ABSTRACT
The previous chapters have revealed the ways in which ‘heritage’ as a discourse is a part of the social processes of meaning making. Heritage is a process of remembering that helps to underpin identity and the ways in which individuals and groups make sense of their experiences in the present. In this process, physical objects, places or sites, collective or individual memories and acts – such as the Castleford Festival, passing on family stories to children, learning to visit and ‘read’ certain places or landscapes, etc. – and other forms of intangible experience, all become focal points, or cultural tools, for heritage practices concerned with defining, re/creating, negotiating, proclaiming and preserving identity. The identity that is created may, depending on those defining the discourse, revolve around a sense of nation, class, gender, ethnicity, family or a range of other collective experiences . . . and some heritage discourses have more power and authority than others do. This simple observation, however, is important for understanding the consequences of the ability of various groups to have their discourse about heritage recognized within the authorized discourse. Heritage and the identities and understandings of both the past and the present it creates do not simply exist internally to the group or other collective that has created them – they do work, or have a consequence, in wider social, cultural, economic and political networks. They have a consequence for, and in, the day-to-day lives of individuals beyond the provision of a sense of self or collective identity.
