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Forging Heritage in the Nation-State
The Political Production of Oblivion
Michael Herzfeld
242 pages, bibliog., index
ISBN 978-1-80768-036-7 $135.00/£104.00 / Hb / Not Yet Published (January 2027)
eISBN 978-1-80768-037-4 eBook
Reviews
‘This highly accessible and erudite book, drawing on Herzfeld’s extensive ethnographic work in Europe and Asia, provides an important and wide-ranging discussion of issues at the core of critical heritage studies, drawing out their implications for engaging with the politics of the nation state.’
Laurajane Smith, Centre for Heritage and Museum Studies, Australian National University
‘It is theoretically rigorous, ethnographically grounded, and makes a substantial contribution to critical heritage studies and political anthropology. The book is based on long-term, in-depth ethnographic research and demonstrates the author’s deep command of both empirical material and conceptual debates around heritage, power, and nationalism.’
Yujie Zhu, Australian National University
Description
Nation-states use heritage to project cultural unity and commemorate nationally significant events and achievements. In appearing to commemorate, however, heritage often has the opposite effect: it obliterates the memory of how national identity was forged. This book, which draws on a wide array of ethnographic materials, connects the idea of heritage back to the social practices associated with inheritance. That link, despite its complexity and wide cultural variation, has equipped nation-states and other major authorities with a powerful means of suppressing dissidence, creativity, and debate about history and identity. By seeking the spectral traces of earlier forms of language, spatial arrangements, and political life, however, we can recover some of the diverse voices that the forces of nationalism and capitalism have ignored or suppressed in the name of heritage.
Michael Herzfeld is Ernest E. Monrad Research Professor of the Social Sciences in the Department of Anthropology at Harvard University. He is the author of eleven books, the most recent of which was Siege of the Spirits: Community and Polity in Bangkok (2016, University of Chicago Press). He is a former president of the Modern Greek Studies Association and of the Society for the Anthropology of Europe.
Subject:
Contents
Of Related Interest
Changing the World, Changing Oneself
Political Protest and Collective Identities in West Germany and the U.S. in the 1960s and 1970s
A European Memory?
Contested Histories and Politics of Remembrance
Women and the Politics of Military Confrontation
Palestinian and Israeli Gendered Narratives of Dislocation
