides readers with a contextualized understanding of the conditions and operation of Asian CCIs. Both internationalising and de-Westernising our knowledge of CCIs, it offers a comprehensive contribution to the field from academics, practitioners and activists alike. Covering 12 different societies in Asia from Japan and China to Thailand, Indonesia and India, the themes include: State policy in shaping CCIs Cultural production inside and outside of institutional frameworks Circulation of CCIs products and consumer culture Cultural activism and independent culture Cultural heritage as an industry. Presenting a detailed set of case studies, this book will be an essential companion for researchers and students in the field of cultural policy, cultural and creative industries, media and cultural studies, and Asian studies in general.

The Routledge Handbook on Historic Urban Landscapes in the Asia-Pacific sheds light onto the balancing act of urban heritage management, focusing specifically on the Asia-Pacific regions in which this challenge is imminent and in need of effective solutions. Urban heritage, while being threatened amid myriad forces of global and ecological change, provides a vital social, cultural, and economic asset for regeneration and sustenance of liveability of inhabited urban areas worldwide. This six-part volume takes a critical look at the concept of Historic Urban Landscapes, the approach that UNESCO promotes to achieve holistic management of urban heritage, through the lens of issues, prospects, and experiences of urban regeneration of the selected geo-cultural context. It further discusses the difficult task that heritage managers encounter in conceptualizing, mapping, curating, and sustaining the plurality, poetics, and politics of urban heritage of the regions in question. The connective thesis that weaves the chapters in this volume together reinforces for readers that the management of urban heritage considers cities as dynamic entities, palimpsests of historical memories, collages of social diversity, territories of contested identities, and sites for sustainable liveability. Throughout this edited collection, chapters argue for recognizing the totality of the eco-cultural urban fabric, embracing change, building social cohesion, and initiating strategic socio-economic progress in the conservation of Historic Urban Landscapes. Containing thirty-seven contributions written by leading regional experts, and illustrated with over 200 black and white images and tables, this volume provides a much-needed resource on Historic Urban Landscapes for students, scholars, and researchers.

The prevalent global heritage discourse has been primarily Euro-centric in its origin, premise, and praxis. Diverse cultural, historical, and geographical contexts, such as that of Asia, call for more context-specific approaches to heritage management. This book explores this complexity of managing the cultural heritage in Asia. Case studies include sites of Angkor, Himeji Castle, Kathmandu Valley, Luang Prabang, Lumbini, and Malacca, and the book uses these to explore the religious worldviews, heritage policies, intangible heritage dimensions, traditional preservation practices, cultural tourism, and the notion of cultural landscape that are crucial in understanding the cultural heritage in Asia. It critiques the contemporary regulatory frameworks in operation and focuses on the issues of global impact on the local cultures in the region. The book goes on to emphasize the need for integrated heritage management approaches that encompass the plurality of heritage conservation concerns in Asian countries. Themes are discussed from the vantage point of heritage scholars and practitioners in the South, Southeast, and East Asia. This book thus presents a distinctive Asian perspective which is a valuable source for students and practitioners of heritage within and beyond the Asian context.

The Routledge Handbook on Historic Urban Landscapes in the Asia-Pacific sheds light onto the balancing act of urban heritage management, focusing specifically on the Asia-Pacific regions in which this challenge is imminent and in need of effective solutions. Urban heritage, while being threatened amid myriad forces of global and ecological change, provides a vital social, cultural, and economic asset for regeneration and sustenance of liveability of inhabited urban areas worldwide. This six-part volume takes a critical look at the concept of Historic Urban Landscapes, the approach that UNESCO promotes to achieve holistic management of urban heritage, through the lens of issues, prospects, and experiences of urban regeneration of the selected geo-cultural context. It further discusses the difficult task that heritage managers encounter in conceptualizing, mapping, curating, and sustaining the plurality, poetics, and politics of urban heritage of the regions in question. The connective thesis that weaves the chapters in this volume together reinforces for readers that the management of urban heritage considers cities as dynamic entities, palimpsests of historical memories, collages of social diversity, territories of contested identities, and sites for sustainable liveability. Throughout this edited collection, chapters argue for recognizing the totality of the eco-cultural urban fabric, embracing change, building social cohesion, and initiating strategic socio-economic progress in the conservation of Historic Urban Landscapes. Containing thirty-seven contributions written by leading regional experts, and illustrated with over 200 black and white images and tables, this volume provides a much-needed resource on Historic Urban Landscapes for students, scholars, and researchers.

The Routledge Handbook of Highland Asia is the first comprehensive and critical overview of the ethnographic and anthropological work in Highland Asia over the past half a century. Opening up a grand new space for critical engagement, the handbook presents Highland Asia as a world-region that cuts across the traditional divides inherited from colonial and Cold War area divisions - the Indian Subcontinent/South Asia, Southeast Asia, China/East Asia, and Central Asia. Thirty-two chapters assess the history of research, identify ethnographic trends, and evaluate a range of analytical themes that developed in particular settings of Highland Asia. They cover varied landscapes and communities, from Kyrgyzstan to India, from Bhutan to Vietnam and bring local voices and narratives relating trade and tribute, ritual and resistance, pilgrimage and prophecy, modernity and marginalization, capital and cosmos to the fore. The handbook shows that for millennia, Highland Asians have connected far-flung regions through movements of peoples, goods and ideas, and at all times have been the enactors, repositories, and mediators of world-historical processes. Taken together, the contributors and chapters subvert dominant lowland narratives by privileging primarily highland vantages that reveal Highland Asia as an ecumune and prism that refracts and generates global history, social theory, and human imagination. In the currently unfolding Asian Century, this compels us to reorient and re-envision Highland Asia, in ethnography, in theory, and in the connections between this world-region, made of hills, highlands and mountains, and a planetary context. The handbook reveals both regional commonalities and diversities, generalities and specificities, and a broad orientation to key themes in the region. An indispensable reference work, this handbook fills a significant gap in the literature and will be of interest to academics, researchers and students interested in Highland Asia, Zomia Studies, Anthropology, Comparative Politics, Conceptual History and Sociology, Southeast Asian Studies, Central Asian Studies and South Asian Studies as well as Asian Studies in general.

Asia is regarded as the fastest growing area for international and domestic tourism in the world today and over the next 20 years. Given the economic, social and environmental importance of tourism in the region, there is a need for a comprehensive and readable overview of the critical debates and controversies in tourism in the region and the major factors that are affecting tourism development both now and in the foreseeable future. This Handbook provides a contemporary survey of the region and its continued growth and development as a key destination and generator of tourism, which is marked by a high proportion of intra-regional travel. The book is divided into five sections. This first section provides an introduction to the region and context to the nationally focused chapters. The next three sections are then broadly based on the three UNWTO Asian regions: South-East Asia, South and Central Asia, and East and North-East Asia, providing readers with a valuable snapshot of tourism at various scales, and from various approaches and positions. The concluding section considers future prospects for tourism in Asia. The handbook is interdisciplinary in coverage and is also international in scope through its authorship and content. It presents a range of perspectives and understanding of the processes and forces that are shaping tourism in this fascinating and dynamic region that is one of the focal points of global tourism. This is essential reading for students, researchers and academics interested in tourism in the growth region of Asia now and in the future.

The Routledge Handbook of Race and Ethnicity in Asia introduces theoretical approaches to the study of race, ethnicity and indigeneity in Asia beyond those commonly grounded in the Western experience. The volume’s twenty-eight chapters consider not only the relationship between ethnic or racial minorities and the state, but social relations within and between individual and transnational communities. These shape not only the contours of governance, but also the means by which knowledge of national identity, ‘self ’, and ‘other’ have been constructed and reconstructed over time. Divided into four sections, it provides holistic and comparative coverage of South, South East, and East Asia, as well as Australasia and Oceania; an area that extends from Pakistan in the West to Hawai’i in the East. Contributors to this handbook offer a variety of disciplinary and interdisciplinary perspectives, opening a domain of scholarship wherein the relationship between phenotype and racism is less pronounced than European and North American approaches, which have often privileged the so-called ‘colour stigmata’, leading to further exclusions of particular ethnic, racial, and indigenous communities. This volume seeks to overcome racism and white ideologies embedded in theories of race and ethnicity in Asia, proving a valuable resource to both students and scholars of comparative racial and ethnic studies, international relations and human rights.

Decades after the end of the World War II East Asia continues to struggle with lingering animosities and unresolved historical grievances in domestic, bilateral and regional memory landscapes. China, Japan and the Korea share a history of inter- and intra-violence, self-other identity construction and diametrically opposed interpretations of the past. Routledge Handbook of Memory and Reconciliation in East Asia offers a complete overview of the challenges of national memory and ideological rivalry for reconciliation in the East Asian region. Chapters provide authoritative analyses of contentious issues such as comfort women, the Nanjing massacre, history textbook controversies, shared heritage sites, colonial rule, territorial disputes and restitution. By interweaving memory, human rights and reconciliation the contributors actively explore real prospects of redressing past wrongs and achieving peaceful coexistence at personal as well as governmental levels. Bringing together an international team of experts, this book is an essential read for students and scholars of East Asian studies, anthropology, gender studies, history, international relations, law, political science, and sociology, and for those interested in memory and reconciliation issues.