Economies of culture: Theme parks, museums, and capital accumulation in China, Hong Kong and Taiwan

The dissertation shows that representing cultural difference has become a fundamental means of accumulating capital in the late twentieth century. It focuses on the juncture of three issues central to exhibitions of ethnic and indigenous cultures: transnational flows of capital, nation-building, and constructing cultural identities. I argue that theme parks and museums form an important social space in which economic, political, technological forces join together to create social norms and standards that replace the law to become principles of power. I compare three historical moments of social change in the 1980s and the 1990s. In China's transformation from socialism to capitalism, the Chinese theme park blurs the boundaries between the cultural and economic domains. It utilizes ethnic cultures as an important source to generate economic value while deliberately displays them as national cultures. In Hong Kong's transition from a British colony to China's Special Administrative Region, the Hongkongese museum represents indigenous culture to construct a collective Hongkong identity through placing the culture in the colonial context of the global economy. In the process of building the Taiwanese nation, the Taiwanese museum forms an expert system to produce scientific knowledge about Taiwan's aboriginal cultures but primarily for the purpose of constructing an authentic national culture. All these cases show that the appropriation of cultures through theme parks and museums has changed the way social power operates. This point has important implications for museum practice; it has raised critical questions about the museum's role in constructing social experience for museum professionals.