HERITAGE AS SOCIAL ACTION- a review
Updated: Feb 19, 2025
Heritage, a cultural attribute or a tradition that has been passed down through generations, is described as a legacy that a person, a family, a neighborhood, a society, or a nation inherits over generations and is an utmost responsibility to be passed on to future generations.
“These old buildings (Tangible Heritage) do not belong to us alone; they belonged to our forefathers and they will belong to our descendants unless we pay them false. They are not in any sense our property to do as we like with them. We are only trustees for those that come after us.” -William Morris, 1877, Society for Protection of Ancient Buildings
It is important to understand that heritage encompasses not just physical structures but also social and cultural activities. The entire framework of heritage conservation has focused on the objectification and materialization of historically significant sites. As a result, the social values of these historic locations have been deprioritized. Cultures and social characteristics are not simply collections of objects and people but are more effectively comprehended as a series of processes through which new and old practices are integrated into a cultural system. These processes have been deeply ingrained, resulting in the creation of cultures through various forms of 'work'.
Viewing heritage as cultural capital and a means of connecting individuals with each other and their environment, participation in local heritage can be seen as a form of social action. By referencing the past and creating new meanings from its remnants and memories, individuals can reshape and redefine societal operations. People's connection with their heritage involves the meanings attributed to these places, which become part of their significance, especially the social significance. To delve into the social significance of a heritage site, it is crucial to examine the related local communities and the everyday lives of ordinary people.
It is important to recognize that all these local landscapes carry significance, and these meanings are linked to the 'lived world' of everyday people. In the current context, such cultural landscapes are inhabited by local communities, and it is these individuals who impart the symbiotic meaning to the historical environment. These symbiotic meanings are never static within the local community itself. Nonetheless, it is widely acknowledged that these meanings and the heritage stories provide a collective significance to the heritage. The perception of local heritage and its associated story can vary from person to person, and similarly, what a conservationist perceives about the same heritage might be solely based on its commodified or tangible aspects.
It is very naive to have a solely materialistic approach to conservation practice, which, at present, largely looks at the material form in isolation. The deeper social and historical forces are often ignored or not considered in totality, along with the physical attributes. In a rapidly globalizing world, this creates a tendency to commodify heritage properties, and thus, development in the form of real estate supersedes conservation.
Positioning the various attributes that define heritage places and the way local places become heritage places not merely by their physical identity but by their association and viability to the community is crucial to understand. Local communities are more of a cultural composition that has evolved through integrity and local identity building than a natural phenomenon. The struggle of indigenous people for recognition of their rights over traditional land calls for a demonstration of a tangible linkage between the community and their local landscape. This has instigated the idea of merging heritage work with the work of identity building, with heritage work being driven by the tenacious and fragile desire of people. It is this link that can aid in the conservation of not just the physical form but the sense of place, community, belonging, and all the intangible aspects that constitute the attributes of social significance.
Original Paper- Heritage as Social Action by Denis Byrne
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