ABSTRACT
The main concern of Theme One was the nature of the relationships of places and identities: in this second set of chapters, the debate is broadened to address such key questions as: 'who deliberately creates place identities and why do they do that?' The focus here is upon the conscious use by public jurisdictions and official agencies, implicated in the commodification of senses of the past, to reinforce or even create an identification of people with specified places. Inevitably, because of two related dichotomies inherent in all questions of heritage and identity, tensions and conflicts emanate from these processes. The first is between the collective and the individual: the second between the official and the unofficial.
