THE RISE OF HERITAGE

The growing importance of heritage would seem to be due to a complex array of inter-locking factors: educational, cultural, political and commercial. There seems a desire by many people to know more about the history of a place, person or event, to disseminate this knowledge and often to celebrate it. Heritage is intimately bound up with culture, whether on a local, regional or national scale, and the preservation or remembrance of lifestyles, work practices, musical or folk traditions and so on. Such emphases, in turn, are often linked to political considerations concerned with the promotion (or obscuring) of particular versions of the past which lend support to contemporary agendas (Lowenthal 1998). For example, arguments over national identity and the inculcation of loyalty to the state are often bolstered through reference to a shared heritage (Hobsbawm 1992; Gellner 1997; Smith 2001).

Whatever the underlying causes of the increased demand for heritage, it is clear that there is an expanding supply, so that heritage has become a recognised industry. The perceived economic potential of heritage means that it has become ever more utilised as a mechanism in regeneration strategies, mainly through the promotion of heritage sites and elements of local heritage as tourist attractions (Timothy and Boyd 2003). Moreover, the cachet attaching to ideas such as ‘heritage’ and ‘tradition’ has seen such terms applied (often in a very tenuous manner) to various products as a marketing mechanism.