16 C O N T E X T 1 4 2 : N O V E M B E R 2 0 1 5 ways in which experts might earn the legitimacy of the authority delegated to them, partly through taking part in, and helping to inform, public debate, and by building broad-based and plural coalitions and networks. In thinking about how heritage relates to democracy, a bit of democratic theory has proved useful. In democratic theory, the argument has been made that delegated authority is legitimate when the subject is ‘contingent’, by which is meant specialised and technical and not related to broader community-wide questions.3 For example, fixing a car, treating cancer and teaching maths can be delegated. But, conversely, whether we plan new roads or new public transport systems, invest in cancer research or have universal free education can not be delegated. The bigger decisions, it is argued, have to be undertaken within a democratic framework, representational or otherwise. So how to put decisions into practice has traditionally been seen as legitimate for professionals to lead on but the bigger, non-contingent, community-wide decisions must be subject to some form of democratic process. For heritage the line drawn here between contingent and non-contingent decisions has always been a bit slippery. Experts on heritage not only know specific things about a certain building, site or object and how to look after it, they are also called on to say whether it is significant enough to be collected, listed and protected. At times in heritage decision-making the line of what is relevant is drawn tightly. To give an example, ‘architectural interest’ implies that only those who know about architecture as a discipline can say if a building is significant. Is this brutalist building significant in the context of all brutalist buildings in the country? This formula could be seen as an attempt to keep heritage as a technocratic – contingent – matter.While the democratic direction that significant architecture should be protected has been set at a very high level through law or policy, delegated to experts is bothwhat and how. Yet this type of boundary-drawing tends to fail because of how very important the places we live are to us. But not only this. Heritage from its inception has been very ambitious about its purpose and significance: heritage is forever, for posterity, for everyone, for humanity, accessible to all, representative of all, crucial for wellbeing and a sense of belonging.Very big and non-contingent claims such as these can not really be made without pushing ‘heritage’ from a technical into a democratic frame. In some ways the passionate advocacy of professions has meant that heritage can not be only theirs to define and manage. But the idea of elected officials making decisions about heritage has not entirely sat right either. This in part because the claims made on behalf of heritage – such as being representative of the nation or of humanity – make it possible for all of us to use heritage to assert democratic rights (such as the history-from-below movement). If heritage is so important, if it is about all of us and all dimensions of our lives, then – as the last decades have testified – it has become clearer and clearer that significance can not be known without directly involving people who know and care about a particular place. As part of the Heritage Decisions project, we explored how to bring traditional forms of academic and professional expertise into public dialogue through debating Stonebow House in York. Often referred as ‘York’s most hated building’, the level of public debate about Stonebow House meant that it could never only be compared technocratically to every other brutalist building in the country. The meaning of Stonebow House relates to the streets of which it is part, the shops it contains, the effect it has on the bus stops, the views it offers, how people feel about it: its very local significance. We undertook this process not to change anyone’s mind necessarily (although this did happen in some cases) but to see how high-quality debate might enable more people to develop their opinions into deeper, better informed arguments. To help us with this, JonWright, heritage consultant for Purcell, former senior caseworker for theTwentieth Century Society and, until 2013, head of conservation at the Council for British Archaeology inYork, offered References 3 Saward, M (1998) The Terms of Democracy, Policy Press, Oxford Heritage is difficult to retain as a matter only for professional expertise because the places we live in matter enormously to us. Aerial view of the centre of York (Photo: Peter Czerwinski, Wikimedia Commons)
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