Comparative case analysis reveals the decoupling of cultural visibility from material support in privately owned heritage houses, highlighting uneven fiscal burdens in urban preservation.
Key Points
To evaluate how heritage governance decouples cultural visibility from material support, shifting maintenance and financial risks onto private owners of diasporic properties.
Comparative case analysis of four privately owned Chinese heritage houses situated along the Chao Phraya River in Bangkok, Thailand.
Theoretical application of Nancy Fraser's recognition-redistribution framework alongside the Authorized Heritage Discourse model to examine ownership structures, adaptive reuse, and institutional oversight.
Heritage governance operates through selective recognition, actively promoting historic structures for tourism and city branding while withholding public fiscal support for their physical conservation.
Sites experience divergent regulatory outcomes, spanning formal monument status accompanied by regulatory restrictions without state funding to informal legitimacy driven by small-scale community entrepreneurship.