| Abstract: |
Living heritage practices have become dynamic responses to the global structures of heritage governance structures, especially in postcolonial Southeast Asia. However, the current studies favor Authorised heritage narratives and dismiss the dialogical community engagements. This study looks at how the Tai Puan community at Ban Chiang negotiates and reinterprets the meanings of heritage in dialogical interaction with global heritage discourses, pointing toward alternative frameworks for understanding living heritage. The research is based on ethnographic fieldwork, semi-structured interviews and critical discourse analysis and captures complex processes of local actors producing, resisting and hybridizing heritage narratives. Dialogical practices are found to empower community agency and to encourage interpretations of living heritage that contradict UNESCO's Authorised frameworks. This research adds to critical heritage scholarship by developing a dialogical model of living heritage, and it offers insights into decolonial approaches to heritage governance.
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