Increasing challenges for world heritage sites protection as a result of the development of sustainable tourism: a case of The Old Town of Lijiang, China

Màster universitari en Disseny -- Contemporary DesignWith the growth of economy and globalization in near three decades of China, tourism has become one of the biggest business than ever before. In China, those ancient towns are one of the most popular tourism destinations. It brings negative effect in some way while the tourism industry encourages the growth of local economy and living standard. The purpose of this report is to explore the possibilities between cultural innovation and social sustainability of tourism industry in Chinese ancient towns as the Old Town of Lijiang, Yunnan Province for example. In the end, the report also provides responsive improvement for the tourism industry in Lijiang. To measure the sustainability of tourism in Lijiang, the report focuses on two aspects of social dimension and cultural dimension, employs contemporary design, which include the visible and audible system in order to convert various aspects into a relatively tangible measurement. As for the outcome of analysis, it indicates that: 1) tourism in Lijiang is unsustainable in social dimension due to the paramount pressure on the traditional life style and land use which caused by overhaul tourist population poured into Lijiang in decades years; 2) tourism in Lijiang generally has played a positive role in the preservation of local culture. The findings help decision makers understand both weaknesses and strengths of tourism better in each aspect of the tourism industry in Lijiang to make responsive strategies and policies to ensure a more sustainable future

The resilience of labrosones in coastal communities bordering the Indian Ocean

The resilience of labrosones bordering the Indian Ocean is an investigation that has gathered and presented both findings and arguments from related scholarship that highlight the distribution of labrosones along the research region and emphasizes their socio-musical significance in sustaining cultural traditions that have helped to define these communities. Conclusions drawn from the distribution study further uncovered the religious, cultural, and social significance of labrosones. These findings were engaged in order to broaden the systematic approach of organology to form a contextual, culturally situated, and inclusive organology for labrosones. The central objective of this thesis was to provide a theoretical lens through which labrosones were viewed and studied by engaging; Bates' concept of the social life of instruments (2012), Doubleday's gendered nature of instruments (2008), Binford's analysis of material culture (1972), and Kartomi's argument for contextual organology (1990). Though previous scholarship in musicology and ethnomusicology have engaged these themes for music instruments in general, this thesis applies a geographically and culturally specific analysis for labrosones in particular. Through archival research of primary and secondary sources, the research was able to intellectually situate and acknowledge the labrosone beyond a static sound object and present it as a sound-producing object with a social life, significant to cultural practices and symbolic of cultural communities. This research has the potential to contribute to scholarship, both in labrosone organology and pedagogy at tertiary level

Interconnected In-Between: On the dynamics of abjection, animism, temporality and location in nomadic art practice

This practice based PhD research is conducted through my installations One Hundred Ten Thousand (2011-12), Rituals to Mutations (2013) and Blackballing (2013). It is a journey from the sites of propagation marginalised villages in the outskirts of Beijing and a forgotten Buddhist temple in Chongqing, Central China - through the production processes to exhibitions in global venues. This research examines the potentiality of nomadism as a political position. This specific agency provides a unique setting through which this inquiry makes a contribution to the field of contemporary art in the contexts of globalisation, nomadic subjectivity, new materialism and the posthuman/postanthropocentric condition, and to visual language. It argues for a more ethical and material relationship with others, human and non-human. I examine how transformative, intersubjective relations, nomadic politics, extensive lived experience, local knowledge and different levels of collaboration might be addressed by my artworks and how these processes might be encountered by the viewer. I explore how the use of these different fluid connections in my work might transform our sense of ourselves and our relationship with others, human or not. As a process of rereading and reconstituting, starting from specific cultural details like those of Chinese village graveyards, and interconnecting spatial, historical, sociopolitical and metaphysical reconfiguration, the research project examines the possibilities of merging them with emergent, unexpected bodies of knowledge and systems of interdependence. Julia Kristeva’s psychoanalytical notion of abjection is a frame of reference through which I develop methodological tools. In this research, I situate this psychoanalytical, Eurocentric and rather limited notion in more anthropological and extended fields of relationships, especially in relation to notions such as ‘becoming’ (Gilles Deleuze) and animism (Anselm Franke), and to local knowledge and nomadic discourses (Rosi Braidotti). I do this in order to examine how oppositional relations between the Self and the Other and dualistic concepts might be transformed. I evaluate my research in dialogic relation to other artists’ works, via reflexive conversations alongside theoretical propositions and in relation to my political nomadic position as a researcher and practitioner. This research leads to a re-evaluation of how concepts of abjection and resistance might be rethought in art practice. By integrating processes of abjection with Deleuzian ‘becoming’, my artworks explore how transformative processes of, for example, material(ities), rituals or pollution, might be engendered in systems of relations in which oppositional relations between subjects and objects (human and non-human) are destabilised and operate inclusively

[DiaGram]; Rethinking Graphic Design Process

Central to any graphic design education is the teaching of a design (or creative) process as an aid to problem-solving. This study draws upon experimental workshops within design education, together with current thinking from the broader arts, emotional psychology and the brain sciences, to explore the idea of repositioning process as the ‘main event’ – rather than it being a means-to-an-end. The study sought to frame learning experiences that enabled students to consciously become the object of their own study; including themes that explored ‘personal identity’, ‘dualism’, ‘mind-wandering’ and ‘habit’ as mechanisms to enhance our creative capacity, and evidenced significant improvements in the students’ confidence, dexterity and working methodologies (including the elusive ‘risk’ and ‘play’). The emerging conclusions propose key anchors (‘dissociative creativity’, ‘process as the main event’, ‘collaboration’ and ‘immersion’) that we believe ought to be central to the development of any new teaching (esp. within graphic design). Keywords: Design, Education, Process, Creativity, Risk Full paper. Delivered 31 May 2017. Page 81–95 of attached document

Sustainability of Rural Tourism and Promotion of Local Development

This Special Issue contains articles include, but not limited to, empirical, analytical, or design-oriented approaches to the following topics: Monitoring of carrying capacity and mechanisms for managing tourist flows in rural areas; Systems and tools to measure the social, economic, and environmental sustainability of rural tourism; Integration between public tourism policies and private strategies in the promotion and implementation of sustainable practices; Policies for promoting public participation in the planning and development of sustainable rural tourism; The impacts of tourism on traditional agricultural activities; Identity enhancement of the territory and its productions; "Good practices" in the implementation of rural tourism sustainability

Adaptive Strategies for Water Heritage

This Open Access book, building on research initiated by scholars from the Leiden-Delft-Erasmus Centre for Global Heritage and Development (CHGD) and ICOMOS Netherlands, presents multidisciplinary research that connects water to heritage. Through twenty-one chapters it explores landscapes, cities, engineering structures and buildings from around the world. It describes how people have actively shaped the course, form and function of water for human settlement and the development of civilizations, establishing socio-economic structures, policies and cultures; a rich world of narratives, laws and practices; and an extensive network of infrastructure, buildings and urban form. The book is organized in five thematic sections that link practices of the past to the design of the present and visions of the future: part I discusses drinking water management; part II addresses water use in agriculture; part III explores water management for land reclamation and defense; part IV examines river and coastal planning; and part V focuses on port cities and waterfront regeneration. Today, the many complex systems of the past are necessarily the basis for new systems that both preserve the past and manage water today: policy makers and designers can work together to recognize and build on the traditional knowledge and skills that old structure embody. This book argues that there is a need for a common agenda and an integrated policy that addresses the preservation, transformation and adaptive reuse of historic water-related structures. Throughout, it imagines how such efforts will help us develop sustainable futures for cities, landscapes and bodies of water. ; Crosses regional and national boundaries to meet global challenges Proposes an integrated policy on preservation, transformation and adaptive reuse of water-related structures Offers tools to facilitate collaboration among stakeholders Open Access boo

Global Indigeneities and the Environment

Global Indigeneities and the Environment—covering fields from American Indian Studies, anthropology, communications, ethnoecology, ethnomusicology, geography, global studies, history, and literature, the purpose of the Special Issue is to give new understandings of the concept of global indigeneities and to showcase some of the most promising work in the field to date

Terroir in Tibet: Wine Production, Identity, and Landscape Change in Shangri-La, China.

Ph.D. Thesis. University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa 2017