Bringing the Community Back: A Case Study of the Post-Earthquake Heritage Restoration in Kathmandu Valley

Abstract

Heritage preservation is a resource-intensive activity nested among other processes in the public administration, related to identity building and touristic product enhancement. Strategies and schemata associated with heritage preservation sprang in the western world after WWII and they have been adapted, in the form of ‘heritage management’, in various contexts with questionable effectiveness regarding sustainability. Our paper discusses the case of the post-earthquake cultural, social and political landscape of the World Heritage Site of Kathmandu valley in Nepal. By reviewing the bibliography and drawing upon various case studies of post-earthquake heritage restoration, we focus on the traditional ways of managing human and cultural resources in the area as related to the modern national heritage management mechanism. We also examine how traditional practices, re-interpreted into a modern context, can point towards inclusive and sustainable forms of collaboration based on the commons. We shed light on the elements of an emerging management system that could protect the vulnerable monuments through community participation, adapted to the challenging realities of the Nepalese heritage and its stakeholders.

Can cultural economy be social? Discussing about the rural heritage of Greece

“…This gap might allow the materialization of contemporary heritage policy trending in Europe and focusing on the "cultural property" narrative for heritage. This heritage as a-stateasset-concept has been dominant since the primary enclosure of the past by nation-states in the form of national landmarks (Lekakis, forthcoming;Lekakis et al, 2018). However, today,…”

“…The commons are goods and processes used and produced collectively, administered in egalitarian and participatory ways by the communities that manage them, making them accessible on regulated and equal terms (Kioupkiolis, 2019). Even though the history of the commons goes back to Aristotle (koinón) and the medieval arrangements for the collective management of natural resources (such as the Magna Carta Libertatum and the Charter of Forests), the concept is mostly known in bibliography through the 16th-17th c. land enclosures in Britain in favour of the emerging bourgeoisie and the regularly cited but systematically overthrown theory of G. Hardin, on the supposed ''tragedy of the commons'' (Lekakis et al, 2018).…”

“…In this emerging scientific field and arena of debate and practice, culture and heritage appear in notably few discussions while the currently available bibliography can be considered rather fragmented in terms of theoretical enquiries and applications (Lekakis et al, 2018).…”

“…Governance bibliography presents several pluralistic models for multi-stakeholder collaboration and management, with various levels of complexity (e.g. nested governance; Ostrom, 1990) and also the possibility of applying these to the cultural heritage field (Lekakis at al., 2018). Towards this goal, the use of existing structures of social collectives (e.g.…”

“…However, gradually, economic rationalism and obsession for growth push for capitalizing on the rural assets of "uniqueness", such as windmills and watermills, mainly through processes of museumification, which appropriate monuments for tourism consumption (Lekakis and Dragouni, 2019). To our view, the reintroduction of the commons in the public realm as a hybrid academic discipline and a sustainable and inclusive process to manage collectively natural, social, and digital public goods, jeopardized from the shrinking of the welfare state, offers a promising and largely unattained hypothesis to test for cultural heritage in general (Lekakis et al 2018).…”