Getting in touch with history: The role of historic preservation in shaping collective memories

Abstract

This paper argues that historic preservation is playing an increasingly important role in shaping collective memories. Historic preservation encompasses the range of strategies by which historic structures are maintained, manipulated, and managed. These strategies include preservation, restoration, conservation and consolidation, reconstitution, adaptive re-use, reconstruction, and replication (Fitch 1982: 46–47). While people are drawn to historic sites in the hopes of an immediate encounter with authentic, physical remains, this encounter is never unmediated. Instead, three social processes can be identified that shape it and the collective memories associated with the site: namely 1) selection, 2) contextualization, and 3) interpretation. Focussing on examples drawn from the field of industrial preservation in Great Britain and the United States, I demonstrate how these processes shape our encounters with history, and how this form of commemoration inevitably involves a political dimension.