World Heritage and/as placemaking: Learning from the Honghe Hani Rice Terraces in China

This study examines how Unesco’s World Heritage Program creates the official heritage narrative and what role tourism plays in constructing the narrative. It is based on the hypothesis that touristic considerations are built into the heritage-making process. Theoretically, it confronts Di Giovine’s (2008) ritual process. Instead of seeing heritage-making as producing heritage-scape, we frame this process as placemaking. We revisit his model by focusing on what constitutes a site’s official heritage narrative, and the procedures for creating it. An alternative model of “locate the idea of heritage – idealize heritage narrative – reproduce heritage narrative” is proposed. The model is used to examine the Cultural Landscape of Honghe Hani Rice Terraces (HHRTs) in Yunnan in China. The empirical results 1) reveal the factors and process of defining heritage boundaries and selecting heritage elements; 2) present the methods and strategies the member state uses to idealize the narrative in this text-based communication; 3) identify two means by which the official narrative continues to reproduce after designation. The empirical observation also substantiates our hypothesis of tourism as a co-producer of heritage due to accessibility and management issues. It helps to understand that the very construction of a place as a World Heritage site (WHS) also entails tactics and compromises – that it is not simply about “pure” Outstanding Universal Value, but also about touristic meaning.