Conceptual Framework for On-site Digital Interpretation Developments in Cultural Heritage Sites

On-site heritage interpretation plays a vital role in cultural heritage sites in conveying the significance and multiple heritage values to the visitors. In an era where the world is transforming with innovative digital applications, the heritage sites are also being integrated with digital interpretation techniques to deliver a better interpretation and new dimensional experience to the visitors. Though multiple digital solutions are available, not all the techniques are appropriate, applicable and feasible to every site. Besides, neither proper worldwide principles nor framework has been exerted for these digital heritage interpretation developments. Therefore, this study is focused on building a generic conceptual framework to select the most appropriate digital interpretation technique(s) that fit the context of the heritage site, giving special reference to the six Cultural World Heritage Sites of Sri Lanka. The relevant qualitative and quantitative data were gathered via in-depth interviews, field observation, literature survey and a visitor survey questionnaire. The main themes and sub-themes derived through the thematic analysis were adopted as the theoretical framework for the research to analyze the collected data of the six Cultural World Heritage Sites and the selected digital techniques. Based on the results, the study recommends appropriate digital techniques for each Cultural World Heritage Sites of the country. Further as aimed, the study presents a conceptual framework for on-site digital interpretation developments for cultural heritage sites by categorizing the 24 criteria derived for data analysis under five phases namely ‘Prepare’, ‘Assess’, ‘Design’, ‘Implement’ and ‘Sustain’.

A Conceptual Framework for Heritage Impact Assessment: A Review and Perspective

Heritage Impact Assessment (HIA) has recently emerged as a conflict-solving tool to improve World Heritage (WH) conservation in line with sustainable development policies. The increasing number of requested HIAs for affected WH properties over the last years reveals that more attention is being paid to HIA as a practical tool to adequately support the protection and management of historic monuments and sites against new constructions and development. However, the application of integrated and systematic impact assessment methods within HIA still remains a key challenge in different HIA projects. Therefore, this paper contributes to the further development of a transparent and systematic procedure of HIA in accordance with Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA). It also explores different standard methods of impact assessment in EIA and discusses their applicability to cultural World Heritage properties. Finally, the paper emphasizes a need for developing integrated impact assessment methods to address the multiple impacts of development projects. Such methodological enhancement can further contribute to mitigation strategies and decision-making to protect World Heritage properties within the context of sustainable development.

Forms of government and local community participation in the management of cultural World Heritage sites in Southeast Asia | รูปแบบของรัฐกับการมีส่วนร่วมของชุมชนท้องถิ่นในการจัดการแหล่งมรดกโลกทาง วัฒนธรรม ในเอเชียตะวันออกเฉียงใต้

This paper studied the management of three World Heritage sites in 3 countries of Southeast Asia : Malaysia, Laos, and Thailand. The results of this research show that a decentralized form of government in Southeast Asia provides opportunities for local communities to develop better participation in the World Heritage site management than the centralized forms of government. For local communities to contribute to the World Heritage philosophy, it is necessary to improve both the conceptual and practical aspects of the World Heritage Committee, Advisory organizations, and State Parties. They have to learn lessons and agree to work closely together. บทความนี้เลือกศึกษาการจัดการแหล่งมรดกโลกจำานวน 3 แหล่งในประเทศมาเลเซีย ลาว และไทย โดยใช้วิธีการ สำารวจเอกสาร ผลการศึกษาพบว่า รูปแบบของรัฐในเอเชียตะวันออกเฉียงใต้ที่กระจายอำานาจจะเปิดโอกาสให้ ชุมชนท้องถิ่นสามารถพัฒนาการมีส่วนร่วมในการจัดการแหล่งมรดกโลกได้ดีกว่ารูปแบบรัฐที่รวบอำานาจ การที่จะ ให้ชุมชนท้องถิ่นมีส่วนร่วมตามปรัชญาของมรดกโลกจึงจะต้องปรับปรุงทั้งในส่วนของกรอบคิดและการปฏิบัติทั้งใน ส่วนของคณะกรรมการมรดกโลก องค์กรที่ปรึกษา และรัฐภาคี โดยต้องสรุปบทเรียนและยอมรับร่วมกันอย่างใกล้ ชิด

The Gymnasium and Greek Identity

This chapter focuses on questions of identity more clearly and provides an analysis of its different implications, to show how the communities of the gymnasia of Hellenistic Egypt, while following traditions of Greek character, were thoroughly embedded in the socio-cultural world of the country in which they lived. It is argued that the members of the gymnasium displayed complex identities, which could encompass features deriving from various traditions; this goes beyond a simplistic interpretation and understanding of ethnicity. Beyond strict ethnic designations, Ptolemaic society also functioned in a less exclusive fashion, according to cultural definitions: the Ptolemaic category of Hellenes ‘Greeks’ was applied to people who displayed a certain degree of knowledge of Greek language and culture, not only to those who were of strict Greek ethnicity. As the prime institution of Greek cultural traditions, the gymnasium operated as the quintessential ‘association of the Hellenes’: the place where those who were willing to go Greek could express themselves as a well-defined group of people, while upholding specific aspects of Greek life. However, it is shown how the gymnasium’s members stretched over different layers of (normally) the middle and upper strata of local society and shared many features, which were foreign to Greek traditions and thought, including specific onomastic choices, religious practices, or marriage patterns. ‘Those of the gymnasium’ were fully embedded in and deeply intertwined with the local population—to the point that they essentially formed a part of it: they were the ‘Greeks’ of Egypt.

Civilizational Aspects of Japanese History: Continuities and Discontinuities

This paper discusses the merits and problems of civilizational perspectives on Japanese history, with particular reference to the task of combining a comparative approach with valid points made by those who see Japan as a highly self-contained cultural world. After a brief consideration of Claude Lévi-Strauss’s reflections on Japan, the central section of the paper deals with Shmuel Eisenstadt’s work. His conception of Japan as a distinctive civilization characterized by pre-axial patterns is rejected on the grounds that the native mode of thought which he proposes to describe is more plausibly interpreted as an offshoot of Chinese traditions, although a notably autonomous and historically changing one. The transmission of Daoism to Japan, although much less explicit than the reception of Confucianism and Buddhism, was of crucial importance. That said, Eisenstadt’s concrete analyses of Japanese ways to transform foreign inputs are often detailed and insightful, and his comments on the relationship between culture and institutions raise important questions, although they must in many cases be reformulated in more historical terms. The paper discusses the genesis, dynamics and collapse of the Tokugawa regime (1600–1868), and concludes with reflections on Japanese modernity, up to and including its present crisis.

Eurozentrismus dekonstruieren. Zur Bedeutung postkolonialer Perspektiven auf schulische und außerschulische Bildungsangebote

Based on findings from an empirical study on young people’s perceptions of the inbalanced global distribution of cultural World Heritage sites, various aspects are discussed in order to deconstruct Eurocentrism in educational programmes. In particular, postcolonial perspectives and the importance of decolonising will be addressed.

Legal Vocabulary as Means of Revealing by Marcel Proust of the Cultural Codes of French Aristocracy, Bourgeoisie and Peasantry

This article is devoted to the stylistic and cognitive analysis of the legal vocabulary in the third volume of Marcel Proust’s novel “In Search of Lost Time” used in order to describe mental, psychological and cultural world of Guermantes in its contrast with the world of bourgeoisie and with that of French peasants. The legal terms we consider in the paper are used by Proust as core components of a number of stylistic figures, first of all, similes and metaphors. Following Gérard Cornu and some other scholars, we understand legal terminology (legal terms and legal vocabulary in general) as any word of language (in our case, those of French) having at least one legal meaning, acknowledged by an authoritative French dictionary. The legal terms identified in the text were classified into two groups: general legal vocabulary and specific legal vocabulary belonging to different branches of law: constitutional, criminal, international. In order to confirm their legal semantics while conducting contextual analysis, we have consulted all types of diction-aries: bilingual, monolingual, general and special ones. The main aim of the article was to determine the functions of these figures in Marcel Proust’s text whose poetics is not at all legal. To achieve it, the main task was to identify the connections between the denotative meaning of a given term and its connotative contextual transformations. This means first of all to decode contextual links between the legal figure under analysis and various domains of life it was applied to by Proust. Eventually, this analysis helps to reveal French cultural codes, those of declining aristocracy, empowered bourgeoisie and, in “Guermantes”, of peasantry. Thus, the Guermantes are associated in the eyes of the bourgeoisie, represented by Marcel, with something ancient, inaccessible to rational minds, charming: some sublime images, magical legends of ancient times, exquisite works of art and music, antique music instruments. In this context, a legal term, such as carte photographique d’identité for instance, introduces, by contrast, some materially-minded, pragmatic, prosaic notes. At the same time, democratic changes leading to the rise of the bourgeoisie, as well as the world of peasants are depicted in an extremely concrete way, being associated with the untamed force of nature: damage and devastation caused by the floods, noises, and the like. At the same time, various typical human feelings, such as Marcel’s admiration and Saint-Loup’s love due to the use of legal figures may be represented as imprisonment.

STUDY OF CULTURAL VALUES OF THE KYZYLORDA REGION

Currently, there are many issues in the field of cultural values of science that are not studied and require study at the modern level. The fundamental changes that have taken place in the political, social, economic, cultural and spiritual spheres of society since the republic of Kazakhstan gained independence have set the task of studying them in a new way for cultural scientists. In order to take a fresh look at our work in this task, it is necessary to use research methods. It is important to study the stages of development, activities and directions of cultural values of the Kyzylorda region, which are the subject of research. The cultural values of the Kyzylorda region are considered a cultural artifact that provides complete information about the kazakh cultural world. Since the scientific and theoretical issues of the analysis of cultural values of the Kyzylorda region were not the subject of special research in cultural anthropology, an attempt to consider it in a complex interdisciplinary field on the basis of semantic, pragmatic ideas, classification of various basic elements that form culture, elements of the Turkic worldview, defining the concept of the sanctity of cultural values in the Turkic worldview are an urgent problem. In the article, we conducted cross-cultural research and identified specific problems, requirements and research directions in cross-culture.

Mode Harmonic Concept of Oleksandr Cherepnin’s Composer Creativity

The relevance of the topic is determined by the existing contradiction between the great importance of Olexandr Cherepnin’s compositional works, which are widely recognized in the modern cultural world and contain many innovative artistic and theoretical ideas, and the lack of proper coverage in the scientific literature. The analysis of the array of musicological literature devoted to the peculiarities of the musical culture of the XX century proves the fact that the artistic personality of O. Cherepnin and his life and creative path still generally remain beyond the attention of researchers. The purpose of the article is to reveal the meaningful and terminological features of the mode harmonic concept of O. Cherepnin’s compositional works. The methodology. The main methods applied in this study are systematic approach and methods of comparative and musicological (mainly mode harmonic) analysis. The results. O. Cherepnin’s musical language has overcome a long way before it was formed into a single mode harmonic concept. This mode harmonic concept of the artist’s works was first embodied in many of his works, and then was theoretically comprehended by him and given in the article “Basic Elements of My Musical Language” (1962). Therefore, from the beginning, the features of the composer’s mode harmonic language were formed under the influence of artistic necessity and were not subjected to theoretical conceptual principles. The mode harmonic concept of the artist, which became a generalization of his creative activity and artistic ideas, is based mainly on the theory of ambivalence of major and minor. At the same time, the composer does not use the major­minor as the mode basis for his works, basing (as the author himself and researchers of his work emphasize) primarily on the theory of modality. Cherepnin’s mode harmonic concept of musical language is based on a nine­stage scale, which is considered by the composer as universal and is found in most of his works. The most separate and independent components of the nine­stage scale are the three major­minor tetrachords and the two hexachords. The presence of different pitch positions of the scale allows to determine the tonal center at the level of separate fragments of the musical fabric of the work. The harmonic vertical (harmonic structure) of the majority of O. Cherepnin’s works is also formed on the basis of the vertical segments of the specified nine­stage scale. Such mode segments, which in separate works of the composer or their parts play the role of mode harmonic basis, are defined by us as “submodes” (my term — Ch. H.). The most common are tritone consonances, and each “submode” has its own chord that performs the function of the tonic one. The most important among them, according to the composer’s point of view, is a major­minor tetrachord, i.e. vertical four­tone chord. All these consonances are very diverse in their interval structure and intensity of sound. Five­ and six­tone chords are used by the artist much less due to their intense phonism and the need for at least an acoustic solution. Pentatone scales, which are constantly presented in an incomplete form (with the omission of one or two tones), and symmetrical modes are also widely used in O. Cherepnin’s works. Bright ethnic elements of the composer’s mode harmonic concept, which are widely used in his works, are the specific tritone consonances, called by O. Cherepnin as “Georgian trisounds”. The topicality of the study lies in the disclosure of one of the main conceptual foundations of the multifaceted musical language of O. Cherepnin — his mode harmonic component, which has not yet been sufficiently studied. The practical significance. The obtained results of the research allow to reveal the world importance of O. Cherepnin’s artistic figure and composer’s works, to highlight his innovative musical­theoretical ideas and to determine the special place of the artist in the constellation of contemporary composers who actively experimented with tonal­harmonic systems. The obtained conclusions generally expand the view on the nature and structure of mode harmonic thinking of composers of the XX century.