Who defines heritage and who cares for / maintains it? Leiden MOOC Week 2
Friday, 18 May 2018, 08:08
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Who defines heritage and who cares for / maintains it?
Bertaccchini et.al (2015:13) summarise evidence based on
analysis of processes of international decision-making that huge influence is
wielded by nations with common economic interests. In this case, these nations
are ones with much political investment in the economics and ideologies of
growth. These aims may in various cases be at loggerheads with value systems
based on local, religious or communal practices that attempt to preserve
heritage, tangible or intangible, natural, human-built or theologically
inspired. The case of the preservation of forests in the face of economic
interests is a case in point. Here nations acting in concert can block forest-heritage
conservation in another nation often because not doing so would threaten their
right to exploit their own ‘uneconomic’ heritage. In nations with declining
ability to sustain growth by deforestation (because it has already largely
happened), an apparently ‘more balanced’ view might equally be led by
self-interest. Preservation of forest in third-world countries is their only
chance of defending their ecological survival.
Regarding Castle Hill, preservation is no longer an urgent
issue because of the declining value to developed capitalist countries of
localised defensive uses and human-made formations in them of natural
hill-tops. Castle Hill is overlooked by power. Such economic interests that
took a stake in it – small household farmers building adit mines or the remains
of a defunct public house – were never a great threat and could be sustained
with the preservation of the much earlier earthworks and land-markings because
they didn’t need each other and didn’t get in each other’s way. Now that both
are consigned to economic, social and cultural irrelevance (in the views of
majorities), they may be allowed to decay together.
I will concentrate on Byrne (2015) as an analogue to my
further thoughts. Although such religious traditions as might have been
important to pre-Roman civilizations are now not fully understood, they die
because communities of ‘souls’ no longer have enough interest to maintain their
important sites or the intangible heritage that makes them understandable. Of
course, intangible heritages are a site of changing meanings and this is why, I
think, the practice of Buddhist communities and individuals in ‘maintaining’ or
‘restoring’ shrines are resisted by some national and academic heritage interests
because bearers of that intangible heritage may, and probably will, maintain
and restore something in ways that change it because of forgotten or now
seemingly irrelevant aspects of older parts of intangible heritage.
This is a dilemma. Castle Hill represented almost certainly
a hill-top means of defending against Roman imperialism but the value to me of
Castle Hill is sometimes that it represents the focus for Chartism in the 1840s
– a tradition that contained some political beliefs and interests that still
are radical and would be seen as such. When a powerful Huddersfield bourgeoisie
commissioned Victoria Tower on Castle hill top, it also served to change the
meaning of the hill from association to liberty and anti-imperialism
(Brigantine or radical working-class Chartism). It became a monument to Empire
under the Empress of India in fact.
The Chartist association is forgotten because it has little
intangible heritage to value and re-interpret it from a radical working-class
perspective. Hasn’t Castle Hill as heritage already been then preserved as a
heritage that only serves the few – those to whom movement on to new political
and economic definitions about what matters to communities in the present, past
and future. Byrne’ practising Buddhists keep Buddhism alive after all, not
monuments frozen behind boundaries. But, of course, it is not that simple.
Ownership of heritage then needs to reflect many stakeholders. In doing it, we
would still have to accept that what survives is partial and the product of
dialogue with a future-moving tendency. Any answers out there?
Who defines heritage and who cares for / maintains it? Leiden MOOC Week 2
Who defines heritage and who cares for / maintains it?
Bertaccchini et.al (2015:13) summarise evidence based on analysis of processes of international decision-making that huge influence is wielded by nations with common economic interests. In this case, these nations are ones with much political investment in the economics and ideologies of growth. These aims may in various cases be at loggerheads with value systems based on local, religious or communal practices that attempt to preserve heritage, tangible or intangible, natural, human-built or theologically inspired. The case of the preservation of forests in the face of economic interests is a case in point. Here nations acting in concert can block forest-heritage conservation in another nation often because not doing so would threaten their right to exploit their own ‘uneconomic’ heritage. In nations with declining ability to sustain growth by deforestation (because it has already largely happened), an apparently ‘more balanced’ view might equally be led by self-interest. Preservation of forest in third-world countries is their only chance of defending their ecological survival.
Regarding Castle Hill, preservation is no longer an urgent issue because of the declining value to developed capitalist countries of localised defensive uses and human-made formations in them of natural hill-tops. Castle Hill is overlooked by power. Such economic interests that took a stake in it – small household farmers building adit mines or the remains of a defunct public house – were never a great threat and could be sustained with the preservation of the much earlier earthworks and land-markings because they didn’t need each other and didn’t get in each other’s way. Now that both are consigned to economic, social and cultural irrelevance (in the views of majorities), they may be allowed to decay together.
I will concentrate on Byrne (2015) as an analogue to my further thoughts. Although such religious traditions as might have been important to pre-Roman civilizations are now not fully understood, they die because communities of ‘souls’ no longer have enough interest to maintain their important sites or the intangible heritage that makes them understandable. Of course, intangible heritages are a site of changing meanings and this is why, I think, the practice of Buddhist communities and individuals in ‘maintaining’ or ‘restoring’ shrines are resisted by some national and academic heritage interests because bearers of that intangible heritage may, and probably will, maintain and restore something in ways that change it because of forgotten or now seemingly irrelevant aspects of older parts of intangible heritage.
This is a dilemma. Castle Hill represented almost certainly a hill-top means of defending against Roman imperialism but the value to me of Castle Hill is sometimes that it represents the focus for Chartism in the 1840s – a tradition that contained some political beliefs and interests that still are radical and would be seen as such. When a powerful Huddersfield bourgeoisie commissioned Victoria Tower on Castle hill top, it also served to change the meaning of the hill from association to liberty and anti-imperialism (Brigantine or radical working-class Chartism). It became a monument to Empire under the Empress of India in fact.
The Chartist association is forgotten because it has little intangible heritage to value and re-interpret it from a radical working-class perspective. Hasn’t Castle Hill as heritage already been then preserved as a heritage that only serves the few – those to whom movement on to new political and economic definitions about what matters to communities in the present, past and future. Byrne’ practising Buddhists keep Buddhism alive after all, not monuments frozen behind boundaries. But, of course, it is not that simple. Ownership of heritage then needs to reflect many stakeholders. In doing it, we would still have to accept that what survives is partial and the product of dialogue with a future-moving tendency. Any answers out there?