Asian Heritages
About the Book Series
The Asian Heritage Series explores the notions of heritage as they have evolved from European based concepts, mainly associated with architecture and monumental archaeology, to incorporate a broader diversity of cultural forms and value. This includes a critical exploration of the politics of heritage and its categories, such as the contested distinction ‘tangible’ and ‘intangible’ heritages; the analysis of the conflicts triggered by competing agendas and interests in the heritage field; and the productive assessment of management measures in the context of Asia.
Telling Other Tales: Experiencing the Balinese Mask World
1st Edition
Edited
By Irving Chan Johnson
April 07, 2026
Since it first mesmerised Western audiences in the early twentieth century, Balinese masked dance–drama (Topeng) has drawn sustained scholarly attention. Yet until now, much of that attention has been filtered through non-Balinese perspectives. Telling Other Tales seeks to redress this imbalance by...
Designs on Pots: Ban Chiang and the Politics of Heritage in Thailand
1st Edition
By Penny van Esterik
January 10, 2026
1. Explores heritage from a prehistoric perspective that combines cultural and historical material 2. Combines contexts of looting and faking with excavated material from a single site 3. Provides an example of symmetry analysis on prehistoric painted pottery....
Heritage and Romantic Consumption in China
1st Edition
By Yujie Zhu
January 10, 2026
The drums beat, an old man in a grand robe mutters incantations and three brides on horseback led by their grooms on foot proceed to the Naxi Wedding Courtyard, accompanied, watched and photographed the whole way by tourists, who have bought tickets for the privilege. The traditional wedding ...
Chinese Heritage in the Making: Experiences, Negotiations and Contestations
1st Edition
Edited
By Christina Maags, Marina Svensson
January 09, 2026
The Chinese state uses cultural heritage as a source of power by linking it to political and economic goals, but heritage discourse has at the same time encouraged new actors to appropriate the discourse to protect their own traditions. This book focuses on that contested nature of heritage, ...
Beyond Bali: Subaltern Citizens and Post-Colonial Intimacy
1st Edition
By Ana Dragojlovic
December 01, 2025
This ethnography explores how Balinese citizens produce postcolonial intimacy-a complex interaction of claims to proximity and mutuality between themselves and the Dutch under colonialism that continues today. Such claims, Ana Dragojlovic explains, are crucial for the diasporic reconfiguration of ...
Eurasian Encounters: Museums, Missions, Modernities
1st Edition
Edited
By Carolien Stolte, Yoshiyuki Kikuchi
December 01, 2025
The essays in this volume explore crucial intellectual and cultural exchanges between Asia and Europe in the first half of the twentieth century. Examining the increased mobility of people and information, scientific advances, global crises, and the unravelling of empires, Eurasian Encounters ...
Heritage and the Making of Political Legitimacy in Laos: The Past and Present of the Lao Nation
1st Edition
By Phill Wilcox
December 01, 2025
The Lao People’s Democratic Republic is nearly fifty years old, and one of the few surviving one-party socialist states. Nearly five decades on from its revolutionary birth, the Lao population continues to build futures in and around a political landscape that maintains socialist rhetoric on the ...
The Heritage Turn in China: The Reinvention, Dissemination and Consumption of Heritage
1st Edition
Edited
By Carol Ludwig, Linda Walton, Yi-Wen Wang
December 01, 2025
The Heritage Turn in China: The Reinvention, Dissemination and Consumption of Heritage focuses on heritage discourse and practice in China today as it has evolved from the 'heritage turn' that can be dated to the 1990s. Using a variety of disciplinary approaches to regionally and topically diverse ...
World Heritage and Urban Politics in Melaka, Malaysia: A Cityscape below the Winds
1st Edition
By Pierpaolo De Giosa
December 01, 2025
Already celebrated as a busy entrepôt and the most glorious of the Malay kingdoms of the past, Melaka has been on the UNESCO World Heritage List (together with George Town) since 2008 on the strength of its multi-ethnic and multi-religious urban fabric. Yet, contrary to the expectations of heritage...
Resilience as Heritage in Asia
1st Edition
Edited
By Michael Herzfeld, Rita Padawangi
June 04, 2025
Resilience as Heritage in Asia analyzes forms of collective resilience through manifestations of strength-in-fragility in selected communities in Asia (Indonesia, Japan, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, and Thailand). Persistent resistance to communal erasure taking place through repressive ...
Indigenous Heritage and Identity of the Last Elephant Catchers in Northeast Thailand
1st Edition
By Alisa Santikarn
February 25, 2025
In 2019, when Mew Salangam passed away at 91, newspapers across Thailand described him as belonging to the last generation of elephant doctors. Mew was a member of the Kui Ajiang community in Thailand, an Indigenous group living in the Northeast known for catching elephants. Sometime beginning in ...