Cultural Politics and Contested Place Identity

Whose Heartland?

“…Each of these local actions have taken place within a broader, more global milieu of rising environmental concern over greenhouse gasses and global warming, suggesting that the Heartland's local power networks (Jeong and Almeida Santos, 2004) are indeed nested within Massey's ''power geographies of the global' ' (2004, p. 11). What remains to be seen is whether the Heartland and other local areas can exercise their power as nodes within the local network to influence the global (as Massey, 2004, suggests).…”

“…In rural areas, perhaps more than elsewhere, place is more than just the value of the land (Wulfhorst et al, 2006). Rather place is a struggle over identity and power to impose one meaning over another (Jeong and Almeida Santos, 2004). Through examining the politics of place in rural areas, we can identify ''the invisible webs of local power networks'' (Jeong and Almeida Santos, 2004, p. 654) as well as examine the rural's nested set of relations in the ''power geographies of the global'' (Massey, 2004, p. 11).…”

“…Place is therefore both a site of meaning as well as a tool used by powerful groups to manipulate present and future action. Over the past decade, increasing attention has been paid to the role of conflict in re-defining and resisting taken-for-granted meaning of place, having been being applied to a broad range of situations including globalization (Amin, 2004), issues of what 'belongs' and not (Trudeau, 2006), cultural festivals (Jeong and Almeida Santos, 2004), and urban conflicts (Alfasi, 2004). The politics of place is even entering the literature in the humanities (Benjamin and Vardoulakis, 2004) and forest management (Kruger and Jakes, 2003;Yung et al, 2003).…”

Urban Ethnic Festivals, Neighborhoods, and the Multiple Realities of Marketing Place

“…Jeong and Almeida Santos (2004) show how power relations among dominant and traditional cultures influence which cultures are being represented by the festival and how this affects their identification with their place. Place meanings also become more difficult to understand as immigrants and the networks and flows associated with them travel back and forth between the homeland and the new community (Duval, 2006;Shukla, 1997;Louie, 2000).…”

Concerns and Opportunities around Cultural Heritage in East Asian Globally Important Agricultural Heritage Systems (GIAHS)

“…Among them, local identity focuses on people who participate in a very narrative scale of area and how people interact with the local environment [30]. Being designated as a heritage can provide a platform through which identity can be managed, represented, and rebuilt [28][29][30][31][32]. In such situations, a heritage generates a sense of identity, belonging, and public memories among local residents through the production of heritage sites and goods [33], which may "help sustain the ongoing production of local identities" [30].…”