Negotiating Heritage through Education and Archaeology

Abstract

This book contributes to global conversations about the nature and practice of public history and heritage studies, as well as heritage scholarship in Latin America and the Caribbean. Drawing from the context of Belize and two rural African-descendant Kriol communities, this book demonstrates the many means by which people construct values, meanings, and practices related to heritage. These meanings have wide-ranging influences on peoples’ cultural identity, daily practices, and engagements with tangible and intangible culture. The author demonstrates that since the late nineteenth century, Belizean colonial and national institutions have constructed and used heritage places and ideologies to manage difference, govern citizens, and reinforce economic and social development agendas, particularly through archaeology and formal education. Institutional heritage practices have resulted in marginalized pasts and enduring racial and ethnic inequalities, especially in regards to Kriol cultural heritage. However, this book also details how Belizean teachers and children resisted and responded to persistent colonial and state legacies through vernacular heritage practices. The book’s methodology is innovative as it combines British imperial archival sources with years of ethnographic observations and interviews with government officials, teachers, and young people. A major contribution of the book is historicizing heritage by identifying connections between colonial and state cultural politics and global heritage trends over time. Another significant contribution is demonstrating how education and archaeology are interconnected social institutions through which official and vernacular heritage forms and practices are constructed, controlled, negotiated, and contested.