ABSTRACT
The overall aim of this book is to examine the relationships between place and time as these are related though the medium of heritage. In defining the discourses of inclusion and exclusion that constitute identity, people call upon an affinity with places or, at least, with representations of places, which, in turn, are used to legitimate their claim to those places. By definition, such places are imaginary but they still constitute a powerful part of the individual and social practices which people use consciously to transform the material world into cultural and economic realms of meaning and lived experience. Senses of places are therefore the products of the creative imagination of the individual and of society, while identities are not passively received but are ascribed to places by people. While commonplace, such statements need re-stating here for two reasons. First, as occurs with nationalist ideologies, people do often assume that identities are intrinsic qualities of landscapes and cityscapes. Secondly, it is not enough to conclude that places are imagined entities. Rather, if individuals create place identities, then obviously different people, at different times, for different reasons, create different narratives of belonging. Place images are thus user determined, polysemic and unstable through time.
