Creating Heritage: Unrecognised Pasts and Rejected Futures

Thomas Carter · David Harvey · Roy Jones · Iain Robertson

Nov 2019 · Routledge

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This book investigates the selection process of heritagisation to understand what specific pasts are being selected or rejected for representation, who is selecting them, how and to whom they are being represented and why they are being presented, or dismissed, in the ways that they are.

Some aspects of our pasts are venerated and memorialised for a variety of reasons, while others are forgotten or even hidden. This volume, thus, provides examples from across a spectrum. Some phenomena are well-suited to heritagisation, such as animals memorialised for their bravery, long past agricultural techniques and implements, and impressive landscapes. However, this book also deals with products (e.g. tobacco), historical periods (e.g. the Third Reich) and scientific techniques (e.g. genetic modification) with negative connotations that extend beyond their heritage attributes.

This volume considers how the actors in the heritage industry admit, valorise, prioritise and rationalise historic resources as heritage products. These findings provide practical examples of how heritage institutions privilege, frame and/or exclude a wide range of heritage items. They also contrast the invocations of sectional (local, national or class based) and more cosmopolitan heritages and consider the extent to which innovation and change are or can be acknowledged within the heritage discourse.

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Thomas Carter is the Heritage and Volunteer Coordinator for the University of Northampton Students’ Union. His work focuses on research and engagement projects connected to the restored Grade II listed Midland Railway Engine Shed which is now the Students Union’s home.

David C. Harvey is an Associate Professor in Critical Heritage Studies at Aarhus University, Denmark, and an Honorary Professor of Historical and Cultural Geography at the University of Exeter, UK. His work focuses on the geographies of heritage, landscape and commemoration.

Roy Jones is an Emeritus Professor of Geography at Curtin University in Perth, Western Australia. He is a historical geographer with research interests in heritage, tourism and regional change.

Iain J.M. Robertson is Reader in History at the Centre for History, University of the Highlands and Islands, UK, and an Adjunct Professor of Historical Geography at Curtin University in Perth, Western Australia. His work focuses on entanglements of heritage and power.