This thesis studies contemporary China's heritage boom phenomenon as experienced through the everyday lives of antiquarian communities (collectors, antique dealers etc.) and heritage professionals in and around Beijing. Aiming to extend our vision beyond heritage sites and museums, which constitute the traditional subject of anthropological studies of heritage, the thesis explores the ways in which 'heritage' and 'treasure' are lived by wider Chinese urban residents, constituting a total social fact. Challenging the popular assumption made by heritage scholars in which heritage phenomenon is considered a by-product of modernity's tendency to contrast the current progress with the past as a benchmark, this thesis argues that contemporary China's heritage fever is, however, a social symptom of utopian replacement, in which the idea of linear progress promised by modernisation has been challenged by a recent nationwide utopian project of returning to 'the prosperous age' ('shengshi') with its emphasis on cyclical 'rise and fall'. Treasures of China, as 'Fragments of the Prosperous Age', have thus emerged as powerful imaginaries and resources to open up a utopian vision of ideal society based on fantastic imaginations of China's past glories. Foregrounding the relations between heritage and utopianism, the thesis subsequently investigates the complex ways in which heritage activists from state systems and antiquarian communities contribute to the utopian project from different pathways, bifurcating China's heritage phenomenon into formal and informal parts. Chapters one and two demonstrate that state-led imaginings have changed from the evolutionary perspective to one pursuing the glory of the past under the new spell of 'civilisational revival'. Officials and activists associated with formal heritage deploy a variety of discursive and bureaucratic technologies to securitise, manage and utilise China's ancient treasures, so as to legitimise the current regime. On the other hand, Chapters three and four show that collectors associated with informal heritage encounter fragments of the past in a bodily and joyful way. In ordinary antiquarian practices which juxtapose the cultivation of moral self with the patination of antique objects, collectors pursue an archaic yet neoliberal custodianship which has altered the ethics and sense of moral responsibility in the domains of market exchange. These two factions in China's heritage world may differ from each other in many aspects, but Chapter five suggests both of them, in fact, conspire to reproduce ancient 'prosperous age' ('shengshi') in the present and for the future. The thesis concludes with a discussion about the extent to which Hegel's future-oriented conception of 'capitalised History' that structures the writing of national history has transformed into a 'capitalised Heritage' in contemporary China. 'Capitalised Heritage' works to recast the importance of the Chinese nation in the contemporary world, reaching an ultimate reconciliation with the spectre and material legacies of the past.

Submitted by Aelson Maciera (aelsoncm@terra.com.br) on 2017-04-18T17:52:56Z No. of bitstreams: 1 DissIFHLG.pdf: 10702734 bytes, checksum: 3f11ee4ccb548f09f8f86d111f9afc4f (MD5) / Approved for entry into archive by Ronildo Prado (ronisp@ufscar.br) on 2017-04-24T14:07:43Z (GMT) No. of bitstreams: 1 DissIFHLG.pdf: 10702734 bytes, checksum: 3f11ee4ccb548f09f8f86d111f9afc4f (MD5) / Approved for entry into archive by Ronildo Prado (ronisp@ufscar.br) on 2017-04-24T14:07:53Z (GMT) No. of bitstreams: 1 DissIFHLG.pdf: 10702734 bytes, checksum: 3f11ee4ccb548f09f8f86d111f9afc4f (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2017-04-24T14:14:10Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 DissIFHLG.pdf: 10702734 bytes, checksum: 3f11ee4ccb548f09f8f86d111f9afc4f (MD5) Previous issue date: 2016-12-12 / Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado de São Paulo (FAPESP) / The object of this investigation is the production of the house in the Basque countryside, the baserri, in the context of the Valley of Araotz (Municipality of Oñati, Guipuzcoa, Basque Country). The study is clearly separated into two parts. On the first one, I deal with the historic formation of the baserri as an object of inquiry and in relation to the genesis of two systems of knowledge that produced, through a complex conceptual and theoretical machinery, its own defining outlines: the family-baserri and the architecture-baserri. On the second part, I try to analyze the particular assemblages which mediated, produced and/or built certain houses in the Valley of Araotz during the period of my fieldwork. This way, the aim consists on describing a particular oikogenesis without structuring it from the classifying outlines introduced by the disciplinary logical sets analyzed on the first part, and at the same time having the possibility to find these same classifiers at work and being able to deal with them as proper ethnographic data. Thus, I describe how the production of houses in Araotz is not limited to a definite series of categories anticipated by an efficient cause and that works as an analytical explanation; on the contrary, the singular acts that make baserri are interdependent and contemporary to the production of a diverse series of aspects, such as family, neighborhood, names, heritage, form and materiality of constructions, landscape and territory, animal husbandry, etc. In addition, it is necessary to state that the “pure” delimitation of these aspects is a mere abstraction and that in Araotz not a few times are these found intertwined to the architectural typologies, the anthropological family types, the valuation of material heritage or simply to the nation-state. In Araotz, not only the family is created through the construction of the house, but even the architecture and the anthropology of kinship are inferred and recreated while house and family are made. / Esta pesquisa tem por objeto a produção da casa do meio rural basco, o baserri, no âmbito do Vale de Araotz (Município de Oñati, Guipúscoa, País Basco). O estudo está claramente dividido em duas partes. Na primeira parte trato da formação histórica do baserri enquanto objeto de conhecimento e em relação à gênese de dois sistemas de saber que produziram, mediante uma complexa bricolagem conceitual e teórica, seus próprios recortes definitórios da suposta natureza do fenômeno: o baserri-família e o baserri-arquitetura. Na segunda parte procuro analisar os agenciamentos particulares que mediaram, produziram e construíram determinadas casas do Vale de Araotz no período do meu trabalho de campo. Assim, o objetivo consiste em descrever uma oicogênese particular sem estrutura-la desde os cortes classificatórios introduzidos pelos pacotes lógicos disciplinares analisados na primeira parte, e simultaneamente ter a possibilidade de encontrar esses mesmos classificadores em pleno exercício para poder tratá-los como dados propriamente etnográficos. Desse modo, descrevo como a produção das casas em Araotz não se limita a uma série definida de instâncias previstas por uma causa eficiente que faz as vezes de explicação analítica; ao contrário, os atos singulares que fazem baserri são interdependentes e contemporâneos à produção de um heterogeneidade de aspectos, como a família, a vizinhança, os nomes, a herança, a forma e materialidade das construções, a paisagem e o território, a cria de animais, etc. Cabe dizer que a delimitação “pura” desses aspectos é uma mera abstração, e que em Araotz não são poucas às vezes que eles se encontram emaranhados às tipologias arquitetônicas, aos modelos antropológicos de família, às valorizações do patrimônio cultural ou, simplesmente, ao Estado-nação. Em Araotz, não se trata unicamente de que a família se faz com a construção da casa, mas de que a própria antropologia do parentesco e a arquitetura inferem e se refazem enquanto se faz casa e família. / FAPESP: 2014/19818-6