ABSTRACT

This book investigates the selection process of heritagisation to understand what specific pasts are being selected or rejected for representation, who is selecting them, how and to whom they are being represented and why they are being presented, or dismissed, in the ways that they are.

Some aspects of our pasts are venerated and memorialised for a variety of reasons, while others are forgotten or even hidden. This volume, thus, provides examples from across a spectrum. Some phenomena are well-suited to heritagisation, such as animals memorialised for their bravery, long past agricultural techniques and implements, and impressive landscapes. However, this book also deals with products (e.g. tobacco), historical periods (e.g. the Third Reich) and scientific techniques (e.g. genetic modification) with negative connotations that extend beyond their heritage attributes.

This volume considers how the actors in the heritage industry admit, valorise, prioritise and rationalise historic resources as heritage products. These findings provide practical examples of how heritage institutions privilege, frame and/or exclude a wide range of heritage items. They also contrast the invocations of sectional (local, national or class based) and more cosmopolitan heritages and consider the extent to which innovation and change are or can be acknowledged within the heritage discourse.

chapter 2|16 pages

Bygones, survivals and ‘all the old rubbish’

Curatorial discernment and the failure to create an English national folk museum

chapter 3|14 pages

Disruptive forms, persistent values

Negotiating digital heritage and ‘The Memory of the World’

chapter 4|35 pages

‘Tracking’ loose heritage

The 13.10 from Cheltenham

chapter 5|16 pages

Tempelhof Airport in Berlin

Conflicting realms of heritage

chapter 6|13 pages

Hidden heritage and secret coves

Analysing a discourse used to communicate about heritage and reflecting on its ontological politics

chapter 7|16 pages

A geomorphic paradox

Performing histories of change as the land-slips away

chapter 10|16 pages

From imperialism to inclusion

The evolving representations of heritage in Kings Park, Perth, Western Australia

chapter 12|16 pages

The heritage of agricultural innovation and technical change in post-war Britain

Heroic narratives, hidden histories and stories from below

chapter 13|17 pages

Heritage and sustainable development

The case of tobacco cultivation in eastern Taiwan