Imagined communities: Reflections on the origin and spread of nationalism

Examining international case studies including USA, Asia, Australia and New Zealand, Laurajane Smith identifies and explores the use of heritage throughout the world.

Challenging the idea that heritage value is self-evident, and that things must be preserved because they have an inherent importance, Smith forcefully demonstrates that heritage value is not inherent in physical objects or places, but rather that these objects and places are used to give tangibility to the values that underpin different communities and to assert and affirm these values.

A practically grounded accessible examination of heritage as a cultural practice, The Uses of Heritage is global in its benefit to students and field professionals alike.

Uses of heritage

Bodies That Matter: On the Discursive Limits of “Sex”

Benedict Anderson’s deservedly famous thesis about the origins and nature
of modern nationalism turns around the central notion of an “imagined
community.” This category provides him with a matrix out of which one
can apprehend-theoretically and historically-the different variants of nationalist discourse formulated over the last two hundred years. We will refer,
in the brief comments that follow, to three basic dimensions structuring
the fabric of Anderson’s argument: 1) the presuppositions implicit in the
notion of an “imagined” community; 2) the kind of substitutability or solidarity which is required to be a member of such a community; 3) the kind
of relationship that is established between such a community-which is by
definition finite or limited-and its outside. Before that, however, let us
describe the main features of Anderson’s thesis.

On Imagined Communities

Inclusion and democracy.

This paper revisits the notion of ‘community’ within the field of heritage, examining the varied ways in which tensions between different groups and their aspirations arise and are mediated. Our focus is a close examination of the conceptual disjunction that exists between a range of popular, political and academic attempts to define and negotiate memory, place, identity and cultural expression. To do so, the paper places emphasis on those expressions of community that have been taken up within dominant political and academic practice. Such expressions, we argue, are embedded with restrictive assumptions concerned with nostalgia, consensus and homogeneity, all of which help to facilitate the extent to which systemic issues tied up with social justice, recognition and subordinate status are ignored or go unidentified. This, inevitably, has serious and far‐reaching consequences for community groups seeking to assert alternative understandings of heritage. Indeed, the net result has seen the virtual disappea...

The recognition and misrecognition of community heritage

1. Introduction 2 . The Cultural Politics of Identity: Defining the Problem 3. Archaeological Theory and the 'Politics' of the Past 4. Archaeology and the Context of Governance: Expertise and the State 5. Archaeological Stewardship: The Rise of Cultural Resource Management and the 'Scientific Professional' arcHaeologist 6. Significance Concepts and the Embedding of Processual Discourse in Cultural Resource Management 7. The Role of Legislation in the Governance of Material Culture in America and Australia 8. NAGPRA and Kennewick: Contesting Archaeological Govrnance in America 9. The 'Death of Archaeology': Contesting Archaeological Covernance in Australia 10. Conclusion

Archaeological Theory and the Politics of Cultural Heritage

Heritage, Communities and Archaeology

This paper reviews the methodological utility of Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) in heritage studies. Using the Burra Charter as a case study we argue that the way we talk, write and otherwise represent heritage both constitutes and is constituted by the operation of a dominant discourse. In identifying the discursive construction of heritage, the paper argues we may reveal competing and conflicting discourses and the power relations that underpin the power/knowledge relations between expertise and community interests. This identification presents an opportunity for the resolution of conflicts and ambiguities in the pursuit of equitable dialogues and social inclusion.

Laurajane Smith

Papers

Uses of heritage

The recognition and misrecognition of community heritage

Archaeological Theory and the Politics of Cultural Heritage

Heritage, Communities and Archaeology

The Utility of Discourse Analysis to Heritage Studies: The Burra Charter and Social Inclusion