367 ISSN 0894-6019, © 2012 The Institute, Inc. Mediating Heritage Preservation And Rural Development: Ecomuseum Development in China William Nitzky School of Human Evolution and Social Change Arizona State University ABSTRACT: This paper examines the complex role government- led ecomuseum projects play in contemporary Chinese society as a strategy to preserve cultural heritage and stimulate economic development in impoverished ethnic minority regions. Drawing on ethnographic data collected from nine ecomuseums in south- west China, this paper explores how the foreign ecomuseum concept, originating as a community-based approach to involve local populations in the protection, development, and manage- ment of local heritage through a “living museum” space, has been localized within the Chinese context. It shows how ecomu- seums manifest in rural locales as they are implicated in multiple social, economic, and political agendas for cultural preservation and development that often extend beyond the community. At the same time, the top-down government-led ecomuseum ap- proach has become the impetus for reconfiguring villagers’ re- lationships with their cultural heritage and has recently created spaces where different articulations of culture, memory, meaning, and values are expressed, negotiated, and contested. The range of cases profiled throughout this study illustrate the complexities and political dimensions that shape “ecomuseum with Chinese characteristics.”