In This Issue

Of Mills and Malls: The Future of Urban Industrial Heritage in Neoliberal Mumbai
Manish Chalana

The mandate of historic preservation is to maintain vestiges of diverse cultural heritage, a task that is becoming increasingly difficult in rapidly globalizing India. Much of the country’s urban heritage outside of the “monument-and- site” framework is threatened by massive restructuring of cities facilitated by neoliberal urban policies. Mumbai has a rich cultural heritage, associated with diverse sociocultural and economic groups. Much of this is threatened by development practices pursued by various forces with a particular vision of Mumbai as an emerging “global city.” In this work Chalana examines Girangaon, an early industrial district of Mumbai, currently being transformed by forces of domestic and global capital. He argues that Girangaon’s urban industrial heritage is a significant piece of the city’s development history, which future visions of a global metropolis should embrace. While the expansion of Mumbai’s economy has benefited some avenues of preservation practice in Mumbai, in Girangaon its consequences have also been negative, as a working-class neighborhood is restructured into a hypermodern district for the elite. The current forms of preservation practice in the city have been insufficient in addressing the complexity around managing heritage in low-income neighborhoods. Girangaon, and Mumbai overall, reveal the many ways that economic, cultural, and political globalization can impact historic preservation practice.

Citizens versus Experts: Historic Preservation in Globalizing Shanghai
Qin Shao

Shao studies citizen preservation in the global city of Shanghai. The pursuit of economic growth has led to large-scale demolition of residential homes and historic structures there since the late 1980s. It has also given rise to citizen involvement in historic preservation. In 2002, Lincoln Lane, a neighborhood built in the 1920s, faced demolition. The residents launched a campaign to preserve their Lane. They documented the significance of the Lane, petitioned the local government, contacted the media in and outside China, and reached out to the people of Springfield, Illinois, President Abraham Lincoln’s hometown, for support. Some renowned Chinese experts on urban preservation initially supported their causes but eventually sided with the local government, which resulted in the demise of the Lane. This study explores the conflict among the citizens, the experts, and the government, and the politics and economics in historic preservation. It also demonstrates global influence in historic preservation. While the advance of global capitalism was the ultimate cause of the demolition, globalization has also provided the residents with not only a heightened awareness of historic preservation but also more resources to argue for that cause.

Shiny New Buildings: Rebuilding Historic Sikh Gurdwaras in Indian Punjab
William J. Glover

This article examines some of the tensions inherent in conservation and reconstruction work taking place on Sikh religious monuments in northen India, particularly at those monuments that mark important events in Sikh history or in the lives of the Sikh Gurus and their families. Juxtaposing the divergent practices of enthusiastic lay worshippers with those of more professionally trained heritage conservationists, the author argues that both groups engage simultaneously with protocols of objectivist “history” and subjective notions of “heritage,” albeit in differing ways. The analysis focuses on a handful of sites undergoing renovation in Anandpur Sahib, India, to explore the material, cultural, and rhetorical strategies through which different groups secure their appropriation of the sites’ historical and affective qualities. Two museums located in the town—one dedicated to the life history of Guru Tegh Bahadur, and the other intended to be an internationally prominent center for Sikh heritage—add further complexity to a town landscape replete with meaningful objects.

After the Flood: Cultural Heritage and Cultural Politics in Chongqing Municipality and the Three Gorges Areas, China
Paola Demattè

Following the construction of the Three Gorges Dam and the gradual filling of the lake in recent years, the municipality of Chongqing, which holds most of the massive reservoir, has undergone great ecological and social changes. Aside from environmental problems and social issues, the construction of the dam has inevitably also affected the “local cultural heritage,” putting in place new criteria for its definition. Charting the development of preservation debates around the sites affected by the Three...