Notions of Heritage: Notions de patrimoine

Par Jessica Mace et Yujie Zhu

What is heritage ? This is the most fundamental but difficult question to be answered in heritage studies. It has been addressed many times, but singular definitions always seem to come up short. This book contributes to understandings of heritage as a multifarious construct. It sees it not as something defined by material objects, but as a cultural, economic, and political resource, a discursive practice, and as a process or performative act that engages with the past, present, and future. Notions of Heritage explores the challenges and consequences that result from overlapping, outdated understandings of heritage, as well as new notions of heritage altogether, whether in form or in practice, paving the way forward in the field of critical heritage studies.

Qu’est-ce que le patrimoine ? C’est une question à la fois fondamentale et complexe à laquelle cherchent à répondre les études sur le patrimoine. Celle-ci a été maintes fois abordée, mais les définitions précises semblent toujours manquer. Cet ouvrage contribue à la compréhension du patrimoine comme construction multiforme. Il ne le considère pas en tant qu’objets matériels, mais comme une ressource culturelle, économique et politique, une pratique discursive, et en tant que processus ou acte performatif qui s’engage avec le passé, le présent et le futur. Notions de patrimoine explore les défis et les conséquences qui résultent des conceptions obsolètes et chevauchantes du patrimoine ainsi que les nouvelles notions du patrimoine, que ce soit dans la forme ou dans la pratique, qui ouvrent la voie aux études critiques sur le sujet.

Jessica Mace, Ph.D., is a Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of Art History at the University of Toronto and Adjunct Professor in the Department of Urban and Tourism Studies at the Université du Québec à Montréal.

Yujie Zhu, Ph.D., is a Senior Lecturer at the Centre for Heritage and Museum Studies of the Australian National University.

With contributions from Patrick Bailey, Adélie De Marre, Myriam Guillemette, Rebecca Hingley, Myriam Joannette, Jessica Mace, Ainslee Meredith, Magdalena Novoa E., Wenzhuo Zhang, Hao Zheng and Yujie Zhu.

• Langue: Français
• Éditeur: Presses de l'Université du Québec
• Date de sortie: 3 nov. 2021
• ISBN: 9782760555655

Jessica Mace

Jessica Mace, Ph. D., est professeure associée au Département d’études urbaines et touristiques de l’UQAM et rédactrice en chef du Journal de la Société pour l’étude de l’architecture au Canada.

Aperçu du livre

Introduction

Notions of heritage

Jessica Mace and Yujie Zhu

What is heritage ? This is the most fundamental but difficult theoretical question to be answered in heritage studies. It is a question that has been addressed many times, but singular definitions of heritage always seem to come up short. Indeed, it seems that it cannot be explained quite so easily. Some scholars argue that heritage should not be a single, standardized concept, but needs a more integrated approach to reflect its diversity and complexity.¹ This can be viewed as an echo of the critical work of David C. Harvey that encourages us to gain a deeper understanding of the historical nature of heritage and engage with the debates about identity, power and authority.² This book aligns itself with these understandings of heritage as a multifarious construct, as well as with recent scholarship in heritage studies that sees heritage not as something defined by material objects, but as a cultural, economic, and political resource,³ a discursive practice,⁴ or even as a process of various acts that engage with the past, present, and future.⁵

These plural understandings and conceptions of heritage have resulted from paradigmatic shifts in the study of heritage over the past few decades. First, these changes in research interests have precipitated in part as a reaction to the ongoing diverse social, political, economic, and cultural transformations of societies and understandings of nation states since the close of the Second World War. Since that time, public interest in heritage has increased, resulting in what has been called a heritage boom.⁶ This so-called boom may have resulted from nostalgia triggered by economic decline or deindustrialization, but also possibly from the development of mass tourism. In each case, the past is commercialized and sanitized, as noted by Robert Hewison in his development of the idea of the heritage industry.⁷ In our ever-changing and globalized world, however, this scrubbing — or in extreme cases whitewashing — of the past bears more scrutiny than ever.

Second, drawn from poststructuralism and Foucauldian perspectives on power, scholars have called for a shift in the understanding of heritage away from conservation of the material past to a recognition of the politics of the past ; politics that are carried through to a present, where they are not necessarily welcome.⁸ The pivot from the previous emphasis on conservation and preservation of material heritage — although these issues are still debated — to complex questions of the power and social consequences that heritage embodies and produces has generated a field of study and a scholarly approach called critical heritage studies. In that context, the concept of heritage itself is understood as a complex and relational phenomenon that draws together and joins various social and cultural entities, such as : material objects, places, values, ideas, emotions, memory, and identity.

Anchored within the logic of critical heritage studies, the chapters in this volume reflect on these multivalent notions, challenging, among other things, how we discuss heritage, how we create it, how we value it, and how we perform it. While each of the chapters inevitably touches on and discusses a range of issues and theories, we can broadly identify some major themes in parsing the notions of heritage that are addressed and built upon by their authors.

Heritage as discourse

The political work that heritage does is particularly evident in heritage policies and institutions that are rooted in the discourses created in and dominated by the West.⁹ Heritage professionals and experts often participate in the constitution of what Laurajane Smith has called the Authorized Heritage Discourse (AHD) — a discourse that not only organizes the way concepts like heritage are understood, but the ways in which we act, the social and technical practices that we act out, and the way that knowledge is constructed and reproduced.¹⁰ This discussion not only focuses on the right to access knowledge, but also the power of knowledge production.¹¹

The discursive turn in heritage studies helps us to understand the power that cultural heritage entails, as well as its impacts on people and societies. As shown in Chapter 1 in Rebecca Hingley’s analysis of Antarctic heritage, for instance, the language used by heritage organizations and professionals serves to construct the past in specific ways to consolidate elite interests.¹² This occurs continually as governing documents — for instance policies and charters, such as those produced by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) — which mandate the consultation of professionals and experts. This kind of expertise, however, is typically historically framed and biased to protect elite interests and identities, dating back to notions of heritage as pertaining to the material interests of the nation ; that is, monuments or buildings, for example that consolidate national rhetoric, political and capital interests. These experts are thus granted the authority to interpret and reconstruct the past, with the result that heritage becomes a professional concern removed from the peoples and the public that it impacts. Heritage professionals use these international standards, policies, charters, and, importantly, the language deployed within them, to access, record, interpret, and manage heritage sites. Effectively, these are intended to dictate the ways in which people understand and interpret the past.¹³ Hence, this top-down approach reifies elite social practices, experiences, concerns, or so-called high-culture, which is not representative of all aspects of a culture, place, or people.¹⁴

Consequently, the general public — especially the poor, the less educated, minorities, and other marginalized groups — are often excluded from decision making, management, and interpretation of cultural heritage. Not only this, but the systematic exclusion from the AHD means that these marginalized groups do not see themselves reflected in recognized heritage and are left without the power to change it, as it has become an insular entity.

As illustrated in Myriam Joannette’s contribution (Chapter 2) on the relationship between heritage and tourism, however, all heritage is dissonant and shaped by different opinions and interpretations.¹⁵ This is demonstrated in the various ways that language is used at heritage and tourist sites of different scales, from the local to the global. Therefore, the critical approach to studying heritage not only reveals the dynamics of power relationships, but also calls for pluralization and diversity. In other words, the discursive approach of heritage studies considers power in its multiple forms and not just in the hands of elites. Along these lines, using the notion of insurgent heritage, Magdalena Novoa E. (Chapter 3) describes how a grassroots community in the deindustrialized mining town of Lota, Chile, developed their own sense of heritage counter to the authorized discourse. In so doing, the critical approach to heritage studies does not limit itself to critiquing power and politics issues, but also serves to encourage transformation, thereby actively shaping social justice and ethics.

Heritage as process

Adding to critiques of discourse, recent studies also perceive cultural heritage as a process : it is not the passive preservation of things from the past but an active process of assembling a series of objects, places and practices that we choose to hold up as a mirror to the present, associated with a particular set of values that we wish to take with us into the future.¹⁶

Several scholars have emphasized how these tangible and intangible dimensions of heritage, like value, are inevitably intertwined.¹⁷ Heritage is thus not simply material (and in many cases not material at all), but rather it is about the entanglement of these diverse dimensions and their manufactured effect on people. It is a constant process of meaning making and cultural production that Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett defines as a metacultural operation.¹⁸ For her, fostering, preserving, and producing heritage are processes that take place in diverse national and international heritage policy processes.

Following from this, others have argued along similar lines and have, in particular, examined how Western models have been exported and adapted in various contexts, with varying degrees of success.¹⁹ This underscores that heritage is a culturally conditioned structure, that is not immutable, but that has the capacity to change and be changed. Relatedly, language also feeds into the processes of heritage as it serves to dictate its meanings and understandings through official channels, but also through popular usage.²⁰

Reflecting these ideas, in Chapter 4 of this volume, Hao Zheng traces the Chinese concept of heritage over time, while in Chapter 5, Wenzhuo Zhang examines the making of the city of Harbin, China, as a de-industrial and de-colonial city. Both chapters recognize heritage as a layered process, which helps to clarify the consequences of official discourses. These analyses demonstrate how heritage is used to legitimize state and non-state actor interests, for example, nation building, urban development, tourism, and value appropriation, including museumification and commercialization. More importantly, such an approach shifts attention away from focusing on heritage as something in the past, instead shifting the understanding of heritage to something in the present that is future oriented.

Heritage as value

Considering and recognizing heritage as a process with consequences leads to a discussion of heritage as value. For instance, some research emphasizes the economic value of heritage and demonstrates that heritage conservation can enhance economic development.²¹ But beyond limiting the definition of value to a monetary component — as is often the case with tourism or the commercialization of heritage — recent heritage studies have acknowledged political and social values when dealing with the use of heritage for conservation, development, and community building.²²

Given the various abstract implications that feed into definitions and understandings of value, when heritage objects or properties are evaluated by authorities or experts, value assessments may be confronted by challenges or negotiations by different groups of people with various interests.²³ Following from these considerations of value, in Chapter 6, for example, Ainslee Meredith examines the social value of community heritage collections in Queensland, Australia, in the context of post-disaster recovery. Such an approach regards heritage as a dialectic between discourse and the practice of conservation. That is, relying on predefined criteria, the authorized scientific approach to value assessment does not always coincide with the values of local communities, and presupposes that certain values are more valid than others.²⁴ This means that the way in which we perceive heritage value depends on varying degrees of authority or legitimacy dictated by factors such as scale (local, national, global), zoning (heritage and non-heritage space), and UNESCO classified heritage categories (cultural, natural, tangible, intangible, etc.). Taking UNESCO as a starting point, in Chapter 7, Adélie De Marre questions the abstract and subjective aesthetic qualities that factor into the designation of natural world heritage sites. That is, the UNESCO framework relies on the notion of beauty, as part of its criteria for Outstanding Universal Value (OUV), but provides no further qualifier. Indeed, interpretations of aesthetics are historically and culturally rooted, and their inclusion without explanation in global heritage legislation is revealing of heritage values at large. As Nigel Walter²⁵ suggests, we need to study the genealogy of value systems and the foundation of conservation philosophy ; Chapters 6 and 7 of this book rise to this challenge.

Heritage as performance

Lastly, instead of being conceived of as a material object, heritage can also be approached as performance. Approaching heritage in this way emphasizes meaning making, identity politics, and the interaction between heritage and human behaviour through practices. Rather than focusing solely on symbolic structures handed down from the past, the performance approach assumes that all human practices and all cultures are performances.²⁶

The performative angle offers two new perspectives in examining conceptions of heritage. First, performances of heritage might include heritage as a reproduction of the past through re-enactment, cultural performance, and imagination.²⁷ In this view, the past is not a thing, but a form of dialogue and play through performance. But beyond this, we could consider the performativity of heritage : performativity reveals a shift in how agency in heritage is conceptualized and exemplified. Such an approach moves away from poststructuralist understandings toward an understanding of the role of affect and embodiment at heritage sites. While recognizing materiality, the idea of embodiment empowers the affective experiences of participants.²⁸

Patrick Bailey (Chapter 8) examines how heritage and memory construct an authorized discourse in relation to national rhetoric in Australia. The idea of heritage in this study is not limited to exhibitions at the Australian War Memorial, but also covers commemorative practices. In this way, the Memorial has been approached as a performance stage in which authorities create and present certain histories in the construction of national identity. Similarly, Myriam Guillemette examines winter heritage as a form of seasonal performance in Montreal, Canada (Chapter 9). This conception of heritage includes both tangible and intangible elements, which become performative aspects of branding. In both Chapters 8 and 9, the performance approach helps guide our understanding of heritage as a process of making, unmaking, and remaking, which results from the interaction between official narratives, materials, and lived experience.

Conclusion

These are but a few brief considerations and modes of thinking about heritage that draw on a range of heritage scholars and which challenge historic norms. These critical approaches, and those demonstrated by the authors in this volume, are becoming more and more urgent in a world that is increasingly attuned to social inequity, racism, displacement, and discrimination. Indeed, the current global COVID-19 pandemic has, in many ways, further revealed and reinforced these issues, as attested to by the resurgence of the Black Lives Matter movement. These connected global crises have laid bare all manner of deeply entrenched colonial wounds and their legacies of systemic injustice. The widespread recognition of these inequities and their corresponding calls to action make the questioning of accepted modes of thinking and doing more imperative than ever.

Heritage has a significant role to play in this. We believe that these challenges require us to think further about the nature of heritage and its impact on different communities and societies. And not just how we think about heritage, but how it is practiced and how we might create models that encompass the lived experience of all the actors involved. Breaking down the various components in our understanding of the conceptions of heritage does not weaken or divide the field ; in fact, these various layered meanings and sometimes disparate points of view work together to present and create a more meaningful whole.

The new research presented in this book signals a step toward a better understanding of the underlying structures of heritage and how thinking about heritage might be dramatically changed. Yet further critical discussion of the multifaceted conceptions of heritage is needed to build upon this momentum. We need to continue to look for critical, but also practical approaches with the capacity to change and flex over time, and to guide us in understanding the ever-changing ideas of heritage for our current generation as well as for those yet to come.

1. Michael Turnpenny, Cultural heritage, an ill-defined concept ? A call for joined-up policy, International Journal of Heritage Studies, 2004, vol. 10, no 3, p. 295-307.

2. David C. Harvey, The history of heritage, in Brian J. Graham and Peter Howard (eds.), The Ashgate Research Companion to Heritage and Identity, Farnham, Ashgate, 2008, p. 19-36.

3. John E. Tunbridge and Gregory J. Ashworth, Dissonant Heritage : The Management of the Past as a Resource in Conflict, Chichester, John Wiley & Sons, 1996.

4. Laurajane Smith, Uses of Heritage, Abingdon, Routledge, 2006.

5. David C. Harvey, Heritage pasts and heritage presents. Temporality, meaning and the scope of heritage studies, International Journal of Heritage Studies, 2001, vol. 7, no 4, p. 319-338.

6. Kevin Walsh, The Representation of the Past : Museums and Heritage in the Post-modern World, New York, Routledge, 1992, p. 94.

7. Robert Hewison, The Heritage Industry. Britain in a Climate of Decline, London, Methuen, 1987.

8. Tunbridge and Ashworth, Dissonant Heritage, op. cit. ; Rodney Harrison, Heritage : Critical Approaches, New York, Routledge, 2013 ; Tuuli Lähdesmäki, Suzie Thomas, and Zhu Yujie (eds.), Politics of Scale : New Directions in Critical Heritage Studies, New York, Berghahn Books, 2019.

9. Timothy Winter, Heritage studies and the privileging of theory, International Journal of Heritage Studies, 2014, vol. 20, no 5, p. 556-572.

10. Smith, Uses of Heritage, op. cit., p. 4.

11. Harrison, Heritage : Critical Approaches, op. cit., p. 109.

12. Smith, Uses of Heritage, op. cit. ; Pierre Nora, "Between memory and history : Les lieux de mémoire," Representations, 1989, vol. 26, no 26, p. 7-24.

13. Smith, Uses of Heritage, op. cit., p. 4.

14. Michael Herzfeld, Heritage and the right to the city : When securing the past creates insecurity in the present, Heritage & Society, 2015, vol. 8, no 1, p. 3-23.

15. Tunbridge and Ashworth, Dissonant Heritage, op. cit.

16. Harrison, Heritage : Critical Approaches, op. cit., p. 4.

17. Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett, Destination Culture : Tourism, Museums, and Heritage, Berkeley, University of California Press, 1998 ; Dawson Munjeri, Tangible and intangible heritage : From difference to convergence, Museum international, 2004, vol. 56, no 1, p. 12-20 ; Laurajane Smith and Natsuko Akagawa (eds.), Intangible Heritage, London, Routledge, 2009.

18. Kirshenblatt-Gimblett, Destination Culture, op. cit.

19. See Yujie Zhu and Christina Maags, Heritage Politics in China : The Power of the Past, New York, Routledge, 2020.

20. Lucie K. Morisset, "But what are we really talking about ? From patrimoine to heritage, a few avenues for reflection," Journal of Canadian Studies, 2018, vol. 52, no 1, p. 11-56.

21. Robert Shipley and Marcie Snyder, The role of heritage conservation districts in achieving community economic development goals, International Journal of Heritage Studies, 2013, vol. 19, no 3, p. 304-321 ; Dalia A. Elsorady, The economic value of heritage properties in Alexandria, Egypt, International Journal of Heritage Studies, 2014, vol. 20, no 2, p. 107-122.

22. Ryan W. Carter and Richard Bramley, Defining heritage values and significance for improved resource management : An application to Australian tourism, International Journal of Heritage Studies, 2002, vol. 8, no 3, p. 175-199 ; Yujie Zhu, Heritage Tourism : From Problems to Possibilities, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2021.

23. Yujie Zhu, Cultural effects of authenticity : Contested heritage practices in China, International Journal of Heritage Studies, 2015, vol. 21, no 6, p. 594-608.

24. Leidulf Mydland and Wera Grahn, Identifying heritage values in local communities, International Journal of Heritage Studies, 2012, vol. 18, no 6, p. 564-587.

25. Nigel Walter, From values to narrative : A new foundation for the conservation of historic buildings, International Journal of Heritage Studies, 2014, vol. 20, no 6, p. 634-650.

26. Erving Goffman, The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life, New York, Doubleday, 1959.

27. Michael Haldrup and Jørgen Ole Bœrenholdt, Heritage as performance, in The Palgrave Handbook of Contemporary Heritage Research, London, Palgrave Macmillan, 2015, p. 52-68.

28. Yujie Zhu, Performing heritage : Rethinking authenticity in tourism, Annals of Tourism Research, 2012, vol. 39, no 3, p. 1495-1513.

Heritage as discourse

Le patrimoine comme discours

Antarctic historic sites and monuments

Conceptualizing heritage on and around the frozen continent

Rebecca Hingley

Abstract

The approach to heritage management in Antarctica is both dictated and validated according to a framework codified within the region’s overarching governing regime, the Antarctic Treaty System (ATS). Historic Sites and Monuments (HSMs) in Antarctica are protected under the ATS ; their status is granted once they have been proposed, accepted, and subsequently recorded on the official HSM List. At the time of writing (2019), there are 94 entries on this legally-binding register that represents 21 different states. There is one conceptualization of heritage in the region that dominates and is enshrined within international law, but whose is it ? Furthermore, what are the norms that underpin this conceptualization ? Finally, what are the challenges this conceptualization currently faces ? These are the guiding questions for this chapter that counters the argument for Antarctic exceptionalism in this governing space. It is tempting to consider Antarctica as an exceptional place or a place apart, but it is not exempt from the social, cultural, and political forces active elsewhere throughout the globe, and neither is its heritage. By exposing the current conceptualization of Antarctic heritage, the weaknesses of the existing framework for heritage management in this polar space become visible. Antarctic heritage may quite literally be frozen in time, but its conception and subsequent treatment is not.

Heritage frozen in time

The notion of Antarctic heritage may seem peculiar considering that humans have only relatively recently begun to interact with this polar space, and given that no Indigenous population ever permanently inhabited the region. Nevertheless, historic remains have been found and protected on and around the continent. Although the concept of heritage is not actively contested in this part of the world, it has the potential to be as multiple actors in the region engage with it, express divergent perceptions of it, and therefore could pose competing management approaches for it. The primary objective of this chapter is to dissect the concept of heritage in Antarctica by dismantling the official discourse that defines and manages historic remains in the region at present, and identifying the authors of the discourse as well as what it constitutes. This first section provides a brief history of cultural heritage management in the region ; the second section identifies who is responsible for the construction of the official discourse ; the third section unpacks how this official discourse conceptualizes heritage ; the fourth section considers the challenges the official discourse faces ; and the fifth and final section summarizes