Heritage agnosticism: a third path for the study of cultural heritage

Abstract

Avoiding the pitfalls of both the reverential approach of ‘heritage belief’ and the overly critical one of ‘heritage atheism’, ‘heritage agnosticism’ is proposed as a theoretical middle path for the burgeoning field of heritage studies. The cases of Kyoto and the UNESCO World Heritage arena demonstrate the limits of a purely deconstructive analysis. The popular demand for historical veracity and authenticity, lay historicities, the ethnographic study of heritage institutions, and personal attachments to heritage are research topics that will benefit from heritage agnosticism, particularly if it accounts for the full variety of both professional and lay positions and voices.

Giving voice to heritage: a virtual case study

“…Heritage is an emotional issue and heritage interpretation can ‘have a strong affective and emotional impact on people’ (Uzzell and Ballantyne : 503). It can turn people into what Brumann () describes as reverential believers, critical atheists or as a ‘third path’, heritage agnostics.…”

How conservation matters: Ethnographic explorations of historic building renovation

“…The conservation consensus of the UK reflects and refracts a wider 'global inflation' (Franquesa, 2013: 358) of interest in heritage, specifically in the form of international charters and treaties through which shared principles have been consolidated and disseminated. The practices of home-owners and non-professionals are less directly framed by these principles but even so resonate with accounts from other geographical contexts, in orientations to valuing the past configured against an understanding of the destructive possibilities of modernity (Brumann, 2012(Brumann, , 2014.…”

Where knowledge meets: heritage expertise at the intersection of people, perspective, and place

“…These meetings highlight a series of dynamics that have received relatively little attention in interdisciplinary accounts of heritage practice. The recent burgeoning of the field of critical heritage studies has done much to illuminate the ‘consumption’ of heritage via various practices of reinterpretation, appropriation, and resistance to professional presentations of the past, but has had much less to say about the practices through which these understandings are produced by various heritage experts (Brumann ; Jones & Yarrow ). While this essay's focus on heritage experts helps to redress this imbalance, the lens of ‘meeting’ highlights a specific set of negotiations that complicate and refine understanding of the work of these professionals.…”

“…As Brown recently highlights: ‘[A]nthropologists are less inclined to treat bureaucracy as an object of study in its own right than as a backdrop for meditations on the “injustices of social stratification”’ (2010: 741). Anthropologists of organizational practice (as discussed by Mosse and Yarrow, ), like interdisciplinary accounts of heritage studies (see Brumann ; Jones & Yarrow ), have more prevalently engaged in morally inflected critiques of bureaucratic conduct than in situated ethnographic accounts of the ethical and ideological commitments of those involved.…”

“…Extending recent efforts to move beyond these analytical frameworks (Brumann ; ; Jones & Yarrow ; Macdonald ; Yarrow & Jones ), and building on conceptual frameworks outlined in the introduction to this volume, I aim to develop an ethnographic description of the forms and effects of meetings as central elements of heritage practice. The account draws on ethnographic research based at Historic Scotland, the national government agency with responsibility for conserving, investigating, and promoting the historic environment.…”