Pluralising Pasts

Heritage, Identity and Place in Multicultural Societies

G. J. Ashworth, Brian Graham, J. E. Tunbridge

• Publisher: Pluto Press
• Year: 2007
• ISBN:
  9781783716111
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Art
• Subtopic: Museum Studies

From museums and the preservation of old buildings to broader questions of community and identity, heritage is now a political issue. This book explores what heritage means now heritage is big business and how it is used to encourage people to identify with particular places and 'traditions', now it is entangled with capitalism. Examining a range of questions, including the way contemporary societies use heritage in the creation and management of collective identities, and how heritage is involved with the complexities of multicultural societies. As resources are poured into heritage and questions of identity enter into public discourse, this book shows how the heritage industry is used politically and commercially to shape the ways people represent themselves, and are represented, in diverse and hybrid societies.

1INTRODUCTION: HERITAGE AND PLURALITY

This book focuses on the ways in which contemporary societies use heritage in the creation and management of collective identities, most especially as expressed through the shaping of senses of belonging defined and transmitted through representations of place. These processes occur within a range of overlapping scales extending from the global through the national and regional to the local and individual. The increasing diversity and fragmentation of societies and the search for policies that respond to such diversity, while simultaneously if contradictorily fostering cohesion, are endowing heritage with a new set of tasks and responsibilities, few of which can easily be reconciled with each other. The ways in which plural representations of the past are implicated in the creation of plural heritages and place identities, and in the service of various policy models and aspirations of plural societies, are investigated here, both as conceptual issues, and through the medium of range of case studies drawn from societies around the world. While the book does have a policy orientation, our primary concern, however, is to address the conceptualisation of heritage in plural societies rather than the formulation of policies per se.

The past, transformed into heritage, is a ubiquitous resource with many contemporary cultural, economic and political functions. For more than 30 years, these present-day uses of the past have generated an important and growing ‘heritage industry’. Similarly, despite the contemporary theoretical conceptualisation of identity as a multiplicity of belongings, the need of individuals to belong to territorially defined social groups seems no less important now than when it was a defining characteristic of the nineteenth-century nation-state. What has changed, however, is that those identifications with representations of space and place have become more complex as globalisation has been accompanied by a re-territorialisation that seemingly privileges the regional and local at the expense of the national.

Some of these dimensions of heritage, and the ways in which it is entwined with other concepts, including memory, commemoration and tradition, were analysed and exemplified in an earlier book by the same authors, A Geography of Heritage: Power, Culture, Economy (Graham et al., 2000). This present book focuses specifically on one fundamental attribute of heritage that underlay much of the previous investigation, namely its explicit role as a – perhaps the – key factor in creating representations of place as a core attribute of identity, and the ways in which this presents both constraint and opportunity in plural, diverse and fragmented societies. Heritage as process and practice fulfils a multiplicity of roles in contemporary societies. The roles of heritage planning and management include: the fostering and strengthening of the identification of peoples with their governments and jurisdictions at various spatial scales; the identification of individuals with social groups; and the construction of images of place for promotion in various markets. Thus heritage is being loaded with expectations that extend from political legitimation through social cohesion and inclusiveness to encompass the commodification and marketing of place products, not least but also not only for tourism. The inevitable outcome is that conflicts of interest are an inseparable accompaniment to heritage as practice and process. While fully cognisant of the economic imperative attached to heritage through cultural tourism, our particular focus here is on the tensions that arise from the nexus of heritage, identity and place. Although the interplay between these is discussed at length in Part I of the book, it is necessary here to establish our ground by making some introductory definitional comments about each of these key concepts.

HERITAGE

Even within a single society, pasts, heritages and identities should be considered as plurals. Not only does heritage have many uses but it also has multiple producers, both public–private, official–non-official and insider–outsider, each having varied and multiple objectives in the creation and management of heritage (Ashworth and Graham, 2005). In addition societies, notably in Western countries, are becoming more self-consciously socially and culturally diverse, a fragmentation which raises issues as to how this heterogeneity should be reflected in heritage selection, interpretation and management. As Littler and Naidoo (2004) argue, the definition of heritage has ‘morphed’ over time. In this present context, we define the concept as the use of the past as a cultural, political and economic resource for the present, our concern being with the very selective ways in which material artefacts, mythologies, memories and traditions become resources for the present.

Thus the study of heritage does not involve a direct engagement with the study of the past. Instead, the contents, interpretations and representations of the heritage resource are selected according to the demands of the present and, in turn, bequeathed to an imagined future. It follows, therefore, that heritage is less about tangible material artefacts or other intangible forms of the past than about the meanings placed upon them and the representations which are created from them (Graham et al., 2000; Graham, 2002). It is meaning that gives value, either cultural or financial, to heritage and explains why certain artefacts, traditions and memories have been selected from the near infinity of the past. Meanings are marked out by identity, and are produced and exchanged through social interaction in a variety of media; they are also created through consumption. These meanings further regulate and organise our conduct and practices by helping set rules, norms and conventions:

It is us – in society, within human culture – who make things mean, who signify. Meanings, consequently, will always change, from one culture or period to another.

(Hall, 1997: 61)

In sum, therefore, heritage is present-centred and is created, shaped and managed by, and in response to, the demands of the present. As such, it is open to constant revision and change and is also both a source and a repercussion of social conflict.

This idea of present-centredness is a recurrent theme in the recent literature on heritage and has profound implications for the study of the concept in plural societies. For Lowenthal (1998: xv), ‘in domesticating the past we enlist [heritage] for present causes … [it] clarifies pasts so as to infuse them with present purposes’, one result being that, ‘heritage vice becomes inseparable from heritage virtue while under the aegis of national patrimony looms a multinational enterprise’ (Lowenthal, 1998: 5). This present-centred perspective is reiterated by Peckham (2003) who, citing Halbwachs (1992), argues that heritage is often used as a form of collective memory, a social construct shaped by the political, economic and social concerns of the present. Inevitably, heritage is characterised inherently by a dissonance created through its simultaneous multiple commodification as cultural and economic capital.

Despite the simultaneous growth since the 1960s of many manifestations of individual heritage such as genealogy, Lowenthal (1998) claims that heritage has moved from the private to the public realm and that, more and more, it denotes that which we hold jointly. He observes, too, the legacy of ‘oppression’ in validating present identity and the national being replaced or supplemented by the local and ethnic so that mainstream heritage agencies ‘now find it hard to limn a national saga without causing ethnic or religious offence’ (1998: 83). Heritage conflict has thus become a global issue because it is so deeply implicated in the processes of social inclusion and exclusion that define societies characterised by ever more complex forms of cultural diversity. While its origins can be linked to the nineteenth-century rise of ethno-nationalism and Romantic notions of attachment to place, heritage can also function as a form of resistance to such hegemonic discourses and a marker of plurality in multicultural societies.

IDENTITY AND PLACE

Individuals have always been capable of identifying with different social groups and spatial scales. Few of these differences cause conflict and many – as in the so-called ‘Russian doll model’ – are even comfortably complementary. Contemporary societies, however, are experiencing both more diversity and greater fragmentation. Thus many pasts become transformed through many heritages into many identities, only some of which are associated with place. These narratives of belonging may support, coexist with or conflict with each other. Thus identity can be visualised as a multi-faceted phenomenon that embraces a range of human attributes, including language, religion, ethnicity, nationalism and shared interpretations of the past (Guibernau, 1996). It is constructed into discourses of inclusion and exclusion, of those who qualify for membership, and those who do not. Identity refers to the processes, categories and knowledges through which communities are defined as such, and the ways in which they are rendered specific and differentiated (Donald and Rattansi, 1992). Central to the concept of identity is the idea of the Other – groups, both internal and external to a state – with competing and often conflicting beliefs, values and aspirations (Said, 1978). The attributes of Otherness are thus fundamental to representations of identity, which are constructed in counter-distinction to them. As Douglas argues:

the function of identity lies in providing the basis for making choices and facilitating relationships with others while positively reinforcing these choices. ... In emphasising sameness, group membership provides the basis for supportive social interaction, coherence and consensus. As identity is expressed and experienced through communal membership, awareness will develop of the Other. ... Recognition of Otherness will help reinforce self-identity, but may also lead to distrust, avoidance, exclusion and distancing from groups so-defined.

Douglas (1997: 151–2)

However this could be and, on occasion, has been read as meaning that identity is fixed and stable. Rather, it too is linked to ‘senses of time’ and atavistic fears in that it is not ‘secured by a lifelong guarantee’ and is ‘eminently negotiable and revocable’ (Bauman, 2004: 11).

HERITAGE, IDENTITY AND PLACE

In defining such ideas of inclusion and exclusion, people call upon an affinity with places or, at least, with representations of places which, in turn, are used to legitimate their claims to territory. By definition, these are representations of imaginary places, but they still constitute a powerful part of the individual and social practices that people consciously use to transform the material world into cultural and economic realms of meaning and lived experience. In sum, the functions of place identity include: the fostering and strengthening of the identification of peoples with their governments and jurisdictions at various spatial scales; the promotion of political ideologies that justify the right to exercise power over others; the identification of individuals with social groups; and the construction of images of place for promotion in various markets for various purposes. Senses of place are therefore the products of the creative imagination of the individual and of society, while place identities are not passively received but are ascribed to places by people. While commonplace, such statements need re-stating here for two reasons.

First, as occurs with nationalist ideologies, people often essentialise identities as intrinsic qualities of landscapes and cityscapes. According to Lowenthal (1985), the past validates the present by conveying an idea of timeless values and unbroken lineages and through restoring lost or subverted values. Thus, for example, there are archetypal national landscapes, which draw heavily on geographical imagery, memory and myth (Gruffudd, 1995). Continuously being transformed, these encapsulate distinct home places of ‘imagined communities’ (Anderson, 1991), comprising people who are bound by cultural and – more explicitly – political networks, all set within a territorial framework that is defined through whichever traditions are currently acceptable, as much as by its delimited geographical boundary.

Second, it is not enough merely to conclude that places are imagined entities. Rather, if individuals create place identities, then obviously different people, at different times, for different reasons, create different narratives of belonging. Senses and images of place, which are thus user-determined, polysemic and unstable, must also be related to senses of time if only because places are in a continuous state of becoming (Pred, 1984). Heritage operates as the key linkage in this process but as a dynamic rather than a fixed entity. Heritages can be invented or discarded as the demands of contemporary societies change, as is presently occurring in the former Central and Eastern Europe, where twentieth-century pasts shaped by Nazism, Marxist-Leninism and ethno-nationalism have to be reinvented to reflect the new present of European integration, reconciliation and atonement (Tunbridge, 1998). Thus heritage can be as much about forgetting as remembering the past.

THE COMPLICATING OF HERITAGE

It is readily apparent even from these brief introductory comments that the interaction of heritage, identity and place is complicated by the ways in which this trinity of what are themselves contested terms overlap with numerous others. We discuss this further in Chapter 2 but, at this stage, it is necessary to introduce and distinguish between four key sets of concepts that are intrinsic to the debate on heritage, identity and place that is at the core of this book. These are culture and the interlinked triad of assimilation, multiculturalism and pluralism.

Culture

To observe that, ‘“culture” is … something of a muddle’ Mitchell (2000: 14) is to reiterate an on-going argument that the concept is too elusive, too all-encompassing and even too inherently contradictory to be of use and, as such, even potentially dangerous (Duncan and Duncan, 2004). Nevertheless, ‘culture [is] just too important a concept to leave languishing, precisely because ... culture is politics’ (Mitchell, 2000: 36). Duncan and Duncan (2004: 394) see a need to rethink culture and the idea of cultural coherence in an age of heterogeneity, porous boundaries, complexity and far-reaching networks. Hence, they argue that ‘the definition of culture should be, and should remain, broad and empirically unspecified.’ For them, culture does have ontological status rather than merely being a belief, not least because it has practices – to which could be added knowledge – of which heritage is one. To Sewell (1999), therefore, culture exists only in and through practices. The problem is that these practices are legion. As Mitchell writes:

Culture consists in practices, but is also a ‘system of signification’. … [It] is a way people make sense of the world … but it is also a system of power and domination. Culture is a means of differentiating the world, but it is also global and hegemonic. Culture is open and fluid, a ‘text’ ... always open to multiple readings and interpretations, but it is something with causative power ... and hence must be unitary and solid. ... Culture is a level, or sphere, or domain, or idiom; but it is also a way of life. Culture is clearly language – or ‘text’ or ‘discourse’ – but it is also the social, material construction of such things as ‘race’ or ‘gender’. Culture ... is politics, but it is also the both ordinary and [paraphrasing Matthew Arnold’s words] the best that [has been] is thought and known.

(Mitchell, 2000: 64)

Heritage precisely mirrors culture to the extent that the terms could be interchangeable in this quotation – one reason why the expression ‘cultural heritage’ is tautological in the sense that all heritage is, perforce, cultural. In this exploration of fluid, overlapping and multiple meanings, it is important to remember, however, the caveat that ‘cultures are relational, contested and sometimes deployed in dangerously essential terms’ (Duncan and Duncan, 2004: 396).

Assimilation, multiculturalism and pluralism

Assimilation can be defined as the processes by which communities not merely intermix but through which one culture may be absorbed by another. It is often treated as a synonym of acculturation and integration and thus implies the obliteration of difference, a set of processes that may be articulated through space (Johnston et al., 2000). As such, policies of assimilation are frequently used in counter-distinction to policies for multiculturalism and cultural pluralism, which work in different ways across different sites but, in their broadest sense, refer to the recognition or, at least, toleration of different cultural or ethnic groups within socially plural societies (Goldberg, 1994). Haylett (2001: 357) sees this definition, which embodies the belief that different cultural or ethnic groups have a right to remain distinct rather than assimilating to mainstream norms (Johnston et al., 2000), as evoking ideas of cultural tolerance and equality. He argues, however, that often these latter are not substantially connected to the political and economic mechanisms that ‘could make these aspirations meaningful or realisable’.

The term, ‘plural society’ has been employed in different ways but is used here in its broader sense, in that most societies are marked by cultural diversity, most commonly by ethnicity, race, language, class and religion. It could be interpreted as having some affinity with notions of multiculturalism, which accept plurality as opposed to an insistence on assimilation. But pluralism also invokes the idea of ‘multiple cultures’, of ‘standing alone’ or ‘separate development’, in which cultural identity becomes a strategy of resistance to hegemonic state identities. Again pluralism has been criticised for ‘implying a degree of equality between different sections within such societies, obscuring the existence of deeply structured inequalities between them’ (Johnston et al., 2000: 587).

The term ‘plural heritage(s)’ is one that is employed frequently in the subsequent discussion. We are cautious about using the term, ‘multiculturalism’, as ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of figures
• Acknowledgements
• Preface
• 1. Introduction: heritage and plurality
• Part I: The conceptual context
• Part II: A typology of plural societies
• Part III: Heritage in plural societies
• References
• Subject index
• Index of places