Laura Jane Smith: Heritage is essentially immaterial: critical heritage studies and museum studies.
Abstract: This paper reviews the history of heritage research and sorts out the development context and research themes of critical heritage research.
On this basis, a new theoretical thinking on heritage is put forward, that is, heritage is essentially a cultural production process that creates meaning, including stimulating the audience's memory, building their identity, and sense of place.
Through interviews with visitors from museums in the United Kingdom, Australia, and the United States, this article shows the memories and identities reflected during the visitors 'visit.
Different social groups have diverse ways of utilizing and understanding heritage, and heritage and museum experts cannot always dominate the use of heritage and the way the audience community reconstructs heritage.
It is not just heritage-related institutions that create a sense of history.
Audiences in museums and heritage sites also create a sense of history.
Museum visitors are users of heritage, and they understand and utilize heritage creation in multiple ways.
Keywords: Critical research on heritage; Identity; A sense of history; Introduction to the author of heritage production: Laurajane Smith is a professor at the School of Archaeology and Anthropology at the Australia National University and editor-in-chief of the SSCI source journal "International Journal of Heritage Research".
Her books such as "Archaeological Theory and the Politics of Cultural Heritage" and "Uses of Heritage" have led heritage research in the international heritage community.
Zhang Yu is a lecturer at the School of Foreign Languages of Zhejiang A & F University and a visiting scholar at Australia National University.
1.
Introduction
Although heritage research and museum research focus on the same objects and both focus on all aspects of heritage, both academic research on heritage and heritage protection practices are often isolated from museum research.
However, with the rise of a new research trend, interdisciplinary research and practice of cultural heritage is increasing, while at the same time, the isolation between museum research and other heritage research is gradually being eliminated.
Rodney Harrison [1] called this research trend critical heritage studies.
This study first reviews the development context of heritage research and points out why emerging critical heritage research emerged and why it is necessary.
Through this review, I want to emphasize that more and more scholars realize that heritage is essentially a cultural production process, and many disciplines involved in heritage research and heritage practice are involved in the process of heritage creation.
Secondly, I want to explore how museum practices (including collection, curation, exhibitions, etc.) participate in the process of heritage creation.
This study also pointed out that visitors visiting museums and heritage sites is another process of creating heritage.
2.
Heritage research in English literature
In 1985, Dr.
David Lowenthal published The Past is a Foreign Country,[2] which was the beginning of academic heritage research (at least in the English-speaking world).
In the English-speaking world, in addition to Rowenthal, there are also Wright [3] and Hewison [4][5] from a historical perspective, Walsh [6], Shanks and Tilley [7] from an archaeological perspective, and Bennett [8] from a sociological perspective.
The study of heritage by scholars such as Rowenso is a response to three intertwined social events.
These incidents include:
First, since the end of World War II, some human creations have been regarded as fragile and limited resources, and people believe they need to be protected for the benefit of future generations.
Public interest in this regard is high, and relevant protection policies have also been formulated by various countries and internationally.
Second, in people's eyes, there are no restrictions on the utilization of the economic value of heritage.
This form of utilization continues to increase.
This is manifested in the following two forms: (1) the tourism department's involvement in heritage has led to concerns that heritage sites and their history may be commercialized or Disney-oriented;(2) the increasing development of community museums, ecological museums, and heritage centers, which is a challenge to traditional large-scale museums with national consciousness and civic consciousness as the core pose a challenge; During this period, museums became increasingly diverse, and often featured a feature that they provided an easy way to improve the economy for communities that were not yet industrialized or marginalized.
Third, many Western countries have turned conservative at the political and social levels.
For example, the concepts of using and safeguarding heritage serve as the basis for conservative social and cultural policies.
This phenomenon has attracted the attention of academia and prompted scholars to pay attention to the economic aspects of heritage.
This is the third event closely related to the first two social events.
In many ways, there were significant deviations in heritage research during this period.
There are two ways to understand heritage:
First of all, heritage management and heritage protection tend to be technical and dominated by a discourse, which I call the "Authorized Heritage Discourse", or simply AHD Smith, 2006)[9].
It refers to an expert and technical discourse that stems from discussions of heritage conservation in Western European architecture and archaeology in the 19th century.
This discourse focuses on objects, sites, places and landscapes that are aesthetically pleasing or have a long history, and believes that contemporary people have a responsibility to protect them and pass them on to future generations.
This concept of inheritance has been so emphasized that contemporary people have no right to actively utilize heritage, because the moral requirement is to pass on these cultural wealth intact to future generations.
What is rooted in this discourse is the idea that the value of material culture is contained in material carriers and has nothing to do with people.
Heritage is considered fragile, limited and non-renewable and must be protected through experts, who refer to archaeologists, museum curators, architects, etc.
They are naturally seen as protectors of the past, able to understand the value of heritage and convey it to audiences nationally and around the world.
Assumptions about the intrinsic value of heritage also reinforce the idea that heritage represents the good aspects of the past and that it contributes to the continued development of cultural identities now and in the future.
This discourse also emphasizes identity construction.
Heritage is related to the construction of identity, especially the construction of national identity.
Although no study has ever delved into how sites or places contribute to identity construction, the connection between the two is taken for granted.
Authoritative heritage discourse not only constructs a definition of heritage, but also constructs an authoritative way of thinking.
This way of thinking is used to understand and deal with some social issues related to identity.
Of course, authoritative heritage discourse is not single and constant, but dynamic and controversial.
Despite this, an authoritative understanding of heritage still exists, with certain consequences.
In this sense, this word is real.
One consequence is that it excludes different or opposing ways of understanding heritage.
Another consequence is that it continues to legitimize the knowledge and values that make up this discourse.
In the 1990s, Western academia began to establish postgraduate courses to provide vocational training for heritage and museum practitioners.
These courses are largely framed by authoritative heritage discourse and tend to emphasize technical management and curatorial processes.
Heritage research literature from this period also reflects this.
As David Harvey points out [10], a large body of literature focuses on practical, practical issues such as heritage preservation, protection and management, value assessment, law, policy, best practice cases, and heritage ethics.
Museums, archaeology and architecture pay special attention to these aspects.
Much of the research in these areas arises as archaeology and architecture are involved in cultural resource management/cultural heritage management and architectural protection/preservation.
The second way of understanding heritage is that heritage is "false history", a view that is deeply influenced by Rowenso's view [11][12][13].
At the time in the UK, heritage was openly used to defend the socially and politically conservative belief that the past was better and that Western society should return to forgotten, social and cultural values of the past.
In the early days of heritage research, academic discussions focused on how people could use heritage to support conservative values.
Therefore, in its early days, heritage research was conducted along two rather narrow paths.
One is the technical route, which believes in the power of heritage experts and believes that the role of heritage in politics is too small to be negligible or completely controllable.
These experts are trained to be objective and professional, and they are very good at how national and international heritage laws and policies are technically applied.
The second is the academic route, based on an elite understanding of heritage.
Heritage is regarded as the opposite of history or popular history.
People must view heritage with suspicion.
Heritage needs to be controlled by professionals such as historians, archaeologists and museum curators.
Heritage research has been carried out along the above paths, despite the insights provided by Raphael Samuel about heritage.
Samuel pointed out in The Theater of Memory [14](1994:225) that heritage has become "one of the major social movements of our time." He believes that the phenomenon of heritage being used to support conservative values does exist, but this is not the whole picture of things.
Heritage can be used in many social and politicized ways, which deserves academic attention.
It is worth mentioning that each of the above scholars influenced subsequent heritage research, but the degree of influence varied greatly.
For example, searching Google Academics The results (as of May 2011) show that the 1995 reprinted version of Rowenso's "The Past Is a Foreign Land" has been cited 2600 times, and his 1998 book "The Crusade of Heritage and the Destruction of History"(The Heritage Crusade and the Spoils of History)[11] has been cited more than 500 times, and Robert Huysen's book The Heritage Industry [5] has been cited more than 900 times.
Samuel's "Theater of Memory" has only 380 citations, although I think the book was a better guide to analyzing the legacy then and now.
Of course, Google Academics is not accurate.
Samuel died relatively young, and Rowenso is still active in his eighties.
However, these data still show how different views on the nature and significance of the legacy are influential.
Authoritative heritage discourse adheres to a technical understanding of heritage.
The heritage research path led by scholars such as Rowenso seems to be opposed to it, but in fact still reproduces some elements of this discourse.
Their view of heritage is to regard tourists or heritage users in heritage sites as passive consumers, and only with the intervention of experts can we understand the true meaning of the past.
This view of heritage is a replica of Robert Hueisen, who Hueisen calls a criticism of the heritage industry.
It also focuses on issues such as the authenticity and ownership of heritage, and defines heritage as conservative and passive rather than positive and creative.
In addition, heritage research and museum research during this period were isolated from each other.
If you search heritage research literature, until the early years of the 21st century, museum research was rarely mentioned in heritage research.
This was the deadlock in heritage research at the end of the 20th century.
However, there is now a large amount of literature on what Rodney Harrison [1] calls critical research on heritage.
I believe that the significant increase in interest in heritage research is not due to the academic guidance of scholars such as Rowenso, but stems from the attention to heritage practice in heritage and museum research.
In fact, the focus on heritage practice has raised some important questions that have attracted the attention of scholars.
One of the most important factors that inspired this research shift was community engagement with heritage and museums.
When heritage and museum research both began to focus on communities, they began to have a dialogue because they encountered similar resistance from communities as they tried to involve communities or integrate them into heritage conservation.
Because authoritative heritage discourse has constructed a persuasive and elitist definition of heritage, it has a great impact, and it has become the focus of criticism from various community groups.
Community groups often use heritage in ways that are different from authoritative heritage discourse.
When heritage and museum experts enter the community to do heritage work, they often have varying degrees of missionary enthusiasm for "doing good", which may also trigger criticism.
However, due to the implementation of community integration policies, community participation in heritage protection is not effective.
This policy inadvertently assimilates marginalized communities, allowing them to understand culture and heritage in an authoritative way.
This process maintains the narrative that excludes the other constructed by authoritative heritage discourse, leading to the further marginalization of a large number of communities and exacerbating their antipathy.
From the late 1960s, Aboriginal groups challenged the primacy of expert discourse in their heritage management.[15][16][17][18][19] Many non-Western critics have also begun to challenge the legitimacy of Western models of estate management.
For a long time, the Western heritage management model has emphasized that the concept and practice of Western heritage are universal through UNESCO, ICROM, ICOMOS and other institutions.
In addition, within Western countries, communities formed along common geographical or cultural, ethnic, social, or political lines have begun to assert that their views of heritage differ from traditional expert knowledge.
I think it is no accident that communities and non-Western regions are challenging Western heritage management models.
Because heritage plays an important role within a country and even around the world, it is not only a social resource, but also a political resource.
In the late 20th century, recognizing differences became an area of political wrangling.
Political philosophers believe that this new way of political practice provides a platform to promote social justice and fairness, on which basis vulnerable groups such as indigenous peoples can make demands so that they can be more equitably allocated to finance, welfare, housing and power resources such as education.
Dr.
Nancy Frazer [20][21] believes that the "politics of recognition" is based on the recognition that different communities have different histories, needs and demands, and that they can make demands and obtain formal and material recognition.
In order to achieve equality and justice, they must be given material compensation [22].
At the same time, public and academic circles have become increasingly interested in heritage.
I am not saying that public interest in heritage is directly related to the politics of recognition.
However, inheritance does often be used as material or evidence of authority for identity identification.
This helps us understand why community groups are so eager to control their heritage during this period and have their own voice heard in understanding heritage [23].
Academics need to respond to growing community initiative, which has generated a lot of critical thinking about legacy.
For example, Denis Byrne [24][25] studied the role of neocolonialism played by heritage, and some scholars have critically reviewed European social integration policies.
There are also some documents that promote theoretical thinking on heritage practice, exploring the disharmony between institutionalized heritage practice, government policies, discourse, legal tools and communities, communities and other stakeholders in heritage management, utilization, and interpretation.
Although the number of documents in this regard is relatively small, it has a great impact.
As the public or community becomes increasingly interested in heritage, research on heritage tourism is increasing significantly.
In addition to criticizing the heritage industry, many scholars have recently conducted in-depth analysis of the performance characteristics of heritage tourism and the way in which cultural significance, social values and tastes are constructed [26][27][28][29][30][31][32][33][34][35][36][37].
In these studies, the line between visitors and visitors to heritage sites began to blur, and heritage research gave people the opportunity to question so-called "well-known" tourism research and marketing.
Issues such as "authenticity" and nostalgia that have long dominated heritage research have also begun to be reconsidered.
Heritage interpretation strategies have been questioned by many, and scholars have raised new research questions, such as how people use heritage to legalize or delegitimize certain historical narratives.
Previously, people in the heritage and museum fields often complacently believed that heritage interpretation was about interpreting the best heritage practices, that is, educating passive audiences in the most effective and participatory way possible, or providing them with learning opportunities.
Today, this understanding is beginning to be disintegrated.
The second theme covered by a large amount of literature is heritage conflicts and heritage disputes.
The most well-known ones are cultural relics return, cultural relics trading, and basic heritage protection issues and practices.
Many scholars, especially American scholars, try to view heritage issues critically.
Scholars are also increasingly concerned about "heritage that hurts", a term derived from the title of a recently published monograph by Joy Sather-Wagstaff [38], first coined by Zell and Ballantyne [39].
This type of research focuses on understanding the diversity of heritage and is not limited to controversial heritage and warning heritage, but extends to all heritage.
Since people may have different views on all heritage, the assumption of an authoritative heritage discourse that heritage has universal value is difficult to hold.
Some research touches on a third theme, how heritage constructs nationalist narratives and other forms of uniform history.
Scholars have found that certain social, cultural and ethnic groups in society are often ignored because they are subordinates in society, resulting in their political marginalization.
Several studies have explored how monuments and museums play a political role in educating and managing national identity, civic values, civic tastes, and civic behavior.
Dr.
Emma Waterton and Steve Watson support the development of "non-representative theory", and scholars such as Rodney Harrison and Tony Bennett have explored the relationship between actor-network theory and heritage research.
The fourth theme of critical research on heritage is the role of heritage as a cultural and social phenomenon in the social, economic and cultural aspects of Western culture, and the role heritage plays in people's lives.
This type of research focuses particularly on memory and identity issues.
As mentioned above, there is currently very little research on how heritage and memory are related.
In research on community heritage and memory, the connection between the two has begun to have the clearest discussion to date.
Scholars have also used the theory of memory and remembrance to explore the relationship between social identity and sense of place.
Some scholars have studied the cultural tool functions played by heritage in the process of remembrance, memory and forgetting.
Research by Yaniv Poria (2009) reminds us that heritage is also related to emotion, and that the emotional dimension of heritage has an impact on our understanding of identity, memory, sense of place, museums, site interpretation, and visitor motivations.[35][48]
The last emerging research topic is intangible cultural heritage.
The adoption of the Convention for the Protection of Intangible Cultural Heritage in 2003 inspired more discussion of this topic.
Research by Kirshenblatt-Gimblett [28] proved that the emergence of this convention only randomly added a third category of heritage, namely intangible cultural heritage, in addition to cultural heritage and natural heritage.
Despite this, some scholars recognized the interconnectedness between the three and had some interesting discussions that prompted a rethink of heritage practice.
My understanding of heritage comes from the above documents [9].
Heritage has long been regarded as a material object, site or place.
Below I will challenge this concept and present my understanding of heritage.
3.
Heritage manufacturing
Heritage is important and dynamic.
It is dynamic, not something that is solidified in material form.
It includes a series of behaviors that occur in a specific place or space.
Although heritage is an act that occurs locally, the reason why these places become heritage sites is because what happened in these places creates meaning and carries people's memories.
The heritage site also provides a sense of scene and reality to what happens here.
Heritage is something that has already happened.
It is not a specific activity, but a series of activities, including memory, commemoration, exchange and inheritance of knowledge and memory, identity identification, identification and expression of social and cultural values and social and cultural significance.
This process may promote social progress or maintain conservative values.
The essence of heritage is an experience, a social and cultural performance, in which people usually participate actively, consciously and critically.
What impact does the legacy have? What will be the consequences of being recognized as heritage? Heritage activities bring emotions and experiences created by people, as well as people's memories of them.
These will give people a sense of identity and belonging.
In addition, social networks and connections are constantly created and recreated in this process, rather than maintaining the status quo.
Heritage activities promote the re-creation of these networks and relationships.
In heritage activities, people generate, examine, think about, reject, welcome or change social and cultural values, meanings and understandings about the past and present.
Identity is not just a static thing generated in heritage sites and reproduced by heritage sites.
When people, communities and institutions reinterpret or evaluate the past based on today's social, cultural and political needs, and remember or forget the past, identity is constantly actively Reconstructed and negotiated.
The essence of heritage is a cultural process or embodied performance, with many different levels and backgrounds.
In the following paragraphs, I will introduce three of them.
4.
Three levels
First, let's look at legacy creation at the institutional level.
When heritage departments and governments formulate and implement cultural policies and funding policies, they are participating in heritage creation; when museums and heritage professionals choose to collect cultural relics, whether to hold exhibitions, whether to protect or preserve certain heritage sites or buildings, and how to interpret heritage or not to interpret heritage, they are also participating in heritage creation.
A national or international heritage list is a product of heritage creation because it represents specific information and concepts about what was in the past and what was in the present.
Museum exhibitions create heritage in the same way.
Exhibits in heritage sites and museums are not discovered, but identified, and represent the heritage stories that heritage and museum experts want to tell.
The second level of heritage creation occurs in communities.
However, one point that was often ignored in early heritage research is that the group of heritage experts is itself a community [22](Smith, Waterton, 2009).
Museum employees and heritage officials can be understood as a community of interests in heritage matters.
Like other heritage stakeholders, they deal with and control heritage objects and sites, and in the process they build their professional identities [22].
Heritage creation also exists at the individual level.
Although institutions (such as museums and heritage institutions) guide and influence audiences 'heritage creation through careful design, organization of exhibitions, and use of interpretive materials, they cannot always control audiences' understanding of heritage.
Therefore, the third level of heritage creation occurs at the individual level, especially when people go to heritage sites and museums for exhibitions.
Much of my research focuses on this third level.
V.
Specific Cases
I have interviewed visitors at many museums and heritage sites in the UK, Australia, and the United States.
So far, I have interviewed or supervised graduate students to interview 24 institutions with more than 3500 viewers.
These materials show that when visitors visit museums and heritage sites (what they call leisure tours), they participate in a range of shaping memories and identities.
One of the most striking findings in the study was that when people went to museums and heritage sites, they rarely said they were there to study or receive education.
People prefer to say that they go to these places to deepen their existing knowledge, feelings, or concepts.
Here are a few typical examples:
"Every time we come to a place like this, it deepens the impression we have and makes me feel that it's great to be an Australia...
I don't feel that I have gained anything new, but my knowledge and opinions have been deepened.
That's what I get here."
"There is nothing new.
I already had similar knowledge and experience before visiting here.
I think coming to visit just deepened my original opinion." "No, no, I don't think the exhibition has changed my original opinion.
I think it plays a consolidating and strengthening role.
Obviously, there is information here that I didn't know before, but it only consolidates my previous views."
When asked,"Has anything you see today changed your view of the past or present?" 83% of the audience either said they didn't, or they just deepened their existing knowledge or feelings.
Even for some museum exhibitions that attempt to challenge existing ideas or reveal hidden history, such as an exhibition of Britain's involvement in the slave trade, the audience's answers are similar.
Some visitors pointed out that one of the purposes of their visit to museums or heritage sites is to strengthen existing concepts:
"I guess people look at exhibits to strengthen their understanding." "We came here to visit because it consolidates what I saw and makes me proud to be an Australia."
As David Rowenso, Robert Hueisen and other scholars feared and predicted, what audiences in museums and heritage sites is building a conservative, patriotic understanding of the national narrative.
For example, when visitors visit the former residences of celebrities in England, they will develop a sense of national pride based on class divisions and "take off their hats" to them: "This is part of our history in England.
Without such people, our lives would still be very poor.
The former residences of celebrities give us people to take off their hats, which makes us part of history."
Visiting the former residences of celebrities is not only related to the country, but also related to the status of the white middle class in British society.
"Contact with inheritance is a very important leisure time.
This behavior itself is very middle-class...
Especially for the middle class, it brings us a pleasant feeling.
Of course, different places attract different people." "It's nothing to most people, people would rather go shopping.
Visiting famous people's former residences seems to be a middle-class hobby, depending on one's education level and the environment in which they grew up.
It reflects the training goals of the education you receive."
In these examples, Britain's authoritative heritage discourse shapes the way audiences interact with the former residences of celebrities and their understanding of the meaning of such heritage, constructs their perception of self-identity, and cultivates their sense of belonging to the social class to which they belong.
This sense of belonging is based on their understanding of class differences and the ability of the middle class to demonstrate that they have certain tastes and skills to interpret the elite aesthetic significance of the former residences of celebrities [9].
In Australia's nation-building, rural areas have been given a mythical importance.
For some visitors to the Stockman Hall of Fame, this concept was reinforced after the visit.
This is a museum in rural Queensland, 1200 kilometers from Brisbane, and tells the story of European ranchers.
Such people are called cowboys in the United States and South American cowboys in Argentina.
These workers occupy an important and even romantic place in the narrative about the origins of Australia.
However, the museum also highlights the importance of Aboriginal people in telling this history, which challenges the narrative of Australia's nation-building.
Historically, Australia has been a country with a large population concentrated in cities, with 89% of the population living in coastal cities of Australia.
As a result, the rural life depicted by this museum is not the actual experience of most Australia now or in the past.
However, despite this, some viewers found the real Australia here:
"Wilderness is the real Australia, and cities cannot represent Australia."
"I think the museum aroused a lot of emotions in me.
I feel very proud to be an Australia.
This reflects the spirit of Australia's inland.
In my opinion, this is the spiritual pillar of Australia."
Many visitors from rural areas believe that this museum can help people living in cities or coastal areas understand the true meaning and value of being Australia.
For example, some interviewees believe that:
"I think city residents need to know what Australia's heritage is...
I think someone needs to tell them that." "The history of rural Australia has been covered up...
It's understandable, but...
there are city residents who have always lived in cities without knowing it...
If you haven't been in the countryside,...
You won't understand what's going on there.
They take everything for granted."
Interestingly, after seeing the museum, many visitors from cities expressed their humility and guilt towards the rural areas.
Some even said that they were making the pilgrimage with reverence.
This undoubtedly consolidates Australia's authoritative heritage discourse and the historical position that the countryside enjoys in Australia's national identity.
For example, it was pointed out:
"The exhibition broadens people's horizons and lets people know what difficulties the pioneers encountered when exploring Australia.
I think everyone should come here for a pilgrimage."
The myth of Australia's pioneers espoused by these interviewees underestimated the role of urban and multicultural communities in Australia's national identity, and concealed many things, such as the suppression, economic exploitation and sexual exploitation of indigenous farm workers.These examples may confirm Rowenthal and Hueisen's view of heritage that is false history and essentially conservative.
Of course, in these cases, people use the role of heritage to consolidate and legitimize certain conservative values and identity constructs.
However, some interviewees also viewed the issue of identity construction from a critical perspective.
Heritage can also be used to build personal and community identities at Labor History Museums and Labor Culture Festivals in Australia and the United Kingdom.
By incorporating more progressive ways of understanding heritage, museums and heritage sites can become a place to reminisce about family or community memories, helping audiences pass on these memories and the values behind them to their relatives and children.
For example, some interviewees said:
"Being here has brought back my memory.
It's great to share it with my family."
"This place allows people to understand the past, otherwise people won't remember it.
Memory is very important.
Memory is contained in landscapes and buildings."
"I once felt like I had returned to history...
It made history very clear and deepened people's feelings about the past."
These memories often reinforce the political value of progress, such as what it means to be a member of a community.
Others used memories and nostalgia to judge the present:
"It keeps reminding me not to forget what happened in the past,...
the ruling class cares about no one, only themselves...
I work in the union and I know things like this are still happening and we are still fighting management to stop them from exploiting workers."
"This land will not please everyone, and it will be difficult, but they (here the leaders of the British coal miners 'strike in 1984-1985) have the courage to stand up.
Politics affects everyone.
Politics is not the only place in parliament."
"I come from a coal mining village.
I am thinking about the cultural and social impact of the shutdown of the industry."
In other heritage sites where I conducted surveys, I also heard people thinking about the memories and identity construction brought by heritage.
For example, Australia who visit the Immigration Museum in Melbourne, like British people who visit the Labor History Museum, reshape their memories and identities by visiting heritage sites.
By visiting the museum, visitors not only recall and think about the stories of immigrants told by their fathers or grandparents, but also negotiate the cultural values of their families and the values of contemporary Australia.
In this process, the audience usually develops a very keen understanding of society and individuals.
Another important theme revealed by the research materials is people's reflection on heritage creation by heritage institutions.
2007 marks the 200th anniversary of the passage of the Slavery Trade Act in the UK.
African-Caribbean people in the UK visited the museum in order to test the popularity of public discussion on the topic and to see how much British society recognized the history of the slave trade.
They wanted to understand how well the museum, as a national institution, could properly handle racist and multicultural issues, or whether it avoided such issues.[49] African-Caribbean audiences mainly use visits to observe how the British white community expresses this theme, rather than use visits to reconstruct or confirm their identity.
For example, some interviewees said:
"I think this exhibition is a beginning to let people understand that England or Britain was involved in the slave trade and to send a signal to us that society has some recognition of the suffering we have suffered.
It remains to be seen whether this recognition will be integrated into British life, history and education."
The above is part of the interviews I have conducted with visitors at museums and heritage sites in recent years.
Due to space limitations, I cannot present them all.
The following points I want to emphasize are: First, heritage can be used and understood in many ways.
Second, this diversity exists not only in different types of museums and heritage sites, but in every museum and heritage site.
Third, heritage and museum experts cannot always control the way people and diverse communities use and reconstruct heritage.
Fourth, we will not always like the role of heritage in society, but people cannot ignore the role of heritage, and heritage cannot become false history.
Fifth, it is not only heritage institutions that create a sense of history, but also visitors to museums and heritage sites.
As users of heritage, museum visitors are not passive.
They actively understand and utilize heritage production in multiple ways.
VI.
Conclusion
This paper first reviews the academic history of heritage research since the 1980s, and points out the background and several major research themes of the rise of critical heritage research.
On this basis, this paper puts forward new theoretical thinking on the nature of heritage, and explains a new understanding of heritage by analyzing interviews with visitors from many museums and heritage sites in the United Kingdom, the United States, and Australia.
As some scholars have pointed out, museums and heritage sites are not "safe" places.
They are not passive, but dynamic, and their understanding is often different.
We may not always like the diversity of meanings produced there, or we may not like the fact that we cannot always control the results of meaning production.
Looking back at the time when heritage research was first formed, heritage scholars realized that we could not control all the impacts of heritage and might panic, and then mistrust heritage and denounce it as false history.
The goal is to keep heritage under control in the hands of experts, such as historians, archaeologists and museum curators.
I think this is a short-sighted idea that devalues the important value of the legacy phenomenon.
As Raphael Samuel pointed out, legacy is not just a social movement, but also a subjective political negotiation about identity, place, and memory.
Heritage is the moment or process of constructing or reconstructing cultural and social values and meanings.
In this sense, all heritage is essentially intangible.
Heritage is a process or performance from which we individuals, communities or countries can find value and cultural and social significance, thereby helping us understand the present, our identity, and our place and social status.
This process is not limited to technical policies for heritage site management, heritage protection, museum curation or the World Heritage List.
Critical research on heritage needs to clearly focus on heritage users and their use of heritage, and pay attention to their relationship with power, place, class, ethnic group, ethnicity, and different identities.
Critical research on heritage needs to remain critical; it needs to ask tough questions about the use of power and ideology, how memories and identities are shaped, and for what purposes.
It also poses challenges for people with professional knowledge.
In the words of the great political theorist Antonio Gramsci, although not everyone is an intellectual for a living, everyone is an intellectual.
In the same way, although not everyone takes heritage as a profession, everyone is interpreting heritage and performing heritage performances.
This made me realize another important factor in critical heritage research: making heritage more democratic.
Traditional ways of understanding heritage often cause the rights and interests of many communities to be artificially suppressed.
Consideration of community rights and interests in heritage can push us to rethink heritage in a new direction.
Obviously this is a challenge for many people in heritage and museum institutions, but if critical research of heritage is to make meaningful, it must inspire practice, education and training to provide heritage and museum institutions with a new way of thinking and doing things.
New museology has had an impact on museum practice to some extent, but I believe there is still a lot of room for the future.
Expanding museum research within a broader scope of heritage research will bring positive results.
Critical heritage research must also become a broad platform to absorb the writings of scholars and practitioners from non-English-speaking countries, with special emphasis on research by scholars from Asia, Latin America and Africa.
(This article was originally published in "Cultural Heritage", No.
3, 2018.
The annotations are omitted, and refer to the original issue for details)