ABSTRACT
Our turn to representation in this volume is not an isolated event; we are by no means the rst to tackle the subject and it would be disingenuous to suggest otherwise. Stuart Hall’s edited volume Representation: Cultural Representations and Signifying Practices, rst published in 1997, was, for example, one of our starting points for this project and remains at its core. We therefore position this volume within the context of a long-established history in sociology that takes representation as a key moment of meaning-making (Chaplin 1994; du Gay et al. 1997; Hall 1997; Evans and Hall 1999; Emmison and Smith 2000; Morra and Smith 2006). This history has wended its way through cultural studies, tourism studies, cultural geography, art history, communication studies, archaeology and anthropology amongst others (Daniels and Cosgrove 1988; Foster 1988; Urry 1990; Bryson et al. 1994; Rojek 1993, 1997; Sturken and Cartwright 2000; Mitchell 2002; Crouch and Lübbren 2003; Schirato and Webb 2004; Smiles and Moser 2005; Rose 2007), and has begun to permeate the research of scholars working in the eld of heritage studies, resulting in a smattering of publications that play with ideas of visuality, imagery, visual culture and what can broadly be termed as representational practice. Yet, while representation has long been accepted as a core component falling within the remit of heritage studies, not least because of the development of museology and interpretation studies (Merriman 1991; Hooper-Greenhill 1995, 2000) and critical studies of heritage itself (Walsh 1992; Brett 1996), few attempts to make it the dedicated focus of scholarship have been made. Our purpose with this volume is to grant it that right of entry and raise questions about its relative signicance, modalities and various ways of applying and understanding it.
