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International Journal of Heritage Studies Vol. 10, No. 4, September 2004, pp.

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Heritage: Pride or Passion, Product or Service?


Gary Edson

Concerns about cultural, natural, tangible, and intangible heritage have caused governments to enact protective legislation, courts to impose penalties, and organisations to conduct awareness campaigns. Heritage has become an important economic attraction that draws hundreds of thousands of visitors and billions of dollars into communities around the world, but what is the heritage that is being protected and promoted? This paper is a commentary on the theoretical basis of heritage. The questions posed and the ideas offered are not intended to condone the unregulated movement of cultural or natural materials (heritage) in any form. The plunder of archaeological sites, the theft of cultural and natural objects and specimens, and the destruction of structures and locations for profit or during times of conflict are heinous acts. These activities incite the spoilage of history, deplete traditional values, and degrade the basic notion of human decency. Nevertheless, the question remains: what is heritage?
GaryEdson 0 gary.edson@ttu.edu 00000September 2004 International 10.1080/1352725042000257366 RJHS10401.sgm 1352-7258 Original Taylor 2004 4 10 &Article and Francis (print)/1470-3610 Francis Journal Ltd Ltd of Heritage (online) Studies

Keywords: Heritage; Culture; Heritage Industry; Cultural Tourism; Illicit Trafficking; Heritage Management; Heritage Attractions Symbols and myths come from such depths that they are part and parcel of the human being.1 However, the distinction between myth and history [heritage] has become an increasing problem for western societies throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries as scholars have become increasingly aware of the ways in which actual events can be interpreted to produce different meanings for different people.2 Where does the myth end and heritage begin? Perhaps they are the same, and if they are, then the notion requires no further explanation. However, the question acquires a different patina if, when the myth ends, the commerce (in the broadest sense of the concept) begins. The history of humankind is filled with interesting examples of myths
Gary Edson, Museum of Texas Tech University. Correspondence to: gary.edson@ttu.edu ISSN 13527258 (print)/ISSN 14703610 (online) 2004 Taylor & Francis Ltd DOI: 10.1080/1352725042000257366

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evolving through heritage to commercialisation. The examples, old and new, include beliefs, practices, and invented traditions. In most instances, the event or circumstance moved through two or more of these stages to find full endorsement as commercial ventures clocked in the trappings of heritage. One particular phenomenon that has exercised critics in the past few years has been the proliferation of representations of the past that have come to be termed heritage.3 This statement, written over a decade ago, proclaims a query that surpasses social, economic, political, and geographical explanation. What is heritage, and why has it become a commodity to discover, preserve, and exploit in communities around the world? The ubiquitous nature of the heritage phenomenon, although a source of some wonderment, has a socio-psychological basis that has reasserted itself as the demands of contemporary life have escalated. Ergo, whenever humankind has looked for something solid on which to found their lives, they have chosen, not the facts in which the world abounds, but the myths of an immemorial imagination 4 Assuming that heritage is something delineating the psychology, customs, or ideals of society, and that it is passed down from preceding generations in a tangible or intangible form, then it is, to paraphrase Eric Hobsbawm, those activities and events that establish or symbolise social cohesion or the membership of groups, real or artificial communities.5 It is possible to identify many activities that were created for social or religious purposes and evolved into a form of heritage industry. However, rather than go into detail about individual items of invented heritage, a few representative examples may suffice: Christmas was invented in the fourth century to eclipse a festival of a rival religion.6 Since that time is has become the single most important commercial occurrence in the USA and it is rapidly gaining a similar reputation in other countries of the world. Bastille Day was popularised, to transform the heritage of the Revolution into a combined expression of state pomp and power and the citizens pleasure.7 One further example of invented tradition is the sports club. These organisations depend on invented tradition to develop and sustain a loyal following. A good representation of this approach is the Dallas Cowboys football teamoften called Americas Team. However, it is important not to get lost in the example and forget the basis for the issue of fabricated heritage. It is the intention of this paper to present a theoretical assessment of heritage and to consider its relationship to human perception. Because of social, cultural, and political factors and the evolving role of the heritage industry, this appraisal seems appropriate. In part, the need to examine heritage authenticity reflects the intuited loss of individual and group identity associated with cultural homogenisation. Identity, social values, and personal integrity are acknowledged casualties of the transpositional arrangement that results in loss of generally undefined but commonly lamented heritage. Perhaps because of these assumed losses, a great deal of attention has been given to the significance of heritage and what it means in the context of social identification. Concerns about cultural, natural, tangible, and intangible heritage have caused governments to enact protective legislation, courts to impose penalties, and organisations to conduct awareness campaigns.

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The US Congress declared that an


advanced civilization must not limit its efforts to science and technology alone, but must give full value and support to other great branches of scholarly and cultural activities in order to achieve a better understanding of the past, a better analysis of the present, and a better view to the future.8

This 1965 statement can be construed to apply to all aspects of heritage from Mount Rushmore to Benjamin Franklins spectacles, but are all such items representative of individual or group heritage, or simply oddities that are showcased to attract and entertain the curious?9 The concept of historic preservation, one part of the heritage equation, has become an international cynosure. The US government enacted various laws to protect and preserve heritage including the Antiquities Act (1906), the National Historic Preservation Act (1966), the Endangered Species Act (1973) and the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (1991). The Canadian government established the non-profit organisation Heritage Canada to conserve historic areas through recycling and adaptive reuse. Similarly, countries in Europe have organisations devoted to the preservation of cultural heritage. For instance, the British National Trust was established in 1895 to administer historically significant homes, properties, and scenic areas, and the National Heritage Act was enacted in 1983. Historic preservation is a priority in Russia and many of the former Eastern bloc countries, and in China and Japan (the Law for the Protection of Cultural Properties), ancient shrines, palaces, and gardens have been preserved. Egypt has the Antiquities Protection Law and several African, Middle Eastern (as an example, the Ottoman Decree on Antiquities adopted in Turkey in 1874), and South American nations (the Cultural Heritage Act enacted in Ecuador in 1979) have agencies and laws to protect and preserve heritage.10
Culture consists of patterns, explicit or implicit, of and for behavior acquired and transmitted by symbols, constituting the distinctive achievement of human groups, including their embodiments in artifacts; the essential core of culture consists of traditional (i.e., historically derived and selected) ideas and especially their attached values 11

Many of the laws and decrees address the protection of cultural heritage because, for a number of years, countries used the word culture as an inclusive term intending to identify anything and everything that humans made, gathered, or recognised, and in most instances the concern was for tangible heritage only. That viewpoint caused culture to be defined as the way of life of a group of people.12 This perspective is being revised to consider both cultural and natural heritage as separate but conjoined aspects of human existence, and to give equal attention to intangible elements such as song, dance, languages, and culinary practices to name the most obvious. The following definitions produced by the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) reflect this consideration. The UNESCO definition of cultural heritage:
G

monuments: architectural works, works of monumental sculpture and painting, elements or structures of an archaeological nature, inscriptions, cave dwellings and

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combinations of features, which are of outstanding universal value from the point of view of history, art or science; groups of buildings: groups of separate or connected buildings which, because of their architecture, their homogeneity or their place in the landscape, are of outstanding universal value from the point of view of history, art or science; sites: works of man or the combined works of nature and man, and areas including archaeological sites which are of outstanding universal value from the historical, aesthetic, ethnological or anthropological point of view. The same document defines natural heritage as:

natural features consisting of physical and biological formations or groups of such formations, which are of outstanding universal value from the aesthetic or scientific point of view; geological and physiographical formations and precisely delineated areas which constitute the habitat of threatened species of animals and plants of outstanding universal value from the point of view of science or conservation; natural sites or precisely delineated natural areas of outstanding universal value from the point of view of science, conservation or natural beauty.13 In addition, the UNESCO Web site defines intangible heritage as:
embracing all forms of traditional and popular or folk culture, i.e. collective works originating in a given community and based on tradition. These creations are transmitted orally or by gesture, and are modified over a period of time through a process of collective recreation. They include oral traditions, customs, languages, music, dance, ritual, festivals, traditional medicine and pharmacopoeia, the culinary arts, and all kinds of special skills connected with the material aspects of culture, such as tools and the habitat.14

These definitions are extensive, inclusive, and formulated to appeal to the international community, thus reflecting the role and responsibility of UNESCO. However, it is possible, or probable, that people simply believe in things (heritage) because they want to and need to, and that what they believe in has minimal inherent value and limited socio-political or cultural pertinence. [T]hings stabilize our sense of who we are; they give a permanent shape to our views of ourselves that otherwise would quickly dissolve in the flux of consciousness.15 This assumption does not deny the importance of specific objects, specimens, structures, locations, or activities, but it suggests a different reason for defining heritage and heritage assignment. It also suggests that the heritage of individuals and groups may be disassociated with history but assigned importance by means of social interchange (communication and diffusion) and assumed need. Heritage, in most communal situations, is something that is partly material, partly human, and partly spiritual on which humans often rely to cope with circumstances specifically challenges that face them. It is more than customs, ideas, and tradition.16 It often includes belief that is not necessarily limited to sacred considerations. Therefore, heritage is most often a set of conditions adopted by a cultural grouping to meet the

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basic requirements of that group. However, owing to the scattered nature of contemporary society, primary group identity has been replaced by the general assimilation of social conditions that reflect the need for individual validation. These routines are transmitted by means of imitation, social conditioning, and teaching. The use of these secondary practices is reinforced as they are transmitted from one generation to the next. This integration of non-tradition-based activities alters the coherent whole of the group and challenges the validity of uncorroborated practices (heritage) allegedly based on cultural history. The heritage industry often promotes a vicarious experience that depends on using objects or locations as means of entering into or living in the past. Ludmilla Jordanova wrote in The New Museology: Visitors are required to assent to the historical authenticity and reality of what they see, while they simultaneously recognize its artificial, fabricated nature. We understand the past, not by spuriously re-experiencing it, but by turning over many different kinds of evidence relating to it and by generating from this an understanding which inevitably has a strong intellectual, that is, abstract component.17 Reflecting on the nature of objects of all kinds, Spencer Crew and James Sims wrote:
The mendacity of objects is all too familiar to makers of collections and exhibitions: once removed from the continuity of everyday uses in time and space and made exquisite on display, stabilized and conserved, objects are transformed in the meanings that they may be said to carry: they become moments of ownership, commodities.18

This reference may be read as a challenge to the integrity of all objects or questioning only those that can be removed from the time and space continuum in which they were created. This dichotomy may be considered a critical issue for heritage resources. The reality of heritage can be altered by disassociation. Is a traditional song the same when it is recorded and replayed in a concert hall? In situ and ex situ values are different and may (probably) cause the object, building, monument, or other heritage resources to send different messages. In the publication Introduction to Museology by Ivo Maroevic, the statement is made that: heritage intensely acts on the system around it, because it stimulates its own interpretation, and the formulation of messages and their use.19 In addition, he concludes that historic buildings, historic urban centres, natural reserves, and national parks reside under a certain system of limited use to preserve their qualities as forms of presentation and representation of knowledge. The time and place of the heritage resource, in this context, affords a level of associational reference and consequential validation. No view of history is absolute. Every consideration, no matter the perspective or predilection, assigns a personal value to each element of the historical process. Cultural patrimony is often aligned with the consensus view of historical events and tends to focus on commonly recognised heroes, battles, and institutions (transformational activities). Most assessments are subjective and based on perspectives that are far removed from the actual events. It is generally believed, however, that spatio-temporal

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continuity is a necessary condition for the identity of physical objectsthe tangible and the same might be said of the intangible. Similarly, the spatio-temporal continuum is associated with the history of a people and, therefore, it is reasonable to speculate that historical affiliation and collective memory are means for people to orient themselves to their past.20 Frequently, history and heritage are assumed synonymous; however, the idea of heritage has greater symbolic meaning than the object, time, or place, that is, the historical reference. The dramatic and representative values of heritage expressions are often subordinate to symbolic or mnemonic allusions. However vague or personal these references may be, they stimulate a response that implies understanding. The heritage in most circumstances can be regarded as identity through time and, if so, that identity (individual or group) verifies something (heritage) as being important. When a person or group has that time/space relationship (memory), there is an innate notion of identity, and with that identity the related heritage has validity. Real or imagined heritage manifestations are viewed as elements of continuity, and one reality lives at the expense of countless others.21 Because human behaviour is either learned or modified by social conditions, the fulfilment of desire is often the motive for assimilated or invented heritage. This approach reinforces group agreement on the value of its members as a part of the physical or natural environment. Consequently, it may be assumed that many aspects of heritage are to address specialised group needs instead of maintaining historic priority. Psychological continuity is an important criterion of identity and a primary ingredient in the notion of heritage. There is, however, an illogical nature to the notion of continuity in reference to time and place. This concept requires that the place remain consistent for an extended identifiable time. This requirement is often addressed by associating the persisting heritage concept with an object or system of objects embodied in a place. Thus, any consideration of continuity includes persisting places or objects that establish a frame of reference. This qualification gives credence to the notion of cultural and natural heritage as places and objects that are relevant to the continuity of identity within the time/space continuum. To define the cultural identity (heritage) of a group requires a comparative assessment that views a particular culture in universal terms. This comparison is necessary to demonstrate the uniqueness of the reference groups heritage. Verification of cultural values (heritage) also requires communication and the diffusion of belief. Furthermore, and possibly most importantly, the identity of each culture has to be recognised as containing a value that is universal. John Rajchman addressed this concept in his 1995 publication on culture and identity:
Cultural identity is often described as being what expresses the singularity of groups, people and societies, what forbids conflating them in a uniformity of thought and practice or purely and simply erasing the borders that separate them and that translate the at least tangential correlation between linguistic facts, facts of kinship, aesthetic facts in the broad sense (for there are styles of life just as there are musical and literary styles) and political facts.22

This point of view suggests that what is arbitrary in heritage identification is that a specific manifestation of heritage, and not another, is given a level of reality for a

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specific individual or group according to circumstances that are understood and appreciated by that individual or group only. The heritage presents itself as a unity of discrete and functional meanings. The underlying fact about heritage (and identity) is that it seldom persists unaltered through circumstantial change unless it is maintained in a non-contextual environment, much as an artefact in a museum. For many, heritage is a simulacrum of social memory or myth. There was probably never a time in the history of humankind when heritage was not subject to invention, restoration, or adaptation to meet the social, political, spiritual, or financial requirements of the subject community. The illusion of having already experienced something being experienced for the first time is an essential part of reconstructed or invented heritage. The creation of heritage includes a process of formalization and ritualization, characterized by reference to the past, if only by imposing repetition.23 The extant community may have no recollection of the heritage resource being endorsed, and often there is no sense of dj vu. The group that experienced the event no longer exists and there is little, or no, empirical data to identify them or to verify their existence. Yet the feeling persists. People having common ancestry may share a sympathetic association with past events or objects even though the current generation had no direct connection with the heritage resource. Nevertheless, the association is firmly embedded in the collective memory, and it is possible to recall in detail, activities, events, or objects that are described, identified, or defined by others. There are many examples of this phenomenon, and among the most common are those found in self-perpetuating ceremonies such as religious ceremonies, fraternal organisations, and procedural affirmations. These elements, though generally intangible and generic to most societies, are aspects of the collective memory and routinely associated with cultural heritage. Though human responses to heritage issues may be described as the spontaneous effect of circumstantial conditions, the implanted attitudes have a socio-cultural basis. Assuming that all human behaviour that is not reflex is due to a combination of the agents including experience or lack of experience, understanding or absence of understanding, judgement or failure to judge, and decision or refusal to decide,24 then the recognition of heritage as a true manifestation of essential values and heritage as a social invention becomes a complex issue. Individual and group assessment is made more difficult by memory, advocacy, communication, and diffusion. It is also quite likely that social position and affluence have a direct effect on individual and group perspective of heritage. The human capacity to assimilate group memory is expansive and directly influenced by the spatial and temporal continuum in which the person resides. There are two pasts to the past: the temporal one that passes and is gone, and the metaphorical past that is held in the memories and traditions of a society and its surroundings.25 Maurice Halbwachs included a related concept in his 1980 publication The Collective Memory. He noted that a person has two aspects to the memory processone individual (personal) and one collective (social). Halbwachs proposes that individual memory is reinforced when others remember the same or similar objects, events, or activities. This collective recognition of past circumstances allows the individual to reconstruct a body of memories that is recognisable. The person has one

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memory process that reinforces individuality, and a second process that maintains impersonal remembrances of interest to the group.26 In all probability, the two memories converge at that time when the individual locates himself or herself within the collective present by evoking his or her past. The social memory can be relied upon to fill the gaps in individual recollection when needed. Various organisations fulfil this role. As examples: the Mayflower Society and the Daughters of the Republic of Texas are organisations of selected individuals who come together for mutual acknowledgement and to aid selected societal activities. The history of the individuals may not be invented but the significance of the association has been traditionalised and glorified. Many people have had the experience of relating to events and objects not by what is seen or remembered but by undefined elements that were allied with the concerns of those people offering the objects for view. These encounters promote borrowed memories based on the testimony or attitudes of others who may draw their inspiration from a more distant generation of impressions. Nevertheless, these remembrances, no matter how arbitrarily encountered, often have a profound influence on the heritage of a people and a nation. Heritage invention and adaptation take place when transformation of social patterns outgrows the practices and institutions of the past, thus affirming the need for a new scheme of socio-cultural interaction. This change occurs in all societies as a reflection of the collective identity. It is promoted as the emotional essence of a community and as a part of the human continuum. Expressions of the adapted heritage can contain multiple and contradictory assertions; there can be more than one message with essential or accidental qualities because societies are fabricated from a mixture of attitudes and experiences. The Aristotelian thesis that objects have both essential and accidental qualities reinforces the tentative nature of heritage resources. Those resources that remain unchanged are described as the objects essential properties. The accidental qualities, in contrast, are those characteristics that change in various waystime, space, circumstance, and condition. Though Aristotle probably did not have heritage in mind when he formulated this hypothesis, the concept has applicability to those things that are assigned heritage value. Undoubtedly, the assigned value should be more than how a thing presents itself to the human observer in his or her immediate life-world. In an evolving cultural context, circumstantial conditions may stimulate identity criteria (memory and character), including the relationship between objects and situations that acknowledge or verify the difference between groups of seemingly similar cultures. Random diffusion of an idea may instil derivative values by embedding one condition or phenomenon in place of another. Therefore, it is possible to view society as a world-making activity27self-perpetuationin the sense that it creates or recreates and communicates values within the limits imposed by the groupa circumstantial reality. The human environment is that peculiar set of communicational realities that distinguish one culture, one people, and in some instances one individual, from all others. When a public, large or small, attempts to define an event of heritage proportions, it is necessary to assign its various portions to the delineation of collective time. Such

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temporal apportionments are imposed upon the public because the event as a heritage resource does not reside in any single memory.28 This measure of social time is external to the lived duration of contemporary society and beyond the grasp of individual memory. A situation of this nature differs from an historical event that has distinct temporal demarcations. Heritage may refer to the human-made, natural, and historical character of the material and symbolic elements of life as well as the intrinsic productivity of social action. Heritage, viewed from this perspective, is a means by which human beings orient themselves to their past, and many of the elements of the pastboth real and imagined, cultural and natural, tangible and intangibleare organised chronologically. They are also identified as happening before or after a particular occurrence, and where actual time/space markers do not exist, reference points are created.29 There are numerous examples of these ersatz markersin the beginning, before enlightenment, prehistoric, post-Edwardian, Medieval, and pre- or post-Columbus. These indicators tend to be place-bound, and have no inherent points of reference. They imply that they represent a time/space condition that came either before or after another time, but the contextual reference is unstated. However, these divisions in circumstance (and time) divide the human process into phases or parts. In most cases the markers are not imposed artificially but exist, albeit of lesser consequence within the socio-cultural or political process,30 and are given enhanced or celebratory status. The purpose of the markers is to codify history, and in many cases they are to provide a conceptual basis for heritage.
Compulsive anniversaryism now seems characteristic of the heritage age in which we live; 1990 witnessed dozens of past-related celebrations nationally and countless others at the local level, and many such have already been announced for 1991. We celebrate ourselves, our organizations, our places, our heroes, sometimes our authentic, and significant history, we even celebrate celebrations and commemorate disasters. That deemed worthy of official national celebration comes from a very filtered sort of history, essentially patriotic, conservative, and suitable for the national history curriculum.31

The notion of cultural identity as a reference to heritage in some sense reflects upon itself in the privileged dimension of time.32 With or without explicit reference to the pertinence of this notion in the context of historical temporality, and with or without any association with the historicity of the culture, it is possible to identify certain cultural attributes. Nevertheless, cultural identity and the associated heritage change are transformed, which is a requirement of culture. The things of the world have the function of stabilizing human life.33 They address the metaphysical question about the relationship of mind and body and hold an essential position of the concept of personal and group identity. When the parallel tracks of mind, body, history, and need converge, a heritage phenomenon emerges. However, that union may satisfy the need of only one person. To promote the larger sense of heritage, selected elements are endorsed and explained to those people seeking the security of socio-cultural reference. Objects give concrete evidence to ones place in a social network as symbols (literally, the joining together) of valued relationships.34 As an

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example, the Ku Klux Klan was an organisation formed as a social club by a group of Confederate Army veterans in Pulaski, Tennessee, around 1865. The group adopted the name Ku Klux Klan from the Greek word kuklos, meaning circle, and the English word clan. The group shared a common agenda. The name and symbols remained while the organisation evolved into a social action group outside the mainstream of society.35 Such organisations are designed to promote individual self-worth by establishing relationships with other similar-thinking people. Fraternal orders exemplify this concept of brotherhood or sisterhood as unions of like thinkers endorsing invented heritage. Perhaps there is no creditable basis for individual or group heritage, and maybe that should not be an issue. This conjecture reflects on the nature of reality, or at least on the correctness of thought about the nature of reality,36 as an examination that goes beyond the confines of a philosophical enquiry into the authentic basis of heritage resources. The investigation may begin with the Parmenidesian theory that thought and being are the same,37 and with that hypothesis there is the concept that identity is the basis of unitythe unity of heritage or purpose. Since the 16th century, the objects of cultural and natural heritage have found their way into museums. They are objects (artefacts) of pride, prestige, and common wealth. In some instances, as with the Louvre, Smithsonian, or Victoria and Albert Museums, the artefacts and often the museums, as associated places, are viewed as part of the identity of the nation and the people. The artefacts are considered not only for their assigned cultural, scientific or historic values but also for what they signify (personal, philosophical, or associational). Museums are generally most interested in the identity of the object, while the cultural and natural heritage structure, site, or activity is generally more concerned with the identity of those people associated with that heritage. That societal connection is necessary to validate the object as heritage. The museum depends on relevant didactic panels as complementary elements to tell the story of the artefact, while for heritage the information is often required to identify the structure, site, or activity. In the museum the information supplements the object, but for cultural and natural heritage the information defines (identifies) the object. These issues of communication are associated with issues of context and verification. For cultural and natural heritage resources, communication is required to determine what is from what seems to be. There is a need to differentiate between appearance, reality, and story. To address these questions, governments, societies, clubs, and special-interest groups publish catalogues of protected heritage items that range from the inclusive to the exclusive.38 These lists are intended to inform people about the things that are protected or restricted from change, destruction, or removal. The lists define heritage according to socio-political definition, and establish heritage identification by disseminating the relevant information (communication + diffusion). Much of the world heritage was pre-codedfixed in time and placeby the mid19th century,39 and in some locations the encoding occurred earlier. Many of the thoughts and ideas that guide contemporary human relationships and socio-cultural attitudes were fixed before Isaac Singer devised the continuous-stitch sewing machine

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or Jenny Lind, the Swedish Nightingale, toured the USA under the management of P. T. Barnum. With this encoding process in mind, it may be better to view heritage not as a historical truth (fact) but only as conditional and hypothetical reasoning calculated to explain the nature of things (and people), and not to determine the origins of traditions or practices. If it is assumed that heritage has no empirical reality, then the process of identification is greatly altered and simplified. Heritage as a social phenomenon is difficult to define and to explain without overlapping into fields of behavioural science and psychology. There are, however, certain considerations to be pondered, particularly the apparent contradiction between the finality or individuality of information and the formal or abstract character generally associated with heritage resources. The explanatory value of heritage, as it is often conceived and promoted, is low when it comes to investigating the conditions of social stability or identity validation. To analyse the societal implications of heritage, it is necessary to examine how resources of signification are used to legitimate the special interests of hegemonic groups. [L]ack of clarity and rigour has led both public sector and commercial managers (in, for example, public enquiries or sponsorship discussions) to regard heritage as a soft field lacking in professionalism.40 Merriman describes the term heritage industry as pejorative, and states that the popular addiction to the past reflects the failure of modern society to face the future after the decline of industry, and that society is looking back to a more glorious past, but this past, as portrayed in displays led by marketing policies, is a romanticized fiction. Merriman also notes that heritage can have very positive connotations as well as negative ones, and can play a crucial, creative role in the lives of different communities.41 To be meaningful to a responding audience, a heritage resource requires the specification of a logical meaning, a time and a space relationship, and a direction. Without the identifiable heritage resource (material body) or logical subject, recognition is not describable. Furthermore, the heritage unit must be thought of as maintaining its identity during the process of change.42 The heritage exists so long as it retains its sameness or identity. When it loses its sameness, it ceases to exist as a heritage resource and subsequently cannot be in any associational process, nor can it change or remain unchangeable. The procedure of change may include a sense of direction that indicates the process of movement from one place, status, or condition to another. The concept of direction can be measured in various terms including time, space, duration, and context. Heritage as a phenomenal aspect of social existence may be unique or recurring. The uniqueness or recurrence of the heritage resource may, however, have different forms or degrees.43 Stonehenge can be viewed as unique because it happened only once (as far as we know) in one location, and it has remained the same during a process of change. On the other hand, the spoken language of a group is essentially similar. Different people repeat the same words and phrases for generations, and in that process the words change in pronunciation and meaning. In this example, the heritage changes in time and space and may be regarded as non-specific. This is not to say that language is not unique to the group, rather that it is a recurring phenomenon that has evolved

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through the time/space continuum. It is representative, but not always indicative, of its socio-cultural origin. Undoubtedly, there is a difference of perception about time and space in different eras and different cultures. The time/space continuum is a relative concept that reinforces or weakens ideological as well as sociological points of view. However, the affixing of traditional values and experiential associations can occur almost immediately with the aid of communication, and the assigning of traditional values and the appraisal of those values as they relate to heritage must consider the difference between the absolute and relative meaning of the circumstances that precipitated the tradition. The unconditional and objective value of a heritage resource is absolute, while that which is heterogeneous and culturally related is relative. The acknowledgement of this differentiation casts doubt on the validity of socially verified tradition as the underpinning of heritage. Traditional values must have components that are recognised for their symbolic reference to acquire heritage status. Invented traditions, those that lack symbolic reference, are viewed as practices normally governed by overtly or tacitly accepted rules of a ritual, which seek to inculcate certain values and norms of behaviour by repetition. These activities suggest continuity with the past. In fact, where possible, they normally attempt to establish continuity with a concordant historic past.44
As long as the unit [heritage] which is in process is identifiable, the process continues to exist in spite of all the changes in its directions. When the unit [heritage] is changed to such an extent that it becomes unidentifiable, the process ends. The moment when the identification of the unit [heritage] becomes impossible is the point at which the process ends. The moment when we observe the emergence of a new unit [heritage] which, so far as our knowledge goes, did not exist before, a new process is started. 45

Much of the heritage fascination is based on an institutionalised rationalisation of the past that is relevant to a few people but designed to appeal to many cultural tourists. In The Representation of the Past, Kevin Walsh notes that The past has been severed from the daily experiences of people, and mediated as a neutered essence which, in its institutionalised form, is often employed to legitimate the ideas of modernity and progress.46 Probably, as Walsh states, this process of legitimising the past began in museums, and continues to be an integral part of musealising objects of cultural and natural significance. Like the museum, the heritage resource attempts to promote the notion of national or group identitya status groupat a time when many peoples feel threatened by the loss of distinctiveness. Every group requires an element of identity, and in every society people act or react according to the examples given to them by their history and the characteristics of their social order. This is true for the economic, social, political, and cultural life of a people. (The status group is not the same as an economic or political group in that the status group is aligned by factors outside individual control, whereas the economic and political groups are affiliated by factors determined by individual decision making.) For a people or a country, the act of preserving heritage resources (real or imagined) is an expression of resilience. It is a cumulative effort to save humanity and its allied history, natural surroundings, and technological and creative endeavours. This concept can relate to all humans and all locations equally. Undoubtedly, heritage plays an incisive

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role in the formation of a national consciousness, in national unity, and in economic and social development. Objects, places, and other physical and ideological manifestations reinforce identity, but may not in themselves constitute a true element of cultural or social validation. Every social group develops its own heritage, beliefs, customs, values and usage, which the incumbent population continually re-creates. The projected heritage of the group is a mix of pride, unity, ethnic loyalty, and nostalgia. As the worlds cultural and natural heritage diminishes, social values change and historic indicators become expendable. Much of the world has experienced the phenomenon of disposable history that is the symbolic aspect of social life. Most societies and individuals have a short cultural memory, and that which remains is often modified by subjective and selective recollection. [S]ymbolic culture is a product of past social action although its producers are not always easily identified.47 When myth is more interesting (or entertaining) than reality, the myth is remembered and transmitted. Concordant with the notion of abandoned history is the idea of rediscovered or redefined heritage. The unpredictable difficulty with rediscovered heritage is that it has no referential place in the past and no evidentiary essence. Often the official account is a mixture of fact and fiction formulated to validate a general theme. Not only is the concept of heritage often not absolute and the resource not permanent but also the conception and association of the resource is subject to historical mutability. Although the concept of rediscovered heritage is vague and inconsistent with historic precedent, people tend to act or react according to the examples given to them by their history (absolute or relative) and the characteristics of their social order (absolute or relative). This is true for the economic, social, political, and cultural life of a people. Heritage, in the best of circumstances, enfranchises the emotionally and culturally disenfranchised. It allows humankind to transcend individual destiny to achieve continuity. The heritage resources have extraordinary emotional and intellectual appeal since they evoke a feeling of prestige and, therefore, a sense of pride. They help to generate an environment where the people can acquire an awareness of the continuity that exists in human creation, glimpse a past that they receive with admiration and gratitude, and project the future to which they will transmit the results of their own endeavours. The danger lies in assigning social or cultural values to simulacra of a marginally defined past. The consequence of such misalignment is cultural entropy. When Marxist theory is applied, heritage resource commodities have two forms, a physical or natural form, and a value form.48 Where does the worth of heritage resources liein the physical form or the value form? To assign a value to a heritage resource, there must be an equivalent measure against which to judge that worth or meaning. To assign a physical or natural worth to heritage is a notion that reduces the object, location, or event to materiality. Marilyn Phelans book on The Law of Cultural Property and Natural Heritage: Protection, Transfer and Access makes the statement that cultural property constitutes one of the basic elements of civilization and national culture and that its interchange increases the knowledge of the civilization of man, enriches the cultural life of all people, and inspires mutual respect and appreciation among nations.49 Perhaps the

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capacity to make socio-cultural identity meaningful lies in the concept of heritage, and the actual value of heritage may lie not so much in its convergence with individual or group identity, as in the identification of the immeasurable differences that separate one individual or group from others. The past can only be represented if it is first established in the group imagination as a place with identifiable features.

Notes
1 2

[1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] [7] [8] [9]

[10] [11] [12] [13]


10 11 12 13

[14] [15] [16] [17] [18] [19] [20] [21] [22]


14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22

[23] [24] [25] [26] [27] [28] [29] [30] [31] [32] [33] [34] [35] [36] [37]
23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37

Eliade, Images and Symbols: Studies in Religious Symbolism, 9. Holm and Bowker, Myth and History, 2. Merriman, Beyond the Glass Case, 8. Campbell, The Historical Development of Mythology, 20. Hobsbawm and Ranger, The Invention of Tradition, 9. Panati, Extraordinary Origins of Everyday Things, 67. Hobsbawm and Ranger, The Invention of Tradition, 271. Phelan, The Law of Cultural Property and Natural Heritage. As a note, the faces on Mount Rushmore were originally planned to be Kit Carson, Jim Bridger, and John Colter, not the four famous Presidents of the USA. The carvings were to be a tourist attraction to draw money to South Dakota. Panati, Extraordinary Origins of Everyday Things, 282. Phelan, The Law of Cultural Property and Natural Heritage, 2023. Kroeber and Kluckhohn, Culture: A Critical Review of Concepts and Definitions, 156. Barnouw, Culture and Personality, 6. UNESCO, Conservation Concerning the Protection of the World Culture and Natural Heritage, Articles 1 and 2. http://www.unesco.org Csikszentmihalyi, Why We Need Things, 23. Malinowski, A Scientific Theory of Culture, 36. Jordanova, Objects of Knowledge: A Historical Perspective on Museums, 25. Crew and Sims, Locating Authenticity: Fragments of a Dialogue, 159. Maroevic, Introduction to Museology, 142. Goudsblom et al., The Course of Human History. Ames, Introduction, 160. Both the quote and the material in the previous paragraph are from Rajchman, The Identity in Question, 174. Hobsbawm and Ranger, The Invention of Tradition, 4. Maynell, The Nature of Aesthetic Value, 26. Stone and Molyneaux, The Presented Past, 2. Halbwachs, The Collective Memory, 50. Wuthnow et al., Cultural Analysis, 24. Halbwachs, The Collective Memory. Ibid. Sorokin, Social and Cultural Dynamics. Fowler, The Past in Contemporary Society: Then, Now, 44. Rajchman, The Identity in Question, 175. Arendt, The Human Condition, 13. Csikszentmihalyi, Why We Need Things, 23. http://www.geocities.com Oderberg, The Metaphysics of Identity Over Time, 2. Heidegger, Identity and Difference, 7.

International Journal of Heritage Studies 347


[38] The World Heritage List maintained by UNESCO includes 754 properties located in 129 national states (http://whc.unesco.org/heritage.htm). [39] Thayer, On Communication, 46. [40] Alfrey and Putnam, The Industrial Heritage, 88. [41] Merriman, Beyond the Glass Case, 3, 4. [42] Sorokin, Social and Cultural Dynamics. [43] Ibid. [44] Hobsbawm and Ranger, The Invention of Tradition. [45] Sorokin, Social and Cultural Dynamics, 61. [46] Walsh, The Representation of the Past, 176. [47] Fardon, Power and Knowledge, 157. [48] Marx, Capital: A Critique of Political Economy, 55. [49] Phelan, The Law of Cultural Property and Natural Heritage.
38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49

References
Alfrey, J., and T. Putnam. The Industrial Heritage: Managing Resources and Uses. New York and London: Routledge, 1992. Ames, K. Introduction. In The Colonial Revival in America, edited by A. Axelrod. Wilmington, DE: Henry Francis du Pont Winterthur Museum, 1985: 7, quoted in Karp, I., and S. Lavine, eds., Exhibiting Cultures. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution, 1991: 160. Arendt, H. The Human Condition. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1958. Barnouw, V. Culture and Personality. Homewood, IL: The Dorsey Press, 1973. Campbell, J. The Historical Development of Mythology. In Myths and Mythmaking, edited by H. A. Murray. New York: George Braziller, 1960. Crew, S., and J. Sims. Locating Authenticity: Fragments of a Dialogue. In Exhibiting Cultures, edited by I. Karp and S. Lavine. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution, 1991. Csikszentmihalyi, M. Why We Need Things. In History from Things: Essays on Material Culture, edited by S. Lubar and W. D. Kingery. Washington, DC and London: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1993. Eliade, M. Images and Symbols: Studies in Religious Symbolism. Translated by Philip Mairet. New York: Harvill Press, 1961. Fardon, R., ed. Power and Knowledge: Anthropological and Sociological Approaches. Edinburgh: Scottish Academic Press, 1985. Fowler, P. The Past in Contemporary Society: Then, Now. New York and London: Routledge, 1992. Goudsblom, J., E. Jones, and S. Mennell. The Course of Human History. New York and London: M. E. Sharpe, 1996. Halbwachs, M. The Collective Memory. Translated by Francis J. Ditter Jr and Vida Yazdi Ditter. New York: Harper Colophon Books, 1980. Heidegger, M. Identity and Difference. Translated and Introduction by Joan Stambaugh. New York and London: Harper & Row, 1969. Hobsbawm, E., and T. Ranger. The Invention of Tradition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983. Holm, J., and J. Bowker. Myth and History. London and New York: Pinter, 1994. Jordanova, L. Objects of Knowledge: A Historical Perspective on Museums. In The New Museology, edited by P. Vergo. London: Reaktion Books, 1991. Kroeber, A. L., and C. Kluckhohn. Culture: A Critical Review of Concepts and Definitions. New York: Vintage Books, 1963. Malinowski, B. A Scientific Theory of Culture. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1944. Maroevic, I. Introduction to Museology: The European Approach. Munich: Verlag Dr. Christian Mller-Straten, 1998.

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Marx, K. Capital: A Critique of Political Economy, edited by Frederick Engels. New York: The Modern Library, 1936. Maynell, H. The Nature of Aesthetic Value. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1986. Merriman, N. Beyond the Glass Case: The Past, the Heritage and the Public in Britain. Leicester: Leicester University Press, 1991. Oderberg, D. S. The Metaphysics of Identity Over Time. New York: St. Martins Press, 1993. Panati, C. Extraordinary Origins of Everyday Things. New York and London: Perennial Library, Harper & Row, 1987. Phelan, M., ed. The Law of Cultural Property and Natural Heritage: Protection, Transfer and Access. Evanston, IL: Kalos Kapp Press, 1998. Rajchman, J., ed. The Identity in Question. New York and London: Routledge, 1995. Sorokin, P. Social and Cultural Dynamics. 2nd ed. Boston: Extending Horizons Book-Porter Sargent Publishing, 1957. Stone, P. G., and B. Molyneaux, eds. The Presented Past. London and New York: Routledge, 1994. Thayer, L. On Communication. Norwood, NJ: Ablex, 1987. UNESCO. Conservation Concerning the Protection of the World Culture and Natural Heritage. Paris: UNESCO, 1972. Walsh, K. The Representation of the Past. London and New York: Routledge, 1992. Wuthnow, R., J. Hunter, A. Bergesen, and E. Kurzweil. Cultural Analysis. Boston and London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1984.

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