Defeating the Panopticon -- Beautiful or Mournful? The Contested Meanings of the Tsunami Museum in the Post-disaster landscape of Banda Aceh, Indonesia -- Decolonize: the Mosi-oa-Tunya / Victoria Falls World Heritage Site, Engaging the Unspoken Truths -- Ballance and de Belalcázar: What violent action against two statues in New Zealand and Colombia reveals about the political power of landscape -- Will this Kill that? -- Contesting the Memory of Sarajevo -- Acts of ongoing repression? Aboriginal Cultural heritage and landscape protection in Postcolonial Australia -- Do we need to topple Watson? -- Changing the collective narratives of nation and self? ‘explorer’ and massacre memorials in 21st century Australia -- Ephemeral occupations: Plaza Dignidad and the contestation of Chilean democracy.

Geographers – and others – have been long aware that landscapes are neither natural or neutral. This is particularly true of landscapes of memory. Powerful groups inscribe such landscapes with both a preferred vision of the past and with sets of idealized societal values, and morays. Yet, and despite the authoritative weight such landscapes carry, they can be challenged. Even before the monument topplings of 2020, groups across the globe were challenging official memory discourses. This volume offers case studies of what might be considered global iconoclasm. Drawing upon original international case studies, this monograph critically engages with and reveals the dynamics of landscape contestation. From the Tsunami Museum of Banda Aceh to the echoes of Mussolini’s Fascist Italy by way of the decolonization of sites in Australia, New Zealand, Colombia and Africa the processes of landscape contestation are innovatively teased out by established and newly emerging scholars. This book should be of interest to any scholar interested in the politics of mnemonic landscapes. The Editors: Professor Michael Ripmeester is Professor of Geographer in the Geography and Tourism Studies at Brock University in St. Catharines, ON. Canada. Dr. Matthew Rofe is an Urban-Cultural Geographer and serves as the Lead Research Degree Coordinator in UniSA Creative at the University of South Australia, Adelaide, South Australia.