ABSTRACT
This chapter explores this complex spectrum of multicultural societies and their heritage representations. It engages with Soja's ideas concerning the reconciliation of the real material world and imagined representations of space. The practical resolution of heritage dissonance can scarcely be a simple matter, given the myriad economic, social and political functions of heritage. It is one further complicated by the multiplicity of spatial scales at which the institutions of heritage management operate and their motivations. The heritage reflections of US national ideology are pervasive and omnipresent. The most revered are those of the American Revolution the origin of national democratic virtues and the Civil War, deemed to have defended them. However, in the apparently intractable Belfast's, Sarajevo's or Jerusalem's of the world, any recognition of a common heritage might require a minimalist approach, accenting only that which is held in common and nurturing social harmony at the expense of profitable commodification of divisive heritage resources.
