Uses of Heritage

Laurajane Smith

• Verlag: Routledge
• Jahr: 2006
• ISBN:
  9781134368020
• Auflage: 1
• Thema: Sciences sociales
• Thema: Anthropologie

Examining international case studies including USA, Asia, Australia and New Zealand, Laurajane Smith identifies and explores the use of heritage throughout the world.

Challenging the idea that heritage value is self-evident, and that things must be preserved because they have an inherent importance, Smith forcefully demonstrates that heritage value is not inherent in physical objects or places, but rather that these objects and places are used to give tangibility to the values that underpin different communities and to assert and affirm these values.

A practically grounded accessible examination of heritage as a cultural practice, The Uses of Heritage is global in its benefit to students and field professionals alike.

Part I
THE IDEA OF HERITAGE

1
THE DISCOURSE OF HERITAGE

There is, really, no such thing as heritage. I say this advisedly, and it is a statement that I will qualify, but it needs to be said to highlight the common sense assumption that ‘heritage’ can unproblematically be identified as ‘old’, grand, monumental and aesthetically pleasing sites, buildings, places and artefacts. What I argue in this book is that there is rather a hegemonic discourse about heritage, which acts to constitute the way we think, talk and write about heritage. The ‘heritage’ discourse therefore naturalizes the practice of rounding up the usual suspects to conserve and ‘pass on’ to future generations, and in so doing promotes a certain set of Western elite cultural values as being universally applicable. Consequently, this discourse validates a set of practices and performances, which populates both popular and expert constructions of ‘heritage’ and undermines alternative and subaltern ideas about ‘heritage’. At the same time, the ‘work’ that ‘heritage’ ‘does’ as a social and cultural practice is obscured, as a result of the naturalizing effects of what I call the ‘authorized heritage discourse’.

The aim of this chapter is to demonstrate the discursive nature of heritage and to unpack this discourse to illustrate that the subject of our heritage ‘gaze’, to borrow from Urry (1990), is not so much a ‘thing’ as a set of values and meanings. ‘Heritage’ is therefore ultimately a cultural practice, involved in the construction and regulation of a range of values and understandings. How these observations are then dealt with is then the subject of Chapter 2. The argument advanced in this chapter is that there is a hegemonic ‘authorized heritage discourse’, which is reliant on the power/ knowledge claims of technical and aesthetic experts, and institutionalized in state cultural agencies and amenity societies. This discourse takes its cue from the grand narratives of nation and class on the one hand, and technical expertise and aesthetic judgement on the other. The ‘authorized heritage discourse’ privileges monumentality and grand scale, innate artefact/site significance tied to time depth, scientific/aesthetic expert judgement, social consensus and nation building. It is a self-referential discourse, which has a particular set of consequences.

The first consequence is the need to construct a material reality for itself–to establish claims about itself that make it real. In this process a number of boundaries are drawn. One boundary disconnects the idea of heritage from the present and present-day values and aspirations so that it becomes something confined to ‘the past’ (Urry 1996). Another ensures that heritage becomes the proper subject of analyses and responsibilities for a range of forms of expertise and associated ‘experts’. The power relations underlying the discourse identify those people who have the ability or authority to ‘speak’ about or ‘for’ heritage… and those who do not. The establishment of this boundary is facilitated by assumptions about the innate value of heritage, which works to obscure the multi-vocality of many heritage values and meanings. Discourse works to identify particular forms of expertise that may be called upon to make pronouncements about the meaning and nature of heritage, and to mediate and adjudicate over any competing heritage discourses. This is not to say that expert pronouncements and judgements are not contested–they are–but in this process the boundaries of any negotiations over heritage values and meanings become very tightly drawn indeed, as they become specific contests over the management or interpretation of specific heritage sites. This process works to limit broader debate about, and any subsequent challenges to, established social and cultural values and meanings.

The discourse also constructs two important sets of heritage practices, those focused on management and conservation of heritage sites, places and objects, and those tied to the visitation of sites and institutions within tourism and leisure activities. However, the broader cultural work that these practices do is often obscured by the way the discourse of heritage constructs not only the idea of heritage, but also its practices. However, what these practices are involved in are the negotiation and regulation of a range of cultural and social values and meanings. Cultural heritage management and the acts of visiting heritage sites as a tourist or other visitor become acts directly implicated in the occasional construction or reconstruction, but most certainly the maintenance, or more precisely conservation and preservation, of social and cultural meanings.

To explore these ideas a bit further, this chapter does a number of things. Firstly, it briefly reviews theories of discourses and defines the concept as used in this work. The first section of this chapter thus presents a theoretical and methodological underpinning for the rest of this chapter and the book. The second section asks ‘when was heritage’ and examines when, why and where the dominant discourse of heritage emerged and how and why it became dominant. The chapter then briefly examines the consequences of the existence of this discourse and finally reviews the range of competing heritage discourses. These themes are examined in more detail throughout Parts II and III of the book.

There is no such thing as ‘heritage’

The discursive construction of heritage is itself part of the cultural and social processes that are heritage. The practice of heritage may be defined as the management and conservation protocols, techniques and procedures that heritage managers, archaeologists, architects, museum curators and other experts undertake. It may also be an economic and/or leisure practice, and/or a social and cultural practice, as I am arguing, of meaning and identity making. These practices, as well as the meaning of the material ‘things’ of heritage, are constituted by the discourses that simultaneously reflect these practices while also constructing them.

I also want to use this section to carefully set out some parameters to my use of the term ‘discourse’. In discussing how people talk and write about ‘heritage’, I don’t want to get tangled up in debates on the relevance of postmodern arguments that discourse is all that matters. The position that I adopt epistemologically draws on critical realism and, though I acknowledge the usefulness of Foucauldian approaches to discourse, I anchor my analysis firmly in an understanding that social relations are material and have material consequences, in a way informed by critical discourse analysis. This is an important distinction, as I do not want to lose sight of the materiality of heritage at the same time as I am problematizing it.

The analysis I am constructing explicitly deals with the ‘work’ that the practices and performances of heritage ‘do’ culturally and socially. As such, I am also concerned with what Lorimer (2005: 84), drawing on the work of Thrift, calls the non, pre or more than representational aspects of social life, which are prior to or not dependent on discourse: ‘focus falls on how life takes shape and gains expression in shared experiences, everyday routines, fleeting encounters, embodied movements, precognitive triggers, practical skills, affective intensities, enduring urges, unexceptional interactions and sensuous dispositions.’

This analysis offers insights into the political consequences of space, performance and affect. As Thrift argues (2003: 2022–3):

Spaces can be stabilised in such a way that they act like political utterances, guiding subjects to particular conclusions. But, as a counterpoint, the fabric of space is so multifarious that there are always holes and tears in which new forms of expression can come into being. Space is therefore constitutive in the strongest possible sense and it is not a misuse of the term to call it performative, as its many components continually act back, drawing on a range of different aesthetics as they do so.

Thinking about discourse

At its most simplistic, as Wetherell (2001: 3) observes, discourse is the ‘study of language use’, it is an analysis of how language is used ‘to do things’, but is not reducible to language (see also Taylor 2001: 5). It is about the inter-relationship between language and practice (Hall 2001: 72). Discourse is a social action, and this idea of discourse acknowledges that the way people talk about, discuss and understand things, such as ‘heritage’, have a material consequence that matters. In addition, not only is discourse ‘used’ to do things by actors, but discourses also do things to actors and are productive independently of actors (Bourdieu and Wacquant 2000; Fischer 2003). A useful starting point is the idea of discourse ‘as a specific ensemble of ideas, concepts, and categorisations that are produced, reproduced, and transformed in a particular set of practices and through which meaning is given to physical and social realities’ (Hajer 1996: 44). As such, discourses are ‘inherently positioned’, and so the collection of ideas, concepts, and categorizations regarding heritage give rise to different ways of ‘seeing’ the social practice of managing ‘heritage’ according to the positions of social actors (Fairclough 2001: 235).

Foucault (1991), one of the more influential writers on discourse, argues that discourses are forms of expertise, collected into different disciplines, which deal with the construction and representation of knowledge. Discourse not only reflects social meanings, relations and entities, it also constitutes and governs them. The focus of much of Foucault’s work was concerned with the epistemological issues of knowledge construction and practice, in particular the power–knowledge relations underlying forms of expertise and the relations of power underpinning dominant discourses. Although his work was concerned with the contestation of and challenges to the dominant discourse, focus tended to be on the dominant discourse itself and competing and/or everyday or ‘popular’ discourses tend to be overlooked, as are the ways in which they contest and challenge bodies of expertise or dominant discourses (Purvis and Hunt 1993; van Dijk 1998). This is because Foucault was concerned not so much with general political struggles but with identifying techniques of power (Rouse 1987, 1994). For Foucault, the relationship between power and knowledge–power/knowledge–was vital, and he identified knowledge as a particular technique of power (1991). As Hall notes (2001: 78), a major critique of Foucault’s work on discourse is that he attempts to ‘absorb too much’ into the idea of discourse, and in particular to neglect the material, economic and structural factors in the way power and knowledge are deployed. Other critiques of Foucault have been concerned that his focus is ‘not about whether things exist but about where meaning comes from’ and that this focus leaves studies of discourse open to the charge of relativism (Hall 2001: 73), while others express concern that all social action may be perceived as reducible only to discourse (Fairclough 2000: 145). In addition, Foucault’s ideas about discourse have been criticized for not offering a clear methodological approach, particularly in relation to the links between knowledge and practice and social change (Sayer 1992; Fairclough 1993).

As a remedy to these issues, Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) offers a theoretical platform and methodological approach that aims to illuminate the links between discourse and practice, and the light this can shed on human relationships and social actions and issues. CDA is a well-established interdisciplinary methodology for analysing discourse and discursive practice and is located within critical social scientific theory and analysis (Chouliaraki and Fairclough 1999). In particular, the philosophy of critical realism underlies CDA, which acknowledges that things exist independently of our knowledge of them, or indeed discourses about them, but that ‘we can only know them under particular descriptions’ (Bhaskar 1978: 250). Critical realism recognizes the power of discourses, but stresses the concrete social relations that underlie and generate discourses (Bhaskar 1989; Sayer 1992; Chouliaraki and Fairclough 1999; Fairclough et al. 2003).

A central concern of CDA is identifying and understanding how people organize themselves and act through particular discourses (Fairclough et al. 2004: 2). It is also important to understand the relationships between different discourses, as discourses are elements that constrain and constitute the various relationships between people. As such, discourses may be deployed to help regulate, maintain or challenge social relations. This is not to say that discourse represents the totality of social practice, but is one of the interlinked elements of that practice. However, if we accept that discourse is an irreducible part of social life, then one route to analysing what is going on socially can be achieved through the analysis of what is going on interdiscursively (Fairclough 2001: 240). Particular practices, sections of society, such as bodies of expertise, areas of policy development, public employees, community groups and so forth have particular discourses internalized within them that help them to shape social life and particular behaviour and practices (Fairclough 2000: 144–5). Discourse may also work to bind collectives to particular internalized ideologies, assumptions and practices. The important point here, however, is the recognition of the existence of competing and inter-relating discourses that are understood to have an impact on the way people think about and interact with the social and physical world.

Integral to CDA is not simply an analysis of discourse but also an analysis of the social and political context of that discourse and an analysis of the social effects that a discourse has–that one of its elements is ‘looking closely at what happens when people talk or write’ (Fairclough 2003: 3). Of particular concern is an examination of the way discourses become intertwined with the legitimation and maintenance of power (Marston 2004). In legitimizing and naturalizing the ideologies and range of cultural and social assumptions about the way the social world works, discourses can have a persuasive power in maintaining and legitimating hierarchies of social relations (Fairclough 2003).

For Fairclough (2003: 124), the point of analysis is not only how those using a particular discourse see the world, but also a consideration of how discourses are also projective given that they may ‘represent possible worlds which are different from the actual world [but are] tied in to projects to change the world in particular directions’. An important issue here is the idea that discourses are not just about sustaining and legitimizing certain practices and social relations, but may also simultaneously be engaged with social change (Fairclough et al. 2004: 2). While CDA may privilege the study of language and how it is used, it also sees language as a tool to reveal and reflect social projects and relations, and changes within these. The micro-analysis of discourse provides a macro-analysis of social contexts (Marston 2004: 38). CDA is, in sum, concerned with developing accounts of the inter-relation of discourse with power and domination, social hierarchies, gender relations, the work of ideologies, negotiations between different social identities and the acts of production and resistance within political spheres (Fairclough 2003; Waterton et al. 2006).

The idea of discourse used in the rest of this volume incorporates the notion of discourse as advanced by CDA; in short, that discourse is both reflective of and constitutive of social practices. The following section of this chapter identifies a particular discourse and area of discursive practice centred on ideas of ‘heritage’ and its management and conservation. This is a historically situated discourse; it is also a discourse, as I will argue, situated within certain Western social experiences and social hierarchies. Due to the limits of space, and for the sake of the arguments I develop in this volume, it is a generalized characterization of a discourse. Subsequently I recognize that some nuances of this discourse will be glossed over, and that this discourse is far more mutable across both time and space than I am characterizing it. Indeed, there are elements within it that recognize and pursue agendas for social change, although these are often obscured by the self-referential tendencies of the discourse. However, my task is to identify the general characteristics of the dominant discourse in heritage, and the way it both reflects and constitutes a range of social practices–not least the way it organizes social relations and identities around nation, class, culture and ethnicity.

When was heritage?

David Harvey (2001: 320) notes that a concern with ‘heritage’, or at least a concern with ‘the past’ and material items from that past, has a much deeper history than most contemporary debates around the idea of heritage usually allow. He notes that the use of the past to construct ideas of individual and group identities is part of the human condition, and that throughout human history people have actively managed and treasured material aspects of the past for this purpose (2001: 333; see also Diaz-Andreu et al. 2005). Certainly, the use of material culture in bolstering national ideology is well documented in the literature (see, for instance, Trigger 1989; Diaz-Andreu and Champion 1996; Boswell and Evans 1999; Carrier 2005; Diaz-Andreu under review). Harvey cautions that the tendency to see heritage as largely a modern phenomena works to reduce debates about heritage to specific technical issues over contemporary management and conservation practices, and subsequently any real engagement with debates about how heritage is involved in the production of identity, power and authority are obscured (2001: 320). However, my task here is to examine what Harvey (2001: 323) himself identifies as a particular ‘strand’, but which is more usefully discussed as a particular discourse, of heritage that emerged in late nineteenth-century Europe and has achieved dominance as a ‘universalizing’ discourse in the twenty-first century. One of the consequences of this discourse is to actively obscure the power relations that give rise to it and to make opaque the cultural and social work that ‘heritage’ does. While there is a general interest in the past, there is a discourse of heritage that creates a particular set of cultural and social practices that have certain consequences in the context of late modernity. Although some commentators today see heritage as having a particular post-modern expression tied to economic commodification and hyper-relativism, this is simply not the case. The origins of the dominant heritage discourse are linked to the development of nineteenth-century nationalism and liberal modernity, and while competing discourses do occur, the dominant discourse is intrinsically embedded with a sense of the pastoral care of the material past.

As has been well rehearsed in the heritage literature, the current concept of heritage emerged in Europe, particularly Britain, France and Germany, within the context of nineteenth-century modernity (for overviews see, for instance, King et al. 1977; Walsh 1992; Bennett 1995; Barthel 1996; Pearce 1998; Jokilehto 1999). Enlightenment rationality and claims about the possibility of objective truth had overturned medieval religious ideas about the nature of knowledge. The idea of progress took on particular force at this time and both legitimized and reinforced European colonial and imperial expansions and acquisitions in the modern era. Through colonial expansion new dialogues about race developed, and ethnic and cultural identity became firmly linked with concepts of biology or ‘blood’, and Europeans believed themselves to be representative of the highest achievements of human technical, cultural and intellectual progress. Debates over Darwinian evolution had also cemented the social utility and rationality of science, and social Darwinism had further helped to naturalize the conceptual link between identity and race, and the inevitability of European cultural and technical advancement and achievement (Trigger 1989).

The industrial revolution and associated urbanization of the nineteenth century dislocated many people from a sense of social and geographical security. The French Revolution had also altered the European sense of historical consciousness (Anderson 1991; Jokilehto 1999), and undermined previous ideas of territorial sovereignty, already challenged by the treaty of Westphalia. Nation states had emerged and nationalism developed as a new meta-narrative to bind populations to a shifting sense of territorial identity and to legitimize state formation (Graham et al. 2000: 12). The emergence of a mercantile middle class as feudalism gave way to capitalism had also destabilized the political and economic role of the aristocracy. All in all, the nineteenth century may be characterized as a period that called for ‘new devices to ensure or express social cohesion and identity and to structure social relations’ (Hobsbawm 1983b: 263). National and racial discourses coalesced and naturalized a link between concepts of identity, history, and territory to establish a doctrine of ‘blood and land’ (Olsen 2001: 53). It is within this context of the developing narrative of nationalism and of a universalizing modernity that a new, more pointed, concern for what we now identify as ‘heritage’ emerged. The sense of the new Modern Europe was to be expressed in the monuments that were to be protected and managed for the edification of the public, and as physical representations of national identity and European taste and achievement. As Graham et al. (2000: 17) note, ‘to be modern was to be European, and that to be European or to espouse European values (even in the United States) was to be the pinnacle of cultural achievement and social evolution.’

The desire to propagate these values found synergy with the liberal education movement, whose sense of pastoral care identified a moral responsibility to educate the public about their civic and national du...