Uses of Heritage

What is it about?

The book, published in 2006, makes three core arguments 1. that heritage is a performance of meaning making (and that those 'things' we tend to call heritage, artefacts, sites, places and etc are cultural tools used in this performance rather than heritage in and by themselves); 2. that there is a dominate or 'authorised heritage discourse' that tends to frame national performances of heritage making; 3. there are discourses of heritage that sit outside of and/or in opposition to the authorised discourse, but that these are often marginalised or ignored. Introduction Part 1: The Idea of Heritage 1. The Discourse of Heritage 2. Heritage as Cultural Process Part 2: Authorised Heritage 3. Authorising Institutions of Heritage 4. The 'Manored' Past: The Banality of Grandiloquence 5. Fellas, Fossils and Country - The Riversleigh Landscape Part 3: Responses to Authorised Heritage 6. Labour Heritage: Performing and Remembering 7. The Slate Wiped Clean? Labour Heritage, Memory and Landscape in Castleford, West Yorkshire, England 8. 'The Issue is Control': Indigenous Politics and the Discourse of Heritage. Conclusion

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Why is it important?

This book has set agendas in heritage studies and remains highly influential within this field.