Theory and Practice in Heritage and Sustainability ─ Between Past and Future

This book explores the relationships between heritage and sustainability in terms of both theory and practice. It examines the relationships between people and communities in the places where they live, and thus exemplifies the diverse ways in which heritage is used to forge identities and support and create memory, individually and collectively. The book encourages a view of heritage as a people-centred process and focuses on the aspects of cultural sustainability that help to support human well-being through socially- and culturally-sensitive policy and practice.

Bringing together interdisciplinary and theoretically-informed case studies, the book addresses both concepts and practical applications, in a range of places, contexts and forms including the built environment, landscape, townscape, museums, and industrial sites, every day heritage, ‘ordinary’ places and the local scene as well as UNESCO-designated sites. The case studies show in a cohesive way how the cultural values that people attach to place are enmeshed with issues of memory, identity and aspiration and how they therefore stand at the centre of sustainability discourse and practice. The examples are drawn from Europe, but all offer transferable more universal lessons. They illustrate the particular contribution that the inheritance of the past can make to cultural engagement with sustainability. The book offers unique insights from Baltic, central, eastern and south-eastern Europe, regions with distinctive cultural approaches, discourse and social challenges, thus adding value to the examination of how their heritage has been used (and abused) to forge identities and frame political action.

This book draws together the lessons of the case studies, emphasising transferability and specificity, and outlining the potential contribution of the examples to emergent and future research, practice and policy in the sustainability field and the implications for future heritage thinking. This is a unique offering for postgraduate students, researchers and professionals interested in heritage management, governance and community participation and cultural sustainability.

Graham Fairclough is Strategic Research Adviser at Newcastle University, UK. He worked for English Heritage (one of the UK’s national heritage agencies) and its predecessors until 2012.