'Deploying Culture and History in the Age of 'Asian Values': Material Debates on Heritage in Thailand and Elsewhere'

In current debates in Thailand, China and other parts of South-East and East Asia, the idea of an ‘Asian’ way of doing things seems to have more purchase than merely as an antidote to ‘the West’. Indeed, it becomes the basis of internal refractions, comparable (for example) to the refractions of ‘conservation’ in Italy, but with distinctive and potentially disruptive political and ideological ramifications. Building on his recently published research in Bangkok (Siege of the Spirits: Community and Polity in Bangkok, 2016), Professsor Herzfeld will demonstrate the ways in which certain widespread terms associated with heritage – ‘vernacular architecture’, ‘tangible/intangible’, ‘historic conservation’ and even ‘culture’ – have become tools in the ongoing battle to determine the future shape of citizenship and sovereignty.

Join us for tea and cake from 5.00pm.