Context 155 - July 2018

C O N T E X T 1 5 5 : J U L Y 2 0 1 8 13 Theory and practice I am interested in the everyday practice of what this involves, whether for conservation profes- sionals of various kinds, or for others who may share or dispute the value of these approaches. I am particularly interested in the way that some broadly shared principles are made sense of in quite different ways. For instance, even within a national heritage agency such as Historic Environment Scotland, a focus of some of my research, shared policies and principles intersect with some distinctive professional commitments and traditions of practice. A stone mason and an archaeologist will both be interested in authenticity, but whereas the former might stress how this is grounded by adherence to the principles and traditions of masonry, the latter might give more emphasis to the importance of material continuity. This is just one of many instances in which a shared focus on continuity leads to some very different assessments of what this practically implies (for a more extended discussion of this case see Jones andYarrow, 2013). More generally I aim to highlight the sometimes overlapping, often divergent, assumptions that different people hold with respect to the question of whether and how the past should be valued. And to show how this, in turn, relates to distinct orientations regarding how and how much to retain of the material traces it leaves (see particularlyYarrow, 2018, 2017). This approach builds on a much broader literature that sees heritage as a process, rather than an object (see particularly DeSilvey, 2017); a way of interpreting, assigning and elaborating the value of the past with respect to present and future societies. My own work (often in col- laboration with others) is partly distinctive in its attention to the social practices of conservation professionals and the role they variously play in making that object. CONTEXT:What implications does this have for practitioners working in these fields? TY: My work is more about conservation than for it, which is to say that my primary aim is to try to explain this as a social practice, rather than to answer the more applied question of how it could be done ‘better’. Even so, this research has led me to various conclusions. I hope that some practitioners may find some of these thought-provoking or challenging, if not straightforwardly helpful. The first is a general point, in fact an unin- tended implication recognised by some of the subjects of my research. As an ethnographer I try to make explicit how ‘common sense’ may be less common than is sometimes supposed. Some of the conservation professionals I have worked with tell me they find my descriptions useful: helping them to reflect on the assump- tions that are embedded in their daily interac- tions to the point where they become too famil- iar to recognise; highlighting the specific ways in which their own approaches may diverge with others, for instance in giving different attention to materials, aesthetics or traditions of practice as sources of value; helping them to see where others were coming from, and how and why they disagreed; highlighting how very practi- cal interventions involve values and choices, even where these sometimes become invisible through routine or professional habit. I am not an expert in this field but I hope that through my descriptions I can hold up a kind of mirror in which people can see their work in a slightly different light. The second more specific points relate to research that I recently did focusing on the inter- section of ideas of heritage conservation with those of energy and environmental conservation, particularly in the context of renovation and retrofit of traditionally constructed buildings in the Cotswolds. There is now a very large body of work on the buildings science and technology of retrofit, but a much less-developed body of social science research on these issues (but see Yarrow, 2016, Fouseki and Cassar, 2015, Pendlebury et al, 2014, for some recent social science perspectives on this). Without wanting to question the utility of this technologically oriented work, I think it is important to highlight how technological considerations necessarily relate to social ones, insofar as technologies are used (or not) by people. At an end of project workshop attended by stakeholders in both the heritage and energy sectors there was broad consensus on this point. The following conclusions are partly informed by that broader discussion, as well as my own research in this area. One finding is that energy use is not the same as energy efficiency. Because inhabit- ants’ assessments of the character of buildings relate to the use of these spaces, the relation- ship between increased efficiency and reduced energy consumption is far from straightforward. An architect, client and planner considering a possible conversion to a barn. The historic environment is produced through myriad social negotiations, framed but never entirely determined by planning legislation.