Heritage Studies: Methods and Approaches (review)

Heritage Studies is an ambitious and timely contribution to an increasing interest in theories and practices around heritage. In its inquiry of methodology specific to heritage studies, the volume attempts to capture the emerging field. As several contributors of this volume vacillate, heritage studies is not a given: it lacks "a separate disciplinary identity" (p. 9); "[t]here is no discipline as such as heritage" (p. 326); "Heritage Studies is a relatively new discipline or field of studies" (p. 17); it "now exists as a distinct set of academic practices" (p. 11); and it is a "burgeoning field" (p.140). While there is an attempt to identify heritage as a distinct subject of inquiry, this volume makes an effort to maintain its open-endedness and multidisciplinarity.

At the same time, the drive to identify and preserve heritage, to inventory heritage (as in the UNESCO World Heritage project), and to consume heritage (heritage tourism), is a long-standing phenomenon, and more recently a global trend. Heritage Studies, then, is a product that addresses concerns that come with scholarly and practical engagement of the theme as it marks several years of research and collaborations that took place in Cambridge, UK. More than a need to establish a new field, an umbrella term of heritage studies serves as a point of inquiry that interconnects diverse works and as a common forum for productive exchange.

Heritage Studies first "sets the scene" by outlining the field of inquiry. The first two chapters by the editors establish the legitimacy of inquiry and chart the history of heritage as a theme. Because this introduction (part I) ends with a chapter that addresses the current standing of public archaeology by historicizing the practice, heritage in this volume is given an archaeological orientation. Thus, rather than getting mired in the conceptual entanglement of heritage with tradition, history, memory, modernity, and so forth, this work is able to engage with the materiality of heritage premised by archaeological practices.

The volume organizes the methodology of heritage studies in three parts: investigating texts), investigating people, and investigating things, with a noticeable emphasis on people. In part II, textual analyses are addressed by historical inquiry and from a management perspective. Soderland illuminates details of legal processes (the U.S. federal legislation in this case) and textual sources to investigate the legal, social and political development of heritage as an issue. Sommer follows different articulations of Saxon identity through varied historical sources including museums and exhibitions, antiquarian societies, publications, as well as contemporary web texts. On the other hand, Baxter's main concern is establishing data records for future use; in this case, assessment of heritage status.

Part III explores methods to investigate people, and most contributions involve ethnography in its multiple enunciations; they include participant observation, non-participant observation, structured, non-structured, and semi-structured interviews, soliciting information through drawings and questionnaires, and observing non-verbal communication. Ethnographic investigations, by virtue of being open-ended, do not follow presupposed courses, and authors illustrate the instances in which they were forced to redirect their research), drop or add certain dimensions, constantly reconfigure the frame of research, and tailor methods to particular sites and situations. Some cases are phenomenological inquiries, some are action- or policy-oriented. While it is difficult to say whether there is something novel in the application of ethnographic methods to the investigation of heritage, the elucidation of a number of methods in these chapters are grounded in specific instances and allows us to fine-tune our understanding of them.

The focus of part IV is the investigation of things. Taking heritage as spatial entities, this section of the volume proposes innovative methods such as the use of GIS, heritagescape, or demonstrates ways to classify them. Nevertheless, as heritage is ultimately about people, investigating things cannot circumvent engaging people; both Fitzjohn and Lillehammer characterize heritage sites through people's attitude. Of particular interest...