ABSTRACT
Chapter 3 develops the idea of ‘registers of engagement’, based on and incorporating the theoretical arguments developed in Chapters 1 and 2. Registers of engagement are used as a way of measuring and describing variations in visitor responses and assessing their political and social consequences. Intensity, valence and conservative/progressive tendencies to interact with various modes of engaging, such as ideology, embodiment, remembering/forgetting, imagination, scope, time and so forth, to produce registers of engagement that underpin and frame the various performances of heritage-making are elaborated. Underpinning the idea of registers of engagement is the argument that understanding how visitors use museums and heritage sites is essential for understanding the impact and consequences of professional heritage and museological practices. The chapter also defines some of the core terms, such as ‘visitor’, ‘learning’ and ‘tourist’, used in the study.
