ABSTRACT
This book explores questions of multivocality in 21st-century World Heritage-making. It takes the outset in new research relating to the Rjukan-Notodden Industrial Heritage, a World Heritage site located in a sparsely populated and mainly rural post-industrial region in southern Norway, which was enlisted by UNESCO in 2015. Stressing the understanding that World Heritage creates joint commitments to sustainability principles and heritage conservation, the chapters discuss notions of change as integral to all societies, including industrial places undergoing world heritage-making and heritagisation processes. The book outlines, firstly, the potential contribution of multivocality and pluralism in heritage research, grounded in multidisciplinary examples and cases from the Rjukan-Notodden Industrial Heritage Site. It defines and develops, secondly, the notion of multivocality and demonstrates its relevance for improving practices and policies for world heritage management, policy-makers, planners and government. And, thirdly, the book provides researchers with a fruitful analytical tool to account for pluralism and multivocality in theoretical approaches to exploring the past, present and future of complex world heritage sites.
