ORE Open Research Exeter
TITLE
Heritage pasts and heritage presents: temporality, meaning and the scope of heritage studies
AUTHORS
Harvey, David
JOURNAL
International Journal of Heritage Studies
DEPOSITED IN ORE
15 January 2009
This version available at
http://hdl.handle.net/10036/47550
COPYRIGHT AND REUSE
Open Research Exeter makes this work available in accordance with publisher policies.
A NOTE ON VERSIONS
The version presented here may differ from the published version. If citing, you are advised to consult the published version for pagination, volume/issue and date of
publication
David C. Harvey
Department of Geography, University of Exeter,
Amory Building, Rennes Drive, Exeter, EX4 4RJ, UK.
Tel; (01392) 263330 Fax; (01392) 263342 e-mail;
D.C.Harvey@exeter.ac.uk
Heritage pasts and heritage presents:
Temporality, meaning and the scope of
heritage studies
International Journal of Heritage Studies, Volume 7, no. 4,
(pages 319-338)
Published, December 2001
David C. Harvey is a lecturer in historical cultural geography at the University of
Exeter. He got involved in heritage studies through his previous research into territorial
development, landscape change and hagiography in Cornwall. He is currently working
on a British Academy funded project that examines the representation of ancient
monuments in Britain and Ireland over the last 300 years.
1
Heritage pasts and heritage presents: Temporality,
meaning and the scope of heritage studies
Abstract:
With the apparent focus of work carried out by the heritage ‘community’ very much
directed towards heritage practices in the present, the potential historical scope for the
discipline as a whole, becomes ever-more temporally closed. This paper makes space
for a longer historical analysis of the development of heritage as a process. The paper
ranges over the evolution of a medieval sense of heritage and how it is related to
transitions in the experience of space and place, and also explores some early modern
developments in the heritage concept, relating them to societal changes associated with
colonial (and post-colonial) experience. This deeper understanding of the historically
contingent and embedded nature of heritage allows us to go beyond treating heritage
simply as a set of problems to be solved, and enables us to engage with debates about
the production of identity, power and authority throughout society.
Key words:
Heritage history; medieval heritage; ancient monuments; heritage process
Introduction:
In decrying the lack of any full, or even remotely accepted, theorisation of the heritage
concept, Larkham questions whether heritage is simply “all things to all people”.
1
Certainly there seems to be as many definitions of the heritage concept as there are
heritage practitioners, while many commentators simply leave the definition as broad
and malleable as possible. Johnson and Thomas for instance, simply note that heritage
is “virtually anything by which some kind of link, however tenuous or false, may be
forged with the past”, while Lowenthal seems to revel in his claim that “heritage today
all but defies definition”.
2
This in itself raises the question of whether we really need a
tight definition at all, let alone a comprehensive ‘manifesto’ of what heritage studies is
all about. However, without wanting to delve into the inconclusivity (and ultimate
aridity) that some of such debates have led us to in the past however, I think we do at
least need to consider the ‘scope’ of heritage studies as a discipline. This is particularly
important with regard to the theorisation of temporality that its very ‘presentness’ seems
to imply. In short, I feel that many contemporary studies of heritage issues have failed
to fully explore the historical scope that the concept really implies, and have rather been
too pre-occupied with certain manifestations of heritage’s recent trajectory. I certainly
do not intend to prescribe a narrowly-defined heritage manifesto, nor do I wish to
denigrate any recent heritage work. Rather I wish to make space for a longer historical
analysis of the development of heritage practices. Consequently, by providing a longer
historical narrative of ‘heritageisation’ as a process, I am seeking to situate the myriad
of multiply-connected inter-disciplinary research that makes up the terrain of heritage
studies today.
The premise of this paper is that heritage has always been with us and has always been
produced by people according to their contemporary concerns and experiences.
Consequently, we should explore the history of heritage, not starting at an arbitrary date
1
P.J. Larkham, ‘Heritage as planned and conserved’, in D.T. Herbert (ed.) Heritage, Tourism and
Society, London: Mansell, 1995, p. 85.
2
P. Johnson and B. Thomas, ‘Heritage as business’, in D.T. Herbert (ed.) Heritage, Tourism and
Society, London: Mansell, 1995, p. 170. D. Lowenthal, The Heritage Crusade and the Spoils of
History, Cambridge: CUP, 1998, p. 94.
2
like 1882, but by producing a context-rich account of heritage as a process or a human
condition rather than as a single movement or personal project.
3
This account would
place people such as William Morris (or Robert Hewison for that matter) as
representative of a particular strand of heritage at a particular moment in time,
reflecting the agendas, perceptions and arrangements of that time.
4
Every society has
had a relationship with its past, even those that have chosen to ignore it, and it is
through understanding the meaning and nature of what people tell each other about their
past; about what they forget, remember, memorialise and/or fake, that heritage studies
can engage with academic debates beyond the confines of present-centred cultural,
leisure or tourism studies.
This short essay seeks to explore the development of the heritage process over the long
term. In order to do this, the paper reviews the contribution of certain published work
on such heritage issues that has been produced by people generally working outside of
the field of heritage studies. A range of scholarly work on early modern and even
medieval subject areas will be examined and placed within an understanding of the
long-term development of heritage as a social process. In this sense, I will explore
processes of heritageisation within a much longer temporal framework than is normally
used. For instance, the evolution of a medieval sense of heritage is related to changes in
technology and transitions in the experience of place and space, while some more
recent developments in the heritage concept are related to the more recent societal
changes connected to colonial (and post-colonial) experience. This essay merely
scratches the surface of what is implied by this expanded temporal scale. Nevertheless,
I feel that a deeper understanding of the historically contingent and embedded nature of
heritage is vital, both in order to avoid falling into the trap of producing endless
present-centred case studies for little (apparent) reason, and to enable us to engage with
debates about the production of identity, power and authority throughout society.
Firstly however, we need to examine the nature of this ‘present-centredness’ which
pervades the subject, before quickly exploring the full implications of the heritage
definitions that are in current circulation. This will establish a firm contextual basis
within which to place the historical analysis of the heritage concept.
The presentness of heritage; heritage definitions and the apparent demise of
history:
A glance at some recent heritage studies texts soon reveals the complexity and wide
scope of the subject.
5
In particular, Arnold et al’s recent collection of essays shows just
how broad the blanket term of heritage studies can be, with topics ranging from war
memorials in Wales to the media treatment of Princess Diana.
6
This itself has caused
some consternation, with Terry-Chandler for instance seeing the “unsystematized” and
“heterogeneous” nature of heritage studies potentially leaving us with little more than a
3
1882 is the date of the Ancient Monuments Act in Great Britain. Other arbitrary dates for the ‘start’
of heritage include the French Revolution or the establishment of the National Trust in 1895.
4
This idea is strongly resonant of ideas about the invention of tradition . See E. Hobsbawm and T.
Ranger (eds.), The Invention of Tradition, Cambridge: CUP, 1983.
5
For instance, see B.J. Graham, G.J. Ashworth and J.E. Tunbridge, A Geography of Heritage; Power.
Culture, Economy, London: Arnold, 2000; Lowenthal, Heritage Crusade; M. Hunter (ed.), Preserving
the Past; The Rise of Heritage in Modern Britain, Stroud: Sutton, 1996.
6
J. Arnold, K. Davies and S. Ditchfield (eds.), History and Heritage; Consuming the Past in
Contemporary Culture, Shaftesbury: Donhead, 1998; A. Gaffney, ‘Monuments and memory: The
Great War’, in J. Arnold, K. Davies and S. Ditchfield (eds.), History and Heritage; Consuming the
Past in Contemporary Culture, Shaftesbury: Donhead, 1998, pp. 79-89; J. Davies, ‘The media
iconicity of Diana, Princess of Wales’, in J. Arnold, K. Davies and S. Ditchfield (eds.), History and
Heritage; Consuming the Past in Contemporary Culture, Shaftesbury: Donhead, 1998, pp. 39-50.
3
“morass of case studies”.
7
Interestingly, the one aspect that appears to unite almost all
of these case studies, as well as the wider subject as it is practised today, is the dating of
their heritage subjects; almost all commentators placing the appearance of the heritage
phenomenon in the latter half of the twentieth century, with even the earliest origins
often manifested only in nineteenth century with the Ancient Monuments Act of 1882
and personified by such figures as William Morris.
8
For instance, in the opening pages
of their book, McCrone et al proclaim that “heritage is a thoroughly modern concept, …
.(it) belongs to the final quarter of the twentieth century”.
9
Although McCrone et al
acknowledge a much older origin for heritage in a legal sense, their linking the concept
with modernity is complete, claiming heritage to be “a condition of the later twentieth
century”.
10
Continuing this trend of dating the heritage concept within the opening
paragraphs of a text, Lowenthal argues that it is only in our time that heritage has
“become a self-conscious creed”, while Graham et al claim that it is only in the last few
decades that the word has come to mean more than a legal bequest.
11
Considering the
acknowledged complexity of the heritage phenomenon, it is certainly understandable
why so many commentators use a purposely vague and malleable definition of the
concept. However, in the aforementioned cases at least, it seems that the unexamined
assumptions regarding the dating of heritage are let loose before any such definitions
are even reached.
It is easy to see why heritage commentators have dated their subject in such a way, what
with the increasingly high profile of heritage in the public mind,
12
matching the
increasing proliferation of heritage sites; a recent trend that has been much discussed in
the literature.
13
The critical response of Robert Hewison
14
to the recent developments of
the so-called ‘heritage industry’ are well known, and the dating of this rise of
‘heritageisation’ to the later twentieth century is a central part of his thesis. A simple
overview of this debate however, shows that whether critical or supportive of such
recent heritage practices, most authors seem to accept implicitly the recent nature of
7
F. Terry-Chandler, ‘Heritage and history: A special relationship?’, review article in Midland History,
Vol. 24, 1999, pp. 188-193. Terry-Chandler seems to have faith in the apparent self-evident existence
of a ‘substantive base’ for heritage studies upon which she provides no further comment. This has
drawn questions on the Mailbase heritage discussion list, most specifically from Peacock
(23/11/1999).
8
Such views were very much to the fore during The Idea of Heritage Conference, London Guildhall
University, (7-9/9/1999). Many delegates using phrases such as ‘heritage in Britain started with the
1882 Act’. The sentiments of the present paper were fermented during the attendance of this excellent
conference.
9
D. McCrone, A. Morris and R. Kiely, Scotland –the Brand. The Making of Scottish Heritage,
Edinburgh: Polygon, 1995, p. 1.
10
Ibid., p. 1.
11
Lowenthal, Heritage Crusade, p. 1; Graham et al, Geography of Heritage, p. 1.
12
Reflecting the thoughts of Tunbridge and Ashworth, ‘heritage’ is one of those things which everyone
possesses, and which everyone will defend, seemingly without thought. J.E. Tunbridge and G.J.
Ashworth, Dissonant Heritage; The Management of the Past as a Resource in Conflict, Chichester:
Wiley, 1996. More recently, National Lottery funding has added a further cash injection into the
public profile of heritage in Britain, raising many questions about the increasingly overt politicisation
of heritage management and funding.
13
Robert Hewison is perhaps best known for this. In 1987 his book The Heritage Industry; Britain in a
Climate of Decline formed a cornerstone of a long-running debate about the nature and worth of the
recent trajectory of heritage in Britain. This book provides numerous facts that outline the
proliferation of ‘heritage’, such as how the 68 monuments scheduled by the 1882 Act have now risen
to more than 12,000, with over 330,000 listed buildings besides.
14
R. Hewison, The Heritage Industry; Britain in a climate of Decline, London: Methuen, 1987; R.
Hewison, ‘Great expectations – hyping heritage’, Tourism Management, Vol. 9, 1988, pp. 239-40; R.
Hewison, ‘Heritage: An interpretation’, in D.L. Uzzell (ed.), Heritage Interpretation, Volume 1,
London: Belhaven, 1989, pp. 15-23.
4