In this important book, the authors unpack the theoretical and practical issues around the development of heritage sites, critically dissecting key conservation benchmarks such as the ICOMOS guidelines, BS 7913 and the RIBA Conservation Plan of Work to reveal the mechanics of heritage guidance, its advantages and conceptual limitations. Underpinned by an active understanding of the conservation philosophy of William Morris, the book presents five case studies from the UK and North and South America that speak about different facets of heritage value, such as urban identity, commodification, authenticity, materiality and heritage as an intellectual and ethical framework. Heritage is never neutral; its definition is privileged yet its influence is political. Art, landscape and archaeology all offer examples of how the operational ideas of adjacent disciplines can influence an integrated idea of heritage conservation, and how this is communicated in order to determine significance and share in its custodianship. This book provides insights into how to identify and challenge these limitations, expanding inclusion by describing tactics for changing how people can relate to and build on the past. Clearly written for all levels of readership within the conservation professions and community custodians of heritage buildings and places, the book provides strategies and tactics for understanding the heritage significance of materials, their fabrication, detail and use. The narratives that historic fabric contains can help shape the meaningful involvement of local people, providing a roadmap for those navigating the double-bind of using the past to underpin the future.

This volume explores the process of heritage making and its relation to the production of touristic places, examining several case studies around the world. Most existing literature on heritage and tourism centers either on its managerial aspects, the tourist experience, or issues related to inequality and identity politics. This volume instead establishes theoretical links between analyses of heritage and the production and reproduction of places in the context of the global tourist trade. The approach adopted here is to explore the production of heritage as a complex process shaped by local and global discourses that can have a deep impact on several policies and legislations. Heritage itself has now become not only a global discourse, but also a global practice, which may eventually lead to the use of heritage as a field for hegemony. From these perspectives, heritage making may be incorporated in the world economy, mainly through the global tourism trade. The chapters in this book stress the need for identifying the intrinsic political implications of these processes, relocating their study in political, economic and social settings. Combined with a diversified set of theoretical approaches and research methods, guided by a common thematic rationale, The Making of Heritage is at the forefront of current debates about heritage.

In this textbook we see heritage in action in indigenous and vernacular communities, in urban development and regeneration schemes, in expressions of community, in acts of nostalgia and memorialization and counteracts of forgetting, in museums and other spaces of representation, in tourism, in the offices of those making public policy, and in the politics of identity and claims toward cultural property. Whether renowned or local, tangible or intangible, the entire heritage enterprise, at whatever scale, is by now inextricably embedded in “value”. The global context requires a sanguine approach to heritage in which the so-called critical stance is not just theorized in a rarefied sphere of scholarly lexical gymnastics, but practically engaged and seen to be doing things in the world.

This book offers a scholarly perspective on heritage as a discourse, concept and lived experience in Malaysia. It argues that heritage is not a received narrative but a construct in the making. Starting with alternative ways of “museumising” heritage, the book then addresses a broad range of issues involving multicultural and folklore heritage, the small town, nostalgia and the environment, and transnationalism and cosmopolitanism. In so doing it delivers an intervention in received ways of talking about and “doing” heritage in academic as well as state and public discourse in Malaysia, which are largely dominated by perspectives that do not sufficiently engage with the cultural complexities and sociopolitical implications of heritage. The book also critically explores the politics and dynamics of heritage production in Malaysia to contest “Malaysian heritage” as a stable narrative, exploring both its cogency and contingency, and builds on a deep engagement with a non-western society in the service of “provincialising” critical heritage studies, with the broader goal of contributing to Malaysian studies.​

Contrary to popular perceptions, cultural heritage is not given, but constantly in the making: a construction subject to dynamic processes of (re)inventing culture within particular social formations and bound to particular forms of mediation. Yet the appeal of cultural heritage often rests on its denial of being a fabrication, its promise to provide an essential ground to social-cultural identities. Taking this paradoxical feature as a point of departure, and anchoring the discussion to two heuristic concepts—the "politics of authentication" and "aesthetics of persuasion"—the chapters herein explore how this tension is central to the dynamics of heritage formation worldwide.

This book examines the making of heritage in contemporary Japan, investigating the ways in which particular objects, practices and institutions come to be seen as forms of heritage which are ascribed public recognition and political significance.

Design and Heritage provides the first extended study of heritage from the point of view of design history. Exploring the material objects and spaces that contribute to our experience of heritage, the volume also examines the processes and practices that shape them. Bringing together 18 case studies, written by authors from the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, Brazil, Norway, India, South Africa, Australia and New Zealand, the book questions how design functions to produce heritage. Including provocative case studies of objects that reinterpret visual symbols of cultural identity and buildings and monuments that evoke feelings of national pride and historical memory, as well as landscapes embedded with trauma, contributors consider how we can work to develop adequate shared conceptual models of heritage and apply them to design and its histories. Exploring the distinction between tangible and intangible heritages, the chapters consider what these categories mean for design history and heritage. Finally, the book questions whether it might be possible to promote a truly equitable understanding of heritage that illuminates the social, cultural and economic roles of design. Design and Heritage demonstrates that design historical methods of inquiry contribute significantly to critical heritage studies. Academics, researchers and students engaged in the study of heritage, design history, material culture, folklore, art history, architectural history and social and cultural history will find much to interest them within the pages of the book.