Encounters With Popular Pasts ― Cultural Heritage and Popular Culture

This volume is based on the recognition that heritage is popular and popular culture is now readily transformed into heritage whose meanings and myths reshape social life and political and economic realities as well as re-make “tradition.” The papers in this volume consider: What does popular heritage look like? To whom does it speak? Is it active in dissolving class and cultural boundaries or just in reproducing new ones? How do societies manage a heritage that is fluid, immediate and that straddles extremes of serious conflict and hedonistic frivolity? When/under what circumstances is the creation and expression of new cultural forms – popular culture – capable of being transformed into heritage?.

Mike Robinson

Professor Mike Robinson holds the Chair of Cultural Heritage at the University of Birmingham, UK and is Director of the Ironbridge International Institute for Cultural Heritage. He was previously Professor of Tourism and Culture at Leeds Metropolitan University and founder and Director of the Centre for Tourism and Cultural Change. Mike also is founder and Editor-in-Chief ofJournal of Tourism and Cultural Change (Routledge/Taylor Francis) and founder and Editor of theTourism and Cultural Change book series published by Channel View Press.

Over the past twenty-plus years Mike’s work has focused on the inter-relations between heritage, tourism and culture. He has published numerous books, articles and chapters on the various ways in which these realms intersect. Recent books includeEmotion in Motion: Tourism, Affect and Transformation (Ashgate, 2012), The Framed World: Tourists, Tourism and Photography (Ashgate, 2009) and World Heritage and Tourism (University of Laval Press, 2011). He is the co-editor (with Tazim Jamal) and a contributor to theSAGE Handbook of Tourism Studies (2012). Mike was commissioned by UNESCO to research and write a major report on Tourism, Culture and Sustainable Development (co-edited with David Picard) and also was later commissioned to write on tourism and representation for the UNESCO 2009 World Diversity Report.

Mike is a long standing member of the UNESCO/UNITWIN Network on Tourism, Culture and Development, a former member of the Culture Committee of the UK National Commission for UNESCO, and a Board member/Trustee of the Council for British Research in the Levant, an Institute of the British Academy. Mike was a Government appointed member of the UK’s Expert Panel to determine the UK’s Tentative List for World Heritage in 2010-2011. He was recently appointed to the UNESCO Expert Panel to assist with the development of a Programme in World Heritage and Sustainable Tourism.

Mike is a former Visiting Professor at the Facolta di Lettere e Filosofia, Universita degli Studi di Trento, Italy and is now Visiting Professor at National Taiwan University. Mike has undertaken work on tourism and heritage in Taiwan, India, Jordan, Syria, Lebanon, Belgium, South Africa, Lithuania and Austria and has worked on heritage and tourism related projects in a further 20 countries. He has organized over 20 major international conferences.

Professor Mike Robinson holds the Chair of Cultural Heritage at the University of Birmingham, UK and is Director of the Ironbridge International Institute for Cultural Heritage. He was previously Professor of Tourism and Culture at Leeds Metropolitan University and founder and Director of the Centre for Tourism and Cultural Change. Mike also is founder and Editor-in-Chief ofJournal of Tourism and Cultural Change (Routledge/Taylor Francis) and founder and Editor of theTourism and Cultural Change book series published by Channel View Press.

Over the past twenty-plus years Mike’s work has focused on the inter-relations between heritage, tourism and culture. He has published numerous books, articles and chapters on the various ways in which these realms intersect. Recent books includeEmotion in Motion: Tourism, Affect and Transformation (Ashgate, 2012), The Framed World: Tourists, Tourism and Photography (Ashgate, 2009) and World Heritage and Tourism (University of Laval Press, 2011). He is the co-editor (with Tazim Jamal) and a contributor to theSAGE Handbook of Tourism Studies (2012). Mike was commissioned by UNESCO to research and write a major report on Tourism, Culture and Sustainable Development (co-edited with David Picard) and also was later commissioned to write on tourism and representation for the UNESCO 2009 World Diversity Report.

Mike is a long standing member of the UNESCO/UNITWIN Network on Tourism, Culture a