01925nas a2200205   4500000000100000000000100001008004100002653001000043653001500053653001400068653001300082653003300095100002200128245011300150856014800263300001200411490000700423520126900430022002001699                                       d10aJapan10aassemblage10acommunity10aDisaster10aIntangible cultural heritage1 aAndrew Littlejohn00aThe potential of intangible loss: reassembling heritage and reconstructing the social in post-disaster Japan  uhttps://www.scopus.com/inward/record.uri?eid=2-s2.0-85112144051&doi=10.1111%2f1469-8676.13095&partnerID=40&md5=6c7395e0e69a4da2d411355af149b598  a944-9590 v293 aAttitudes towards cultural heritage have long been characterised by an ‘endangerment sensibility’ concerned with preventing losses. Recently, however, critical heritage scholars have argued that loss can be generative, facilitating the formation of new values and attachments. Their arguments have focused primarily on material heritage, whose risk of damage and disappearance is accelerating due to growing environmental crises. After Japan’s 2011 tsunami, however, heritage scholars there began probing a related question: what happens when supposedly ‘intangible’ heritage is damaged? Taking this question as a starting point, I ask how recent applications of assemblage theory in studies of heritage can shed light on destruction s role in forming and reforming places and peoples. Drawing on fieldwork in Japan’s disaster regions, I argue that disassembly is a form of damage rendering both the things mediating heritage and its reciprocal mediation of social life matters of concern. I suggest that the potential of loss lies in how heritage can be made to translate other interests during its reassembly. By contrast, attempts to perpetuate pre-existing relations can render the social more rather than less precarious, depending on the context.  a09640282 (ISSN)