Heritage, Contested Sites, and Borders of Memory in the Asia Pacific: 16 (East and West)

Contests over heritage in Asia are intensifying and reflect the growing prominence of political and social disputes over historical narratives shaping heritage sites and practices, and the meanings attached to them. These contests emphasize that heritage is a means of narrating the past that demarcates, constitutes, produces, and polices political and social borders in the present. In its spaces, varied intersections of actors, networks, and scales of governance interact, negotiate and compete, resulting in heritage sites that are cut through by borders of memory.

This volume, edited by Edward Boyle and Steven Ivings, and with contributions from scholars across the humanities, history, social sciences, and Asian studies, interrogates how particular actors and narratives make heritage and how borders of memory shape the sites they produce.

Edward Boyle, Ph.D. (2018), Hokkaido University, is Associate Professor at Nichibunken, and editor of Japan Review. He has published widely on the borders of Japan and the region, Northeastern India, and Palau, including Geo-politics of Northeast Asia (Routledge 2022).

Steven Ivings, Ph.D. (2014), London School of Economics and Political Science, is an Associate Professor at the Graduate School of Economics Kyoto University. His research examines socio-economic change in Northeast Asia, particularly in port cities and Japan’s colonial former empire.