Definition of Heritage
The definition of heritage is at once overwhelmingly expansive, and at the same time, frustratingly elusive. Though linguistically related to ‘inheritance’ or ‘heredity’, its current usage depends as much upon current politics, economics and events, as it does on the past.
UNESCO’s ‘Convention Concerning the Protection of the World Cultural and Natural Heritage’ (1972) defined two kinds of heritage: cultural and natural. Cultural heritage is composed of monuments, groups of buildings and sites anything from sculptures to cave dwellings ‘which are of outstanding universal value from the point of view of history, art or science’ (UNESCO World Heritage Centre 2005). Natural heritage is composed of natural features, delineated habitats and sites of ‘outstanding universal value’ to science, aesthetics and conservation.
English Heritage lumps together the cultural and the natural into one ‘historic environment,’ including everything from sporting venues to gardens. As English Heritage Chairman Sir Neil Cossons declared, heritage is the full measure of ‘physical assets’ (English Heritage 2001, p. 2) that we have inherited from past centuries. But if heritage is inherited, to whom is it given?
Patrick Marandel believes that we live in ‘a competitive world in which we don’t inherit our heritage, we fight to earn it [] we all have the heritage we deserve’ (National Art Collections Fund 2004, p.26-27). Marandel’s competitive vision of heritage is reflected in his dating of the term. Marandel cites the first recorded notion of concern for heritage as a 1602 Florentine decree forbidding the export of certain artworks from the city (National Art Collections Fund 2004, p. 25). This view seems to take for granted that heritage is a positive thing, to be struggled for and preserved for a nation. But as David Lowenthal (1985, p. xvii) pointed out, ‘[e]very inheritance is alike beneficial and baneful.’ For what of troubled pasts, like that of the Holocaust? Is the Holocaust something to ‘save’ for the nation of Germany?
For organisations whose goals are the acquisition and preservation of objects and spaces, concrete definitions of heritage are useful. However, heritage is more intangible than these definitions suggest. Heritage also encompasses the range of attitudes we take towards physical objects and spaces from the past. Indeed, soon after the question ‘what is heritage?’ comes the question ‘who judges heritage’? Who determines whether something is an ‘asset’ of ‘outstanding universal value’? Whose heritage do we choose and for whom?
Oliver James described heritage as a currency, providing ‘a common denominator through which we can relate to other people’ (English Heritage 2001, p.17). Harbinger Singh Rana, the Director of the Maharaja Duleep Singh Centenary Trust, echoed his sentiments, describing how the preservation of British-Asian heritage connects the two cultures: ‘[w]e have made this country our home and we want to engage with the monuments, sites and buildings with which we are connected by history history is what binds cultures’ (English Heritage 2001, p.32).
This statement reveals facets of heritage that go beyond the merely physical. Firstly, heritage has the power to change the present. Because certain items are favoured over others for political, social or economic reasons, heritage is not a passive, but an active force upon the affairs of the present. Secondly, there are multiple, intertwined heritages. Heritage is not limited to the objects and spaces of a nation, but may also describe the food, clothing, customs and religion of an ethnic group, a local community, even a family or an individual’s personal past. Heritage represents a network of different pasts and traditions, which interweave and interconnect with one another.
Liz Forgan, Chair of the Heritage Lottery Fund, described the impossibility of defining heritage within her organisation whose very purpose is to fund it. She admitted that this was because heritage ‘is what has meaning and value to the individual’ (National Art Collections Fund 2004, p.66). Because it ultimately reduces to a personal level, the only consensus her organisation has come to is a working definition: heritage is ‘what has meaning and value from the past for people today’ (National Art Collections Fund 2004, p.66). This encompasses a range of ways people use the objects from the past: objects can be ‘spiritual batteries,’ ‘political trophies,’ economic assets, ‘badges of identity,’ or simply things which make people happy (National Art Collections Fund 2004, p.67). Therefore, heritage is not simply the physical remains of the past, but the ways that these are viewed and made use of today.
I propose a wide-ranging definition, one that takes into account the national and the personal, the concrete and the abstract views of heritage: heritage is what we inherit from the past and our relationship with this inheritance. Whether memories or objects, an ethnic identity or a national trait, a positive aspect or a negative one, we are all always accompanied, from the moment we are born, with the traces of the past. We do not earn it, we are obliged to inherit it, for better or for worse. As David Lowenthal (1985, p.xv) declared, ‘the past is everywhere whether it is celebrated or rejected, attended to or ignored, the past is omnipresent.’
Physical objects can support the impalpable past of memories and stories. However, in the same way that memories and stories transform over time, the interpretation of artefacts and spaces changes constantly depending on the present. Our concept of the past, and therefore our relationship with it, changes from era to era; ‘we cannot help but view and celebrate it through present-day lenses’ (Lowenthal 1985, p.xvi).
While our interpretation of heritage may alter over the centuries, by displaying artefacts in museums and preserving spaces for later generations, we may shed light upon this process itself: ‘by relating contemporary societies to the forces that have shaped and are continuing to shape them, museums demonstrate that all cultures are subject to evolution’ (Anderson 1999, p.7). While ‘these fragmentary survivors’ may not ‘reveal’ the past itself, they may make us more careful about our actions in the present, by highlighting ‘the fragility of human culture and environment’ (Anderson 1999, p.7). While ultimately, everyone’s definition of heritage will be different, depending on one’s own unique past, the inevitable presence of the past in our lives makes the task of defining heritage and our own relationship to the past a vital one, in order to understand ourselves, our social groups, our present and our future.
Bibliography
Anderson, D. (1999), A Common Wealth: Museums in the Learning Age, Department for Culture, Media and Sport, London.
English Heritage (2001), Annual Review 2000/01, English Heritage, London.
Lowenthal, D. (1985), The Past is a Foreign Country, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.
National Art Collections Fund (2004), Saving Art for the Nation: A Valid Approach to 21st-century Collecting, National Art Collections Fund, London.
UNESCO World Heritage Centre (2005), ‘Convention Concerning the Protection of the World Cultural and Natural Heritage.’ World Heritage. Retrieved November 3, 2005
Tags: heritage, historic environment, history, Holocaust, UNESCO
