Letting the past serve the present: museum interpretation in China's borderlands

In this IIAS Lunch Lecture Dr Gwen Bennett will examine Liaoning Province’s use of the Neolithic Hongshan Culture as a vehicle to re-situate the origins of Chinese civilization to Liaoxi, the western Liaoning region, along with some of its reasons for attempting to do so.

China’s northern tier of provinces, Xinjiang, Inner Mongolia, and Liaoning, only became, once and for all, included in the Qing Empire’s territorial boundaries during the 19th century. After 1949, the PRC needed to incorporate these regions, dominated by non-ethnic Han people, into a unified modern state, but the identity narratives that the Communist Party had created lost their legitimacy after the events of 1989. New narratives focused on nationalism were created in the midst of the economic reforms in the 1990s that also devolved more control to the provinces. With this greater leverage, some provinces seized the opportunity to re-situate their relationship to the State by crafting their own regional narratives of belonging.

Photo: peopledaily.com.cn

Every third Wednesday of the month one of the IIAS researchers will present his/her work-in-progress in an informal setting to their colleagues and other interested attendees, followed by a lunch provided by IIAS. These lunch lectures are organized to give the research community the opportunity to freely discuss ongoing research and to exchange thoughts.

Lunch is provided. Please register using the form below.