Lights and shadows over the Recommendation on the Historic Urban Landscape: ‘managing change’ in Ballarat and Cuenca through a radical approach focused on values and authenticity

The 2011 Recommendation on the Historic Urban Landscape (HUL) is the most recent incorporation to the global process of heritage production that was triggered by the 1972 World Heritage Convention. Five years since the publication of the Recommendation, it is clear that, despite UNESCO’s efforts, opportunities for the implementation of the HUL on a global level have been scarce. An increasing awareness regarding public participation has provided an additional opportunity for the HUL, due to an enhanced understanding of an ideal urban heritage management that, avant la lettre, disregards traditional up-down decision-making processes. Our paper provides a critical evaluation of the positive and negative aspects which have arisen from the implementation of HUL Recommendation with regards to charters and theory. We have also taken into consideration the risks that are concomitant to its ambitious holistic approach, as well as the ambiguities with regards to the definition of landscape on which the HUL is based. This paper also identifies the opportunities that a renewed focus on heritage values and authenticity management, as reflected in the cases of Cuenca (Ecuador) and Ballarat (Australia), may offer for the successful implementation of the HUL approach.     

License to judge: fleshing out expertise in cultural policy

This paper endeavours to examine different types of expertise in cultural policy. Unlike other conceptual studies, it focuses on the abstract notion of expertise i.e. the different forms of cognition and knowledge deployed in cultural policy, rather than the personage of an expert. The article proposes a distinction between arts expertise and technocratic expertise and employs five analytical categories within which they are discussed and compared with each other. Although a clear-cut differentiation seems impossible to achieve, the binary approach helps to shed light on how different forms of expert judgement in cultural policy can be framed and legitimised as well as how vulnerable they are to political influence and the concomitant pressure of the democratisation of policy-making.     

Networked practices of intangible urban heritage: the changing public role of Dutch heritage professionals

This study examines the changing roles of heritage professionals by focusing on the participatory practices of intangible urban heritage. Developments towards democratisation in the heritage sector led to a growing expectation that heritage professionals would work with local publics. This democratisation is manifested in (1) the use of digital media for grassroots heritage practices, (2) the broader scope of what is defined as heritage, and (3) a focus on communities in UNESCO’s Convention for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage. Heritage professionals are thus challenged to develop inclusive heritage practices, particularly in cities, which are characterised by a dynamic nature and cultural diversity. In this article, I analyse how urban heritage organisations and professionals have responded to these developments. Drawing on interviews and a qualitative content analysis of these organisations’ policy documents, I examine the ways in which heritage professionals reconsider their public role through what I define as networked practices of intangible heritage. This concept captures the networked structure in which heritage professionals increasingly work, and also demonstrates how heritage is given meaning through public practices that take place in both the physical and virtual realms of contemporary cities.     

The participation myth

Policy rhetoric around strategies to and the value of increasing participation in the arts has been well documented internationally over more than a decade. But in the UK, which is the focus for this article, targets to increase participation have been consistently missed and there remains a direct correlation between those taking part in cultural activity and their socio-economic status. The starting point for this article is to examine the barriers to increasing participation in the arts and question the way that such policy has been implemented within the English context, which may have relevance for policy-making in other countries. What is demonstrated is that policy implementation is influenced by vested interest of those in receipt of funding and that a narrow range of voices, from a powerful cultural elite, are involved in the decision-making in the arts. The article makes a case for widening the range of voices heard in decision-making in order to support both artistic practice and public engagement.     

Online petitions in Australia: Information,opportunity and gender

This article compares offline and online petition signing in Australia, to examine whether online forms of political activity can mobilise citizens who would otherwise not participate. Using data from the 2010 Australian Election Study and a model of civic voluntarism comprising online and offline resources, the article presents several unexpected findings. First, women are significantly more likely than men to sign both written and e-petitions, and this will likely continue with the increasing circulation of e-petitions and corresponding decline in written petitions. Second, Australians from a non-English-speaking background are underrepresented in the signing of written petitions but not of e-petitions. Civic skills gained in the workplace and voluntary organisations positively predict both forms of petition signing, but language, gender and income do not constitute barriers to the signing of e-petitions. This article contributes to emerging evidence the internet can mobilise traditionally underrepresented groups to participate in political activity.

本文对澳大利亚脱线和在线请愿做了比较,以了解在线的政治活动能否动员起本来不参与政治的公民。笔者使用了2010年澳大利亚选举研究的数据以及比较在线与脱线资源的公民志愿行动模型,获得了若干意想不到的发现。首先,比起男子,妇女联署纸本及电子请愿书的可能性会大得多,这种情况会伴随着电子请愿的流行和纸本请愿的式微而继续下去。公民在工作单位以及志愿者组织那里获得的技能有助于他们积极参与两种请愿,而语言、性别、收入也不构成电子请愿的障碍。本文印证了互联网可以动员以往不大被代表的人群参与政治活动的说法。     

Young people's involvement in policy research

This article reviews the legacy of young people's involvement in policy research in the UK and proposes an approach of collaboration with young people that may be useful in other settings. It critiques the sociocultural and socioeconomic context relevant to young people's involvement in research, using the Young Researcher Network (YRN) as a case study. A key benefit of using the YRN has been the ability to identify and analyse potential barriers and facilitators influencing the relationships of young people and organisations whilst both groups worked together to improve policy. This allowed young people to connect to the policy environment in a meaningful way. The approach has been embedded into The Office for the Children's Commissioner in England, the National Institute for Health Research as well as other leading youth organisations in the UK, which is likely to increase the direct involvement of young people in policy research.     

Book-in-a-box to Xbox: materiality and the contemporary textual object

Book-in-a-box to Xbox is a discussion of developments in the material form of contemporary textual objects and of the impact this has on user/reader experience. The article formulates itself as a contemporary book history, situating the texts in question within the broader sphere of digital culture, and analyses textual function, reception, form and user interaction, presenting a cultural theorising of contemporary textual objects. The article conducts these discussions via a consideration of Marc Saporta's Composition No. 1 (a key example of materially experimental literature); recent developments in e-reading and the implications of these developments; designing interactivity in massively multiplayer online gaming; and emerging forms of sociality, or shared experience, in virtual reading and playing communities.     

Assessing Representation at Different Scales of Decision Making: Rethinking Local is Better

The nature and quality of representation in public participation is crucial to reaching acceptable environmental decisions that can be implemented. Ten case studies of natural resource management groups involved in agriculture in south western Australia were conducted at four spatial scales—state, regional, land conservation district (shire or county), and subcatchment. Qualitative analysis identified the desirable qualities of representatives, and then compared perceptions of current practice at the four scales against these ideals. Desirable qualities were being an active participant, competency (skills and knowledge), credibility, adopting the group identity and commitment, communicating outside the group, having established social networks, and an ability to function in multiple roles. Analysis across scales suggests that for groups at broader spatial scales of organizing, such as the state level, representation was closer to achieving the desired qualities than at other scales. This finding is contrary to much of the current rhetoric in natural resource management, and environmental management more generally, that "local is better." The article concludes with some thoughts as to why this is the case, suggesting that the success or otherwise of representation, and the public participation in which representatives are involved, is influenced not only by the scale of decision making but also by how representatives are selected and what they are expected to achieve.     

Why Citizens Do and Do Not Attend Public Meetings about Local Cancer Cluster Investigations

Why do citizens choose to attend or not to attend community public meetings about possible cancer clusters? To answer this question, we examine self‐report data collected during a series of mail surveys conducted in six communities experiencing current health investigations into suspect levels of cancer or cancer clusters. We analyze the data using quantitative content analysis while also providing qualitative summaries and categorizations of survey participants' reasons for attending or not attending a specific public meeting in their community. In addition, we use survey data related to respondents' past participation and sociodemographic characteristics. The results found that rational reasons (e.g., to get information) dominated citizens' justifications for attending the public meetings, whereas socioeconomic and mobilization factors (e.g., did not hear about meeting, too busy) were most commonly cited as reasons for not attending. Less common but still present were relational considerations, such as believing the people in charge were fair. Taken together, the findings suggest that the majority of citizens who attended the public meetings could be categorized as the curious, the fearful, and the available. In comparison, the majority of citizens who did not attend could be described as the uninformed, the indifferent, the occupied, and the disaffected.     

'Hired Hands' or 'Local Voice': Understandings and Experience of Local Participation in Conservation

In recent years, the notion of local participation has emerged as a major force in both policy-making and political philosophy. This paper explores the role that participation is playing in mediating relations between local people, conservation organizations and the ideas and practices of nature conservation in England. Drawing upon empirical research in the county of Kent, the paper argues that there are systematic discrepancies between the motives, experiences and understandings of the various policy actors towards the theory and practice of a participatory conservation. It argues that these apparent discrepancies have serious implications for both the credibility and the effectiveness of present initiatives, whereby participatory practice serves to reshape existing conceptions of conservation and rural space.