Conclusion

Abstract

Throughout this volume, I have focused upon the relationships between heritage, public policy and power in an attempt to develop a critical understanding both of heritage and the way it is utilized as a tool of cultural governance. My intention was to add to the small, but growing number of publications that challenge us to produce new ways of thinking about heritage and rework our awareness of the role it plays in our everyday lives. This area of study is certainly promising, but we are still a long way from declaring that the field of critical heritage studies has arrived; and until there is greater clarity in this area of research, heritage studies will struggle to find productive and creative things to say about cultural politics. With this in mind, my purpose has been to argue that the links between heritage, language, ideology, power, identity formations and the emotive uses of the past are more fundamental to the emerging field of heritage studies than are the technical issues of identifying and managing buildings, sites and monuments, and protecting their fabric (Logan and Reeves 2009: 13). They are also more important than devising strategies to increase the number of ‘excluded’ bodies at already recognized heritage sites and places. For if we are to take the issues of diversity seriously, we need also to develop the analytical tools necessary to reflexively recognize not only the processes of marginalization already implicit within heritage organizations and associated policy, but that the very definition of heritage is something that we cannot as yet set aside. This has been the challenge of the volume.