Five students will preview their presentations for the IASTE (International Association for the Study of Traditional Environments) 2006 Conference, to be held at Thammasat University, Bangkok, Thailand, from December 15-18, 2006.

Susanne Cowan
The Village Ideal: The Dialectic of the Real and the Imaginary in Modern Planning

Gabriel Arboleda
Traditional Architecture in the Era of the Web 2.0: Using Online Participative Tools to Develop an Internet Database of Traditional Buildings

Cecilia Chu
Heritage of Disappearance? Shekkipmei and Collective Memory(s) in Posthandover Hong Kong

Mrinalini Rajagopalan
Partition and its Aftermath: The Search for Delhi's Hindu Past

Carmen Tsui
Learning from Las Vegas! The Recent Development of Macao's Mega-Casino/Resorts

This conference will explore the complex ways in which the idea of tradition has been destabilized by globalization, particularly as manifested in "hyper-traditions." We use the term "hyper" to refer to social and cultural realms, created and maintained through contemporary technologies of communication, transportation, and information transfer, that have radically transformed notions of time and space, forever changing the meanings of distance and immediacy. As one form of current time-space altering media, the hyper-real entails simulation: in this realm, the simulation is a map that precedes the territory to which it refers, a map that effectively creates the territory and becomes the reality itself. In this way, perhaps as a response to the perceived "end of tradition" or "loss of heritage" (seen by some as inevitable by-products of globalization), hyper-traditions emerge in part as references to histories that did not happen, or practices de-linked from the cultures and locations from which they are assumed to have originated. This IASTE conference focuses on how these practices transform our understanding of tradition; how they shape the experiences and processes of tourism, migration, urbanization, and cultural change; and what liberatory prospects they may offer.

Everyone welcome!