My Goodness, My Heritage! Constructing Good Heritage in the Irish Economic Crisis

Abstract

In 2008, the Republic of Ireland entered a severe financial crisis partly as a part of the global economic crisis. Since then, it has seen large raises in income taxes and cuts in state spending on health, welfare, education and on heritage, which has suffered relatively large cuts. This implies a need for rethinking choices and prioritisations to cope with the changing circumstances. Across Europe, the effects of the crisis on heritage, or the whole cultural sector, have yet mostly been highlighted in general or supposed terms rather than empirically analysed. But what actually happens to how heritage is conceptualised in times of crisis? Inspired by Critical Discourse Analysis, this paper explores representation of and argumentation for heritage in Irish state heritage policies pre and post the recession 2008. Much concerns regarding heritage management are discursively shaped. Policies, stating the authorised viewpoint, are thus key in the construction of heritage and its values in society. Recently, research has highlighted a shift towards more instrumentality in cultural policy due to wider societal changes. A crisis could influence such development. The analysis departs from an often-stated notion of heritage as a part of the Irish national recovery, but what does that imply? Focus is therefore put on how different representations of heritage and its values are present, argued for and compete in a situation with increasing competition regarding relevance and support. The paper shows how heritage matters are refocused, streamlined and packaged as productive, good-for-all, unproblematic and decomplexified in order to be perceived and valued as part of the national recovery. This includes privileging certain instrumental values, foremost economic, by means of specificity, space and quantification, while heritage's contribution to social life, education or health, although often mentioned, are downplayed by being expressed in much more vague terms.

Which museums to fund? Examining local government decision-making in austerity

“…This shows a clear prioritisation of an economic function for local authority museums, with funding being withdrawn from those that cannot compete on these terms. These findings build on the work of others who have shown similar prioritisations within policy (Lagerqvist 2015(Lagerqvist , 2016, demonstrating the 'actually existing' impacts of austerity at the level of practice. The data I have presented do not allow for an assessment of implications, but the work of others indicates that we should be concerned by an approach which seems to imply a future scenario where museum provision is concentrated in cities and in fewer, more commercially friendly buildings (see Brook 2016 on accessibility and participation).…”

“…Those with an interest in linking the internal functioning of museums to broader developments, whether in government policy or professional arguments deployed to make the case for continued subsidy or investment mostly capture a time before austerity (Lawley 2003;McCall 2016;Gates 2012;Gray 2016). Studies which concentrate on austerity and museums have begun to emerge but tend to concentrate on changes within policy texts and political statements and consequently neglect how these developments affect individual museums (Lagerqvist 2015(Lagerqvist , 2016Kloosterman 2014). An updated perspective is therefore required, not as part of an assumption that austerity has prompted a paradigm shift but to consider the extent to which it has intensified dynamics already at play or created new ones.…”

“Saving” Coney Island: The construction of heritage value

“…It also raises the question of how and whether neighborhood redevelopment plans should account for the experience of place as a valued dimension of heritage. These considerations have bearing on debates dealing with the proper focus of historic preservation practice and with the manner in which this field conceptualizes heritage value (Carman, 2014;Clark, 2006;Lagerqvist, 2015).…”