C O N T E X T 1 3 3 : M A R C H 2 0 1 4 17 VALUING HERITAGE Gareth Hoskins is a lecturer in geography at Aberystwyth University. (such as sophistication, aesthetic sensibility, cultural knowledge, taste and stylistic appreciation) was the virtual monopoly of the dominant social class. Holden and Hewison (2006), for example, have critiqued the heritage profession for its democratic deficit and fear a real crisis of legitimacy in the way decisions are made. Third is the political intervention that occurs in the UK with the spectre of the secretary of state, who is entitled to reject any recommendation and is vulnerable to lobbying (see Jacobs 1996). In the USA, overt pressure can be directed at those crafting designation protocols. ‘When push comes to shove, we get plenty of members of the House and the Senate that call up and say...You know this is a really important project.We’re not going to have any problems with historic preservation are we? They like it when it’s not in the way but if we’re delaying something that they want to get done before their term is up then they say hey what’s going on?’ (Federal Government Employee, 2013). Fourth is the uneven access to knowledge and capacity to influence decision-making. Even while procedures are fair minded and balanced, existing social power is able to assert its own interests more readily. For example, one listings officer remarked in 2013: ‘I’ve got a really embarrassing case load and I have to work out which one I’m going to do next. If I’ve got somebody ringing me up and shouting at me, my inclination is going to be to do that one. And if someone writes to their MP or to the chief executive that’s a special thing; then their case automatically gets escalated. I’ve got to go and see my boss, I’ve got to explain all my dealings. Some people are more likely to be good at doing that sort of thing but anyone could do it’. Fifth is the bias in the logics of the selection process which creates a very clear steer towards what counts as ‘appropriate’ heritage. ‘Sometimes the application is not very well done in a written way. In this particular case of the African American church, when we got the documentation, all of us looking at it in the office were saying right we’re really scraping the bottom of the barrel on this one. This is really, really pushing it’ (US preservation officer, 2013). In the UK similar problems arise: ‘We often get applications for hinges like village halls and schools. Places that have particular significance for communities where things have happened, where they’ve got married. Those are always a little bit difficult to deal with because you don’t want to write your report saying “this is a 20th century building. It doesn’t have any architectural interest. It’s been trashed.” So a term that we quite often use in those circumstances is local interest in a lot of things that we turn down for listing’ (listings officer, 2013). The shape and content of the historic landscape reflects rather than challenges each nation’s uneven distribution of wealth, social power, and cultural and political influence. InWashington DC, for instance: ‘We don’t take things off the inventory, so we have this sort of mosaic of different time periods and different value systems represented in it. There’s the original list from the 1960s, which was a little bit old-fashioned – colonial buildings, mansions, rich people’s homes and that kind of stuff. From the 70s there are lots of African American landmarks.Then began special interests and an appreciation of Victorian architecture, then places associated with labour leaders, suffragettes, union leaders, peacenicks and local gay rights leaders, and an African American restaurant that’s not architecturally remarkable but is a really important site of civil rights agitation. More recently there are a lot of buildings that are on there because the developers want the tax credits – apartment buildings that are nice apartment buildings but they don’t represent anything in particular’ (preservation officer, 2013). However revealing the landscape of the valued might be as a record of influence and taste, defending the lists and inventories on the basis that they reflect the ethical viewpoints and political-economic compromises from previous times is to ignore how the continuing presence of a place or building on the list is a public validation and a tacit approval of the things that place or building represents. The officially sanctioned historical built environment does not merely reflect a society riven with social division. It serves to perpetuate those divisions by maintaining and championing that built environment as a representative public resource. Barry MacKintosh, a United States National Parks Service historian, offered us a potential way forward in his 1985 review of the Historic Landmarks Program. ‘The true value of an honor is revealed not by its most qualified recipient but by its least,’ MacKintosh wrote. ‘If landmark status is to signify all it should to the American people, its coin must not be debased… To maintain and enhance the integrity of the program, its staff should get as much credit for the refusal or the casting out of an unworthy site as for the admission of a worthy one.’ Far left: A UNESCO badge at BlaenavonWorld Heritage Site References Harrison, R (2012) ‘Forgetting to Remember, Remembering to Forget: late modern heritage practices, sustainability and the ‘crisis’ of accumulation of the past’, International Journal of Heritage Studies (ahead-of-print) Henderson, G (2013) Value in Marx: the persistence of value in a more-than-capitalist world, University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis Hewison, R and Holden, J (2006) ‘Public Value as a Framework for Analyzing the Value of Heritage: the ideas’, in Clark, K (ed) Capturing the PublicValue of Heritage: the proceedings of the London Conference, 25–26 January, English Heritage Jacobs, J M (1994) ‘Negotiating the heart: heritage, development and identity in postimperial London’, Environment and Planning, Part D, Society and Space, 12(6) Jones, S, andYarrow, T (2013) ‘Crafting authenticity: an ethnography of conservation practice’, Journal of Material Culture, 18(1) Makcintosh, B (1985) The Historic Sites Survey and National Historic Landmarks Program: a history, Department of Interior,Washington DC Smith, L (2006) Uses of Heritage, Routledge, Oxford Trouillot, M R (2012) Silencing the Past: power and the production of history, Beacon Press, Boston, Mass TheWashington DC historic preservation plan
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