The contested interpretation of heritage landscapes in northern Ireland

Abstract

Because the nature of society is both negotiated and contested, cultural artefacts, including heritage landscapes, will be invested with differing and conflicting meanings by various social groups. This is but one aspect of what might be termed the dissonance of heritage. The present discussion is framed within the context of the argument that relics of the past are a resource to be selectively exploited in accordance with contemporary political and cultural demands. The paper uses the example of Ulster's Folk and Transport Museum to examine these issues. It concludes that while consumers do appreciate the cultural complexity of the Museum's role as one medium of communication of identity in a contested society, the institution's effectiveness in this regard is undermined by the middle‐class bias of those consumers.     

The international heritage doctrine and the management of heritage in Sarajevo,Bosnia and Herzegovina: the case of the Commission to Preserve National Monuments

Since the formal end to the conflict of dissolution of Yugoslavia in 1995, cultural heritage has been given a central role in post-war recovery and reconstruction, and in the development of sustainable peace in the region. This role reflects the pivotal function accorded to heritage in post-conflict settings within the international heritage doctrine, while re-assessing the crucial role of culture in ‘building peace in the minds of men and women’ (UNESCO) and in creating ‘greater understanding of one another among the peoples of Europe’. I will present and analyse the current formal/legal system of heritage construction and reconstruction in Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH), its relations with the international heritage doctrine and its implications on the local process of memorialisation of armed conflict. As I will argue, one fundamental pitfall of the international heritage doctrine fashioned by UNESCO and the Council of Europe is that it implicitly relies on the nation-state as the carrier and developer of collective cultural memory and identity, overlooking settings where the primary mode of group identification and legitimisation occurs at different (lower) levels, as in BiH.     

New Britain,new heritage: The consumption of a heritage culture

Abstract

Each month in Britain marks a further, official, distancing from the past and its memorials, as we move closer to the selected Millennium marker. Heritage has a particularly low profile at present with policies for destruction of the House of Lords encouraging increasing ridicule aimed at legacies from the past. In terms of media coverage, at least, the heritage bubble has burst, as indeed it had to. As soon as modest, individual or community, breaths were marshalled into corporate puff, the sheer size of the national preservation and presentation enterprise hinted at its own demise. Nicholas Howard, he of Castle Howard, provided an appropriate caution in 1993, when he noted:     

Intangible heritage embodied and Intangible heritage

Over the past decade, intangible cultural heritage (hereafter, ICH), the significance which it possesses and the continuation of its myriad manifestations have reached unprecedented levels of recognition and attention on international and national policy agendas. Traditional Medicine (hereafter, TM) has long been included under the vast umbrella of ICH, yet there have been few attempts to explore that relationship. This paper examines the practical implications of applying the UNESCO Convention for the Safeguarding of Intangible Heritage to TM, alongside the relationship of traditional medicine to the fields of human rights, public health and development. It considers, and reaches the conclusion that the cultural significance of traditional medicine combined with the fundamental principles of the Convention render the Convention significant in safeguarding traditional medicine for the future.     

Remembering Lee Kuan Yew: politics,heritage and political heritage in Singapore

The paper discusses issues of political heritage and the commemoration of notable figures within the context of the small city state of Singapore, a former British colony which celebrated 50 years of full independence in 2015. Particular reference is made to Mr Lee Kuan Yew, hailed as the founding father of the modern republic, who also died that year. Heritage overall is shown to occupy an important place in official nation building efforts, including political heritage dominated by the narrative of the success of the government formed by the party created and led by Mr Lee. Approaches to remembering the man and his legacy are considered, focusing on debate about turning his home into a memorial and possibly a national monument. The case confirms the generally observed manner in which formal depictions of political heritage, encompassing stories of influential individuals, are inextricably tied to contemporary politics. It also reveals the particular challenges of heritage management in Singapore arising from its history and official endeavours to shape public and private memories.     

Fieldwork,heritage and engaging landscape texts

This paper outlines and analyses efforts to critically engage with “heritage” through the development and responses to a series of undergraduate residential fieldwork trips held in the North Coast of Jamaica. The ways in which we read heritage through varied “texts” – specifically, material landscapes, guided heritage tours, visual imagery and creative writing – and how these readings are couched within changing emotional geographies are analysed in relation to specific field-based sites. The study highlights the dynamic nature of heritage landscapes and the creative ways in which they can be understood and represented through diverse forms of engagement and assessment.     

Action heritage: research,communities, social justice

Societies are unequal and unjust to varying degrees and heritage practitioners unavoidably work with, perpetuate and have the potential to change these inequalities. This article proposes a new framework for undertaking heritage research that can be applied widely and purposefully to achieve social justice, and which we refer to as action heritage. Our primary sources are semi-structured conversations we held with some of the participants in three heritage projects in South Yorkshire, UK: members of a hostel for homeless young people, a primary school, and a local history group. We examine ‘disruptions’ in the projects to understand the repositioning of the participants as researchers. The disruptions include introducing a scrapbook for personal stories in the homeless youth project and giving the school children opportunities to excavate alongside professional archaeologists. These disruptions reveal material and social inequalities through perceptible changes in how the projects were oriented and how the participants thought about the research. We draw on this empirical research and theorisations of social justice to develop a new framework for undertaking co-produced research. Action heritage is ‘undisciplinary’ research that privileges process over outcomes, and which achieves parity of participation between academic and community-based researchers through sustained recognition and redistribution.