Heritage and community engagement

For many years now, a number of scholars have been assessing the role of communities within the field of heritage studies. This is an area that is also gathering strong political backing, evidenced by the foregrounding of the term in recent international policy, such as the independent review prepared for the IUCN World Heritage Programme, titled IUCN, World Heritage and Evaluation Processes Related to Communities and Rights (Larsen 2012), as well as that developing at the national level, such as the Australian Heritage Strategy consultation. It is a term that is equally visible within broader public policy, too, taking perhaps its most obvious form in recent community cohesion debates occurring in the United Kingdom, which revolve around issues of citizenship and national values. The relationship between heritage and community is, therefore, one that has significant currency at many different levels: conceptually, in terms of heritage management practices, and more broadly, as something that is implicitly referenced in debates about identity and cultural difference. The latter in this list may at first appear to push the chapter beyond the scope of traditional heritage management. Yet, I will argue, it is a focus of interest that nonetheless has important consequences for any consideration of ethics, especially those that take up a social justice approach. To better understand this, the chapter will reflect upon the work of Nancy Fraser and her 'politics of recognition', which will be drawn upon as a framing device for illustrating that if dominant patterns of cultural value (both institutional and societal) prevent some communities from participating on a par, as peers, with others in social life, we can speak of misrecognition. Holding this in mind thus necessitates structuring the chapter around three key agendas: (1) establishing workable definition of 'community', (2) examining ethically sound practices and methods of community engagement within the field of heritage studies, and (3) exploring the politics bound up with the uses 'heritage' and 'community' are put to in wider social life, particularly in terms of marginalisation. Across the back of all three, then, will be a broader consideration of the operationalisation of the term 'community'.