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.