Uses Of Heritage

Examining international case studies including USA, Asia, Australia and New Zealand, this book 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, it demonstrates how it gives tangibility to the values that underpin different communities.

Emotional Heritage brings the issues of affect and power in the theorisation of heritage to the fore, whilst also highlighting the affective and political consequences of heritage-making. Drawing on interviews with visitors to museums and heritage sites in the United States, Australia and England, Smith argues that obtaining insights into how visitors use such sites enables us to understand the impact and consequences of professional heritage and museological practices. The concept of registers of engagement is introduced to assess variations in how visitors use museums and sites that address national or dissonant histories and the political consequences of their use. Visitors are revealed as agents in the roles cultural institutions play in maintaining or challenging the political and social status quo. Heritage is, Smith argues, about people and their social situatedness and the meaning they, alongside or in concert with cultural institutions, make and mobilise to help them address social problems and expressions of identity and sense of place in and for the present. Academics, students and practitioners interested in theories of power and affect in museums and heritage sites will find Emotional Heritage to be an invaluable resource. Helping professionals to understand the potential impact of their practice, the book also provides insights into the role visitors play in the interplay between heritage and politics.

The Industrial Heritage is the first integrated approach to the assessment, conservation, interpretation, financing and management of the complex heritage of industrial cultures. It breaks new ground, as the authors (both active workers in the field) suggest that concepts of heritage defined to deal with pre-industrial cultures must be modified to deal with the very different demands presented by industrial objects and the societies which produced them. The essence of this book is practicality, offering examples of the real issues which confront those concerned with preserving and managing the industrial heritage.

"Authorized Heritage" analyses the history of commemoration at heritage sites across western Canada. Using extensive research from predominantly government records, it argues that heritage narratives are almost always based on national messages that commonly reflect colonial perceptions of the past. Yet many of the places that commemorate Indigenous, fur trade, and settler histories are contested spaces, places such as Batoche, Seven Oaks, and Upper Fort Garry being the most obvious. At these heritage sites, Indigenous views of history confront the conventions of settler colonial pasts and represent the fluid cultural perspectives that should define the shifting ground of heritage space. Robert Coutts brings his many years of experience as a public historian to this detailed examination of heritage sites across the prairies. He shows how the process of commemoration often reflects social and cultural perspectives that privilege a conventional and conservative national narrative. He also examines how class, gender, and sexuality often remain apart from the heritage discourse. Most notably, Authorized Heritage examines how governments became the mediators of what is heritage and, just as significantly, what is not.

The concept of heritage relates to the ways in which contemporary society uses the past as a social, political or economic resource. However, heritage is open to interpretation and its value may be perceived from differing perspectives - often reflecting divisions in society. Moreover, the schism between the cultural and economic uses of heritage also gives rise to potential conflicts of interest. Examining these issues in depth, this book is the first sustained attempt to integrate the study of heritage into contemporary human geography. It is structured around three themes: the diversity of use and consumption of heritage as a multi-sold cultural and economic resource; the conflicts and tensions arising from this multiplicity of uses, producers and consumers; and the relationship between heritage and identity at a variety of scales.

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

Digital heritage can mean many things, from building a database on Egyptian textiles to interacting with family historians over Facebook. However, it is rare to see professionals with a heritage background working practically with the heritage datasets in their charge. Many institutions who have the resources to do so, leave this work to computer programmers, missing the opportunity to share their knowledge and passion for heritage through innovative technology. Open Heritage Data: An introduction to research, publishing and programming with open data in the heritage sector has been written for practitioners, researchers and students working in the GLAM (Galleries, Libraries, Archives and Museums) sector who do not have a computer science background, but who want to work more confidently with heritage data. It combines current research in open data with the author’s extensive experience in coding and teaching coding to provide a step-by-step guide to working actively with the increasing amounts of data available. Coverage includes: • an introduction to open data as a next step in heritage mediation • an overview of the laws most relevant to open heritage data • an Open Heritage Data Model and examples of how institutions publish heritage data • an exploration of use and reuse of heritage data • tutorials on visualising and combining heritage datasets and on using heritage data for research. Featuring sample code, case examples from around the world and step-by-step technical tutorials, this book will be a valuable resource for anyone in the GLAM sector involved in, or who wants to be involved in creating, publishing, using and reusing open heritage data.

This insightful Research Agenda examines the multidimensional relationships between heritage planning and pressing current societal challenges around climate, identity and development. Mapping future avenues for the field, it suggests new approaches to executing, studying and reflecting on heritage planning.