Our program aims at analyzing the making process of architectural and cultural heritages in China through the example of the innovative “Tianjin experience”. It is therefore a study of the social and political challenges as well as the innovations such a process contributed to, with the involvement from the period around 2004, when large areas of the traditional city of Tianjin were demolished, of a group of grass root movement for architectural heritage: the “Volunteers for the Protection of Tianjin’s Architectural Heritage”?
In this perspective, this project is clearly anchored in the Part “Transformations du patrimoine et politiques culturelles” of ANR Axe 5. It is related to two priorities: Priority 30 : “Study of culture and integration factors”; Priority 33 “Social, educational and cultural innovations”.
By politics, we mean official policies, both local and national, but also the way they are oriented by initiatives stemming from the civil society and contribute in return to the rise of such a public sphere. By politics, we also mean that the initiatives taken in a locality such as Tianjin have become precedents for the politics of cultural heritage in other Chinese cities inasmuch as they have been affected by interactions with policies, institutions, archival funds and scholars outside of China.
The Chinese case offers indeed an invaluable opportunity to observe the answers given to the questions – “What makes an architectural and cultural heritage?”, “What is to be valued and why?” – after a political experience that turned against the past before reviving it in a rather abstract and blurred manner, made of a complex web of memorial stresses and lapses. Moreover, the Chinese case is embedded in a specific situation where a rapid urban transformation occurred while cultural heritage identification and protection criteria were limited and poorly institutionalized. Heritage policies were thus discussed in the context of massive and imminent destructions. They aimed at answering the question “What should not be destroyed and why?” rather than “How to protect a well-identified heritage or patrimoine?”. Finally, the renewal of interest of Chinese leadership towards Chinese past has legitimized – although not official encouraged- the concern of Chinese citizens for their own past and its heritage. As a consequence, grass root initiatives have been taken which allows for an analysis of the genesis of civil society initiatives in the field of cultural heritage and its consequences on national and local cultural policies in an environment characterized by a complex pattern of interaction with, and appropriation of, international standards, concepts, policies, regulations.
Complex relationships and knowledge regarding the past; rapid economic development; rise of a civil society within specific political constraints: these are the main characteristics of the context in which the “Tianjin Model” innovations are embedded.
The city of Tianjin offers a rather unique opportunity to study the politics of architectural heritage in China from academic disciplines such as history, anthropology, sociology, architecture and geography. The choice of Tianjin municipality for this joint project stems first of all from the innovative “Tianjin Model” that has developed since the mid-2000s, a model arising from the civil society’s initiatives and that is formally captured as combining ‘government direction, expert advice and public participation” to protect cultural heritage. Such a model has been recognized nationwide and has influenced national policies as well as experiments in other Chinese cities.
This Model could not have emerged without the actions and initiatives taken since 2004 by a group called the “Volunteers for the Protection of Tianjin’s Architectural Heritage” and the complex but efficient relationships they established with Tianjin inhabitants, local and national historians, architects, specialists of “cultural goods” or “cultural relics” in China as well as local and national officials or leaders. The rise of this specific « Model » in Tianjin can also partly be understood by the specificity of the city itself. Tianjin, located 120 kms from Peking or Beijing, is a municipality of 15 million inhabitants whose proximity from Beijing has hampered the economic development. As a consequence, urbanization process was late as compared with Peking, Guangzhou and Shanghai: the problem of “architectural heritage” in Tianjin benefited from the positive or negative sides of these precedents. Another major characteristic of Tianjin is the richness and diversity of such an heritage since Tianjin was harbor to nine foreign concessions: the German (1899-1917), Austrian (1901-1917), Russian, (1903-1920), Belgium (1902-1931), English (1860-1943), Japanese (1888-1945), French (1860-1946), Italian (1901-1947), the American concession being quickly administered by the British government. Each concession adopted different architectural guidelines and regulations; each concession witnessed the building of houses, shops, factories, go-downs showing unusual patterns of overlapping styles and features. Moreover, the walled Chinese city or ‘old city’, founded in 1404, although undergoing rapid changes during the 19th century, preserved until 2003 an unusually rich architectural fabric. Not far away from the Chinese city and the territory of the foreign concessions, the so-called Hebei New District, built during the first years of the 19th century under the inspiration but also the re-interpretation process of western urban planning tools and methods, is considered as the third historical district of the city. It is thanks to such a rich architectural heritage that Tianjin was officially designated in 1986 as one among the 123 Chinese cities “culturally and historically famous”, a label that implies specific obligations as far as protection issues are concerned. One should add nonetheless that, besides these three historical districts, the buildings and factories in Tianjin highlight the diversity of urban concerns and architectural approaches that have crossed the history of China during the 20th century.
However, the choice of Tianjin is also motivated by the need to analyze a city other than Peking or larger cities such as Shanghai and Guangzhou, that is to select a city where the interplay between national and local regulations, a fundamental issue to grasp the fate of “cultural heritage” identification and protection in China, can be observed. The Tianjin municipality thus offers an exemplary setting to understand the mutual dependence and tensions between various administrative levels and bodies. Finally, one should add that the coordinator of the proposed project, Isabelle Thireau, Director of Research at the French National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS), Director of Studies at the School for the Advanced Studies in the Social Sciences (EHESS), has stayed three years in Tianjin as a Visiting Scholar at the Peking University, Department of Sociology and Anthropology (2010-2013) and has thus become familiar with Tianjin scholars, officials, volunteers of architectural heritage protection.
The project has three main objectives, closely connected but distinguished for the purpose of labor division.
- About a Sociology of Innovation: the “Volunteers for the Protection of Tianjin’s Architectural Heritage” and the “Tianjin Model”.
- Identifying, Valuing and the Making of an Heritage under Threat. Far-reaching Lessons from the Tianjin Case.
- Cultural Heritage, Social Integration and the Recognition of a Shared History: To Mobilize the Past on Behalf of the Present.