Elephanta Island: World Heritage, Cultural Conservation and Options for Nature Conservation
Elephanta Island lies within a large natural harbour 7 km east of Mumbai, India, and is the site of several cave temples devoted to the Hindu deity Siva dated 4th to 9th century AD. The number, scale and quality of the bas-reliefs and sculptures within the temples, together with their uniqueness and setting, secured inscription as a World Heritage (Cultural) Site in 1987. Otherwise, the silvan nature of the island contrasts vividly with the densely populated city nearby that is largely bereft of urban greenspace. Could conservation measures for the cave temples have incidental benefit for the natural environments of the island, providing an economical means of securing a natural conservation area for Mumbai inhabitants? Exploring this apparently simple question revealed a complex situation necessitating consideration of issues well beyond the techniques of either cultural or nature conservation.
The Rise and Fall (?) of Hội An, a UNESCO World Heritage Site in Vietnam
The title of UNESCO “World Heritage Site” is a much desired marker of quality tourism. Yet social scientists rarely discuss the designation’s impact on specific locales, the programme’s effectiveness or its negative effects. Ethnographic fieldwork conducted at the World Heritage Site of Hội An in Vietnam since 1998 permits exploration of the practices, processes and outcomes of achieving World Heritage Site status, as well as of the impact of that status on the lives of local people. The World Heritage project fails in its approach to cultural heritage in less affluent destinations, hardly protects material heritage and possibly contributes to the destruction of the sites that it aims to protect.
Heritage Languages: In the 'Wild' and in the Classroom
Heritage speakers are people raised in a home where one language is spoken who subsequently switch to another dominant language. The version of the home language that they have not completely acquired – heritage language – has only recently been given the attention it deserves from linguists and language instructors. Despite the appearance of great variation among heritage speakers, they fall along a continuum based upon the speakers’ distance from the baseline language. Such a continuum-based model enables researchers and instructors to classify heritage speakers more accurately and readily. This article discusses the results of research on lower-proficiency speakers, identifying recurrent features of heritage languages in phonology, morphology, and syntax. Preliminary results indicate that different heritage languages share a number of structural similarities; this finding is important for the understanding of general processes involved in language acquisition. The article also presents implications of the main findings for language education and identifies areas needing further study.