Authorised Heritage Discourse Research Articles

Conflict in Common: Heritage-making in Cape York

ABSTRACTThe outstanding natural and cultural values of Cape York have been acknowledged for decades, but those decades have been characterised by deep conflict. Non-government organisation intervention in local politics has seen a forceful push for nominating some or all of the Cape York Peninsula as a World Heritage Site. We illuminate the authorised heritage discourse at work in heritage-making, and highlight contested issues of ownership, governance, authenticity, and value. These themes contribute to the possibility of marginalising the voices of local people who wish to contribute to heritage-making in Cape York. Politics infuses all aspects of heritage-making in Cape York, and the specific experiences on Cape York reflect larger political processes occurring in World Heritage discourse. The paper draws on interviews undertaken in May and June 2012.

World Heritage as discourse: knowledge, discipline and dissonance in Fujian Tulou sites

The study examines the official discourse of World Heritage Fujian Tulou in China, and compares it with the authorised heritage discourse defined by Smith. I find that although, textually, the former is antithetical to the latter by emphasising the harmony between human habitat and nature, in practice it is as hegemonic as the Western authorised heritage discourse. The Chinese harmony discourse tends to provide a single narrative for the site’s value and privileges expert knowledge over local voices, while it empowers government by ignoring local residents’ capability within heritage conservation. Moreover, the harmony discourse frames, articulates and constitutes non-heritage practices such as public health and moral norms, to legitimise the governmental power. As a result, the harmony discourse, supposedly aiming at maintaining a harmonious society, has created profound dissonance among the inhabitants.

Proud to be Dogon: An exploration of the local perspective on cultural tourism and cultural heritage management in Dogon country, Mali

This paper explores how the local population of two Malinese villages in Dogon country, Kani Kombolé and Teli, are both managing their cultural heritage (on the United Nations Educational Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) World Heritage List since 1989) and creating a cultural tourism experience. The research is based on a project initiated by the National Ethnology Museum of the Netherlands and the Mission Culturelle in Dogon country to restore these villages. These institutes appear to be proponents of the authorised heritage discourse which perceives ‘heritage’ as aesthetic monuments which need to be ‘conserved as found’. The main question is: does the local population of Kani Kombolé and Teli comply with the authorised heritage discourse approach of these institutes or do they feel empowered to conserve, use and manage cultural heritage in their own way? It can be concluded that the local population partially manages their cultural heritage on their own terms and that this is not achieved without conflicts.

Creator, collaborator, critique or consumer: Frameworks of citizens' participation in heritage making

Even though discussions and practices around citizens' participation in heritage were at their peak during last five years, the ideas about levels and ways of citizen participation through heritage making are by no means recent or unified. These distinctive ideas under the umbrella of 'engagement' form a variety of possible, even contradictory frameworks through which the role, rights, privileges, and responsibilities of the citizen and the community are defined in relation to those of the national state, public memory institutions and heritage professionals. They range from those asserting the rights of citizens in dissent and critical thinking towards dominant institutionalized practices, to those advocating participation as an effective way of engaging citizens in consuming authorized heritage discourses. Participation is thus neither good nor bad in acheiving citizens' rights to heritage, but is driven and influenced by the framework which utilizes it. The proposed paper aims to examine and structure the four key frameworks through which citizens' participation in heritage making is asserted, in order to shed light on what we are thinking, talking and practicing around participation. The first framework is heritage without institutions tracing back from Marlaux's imaginary museum performed by every individual, to the ways in which global civic communities perform practices around heritage that challenge dominant politics of heritage. The second relates to group of ideas around community museums, in which heritage is participatory even in the decision making, but the process is being mediated and curated by the professionals. The third is participatory museum framework in which citizens participate within an institutionalized environment to become more emersed in it, but could (possibly) challenge and shape it by forming their own meanings around musealization. The fourth group is related to critical, discursive museum, derived from critical heritage studies in which professionals are creating civic forums for citizens, thus fostering critical thinking around heritage-making.

Conservation values, the authorised heritage discourse and the conservation-planning assemblage

The focus of this paper is the practice of conservation applied through the English planning system, termed conservation-planning. It argues that a distinct conservation-planning social entity has developed that may be described as an ‘assemblage’ and that the values and validated practice of conservation-planning are constructed as an authorised heritage discourse (AHD). Emphasis is placed upon the way that the AHD maybe mobilised by the conservation-planning assemblage in relation to other elite discourses, explored through the way that relationships have developed between the policy spheres of conservation-planning, regeneration and economic development. In doing so, it is argued conservation has successfully repositioned itself from being regarded as a barrier to development to being regarded as an active agent of change. Furthermore, the paper proposes that within the conservation-planning AHD we might detect sub-AHDs, organised around the short-hand labels of Conservation Principles, The Heritage Dividend and Constructive Conservation, each with a somewhat different rhetorical purpose. Through this analysis, we can better understand conservation-planning as a distinct heritage social entity and process. It shares values with other heritage activities but also has distinct differences, intimately related to its political relationship with other domains of urban management.

International Cultural Heritage Regimes, International Law, and the Politics of Expertise

Abstract:The article examines the problematic politics of expertise in the formation of international legal rules in the field of heritage, looking specifically at international conventions made under the auspices of UNESCO. The article shows that, even within this seemingly small and cohesive universe, there is a lot of room for disagreement, and much of it can be traced back to what Laurajane Smith has called “the Authorized Heritage Discourse” (AHD). The AHD is responsible for the dichotomization of heritage between intangible and tangible, as heritage professionals strive to hold on to and expand their self-created professional legitimacy and importance. Heritage professionals, in striving to maintain their relevance, tend to create self-referential regimes that exclude heritage holders and communities. I argue that lawyers, because of their own professional tendencies, might be in a position to offer a counterpoint to rule by experts in international cultural heritage management.

Conserving Dirty Concrete: The Decline and Rise of Pasmore's Apollo Pavilion, Peterlee

The Apollo Pavilion, Peterlee, is a large sculpture built to the designs of artist Victor Pasmore. Always controversial, the pavilion has been under threat for much of its life. However, it is recently restored and in December 2011 it was granted Grade II* listing. This might be seen as a story of an artwork and monument rescued from ruin by an artistic and cultural elite similar to the one which created it, as part of a wider “authorized heritage discourse” that has sought to revalorize avant-garde modernist structures despite public hostility. However, the paper argues that the pavilion also needs to be understood in other ways. First, the impetus for creating a positive future for the pavilion has been generated locally. Second, there is a need to understand it in the wider context of the landscape in which it sits; as the visual culmination of an ambitious collaboration between artist and architect. Third, the pavilion should be seen as a monument embodying progressive values, as part of the post-war settlement that strove to create better living environments for all. Fourth, it is argued, it is an object that will continue to provoke, rather than becoming part of a warm, comforting blanket of heritage.

Unauthorising popular music heritage: outline of a critical framework

The purpose of this paper is to set out a critical and analytical framework with which to explore the ways in which popular music heritage in the UK (or in England more specifically) is variously understood, discussed, critiqued, practised or performed. Developed as part of a large-scale European project examining popular music, cultural heritage and cultural memory, our analysis is based on qualitative studies of popular music heritage discourses that reflect a broad cross section of sectors, institutions and industries. Adapting Smith’s concept of authorised heritage discourse, we propose a three-way analytical framework that theoretically and methodologically foregrounds those practices and processes of authorisation that variously ascribe music heritage discourses with value, legitimacy and social and cultural capital. Focusing our discussion on the example of music heritage plaques, we identify three categories of heritage discourse: (1) official authorised popular music heritage, (2) self-authorised popular music heritage and (3) unauthorised popular music heritage. The arguments developed in the final section of the paper in relation to unauthorised music heritage are presented as a critical point of orientation – heritage-as-praxis – that works in dialectical opposition to authorised heritage, or what we have more loosely termed ‘big H’ heritage.

The pit: landscape scars as potential cultural tools

A huge and continuously growing pit is about to divide the Swedish mining town of Malmberget into two halves. What once was the town centre is now a 200 metres deep hole, and private homes and key buildings like the old school and the church have had to be demolished or moved. The pit is a human imposed ‘landscape scar’ epitomising the town’s lost golden age of mining, its present situation of decline and uncertain future prospects – despite a recent recovery in the mining industry. Although the pit is decisively present in the local community, it is not articulated as significant, especially not from a heritage perspective. Why is this so? In this article, we examine the pit as a potential cultural tool for heritage processes, and find that it is indeed used by individuals in this respect, but not in collective memorialisation. We conclude that landscape scars definitely can constitute critical cultural tools, although they may not always need to be labelled as belonging to an ‘authorized heritage discourse’. Instead, the potential of the landscape scar is to enhance the amount and recognition of shared memories in the local community.

Discourses of heritage : implications for archaeological community practice.

This paper summarises previous arguments about the existence and nature of a Western and Eurocentric Authorised Heritage Discourse and examines the consequences this discourse has for archaeological practices associated with community engagement and outreach. This discourse frames archaeology heritage practices and works to conceive heritage as specifically ‘archaeological heritage’. The archaeological discipline owes much to the existence of this discourse, which privileges expert values over those of community and other sub-national interests and which works to constrain understandings of heritage as primarily material. This discourse hinders productive and critical community engagement and the paper argues that archaeologists need to engage in self-conscious and explicit challenges to this discourse to facilitate meaningful community partnerships.

These Are Not Old Ruins: A Heritage of the Hrun

The economic boom and subsequent collapse (Hrun) of the mid 2000s had a marked effect on Reykjavik, leaving various half-finished and empty structures with uncertain futures. Although the material culture of the economic collapse has been examined to some degree, the abandoned building sites have not. The Icelandic heritage discourse has so far had very little engagement with twentieth-century materiality and even less with twenty-first-century materiality but this paper contends that these places can nevertheless be seen as heritage. In order to engage with such places, the Icelandic authorized heritage discourse must be significantly broadened.

Archaeology, Community, and Identity in an English New Town

It has been widely accepted that elements of the historic environment have been deployed to create an 'authorized heritage discourse' which supports the 'top-down' reinforcement of particular identities. Archaeology can be a vehicle for the expression of alternative identities. This article looks at the ways in which the historic environment has been used in Telford, an English new town created in the 1960s, both to support the creation of this new place, and in opposition to it. A community archaeology project undertaken by the author in 2010 is described, and forms the basis of a discussion on the role of communities in heritage, the ways in which community identities may shift, and how relationships between communities and the historic environment profession may evolve.

‘The Birthplace of Australian Multiculturalism?’ Retrospective Commemoration, Participatory Memoralisation and Official Heritage

In Australia, the authorised heritage discourse contributes to shaping the stereotypically Australian. It actively engages in creating a contemporary national story which glosses over the more shameful or distasteful episodes and themes in Australian colonial and post‐colonial history which is presented as being by‐and‐large progressive and benign. While the process of forging national history has become more complex and increasingly fraught, given globalisation and the emergence of new histories, nation and nationalism remain culturally persistent. The turn to multiculturalism from the 1970s as the principal way of defining Australianness and the nation lead some conservatives in politics and the heritage industry to appropriate the new social history, using it to present diversity as an indicator of a fair and open society. In this process, both history—an evolving academic discipline—and the past—lived experience which has meanings and uses in the present—were transformed into heritage.

Rome – The Unauthorized Version

This article looks at the interaction of the people of Rome with their past and the creation of sites of memory with a particular focus on the period from the Risorgimento and onwards. It uses visual, textual and oral evidence to examine how the monuments of the ancient past were used as places to live and work. Being an integral part of the daily lives of the citizens meant that these monuments became important symbols of their identity and social cohesion. The use of ancient Rome for political purposes by the Risorgimento and Fascist governments was a separate heritage discourse, distinct from the daily interactions of ordinary peoplle. Using the memorial at the Fosse Ardeatine as a case-study explores how lieux de mémoire change status as succeeding generations reinterpret events and how monuments become co-opted into an Authorised Heritage Discourse.