A couple of useful chapters from a book called Heritage Studies : Methods and Approaches edited by John Carman and Marie Louise Stig Sørensen.
In the first
chapter, “Heritage Studies : An outline”, the editors give a history of
Heritage Studies. They quote a definition from UNESCO : “Heritage is our legacy
from the past, what we live with today, and what we pass on to future
generations”. However, they argue that there is no real definitive definition,
so to speak, as Heritage Studies exists in an “interdisciplinary space”.
They trace the
roots of heritage studies back to the late 18th/early 19th
century, emerging with civil rights and citizenship, and argue that the
industrial revolution and land destruction gave rise to the need to “safeguard”
heritage. This brought heritage legislation into play. However, such
legislation brought with it conflict with the state and the traditional
guardians of heritage.
Heritage studies
as a discipline was first clearly identified in 1980s as the “field of practice
that investigates the role of the past in the present”. Part of driver was
post-colonialism and new voices and contested ownership. Arose from
“developments in several otherwise largely unrelated disciplines.” There was an
initial school of thought that “today’s presentations of the past can be
coloured by ideologies”, but the authors rebut this as they believe it to be
grounded in perspective rather than substantive research. Here I would have to
quote back to them the idea of life history or microhistory. The current
authors are not living through the 1980s!
Subsequent work in
the 1990s “identified different communities who valued different types of past
– a monumental, national or global history; or a more personalised, family and
genealogical past”. The authors acknowledge the “expressly political nature of
interpreting the past”. For me this idea is not so different to identity. One’s
own views (self) magnified through research. Here there is also the idea of
metanarrative dominating. The authors then go on to state that heritage is “recognised as simultaneously defenceless and
open to abuse… and also as a potentially empowering aspect of social life in
terms of, for example, the formation of identity and creating a sense of
rootedness” (so they probably agree with agree with me!)
They summarise current
(2009) concerns : “We have officially as well as cognitively moved from an
object/monument-focused understanding of heritage to being able to recognise
the many kinds of cultural products that are part of our construction of
heritage and the roles it plays in our lives”.
Apart from where
my lived experience gives me different opinions, I’ve taken this chapter at
face value as a potted history of Heritage Studies. Although I don’t think
there is a lot that is directly related to what I’m doing, it’s useful to have
the background. It also supports some of Harrison’s views, particularly
regarding the many different strands of heritage and culture it brings
together.
Of more interest
was Grete Lillehammer’s “Making them Draw : The use of drawings when
researching public attitudes towards the past” Lillehammer was investigating “public
attitudes towards cultural heritage in a rural district of south-western
Norway”, looking at the opposing views of farmers and environmental bureaucrats.
There was an ongoing conflict between the cultural heritage of the land and its
use for farming, particularly concerning the so-called “fairy rings”.
Lillehammer
interviewed people from both groups, and at the end of the interview, asked
them to draw a map of the farm. These she termed “cognitive maps”, describing
these as “products of the mind’s ordering of information”. She had come across
this method by chance during the literature search for her research, and
approached its use “ …as freely and openly as possible to see what happened”.
She then realised that “…the most representative record … was actually the
drawings made by the two groups”. She recognised some similarities in the maps
but could not fully describe these. By using them to assist her systematic
analysis of the interviews, she gained fuller understanding of the drawn maps. Farmers
draw their farm from near – others drew them from managers from afar. Basically
the drawings serve to depict what could be expected in terms of the differences
between the two groups.
She acknowledges
that trying something new can bring interesting results: “The potentiality of
applying methods generated from the theory of different disciplines stresses
the importance for Heritage Studies and archaeology continuing to explore and
even further extend its means of investigation”.
Lillehammer’s work
really resonated with me, and at least part of this resonance was intuitive. Firstly
I liked the way she presented her book chapter chronologically, as a
description of her journey of the discovery of the cognitive mapping method and
her growing understanding of how she could apply it and use it as another
method alongside her original method of interviewing. This made me think that
perhaps my presentation at “Grim Up North?” wasn’t overly personal after all,
which was reassuring.
I liked the fact that
she had used the cognitive mapping method “freely and openly” and had been open
to the possibilities it could bring. This put me in mind of my openness to my
surroundings when undertaking a wandering. I often think that research employs
rather prescriptive, rigid methods (and academic research often demands similar
outcomes) and yet by the nature of the freedom and unpredictability of drawing,
she had employed it freely and gained rich outcomes. Of course, given my
history of tension between the written and the visual, I was personally pleased
that the drawn outcomes had given rise to greater insights than those afforded
by interview alone. That was probably the most resonant point.
Her conclusion about
applying methods from different disciplines is very similar to the path my research
is taking at the moment. Using heritage, identity and psychogeographical
perspectives is enabling me to discover and depict new areas and depths in my
practice.
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