Values in Heritage Management: Emerging Approaches and Research Directions

Edited by Erica Avrami, Susan Macdonald, Randall Mason, and David Myers

The Getty Conservation Institute, Los Angeles

Copyright

The Getty Conservation Institute
Timothy P. Whalen, John E. and Louise Bryson Director
Jeanne Marie Teutonico, Associate Director, Programs

The Getty Conservation Institute (GCI) works internationally to advance conservation practice in the visual arts—broadly interpreted to include objects, collections, architecture, and sites. The Institute serves the conservation community through scientific research, education and training, field projects, and the dissemination of information. In all its endeavors, the GCI creates and delivers knowledge that contributes to the conservation of the world’s cultural heritage.

© 2019 J. Paul Getty Trust

The text of this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. To view a copy of this license, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/. All images are reproduced with the permission of the rights holders acknowledged in captions and are expressly excluded from the CC BY-NC-ND license covering the rest of this publication. These images may not be reproduced, copied, transmitted, or manipulated without consent from the owners, who reserve all rights.

First edition, 2019
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

- Names: Values in heritage management (2017 : Getty Conservation Institute), author. | Avrami, Erica C., editor. | Getty Conservation Institute, issuing body, host institution, organizer.

- Title: Values in heritage management : emerging approaches and research directions / edited by Erica Avrami, Susan Macdonald, Randall Mason, and David Myers.

- Description: Los Angeles, California : The Getty Conservation Institute, [2019] | Includes bibliographical references.

- Identifiers: LCCN 2019011992 (print) | LCCN 2019013650 (ebook) | ISBN 9781606066201 (epub) | ISBN 9781606066188 (pbk.)

- Subjects: LCSH: Historic preservation. | Cultural property—Protection.

- Classification: LCC CC135 (ebook) | LCC CC135 .V34 2017 (print) | DDC 363.6/9–dc23

- LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019011992

Front cover: Removal of the decades-old bronze statue of British colonialist Cecil John Rhodes from the campus at Cape Town University, Cape Town, South Africa, Thursday, April 9, 2015, in response to student protests describing it as symbolic of slow racial change on campus. Cecil Rhodes lived from 1853 until 1902 and was a businessman and politician in South Africa and a fervent believer in British colonial rule. Image: AP Photo / Schalk van Zuydam / © 2019 The Associated Press

Contents

- Foreword — Jeanne Marie Teutonico

- Acknowledgments

- Part I. Background

- 1. Introduction — Erica Avrami, Susan Macdonald, Randall Mason, and David Myers

- 2. Mapping the Issue of Values — Erica Avrami and Randall Mason

- Part II. Perspectives from the Field

- 3. Spatializing Values in Heritage Conservation: The Potential of Cultural Mapping — Erica Avrami

- 4. Heritage Work: Understanding the Values, Applying the Values — Kristal Buckley

- 5. The Shift toward Values in UK Heritage Practice — Kate Clark

- 6. Understanding Values of Cultural Heritage within the Framework of Social Identity Conflicts — Karina V. Korostelina

- 7. The Contemporary Values behind Chinese Heritage — Kuanghan Li

- 8. Values-Based Management and the Burra Charter: 1979, 1999, 2013 — Richard Mackay

- 9. Is Conservation of Cultural Heritage Halal? Perspectives on Heritage Values Rooted in Arabic-Islamic Traditions — Hossam Mahdy

- 10. Changing Concepts and Values in Natural Heritage Conservation: A View through IUCN and UNESCO Policies — Josep-Maria Mallarach and Bas Verschuuren

- 11. Valuing Traumatic Heritage Places as Archives and Agents — Randall Mason

- 12. Values and Relationships between Tangible and Intangible Dimensions of Heritage Places — Ayesha Pamela Rogers

- 13. The Paradox of Valuing the Invaluable: Managing Cultural Values in Heritage Places — Tara Sharma

- 14. Heritage Economics: Coming to Terms with Value and Valuation — David Throsby

- 15. From the Inside Looking Out: Indigenous Perspectives on Heritage Values — Joe Watkins

- Appendix: Conclusions and Recommendations of the Symposium Participants

- Further Readings in Heritage Values

- Symposium Participants

- Contributors

Foreword

The notion of significance has a long history that underpins conservation practice. In 1979 the Burra Charter was adopted by Australia ICOMOS. Revisions in 1999 recast the concept of significance in a more participatory light and launched a new era in values-based heritage management by identifying a broader range of values and stakeholders to be considered in conservation practice. Yet despite the advances embodied in the Burra Charter, formal processes for values-based heritage assessment and conservation were still not prevalent as recently as two decades ago. Economic studies of heritage were uncommon, and the methodologies for undertaking them less developed and tested than they are today. At the same time, questions about the societal benefits of heritage conservation and its economic value arose with growing frequency toward the end of the twentieth century. Diverse groups also increasingly demanded the recognition of heritage they valued, and sought greater agency in the management of that heritage.

In response to such developments, the Getty Conservation Institute (GCI) launched the Agora initiative in 1997, under the direction of Marta de la Torre, to provide a forum in which “the complex social, political and economic issues raised by [the] protection [of heritage] could be explored and debated.”[1] This initiative evolved into the GCI’s Research on the Values of Heritage project, which aimed to bridge economic and cultural approaches to valuing heritage and, ultimately, to advance development of a more integrated approach to conservation.

Between 1998 and 2005, through research, convening, and case studies, the project aimed to characterize the heritage values considered fundamental for conservation decisions; examine the potential contributions of economic analysis; develop methods for assessing heritage values and for their incorporation into conservation processes; and produce case studies examining values in site management. This work resulted in four publications: Economics and Heritage Conservation (1999), Values and Heritage Conservation (2000), Assessing the Values of Cultural Heritage (2002), and Heritage Values in Site Management: Four Case Studies (2005).[2] More recent GCI activity has produced two additional publications focused on stakeholders and the application of consensus building and dispute resolution methods: A Didactic Case Study of Jarash Archaeological Site, Jordan: Stakeholders and Heritage Values in Site Management (2010),[3] and Consensus Building, Negotiation, and Conflict Resolution for Heritage Place Management (2016).[4] The GCI has also embedded values-based conservation in its own field projects and training efforts around the world.

This work at the GCI was part of a broader movement in the field to advance values-based planning methodologies. Today, the principle that a thorough understanding of the cultural significance of a place should guide all aspects of heritage decision making is fundamental to contemporary conservation practice. This principle is applied at all stages of the conservation process, from the identification of what is deemed heritage, to the development of conservation policies and intervention strategies, to the investment and expenditure of resources in heritage management activities. Implicit in this approach is the importance of engaging in management processes the multiple publics who use and care about a heritage place. Such engagement has been explicitly acknowledged in the codification of responsibilities of heritage professionals in the recently adopted “ICOMOS Ethical Principles.”[5]

Despite these significant developments in applied theory and practice, however, values-based approaches are not well researched and formalized, and policy change at the level of heritage governance is not prevalent around the world. New questions and issues are emerging in relation to values-based heritage management, including the recognition of a broader range of heritage typologies—tangible and intangible—and the development of new norms and methods of practice. In addition, the ways in which heritage functions within societies have evolved, with stakeholder communities in many places becoming increasingly active.

In 2016, two former GCI colleagues—Erica Avrami of Columbia University and Randall Mason of the University of Pennsylvania—approached the GCI about working collaboratively to further advance discourse on heritage values in response to these challenges. The result was a jointly organized symposium, “Values in Heritage Management: Emerging Approaches and Research Directions,” held in Los Angeles on February 6 and 7, 2017. The event brought together an invited group of scholars and practitioners to explore a range of emerging issues and approaches from a variety of geographic regions and professional disciplines. The ideas shared at the symposium served as a springboard for the individual contributions contained in this volume, including a discussion paper by Avrami and Mason in which they argue for a stronger alignment between values in heritage practice and societal values. The publication’s appendix contains conclusions and recommendations from the symposium regarding relevant challenges and gaps in the heritage field, as well as opportunities for improving heritage conservation outcomes through the better understanding, development, and use of values-based methodologies.

We are grateful to the volume editors—Erica Avrami, Susan Macdonald, Randall Mason, and David Myers—for conceiving the symposium and publication, and for guiding this volume to completion. We hope that this publication will provoke continued dialogue and, ultimately, contribute to the advancement of conservation practice.

- Jeanne Marie TeutonicoAssociate Director, ProgramsThe Getty Conservation Institute

Notes

1. Getty Conservation Institute, “The Agora, Values and Benefits Inquiry, Report of Initial Meeting,” unpublished report, 1996, 2. ↩

2. Randall Mason, ed., Economics and Heritage Conservation (Los Angeles: Getty Conservation Institute, 1999); Erica Avrami, Randall Mason, and Marta de la Torre, eds., Values and Heritage Conservation: Research Report (Los Angeles: Getty Conservation Institute, 2000); Marta de la Torre, ed., Assessing the Values of Cultural Heritage (Los Angeles: Getty Conservation Institute, 2002); Marta de la Torre, ed., Heritage Values in Site Management: Four Case Studies (Los Angeles: Getty Conservation Institute, 2005). All of these publications are available at http://www.getty.edu/conservation/our_projects/field_projects/heritage/heritage_publications.html/. ↩

3. David Myers, Stacie Nicole Smith, and May Shaer, A Didactic Case Study of Jarash Archaeological Site, Jordan: Stakeholders and Heritage Values in Site Management (Los Angeles: Getty Conservation Institute; Amman: Dept. of Antiquities, Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan, 2010); Stacie Nicole Smith, David Myers, and May Shaer, A Didactic Case Study of Jarash Archaeological Site, Jordan: Stakeholders and Heritage Values in Site Management: Teaching Materials (Los Angeles: Getty Conservation Institute; Amman: Dept. of Antiquities, Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan, 2010). Both parts of the publication are available at http://hdl.handle.net/10020/gci_pubs/jarash_case_study/. ↩

4. David Myers, Stacie Nicole Smith, and Gail Ostergren, eds., Consensus Building, Negotiation, and Conflict Resolution for Heritage Place Management: Proceedings of a Workshop Organized by the Getty Conservation Institute, Los Angeles, California, 1–3 December 2009 (Los Angeles: Getty Conservation Institute, 2016), http://hdl.handle.net/10020/gci_pubs/consensus_building/. ↩

5. “ICOMOS Ethical Principles,” 2014, https://www.icomos.org/images/DOCUMENTS/Secretariat/2015/GA_2014_results/20150114-ethics-asadopted-languagecheck-finalcirc.pdf. ↩

Acknowledgments

We thank all of the authors who so generously presented their work at the symposium and then prepared their valuable contributions for this publication. We greatly appreciate GCI associate director Jeanne Marie Teutonico’s ongoing support of the GCI’s collaborative efforts to advance research and practice related to values in heritage management. We also acknowledge GCI staff members Martha Demas, who provided welcome input during the symposium; Sara Galerne, for logistical support to the symposium and production of the publication; and Laura Matarese, who helped record the symposium discussions. Our thanks as well to Cherie-Nicole Leo, Mayssa Jallad, and Sara Stratte, who contributed to the compilation of the publication’s bibliography as graduate research assistants at Columbia University and the University of Pennsylvania, and Anna Duer of the GCI Information Center, who carefully reviewed the publication’s bibliography and helped with its formatting. Special mention goes to the GCI’s Gail Ostergren for patiently working with all the editors and authors to assemble and provide a first edit of the entire manuscript. Our thanks to the GCI’s Cynthia Godlewski, who guided the final manuscript through to publication. Finally, we wish to thank the Getty Publications team, who shepherded this book through the publication process: Ruth Evans Lane, project editor; Lindsey Westbrook, copy editor; Greg Albers, digital publications manager; Kelly Peyton, image acquisition and permissions; Laura diZerega, graduate intern; Jim Drobka, design; and Suzanne Watson, production.

Part I

Background

1

Introduction

- Erica Avrami

- Susan Macdonald

- Randall Mason

- David Myers

Over the last several decades a considerable discourse on the values of heritage has emerged among heritage professionals, in governments, and within communities.[1] This discussion has sought to advance the relevance of heritage to dynamically changing communities and forge a shared understanding of how to conserve and manage it. Values-based heritage conservation aims to retain the cultural significance of places, typically by balancing the aesthetic, historic, scientific, spiritual, and social values held by past, present, and future generations.[2] As values-based conservation has evolved in the last quarter century, it has provided new modes of engagement for a wider range of stakeholders, responding to the challenges of sustaining heritage sites and amplifying their relevance.[3] This volume’s collection of contemporary accounts of values-based conservation takes stock of recent discussion, experimentation, and applications in practice. The genesis of the collection was a symposium held in Los Angeles in February 2017 that brought its editors and authors together to explore a range of emerging issues and challenges. The work of these sixteen practitioners and scholars enables broad reflection on current practice and maps out areas for future research.

Decisions based on values permeate typical conservation processes, from the identification of places to be protected, to ongoing decisions about conserving and managing sites, to justifying the relevance of heritage conservation as a form of public policy, to evaluating long-term policy effects on society and the environment. Often in practice heritage professionals are balancing between policy-level rationales, such as promoting public welfare and generating tourism revenue, and the immediate priorities of on-the-ground conservation and management, such as retaining the significant aspects of a particular building or site and accommodating its practical functions serving owners, occupants, or visitors. These decisions, however, are not divorced from each other. They are deeply interrelated through valorization—the process of creating new or adding value to heritage through recognition, protection, or other interventions.

Values-based conservation approaches navigate these varying scales and interests by incorporating different perspectives in decision making. How the views of many publics (some powerful, others acutely disempowered) inform the decisions professionals make about what to preserve and how has become increasingly germane as democratic processes have proliferated internationally, and as mobility has created more diverse communities. While it is generally agreed that broader, “bottom-up” participation by a wider range of stakeholders will inform better choices, values-based heritage management is still inconsistently applied, and its processes and outcomes are still largely under-studied in many places.

As societies around the globe, and at all scales, continue to change and transform, and heritage places take on even more prominence in contemporary life, values-based conservation has been challenged with rising to these new complexities. How can the fundamental principles of values-based conservation be better understood and extended to meet these challenges, and what values-based approaches have been successfully applied that have potentially broader utility?

The chapters in this volume explore existing values-based approaches in order to understand which methods have proven effective, how they are operationalized (or not), and what their limitations may be when applied in varying cultural contexts. These ambitious questions motivate us to explore how values-based approaches have fared and how values discourse shifts as societies are more empowered to define and redefine heritage, and as different publics utilize heritage for different ends.

What we seek is not simply a process of understanding “values,” but of exploring the self-aware role of the heritage professional in valorizing places to prompt different kinds of interventions or management decisions, from simply listing or recognizing a site as worthy of conservation to integrating heritage into broader development plans. In other words, we honor the emerging understanding that heritage is both a vestige to which we ascribe value and a catalyst for manifesting shared societal values.

In “Mapping the Issue of Values,” Erica Avrami and Randall Mason chart the historical arc of the heritage-focused values discourse in relation to societal and environmental change. They suggest a rebalancing of the operational framework adopted in many countries between typically ascribed heritage values—such as historic, aesthetic, and scientific—and broader societal values that more explicitly acknowledge the ways in which communities instrumentalize heritage for social, economic, and environmental (that is, non-heritage) ends. In the individually authored papers that follow, fourteen researchers and practitioners describe their work in terms of values-based conservation ideals and models. Their examinations draw from a variety of cultural, professional, and geopolitical contexts in an effort to shed light on shared challenges and opportunities in practice.

The contemporary heritage field is marked by a number of intersecting theoretical lines of argument (often reexamining long-inherited ideas), cultural dynamics, political issues, practical issues, and challenges of governance and policy. Depending on the author, the place, and the heritage issue, different factors take precedence. This notion of intersectionality is threaded throughout the understanding of heritage values and valorization built up by the group of practitioners and scholars represented in this book (and more broadly in the field).[4]

The typical introduction to an edited collection of essays narrates the flow of ideas represented in the papers, one after another. We take a different approach here, outlining a range of themes, views, arguments, sources, and writers, and foregrounding the complexity of ideas and interconnections.

Understanding the Dynamic Nature of Values

Values have been traditionally tied to the history and materiality of places. Heritage is acknowledged first as a bearer of place-based narratives, such as the story of prisoner incarceration and rehabilitation told at Eastern State Penitentiary and the evocative reminder of traumatic events of the Rwandan genocide memorials described by Randall Mason. While development of the heritage profession has greatly refined practices related to understanding these connections, multiple authors speak to the reality that decision making revolves less around a set of fixed values reflected in fabric, and is increasingly influenced by a broader range of values reflective of contemporary society. Kuanghan Li, in her analysis of Dali village in China’s Guizhou province, notes that the introduction of social and cultural values with “Chinese characteristics” allows for formerly unacknowledged forms of heritage to receive official recognition and protection. Joe Watkins likewise outlines how Native American communities and their views of heritage brought about US government recognition of values attributed to places because of associated cultural practices or beliefs of living communities. In examining the role of such cultural values in natural resource conservation, Josep-Maria Mallarach and Bas Verschuuren note their importance to achieving equitable approaches to environmental as well as cultural heritage management.

Erica Avrami and Kristal Buckley, exploring cases in Egypt and Australia respectively, both speak to the power of cultural mapping to engage communities more directly in defining the social-spatial relationships critical to understanding how heritage places are valued and valorized by multiple publics. Such community-oriented tools can also challenge traditional approaches to conservation that may prioritize historic fabric, as Richard Mackay describes in his account of Sydney’s Luna Park. The materiality (tangible attributes) of heritage has come to be recognized as operating in a more complex dialogue with intangible attributes such as practices, uses, and connections. Communities in Ladakh, India, maintain and renew their heritage resources in ways that favor the continuity of intangible, social values, and Tara Sharma elucidates how these decisions challenge the precept of preserving original fabric that is often espoused by heritage norms and professionals.

Bringing an economic lens to the question of evolving values, David Throsby asserts that benefits flow from tangible as well as intangible heritage assets, and that the concept of cultural capital helps model how this works. But both Ayesha Pamela Rogers and Karina V. Korostelina caution that the relationship between tangible and intangible aspects of heritage can also be a source of tension. Cultural and professional biases as well as identity-based conflicts between distinct groups can manifest through the different values each ascribes to heritage, underscoring the dynamic and often temporal nature of values-based approaches to decision making.

Balancing Heritage Norms and Cultural Differences

Changing values and the inclusion of more actors in valuing processes provoke responses in governance and policy, as well as in professional norms and practices. Broader inclusion in heritage processes is a means of empowerment and political engagement for communities as they grapple with increasing diversity and seek ways to cultivate collective memory. This can in turn incur new kinds of questioning of heritage policies and practices, as well as overall governance structures at different scales of jurisdiction, especially in postcolonial contexts. Some authors highlight the power of community-driven action; others note the limitations said structures impose on participatory management.

Many of the texts underscore the pressing need to recognize culturally specific ways of valuing heritage and cultural difference in terms of how heritage is perceived, conceived, and managed. In some of the cases, participatory values-based approaches are not the norm, thereby limiting responsiveness to community concerns. Some papers highlight that internationalized approaches adopted by governments and heritage professionals, including values-based ones, are often heavily biased by the Eurocentric or Anglocentric worldviews from which they emerge.[5] For example, the creation of Western-modeled government heritage agencies in Muslim-majority nations has in some cases undercut centuries-old traditions of locally implemented and community-responsive support mechanisms, as Hossam Mahdy demonstrates. Watkins examines how US federal policies and funding focus on stewardship of the tangible places associated with Native American beliefs and practices, without adequate provisions for preserving the intangible traditions themselves, creating a mismatch between government and tribal conceptions of heritage. Such differing worldviews highlight the challenges of establishing and maintaining shared heritage norms and values in multicultural societies. Working across cultures compels greater awareness of and sensitivity to differing worldviews among stakeholders. In their joint paper Mason and Avrami contend that values-based approaches that are context responsive and culturally specific—and that recognize societal, not just heritage, values—have the potential to hold authorities accountable for decisions that counter the societal values associated with places and to assert power over governance processes.

Mallarach and Verschuuren drive home the point that governance structures are highly influential in the efficacy of values-based heritage management and play a critical role in the shift between top-down regulatory frameworks and bottom-up, rights-based approaches. They argue that the international arena has an important role to help establish shared aims of values-based management through policies and practices that are supportive of and applicable to local cultural contexts. Throsby clarifies this further, suggesting that acknowledging the different treatments and uses of economic and cultural values clarifies the role of state agencies vis-à-vis other actors, which can be helpful as these relationships are being redrawn. Indeed, economic discourse around values can still provide something of a lingua franca bridging cultural and political divides.

In the case of Australia, as Mackay and Buckley assert, the Australia ICOMOS Charter for Places of Cultural Significance (also known as the Burra Charter), a non-statutory, values-based decision-making tool, has been central to determining conservation and management policies for Australia’s heritage places. Introducing participatory processes into governance, as promoted in the Burra Charter, has also increased support for conservation and secured better outcomes. The Burra Charter has evolved over time to recognize intangible dimensions and Indigenous heritage, which underscores how changing values and new knowledge inform shifts in heritage norms.

The development and revision of the China Principles (ICOMOS China 2015) reflect the internal evolution of Chinese practices through the broadening of both recognized value and heritage categories and the portrayal of national image, but Li notes that they also demonstrate the influence of international norms. Rogers raises the crucial point that the application of internationalized values-based heritage management processes to local contexts, especially those with colonial-based laws and limited participatory governance structures, presents fundamental challenges. Sharma cautions that conflicts between colonial-based heritage policies and contemporary heritage practices underscore values-related tensions that have yet to be reconciled at the level of governance and within the heritage profession.

Changing Notions of Value and Shifts in Heritage Practice and Management

Concepts of value directly shape modes of practice, so new notions of value inspire new practices. Further, the complex relationships between traditional heritage values and broader societal values raise questions about their application in decision-making processes.

In their respective accounts of the evolution and application of the Burra Charter in Australia, both Buckley and Mackay note that recognition of social value has catalyzed shifts in the roles and participation of experts, and further democratized heritage management through new models of traditional owners managing heritage places. Mason asserts that heritage and its internationalized practices can be taken further along this path, functioning as an agent of broad social change, sometimes challenging traditional practices and vice versa. The embrace of international models has advanced the state of practice in China, as Li observes, but increasing interest in heritage among broader publics challenges the singular roles of the state and the profession.

In her description of the changing function of a neglected Mughal monument in Lahore, Pakistan, Rogers asserts that contemporary use of heritage represents ongoing shifts in societal values that must be continually reconciled with management decision making. Likewise, changes in environment and social context can influence values in ways that compel broad change in heritage practice, as in Kate Clark’s account of how the English Heritage (now Historic England) Conservation Principles (2008) mark a shift toward values and sustainability in cultural heritage management, drawing on natural heritage practice. Mallarach and Verschuuren echo the reciprocal relationship of nature-culture dynamics, and underscore the need to recognize different worldviews and knowledge systems so as to establish management practices that reflect shared values.

Promoting Participatory Processes

The essential narratives and values of heritage places are rarely, if ever, singular. This multiplicity can only be recognized through more participatory heritage management processes that give voice to a range of stakeholders, including those beyond the realm of heritage experts (from other disciplines as well as nonexperts). Several authors present histories and cases that further underscore how broader involvement, especially of local communities, in deciding what and how to conserve is critical to socially responsive and socially relevant practice.

Buckley, Clark, and Mackay all emphasize the fundamental role of participatory processes that extend beyond heritage experts. Mason takes this further by noting that as social and societal values play more influential roles in conservation decisions, participatory processes take on greater importance vis-à-vis expert judgment. Identifying heritage through a community-driven process can elucidate values that, as Sharma argues, challenge concepts of boundaries, materiality, and heritage language. And Rogers suggests that greater recognition of “informal modes of engagement” is key to fostering participatory processes that are community responsive.

Korostelina, as well as Mallarach and Verschuuren, note that such participatory processes can provide important means of conflict resolution among diverse stakeholders and their respective values. If dealt with sensitively, they can create common ground and mutual understanding of underlying needs. Such processes have the potential not only to mediate laterally among (potentially conflicting) interest groups, but also to address the varying degrees of agency and power among decision makers. Experts have a potentially significant role to play. Li observes that disconnections between top-down policies and local practices in China require heritage professionals to act as mediators in addressing community concerns. Avrami shares similar views in relation to how experts interact with communities to understand and spatialize values, noting that “expert-led” and “community-driven” are not mutually exclusive. It is often through the interaction of these agents that underrepresented community voices are empowered, as illustrated by Watkins’s account of how US federal heritage policy shifted in the 1990s to enable more than 170 Native American tribes to take over preservation functions on their own tribal trust lands, and gave participatory processes additional statutory support.

Using Heritage for Social Outcomes

Conservation increasingly plays a role in processes of social justice, reconciliation, healing, and promoting understanding as well as other sociocultural-related benefits across diverse communities—even pursuit of economic benefits. These burgeoning expectations of heritage tie conservation more firmly to dynamic, contemporary societal issues.

Mason makes the case, most poignantly in his example of Rwanda, that conservation decisions sometimes respond primarily to contemporary issues—such as trauma, reconciliation, and human development—and do not necessarily stem from the interpretation of traditional heritage values. Korostelina shifts this assessment from reactive to proactive, suggesting that inclusive heritage practices have the potential to promote accountability for past injustices, heal traumas, and reduce the likelihood that injustices will occur in the future. Avrami likewise suggests that it is incumbent upon the heritage field to use more inclusive values-based approaches to support restorative justice by empowering underrepresented stakeholders and narratives.

Mallarach and Verschuuren from the natural heritage perspective, and Buckley from the cultural heritage perspective, assert that rights-based approaches represent an emerging recognition of the importance of local voices and values, Indigenous land rights, and traditional knowledge in achieving equitable outcomes. Mahdy warns that formerly equitable and sustainable outcomes are undermined when Western concepts of heritage values are imposed in an Islamic setting while doing away with traditional Islamic support mechanisms; sustained delivery of social services is weakened as a result.

What is important about heritage, and which places or items are important as heritage? What purposes can heritage serve? If heritage conservation is organized to serve society, who does it serve and how well does it serve? These are the ultimate questions value-based conservation means to address. By deeply interrogating why we conserve and what we should conserve, we’ll find answers to guide how we conserve.

Through the 2017 symposium and this volume, we aspired to identify challenges and explore where further research may advance the application of values-based approaches to the heritage enterprise. The field has long sought to better connect professional and public values, and to bridge divides between policy and place-based practices. The papers herein illustrate the barriers to and opportunities for putting these approaches into motion. Collectively, they serve both as an evidence-based assertion of the need to forge ever stronger societal connections and as a provocation to reconsider the relational dynamics of those connections in ways that challenge the field to adapt policy and practice.

Notes

1. Heritage professionals are those individuals with a primary focus on the understanding, recording, conservation, management, and presentation of cultural heritage. They come from a broad range of disciplines, including but not limited to heritage conservation, archaeology, architecture, urban planning, history, anthropology, and geography. They work in a broad spectrum of organizations spanning public, private, and NGO sectors. ↩

2. This definition is best known through the influential Burra Charter (Australia ICOMOS 2013). The term “values” is used in the sense of positive qualities or attributes ascribed by stakeholders, and not in the sense of ethics or beliefs. ↩

3. A stakeholder is defined here as any person, group, or organization with an interest or concern (a stake) in a place, situation, issue, or conflict, or who will be fundamentally affected by related outcomes. ↩

4. Intersectionality is a term arising from identity politics, holding that different aspects of identity (gender, race, class, et cetera) cannot legitimately be isolated or treated as separate analytical categories. ↩

5. The editors of this volume acknowledge that they are products and representatives of an Anglo-European heritage tradition, and as such bring their own views informed by that tradition to this analysis. ↩

References

- Australia ICOMOS. 2013. The Burra Charter: The Australia ICOMOS Charter for Places of Cultural Significance. Burwood: Australia ICOMOS. http://australia.icomos.org/wp-content/uploads/The-Burra-Charter-2013-Adopted-31.10.2013.pdf.

- English Heritage. 2008. Conservation Principles, Policies and Guidance for the Sustainable Management of the Historic Environment. London: English Heritage. https://www.historicengland.org.uk/images-books/publications/conservation-principles-sustainable-management-historic-environment/.

- ICOMOS China. 2015. Zhongguo wen wu gu ji bao hu zhun ze / Principles for the Conservation of Heritage Sites in China. Rev. ed. Beijing: Wen wu chu ban she. http://hdl.handle.net/10020/gci_pubs/china_principles_2015.

2

Mapping the Issue of Values

- Erica Avrami

- Randall Mason

Values have long underpinned concepts of heritage and its conservation within the built environment. The last half century bore witness to a critical period of political and social influence that shaped the field’s institutional and professional development, and has broadened the understanding of how multiple publics may ascribe different values to heritage. An analysis of evolving trends and emerging issues suggests that the contemporary field is characterized by two distinct, complementary perspectives: one centered on heritage values (associated with the curatorial, materialist traditions of conservation practice) and the other on societal values (focused on the economic, political, social, and environmental uses of heritage). Integrating these different yet interdependent views can advance learning and self-critique within the professional field and inspire more sustainable and inclusive practices of conservation.

“Cultural heritage undergoes a continuous process of evolution.”

—“Nara + 20” (Heritage and Society 2015, 145)

What is the biggest challenge facing the heritage conservation field in the 2010s and beyond? The relevance of heritage and its conservation to contemporary society surely ranks high on anyone’s list. The basis of this chapter is the assertion that careful study of the role of values in conservation—how they are discerned, acted upon, reshaped by myriad actors—is essential to increasing the societal relevance of conservation.

Values have long played a central role in defining and directing conservation of built heritage. Value, wherever it resides, produces a flow of benefits. The dynamics among values and benefits are complex and tend toward conflict. One cannot maximize all values of a place; elevating one kind of value may come at a cost to others, and the weight given to different benefits is constantly changing. In nearly every aspect of conservation practice—from understanding and eliciting the values of heritage places to incorporating value assessments into decisions and policies—appraisals of value matter. Heritage professionals recognize that solving the puzzle of values is a central part of managing sites, determining treatments, deciding on tolerances for change, and ultimately serving society.

The particular roles played by values in conservation practice, and the range of values invoked as society constructs heritage, continue to evolve (Heritage and Society 2015). As the scope and scale of heritage conservation has grown, deeper complexities have emerged, many of them politically fraught. They emanate not simply from conservation professionals adopting new politics or looking at heritage places in new ways, but rather from myriad actors in society at large finding heritage useful and desirable. The politicization of heritage values is instigated by deep societal changes of the past few generations. It leaves us working in a field more open to external forces and more aware of our real and expected effects on lives and localities.

To operate effectively in the thoroughly politicized global society emergent in the last fifty years—in other words, to remain relevant and effective—conservation professionals have been challenged to broaden their perspective, enlist new partners, reframe inherited theories, and engage with political, economic, and cultural dynamics of the society writ large as part of the practice of conservation. Professionals, in other words, have been compelled to strengthen their traditional curatorial focus on a few, widely accepted categories of heritage value—historic, artistic, aesthetic, scientific—by sharpening their engagements with values activated by the broader societal processes affecting heritage (for instance the politicization of culture, the ubiquitous influence of economic thinking, changing governance models, the transformative effects of digital technology, and the role of the built environment and social-spatial dynamics in responding to climate change). Whether these broader societal forces shape decisions about built heritage for better or worse, it seems undeniable that conservation professionals must theorize and practice with them in mind.

This chapter creates a “map” of the overall subject of values as a practical, intellectual, and critical concept in conservation practice. It outlines relevant issues bridging practical, policy, and theoretical discourses in conservation, puts them in context of the field’s history, and explores the changing roles of values in contemporary conservation practice and policy. It gives particular emphasis to issues stemming from the validity of multiple value perspectives, the influence of larger societal forces shaping heritage values, decision-making tools and processes, the desire to evaluate and measure conservation outcomes, and the expert status of conservation professionals vis-à-vis other stakeholders and participants in conservation decisions.

The first part of this chapter introduces the subject and goals of the discussion. Then it moves on to look retrospectively at the evolution of value concepts in conservation, as well as in allied fields and social movements that have shaped conservation. It describes the conventional conservation concepts that manifest values thinking in practice, then outlines emergent trends and topics that mark recent debates over the effects of values in conservation. It takes stock of the current state of thinking and practice regarding values in conservation, while identifying problematic areas of practice as future research topics, then concludes with a brief summary of the implications of this research.

The Promise and Problem of Values

A single theme links all aspects of values-based conservation: the belief that conservation is more effective and relevant when the variety of values at stake for a place are well understood and embraced in decision making at all levels.

Concepts of “value” vary greatly in the parlance of different professional domains. Our use of the word requires clear definition at the outset. In the context of conservation, values refer to the different qualities, characteristics, meanings, perceptions, or associations ascribed to the things we wish to conserve—buildings, objects, sites, landscapes, settlements.[1] Values are central to conservation decision making, though they are not the only factor to be accounted for.[2] Values are not fixed, but subjective and situational. It follows that values must be understood in relation to the person or group ascribing a value to a place, and in relation to the place’s physical and social histories. Values are not always “good” qualities; they can also represent undesirable views or actors.

The trend of the last generation has been broadening the field’s ability to recognize, discern, document, and act on the dynamism of values—and indeed a broader range of values than admitted in traditional practice. The force behind this trend, we argue, came from broader societal forces more than factors internal to the field. Yet while conservation has embraced values-centered thinking and its attendant challenges—shifts in the literature of the field suggest this strongly—the response has been diligent, but not consistent.

People ascribe value to heritage in myriad ways, as there are often differences in how heritage professionals and the public at large find meaning in particular places. The contemporary conservation field is characterized by two distinct, complementary perspectives on values: one centered on heritage values, the other on societal values. The conservation field is rooted in heritage values, the core historic, artistic, aesthetic, and scientific qualities and narratives that form the basis for the very existence of the heritage conservation field. This perspective serves the core functions of heritage in modern society—sustaining historical knowledge, representing the past, memorialization—and is associated with the well-known curatorial, materialist traditions of conservation practice. A more contemporary, outward-looking perspective of societal values focuses on uses and functions of heritage places generated by a broad range of society-wide processes external to conservation. The societal-value perspective foregrounds broader forces forming the contexts of heritage places as well as the non-heritage functions of heritage places—including economic development, political conflict and reconciliation, social justice and civil rights issues, or environmental degradation and conservation.

The distinctions between heritage- and societal-value perspectives should not be overemphasized, yet they have become more salient against the societal developments of the last couple of generations. As different factions within societies assert their needs, heritage increasingly becomes useful for a broader range of reasons (as heritage per se, and beyond heritage). We emphasize this distinction between the two valuing perspectives neither to discredit traditional conservation practice and its pursuit of heritage values (although the hegemony of omniscient expertise needs to be challenged) nor to lionize critical theorists who advocate a radical shift toward societal values (and who appear rather too consumed with the politics and theorization of heritage to connect with practices of conservation). The ultimate goal here is acknowledging the difficult issues raised by the embrace of values-based ideas in their varied forms and for varied purposes, and enabling the flourishing of many constructive, critical, and practical perspectives on heritage and its conservation.

Other analysts (Wijesuriya, Thompson, and Young 2013) have observed this distinction in categories and deployment of values in practice, amounting to a discernment between essential and instrumental values—paralleling categories of heritage and societal values (a theme taken up in more detail later in this chapter).[3] Heritage values tend to be treated as essential: they are the core concern of most conservation activities and are largely contingent upon protection of form and fabric. Societal values are regarded as instrumental in that they are intended to produce other, non-conservation outcomes. While heritage laws and government policies often cite societal values as part of their rationale for public investment—from education to economic benefit—there is often a disconnect between these broader aims and place-based practice.

As elaborated below, the ambition of the conservation field has traditionally been limited to essential values, and conflicts between essential and instrumental uses are common (see sidebar: “Displace, Destroy, or Defend?”). However, essential and instrumental uses can be complementary and cumulative, not exclusive. Both types of value and valuing perspectives are at play in most heritage places, most of the time. The conservation profession tends to magnify and segregate heritage values (and places bearing them) in order to protect them from the broad churn of social change. Because the societal uses of heritage are not completely aligned with conservation philosophy, tensions can arise, often changing the balance of decision making, deprioritizing traditional heritage values and vexing the profession.

Displace, Destroy, or Defend? Controversial Memorials and the Interplay of Heritage Values and Societal Values

As we write, each day’s news brings word of another city deciding to edit its built heritage publicly and dramatically, altering monuments that speak to racial injustice and colonial power. Controversies surrounding such monuments highlight the interplay of heritage values and societal values in decisions about public heritage places, and mark the shift in influence toward societal values. For heritage conservation, such conflicts drive home the point that the fixity and physicality of the monuments’ architectural fabric and long-ago-scripted narratives can stand at odds with the changefulness marking how broader society values these heritage places.

Monuments representing historic, officially sanctioned discrimination provoke protests by those opposing institutional racism. New Orleans’s decision to remove several Confederate monuments in 2017 elevated this as a public issue in the United States (fig. 2.1). Similar controversies have arisen over memorials to Cecil Rhodes in Cape Town and Oxford, a Friedrich Engels statue moving from Ukraine to England, and Chiang Kai-shek monuments collected in a park in Taiwan, among numerous other examples, leading to furious debates, sometimes-violent protests, and a global movement (Coughlan 2016).

Lee Circle, New Orleans, with the statue of Confederate General Robert E. Lee removed from atop the column, February 2018. Image: Randall Mason

Broad public demand drives these decisions, revealing politics and valorization asserting societal values over heritage values when contemporary interpretations of these places are sufficiently traumatic and urgent. Difficult decisions to remove, displace, or at least recontextualize material heritage ensue. In New Orleans, societal forces have shifted so dramatically that the associations and identity-forming functions of these memorials in public space have come to be perceived as intolerable. Defenders of Confederate monuments insist on material protection (from altering, defacing, and removing of monuments) on the basis of a narrow reading of their heritage value, which ultimately was untenable politically.[1]

Notes

1. A New Orleans resident quoted in the New York Times explained: “My whole life has been dedicated to trying to preserve cultural heritage, which means I don’t believe in tearing down anything” (Blinder 2017, n.p.). ↩

While the intent of the heritage professional may be to preserve both heritage and societal values, the two perspectives differ in how they frame outcomes: the heritage-value perspective tends to regard material conservation and careful curation of heritage places as an end in itself, with social benefits and outcomes implied; the societal-value perspective regards heritage and its conservation as a means to a variety of social ends (economic gain, social justice, et cetera; see sidebar: “Societal versus Heritage Values”).

Societal versus Heritage Values: When Instrumentality Trumps Essential Views of Heritage

In 2004 the UNESCO World Heritage Committee inscribed the Dresden Elbe Valley on the World Heritage List. Eighteen kilometers in length and stretching along the Elbe River, the cultural landscape included baroque court architecture, middle-class structures, industrial heritage, historic bridges, gardens, and other urban and landscape features (fig. 2.2). Two years later, the site was placed on the List of World Heritage in Danger due to the planned construction of the Waldschlösschen Bridge and its negative visual impact. After failed attempts at mediation and redesign, the committee delisted the site in 2009.

Opening festival for the controversial Waldschlösschen Bridge in Dresden, Germany, 2013. Image: Sebastian Kahnert / dpa / AP Images / © 2019 The Associated Press

Plans to construct a bridge at the Waldschlösschen site had been afoot since 1996. After the project was approved in 2004, but funding diverted, bridge proponents sought to compel the city to proceed with construction via referendum. In a 2005 vote, more than half the citizens of Dresden participated, and more than two-thirds supported the bridge (Schoch 2014).

At the height of the debate, city officials noted that despite the potential loss of UNESCO designation, “the bridge has become a symbol of something even more important for a post-Communist city like Dresden: citizen action” (Abramsohn 2009, n.p.). A local newspaper poll conducted immediately following the delisting found that a majority of residents were willing to forgo World Heritage status for the bridge (Johanson 2013). After its opening in 2013, which was attended by sixty-five thousand Dresdeners, the bridge had a 75 percent approval rating (Schoch 2014, 213).

The conflict illustrates the tension between the heritage values recognized through expertise and internationalized standards, and the societal values held by the people of Dresden. Local residents did not see the loss of a UNESCO title as undermining their heritage and quality of life, whereas they saw the bridge as an asset that would augment it. In exercising their preference, the dialogue surrounding the value of Dresden’s heritage challenged curatorial paradigms and catalyzed collective agency.

The two perspectives also differ in how values are conceptualized: the heritage-value perspective centers on the categorical importance of historic, artistic, aesthetic, and scientific values associated with heritage places as interpreted by experts and scholars; the societal perspective places more emphasis on the dynamic, complex interplay of heritage and societal values as activated by a wide variety of actors, interest groups, and institutions, including but extending well beyond the heritage conservation field. The challenge of contemporary conservation theory is weaving together both perspectives. Values discourse provides a basis for this.

The coexistence and conflict between these two perspectives is the main narrative of the last fifty years of conservation’s evolution. The turn toward a new paradigm counterposing these values perspectives stemmed from the deep political changes in the 1960s (as elaborated below). Since this time, the effects of different value perspectives are evident in myriad challenges to dominant, inherited power structures, while cultural diversity has been advocated ever more widely. In this milieu, heritage conservation got repositioned in relation to civil society: heritage became thoroughly politicized; heritage conservation became a ubiquitous, mass concern of global scale; conservation also took on a dual life as both state institution and protest movement, deployed variously to critique development and enable redevelopment; and the cultural interpretations and design decisions on which conservation stands became widely contested.

History and Evolution of Values and Valorization in Conservation

The embrace of value types as a foundational issue in heritage conservation by Alois Riegl, Camillo Boito, Gustavo Giovannoni, and other early European theorist-practitioners grew out of earlier cultural traditions of scholarship and connoisseurship (Etlin 1996; Hutter and Throsby 2008). These were amplified by modernity’s impulse to separate, sort, classify, and problem solve all kinds of complex phenomena. The point of such axiological work should not be interpreted as establishing absolute types, but rather as about discerning conservation values in relation to societal values at large with the goal of providing clear bases for decision making. Indeed, Riegl’s famous 1903 essay “The Modern Cult of Monuments” was part of a report on Austrian government heritage policy (Riegl [1903] 1982).

Though the notion of heritage is ancient and has roots far beyond Europe, this chapter puts European conservation at the center of conservation historiography, acknowledging that, first, modernity created the need for a distinct concept of built heritage and conservation in the nineteenth century, and, second, modernity arose most forcefully from European experience, though it has ceased to be a purely Western concept. Fueled by globalization, modernity has been made “indigenous” by cultures across the world (Abbas 1997; Hosagrahar 2005).

Theoretical Foundations and the Curatorial Paradigm

The notion of heritage expertise and professionals tasked with the care of material heritage—the figure of the conservation expert—is built around certain conceptions of value and experts’ authority to understand and deal with it. The traditional heart of professional conservation practice is a curatorial paradigm based on the notion of a monument as bearer of heritage values—monuments are conceived as material objects, set aside from the usual social relations of typical or useful objects because of their extraordinary cultural value(s), requiring knowledgeable care and interpretation to fix their physical state and their meaning.[4] The figure of the curator is imbued with expertise—in art history, design, and material science—to discern what heritage warrants collection and protection, and how to protect and interpret it. The establishment of conservation as a modern profession depended on the expert curator-conservator. While curation of monuments existed from antiquity, in the sense that artifacts and buildings possessing great age or association with important narratives warrant special placement and treatment (for instance in an urban square, or in a museum), the practice expanded greatly post-Enlightenment to encompass both found monuments and made monuments.[5]

The Post–World War II Age of Expertise and Internationalism

The heritage conservation field was transformed in the postwar decades by internationalization and institutionalization. Conservation institutions certainly existed in many countries well before the mid-twentieth century, formed in the nineteenth-century period of modernization in which heritage first claimed status as a contested public good to be routinely provided by governments, not only in Europe and its colonies, but also in the United States, Japan, and elsewhere. The desire to consolidate heritage conservation discourse internationally was realized in the Athens Charter of 1931 (ICOMOS 1931). These efforts were organized internally (among experts). The drivers of postwar change to the conservation field were external: vast swings in economic fortune (booms and busts between and after the two world wars); the violence, destruction, and reconstruction caused by nearly global warfare; and, later, mass tourism.

The founding of UNESCO in 1945 elevated culture to the platform of international human rights, and built heritage was an important arena. Many nation-states improved or extended the legal bases of conservation. This internationalization of practice, methodology, and expertise was well represented in the creation of ICCROM (1959) and ICOMOS (1965) and the adoption of the Venice Charter in 1964 (ICOMOS 1965). It was also represented generally in the elevation of the Italian mode of conservation, which is premised on sensitivity to heritage values, imbued with strong design and artistic sensibilities, and committed to applying scientific methods to conservation. The embrace of scientific epistemology as part of heritage conservation expertise was another transformative force in the profession, deepening conservation’s commitment to core heritage values and curatorial authority.

Acknowledgment of conservation expertise and the global reach of conservation issues paved the way for the contentious politicization of heritage in the 1960s and after by establishing heritage conservation among the routine public goods every society came to expect and utilize for varied political purposes. In other words, the bureaucratization of conservation in many governmental and other institutional forms (trusts, museums, conservancies) begat the other life of conservation in this period: as a visible protest movement.

Political Revolutions of the 1960s

The period around the 1960s marked a watershed moment of truly global dimension—political movements questioned sources of authority at every scale, in every field and discipline, on every continent. The results included an acute awareness of social injustice, acknowledgment of globalization, and the broad and deep politicization of culture. This was the culmination of developments beginning in the immediate postwar period: independence movements in colonies of the Global South; assertion of the civil rights of minority and subaltern groups within and across nation-states; and poststructuralism and postmodernism, broad intellectual movements challenging conventional ways of understanding how power and knowledge are deeply intertwined. Critiques were aimed at institutions, experts and expertise, top-down decision making, and metanarratives in general, opening conflicts over control of cultural identities, government agencies, and built environments.

Heritage conservation was deeply affected. “The initial 1960s–70s move toward radical democratization of the Conservation Movement was bound up with a revulsion against professionalism and experts in general” (Glendinning 2013, 325). Canonical ways of determining significance and claiming authority were challenged, resulting in the strong assertion of bottom-up decision making as well as the recognition of alternative interpretations of history and their reflection in built heritage. By the 1960s, protest was regarded as a central mode of conservation, set against the destructive forces of urban renewal, challenging colonial and nationalistic narratives and asserting the authority of minority cultures.

The 1960s set the heritage conservation field on a search for new methods and newfound relevance for the fragmented, contentious societal identities that emerged from empowerment politics. Conceptual underpinnings, sources of authority, and value discourses of conservation were also profoundly transformed in this era, constituting the “values turn” toward a greater embrace of societal perspectives alongside the heritage-values perspective. Political movements notably reshaped and strengthened core concepts, acknowledging multiple notions of authenticity and plural conceptions of significance. In both theory and practice, societal values have provoked innovative thinking while exposing frictions embedded in legal and public policy instruments.

Government institutions and NGOs began to shift in response, acknowledging the interests of minority and subaltern groups, devising consultation and decision-making models enabling the participation of broader publics, and adopting greater decision-making transparency and stakeholder engagement as key ethical and political strategies. The legacy of the 1960s for the conservation field was the embrace of new perspectives on value—foregrounding societal values related to contemporary uses, identities, and interests, while reframing devotion to long-standing historic and artistic (heritage) values.

The Australia ICOMOS Charter for Places of Cultural Significance, or Burra Charter (Australia ICOMOS 2013) and the Nara Document on Authenticity (ICOMOS 1994) are key representations of the accumulated effects of the politicization of heritage conservation. This is clear, for instance, in the Burra Charter’s use of “cultural significance” emanating from grassroots practice. Burra addresses processes for appraising values and embraces a broader spectrum of heritage values (extending to the social and intangible). By calling for recursive reconsideration of cultural significance of heritage sites, the Burra Charter also acknowledges the situational nature of value appraisals and embraces the constructive tension within decision-making processes by incorporating participation and consultation of nonexperts in a process managed by experts and professionals.[6]

Burra’s focused response to cultural diversity, participation, and the notion of alternative authenticities (of Indigenous cultures vis-à-vis Anglo-Western culture) inspired the field and contributed to a period of experimentation with more participatory models used in allied design and environmental fields such as architecture, city planning, rural development, and environmental conservation. Democratization of conservation practice took hold in other contexts as well, including advocacy planning in the 1960s, the National Trust for Historic Preservation’s Main Street Program (rebranded Main Street America in 2015), and Parks Canada’s commemorative integrity practices.

International charters and national laws are probably slowest to respond to changing value perspectives. For example, the Venice Charter, US and Canadian national preservation policies, and UNESCO’s World Heritage Convention support more or less fixed conceptions of significance based on a narrow spectrum of heritage values; significant evolution can be mapped by looking at changing value types embedded in the 1964 Venice Charter (ICOMOS 1965) through the Burra Charter (1979 and subsequent), the Nara Document (and subsequent regional reports), and Nara + 20 (Heritage and Society 2015). Burra placed a situational notion of “cultural significance” at the center of policy and valorized grassroots contributions to decision making; Nara confirmed a relativist and dynamic notion of authenticity and empowered cultures outside of the Western tradition to assert their own notions. Note by contrast the persistence of hegemonic, literally universalizing claims about value (for example UNESCO’s “outstanding universal value”).

This watershed shift to include societal values was instigated by forces outside the field—though of course it was championed by many working in the field. Though conservation professionals often adopt progressive, inclusive cultural politics, there remains some inertia to change in the expert norms, public policies, institutions, and mutual expectations of professionals and citizens. Meanwhile, the turn toward societal values has been widely felt in reshaping theory, on-the-ground practices, and the balance of power among institutions, professionals, and communities and clients.

The Turn toward Societal Values

The values turn strengthened the field’s traditional responsibility for the curatorial care of buildings and sites, and joined it with a responsibility to respond more deeply to the multitude of communities valorizing these places. The expanding roles played by conservation professionals—beyond technical expertise into mediation, facilitation, and embracing stakeholder status—are now widely acknowledged in practice (Myers, Smith, and Ostergren 2016, 34).

Embracing the values turn requires a greater focus on underlying and uncertain processes of valorization, decision making, and gauging the social impact of conservation, as distinct from the traditional emphasis on the certainties of the materiality and originality of buildings and sites themselves as the main index of conservation’s success. This shift in purpose and objectives (again, it is a shift, not a wholesale replacement) provokes rethinking of concepts, methods, and the roles of experts and institutions in conservation. As the conservation field embraces the complexities of a values-rich social practice—in addition to the challenges of curatorship, scholarship, and materials science—new lines of research and innovation emerge as priorities.

Even if traditional conservation practitioners of the pre- and postwar eras—especially the leading figures—understood all the social complexities of conservation (as well as the design, interpretation, and scientific challenges), they did not have the range of expertise or institutions to deal robustly with all of them. This instigated various dissatisfactions or critiques of the limits of the curatorial paradigm. This is evident for example in the published work of James Marston Fitch: he realized the economic and social dynamism affecting historic preservation in the 1960s and 1970s, and elaborated on the need for a broader response to a broader set of values, yet still responded to projects in a fundamentally curatorial mode.

How has the turn toward societal values manifested in heritage conservation theory and practice in the last generation? The topics on the suggestive list below are already being explored in the realms of practice, policy, and theory, and they were among the topics animating the GCI research on values and heritage reaching back to the 1990s.[7]

- Deeper understanding of values as ascribed to heritage places by people, as opposed to being inherent in the materiality of places. This flows from the broader intellectual transformations of poststructuralism and postmodernism, questioning objectivity and highlighting the power exercised by experts and top-down decision makers to frame values.

- Alternative forms of built heritage. Cultural landscapes, intangible heritage, and reconstructions (actual and virtual) have grown more prominent. Each in its own way communicates something about the value of a cultural form or process without relying on traditional means of representing values only in material forms.

- Broader notions of “ownership.” The political and ethical prominence of stakeholders involved in heritage decision processes have, in effect, created new forms of ownership related to heritage places. Some stakeholders are able to assert strong control over a site without owning it legally.

- Greater recognition of Indigenous and subaltern peoples. Postcolonial critiques have revealed Western normative influences and internationalizing narratives and politics affecting conservation. The distinctions between World Heritage Convention and Nara conceptions of value and authenticity, for instance, are by now well known, and scholars and practitioners continue to explore ways of breaking with monolithic Western understandings of heritage and conservation as European creations (Winter 2013).

- Economic valuation. The values turn also opened the heritage conservation field to the challenges and opportunities of economic values (Mason 1999; Mason 2008). The emergence of economic valuation as an area of conservation practice, research, and policy is based on a realization that heritage has “economic lives,” and that important societal values are expressed through markets for heritage goods and experiences. The introduction of economic concepts and methods recalibrates the values ascribed to a place, tending to privilege societal over heritage values.

- New institutional forms. Public-private partnerships, interest groups, trusts, and other hybrid organizations have long played important roles in the conservation field alongside state agencies. Highly participatory and transparent decision making processes, privatization, and changing attitudes toward central governments make institutional arrangements an area in need of deeper study.

- Status of the conservation profession. The consolidation and codification of heritage conservation as a profession continues to evolve in relation to other, allied professional realms working in history, anthropology, design, and museums. The status of the conservation profession—represented by ICCROM, ICOMOS, UNESCO, graduate university departments, et cetera—is continually challenged by external forces reshaping the markets for conservation expertise as well as by internal differences of opinion on how to define the field.

The Onset of “Critical Heritage Studies”

The politicization of heritage cuts different ways. In a progressive direction, heritage is ever more closely linked with identity politics, empowering citizens and nonexperts and embedding participation into societal expectations as well as professional practices. In a neoliberal direction, markets and private institutions have acquired more power; econometric valuation and business logic gain influence in decisions about conservation and its management, resulting in clear trends toward privatization and threats to public good. Politicization has foregrounded arenas of conflict—for instance the issue of gentrification, or recognition of negative or traumatic heritage—as well as made space for a broader range of voices, identities, and narratives.

Following the turn toward societal values, and the pragmatic responses outlined in previous sections, intellectual discourse around “critical heritage studies” has emerged as a radical, thoroughly politicized response to the conservation profession’s slow process of response and reform.[8] At turns dismissive and constructive, critical heritage studies discourse tends to amplify the issues raised by values-centered conservation and explore the myriad conflicts encountered in practice. At its best, this discourse points toward new forms of reflective conservation practice. At its worst, it tends toward solipsistic critiques of heritage cultures while raising existential questions about conservation as a profession. The political and pragmatic challenges of conservation outlined in this chapter deserve serious exploration, and the cadre of scholars identifying with “critical heritage studies” contribute to this.

In light of changes in the conservation field and the scholars who study it (who seem less committed to practice), how are critical heritage studies contributing to the work of conservation?[9]

- Laurajane Smith’s concept of “authorized heritage discourse” (2006, 4) highlights top-down, normative conceptions of heritage more or less imposed by national bodies, or by experts. This feeds the notion that more local expressions of heritage value are more politically authentic.

- Tensions between expert and nonexpert perspectives are manifest in the different values, interests, and identities expressed in heritage identification and decision-making processes. Conflict resolution has gained recognition as a typical role of conservation professionals (alongside established roles as facilitators, brokers, agents, historians, scientists, and designers) (Myers, Smith, and Ostergren 2016).

- East-versus-West formulations of cultural difference have been the subject of scholarship for more than a generation. Earlier works positing Asian cultures as fundamentally different or fundamentally similar in terms of constructing heritage have given way to more nuanced recent work on cultural fusion, positing a model of many different Indigenous modernities (Ryckmans 1989; Denslagen 1993; Abbas 1997; Hosagrahar 2005).

- Values-centered conservation aims at understanding and strengthening the relationships between stakeholders and sites, people and places. Critiques of values-centered conservation can present a false choice between conservation relating to materials, buildings, or sites themselves or to communities, stakeholders, and people (Poulios 2010).

- The assertion of access to heritage as a human right has emerged as a minor but profound argument, gaining new prominence in light of purposeful war-zone destruction of heritage places and refugee crises (Council of Europe 2005; Sen 1999).

- Heritage conservation has been reframed as part of other fields’ projects. Landscape urbanism’s ecological drivers and aestheticization of redundant industrial sites is one example of “mission creep” in allied professional fields verging toward significant overlap with professional conservation. In one sense, this trend can seem akin to one field colonizing the expertise of another (Waldheim 2016). In another sense, the interweaving of heritage conservation concepts and goals with other fields can be posed as a model partnership for elevating the prominence of heritage issues, as with UNESCO’s Historic Urban Landscape initiative (Bandarin and van Oers 2012).

- Calls for increased accountability and transparency in the form of measurement and evaluation have proliferated in the last generation in all areas of public policy. Expressing conservation’s functions in terms of measurable outcomes (social, environmental, economic) is an important area of applied research. Likewise, communicating the effects and results of consultative processes rivals the need to evaluate conservation policies econometrically.

Tradition dies hard. Materiality, artistic and historic values, nationalistic norms of heritage construction, and the objective status of heritage and conservation experts all have great staying power as traditions within the field. The turn toward societal values reinforced these canons while challenging conservation to also reckon with bigger questions like political legitimacy, identity politics and cultural diversity, economic performance and governance under neoliberal regimes, environmental degradation and resilience, and more. Critique, evolution and innovation—in response to transformative changes in global, national, and local societies—are the concerns of the field’s next generation and are taken up in the balance of the chapter.

Current Issues

The previous sections examined the historical and political forces that shaped the heritage field in the past half century and influenced the turn toward societal values. This shift poses significant questions for contemporary conservation practice and policy. It also illuminates substantial differences in how heritage is rationalized as a matter of public policy and investment. This section examines these differences and the challenges they pose with an eye toward exploring how values-based methodologies can more effectively serve the evolution of the field and the well-being of society.

Essential versus Instrumental Views of Heritage

As noted earlier in this chapter, the distinctions between heritage values and societal values are underpinned respectively by concepts framed by Gamini Wijesuriya, Jane Thompson, and Christopher Young in their UNESCO manual Managing Cultural World Heritage (2013), which we frame as essential and instrumental:

The first approach rests on the assumption that cultural heritage and the ability to understand the past through its material remains, as attributes of cultural diversity, play a fundamental role in fostering strong communities, supporting the physical and spiritual well-being of individuals and promoting mutual understanding and peace. According to this perspective, protecting and promoting cultural heritage would be, in terms of its contribution to society, a legitimate goal per se.

The second approach stems from the realization that the heritage sector, as an important player within the broader social arena and as an element of a larger system of mutually interdependent components, should accept its share of responsibility with respect to the global challenge of sustainability.

The essential perspective dominates in heritage practice and policy; it reinforces heritage “as an end in itself … that should be protected and transmitted to future generations” (Wijesuriya, Thompson, and Young 2013, 20). While the values turn (discussed above) is reflected in more participatory conservation practices that engage more diverse stakeholders, the emphasis is often on translating the broader range of societal values that multiple publics ascribe to places into a set of heritage values that can be preserved through professional protection, planning and management, and intervention. This reductionist process through which heritage experts cull relevant societal values and incorporate them into decision making is self-reinforcing; it ultimately supports the essential goal of preserving the fabric of place.

This essential approach is codified in policy, because the criteria used to list heritage are still largely driven by curatorial precepts (see fig. 5.2 in Kate Clark’s contribution to this volume). As conservation professionals, we recognize that heritage is a politicized social construction, as demonstrated by the inclusion of “social value” writ large in heritage management in many contexts, including Australia and the United Kingdom. However, even social value is framed within a strategic aim of saving the physical heritage resource, albeit in relation to social contexts and uses. As Gustavo Araoz contends, “If we analyze what has guided the conservation endeavor, it becomes clear that heritage professionals have never really protected or preserved values; the task has always been protecting and preserving the material vessels where values have been determined to reside” (2011, 58–59).

In light of contemporary societal and environmental conditions, the values turn compels a concomitant exploration of heritage beyond its essential core and material focus so as to demonstrate its instrumentality in the broader churn of contemporary life.

Limitations of a Heritage Values or Essential Approach

Heritage is a social construct; it is created by people ascribing value to places (Avrami, Mason, and de la Torre 2000; Ashworth 1994; Lowenthal 1985). Increased democratization, freedom of expression, and social media and other communications contribute to the proliferation of new forms and platforms for heritage that emerge from wide-ranging communities, narratives, and memories. From the destruction of residential schools for First Nations children in Canada, to the 3D replication of decimated monuments as public art installations, to the role of cultural heritage in transitional justice and reconciliation in South Africa, the built environment is a medium for new kinds of public discourse, and this influences how heritage is defined and treated materially (or not).

These developments illustrate some of the ways in which heritage serves multiple societal aims, and they likewise confront limitations of heritage-value-driven policy and practice. Understanding the limitations and the opportunities they present for conservation decision making can elucidate the dynamic between heritage values and societal values, thereby informing the improvement of policy tools, professional practice, and educational approaches.

Differing geocultural attitudes and norms make for more diverse interpretations of what constitutes heritage and how conservation is approached. The largely Western (European) foundation of globalized heritage policy (Laurajane Smith’s “authorized heritage discourse”) often leads to a false dichotomy of “Western” versus “non-Western” approaches to heritage, when in fact differences can be characterized in myriad ways (localized/internationalized, urban/rural, expert/nonexpert, modern/traditional, colonial/Indigenous, et cetera). Likewise, such differences are not necessarily dichotomized opposites, but rather represent reductionist ways of communicating a range of perspectives. However, by bookending the concepts as seeming polarities, the field can create separations in professional practice that may not exist, or at least not in the same way, within different sociocultural realities. Discrete projects and policy documents like the Burra Charter work to transcend these divides and more fully recognize the multiplicity of values, but the integration of such approaches into public policy beyond a few countries has been more challenging.

Such reductionism is evident in typologizing heritage as well. By categorizing heritage as tangible versus intangible, movable versus immovable, archaeological sites, historic centers, cultural landscapes, et cetera, the heritage field creates a functional vocabulary for cross-disciplinary and cross-cultural communication and collaboration. At the same time, these typologies run the risk of perpetuating the dominant cultures, theories, and approaches through which such typologies are developed, and again can lead to the exclusion of different views and approaches.

Further, heritage values are often categorized through reductionist typologies (aesthetic, historic, environmental, economic, associative) as a practical means of understanding the significance of a place and guiding professional decision making. But such typologies can nonetheless exclude those who perceive their past, their identity, and notions of “heritage” in different ways, because such categorizations are also forms of control (Poulios 2010). The disciplinary tools and languages through which heritage values are assessed can also minimize complexity and thus limit inclusion. Whether through economic valuation or curatorial histories, such methods can sometimes discount different kinds of knowledge and ways of knowing.

Exclusion can be intergenerational as well. The act of designation or listing, under many if not most government laws, confers indefinite recognition, and in many cases protection in perpetuity. However, heritage research over the last quarter century demonstrates that values can change over time (Hobsbawm and Ranger 1983; Tainter and Lucas 1983; Lipe 1984; Lowenthal 1985; Johnston 1992; Muñoz Viñas 2005). Stakeholders of the future may not value a place in the same way, or at all. The narratives created through heritage values may not resonate with subsequent generations (Walter 2014), nor may the living conditions afforded by historic environments meet their needs. Acknowledging that delisting of sites occurs infrequently, the dominant policies in the field incur an ever-growing accumulation of heritage that bequeaths not only those places but the burden of their stewardship to the generations to come (Greffe 2004; Benhamou 1996). Thus, the temporality of heritage values raises questions of intergenerational equity and how heritage conservation can more effectively anticipate and accommodate change over time (Holtorf and Högberg 2014).

These concerns of temporality, relativism, categorization, exclusion, intergenerational equity, sustainability, and more do not negate the importance of heritage values. Rather, understanding their relationship to broader societal values can help unmask biases and enable more instrumental approaches to heritage.

Societal Values and the Instrumentality of Heritage

The conservation profession differentiates certain structures, sites, and landscapes from the rest of the built environment because of their heritage values. This concept has been codified in public policy through processes of designation or listing. Identifying places of heritage value seeks not only to raise awareness about them, but also to protect them from political and/or market forces of destruction, thereby endowing them with a certain right to survival over other elements of the built environment. Additional policy tools augment these protection efforts, usually through some form of knowledge transfer or technical assistance, regulation, allocations of property rights, incentives, or government stewardship or ownership (de Monchaux and Schuster 1997). As the values turn sheds light on the sometimes-unintended consequences of heritage decision making, the conservation field is held increasingly accountable for its outcomes as a form of public policy. Quantifying and qualifying its benefits to society, beyond traditional heritage values, is ever more important as public needs and interests compete for limited resources. The “cultural heritage as a legitimate end in itself” argument, when not substantiated by evidence of its contributions to the environment, the economy, and society, marginalizes the field and limits its leverage for attracting investment (Wijesuriya, Thompson, and Young 2013, 21).

This accountability to demonstrate the instrumentality of heritage conservation is made more challenging by social, demographic, and environmental changes, and the literally global scope of many contemporary issues:

- Energy and resource consumption. Existing buildings account for large percentages of global energy, water, and natural resource consumption, as well as greenhouse gas emissions, compelling changes in how we manage the built environment.

- Climate change and resulting sea-level rise. Projected sea-level rise may force geographic shifts away from coasts, requiring major transformations in infrastructure and buildings.

- Population growth and urban shifts. Urban population growth puts tremendous pressure on the built environment, and land consumption in urban areas is expanding at twice the rate of their populations (Seto, Güneralpa, and Hutyrac 2012).

- Forced displacement. The UN Refugee Agency reported more than sixty-eight million people displaced in 2017 due to conflict and persecution. Numbers are projected to grow significantly as a result of climate refugees, meaning greater mobility and diaspora.

- Immigration and plurality. Many cities, especially in North America and Europe, are home to increasing foreign-born populations. Mobility and migration are contributing to more plural citizenries, and thus more diverse values and narratives ascribed to the built environment.

Conservation cannot address all of these challenges, but these empirical realities will influence societal values and priorities, thereby affecting heritage policies. Expanding from a heritage values focus to a societal values focus is not simply mission creep for conservation; it is a responsible evolution of the field and a recognition of the political interdependence of people and heritage places. How heritage is valued and who values it will fundamentally shift with evolving built environments, communities, and cultures.

The Potential for Change

This analysis suggests that the conservation field must move beyond the physical protection of heritage to exercise its broader benefits. Heritage conservation is now a widely accepted form of public policy; it is dependent on government support and administration in nearly all countries, illustrated by the fact that 193 States Parties have ratified the World Heritage Convention. This implies an affirmative obligation on the part of conservation to serve the public interest writ large.

The diagram in figure 2.3 seeks to demonstrate the relationship of the essential versus instrumental approach, and how heritage values and societal values respectively reorient decision-making structures. It builds on the model developed in the earlier GCI research report Values and Heritage Conservation (Avrami, Mason, and de la Torre 2000, 4–5), the core elements of which are indicated by the shaded gray boxes. It frames the concept of heritage, represented by the blue oval, as something constructed and mediated by the interests of varying publics and their respective priorities, and demonstrates the different outcomes achieved by essential and instrumental paths.

While the intent of the heritage profession may be to preserve both heritage and societal values, the decision paths associated with essential and instrumental approaches to heritage lead to different outcomes. The left-hand path seeks to preserve heritage values as essential, with benefits assessed post hoc. The right-hand path seeks to a priori instrumentalize heritage to produce a broader scope of societal aims. The blue arrows suggest how potential connections between essential and instrumental processes might be strengthened, indicating areas for future research.

An important assertion illustrated in this diagram is that an essential approach to heritage—one that focuses on the strategic aim of physically conserving a place—will not ipso facto demonstrate the instrumentality of heritage. When preservation institutions and professionals are prompted to articulate the positive societal outcomes of conservation, the responses run the gamut: preserving cultural diversity, enhancing civil society, fostering pluralistic discourse, promoting social inclusion and tolerance, creating a more environmentally sustainable built environment, generating economic benefits, promoting good urbanism, et cetera. But what is the mechanism? The hypotheses of cause and effect? The logic model? We cannot designate historic places because of their heritage values, then expect to achieve societal aims and reinforce societal values as a by-product of physical conservation. Such benefits can only be effectively achieved if they are a direct and explicit aim of heritage policy and practice.

Changing Governance and Policy

An instrumental approach to heritage that is unequivocally driven by societal values poses and confronts many challenges in policy and governance structures. Many of the laws, policies, and professional doctrines that constitute the institutional “infrastructure” of heritage have not been widely updated to reflect a progression in thinking about values or adapt to the politicization of heritage. In some cases, the introduction of new tools for understanding values—from ethnographic methods to consensus-building techniques—is hindered by institutional and regulatory frameworks that are not flexible enough to accommodate significant change. Innovation is certainly evident in the shifting responsibilities across public and private sectors and institutions, and demonstrates creative approaches to such institutional rigidity. Increased privatization, the rise of public-private partnerships, and the hybridization of NGOs illustrate the ways in which these traditional infrastructures are shifting in neoliberal economies to divest governments of increasing financial burdens. But markets do not have the ability to ensure intra- and intergenerational equity (Nordhaus 1992). The discursive and regulatory functions needed to promote social justice are the bailiwick of governments (Lake 2002). As Graham Fairclough notes, “It is quite difficult … in the heritage sphere, to see social participation as an alternative to government action, instead of being an addition to it … because the one guarantees the validity and efficacy of the other” (2014, 245).

In this context of governance, shifts in conservation decision making from the more curatorial, expert-driven heritage values to those that more directly engage societal values engender greater stakeholder participation. But institutions may have limited legal mandate, resources (human and financial), and expertise to undertake meaningful consultation. Do heritage institutions and government agencies have the disciplinary and professional breadth and depth to expand their mission in these ways? Even more challenging, such engagement may lead to very different perspectives on whether and how to preserve a place. Can existing regulations and institutional polices support and enable such diversity and inclusion in decision making? Can an enhanced understanding of societal values help to evolve institutional policies and practices toward instrumental approaches?

Among the principal tools in institutional heritage decision making are statements of significance. Many of these may be expert driven, while others may incorporate the input of a variety of stakeholders. As noted previously, these statements are essentially technical outputs; they do not in and of themselves compel participatory discourse, nor does the lack of such discourse necessarily reduce their validity in many institutional contexts. In theory, such statements may be updated and revised with changing conditions, such as the development of a new management plan or expansion of a protection zone. In practice, this can pose institutional challenges. In the city of New York, for example, the Landmarks Preservation Commission develops designation reports that assess significance to support its decision making about what properties to preserve. Once a property is landmarked, that report is a legal and binding document; it cannot be changed, not even if only to correct the date of a building. The authority of experts in ascribing value has been openly challenged, as in a recent legal case in Chicago decrying the subjectivity of preservation criteria and decisions.[10] While there may be greater flexibility in other geographic and institutional contexts, this raises important questions about whether public heritage agencies are equipped to move beyond decision making derived from expert heritage values toward more participatory processes that are directly responsive to societal values, which effectively require more dynamic models of governance and management.

It likewise raises issues about how and when institutions invest in such participatory discourse. Institutional focus in many contexts may be largely weighted toward identifying and designating new heritage places. The growth of heritage lists suggests that this front-end investment in continually expanding heritage rosters can stretch public resources for long-term heritage management and post-designation assessments (Benhamou 1996). This may limit the potential for participation to recur over time.

Changing Education and the Profession

At a professional level, engaging more robustly with societal values raises similar issues regarding stakeholder participation and interdisciplinary engagement. Are heritage practitioners equipped to adapt and implement the tools of anthropology, ethnography, economics, conflict resolution, and more, and/or to work in concert with these allied disciplines? Fundamentally, collective action in heritage management requires some degree of consensus building, but relationships, and forms and levels of consultation, influence roles and outcomes. Should heritage practitioners, allied professionals, and community members share decision-making power? Are heritage professionals serving as experts with higher authority, facilitators of community decision making, or both?

The professional toolbox for heritage decision making that addresses broader societal values (engaging stakeholders; delineating, mapping, and articulating values; integrating values in assessments and long-term management) remains somewhat limited. While research and practices in allied fields can certainly be applied to heritage conservation, they require informed adaptation. This means not only that those from other disciplines must engage more with heritage, but also that those in heritage may step beyond traditional boundaries to help forge connections and focus methodological development (a key point regarding this research). Bringing knowledge of ethnography, environmental management, consensus building, and more, as well as “local” forms of knowledge and knowing, to bear on heritage conservation can lead to new innovations in values-based approaches, but will require concerted effort across institutional, professional, and educational actors.

Academic institutions and practitioners play a critical role. A more inclusive understanding of heritage and values recognizes different kinds of knowledge and different ways of knowing, but formal education at the university level tends to emphasize material conservation and historical and architectural value. The practical skills needed to advocate for listing, preserve structures, and manage heritage predominate in many parts of the world; the political, discursive, analytical, and creative skills needed to instrumentalize heritage as a societal contributor play a lesser role. While a values discourse is certainly emerging in many heritage programs, the extent to which students are being trained to engage with stakeholders and undertake community assessments remains unclear.

The role of the academy in research is also at an important juncture. Certainly scholarship in the area of “critical heritage discourse” has shed new light on issues of cultural dominance and social justice in relation to conservation. But research has struggled to move beyond critique to inform policy and practice.

Changing Conservation Aims and Metrics

The above challenges raise important issues about balancing the heritage field’s focus on the past with an accountability to the future as it demonstrates instrumentality and responds to societal values. Barriers to addressing this include lack of consensus regarding the primary aims of heritage conservation vis-à-vis society (beyond conservation as an end in itself) and lack of metrics to assess how those aims are being met through the use of heritage. On the former point, consensus will likely never be achieved because societal values will be different in each community or geopolitical context, thereby influencing aims and how heritage can contribute. However, a more robust toolbox for the latter could address the diversity of aims and approaches by applying different metrics in varying combinations and contexts.

Important, but limited, progress has been made in the realm of heritage metrics, such as Historic England’s Heritage Counts, which uses socioeconomic indicators. In the United States, studies by the National Trust Preservation Green Lab (now Research and Policy Lab) measure vitality in older neighborhoods as well as the avoided environmental impacts of reusing existing buildings. Parks Canada’s commemorative integrity process assesses the communication of values to visitors. These initiatives demonstrate the breadth of societal aims against which heritage success is being measured.

A critical point, nonetheless, is that many of these innovative efforts are still largely driven by an essential model, in that they seek to substantiate traditional conservation practices and policies by quantifying unplanned benefits. While they certainly work toward demonstrating instrumentality, they do so without internalizing societal values in the heritage decision-making process. In many cases, they effectively co-opt economic and environmental aims and metrics to rationalize conservation and rely heavily on its physical legacy as an indicator of success. The proliferation of economic impact studies, for example, seeks to justify public investment in heritage conservation based on economic measures. More recent environmental studies that quantify the avoided impacts of preserving existing buildings and the population density of historic districts likewise rationalize conservation in terms of environmental indicators. But current decision making about heritage, at least about what should be preserved, is not based on economic or environmental values alone.

Approaches that engage a broader range of societal values may help to more clearly elucidate and rationalize these fundamentally social functions and benefits of participatory heritage decision making, so that the heritage field does not rely predominantly on its physical legacy as an indicator of success, or too heavily on the metrics of other fields. The heritage field has yet to articulate clear aims and associated metrics with relation to inclusion, diversity, tolerance, intergenerational equity, economic profit seeking, ideology-driven protection or iconoclasm, responses to trauma or disaster, or other societal values that are arguably more central to decision making at all scales and contexts.

By redefining the social dimension of heritage beyond static statements of significance and toward dynamic processes of engagement with clear societal aims, the heritage field has the potential to serve as a powerful agent of change. A primary aim of this GCI project is exploring alternative scenarios for practice that can lead to the development of methods and approaches that can support societal-values-driven heritage policy and action.

Conclusions

This attempt to learn from the past, evaluate present conditions, and anticipate future concerns mirrors the modus operandi of the heritage enterprise. Through iterative evaluations of values-based methods (applying both heritage-intrinsic and societal-instrumental perspectives), the field can create a wider spectrum of conservation alternatives and future heritage scenarios, rather than strategically planning and managing places to protect heritage values alone. This is an important point of reckoning.

The long time frame inherent in the idea of conservation, and contemporary acknowledgement of growing cultural diversity (and fragmentation, and fusion), make the societal-values issues more vexing. Practically, this review of trends, concepts, and problems is meant to embed better learning, self-critique, evaluation, and training functions within the professional field of conservation, and inspire practices of sustainable conservation in all senses of the word (from materiality to social meaning to environmental impact to financing).

Extending this analysis to emergent issues on the horizon proactively engages the societal and environmental changes with which the heritage field will soon contend. Heritage values alone will not suffice; the field must be cognizant of and responsive to the shift in societal values toward resilient and inclusive approaches to managing the built environment. How can the heritage field instrumentally address social, economic, and environmental concerns so that conservation serves humanity and the planet by redefining its goals in relation to societal values, not just to heritage values? We posit that a primary challenge of contemporary conservation theory and practice is to weave together both perspectives more robustly.

Notes

1. Values as qualities departs from another common usage of the word in English: values as ethics, philosophies, or normative codes of behavior. ↩

2. As David Myers, coeditor of this volume, related to the authors, many conflict-resolution professionals (among others) use “values” in the sense of ethics, and frame conflicts in terms of interests, identities, and values. Such a framework (as elaborated by Kaufman, Elliott, and Shmueli 2003) presents a substantially different perspective from that employed in the present paper—in which “values” are stipulated as the a priori object of analysis. ↩

3. Essential and instrumental align with the “intrinsic” and “instrumental” approaches to heritage described by UNESCO in Wijesuriya, Thompson, and Young (2013). We have refrained from the use of “intrinsic” to avoid confusion with the debate over intrinsic versus ascribed values in relation to heritage. ↩

4. The notion of “curatorial” conservation is also developed in the work of James Marston Fitch (1982) and Harold Kalman (2014, 49); the excellent social histories of conservation in Europe by Françoise Choay (2001) and Miles Glendinning (2013) also elaborate on the concept. ↩

5. Alois Riegl ([1903] 1982) established this distinction; see Choay (2001) and Glendinning (2013) for broader historical overviews of changing types of “monuments,” or more broadly, the changing objects of conservation attention. ↩

6. For instance, some alternative means of generating statements of significance have arisen using participatory methods to include substantially the views of nonexperts. (Note that “nonexpert” refers to those outside the heritage professions; it does not presume that those outside the field or within the community have no expertise.) Examples include the recent work of Chris Johnston in Australia (collected at http://www.contextpl.com.au/category/papers-and-articles/); the (US) Orton Foundation’s Heart & Soul methodology (described at https://www.orton.org/build-your-community/community-heart-soul/); public design methods, including the work of landscape architect Randolph T. Hester (2006); and the community arts group Common Ground (sourced at https://www.commonground.org.uk/). ↩

7. Years of GCI’s work in this area is available under the Research on the Values of Heritage project: http://www.getty.edu/conservation/our_projects/field_projects/values/. ↩

8. “Critical” remains in quotes due to its polemical and sometimes misleading use: “critical heritage studies” implies that any preexisting studies of heritage lacked critical perspective, which is a categorical overinterpretation. There remains a significant divide between studies grounded in conservation practice (not just empirical observation of such) and studies undertaken as purely scholarly projects. ↩

9. See Logan, Nic Craith, and Kockel (2016) or programs for Association of Critical Heritage Studies conferences at http://www.criticalheritagestudies.org/. ↩

10. See 2013 IL App (1st) 121701-U, http://illinoiscourts.gov/R23_Orders/AppellateCourt/2013/1stDistrict/1121701_R23.pdf. ↩

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Part II

Perspectives from the Field

3

Spatializing Values in Heritage Conservation: The Potential of Cultural Mapping

- Erica Avrami

Inventories have long been a foundational tool in the identification and management of heritage, and mapping traditionally served as a visual device to locate, navigate, document, and delimit heritage places and their physical contexts. Drawing upon the social sciences and the humanities, as well as new geospatial information technologies, the burgeoning field of cultural mapping expands the scope of this enterprise by seeking to understand social dimensions of places in spatial ways, but likewise challenges existing concepts of heritage value to expand our understanding of how communities instrumentalize heritage. The Egyptian village of New Gourna is used as an illustrative case study.

Inventories have long been a foundational tool in the identification and management of heritage. Mapping historically served as a visual device to locate, navigate, document, and delimit heritage places and their physical contexts. The burgeoning field of cultural mapping expands the scope of this enterprise by seeking to understand the social relationships and cultural traditions associated with such places. Drawing upon the social sciences and the humanities, as well as new geospatial information technologies, cultural mapping is a means of exploring people-place dynamics for multiple aims. It can generate new forms of knowledge about both tangible and intangible heritage within a community and provide new platforms for analysis and decision making. It can likewise serve as a vehicle for engaging populations in a dialogue about what they value within their community, and empower them to effectively create and re-create heritage.

As values-based approaches to heritage conservation evolve, how all stakeholders—not just heritage experts—ascribe meaning to places plays a more central role. Participatory practices of data collection recognize more people and more values in the heritage enterprise. Cultural mapping exercises can produce data about not only built heritage, but also traditional crafts, performances, vistas, spiritual locales and practices, long-standing businesses, places of congregation, important travel and access routes, community anchors, stories, personal associations, et cetera, many of which may not be tied to places considered historic but still form critical connections in social-spatial dynamics. These rich and diverse catalogues can raise awareness about intangible and tangible heritage and the links among them, and potentially underpin community identity and resilience through shared memories and narratives.

These practices fundamentally seek broad inclusion in terms of both participation and the assets identified. However, heritage practitioners have a primary charge of preserving values through the built environment, which involves prioritized, and to some degree exclusionary, decision making. Physical conservation does not ipso facto preserve all values. How can practices of cultural mapping more directly inform our understanding of how a broader range of values are associated with place and space—of how values are spatialized within the built environment through spatial-social dynamics? And how can a more robust understanding of how values are spatialized in turn inform more responsive and innovative heritage decision making?

This paper examines these questions through a brief historical overview of the evolution of heritage inventories and cultural mapping; a review of the literature on cultural mapping, its applications, and its implications; as well as an illustrative case, New Gourna village in Egypt, which addresses how cultural mapping can spatialize values and inform decision making.

Early Inventories

The act of mapping as a tool for communicating about space and spatial relationships traces back thousands of years; places of significance are indicated on maps throughout the history of cartography. The modern notion of mapping heritage places is integrally linked to the identification of said places through surveys or inventories that seek to collect information as well as communicate value (Schuster 2002).[1] The inventorying of cultural resources in the Western world dates back to at least the Valor Ecclesiasticus when, in 1535, Henry VIII called for a survey of church properties as part of the dissolution of the monasteries. Some of the earliest Italian inventories date to the eighteenth century, as does the first in France, where a commission des monuments undertook a nationwide survey during in 1790s to catalogue cultural resources seized from the church and nobility during the revolution (Fisch 2008, 11). The Commission des Monument Historiques was later established in France, and published its first catalogue of nearly one thousand sites in 1840.

Drawings and then lithographs were widely used to visualize surveyed heritage places, beyond locational mapping. The advent of photography greatly changed the medium, content, and meaning of these inventories when, in 1851, the Mission Héliographique deployed five photographers to document the historic monuments catalogued by the aforementioned Commission. Under the direction of Eugène-Emmanuel Viollet-le-Duc, the survey sought to collect information for possible restoration projects. One can regard this Mission as a very early, though serendipitous, instance of cultural mapping that fundamentally sought to understand people-place relationships: “Unlike lithographs and drawings, the photographs of the Mission depicted monuments neither as ghosts of the bygone nor as blank slates, but rather as evolving structures functioning as meaningful signs within cultural memory in their current state and environment” (Monteiro 2010, 308). Comparing this early photographic documentation to traditional recording methods lays bare the profound differences created by visual representation. While still an interpretive medium, photography was less forgiving, and in this instance not as easily manipulated in service of Napoleon III’s efforts “to construct French cultural memory around ancient monuments as signs of historical continuity and unified national identity” (Monteiro 2010, 297). These monuments were very clearly an operative element of the present, part of people’s everyday lives. The Mission team submitted more than 250 photographs to the government, which after reviewing the results refused to allow their publication (Daniel 2004).

By the early 1900s, as the Industrial Revolution brought change at a pace previously unimaginable, heritage lists and inventories were increasingly prevalent in the European context, and were viewed as a fundamental policy tool to further heritage conservation agendas (Fisch 2008). The Athens Charter of 1931 explicitly called for “each country, or the institutions created or recognised competent for this purpose, [to] publish an inventory of ancient monuments, with photographs and explanatory notes” (ICOMOS 1931, sect. VII.c.1).

A curatorial perspective on the built environment underpinned inventory efforts during much of the twentieth century, driven by an essential view of cultural heritage as assets to be stewarded for future generations because of their inherent value as physical markers of history.[2] Heritage experts—first architects and historians, then conservation professionals as the field evolved—drove and managed these inventories, largely under the auspices of government agencies, collecting graphic and written documentation in the archival tradition.

Cultural Mapping Emerges

In the post–World War II era, several factors converged to radically shape contemporary theory and practice related to cultural mapping and its application to heritage management, including:

- computing technology and increased access to it;

- a newfound attention to spatiality in critical social theory;

- the emergence of critical cartography and its recognition of the role of political power in geographic knowledge;

- postcolonialism and the rise of Indigenous agency in both managing heritage and mapping territorial space;

- political movements of the 1960s, which challenged authority and championed social justice;

- and new forms of participation in governance and activism in the face of top-down planning, which influenced heritage policy and practice through a societal-values-based discourse.[3]

The advent of flight greatly influenced the realm of cartography, particularly after World War I. Suborbital and satellite imagery further revolutionized photographic documentation of the Earth’s surface, and thus its mapping. By the 1960s these new forms of visualization and advances in computing gave rise to the field of geospatial technology or geomatics, which includes geographic information systems (GIS). Initially, barriers to entry—that is, high cost and required technical skills—precluded the use of GIS beyond governments and wealthy private entities (Stone 1998; Gibson 2010). The birth of the internet, along with higher-performing computer hardware and improved software accessibility (especially in recent years through open-source platforms), opened doors to new mapmakers and users, in turn broadening mapping applications well beyond cartography. At the same time, this technological advancement transformed the map as object from something static and two-dimensional to a networking system, connecting multimodal forms of data in dynamic ways.

In addition to these technical advances, scholarship and activism born of the 1960s political revolution raised new questions about the creation and control of space within society. Critical social theorists, especially Henri Lefebvre (1974), Edward W. Soja (1989), and David Harvey (1989; 2001), forged a discourse arguing that space is socially constructed and made productive through social practices. As Derek Gregory notes, “The analysis of spatial structure is not derivative and secondary to the analysis of social structure[;] … each requires the other” (1978, 120). Neil Smith (1990; 1996) and Dolores Hayden (1995), in their explorations of urban power and place, extended these lines of inquiry to heritage conservation. This raised new awareness about “the created spatiality of social life … as both an outcome and a medium for the making of history” (Soja 1989, 57–58). People and places are integrally linked. The heritage enterprise could no longer isolate issues of value and meaning to fabric and historical associations, and mapping places meant understanding these complex social-spatial relationships in new ways.

In mapping, however, lies inherent power. Maps are never neutral, never simply documentary or revelatory; mapping is a political and creative process (Harley 1989). Critical cartography seeks to expose and challenge this privilege by exploring how mapping can be part of an emancipatory practice (Kim 2015). As Alys Longley and Nancy Duxbury observe, “Mapping can be a colonizing, territorial practice—or a way of undoing languages of territory and privatization” (2016, 10). As an example, Indigenous communities in North America have employed geospatial technologies to protect tribal resources, territories, and practices since the 1970s, as a means of preserving cultural knowledge and sovereignty (Wickens Pearce and Pualani 2008). Epitomizing Michael Stone’s classic categorization of “map or be mapped” (1998), Indigenous communities were early practitioners of cultural mapping as an insurgent act in the postcolonial era, as they sought to defend lands against encroachment and recover lost territory (Poole 2003). Cultural mapping is also advocated and implemented through policy as both a means of heritage inventory and a form of restorative justice, “to stabilize and revitalize the cultural identities of displaced, fragmented, and stigmatized indigenous communities” (UNESCO 2003, n.p.).

Cultural mapping as a means of empowerment extends beyond Indigenous communities. Asset-based community development (ABCD) emerged in the 1990s, for example, empowering local communities through participatory inventories of their resources and capacities, often centering on the historic places and cultural assets they value. A primary aim is to foster civil society and collective agency toward collaborative economic development (Kretzmann and McKnight 1993). Such asset mapping has emerged as an important tool in urban planning to integrate the arts and cultural activities into sustainable community development (Evans and Foord 2008).[4] Heritage is a cornerstone of such mapping, including both tangible and intangible assets. But an important point of evolution is the instrumental role of heritage in many contemporary cultural mapping initiatives.[5] Such cultural mapping does not simply create an inventory or collect data about and manage heritage. Rather, it is designed in service to broader societal aims, such as economic development, social cohesion, and participatory governance, or in some cases to challenge existing governance structures and actions through “counter-mapping.” By focusing on these more instrumental aims, cultural mapping looks beyond heritage assets to understand place attachments in relation to broader social and spatial dynamics. In doing so, heritage, tangible and intangible, is not simply the object of cultural mapping but rather a vehicle through which societal values are made manifest.

Mapping as Essential and Instrumental

As noted above, traditional inventories emerged from essential views of heritage and its value—the “cultural heritage as a legitimate end in itself” argument (Wijesuriya, Thompson, and Young 2013, 21). Ontological and technical progress has advanced these catalogues as multimodal and relational databases that geospatialize heritage places and practices. But deployment is fundamentally driven by the goals of recording and managing heritage places. Cultural mapping has the potential to serve as a tool in service of these inventories and their heritage-values-based goals. Especially through participatory processes, cultural mapping can identify, even create, new heritage. As Longley and Duxbury note, “The process of mapping often reveals many unexpected resources and builds new cross-community and cross-sector connections” (2016, 1).

Cultural mapping provides a medium through which different stakeholders and disciplines can bring to bear their respective expertise and knowledge about heritage, from spatial ethnography to economic and demographic analysis. In so doing, it extends beyond the function of a documentary inventory to a means of correlating different types of data and analyses, such that we understand heritage not simply as a resource, but as a set of relationships demonstrating the “lived experience of space and place” (Duxbury, Garrett-Petts, and MacLennan 2015, 2).

Collaborative mapping that includes robust community participation can forge a network that connects multidimensional data (text, sound, still and moving images, and so forth) about people, places, and practices, providing what Kai Khiun Liew and Natalie Pang refer to as “different ways of locating their collective belongings and memories” (2015, 336). Such processes of elicitation can establish “creative platforms that connect people more deeply to each others’ histories embedded in the geographies of place in order to help disturb histories of forgetting” (Kang 2016, 2).

While cultural mapping may serve these essential heritage aims, the literature is rife with research, case studies, and guides promoting the instrumental role of cultural mapping in achieving broader societal aims, from promoting cultural understanding and cohesion (UNESCO 2009b; Hadzic et al. 2015; Freitas 2016) to supporting community, economic, and regional development (Kunzmann 2004; Pillai 2013; Freitas 2016; Urban Innovations Group, School of Architecture and Urban Planning, University of California, Los Angeles 1979). More discrete aims include enhancing tourism potential and marketing (Hadzic et al. 2015; Di Pasquale et al. 2013), informing culture-driven urban planning and policy, and preparing citizenries for more robust engagement in civil society in general (Redaelli 2012).

Cultural mapping is likewise employed as a tool for social justice and political activism, especially in the face of change and oppression, as evidenced through its aforementioned use by Indigenous communities. UNESCO especially champions this empowering role of cultural mapping, noting important distinctions between the aims of more traditional heritage inventories and those of cultural mapping:

Though inventories of intangible and tangible heritage can be useful and important, they should not be confused with valorization and revitalisation of cultural systems, beliefs and expressions. Mapping should not be approached as solely a technical exercise, but seen as a means to recognise the aspirations, needs and boundaries of the communities being mapped. (UNESCO 2009a, 26)

Beyond applications in Indigenous communities, cultural mapping can provide an important medium for community-based evaluation and critique of private investment and public policy, including culture-based planning and heritage conservation. In the aftermath of dramatic urban regeneration in Bilbao, Spain, for example, residents attempted to reconcile “tension between today’s transformations and managing memories from the past” through cultural mapping as a form of “self-assessment of local institutions’ cultural policies … by basing them on more democratic, transparent, and fairer indicators derived from collaborative processes” (Ortega Nuere and Bayón 2015, 9, 22). Liew and Pang describe similar aims and grassroots practices of cultural mapping in Singapore:

Even as they remain helpless political bystanders of the development projects of the tightly-controlled city state, digital and social media have engendered an active virtual citizenry capable of counter-scripting the republic’s topographical imaginations online…. These uploads represent collectively the insistence on the recognition of more layered levels of social memories and histories of these spaces. (2015, 332)

That cultural mapping can elucidate societal values and instrumentalize heritage suggests that the process of cultural mapping carries as much significance as the output (Pillai 2013). Cultural mapping does not negate the essential role of heritage; rather, it suggests the need for more integrative approaches that balance the intrinsic dimensions of cultural heritage with its contributory potential toward social, economic, and environmental sustainability (Freitas 2016). Defining the aims of cultural mapping, however, is important to methodologically developing its scope and assessing success.

Participation in Cultural Mapping

Given the wide range of functions and users of cultural mapping, participation—by whom, for whom—is critical. The extent to which these processes are top-down versus bottom-up, expert-led or community-based, is at the crux of the contemporary role of cultural mapping. The literature provides insight into the different disciplines that engage in cultural mapping and for what purposes, meaning researchers, practitioners, and policymakers, and their respective perspectives (for the sake of expediency, we will refer to these stakeholders as experts). There is less clarity about how data is collected, created, and used in relation to communities. And the idea of “community”—or other types of experts, as Graham Fairclough (2014, 247) suggests—itself is not well defined.

The collection or generation of data can be consultative, with data going from community to expert or in both directions. It can also be co-creative or completely community driven. This has been made possible, in part, through new technology and media, such as participatory GIS (PGIS), public participation GIS (PPGIS), and volunteered geographic information (VGI). Social networking platforms have also been catalytic in advancing community participation, especially bottom-up activism, in cultural mapping (Kang 2016). Grazia Concilio and Ilaria Vitellio contend that “mapping environments become active and generative spaces, accommodating a variety of languages (texts, images, videos, sounds, etc.) cross-referencing each other” (2016, 2).

The added dimension and richness that broad participation and technology promise are nonetheless challenging, particularly in mediating expert-community interactions. As Margaret Wickens Pearce and Louis R. Pualani note, these (Western) technologies present the possibility of “mistranslations, recolonization, and assimilations of technoscience” when applied cross-culturally (2008, 123). While these same technologies have helped to protect the sovereignty of Indigenous peoples and communicated the significance of their heritage, they can likewise put that heritage at risk. Deidre Brown and George Nicholas argue that “being digitally interactive or multi-layered does not in itself offer a closer correspondence to customary forms of cultural mapping. With poor management, the result can be a digital map of superficial understanding, where … underlying cultural understandings of space (particularly human, animal and supernatural scale) and time (cyclical and sequential) are lost.” In the best possible scenario, “communities themselves … develop forms of visual cultural representation that are more permeable, nuanced, balanced and potentially multi-sensory to depict tangible and intangible elements, sites of dispute or reconciliation, competing foregrounds and backgrounds, memories and intergenerational memories, and non-linear understandings of time and space” (2012, 319, 320).

But power relationships within communities can skew participation as well as the data or outcomes generated. Cultural mapping can exacerbate marginalization and silencing, especially in societies with gender inequality, thereby distorting decision making (UNESCO 2009a). Jake Kosek observes, “The interests served are invariably those of the relatively powerful members of a community who would like to maintain particular social relations and who have greater influence on how the mapping process unfolds” (1998, 55). Graeme Evans and Jo Foord further this critique, noting time and resource limitations, the influence of funders, and poor knowledge bases: “The risk of such exercises is that they can reflect expressed need and a bias towards those active (and vocal) beneficiaries, rather than the community as a whole” (2008, 73). Finally, populations are dynamic, so any mapping exercise may be cross-sectional, capturing only those values represented within the community at a given moment rather than across time (Evans and Foord 2008), potentially resulting in “unrealistic cultural shopping lists” (Kunzmann 2004, 399) that fail to convey priorities in service to all.

Given these realities, why and how should those engaged in heritage management employ cultural mapping?

Participatory cultural mapping has the potential to create “more socially relevant and effective approaches” to cultural heritage management through negotiated outcomes (Guilfoyle and Mitchell 2015, 89). Heritage professionals and other experts can also develop evidence-based data about “the current community, and who it is likely to become as growth and demographic change takes effect, [demanding] a more detailed knowledge about people and places and their interaction” (Evans and Foord 2008, 78). These more scholarly and professional forms of research and analysis can bolster and inform bottom-up, community-based mapping by incorporating the longitudinal knowledge of historic precedents and trends and correlating heritage-specific information with socioeconomic and environmental data. In combination, they can serve to explore the interplay between heritage and societal values, by seeking to spatialize said values and mediate between the essential and the instrumental in heritage management.

Cultural Mapping to Inform Decision Making

“Sometimes the seemingly intangible qualities that make communities work, that gel people together … have a geographical dimension that can be quantified and revealed through a mapping exercise.”

(Gibson 2010, 78)

The case of New Gourna, Egypt, illustrates how cultural mapping can potentially inform heritage decision making by spatializing societal values in relation to heritage values. New Gourna is an experimental community commissioned by the Egyptian Department of Antiquities in the 1940s. The renowned architect Hassan Fathy, who conceived and designed the village, championed the participation of residents in the design and construction process, which employed traditional earthen materials and forms. The international community joined forces to promote conservation of the village, which is part of the World Heritage Site of Ancient Thebes, because of the significant physical losses of and changes to the original architecture, which were undermining heritage values (fig. 3.1).

View from the top of the mosque in 2010 showing new, larger-scale construction in the distance that is replacing original Fathy buildings. Image: Erica Avrami / World Monuments Fund

In 2010, in collaboration with UNESCO and the Luxor Governorate, the World Monuments Fund (WMF) undertook a cultural mapping exercise within the community to understand how residents value and interact with the fabric and space of the village, as well as the social, economic, and environmental factors influencing those values and interactions (Avrami et al. 2011; UNESCO 2011). The mapping also sought to amplify the underrepresented voices of the local community in decision making about their home and their future. In this sense, the mapping was both essential and instrumental in its aims; it attempted to confirm or challenge assumptions made by experts in the heritage planning process and to explore the societal values that were underpinning physical adaptation.

The cultural mapping was not asset driven; it did not ask residents to identify what they valued within the village. Issues of scale influenced the approach, as the aim was to understand changes to fabric and people-space dynamics more intimately, at the scale of individual buildings and even rooms, not just at the village level. It also included spaces and structures that were not original to the Fathy design or even considered “heritage” because of their very recent construction. In this way, the exercise sought to understand the drivers of spatial change and the societal values underpinning them, rather than simply understanding the values ascribed to what was a priori considered “heritage.”

The process engaged observational and discursive methods of (spatial) ethnography. The data collection was consultative (two-way) and consisted primarily of interviews and focus groups with local residents over a two-week span (fig. 3.2a and fig 3.2b). This augmented and informed GIS mapping and photo documentation used to locate and characterize architectural interventions, along with mapping to spatialize familial relationships in the village. The process was also co-creative, in that the team collaborated with residents to produce a community film, providing a less filtered conduit for local voices (Wilkins and World Monuments Fund 2010).

Team members interview local residents during field data collection in 2010. Images: Community Consortium / World Monuments Fund

Cultural mapping confirmed and explained a number of heritage-versus-societal-value tensions by seeking to spatialize those values—that is, to understand them in relation to the design and materiality of the village. First, there is a profound respect within the community for the legacy of Hassan Fathy. This countered assumptions by heritage professionals, who believed that the loss of original fabric indicated a lack of awareness and appreciation on the part of the residents. New material choices not in keeping with Fathy’s original earthen construction are largely a result of groundwater conditions that are particularly deleterious to the traditional earthen construction (fig. 3.3).

Loss of original earthen fabric due to groundwater conditions and poor foundations, as seen in the lower walls of this interior space, has contributed to the use of fired bricks and concrete in the village. Image: Community Consortium / World Monuments Fund

Population growth also contributes to tensions between heritage and societal values. The village as constructed was designed to house 77 families; it now accommodates 174 families. The relatively large average size and the increasing number of households within New Gourna can be attributed to three main factors. First, married sons are expected to raise their families close to or in their parents’ home, sharing commodities and tasks and supporting aging parents. As it is not possible to expand the footprint of buildings or acquire adjacent land, many married sons live in the same dwelling as their parents, often on floors above. Second, some men take two or more wives, and custom requires them to provide housing for all wives equally. In several cases, original Fathy homes are divided to accommodate two households. Third, daughters remain in their parents’ home until marriage. The costs associated with marriage in Egypt have climbed dramatically in recent decades, and young people are consequently staying home longer and marrying older. These familial conditions help to explain the demolition of many of Fathy’s domed houses (fig. 3.4), which preclude the addition of stories and compel families to build anew. Protecting these societal values of familial cohesion and interdependence challenged heritage-value-driven proposals to de-densify the village and demolish some of the more egregious new structures that diminish its architectural significance (fig. 3.5).

Finally, the community strongly values the intimate public spaces within the village: alleys, khan, communal baking ovens, and shared agricultural fields (fig. 3.6), (fig. 3.7).[6] The fields especially are an important source of food and income for many families. Close proximity enables children to walk to and from school independently, which parents value and which may be a factor in village literacy rates that are higher than the national average (fig. 3.8). These findings called into question initial proposals by UNESCO to relocate the school and undertake new construction on portions of the fields as part of its preliminary heritage-based master plan (Pini 2011).

Fathy-designed (at right) and newer structures (left). Many of Fathy’s original buildings have been replaced with taller structures to accommodate extended families, thereby protecting traditional social structures. Image: Hubert Guillaud / CRAterre-ENSAG

New construction adheres to Fathy’s plan and building footprints, but builds higher to accommodate increased population density. Image: Community Consortium / World Monuments Fund

The fields surrounding and open spaces within the village are integral to the social-spatial dynamics of New Gourna. Communal baking ovens remain an important element of daily life. Image: Community Consortium / World Monuments Fund

Intimate and safe hawaari (residential enclaves/alleyways) provide important venues for social interaction in the village. Image: Community Consortium / World Monuments Fund

Access to education is an enduring value in New Gourna, where children can walk safely to school. Image: Community Consortium / World Monuments Fund

Reconciling these tensions between heritage and societal values compels a reckoning of the significant social-spatial relationships born of Fathy’s design, which extend beyond its surviving tangible assets. As Fairclough notes, “Heritage … is more than just an issue of preservation, it is an issue of use, and of value in the wider meaning, of benefits—we should worry more about function not form or fabric, be more accepting of change, more content to keep the often intangible fundamentals of the past’s material remains rather than its sometimes more superficial fabric” (2014, 247). Cultural mapping, by augmenting traditional forms of heritage documentation and assessment through a “dialogical encounter” (Redaelli 2012), can provide insight into these social-spatial relationships so as to inform more effective and relevant heritage management.

Conclusions

Returning to the early example of the Mission Héliographique, we are reminded of the polemic power and complexity of heritage and its mapping: “The Mission’s archives were a muffled voice of dissent … demonstrating how idiosyncratic, complicated, and contested history can be” (Monteiro 2010, 317). The potential of cultural mapping lies in its capacity to both investigate and celebrate this power and complexity.

Mapping fundamentally valorizes some places, practices, and relationships, and in so doing devalues others. The heritage enterprise thus invites a philosophical burden of proof. While in earlier eras, heritage values alone could rationalize conservation as an essential obligation to future generations, contemporary conditions compel more instrumental associations to societal values. Cultural mapping can effectively mediate between the two approaches by spatializing their value relationships, using a range of disciplinary perspectives and tools. Christopher R. Gibson notes,

Research aimed at engaging communities and contributing progressively to improved social relations has a lot to gain from crossing disciplinary boundaries—but … researchers should do so from a position of methodological strength developed from within a disciplinary framework…. Cultural mapping is more a platform for integrating various kinds of inquiry—a horizontal “board” onto which all kinds of quantitative and qualitative data can be pegged to suit the particular questions being asked. (2010, 78)

Clearly defining methodological aims and points of intersection is paramount in the effective implementation of cultural mapping for heritage management. Whether a community-based form of empowerment and knowledge transfer or an assessment by government to inform public policy, cultural mapping’s multimodal and transdisciplinary nature, along with its activist potential, can serve a variety of ends, and in so doing encourage communities to keep creating and re-creating heritage through regenerative processes.

Project information and images for New Gourna are included with permission from World Monuments (WMF). While the case reflects the work of the WMF project team, the author is solely responsible for the commentary and conclusions as related to the theme of this chapter. The author also thanks Adam Lubitz, who provided research support.

Notes

1. “Heritage places” can be historic buildings, structures, or settlements; monuments or memorials; archaeological sites; cultural landscapes; or other spatial forms that have been valorized as heritage. ↩

2. See Avrami and Mason, earlier in this volume, for more on this. ↩

3. See Avrami and Mason, earlier in this volume, for a more detailed discussion of societal values in relation to heritage. ↩

4. As examples of community guides and handbooks for asset mapping, see those developed by Fuller, Guy, and Pletsch (2001); Community Partnership for Arts and Culture (2009); and Municipal Cultural Planning Incorporated (2010). ↩

5. See Avrami and Mason, earlier in this volume, for more on this. ↩

6. Fathy drew upon the traditional concept of a khan as a trading center and designed the structure with workshops for craftspeople and a vaulted, semi-enclosed gallery for public display of goods. The latter continues to serve as a sheltered community gathering space near the mosque. ↩

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- Kang, Kristy H. A. 2016. “Mapping the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Ethnic Communities: Designing an Interactive Cultural History of Koreatown.” Paper presented at 2016 22nd International Conference on Virtual Systems and Multimedia (VSMM), October 17–21, 2016. https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/7863211.

- Kim, Annette Miae. 2015. Sidewalk City: Remapping Public Space in Ho Chi Minh City. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2015.

- Kosek, Jake. 1998. “Unintended Consequences: Three Views of Mapping: Jake Kosek.” Whole Earth 94:55.

- Kretzmann, John P., and John L. McKnight. 1993. Building Communities from the Inside Out: A Path toward Finding and Mobilizing a Community’s Assets. Evanston, IL: Center for Urban Affairs and Policy Research, Northwestern University, 1993.

- Kunzmann, Klaus. 2004. “Culture, Creativity and Spatial Planning.” Town Planning Review 75 (4): 383–404.

- Lefebvre, Henri. 1974. Le production de l’espace. Paris: Éditions Anthropos.

- Liew, Kai Khiun, and Natalie Pang. 2015. “Neoliberal Visions, Post-Capitalist Memories: Heritage Politics and the Counter-Mapping of Singapore’s Cityscape.” Ethnography 16 (3): 331–51.

- Longley, Alys, and Nancy Duxbury. 2016. “Introduction: Mapping Cultural Intangibles.” City, Culture and Society 7 (1): 1–7.

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- Ortega Nuere, Cristina, and Fernando Bayón. 2015. “Cultural Mapping and Urban Regeneration: Analyzing Emergent Narratives about Bilbao.” Culture and Local Governance / Culture et gouvernance locale 5 (1/2): 9–21.

- Pillai, Janet. 2013. Cultural Mapping: A Guide to Understanding Place, Community and Continuity. Petaling Jaya, Malaysia: Strategic Information and Research Development Centre.

- Pini, Daniele. 2011. Safeguarding Project of Hassan Fathy’s New Gourna Village: A UNESCO Initiative—Master Plan Final Report. Paris: UNESCO.

- Poole, Peter. 2003. Cultural Mapping and Indigenous Peoples: A Report for UNESCO. Accessed January 30, 2017. https://www.creativecity.ca/database/files/library/unesco_cultural_mapping.pdf.

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4

Heritage Work: Understanding the Values, Applying the Values

- Kristal Buckley

The inclusion of social value within the constellation of heritage values that lend significance to specific places is not new. But heritage practitioners have recently developed creative responses to new pulses shaping heritage itself. Given societal expectations that our work be transparent, democratic, and able to be validated, the development of social value methods has been slow. Colleagues and political decision makers alike privately express doubts about the legitimacy of social value; meanwhile, many communities have up-skilled and are doing their own heritage work. This paper explores shifting influences in heritage practice and how it engages with people, considering challenges of representation, essentialism, diversity, accumulation, scale, fluidity, repeatability, and affordability. These ideas are explored through examples drawn from practice in southeastern Australia.

The proposition that social value (also known as “associative” value or intangible cultural heritage) should be part of the constellation of heritage values that can imbue particular places with significance is not new. However, it has begun to be more routinely asserted, mainstreamed, and internationalized in heritage practices. In this context, this paper reflects on the work of heritage, particularly the elicitation of values from communities and the implications this work can have for conservation outcomes.

Arguably all heritage values are “intangible” and all meanings applied to heritage places are socially constructed and selected. Consideration of different values is embedded in many formal systems of heritage recognition. The examination and application of “historical” and “aesthetic” significances are well established in Western-derived systems. These have their own knowledge bases, standards, and methods, particularly when applied to architecture and archaeological material. Therefore, the conceptual expansion of heritage designations of places (including sites, areas, and landscapes) on the basis of their associative meanings invites questions about how these values are asserted, portrayed, and respected.

In the name of inclusion, heritage concepts have expanded to include … almost anything! (see Harrison 2012; Silberman 2016), and new methods have emerged to ensure that the intangible dimensions are given weight alongside the values that are commonly applied to the fabric of heritage places. However, the suite of outcomes foreshadowed by the processes of conservation has not changed substantially for the last century or so. The consequences of heritage designation (particularly on the basis of social value) are therefore somewhat narrowly imagined, and changes in methods to identify values with communities may need to be augmented by new means of achieving their safeguarding and transmission.

This paper is based on a belief that the experience of heritage practice can lead in addressing these challenges. It focuses on how practitioners work with the many people who hold perspectives on the heritage values of particular places—or in other words, the elicitation of values from those who hold them. Thus it begins with the idea of “social value” and considers the impacts of significance thresholds before briefly presenting three cases drawn from current practices in southeastern Australia.[1]

Constructing Heritage Values

This paper and the discussion of how values are understood in heritage practice is situated within an Australian context, and is informed by experiences of applying the Australia ICOMOS Charter for Places of Cultural Significance (the Burra Charter) for close to four decades.[2] The Burra Charter (Australia ICOMOS 2013a) was intended as a localized adaptation of the Venice Charter (ICOMOS 1965) and associated international doctrinal frameworks for heritage conservation to Australian practice (Logan 2004). Values-based management was not the invention of the Burra Charter, but despite its parochial purposes, the charter is often credited with the promulgation of this approach and its wider use (Jerome 2014). The core message of the Burra Charter is that a very sound understanding of a place should enable the full array of its values to be articulated in a statement of significance, which is then the touchstone of policy development and decision making.

Values-based systems of formal heritage assessment and protection are constructed around frameworks that shape the ways that places and objects are designated as heritage. One clear point of departure from the articulation of historical and aesthetic significance in the Venice Charter has been the inclusion of social value in the Burra Charter from its beginning in 1979.[3] The importance of this difference to the internationally sanctioned canon should not be underestimated.[4] For example, Sharon Sullivan has said that the inclusion of social value provided the foundation for practitioners to begin to explore the traditional knowledge of Aboriginal people in New South Wales in the late 1970s, well before any formal policy or legal requirement (Sullivan 2004; Buckley and Sullivan 2014).

In their essay in this volume, Erica Avrami and Randall Mason point out that schemes of value sets sometimes treat individual value categories as silos when in fact significances are derived from the interplay among values. Nevertheless, as table 1 illustrates, each of the well-known values frameworks within Australian heritage practice creates space for social value to be articulated within statutory and non-statutory contexts for places and objects, and within both natural and cultural heritage regimes.

Venice Charter

Burra Charter

National Heritage List

Significance 2.0

Natural Heritage Charter

International
(1964)
Monuments and Sites

Australia
(1979–2013)
Cultural Heritage Places

Australia
(2004)
Natural and Cultural Heritage Places

Australia
(2009)
Objects and Collections

Australia
(2002)
Natural Heritage

Historic value

X

X

X

X

Aesthetic value

X

X

X

X

X

Artistic value

X

Scientific value

X

X

X

X

Research value

X

Social value

X

X

X

X

Spiritual value

X

X

Provenance

X

Existence

X

Rarity

X

Representativeness

X

Condition

X

Completeness

X

Life support

X

Heritage values: examples from guides that inform Australian heritage practice. Sources: ICOMOS 1965; Australia ICOMOS 2013a; Department of the Environment and Energy [Australia] 2017a; Russell and Winkworth 2009; Australian Heritage Commission 2002

While these frameworks have a degree of coherence, there are others that pose additional values. For example, Randall Mason (2008) proposes a framework that places heritage values and socioeconomic values together. Including a wider set of potential values could usefully reflect the inescapable social and political nature of heritage, although it could also pose practical complexities, especially when trying to decide which values “count” most. The Burra Charter process takes a midway position, proposing a sequence whereby the values that comprise cultural significance are considered first, before incorporating the wider issues and constraints arising from socioeconomic values.[5] However, the means by which these are effectively included in heritage work is a continuing challenge.

Despite its early inclusion within the Burra Charter, social value was poorly operationalized compared to other values, and in the early 1990s was the subject of an important exploration by Chris Johnston (1992; see also Walker 2014; Johnston 2014). Social-value methods have continued to be relatively underdeveloped, and heritage assessments often make assumptions and conclusions about social value without specifically researching it. An obvious further weakness is that social value is yet to be widely assessed or applied outside Australia, and there is some confusion about how it should be, as well as how it should be incorporated into heritage management.[6]

The Burra Charter Practice Note on “Understanding and Assessing Cultural Significance” explains the use of social value according to the three specific dimensions.[7]

Social value refers to the associations that a place has for a particular community or cultural group and the social or cultural meanings that it holds for them. To understand social value, ask:

- Is the place important as a local marker or symbol?

- Is the place important as part of community identity or the identity of a particular cultural group?

- Is the place important to a community or cultural group because of associations and meanings developed from long use and association? (Australia ICOMOS 2013b, 4)

When considering the methods for determining social value, there is sometimes confusion between the engagements with people to articulate social value versus the need for participation in decisions and inclusion in the management of heritage places. All are critically important, but social-value assessment (for example, through cultural mapping) and community consultation are not the same thing, even if they might involve some of the same people or employ overlapping methods.

Academic criticisms of the Burra Charter and values-based management are pertinent because they focus on the ability to democratize heritage practice and the processes of representation. For example, while the articulation of social value necessitates a different and decentered role for heritage experts, Emma Waterton, Laurajane Smith, and Gary Campbell (2006) use critical discourse analysis to show that the voice in the Burra Charter (or indeed any device of its kind) serves to shore up rather than devolve the authority of experts. They conclude that the Burra Charter is less supportive of diversity and community-centered practice than it claims. Ioannis Poulios has criticized values-based management itself because it insufficiently considers the needs and rights of the present generation. He prefers the term “living heritage” (2010, 175–78). However, there are many counterexamples where mindful application of values-based management and skillful facilitation of social-values methodologies have had empowering outcomes.

These critiques call for more focused attention on the articulation of social value, foreshadowing methodological improvements. It must be acknowledged that currently there are shortcomings. For example, the Burra Charter is better equipped to deal with some kinds of places than others (Buckley and Fayad 2017), and its assertion that values are “inherent” or “intrinsic” to the place itself is debated by Australian practitioners (Byrne, Brayshaw, and Ireland 2003, 55–58; but see also Walker 2014). In this volume, Avrami and Mason summarize an emerging status quo, saying that “values are not fixed, but subjective and situational.” Future changes to the Burra Charter and its accompanying Practice Notes may therefore see changes in these areas.

Localizing Heritage and the Effects of Significance Thresholds

The commonly applied significance thresholds can have an impact on the recognition of social value. It is often the case that social value is more rigorously researched, articulated, and respected at the local significance threshold, and more challenging and generalized at other scales of assessment. Methods for mapping attachment when working directly with local communities seem better developed, compared with approaches for determining social value at the state or national threshold.

An example is the Royal Exhibition Building and Carlton Gardens in central Melbourne, which was inscribed in the World Heritage List in 2004. This place has four separate statements of significance, all using values-based approaches derived from formal systems of regulation but saying different things. The 1880 and 1888 international exhibitions were held here, the largest events ever staged in colonial Australia. These were consciously intended to introduce the world to Australian industry and technology. The World Heritage List citation says that this place is important as a surviving manifestation of the international exhibition movement that blossomed in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, showcasing technological innovation and change and promoting a rapid increase in industrialization and international trade through the exchange of knowledge and ideas (UNESCO 2017).

But most Melbournians would not mention these reasons if asked about the place’s significance. They would instead speak of its architectural merits, particularly the elaborately restored 1901 interior decorative scheme (fig. 4.1a and fig. 4.1b); the fact that it was built by David Mitchell, father of Dame Nellie Melba, an internationally famous Australian operatic soprano; or that it is where everyone has taken their school exams or graduated from university. They would recall that the first moments of the independent nation of Australia occurred at this place, with the initial meeting of the Australian Federal Parliament in 1901—something not mentioned in the World Heritage designation, but prominent in the National Heritage List citation (Department of the Environment and Energy [Australia] 2017a). The building was also used as a migrant reception center, influenza hospital, wartime military facility, and in 1956 an Olympic Games venue (Department of Planning and Community Development [Victoria] 2011). While heritage listings at the national and state levels do recognize the social value of this place, these are expressed in a generalized way that does not clearly distinguish between past (social history) and present (social value) associations. Policy directions arising from these value statements mostly concern interpretation and continued public use, quite a different level of detail when compared with the values attached to the historical and aesthetic values of the building and garden designs. It is unlikely that studies of the social value of this place have been conducted, despite it being the only place in the state that has reached the pinnacle of heritage thresholds through its inclusion in the World Heritage List.

Melbourne’s World Heritage–listed Royal Exhibition Building and Carlton Gardens, showing the interior and front elevation, 2016. Images: Kristal Buckley

The point that can be drawn from this example is that whether or not the intangible dimensions of heritage places are recognized can vary according to the significance thresholds we work with.

What’s New?

The dialogue about values and methods of eliciting them was captured by the Getty Conservation Institute’s values study (de la Torre et al. 2005). What has changed since that time? The following points provide a snapshot of what has moved and what is new in the intervening decade of global heritage practice that is relevant to the call for a better toolbox:

- Human rights. Rights-based approaches to heritage practice are being sought, particularly in relation to the rights of Indigenous peoples. While heritage recognition can have the effect of validating identity claims and rights, it is also the case that heritage designations, management, and decisions can have outcomes that violate or overlook human rights. Enhancing awareness of human rights by practitioners and decision makers is therefore a key driver of change (Disko and Tugendhat 2014; Logan 2012; Oviedo and Puschkarsky 2012).

- Global environmental crises. Natural disasters and the irreversible effects of climate change are now key policy drivers. They are applying new and complex pressures on the ability of heritage places to be conserved, and directing more attention toward what is at stake, including intangible cultural heritage.

- Nature-culture convergences. Denis Byrne, Sally Brockwell, and Sue O’Connor describe the conventional divide between nature and culture as an “ontological marker of Western modernity,” leading to heritages of “people-less” nature and “nature-less” culture (2013, 1). This is a dimension where innovation can be practice led, informed by localized heritage concepts and governance arrangements, but equally faces entrenched institutional arrangements throughout the world.

- Historic Urban Landscape (HUL). Urban heritage conservation has posed great challenges to conservation approaches and mechanisms, which led to work by UNESCO to synthesize global experience and innovation. The 2011 UNESCO Recommendation on the HUL has been a source of innovation at the level of city planning and citizen engagement (Buckley and Fayad 2017).

- Digital technologies and citizen science. There are many ways that digital applications and social media are being used to support heritage practice, including documentation of heritage and articulation of its values. As Hannah Lewi et al. explain, these “create both repositories and digital communities” and build on citizen science initiatives and engagement processes that not only enhance the usual work of heritage, but also “open up new forms of consumption and production of heritage related interpretation and content” (ranging from a high to low “curatorial presence”) and create possibilities for a “digitally enabled heritage citizen” (2016, 13).

- Critical heritage discourse. The recent rise of scholarly work in heritage studies has been remarkable (see Harrison 2013). The critical heritage discourse challenges practice, especially in relation to its engagement with people and constructions of “community.” Critical heritage studies has the potential to make substantial constructive contributions to practice and to pressing social issues and global transformations (Winter 2013).[8] But a two-way dialogue between scholars and practitioners is not yet well established, limiting the ability of the critical heritage discourse to usefully point to blind spots, new possibilities, and the value of theory.

Case Study: Port Arthur Historic Site

Port Arthur Historic Site, located in southeastern Tasmania, is one of eleven sites included in the World Heritage List as the Australian Convict Sites (Australian Government 2008), and was one of the case studies included in the previous values work undertaken by the Getty Conservation Institute (Mason, Myers, and de la Torre 2003). At that time, there was a new conservation plan prepared for the Port Arthur Historic Site Management Authority (see Mackay 2002). Although the conservation plan has been superseded by a newer one (Port Arthur Historic Site Management Authority 2008), the work done at that time to investigate the values is evident in today’s management tools, and in the international, national, state, and local heritage listings for Port Arthur.

Starting in 1830, Port Arthur was established as a secondary punishment settlement for the seventy-five thousand convicts transported from various parts of the British Empire to Van Diemen’s Land (Tasmania). It was a significant place of colonial industry and illustrates changing philosophies in the nineteenth century about punishment and reform (fig 4.2). Exploration of the social value of Port Arthur was part of the preparation of the conservation plan. It involved the identification of a series of different “communities” (including the heritage community, which often expresses strong associations and opinions about the future of this place). Writing about the planning processes, Richard Mackay commented that the consultation processes were a “signature” of the Port Arthur Conservation Plan, necessitated by the recognition that associations with the site were multilayered, with specific policy implications (2002, 14).

Port Arthur Historic Site, Tasmania. Image: Dee Kramer for Port Arthur Historic Site

In addition to the site-wide evaluation, a social value assessment was undertaken by Jane Lennon (2002) for the site of the former Broad Arrow Café in the period following the Port Arthur massacre in 1996, when a lone gunman killed thirty-five people and injured many other visitors and staff of the historic site. The café was one of the locations where people died, and there were different views about what should happen to it. The Port Arthur massacre was the worst act of murder and violence in Australia’s twentieth-century history. Reacting to the widespread surge of sorrow and outrage, Prime Minister John Howard introduced significant gun control laws that ban private ownership of automatic and semiautomatic weapons, considered by many to be a powerful legacy (Davies 2016).

For the past twenty years, the Port Arthur Historic Site Management Authority has interpreted and managed the narrative about this event in ways derived from the social value work done by Lennon (see also Mason, Myers, and de la Torre 2003; Frew 2012). The former café building has been retained as a ruin within a memorial garden that was established in 2000. The sensitivities of those most directly harmed—including many staff working at the site—have been paramount. The memorial garden is quiet and subtle (fig. 4.3). The story is not always mentioned in the introductory tour of the historic site, and information is available on request but not routinely handed out. The name of the gunman is never spoken.

View of the Port Arthur Historic Site memorial garden in 2016. The garden was established at the site of the former Broad Arrow Café in 2000. This Huon pine memorial cross lists the names of the victims. It once stood at the water’s edge at the center of the historic site but was moved to the memorial garden in 2001 (see Frew 2012). Image: Kristal Buckley

The twentieth anniversary of the massacre was marked in April 2016. Some survivors, families of victims, and first responders have said it is possibly now time to reflect again on how we transmit this story at Port Arthur. The methods are not new, despite the skillful and empathetic facilitation that is required, but it requires time. Some early work to reflect with those most directly affected has begun, assisted by the site’s Community Advisory Committee, but the key point is that social value, like all heritage values, is not static. Because the values in this example are anchored in direct experience, their transformation over time should be anticipated, and periodically revisited.

Case Study: Nature/Culture and Budj Bim

Social-value methods require the ability to work across diverse cultural contexts, including those that do not frame values according to dominant Western ontologies. This is frequently evident when working with Indigenous peoples who do not perceive a duality between nature and culture, and see spiritual and other cultural values as embodied in the landscape itself.

Early in 2017, Australia’s prime minister announced that the Budj Bim National Heritage Landscape would be added to Australia’s World Heritage tentative list. This proposal has been developed by the Gunditjmara, the Traditional Owners of Budj Bim. Budj Bim is a continuing cultural landscape, featuring complex and extensive works of hydraulic engineering that have been dated to more than six thousand years (McNiven et al. 2012). The creation of a network of stone weirs and channels enabled a plentiful supply of eels and fish, allowing the Gunditjmara to live semi-permanently on the edges of a large wetland on the vast basalt plain of western Victoria.

In 2002 the Gunditjmara proclaimed their World Heritage aspirations as one of several objectives in the Lake Condah Sustainable Development Program (McNiven and Bell 2010). Alongside this goal was another, to re-flood Lake Condah (Tae Rak), the large water body and wetland that had been drained for more than a century. The engineering works were completed just as a long period of drought broke in 2010. The recovery of the ecological health of the landscape through its rewatering has been impressive (Bell and Johnston 2008; McNiven and Bell 2010) and underpins both the revival of associated cultural traditions and the future economic sustainability of the community.

The lake and the Budj Bim landscape are of immense archaeological significance and continuing scientific potential, but are also the places that have “sustained generations of Gunditjmara” (Bell and Johnston 2008, 8). The Gunditjmara have worked with ecologists and heritage specialists to document their traditional ecological knowledge and heritage values in order to promote their objectives for land justice and World Heritage.

International instruments for biodiversity and the rights of Indigenous peoples have encouraged the development of “rights-based” approaches to nature conservation. As a consequence, natural heritage practitioners worldwide have undertaken innovative cultural mapping and participatory planning with the aim of introducing cultural knowledge and attachments into environmental management and governance (see Brown, Mitchell, and Beresford 2005). In Australia, more than sixty-five-million hectares of protected areas (approximately 40 percent of the total national reserve system’s area) are managed directly by Traditional Owners as Indigenous Protected Areas (Department of the Environment and Energy [Australia] 2017b). Budj Bim is therefore one of many examples where Australian Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples have undertaken their own cultural mapping and values documentation processes in the face of heritage frameworks that are not an ideal fit due to the separate treatment of nature and culture (Bell 2010). The Gunditjmara have formed partnerships with many specialists and practitioners, demonstrating the possibilities for significant shifts in the roles of heritage experts.

Increasingly, communities are doing their own heritage documentation and maintaining their own data systems, enabling community control over the cultural knowledge used in values-based processes. Geospatial tools have assisted with these documentation approaches, but technology has also enabled the growth of community-centered digital archives that could contribute to major shifts in heritage work, especially (but not only) for Indigenous peoples. Two examples from Central Australia are the Mukurtu open-source content management system and community archive platform (Christen 2015), and the Aṟa Irititja digital archive. These provide places for communities to keep digital knowledge, and to apply cultural protocols and specific Indigenous “ways of knowing” (Thorner and Dallwitz 2015, 53).

Case Study: The Historic Urban Landscape Approach, City of Ballarat

UNESCO’s Recommendation on the Historic Urban Landscape (HUL) was adopted by the UNESCO General Conference in 2011 (UNESCO 2011; Bandarin and van Oers 2012) and has had some transformative impacts on heritage practice in cities in different regions of the world (World Heritage Institute of Training and Research for the Asia and the Pacific Region 2016). In 2013 the regional Australian city of Ballarat became the first municipal government to formally join a global pilot phase for the implementation of the HUL (Buckley, Cooke, and Fayad 2016). Located north of Melbourne in Victoria’s Goldfields region, Ballarat is a fast-growing regional city with a strong record of heritage conservation relating to its mid-nineteenth-century gold-rush streetscapes and architecture (fig. 4.4). The city of Ballarat has put the HUL (and, thus, heritage) at the center of its forward-looking strategy, which is a response to projections of significant population growth (City of Ballarat 2015). A key component was a widespread community survey called “Ballarat Imagine,” which asked, “What do you love, imagine and want to retain?” The council has invested in an impressive array of community-centered tools, which have become widely used throughout the council structures.

The city of Ballarat in central Victoria is known for its extensive nineteenth-century streetscapes. The Mechanics’ Institute building, here shown as it looked in 2016, is a typical example. Image: Kristal Buckley

Two websites enable people to contribute their own content. Historic Urban Landscape Ballarat features an ongoing invitation for people to contribute to understanding what is valued about Ballarat, a story-based time capsule and “memory atlas,” and the capacity to share research, images, and other materials.[9] Visualising Ballarat is an HUL spatial mapping portal.[10] These tools aim to make spatial information, stories, and visual materials available to anyone who wants to use them, and allow for many contributors, making better value of the resources collected. The whole-of-organization commitment to these methods has been key to their success (Buckley, Cooke, and Fayad 2016).

Current planning is focused on specific parts of the city, including the area known as Ballarat East. Cultural mapping techniques have been used to draw out the values expressed by the communities of Ballarat East. These include both the heritage values and other issues and aspirations that can inform change. One small component has been led by Steven Cooke of Deakin University, involving the application of “visual methodologies” to understand values and attachment within Ballarat East.[11] Participants wearing digital recording glasses film and narrate their routes as they walk through the area (fig. 4.5). This method has enabled insights that complement the other cultural mapping methods, such as knowledge of local routes, small sight lines, musings about undeveloped spaces, and small details of fencing, curbing, and vegetation that are often too subtle to register in traditional heritage studies.

The author wearing the audio and video recording “glasses” used in the Ballarat East study, 2017. Image: Kristal Buckley

There are opportunities for the outcomes to be incorporated into the planning system; a local area plan is being developed and will guide change over the coming decade. Efforts to collect widely inclusive and values-based understandings about Ballarat East are central to the local area plan. This example demonstrates the extension of traditional heritage study methods to incorporate community-based methods in order to develop new strategic and statutory arrangements for changing urban areas.

Some Concluding Thoughts

Given societal expectations that heritage work should be transparent, democratic, and able to be validated, the development of methods to identify social value has been slow. Colleagues and political decision makers alike sometimes express doubts about the legitimacy of social value within heritage evaluations; meanwhile, many communities are doing their own heritage work. There is a growing casebook of creative work that can suggest approaches and directions for eliciting values with communities and inspire new possibilities.

In some respects, we have yet to perfect a vocabulary for describing place attachment, and social value is sometimes misunderstood as a socioeconomic or utilitarian quality. A small start to improved practice might be to rethink how we describe place attachment for people. Engaging with people in heritage work raises ethical and practical issues that have yet to be sufficiently addressed within professional practices, including:

- Representation/essentialism. There are common pitfalls to seeing communities too simply, portraying identity as fixed and one-dimensional.

- Diversity and visibility. Who is heard and seen in heritage values work, and who is not? How is diversity accounted for in social value and other heritage assessments?

- Accumulation. As our definitions of what heritage can be expand to better reflect cultural diversity, is there a danger of having “too much” heritage? Denis Byrne, Helen Brayshaw and Tracy Ireland discuss the “fear of proliferation of meaning” if widespread attachments to place are respected (2003, 57). Rodney Harrison has referred to this as a “crisis of accumulation,” pointing to the need to consider a broader spectrum of management outcomes than those normally included within conservation (2012, 579).

- Scale and repeatability of methods. Projects like “Ballarat Imagine” show the possibilities of large-scale processes for identifying social value, including for urban areas. Yet many studies seem unlikely to be repeatable, lessening their apparent validity.

- Fluidity of heritage values. If values are dynamic and situational, how can decisions rest on values assessments? With the increased mobility of many peoples—including through environmental, economic, and military displacements—where does the social value go? In situations of demographic change, how do new residents begin to form place attachments?

- Validity and affordability. It takes time, expertise, and resources to conduct social value assessments. Digital technologies offer a better shelf life for the studies that are undertaken, increasing their efficiency while at the same time raising new issues such as how to manage vast quantities of digital data.

- Connecting values with conservation outcomes. The usual models for heritage conservation attach decision making to place, and to land-use planning and decision-making processes. But these are not the only processes that might be important. There are many examples where the values are well identified, but the processes of change cannot easily reflect them. The array of conservation processes—maintenance, preservation, restoration, reconstruction, adaptation—has not changed for nearly a century. The intangible cultural-heritage focus on cultural processes (rather than products) might usefully lead to an expanded set of conservation outcomes.

Three suggestions are offered in conclusion. First, expertise needs to be recognized and specialists are needed, no more or less than for physical conservation. There are opportunities to both take from and contribute to the developing scholarship of heritage studies. Byrne, Brayshaw, and Ireland recommend approaching heritage as “social action” and the use of the principle of “attachment” in the management of heritage places, and propose a corresponding shift in the role of heritage professionals, focusing on facilitation, advice, and connectivity (2003, 143).

Second, there is room to experiment and improve methods of community engagement, especially as the possibilities related to digital technologies are embraced to engage with many more people, different voices, and meanings, and to keep values knowledge so that it is usable and not easily misappropriated. There might be new experts entering the field of heritage work, such as social scientists, digital humanities specialists, and archivists.

Finally, it is important to remember that not all heritage is associated with place, and that the field of intangible cultural heritage offers expanded opportunities for collaboration. The rapid take-up of the 2003 UNESCO Convention on Intangible Cultural Heritage (UNESCO 2003) has demonstrated the potential for greater use of anthropological methods of documentation, but the two communities of practice are not well acquainted. Ultimately heritage work and future practice can move toward methods and outcomes that are both more diverse and more converged.

Notes

1. In Australian practice, thresholds are used to indicate the assessed significance in relation to the three-tier government system. Places are identified as significant at the local, state, or national level, with identified thresholds established for each level. ↩

2. First adopted by Australia ICOMOS in 1979, the charter has been revised a number of times, most recently in 2013. ↩

3. This was augmented by the addition of spiritual value in 1999. ↩

4. The 1994 Nara Document on Authenticity has also had a profound impact in this regard. ↩

5. The Burra Charter process is expressed as a sequence or flow chart, where the heritage values of the place are considered fully and articulated in a statement of significance prior to the consideration of other factors (see Australia ICOMOS 2013a, 10). ↩

6. This was evident in the discussions at the colloquium hosted in 2017 by the Getty Conservation Institute on this topic. ↩

7. Spiritual values are separately defined in this Practice Note. See https://australia.icomos.org/wp-content/uploads/Practice-Note_Understanding-and-assessing-cultural-significance.pdf. ↩

8. See the Association for Critical Heritage Studies, http://www.criticalheritagestudies.org/. ↩

9. http://www.hulballarat.org.au/. ↩

10. http://www.visualisingballarat.org.au/. ↩

11. This research has been supported by the City of Ballarat, Alfred Deakin Institute for Citizenship and Globalisation, and Deakin University’s School of Humanities and Social Sciences. ↩

References

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5

The Shift toward Values in UK Heritage Practice

- Kate Clark

The values-based approach to conservation decision making has become more common in the United Kingdom over the past two decades, often sitting comfortably beside the more traditional fabric-based approach. Driven initially by the Heritage Lottery Fund, whose unique people-based approach to supporting heritage projects was very different from those of other heritage organizations, exploring how both communities and experts value heritage is now built into heritage guidance and practice in museums, built heritage, landscapes, and archaeology. In fact, values-based practice goes well beyond decision making to include debate about the wider economic, social, and environmental benefits of heritage, as well as the value created by heritage organizations. This has had a demonstrable impact on policy and strategy. This paper charts the shift to, and the impacts of, a values-based approach to heritage conservation and its framework of operation over the last twenty years in the UK.

In the years since the Getty Conservation Institute’s Research on the Values of Heritage project (1998–2005) there has been a noticeable change in the extent to which thinking about heritage values has been incorporated into heritage policy and practice within the UK.[1] This chapter provides a perspective on that transformation, exploring three kinds of heritage values reflected in three phenomena: first, changing ideas about significance in the protection and management of heritage (so-called intrinsic values, relating to significance); second, growing awareness of the wider economic, social, and environmental benefits of heritage (instrumental values, relating to sustainability); and third, the exploration of how heritage organizations themselves create value (institutional values, related to service).[2] It draws on some policy developments, mainly in England between 2000 and the present day, in particular the publication of the English Heritage (now Historic England) Conservation Principles in 2008, which put in place a transparent values-based decision-making process for heritage, and the work of the Heritage Lottery Fund (HLF), which has gone beyond formally protected or listed heritage to engage with a wider range of people and types of heritage in the UK.[3]

Significance: Using Values in Designation and Decision Making

The journey toward thinking more explicitly about values in heritage practice begins with the idea of significance. There is nothing new about the concept of significance in heritage. Every decision to preserve something for the future is based on some perception of value. To take a random example: the tooth of a great white shark was recently excavated at a late Bronze Age midden site at Llanmaes in Wales. It had clearly been transported over a great distance, and its location—deposited in a post hole—implied that it had had special meaning to somebody in the past (Amgueddfa Cymru / National Museum of Wales 2017).

Equally, every decision to preserve a heritage asset for the future is based on an individual or collective perception of value. When discussing what should be preserved, the influential nineteenth-century pioneer of British conservation, William Morris, answered:

If for the rest, it be asked us to specify what kind or amount of art, style, or other interest in a building, makes it worth protecting, we answer, anything which can be looked on as artistic, picturesque, topical, antique, or substantial: any work, in short, over which educated, artistic people would think it worth while to argue at all. (Morris 1877, n.p.)

The first legislation to protect monuments in the UK was finally enacted in 1882, after nearly a decade of attempts. How things were to be judged important was a matter of concern from the outset. One of the main objections to the bill was that by preserving monuments, this was a proposal to “take the property of owners not for utilitarian purposes, for railways and purposes of that sort, but for purposes of sentiment, and it was difficult to see where they would stop” (Kennet 1972, 27). The objections of property owners held sway, and the final form of the 1882 Ancient Monuments Protection Act was very much watered down in terms of powers to interfere with property rights. In relation to values or “sentiment,” the act did not define ancient monuments or their significance, except by implication in that they were of “like character” to those in the schedule or list attached to the act (mainly prehistoric monuments) (UK Parliament 1882, 5). Their significance was explained to Parliament during the debate: “As to the value of which … there was an agreement among all persons interested in the preservation of ancient monuments” (Kennet 1972, 29).

As Harold Kalman notes, one of the fundamental elements of European-derived heritage legislative systems is the idea of a list, register, or inventory that recognizes places of merit, and it is possible to trace the evolution of that concept of “merit” through different forms of legislation (2014, 48). For example in the United States, the American Antiquities Act of 1906 extended protection to “historic landmarks, historic and prehistoric structures, and other objects of historic and scientific interest,” although these were confined to federally owned or controlled land (US Government 1906, sect 2). In the UK, ancient monuments are currently defined as being of “national importance” under the 1979 Ancient Monuments and Archaeological Areas Act (UK Parliament 1979, part 1, sect 1.3; Department for Culture, Media and Sport [London] 2013). In the UK, heritage protection was extended to historic buildings following the destruction of World War II. Under the system of “listing,” historic buildings need to be of “special architectural or historic interest” (UK Parliament 1990, ch. 1.1; Department for Culture, Media and Sport [London] 2010).

As well as informing decisions about what to protect, values also come into formal heritage practice after a site has been protected where there is a process of managing change, for example if an owner wants to alter or demolish a property (fig. 5.1a and fig. 5.1b). It is in this area of decision making that the most overt move toward thinking about heritage values has taken place. Decisions about change to individual heritage assets are usually made at a local level, by planning authorities who need to set the special heritage interest of the site against other values, including wider economic, social, and environmental issues, and of course the ambitions of the owner. This is why making decisions about changes to historic buildings, monuments, and places after they have been designated has always been more complex and involves a wider range of values than choosing places to protect (fig. 5.2).

In formal heritage practice, heritage values are used in two different ways: in the selection of assets for protection (a), and in the process of management, decision making, and managing change after those assets have been protected (b).

The range of values taken into account in asset management and decision making (outer circle) can often be much wider than the range of heritage values used to justify designation or formal heritage protection (inner circle).

In the mid-1990s, two key UK government documents guided decision making about heritage assets after they were designated in England: Planning Policy Guidance 15, which covered listed buildings, conservation areas, and other heritage sites (UK, Department of the Environment and Department of National Heritage 1994), and Planning Policy Guidance 16, covering archaeology (UK, Department of the Environment 1990). Both documents sought to show how heritage should be protected as part of the planning system. Although both address the need to take the reasons for which the heritage has been protected into account in decision making (significance), they do so largely by providing guidance on different ways to do this. For example, PPG 15 defined appropriate uses, the importance of repair, issues to be taken into account in considering demolition, and the treatment of specific building elements. Underlying this was the philosophy of minimum intervention, carrying forward Morris’s deep-seated reaction against the nineteenth century’s restoration movement and the scraping away of layers of history, which saw so many historic buildings effectively rebuilt in the interests of re-creating their putative earlier form. For archaeological sites of national importance, where there was a presumption in favor of preservation, PPG 16 showed how to achieve that through strategies such as preservation by record.

The move toward a more explicit values-based decision-making process came with the publication of the English Heritage Conservation Principles in 2008 (English Heritage 2008). As noted at the outset, the idea of significance was not new, and the requirement to consider significance was there in the PPGs and other guidance, such as that on management planning for World Heritage Sites, but what was different was the more explicit approach to using values in decision making. The principles aimed to support quality in decision making, with the ultimate objective of “creating a management regime for … the historic environment that is clear and transparent in its purpose and sustainable in its application” (Historic England 2018).

The core values identified in the principles are evidential, historical, aesthetic, and communal. The guidance on assessing significance describes the process: understanding the fabric and evolution of the place; identifying who values the place and why they do so; linking values to fabric; thinking about associated objects and collections, setting, and context; and then comparing the place with others sharing similar values. It is a process that grounds value in fabric in order to help make decisions about what can be changed and what cannot (English Heritage 2008).

The Conservation Principles signaled a move from decision making based on strategies or recipes (such as minimum intervention, no restoration, presumption on preservation, and treatment of specific elements—values that derive from conservation as a discipline) toward a decision-making process that also had space for the different ways in which heritage mattered to the general public (fig. 5.3a and fig. 5.3b). They marked the first time that a major heritage agency in the UK explained how it expects values to be taken into account in decision making as part of the statutory process.

The values-based approach was now a core part of established conservation thinking in the UK. In Wales, Cadw (the Welsh government historic environment service) published conservation principles in 2011, again putting value and understanding significance at the center of conservation (Welsh Assembly Government 2011), while the Historic Environment Scotland conservation principles explicitly state that “the purpose of conservation is to perpetuate cultural significance” (Historic Environment Scotland 2015, 3).

The transition to values-based decision making involves moving from specific recipes, scenarios, or treatments (a) toward a more transparent approach that takes into account economic and social values, long-term sustainability, and community perceptions (b). In practice the two work well together. Images: The Promenade, Ostend, Belgium, 2017 / Kate Clark

The Impact of the Heritage Lottery Fund on Thinking about Heritage Values

What had happened between 1994 and the publication of the Conservation Principles in 2008 to inspire this move toward values-based thinking?

To some extent trends in heritage reflected a wider move toward recognizing the value of greater community involvement, emerging from both the philosophy of sustainable development (see below) and also wider government policy on social inclusion. In planning, the 1990s witnessed a decisive move toward participatory planning and place making. “Citizen science” was embraced by natural heritage, museums were opening up to wider participation, and in other areas of the arts such as theater and opera, community-based events were becoming more popular.[4]

The biggest influence on heritage practice in the UK was financial. The Heritage Lottery Fund provided new sources of funding, and with it a new approach to heritage. Set up in 1994 to fund heritage projects using money from the National Lottery, it was a very different organization from the national heritage bodies in England, Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland. As a funder and not a regulator, HLF also had a distinctive philosophy. Most importantly, it was set up to fund a very broad range of heritage that went beyond sites and buildings to include museums and archives, biodiversity, industrial heritage, landscapes, and intangible heritage such as oral histories and memories. And because it did not have a regulatory function, it was much freer to explore different approaches to heritage and was not tied to any single legal or policy framework.

With up to £300 million per annum, it soon developed robust funding procedures to ensure that grants were distributed fairly and spent well. The emphasis was on developing procedures for successful projects, whatever kind of heritage was involved: business planning, ensuring access, developing skills, and long-term sustainability. Critically, the Heritage Lottery Fund also recognized the centrality of involving people in heritage activities. There was a huge emphasis on access and engagement, as well as audience development (Heritage Lottery Fund 2002). The fund could support activity projects such as public programs and events or arts activities, as well as the physical repair or conservation of sites.

Another critical aspect of the HLF approach was that it broadened the idea of heritage beyond protected sites. By not confining its financial support to protected sites of high significance (whether cultural or natural) and instead asking applicants to demonstrate how and why the heritage was important to them, HLF opened up opportunities for different communities whose heritage had not previously been recognized or acknowledged through official designation to research, discover, and indeed protect their own stories. These included different ethnic and faith communities, communities with stories that had not been told (the history of disability, for example), and even parts of Britain that felt that their own area or story had not been celebrated. The HLF took the thinking about heritage values beyond the kinds of value enshrined in the heritage protection legislation to embrace a much more diverse range of values.

When deciding what to fund, the application process also, controversially, changed the relationship with heritage specialists by placing the onus on applicants and communities to make a values-based argument rather than relying on the judgment of specialists with a background in the traditional heritage disciplines. National organizations such as English Heritage, Cadw, and Historic Scotland had historically given grants for buildings based on “outstandingness” or the quality of the building. HLF’s new approach did not necessarily disregard the quality of the heritage, but it brought a much wider range of values into play when making decisions about projects.

HLF also influenced the agenda on heritage values by introducing an explicitly values-based planning process (fig. 5.4). Applicants seeking large capital grants for major projects that could have a big impact on a heritage site, such as new visitor centers or major repair programs or interventions, were asked to prepare conservation management plans (Heritage Lottery Fund n.d.). These plans were part of a suite of other project information (business plans, access and audience development plans) designed to help ensure that projects were properly thought through and would be sustainable. Smaller projects were not asked for such plans, but as part of the application process they were still asked to explain the value of the site.

Values-based planning models can challenge the power-based model of heritage practice by recognizing and incorporating a wider range of values into the decision-making process.

The HLF guidance on conservation plans drew on the Australia ICOMOS Charter for Places of Cultural Significance (or Burra Charter) process but adapted it.[5] The original guidance went well beyond significance in the sense of the formal reasons for which a site was designated and asked planners to explore all of the different ways in which people valued the place, including the perspectives of different communities. The planning process used that understanding of value in order to help set out how the site would be managed and sustained in the future, ensuring that community values would be taken into account in future thinking.[6]

The values-based process was not without critics. For instance, at a conference in 1999 to debate the use of such plans, there was a lot of concern that time and money spent on planning would distract attention and funding from the core work of repairing sites and buildings (Clark 1999). Indeed, many plans submitted to HLF for review showed that some practitioners struggled with the HLF requirements to go beyond the formal reasons for which sites were protected and to engage with wider communities and what mattered to them. They also struggled to see how understanding value might shape how a site would be managed.

Sustainability: The Instrumental Economic, Social, and Environmental Benefits of Heritage

The English Heritage Conservation Principles also placed heritage decisions within the context of sustainability. Sustainability is the second (and parallel) trend in values-based heritage practice in the UK since the late 1990s, and involves recognizing the wider economic, social, and environmental benefits that flow from investing in heritage.

The difference between sustainability in the broadest sense and conservation in a narrow sense is that conservation is about repairing an individual site or building, while sustainability involves taking a wider view of that site, including finding a longer-term use to ensure its survival in the future. For people who work with heritage, thinking about sustainability often means finding connections between heritage and the wider context for heritage places, such as land-use planning, economic development, or social inclusion. The two approaches complement each other—there is little point in repairing or conserving a building without thinking about its long-term management, nor is there any point in thinking about the future of a site that has been almost totally lost.

In terms of the values agenda, thinking about sustainability requires heritage practitioners to have a good understanding of the potential economic, social, and environmental benefits of investing in heritage. That understanding helps make the connection between caring for heritage and other, wider policy objectives. It contributes to reducing the isolation of heritage by seeing it as part of a bigger narrative around place and environment.

Perhaps the key point at which ideas about sustainability—and with them broader ideas about the economic and social values of heritage—became part of formal heritage practice in England was during a major review of heritage policies in 2000. The government had asked English Heritage to review its policies for the historic environment. The organization undertook a major consultative exercise, convening a series of working groups that brought together people from heritage, the natural environment, business, and the arts. It culminated in the publication Power of Place: The Future of the Historic Environment and the government policy document A Force for Our Future (English Heritage and Historic Environment Review Steering Group 2000; Department for Culture, Media and Sport [London] 2001).

At the time, new thinking on sustainability was emerging from documents such as Caring for the Earth, published in 1991 by the World Conservation Union (IUCN), United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), and World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF), which argued that sustainability linked the environment and nature to society and economics, and was not just top down but bottom up; recognized that conservation did not take place in isolation; and drove home the importance of involving people. Ideas such as improving quality of life, keeping within the Earth’s carrying capacity, enabling communities to care for their own environments, and integrating development and conservation—originally developed for the natural environment—were applied to cultural heritage.

The legacy of that thinking and of Power of Place is evident in the way heritage practice changed over the next decade or so. Heritage policy became much closer to natural environmental policy, borrowing approaches and ideas, even down to the use of the term “historic environment” rather than “heritage” in policy documents and strategies. There were strategic initiatives to monitor and manage heritage at risk, including buildings and monuments at risk surveys, which mirror the natural heritage focus on endangered species. In 2002 English Heritage published a State of the Historic Environment Report, the first such annual review, which was similar to regular surveys of the natural environment tracking progress in conservation (English Heritage 2002b). Subsequent reports were published under the title Heritage Counts. Heritage concerns became more closely integrated into environmental policies, impact assessments, and funding regimes such as agricultural subsidies. Even the move from individual species to habitats is mirrored in the move from individual buildings and sites toward more use of place-based and character-based thinking in heritage (Franklin and Historic England 2017). Initiatives such as the use of conservation management plans, and indeed World Heritage site management plans, encouraged people to think more widely about the value of heritage to different communities, while the emphasis on managing sites rather than just conserving them reflected thinking about sustainability.

In terms of values, sustainability brought a new emphasis on exploring the economic impacts and benefits of investing in heritage. HLF undertook a major program of economic impact assessments in order to try and capture the direct and indirect impacts of spending on heritage. English Heritage was also undertaking similar work, tracking for example the investment performance of listed buildings.

That move toward recognizing the role of heritage in the economy can also be seen in how organizations were prioritizing funding. As noted, in both England and Wales, grant funding programs moved from giving priority to highly significant individual buildings in need of repair to promoting more heritage-led regeneration schemes that brought new life to deprived areas. Townscape Heritage schemes (similar to US Main Street schemes) put as much emphasis on delivering economic benefit as on repairing significant buildings (English Heritage 2002a). These developments were more than attempts to recast heritage language in the language of current government priorities. There was a genuine recognition that repairing historic buildings was not enough. It was also important to find sustainable uses for them. Recognizing the importance of finding viable uses for heritage buildings, HLF has since launched a heritage enterprise grants program designed to help community groups develop better business skills and find creative new things to do with empty buildings (Heritage Lottery Fund 2018).

The other more recent trend has been in recognizing the social benefits or values of investing in heritage. The idea of using museums and heritage sites for educational purposes is not new; indeed, participation data shows that visiting a heritage site when you are young is one of the biggest drivers for heritage visitation in later life. But over the last two decades, there has been an active move to use heritage as a force to combat social exclusion—where individuals or particular groups lack access to opportunities such as employment or civic engagement, or indeed heritage. It began with a move toward making heritage sites and buildings more physically accessible, but it goes well beyond that. HLF in particular has actively invited excluded groups to apply for funding, encouraging people to tell their own stories and to find and conserve sites that matter to them. It has funded initiatives such as the Anglo-Sikh Heritage Trail to promote greater awareness of the shared heritage between Britain and India and sites of importance to the Sikh community across the UK, or the Royal Mencap Society project on the hidden heritage of people with learning disabilities.[7]

The heritage sector has been inching into health, too, with projects involving homeless people or ex-servicepeople (veterans). Operation Nightingale has been supported by the Ministry of Defence and is helping soldiers injured in Afghanistan return to their regiments or prepare for civilian life using archaeological field projects, including excavation, land survey, drawing, and mapping. In Wales, the Fusion program brings social services providers together with museums and heritage organizations. Very small amounts of funding go to the social services providers, but it has a huge impact, as they begin to see how heritage can help them get young people back into education or reach families who have become isolated.

Over the past fifteen years, heritage organizations in the UK, from museums to funders, advocacy bodies, and site managers, have all recognized that engaging with wider social and economic agendas through understanding the social and economic benefits of heritage, and delivering projects that focus on those outcomes, is a core part of what they do. Prior to its recent reorganization in 2015, English Heritage developed the concept of a “virtuous circle,” based on the conservation principles under the banner of “constructive conservation.” The virtuous circle posits:

By understanding the historic environment people value it; by valuing it they will want to care for it; by caring for it they will help people enjoy it; [and] from enjoying the historic environment comes a thirst to understand it. (English Heritage 2011, 10–11)

Values in Heritage Organizations

The third trend in UK values-based heritage practice over the past fifteen years is evident in how values are reflected in heritage practitioners’ and organizations’ behavior. For individual practitioners, the issues are generally related to ethics in practice (not explored in any detail here), but for organizations the picture is more complex. For heritage organizations, the fundamental question is how to demonstrate the value of what they do. Is it something quantitative that can be measured in terms of targets for performance, such as the number of sites conserved by a funding organization, the number of decisions made by a regulatory organization, or the number of visitors to a museum? Or is the value created by the existence of a heritage organization something less tangible?

These were the questions HLF faced in 2006, driven in part by the need to demonstrate the case for the renewal of its operating license, but also by a growing realization that it was important to be able to explain exactly what such a large investment in heritage had achieved. The fund already had in place an active program for evaluating the impact of its funding, including studies that looked at the benefits of specific programs (such as funding for public parks or for townscape heritage schemes). The HLF also captured a variety of quantitative data about its funding, including data about the geographical distribution of funding across different regions, the different types of heritage funded, and the spread of funding across different grant sizes. The result was a huge bank of social, economic, and spatial data about heritage, but there was no single model to explain the wider value of what the fund had done or created.

HLF commissioned Robert Hewison and John Holden (2011) to devise a possible model. Hewison and Holden reviewed a range of different approaches to capturing the value of heritage. As well as looking at traditional measures of value, such as significance or the economic and social benefits of heritage, they also drew attention to Mark Moore’s work on public value. Moore (1995) looks specifically at how public-sector organizations create value in the way they behave as organizations, including such qualities as trust, transparency, and accountability.

Hewison and Holden identified nine indicators for how HLF created value, encompassing three different kinds of value that in effect asked whether the fund was protecting what people cared about (significance, or “intrinsic” value); whether it was delivering wider economic, social, and other benefits (sustainability, or “instrumental” benefits); and whether it as an organization behaved in a manner that was trustworthy and accountable (through the service it provided to the public, or “institutional” values) (fig. 5.5). This took heritage values beyond a focus on what was achieved by protecting or investing in heritage sites and fabric to include values demonstrated through organizational behavior and the social process of conserving heritage (Demos 2004), an approach that was debated more widely at a conference in 2006 (Clark 2006).

The tripartite model for the public value of heritage brings together thinking about values in heritage practice with Mark Moore’s work on public value. It shows how the use of values goes beyond what heritage practitioners do, to incorporate why they do it and also how they do it. It was originally set out by John Holden (2006) as a simple triangle of intrinsic (relating to significance), institutional (relating to service), and instrumental (relating to sustainability) values.

Since then, Hewison and Holden have taken this approach beyond HLF to show how understanding values plays a critical role in organizational strategies. Heritage organizations raise particular leadership challenges because they deal regularly with competing and often contradictory pressures. They are asked to be both more inclusive and attract a wider range of visitors, while also being more commercial, and to reconcile development and conservation, natural heritage and cultural heritage, collections and buildings. Because there are different views on what is important, passions run high and cultural heritage attracts a wide range of opinions on how it should be managed. For cultural heritage leaders, therefore, a clear sense of organizational values is as important as it is for other organizations, or perhaps even more so (Hewison and Holden 2011).

In understanding value, it is important to understand whose values. Mark Moore’s original concept of the “authorizing environment” (1995, 130) explores the mechanics of legitimacy in public life, recognizing that politicians and the public might see value in different ways. Cultural organizations also must understand the values of their peers and partners—the bodies they work with in order to deliver services.

This is something Moore identifies in his work on public value: distinguishing different “audiences” for value, for instance looking at the difference between what the public might want of a cultural organization and what politicians might want. He describes these in terms of two key groups, “up the line” funders and politicians, and “down the line” customers and the public, and explores the different expectations each group might have (Moore and Williams Moore 2005). For cultural heritage organizations the picture might more realistically be expanded to four groups of stakeholders: peers, partners, politicians (and funders), and the public (or customers) (fig. 5.6). Peers include people in similar organizations and within the sector; partners are the people an organization works with to deliver services; politicians or funders are the critical enablers who also provide legitimacy; and the public are the people who use or benefit from the service. Each group interacts with the cultural organization in a different way, and each has its own expectations.

Heritage leaders also need to recognize that these different stakeholders may have different priorities in terms of what they value. A funder may care about accountability, transparency, and delivery; a member of the public may value customer service; a partner may care about trust and collaboration; while a peer group may be more concerned with the quality of the heritage work. The political dimension is never far beneath the surface in any cultural organization, and leaders need to be acutely aware of the climate in which they operate and gain legitimacy. There is often more than one reporting line (for example to both a board of trustees and a government department), and multiple stakeholders, such as a separate foundation or membership organization. In order to maintain support and engagement, leaders need to be adept at recognizing those different audiences and what they care about without losing sight of the core purpose of the organization in the eyes of the public.

In constructing a model of value for a cultural heritage organization itself, therefore, it is important to think not just about the different kinds of value that the organization creates, but also the different “audiences” for that value. This is one of the issues that has emerged as part of the recent Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) Cultural Value Project, which has been taking forward the wider values work in the UK through a series of commissioned pieces, including one on public value in organizations.[8]

Current Challenges

What does all of this mean for the values agenda today?

For heritage organizations at least, the question of how they create value through their services, practices, and behavior as organizations has never been more relevant. Leading a heritage organization today can feel as much about running a business as about delivering public services. This means that the ethics and values of heritage organizations themselves become even more challenging as they seek to maintain trust and engagement while also generating more income and becoming more businesslike. Demonstrating how an organization creates value for the wider public, at a time when public services have never been more under threat and in question, is perhaps the greatest and most interesting challenge for the values agenda. Equally, as Karina V. Korostelina demonstrates in her contribution to this volume, the ethical issues for individuals and organizations dealing with identity politics in and around heritage are huge and require enormous sensitivity and understanding.

In terms of sustainability—the economic, social, and environmental values of heritage—these questions are still as relevant, if not more so, as when the GCI values project first posed them. In a climate of austerity that questions the value of public services, the need is greater than ever to demonstrate the relevance of heritage to the wider economic, social, and environmental issues of our time. But in order to do that, we continue to need to generate good research about the value of heritage, using research techniques derived from social sciences, geography, economics, and other disciplines. The recent UK AHRC initiative around the value of culture has generated new interest in this field. There are stronger partnerships between academics and practitioners, and there is an emerging, albeit critical, research base.

In terms of the practical business of managing heritage sites, two decades after the launch of the GCI’s Research on the Values of Heritage project, the values-based approach is now fully part of the heritage practice toolbox. In the UK there is much more explicit thinking about values in wider heritage management and decision making. Applicants for funding at HLF are asked to explain what matters about their sites, and organizations such as the National Trust are rethinking their approach to value through a new emphasis on curatorship.

Despite that, there has been concern that the move toward thinking about values means a shift away from conserving fabric. Thinking about values should never displace the need for scientific investigation, core heritage craft skills, and good technical knowledge, but understanding different values helps to reconcile conflicts, manage sites, make difficult decisions, connect with different communities, and explore complexity in the process of managing heritage; the marriage of values and fabric will remain central for the field.

But understanding and working with values does more than that. Values are a common space that should bring together different specializations in heritage (ecology, history, design, buildings, museums, collections) and different community groups, recognizing that most heritage places are not buildings in isolation but mixtures of all of these. Values are also a powerful way to connect with different people and communities—understanding and respecting what is important to others brings people closer together, and heritage can be a powerful way to do that. The values-based approach is a critical way of embedding heritage in the wider world rather than seeing it as something separate.

Whether implicit or explicit, values will always be central to heritage practice. It is not a debate that will go away.

Notes

1. See http://www.getty.edu/conservation/our_projects/field_projects/values/index.html/. ↩

2. My use of the tripartite model of heritage value was inspired by the GCI values project where we debated the distinction between significance and the benefits of investing in heritage (intrinsic and instrumental values) (de la Torre et al. 2005), and the model further developed in personal conversations with John Holden and Robert Hewison as part of the HLF review, which drew attention to Mark Moore’s work on public value (institutional values), discussed below. ↩

3. In 2015 English Heritage was split into two organizations, Historic England (the public body that looks after England’s historic environment) and English Heritage (the registered charity that manages the National Heritage collection, comprising four hundred monuments in the care of the secretary of state). ↩

4. For example, Glyndebourne produces community-based opera. See http://www.glyndebourne.com/education/about-glyndebourne-education/education-projects/commissions/hastings-spring-2/. ↩

5. See article 6 of the Burra Charter (Australia ICOMOS 2013) for a definition of the Burra Charter process. ↩

6. The original HLF guidance has been replaced with a much shorter version online that separates values-based conservation plans from management and maintenance plans (Heritage Lottery Fund 2018). ↩

7. See Anglo-Sikh Heritage Trail, http://asht.info/; and Hidden Now Heard, https://www.hlf.org.uk/our-work/hidden-now-heard. ↩

8. See http://www.ahrc.ac.uk/research/fundedthemesandprogrammes/culturalvalueproject. ↩

References

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- Australia ICOMOS. 2013. The Burra Charter: The Australia ICOMOS Charter for Places of Cultural Significance. Burwood: Australia ICOMOS. http://australia.icomos.org/wp-content/uploads/The-Burra-Charter-2013-Adopted-31.10.2013.pdf.

- Clark, Kate, ed. 1999. Conservation Plans in Action: Proceedings of the Oxford Conference. London: English Heritage.

- Clark, Kate, ed. 2006. Capturing the Public Value of Heritage: The Proceedings of the London Conference, 25–26 January 2006. Swindon, UK: English Heritage.

- de la Torre, Marta, Margaret G. H. MacLean, Randall Mason, and David Myers. 2005. Heritage Values in Site Management: Four Case Studies. Los Angeles: Getty Conservation Institute. http://hdl.handle.net/10020/gci_pubs/values_site_mgmnt.

- Demos. 2004. Challenge and Change: HLF and Cultural Value: A Report to the Heritage Lottery Fund. London: Heritage Lottery Fund. https://www.hlf.org.uk/sites/default/files/media/research/challengeandchange_culturalvalue.pdf.

- Department for Culture, Media and Sport (London). 2001. The Historic Environment: A Force for Our Future. London: Department for Culture, Media and Sport.

- Department for Culture, Media and Sport (London). 2010. Principles of Selection for Listing Buildings: General Principles Applied by the Secretary of State When Deciding Whether a Building Is of Special Architectural or Historic Interest and Should Be Added to the List of Buildings Compiled under the Planning (Listed Buildings and Conservation Areas) Act 1990. London: Department for Culture, Media and Sport.

- Department for Culture, Media and Sport (London). 2013. Scheduled Monuments and Nationally Important but Non-Scheduled Monuments. London: Department for Culture, Media and Sport. Accessed July 28, 2017. https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/249695/SM_policy_statement_10-2013__2_.pdf.

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- English Heritage. 2002b. State of the Historic Environment Report. London: English Heritage.

- English Heritage. 2008. Conservation Principles, Policies and Guidance for the Sustainable Management of the Historic Environment. London: English Heritage. https://www.historicengland.org.uk/images-books/publications/conservation-principles-sustainable-management-historic-environment/.

- English Heritage. 2011. English Heritage Corporate Plan 2011/2015. London: English Heritage. Accessed June 12, 2018. https://content.historicengland.org.uk/images-books/publications/corporate-plan-2011-2015/eh-corporate-plan-2011-2015.pdf.

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- Heritage Lottery Fund. 2002. Broadening the Horizons of Heritage: The Heritage Lottery Fund Strategic Plan, 2002–2007. London: Heritage Lottery Fund.

- Heritage Lottery Fund. 2018. “Heritage Enterprise.” Website accessed June 11, 2018 (website reorganized after renaming of organization).

- Heritage Lottery Fund. n.d. Conservation Management Plans: Helping Your Application. Accessed June 19, 2018. https://www.academia.edu/3639647/Conservation_Management_Plans_-_Original_HLF_Guidance.

- Hewison, Robert, and John Holden. 2011. The Cultural Leadership Handbook: How to Run a Creative Organization. Aldershot, UK: Gower.

- Historic England. 2018. Conservation Principles, Policies and Guidance. Accessed June 12, 2018. https://www.historicengland.org.uk/images-books/publications/conservation-principles-sustainable-management-historic-environment/.

- Historic Environment Scotland. 2015. Conservation Principles for the Properties in the Care of Scottish Ministers. Edinburgh: Historic Environment Scotland. Accessed June 11, 2018. http://homedocbox.com/Landscaping/76836806-Historic-environment-scotland.html.

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- Moore, Mark H. 1995. Creating Public Value: Strategic Management in Government. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

- Moore, Mark H., and Gaylen Williams Moore. 2005. Creating Public Value through State Arts Agencies. Minneapolis: Arts Midwest. Accessed June 19, 2018. http://www.wallacefoundation.org/knowledge-center/pages/creating-public-value-through-state-arts-agencies.aspx.

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- Welsh Assembly Government. 2011. Conservation Principles for the Sustainable Management of the Historic Environment in Wales. Cardiff, Wales: Cadw.

6

Understanding Values of Cultural Heritage within the Framework of Social Identity Conflicts

- Karina V. Korostelina

Heritage specialists often find themselves embroiled in identity-based conflicts, and scholars and practitioners of conflict analysis and resolution have developed approaches and expertise that may be constructively applied to navigate them. Social identity theory can help us better understand how heritage can be valued by certain social groups to increase group self-esteem, provide stability, and give meaning to everyday life. It can also help explain conflicts between social in-groups and out-groups, which may involve a complex interplay of collective memory, nationalism, grievances, relative deprivations, and security dilemmas. Case studies are presented illustrating international historic conflicts between Japan and South Korea, and contemporary internal conflict in Ukraine relating to national identity and history.

Heritage conservation specialists often find themselves embroiled in identity-based conflicts. The values attached to heritage sites or objects tend to be profoundly linked to a group’s need for increased self-esteem and pride, the restoration of justice, and healing the traumas of the past. These values also serve to challenge or preserve social hierarchies and legitimize a group’s position of power. In many cases, social groups have competing or conflictual values attached to a heritage site, thus exacerbating already-existing tensions. This chapter explores the different functions that groups in conflict attribute to heritage sites and provides some practical recommendations for heritage conservation specialists.

In the framework of heritage conservation, “value has been used to mean positive characteristics attributed to heritage objects and places by legislation, governing authorities, and other stakeholders” (de la Torre et al. 2005, 5). Thus, value is defined by the significance for and interests of stakeholders and authorities. Placing heritage values within the context of identity-based conflict brings in another dimension: value is defined through political, emotional, and moral meanings attached to specific events, places, objects, or social practices by the in-group (the group that people feel they belong to). These values help in-groups justify their claims or current position in relation to the out-group(s) (defined as other groups), increase in-group self-esteem, shape the in-group image (internally and externally), and preserve or challenge existing power structures. The value of heritage is, thus, attached to a specific in-group, its identity, and its relations with out-groups.

Heritage Conservation in the Midst of Identity-Based Conflicts

Social identities are based on a strong sense of membership in a specific group (ethnic, national, religious, regional), emotional connection and feelings of loyalty to this group, and perceptions of difference with respect to other groups. Identities do not develop during intergroup conflict, but rather become more salient and mobilized, which serves to significantly change the dynamic and structure of the conflict. The dynamics of identity-based conflict are presented in the 4-C model (Korostelina 2007), which comprises four stages: comparison, competition, confrontation, and counteraction.

In short, ethnic and religious groups living in multicultural communities develop intergroup stereotypes and beliefs. They can be a result of favorable comparisons, prejudices, relative deprivation, or attribution errors, where out-groups are perceived as cunning, artful, cruel, mean, and aggressive. Injustice, histories of conflictual relations, and economic and political inequalities contribute to these unfavorable images, increasing a desire for social change. In situations of competition for power or resources, group leaders use these stereotypes and beliefs as well as in-group loyalties as tools for group mobilization. These employed identities are connected to economic and political interests, and they reinforce negative perceptions of out-group members, attributing aggressive goals to them. Intergroup prejudice becomes stronger when groups have opposing goals and interests. Perceived external threat, especially in the circumstance of a lack of information, strengthens these feelings of insecurity among in-group members. The in-group identity becomes more salient and mobilized, leading to the development of the dual “positive we, negative they” perception. Once a society has become separated into antagonistic groups, social identities come front and center in the conflict, highlighting the security fears, beliefs, values, and worldviews of each group. In the perception of in-group members, the out-group is put outside the moral boundary, devalued, dehumanized, and turned into a homogenous evil. Thus it becomes moral and honorable to completely destroy the economic and political structures that support the Others—even to kill them all. These actions are, in turn, perceived by the out-group as threatening, resulting in the development of counter-actions, causing a new turn in the spiral of conflict and violence.

These complex dynamics of identity-based conflicts are closely connected with the power relations within a given society and specific connotations of power (Foucault 1978; Bourdieu 1977). The legitimization of power in contested intergroup relations is based on the employment, modification, and creation of specific norms and social-identity manifestations that justify a particular order. To increase or stabilize their power, representatives of dominant groups utilize the prevailing meaning of social identity while superordinate groups challenge and attempt to reshape it, thus contributing to the dynamics of identity-based conflict (Korostelina 2014).

As identity-based conflicts permeate the fabric of social life in a vast number of societies, many social practices and institutions become entrenched in their dynamics. Processes surrounding the use, conservation, and management of heritage that emphasize the historic roots of groups are deeply embedded in the complex relations of identity and power in existing intergroup conflicts. Ongoing identity-based conflicts connected with injustice, inequality, contested regions, and historic or contemporary violence between groups place heritage at the very heart of intergroup relations. Conflict can rest on simple recognition of places as heritage, limited access to or threats to them, and damage or destruction by different agents (Johnston and Myers 2016). In the context of heritage conservation, conflict groups attribute competing values to heritage based on the meanings they assign to a heritage object or site. Given that conflicts, which are based on identities of the groups involved, are also bound up with issues of coercion and legitimacy, heritage becomes entangled in power struggles among conflicting groups.

At the same time, interactions with heritage reshape and fortify existing identity-based conflicts. First, the preservation of or investment in historic objects and sites may contribute to the collective self-esteem of the group and the positive image they seek to promote. However, they may also provoke resistance from competing groups or incite violence against particular heritage places or related activities. For example, the preservation of, or impact on, a site connected to one ethnic or religious group can aggravate protests from other groups in the contested region. Second, valorization, marginalization, or destruction of heritage may shape perceptions in intergroup relations by justifying or challenging existing social hierarchies. The conservation of a heritage place that is connected to the historical oppression of one group can be perceived as a threat to the identity of the oppressors. Conversely, the destruction of such a place as evidence of violence is opposed by the oppressed; victims also can support the destruction, as a place may remind them of trauma (Gough 2008; Ashworth 2008). Third, the preservation, marginalization, or destruction of historic objects or sites can also contribute to the legitimacy of existing power structures or mobilize collective action against this structure. Protecting and interpreting the significance of a heritage place connected with a minority group can create a foundation for the mobilization and empowerment of this minority in the fight for their rights. Fourth, actions affecting heritage may shape discourse in society and impact a group’s agenda for the future. Activities that are connected with valorizing the heritage of one group can encourage the competing group to actively advocate for activities that showcase its own heritage.

Functions of Values in the Framework of Social Identity Conflicts

During identity-based conflicts, heritage serves four functions: enhancing (confirmation of identity); legitimization (supporting or challenging existing power structures and intergroup relations); normative (restoration of justice and empowerment); and healing (maintaining a balance between remembering and forgetting).

Enhancing Function

Many efforts aimed at protecting or interpreting the significance of a heritage place provide a foundation for verifying and enhancing the identity of group(s) connected to it. Different groups attribute certain values to heritage places based on explicit judgments about the importance of specific events, people, or places in the history of the nation, or ethnic or religious group. The group connected to the place might want to glorify its past and praise in-group identity—the place is deemed a significant and essential foundation for its ideas and goals (Ricoeur 1965, 26)—thus creating a situation when one “mode of regarding history rules over the other,” and a “monumentalistic concept of the past” endorses a process of selectively emphasizing places and explicit interpretations, which creates specific modes of history (Nietzsche 1983, 70, 69). The “monumental history” value attributed to a place can provoke fierce responses, especially in societies with a history of injustice and discrimination.

Alternatively, the values attributed to heritage places can reflect a critical history, which aims to improve society and restore justice. Through a critical presentation of events connected to a particular place, “the past can become a force for personal growth and political and social betterment” (Blustein 2008, 13). Efforts that confront and consider alternative narratives of heritage give voice to the stories of different groups and communities within the nation and emphasize multiple interpretations of the roots of the past violence (Ricoeur 1995). Thus, the historic place becomes an object of creativity, which allows for constant reinterpretation and for transitioning from conflict toward possible cooperation. However, at the national level, such values of critical history do not create a sense of continuity, patriotism, and loyalty to the nation. Thus, the values attributed to heritage in such cases balance critical and monumental history.

Legitimization Function

The legitimization function of heritage refers to the maintenance of existing power structures and intergroup relations. Some regimes and groups in power can use heritage to justify their current position as superordinate in relation to out-groups by emphasizing past violence committed by out-groups or depicting these out-groups as simplistic, uncivilized, and posing realistic and symbolic threats to the in-group. Such myths, which provide a symbolic foundation for the established social order, are contextualized within the political and social life of a community (Overing 1997, 12). Offering “intellectual and cognitive monopoly” (Schöpflin 1997, 19), myths not only provide the basis for commemorating events connected to a specific site, but also reinforce them, making the protagonists of the myth present in contemporary life (Eliade 1998), thus continuing to divide post-conflict societies.

Through their treatment of heritage, groups in power can validate violence toward out-groups. Because of their belonging to a specific social category, a group can be denied some rights or access to resources and power (economic and political discrimination) or to basic needs, including food (famine), territory (including denying or restricting access to heritage or deportation), or the right to exist (genocide) (Korostelina 2015). Thus, some of the values attributed to heritage by groups in power can support “regimes of truth” (Foucault 1991), which validate existing power structures and develop loyalty among the younger generation.

Normative Function

The normative function of heritage refers to the restoration of justice and the empowerment of minorities and oppressed groups. This value “represents an impulse to confront and undo the injustice of history” (Galanter 1992, 122). The underpinning notion of this value is that many norms and morals within society are created through manipulation and force on the part of dominant groups. The analysis of the past—genealogy—can help people prevent cycles of violence “by taking an increasing control over the habits and values built into us by social-historical processes … and ways we have been controlled and used by forces outside us” (Richardson 2008, 108). Attributing this normative value to a place provides a foundation for restorative justice and group empowerment for positive social change. It provides freedom from judgment in addition to confronting and addressing historical injustice.

Healing Function

The healing function of heritage allows us to take responsibility for the past: “We have to acknowledge what we have done in the past in order to make amends for it; remembering will promote collective and individual healing” (Blustein 2008, 35). Historic preservation can provide an opportunity for groups to heal their traumas and reduce the likelihood that similar events will occur in the future. However, this value is connected to the question of what amount of remembering is most efficient for reconciliation and prevention of violence. Offering excessive evidence about atrocities can reinforce negative attitudes between groups and lead to hostility and revenge. Thus, heritage professionals should be aware of the effects of presenting violent historic events, which could function to impede reconciliation processes.

Another danger of this function is that selecting events can reinforce prejudice and biases among groups or create misconceptions that favor victimized groups. Empowering victimized groups often leads to the perception of victims as innocent. However, in many conflicts, both sides bear responsibility for igniting violence and victimized groups may have also been involved in hostile acts. Acknowledging the victimhood of a group together with providing a balanced view on the roots of conflict can help heal traumas of everyone involved.

The following two case studies illustrate how these functions affect the ways in which societies deal with historical places. The first represents an international historic conflict between Japan and South Korea, and the second illustrates a contemporary internal conflict in Ukraine.

Case Study 1: Heritage and Japanese-Korean Relations

Japanese invasions and control over Korea started at the end of the nineteenth century, when Japan, leveraging Korea’s unstable situation, started to exert influence over the country. Japan completely annexed it with the Japan-Korea Treaty of 1910 (Wolff et al. 2007). During the thirty-five-year Japanese occupation, many Koreans were arrested for political reasons and sixty thousand Korean laborers were moved to Japan to sustain industrial production, especially mining operations. These laborers were forced to work more than twelve hours a day in harsh and dangerous conditions, including tunnel collapses, gas explosions, and falling rocks.

On September 9, 1945, the Japanese governor-general of Korea surrendered to the United States in Seoul, effectively ending Japan’s administration of Korea. Seeing Japan as a security partner in the fight against Communism, US leadership decided not to establish a process similar to the Nuremberg tribunal in Germany, but rather grant immunity to most of the Japanese leadership. The International Military Tribunal for the Far East (IMTFE) convicted only twenty-five Japanese Class A criminals. Seven of them were sentenced to death and the rest were imprisoned, but pardoned in 1956.

The United States also advised South Korea and Japan to normalize their relations, and the first negotiations started in 1951. These negotiations resulted in the treaty of June 22, 1965, despite protests throughout Korea demanding an apology from Japan. Under the treaty, Japan provided $300 million in Japanese products and services as well as $200 million in long-term low-interest loans to Korea (Chung 2009b). South Korea, in turn, agreed to demand no more compensation at the government-to-government and individual-to-government levels (Hook et al. 2012). South Korean civil organizations have stated that compensation for South Koreans has not been settled or fully achieved, while Japan believes that the treaty settled it definitively. Moreover, Japan insisted that the treaty be regarded as economic cooperation rather than compensation. President Chung-hee Park (1963–79) spent the money on highways and industrial plant construction; only 9.7 percent was used to compensate 9,546 victims of the Japanese occupation. Former comfort women (women and girls forced into sexual slavery by the imperial Japanese Army), forced laborers, and injured war veterans were excluded from compensation (Seraphim 2006).

The question of forced Korean labor is closely connected to three other contentious issues that impact Japanese-Korean relations. First is the continuous denial of Japanese responsibility for comfort women. Japan completely avoids discussion of this issue or reframes it using the term “women sent to the front” (Nozaki 2005, 280). Survivors’ demands for compensation are labeled by conservatives as “double or triple dipping” and a threat to Japan’s national interests (Mitsui 2007, 38). The second contentious matter is visits made by Japanese leaders and officials to the Yasukuni Shrine, a Shinto shrine that commemorates Japanese war dead. For the Japanese people, the shrine is a symbol of the bravery and sacrifices made by solders and of the glory of the empire (Low 2013). South Korea emphasizes the fact that it enshrines major war criminals identified or convicted according to the London Charter of 1945. Third, the disputes between Japan and South Korea also involve two tiny rocky islets surrounded by thirty-three smaller isles, known as Takeshima in Japan and Dokdo in Korea. To sum up, Japan’s desire to forget the past and the South Korean aspiration to remember has impacted their relationship (Izumi 2001). Their different approaches to history have also influenced assessments and approaches to historic conservation, as is evident in the case of the Sites of Japan’s Meiji Industrial Revolution.

In 2015, Japan applied to put twenty-three sites on the UNESCO World Heritage List of places that meet a standard of outstanding universal value to humanity. Japan argued that the sites prove “the fact that Japan achieved industrialization in an extremely short period through [the] fusion of a wave of Western technology arriving in Japan and traditional Japanese culture” (Kodera 2015, n.p.). The nomination document stated that the sites—including mines, shipyards, and factories—clearly represent the foundations of the modern Japanese state. South Korea strongly opposed Japan’s UNESCO bid, emphasizing that it undermined the suffering of Korean forced labor at seven of these sites, including a mine on Hashima Island, nicknamed “Battleship Island” (fig. 6.1). Seoul stressed that these properties represent the “‘negative legacy’ stemming from the 57,900 conscripted Korean laborers who were put to work in violation of their human rights” (Kodera 2015, n.p.).

Hashima Island (nicknamed “Battleship Island”), Nagasaki prefecture, Japan. Image: Σ64, Own work, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 3.0 Unported

In July 2015 the UNESCO World Heritage Committee decided to inscribe the Sites of Japan’s Meiji Industrial Revolution, a serial listing that encompasses twenty-three components at eleven facilities in eight prefectures of Japan, on the World Heritage List. As the UNESCO website states, this series of sites “bears testimony to the rapid industrialization of the country from the middle of the nineteenth century to the early twentieth century, through the development of the iron and steel industry, shipbuilding and coal mining…. The site testifies to what is considered to be the first successful transfer of Western industrialization to a non-Western nation” (UNESCO 2017).

Thus, for Japan, the Meiji Industrial Revolution sites represent the enhancing function of heritage, which supports the “monumental” history of Japan, glorifying its achievements. In the nomination document, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe emphasized that these sites “describe our ancestors’ optimism and determination to industrialize. This innovative spirit was passed on to our generation and will continue to sustain future generations. The sites that form the basis for this serial nomination reflect that period of transformation, fundamental to the essence of Japan today and her position in global society” (Abe 2015, n.p.). To avoid discussions of the use of forced labor, Japanese representatives stressed that the sites qualify for World Heritage status based on their role in the rise of Japan in the late nineteenth century during the long reign of Emperor Meiji. According to these officials, that happened before 1910 (when Korea came under Japanese rule) and is not connected with the period in the 1940s when Korean forced laborers were used. Thus the value of this site for Japan reflects its rapid industrial growth and represents the pride of the Japanese nation (fig. 6.2).

Port of Miike, one of the Sites of Japan’s Meiji Industrial Revolution. Image: じじき - own work, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0 International

The World Heritage Site also represents the legitimization function of heritage, which validates the legal nature of the use of Korean workers. As a senior foreign ministry official claimed, Japanese use of compulsory labor was not illegal under the 1930 Forced Labor Convention (Yoshida 2015, n.p.). In their official remarks and statements, Japanese officials avoided using the phrase kyosei rodo (forced labor) in favor of hatarakasareta (were forced to work). While at the World Heritage Committee meeting in Bonn, Germany, Japanese representative Kuni Sato acknowledged that some Koreans “were brought against their will and were forced to work under severe conditions” at some of the industrial sites, foreign minister Fumio Kishida told reporters in Tokyo that the phrase hatarakasareta does not mean kyosei rodo (Yoshida 2015, n.p.). This justification of Japanese policies toward Korea reflects the general interpretation of history in Japan, which serves as a justifying myth and a reality postulate (the definition of what is considered to be truth). It emphasizes that “the annexation of Korea was legally undertaken based on agreements made between Korea and Japan. During the period of Japanese colonization, Korea benefited greatly both economically and socially” (Chung 2009a, 352). Thus, the establishment of the Sites of Japan’s Meiji Industrial Revolution as World Heritage supported these positions and provided legitimacy for historic Japanese policies in Korea.

For Koreans, the World Heritage Site signifies the potential normative function of heritage. It represents an opportunity to restore justice and acknowledge the illegal use of Korean forced labor. They want to revisit the historic positions of Japan to emphasize the vicious nature and structural violence of Japanese colonial rule in Korea and to Koreans elsewhere. Koreans believe that all history related to this site should be represented openly, which led Korea to advocate (unsuccessfully) for the inclusion of the history of forced labor in the inscriptions for seven of the sites (Kirk 2015). From the Korean perspective, it is extremely unfair that Japan glorifies its military history and presents colonization as a positive period for Korean development. Current Japanese actions, including claims over the Dokdo islands and visits by Japanese officials to the Yasukuni Shrine, aggravate feelings of injustice among Koreans. They see these actions as a continuation of Japanese imperialistic policies and as symbolic of Japanese colonial rule. Moreover, they believe that these sites have the potential to address issues of justice and renouncing of Japanese colonial rule (fig. 6.3).

At the Battle of Kwajalein, Marshall Islands, 1944, Korean laborers help Allied forces locate Japanese soldiers. Image: United States Army (Crowl and Love 1993, 248)

Koreans also see a missed opportunity to attribute a healing function of heritage to the World Heritage Site. The vivid memory of brutality and violence during Japanese occupation, including coercing Korean girls to work as comfort women, the harsh treatment of forced laborers, and the complete denial of Korean identity and culture, is still alive among Koreans. The unwillingness of Japan to acknowledge its wrongdoings, issue a consistent apology, or create a program of compensation for victims exacerbates their existing and profound feelings of victimhood. They believe that the site should portray the harsh treatment endured by Korean forced laborers and depict how their rights were violated (Yoshida 2015). This portrayal could serve as a foundation for Japan’s compensation policies toward Koreans who suffered.

Case Study 2: Ukraine

Since Ukraine achieved independence in 1991, conflicts around national identity and history have profoundly affected society there (D’Anieri 2011; Colton 2011; Korostelina 2014; Shevel 2011; Wilson 2002). “Since independence at the end of 1991, Ukraine has been divided between an anti-Russian, pro-European West and a more pro-Russian South and East. Ukrainian nationalism, anchored in the West of the country around L’viv (part of Austria-Hungary only a century ago and part of interwar Poland), is Western-looking, built against Russia as the significant rival, while the Eastern and Southern parts of the country see themselves as more organically linked to Russia” (Malan 2011, n.p.).

This divide is deeply rooted in the history of Ukraine, which for centuries belonged to different empires and ideological systems. Its eastern territories became part of the Soviet Union in 1919, while the western territories were annexed by the Soviet Union in 1939 based on the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact (German-Soviet nonaggression pact). The population of these western territories considered the Soviet Union an alien occupying regime and regarded the Nazis as liberators. The Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA) engaged in a series of guerrilla conflicts during World War II against the Soviet Union and, later, Nazi Germany. In some western regions of Ukraine, the Ukrainian Insurgent Army survived underground and continued its resistance against the Soviet authorities well into the 1950s. Most Ukrainians in the east and south fully defied the Nazi occupation by organizing underground resistance and partisan movements. A significant subset of Ukrainians fought against Nazi Germany in the Red Army under the leadership of Joseph Stalin. Of the estimated eleven million Soviet troops who fell in battle against the Nazis, about 25 percent (2.7 million) were ethnic Ukrainians.

Before the events of 2014, including annexation of Crimea by Russia and violent war in the eastern region, Ukraine was divided by differences in moral values, ethnic identity, and perceptions of history. Even now, historic interpretations of World War II are among the most contested and differ between the western and southeastern regions of Ukraine. According to the narrative popular in the east and south, people in western Ukraine collaborated with the Nazis and committed violent crimes against Poles, Jews, and Communists. Most people see the Great Patriotic War as a source of pride, and perceive the Soviet Red Flag as a flag of glory and victory. According to the narrative popular in the west of Ukraine, Russia dictates the writing of Ukrainian history, especially as it relates to the history of World War II. They see the UPA as the only movement that fought against the regimes of both Stalin and Hitler, and they consider the Red Flag a foul flag of totalitarianism.

The events of spring 2011 represent a vivid example of the role of value attached to a historic site in the identity conflict over history. A group of World War II veterans and representatives of NGOs went from the southern and eastern regions of Ukraine to the west of Ukraine to lay Red Flags and flowers at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier on the Hill of Glory in L’viv (fig. 6.4). Many local veterans and members of families of fallen solders also came to honor remembered heroes. A group of Russian diplomats led by Consul General of Russia Oleg Astakhov joined this demonstration with a wreath, which they planned to lay at the tomb. Ukrainian nationalists from the party Svoboda attacked the procession. Several hundred young people chanted “Shame” to elderly veterans, prevented them from laying flowers, ripped off their medals and other decorations, and burned the Red Flag (fig. 6.5). They also crushed the wreath held by the Russian consul general.

Hill of Glory memorial in L’viv. Image: Водник, Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 2.5

Nationalists burn a Soviet army Red Flag during ceremonies celebrating victory over Nazi Germany in L’viv, Ukraine, May 9, 2011. Image: AP Photo / Petro Zadorozhnyy / © 2019 The Associated Press

The organizers of these violent actions attributed an enhancing function of value to the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. They stressed that the main aim of this visit was to support the Red Army veterans in L’viv and to honor the memory of Soviet soldiers who died on the territory of western Ukraine fighting the Nazi occupation. Veterans from eastern and southern Ukraine came to L’viv to restore their positive identity as people who had fought and won in World War II.

The organizers also assigned a legitimization function to the memorial. The ceremony of laying flowers at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier was a token paid to the older generation of voters for their support of the regional parties. They aimed to increase loyalty among voters who had brought into power former President Viktor Yanukovych and the pro-Russian Party of Regions and increase their support against the background of deteriorating economic conditions. They also aimed to reestablish a balance of ideologies in a country that had become more pro-West and supportive of Ukrainian nationalism during the presidency of Viktor Yushchenko: “This nationalistic abscess should be removed, it could not be cured, it is too late…. All pro-fascist and Nazi parties should be prohibited—immediately!” (Vitrenko 2011, n.p.).

Ukrainian nationalists who believed that the independence of Ukraine was a result of their nationalist struggle attributed a normative function to the memorial. They saw the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier as a symbol of Soviet power—an aggressive invader, totalitarian colonizer of western Ukraine, and promoter of Russian imperial nationalism. They demanded a restoration of justice and aggressively protested Russian imperialistic attempts to impact the development of an independent Ukraine and return to a colonial and totalitarian past. The following excerpt illustrates this value: “One may find some disturbing analogies between Russian supremacists waving red flags in Western Ukrainian cities and Ulster unionists marching with their flags through the Catholic quarters to celebrate the 1688 historical victory and symbolic dominance of the colonizers over the aborigines” (Riabchuk 2011, n.p.).

In protesting the demonstration near the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, the opposition also saw the healing function of heritage. They stated that the symbols of a nonexistent state should not be celebrated because of the repression of the people under Soviet rule. This Soviet totalitarian regime rested on violence, mass famine, Russification, and the forced assimilation of the Ukrainian-speaking population (Korostelina 2014). As one representative of the opposition stated, “Repression resulted in millions of victims under the Red Flag. This was the main reason to prohibit the use of the symbols of a nonexisting state” (Censor.net 2011, n.p.).

Recommendations

These case studies show that heritage valorization and conservation is a highly contextual, highly complex process that is deeply embedded in intergroup relations during identity-based conflicts. It involves intergroup perceptions and biases, relative deprivation and security dilemmas, issues of self-esteem and the revival of identity, out-group threat and in-group support, historic traumas and victimization, and issues of justice, power, and legitimacy. Addressing these issues requires a multifaceted approach.

First, it is important to identify each of the social groups that can attach a specific value to a heritage site. In addition, heritage places can provoke group reactions that are not directly connected to the site, but see similarities in their aspirations and demands, for example oppressed groups in the society and minorities. Each of these groups can attach multiple values to the place, which can motivate them to take actions and engage in hostilities.

Second, dialogue between these groups can help them understand not only their own needs, but also the needs of other groups. Dialogue in divided societies should not illuminate conflict but rather transform the nature of that conflict. Agonistic dialogue practices are less about finding the “truth” or some form of consensus about the history of the conflict, but rather about seeking “accommodation between conflicting accounts in such a way as to make a conflict more livable” (Korostelina 2019, 124; see also Little 2012, 75; Mouffe 2000, 13).

Third, as each group has multiple identities, it is possible to identify common, crosscutting, or overarching identities that can facilitate understanding and cooperation between groups. Common identities that help groups increase their self-esteem and promote positive in-group images are most effective in getting support of each group involved.

Fourth, heritage conservation specialists should take into serious consideration power dynamics in specific communities and the society as a whole. Understanding the balances of power and processes of legitimization and delegitimization can help prevent hostility and violence.

Fifth, narratives connected to a site should represent multiple voices and a critical history, escaping the trap of “monumentalizing” interpretations. At the same time, it is important to stress the complexity of the conflict and avoid dualistic representations of “victim-perpetrator” groups.

Finally, heritage conservation specialists can collaborate with scholars and practitioners of conflict analysis and resolution. Connecting heritage management activities with ongoing projects of transitional justice, reconciliation, and conflict mitigation can help in the development of friendship, trust, empathy, and mutual understanding between groups in order to sustain effective heritage conservation.

References

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- Ashworth, G. J. 2008. “The Memorialization of Violence and Tragedy: Human Trauma as Heritage.” In Ashgate Research Companion to Heritage and Identity, edited by Brian Graham and Peter Howard, 231–44. Burlington, VT: Ashgate.

- Blustein, Jeffrey. 2008. The Moral Demands of Memory. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.

- Bourdieu, Pierre. 1977. Outline of a Theory of Practice. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.

- Censor.net. 2011. “V Lutske zapretili sovetskuyu simvoliku: ‘communism- huzhe fashizma.’” 2011. Website accessed September 22, 2017 (page no longer active).

- Chung, Jaejeong. 2009a. “History Education in Japan: Truth or Distortion?” In The Foreseen and the Unforeseen in Historical Relations between Korea and Japan, edited by the Association for Korea-Japan Historical Relations Studies, 403–11. Seoul: Northeast Asian History Foundation.

- Chung, Jaejeong. 2009b. “What Were the Problems Inherent in the Republic of Korea-Japan Normalization Treaty?” In The Foreseen and the Unforeseen in Historical Relations between Korea and Japan, edited by the Association for Korea-Japan Historical Relations Studies, 346–90. Seoul: Northeast Asian History Foundation.

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- Crowl, Philip A., and Edmund G. Love. 1993. Seizure of the Gilberts and the Marshalls. United States Army in World War II, War in the Pacific. Washington, DC: Center of Military History, United States Army.

- D’Anieri, Paul. 2011. “Structural Constraints in Ukrainian Politics.” East European Politics and Societies 25 (1): 28–46.

- de la Torre, Marta, Margaret G. H. MacLean, Randall Mason, and David Myers. 2005. Heritage Values in Site Management: Four Case Studies. Los Angeles: Getty Conservation Institute. http://hdl.handle.net/10020/gci_pubs/values_site_mgmnt.

- Eliade, Mircea. 1998. Myth and Reality. Prospect Heights, IL: Waveland.

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- Gough, Paul. 2008. “Commemoration of War.” In The Ashgate Research Companion to Heritage and Identity, edited by Brian Graham and Peter Howard, 215–29. Burlington, VT: Ashgate.

- Hook, Glenn D., Julie Gilson, Christopher W. Hughes, and Hugo Dobson. 2012. Japan’s International Relations: Politics, Economics and Security. 3rd ed. Sheffield Centre for Japanese Studies 44. London and New York: Routledge.

- Izumi, Hajime. 2001. “Remembering and Forgetting: Japan-Korea Dimensions.” In Memory and History in East and South East Asia, edited by Gerrit W. Gong, 86–100. Washington, DC: Center for Strategic and International Studies.

- Johnston, Chris, and David Myers. 2016. “Resolving Conflict and Building Consensus in Heritage Place Management: Issues and Challenges.” In Consensus Building, Negotiation, and Conflict Resolution for Heritage Place Management, edited by David Myers, Stacie Nicole Smith, and Gail Ostergren, 1–23. Los Angeles: Getty Conservation Institute. http://www.getty.edu/conservation/publications_resources/pdf_publications/consensus_building.html.

- Kirk, Donald. 2015. “In Japan’s Bid for ‘World Heritage’ Sites, Korea Sees Denial of History.” Christian Science Monitor, May 28, 2015, https://www.csmonitor.com/World/Asia-Pacific/2015/0528/In-Japan-s-bid-for-world-heritage-sites-Korea-sees-denial-of-history.

- Kodera, Atsushi. 2015. “UNESCO Faces Japan’s Legacy of Forced Labor in Heritage Bid.” Japan Times, May 25, 2015, https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2015/05/25/reference/unesco-faces-japans-legacy-forced-labor-heritage-bid/.

- Korostelina, Karina V. 2007. Social Identity and Conflict: Structures, Dynamics, and Implications. New York: Palgrave MacMillan.

- Korostelina, Karina V. 2014. Constructing the Narratives of Identity and Power: Self-Imagination in a Young Ukrainian Nation. Plymouth, UK: Lexington.

- Korostelina, Karina V. 2015. “Crimean Tatars from Mass Deportation to Hardships in Occupied Crimea.” Genocide Studies and Prevention: An International Journal 9 (1): 33–47.

- Korostelina, Karina V. 2019. “Reconciliation in Ukraine: Within and Across the Boundary.” In The Former Soviet Union and East Central Europe between Conflict and Reconciliation, edited by Lily Gardner Feldman, Raisa Barash, Samuel Goda, and André Zempelburg, 105–30, Göttingen, Germany: Vandenhoeck and Ruprecht GmbH and Co.

- Little, Adrian. 2012. “Rhetorics of Reconciliation: Shifting Conflict Paradigms in Northern Ireland.” In Theorizing Post-Conflict Reconciliation: Agonism, Restitution, and Repair, edited by Alexander Hirsh, 65–78. London: Routledge.

- Low, Morris. 2013. “Gender and Representation of the War in Tokyo Museums.” In East Asia Beyond the History Wars: Confronting the Ghost of Violence, edited by Tessa Morris-Suzuki, Morris Low, Leonid Petrov, and Timothy Y. Tsu, 107–27. London and New York: Routledge.

- Malan, Lucio. 2011. “Post-Orange Ukraine”: Internal Dynamics and Foreign Policy Priorities. Draft committee report, NATO Parliamentary Assembly. https://www.ft.dk/samling/20111/almdel/NPA/bilag/7/1042267.pdf.

- Mitsui, Hideko. 2007. “The Resignification of the ‘Comfort Women’ through NGO Trials.” In Rethinking Historical Injustice and Reconciliation in Northeast Asia: The Korean Experience, edited by Gi-Wook Shin, Soon-Won Park, and Daqing Yang, 36–54. New York: Routledge.

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- Overing, Joanna. 1997. “The Role of Myth: An Anthropological Perspective, or, The Reality of the Really Made-Up.” In Myths and Nationhood, edited by Geoffrey Hosking and George Schöpflin, 1–18. New York: Routledge.

- Riabchuk, Mykola. 2011. “The V-Day Spectacle and Beyond.” Current Politics in Ukraine blog, May 16, 2011. Accessed September 22, 2017. https://ukraineanalysis.wordpress.com/2011/05/16/the-v-day-spectacle-and-beyond/.

- Richardson, John. 2008. “Nietzsche’s Problem of the Past.” In Nietzsche on Time and History, edited by Manuel Dries, 87–112. Berlin and New York: Walter de Gruyter.

- Ricoeur, Paul. 1965. History and Truth. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press.

- Ricoeur, Paul. 1995. “Reflections on a New Ethos for Europe.” Philosophy and Social Criticism 21 (5/6): 3–13.

- Schöpflin, George. 1997. “The Functions of Myth and a Taxonomy of Myths.” In Myths and Nationhood, edited by Geoffrey Hosking and George Schöpflin, 19–35. New York: Routledge.

- Seraphim, Franziska. 2006. War Memory and Social Politics in Japan, 1945–2005. Harvard East Asian Monographs 278. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

- Shevel, Oxana. 2011. “The Politics of Memory in a Divided Society: A Comparison of Post-Franco Spain and Post-Soviet Ukraine.” Slavic Review 70 (1): 137–64.

- UNESCO [United Nations Education, Scientific, and Cultural Organization]. 2017. Sites of Japan’s Meiji Industrial Revolution: Iron and Steel, Shipbuilding and Coal Mining. Accessed March 22, 2017. http://whc.unesco.org/en/list/1484.

- Vitrenko, Natalia. 2011. “Ukraine grozit ustanovlenie fashistskoi diktatury.” FoRum, May 10, 2011. Accessed September 22, 2017. http://for-ua.com/authornews/2011/05/11/070905.html.

- Wilson, Andrew. 2002. “Elements of a Theory of Ukrainian Ethno‐National Identities.” Nations and Nationalism 8 (1): 31–54.

- Wolff, David, Steve Marks, Bruce W. Menning, David Schimmelpenninck van der Oye, John W. Steinberg, and Shinji Yokote, eds. 2007. The Russo-Japanese War in Global Perspective: World War Zero, vol. 2. History of Warfare 40. Leiden, the Netherlands, and Boston: Brill.

- Yoshida, Reiji. 2015. “Government Downplays Forced Labor Concession in Winning UNESCO Listing for Industrial Sites.” Japan Times, July 6, 2015. https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2015/07/06/national/history/unesco-decides-to-add-meiji-industrial-sites-to-world-heritage-list/.

7

The Contemporary Values behind Chinese Heritage

- Kuanghan Li

The China Principles (first issued in 2000) were the first formalization of heritage conservation practices and standards for professionals in China. They demonstrated a willingness to embrace concepts widely adopted by the international professional community, while maintaining an approach distinct from Western social and political traditions. As China continues developing, heritage conservation concepts and practices have become more complex and are influenced by a wider range of interests. Revisions to the principles in 2015 bring Chinese practices more in line with emerging international trends, including broadening values categories and enabling grassroots participation. A case study of village preservation from Guizhou province illustrates these transitions on the ground.

The release of Principles for the Conservation of Heritage Sites in China (the China Principles) in 2000 marked a milestone in the history of heritage conservation in modern China (Agnew and Demas 2002). It is the first document of its kind, a formalized nonregulatory code of heritage conservation practices for conservation professionals in China. With blessings from China’s State Administration of Cultural Heritage, the collaborative effort between ICOMOS China, the Getty Conservation Institute (GCI), and the Australian Heritage Commission demonstrated China’s disposition to incorporate conventional conservation concepts as adopted by the international professional community, while exhibiting strong continuity with past conservation practices that stem from China’s scholarly traditions and political context (Lai, Demas, and Agnew 2004; Lü 2016). Since then, the applicability of the China Principles has been widely examined, though relatively few critiques have been published by Chinese heritage professionals not involved in the development of the document.[1]

International reviews and perspectives often compare the China Principles with other, non-Chinese charters and base their critiques on international heritage discourses. While most of these reviews generally agree that the China Principles fulfilled a timely professional need in China, the document has also been questioned for its applicability to the conservation of historic precincts (both urban and rural), the lack of a role for public involvement or a link to nature heritage, and the absence of mentions of social value. Furthermore, there has been some skepticism regarding its political bias as a nonregulatory charter closely associated with the state (Agnew, Demas, and Sullivan 2014, 19–25). In other words, the critiques are concerned about the lack of discussion of issues that depart from traditional heritage values—what may be described as “contemporary socioeconomic values” or simply “contemporary values” (Feilden and Jokilehto 1993, 18–20; Mason 2006). The editors of the China Principles are aware of its limitations and have stated their intention for it to be a living document, where collective user experiences will reveal the need for changes over time and thereby instruct future revisions (Agnew and Demas 2004, 56).

Since 2000 China has continued to experience major social and economic developments that gravely threaten, and paradoxically stimulate, cultural heritage conservation, which is not to be confused with contemporary economics-driven reconstruction. Currently the development of cultural heritage conservation in China is advancing on two fronts. In the vein of the orthodox top-down approach, the influence of the international conservation community together with enhanced fiscal and regulatory support from the state has greatly advanced the heritage conservation profession. Meanwhile, a broader public of wide-ranging interest is becoming more informed and engaged in the heritage field, challenging the authoritative position of the state and the heritage professional community. It was this context that prompted ICOMOS China to release the 2015 revised edition of the China Principles (Tong 2015; Tong 2016, 36).

The revised China Principles reflect emerging trends in the international heritage field and accommodate new heritage genres and ideologies that are embodied in the UNESCO World Heritage system. The revised edition also reflects the shift in Chinese conservation ideology from wenwu (cultural + property/relics) to wenhua yichan (cultural + heritage),[2] insinuating the adoption of an expanded Western-originated heritage concept that includes more than just tangible ancient objects (Bi, Vanneste, and van der Borg 2016, 193–94). While the official Chinese terminology for heritage, wenwu, remains unaltered in the title of the heritage bureau and national heritage protection law, in 2005 the first official cultural heritage (wenhua yichan) themed notice was announced by the State Council. “Strengthening the Protection of Cultural Heritage” was a sanctioned declaration of a change in perspective, and the phrase wenhua yichan has enjoyed public popularity since then. In practice, it is evident in the significant rise in quantity and new genres of heritage sites on the recent national list of major officially protected sites. Many sites that would not have qualified for official protection status based on conventional interpretations of the Cultural Relics Protection Law are now are on the World Heritage List or are recognized as national treasures, such as the Grand Canal (inscribed on the World Heritage List in 2014), the Long March Route, and various rural vernacular heritage sites (Lü 2014, 3). Wenwu now encompasses more than monuments and ancient relics; a more diverse set of contemporary values are used to define and assess what constitutes heritage.

Another marked difference in the revised China Principles is that, unlike the previous international partnership, this revision was primarily undertaken by domestic cultural heritage experts. Though the “outside, international perspective” is still of some influence, as evidenced by the participation of the GCI experts, it is now diffused through the ontological understandings of Chinese heritage experts and officials, largely building on China’s successful World Heritage Site nomination experiences over the past decades. As of the forty-first World Heritage Committee session in 2017, China and Italy are tied for the most World Heritage Sites.

Domestically, the content and timing of the revised China Principles can be regarded as a supplementary text to the proposed amended draft of the Cultural Relics Protection Law of the People’s Republic of China, made public in December 2015 (Legislative Affairs Office of the State Council of the People’s Republic of China 2015).[3] The proposed draft is considered the most drastically modified version to date, and the first time that China’s State Administration of Cultural Heritage openly sought public opinion on changes to the Cultural Relics Protection Law. Even though the proposed amended draft was aborted due to discordant opinions surrounding the more liberal approach toward social participation and nonpublic use of heritage places, the discussion process had a huge impact on public awareness of the protection and management of cultural resources. The revised China Principles embodies core ideologies from the proposed amended draft in a non-statutory capacity, and serves to promote the application of these reformed ideas in professional practice. The document therefore further reveals the intricate relationship between China and international cultural heritage conservation, and the connections and disconnections between the greater national discourse and field applications.

Shift in Values-Centered Preservation: The “3 Plus 2” Paradigm

Modern Chinese scholars and practitioners commonly regard a values-centered methodology as the foundational approach toward heritage conservation, a phenomenon largely attributed to the popularity of the World Heritage system and the formulization of various conservation charters, including the China Principles. Disagreements arise from the establishment of heritage values typologies and their local understanding and applications. The first version of the China Principles defined heritage values in the categories of historic, artistic, and scientific value, which is consistent with the explanation in the World Heritage Convention and with Chinese conservation law and regulations. In China, these three major value typologies originated from the 1961 Cultural Relics Protection Management Temporary Ordinance and have continued to instruct the current national cultural relics law (Xue 2013, 65–67).[4] In fact, in the early development of the first China Principles, the term “cultural values” was used instead of “heritage values,” probably influenced by the use of cultural significance in the Australia ICOMOS Charter for Places of Cultural Significance, or Burra Charter (Australia ICOMOS 1999). It encompassed both implicit heritage values (historic, scientific, and artistic values) and contemporary societal use values (memorial, cognitive, and aesthetic, and use value that generates public well-being) (Ye 2005, 87–88). Nonetheless, many Chinese experts are uncomfortable with the idea of the China Principles departing from the definition of the national law, and the resultant document was a compromise stating only the “major three” heritage values, and acknowledging the social and economic benefits (not values) of heritage in the commentary section.

Some scholars interpreted cultural value as a synthesis of Chinese wenwu (cultural + property) guji (ancient + remains) traditions and international heritage philosophy that introduced the concept of contemporary societal use values. While this understanding is not inaccurate in the contemporary context, Chinese have long been aware of the social impacts of heritage conservation and management. During the late Qing dynasty (mid-nineteenth to early twentieth century), China was facing extensive civic unrest and incursions of foreign forces. The resultant acts of intentional destruction and cultural exploitation, together with waves of reformation movements toward the modern state, triggered an awareness of the need for cultural heritage protection (Guo and Zhang 2009, 24–25). With the dwindling Qing dynasty on the verge of collapse, regional autonomy became more common.

In the 1908 City, Town and Villages Autonomy Charter issued by the state, “monument preservation” was considered alongside acts like poverty alleviation and disaster relief as sanctioned benevolent deeds, recognizing the social benefits that heritage protection could generate for the local community (Yang 1910; Xue 2013, 55). With the introduction of Eurocentric heritage concepts into China in the 1930s, Chinese historic preservation discourse was predominantly dictated by architects and architectural historians with training in the West or Japan in the role of the “expert curator-conservator” (Lai, Demas, and Agnew 2004, 82). Realizing the limitations of such elitist approaches, Liang Sicheng, a leading Chinese architect and architectural historian, emphasized the importance of public education and awareness in heritage conservation (Liang 2001). After the founding of the People’s Republic of China in 1949, the political ideology of the new regime triggered a new round of debate on “what to preserve and how to preserve” (Chen 1955; Lai, Demas, and Agnew 2004, 86). Given the limited resources available to develop the new republic, scholars like Chen Mingda argued for the prioritized protection of heritage that holds certain “historical and artistic values” and “continues to benefit the people today,” in other words heritage that also possesses contemporary values (Chen 1955, 7). Chen also urged an outward-looking approach in heritage conservation that can complement urban planning goals that may be of non-preservation interest.

Even though a multiplicity of heritage values can be found in the lineage of historic preservation in China, the socioeconomic aspect was not previously considered a formal value category, and the mention of such in official cultural heritage documents remained improbable. The stigma was broken in the revised China Principles, where social and cultural values were added to the “official” heritage value typologies, recognizing the inadequacy of the traditional three major values in defining and assessing increasingly wide-ranging heritage subjects. Social value as defined in the revised document “encompasses memory, emotion and education,” and is “the value that society derives from the educational benefit that comes from dissemination of information about the site, the continuation of intangible associations, as well as the social cohesion it may create” (ICOMOS China 2015, 61). Cultural value, by contrast, appears to be an agglomeration of heritage notions that may not directly relate to the materiality and historicity of the site, including cultural diversity, the link between nature and culture, continuation of traditions, and intangible cultural heritage.

Reactions to the expansion of value typologies are mixed. While many approve of the change, some continue to contest the formal addition of the two “new” heritage value typologies—social and cultural values—largely out of concern for inappropriate validation of economic benefits of heritage sites. The opposing views are best summed up by the opinions of Lü Zhou and Guo Zhan, two of the most prominent heritage professionals in contemporary China, both closely associated with ICOMOS China and the international heritage scene. Lü, who led the authoring of the revised China Principles, spoke about the limitations of the three major values and the increasing awareness of the need to officially identify and define cultural and social values in Chinese heritage conservation (Tongheng 2015). However, Lü did not provide much clarification on the imprecise and at times overlapping definitions of the two new value typologies. He instead focused on discussing how new heritage genres such as cultural landscapes and cultural routes have facilitated China’s understanding of the cultural value concept, which is “about the protection of the cultural diversity of different ethnic groups, regions, and of the vernacular cultural heritage with unique local features” (Lü 2014, 3). This understanding has henceforth been applied to such cultural landscape sites as Mount Wutai, West Lake Cultural Landscape of Hangzhou, and Cultural Landscape of Honghe Hani Rice Terraces, as well as cultural routes like the Silk Road, Grand Canal, Shu Road, Tea-Horse Route, and Long March Route.

Interestingly, Lü has equated the literal meaning of “cultural value” in the revised China Principles (2015) with that of “cultural significance” in the Burra Charter, thereby bridging vastly different views toward understanding cultural value. In the Burra Charter the term “cultural significance” is understood as an overarching concept that includes “aesthetic, historic, scientific, social, or spiritual value for past, present, or future generations” and can be embodied in the tangible and intangible dimensions of a heritage place (Australia ICOMOS 2013, 2). In the revised China Principles, cultural value, as opposed to the “major three values,” is not based on historic fabric but relates more closely to the intangible dimension of place. Following this logic, Lü concluded that the blanket use of “cultural significance” or “cultural value” in the Australian context elevated the non-fabric-based focus above historicity and materiality of a heritage site, which he felt was inappropriate for the Chinese context: “Historical value (related directly to historic fabric) will remain the focus of mainland China in many years to come. Ignoring or diminishing historical value would cause confusion and might undermine China‘s conservation efforts” (Lü 2014, 4). This attitude reflects China’s national pride in its ancient legacy of rich material culture, and also the somewhat conflicted belief in the duality of the tangible built form and the intangible, which lends the “major three values” their intellectual and secular discourse claiming universal authority, in contrast with the situational and contextual social and cultural values.

With the same fundamental understanding and yet reaching a rather different conclusion, Guo maintained the stance that historic, artistic, and scientific values are universally recognized as the three basic, intrinsic heritage values as validated in the World Heritage Site definition and Chinese national law. Social value, on the other hand, is a derivative effect of the three basic intrinsic values and is susceptible to subjective assessment by different social groups that hold diverse and at times conflicting values. While social value promoting universal and long-term benefits should be recognized, by giving social value equal importance as the more widely conceded three basic values, actual decision making may favor those with financial and political advantages, leading to unjust and possibly destructive results (Guo 2017). Guo also criticized the idea of “cultural value of cultural heritage” as redundant, since all values pertaining to heritage are in fact cultural, and presenting cultural value in the context of cultural diversity, traditions, and intangible heritage risks overlap with that of social value (Guo 2016). Furthermore, these issues have already been addressed in various UNESCO documents; in particular the legacy of the 1994 Nara Document on Authenticity has generated many discussions regarding the role of the intangible dimension in non-Western heritage places (Jokilehto 2006, 5–7).

Regardless of the difficulty in finding concordance on the nomenclature of different heritage values, the distinction of sociocultural value typologies from the traditional “major three” is generally agreed upon in the heritage field, and the diversity of heritage types and the array of perceived reactions toward heritage in contemporary society cannot be denied or ignored. While general consensus rooted within the notion of material integrity has been reached toward defining historic, artistic, and scientific values within the heritage community, the characterization of cultural and social values is more variable, and the contextual interpretation can vary greatly between cultures, countries, and people (Jokilehto 2006).

The Modern Construct of “Non-Heritage” Values

The revised China Principles’ inclusion of cultural and social values reflects the popular authoritative heritage discourse of twenty-first-century China, which is closely related to economic and civic developments in contemporary Chinese society. Mass urbanization and movement has led to widespread demolition of the old and vernacular, replaced with hastily constructed generic modern designs resulting in what is generally criticized as “one look for a thousand cities.”[5] Reactions to violent eradication of the familiar heightened the importance of heritage conservation for the general public. Furthermore, use of the internet and social media created new channels for public participation, and an increasing number of Chinese citizens have begun to realize the relevance of heritage as a social issue with extensive impacts (Tam 2014).

The notion of cultural value, on the other hand, is largely shaped by the emergence of “new” heritage genres such as cultural landscapes and cultural routes, where the intangible dimension of place is critical in defining its heritage value. A strategic World Heritage List has been constructed to portray a prosperous, civil, culturally diverse, yet unified modern China (Lü 2017).[6] It can be argued, though, that the resultant interpretation reflects more influence from a postmodern Western heritage construct than the traditional Chinese view of cultural places. What would now be recognized as “cultural landscape” is not a novel concept in Chinese culture. The interactive relationship between nature and the human is deeply embedded in Chinese philosophies where “all landscapes are cultural as they are humanly conceived images of nature and deeply involve cultural and social constructions” (Han 2012, 91). The ideas of “famous scenic spots” (mingsheng) and “historic sites” (guji) coexist as places where historical traces in the landscape that require cultivated knowledge and historical research can imbue significances that transcend natural beauty. Their fame was celebrated in poetry, travelogues, records in local annals, paintings, steles, and inscriptions as layers of high-culture meaning (Wu 2012, 62–91). The 1929 Famous Scenic and Historical Sites and Relics Preservation Regulation law issued by the then Nationalist Government listed three categories of “famous scenic and historic sites,” including well-known mountains and lakes and all nature-associated landscapes, historic architecture, and sites of historic remnants (Xue 2013, 55). Only in the 1930s, with predominantly Western-trained professional architects taking the lead on Chinese heritage research, did historic built form became the focus of heritage conservation. Scenic landscapes and historic sites were separated and guided by different disciplines, and only “historical traces” (guji), in a narrow sense, became a subject of antiquarian heritage interest (Wu 2012, 64).

The Western cultural landscape concept, in a sense, reconciled the Chinese landscape and heritage, and widened its horizon from the “traditional aesthetic nature-based focus of high culture to ordinary, rural and ecological landscape” (Han 2012, 103). The examples of West Lake in Hangzhou and Hani Rice Terraces in Yunnan province, both World Heritage Sites, fully illustrate this shift in, and integration of, theories and practices. The West Lake does not fulfill the criteria for outstanding universal value as a natural lake body, but with interpretation of its cultural value, which is a story shared by the elitist literati in conveying ideals of Chinese landscape aesthetics and by the common folk who are well versed in the many stories and legends of the West Lake made popular through dramatic, literary, and visual art forms, it is a classic example of the Chinese “famous scenic and historic site” as a meeting place of elite and popular culture, and now also realizes the construal of the imported Western cultural landscape (fig. 7.1).

The West Lake with Leifeng Pagoda in the background, which is associated with the popular legend of the White Snake Maiden. Image: Louisa Salazar, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0

The Hani Rice Terraces are an exemplary case of the “ordinary, rural and ecological landscape” whereby the merits of Indigenous practices and interactions with the land were undervalued by urbanites and the high cultured. Influences from Western environmental philosophies helped to reveal multifold dimensions of value in these vernacular landscapes beyond the superficial consumption of aesthetic value. These values are interpreted as cultural in the context of the revised China Principles, though they can be just as easily reasoned as “non-heritage-centered” contemporary values concerning ecological conservation, local economy development, rural land ownership, and ethnic policy resolution.

For the state, cultural heritage is also a vital instrument to enhance national identity and promote social harmony against the current complications of socioeconomic development (Bi, Vanneste, and van der Borg 2016, 200). In his speeches on the protection and usage of cultural heritage, President Xi Jinping emphasized the importance of managing the relationship between “heritage conservation and socio-economic development, heritage conservation and heritage usage, heritage conservation and urban rural development, heritage conservation and livelihood improvement,” and various measures were conceived to integrate heritage conservation into social development (Liu 2016, 47). Responding to Xi’s call, one of the most drastic modifications in the 2015 amended draft of the Cultural Relics Protection Law of the People’s Republic of China is the new chapter on “appropriate use,” which is echoed in the revised China Principles, whereby cultural resources are recognized as a social-economic driver, and the release of control over and access to these protected sites from the state to the general society can help propel development. Although economic value, or more precisely the use or market value of heritage, is not officially acknowledged as a heritage value in the revised China Principles (nor in the Burra Charter), its importance as a potential development and conservation driver is conspicuously presented under the label of “appropriate use.” In fact, some of the most vigorous debates regarding the interpretation of “appropriate use” came from those in the antiquity trade and tourism industry, and some even call for the Cultural Relics Protection Law to be renamed as simply the Cultural Relics Law.

Theory into Practice

The existing legal framework that distinguishes the protection and management of immovable cultural heritage from other cultural forms is limiting in situations where there are living communities or continuing traditions on-site. With the addition of cultural and social values in the current Chinese context, formerly unacknowledged heritage genres stand to benefit from this newfound recognition of alternative values. In particular, the introduction of the Western cultural landscape concept allows for identification of the vernacular and other noncanonical forms of cultural heritage whereby the intangible dimensions and natural locale that were considered a background setting are elevated to the same importance as the built heritage (Tong 2016). The case of traditional ethnic villages in Guizhou province well illustrates these changes in Chinese heritage discourse.

Located in southwestern China, Guizhou is one of the least developed yet most culturally diverse provinces in China. In contrast to the parts of the country that underwent rapid and drastic developments in recent decades, the ethnic villages of Guizhou are tucked away in remote mountainous terrain and marginalized from the mainstream Han culture, and their Indigenous cultures and lifestyles seem untouched by modernization. While these villages have always been of keen interest to ethnographers and anthropologists, and their rich intangible cultural heritage is widely acknowledged, their built heritage tends to be overlooked by architects, art historians, and archaeologists—that is, the disciplines that dominate the authoritative heritage discourse. The humble construction approaches and the locals’ active rebuilding practices were among the reasons why the ethnic minority’s vernacular buildings were not considered historically and artistically significant, and they hardly qualified as classed protected monuments. But faced with sociocultural issues arising from rapid globalization and mass urbanization movements, Chinese state and heritage professionals have had a major shift in outlook. While labels like “primitive,” “remote,” and “ethnic minority” in the past were viewed as impediments to development, these places are now looked upon as “authentic” and rich in “cultural diversity.”

A traditional ethnic Dong settlement named Dali village in southeastern Guizhou is a classic example of this phenomenon. Found only in the specific terrain of this region, the Dong people are famed for their rice cultivation set in picturesque terraced fields, carpentry skills manifest in the form of pagoda-like drum towers and covered wooden bridges known as “wind and rain bridges,” and polyphonic choir singing. Dali village is a classic Dong settlement set in a secluded valley, with close to three hundred wooden houses built in the traditional chuandou (column-tie) frame structure, supported by a road network and water system that are integrative to the natural environment, organically developed from hundreds of years of experiential wisdom (fig. 7.2).

View of Dali village with the drum tower in the center. Image:  Li Zhang

Until 2012 Dali was a sleepy village known only to its residents. Eager to protect these ethnic villages, Guizhou Province Administration of Cultural Heritage approached Global Heritage Fund, an international NGO that focuses on cultural heritage conservation and community development, to support the preservation of Dali village. At the same time, the Chinese state was issuing a series of official declarations emphasizing the importance of protecting rural villages and their cultural heritage as a counterstrategy against the drastic impacts of mass urbanization. By 2014, with attention from both local and international involvement, Dali was transformed into a heritage hotspot claiming all the official heritage status, including the Chinese World Heritage Site tentative list.

Differing from types of heritage sites that emphasize material culture, Dali village was first and foremost recognized as a cultural landscape. This understanding stems from the long-term local experiences of Guizhou heritage professionals. In the Proposal on the Conservation and Development of Village Cultural Landscapes (Guiyang Proposal) drafted in 2008, village cultural landscapes are characterized by the “harmonious relationships between people and natural elements,” “rich historic-cultural information,” and the “essence of traditional indigenous culture.” Their heritage values can be defined by the embedded cultural diversity and biodiversity, which have “important symbolic values” and can “provide sources of vitality for cultural sustainability in the future” (Guizhou Administration of Cultural Heritage 2008, n.p.).[7]

With this basic understanding in mind, a multidisciplinary team assembled by Peking University, led by the author, created two sets of conservation planning recommendations: one with legal binding that conforms to the specific formality of the national Cultural Relics Protection Law, where only selected historic buildings can be designated as protected sites based primarily on assessment of their architectural and historical values; and another “unofficial” one with a more practical approach that can address the diverse concerns of different stakeholders and the preservation of different heritage dimensions.

The identification and appraisal of heritage values of Dali village was very much informed by ethnographic methods and approaches. Due to the lack of written Dong language, there is almost no early historic documentation. In addition, the humid climate, which is unfavorable for the preservation of timber, combined with widespread building knowledge among Dong people, promotes active repair and rebuilding activities. With a lack of both textual and material historic evidence, social memories and ontological experiences of the community, as documented through oral histories, folklore, social customs, and traditional farming and building practices, define the sense of place, therefore lending the built, cultivated, and natural environments their historic, artistic, scientific, social, and cultural values. Instead of the traditional preservation planning approach to either designate the entire settlement area as a protected zone, thus stifling the developmental rights of the villagers, or to landmark individual buildings and disregard the rest of the village, the conservation plan recommends a diverse approach toward preserving different types of heritage places. While a few remaining historic buildings are preserved as landmarks, other structures like the wind and rain bridges that have been altered, rebuilt, or even relocated are also deemed socially significant to the community and slated for protection while allowing improvements to better adapt the spaces for modern uses (fig. 7.3).

Women and children passing time on one of Dali village’s five wind and rain bridges. Image:  Li Kuanghan

Policy recommendations are designed to sustain the social and environmental systems. These include protection of the hilltop forest land that provides building wood supply and the integrated water management system; promotion of community-based building activities that reinforce the family-clan governing system and community bonds; and improvement of basic infrastructure to encourage retention of young Dong people. In other words, sustaining the context and actions that result in the tangible cultural heritage are just as significant, if not more so, than preserving the materiality, such that the Dong culture can continue to evolve in the native environment while adapting to shifting values in different times (fig. 7.4).

Construction of a traditional chuandou structure in Dali village by the villagers. Image:  Li Kuanghan

Conclusion

There is general advancement in the theoretical understanding of value assessment for the Chinese heritage community, which also creates new conflicts and discrepancies in practice. Even though value assessment provides a new, profound understanding of heritage places, the resultant conservation and management decisions based on such assessments are oftentimes not supported by existing heritage policies, as the statutory system is slow to react. Furthermore, China’s unilateral governance model makes it difficult to foster interdepartmental cooperation; cultural heritage departments are often sidelined by other government departments that promote economic development agendas. Budding public-private partnerships and social participation is encouraged, but monitored in a cautious manner, as the state is trying to balance socialistic democracy with continued strong-arm governance (Li and Wang 2017). Conservation professionals are scrutinized by a broad range of stakeholders, but are lacking in effective tools and updated industry support to manage changing roles and responsibilities.

This article attempts to explain the tendencies of current Chinese heritage theory and practice by examining the presentation and interpretation of contemporary values in context. While all heritage constructs and values are political in one way or another, it is conceivably more striking in China’s context, where the identification of heritage typologies and interpretation of values is highly attuned to the national political agenda. For instance, the promotion of cultural routes is closely associated with the international diplomacy policy of the Belt and Road Initiative;[8] the preservation of cultural landscapes and vernacular heritage in urban and rural settlements is devised as a means to alleviate the adverse effects of the widening urban-rural wealth disparity, environmental pollution, and key resource depletions, and to foster ethnic harmony; and the development of national archaeological parks around large-scale archaeological sites is aimed not only at conservation but also at urban-rural regeneration. A reading of the contemporary “non-heritage” values not only requires local contextual examination of the heritage site, but also consideration of the greater sociopolitical agenda where such a typology could serve in the greater regional or national context.

Values-centered preservation has provided a paradigm to navigate the shifting nature and relativism of heritage that was both criticized and extolled. How should heritage professionals approach non-heritage values that are not conservation-centered at heritage sites, given the inadequacy of legal and professional tools and the overwhelming abundance of resources and enthusiasm from the market and high-level politics? Moving forward, contextual study of the characterization and understanding of value typologies in different social, cultural, and political landscapes is crucial to the search for answers.

Notes

1. The author’s keyword search on China Knowledge Resource Integrated Database returned nineteen relevant articles, mostly written by participants in the development of the China Principles. ↩

2. These literal meanings of terms are derived from the combination of two or more Chinese characters. They can be interpreted or translated in multiple ways. Some of the meanings used herein are drawn from the glossary in the China Principles. ↩

3. The aborted amended draft is not to be confused with the official 2015 amendment of the Cultural Relics Protection Law of the People’s Republic of China. ↩

4. Cultural Relics Protection Law of the People’s Republic of China (2015 amendment), article 3, states that “Immovable cultural relics … may, depending on their historic, artistic and scientific values, be designated respectively as major sites to be protected.” ↩

5. This term is commonly used in China to describe the phenomenon. ↩

6. Since 2000, thirteen out of the twenty listed Chinese World Heritage Sites are characterized as cultural landscapes, cultural routes, canals, historic settlements, and vernacular architecture, demonstrating a strong inclination toward protection of cultural diversity and living heritage sites. ↩

7. The Guiyang Proposal was drafted at the “International Symposium on the Conservation and Sustainable Use of Village Cultural Landscapes,” held October 24–26, 2008, in Guiyang, Guizhou. ↩

8. The Belt and Road Initiative is a development strategy that emphasizes cooperation and connectivity between China and other Eurasian countries by the land-based Silk Road Economic Belt and the Maritime Silk Road. ↩

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- Yang, Tingdong. 1910. Chengzhenxiang Difang Zizhi Zhangcheng Tongshi. Shanghai: Commercial Press.

- Ye, Yang. 2005. “Study on ‘Principles for the Conservation of Heritage Sites in China.’” Master’s thesis, Tsinghua University.

8

Values-Based Management and the Burra Charter: 1979, 1999, 2013

- Richard Mackay

The Burra Charter offers a framework for heritage management in which multiple—sometimes conflicting—heritage and other values can be understood and explicitly addressed. The charter’s success stems from its flexibility in accommodating evolving notions of heritage, changing economic and political circumstances, and vastly different types of place. The Burra Charter has been amended in 1999 and 2013 in response to developing practice and awareness of intangible attributes and the legitimate expectations of associated communities. Three Sydney-area case studies are presented, which have contrasting values and heritage outcomes—Luna Park, a 1930s amusement park; the BIG DIG archaeological site in The Rocks; and a suburban land development at East Leppington—illustrating a shift in heritage management models from traditional fabric-centered approaches toward more holistic and innovative conservation solutions.

Values-based heritage management provides a basis for good decision making for cultural heritage places. The Australia ICOMOS Charter for Places of Cultural Significance (Australia ICOMOS 2013a), offers a framework in which multiple, sometimes conflicting heritage values and other values and relevant issues can be understood and explicitly addressed. This approach makes it possible to discern relative priorities (such as an overarching objective to retain important attributes) while responding to applicable site constraints, resource limitations, or statutory requirements. One of the key factors in the success of the charter, which has been widely used in Australia and internationally, is that its core values-based premise has proven to be extremely flexible and applicable to a broad range of places and changing circumstances.

The Australian charter has its antecedents in the Charter of Athens, which was adopted at the First International Congress of Architects and Technicians of Historic Monuments in 1931 (ICOMOS 1931). The Charter of Athens incorporated seminal concepts, including the need for expertise and critique, the appropriateness of modern materials, importance of the setting, and statutory protection, but it had a strong focus on architecture, archaeology, and the fabric of historic monuments. These principles were incorporated in the International Charter for the Conservation and Restoration of Monuments and Sites (the Venice Charter) (ICOMOS 1965) prepared at the Second International Congress of Architects and Technicians of Historic Monuments, Venice, 1964, which was subsequently adopted by the then-fledgling International Council on Monuments and Sites (ICOMOS) in 1965. Itself an artifact of its time, the Venice Charter is strongly focused on archaeological site conservation and the restoration of architectural monuments. Emanating from a Eurocentric base, it was never conceived to apply to more ephemeral “New World” places with nonstructural physical evidence or intangible values. It was for this reason that during the early years of Australia ICOMOS, energies were focused on the development of a new bespoke doctrinal document for conservation practice—one that reflected the nature, multifaceted values, and circumstances of Australian cultural heritage places. The result was the Charter for the Conservation of Places of Cultural Significance, adopted at Burra Town Hall in South Australia in 1979, which soon became known as the Burra Charter (Australia ICOMOS 2016).

The Burra Charter is a dynamic document that has evolved to reflect changes to professional practice and emerging issues. The challenges confronted by cultural heritage conservation practitioners and decision makers also change over time and have increasingly included broader societal considerations. Amendments to the original 1979 Burra Charter in 1999 and 2013 have responded accordingly by developing methodologies that engage with emergent issues, such as growing awareness of intangible attributes and the legitimate expectations of associated communities, to become more engaged in decision making for heritage, which is recognized and valued as a public asset. The fundamental values-based principles and logical sequence of processes of the Burra Charter, and its format and presentation, have not altered (Mackay 2004), but are flexible and readily accommodate evolving notions of heritage and changing economic or political circumstances, as well as vastly different types of place. The resulting conservation policies and heritage management models have moved away from traditional fabric-centered approaches, which emerged in Europe during the mid-twentieth century, toward more holistic and innovative conservation solutions. The most impactful changes to the Burra Charter occurred in 1999 and included explicit recognition of nonphysical values such as “use, association and meaning,” cultural diversity and the potential for divergent or conflicting values, and the legitimate rights and expectations of people who are associated with a place (Truscott 2004). This broader, more inclusive view of both values and people is apparent from the outset, in Article 1.2 of the 1999 charter:

Cultural significance means aesthetic, historic, scientific, social or spiritual value for past, present or future generations. Cultural significance is embodied in the place itself, its fabric, setting, use, associations, meanings, records, related places and related objects. Places may have a range of values for different individuals or groups. (Australia ICOMOS 1999)

The changes made to the Burra Charter in 2013 were directed primarily at standards of practice and also include development of a range of associated Practice Notes, which provide specific guidance on the application of the Burra Charter to matters ranging from Indigenous cultural heritage to new work at a heritage place or place interpretation (Australia ICOMOS 2013b). These guidelines, some of which are now in effect, with others still being prepared by Australia ICOMOS, provide evidence of the multiple types of place and variety of projects to which the Burra Charter may apply.

The charter is not without critics; some for instance suggest that there is an overreliance on intrinsic values of places (Zancheti et al. 2009), while others express skepticism regarding the respective roles and relative power of experts, as opposed to associated communities, basing such conclusions on the framework provided by Laurajane Smith’s concept of authorized heritage discourse (Smith 2006; Allen 2004; Waterton, Smith, and Campbell 2006). Others still question whether the Burra Charter’s values-based approach deals adequately with living cultures (Poulios 2010). While these are relevant and valid questions, such critiques typically originate from academic perspectives and are not always grounded in real experience or the actual local cultural context of the charter at work. There are instructive examples of the charter used effectively, in different cultural and community contexts, to assess, conserve, and manage a broad range of places with both tangible and intangible attributes, including as part of the Living with Heritage, Heritage Management Framework, and Tourism Management Plan projects at Angkor, Cambodia (Mackay and Lloyd 2013; Mackay and Palmer 2014). An important consequence of the growth in understanding of the knowledge, roles, and rights of associated people is the shift in professional practice from “expert” to “facilitator” (Sullivan and Mackay 2012, 636).

The values-based approach of the Burra Charter is encapsulated in a simple and logical process, which is:

1. Understand significance (understand the place and assess cultural significance);

2. Determine policy (identify all factors and issues, develop policy, prepare a management plan);

3. Manage in accordance with policy (implement the management plan, monitor the results, and review the plan).

This process is summarized in the simple steps shown in (fig. 8.1), which has been reproduced from the current (2013) version of the charter. The adaptability of the charter’s approach to suit varied types of value and different circumstances is discussed below in relation to three very different places and projects, all in Sydney.

The Burra Charter process: steps in planning for and managing a place of cultural significance. Reproduced from Australia ICOMOS 2013a, p. 10. © Australia ICOMOS Incorporated

Luna Park: Just for Fun

Luna Park is a 1930s-era amusement park located beside the northern end of the Sydney Harbour Bridge, on the harbor shoreline. It is listed in the New South Wales State Heritage Register, and several of its buildings and structures are also listed as heritage items at the local level (NSW Office of Environment and Heritage 2017b).

The location of Luna Park has a layered history that commences with pre-European occupation of the harbor foreshore by Cadigal people of the Eora Nation, although no physical evidence from their presence remains. The postcolonial history of the site is closely bound to the development of the nearby city of Sydney and its North Shore. The wharf for the first regular ferry service across the harbor was here, and in the late nineteenth century the precinct become a major transport interchange for ferries, trains, and trams. In the 1920s the site held erecting shops (engineering workshops) and staging wharves for the construction of the Sydney Harbour Bridge, where steel components were assembled before being ferried onto the harbor and lifted into place.

Once the Sydney Harbour Bridge was completed and opened in 1935, elements of the workshop buildings, relocated amusement rides from Glenelg in South Australia, and new buildings, structures, and attractions were assembled on the sites of former erecting shops and staging wharves (fig. 8.2). The resulting new attraction, Luna Park, became a popular recreation venue for generations of Sydney residents and visitors (Marshall 2005). Over the years, the rides and amusements have come and gone. Artworks and structures have been repaired, maintained, and sometimes updated, but throughout the strong visual character and iconic elements, such as a jovial laughing face flanked by two scalloped towers, fantasy architecture in a vaguely Moorish style, and many examples of pop art, have been constant. Luna Park developed strong associations with such well-known artists as Rupert Browne, Arthur Barton, Sam Lipson, Peter Kingston, and Martin Sharp (NSW Office of Environment and Heritage 2017b). Day and night the place smiles in a cheeky fashion across the waters beneath the Sydney Harbour Bridge at the Sydney Opera House; its color, humor, and movement distinguish Luna Park from every other harbor landmark.

Luna Park Sydney, looking northeast from the Sydney Harbour Bridge, 1935. Hand-colored image from the collection of Luna Park Sydney Pty. Ltd.

Following a fire at the Ghost Train attraction in 1979 (in which five people lost their lives), Luna Park was closed and then reopened a number of times as its owners struggled to remain commercially viable and contemplated development opportunities, until the lease on the site was resumed (compulsorily acquired) by the New South Wales State Government on the basis that the place was an important community asset for the people of Sydney (GML Heritage 2015). In 1995, following the preparation of a conservation management plan, removal of hazardous and structurally defective material, and extensive reconstruction, Luna Park reopened under the management of a state-government-appointed trust, only to close a few years later, then reopen again in 2003 under private-sector stewardship through a new lease, following further physical changes, including the introduction of additional restaurant and event facilities, plus ride replacements, reconstruction, and upgrades, all of which were guided by a values-based approach and the conservation plan. The place has continued to operate under this arrangement in the period since, although a new conservation management plan, which reflects the current circumstances of the site, was prepared in 2015 (GML Heritage 2015).

Unusually, the primary heritage values of Luna Park vest not in original historic fabric, but rather in its concept, design, and traditional use. What is most important about it is its role as part of the “collective childhood” of Sydney and the memories and meanings that the place and its iconic features have in the minds and hearts of Sydneysiders. These values are reflected in the following extract from the official State Heritage Register statement of significance:

Luna Park is important as a place of significance to generations of the Australian Public, in particular Sydneysiders who have strong memories and associations with the place. Its landmark location at the centre of Sydney Harbour together with its recognisable character has endowed it with a far wider sense of ownership, granting it an iconic status. (NSW Office of Environment and Heritage 2017b, n.p.)

The unusual circumstances of Luna Park and the nature of the attributes that encapsulate its heritage values require an equally unusual approach to conservation. Over the first half century of Luna Park operations, there were incremental changes and periodic upgrades of buildings, rides, and amusements. For example, during the 1930s and 1940s, the entrance Face, which was first built from ephemeral materials such as chicken wire, plaster, and papier-mâché, changed its appearance slightly with every round of maintenance (fig. 8.3). Rides came and went, but the core layout, major architectural elements, iconography, and amusement park use continued. By the 1990s the structural condition of some buildings and the imperative to remove hazardous materials, such as asbestos cement sheeting, had resulted in total reconstruction of the major buildings—the Face, Crystal Palace, and Coney Island—with each remaining faithful to a known earlier design, color scheme, and external appearance. The only original elements to be kept were some steel structures, interior murals, a few historic ride attractions, and minor decorative components (fig. 8.4).

The Face, Luna Park Sydney, 2015. The current face is a 1995 reconstruction of a 1950s “Old King Cole” design by Arthur Barton. Image: Julian Siu, © GML Heritage Pty. Ltd. and Luna Park Sydney Pty. Ltd.

The Barrels of Fun, Coney Island, New York, 2015. Continuing operation of other traditional amusements makes an important contribution to conserving the values of Luna Park in Sydney. Image: Julian Siu, © GML Heritage Pty. Ltd. and Luna Park Sydney Pty. Ltd.

The new interventions—which far exceed the usual scale of physical conservation for historic places—are the key to a viable and enduring future. Very little authentic original 1930s, or even pre-1990s, built fabric remains, yet, paradoxically, the authenticity and integrity of Luna Park has been retained. Intangible attributes—the traditional amusement park use, distinctive visual appearance, and ability to evoke powerful memories—are essential to the social values of the place. Consistent with the Burra Charter methodology, it is these uses and associations and memories, rather than historic fabric, that remain constant, thereby retaining Luna Park’s social values and guiding its conservation.

Continuing use as an amusement park is an essential aspect of the heritage value of Luna Park. The Burra Charter overtly recognizes that use can be an important cultural attribute and that adaptation may be necessary to retain cultural significance:

Where the use of a place is of cultural significance it should be retained. (Article 7.1)

A place should have a compatible use. (Article 7.2) (Australia ICOMOS 2013a)

At Luna Park, retention of heritage value through use of the place relies on the ongoing presence of rides and amusements. However, like any other amusement park, Luna Park must regularly refresh its offerings so that its clientele may enjoy new, exciting experiences. Developments in both technology and materials mean that new rides provide greater thrills than the rides available in the mid-twentieth century. Increased safety standards may require existing traditional rides to incorporate new safety features. Changes are inevitable. Luna Park’s approach to these constraints is unusual: by maintaining the characteristic layout, and including “nostalgic” elements, which reflect the spirit of the traditional rides, the contemporary Luna Park retains its identity and values while accommodating other factors such as market context and changing statutory requirements. So, while the distinctive built form and configuration of Luna Park is maintained, different buildings, structures, rides, and amusements may come and go.

The manner in which original significant elements have been treated since the 1990s accords with the applicable principles of the Burra Charter:

Restoration and reconstruction should reveal culturally significant aspects of the place. (Article 18)

Reconstruction is appropriate only where a place is incomplete through damage or alteration, and only where there is sufficient evidence to reproduce an earlier state of the fabric. In some cases, reconstruction may also be appropriate as part of a use or practice that retains the cultural significance of the place. (Article 20.1) (Australia ICOMOS 2013a)

Physical conservation work on existing structures follows these principles, recognizing that most significant elements at Luna Park are already reconstructed.

With regard to the aforementioned factors, the new conservation management plan includes the following statements in the general policy for the conservation and management of Luna Park:

Luna Park should be operated as a traditional amusement park, and should include original rides and amusements, while also allowing for change such as refurbishment and updating of existing rides and installation of new rides …

Components from all periods of the history of Luna Park contribute to its heritage significance.

Much of the essential significance of Luna Park is symbolic and derives from the concept and design of built elements and decorations. Where physical factors prevent the retention of fabric identified as significant, new fabric may be introduced to enable reconstruction of significant elements …

The history and significance of Luna Park should be made accessible to visitors, passers-by and others through both on and off site interpretation. (GML Heritage 2015, 41–42)

These policies directly address the importance of the use of the place, providing a framework to manage adaptation while conserving heritage values. In this context, adaptation may involve additions to the place; the introduction of new facilities, amusements, rides, or services; or changes to safeguard the place itself and the people who visit. The policy approach is thereby founded on the values framework of the Burra Charter, rather than presuming that physical conservation is paramount.

The BIG DIG: On The Rocks

In 1994, archaeological investigations in The Rocks—a historic precinct immediately north of the modern city of Sydney—revealed an extraordinary physical record of one of Australia’s earliest colonial settlements. Today this site, which became known as the BIG DIG, is home to a bustling youth hostel and archaeology education center operated by YHA Australia. Remarkably, the adaptation and development of this site has enabled in situ conservation and interpretation of extensive foundations and other remains associated with the community that lived here for a century following the first arrival of European settlers on the Australian continent. The youth hostel project accommodated multiple, interwoven heritage values and development issues: archaeology, physical conservation, social significance, engagement with stakeholders, public-private interface, and tension between economic and heritage values (fig. 8.5).

Students learn about colonial Sydney at the BIG DIG, 2011. The design of the building above has enabled in situ conservation and interpretation of archaeological remains. Image: Ted Sealey, © YHA Ltd.

The BIG DIG site is located between Cumberland and Gloucester Streets on a rocky ridge projecting into Sydney Harbour on the western side of Sydney Cove. It was here that Europeans stepped ashore when Australia was invaded and colonized in 1788, and for the ensuing two decades it was a place where resourceful convicts were permitted to build small dwellings. As the settlement grew, intensification saw the erection of small terraces and, later, large-scale maritime facilities, bond stores (warehouses), and merchant houses (Mackay and Johnston 2010). By the end of the nineteenth century there were numerous buildings, including rows of terrace housing, three hotels, and a bakery. However, following the arrival of bubonic plague, the area was resumed by the state government, the buildings were demolished, and the physical remains from early colonial times were buried. The site was variously used for industrial purposes and as a car park over the course of the twentieth century, and the structures and other physical remains from early colonial times remained buried and largely forgotten until archaeological investigations in 1994 (Karskens 1999; Godden Mackay Pty. Ltd. and Karskens 1999).

The archaeological investigations were initially directed at determining the nature and extent of any surviving features, in advance of development. However, over the course of several months of painstaking work, the archaeological team and hundreds of volunteer participants uncovered a rich chronicle of early Sydney that far exceeded all expectations: intact streets, substantial building remains, landscape features, extensive undisturbed historical deposits, and hundreds of thousands of artifacts. It was soon realized that the site provided extremely rare surviving evidence of the convict and ex-convict community established on The Rocks at the time of Australia’s first European colony and is “one of few surviving places in The Rocks where a substantial physical connection exists to the time of first settlement, including the huts and scattered houses built on and carved into the sandstone outcrops that gave The Rocks its name” (NSW Office of Environment and Heritage 2017a, n.p.).

The BIG DIG site retains historic associative values arising from a combination of documentary and physical evidence of historic events, processes, and people. Other heritage values changed over the course of the archaeological investigation project, with archaeological potential (often characterized as “scientific value”) being realized and other values being generated. These include the aesthetic qualities of the evocative ruins that were exposed, newly created social values arising from the public perceptions that followed community involvement and media interest, as well as the educational value of the place, the artifacts, and the related documents and knowledge. The site provides a compelling example of the mutable quality of heritage values.

For more than a decade after the major phase of on-site investigations, and following abandonment of plans for commercial development, the BIG DIG site lay idle until YHA Australia secured the opportunity to build a youth hostel and archaeology education center. While the core business of YHA Australia is hostels, the ensuing success of the enterprise was founded on realization of the potential synergy between low-cost accommodation in the heart of a major city and the opportunity for “hands on” experience of Sydney’s history, which arose from the high interpretive and educational potential of the place. This realization, in turn, drove a values-based design approach using the Burra Charter framework.

No attempt was made to reconstruct or rebuild any former structures. Instead, the archaeological team carefully assessed and mapped every feature on-site and graded its relative heritage significance, based on judgements of historic association, aesthetic quality, research, educational potential, and physical integrity. This plan—based on heritage values, rather than the client’s operational brief—set the framework for the design of the building above, particularly its structure and foundations (Alexander Tzannes Associates and Godden Mackay Logan Pty. Ltd. 2006).

The resulting built form touches down on less than 5 percent of the remnant archaeological site; the matrix-like steel frame uses techniques such as cross bracing and transfer beams to avoid significant features. Every ground disturbance required for construction was hand excavated, using the same methods and research framework as the original excavations. An impervious platform built across the site prevented inadvertent damage from spills or unauthorized interventions during the construction phase.

The three modern structures all occupy areas where previous buildings and their external facades aligned with historic streets. In places these are interpreted using metal screens and historic images (fig. 8.6a and fig. 8.6b). Externally, the buildings present as new elements of contrasting but sympathetic design within the surrounding late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century streetscape. Voids within the hostel buildings provide views of remains, which are interpreted through signs, historic images, and artwork. Other devices, such as the naming of rooms, artifact displays, and wire sculptures contribute to the multiple levels of message and meaning conveyed to visitors.

Carahers Lane off Cumberland Place, The Rocks, (a) looking south in 1901 and (b) the same view in 2009. Image: (a) NSW State Archives, Rocks Resumption Photographic Survey, CC BY 2.0; (b) Richard Mackay, © Richard Mackay

The BIG DIG Archaeology Education Centre component of the project has proven an outstanding success. Built as a separate structure, also straddling archaeological features below, the center includes two classrooms, school facilities, a mock archaeological dig, and a separate viewing area where students can see excavated parts of the site. There are a range of different school programs offered for both primary and secondary students, some of whom make use of the site-specific education kit, excavation reports, published works, and real artifacts as part of their program (Astarte Resources, Godden Mackay Logan Pty. Ltd., and Historic Houses Trust of NSW 2000; Karskens 1999; Mackay 2005). The adjacent hostel provides accommodation for regional schools. In 2016 the BIG DIG Archaeology Education Centre welcomed its fifty-thousandth student. The facility is also regularly used as a meeting and conference venue.

The project is underpinned (literally and metaphorically) by founding the concept and design on the values of the place; both redevelopment and use have been values driven, combining conservation and modern infill in a sensitive urban context. These innovations have been widely recognized with multiple national awards in fields as diverse as architecture, urban development, heritage conservation, tourism, and archaeology, as noted in the official state heritage listing citation:

The sensitive construction of a Youth Hostel (YHA) over the archaeological site and integrated interpretation of this archaeological site has received multiple awards in design and heritage. The YHA development has been described as arguably one of the best contemporary examples of in-situ conservation of archaeological remains in an urban context anywhere in the world. (NSW Office of Environment and Heritage 2017a, n.p.)

Willowdale, East Leppington

Over the course of nearly forty years, the Burra Charter has been successfully applied to an increasingly wide range of cultural place types and issues. Originally drafted by practitioners who were predominantly involved with historic sites, the charter was always intended to encompass diversity, ranging from cathedrals to archaeological ruins, shipwrecks to gardens. Since the revisions in 1999, however, it has become increasingly relevant to cultural resource management decisions for Indigenous heritage and, more recently, in contexts that involve multiple natural and cultural values and the emergent sustainability agenda. A major land development project at East Leppington, on the Cumberland Plain in western Sydney, offers an informative example.

Before addressing the specific place and project, it is important to understand that for many Indigenous Australians the notion of “connection to Country” and the intangible ties that bind them to the ancient land for which they speak are paramount to Indigenous identity, well-being, and intergenerational cultural traditions. Chris Tobin, a Darug man from western Sydney, puts this eloquently:

As Aboriginal people our identity is inseparable from our Country. We are the people of that Country. It holds our stories, provides food and medicine to our bodies and spirit and it has been home to our people for all recorded history, as it has been home to our ancestors for tens of thousands of years. (Mackay 2015, 78)

A land development project at East Leppington considered both the scientific values of Indigenous archaeology and the values and perspectives of Traditional Owners, combined with natural values assessment, to determine how open space is deployed and new “places” are created. In the greater Sydney area, new large-scale land releases have seen an area that was formerly a greenbelt of agricultural land rezoned and made available for housing development. In the past, such land releases were usually undertaken without specific consideration of Indigenous heritage sites or places, and have resulted in widespread impact to previously unrecorded sites and inadvertent loss of cultural connections with Country. The East Leppington precinct (now also known as Willowdale) was approached from a different perspective. This land release and consequential development by property development company Stockland Ltd. sought to understand all of the heritage values of the area as crucial input to the urban planning process (Owen 2015a; Mackay 2017, 114).

Understanding the cultural values of the Willowdale precinct was a multistage, interactive process commencing with research on the geophysical resource—geology, geomorphology, ecology, and landscape—and initial desktop study and predictive modeling of archaeological potential. Consistent with the required process for evaluating and managing Indigenous heritage under NSW legislation and guidelines (NSW Department of Environment, Climate Change and Water 2010), Indigenous people with connections to this Country were invited to register. Associated people from the Dharawal and Gundungurra language groups were then engaged in both consultative processes and field surveys. The predictive model was refined, and a program of archaeological test excavation across a broad area followed. During this process, employment opportunities were offered to representatives from the Indigenous communities (fig 8.7). These investigations revealed an extensive archaeological landscape containing extensive artifact scatters and identified scientifically important features and deposits, including earthen structures believed to be cooking ovens (Owen 2015b).

Archaeological investigations at East Leppington (Willowdale) involved active participation by representatives of Dharawal and Gundungurra Indigenous language groups, 2013. Image: Tim Owen, © GML Heritage Pty. Ltd.

The involvement of Dharawal and Gundungurra people in the process simultaneously provided them with opportunities to reconnect with Country in a tangible manner and, through employment on-site, to receive some benefit from the processes arising from the management of their cultural heritage in a development context. At the same time, the research and scientific framework of the archaeology enabled the research potential of the landscape to be realized and demonstrated its scientific research potential. The consultative process undertaken with registered Indigenous stakeholders identified that, in addition to the physical evidence provided by archaeological features, the Willowdale precinct had other associative values arising from attributes such as views and stories connected to the landscape.

Work with Stockland’s design team resulted in an urban design that recognized and included the key heritage attributes and values, both tangible and intangible (Owen 2015a). The provision of detailed heritage evidence facilitated conservation outcomes and informed the character of the final design (GML Heritage 2012). A range of landscape features and community facilities have been incorporated within the land release. These include, for example, the lookout knoll, a park that was specifically established to conserve intangible values associated with the function of this hilltop and the associated view corridors to the nearby Blue Mountains (fig. 8.8). Creation of this park, and the retention of this land in an undeveloped state, was of major importance to the Traditional Owners who spoke for this Country and their associated local community. The process of establishing the park involved a meeting of Indigenous elders, who defined limits to the extent of permissible development based on cultural knowledge. Once this extent was determined, the open space requirement was incorporated within a “development control plan,” which sets parameters for development on the upper slopes of the hill, conserving the place and its associated view lines and stories. Through these processes the land release, rather than impacting upon traditional culture, has reestablished and strengthened connections between local Indigenous people and this Country and reinforced the principle that Indigenous people enjoy a right to participate in decisions that affect their culture and heritage.

The lookout knoll, Willowdale, looking northwest toward the Blue Mountains, 2013. Image: Tim Owen, © GML Heritage Pty. Ltd.

Other components of the development were also driven by an approach that commenced with establishing heritage values and then accommodating these within the framework of other project constraints and objectives. Proposed sports fields were carefully sited to enable Indigenous archaeological deposits to be capped and conserved for posterity (whether for the benefit of future Indigenous communities, for researchers, or for both) beneath a covering of clean fill. Recognizing the interconnection of natural and cultural values, conservation areas along riparian corridors were configured to protect both natural species and archaeological deposits. Two local parks were re-sited to provide greater retention of known sites and associative Indigenous values. A permanent conservation zone was dedicated to protect a known site that had previously been saved through intervention by an Indigenous Elder.

These activities have all occurred in a rapidly growing area on the urban periphery that has high real estate value and strong demand for new development opportunities, yet the very substantial conservation outcomes are perceived as enhancing the new development and the reputation of the developer, rather than adversely affecting property yields.

The process and outcomes demonstrate cultural heritage conservation, using the Burra Charter methodology, across multiple value sets at a landscape scale. The approach also addresses emerging innovation challenges and concepts by prioritizing as values attributes that the property development community had previously regarded as constraints, namely culture, heritage, and identity. The approach taken identified and conserved both tangible and intangible Indigenous heritage values within the new Willowdale precinct (Owen 2015b), thereby also delivering results that contribute to the wider objective of Aboriginal “reconciliation.” The project has been nominated under the Green Star—Communities rating tool within the innovation category (Green Building Council of Australia 2017), a nomination that highlights how recent developments in Australian sustainability ratings systems are commencing to recognize the intergenerational “inheritance” values of culture to a sustainable future, rather than only recycled materials and/or measures of energy performance.

Conclusion

Like the places whose conservation and management it guides, the Burra Charter is itself evolving and changing to suit changing circumstances and different contexts. In a strange quirk of fate, when changes to the Burra Charter were first proposed at a special meeting of Australia ICOMOS purposefully convened at the Burra Town Hall in November 1997, nearly twenty years after the charter’s adoption, the revision was not accepted, as the level of change proposed was considered too extensive, such that the core value of the charter was at risk. In a submission about the draft, this author dryly observed:

The level of change is too great. Might I suggest, somewhat facetiously, that the redrafting has itself not followed two essential principles; i.e., it has not identified and retained the significant elements of the previous Charter—thereby losing its fundamental essence and, secondly, it has not followed the cautionary principle it advocates. (Mackay 2004, 35)

It would be another two years before the amendments, which provided greater recognition of intangible attributes and the rights of associated people, would be adopted (Australia ICOMOS 1999). What is significant, however, is that although, in contrast to many doctrinal heritage guidelines, the Burra Charter continues to be amended and updated, its core principles and process remain firmly founded on understanding the place, assessing its values, identifying issues, and developing policies to address and manage the issues so as to retain the identified values (see fig. 8.1). It is this clarity that makes the Burra Charter flexible to suit different types of place and adaptable to respond to different statutory, financial, physical, or operational contexts. The charter’s approach is relevant to Luna Park’s “amusing” circumstances, where there is virtually no original fabric (but strong associative social values), and as a tool to discern values-based design constraints on the BIG DIG archaeological site or to manage Indigenous connection to Country at a landscape scale at Willowdale. The charter is aging gracefully, and its progressive phases of adaptation have been sympathetic to the original. Because it has evolved to meet emerging practice needs and to recognize shifting government and societal values and changing community perceptions, the Burra Charter remains a powerful and effective tool for making well-informed decisions about important cultural heritage places.

The projects discussed in this paper are presented with permission from GML Heritage Pty. Ltd. and assistance from Julian Siu and Tim Owen. Peter Hearne from Luna Park Sydney Pty. Ltd. and Alison Frappell from YHA Australia consented to reproduction of project information and illustrations. While the chapter appropriates much work by others, the author is solely responsible for the commentary and conclusions.

References

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- Astarte Resources, Godden Mackay Logan Pty. Ltd., and Historic Houses Trust of NSW. 2000. “The BIG DIG Kit.” Canberra: Astarte Resources.

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- Australia ICOMOS. 2016. Collaboration for Conservation: A Brief History of Australia ICOMOS and the Burra Charter. Burwood: Australia ICOMOS. Accessed November 16, 2017. http://australia.icomos.org/wp-content/uploads/Collaboration-for-Conservation-A-brief-history-of-Australia-ICOMOS-and-the-Burra-Charter.pdf.

- GML Heritage. 2012. “East Leppington Rezoning Report: Heritage Management Strategy.” Unpublished report prepared for the NSW Department of Planning and Infrastructure on behalf of Stockland Corporation Limited. Redfern, Australia: GML Heritage.

- GML Heritage. 2015. “Luna Park, Sydney Conservation Management Plan.” Unpublished report prepared for Luna Park Sydney Pty. Ltd.

- Godden Mackay Pty. Ltd. and Grace Karskens. 1999. The Cumberland Gloucester Streets Site Archaeological Investigation. 6 vols. Redfern, Australia: Godden Mackay Logan Pty. Ltd.

- Green Building Council of Australia. 2017. “Green Star Communities: Green Star Rating System.” Accessed May 18, 2017. http://new.gbca.org.au/green-star/rating-system/.

- ICOMOS. 1931. The Athens Charter for the Restoration of Historic Monuments–1931. [Paris]: ICOMOS. http://www.icomos.org/en/charters-and-texts/179-articles-en-francais/ressources/charters-and-standards/167-the-athens-charter-for-the-restoration-of-historic-monuments.

- ICOMOS. 1965. International Charter for the Conservation and Restoration of Monuments and Sites (The Venice Charter 1964). [Paris]: ICOMOS. https://www.icomos.org/charters/venice_e.pdf.

- Karskens, Grace. 1999. Inside The Rocks: The Archaeology of a Neighbourhood. Sydney: Hale and Iremonger.

- Mackay, Richard. 2004. “Associative Value and the Revised Burra Charter: A Personal Perspective.” Historic Environment 18 (1): 35–36.

- Mackay, Richard. 2005. “Archaeology: Stories and Contemporary Social Context.” Historic Environment 18 (3): 27–30.

- Mackay, Richard. 2015. “The Contemporary Aboriginal Heritage Value of the Greater Blue Mountains.” In Values for a New Generation: Greater Blue Mountains World Heritage Area, edited by Doug Benson, 78–95. Katoomba, Australia: Greater Blue Mountains World Heritage Area Advisory Committee. Accessed November 16, 2017. http://www.naturetourismservices.com.au/threesisters/values-for-new-generation2.pdf.

- Mackay, Richard. 2017. “Heritage: Australia State of the Environment 2016.” Canberra: Australian Government Department of the Environment and Energy. Accessed November 16, 2017. https://soe.environment.gov.au/theme/heritage#Executive_Summary_Heritage_2016.

- Mackay, Richard, and Chris Johnston. 2010. “Heritage Management and Community Connections: On The Rocks.” Journal of Architectural Conservation 16 (1): 55–74.

- Mackay, Richard, and Georgina Lloyd. 2013. “Capacity Building in Heritage Management at Angkor.” World Heritage Institute of Training and Research for the Asia and the Pacific Region Newsletter 26:21–24.

- Mackay, Richard, and Stuart Palmer. 2014. “Tourism, World Heritage and Local Communities: An Ethical Framework in Practice at Angkor.” In The Ethics of Cultural Heritage: Memory, Management and Museums, edited by Tracy Ireland and John Schofield, 165–83. New York: Springer.

- Marshall, Sam. 2005. Luna Park: Just for Fun. 2nd ed. Sydney: Luna Park Reserve Trust.

- NSW Department of Environment, Climate Change and Water. 2010. Due Diligence Code of Practice for the Protection of Aboriginal Objects in New South Wales. Sydney: Department of Environment, Climate Change and Water NSW. Accessed November 16, 2017. http://www.environment.nsw.gov.au/resources/cultureheritage/ddcop/10798ddcop.pdf.

- NSW Office of Environment and Heritage. 2017a. “State Heritage Database: Cumberland Street Archaeological Site.” Accessed May 20, 2017. http://www.environment.nsw.gov.au/heritageapp/ViewHeritageItemDetails.aspx?ID=5056816.

- NSW Office of Environment and Heritage. 2017b. “State Heritage Database: Luna Park Precinct.” Accessed May 20, 2017. http://www.environment.nsw.gov.au/heritageapp/ViewHeritageItemDetails.aspx?ID=5055827.

- Owen, Timothy D. 2015a. “Advocating Aboriginal Heritage Conservation and Management through the Land Development Process: An Example from New South Wales, Australia.” In International Austronesian Conference Proceedings. Territorial Governance and Cultural Heritage, 186–204. Taipei: Council for Indigenous Peoples and the National Taipei University of Education.

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- Waterton, Emma, Laurajane Smith, and Gary Campbell. 2006. “The Utility of Discourse Analysis to Heritage Studies: The Burra Charter and Social Inclusion.” International Journal of Heritage Studies 12 (4): 339–55.

- Zancheti, Sílvio Mendes, Lúcia Tone Ferreira Hidaka, Cecilia Ribeiro, and Barbara Aguiar. 2009. “Judgement and Validation in the Burra Charter Process: Introducing Feedback in Assessing the Cultural Significance of Heritage Sites.” City and Time 4 (2): 47–53. http://www.ct.ceci-br.org/novo/revista/viewarticle.php?id=146.

9

Is Conservation of Cultural Heritage Halal? Perspectives on Heritage Values Rooted in Arabic-Islamic Traditions

- Hossam Mahdy

Arabic-Islamic traditions developed over more than fourteen centuries have reached a high level of sophistication in preserving cultural heritage, with great emphasis on intangible heritage, but these traditions have been marginalized and ignored by modern, Eurocentric conservation practices. As a result, local stakeholders in the Arab region have been indifferent, even hostile, to professionally managed heritage. Despite recent shifts toward values-based conservation and the democratization of heritage practices, practitioners have failed to understand Islam as a worldview, a way of life, and a value system. A number of related issues are examined from an Arabic-Islamic perspective, and recommendations made to address them.

Why are cultural heritage conservation efforts consistently failing to win the interest and approval of conservative traditional communities outside the West, such as Arab Muslim communities? The present paper strives to investigate the causes of conflicts in attitudes and differences in values and methods between conservation professionals and Islamic perspectives in traditional Arab contexts in order to reach an understanding of how to bridge the gap for more effective and relevant conservation and management of cultural heritage.

Arabic-Islamic conservation traditions have developed over more than fourteen centuries and reached a high level of sophistication in preserving cultural heritage, with a great emphasis on intangible heritage, particularly the “word” both oral and written, including religious texts such as the Qur’an and hadith (the Prophet’s sayings), and secular texts including poetry and prose.[1] However, these traditions have been marginalized and ignored by modern conservation practices, which were first introduced to the Arab region by European colonizers and Orientalists, and later adopted by Arabs and Muslims specializing in heritage-related fields. Prevailing Eurocentric theories and practices of the international conservation movement since the mid-twentieth century encouraged the continuation of separate approaches to intangible and tangible heritage, and the exclusion of Arab-Islamic traditions of conservation from approaches and methods of tangible cultural heritage. This may explain why for many decades local communities and various stakeholders were indifferent or even hostile to professionally conserved, managed, and presented cultural heritage in the Arab region.

With a few exceptions, the situation remains the same up to the present, despite shifts in conservation theory over the last two decades toward values-based conservation, the democratization of heritage practices, and the adoption of contextual notions of authenticity.

Values and Worldviews

The scope of understanding and valorizing cultural heritage by conservation professionals has been broadened by the adoption and implementation of values-based approaches, which bring professional conservation theory and practice closer to nonprofessional stakeholders and local communities. Nevertheless, conflicting attitudes are apparent in Islamic contexts. This may be explained by differences in values: “Values can be a source of conflict when one person’s or group’s ethics or views are not accepted or equally valued by other parties. Parties may give fundamentally different answers to serious ethical and moral questions” (Smith 2016, 31).

Conservation professionals use the concept of value “in reference to the qualities and characteristics seen in things, in particular the positive characteristics (actual and potential)” (Mason 2002, 7). Values as qualities departs from another common usage of the word in English: values as ethics, philosophies, or normative codes of behavior. On the other hand, from an Islamic point of view values are often defined by exactly what Randall Mason excludes from their definition within a “values-based” approach to conservation: ethics, philosophies, and normative codes of behavior. Furthermore, according to Mason’s definition and under values typologies either in use by heritage organizations or proposed, this author argues that Islamic values should be considered under social and spiritual values according to the Australia ICOMOS Charter for Places of Cultural Significance, or Burra Charter (2013), or as “sociocultural values,” including specifically the subcategory of spiritual/religious value, according to a provisional typology proposed by Randall Mason (2002, 8–10, 12).

The term “values” refers within Islamic contexts to an essentially different meaning than the same term in cultural heritage conservation norms and literature, such as the World Heritage Convention, the Burra Charter, the Nara Document on Authenticity, or the GCI research project on values in heritage conservation.[2] Islamic values are not limited to religious, spiritual, or cultural aspects, as they stem from a worldview formed by Islam. According to Michelle LeBaron, “Worldviews are those systems or structures within which our values, beliefs, and assumptions lie. They influence how we see ourselves and others (identities) and how we make meaning of our lives and relationships” (2003, 6). Islam, as a worldview, is manifest in different fields described as “Islamic” even if not religious, such as economy, medicine, psychology, sociology, arts, architecture, and urbanism, among others. This worldview is based on Qur’anic instructions (The Qur’an 6:162).[3]

Besides holding an Islamic worldview, Muslims are instructed to respect various local traditions as long as they do not conflict with Islamic principles (The Qur’an 7:199). This results in diverse manifestations of Islamic cultural phenomena in different communities and cultural groups throughout the Islamic world, which share at the same time certain characteristics and qualities based on a universal ‘aqidah (belief system) and shari’ah (code of conduct). In his introduction to Architecture of the Islamic World: Its History and Social Meaning (1978), Ernst J. Grube highlights the fact that the adjective “Islamic” is not used in a religious sense: “If ‘Islamic’ is not an adjective defining a religious quality, should it be understood as a word that identifies a special kind of architecture, that of a civilization reflecting, or determined by, special qualities inherent in Islam as a cultural phenomenon?” (1978, 10).

For conservation professionals to limit Islam to the category of “spiritual value,” as well as their lack of awareness of Islam as a worldview, causes a conflict of attitudes. Furthermore, as decision makers and technical advisors to decision makers, they may cause irreversible damage to the intangible aspects of the very heritage they aim to preserve. “When worldviews are not in our awareness nor acknowledged, stronger parties in conflict may advertently or inadvertently try to impose their worldviews on others. Far more profound than trying to impose a particular solution to a conflict or a way of communicating, the imposition of a worldview can be destructive to a whole way of life” (LeBaron 2003, 6).

Intrinsic Values

The lack of awareness and/or acknowledgment of non-Western worldviews has resulted in the imposing of European, Christian, or secular worldviews outside of the West. This is manifest in the rationale for giving historic buildings, works of art, and cultural heritage a high or intrinsic value—a view that is held by many conservation professionals, although not all. “What distinguishes goods with especially high or intrinsic value from ordinary, everyday goods is that while we find it natural and acceptable to make trade-offs among the latter, we don’t among the former…. We are happy to allow a trade in … postcards but not the historic buildings or sublime landscapes they depict, in religious trinkets but not great religious works of art” (Rogers 2004, 3).

Although this is an apparently modern secular attitude, it is deeply rooted in premodern Christian European values. It is extending the “sacred” within a premodern religious context into a modern secular context, while giving it the new term “intrinsic value,” which is more acceptable in a modern, secular, and international context. “When people ask whether art or liberty are sacred, often they are really asking whether these things should be highly valued, never to be compromised for the sake of something else” (Benn 2004, 119). By contrast, a central concept to ‘aqidah, which hugely impacts the Islamic worldview, is that nothing material is sacred, or indeed intrinsically valuable.[4] Should conservation professionals fail to justify “socially constructed values” for a tangible heritage resource, their rationale would not be understood or accepted in an Islamic context, and their efforts would likely conflict with local attitudes.

Scientific values should be treated differently. Science is highly valued by Islam. It is not intrinsic, but it is more abstract and neutral than socially constructed values. However, the special place of scientific values was not relevant to cultural heritage before the establishment of archaeology as a scientific method and discipline in modern times. The importance of scientific values from an Islamic point of view is often unnoticed by conservation professionals because of the general assumption that there is a conflict between religion and science, faith and reason, or mind and soul (Freeman 2002, xv). In other words, while the Christian West needed to limit the influence of religion in order to set the Western mind free, Muslims didn’t have to go through the same process.

Islamic perspectives on intrinsic values and the special place of scientific values explain attitudes by Saudi authorities that might otherwise seem contradictory. For instance in Makkah and Medina, a conflict between heritage values and functional values became a big issue over the last few decades as the number of the pilgrims increased every year. A decision was made to demolish a huge number of historic buildings and big areas of historic urban fabric around the holy mosques in both cities in order to build better facilities to serve the pilgrims. While many conservation professionals and organizations objected and condemned the decision, the majority of Muslims around the world fully understood and appreciated the rationale of the Saudi authorities, and in many cases praised the decision.

On the other hand, the Saudi authorities’ attitude toward the al-Hijr archaeological site is interesting, as they have been actively conserving and managing it and successfully nominated it to be listed as a World Heritage Site in 2008. Not only is al-Hijr a pre-Islamic site, but it is mentioned in the Qur’an as being built by a community that was an enemy of Allah (The Qur’an 15:80–84). The contrasting Saudi attitudes toward Makkah and Medinah on the one hand, and toward the al-Hijr archaeological site on the other, can only be understood in light of Islamic perspectives on intrinsic values and the special place of scientific values.

Assessment of Integrity and Authenticity

Integrity and authenticity are the qualifying conditions for values of cultural heritage properties in professional conservation practices. Requirements for integrity and authenticity are a crucial tool for assessing and verifying the proposed outstanding universal values of cultural properties during the nomination process for UNESCO’s World Heritage List. They are also a tool for monitoring, management, and conservation of World Heritage Sites.

However, there are many indications in the World Heritage discussions, nomination dossiers, and experts’ writings expressing concern that integrity and authenticity are culture specific, and quite confused and difficult to identify across cultures (Stovel 2007, 22–23). In Islamic contexts, assessing integrity and authenticity as practiced by conservation professionals creates a number of problems and conflicting attitudes. The absence of ethics is a major problem. Another is the emphasis on material and tangible attributes. Also problematic is the consistent ignoring of centuries-long Islamic intellectual traditions on assessing integrity and authenticity through highly developed methods and tools.

Integrity, according to the World Heritage Convention’s Operational Guidelines, “is a measure of the wholeness and intactness of the natural and/or cultural heritage and its attributes” (UNESCO 2005, paragraph 88). This definition is the central meaning of integrity within Islamic contexts, and it excludes the meaning of integrity as “a firm adherence to a code of moral values,” which is one of the definitions in Merriam Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary. Furthermore, within an Islamic context, shari’ah is a highly developed and closely followed canonical source for methods and tools to assess the integrity of values.

The conflicting attitudes toward the integrity of heritage resources is evident throughout the Muslim world in sites that meet the World Heritage conditions for integrity, and thus are inscribed on the World Heritage List. Meanwhile, from an Islamic point of view, they do not meet the conditions of integrity. For example, the site of Ancient Thebes with its Necropolis in Luxor, Egypt, was listed as a World Heritage Site in 1979. In recent years, UNESCO objected to the Egyptian government’s project of reinstating the Avenue of Sphinxes between Luxor Temple and Karnak Temple, demolishing in its course many important buildings in the heart of the city of Luxor. The objection from UNESCO, ICOMOS, and the conservation community raised the concern that this project is stripping from the World Heritage Site some of its important historic layers in favor of the presentation of a particular historic period. Meanwhile, the suffering of affected local communities in Luxor as a consequence of this project was acknowledged and regretted by some conservation professionals and bodies. But such problems were considered to be outside the scope and mandate of cultural heritage conservation professionals and were thus left out of the discussions on the integrity of the site.

From an Islamic point of view, the integrity of the site and its values and significance cannot be divorced from moral issues. Furthermore, intangible values and human well-being are higher on the hierarchy of values and priorities of management and conservation, should they conflict with tangible heritage values.

Authenticity was defined during discussions for the Nara Document on Authenticity as a “measure of the degree to which the value of a heritage property may be understood to be truthfully, genuinely and credibly expressed by the attributes carrying the values” (Stovel 2004, 3). Although the Nara Document offers great flexibility in understanding cultural differences and in judging values and authenticity within different contexts, the primary professional debates and practices in the field of conservation remain Eurocentric and difficult to grasp and implement in non-Western contexts (Von Droste and Bertilsson 1995, 5).[5] Furthermore, they remain essentially material based, even with the inclusion of intangible heritage, spirit, and feeling among factors contributing to authenticity (Cameron 2009, 134).

Islamic perspectives are different in defining authenticity and the methods for its assessment. The definition of authenticity that attaches spiritual values to tangible and material attributes is not acceptable, as it is uncomfortably close to idol worship. According to ‘aqidah, the most important mission of Islam is to free humankind from idol worship so that individuals submit only to Allah, the one and only god. Hence, the dictionary meaning of Islam is “submission.”

The conflict in attitudes toward authenticity is manifest in the Saudi government’s view of the authenticity of historic buildings and sites that are associated with the Prophet. While a professional conservator would see the fabric of a historic building as an important attribute of the site’s authenticity, the Saudi authorities perceive the authenticity in the site’s location, name, and functionality. They often have intentionally demolished historic buildings and built modern structures in the same locations, with the same place names and functions, despite the outcries of conservation professionals (Kamel 2003, 65–73). This should not be confused with the destruction of non-Islamic heritage by militant groups such as the Taliban and Da’esh (which may recall iconoclasm in a historic Christian context). This is against shari’ah and, unlike the Saudi destructions, has been condemned unanimously by scholars of shari’ah, including the Saudis.

Authentication—meaning methods and tools for assessing authenticity—is central to Islam. An elaborate and sophisticated methodology for authenticating hadith was developed and observed by Muslim scholars. This involved examining the actual text of each saying by the Prophet, as well as the chain of its narrators going back to the Prophet, with equal attention to written and oral sources. According to this methodology, a hadith is given one of six grades, which qualifies or disqualifies it as a canonical reference for shari’ah.

The body of literature on authentication within Islamic intellectual heritage is huge and highly sophisticated. It influences Muslims’ approach to history and to assessing the authenticity of sources of information for different purposes. However, the assessment of authenticity by conservation professionals within an Islamic context doesn’t acknowledge fourteen centuries of Islamic intellectual heritage on authentication. This is perhaps due to the fact that modern conservation theory and practice were initiated in the West and remain Eurocentric to a great extent, with little to no awareness or acknowledgment of non-Western intellectual achievements. This is particularly true in the case of Islam, thanks to a long Western academic tradition of Orientalism. “Clichés about how Muslims (or Mohammedans as they are still insultingly called by some Orientalists) behave are bandied about with an abandon no one would risk in talking about blacks or Jews. At best, the Muslim is a ‘native informant’ for the Orientalist” (Said 2000, 105).

Waqf

Waqf is a formidable mechanism for the conservation and management of cultural heritage in Islamic contexts. The great majority of Islamic historic buildings standing today are tied to a waqf arrangement, and were not demolished or greatly altered throughout their long history thanks to shari’ah rules regarding waqf.

Waqf is an Islamic system of endowment, initiated by the Prophet as early as the first years of Islam. Like any other endowment system, waqf implies that financial resources are secured to establish a revenue-generating investment dedicated to the management, maintenance, and upkeep of an institution or building for public benefit and/or charitable causes. However, it is important to understand waqf within the Islamic worldview in order to comprehend its meaning and the way it works within a Muslim community. Muslims’ motivation to create and to respect a waqf arrangement is due to the Islamic concept of sustainable charity, meaning a charitable deed that continues to serve the community well beyond its initiator’s lifespan (Amin 1980, 16).

For example, a Muslim philanthropist may build a hospital within a waqf arrangement, which means also allocating resources for an investment such as agricultural lands, shops, hotels, et cetera, the revenue of which secures the management and maintenance of the hospital. Thanks to the waqf, Qalawun’s hospital in Cairo continued to function for centuries after the death of Qalawun himself, until modernization plans were implemented in mid-nineteenth-century Egypt according to a European model and in conflict with Islamic shari’ah.

According to shari’ah, a waqf deed is considered a contract with God, meaning that once the waqf document is written and registered by the judicial system, no one, not even the initiator-patron, has the legal power to make any changes (Mahdy 1991, 32). Once resources are allocated to a waqf arrangement, their ownership becomes God’s, and their management is to be overseen by the judge or the judicial system. It is this strict legal concept that gives the waqf system its efficiency and sustainability. Muslims’ respect for waqf is so great that even in times of armed conflicts, waqf arrangements are respected. For example, when the Ottomans defeated the Mamluks of Egypt in the early sixteenth century, the first decree that the Ottoman Sultan issued upon entering Cairo victoriously was that all waqf deeds were to be respected (Amin 1980, 341).

The waqf is a legally binding document that secures the preservation and performance of a building or institution. It is also a management plan specifying how it should be managed, maintained, and revitalized when needed. Waqf documents describe in great detail how the revenue should be spent to secure the performance of the institution and how would it function, including personnel, tools, and other relevant issues. Furthermore, a waqf document sets the criteria for appointing the administrators who should execute it under the supervision of the local legal system.

The absence of waqf from professional theory and practice in Islamic contexts today is perhaps the most damaging consequence of the lack of awareness and acknowledgment of the Islamic worldview. Despite historians’ testimonies regarding the crucial role that waqf played in the conservation and management of cultural heritage, it remained outside the domain of modern conservation debate and practices.

Sustainability and Recycling

The Islamic emphasis on sustainability and responsible management of the environment favors recycling older buildings and giving them new functions or incorporating them into newer buildings, rather than demolition and replacement, as practiced more often in modern days. Islamic perspectives on sustainability are based on the view that the aim of human life on Earth is to do good in order to please Allah. This implies human endeavors to develop the environment with care and wisdom, regardless of whether the person in question, others, or no one would benefit from such thoughtful and balanced development.[6] Instructions for wise management of the environment can be found in many hadiths, such as:

Do not waste water even if performing ablution on the bank of a fast flowing large river.[7]

Muslims are instructed by the Qur’an to manage resources wisely:

Give to the near of kin, the needy and the destitute traveler their rights and do not squander, for the wasteful are the brothers of satan; … and do not keep your hand chained to your neck (when spending), nor open it completely, so that you will sit blamed and destitute. (The Qur’an 17:26–29)

Careful management of the environment and avoiding unnecessary waste are important aspects of Islamic attitudes to development, including urban development. For example, many architectural elements such as marble columns and wooden doors are recycled for use in new buildings. Also, buildings from previous periods are adapted partially or fully to new uses. The Mosque of Abul Hajjaj in Luxor, for instance, was built in the thirteenth century, but incorporated within its construction parts of the ancient Egyptian Luxor Temple (fig. 9.1) and (fig. 9.2).

The Mosque of Abul Hajjaj as seen from Luxor Temple. Image: Hossam Mahdy

The interior of the Mosque of Abul Hajjaj during restoration works, showing the integration of part of the Luxor Temple structure within the structure of the mosque. Image: Hossam Mahdy

Besides being a logical tool for achieving sustainability, recycling in an Islamic context should also be understood as a manifestation of Muslims’ acceptance of the cycle of life for everything, and the conviction that nothing is eternal except God (The Qur’an 55:26–27). However, a word of caution is called for. Recycling older buildings within an Islamic context was practiced in premodern times, before the establishment of archaeology as a scientific method and discipline for the understanding, verifying, and authentication of history and historical accounts. The Qur’an instructs Muslims to reflect on the material remains of previous peoples, cultures, and civilizations as “signs” or proofs, as in the verse explaining that Allah recovered the body of the Pharaoh, who was chasing Moses and the Israelites and drowned in the process:

So this day We shall deliver your (dead) body (out from the sea) that you may be a sign to those who come after you! (The Qur’an 10:92)

From the Islamic point of view, should recycling and archaeological research conflict, the utmost priority would be given to archaeology, as the importance of authenticating history is central to shari’ah, and thus supersedes other aspects and values.

Historic Mosques

Historic mosques are obvious examples of conflicting attitudes in an Islamic context. Most, if not all, premodern mosques throughout the Islamic world were tied to a waqf arrangement that secured the financial resources and management plans for maintaining them and ensuring that they functioned effectively. The establishment of Muslim-majority nation-states in modern times, following the European model, and the subsequent centralization of administration for public services meant that a government body was established to carry out the responsibility for management of all the mosques in a town, region, or country. Waqf revenue-generating investments were likewise centralized and considered a single collective pool of financial resources, to be spent according to priorities identified by bureaucrats, politicians, and decision makers, regardless of what was stated in each individual waqf document by its founder. The efficiency of management and maintenance of mosques was consequently compromised.

The identification and listing of premodern mosques as “historic buildings” meant the further compromising of their conservation, maintenance, and management, as they were divided between the ministries of culture, pertaining to conservation issues, and the ministries of awqaf (plural of waqf) and religious affairs, pertaining to religious and functional issues. The ministries of culture were modeled on European examples identifying culture as “high culture” following European mindsets (opera, classical music, theater, cinema, fine arts, and cultural heritage) that had no relevance among traditional Arab-Muslim communities. Any cultural issue related to Islam was formally considered religious rather than cultural, and was made the responsibility of the ministries of awqaf and religious affairs.

Apart from the inefficiency of management and conservation of Islamic heritage resources, this “modern” arrangement conflicts with essential shari’ah rules that forbid the spending of revenue from waqf resources on different causes than what were stated by the founders. Furthermore, according to modern arrangements, in the case of a conflict between heritage values as identified and championed by conservation professionals, and functional values as identified and championed by awqaf officials or the local community, priority is always given to heritage values. In many cases the result rendered a historic mosque less meaningful and less relevant to the local community and other stakeholders.

Conservation and management problems of historic mosques can be seen throughout the historic city of Cairo. Some grand mosques with huge capacities and facilities to house mosque-related functions, such as education, accommodation of students, and drinking fountains, lie empty and are hardly used by local communities, such as in the cases of Ibn Tulun Mosque and the mosques of Sultan Hassan and Rifa’i, which were isolated from their urban surroundings by fences and ticketing booths for the purpose of tourism. Other historic mosques in Cairo are well used but not well adapted to their users’ needs. For example lighting, ablution places, keeping of shoes, and car parking are usually dealt with in an ad-hoc manner because they fall in a blind spot between the two main responsible authorities. This manifests in many mosques in the historic city, such as Sinan Pasha Mosque (fig. 9.3).

Functional elements at Sinan Pasha Mosque in Bulaq, Cairo, are installed and managed by users without effective involvement of conservation professionals. Image: Hossam Mahdy

Sabils

Historic sabils (drinking fountains) are an example of nonreligious historic structures in an Islamic context. In premodern Cairo many sabils were built throughout the city as acts of charity by various philanthropists to offer water to passersby. Although sabils are not religious buildings per se, they are motivated by the Islamic notion that “the best act of charity is to give water for drinking,” according to the Qur’an and hadith (Mostafa 1989, 34).

All historic sabils of Cairo were built within waqf arrangements that secured the funds and management mechanisms to permit them to function effectively. This lasted until the listing of sabils as historic structures in the late nineteenth century. Consequently, all historic sabils were transformed from charitable institutions offering the public a much-needed service to monuments without a function or meaning. The justification that was made for discontinuing the function of historic sabils was that water shouldn’t be stored or served in these fragile historic structures, lest it quicken their deterioration.

From an Islamic point of view, preventing the charitable act of offering drinking water is unacceptable. This may explain the negative attitude of local communities toward these historic sabils, even if they were adapted for new functions. The Sabil of Muhammad ‘Ali in al-Mu’izz Street is an example of this problem (fig. 9.4). Other sabils were even robbed of their architectural fixtures without much care on the part of the local community. The Sabil of Ruqayyah Dudu is an example of this problem (fig. 9.5). Historic drinking troughs for animals suffer from the same issue. An example is Sultan Qayetbay drinking trough, which was restored, closed, surrounded by a fence, and soon became a convenient point for collecting garbage for the whole street (fig. 9.6).

A clear sign that offering water for passersby is still cherished as an act of charity, and that such a service is needed today from a functional point of view, are the ad-hoc sabils that pop up in different forms and shapes in many streets in Cairo, particularly in informal areas (fig. 9.7 and fig. 9.8).

The Sabil of Muhammad ‘Ali in al-Mu’izz Street, Cairo, was restored by conservation professionals and adapted to be used as a museum; it is hardly relevant to the local community. Image: Hossam Mahdy

The Sultan Qayetbay drinking trough for animals was restored and surrounded by a fence; lately it is used by the community and local authorities as a point for garbage collection. Image: Hossam Mahdy

Sabil of Ruqayyah Dudu, Cairo, is a neglected sabil that was robbed of its metal grilles and other architectural fixtures; conservation professionals have put up a fence and barbed wire to protect it from further vandalism and theft. Image: Hossam Mahdy

An informal sabil for people and animals. Image: Hossam Mahdy

An informal sabil consists of pots for drinking water and an ad-hoc plaque with a relevant verse from the Qur’an and a request to pray for a certain individual. Image: Hossam Mahdy

Concluding Remarks and Recommendations

The identification of roots and causes for conflicting attitudes within Islamic contexts is a step toward bridging the gap between conservation professionals and local traditional communities and stakeholders. Actually, such identification is also valid as a general approach in other non-Western contexts. Differences in values may cause conflicting attitudes, and such differences should not be taken lightly, or be viewed superficially or with the assumption that they are due to carelessness or lack of education on the part of local communities and stakeholders. Investigations should dig deeply into the understanding of local cultures to find sources of differences. Should differences be due to different worldviews, consensus-building methods and tools should be applied to bridge the gap. Every effort should be made to explain relevant concepts for both “sides” in a cultural divide, including explanations of terms, concepts, and values within their cultural, social, and historical contexts.

In the Islamic context, Islam should be understood as a worldview that requires incorporation of its values and building on its beliefs in order to identify values of cultural heritage resources and assess their authenticity and integrity. From an Islamic point of view, heritage values cannot be divorced from ethics. They should not be stated as intrinsic values, nor be readily given priority over other socially constructed values. On the other hand, scientific values are highly valorized. Accordingly, archaeological values could be fully endorsed should they be adequately identified as scientific values.

Tools, mechanisms, and methods of identifying and assessing the integrity and authenticity of heritage that were developed throughout the long history of Islamic civilization should be studied, respected, and when applicable implemented, such as the waqf system. Another example is the conservation of built heritage as a means for wise and sustainable management of the environment. Accordingly, conservation and/or revitalization of built heritage are valued as environmentally friendly recycling efforts. Reconciliation should be sought between Islamic approaches, methods, and tools on the one hand, and those developed by the international conservation movement on the other. With a sensitive approach, values-based conservation concepts can be successfully applied in Islamic contexts. And the other way around may also be possible: Islamic approaches and methods may prove useful for application outside the Islamic world.

Further studies are needed on Islamic intellectual history pertaining to the conservation of cultural heritage, particularly on pre-Islamic heritage in Muslim lands, in order to avoid the hugely damaging misunderstanding that Muslims do not appreciate or care for the cultural remains of pre-Islamic civilizations.

Notes

1. “Islam” in the present text refers to the civilization and worldview, not only as a religion. “Arab” refers to the culture of Arabic-speaking communities or the Arab region. “Arabic-Islamic traditions” refers to traditions based on Islam as a worldview, adopted by communities in the Arab region. However, the unique relationship between Islam and Arabic should not be underestimated. Arabic is the language of the Qur’an, hadith, and all important Islamic texts. It is also the language of prayers and other Islamic rituals. On the one hand, Arabic is the carrier of Islamic concepts. On the other hand, thanks to Islam, Arabic spread well beyond its initial abode in the Arabian Peninsula and became the first language in twenty countries and the second in more than fifty countries, and remains a vibrant living language today. This may explain why it is sometimes difficult to explain an Islamic concept in a language other than Arabic. ↩

2. Stacie Nicole Smith (2016, 27–33) defines “values” in the dispute resolution field in a similar way to its definition within a traditional Islamic context. However, her definition has not yet impacted mainstream debates on values-based heritage management. ↩

3. All Qur’anic verses cited in the present text are according to the translation by Abdullah Yusuf Ali (http://www.quran4u.com/quran_english_Yeh.htm/). The citation is indicated by chapter and verse rather than page number. The first number refers to the chapter, and the second number refers to the verse within the chapter. ↩

4. Nothing material is sacred, with the exception of a few places and objects that are named as “sacred” by Islam, such as the K’abah in Makkah, the Prophet’s mosque in Medina, and the Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem. ↩

5. This remains true, as acknowledged by the first recommendation of Nara + 20, which states: “Further work is needed on methodologies for assessing this broader spectrum of cultural forms and processes, and the dynamic interrelationship between tangible and intangible heritage” (ICOMOS Japan 2014, n.p.). ↩

6. The word “develop” doesn’t convey the exact meaning of the Arabic word ‘amara, which “encompasses both tangible and intangible aspects of building a place as well as revitalizing it” (Mahdy 2015, 612). ↩

7. All quoted hadiths are from Search Truth website: http://www.searchtruth.com/hadith_books.php/. ↩

References

- Amin, Muhammad M. 1980. “Al-Awqaf wa Al-Hayat Al-Ijtima’iyyah fi Masr (648–923 H / 1250–1517 M. Dirasah Tarikhiyyah Watha’iqiyyah / The Waqfs and Social Life in Egypt 648–923 AH/ 1250–1517 AD (Historical-Documental Study).” Cairo: Dar Al-Nahdah Al-Arabeyyah.

- Australia ICOMOS. 2013. The Burra Charter: The Australia ICOMOS Charter for Places of Cultural Significance. Burwood: Australia ICOMOS. http://australia.icomos.org/wp-content/uploads/The-Burra-Charter-2013-Adopted-31.10.2013.pdf.

- Benn, Piers. 2004. “The Idea of the Sacred.” In Is Nothing Sacred?, edited by Ben Rogers, 119–27. London: Routledge.

- Cameron, Christina. 2009. “The Evolution of the Concept of Outstanding Universal Value.” In Conserving the Authentic: Essays in Honour of Jukka Jokilehto, edited by Nicholas Stanley-Price and Joseph King, 127–36. ICCROM Conservation Studies 10. Rome: ICCROM. https://www.iccrom.org/sites/default/files/ICCROM_ICS10_JukkaFestchrift_en.pdf.

- Freeman, Charles. 2002. The Closing of the Western Mind: The Rise of Faith and the Fall of Reason. New York: Vintage.

- Grube, Ernst J. 1978. Architecture of the Islamic World: Its History and Social Meaning. Edited by George Michael. London: Thames and Hudson.

- ICOMOS Japan. 2014. “Nara + 20: On Heritage Practices, Cultural Values, and the Concept of Authenticity.” http://www.japan-icomos.org/pdf/nara20_final_eng.pdf.

- Kamel, Omar Abdullah. 2003. La Thara’Ii’ lihadm Athaar Al-Nubuwwah [No Justification for Demolishing the Prophet’s Heritage]. Beirut: Baysan.

- LeBaron, Michelle. 2003. “Cultural and Worldview Frames.” In Beyond Intractability. Edited by Guy Burgess and Heidi Burgess. Boulder: Conflict Information Consortium, University of Colorado. Accessed March 11, 2017. http://www.beyondintractability.org/essay/cultural-frames.

- Mahdy, Hossam. 1991. “The Mosque of Mahmoud Muharram in Al-Gammaliyyah: A Conservation Study.” MSc thesis, University of Louvain.

- Mahdy, Hossam. 2015. “Proposed Arabic-Islamic Contributions to the Theory of Conservation for Cultural Heritage.” In Proceedings of ICOMOS Symposium on Heritage and Landscape as Human Values, 9 to 14 November 2014, Florence, edited by Maurizio Di Stefano, 609–13. Charenton-le-Pont, France: ICOMOS; Naples, Italy: Edizioni scientifiche italiane.

- Mason, Randall. 2002. “Assessing Values in Conservation Planning: Methodological Issues and Choices.” In Assessing the Values of Cultural Heritage: Research Report, edited by Marta de la Torre, 5–30. Los Angeles: Getty Conservation Institute. Accessed March 11, 2017. http://hdl.handle.net/10020/gci_pubs/values_cultural_heritage.

- Mostafa, Saleh Lamei. 1989. “The Cairene Sabil: Form and Meaning.” Muqarnas 6:33–42.

- Rogers, Ben, ed. 2004. “Introduction.” In Is Nothing Sacred?, 1–6. London: Routledge.

- Said, Edward. 2000. “Arabs, Islam and the Dogmas of the West.” In Orientalism: A Reader, edited by A. L. Macfie, 104–7. Cairo: American University in Cairo.

- Smith, Stacie Nicole. 2016. “Consensus Building for Cultural Heritage Place Management.” In Consensus Building, Negotiation, and Conflict Resolution for Heritage Place Management, edited by David Myers, Stacie Nicole Smith, and Gail Ostergren, 24–61. Los Angeles: Getty Conservation Institute. http://www.getty.edu/conservation/publications_resources/pdf_publications/consensus_building.html.

- Stovel, Herb. 2004. “Authenticity in Conservation Decision-Making: The World Heritage Perspective.” In “Conservation and Cultural Heritage,” special issue, Journal of Research in Architecture and Planning 3:1–8.

- Stovel, Herb. 2007. “Effective Use of Authenticity and Integrity as World Heritage Qualifying Conditions.” City and Time 2 (3): 21–36. Accessed September 26, 2017. http://www.ceci-br.org/novo/revista/docs2007/CT-2007-71.pdf.

- UNESCO [United Nations Education, Scientific, and Cultural Organization]. 2005. Operational Guidelines for the Implementation of the World Heritage Convention. Paris: UNESCO World Heritage Centre. Accessed September 26, 2017. http://whc.unesco.org/en/guidelines.

- Von Droste, Bernd, and Ulf Bertilsson. 1995. “Authenticity and World Heritage.” In Nara Conference on Authenticity in Relation to the World Heritage Convention, Nara, Japan, 1–6 November 1994: Proceedings, edited by Knut Einar Larsen, 3–15. Paris: UNESCO World Heritage Centre; Tokyo: Agency for Cultural Affairs; Rome: ICCROM; Paris: ICOMOS.

10

Changing Concepts and Values in Natural Heritage Conservation: A View through IUCN and UNESCO Policies

- Josep-Maria Mallarach

- Bas Verschuuren

New directions in natural heritage conservation acknowledge conflicting relationships between societies and their environments, and seek to respond to impending global crises due to overconsumption of resources, climate change, and biodiversity extinction. Methodological changes include advancing more holistic, natural-cultural approaches; recognizing the role of governance in successful management strategies; integrating scientific and traditional knowledge in valuation processes through engagement with Indigenous peoples and local communities; and promoting rights-based approaches. These shifts have significantly influenced the work of international bodies, and thereby helped to institute values-based policies that constitute a radically new context for conceiving, evaluating, and prioritizing heritage conservation.

Our global ecological footprint surpasses Earth’s biocapacity by 35 percent and keeps growing (World Wildlife Fund 2016). Meanwhile, exponential economic growth continues to drive global climate change (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change 2014) and biodiversity extinction (United Nations Environment Programme 2012). If these trends remain unabated, a global ecological collapse is probable (Millennium Ecosystem Assessment 2005). The Western technocratic and materialistic paradigm, identified as one of the main drivers of these trends, requires urgent change that is not likely to be derived from the very same paradigm (Barnosky et al. 2012). Simultaneously, these developments constitute a radically new context for conceiving, evaluating, and prioritizing heritage conservation policies.

New directions in natural heritage conservation are not just derived from bridging an abstract dichotomy between utilitarian or economic values and intangible cultural and spiritual values, but rather from acknowledging the conflicting relationships between societies and their environments. These relationships could be characterized as anywhere between healthy and harmonious to pathological and destructive for natural heritage conservation. New directions in natural heritage conservation increasingly emphasize the role of cultural values and subsequently seek common ground among shared values between different worldviews and knowledge systems.

The divide between nature and culture has been acknowledged as one of the foundational features of Western ontology that bedevil the realm of natural heritage conservation (Harmon 2007). As a result, many countries created separate policies for natural and cultural heritage conservation, including different administrations that apply different legislation, methods, languages, scientific disciplines, and practices. In protected areas, proposed integrated approaches to bridge this divide—for example the creation of eco-museums where ethnology, anthropology, and conservation converge—have had a rather limited impact. The more recent introduction of cultural values and bio-cultural conservation approaches may offer new ways forward in bridging the nature-culture divide in natural heritage conservation (Maffi and Woodley 2010; Verschuuren et al. 2010; Apgar, Ataria, and Allen 2011; Pungetti, Oviedo, and Hooke 2012).

Below, we briefly describe the following shifts in heritage conservation within protected and conserved areas:

- from exclusive natural assessments to more holistic, natural-cultural approaches;

- from management to the inclusion of governance of natural heritage;

- from scientific expert valuation to valuation by Indigenous peoples, local communities, and other traditional knowledge holders;

- from tangible natural values to also including cultural, spiritual, and other intangible values;

- from applying top-down legal and regulatory frameworks to bottom-up rights-based approaches, including traditional laws, duties, and responsibilities.

Next, we describe how these changes have impacted the work developed by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) and UNESCO using selected examples. We then look at some of their implications and applications at the national level in various countries around the world.

Changing Values and Concepts in Natural Heritage Conservation Policies

The 1999 publication Cultural and Spiritual Values of Biodiversity marked the onset of a new phase in conservation. Illustrated with examples from around the world, it argued that nature and culture are inextricably linked (Posey 1999, 1–18). Darrell Addison Posey’s conceptual framing of “cultural and spiritual” values had a significant impact on subsequent developments in international natural heritage conservation organizations such as UNESCO and the IUCN. The latter is the largest and most influential conservation organization in the world, including more than fourteen hundred government and nongovernmental organizations; some sixteen thousand scientists and experts participate on a voluntary basis, organized in numerous groups, under the umbrella of six commissions.

We recognize the following five changes to be essential to the process of changing values and concepts in natural heritage conservation:

1. From exclusive natural assessments to more holistic, natural-cultural approaches. During the second part of the twentieth century, most natural heritage assessments were validated using criteria based on Western natural sciences. This resulted in a number of new concepts and terminology, such as cultural landscapes (Bridgewater and Bridgewater 1999), bio-cultural diversity (Loh and Harmon 2005; Maffi and Woodley 2010), and socio-ecological resilience (Berkes and Folke 1998).

2. From management to the inclusion of governance of natural heritage. Complementary to management, the complex concept of governance of natural heritage was developed during the twentieth century (Dearden, Bennett, and Johnston 2005). This led to the creation of the IUCN management and governance matrix, where categories of protected areas are cross-checked with four broad governance types, namely governance by government, shared governance, private governance, and governance by Indigenous peoples and local communities (Dudley 2008). While this development has been quite an achievement, it has also received some critiques claiming that “the matrix” takes a narrow and restrictive view on governance (Martin 2012) and excludes nonhuman agency while ignoring spiritual governance (Verschuuren 2016).

Monastery Gregoriu, one of the twenty sovereign monasteries that constitute the Monastic Republic of Mount Athos, Greece, a natural and cultural World Heritage Site, which is ruled by a customary governance system that has been in place for more than a millennium. Image: Josep-Maria Mallarach

The concept of governance encompasses who makes decisions, and the context of and procedures for how decisions are made. For example, traditional forms of governance are part of religious traditions at Mount Athos in Greece (fig. 10.1). It includes rights holders and stakeholders as well as legal instruments across different powers and levels of decision making. A notable innovation in the IUCN conceptualization of governance is that besides types, it includes quality and vitality. Governance quality includes, among other aspects, legitimacy and equity in relation to all actors involved in heritage conservation, including Indigenous peoples and local community conserved areas (Borrini-Feyerabend et al. 2013).

3. From scientific expert valuation to valuation by Indigenous peoples and local communities and other traditional knowledge holders. Science-driven expert valuation has gradually opened up and given way to valuation by the keepers of traditional, religious, cultural, and spiritual values of natural heritage, such as Indigenous peoples, spiritual leaders, and local communities (Pretty et al. 2009). This has led to the recognition of values derived from traditional sciences, customary norms, religious and spiritual teachings, and traditional practices (Beltrán 2000), resulting in increased interest in shared values between Western scientific approaches and traditional sciences and worldviews within the interpretation, management, and governance of natural heritage (Lockwood, Worboys, and Kothari 2006).

4. From tangible to intangible heritage, including religious and spiritual values. There has been a move beyond tangible cultural attributes toward acknowledging the significance of intangible cultural and spiritual heritage (Berkes 1999; Dudley, Higgins-Zogib, and Mansourian 2005; Mallarach and Papayannis 2007; Mallarach 2008; Papayannis and Mallarach 2010). The spiritual significance of nature includes animistic and religious values and has been among the most influential drivers for nature conservation throughout history (Harmon and Putney 2003; Schaaf and Lee 2006; Wild and McLeod 2008). More than 85 percent of humanity adheres to some faith, and religious institutions are among the oldest and most influential organizations in the world (O’Brien and Palmer 2007). Conservation organizations have gradually realized the need to increase social support for natural heritage conservation in collaboration with religious organizations (Palmer and Finaly 2003). This realization has opened an inquiry into conservation contributions from other cosmologies, worldviews, and religions in the application of bio-cultural initiatives and approaches to natural heritage conservation (Mallarach 2012; Verschuuren, Subramanian, and Hiemstra 2014).

5. From top-down legal and regulatory frameworks to bottom-up rights-based approaches, including traditional codes, duties, and responsibilities. Natural heritage that has been conserved by traditionally protected areas has often applied top-down regulatory frameworks. Working from the bottom up, rights-based approaches enable Indigenous peoples, local communities, and other actors to continue traditional practices and ways of life that have conserved nature for many generations (Campese et al. 2007). This results in the increased recognition of cultural and spiritual values and the inclusion of traditional law and cultural practices in natural heritage conservation. Several types of nonbinding designations and actors benefit from this approach, such as Indigenous and community conserved areas and territories (ICCAs), and sacred natural sites (SNSs) with their custodian and guardian communities (Lee and Schaaf 2003; International Union for Conservation of Nature 2016). ICCAs encompass a variety of terrestrial or marine areas managed by Indigenous peoples and local communities—that is, one of the four governance types recognized by IUCN (Kothari et al. 2012). ICCAs may be recognized as protected areas or complement a country’s protected area system as different, but effective, ways of supporting conservation (Borrini-Feyerabend et al. 2013).

ICCAs are recognized under the United Nations Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) as protected areas. They count toward the global Aichi Biodiversity Target 11, to have 17 percent of all terrestrial and 10 percent of all marine ecosystems under protection by 2020 (Convention on Biological Diversity 2011). Signatory states report annually on progress toward this target based on strategic biodiversity action plans. Sacred natural sites are natural places that are spiritually significant for people and communities (Wild and McLeod 2008). Sacred natural sites have been recognized to exist throughout all the IUCN management categories and governance types (Dudley 2008). Many are looked after by Indigenous peoples, local communities, and/or followers of institutionalized religions (Verschuuren et al. 2010).

Selected Changes in IUCN

IUCN periodically adopts resolutions and recommendations that are known to have worldwide influence, setting the global conservation agenda. They support the development of international and national environmental law, identify emerging issues in conservation, and promote specific actions on ecosystems, protected areas, and species. Since 1948 more than one thousand resolutions have been adopted by IUCN member organizations (International Union for Conservation of Nature 2012, 3). This section outlines how the aforementioned changes have affected some of the IUCN’s policies and strategic directions, in particular within the World Commission on Protected Areas (WCPA), the oldest of the six IUCN commissions. Our analysis focuses on the recommendations and resolutions adopted by IUCN’s General Assembly and IUCN’s Best Practice Guidelines Series, prepared by different groups of experts, which we consider the most seminal documents issued by IUCN (tables 1, 2).

Year

Resolution/ Recommendation Number

Title

2003

Rec. 13

Integrating Cultural and Spiritual Values in the Strategies, Planning and Management of Protected Natural Areas

2008

Res. 038

Recognition and Conservation of Sacred Natural Sites in Protected Areas

2008

Res. 4.056

Rights-Based Approaches to Conservation

2008

Res. 4.052

Implementing the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples

2008

Res. 4.099

Acknowledging the Need for Recognizing the Diversity of Concepts and Values of Nature

2012

Res. 147

Supporting Custodian Protocols and Customary Laws of Sacred Natural Sites

2012

Res. 2012

Respecting, Recognizing and Supporting Community Conserved Areas

2012

Res 5.094

Respecting, Recognizing and Supporting Indigenous Peoples’ and Community Conserved Territories

2012

Res. 009

Encouraging Collaboration with Faith Organizations

2014

n/a

The Promise of Sydney

2016

Res. 033

Recognizing Cultural and Spiritual Significance of Nature in Protected and Conserved Areas

2016

Res. 064

Strengthening Cross-Sector Partnerships to Recognize the Contributions of Nature to Health, Well-Being and Quality of Life

Global commitments, resolutions, and recommendations of the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) and World Commission on Protected Areas (WCPA) that make explicit reference to cultural and spiritual values.

Year Published

Best Practice Guideline number

Complete Title

Integration of Cultural and Spiritual Values

2004

11

Indigenous and Local Communities and Protected Areas: Towards Equity and Enhanced Conservation

F

2006

12

Forests and Protected Areas: Guidance on the Use of the IUCN Protected Area Management Categories

F

2006

13

Sustainable Financing of Protected Areas: A Global Review of Challenges and Options

L

2006

14

Evaluating Effectiveness: A Framework for Assessing Management Effectiveness of Protected Areas, 2nd ed.

P

2007

15

Identification and Gap Analysis of Key Biodiversity Areas: Targets for Comprehensive Protected Area Systems

L

2008

16

Sacred Natural Sites: Guide for Managers of Protected Areas

F

2011

17

Protected Area Staff Training: Guidelines for Planning and Management

P

2012

18

Ecological Restoration for Protected Areas: Principles, Guidelines and Best Practices

F

2012

19

Guidelines for Applying the IUCN Protected Area Management Categories to Marine Protected Areas

F

2013

20

Governance of Protected Areas: From Understanding to Action

F

2013

21

Guidelines for Applying Protected Area Management Categories Including Best Practice Guidance on Recognizing Protected Areas and Assigning Management Categories and Governance Types

F

2014

22

Urban Protected Areas: Profiles and Best Practice Guidelines

P

2015

23

Transboundary Conservation: A Systematic and Integrated Approach

P

2016

24

Adapting to Climate Change: Guidance for Protected Area Managers and Planners

P

2016

25

Wilderness Protected Areas: Management Guidelines for IUCN Category 1b Protected Areas

F

Global guidance documents published by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) since 2004, with low (L), partial (P) or full (F) integration of cultural and spiritual values.

Every ten years the IUCN World Commission on Protected Areas organizes a world congress, which sets the agenda for protected areas and issues recommendations that aim to influence the policies of the member organizations. The Fifth IUCN World Parks Congress, which took place in Durban, South Africa, in 2003, marked a major value shift in natural heritage conservation (Phillips 2003). For the first time a substantial delegation from the world’s Indigenous peoples devised an articulate criticism of Western approaches to nature conservation. This included both technical approaches and injustices that Indigenous peoples have been suffering as a result of the creation of modern protected areas, for instance national parks and wildlife reserves (Brosius 2004). The Durban Accord defined a new approach for protected areas, integrating conservation goals with the interests of all affected people (International Union for Conservation of Nature 2004). Cultural and spiritual values were included in many recommendations. In particular, Recommendation 13 was fully devoted to integrating cultural and spiritual values in the strategies, planning, and management of protected natural areas, including bold strategic requests (International Union for Conservation of Nature 2003). These recommendations have had a significant impact on all the IUCN Guidelines published since (see table 2).

The IUCN-WCPA Specialist Group on Spiritual and Cultural Values of Protected Areas (CSVPA), which was founded in 1998 and drove much of the process behind the aforementioned changes at the World Parks Congress in 2003, initiated the preparation of guidelines for protected area managers on sacred natural sites, focusing on Indigenous peoples (Wild and McLeod 2008). In 2005 the Delos Initiative, focusing on sacred natural sites in technologically developed countries, emerged from CSVPA (Mallarach and Papayannis 2007); the initiative has identified a collection of sacred natural sites as case studies (fig. 10.2). Since 2012 CSVPA developed a program of work on the cultural and spiritual significance of nature in the governance and management of protected and conserved areas, which is in the process of producing best-practice guidelines, a peer-reviewed volume (Verschuuren and Brown 2019), and training modules (Bernbaum 2017).

Lions Head, with the simple grave of Sufi Shaykh Mohamed Hassen Ghaibie Shah at its feet, one of the kramats (miraculous tombs) that constitute the Sacred Belt of Cape Town, South Africa; these are among the Delos Initiative case study sites. Some of these sacred natural sites are included in protected areas, for example Table Mountain National Park, while the rest are conserved by the local Muslim Malay community. Image: Josep-Maria Mallarach

The impact of the 2003 World Parks Congress and the subsequent IUCN policy changes (International Union for Conservation of Nature 2009; International Union for Conservation of Nature 2012; International Union for Conservation of Nature 2014; International Union for Conservation of Nature 2016) are also reflected in the number and scope of international events on cultural and spiritual values and sacred natural sites in protected areas organized in Europe (table 3). These last changes are notable, considering that Europe was the cradle of positivism and materialism.

Cultural and Spiritual Values of Protected Areas

2008

Communicating Values of Protected Areas, Germany

2010

I Conference Carpathian Network of Protected Areas, Romania

2011

Conference Europarc Federation, Germany

2011

Spiritual Values Protected Areas of Europe, Germany

2013

II Conference Carpathian Network of Protected Areas, Slovakia

2015

Conference Society of Conservation Biology, France

2016

BPG Cultural & Spiritual Significance of Nature, Germany

2017

BPG Cultural & Spiritual Significance of Nature, Germany

Sacred Natural Sites

2006

Delos Initiative 1, Montserrat, Spain

2007

Delos Initiative 2, Ouranoupolis, Greece

2010

Delos Initiative 3, Aanaar/Inari, Lapland, Finland

2010

Symposium on Religious World Heritage Sites, Kiev, Ukraine

2013

Mount Athos, Thessaloniki, Greece

2016

Initiative of World Heritage Sites of Religious Interest, France

2017

Delos Initiative 4, Malta

Selected International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) and UNESCO international events related to cultural and spiritual values of natural heritage in Europe since 2006.

In 2008 IUCN renewed its definition of protected areas: “A clearly defined geographical space, recognized, dedicated and managed through legal or other effective means, to achieve the long term conservation of nature, with associated ecosystem services and cultural values” (Dudley 2008, 8). The detailed interpretation of each word of the definition clarified that conserving “associated cultural values” was part of the mission of protected areas, and that “other effective means” for conserving nature include, for instance, “recognized traditional rules under which community conserved areas operate” (Dudley 2008, 8–9). IUCN protected area categories were also redefined, including the governance dimension, cultural values, and spiritual values, and in connection with them the recognition of sacred natural sites (Dudley 2008). This work built on a consensus about the meaning of “conservation,” an umbrella concept that includes “preservation,” “protection,” “sustainable use,” and “restoration” (International Union for Conservation of Nature, United Nations Environmental Program, and World Wildlife Fund 1980).

The new definition of protected areas opened the door for a complementary concept of “conserved areas,” a term borrowed from the Convention on Biological Diversity (1992) referring to natural areas or landscapes conserved through other than legal means—including those conserved through cultural and/or spiritual values. A specific IUCN Task Force on Other Effective Area-Based Conservation Measures was established in 2015 to carry out the task of providing guidance on assessment and recognition of these areas by governments (Jonas et al. 2014).

During the subsequent IUCN General Assembly, several resolutions were adopted on sacred natural sites included in protected areas, on rights-based approaches to conservation, and on the need for recognizing the diversity of concepts and values of nature or encouraging collaboration with faith organizations, which prompted the creation in 2015 of the Specialist Group on Religion, Spirituality, Environmental Conservation, and Climate Justice within the IUCN Commission on Environmental, Economic, and Social Policy.

The Promise of Sydney summarized the main outcomes of the last World Parks Congress, 2014, on how to engage the hearts and minds of people and engender lifelong associations among physical, psychological, ecological, and spiritual well-being (International Union for Conservation of Nature 2014). Building on this, the conclusions of the IUCN World Conservation Congress in 2016 (the first to have a high-level segment on religion and conservation) clearly stressed the importance of spirituality, religion, and culture, including the wisdom of Indigenous and traditional peoples, for nature conservation. This was expressed in Navigating Island Earth: The Hawai’i Commitments, which argues for the necessity of cultivating a “culture of conservation” that links “spirituality, religion, culture and conservation”:

The world’s rich diversity of cultures and faith traditions are a major source of our ethical values and provide insights into ways of valuing nature. The wisdom of indigenous traditions is of particular significance as we begin to re-learn how to live in communion with, rather than in dominance over, the natural world. (International Union for Conservation of Nature 2016, 2)

Selected Changes in UNESCO

This section highlights changes regarding the integration of cultural and natural values within the work and policies of UNESCO since the 1970s.

The UNESCO Man and Biosphere Program (MAB), launched in 1971, focuses on creating learning sites for sustainable development. Its aim is to integrate cultural and biological diversity, especially the role of traditional knowledge in ecosystem management (UNESCO 1974). The MAB promotes equitable sharing of conservation benefits derived from managing ecosystems through economic development that is socially and culturally appropriate and environmentally sustainable. After four decades in operation, the current MAB Strategy 2015–25 and the Lima Declaration continue to direct its integrative approach to natural and cultural values (UNESCO 2017).

The Convention Concerning the Protection of World Cultural and Natural Heritage (UNESCO 1972) recognizes cultural, mixed, and natural heritage sites. In 1992 it became the first international legal instrument to recognize significant interaction between humans and the environment as cultural landscapes (Rössler 2005).

World Heritage Sites are nominated by states based on six cultural criteria, assessed by the International Council on Monuments and Sites (ICOMOS), and four natural criteria, assessed by IUCN. Assessment of the cultural and natural criteria has been done independently following the convention’s Operational Guidelines. Only more recently have IUCN and ICOMOS worked together to connect their practices and find ways to link the natural and the cultural as well as the tangible and intangible values of heritage sites (Leitão and Badman 2015). Some criteria, such as World Heritage Convention Criterion VII, “exceptional natural beauty and aesthetic importance,” have been specifically reviewed for their applicability in natural and cultural heritage (Mitchell et al. 2013).

Globally, a large proportion of Natural World Heritage Sites include sacred natural sites (Shackley 2001). Acknowledging this fact, UNESCO launched the Sacred Natural Sites and Cultural Landscapes Initiative in 2005. A few years later, to provide appropriate recognition of the religious value and the role of religious communities in the management of World Heritage Sites, UNESCO launched the Initiative on Heritage of Religious Interest. The initiative has been tasked with preparing guidance for the management of these World Heritage Sites (UNESCO 2018). It is expected that once this guidance has been adopted by UNESCO, States Parties will implement it on a voluntary basis, thereby improving the recognition and quality of both governance and management of the values and attributes of religious interest in World Heritage Sites.

The Universal Declaration on Cultural Diversity (UNESCO 2002) and the coming into force of the Convention for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage (UNESCO 2003) and the Convention on the Protection and Promotion of the Diversity of Cultural Expressions (UNESCO 2005) provide the ideal context in international policy to rethink the role of intangible heritage of natural, cultural, and mixed World Heritage Sites. While all these conventions work independently, much could be gained from developing synergies that mutually reinforce the interconnectedness of tangible and intangible heritage.[1]

Several United Nations programs are aimed at bridging the gap between cultural and biological diversity and the integration of Indigenous knowledge. These are the program on Biocultural Diversity, in collaboration with the Secretariat of the Convention on Biological Diversity, and the program on Biodiversity and Local and Indigenous Knowledge. As a programmatic approach enables conventions and UN institutions to collaborate successfully, the collaboration between actual conventions proves complicated.

Implications and Applications at the National Level

The programmatic and policy changes in IUCN and UNESCO have guided the integration of cultural and spiritual values along with rights-based approaches in the work of international and national organizations and governments. Despite resistance from some sectors, such as the extractive industries, agriculture, and fisheries, the cultural and spiritual values of natural heritage have gradually been acknowledged in many countries’ conservation policies, strategies, regulations, and initiatives. There has not been any global analysis of the extent of these changes. The following section offers several examples of their integration in regional transboundary conservation, in national conservation approaches, and in specific conservation programs.

Inspired by the value changes discussed above, a number of transboundary ecosystem or landscape conservation initiatives, such as the Kailash Sacred Landscape Initiative, have integrated cultural and spiritual values in their work. The program, founded in 2009 by the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP) and the International Center for Integrated Mountain Development (ICIMD), comprises a large area of Tibet and adjacent areas of Nepal and India. Mount Kailash is venerated by more than one billion Hindu, Buddhist, Jain, Bön, and Sikh devotees, and has been a pilgrimage destination since prehistoric times (Pandey, Kotru, and Pradhan 2016). The governments of the respective countries are currently exploring the possibilities of developing nominations for natural World Heritage Sites that would cover most of Kailash Sacred Landscape (fig. 10.3). The cultural and spiritual values of Kailash are guiding the preparation of the nomination files that describe the values for nomination of each part of the site.[2]

View of Mount Kailash, one of the most important pilgrim destinations in Asia, from a small hermitage by the pilgrims’ trail. Image: Edwin Bernbaum

An example of national-level integration of cultural and spiritual values is the development of a strategic direction on intangible heritage within the 2009–13 Action Plan for Protected Areas of Spain. This national-level action plan included a strategic direction on the development of a manual for protected-area managers to integrate cultural and spiritual values into their areas of responsibility (Mallarach, Comas, and de Armas 2012). The manual includes more than forty recommendations for incorporating intangible values into all stages of natural protected areas, governance, management, and planning. As a reference on the groundwork, it provides ten detailed case-study descriptions and more than one hundred examples of initiatives and experiences with the conservation of intangible heritage from Spain. For a summary see table 4, and for a more detailed explanation of the development and implementation of the manual see Mallarach et al. (2019).

Intangible Value

Examples

Artistic

Traditional dance, music, songs, and rural games; nature painting and photography; nature literature; media, films, and television programs

Aesthetic

Silence and tranquility; visual, auditory, and olfactory beauty; harmony

Social

Traditional knowledge and trades; feasts and gastronomy; festivals and fairs

Governance

Structures; rules; customs; traditional governance and institutions

Historic

Relevant historical events and facts

Linguistic

Languages and dialects; traditional legends and tales; sayings and riddles; vocabulary about nature and its meanings

Religious

Rituals; pilgrimages; ceremonies; living shrines, monasteries, chapels, sanctuaries, and hermitages

Spiritual

Sacred natural sites; abandoned shrines, temples, hermitages, etc.; archaeological sacred sites; other natural sacred sites

Values of intangible heritage related to protected areas of Spain (Mallarach, Comas, and de Armas 2012, 31).

In many countries across the world, cultural values such as beauty, silence, and tranquility are increasingly seen as significant and included in the development of new strategies for natural heritage conservation, permeating the national, regional, and local levels. Across Europe, national agencies responsible for natural heritage conservation have used such values to develop successful conservation tools, for instance the “Tranquility Areas” of England; the “Areas of Outstanding Beauty” in Scotland, England, and Wales; and the “Silence Areas” in the Netherlands. Silence and tranquility are considered human needs and the basic conditions for a deep connection with nature in cultures the world over.

Discussion and Conclusions

Natural heritage and cultural heritage cannot be considered in isolation. The evidence for interdependence and the relationships between humans and the environment justify new conceptualizations and the need to adopt integrated, coordinated approaches to the conservation of heritage (Latour 2011).

Many unsustainable global trends, such as climate change and biodiversity extinction, are affected by societal changes in positivistic, materialistic, and utilitarian values. We argue that slowing down the destruction of bio-cultural heritage requires implementing an array of new and integrated conservation approaches. However, to do away with the very root causes of these damaging value systems would require one to look beyond the practice of conservation and draw on fundamentally different philosophies that offer alternatives to materialism, neoliberalism, and capitalism (Büscher et al. 2016). From a philosophical and ethical perspective, we suggest seeking inspiration in the different cultural practices and worldviews of societies around the globe that have conserved natural heritage for millennia and have demonstrated their ability to adapt to the changes of time, as they provide valuable lessons (Lele et al. 2010; Verschuuren 2016).

In the context of natural heritage conservation, we suggest a reassessment of the values of the last century’s conservation thinkers along with those enshrined in humanity’s great spiritual and religious traditions and those informing cultural practices and worldviews of Indigenous peoples and local communities. Such assessments would contribute to the gradual paradigm shift already under way in nature conservation (Stevens 2014), based on the changes in concepts and values discussed in this article. Such assessment could also contribute to increasing commitment for adopting a conservation ethic as quoted in the previous section and proposed in the concluding remarks of the last IUCN General Assembly (International Union for Conservation of Nature 2016).

Notes

1. Mechtild Rössler, personal communication. ↩

2. Edwin Bernbaum, personal communication. ↩

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11

Valuing Traumatic Heritage Places as Archives and Agents

- Randall Mason

Places associated with trauma, tragedy, or other “negative memories” have recently taken on great cultural significance in contemporary society. Global discourse on trauma bears on conservation decisions and values-based approaches. Traumatic heritage places (THPs) challenge traditional value categories and hierarchies, foregrounding societal values and questioning conservation paradigms that prioritize heritage values bound up in the fabric of sites. Using cases from the United States and Rwanda, this chapter explores THPs as both archives of past events and agents of contemporary social change, framing the potentials and stresses of expanding the spectrum of values at play in conservation decisions.

An early-nineteenth-century prison in Philadelphia. Rural churches transformed into genocide memorials in Rwanda. A newly created memorial to a terrorist attack in rural Pennsylvania. What do these three heritage places have in common?

They are recently identified heritage sites marking places of cultural trauma, and they are conserved to convey the societal (non-heritage) values ascribed to them by contemporary stakeholders, as well as the heritage values of their buildings, landscapes, and collections. The cultural significance of these places relates strongly to conflicts around genocide, racial injustice, civil rights, mass incarceration, the specter of terrorism, or other cultural traumas. Like all heritage places, their conservation and management is shaped by the challenges of curating historical fabric (using the sites as archives) as well as the desires projected onto them by broad stakeholder interests located in society at large (using the sites as agents for societal change).

Places associated with tragedy, “difficulty,” or other negative histories have long been acknowledged as heritage sites (battlefields, for instance). Traumatic places, too, have for generations occupied an important niche in the heritage field (for example concentration camps). What’s new since the turn of the twenty-first century is global society’s embrace of a “discourse of trauma” as a master narrative of social change—one effect of which is to push sites of collective (cultural) trauma into the foreground of consciousness. These places where cultural trauma is materially represented and commemorated possess growing influence on public discourse, and correspondingly present challenges to the heritage field. The politics of trauma cut deeply, and in both progressive and repressive directions. Traumatic heritage places are so dominated by societal values constructed in broad social milieus that site-specific values of historic fabric and conservation processes get reframed. The function of the sites as “platforms” for representing and debating issues of contemporary relevance is compelling and risky. With a decided turn toward societal values, the managers of traumatic heritage places face difficult challenges balancing heritage and societal values in decisions about acknowledging (valorizing) and subsequently planning and designing (valuing) these places.

The notion of “traumatic” places emerged from the social science and humanities literature in the 1990s. The author’s experiences practicing at several negative-history sites brought the concepts of values-based conservation to bear on the phenomenon personally. For varying reasons, these sites faced opportunities to connect with urgent societal issues, and reacted by reinforcing their commitments to conservation of heritage and societal values and their functions as platforms to discuss, interpret, and engage audiences about the conflict. The difficulty of balancing these valuing processes in the frame of a specific site presents an acute challenge. Since these societal values and benefits are not well modeled by the existing values-based conservation frameworks, naming a new category of values seemed in order. Traumatic heritage places are extreme versions of “negative” or “difficult” heritage (Getty Conservation Institute 2002; Doss 2010; Foote 2003; Meskell 2002) in three senses: they respond in a timely fashion to urgent contemporary cultural crises; in scale, their influence extends well beyond site-specific, place-bound values traditionally taken into account in conservation management; and trauma leaves permanent indelible marks, metaphorically and materially. In the words of sociologist Jeffrey Alexander, a leading scholar of cultural trauma:

Cultural trauma occurs when members of a collectivity feel they have been subjected to a horrendous event that leaves indelible marks upon their group consciousness, marking their memories forever and changing their future identity in fundamental and irrevocable ways. (2012, 1)

In terms of values-based conservation, the disruption associated with traumatic sites is a transformation in the spectrum of values that shape their management. The outward-facing, external, societal values of sites (which may or may not be expressly reflected in their physical fabric) take priority, potentially at a cost to the sites’ conservation-specific heritage values and qualities. The urgency of managing the sites for healing, cultural identity, and political functions can undermine attention to the values relating to the sites’ capacity to materially bear witness and serve as literal texts representing the past. Traumatic heritage places foreground societal values as drivers of conservation management decisions, realizing the capacity for built heritage to provide additional benefits beyond the literal site. This presents both an opportunity and a danger for heritage conservation interests: for instance chances to respond to current social needs, and risks of undermining the core curatorial values of heritage places in reaching for contemporary societal urgency. Political manipulation and inciting conflict around heritage ideas present acute dangers, too.

These heritage places, in other words, are shaped as much in response to external societal stresses as to the internal conditions more typically addressed by conservation.[1] Their management is expected to sustain both the “archive” function foundational to heritage conservation (providing and interpreting data about the past) as well as their functions as “agents” for social change (advocating for social justice causes, for instance, or providing economic opportunities for the disadvantaged). In terms of values-based conservation, these sites face the challenge of protecting and interpreting the heritage values of the sites, supporting social-value uses, and responding to demands to realize societal values (these distinctions are elaborated upon below).

This concept of societal values has been implicit in values-based conservation since at least 1979 with the introduction of the Australia ICOMOS Charter for Places of Cultural Significance, or Burra Charter (Australia ICOMOS 2013), as intangible, broader-scale valuation processes were recognized as consequential if not always present or decisive. Such traumatic societal values have typically been classified as a social value, societally resonant though place-bound. To the extent that values-centered preservation aspires to holistic management of heritage places, these societal values should factor into values assessments and management, design, and conservation decisions.

Expanding Values Perspectives

Built heritage is defined by its pastness—its capacity to present historical evidence and represent moments of past experience, literally and conceptually, in the present—and by its physical presence as discrete sites. Heritage sites function to concretize and locate memory and provide space for commemoration; the function of their management centers on sustaining their performance of archival and curatorial functions. In other words, the core outcomes are protection and interpretation of objects, buildings, landscapes, and their associated cultural values. Yet heritage places are called upon to do more as well—especially as they seek greater relevance in contemporary society. If heritage is defined as the past made useful, one should expect its utility to extend beyond archiving, curation, and instruction, and indeed heritage places do generate revenue, provide public and recreational space, and so forth. So, in addition to the pastness that has long been the focus of the conservation profession, heritage these days possesses other (non-heritage) qualities that are undervalued, have gone unacknowledged, and should be part of holistic management.

How are the different value categories distinguished from one another? Heritage and social values are already established in the literature. Societal values make explicit the very nature of heritage as a construction of modernity—that societal needs for heritage are created by the stresses, failures, and contradictions of modern society (Choay 1999; Huyssen 2003).

Heritage values are clearly and well established; discerning, sustaining, and interpreting them are central to the whole enterprise of conservation, historically and today. The Burra Charter and myriad other academic works and policy documents related to values-based conservation frameworks define them: the historical, aesthetic, social, scientific, and spiritual qualities or potentials ascribed to a heritage place, connecting present to past, arising out of the place’s particular evolution through time and space, and contributing directly to a place’s cultural significance.

Social values are attached to the pastness and site-specificity of heritage places, but provide benefits beyond curatorial uses, including non-archival, non-curatorial uses or applications of heritage values and fabric for “community identity; attachment to place; symbolic value; spiritual associations and social capital” (Jones 2016, 2). Social values activate the associations and meanings ascribed to the heritage place by contemporary communities, often in direct reference to specific historical narratives and particular spaces or fabric (Johnston 1992). Taken together, the social values of a heritage place are “a collective attachment to place that embodies meanings and values [specific to the site that are important to a [contemporary] community or communities” (Jones 2016, 2).

Societal values, as elaborated in the article I coauthored with Erica Avrami in this volume, are non-heritage qualities ascribed to heritage places. The broadest take on this definition would include economic values (which would be a distraction from the present argument),[2] but this paper centers on societal values directly corresponding to traumatic heritage places: qualities of heritage places that relate to contemporary issues of social, political, and identity conflict. If heritage values are seen as endogenous (originating from response to the place itself), societal values are exogenous (originating in society at large). Societal values’ connections to heritage places are less literal than those between heritage places and social values. Instead of mapping specific narratives to specific historical fabric (social values), societal values can emerge from a general alignment of a place with social conflict, and not just from the very specific associations of particular fabric with particular events typical of heritage values. For example, one site can stand for an entire genocide, or one prison for the issue of mass incarceration.

As exemplified by traumatic heritage places, societal values: reflect important desires, demands, and issues of broad contemporary relevance; relate to the scale of society, not the discrete site; are presentist and quite changeable; connect to stakeholders external to (and often well beyond) the site; and enable flows of non-heritage benefits (advocating for social justice, peace building, civil rights, and so forth).

The argument here—with reference to values-centered conservation theory—is to expand the categories of potential value ascribed to traumatic heritage places in order to model better how contemporary society uses these places. By acknowledging the additional category of societal values, managers can encompass the non-heritage, not-necessarily-site-specific, society-wide functions, meanings, and benefits realized beyond the better-known and better-theorized categories of heritage and social values. Strategically, the contemporary relevance of sites is thereby advanced beyond what their heritage functions produce.

Metaphorically, societal values enable sites to function as platforms on which issues of contemporary relevance can be acknowledged, represented, and debated. The quandary for heritage management is accepting societal values, but not letting them eclipse the heritage and/or social values specific to the site (or erode the site’s material integrity or experiential authenticity). How to have it both ways?

Traumatic Heritage Places Defined

Traumatic heritage places have emerged as a distinct type of heritage, the relevance of which derives substantially from the societal values ascribed to the sites (Doss 2010; Foote 2003; Getty Conservation Institute 2002). Traumatic heritage places mark and represent negative events of the past as part of the contemporary social process of constructing and responding to cultural trauma: emerging over the course of the twentieth century, reaching a crescendo on the eve of the twenty-first century, relating to violence, discrimination, armed conflict, genocide, natural disasters, and so forth (Alexander 2012; Sztompka 2000). The significance of traumatic heritage places resides in their ability to represent such societal narratives or memories as loss, destruction, violence, and discrimination, such that they “perform” social functions of healing, mourning, or politicizing culture in the present. They are distinguished by a combination of physical evidence, site specificity, compelling narratives, and spaces for commemoration, enabling representation of traumatic events and healing at a societal scale.

Traumatic heritage places produce two benefit streams to the public: first, traditional, canonical heritage benefits flowing from the curatorial functions that form the core of conservation; and second, societal benefits flowing from a site’s function as a platform for representing, discussing, and enacting social change, resolving conflicts, and otherwise connecting to urgent contemporary issues. In other words, traumatic heritage places serve both as archives of cultural history and memory for the long term and as agents of social change in contemporary society. They add layers of complexity and opportunity to heritage management and decision making.

Heritage sites with tragic narratives and/or representing traumatic social events have been around for a long time. Their functions, and their mix of values, evolve. Older tragedy sites are presented as memorials to the past, essentially fitting the model of archive, effectively passive. Their mere presence enforces their tacit social impact as historical lessons and “archives.” Battlefields are a classic example: scrubbed of most undesirable or graphic aspects of their story, and foregrounding valor, sacrifice, and noble causes in abstraction. Sites of wartime iconoclasm, such as the cities of Hiroshima, Warsaw, and Dresden, interpret citizen slaughters. Holocaust memorials may be regarded as sui generis, but they also set something of a model for sites of traumatic heritage.

While they are nothing new, traumatic heritage places have particular relevance today. Influential cultural critics have argued that the spectacle of others’ suffering became essential to the experience of modernity in the twentieth century, when the means to project images of war and other violence via the media became ubiquitous. As Susan Sontag observed, “Being a spectator of calamities taking place in another country is a quintessential modern experience” (2003, 18).

Traumatic heritage places enable us to reflect on some of the most deeply meaningful and troubling narratives of recent history—genocide, terrorist attacks, violence, incarceration—and engage them as heritage. Such events have long been a part of social history, but lately have become much more prominent objects of open memorial reflection, valorized by any number of political, artistic, and academic reactions to pursue peace building and reconciliation in the aftermath of conflict, trauma, and disaster. The roles of the media and of commodification of culture have been crucial in fomenting reaction to societal or “cultural” trauma (Alexander 2012; Assmann 2016; Sztompka 2000; Yusin 2017; Zelizer 2010). And, as argued elsewhere in this volume, this era of mass reckoning with trauma and social upheaval has historical roots in the Vietnam War, postcolonial, civil rights era culminating in the 1960s.[3]

Places of trauma and tragedy have claimed a prominent role in contemporary politics, in public space, and in the construction of heritage. The Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, DC, is often cited as a turning point; the litany of Holocaust memorials and post-Soviet and post-Yugoslav memorials have also been important reference points. More recent memorials at sites of terrorism are the latest type (Doss 2010; Young 1994). Notably, the cultural significance of such sites is not dominated by the sites and collections themselves, as in the mode of typical heritage places. Their meaning is equally invested in societal narratives and social processes—the fugitive ideas and political, moral crises provoked by conflict that the sites have a role in representing and reproducing.

The current expectation that traumatic heritage places function as archives of history and memory as well as active agents of change is exemplified by “sites of conscience” and the work of the NGO International Coalition of Sites of Conscience, “the only global network of historic sites, museums and memory initiatives that connect past struggles to today’s movements for human rights.” The coalition’s objective is to “turn memory into action” (International Coalition of Sites of Conscience 2018, n.p.). Sites of Conscience member organizations interpret history in site-specific facilities and engage public audiences by stimulating dialogue on pressing social issues, all to the end of promoting social justice and human rights. Sites of Conscience focus on conceptual connections between historical narratives and contemporary politics, mostly through creative and performative works such as exhibits, programs, workshops, and dialogues—which is to say not through projects of constructing, conserving, inhabiting, adapting, and reusing buildings and landscapes. Sites of Conscience (SOCs) are, in other words, very focused on societal values, but less on the materialities of heritage places (Ševčenko 2010; Ševčenko 2017).

For heritage conservation, SOCs are a provocative model that uses heritage as a means of social justice and civil rights advocacy, as opposed to the conservation of sites as an end in itself. Indeed, the coalition is currently evaluating its impact by looking not at site conservation, but rather at “the global impact of Sites of Conscience in addressing wider social processes such as human rights reform, violence prevention and transitional justice” (International Coalition of Sites of Conscience 2018, n.p.).

SOCs and other forms of traumatic heritage or tragedy memorial have, in the past generation, marked a turn in the global culture of heritage. From globally prominent, ideologically fraught, carefully designed, large-scale memorial complexes to more ordinary, personal, makeshift, and modest sites, the “negative” and the mournful are embraced, bringing heritage from the annals of the past to contemporary social conflict on front pages and websites, and in public spaces (Fairclough et al. 2008, sections 1 and 2; Logan and Reeves 2009; Meskell 2002).[4]

Scholarly analysis devoted to tragic heritage places tends to focus on the processes of their creation and interpreting their meaning through the lens of social psychology or creative practice. Much less attention is paid to their design and ongoing management as heritage places. Thus, the influence of traumatic heritage places and negative heritage is only beginning to be reflected in theories and modes of practice. Notable exceptions, in the context of the present volume, include Getty Conservation Institute case studies on Grosse Île and Port Arthur analyzing the evolution of values-centered conservation histories (de la Torre et al. 2005). Both cases detailed traumatic recent events and the incorporation of narratives related to these events as site-specific social values.

Eastern State Penitentiary Historic Site

Eastern State Penitentiary is a heritage site in Philadelphia.[5] It possesses highly significant heritage values as an architectural monument and historic landmark in the development of penal philosophy (“the separate system” of total isolation). Social values realized by art and entertainment programming have also been pursued as part of a sustainable management strategy. Most recently, Eastern State has become a platform for raising awareness of divisive societal issues about the traumatic experience of mass incarceration combined with racial discrimination in the United States. It exemplifies the process of managing a site by building from the cultivation of heritage values toward an embrace of societal values relating the collective trauma of mass incarceration to public heritage practices.

The eleven-acre building complex was opened in 1829 to meet an emergent social need—reform of lawbreakers based on a strategy of isolation and penitence articulated by Jeremy Bentham and advocated by Philadelphia Quakers.[6] Architect John Haviland’s design centered on a simple and monumental architectural form: hub-and-spoke cellblocks, each consisting of individual cells surrounded by a massive stone perimeter wall with a single gate (fig. 11.1). The panopticon form was later copied hundreds of times around the world.

Contemporary aerial view of Eastern State Penitentiary showing its hub-and-spoke layout and massive perimeter wall. Image: Darryl Moran, 2015, courtesy Eastern State Penitentiary Historic Site, Philadelphia

Listed as a city landmark in 1958 and a National Historic Landmark in 1965, Eastern State closed as a prison in 1971. Preservation advocates mounted a grassroots effort to protect it from demolition or unsympathetic rehabilitation on the basis of historical and architectural values (its age, legacy of innovative social policy, and as a work of Haviland). A mayoral task force formed in 1988 and began basic repairs; the site was interpreted to the public soon thereafter. In 1998 Eastern State Penitentiary Historic Site Inc., a nonprofit corporate management entity, was organized to manage the site, including preservation, interpretation, and fund-raising operations (initially centered on a Halloween event).

A policy to conserve Eastern State Penitentiary’s fabric as a “stabilized ruin” was adopted for practical as well as philosophical reasons: the great cost of anything more than stabilization and basic safety, and a consensus preservation philosophy valuing the layers of the site’s built heritage. In other words, the period of its abandonment and decay also held heritage value. Financial need led managers to experiment with revenue generation and audience building by expanding the Halloween event to become the lucrative “Terror Behind the Walls” and commissioning an ongoing series of site-specific artworks. The success of these two added functions has grown the management organization’s capacity to sustain the heritage and social values of the site and connect with larger audiences interested in societal issues of social justice, civil rights, and mass incarceration.

Through the 2000s and 2010s, managers carefully balanced heritage and social values—the functions of a museum versus those of an attraction. As contemporary debates about mass incarceration in the United States grew more prominent, managers realized an opportunity to interpret Eastern State Penitentiary as a (failed) experiment in penal reform and use it as a platform to discuss the current role of prisons and incarceration in US society. Large, prominent exhibitions were mounted: the Big Graph, displaying the disproportionate number of citizens imprisoned in the United States vis-à-vis other countries, and the award-winning multimedia exhibit Prisons Today: Questions in the Age of Mass Incarceration, presenting contemporary debates about incarceration as part of the standard tour of Eastern State as a heritage place (fig. 11.2). The “archive” had evolved into an “agent,” too.

Part of the exhibit Prisons Today: Questions in the Age of Mass Incarceration at Eastern State Penitentiary. Image: Darryl Moran, 2016, courtesy Eastern State Penitentiary Historic Site, Philadelphia

Societal values are still framed by and related to the heritage values of the site, but more directly responding to the societal issues of incarceration in US society. In terms of material heritage, some decisions to support adaptive reuse of historic spaces were required to enable the realization of social and societal values, for instance stabilizing and reusing cells and exercise yards for art platforms and exhibition spaces.

Over the first twenty-five years of its conservation and development, Eastern State Penitentiary’s management evolved by gradually embracing a wider range of values. As a mature organization, it has looked to broader societal questions provoked by (but not confined to) its heritage—the multifaceted debates and complex politics of mass incarceration and penal reform in the United States.

Can a historic prison be a platform for reform of contemporary incarceration policy while effectively conserving its built heritage? Absolutely. But it takes a keen awareness of the distinctions between, on one hand, values emanating from the site’s fabric and responsibilities for stewardship and, on the other, values resonant in broader social discourse that opportunistically find a place on the platform. And it takes a commitment to balance the conservation of heritage values reflected in fabric, built environments, and heritage experiences with the opportunities the heritage conservation success provides to convene new audiences on the basis of interpreting societal values. The site’s management has embodied the strengths of both traditional conservation and the active social and political project of sites of conscience.

Rwandan National Genocide Memorials

In the aftermath of the 1994 Rwandan Genocide, eight national genocide memorials were created as part of recovery and reconciliation processes (fig.11.3).[7] They are starkly traumatic places marking sites of significant massacres during the one hundred days of genocide that began in April 1994, and they display extensive collections of human and artifact remains (Greco 2017). The sites are literal archives of the killings’ aftermath as well as platforms for social healing. They also serve the national government and political regime as symbols of recovery. These evidently damaged sites and collections are activated by the government’s ongoing national campaign of genocide prevention education. They constitute an important category of “proof of the genocide against the Tutsi in Rwanda,”[8] a meaning carefully circumscribed and scripted by the Rwandan state.

The sanctuary building at Nyamata Genocide Memorial, Rwanda. Image: Randall Mason

Each of the eight memorials identified and created around the small country have buildings and collections displaying physical evidence of violence; the contexts of the sites tend to be orderly and improved with new visitor facilities. Societal values dominate the sites—the integrity of collections and other fabric have been sacrificed for clarity in projecting the national political narrative—resulting in a threat to heritage values in the long term. In order for both heritage and societal values to be sustained through time (past the lives of those with direct memories of 1994), heritage values have to be asserted against overwhelming societal values about the victimization of the Tutsi. Heritage values are (to date) barely tended, other than through government ownership and staffing of the sites.

Flight 93 National Memorial

The location of Flight 93’s crash on September 11, 2001, in Shanksville, Pennsylvania—an agricultural and mining landscape—almost instantly became an object of intense memorialization, and, in time, a National Memorial—albeit a National Memorial created with an enormous amount of citizen input, especially from the victims’ families.[9] The site was documented and carefully developed to perform both the longue-durée archiving function to remember the event, and the immediate social function of creating a platform for social, political, and personal enactment of loss, anger, and grief. Curatorial tasks included the national government’s purchase of the site, forensic work on the human remains and crash site, displaying and archiving popular memorials that immediately and continually were left at the site, and eventually staging a memorial design competition leading to the creation of a permanent visitor center and other facilities.

A National Memorial heritage landscape emerged, epitomizing the balance to be struck when conserving heritage stemming from contemporary tragedy. While the site was not explicitly managed with a values-based framework, it exemplifies the need to extend the values-based categories. The principal challenge of managers was embracing immediate, urgent societal need for a memorial at the site of the crash while balancing long-term archival responsibilities, the sanctity of a gravesite, and mass tourism facilities. Management was aided by the sheer size of the National Memorial (more than two thousand acres, compared to the small “sacred ground” crash site).

An elaborate traumatic heritage place has taken shape, performing contemporary functions of commemoration, political symbolism, creating a long-term archive of 9/11, and providing a place of personal mourning for families of the victims. One cost of this was erasing previous layers of landscape history in favor of monumentalizing one moment in history, quite a departure from contemporary conservation philosophy, which generally aspires to represent multiple layers.

Repercussions for Practice

The idea of societal values functioning as a metaphorical platform to deal with non-heritage issues, functions, and benefits has emerged as an abiding theme in professional practice. Clients, users, managers, and conservation professionals often express the desire to connect preservation resources and heritage places to the everyday life of their communities so they may serve to address the deep issues plaguing our societies as well as directly conveying understanding of the past. In other words, our collective goal is broader societal relevance for heritage conservation through construction of broader concepts of value. At the level of design, conservation, management, financing, operation, and programming, this often boils down to colocation and sharing of facilities—or, in terms of this paper, using heritage resources to advance non-heritage goals. Heritage places function as platforms for a changing combination of non-heritage benefits. The “platform” notion is a riff on adaptive reuse—an adaptation of the site for non-heritage functions in response to external needs, demands, or opportunities—which can be accommodated as long as historical fabric and cultural significance are not eroded unduly.[10]

Societal values open new opportunities for contemporary relevance of built heritage and raise some constructively critical issues regarding values-based conservation as a framework for conservation practice, theory, and education. The idea of admitting a set of values less connected to the particularities of a site’s fabric—values driven by issues far beyond the site and unabashedly momentary/presentist—seems to invite conflict and trade-offs. Being too responsive to the political issues of “right now” may come at the cost of responding to conservation’s traditional and central responsibilities for the “long now.”

Heritage values have by definition always taken priority in conservation, but not in society at large. They have fed a tendency in the field toward insularity. Expansion of societal uses may threaten the integrity of historic fabric and/or draw financial and human resources away from conservation, and may risk opening sites to “outside,” non-conservation influences. These are valid concerns and real conflicts, and can mostly be addressed as matters of design, and management decisions and leadership. In some circumstances, though, the cultivation of societal values should have a stronger claim on decisions.

For instance, recent conflicts surrounding the removal of Confederate monuments from public squares in cities in the American South reveal a weakness of preservation as a materialist ideology, sometimes verging on fundamentalism: some “preservationists” argue for the retention of statues as historical evidence, against evolving societal norms that they are offensive. Destruction or removal of these monuments has the whiff of compromise to some conservation professionals, but it may be a reasonable cost for relevance and societal benefits.

Stakeholder roles and the politics of heritage practice and management are made more complex by embracing societal values. Connecting with more (and more “distant”) stakeholder groups might provide additional (presentist) benefits but amplifies the divergent interests managers are compelled to consider. For Eastern State Penitentiary, for instance, new relevance is gained by engaging advocates for the formerly incarcerated, reform of drug laws, racial justice, and so forth, moving beyond those previously engaged on the basis of the site’s heritage and social values. The composition of staff and leadership has shifted accordingly. The changing power of certain stakeholders must remain a matter of vigilance for managers so not only the most powerful are heard. Because stakeholder engagement is fundamentally a political process, the prospect of hijacking heritage places for political purposes is a real risk. A broader collection of stakeholders is both a lure and a danger: the lure of greater relevance and support; the danger of outsize influence from presentist stakeholder interests (Greenspan 2013).

The successes of values-based conservation have rightly been acknowledged and applauded, though limits are also recognized (ICOMOS Japan 2014; Poulios 2010; Walter 2014). Values-based conservation is a powerful but not totalizing framework, and rests on the premise that heritage conservation is an established, even self-justifying, public good. It provides an important and adaptable bridge connecting traditional curatorial practices of conservation professionals and the varied, changeable heritage values attributed to sites by multiple stakeholders.

Values-based conservation concepts and tools deal very well with particularities and characteristics of sites themselves, and with values ascribed to sites by stakeholders within the context of site planning and management. They are much less focused on presentist values at large in society.

Adopting the perspective that values are rooted principally in the site can lead managers to insufficiently account for the values generated by society writ large. To the extent that conservation of these sites fuels a pursuit of society-wide benefits, society-wide values also need to be accounted for in management and decision frames. In other words, we traditionally see values as place-bound, and tend to each site as an island; while this protects the integrity of the island best, it may not realize the larger societal values ascribed to the place best. This is not to suggest that decision making about a site should be based on distant, society-wide needs, but conservation professionals should be aware of, and validate, “platform” functions. Embrace of societal values is part of the evolution and extension of values-based conservation frameworks.

A skeptical view will suggest that traumatic heritage sites are no different and represent only a nuanced rebalancing of the stakeholder involvement that is a foundation of values-based conservation—that “social values” already encompass enough non-heritage value and benefit. Traumatic heritage places, though, demonstrate the potential to transform heritage places into cultural sites of societal activism, reform, and development (sympathetic with conservation but distinct from it). Eastern State Penitentiary, the Rwandan Genocide Memorials, and the Flight 93 National Memorial are examples of heritage places actively conceived and constructed as means to other (societal) ends balanced against their heritage conservation as a self-justifying end.

All heritage places, it is hypothesized, potentially have influential societal values; thus, establishing them as a potential category of values in typical values-based planning and management frameworks seems warranted. Traumatic heritage places foreground the phenomenon of societal values, adding contemporary relevance while satisfying core conservation values and benefits. Societal values can relate strongly to social justice and cultural identity issues, but the category could also extend to economic development, environmental conservation, or other issues in society at large.

Of course, the pursuit of societal values is not necessarily progressive—such values can also be the province of undesirable political forces. The perspective of this paper, formed by practice as much as scholarship, is that societal values present major opportunities to increase the contemporary relevance of heritage sites and improve the efficacy of values-based conservation. Societal values fuel a more activist form of conservation, envisioning work on sites and collections not only as an end in itself (archiving) but also as a means to other social ends (agency) (Schneider and Till 2009; Wharton 2015).

Notes

1. The notion of “internal” and “external” used here, in relation to heritage places or sites, parallels the idea of “essential” and “instrumental” approaches to heritage advanced in my article with Erica Avrami in this volume. ↩

2. Mostly for reasons of length. Economic values can operate as both social and societal values for heritage places, but there is no space here to develop this more elaborate argument. ↩

3. See my article with Erica Avrami in this volume. ↩

4. The distinction between a tragic versus a traumatic site rests on ongoing societal function: a tragic site passively marks a historic event, person, or location associated with negative history; a traumatic site connects to contemporary healing processes, identity formation, and political debate, actively advocating particular interpretations of negative histories (Greenspan 2013; Linenthal 2003). ↩

5. The author has been an unpaid advisor and director of Eastern State Penitentiary Historic Site Inc., chairing its strategic planning committee. ↩

6. The history of Eastern State Penitentiary is sourced from Johnston, Finkel, and Cohen (1994) and Eastern State Penitentiary (2018). ↩

7. The author led a research, training, and implementation project in partnership with the Rwandan government, focused on the memorial at Nyamata. ↩

8. This is a politically fraught term used in reference to these sites. ↩

9. The author participated in the memorial design competition as a member of one of the five finalist teams; this experience included several site visits and conversations with officials and other stakeholders in the conservation process (US National Park Service 2007; Thompson 2017). ↩

10. The platform idea has been invoked elsewhere in heritage management practice to describe the functioning of partnership parks, in particular heritage areas codeveloped by local and state authorities with the National Park Service in the United States (Laven et al. 2010); public spaces and other civic infrastructure (Greenspan and Mason 2017, 13); and public libraries (Mattern 2014). ↩

References

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- International Coalition of Sites of Conscience. 2018. Accessed April 3, 2018. http://www.sitesofconscience.org/en/home/.

- Johnston, Chris. 1992. What Is Social Value? A Discussion Paper. Australian Heritage Commission Technical Publications Series 3. Canberra: Australian Government Publishing Service. http://www.contextpl.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/What_is_Social_Value_web.pdf.

- Johnston, Norman, Kenneth Finkel, and Jeffrey A. Cohen. 1994. Eastern State Penitentiary: Crucible of Good Intentions. Philadelphia: Philadelphia Museum of Art.

- Jones, Siân. 2016. “Wrestling with the Social Value of Heritage: Problems, Dilemmas and Opportunities.” Journal of Community Archaeology and Heritage 4 (1): 21–37.

- Laven, Daniel, Curtis Ventriss, Robert Manning, and Nora Mitchell. 2010. “Evaluating U.S. National Heritage Areas: Theory, Methods, and Application.” Environmental Management 46 (2): 195–212.

- Linenthal, Edward T. 2003. The Unfinished Bombing: Oklahoma City in American Memory. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

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12

Values and Relationships between Tangible and Intangible Dimensions of Heritage Places

- Ayesha Pamela Rogers

Drawing from case studies across Asia (Pakistan, Hong Kong, Lao PDR, and Thailand), this paper investigates how the range of values attributed to the intangible aspects of cultural heritage places supports their overall significance, including ways in which the values ascribed to both intangible and tangible dimensions of such places relate to each other. It highlights a range of intangible or living values derived from many different stakeholders—values that are often overlooked or ignored in the significance assessment process. The consequences, in some cases, have been destruction or irreparable damage to heritage. Failure to identify and incorporate living values, as defined by the occupants and users, has resulted in lost opportunities and the shortchanging of significance and meaning. Putting intangible values at the center of conservation decision making is central to maximizing these opportunities and maintaining meaning for all.

This essay investigates how the various values attributed to intangible aspects of cultural heritage places support their overall significance, including ways in which the values ascribed to both intangible and tangible dimensions of such places relate to each other. The tangible fabric of a place and the intangible aspects that give it meaning are inseparable. This relationship is not always coordinated or compatible, at times leading to creative or destructive tensions that have implications for values-based approaches to their conservation. Erica Avrami, Randall Mason, and Marta de la Torre suggest that “analytically, one can understand what values are at work by analyzing what stories are being told” (2000, 9). To frame thinking about these questions on values, I have selected five heritage places with which I have a long-term working relationship and have sought to identify the “stories being told” and the values at work.

I adopt a focused case study approach to investigate the social and physical histories of the places, acknowledging that values are “not fixed, but subjective and situational.”[1] Specificity is required in order to reveal the complex and multidimensional values at work. The heritage places chosen are from Asian countries. They represent different periods and comprise built heritage, cultural landscapes, and living heritage places. The values and significance and their “stories” are revealed through a combination of cultural mapping providing the voice of communities, ethnographic tools representing the voice of heritage practitioners, historical research representing the voice of academics, and documentation reflecting the voice of the heritage itself.

These case studies should be read as short stories about intangible “public value,” which frames heritage as “a vital part of the public realm,” what Tessa Jowell defines as “those shared spaces and places that we hold in common and where we meet as equal citizens. The places that people instinctively recognize and value as not just being part of the landscape or townscape, but as actually being part of their own personal identity. That is the essential reason why people value heritage” (2006, 8). Each of the case study heritage places is briefly introduced and the different voices expressing different values are described, along with the resulting conflicts or tensions that characterize the place and the challenges arising from them. The final portion investigates what this means for a values-based approach to heritage conservation and management.

Tomb of Ali Mardan Khan, Lahore

This Mughal monument was built during the reign of Shahjahan (1628–58) by Ali Mardan Khan, a Persian nobleman who became governor of Lahore, Kashmir, and Kabul. He is famed as the architect and designer of the great canal that brought water from the River Ravi to Shalamar and the other gardens that gave Lahore fame as a “city of gardens.” The tomb was built for his mother, and he was later laid to rest beside her upon his death in 1656/57 (fig. 12.1).

The Tomb of Ali Mardan Khan in what remains of its garden, Lahore, Pakistan. Image: Ayesha Pamela Rogers, 2014

The building is an octagonal brick structure with lofty arched entrances on each side, topped with a massive dome on a tall drum. The corners of the roof are decorated with chattris (domed kiosks), and the whole building was originally adorned with tile mosaic and fresco work. It was once surrounded by a large geometric paradise garden (a form of garden of ancient Persian origin), and although most of it is now lost to encroachment, an original gateway remains at the northern side, richly embellished with colorful tile mosaics (Lari 2003). The impressive scale of the former garden compound can be gauged from the distance between the tomb and this extant gateway.

The contemporary uses of Ali Mardan Khan’s resting place, both authorized and unauthorized, illustrate the multiple values attributed to it by different communities. The tomb is officially protected and under the care of the provincial Department of Archaeology. There are no available statements of values or significance for such protected properties, but the aspects that receive recognition at this official level are usually antiquity, association with a historical figure, and/or aesthetic and architectural merit. The monument is formally closed to the public and therefore has virtually no value for most Lahoris, many of whom do not know of its existence. It is, however, open for religious observance on Thursday evenings when one form of living religious function is “authorized” for a specific community of users. Local devotees who view Ali Mardan Khan as a saint maintain his grave, located below the monument, cleaning, decorating, and providing electricity for weekly worshippers. This limited usage is tolerated in recognition of the important spiritual value of the heritage place to this community.

Another group also uses the tomb on Thursday evenings, but without the approval of the authorities. Female devotees climb to the hollow dome above the tomb to perambulate around their phir or religious leader, seeking fulfilment of their personal prayers in the dimly lit space. The weekly experience of the women gathering at the tomb is enhanced in intangible but pivotal ways by the setting. The intensely private interactions with a heritage space that we see in this narrative take on cultural complexity that would be lacking if they took place just anywhere. This use of the tomb represents “the expression of subaltern discourses on how people engage with history at intense and personal levels, achieved not by perceiving heritage through the filter of expert interpretation but by individual relationships with places and spaces” (A. Rogers 2011, 118).

The Tomb of Ali Mardan Khan is a nationally protected monument. While the designation identifies the historical significance as “Mughal,” the determination of locals to enter and experience it has contributed to the continuous formation of new ideas about its values and significance. What we see is a clash between two ways of relating to the ancient material past. The first is an official modernist archaeology that identifies and circumscribes heritage sites—creating a heterotopia, or a place separate from the viewer’s daily reality (Stroulia and Sutton 2010, 14)—and then presents them to the community only on its own terms. On the other hand we have a set of diverse, alternative popular approaches that project their own version of the heritage values of monuments, like the Tomb of Ali Mardan Khan, based on reconnecting such heritage places to daily life and contemporary needs.

The authorized heritage values associated with built heritage such as the Tomb of Ali Mardan Khan are based on architectural design and features, decorative aesthetics, age, and historical association. However, effective and relevant conservation also requires consideration of the meaningful contemporary uses of the building and its setting by groups that invest living values into the same built fabric. Currently, heritage properties in Pakistan such as this tomb are managed without reference to values or stakeholders. The result is a national landscape littered with historic places that are “preserved” but lifeless—sites of heterotopia (Foucault 1984; Stroulia and Sutton 2010, 14). The challenge is to find ways that values-based approaches can be introduced to change this kind of situation.

Historic Towns, Pakistan

The historic towns of Pakistan have never at any point in their history been planned or designed or, until very recently, conserved. The physical fabric and sense of place that has passed down to us has instead survived because of the desire of generations of residents to maintain their traditional way of life. Community cohesion or social capital has preserved what remains of the past and acts as a glue to ensure the continuing smooth functioning of the city, despite pressures of density, poor infrastructure, and social tensions. It is this intangible living heritage set within the built heritage of the city that gives significance to historic towns (fig. 12.2).

The intangible living heritage of Rawalpindi, Pakistan, is integrally linked to the built heritage of the city. Image: Ayesha Pamela Rogers, 2015

The attributes of historic towns’ values illustrate this living, social nature of the city. These values are encoded in the links from private to increasingly public spaces in the built environment, interpersonal transactions, and the spatial patterns that position people and places within a mutually understood context (Khan 2017).

Study of the features and values of traditional neighborhoods and street markets shows that their real value does not reside in their historic appearance, heritage facades, or heritage craft products. It is in the sense of belonging and tradition that these places provide to different types of users—what is known as place attachment, or sense of place. Place attachment “is the symbolic relationship formed by people giving culturally shared emotional/affective meanings to a particular space of piece of land that provides the basis for the individual’s and group’s understanding of and relation to the environment” (Low 1992, 165). This close interpersonal relationship is visible, for example, in the direct dialogue between shopper and shopkeeper, which takes place not inside a shop but at its entrance where shopkeepers sit (Batool 2017). These intangible values of knowledge, concepts, and skills can endure and link the ancient to the contemporary city in enriching and potentially profound ways.

The historic towns of Pakistan are a different kind of historic city, without landmark spaces or iconic heritage buildings, and not perceived as “heritage” at official levels, but beloved by their residents as physical embodiments of the traditional social capital that is their true heritage. The significance of such places rests in the densely packed areas of bazaars and mohollahs (neighborhoods), which have developed organically, creating an enduring and resilient pattern of urban life. The streets, buildings, and public spaces are imbued with societal values expressed by change, multiple uses and sensory experiences, traditions, and interpersonal relationships. These are beginning to come into conflict with the contemporary economic and development values that drive tourism as historic urban centers are increasingly exploited for their historic built environments, often at the cost of more intangible values.

In the historic towns of Pakistan and many other places around the world, there are few if any conservation projects being carried out because it is simply not yet part of most urban agendas. The rare examples of values-based conservation are “imported,” meaning that international organizations or foreign-trained experts have introduced their approach in isolated built heritage or urban upgrade projects. This has little lasting impact on local theory or practice. In such circumstances the challenge is not just to refine the effectiveness of values applications, but something much more fundamental—introduction of the basic concepts of values and their meaning and importance at the center of local heritage conservation.

Pak Mong Historic Village, Hong Kong

The historic villages of rural Hong Kong have evolved over the centuries from agricultural settlements into residential neighborhoods of the modern city (fig. 12.3). Many, such as the village of Pak Mong, retain the basic tangible elements of a southern Chinese traditional village dictated by and embedded in the ancient practice of feng shui.

Wong Chuk Yeung, Hong Kong, a southern Chinese traditional village dictated by and embedded in the ancient practice of feng shui. Image: Ayesha Pamela Rogers, 1986

Feng shui, or kanyu as it is referred to in classical texts, is the ancient tradition of geomancy that embraces the “links between Chinese cosmology (heaven) and Chinese social reality (earth)” (Ding 2005, 1). By employing the five elements, four cardinal directions, and the concepts of yin and yang, feng shui shapes and designs the cultural landscape and its built elements both tangibly in terms of position, material, and form, and intangibly by channeling qi energy and forces to achieve balance between the cosmos, nature, and humanity.

Feng shui works at several different levels and endows a heritage place with multiple, complex values. The concept can position a settlement within the landscape to create a microcosmic environment that follows the dragons embedded in the mountains. It can order spatial relationships within this settlement to ensure the containment and beneficial flow of qi life force within the dragon’s xu (lair). It can also prescribe the architectural form of individual built elements and the best time for their construction to maintain balance and good fortune. Finally, nurturing of a feng shui woodland behind the village works to embrace the whole and ensures its continuity.

The persistence of the feng shui tradition is evident in the historic village of Pak Mong, founded more than six hundred years ago in the northeast of Lantau Island. The feng shui of Pak Mong has a yang line that is strong and derives straight from the distant mountain of Shek Uk Shan. To augment the yin, the path into Pak Mong has many bends and is surrounded by thick woods that prevent direct views to the exposed ocean. The feng shui wall was also built to prevent direct exposure of the village to the ocean. The “official” entryway is located at the far end of the village and is curved, again to prevent direct outflow.[2]

The wider setting of Pak Mong has been altered with the construction of a new airport and associated highway along the north of Lantau Island, and feng shui arrangements struggle to maintain the cosmic balance. The traditional feng shui layout is still visible in the village plan, although historic built features such as traditional green brick houses, shrines, an ancestral hall, and a watchtower are now overshadowed by modern three-story residences. It may appear that the tradition of geomancy has been lost and that the contemporary community values comfort and modernity over cosmic balance, but that would be incorrect.

Feng shui still looms large in the community psyche. Negative qi from the massive Hong Kong-Zhuhai-Macau Bridge being built to the north of the village has been linked by Pak Mong villagers to the death of eight residents since bridge construction commenced. The village is perceived as being between two of the bridges, an arrangement described in feng shui as like being between two swords. This conviction has led to protests, banners, and demands that the government pay for special ceremonies ten times every month until the bridge is completed to protect the village’s feng shui.

Intangible feng shui values do more than support the significance of historic villages like Pak Mong; they are, in fact, the primary source of that significance. As “the art of adapting the residences of the living and the dead so as to cooperate and harmonize with the local currents of the cosmic breath (or so called qi),” feng shui acts as the frame within which the traditional built environment can function (Skinner 1982, 6). It guarantees security, longevity, and prosperity in the face of hostility and challenges from nature and the gods. The tangible aspects of Pak Mong, such as the traditional village layout, water bodies, shrines, ancestral hall, temple, and house rows, are enabled and validated by the intangible values of the geomantic landscape.

The multiple layers of intangible and tangible values associated with the village of Pak Mong present almost an opposite scenario to that seen in Pakistan’s historic towns; they are recognized and protected to varying degrees, but separately. The village itself is listed and a number of historical structures in it are graded within the Hong Kong heritage system. The feng shui woodland is listed under a forest and countryside ordinance, and feng shui features and concepts are considered by the heritage authorities to be essential parts of the urban and rural landscape to be included in management plans and impact assessments. So the issue is not lack of awareness of values embedded in multiple aspects of the place, but rather the division of these values into different categories under different jurisdictions. Can values-based conservation function in such situations?

Plain of Jars, Lao PDR

The mountainous province of Xieng Khouang in northern Lao PDR is home to the Plain of Jars, a series of at least eighty-five archaeological sites, each containing anywhere from one single jar carved from local stone to several hundred of them (fig. 12.4). The large monolithic jars date from the sixth century BCE to the fifth century CE, and excavations in 2016 revealed evidence of use of the area as a funerary landscape. While there has been knowledge of the site since research was first carried out in the 1930s, the culture that created this landscape is unknown and the Plain of Jars remains an enigmatic heritage place with multiple layers of values.

A jar site in the Plain of Jars, Lao PDR—objects of local myth, archaeological theory, and tourism potential. Image: Ayesha Pamela Rogers, 2003

For local inhabitants, the jars have mystical powers linked to tales of giant ancestors who used them for drinking vessels. Villagers use them for medicinal purposes and recycle jar fragments into contemporary burial markers. For them, the prehistoric archaeological landscape is imbued with intangible but powerful meaning. Its mystery has become a major tourism value. Tourism websites refer to secrets “lost in time,” emphasizing that “we still don’t know with any certainty who created the jars or why, and possibly we never will. The jars may hold on to their secrets forever” (Babcock 2017, n.p.).

Another important layer of meaning, more tangible than the enigma, lies over the same rural landscape; this is the twentieth-century landscape of the Secret War (1964–73) as experienced by the contemporaneous local community (Box 2003). During this period, the United States carried out approximately half a million bombing missions over Xieng Khouang. More than two million tons of ordinance were dropped, of which some 30 percent failed to detonate and remained on or below the surface of more than 25 percent of the province’s farmland, paddy fields, villages, and the Plain of Jars (Rogers and Van den Bergh 2008). This unexploded ordinance (UXO) has implications for the safety of communities, accessibility of agricultural land, and development of tourism at the jar sites.

This is a landscape of devastation with modern negative and memorial values overlaying the ancient archaeological values, linked by tourism. These include the mystical value of the megalithic jars to local communities; economic value of mysterious archaeological remains and war tourism; archaeological and scientific research value of the jar sites; and memorial value of a landscape in which so much life was lost in living memory. It is not surprising that in the perception of local residents of the Plain of Jars, the modern layer of the palimpsest represents particularly urgent and relevant societal values.

The multiple intangible layers of valuation seen at the Plain of Jars—traditional use and meaning, archaeological value, memorial function, tourism narratives—create a tension between tangible and intangible aspects of the place. However, at the same time they are all connected by the very tangible existence of UXO across the landscape and face the threat of loss, physical injury, and death that it poses.

The Secret War left evidence across the Plain of Jars landscape that serves as a tangible reminder of a heritage of pain (Logan and Reeves 2009). The war is part of living memory for many, and bombing craters, bullet-ridden stone jars, and UXO are a permanent reminder of loss and risk. Every family in the Plain of Jars has suffered injury or lost members to death by UXO, even decades after the end of hostilities. The challenge for values-based conservation and management of the heritage place is how to acknowledge its memorial values alongside archaeological, scientific, and other values, including traditional meanings for local residents and future economic values derived from archaeological tourism, battlefield tourism, and ecotourism. None of these values can be explored or developed until the UXO is cleared, illustrating how closely linked tangible and intangible aspects of the site have become. How heritage professionals deal with these realities in the aftermath of war and in preparation of the World Heritage nomination currently under way will have implications for other sites in post-conflict areas.

Maritime Adaptations of the Chaw Lay Sea Gypsies, Phuket, South Thailand

The Chaw Lay are an Indigenous population of the west coast of Thailand. Traditionally they live a nomadic existence over an area extending from Myanmar to Singapore. They travel from base settlements in Phuket and nearby islands to and from a wide range of fishing camps by small boats. This maritime adaptation results in minimal built environment features, for instance temporary structures, compacted sand surfaces, fires, and shell middens. Instead, values are reflected by the intangible and living heritage of the Chaw Lay on water and on shore: from birth to marriage and burial ceremonies; grave cleaning and feasting; Loy Rua, a days-long ceremony to mark the beginning and end of the monsoons and therefore access to the sea; the construction of ritual boats to carry evil out of the community; spirit houses for ancestors and carved poles to mark ceremonial areas; and song, chant, dance and magical potions to bring true love (P. Rogers 1992).

All the adaptive flexibility that the Chaw Lay have built into their marine transhumance is reinforced, which is to say taught, through these annually repeated intangible practices that include the participation of far-flung groups and individuals and often even the ancestors. This can be seen in all types of intangible practice, from Loy Rua festivities to burial customs, where the point is to maintain linkages within the sea-based network of island sites, which, taken as a whole, is their home. In order to maintain this adaptation they value mobility—physical mobility, tool kit mobility, and social mobility. Seasonal ceremonies that bring together mobile groups serve as the cultural glue that fortifies the links between constantly moving Chaw Lay, tying children to the ancestors, facilitating courtship and marriage, and celebrating the people’s connection to their environment. These periodic intangible practices, which reinforce group solidarity, pass on the knowledge needed for a resilience strategy to counter cycles of fragmentation and dispersal (fig. 12.5).

Generations gather at dawn for the ceremony of communal bathing in lustral water, Tukay village, Phuket, Thailand. Image: Ayesha Pamela Rogers, 1979

In other cultures, such practices are often ways to claim title over space, but this cannot be said for the Chaw Lay, whose entire adaptation is grounded in transience. Intangible practices can also be used to guarantee the right to exploit critical marine resources and reinforce group cohesion. These are not mutually exclusive; on the contrary, they are mutually inclusive, as together they provide stability and resilience in a mobile lifestyle.

The overall significance of Chaw Lay heritage resides almost exclusively in the multiple values attributed to their rich intangible culture. The concept of “heritage place” has limited meaning in such a mobile culture based on a perishable and small material culture. Chaw Lay heritage places are associated instead with specific ritual spaces, all conceptualized by the Chaw Lay in relation to the sea. These include the shoreline for launching ceremonial boats and posting poles and ancestral flags; hilltops overlooking the sea for ritual feasts; promontories and bays as locations for burial grounds; peripheral edges of villages as the site of spirit houses; and, critically, the surface of the sea itself as the ritual space for all of life.

For the Chaw Lay, heritage places are geographical locations in their physical environment and the values they attach to them are therefore mobile, abstract, and embedded in nature. The greatest threat facing the Chaw Lay and their cultural values is loss of these shorelines, promontories, bays, and marine resources to tourism, property development, and industrial fishing. This is happening now, and legal and overt conflict has arisen at Rawai, a heavily touristed beach in Phuket, where the Chaw Lay have been excluded from the entire range of their ecological niche. Rawai is a flash point, one of the last places where Chaw Lay values thrive, intangibly through the ceremonies and celebrations that take place there and tangibly in the nearby spirit area and cemetery. How does the values-based approach respond to such cases of imminent threat to Indigenous values from the modern world?

Discussion

Reflecting on these vignettes that focus on intangible and living values highlights issues for a values-based approach to heritage conservation and management. First, there are major challenges in places where values-based conservation is still not understood and has not been adopted. Large portions of the world’s heritage are in the custodianship of bodies who are unfamiliar with values concepts and values-based conservation approaches, and are actively suspicious of any stakeholder involvement. In these cases, all values, particularly social ones, play little or no role in the work of conserving and managing heritage places. This is particularly relevant in places such as Pakistan, which still follow the colonial code for heritage conservation prescribed in Sir John Marshall’s Conservation Manual: A Handbook for the Use of Archaeological Officers and Others Entrusted with the Care of Ancient Monuments (1923), where values are not part of decision making even at World Heritage properties. The narrow focus on the fabric of sites and monuments is reinforced by the legislative framework, which is similarly based on colonial-period heritage laws. There is little postcolonial discourse on heritage in Pakistan, surprisingly for a postindependence state trying “to continue a nineteenth-century vision of a nation in territories that were … made more divided as part of the process of European colonization” (Harrison and Hughes 2009, 266). There is widespread dissatisfaction with how heritage is dealt with, but at the same time a notable lack of postcolonial critique of official approaches to heritage management. Discussion of possible responses to this challenge are closely tied to my second point.

International values-based approaches are often applied to specific projects in countries where values do not usually play a role in heritage conservation. The aim is to introduce best practices, raise awareness of values-based conservation, and set new standards. However, in reality such efforts have no impact or lasting effect at the local level. For example, values-based principles may have guided management plans written for the Pakistan World Heritage properties of Lahore Fort and Shalamar Gardens, but it is fair to say that no conservation actions taken since, to implement these plans or manage heritage in general, have considered values in any way (UNESCO Islamabad, Rogers, and Lari 2006; UNESCO Islamabad 2006). Setting examples of values-based best practice is not an effective way on its own to introduce and operationalize the approach in places without the appropriate value awareness framework. What is needed is focused capacity building to be embedded in existing university programs in heritage, architecture, and planning. Long-term investment in values training for government officers is needed for government officers in order to inform those already in decision-making positions and the younger generation of future officeholders.

Heritage conservators and managers need to acknowledge multiple and often conflicting layers of values at a place, particularly when they break down into traditional and Indigenous versus modernizing and global values. This is vividly enacted at all these heritage places. The way that local inhabitants of historic places have created social spaces within “inaccessible” monuments can enhance our understanding of how to conserve and manage the values of archaeological or built heritage. Similarly, core social values of community, communication, and sharing of activities and space in historic towns can be reflected in spatial plans and uses of heritage. A shift in focus to preserving patterns and relationships of such places over their appearance would preserve continuity of use and footprint while maintaining the spatial patterns that position people and places within a mutually understood context. Identification and understanding of intangible social values require wider use of anthropological and ethnographic skills and approaches combined with local participation and mapping of patterns, relationships, and interactions.

The strength of values-based conservation lies in great part in its recognition of the importance of stakeholder inclusion—bringing new groups into the values identification process in order to ensure more effective conservation planning with “responsiveness to the needs of stakeholders, communities, and contemporary society” (Mason 2002, 6). This lies at the core of identifying and understanding social values but is anathema for many heritage and antiquities departments in Asia and beyond. The challenge is to identify mechanisms for cooperation that bring multiple stakeholders into the process in ways that do not threaten authorities sensitive to criticism and change.

In Hong Kong, the village of Pak Mong illustrates how complicated this consideration of values can become; it is on the List of Recognised Villages, which includes villages proven to be in existence in 1898, reflecting value in age. A few historical buildings within such villages may be listed as graded buildings or monuments under the Antiquities and Monuments Ordinance based on value in age, architectural merit, or rarity. Feng shui woodlands are protected either as Sites of Special Scientific Interest under the Forests and Countryside Ordinance or as conservation areas based on ecological and scientific value. Individual feng shui features inside and near historic villages and woodlands are inventoried for their historical and rarity value.

Thus Pak Mong represents values as seen through the expert eyes of forest and countryside officials, the antiquities department, planners, and researchers. Different sets of values that are not necessarily conflicting but embedded in different attributes are managed separately, often to the detriment of the values of the heritage as a whole. These disparate values can be merged if the village and its setting are viewed as a cultural landscape defined by and imbued with the intangible value of feng shui. Landscape is “the repository of intangible values and human meanings that nurture our very existence. This is why landscape and memory are inseparable because landscape is the nerve centre of our personal and collective memories” (Taylor 2008, 4). In the case of the Chaw Lay, a cultural landscape framework could support the safeguarding of intangible values linking sea and islands, communities, and generations of people that are attached to places but not to tangible heritage built form.

The challenge for values-based conservation and management of the Plain of Jars is to balance memorial values alongside archaeological, scientific, and other values, including traditional meanings for local residents and future economic values derived from archaeological tourism, battlefield tourism, and ecotourism. The Lao-UNESCO Programme for Safeguarding the Plain of Jars (initiated in 1998) focused on locally led site documentation, UXO clearance to create a safe and stable environment, local community-based heritage and tourism management, and monitoring of socioeconomic and cultural impacts. This approach has been replaced by a new collaborative project between Lao and Australian researchers that hopes to “unlock more of the secrets behind the Plain of Jars.” The focus is on archaeological investigations, including excavation and “an array of advanced analytical techniques” involving experienced researchers and advanced technology and innovation from Australia (Australian Embassy n.d.). This change in approach risks a change in how the landscape is valued. “While looking at the same vistas, locals often see ‘landscapes of continuity,’ which they adapt to present needs, whereas archaeologists often see ‘landscapes of clearance,’ created by taxonomies that have the impact of freezing the past and removing it from present use” (Stroulia and Sutton 2010, 25).

Each of these case studies contributes to our understanding of how the values attributed to intangible aspects of cultural heritage places support their overall significance: the personal spiritual narratives of ordinary Lahorites add rich meaning to an otherwise undervalued and neglected Mughal monument; the living social values of Pakistan’s historic towns generate the sense of place fundamental to their significance; the significance of Pak Mong traditional village is based on adherence to intangible geomantic principles; at the Plain of Jars, we see an unexplained archaeological landscape overlain with intangible memorial values linked to all-too-tangible evidence of recent violence; and in Phuket intangible ceremonies, ritual space, and linkages over water combine to define the essence of the Chaw Lay adaptation.

These case studies also illustrate what Erica Avrami and Randall Mason describe in their essay in this volume as the problematic nature of values and value conflicts. As we recognize an increasing range of values ascribed by differing actors and delve into their multiplicity, mutability, and interrelationships, it becomes apparent that conserving them all may well be impossible; decisions must be made, priorities set. The aim of values-based conservation is to understand the variety and nature of values ascribed to a place and integrate that understanding into decision making that results in effective, relevant conservation. The challenge is how values-based approaches can achieve this and strengthen the kinds of value relationships described in the case studies presented above in ways that may create better outcomes for heritage conservation and management.

These value relationships highlight the importance of “social value,” described by Siân Jones as the value that “encompasses the significance of the historic environment to contemporary communities, including people’s sense of identity, belonging and place, as well as forms of memory and spiritual association. These are fluid, culturally specific forms of value created through experience and practice. Furthermore, whilst some align with authorized heritage discourses, others are created through unofficial and informal modes of engagement” (2016, 1). Recognition and development of these “informal modes of engagement” is key to successful integration of these important social values into values-based conservation. Avrami and Mason point out that there are always social values behind heritage, because heritage, as a means of connecting people and place through memory and narrative, is a social construction: “By redefining the social dimension of heritage beyond static statements of significance and toward dynamic processes of engagement with clear societal aims, the heritage field has the potential to serve as a powerful agent of change.”

Notes

1. To quote Avrami and Mason in this volume. ↩

2. Patrick Hase, personal conversation, 1997. ↩

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- Mason, Randall. 2002. “Assessing Values in Conservation Planning: Methodological Issues and Choices.” In Assessing the Values of Cultural Heritage: Research Report, edited by Marta de la Torre, 5–30. Los Angeles: Getty Conservation Institute. Accessed March 11, 2017. http://hdl.handle.net/10020/gci_pubs/values_cultural_heritage.

- Rogers, Ayesha Pamela. 2011. “A Popular Past: Personal Narratives of Heritage Places.” Sohbet 2: Journal of Art & Culture 2, https://www.academia.edu/1248861/A_Popular_Past_Personal_Narratives_of_Heritage_Places.

- Rogers, Pamela. 1992. “Celebrations of the Sea People of Southern Thailand.” Hong Kong Anthropologist 5:29–32. http://arts.cuhk.edu.hk/~ant/hka/documents/oldseries/HKA05.pdf.

- Rogers, Pamela R., and Julie Van den Bergh. 2008. “The Legacy of a Secret War: Archaeological Research and Bomb Clearance in the Plain of Jars, Lao PDR.” In Interpreting Southeast Asia’s Past: Monument, Image, Text, edited by Elizabeth A. Bacus, Ian C. Glover, and Peter D. Sharrock, 400–408. Singapore: NUS.

- Skinner, Stephen. 1982. The Living Earth Manual of Feng Shui: Chinese Geomancy. New York: Arkana Penguin.

- Stroulia, Anna, and Susan Buck Sutton, eds. 2010. Archaeology in Situ: Sites, Archaeology, and Communities in Greece. Lanham, MD: Lexington.

- Taylor, Ken. 2008. “Landscape and Memory: Cultural Landscapes, Intangible Values and Some Thoughts on Asia.” In Finding the Spirit of Place: Between the Tangible and the Intangible: 16th ICOMOS General Assembly and International Scientific Symposium, 29 Sept–4 Oct 2008, Quebec. Accessed December 18, 2017. https://www.icomos.org/quebec2008/cd/toindex/77_pdf/77-wrVW-272.pdf.

- UNESCO Islamabad. 2006. Shalamar Gardens Master Plan 2006–2011. Islamabad, Pakistan: UNESCO. Accessed December 18, 2017. http://unesdoc.unesco.org/images/0021/002169/216928e.pdf.

- UNESCO Islamabad, Pamela Rogers, and Yasmeen Lari. 2006. Lahore Fort Master Plan 2006–2011. Islamabad, Pakistan: UNESCO. Accessed December 18, 2017. http://unesdoc.unesco.org/images/0022/002202/220201e.pdf.

13

The Paradox of Valuing the Invaluable: Managing Cultural Values in Heritage Places

- Tara Sharma

Heritage conservation in India is historically rooted in a material-based approach. In recent years some have attempted to adopt a more values-based approach, yet conserving living sites and objects of worship presents many challenges. Values are still largely defined by “experts,” and conservation decisions based on such assessments may be contested by traditional custodians and local communities whose practices favor renewal and maintenance over the preservation of physical fabric, and who place the continuity of intangible social values at the core of decision making. Citing examples from villages in the Trans-Himalayan region of Ladakh, this paper explores approaches negotiating multiple, often contentious, cultural values surrounding the treatment of religious sites and objects.

Heritage conservation in India is historically rooted in a material-based approach. In recent years some have attempted to adopt a more values-based approach, yet conserving living sites and objects of worship presents many challenges. Values are still largely defined by “experts,” and conservation decisions based on such assessments may be contested by traditional custodians and local communities whose practices favor renewal and maintenance over the preservation of physical fabric, and who place the continuity of intangible social values at the core of decision making. Citing examples from villages in the Trans-Himalayan region of Ladakh, this paper explores approaches negotiating multiple, often contentious, cultural values surrounding the treatment of religious sites and objects.

Places and objects valued by local communities across Asia have been handed down from generation to generation, either repaired and maintained in the form in which they are inherited, or sometimes created anew over older remains. Traditional systems of management practices, local beliefs, and living art traditions enable continuity in the transmission of social values embodied in these places. The positioning of these practices and associated social values within the heritage discourse has gained acceptance over the past several decades, particularly with the shift from a material- to a values-based approach.[1]

The basic premise of the values-based approach is that people ascribe value to heritage places in countless ways, and that values play a central role in defining and directing conservation of built heritage. The ultimate aim of conservation in the values-based approach is not to conserve material for its own sake, but rather to maintain (and shape) the values embodied by the heritage, with physical intervention or treatment being one of many means toward that end (Avrami, Mason, and de la Torre 2000). A primary challenge is prioritizing diverse (particularly intangible) values. In practice, differences may arise stemming from the very construct of the notion of heritage or the diverse values seen to be embodied in it by multiple communities of heritage conservators and traditional custodians.

This paper explores some of the practical challenges faced in the field when negotiating diverse cultural values by sharing experiences working with core communities in villages across the Trans-Himalayan region of Ladakh in India.[2] These experiences are positioned across a spectrum spanning the formal conservation discourse in India, epitomized by the predominantly material-based approach of the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI), the values-based approach of heritage professionals working on so-called unprotected heritage, and traditional and/or Indigenous management practices, worldviews, and belief systems.

Negotiating diverse and often conflicting values in heritage places is often biased by one’s own limited understanding of larger social or religious contexts within which this heritage is situated—beginning with the very process of identifying heritage. Participatory approaches to cultural mapping can contribute to a more layered and nuanced understanding of heritage, but conserving diverse values in practice during conservation projects is far more challenging. Where traditional approaches of renewal and maintenance continue, communities place the continuity of intangible social values at the core of decision making. For conservation programs implemented by heritage experts, it is the continuity of the physical fabric that still dictates the values to be conserved. This paper explores the dilemmas faced by both heritage conservators and core communities in negotiating values stemming from very different views on continuity.

Approaches to the Conservation of Built Heritage in India

The main conservation principles and concepts as understood and practiced today by heritage institutions and professionals emerged in eighteenth-century Europe (Jokilehto 2011). For former colonies of the British Empire, this was inherited as an archaeology-based conservation practice that still forms the backbone of heritage legislation in countries such as India. In the postcolonial period, Asian countries have also absorbed much of the modern heritage discourse from global institutions like UNESCO and ICOMOS (Chapagain 2013).

The Ancient Monuments and Antiquities Sites and Remains Act, passed in 1958 and amended in 2010, remains the primary legal instrument by which more than thirty-five hundred nationally protected monuments and sites are preserved by the ASI.[3] An ancient monument is defined as “any structure, erection or monument, or any tumulus or place of interment, or any cave, rock-sculpture, inscription or monolith which is of historical, archaeological or artistic interest and which has been in existence for not less than one hundred years” (Republic of India 1958, section 2a). Archaeological sites and remains are “any area which contains or is reasonably believed to contain ruins or relics of historical or archaeological importance which have been in existence for not less than one hundred years” (Republic of India 1958, section 2d). Within the framework of this definition, the emphasis on what is commonly referred to as the material-based approach has informed much of the ASI’s work.

In 2014 the National Policy for Conservation (Republic of India 2014) was framed by the ASI for nationally protected monuments under their purview. It sought to consider the changing contexts for monument conservation in India and articulated the need for a shift from a material-based to a values-based approach. Article 5.01 states, “It is important to define the nature of conservation intervention for monuments that is based on their value/significance which is determined by the nature and extent of intervention required for its conservation. The imperative of such values-based approach is derived from the nature/typology of a monument and from the interpretation of its value/significance.” Subsequent articles of the policy, however, define the range of conservation measures that may be adopted on a monument as depending largely on its archaeological, artistic, or architectural value. The policy does not specifically address social values, and in fact certain provisions may not augur well for the conservation of social values. For instance:

- “Missing or damaged sculptures, idols, wall paintings, inscriptions, etc., should not be replaced or attempted to be completed.” (Article 4.11)

- “In cases where inappropriate modern or recent additions and/or alterations have been made to the monument in the recent past, after its protection, which have a direct impact on the authenticity/integrity of the monument, it may be desirable to remove or undo such interventions. The monument should then be restored to either its original or an earlier known state depending upon the available evidences.” (Article 4.16)

This is particularly true in religious places where renewal and evolution are integral to the life cycle. It is here that the potential for conflict arises between custodians and heritage professionals, as we will see.

While ASI’s approach is confined to monuments and sites under its protection, a more flexible values-based approach has been adopted by heritage professionals working on what is referred to as “unprotected” heritage. Documents such as the INTACH charter (Indian National Trust for Art and Cultural Heritage 2004) acknowledge, for example, the role of traditional craftsmanship in conservation and the tradition of renewal. The practical applications of these principles, however, remain contested even among heritage professionals.[4] Not all heritage, however, is conserved by the ASI or the network of trained heritage conservators. In fact, a sizable portion of India’s heritage is maintained by age-old practices of repair and renewal carried out by community-led traditional management bodies that continue to perform a function in contemporary community life. Over the past few decades, partnerships between these community bodies and heritage practitioners have formed in places like Ladakh to conserve diverse values and have enriched the heritage discourse in India.

The Conundrum of Defining Values: By Whom? For Whom?

The gap between traditional and contemporary conservation practices stems from the very definition of what constitutes “heritage” (T. Sharma 2013). In the case of Asian heritage, this definition stems more from spiritual or intangible beliefs and worldviews than tangible or material aesthetic principles (Chapagain 2013). The task of identifying heritage itself is driven predominantly by the heritage professional. As Laurajane Smith points out, “Heritage is heritage because it is subjected to the management and preservation/conservation process, not because it simply ‘is.’ This process does not just find sites and places to manage and protect. It is itself a constitutive cultural process that identifies those things and places that can be given meaning and value as ‘heritage,’ reflecting contemporary cultural and social values, debates, and aspirations” (2006, 3).

The identification of built heritage through the creation of inventories is one of the first steps taken in developing long-term conservation strategies. In 2003, the Namgyal Institute for Research on Ladakhi Art and Culture (NIRLAC), with a mandate to develop a regional conservation program for the Trans-Himalayan region of Ladakh, began the task of inventorying immovable cultural resources. The NIRLAC approach overturned then-popular top-down practices wherein experts—conservation architects, historians, archaeologists—would visit an area to identify heritage places of significance at the regional level, which in the case of Ladakh generally focused on Buddhist monasteries and temples, palaces, and forts. The project, funded by the Ford Foundation, instead chose to understand heritage from the village level up in order to identify what kinds of built or landscape elements were valued by the village communities.

The criteria for the inventory had to be constantly reevaluated and revised as community perceptions came to be more clearly understood (T. Sharma 2013). It encompassed a wide range of heritage, from the well-known typologies of monasteries, forts, and palaces; to village temples, mosques, stupas, mani walls (built of stones inscribed with Lamaist prayers), lhato (altars to the protector deities), lubang (altars to the underworld deities, lu), solitary cave retreats for monks, and steles; to remains of archaeological importance, such as petroglyphs or abandoned ruins of ancient temples or stupas. The inventory also documented elements of the landscape that the community held sacred, including mountains, rock formations, trees, lakes, and so on. Nomadic camping grounds and pasture lands were also included (fig. 13.1) (Namgyal Institute for Research on Ladakhi Art and Culture 2008).

The inventory included elements of the landscape such as the nomadic camping grounds in the Changthang region. Image: Tara Sharma

The inventory also included contemporary places of cultural significance such as the Jiwestal, where His Holiness the Dalai Lama delivers his teachings in Ladakh. Image: Tara Sharma

While recording the significance of each heritage place, emphasis was given to understanding its value for contemporary village communities. For example, rows of stupas (chorten) that line the entrances to Buddhist villages were included for their significance to passersby who circumambulate them as they travel to and from the village, rather than for their antiquity. Age itself was measured in generations as recounted by villagers, whose estimations were sometimes accurate and sometimes glaringly erroneous, highlighting the subjective perception of time itself. Some of the contemporary places of significance such as the Jiwestal, large grounds in the outskirts of Leh, where His Holiness the Dalai Lama delivers his teachings to the people when he visits Ladakh, were included, as were the stupas constructed on these grounds (fig. 13.2). Sacred landscape elements continue to be discovered in Ladakh by eminent spiritual leaders, and during the inventory the team revisited villages where such sacred sites had been recently identified.

The inventory was carried out primarily by a team of Ladakhi youth familiar with the language and culture, and included scholars, pilgrims, monks, and tour guides in addition to architects. This leap from the typical practice of mapping by experts, where emphasis is placed on physical or architectural descriptions of the listed heritage, to a significance-based mapping drawing on the community’s association with a place, drew its share of criticism from experts at the time (T. Sharma 2013).

With the village as the focal point for the inventory, legends associated with the founding and naming of villages were also documented, bringing to light the fascinating nature-culture link of human habitation in the cold, arid desert landscape. The Dards, who migrated many centuries ago from their original homeland around the Gilgit region of present-day Pakistan, are a specific ethnic group in Ladakh. One of the villages they founded is that of Dha. According to their oral histories, they migrated across the mountains from their homeland in the Gilgit region, residing for a while in the upper mountain reaches (Dha Brog) before winding down to the present settlement. From Dha Brog, an ancestral hero, Gil Singhe, is said to have shot an arrow down toward the present village, announcing that the people would settle wherever the arrow struck. The arrow struck a rock, and even today the village draws water from this point where they believe the arrow landed. The word dha means “arrow” in the local dialect (Namgyal Institute for Research on Ladakhi Art and Culture 2008).

The inventory also highlighted some of the paradoxes inherent in its own approach. First, circumscribing what constituted heritage versus what fell outside this boundary was not always clear. For core communities, continuity of association (through cultural processes of creation and renewal) implied that values stemming from materiality or from age or antiquity were not necessarily a priority. Other values—predominantly social values for contemporary communities—were given more weight. For example, the question arose whether to include in the list contemporary stupas that continue to be created across Ladakh employing modern construction materials and contemporary styles as part of a continuing tradition. Equally, a decision was made to include places, specifically mosques and imambara (buildings used by Shia Muslims for rituals commemorating the martyrdom of Husain Ali in the first month of the Islamic calendar), that had been entirely rebuilt in the recent past using modern construction materials and new architectural vocabularies but were deemed of value for the core community, who still viewed them as spaces that had been used continuously for worship over the centuries. The space and its function, rather than the built envelope enclosing the space, were deemed to be of value.

Another dilemma involved translating ideas of heritage and values into local parlance. In a sense, everything could be considered as having heritage value, given the specific ways in which communities in Ladakh have adapted to the desert climate, where limited access to resources has impacted almost all facets of life. From objects of daily use, such as a clay pot produced in Likir or an embossed metal plate from Chiling, to the layout of villages, with the scattering of burial grounds and sacred places, terraced fields and orchards irrigated through traditional water management systems, and adobe dwellings reflecting the specific social organization (the khangba or “big house” and khangu or “little house”), all reflect diverse values to heritage professionals, while for communities all are viewed as part of a way of life.

Participatory approaches that recognize diverse values at the stage of identifying heritage in a specific cultural context are critical. It is important to note that while the process of identification of heritage values helps heritage practitioners develop conservation plans, it also impacts how communities view their heritage as selected places and objects whose specific values distinguish them from the mundane. What is of value to a specific community or communities subsequently gains value for wider communities. For example, museums established within monasteries in Ladakh hold ritual objects once valued for their functional use as aids in religious practice, which today are understood to have additional artistic or historical values that are recognized by wider global communities.

Conserving Values: How and by Whom?

While the inventory program highlighted the diverse range of values, the actual challenge of prioritizing these values came through the implementation of conservation programs. One of the most visible and contentious areas is the conservation of wall paintings inside Buddhist temples and monasteries. The historic and artistic significance of Buddhist wall paintings and temple sculptures in Ladakh, dating from about the tenth century onward, has today been well established by art historians. Substantial research since the 1970s has revealed a wealth of information on the evolution and transmission of artistic styles and the historical expansion of the various schools of Buddhism, while more recent research into materials and techniques has shed light on the high technical quality and sophistication of their execution, which has enabled them to survive to this day.

With an aim to conserve the art historical values of these paintings, several programs have been initiated by both the ASI and nonprofit organizations applying scientific principles to meet international conservation standards. The final post-conservation presentation of wall paintings is subject to intense negotiations. At the same time, local village and monastic management bodies continue their tradition of maintaining and creating anew as the need arises.

This is because for core communities, other values are recognized in these paintings, namely their use as tools to aid meditation and spiritual practice. Through the act of consecration, all sacred objects are given a “mandate” to fulfill their purpose of existence—to aid the spiritual development of living beings. This mandate runs through the life cycle of the sacred object until it succumbs to the effects of the four elements: earth, water, fire, wind.[5] At this stage, depending on the spiritual value, the mandate may be transferred to a new object or painting consecrated for this purpose, or it may be allowed to completely decay if it has been associated with a powerful spiritual personality. For instance Dzongsar Ngari Choedje Thingo Rimpoche, a great scholar and until his death in 2008 the abbot of Dzongsar monastery in Kham, eastern Tibet, told me that in the context of painted scrolls, even if the painting is very badly damaged, it should not be restored because the mandate that has been given is valid as long as the last small piece of the painting remains: “Touching a thangka with one of the four elements (paint, for example, can contain water or earthen products, and sometimes is heated with fire) in order to change its structure, would end the mandate. At some point the thangka will succumb to one of the four elements.”[6] According to the Buddhist monk Matthieu Ricard, conservation approaches should primarily be suited to answer the requirements of ritual functions and practice (Fonjaudran, Menon, and Gill 2012).

To illustrate this diversity in values and their application in the conservation process, let us consider a few examples. In 1998, Hemis Monastery was included in India’s tentative list for nomination on UNESCO’s World Heritage List.[7] The monastery, founded in the seventeenth century, is a thriving center of the Drukpa Kagyu sect and is listed as a nationally protected monument by the ASI. Values recognized at the time of its inclusion on the tentative list focused on its historical and architectural values as the oldest monastery in the region belonging to the Drukpa Kagyu and as a unique example of a monastic complex of the period. Its contemporary spiritual values for the core community were not acknowledged. In 2008, the old assembly hall in the complex, which had been deteriorating for many years, was finally partially demolished and rebuilt by the monastic community following a long standoff between the ASI and the monks. The loss of the “original” wall paintings following this partial demolition was vociferously lamented by heritage professionals and even drew the attention of the national media. For the monastic management committee, repair and renovation of the monastery as a contemporary institution was an ongoing process, as monks resided and prayed here. For the heritage professionals, the lack of conservation expertise and dependence on village masons by the monastery did not bode well (Dogra 2008). This view was voiced by other conservators, too: “A Buddhist monastery in Ladakh sans wall paintings is nothing but mud walls. Monasteries in Ladakh are major storehouses of beautiful wall paintings belonging to different historical periods” (J. Sharma 2003, 31). It is interesting to note here that contemporary wall paintings executed by trained Buddhist artists are not included in this framing of historical periods. The views of the custodians and of the conservators stem from very different understandings of the cultural values embodied in the monastery (fig. 13.3) (T. Sharma 2018).

Wall paintings are particularly vulnerable to precipitation in Ladakh, and in the past few decades their conservation has elicited much discussion among custodians and conservators, particularly in regard to the diverse spiritual and art historical values they embody. Image: Tara Sharma

To understand the context of the repainting at Hemis Monastery, I spoke with the master artists, the (since deceased) Padma Shri Tsering Angdus Olthangpa and his disciple, who were given this responsibility by the monastic management. The artists explained that only decayed wall sections were demolished, and every attempt was made to retain the work of the original artist. The missing sections were repainted according to the previous iconographic layouts. However, on completion, the stark visual difference between the older paintings and new ones was found to be too distracting for spiritual practice, and it was decided to overlay new colors within the original line work. For the artists, the original work remained the original work, just refreshed with new pigments. They also pointed out that at the time of retouching the older paintings, they encountered evidence of earlier cycles of repainting. The continuity in the tradition of repairing damaged wall paintings, itself a product of a traditional monastic management system, must be understood in the context of the social values of the monastery (T. Sharma 2018).

The conservation of wall paintings within the Lama Lhakhang chamber, undertaken for Chemday Monastery by the Indian National Trust for Art and Cultural Heritage (INTACH), highlighted the potential to conserve these diverse values through in-depth discussions between custodians and conservators. The monastery, contemporary to Hemis, belongs to the same Drukpa Kagyu order and is managed through a traditional monastic system. The paintings, dating back to the seventeenth century and the time of the monastery’s founding, had survived but were in fragile condition. The entrance wall was particularly obscured with a centuries-old accumulation of soot from dust and burning oil lamps, while other walls demonstrated different issues, including detachment of the paint layers, delamination, cracks, and loss of plaster. In discussions with the monks, it was revealed that the current condition of the paintings impeded spiritual practice, and options for conservation as well as retouching and/or painting anew were discussed. After consultations between the monastic management and the artist Tsering Angdus (now deceased), it was decided to permit the conservation of the wall paintings, with the option to repaint incomplete sections post-conservation resting with the monks.

Discussions on the conservation approach involved both conservators and monks. The former group focused on the appropriate method for cleaning the paintings and whether to employ only mechanical (as opposed to chemical) cleaning. The monks were clear that if the paintings were not legible following conservation, spiritual practice would be disrupted and repainting would be needed. Where heavy soot in some areas obscured the figures beneath, solvent cleaning generally led to positive outcomes, including the revelation of a rare painting of the founder, the great spiritual leader Lama Stagtsang Raspa, and his patron, King Sengge Namgyal (fig. 13.4a and fig. 13.4b), reinforcing the strong spiritual association with the monastery’s founding (INTACH Conservation Institutes 2013).

A seventeenth-century wall painting in the Lama Lhakhang obscured by layers of soot (a) and then after conservation (b), which revealed a rare image of the patron King Sengge Namgyal and the founder Lama Stagtsang Raspa. Images: Tara Sharma

I had the opportunity to mediate discussions among the monks, artists, and conservators concerning repainting where paint layers had been completely lost. International conservation standards of minimum intervention and reversibility generally govern the approach taken toward the conservation and final presentation of wall paintings. Yet as David Lowenthal succinctly states, the idea that “nothing should be done that could not be undone, that each valued artifact was entitled to be returned to its previous or ‘original’ condition,” is coming to be understood as more and more “quixotically unrealistic. The erosions and accretions of memory and history implacably alter every physical object no less than they do each sentient being” (2000, 20). In particular, “While the general approach to the conservation of a work of art is to carry out minimal reconstruction of damaged or missing elements in a mural painting, the same philosophy cannot be adopted for a living religious site” (Sharma and Weber 2011, 81).

A range of techniques have been adopted by art conservators in the past for the final presentation of temple wall paintings in Ladakh, “which included processes such as trattegio or rigatoni, chromatic selection, neutral color infill and invisible retouching, based on the viewers’ field of vision and iconographic importance of the image for the community” (Sharma and Weber 2011, 82). Repainting of missing portions by local artists is usually carried out under the guidance of trained conservators using conservation-grade materials and techniques to distinguish the intervention from the historic layer. The role of the conservators is ultimately to advocate for the wall paintings themselves, irrespective of their functions, and to prolong their life by stabilizing the existing materials and adopting a cleaning approach to improve their legibility (Fonjaudran, Menon, and Gill 2012).[8] Conservation programs focus on the need to conserve values associated with the historic and artistic characteristics of material fabric, and less on social values that arise from continued traditions of creation and renewal followed by artists and monks. In Chemday, the monks’ decision that local artists would repaint only the missing areas of images was followed, which enabled the paintings to be completed and fulfill their mandate for religious practice. Paintings that were complete and visible after cleaning by conservators were not repainted.

For the core community, the primary social value that the paintings embody stems from a specific cultural context in which sacred art is created and for which artists undergo rigorous training. The training includes traditional fields of knowledge such as philosophy, logic, literature, medical sciences, and astrology, along with the arts, making it a complete knowledge system. Today young novices and artists are trained at the Central Institute of Buddhist Studies in Leh, where senior artists like the late Tsering Angdus once taught.[9] Tsering Angdus was a disciple of his master, Deba Pasang of Narthang of the Tsang province of southwestern Tibet, who was trained in the Menri style of the Tsang school, which was developed in the fifteenth century by Manla Dondrub, with whom Tsering Angdus believed he had a karmic connection. Great emphasis is placed on correct iconometry and drawing. In the early 1980s Tsering Angdus and his disciples painted the Guru Lhakhang in Chemday Monastery, described by one author as the finest tantric figures to be seen in Ladakh (Lo Bue 2011). Tsering Angdus described the process by which he would create paintings, sitting in retreat and meditating upon the attributes of the sacred figure he was planning to portray. Mineral pigments, which he formerly prepared himself, were gradually replaced with modern synthetic pigments now commonly used by artists across Ladakh. There were rituals associated with the creation of the painting as well, culminating in the final opening of the eyes and consecration of the image (rab nas) infusing the sacred essence into the image (T. Sharma forthcoming).

Painting a sacred image is not simply a routine following a prescribed formula of proportions and measurements, but a spiritual enactment of the artist’s intent (fig. 13.5). The deity could refuse to reside in an image if it is incorrectly portrayed at the time of consecration or if the artist is not treated respectfully by the patron. Quoting from the Tantra of Consecration, Jamgön Kongtrul Lodrö Tayé, the nineteenth-century Tibetan scholar and author of the encyclopedic Treasury of Knowledge, notes that “the being of pristine cognition (jñañasattva) will not enter [the image of] a deity fashioned by an artist who is displeased. At the start of the consecration the artist should be pleased” (Tayé 2012, 185). The jñañasattva will not enter into a deity image that is imperfectly created, and in such cases only negativity will ensue. Even good deeds carried out in a place where such an image is enshrined will diminish and such places should be abandoned in favor of purer locations.

An artist painting an image of Guru Padmasabhava on the walls of a newly built temple in Gya village, Ladakh. The paintings conform to iconographic standards laid down in Buddhist canonical texts and traditionally passed from master to apprentice. Image: Tara Sharma

The conservation of diverse values, as seen from the examples above, is a complex process that requires new tools of learning and practice for today’s heritage practitioners. Accepting that heritage values are not rooted solely in antiquity or materiality, but equally in the continuity of traditions and practices, requires a new framework for engaging with communities that recognizes the roles of traditional management bodies and contemporary institutions of learning about traditional arts in the decision-making process.

Conclusion

Traditional practices regarding the maintenance of sacred objects and structures continues today in villages across Ladakh, stemming from a worldview that acknowledges cycles of creation, repair, renewal, and decay. Damaged folios of sacred texts, thangkas, votive tablets, and other ritual paraphernalia are often placed inside a collapsed chorten (shrine) or immersed in water to decay, much to the dismay of heritage professionals! But this practice follows a tradition laid out in Buddhist texts relating to the fine arts, mentioned in the Pratimāmānalakshanām (Theory of Proportions of Statues), a Tibetan translation of an original Sanskrit work found in the Tengyur: “The image of a goddess, established or being established, if it be burnt, worn out, broken or split up will always be faulty…. They should be given farewell according to the usual ceremonial rites” (Ātreya, Cauhāna, and Juganū 2013, 40). Depending on the material of the statue, certain modes are prescribed for its ritual destruction after appropriate deconsecration rituals. The jñañasattva is reinstalled in the newly commissioned image. The text concludes with the merit that accrues to the person who thus cares for an old statue (Ātreya, Cauhāna, and Juganū 2013, 42). Acceptance of the material life cycle of a sacred object—creation, maintenance, decay—stems from a worldview that places the continuity of the intangible value at the core of decision making.

Heritage professionals are now realizing that valuing the invaluable may not be such a paradox. They are negotiating diverse values, and pushing the envelope of the profession to embrace divergent value systems. Alternate narratives on traditional management practices for the conservation of heritage places, and on the stewardship of communities in decision making regarding what to conserve and how, are today finding their place in the heritage discourse. The actual implications of recognizing larger social, economic, and religious contexts within which heritage is positioned is leading to a rethinking of approaches to heritage places and objects, placing communities at the core of decision making.[10]

Notes

1. The material-based approach can be described as: who (the community group responsible for heritage definition and protection), the conservation professionals; what (the meaning of heritage, and the aim of conservation), preservation of the material of the past; and how (the way heritage is protected by the relevant community group), treating fabric as a non-“renewable” resource, aligning power in the hands of the conservation professionals, the so-called experts, without the involvement of the community, and conducting conservation with reference to modern, science-based principles and practices (Poulios 2014). The model of a values-based approach has been described as: who, stakeholders and other interest groups, including local and Indigenous communities; what, protection of values associated not only to tangible but also to intangible heritage expressions such as user or social value; and how, involving stakeholder groups and conducting conservation with reference not only to modern, science-based principles and practices of the conservation professionals but also to the traditional management systems and maintenance practices of the local communities (Poulios 2015). ↩

2. The core community is defined as a specific local group that created heritage and sustains its original function, considers heritage an integral part of its contemporary life (in terms of its identity, pride, self-esteem, structure, and well-being), and sees caring for heritage as its own inherent obligation (Poulios 2015). ↩

3. The ASI, established in 1861, is India’s official agency charged with protecting and conserving monuments of national importance as well as conducting archaeological excavations and research. ↩

4. For a review of the INTACH charter see (Kawathekar, De Sarkar, and Rai 2005). ↩

5. Personal communication with Dzongsar Ngari Choedje Thingo Rimpoche, 2007. ↩

6. Personal communication with Dzongsar Ngari Choedje Thingo Rimpoche, 2007. ↩

7. The tentative list submission was subsequently withdrawn and replaced in 2015 by a new submission for a Cold Desert Cultural Landscape encompassing the entire Ladakh region. See http://whc.unesco.org/en/tentativelists/6055/, accessed November 29, 2017. ↩

8. For an analysis on the ethical considerations to the conservation of Buddhist wall paintings in Ladakh see Fonjaudran, Menon, and Gill (2012). ↩

9. In the 1950s, following the turmoil in Tibet, access to traditional monastic centers of learning there were disrupted for monks and novices from Ladakh. To address this need, a School of Buddhist learning was established in Leh in 1959, which in 1962 received the support of India’s Ministry of Culture. Today the school has its main campus in Choglamsar and branch schools in fifty monasteries and nunneries. ↩

10. ICCROM’s people-centered approach and ICOMOS’s rights-based approach are examples of this shift. ↩

References

- Ātreya; Phanindra Nath Bose, Anubhūti Cauhāna, and Śrīkr̥ṣṇa Juganū. 2013. Great Sage Ātreya’s Ātreya-tilakam: An Indian Treatise about the Principles of Image-Making: Along with Sanskrit Text, Valuable Notes, “Mohanabodhinī” Hindi Translation. Translated by Phanindra Nath Bose. Delhi: Parimal.

- Avrami, Erica C., Randall Mason, and Marta de la Torre. 2000. Values and Heritage Conservation: Research Report. Los Angeles: Getty Conservation Institute. http://hdl.handle.net/10020/gci_pubs/values_heritage_research_report.

- Chapagain, Neel Kamal. 2013. “Introduction.” In Asian Heritage Management: Contexts, Concerns and Prospects, edited by Kapila D. Silva and Neel Kamal Chapagain, 1–29. London: Routledge.

- Dogra, Chandra Suta. 2008. “The Broken Hemisphere: A Casual ASI Oversees the Wanton Destruction of Ladakh Heritage.” Outlook India, November 3, 2008, https://www.outlookindia.com/magazine/story/the-broken-hemisphere/238849.

- Fonjaudran, Charlotte Martin de, Sreekumar Menon, and Maninder Singh Gill. 2012. “Sumda Chun and Other Early Buddhist Wall Paintings in Ladakh: Practical and Ethical Conservation Issues from Failing Structures to Obscuring Surface Layers.” In Art of Merit: Studies in Buddhist Art and Its Conservation: Proceedings of the Buddhist Art Forum, edited by David Park, Kuenga Wangmo, and Sharon Cather, 203–18. London: Archetype.

- Indian National Trust for Art and Cultural Heritage. 2004. Charter for the Conservation of Unprotected Architectural Heritage and Sites in India. New Delhi: Indian National Trust for Art and Cultural Heritage. Accessed November 28, 2017. http://www.intach.org/about-charter-principles.php.

- INTACH Conservation Institutes. 2013. “Completion Report of the Conservation Project in Chemday Monastery, Ladakh J&K.” Unpublished report.

- Jokilehto, Jukka. 2011. A History of Architectural Conservation. New York: Routledge.

- Kawathekar, Vishakha, Paromita De Sarkar, and Gurmeet S. Rai. 2005. “The Case of the INTACH Charter.” Context: Built, Living and Natural 2 (1): 83–88. http://www.dronah.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/context-2.pdf.

- Lo Bue, Erberto. 2011. “Lives and Works of Traditional Buddhist Artists in 20th Century Ladakh: A Preliminary Account.” In Ladakhi Histories: Local and Regional Perspectives, edited by John Bray, 353–78. Dharamshala, India: Library of Tibetan Works and Archives.

- Lowenthal, David. 2000. “Stewarding the Past in a Perplexing Present.” In Values and Heritage Conservation, edited by Erica Avrami, Randall Mason, and Marta de la Torre, 18–25. Los Angeles: Getty Conservation Institute. http://hdl.handle.net/10020/gci_pubs/values_heritage_research_report.

- Namgyal Institute for Research on Ladakhi Art and Culture. 2008. Legacy of a Mountain People: An Inventory of Cultural Resources of Ladakh. Vol. 1. New Delhi: Namgyal Institute for Research on Ladakhi Art and Culture.

- Poulios, Ioannis. 2014. “Discussing Strategy in Heritage Conservation: A Living Heritage Approach as an Example of Strategic Innovation.” Journal of Cultural Heritage Management and Sustainable Development 4 (1): 16–34.

- Poulios, Ioannis. 2015. “Gazing at the ‘Blue Ocean’ and Tapping into the Mental Models of Conservation: Reflections on the Nara + 20 Document.” Heritage and Society 8 (2): 158–77.

- Republic of India. 1958. Ancient Monuments and Archaeological Sites and Remains Act 1958. ACT no. 24 of 1958. New Delhi: Republic of India.

- Republic of India. 2014. National Policy for Conservation of the Ancient Monuments, Archaeological Sites and Remains (NPC-AMASR) Protected by the Archaeological Survey of India. New Delhi: Ministry of Culture, Government of India.

- Sharma, Janhwij. 2003. Architectural Heritage: Ladakh. Delhi: INTACH in association with Har Anand Publications.

- Sharma, Tara. 2013. “A Community-Based Approach to Heritage Management from Ladakh.” In Asian Heritage Management: Contexts, Concerns, and Prospects, edited by Kapila D. Silva and Neel Kamal Chapagain, 271–84. London: Routledge.

- Sharma, Tara. 2018. “In Search of the Truth in the Sacred Art of India: Perspectives on Authenticity.” In ICCROM-CHA Conservation Forum Series on Revisiting Authenticity in the Asian Context, edited by Gamini Wijesuriya and Jonathan Sweet, 171–80. Rome: ICCROM.

- Sharma, Tara. Forthcoming. “Acts of Merit: Sustainable Traditional Practices for Heritage Management and Conservation in Ladakh, India” [working title]. In ICCROM-CHA Conservation Forum Series on Applicability and Adaptability of Traditional Knowledge Systems in Conservation and Management of Heritage in Asia. Rome: ICCROM.

- Sharma, Tara, and Mark Weber. 2011. “Temple Guardians: A Community’s Initiative in Conserving its Sacred Heritage.” Context: Built, Living and Natural 8, (1): 77–84.

- Smith, Laurajane. 2006. Uses of Heritage. London: Routledge.

- Tayé, Jamgön Kongtrul Lodrö. 2012. Indo Tibetan Classical Learning and Buddhist Phenomenology. Translated by Gyurme Dorje. Book 6, parts 1 and 2, of The Treasury of Knowledge. Boston and London: Snow Lion.

14

Heritage Economics: Coming to Terms with Value and Valuation

- David Throsby

The economics of heritage has emerged as a distinct field of research and empirical application in cultural economics. This paper considers the development of the field since the 1990s and explores its impact on practice and policy. Three significant areas of research are highlighted: theory and the application of economic analysis to heritage issues; evaluation methods and their suitability for assessing cultural value; and understanding the economic impact of heritage policy. This paper illustrates an example of innovative research and application in one specific area: heritage investment as a driver of urban renewal projects in developing countries. It reiterates the continuing importance of recognizing the economic, social, and cultural context and impacts of heritage practice.

When the Getty Conservation Institute organized a workshop on values in heritage conservation in Los Angeles in December 1998, the field of heritage economics as a recognizable specialization in the well-established discipline of cultural economics was barely a decade old.[1] Sporadic interest in heritage issues among economists had been around for some years, but it was a paper by Alan Peacock to the British Academy in 1994 that first drew widespread attention to the questions raised if formal economics were to be applied to heritage decision making (Peacock 1995). Peacock, an eminent British academic, public finance economist, and musician, argued that if governments were to provide funding for heritage conservation, the public should be allowed some say over how “their” money was spent. His acerbic intervention brought a spirited response from heritage professionals who feared that the intrusion of economists onto their turf would convert all values to monetary terms and allow ill-informed popular opinion to influence the allocation of conservation resources (Cannon-Brookes 1996).

In the years following Peacock’s paper, a growing number of economists took an interest in the economics of heritage, leading to the appearance of two volumes of collected contributions published in the late 1990s (Schuster, de Moncheaux, and Riley 1997; Hutter and Rizzo 1997). This work helped reassure skeptics that there was ample scope for economists to make a sensible contribution to discussions about cultural heritage without assuming that financial values were all that mattered. Since those days the literature of heritage economics has been augmented by several further collected volumes (Navrud and Ready 2002; Rizzo and Towse 2002; Teutonico and Matero 2003; Licciardi and Amirtahmasebi 2012; Rizzo and Mignosa 2013) and an increasing number of papers and research monographs on a wide range of issues in the field.[2] Researchers have been able to draw upon theoretical and empirical developments in the broad field of cultural economics, where valuing cultural goods and services more generally remains a key concern for economic analysis.

In this paper I discuss how economics can assist in understanding the societal values implicated in heritage conservation management, and give some indications of innovative directions in research in the field.

Basic Concepts

Among the economic concepts relevant to heritage that have emerged, the most important is cultural capital, defined as any capital asset that embodies or gives rise to cultural value in addition to whatever economic value it possesses (Throsby 1999; Rizzo and Throsby 2006).[3] This definition requires some elaboration. First, the term “asset” invokes the idea of a stock, which in the case of heritage may exist in tangible form as, say, a building or a painting, or may be intangible, like a traditional craft skill or William Shakespeare’s plays. In economics, any item of capital stock, such as a house or a car, is relevant for analysis because it yields a flow of services. In the case of cultural capital, the stock of capital generates a flow of services in various ways, for example when a tourist visits a historic site, someone looks at a painting, or Hamlet is performed. These flows can be interpreted as production processes, where the final output is the cultural service experienced by the consumer.

The second point relates to value, the basis on which economists interpret the characteristics of cultural capital that distinguish it from other capital goods. In common parlance the concept of an asset connotes worth, frequently thought of simply in financial terms. Cultural capital is no different—it generates economic value, and does so both in its stock form (a historic building can be sold) and as a flow (tourists pay to visit a site). But unlike “ordinary” capital assets, items of cultural capital embody or give rise to an additional and different sort of value: cultural value (Throsby 2001). This concept seeks to capture the range of nonmonetary values attributable to cultural phenomena. In the case of heritage buildings, sites, and so on, the concept of cultural value is cognate with that of cultural significance (or heritage values) as understood in the heritage profession, as I will soon discuss.

It should be noted that proposing the existence of a concept of value that is not measurable in financial terms, as is essential in the economic definition of cultural capital, requires a broadening of outlook among economists schooled in the strict neoclassical tradition. In the standard model of an economy comprised of profit-maximizing producers, utility-maximizing consumers, and perfectly functioning markets, the value of a good or service is fully representable, in principle at least, in monetary terms. It is assumed that no matter what the motivation for demand, if an individual values something they will be prepared to pay for it, and their willingness to pay can capture all dimensions of their underlying preferences, including those derived from aesthetic or other cultural judgments. However, since economists are interested in understanding decision making, it may be possible to persuade a strict traditionalist to contemplate other forms of value if it can be shown that, independently of financial effects, such alternative values affect people’s choices and hence the allocation of resources.

Introduction of the concept of cultural capital into the economics of heritage has drawn on the parallel concept of natural capital in the economics of the environment (El Serafy 1991; Jansson et al. 1994). A particular parallel relates to sustainability. The management of natural capital can be understood within the paradigm of ecologically sustainable development, where economic, social, and environmental values are interpreted within a holistic system (World Commission on Environment and Development 1987; Costanza and Daly 1992). In the same vein, it can be seen that sustainability provides an overarching framework for interpreting the management of cultural capital, allowing the articulation of a concept of culturally sustainable development mirroring that of its environmental counterpart (Throsby 2017). A further advantage of this theoretical synergy between natural and cultural capital is that methodologies to assess the value of environmental assets have proved to be directly transferable to valuation processes in the economics of cultural heritage, as we shall see further in the next section.

Evaluation Methods

Although there may be some variation in the detail of different approaches to valuing cultural heritage assets from an economic perspective, the fundamental distinction between economic and cultural value alluded to above holds, whether applied to asset stocks or the services they provide. That being so, we can divide our account of valuation procedures according to these two value elements.

We turn first to economic value, which can be defined using methods of economic analysis and is expressible in monetary terms—the values that individuals are prepared to pay for in one way or another. The categories into which the economic value of heritage can be divided correspond to three identifiable ways in which individuals experience heritage—use, nonuse, or as a beneficial externality.

Use value accrues to individuals, households, or firms through the direct consumption of heritage services. It may be experienced, for example, through the ownership of heritage assets, or the enjoyment of the services of a heritage asset (living in a heritage house or working in a historic building). Such values are reflected in market processes, and can be observed in various financial transactions. Direct use value of heritage also accrues to tourists visiting cultural sites, measured by variables such as entrance fees.

The second aspect of individual valuation is the nonuse or passive use values, which are experienced by individuals but are not reflected in market processes, since they are derived from attributes of cultural heritage classifiable as public goods. Consumption of public goods is defined as being non-rival (one person’s consumption does not diminish anyone else’s) and non-excludable (once the good is available, people cannot be excluded from consuming it). Research in environmental and ecological economics over the last twenty years or so has identified three categories of passive use value that are equally relevant to heritage: existence, option, and bequest values.[4] All of these sources of value give rise to demand for the conservation of heritage expressible as individual willingness to pay, the measurement of which is discussed below.

The third type of value of cultural heritage experienced by individuals stands somewhat apart from the above two categories, although it entails both use and nonuse characteristics. It derives from the fact that heritage may generate positive spillovers, or externalities. Heritage buildings, for example, give rise to a beneficial externality if passersby gain some transient pleasure from observing their aesthetic or historic qualities. For example, pedestrians in Milan may enjoy the sight of the Duomo as they walk through the adjacent piazza. In principle the economic value of such a benefit could be estimated, although in practice it seldom is. But the fact remains that positive spillovers are an identifiable and potentially significant value of heritage that accrues to individuals.

In regard to measurement, the assessment of use values should be straightforward, since they are derived from financial transactions that can be observed or estimated. Much attention has been paid to the more problematic estimation of nonuse values in applied research in the economics of cultural heritage, adapting methods from other fields. The approaches in use can be classified into revealed-preference and stated-preference methods. The former rely on inference from observed behavior, such as the use of real estate prices to estimate whether the heritage qualities of domestic dwellings in a certain area have an effect on their sale price (Moorhouse and Smith 1994). These studies, and others based on revealed-preference data, including the so-called travel cost method (Bedate, Herrero, and Sanz 2004), are limited in their usefulness for estimating nonuse values because they essentially measure private individual benefit rather than wider public-good effects (Armbrecht 2014). Thus, assessment by economists of the nonmarket benefits of cultural heritage has concentrated overwhelmingly on stated-preference methods using contingent valuation or, more recently, discrete-choice modeling.

Stated-preference approaches involve asking people to indicate their willingness to pay for the benefits received, or their willingness to accept compensation for their loss. The investigation may take place under quasi-experimental conditions, or more commonly may be administered through sample surveys of individuals. For instance, the nonuse value of a local heritage site might be assessed using contingent valuation by means of a survey of a sample of residents of the area (Cuccia 2011). Respondents might be asked hypothetically to indicate the maximum financial contribution they would make to a fund to support the site, or alternatively whether they would be willing to pay by some other means such as through an adjustment to their taxes (Tuan and Navrud 2008).

A discrete-choice experiment yields a wider range of information compared to that obtainable from a contingent valuation exercise. The methodology may be applied to heritage in general (Allen Consulting Group 2005), or more commonly to a retrospective (ex post) or prospective (ex ante) evaluation for a specific conservation project or site. A typical discrete-choice study applied to a heritage site will seek respondents’ evaluations of a variety of attributes such as its accessibility, its aesthetic quality, the facilities it offers, and so on (Alexandros and Jaffry 2005; Willis 2009; Choi et al. 2010). Some payment requirement is usually included such that willingness to pay for the various attributes or for the site as a whole can be inferred. Discrete-choice surveys are readily administered online and can thus command relatively large sample sizes. They do require complicated experimental design, but nevertheless these sorts of assessment methods are destined to find wider application in the future.

What conclusions can be drawn about the usefulness of these economic assessment methods in the practical world of heritage conservation? Some form of economic evaluation of a conservation project is very likely to be relevant, if not essential, if the project is seeking to secure funding or to justify funding already received. The great majority of heritage projects are initiated for cultural reasons rather than for economic gain. Nevertheless it is likely that all projects will generate some benefits whose value can be represented in financial terms. All assessments are likely to include some monetary measurement of direct use values. In addition, as a component of an overall judgment on the economic worth of a project, it may be desirable or necessary to demonstrate in economic terms that the nonuse benefits have been or are likely to be significant. Indeed, for conservation projects, it is often the case that nonuse benefits will be expected to make up a major proportion of the undertaking’s total economic value.[5]

However, the sorts of economic assessments described above require expertise and resources. Even if the latter are available, the former may be in short supply. These considerations reinforce the proposition that assessments of important projects should ideally be implemented by a team that includes one or more economists who can work alongside other heritage professionals in evaluating the economic dimensions of the project’s benefits and costs.

We turn now to the assessment of cultural value. In the economics of heritage, cultural value has been represented as a multifaceted and shifting concept that has no single unit of account (Mazzanti 2003; Choi 2010). Given its multidimensional character, it has been argued that an appropriate way to proceed in assessing it is to deconstruct it into its constituent elements (Throsby 2001, 26–31). For example, the cultural value of a heritage building might be identifiable as having aesthetic, symbolic, social, historical, educational, and scientific components. Such a categorization of cultural value dimensions is similar to the specification of criteria for judging the cultural significance of buildings or sites laid out in heritage evaluation procedures such as the Australia ICOMOS Charter for Places of Cultural Significance (Burra Charter) or the requirements for nominating sites to the World Heritage List.

Identification of cultural value in these terms is a prerequisite to a comprehensive evaluation, but measurement presents problems. A judgment as to the degree of cultural significance or the level of cultural value of a heritage item is inevitably a subjective one, so the challenge is to invent means of assessment that are as transparent as possible, in the hope of providing a common standard by which assessors can determine the score they wish to allocate to a particular item on a given criterion. Such a score might be a direct rating against that criterion, effectively a numerical representation of a qualitative judgment (“very significant,” “significant,” “not particularly significant,” et cetera).

This sort of assessment approach can be put into effect in practice by seeking individuals’ agreement or disagreement with a series of qualitative statements bearing on particular cultural value elements, where several different statements might be used for each value component to allow exploration of different ways of expressing that value. A numerical score can be assigned to responses allowing aggregation of judgments across individuals, across value elements, or both; if necessary, the aggregation can be weighted to reflect different levels of importance attaching to different components.

Economic Issues in Heritage Policy

The use and abuse of cultural heritage by private owners and public authorities has significant public-interest ramifications. For this reason virtually all governments—national, regional, state, local—have a heritage policy of one sort or another. Their policy will relate importantly to their own behavior, since they are often holders of heritage assets themselves, through their ownership of historic public buildings and so on. In addition, policy intervention is needed to control the behavior of individual and corporate owners of heritage to prevent practices judged contrary to the public interest. Several policy issues arise.

First, despite the fact that most economists prefer the operation of markets rather than regulatory intervention as the means to affect resource allocation in any industry, regulation turns out to be the major instrument that governments around the world use to deliver heritage policy—that is, listing of heritage buildings or sites according to their level of significance. Listing imposes constraints on owners as to how heritage can be used, whether it can be modified or sold, and so on. As a policy instrument, regulations have a number of disadvantages familiar to economists: they create inefficiency, they involve administrative costs, they convey perverse incentives, and they can be captured by interest groups who can turn them to their own advantage. Despite these drawbacks, regulations have some attractive features in the implementation of policy, especially in the case of heritage: they are direct, deterministic, and provide certainty of outcomes. Moreover, they act much more quickly than market intervention—an advantage, for instance, when needed to forestall demolition of a heritage property.

Second, conflict between public and private interests frequently arises in the heritage arena. For example an assessment by a private owner of the benefits and costs of a conservation project involving the adaptive reuse of their heritage property will be based solely on the financial flows into and out of their private accounts, whereas the same project assessed at a social level is likely to include a range of collective benefits and costs not otherwise accounted for. In considering how to deal with cases where private owners claim to be disadvantaged by listing or its consequences, a government cannot afford to lose sight of the primary purpose of heritage regulation, which is to protect the public benefit arising from the built heritage at whatever level that benefit is experienced. In particular, it is important that the short-term financial exigency of some property owners should not be allowed to override the longer-term public interest. The key to achieving the appropriate balance between private and public interest in heritage conservation lies particularly in two policy directions: the application of objective, consistent, and thorough procedures for heritage assessment, and the provision of adequate resources for compensation when a legitimate need for it can be shown to exist.

Finally, we turn to the issue of balancing economic and cultural objectives in heritage policy making. For some projects the generation of economic and cultural value may be complementary and balanced, leading to a win-win outcome. In other cases, however, a trade-off between the two types of value might be involved. Some heritage buildings or sites may have high cultural value but relatively little economic value, even when the latter includes nonmarket benefits. Others may be exactly the reverse. The choice between them, if there is a choice, entails some exchange of one value for the other. How much economic value are we as individuals or as a society prepared to give up in order to secure a given level of cultural value, and vice versa?

In practice, these dilemmas are resolved through some sort of political process or negotiation procedure. In such cases it goes without saying that a comprehensive assessment of both the economic and the cultural value generated by the project, evaluated using the procedures discussed in this paper, is necessary to reach a rational final decision.

Some New Areas of Application

Research in the economics of heritage has taken some innovative directions in recent years. For example, the role of tangible and intangible cultural heritage in contributing to the concept of terroir in analyzing the regional localization of specialized wine and food production has been studied (Douguet and O’Connor 2003; Cross, Plantinga, and Stavins 2011; Anatole-Gabriel 2016). In the present paper I discuss one further example of an area of research where economics is being applied to cultural heritage issues: urban renewal in developing countries.

In developing countries, significant concentrations of cultural heritage assets exist in the traditional architectural fabric of towns and cities. It is well known that processes of urban growth in such countries have frequently bypassed a central area where the street pattern, social networks, and traditional activities have remained unchanged, perhaps for centuries (Razzu 2005). In such cases modernization and urban expansion have occurred elsewhere, so that the historic core comprises a more or less homogeneous agglomeration of both tangible and intangible cultural heritage. Although they may be of interest to conservationists, these historic cores oftentimes present difficult problems for urban planners, especially when the city’s development strategy is one of increasing inner-city housing densities and expanding large-scale commercial investment. In these circumstances the most practical and cost-effective development path for the city might appear to be to relocate the residents of the core, demolish the buildings, and replace them with modern structures.

On the other hand, a number of studies have shown that a viable alternative to demolition may be to rehabilitate the heritage building stock, upgrade the infrastructure in the core, and improve service provision to local businesses and households (Rypkema 2013). Historic urban centers, such as the medinas and souks in many Middle Eastern and North African towns and cities, are usually interconnected networks of local creative industries that supply cultural goods and services both to the resident population and to visitors, including tourists (Cernea 2001; Bigio and Licciardi 2010). Rehabilitation of the core provides a stimulus to these industries, generating incomes and employment for local people and businesses. Moreover, cultural capital assets, both tangible and intangible, are important in maintaining the social and cultural fabric of the community (Steinberg 1996). It is well established that social cohesion, community engagement, and the development of social capital are greatly enhanced in urban environments that are of a human scale, that reflect traditional cultural values, and that encourage creative participation among the local population (Serageldin 1999; Bandarin and van Oers 2012; Rojas and Lanzafame 2011).

Public or private expenditure on heritage conservation in cities and towns in any country can be seen as an investment project, and therefore amenable to ex ante or ex post evaluation using investment appraisal methodologies such as cost-benefit analysis. In principle these methods involve assembling the project’s capital costs, estimating the future stream of discounted benefits and costs generated by the project, and expressing the result in terms of statistics such as a benefit-cost ratio or a percentage rate of return on the original investment. The calculations should ideally include an assessment of any nonmarket or spillover effects of the project. Moreover, heritage conservation can be expected to have significant social and cultural impacts, and some account of these effects should also be included in the analysis.

However, when these techniques are applied to assess the economic, social, and cultural impacts of heritage-led urban rehabilitation programs in developing countries, some modification of these conventional appraisal procedures as used in the developed world is necessary. Most importantly, data are generally unavailable to estimate in detail the project’s time-stream of benefits and costs, and even its capital costs may be difficult to identify with certainty because of the range of financial sources likely to be involved. Moreover, a rigorous contingent-valuation study to measure nonmarket effects may be impossible to implement because of the resources required and problems in identifying the appropriate survey population.[6]

In these circumstances a methodological approach can be adopted that retains the overall framework provided by cost-benefit analysis but quantifies the various components only as far as data will allow. Rather than deriving precise estimates of the project’s financial benefits and costs over time, such an approach might instead specify a range of economic indicators that capture in broad terms the impacts on residents, households, and businesses who live and operate in the affected areas, and seek to measure them via sample surveys of relevant stakeholder groups. If the historic city center is visited by tourists, their expenditures can also be included.

Moreover, in this approach the survey instruments used to collect data on the economic impacts of heritage investment in historic centers can be adapted to gather information about the project’s social and cultural impacts as well. For example, a series of questions about the perceived cultural value flowing from the upgrading of heritage assets can be included in questionnaires, and the possibility of beneficial effects on social cohesion, quality of life, and so forth resulting from improvements in the urban environment can also be investigated.

Although these procedures are not capable of yielding the standard outcome statistics of cost-benefit analysis such as benefit-cost ratios or internal rates of return, they can provide a broader and in some senses richer account of the overall impacts of heritage-led urban investment projects. In particular they can focus attention on the specific role of heritage conservation in generating economic, social, and cultural benefits for communities.[7]

Conclusions

It can be argued that a major challenge confronting the field of heritage conservation in the twenty-first century is that of demonstrating the relevance of the field to the society or societies that it serves. Relevance in this context can be judged with reference to values: Are the values on which conservation practice is based consistent with societal values? Consideration of this question requires a widening of the context in which conservation practice is evaluated, bringing in perspectives from the humanities and social sciences where thinking about societal values is of central concern.

Economics can contribute much to this reflection. In the long tradition of political economy, debates about value and valuation have played a fundamental role. Issues have been carried forward in contemporary times in the field of heritage economics, with particular interest in exploring the interplay between economic and cultural values in the theory and practice of heritage evaluation. A suite of methodologies arising from this research have been applied in investigations into the economic and cultural values yielded by a range of practical conservation projects.

Decision making in the heritage conservation field clearly involves multidimensional values that call upon a range of different expertise. Here I hope to have shown that economists have something to contribute to values-based heritage policy making that goes far beyond a simple assessment focusing on tangible financial return. On the contrary, the approaches to value and valuation developed by heritage economists allow the integration of formal economic analysis into the wider concepts of societal value that heritage conservation is required to serve. By these means economists can assist in developing policy strategies that will more closely reflect the values of the society in which the policies are to be put into effect.

Notes

1. See Mason (1999) for a report on the meeting. ↩

2. For overviews of the field see Mason (2005) and Benhamou (2011). For a discussion from a conservation perspective of the potential for dialogue between economics and conservation practice see Mason (2008). ↩

3. Usage of the term “cultural capital” in this sense is now well established in cultural economics. It contrasts with the way the term “cultural capital” is used in sociology, where it refers to the cultural competencies or acquired cultural knowledge of an individual or group, following the writings of Pierre Bourdieu (1986). In economics, these competencies and knowledge would be seen as one component in an individual’s human capital (Becker 1964). ↩

4. For explanation of these terms see for example Throsby (2001, 78–79). ↩

5. Note that if resources are not available for a full stated-preference evaluation for a particular heritage site, the relevant nonuse values may be inferred by reference to a similar study elsewhere, using so-called benefit-transfer methods. See Tuan, Seenprachawong, and Navrud (2009); Ulibarri and Ulibarri (2010). ↩

6. An exception is the comprehensive contingent valuation study carried out in relation to the rehabilitation of the medina in Fez, Morocco, in the early 1990s, undertaken by the World Bank. See Carson, Mitchell, and Conaway (2002). ↩

7. For illustrations of the development of these methodologies in evaluating urban heritage investments in developing countries, see applications in Macedonia and Georgia (Throsby 2012) and in Jordan (Throsby and Petetskaya 2014). For an outline of the methods used, see Throsby (2016). ↩

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- Cuccia, Tiziana. 2011. “Contingent Valuation.” In A Handbook of Cultural Economics, edited by Ruth Towse, 90–99. Cheltenham, UK: Edward Elgar.

- Douguet, Jean-Marc, and Martin O’Connor. 2003. “Maintaining the Integrity of the French Terroir: A Study of Critical Natural Capital in Its Cultural Context.” Ecological Economics 44 (2–3): 233–54.

- El Serafy, Salah. 1991. “The Environment as Capital.” In Ecological Economics: The Science and Management of Sustainability, edited by Robert Costanza, 168–75. New York: Columbia University Press.

- Hutter, Michael, and Ilde Rizzo, eds. 1997. Economic Perspectives on Cultural Heritage. London: Macmillan.

- Jansson, AnnMari, Monica Hammer, Carl Folke, and Robert Costanza, eds. 1994. Investing in Natural Capital: The Ecological Economics Approach to Sustainability. Washington, DC: Island.

- Licciardi, Guido, and Rana Amirtahmasebi, eds. 2012. The Economics of Uniqueness: Investing in Historic City Cores and Cultural Heritage Assets for Sustainable Development. Urban Development Series. Washington, DC: World Bank. http://hdl.handle.net/10986/12286.

- Mason, Randall, ed. 1999. Economics and Heritage Conservation: A Meeting Organized by the Getty Conservation Institute, December 1998, Getty Center, Los Angeles. Los Angeles: Getty Conservation Institute.

- Mason, Randall. 2005. Economics and Historic Preservation: A Guide and Review of the Literature. Washington, DC: Brookings Institution.

- Mason, Randall. 2008. “Be Interested and Beware: Joining Economic Valuation and Heritage Conservation.” International Journal of Heritage Studies 14 (4): 303–18.

- Mazzanti, Massimiliano. 2003. “Valuing Cultural Heritage in a Multi-Attribute Framework Microeconomic Perspectives and Policy Implications.” Journal of Socio-Economics 32 (5): 549–69.

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- Navrud, Ståle, and Richard C. Ready, eds. 2002. Valuing Cultural Heritage: Applying Environmental Valuation Techniques to Historic Buildings, Monuments and Artifacts. Cheltenham, UK: Edward Elgar.

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- Rizzo, Ilde, and David Throsby. 2006. “Cultural Heritage: Economic Analysis and Public Policy.” In Handbook of the Economics of Art and Culture, edited by Victor A. Ginsburgh and David Throsby, 1:983–1016. Handbooks in Economics 25. Amsterdam: Elsevier (North-Holland).

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15

From the Inside Looking Out: Indigenous Perspectives on Heritage Values

- Joe Watkins

Native American tribes across the United States face similar challenges in dealing with US federal policies relating to historic preservation. Federal laws define significant cultural resources in a much narrower way than do Native American tribes: the former focus on stewardship of tangible places, whereas the latter generally also value intangible traditions, knowledge, and symbolic landscapes. This and other mismatches led to the addition of Traditional Cultural Properties in US federal policy in the 1990s, and to more than 170 Native American tribes taking over preservation functions on their own tribal trust lands. But a significant gap between the federal system and tribal needs still exists, and requires an explicit reexamination of Western concepts of heritage preservation in order to more fully meet the needs of American Indian populations.

Throughout the world, Indigenous populations are often seen as “politically weak, economically marginal, and culturally stigmatized members of the national societies that have overtaken them and their lands” (Dyck 1992, 1). The interruption of land tenure by colonizing interlopers, the suppression of native language by a dominant society that seeks to integrate dissimilar cultures into a singular “homogeneous” one, the perception by their “conquerors” that Indigenous people are an inferior race, and the social and economic marginalization of the group as a whole all contribute to the ongoing perception of Indigenous populations as second-class citizens.

According to the International Labor Organization, Indigenous peoples are “tribal peoples in independent countries whose social, cultural and economic conditions distinguish them from other sections of the national community, and whose status is regulated wholly or partially by their own customs or traditions or by special laws or regulations,” or are “regarded as indigenous on account of their descent from the populations which inhabited the country, or a geographical region to which the country belongs, at the time of conquest or colonization or the establishment of present state boundaries and who, irrespective of their legal status, retain some or all of their own social, economic, cultural and political institutions” (International Labor Organization 1990, Articles 1.1a, 1.1b). Commonly known as the Fourth World, Indigenous groups generally are subsumed within the national heritage that surrounds them. Programs aimed at protecting a “nationalist heritage” either overlook the heritage of Indigenous populations within neo-nationalist borders (in terms of original occupants) or subsume the Indigenous heritage as their own, such as the situation in Latin America where the move toward creating nationalist and centralist identities was often at the expense of the Indigenous (often unorganized) voice (Coggins 2003). More recently, the opening in 2004 of the National Museum of the American Indian in Washington, DC, signaled a turning point in American Indian representation in museums, but it also contributed to homogenization to a certain extent; less a museum than a “culture center,” the NMAI struggles to adequately represent the Indigenous people of North, Middle, and South Americas.

Additionally, the debate over who should own or control heritage has still not moved far beyond John Merryman’s depiction of cultural property under “cultural nationalist” and “cultural internationalist” perspectives (Merryman 1986). Authors writing about cultural property law still debate the distinctions (Bauer 2007; Gerstenblith 2002) and continue to glide over the heritage concerns of those Indigenous populations within a nation’s borders.[1]

Indigenous populations in the United States are known by a variety of terms. In the lower forty-eight states they are known as American Indians or Native Americans. In Alaska, populations who occupied the area prior to colonization are known as Alaska Natives (as opposed to Native Alaskans, which describes anyone born in the state of Alaska regardless of descent). In Hawaii the Indigenous population is known as Native Hawaiian. Throughout this paper I use the terms American Indian or Native American interchangeably, and will also use it to include Alaska Natives and Native Hawaiians only as a matter of convenience, with apologies in advance to anyone who might be offended.

In October 2015, the number of federally recognized tribes in the United States reached 567 with the addition of the Pamunkey Tribe of Virginia; trying to characterize a single “American Indian” perspective runs the risk of stereotyping and homogenizing the various perspectives. While applied and academic researchers recognize a coherent philosophy known as Western thought that seems to underlie Western science, no such philosophy has been fully explored to describe Indigenous philosophies across the globe. However, the idea of a global Indigenous school of thought may be used to describe some overriding concepts that Indigenous groups hold to describe relationships with the social, natural, and built environments (Watkins 2013). Drawing from examples of various Indigenous populations and their approaches to the world, known variously as Native science, traditional ecological knowledge, and collaborative stewardship (Ross et al. 2011), one can talk in broad strokes of underlying structures that Indigenous groups use to understand the geographies of their worlds.

Much of the relationship between Indigenous groups in the United States and the federal government is derived from treaties made with early tribal nations. This special relationship has arisen from the federal government’s trust responsibilities to the tribes. This responsibility has been likened to one between a trustee and a ward, with the federal government maintaining a fiduciary responsibility over the tribes.[2]

Federal relationships with tribes relate primarily to federally recognized tribes, even though non–federally recognized tribes have standing in some states (California, for example) nearly equivalent to federally recognized tribes. A federally recognized tribe is an American Indian or Alaska Native tribal entity that has a government-to-government relationship with the United States, with certain responsibilities, powers, limitations, and obligations attached to that designation. Federally recognized tribes are regarded as possessing certain inherent rights of self-government (that is, tribal sovereignty) and are entitled to receive certain federal benefits, services, and protections because of their special relationship with the United States. Currently, Native Hawaiian organizations do not have status equivalent to federal recognition, but a September 2016 rule by the Department of the Interior established an administrative procedure to recognize Hawaiian sovereignty if a unified Native Hawaiian government is ever established in the future.

Defining “Heritage”

In contemporary heritage management practice, heritage is composed of three main classes. Tangible heritage—heritage products that can be touched, seen, and preserved—is one of the most commonly discussed aspects. This includes physical places such as buildings, archaeological sites, and so forth. A second class of heritage—intangible heritage—is comprised of social constructs and knowledge that has been transmitted from generation to generation, as well as that which might be transmitted in the future. A third class—immovable objects such as mountains, viewscapes, and landscapes that are significant to a group—can also be defined. The three classes often overlap depending on the perspective through which they are viewed. In the United States, heritage management is usually concerned with tangible heritage, although more recently the preservation of viewscapes and landscapes has become more common.

American Indian ideas of heritage often combine or conflate the three categories into a single definition that must be protected. Objects, whether individual artifacts or structures, often are associated closely with stories or tales; additionally, they are often tied to particular places in the cultural and/or natural landscape. As such, conflicts in values regarding relationships between objects, ideas, and places are less problematic in tribal cultures than they appear to be in Western cultures.

The heritage management system in the United States developed out of an intention to “save” things of importance to US history. That history more often revolved around great individuals involved in creating “America” out of wilderness or wrested from other colonial powers (fig. 15.1). The values associated with those heroes of politics or commerce were primarily Western, and most often failed to consider the values of minority or economically marginal cultures in the broader population.

Early heritage preservation in the United States was aimed at protecting places associated with famous or historical persons, such as Mount Vernon, Virginia, the historic home of George and Martha Washington. Image: David Samuel, courtesy Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0

Thomas King (2013, 15–31) offers a brief history of the development of historic preservation in the United States: basically it has evolved from a desire to preserve historic places to one concerned with managing the physical manifestations that represent cultures of the past or contemporary populations. It is concerned primarily with the built environment—architecture, the works of artisans, and places of importance in relation to famous historical figures—even though there is concern with properties that have yielded or may be likely to yield information important to history or prehistory. As such, the idea that certain things make a place important enough to conserve or protect (significance) is based on a combination of the integrity of the place in conjunction with its association with events that either contribute to the broad patterns of US history, are associated with the lives of significant persons, embody distinctive characteristics of a type or represent the work of a master, or are important to Western science.

The first federal action that established the foundations of the US government’s involvement in heritage protection was the Antiquities Act of 1906. It was based on the idea that US heritage was important and belonged to all citizens. It created a mechanism to preserve areas of natural and cultural importance on public land and created criminal sanctions for the unauthorized destruction or appropriation of antiquities owned or controlled by the federal government. It also created a permit system whereby qualified institutions of learning could initiate scientific investigations. While such preservation measures were important for the protection of US heritage, they also served to alienate Native American communities from their ancestral heritage in many respects (Watkins 2006). The legislation deals mostly with properties located on federal or tribal property; private property owners can take advantage of some federal preservation programs, but private property is not protected by federal preservation laws.

The Historic Sites Act of 1935 declared that it was a national policy to preserve historic sites, buildings, and objects of national significance for public use—it was the first assertion of historic preservation as a government duty, which was only hinted at in the 1906 Antiquities Act. But it wasn’t until the 1960s that the federal government expanded the process that allowed preservation of areas of importance to regional and local history rather than just national importance.

In the beginning phases of the US historic preservation movement, actions were generally based on the values of a select few, or on the values inherent in a particular economic or social class. More often decisions made to preserve particular locations or buildings were driven by upper- or upper-middle-class values rather than by the general public. “Urban renewal” in the 1960s usually meant destruction of entire neighborhoods without consideration of their occupants or historic or heritage values. The National Historic Preservation Act (NHPA) of 1966 was passed primarily in response to the rampant destruction of buildings and places as a result of federally funded projects.

The majority of the values used to develop significance under the National Historic Preservation Act and determine things worthy of “saving” dealt with Western values applied to locations viewed through a Western perspective. Very few contributions by non-Western cultures fit within the structures of such concepts, and those that were representative of the Indigenous cultures—archaeological sites—were deemed significant only in situations where they could contribute to Western history or prehistory.

In 1992, amendments to the NHPA created a process whereby American Indian tribes could take over preservation functions from the state on tribal trust lands and, in 1996, twelve tribes formally assumed some historic preservation authority and responsibilities. At the beginning of 2017, more than 170 tribes were participating formally in the national historic preservation program with their own Tribal Historic Preservation Officers (THPOs). While this offers an opportunity for tribes to participate in the heritage preservation system, it still remains difficult for them to interject their values, since the laws under which they operate hinder full integration of a non-Western value system.

Native American Approaches to Heritage Management

In the United States, Native American heritage conservation deals less with constructed space as architectural examples, and more with locations of importance to a particular tribe for other reasons. There are structures that have achieved significance to tribes within the historic record, such as the Peoria Indian Schoolhouse in Ottawa County, Oklahoma, which is important to the Confederated Peoria Indian Tribes for its association with early tribal education. Akima Pinšiwa Awiiki (fig. 15.2), near Fort Wayne, Indiana (more commonly known as the Chief Jean-Baptiste de Richardville House), is important to the Miami Nation as a symbol of Miami Indian resistance and survival.

To many tribes, a structure’s importance is based more in symbolic meaning than in its association with a particular individual or architectural style, as is the case with Akima Pinšiwa Awiiki, near Fort Wayne, Indiana. Image: Nancy.mccammon-hansen, courtesy Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0

Tribal concepts of heritage preservation and the mainstream concept of heritage management in the United States are not fully compatible. The mismatch between federal, state, and local programs and Native American conceptions of significant heritage resources and resource management often extends beyond the NHPA’s definitions of heritage. For example, with the passage in 1990 of the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA), tribes began managing materials that belong to or are related to their cultures outside of place-based heritage. Tribal heritage managers are often tasked with grave protection issues and the repatriation of cultural materials as well as language and cultural preservation.

As more and more tribes got involved with the NHPA, they were required to apply federal regulations to areas that frequently didn’t meet Western concepts inherent in the law; it became necessary for the tribes to try to adapt the law to make it fit their perspectives on heritage. Tribes argued that heritage goes beyond history-based significance, and were able to influence the construction of a special class of locations known as traditional cultural properties/places (TCPs). TCPs are eligible for inclusion in the National Register of Historic Places because of their association with cultural practices or beliefs of a living community that are rooted in that community’s history, and are important in maintaining its continuing cultural identity (King and Parker 1998, 1). While not all TCPs are related to tribal culture, most are. TCPs can be associated with real or mythical persons or beings, and can therefore extend beyond human lives.

Utilizing the National Register as a mechanism to “protect” or “manage” TCPs is effective, but in many circumstances it creates unwelcome problems. The NHPA requires a complex set of interactions and underlying assumptions that sometimes constrains tribal members. People who wish to protect a site must provide information to outside managers to bolster claims for significance, and heritage managers generally rely on information that can be verified by objective experts or other information. Thomas King discusses the hesitancy of some tribes to share certain information with non-tribal entities, or with tribal members who are not meant to have the information. He also mentions an unsubstantiated fear by some consultants that areas could be given “instant sacredness” by a group as a means to stop proposed projects (2003, 250).

Tribal attributions of “sacred” (in relation to TCPs) are usually based on specialized knowledge not generally available to non-tribal members—and sometimes not available to all members of the same tribe. And sometimes the process within the NHPA does not “protect” the site from destruction. The process is not meant to prevent destruction of important areas, but rather to ensure that a federal agency takes into consideration the impacts of a particular project on a heritage area. In addition, the idea of an area’s sacredness being the driving characteristic of significance creates a problem with the US Constitution’s legal separation of religion and state, such that most federal managers are hesitant to use such information as a protective mechanism.

Sometimes the system works, and sometimes it doesn’t. A proposed ban on rock climbing at Devils Tower, Wyoming (known as Mato Tipila in the Lakota language), out of deference to traditional American Indian religious practices, was held by US courts to be an unconstitutional preference of Lakota religious rights over the rights of the rock climbers (fig. 15.3). Proposed construction of a warehouse by the US Army Corps of Engineers in the vicinity of Medicine Bluff, Oklahoma, was prevented by the courts because the construction would hinder the use of the area by Comanche religious practitioners. Both of these cases involved impacts on Native American sacred areas by non-tribal members, but the courts ruled differently.

Differing value systems can lead to conflict in heritage management and/or protection. Incompatible uses of Mato Tipila (Devils Tower National Monument), Wyoming, pitted tribal users against rock-climbing enthusiasts. Image: BD, courtesy Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 2.0

Another mismatch between federal and tribal heritage management involves what tribal groups generally consider an artificial separation of the cultural and the natural worlds. Federal regulations separate federal management of these two environments, with impacts to the natural environment managed through the National Environmental Policy Act of 1969 rather than through the NHPA. One example of this mismatch is evident in comments offered by the Hualapai Tribe of Arizona on a proposed change of a rule to allow members of traditionally associated recognized tribes to gather plants and plant parts for traditional uses.[3] In its comments, the Hualapai Nation indicated that it felt that “any place within a park area where a tribe has traditionally harvested plants or plant materials would most likely qualify … as a traditional cultural property (TCP)” (Hualapai Nation 2015). While the rule itself does not acknowledge that gathering places can or should be considered TCPs, the Hualapai recognize the need to manage places not conforming to Western concepts of historic value.

The situation described above is also exemplified by an alternative perspective on interacting with the natural world that tribes and other populations have utilized outside of Western science. Traditional ecological knowledge, as Peter Usher defines it, “refers specifically to all types of knowledge about the environment derived from the experience and traditions of a particular group of people,” and therefore meets a definition of “intangible heritage” (2000, 185, emphasis in original).

Cultural-based value statements can be utilized in further refining a values-based approach to heritage conservation and management that operates within Western imposed strictures yet incorporates non-Western tribal values. Ultimately, such an integration of natural and cultural perspectives in a knowledge system beyond a historical or structure-based system like the United States currently uses would better suit the needs of many different cultures.

The federal program to manage cultural heritage requires that federal agencies reach out to affected communities and tribes to gather their thoughts and perceptions of project impacts. However, the NHPA created a marked dichotomy in heritage management in the United States: “heritage” (in the broader sense) may be protected only if it fits within or intersects with the criteria of the dominant culture (for instance National Register criteria) or if it is brought to the attention of heritage managers. And, sometimes, the manner in which such perspectives are requested causes further issues within the Native preservation community.

Challenges and Issues Relating to Consultation and Communication

Native American groups involved in heritage management share similar issues with the broader heritage management world. They must identify items worthy of protection, find ways to convince federal agencies and project managers that such places meet the requirements of heritage preservation laws, and find funding to continue operating offices that face daily onslaughts of requests for information.

Federal agencies initiate consultation as a means of gathering information on the possible impact of specific projects on historic sites or places of importance. Agencies generally start a “time clock” once they initiate the consultation proceedings, with groups given a set period during which they must respond or run the risk of not being able to protect their important places. Tribes receive such requests from numerous federal agencies each day, and quite often the agencies perceive such requests to be sufficient outreach to the affected community. While the responsibility to protect tribal heritage falls mostly on the tribe as keepers of knowledge and protectors of important places, the sheer volume of requests often overwhelms the tribal offices. Tribal members charged with communicating information to federal agencies may not have sufficient time to initiate internal discussions with traditional leaders about areas of significance. As often, tribal offices charged with heritage preservation issues are understaffed.

In one such situation in 2008, the Comanche Nation of Oklahoma was forced to go to court to enforce its right to continue to be involved in the process. The Corps of Engineers had initiated a request for information relating to a proposed project on Medicine Bluff, an area sacred to the tribe (fig. 15.4), and the tribe had not responded within the regulatory time period. The project would have impacted a site of extreme importance to the Comanche and other tribes in the area. The Corps claimed that it had lived up to its regulatory responsibility and that the tribe had not, but the court held that the Corps had not consulted in good faith and that its actions were contrary to the spirit of the NHPA and its regulations.

The Comanche Tribe holds sacred the southern access to Medicine Bluff, Oklahoma. The District Court of Western Oklahoma agreed, and prevented federal action that would have impacted the area. Image: Crimsonedge34, courtesy Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0

One of the challenges involving heritage preservation processes in the United States has to do with the different cultures that exist within the nation today and how they interact. The United States is anything but monolithic, and its various ethnic groups (including American Indians) operate with different interaction expectations—that is, they may have different expectations not only of the results of group interactions, but also of the way those interactions occur. Each culture values different aspects of the interactions as well, with some cultures putting more value on face-to-face interactions, and others putting more value on authority than on perceived rights.

Cultures communicate in different styles, and communication styles influence both interactions and views of the interactions. In 1976, Edward Hall differentiated between low- and high-context as a means of explaining cultural differences in how things are communicated and accepted by various cultures. In general, low-context communication occurs when the majority of the information is explicitly presented, with little reliance on shared experiences. High-context communication generally occurs as if the information is within the physical context or internalized in the person. Western cultures operate within a lower level of cultural context, assuming that very little information is shared by the group, and that therefore explicit statements are necessary. Tribal cultures, in general, operate within a shared context, and therefore much of the conversation is unstated or implicit (1976, 79).

Additionally, groups who communicate in a high-context style also tend to do so indirectly, with the listener required to filter the valuable information out of the conversation. Low-context cultures, because of the perceived lack of shared knowledge, often use a more direct communication style, tending to be explicit, fact-filled, and repetitive. Stella Ting-Toomey notes that “Native Americans … who identify strongly with their traditional ethnic values would tend to be group oriented” and more likely comfortable with high-context communication, while “European Americans who identify strongly with European values and norms (albeit on an unconscious level) would tend to be oriented toward individualism” and low-context communication styles (2005, 216).

As a primer in these sorts of issues, The Toolkit for Cross-Cultural Communication (Elliott, Adams, and Sockalingam 2016) offers a study of collaboration styles of African American, Asian American, Native American, Hispanic American, and Anglo American communities, and insights that should be used to shape collaboration. Not surprisingly, Anglo American individuals, more comfortable with low-context, direct communication styles, struggle to understand the high-context, indirect communication styles of Native Americans. Anglo American heritage managers often want direct, immediate answers rather than responses that serve to delay action until more thought-out responses can be formulated. Thus, Native American values such as the desire for group consensus, reverence for long-term history, inclusion of spiritual elements in meetings, and need for community respect and support often conflict with Western values of individualism, task-based purpose versus long-term relationships, and general exclusion of spiritual elements in meetings. Successful heritage management partnerships rely on shared values, and conflicting values concerning significance decisions can strain progress toward mutually beneficial solutions.

Federal agencies’ interactions with tribes are usually within the consultation arena, and essentially involve gathering opinions and perspectives about specific actions being undertaken, licensed, or permitted by a federal agency. Guidance exists in the form of executive orders such as EO 13084, “Consultation and Coordination with Indian Tribal Governments” (issued 1998) or EO 13175, “Consultation and Coordination with Indian Tribal Governments” (issued 2000). Federal agencies provide their own guidance, such as the Advisory Council on Historic Preservation’s “Consulting with Indian Tribes in the Section 106 Process” (updated 2005), the Forest Service’s Departmental Regulation 1350-002, “Tribal Consultation, Coordination, and Collaboration” (issued 2013), and the Department of the Interior’s Secretarial Order 3317, “Department of the Interior Policy on Consultation with Indian Tribes” (issued 2011). But while federal agencies are charged with gathering those opinions, they are not required to follow or abide by them.

Such memoranda and policy statements guide federal agency interactions with tribal nations, but those interactions can vary considerably. The process is flawed in that tribes are usually contacted only after a project has been planned rather than at the initial conception stages, when tribal values and concerns could be more easily integrated and changes would be easier to make. This continues to enforce the primacy of Western governmental values in heritage management while subordinating tribal values.

Conclusions

Federal actions define and often limit interactions when it comes to lessening harm to places of importance to tribal heritage. Federal agencies are required to communicate and consult with federally recognized tribes that are impacted by the federal agency’s programs or by programs funded, licensed, or otherwise permitted by the agency. Tribes are forced to choose methods of lessening the impact of federal actions on their heritage. Federal laws and regulations, while acknowledging tribal heritage, are primarily procedural in nature rather than preventative or prohibitive. Federal actions are generally seen as beneficial to “the many” even if harmful to “the few.” As such, if the agency follows proper procedure, it generally may proceed with the project regardless of direct impact to the resources (however defined).

Federal agencies generally regulate Indigenous heritage through a series of “one-size-fits-all” laws that do not take into consideration the importance of heritage in tribal cultures. Federal laws and regulations force tribal concepts into Western ones and separate a generally holistic perspective into artificial subsets. A broader concept of heritage—one that recognizes past and present as inextricably intertwined—makes the separation of the various components of tribal culture unseemly and unworkable.

As Randall Mason and Erica Avrami have noted (2002, 20–24), the best or most appropriate decisions for a site (or place) of heritage are those that preserve the values of the place and are sustainable. The decisions do not draw naturally on a single value, but are built with input from a variety of stakeholders—groups or individuals with a vested interest in seeing that the place is conserved or managed. These groups in turn have varied standing in relation to one another. In projects that fall under the purview of the National Historic Preservation Act, groups with standing are often poorly defined. Local historic societies may share the stage with national organizations, and tribal groups, while they have a different level of standing in a more formal sense, may often be left to the last in a manner that hinders their full participation. Native American involvement in heritage preservation is not likely to be fully realized until heritage managers are willing to give up control over the management of tribal heritage and allow tribes to manage their heritage in a manner befitting specific tribal ideas.

Such an option might be in designating tribal heritage preservation as “sanctioned space.” Sanctioned spaces, as defined by Cathleen Crain and Niel Tashima (2017), are safe spaces created by authority figures and culturally powerful others (including community organizations) for the discussion of proscribed or sensitive topics and for the testing of new behaviors. Sanctioned spaces can be a tremendous strategy for positive change in a variety of contexts: in behavioral contexts ranging from child wellness to clergy health to intimate partner violence prevention, but also in conceptual contexts concerning process and procedure such as intergovernmental communication, consultation, and heritage preservation. Some of the fundamental elements in establishing a sanctioned space are a trusting relationship with the organizers, recognition of and honor for cultural values as part of the space, active dialogue and active listening, and respect for alternative ways of creating solution pathways.

Communities should have the right to create safe spaces within which they can operate without the “permissions” of outside communities. The community—not merely laws or regulations—drives the actions and reactions and perhaps chooses to operate outside of the legal system, but still as a means to further influence positive actions of the community. Tribal values are different than those of the dominant Western culture, although in some instances there is no conflict. Tribal values are more about a sense of feeling and interconnection with a location than about the issues commonly ascribed to Western culture related to physical being, architectural structures, and so forth.

Federal policies, however, are more often concerned with the management of federal funds than about specifics of program management. While a federal agency might recognize that tribal heritage programs deal with different aspects of heritage than federally specific funding allowances, the agency is tasked with allowing the tribe to expend federal funds only for actions permitted under particular funding programs. As mentioned above, while a tribal group might task its heritage preservation officer with protecting historic sites, language, human remains and associated items, and living aspects of tribal culture, each one of these falls under separate laws and associated regulations that require federal managers to prevent the tribe from using funds to pay for programs not allowable under the regulations of the particular fund source.

If the ultimate goal is to help tribes protect and conserve their heritage, it behooves the federal government to create mechanisms whereby the tribes are given safe spaces and tools to do so. The National Park Service has repeatedly said it was not trying to create THPOs as mini-SHPOs (State Historic Preservation Officers), but its actions speak otherwise. It has forced tribes into a mode of operation that they would not naturally use (as described above). A more effective mechanism to help tribes conserve their heritage would be to provide them funds, but allow them to develop procedures that better fit tribal norms and needs. Until tribes are given the authority and allowance to manage their heritage resources as they see fit, THPOs will continue to be outside of the heritage preservation and conservation world, struggling to use tools with assembly instructions printed in a foreign language.

Notes

1. But see Watkins (2005) for a third, “cultural intra-nationalist” perspective. ↩

2. See d’Errico (2000) for a more detailed discussion of the concept of tribal sovereignty in Indian law. ↩

3. Associated tribes are federally recognized tribes having a deep historical, cultural, and spiritual connection to a specific place that is now managed by the National Park Service. ↩

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Appendix

Conclusions and Recommendations of the Symposium Participants

The GCI symposium “Values in Heritage Management: Emerging Approaches and Research Directions,” held in February 2017, provided a platform for participants to share their experiences and foster a dialogue around the research and cases developed for this volume. In keeping with the GCI’s mission to advance conservation practice internationally, and to create and deliver knowledge that contributes to the conservation of the world’s cultural heritage, participants considered some of the key issues related to the development and application of values-based approaches in heritage management. The following summarizes the major themes that emerged, including significant challenges and needs along with recommended actions for advancing practice. While these represent a collection of ideas from the gathered heritage professionals rather than a consensus on behalf of the field, they nonetheless suggest a practical agenda for future action.

Worldviews and Concepts (Philosophy and Theory)

The internationalized professional standards that are promoted in the heritage field today are based largely on Western cultural concepts. A broader understanding of how heritage is valued in non-Western cultures is needed to inform more inclusive development and more context-sensitive application of values-based methodologies, and this work is needed urgently.

Recommended actions:

- Develop and publish explanations of how heritage is valued (including key concepts) from a variety of non-Western cultural perspectives, and how these values flow through into conservation, stewardship, policies, and institutions.

Policy (Institutions and Governance)

While values-based approaches have been codified in governance structures for heritage in a number of countries, most applications occur at a project level. Further research is needed on how to more extensively adapt and integrate values-based approaches into institutional and regulatory heritage policies.

Recommended actions:

- Develop guidance and case studies on integrating values-based approaches into institutional heritage policies and processes.

Frameworks and Tools (Professional Resources)

At the professional or practitioner level, there is a need for greater understanding of how values-based conservation approaches can effectively play out in practical terms through the entire conservation process (from understanding stakeholder perspectives, to developing plans and interventions, to monitoring outcomes). This includes deeper investigation of methods for identifying, assessing, and managing social values, as well as the development of tools for dealing with conflicting values.

Recommended actions:

- Develop culturally appropriate values-based frameworks with guidance on application and tailoring for specific contexts, publish the frameworks in a variety of languages, and promote their application in a variety of cultural contexts.

- Further develop cultural mapping methods to demonstrate how this approach to values elicitation can more effectively relate to other survey and elicitation methods, and develop information on how the social values identified flow into policy and management.

- Develop guidance on application of a variety of methods for identifying, assessing, managing, and conserving social values.

- Develop a tool kit for understanding and managing conflict over values in heritage management.

- Develop case studies, tool kits, and guidance on economic evaluation methods for heritage practitioners.

Capacity Building and Awareness Raising (Education and Advocacy)

While the “Frameworks and Tools” section above discusses some of the resources needed to support professional practice, added training, advocacy, and educational materials could enhance capacities to adapt and apply such tools.

Recommended actions:

- Develop a step-by-step, illustrated process map of values-based management practice (from understanding values, to policy development, to management, to monitoring).

- Develop didactic materials on values-based management.

- Develop didactic materials and more training opportunities on conflict resolution for heritage practitioners.

- Develop professional capacities for integrating economic valuation in heritage management.

Inter-field Collaboration (Interdisciplinary Collaboration)

While there is a need to develop capacities within the heritage profession itself, it was also acknowledged that advancing value-based approaches requires collaboration with those from other fields and with other types of knowledge, especially in the environmental realm, but also other disciplines (anthropology, economics, et cetera).

Recommended actions:

- Develop guidance for integrated values-based management of nature and culture.

- Develop values-based nature-culture resilience guidelines.

Further Readings in Heritage Values

This reference list builds upon the previous annotated bibliography produced by the GCI Research on the Values of Heritage project and published in its 2000 research report Values and Heritage Conservation (Avrami, Mason, and de la Torre 2000, 73). In the nearly two decades since, the body of literature examining the role of values in the heritage enterprise has expanded significantly. This addendum, which includes texts published since 2000, serves as a complementary information resource for exploration of recent research and emerging avenues of inquiry.

Allen, Caitlin. 2004. “The Road from Burra: Thoughts on Using the Charter in the Future.” Historic Environment 18 (1): 50–53.

Anatole-Gabriel, Isabelle, ed. 2016. La valeur patrimoniale des économies de terroir: volume constitué des actes du colloque international “La valeur patrimoniale des économies de terroir comme modèle de développement humain,” tenu au collège des Bernardins, les 18 et 19 février 2015 et organisé par l’association des Climats du vignoble de Bourgogne-patrimoine mondial. Collection Sociétés. Dijon, France: Éditions universitaires de Dijon.

Anico, Marta, and Elsa Peralta, eds. 2009. Heritage and Identity: Engagement and Demission in the Contemporary World. Museum Meanings. London: Routledge.

Armbrecht, John. 2014. “Use Value of Cultural Experiences: A Comparison of Contingent Valuation and Travel Cost.” Tourism Management 42 (6): 141–48.

Atkinson, Jeanette. 2014. Education, Values and Ethics in International Heritage: Learning to Respect. Farnham, UK: Ashgate.

Australia ICOMOS. 2013. The Burra Charter: The Australia ICOMOS Charter for Places of Cultural Significance. Burwood: Australia ICOMOS. http://australia.icomos.org/wp-content/uploads/The-Burra-Charter-2013-Adopted-31.10.2013.pdf.

———. 2013. Burra Charter Practice Notes. Burwood: Australia ICOMOS. http://australia.icomos.org/publications/charters/.

Australian Heritage Commission. 2002. Australian Natural Heritage Charter for the Conservation of Places of Natural Heritage Significance. 2nd ed. Canberra: Australian Heritage Commission in Association with the Australian Committee for the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (ACIUCN). https://webarchive.nla.gov.au/awa/20170226002350/https://www.environment.gov.au/system/files/resources/56de3d0a-7301-47e2-8c7c-9e064627a1ae/files/australian-natural-heritage-charter.pdf.

Avrami, Erica. 2009. “Heritage, Values, and Sustainability.” In Conservation: Principles, Dilemmas and Uncomfortable Truths, edited by Alison Richmond and Alison Bracker, 177–83. Oxford: Elsevier/Butterworth-Heinemann.

Avrami, Erica C., Randall Mason, and Marta de la Torre. 2000. Values and Heritage Conservation: Research Report. Los Angeles: Getty Conservation Institute. http://hdl.handle.net/10020/gci_pubs/values_heritage_research_report.

Báez, Andrea, and Luis César Herrero. 2012. “Using Contingent Valuation and Cost-Benefit Analysis to Design a Policy for Restoring Cultural Heritage.” Journal of Cultural Heritage 13 (3): 235–45.

Báez-Montenegro, Andrea, Ana María Bedate, Luis César Herrero, and Jose Ángel Sanz. 2012. “Inhabitants’ Willingness to Pay for Cultural Heritage: A Case Study in Valdivia, Chile, Using Contingent Valuation.” Journal of Applied Economics 15 (2): 235–58.

Bandarin, Francesco, and Ron van Oers. 2012. The Historic Urban Landscape: Managing Heritage in an Urban Century. Chichester, UK: Wiley-Blackwell.

Bloemers, Tom (J. H. F.), Henk Kars, Arnold van der Valk, and Mies Wijnen, eds. 2010. The Cultural Landscape and Heritage Paradox: Protection and Development of the Dutch Archaeological-Historical Landscape and Its European Dimension. Landscape and Heritage Studies. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press.

Brown, Jessica, Nora Mitchell, and Michael Beresford, eds. 2005. The Protected Landscape Approach: Linking Nature, Culture and Community. Gland, Switzerland: IUCN. https://portals.iucn.org/library/sites/library/files/documents/2005-006.pdf.

Buckley, Kristal, and Sharon Sullivan. 2014. “Issues in Values-Based Management for Indigenous Cultural Heritage in Australia.” APT Bulletin 45 (4): 35–42.

Bullock, Veronica M. 2012. “The Marriage of Risk Assessment and Significance Assessment: Challenges and Opportunities.” In “International Symposium on Cultural Property Risk Analysis.” Special issue, edited by Robert Waller, Collections: A Journal for Museum and Archives Professionals 8 (4): 307–22.

———. 2014. “Significance Assessment as a Way to Salvage Prioritising.” In Ensaios do Seminário Oficina em gestão de riscos ao patrimônio museológico / Ensayos del Seminario Taller en Gestión de Riesgos al Patrimonio Museológico / Essays from the Museum Heritage Risk Management Professional Training Institute 2011, 267–74. Brasília: Programa lbermuseus, Organização dos Estados Ibero-Americanos para a Educação, a Ciência e a Cultura. http://www.ibermuseus.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/PATR.RIESGO_Gestao-do-Patrimonio-Museologico-em-Risco-2011-WEB-reduzido.pdf.

Burke, Sheridan, and Susan Macdonald. 2014. “Creativity and Conservation: Managing Significance at the Sydney Opera House.” APT Bulletin 45 (2/3): 31–37.

Byrne, Denis, Helen Brayshaw, and Tracy Ireland. 2001. Social Significance: A Discussion Paper. Hurstville, Australia: NSW National Parks and Wildlife Service, Research Unit, Cultural Heritage Division. http://www.environment.nsw.gov.au/resources/cultureheritage/SocialSignificance.pdf.

Calame, Jon, and Kirstin Sechler. 2004. “Is Preservation Missing the Point? Cultural Heritage in the Service of Social Development.” Future Anterior: Journal of Historic Preservation History, Theory and Criticism 1 (1): 57–63.

Cameron, Christina. 2009. “The Evolution of the Concept of Outstanding Universal Value.” In Conserving the Authentic: Essays in Honour of Jukka Jokilehto, edited by Nicholas Stanley-Price and Joseph King, 127–36. ICCROM Conservation Studies 10. Rome: ICCROM. https://www.iccrom.org/sites/default/files/ICCROM_ICS10_JukkaFestchrift_en.pdf.

Cameron, Fiona, and Sarah Kenderdine, eds. 2007. Theorizing Digital Cultural Heritage: A Critical Discourse. Media in Transition. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Carson, Richard T. 2011. Contingent Valuation: A Comprehensive Bibliography and History. Cheltenham, UK: Edward Elgar.

Choay, Françoise. 2001. The Invention of the Historic Monument. Translated by Lauren M. O’Connell. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.

Choi, Andy S., Brent W. Ritchie, Franco Papandrea, and Jeff Bennett. 2010. “Economic Valuation of Cultural Heritage Sites: A Choice Modeling Approach.” Tourism Management 31 (2): 213–20.

Claesson, Stefan. 2011. “The Value and Valuation of Maritime Cultural Heritage.” International Journal of Cultural Property 18 (1): 61–80.

Clark, Kate. 2004. “Why Fund Heritage? The Role of Research in the Heritage Lottery Fund.” Cultural Trends 13 (4): 65–85.

———, ed. 2006. Capturing the Public Value of Heritage: The Proceedings of the London Conference, 25–26 January 2006. Swindon, UK: English Heritage.

———. 2014. “Values-Based Heritage Management and the Heritage Lottery Fund in the UK.” APT Bulletin 45 (2/3): 65–71.

Clark, Kate, and Gareth Maeer. 2008. “The Cultural Value of Heritage: Evidence from the Heritage Lottery Fund.” Cultural Trends 17 (1): 23–56.

Crooke, Elizabeth. 2010. “The Politics of Community Heritage: Motivations, Authority and Control.” International Journal of Heritage Studies 16 (1/2): 16–29.

Crossick, Geoffrey, and Patrycja Kaszynska. 2016. Understanding the Value of Arts and Culture: The AHRC Cultural Value Project. Swindon, UK: Arts and Humanities Research Council. http://www.ahrc.ac.uk/documents/publications/cultural-value-project-final-report/.

de la Torre, Marta. 2002. Assessing the Values of Cultural Heritage: Research Report. Los Angeles: Getty Conservation Institute. http://hdl.handle.net/10020/gci_pubs/values_cultural_heritage.

de la Torre, Marta, Margaret G. H. MacLean, Randall Mason, and David Myers. 2005. Heritage Values in Site Management: Four Case Studies. Los Angeles: Getty Conservation Institute. http://hdl.handle.net/10020/gci_pubs/values_site_mgmnt.

Demos. 2004. Challenge and Change: HLF and Cultural Value: A Report to the Heritage Lottery Fund. London: Heritage Lottery Fund. https://www.hlf.org.uk/sites/default/files/media/research/challengeandchange_culturalvalue.pdf.

Dutta, Mousumi, Sarmila Banerjee, and Zakir Husain. 2007. “Untapped Demand for Heritage: A Contingent Valuation Study of Prinsep Ghat, Calcutta.” Tourism Management 28 (1): 83–95.

Duxbury, Nancy, W. F. Garrett-Petts, and David MacLennan, eds. 2015. Cultural Mapping as Cultural Inquiry. Routledge Advances in Research Methods 13. New York: Routledge.

Emerick, Keith. 2014. Conserving and Managing Ancient Monuments: Heritage, Democracy, and Inclusion. Heritage Matters 14. Woodbridge, UK: Boydell.

English Heritage. 2002. Heritage Dividend 2002: Measuring the Results of Heritage Regeneration 1999–2002. London: English Heritage.

English Heritage and Historic Environment Review Steering Group. 2000. Power of Place: The Future of the Historic Environment. London: Power of Place Office.

Fairclough, Graham. 2014. “What Was Wrong with Dufton? Reflections on Counter-Mapping: Self, Alterity and Community.” In Who Needs Experts? Counter-Mapping Cultural Heritage, edited by John Schofield, 241–48. Heritage, Culture and Identity. Farnham, UK: Ashgate.

Fairclough, Graham, Rodney Harrison, John H. Jameson Jnr., and John Schofield, eds. 2008. The Heritage Reader. London: Routledge.

Fan Jinshi, Zheng Jun, Lu Zhou, and Jeffrey Levin. 2016. “An Evolution in Values: A Discussion about Cultural Heritage Conservation in China.” Conservation Perspectives: The GCI Newsletter 31 (1): 19–24.

Ferretti, Valentina, Marta Bottero, and Giulio Mondini. 2014. “Decision Making and Cultural Heritage: An Application of the Multi-Attribute Value Theory for the Reuse of Historical Buildings.” Journal of Cultural Heritage 15 (6): 644–55.

Ferretti, Valentina, and Elena Comino. 2015. “An Integrated Framework to Assess Complex Cultural and Natural Heritage Systems with Multi-Attribute Value Theory.” Journal of Cultural Heritage 16 (5): 688–97.

Fouseki, Kalliopi, and Caroline Sandes. 2009. “Private Preservation versus Public Presentation: The Conservation for Display of In Situ Fragmentary Archaeological Remains in London and Athens.” Papers from the Institute of Archaeology 19:37–54. https://pia-journal.co.uk/articles/10.5334/pia.323/.

Fredheim, L. Harald, and Manal Khalaf. 2016. “The Significance of Values: Heritage Value Typologies Re-examined.” International Journal of Heritage Studies 22 (6): 466–81.

Gang, Song, Yang Changming, Hao Chen, and Ran Yanping. 2014. “Application of Value Assessment Weights in Conservation of Modern Architectural Heritage.” Indonesian Journal of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science 12 (12): 8312–18.

Gang, Song, Yang Chang-Ming, Hao Chen, and Ran Yan-Ping. 2014. “Weights of the Value Assessment Indicators in Integrated Conservation of Modern Architectural Heritage.” Journal of Applied Sciences 14:580–85.

Giaccardi, Elisa, ed. 2012. Heritage and Social Media: Understanding Heritage in a Participatory Culture. New York: Routledge.

Gibson, Lisanne, and John Pendlebury, eds. 2009. Valuing Historic Environments. Heritage, Culture and Identity. Farnham, UK: Ashgate.

Glendinning, Miles. 2013. The Conservation Movement: A History of Architectural Preservation: Antiquity to Modernity. Abingdon, UK: Routledge.

Goldschmidt, Nils, and Bernd Remmele. 2005. “Anthropology as the Basic Science of Economic Theory: Towards a Cultural Theory of Economics.” Journal of Economic Methodology 12 (3): 455–69.

Golinelli, Gaetano M., ed. 2015. Cultural Heritage and Value Creation: Towards New Pathways. Cham, Switzerland: Springer.

Graham, Brian, and Peter Howard, eds. 2008. The Ashgate Research Companion to Heritage and Identity. Burlington, VT: Ashgate.

Gražulevičiūtė-Vileniškė, Indrė, Vytautas Janilionis, Jūratė Guščinskienė, and Ligita Azukaitė. 2011. “Contingent Valuation of Built Heritage Properties in a Transition Country: A Case of Lithuania.” International Journal of Strategic Property Management 15 (4): 393–415.

Greffe, Xavier. 2004. “Is Heritage an Asset or a Liability?” Journal of Cultural Heritage 5 (3): 301–9.

Guilfoyle, David R., and Myles B. Mitchell. 2015. “Compliance-Based Archaeological Heritage Management and Place-Based Participatory Mapping for Negotiated Outcomes.” Australian Archaeology 80 (1): 80–90.

Hamilton, David, Glen Atkinson, William M. Dugger, and William T. Waller Jr. 2010. Cultural Economics and Theory: The Evolutionary Economics of David Hamilton. Routledge Advances in Heterodox Economics 11. London: Routledge.

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Harmon, David, and Allen D. Putney, eds. 2003. The Full Value of Parks: From Economics to the Intangible. Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield.

Harrington, Jane. 2009. “Managing Intangible Cultural Heritage: Competing Global and Local Values.” Historic Environment 22 (3): 19–23.

Harrison, Rodney. 2013. Heritage: Critical Approaches. Milton Park, UK: Routledge.

Hassan, Fekri. 2008. “Heritage for Development: Concepts and Strategic Approaches.” In Cultural Heritage and Development in the Arab World, edited by Fekri Hassan, Aloisia de Trafford, and Youssef Mohsen, 13–52. Alexandria, Egypt: Bibliotheca Alexandrina. https://www.bibalex.org/arf/en/gra1106_df_20081102_book.pdf.

Heras, Veronica Cristina, Anja Wijffels, Fausto Cardoso, Aziliz Vandesande, Mario Santana, Jos Van Orshoven, Thérèse Steenberghen, and Koenraad van Balen. 2013. “A Value-Based Monitoring System to Support Heritage Conservation Planning.” Journal of Cultural Heritage Management and Sustainable Development 3 (2): 130–47.

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ICOMOS China. 2015. Zhongguo wen wu gu ji bao hu zhun ze / Principles for the Conservation of Heritage Sites in China. Rev. ed. Beijing: Wen wu chu ban she. http://hdl.handle.net/10020/gci_pubs/china_principles_2015.

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Symposium Participants

This list reflects titles and affiliations at the time of the symposium “Values in Heritage Management: Emerging Approaches and Research Directions,” held in Los Angeles in February 2017.

Erica Avrami, James Marston Fitch Assistant Professor of Historic Preservation, Columbia University, New York

Kristal Buckley, Lecturer in Cultural Heritage, Deakin University, Melbourne

Kate Clark, Visiting Professor in Heritage Valuation, University of Suffolk, UK

Martha Demas, Senior Project Specialist, Getty Conservation Institute, Los Angeles

Karina V. Korostelina, Professor, School for Conflict Analysis and Resolution; Director of the Program on History, Memory, and Conflict, George Mason University, Arlington, Virginia

Kuanghan Li, China Heritage Program Director, Global Heritage Fund, Beijing

Susan Macdonald, Head, Buildings and Sites Department, Getty Conservation Institute, Los Angeles

Richard Mackay, Director of Possibilities, Mackay Strategic Pty. Ltd., Sydney

Hossam Mahdy, Independent Heritage Consultant, Oxford

Josep-Maria Mallarach, Independent Environmental Consultant, Catalonia, Spain

Randall Mason, Chair, Graduate Program in Historic Preservation; Associate Professor of City and Regional Planning, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia

Laura Matarese, Associate Project Specialist, Getty Conservation Institute, Los Angeles

David Myers, Senior Project Specialist, Getty Conservation Institute, Los Angeles

Gail Ostergren, Research Associate, Getty Conservation Institute, Los Angeles

Ayesha Pamela Rogers, Managing Director, Rogers Kolachi Khan and Associates, Lahore

Tara Sharma, Independent Heritage Consultant, Safeguarding Cultural Resources, New Delhi

Jeanne Marie Teutonico, Associate Director, Programs, Getty Conservation Institute, Los Angeles

David Throsby, Professor of Economics, Department of Economics, Macquarie University, Sydney

Joe Watkins, American Indian Liaison Officer; Chief, Tribal Relations and American Cultures; and Supervisory Cultural Anthropologist, National Park Service, Washington DC

Contributors

- Erica Avrami

Erica Avrami is the James Marston Fitch Assistant Professor of Historic Preservation at Columbia University’s Graduate School of Architecture, Planning, and Preservation, and a research affiliate at the Center for Sustainable Urban Development at Columbia’s Earth Institute. She was formerly the director of research and education for World Monuments Fund and a project specialist at the Getty Conservation Institute. She earned her BA in architecture and MS in historic preservation, both at Columbia, and her PhD in planning and public policy at Rutgers University. She was a trustee and secretary of US/ICOMOS from 2003 to 2010 and currently serves on the editorial advisory board of the journal Change Over Time.

1. Introduction

2. Mapping the Issue of Values

3. Spatializing Values in Heritage Conservation: The Potential of Cultural Mapping

- Kristal Buckley

Kristal Buckley is a lecturer in cultural heritage at Deakin University. Her teaching and research interests concern evolving forms of global cultural heritage practice. She holds professional qualifications in the fields of archaeology, anthropology, and public policy, and has worked in government, private practice, and the community sector. She is a former international vice president of ICOMOS and a former president of Australia ICOMOS. She works as a World Heritage adviser for ICOMOS and is a board member of the Port Arthur Historic Site Management Authority, Tasmania. She is a member of the Order of Australia.

4. Heritage Work: Understanding the Values, Applying the Values

- Kate Clark

Kate Clark is an industrial archaeologist who has worked with the Ironbridge Gorge Museums, English Heritage, and the Heritage Lottery Fund in the UK; Sydney Living Museums in Australia; and on historic environment, museums, archives, and libraries in the Welsh government. She has written extensively on buildings archaeology, sustainable development, heritage management, and heritage values, and was involved in developing values-based approaches in the UK. Her current interest is around the use of creative games and activities to teach skills that communities and specialists need to manage heritage in the modern world.

5. The Shift toward Values in UK Heritage Practice

- Karina V. Korostelina

Karina V. Korostelina is a professor at the School for Conflict Analysis and Resolution, George Mason University, and director of the Program on History, Memory, and Conflict. She is a leading expert on identity-based conflicts, nation building, and the role of history in post-violent societies. She has been a Fulbright New Century Scholar and a Rockefeller Foundation fellow. Her research has been supported by thirty-seven grants and has been presented in ninety articles and book chapters and fifteen books, including Social Identity and Conflict: Structure, Dynamic, and Implications (Palgrave Macmillan, 2007), Constructing the Narratives of Identity and Power: Self-Imagination in a Young Ukrainian Nation (Lexington, 2013), and Trump Effect (Routledge, Taylor & Francis, 2017).

6. Understanding Values of Cultural Heritage within the Framework of Social Identity Conflicts

- Kuanghan Li

Kuanghan Li holds a BA in architectural studies from the National University of Singapore, an MS in historic preservation from the University of Pennsylvania, and a PhD in cultural heritage conservation from Peking University. She has worked on various architectural design and historic preservation projects in the United States, India, France, Morocco, and China. Since 2008 she has been director of Global Heritage Fund’s China Heritage Program, where she works closely with public and private partners and local communities on planning, conservation, and development issues. Her recent practice and research focus is on the conservation and development of ethnic villages in southwest China.

7. The Contemporary Values behind Chinese Heritage

- Susan Macdonald

Susan Macdonald manages the Buildings and Sites Department at the Getty Conservation Institute, where she oversees some twenty international projects that aim to advance conservation practice across a variety of challenges. She has worked as a conservation architect in private practice and in the government sector in Australia and in London, including with English Heritage and as a former director of the NSW Heritage Office, where she was involved in a wide range of conservation issues, from urban planning to development, economics, policy, and technical matters. She has a particular interest in twentieth-century heritage conservation and has been involved in international committees and world heritage issues.

1. Introduction

- Richard Mackay

Richard Mackay is director of possibilities at Mackay Strategic and was a founding partner of the Australian consulting practice GML Heritage. He is an ICOMOS cultural adviser to the World Heritage Committee, former chair of the Australian World Heritage Advisory Committee, and a former member of the State Heritage Council and the Australia ICOMOS Burra Charter Working Party. He coedited the Getty Readings in Conservation volume Archaeological Sites: Conservation and Management (2013). He was the inaugural winner of the Sharon Sullivan Award for his contribution to Australia’s national heritage and is a member of the Order of Australia for services to archaeology and cultural heritage.

8. Values-Based Management and the Burra Charter: 1979, 1999, 2013

- Hossam Mahdy

Hossam Mahdy is an independent researcher and a freelance consultant on the conservation of cultural heritage. His research and consultancy work focuses on Islamic views on the conservation of cultural heritage, Arabic conservation terminology, and the translation of conservation literature from English into Arabic and vice versa. He is a former head of the Conservation Section at Abu Dhabi Authority for Tourism and Culture, UAE; head of the Heritage Unit at AlexMed, Bibliotheca Alexandrina, Egypt; Conservation Department lecturer, South Valley University, Egypt; and freelance conservation architect contributing to numerous projects of architectural and urban conservation in the Arab region. He holds a PhD from the University of Glasgow.

9. Is Conservation of Cultural Heritage Halal? Perspectives on Heritage Values Rooted in Arabic-Islamic Traditions

- Josep-Maria Mallarach

Josep-Maria Mallarach is a senior independent environmental consultant based in Catalonia, Spain, with three decades of experience. His fields of expertise include landscape and protected areas planning, management, interpretation, and evaluation. From 1985 to 1991 he was the director of the Garrotxa Volcanic Zone Natural Park, Spain. Since 2004 he has been a member of the IUCN World Commission on Protected Areas, a member of the steering committee of the Group on Cultural and Spiritual Values of Protected Areas, and joint coordinator of the Delos Initiative. He is representing IUCN at the UNESCO Initiative of World Heritage Sites of Religious Significance. He holds a PhD from the University of Navarra.

10. Changing Concepts and Values in Natural Heritage Conservation: A View through IUCN and UNESCO Policies

- Randall Mason

Randall Mason is chair of the Graduate Program in Historic Preservation, associate professor of city and regional planning, and executive director of PennPraxis at the University of Pennsylvania’s School of Design. He worked previously at the Getty Conservation Institute, and maintains an active practice in heritage conservation and urban planning. His book The Once and Future New York (University of Minnesota Press, 2009) won the Society of Architectural Historians’ Antoinette Forrester Downing Book Award in 2011, and in 2012–13 Mason held the National Endowment for the Arts Rome Prize at the American Academy in Rome. Current projects include conservation of genocide memorial sites in Rwanda, conservation planning for an abandoned island in New York, and Philadelphia-based research on civic infrastructure and the efficacy of creative place making. He holds a PhD from Columbia University.

1. Introduction

2. Mapping the Issue of Values

11. Valuing Traumatic Heritage Places as Archives and Agents

- David Myers

David Myers is a senior project specialist at the Getty Conservation Institute, manager of the GCI’s Recording and Documentation Unit, and a member of the Buildings and Sites Department. He works on the Arches open-source heritage inventory and management system, previously worked on the GCI Values and Economics Project, and manages the GCI project Heritage Values, Stakeholders, and Consensus Building. In the past he has worked on GCI projects in Jordan, Egypt, southern Africa, Iraq, and Los Angeles. He previously served as a legislative assistant to a member of the US House of Representatives.

1. Introduction

- Ayesha Pamela Rogers

Ayesha Pamela Rogers is a Canadian archaeologist and heritage manager with a BA degree from the University of British Columbia, an MA from the University of Birmingham, and a PhD from University College London’s Institute of Archaeology. She is currently at the National College of Arts, Lahore, Pakistan, where she is a visiting professor in the Cultural Studies Department, which holds the UNESCO chair in Conservation and Management of Historic Towns and Urban Centres. She is also director of heritage and archaeological consulting firms in Hong Kong and Lahore specializing in heritage impact assessment, and has worked with World Heritage Institute of Training and Research for the Asia and the Pacific Region (WHITR-AP), UNESCO, the World Bank, the World Monuments Fund, and other agencies and governments in the Asian region.

12. Values and Relationships between Tangible and Intangible Dimensions of Heritage Places

- Tara Sharma

Tara Sharma is an independent heritage consultant with a master’s degree in history from Delhi University. She has been working in the field of heritage conservation since 1994 and more specifically with communities in the Trans-Himalayas since 2000. She has worked as a consultant with several national (INTACH, Namgyal Institute for Research on Ladakhi Art and Culture) and international (UNESCO, ICCROM, ICOMOS, World Monuments Fund, Aga Khan Trust for Culture) institutions. She served as a board member of the International Scientific Committee on Earthen Architectural Heritage (ISCEAH) and as secretary to the interim Executive Committee of ICOMOS India.

13. The Paradox of Valuing the Invaluable: Managing Cultural Values in Heritage Places

- Jeanne Marie Teutonico

Foreword

- David Throsby

David Throsby is a distinguished professor of economics at Macquarie University. He is internationally known for his research and his many publications on the economics of art and culture. His interests include the economics of the performing arts, the role of artists as economic agents, heritage economics, the role of culture in sustainable development, and relationships between economic and cultural policy. His book Economics and Culture (Cambridge University Press, 2001) has been translated into eight languages. His most recent book is The Economics of Cultural Policy (Cambridge University Press, 2010).

14. Heritage Economics: Coming to Terms with Value and Valuation

- Bas Verschuuren

Bas Verschuuren is a freelance adviser and researcher with more than twenty years of experience in conservation and rural development issues. He is co-chair to the IUCN-WCPA Specialist Group on Cultural and Spiritual Values of Protected Areas and cofounder of the Sacred Natural Sites Initiative. He combines practical conservation experience with applied multidisciplinary conservation research in conservation management and policy. His academic work includes teaching and applied ethnographic research on different cultures of conservation. He has published widely, including three books. His latest book is Cultural and Spiritual Significance of Nature in Protected Areas: Governance, Management, and Policy (Routledge, 2019).

10. Changing Concepts and Values in Natural Heritage Conservation: A View through IUCN and UNESCO Policies

- Joe Watkins

Joe Watkins is a member of the Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma and has been involved in archaeology for fifty years. He is serving as president of the Society for American Archaeology for 2019–21 and is currently a senior consultant for the Archaeological and Cultural Education Consultants (ACE Consultants) in Tucson, Arizona. He retired in 2018 from the National Park Service in Washington, DC, where he was an American Indian liaison officer, supervisory cultural anthropologist, and chief, Tribal Relations and American Cultures Program. Watkins researches anthropology’s relationships with descendant communities and Indigenous populations, and has published numerous articles on the topic. Recently he has examined the sometimes conflicting issues between federal preservation ideas and heritage practices of American Indians within tribal historic preservation programs.

15. From the Inside Looking Out: Indigenous Perspectives on Heritage Values