Places of Pain and Shame: Dealing With ’Difficult Heritage’

In this contribution to cross-cultural studies and heritage tourism, Logan (heritage and urbanism, Deakin U., Melbourne) and Reeves (Monash U., Australia) introduce 16 essays examining sites that represent painful/shameful episodes in a national or local community's history and the ways that governments, heritage specialists, and the communities themselves seek to commemorate, or in some cases obliterate, these memories. Photographs feature tours at Auschwitz (which raise questions about sensitivity), sites of political unrest in apartheid-era South Africa, Japanese internment camps in Indonesia, massacre sites, the caves of 'comfort women' forced to service Japanese soldiers in Taiwan, political prisons, cemeteries, early insane asylums, and memorials to victims of war, genocide, and colonial violence. Annotation 穢2009 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)