Heritage Futures
Comparative Approaches to Natural and Cultural Heritage Practices
Rodney Harrison (Author), Caitlin DeSilvey (Author), Cornelius Holtorf (Author), Sharon Macdonald (Author), Nadia Bartolini (Author), Esther Breithoff (Author), Harald Fredheim (Author), Antony Lyons (Author), Sarah May (Author), Jennie Morgan (Author), Sefryn Penrose (Author)
Preservation of natural and cultural heritage is often said to be something that is done for the future, or on behalf of future generations, but the precise relationship of such practices to the future is rarely reflected upon. Heritage Futures draws on research undertaken over four years by an interdisciplinary, international team of 16 researchers and more than 25 partner organisations to explore the role of heritage and heritage-like practices in building future worlds.
Engaging broad themes such as diversity, transformation, profusion and uncertainty, Heritage Futures aims to understand how a range of conservation and preservation practices across a number of countries assemble and resource different kinds of futures, and the possibilities that emerge from such collaborative research for alternative approaches to heritage in the Anthropocene. Case studies include the cryopreservation of endangered DNA in frozen zoos, nuclear waste management, seed biobanking, landscape rewilding, social history collecting, space messaging, endangered language documentation, built and natural heritage management, domestic keeping and discarding practices, and world heritage site management.
Praise for Heritage Futures
‘[A book] Likely [to] attract two main groups of readers. One consists of students, researchers, and heritage practitioners looking for inspiration or a gateway to understand current intersections between the fields of (critical) heritage studies and futurology. It will work well for this purpose, as it raises vital questions and points to avenues for collaboration that may help care for the future – not just for the remains of the past in the future. …A second group would be researchers looking for advice on how to write up a big project. The book represents a successful example of how to weave together a large and highly diverse research programme into a single publication.’
Norwegian Archaeological Review
‘The book offers is a fresh perspective on heritage studies by turning the debate on its head and flipping the gaze from the past to the future’
International Journal of Heritage Studies
‘I suspect this book will prove to be a revolutionary addition to the field of heritage studies, flipping the gaze from the past to the future. Heritage Futures reveals the deep uncertainties and precarities that shape both everyday and political life today: accumulation and waste, care and hope, the natural and the toxic. It represents a uniquely impressive intellectual and empirical roadmap for both anticipating and questioning future trajectories, and the strange, unfamiliar places heritage will take us.’
Tim Winter, University of Western Australia
List of figures
Notes on contributors
Preface
Acknowledgements
Part I: Heritage futures
1. ‘For ever, for everyone …’
Rodney Harrison, Caitlin DeSilvey, Cornelius Holtorf and
Sharon Macdonald
2. Heritage as future-making practices
Rodney Harrison
Part II: Diversity
3. Conserving diversity
Rodney Harrison, Esther Breithoff and Sefryn Penrose
4. Diverse fields: Ex-situ collecting practices
Sefryn Penrose, Rodney Harrison and Esther Breithoff
5. Repositories
Sefryn Penrose, Rodney Harrison and Esther Breithoff
6. Banking time: Trading in futures
Esther Breithoff and Rodney Harrison
7. Proxies
Esther Breithoff
8. Towards the total archive
Rodney Harrison and Esther Breithoff
Cross-theme knowledge-exchange event 1
9. The hundred-thousand-year question
Sefryn Penrose, Rodney Harrison, Cornelius Holtorf andSarah May
Part III Profusion
10. Too many things to keep for the future?
Sharon Macdonald, Jennie Morgan and Harald Fredheim
11. Curating museum profusion
Harald Fredheim, Sharon Macdonald and Jennie Morgan
12. Let’s talk!
Harald Fredheim
13. Curating domestic profusion
Jennie Morgan and Sharon Macdonald
14. The Human Bower
Jennie Morgan
15. Doomed?
Sharon Macdonald, Jennie Morgan and Harald Fredheim
Cross-theme knowledge-exchange event 2
16. Collections as techniques of worlding
Rodney Harrison and Sefryn Penrose
Part IV: Uncertainty
17. Uncertain futures
Sarah May and Cornelius Holtorf
18. A shepherd’s futures: Shepherds and World Heritage in the Lake District
Sarah May
19. Toxic heritage: Uncertain and unsafe
Gustav Wollentz, Sarah May, Cornelius Holtorf and
Anders Högberg
20. Micro-messaging/space messaging: A comparative
exploration of #GoodbyePhilae and #MessageToVoyager
Sarah May
21. The one-million-year time capsule
Antony Lyons and Cornelius Holtorf
22. Uncertainty, collaboration and emerging issues
Cornelius Holtorf and Sarah May
Cross-theme knowledge-exchange event 3
23. Transforming loss
Nadia Bartolini and Caitlin DeSilvey
Part V Transformation
24. Living with transformation
Caitlin DeSilvey, Nadia Bartolini and Antony Lyons
25. Fixing naturecultures: Spatial and temporal strategies
for managing heritage transformation and entanglement
Nadia Bartolini
26. Sensitive chaos: Geopoetic flows and wildings in the edgelands
Antony Lyons
27. Signifying transformation
Caitlin DeSilvey, Nadia Bartolini and Antony Lyons
28. Processing change
Caitlin DeSilvey, Nadia Bartolini and Antony Lyons
Part VI: Future heritages
29. Discussion and conclusions
Rodney Harrison, Caitlin DeSilvey, Cornelius Holtorf,
Sharon Macdonald, Nadia Bartolini, Esther Breithoff,
Harald Fredheim, Antony Lyons, Sarah May, Jennie
Morgan and Sefryn Penrose
References
Index
DOI: 10.14324/111.9781787356009
Number of pages: 520
Number of illustrations: 188
Publication date: 28 July 2020
PDF ISBN: 9781787356009
EPUB ISBN: 9781787356030
Hardback ISBN: 9781787356023
Paperback ISBN: 9781787356016
Rodney Harrison (Author) 
Rodney Harrison is Professor of Heritage Studies at the UCL Institute of Archaeology. He is author of many some of which have been translated into Chinese, Italian, Polish and Portuguese language versions. His research has been funded by AHRC, UKRI/Global Challenges Research Fund, British Academy, Wenner-Gren Foundation, Australian Research Council, Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies and the European Commission. He has conducted archaeological, anthropological and/or archival research in Australia, Southeast Asia, North America, South America, the Middle East, UK and continental Europe.
Caitlin DeSilvey (Author)
Caitlin DeSilvey is Professor of Cultural Geography at the University of Exeter.
Cornelius Holtorf (Author)
Cornelius Holtorf is Professor of Archaeology and holds a UNESCO Chair on Heritage Futures at Linnaeus University in Kalmar, Sweden.
Sharon Macdonald (Author)
Sharon Macdonald is Alexander von Humboldt Professor of Social Anthropology and Director of the Centre for Anthropological Research on Museums and Heritage (CARMAH) in the Institute of European Ethnology, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin.
Nadia Bartolini (Author)
Nadia Bartolini is an Associate of the Environment and Sustainability Institute, University of Exeter.
Esther Breithoff (Author)
Esther Breithoff is Lecturer in Contemporary Archaeology and Heritage in the Department of History, Classics and Archaeology at Birkbeck, University of London, and UKRI Future Leaders Fellow. She joined the department in 2019 after holding postdoctoral positions at UiT The Arctic University of Norway and the UCL Institute of Archaeology. Her research spans the fields of Contemporary Archaeology and Critical Heritage Studies and has ranged across a number of different topics, including war, natural and cultural heritage, nuclear and petroleum industries, dictatorships and biobanking, but traces a common set of interests in the relationships between conflicts, resources, recycling and rights across the human/non-human divide in the Anthropocene.
Harald Fredheim (Author)
Harald Fredheim is a Postdoctoral Research Associate at Museum of London Archaeology and the University of Exeter.
Antony Lyons (Author)
Antony Lyons is an independent artist-researcher whose creative methods include film, photography, sonic works and intermedia installation.
Sarah May (Author)
Sarah May is Senior Lecturer in Public History and Heritage at Swansea University. She has previously worked as Senior Archaeologist for English Heritage and as an independent consultant.
Jennie Morgan (Author)
Jennie Morgan is Lecturer in Heritage in the Division of History, Heritage and Politics at the University of Stirling.
Sefryn Penrose (Author)
Sefryn Penrose is a consultant researcher and archaeologist of the recent past.
‘The book offers is a fresh perspective on heritage studies by turning the debate on its head and flipping the gaze from the past to the future’
International Journal of Heritage Studies
‘[A book] Likely [to] attract two main groups of readers. One consists of students, researchers, and heritage practitioners looking for inspiration or a gateway to understand current intersections between the fields of (critical) heritage studies and futurology. It will work well for this purpose, as it raises vital questions and points to avenues for collaboration that may help care for the future – not just for the remains of the past in the future. …A second group would be researchers looking for advice on how to write up a big project. The book represents a successful example of how to weave together a large and highly diverse research programme into a single publication.’
Norwegian Archaeological Review
‘I suspect this book will prove to be a revolutionary addition to the field of heritage studies, flipping the gaze from the past to the future. Heritage Futures reveals the deep uncertainties and precarities that shape both everyday and political life today: accumulation and waste, care and hope, the natural and the toxic. It represents a uniquely impressive intellectual and empirical roadmap for both anticipating and questioning future trajectories, and the strange, unfamiliar places heritage will take us.’ – Tim Winter, University of Western Australia
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