Concrete Memories and Sensory Pasts: Everyday Heritage and the Politics of Nationhood

This paper interrogates how Singapore’s everyday heritage has been framed through embodied and sensory experiences. While buildings and other landmarks have been conserved as heritage icons, this designation also includes particular routes known as heritage trails. Buildings and trails by themselves are not invested with symbolic meaning; it is the processes of heritage packaging that consign particular landmarks and sites with a heritage purpose. By employing the notion of “concrete memories,” I argue that heritage landmarks and trails form a site through which the nation’s history is selectively interpreted, negotiated, and experienced by different actants. Concrete memories comprise three key features: familiarity, sensory remembering, and ownership. The discussion of concrete memories is undergirded by broad methodological principles of actor-network theory. The intention is to call attention to embodied tourism in heritage tourism studies while at the same time addressing the production and consumption of heritage and power relations through heritage networks.

具体的记忆和感性的过往：日常化的遗产和民族性的政治

关键词：日常化的遗产，具体基因，遗产观光步道，遗产化，感性化记忆

本文考察了新加坡的日常化遗产是如何通过具体和感官性的体验进行架构的。在建筑和其它地标物被作为遗产图标而被保护起来的同时，还指定了某些特定的路线为遗产观光步道。建筑和观光步道本身并不天然具有象征性意义，只是遗产的包装推出的过程为特定的地标和场所赋予了一种遗产功能。本文应用了一个“具体记忆”的概念，它由熟悉性的三个关键特征（感官性、记忆和所有权）构成，据此我提出：遗产性地标和观光步道形成了一个场所，通过这个场所，国家的历史会被不同的遗产参与者选择性地诠释、商榷并体验。对具体记忆的讨论是建立在行动者-网络理论的宽泛的方法论原则的基础上。本文意图唤起对遗产旅游研究中的体验式旅游的重视，同时也探讨了遗产和权力关系通过遗产网络的生产和消费的问题。

Translated from English by Li Guo