Museum Representations of Chinese Diasporas

Migration Histories and the Cultural Heritage of the Homeland

Cangbai Wang

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9781000286939
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Art
• Subtopic: Museum Studies

Museum Representations of Chinese Diasporas is the first book to analyse the recent upsurge in museums on Chinese diasporas in China. Examining heritage-making beyond the nation state, the book provides a much-needed, critical examination of China's engagement with its diasporic communities.

Drawing on fieldwork in more than ten museums, as well as interviews with museum practitioners and archival study, Wang offers a timely analysis of the complex ways in which Chinese diasporas are represented in the museum space of China, the ancestral homeland. Arguing that diasporic heritage is highly ambivalent and introducing a diasporic perspective to the study of cultural heritage, this book opens up a new avenue of inquiry into the study and management of cultural heritage in China and beyond. Most importantly, perhaps, Wang sheds new light on the dynamic between China and Chinese diasporas through the lens of the museum.

Museum Representations of Chinese Diasporas takes a transnational perspective that will draw attention to the under-researched connections between heritage, mobility and meaning in a global context. As such, this cross-disciplinary work will be of interest to scholars and students working in the museum and heritage studies fields, as well as those studying Asia, China, migration and diaspora, anthropology, history and culture.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series Information
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• List of figures
• List of abbreviations
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• Part 1 The symbolic museum
• Part 2 The branding museum
• Part 3 The memory museum
• Part 4 The im/possible museum
• Appendix: ‘Overseas Chinese Museums’ in the PRC
• Glossary
• References
• Index