Endangerment-driven heritage volunteering: democratisation or ‘Changeless Change’

Abstract

This article is the product of prolonged wrestling with the question of how heritage professionals and researchers can facilitate and sustain public agency in caring for heritage in the UK during austerity without exploiting volunteers or devaluing professionals. It offers critical perspectives on efforts made to democratise heritage in the UK by increasing public participation through a critique of neoliberalism and the rise of neoliberal approaches in the heritage sector. It argues that the adoption of neoliberal approaches, such as crowdsourcing, that profess to democratise yet reinforce existing power structures, is the inevitable result of insisting on protecting material culture from harm, despite the continuing accumulation of more 'heritage'. Drawing on critical perspectives on participation from a number of disciplines, it is suggested that efforts to increase public participation in heritage cannot hope to avoid exploiting volunteers, devaluing professionals and marginalising traditionally underrepresented demographics unless they also let go of the perceived need to protect the materiality of the past. Drawing on Sarah May's archaeology of contemporary tigers, this article argues that the application of endangerment narratives to heritage reinforces uncritical understandings of both heritage and volunteering that preclude heritage from fulfilling its potential function as a contemporary social process.

Decoupling ‘Open’ and ‘Ethical’ Archaeologies: Rethinking Deficits and Expertise for Ethical Public Participation in Archaeology and Heritage

“…This overlooks that archaeology can be presented and advocated for in ways that recognise and value the agency of publics, and that an interest in working with publics does not preclude regarding them as deficient. Archaeology has a long history of working with volunteers and the UK heritage sector is undeniably dependent on volunteers, yet this does not preclude the possibility of this relationship being condescending and exploitative (Fredheim 2018). Having argued that public participation in archaeology is not inherently ethical, I now turn to how the ways archaeologists think about publics need to change in order to facilitate the development of an ethical 'open' archaeology.…”

“…It is in this sense that development scholars Henkel and Stirrat argue 'empowerment' may function as a form of 'subjection' (Henkel and Stirrat 2001, p. 178). The heritage sector, which is in a perennial state of requiring further funding and assumes any public participation to be morally good, is particularly susceptible to neoliberal governance models that simultaneously position citizens as a resource and cast participants as beneficiaries (Fredheim 2018, cf. Rosol 2016.…”

“…Then, and only then, might museums begin to develop a proper partnership with community partners. (Lynch 2015, p. 3, my emphasis) This same simple deficit model is operationalised in Historic England's 'Heritage Counts' series, which has been promoted with the slogan that 'heritage makes you happy', selectively presenting data that appears to provide evidence for their argument that people would be happier and report higher levels of wellbeing if only they participated in heritage more (Fredheim 2018). This rhetoric has been toned down in the 2018 iteration of the series and earlier editions are no longer available online (Historic England 2018).…”

“…It is therefore imperative to ask why 'participation' is such an enduring buzzword in 2019. As I have argued elsewhere, we should be wary of celebrating the rise of volunteer involvement in archaeology when it coincides with cuts to professional services (Fredheim 2018), or as Lorna-Jane Richardson has put it: 'replacing paid positions with volunteers is an austerity-budget solution, not a punk [or democratising] one' (Richardson 2017, p. 313).…”

Reflecting on evaluation in public archaeology

“…The key to successful project outcomes may be to include community consultation and partnership into project design itself, but this is not an easy undertaking, and the potential for participatory initiatives to "maintain, rather than upend, existing power structures through the control of acceptable forms of, and locations for, participation" must be acknowledged (Fredheim 2018, 625). There are concerns within the discipline that these types of collaborations could lead to exploitation of volunteers (Fredheim 2018;Perry & Beale 2015) or to less academically rigorous archaeological projects with vague aims which are more apt to be misinterpreted by those outside the profession (King 2012;Nevell 2013: Simon 2011. While there may be some degree of flexibility afforded by the current lack of institutional structure for public archaeology evaluation, the benefits of existing institutions committing to rigorous and reflexive public archaeology in their codes and institutional mission statements would empower rather than hamper practitioners.…”