1st Edition

Alternative Economies of Heritage Sustainable, Anti-Colonial and Creative Approaches to Cultural Inheritance

Edited By Denise Thwaites, Bethaney Turner, Tracy Ireland Copyright 2025
292 Pages 36 B/W Illustrations
by Routledge

292 Pages 36 B/W Illustrations
by Routledge

292 Pages 36 B/W Illustrations
by Routledge

Alternative Economies of Heritage is a groundbreaking edited volume that critically evaluates how the ‘work’ of heritage can be reimagined, as a multifarious field of thought and action, to resist the reductive economies of colonial capitalism. In a global context of cultural financialisation and ecological crisis, where sustainable, anti-colonial and creative approaches are required to solve... Read more

1. Transformative Heritage Economies: Reimagining Cultural Value, Exchange and Inheritance
Denise Thwaites, Bethaney Turner and Tracy Ireland

Part 1. Transforming Heritage Subjects

2. Ancestors, Not Objects
Kirsten Garner Lyttle
3. The Currency of Heritage Citizenship in Urban Indonesia
Lauren Yapp
4. Pencilled Calculations
Susan Briante
5. Connecting our Stories: Writing an Indigenous Studies Textbook
Wendy Somerville, Ashley van den Heuvel, Delephene Fraser, Lisa Fuller and Andraya Stapp
6. Re-imagining heritage economies at Cape Town’s Adderley Street flower market
Melanie Boehi
7. Valuing Personal Narratives as Common Heritage: Memory Practices of Museum of the Person
Karen Worcman

Part 2 – Rethinking Heritage Resources

8. It’s the Economy, Stupid! Connecting Heritage Value, Economics and the Everyday
Tracy Ireland
9. Making Heritage through Seed Stories
Zayaan Khan
10. Refiguring Digitization: Experiments in Heritage for a Shared Future
Annet Dekker
11. Heritage Entrepreneurship: Empowering the ‘Forgotten Generation’
Zuhura Mtenguzi and Wanjiku J. Thukia
12. Nurturing Heritage in Community Gardens: Cultivating Tastes for the Future
Bethaney Turner
13. The Value of Post-apartheid Archives: Heritage Economies of South African Archives in the Wake of apartheid
Geraldine Frieslaar

Part 3 – Processes of Possibility

14. Do-It-Yourself Heritage: Collective vacant house renovation in Japan
Nancy Ji
15. Taxila's Cultural Legacy: Transactions between Ancient Civilizations and Modern Communities in a Gandhara City in Pakistan
Nadeem Omar Tarar and Izzah Khan
16. Diverse Mapuche Landscapes: Co-creating Coastal and Mountain Economies of Digital Heritage
Alison Guzman
17. Mapping community economies as a living heritage practice
Ann Hill, Pryor Placino & Justin See
18. Thinking With Shells: Digital Culturescapes Decolonising Digital Heritage
Nancy Mauro-Flude and Shahee Ilyas
19. Loving Work: Surviving, Gathering and Dreaming for Indigenous Futures
T'uy't'tanat Cease Wyss and Denise Thwaites

Reopening

20. The Economy of the Night: Fragments of Darlinghurst’s Queer Heritage
Denis Byrne

Biography

Denise Thwaites is a curator, writer and researcher specialising in contemporary cultural economies, who is currently Senior Lecturer in Interdisciplinary Arts at the University of Canberra. Denise was awarded her PhD in Aesthetics through the University of New South Wales (Australia) and l’Université Paris 8, Vincennes – Saint-Denis (France), before joining UNSW iCinema Research Centre as a Postdoctoral Fellow. Her research harnesses poetic, experimental and collaborative modes of working to destabilise political, cultural and economic imaginaries.

Bethaney Turner is a researcher who explores the multispecies relationships between people, place and the environment, concentrating on how best to build the resilience and capacity of communities to enact more sustainable futures in a time of climate change. She has particular expertise in local food systems (including community food production, food rescue and food waste management) and understanding the impacts of everyday food interactions on human and planetary health and well-being. She works as an Associate Professor in Global Studies at the University of Canberra.

Tracy Ireland is an archaeologist and community-focused heritage practitioner and academic, and Professor of Cultural Heritage at the University of Canberra. Tracy has published widely on heritage management and heritage studies, particularly in areas such as the social value of heritage, heritage ethics, Indigenous historic heritage and archaeological sites conservation.