Values In Heritage Management - Getty

4Negotiation, and Conflict Resolution for Heritage Place Management (2016). The GCI has alsoembedded values-based conservation in its own field projects and training efforts aroundthe world.This work at the GCI was part of a broader movement in the field to advance values-basedplanning methodologies. Today, the principle that a thorough understanding of thecultural significance of a place should guide all aspects of heritage decision making isfundamental to contemporary conservation practice. This principle is applied at all stagesof the conservation process, from the identification of what is deemed heritage, to thedevelopment of conservation policies and intervention strategies, to the investment andexpenditure of resources in heritage management activities. Implicit in this approach isthe importance of engaging in management processes the multiple publics who use andcare about a heritage place. Such engagement has been explicitly acknowledged in thecodification of responsibilities of heritage professionals in the recently adopted “ICOMOS5Ethical Principles.”Despite these significant developments in applied theory and practice, however, valuesbased approaches are not well researched and formalized, and policy change at the levelof heritage governance is not prevalent around the world. New questions and issues areemerging in relation to values-based heritage management, including the recognition ofa broader range of heritage typologies—tangible and intangible—and the development ofnew norms and methods of practice. In addition, the ways in which heritage functionswithin societies have evolved, with stakeholder communities in many places becomingincreasingly active.In 2016, two former GCI colleagues—Erica Avrami of Columbia University and RandallMason of the University of Pennsylvania—approached the GCI about workingcollaboratively to further advance discourse on heritage values in response to thesechallenges. The result was a jointly organized symposium, “Values in HeritageManagement: Emerging Approaches and Research Directions,” held in Los Angeles onFebruary 6 and 7, 2017. The event brought together an invited group of scholars andpractitioners to explore a range of emerging issues and approaches from a variety ofgeographic regions and professional disciplines. The ideas shared at the symposiumserved as a springboard for the individual contributions contained in this volume,including a discussion paper by Avrami and Mason in which they argue for a strongeralignment between values in heritage practice and societal values. The publication’sappendix contains conclusions and recommendations from the symposium regardingrelevant challenges and gaps in the heritage field, as well as opportunities for improvingheritage conservation outcomes through the better understanding, development, anduse of values-based methodologies.We are grateful to the volume editors—Erica Avrami, Susan Macdonald, Randall Mason,and David Myers—for conceiving the symposium and publication, and for guiding thisvolume to completion. We hope that this publication will provoke continued dialogue and,ultimately, contribute to the advancement of conservation practice.Jeanne Marie TeutonicoAssociate Director, ProgramsThe Getty Conservation InstituteviiiTeutonico

NOTES1.2.3.Getty Conservation Institute, “The Agora, Values andBenefits Inquiry, Report of Initial Meeting,”unpublished report, 1996, 2.Randall Mason, ed., Economics and HeritageConservation (Los Angeles: Getty ConservationInstitute, 1999); Erica Avrami, Randall Mason, andMarta de la Torre, eds., Values and HeritageConservation: Research Report (Los Angeles: GettyConservation Institute, 2000); Marta de la Torre, ed.,Assessing the Values of Cultural Heritage (LosAngeles: Getty Conservation Institute, 2002); Martade la Torre, ed., Heritage Values in Site Management:Four Case Studies (Los Angeles: Getty ConservationInstitute, 2005). All of these publications areavailable at d projects/heritage/heritagepublications.html/.David Myers, Stacie Nicole Smith, and May Shaer, ADidactic Case Study of Jarash Archaeological Site,Jordan: Stakeholders and Heritage Values in SiteManagement (Los Angeles: Getty ConservationInstitute; Amman: Dept. of Antiquities, HashemiteForeword4.5.Kingdom of Jordan, 2010); Stacie Nicole Smith, DavidMyers, and May Shaer, A Didactic Case Study ofJarash Archaeological Site, Jordan: Stakeholders andHeritage Values in Site Management: TeachingMaterials (Los Angeles: Getty Conservation Institute;Amman: Dept. of Antiquities, Hashemite Kingdom ofJordan, 2010). Both parts of the publication areavailable at http://hdl.handle.net/10020/gci pubs/jarash case study/.David Myers, Stacie Nicole Smith, and Gail Ostergren,eds., Consensus Building, Negotiation, and ConflictResolution for Heritage Place Management:Proceedings of a Workshop Organized by the GettyConservation Institute, Los Angeles, California, 1–3December 2009 (Los Angeles: Getty ConservationInstitute, 2016), http://hdl.handle.net/10020/gci pubs/consensus building/.“ICOMOS Ethical Principles,” 2014, t/2015/GA2014 nalcirc.pdf.ix

AcknowledgmentsWe thank all of the authors who so generously presented their work at the symposiumand then prepared their valuable contributions for this publication. We greatly appreciateGCI associate director Jeanne Marie Teutonico’s ongoing support of the GCI’scollaborative efforts to advance research and practice related to values in heritagemanagement. We also acknowledge GCI staff members Martha Demas, who providedwelcome input during the symposium; Sara Galerne, for logistical support to thesymposium and production of the publication; and Laura Matarese, who helped recordthe symposium discussions. Our thanks as well to Cherie-Nicole Leo, Mayssa Jallad, andSara Stratte, who contributed to the compilation of the publication’s bibliography asgraduate research assistants at Columbia University and the University of Pennsylvania,and Anna Duer of the GCI Information Center, who carefully reviewed the publication’sbibliography and helped with its formatting. Special mention goes to the GCI’s GailOstergren for patiently working with all the editors and authors to assemble and providea first edit of the entire manuscript. Our thanks to the GCI’s Cynthia Godlewski, whoguided the final manuscript through to publication. Finally, we wish to thank the GettyPublications team, who shepherded this book through the publication process: RuthEvans Lane, project editor; Lindsey Westbrook, copy editor; Greg Albers, digitalpublications manager; Kelly Peyton, image acquisition and permissions; Laura diZerega,graduate intern; Jim Drobka, design; and Suzanne Watson, production.x

Part IBackground

1IntroductionErica AvramiSusan MacdonaldRandall MasonDavid MyersOver the last several decades a considerable discourse on the values of heritage has1emerged among heritage professionals, in governments, and within communities. Thisdiscussion has sought to advance the relevance of heritage to dynamically changingcommunities and forge a shared understanding of how to conserve and manage it.Values-based heritage conservation aims to retain the cultural significance of places,typically by balancing the aesthetic, historic, scientific, spiritual, and social values held by2past, present, and future generations. As values-based conservation has evolved in thelast quarter century, it has provided new modes of engagement for a wider range ofstakeholders, responding to the challenges of sustaining heritage sites and amplifying3their relevance. This volume’s collection of contemporary accounts of values-basedconservation takes stock of recent discussion, experimentation, and applications inpractice. The genesis of the collection was a symposium held in Los Angeles in February2017 that brought its editors and authors together to explore a range of emerging issuesand challenges. The work of these sixteen practitioners and scholars enables broadreflection on current practice and maps out areas for future research.Decisions based on values permeate typical conservation processes, from theidentification of places to be protected, to ongoing decisions about conserving andmanaging sites, to justifying the relevance of heritage conservation as a form of publicpolicy, to evaluating long-term policy effects on society and the environment. Often inpractice heritage professionals are balancing between policy-level rationales, such aspromoting public welfare and generating tourism revenue, and the immediate prioritiesof on-the-ground conservation and management, such as retaining the significant aspects1

of a particular building or site and accommodating its practical functions serving owners,occupants, or visitors. These decisions, however, are not divorced from each other. Theyare deeply interrelated through valorization—the process of creating new or adding valueto heritage through recognition, protection, or other interventions.Values-based conservation approaches navigate these varying scales and interests byincorporating different perspectives in decision making. How the views of many publics(some powerful, others acutely disempowered) inform the decisions professionals makeabout what to preserve and how has become increasingly germane as democraticprocesses have proliferated internationally, and as mobility has created more diversecommunities. While it is generally agreed that broader, “bottom-up” participation by awider range of stakeholders will inform better choices, values-based heritagemanagement is still inconsistently applied, and its processes and outcomes are still largelyunder-studied in many places.As societies around the globe, and at all scales, continue to change and transform, andheritage places take on even more prominence in contemporary life, values-basedconservation has been challenged with rising to these new complexities. How can thefundamental principles of values-based conservation be better understood and extendedto meet these challenges, and what values-based approaches have been successfullyapplied that have potentially broader utility?The chapters in this volume explore existing values-based approaches in order tounderstand which methods have proven effective, how they are operationalized (or not),and what their limitations may be when applied in varying cultural contexts. Theseambitious questions motivate us to explore how values-based approaches have fared andhow values discourse shifts as societies are more empowered to define and redefineheritage, and as different publics utilize heritage for different ends.What we seek is not simply a process of understanding “values,” but of exploring the selfaware role of the heritage professional in valorizing places to prompt different kinds ofinterventions or management decisions, from simply listing or recognizing a site asworthy of conservation to integrating heritage into broader development plans. In otherwords, we honor the emerging understanding that heritage is both a vestige to which weascribe value and a catalyst for manifesting shared societal values.In “Mapping the Issue of Values,” Erica Avrami and Randall Mason chart the historical arcof the heritage-focused values discourse in relation to societal and environmental change.They suggest a rebalancing of the operational framework adopted in many countriesbetween typically ascribed heritage values—such as historic, aesthetic, and scientific—andbroader societal values that more explicitly acknowledge the ways in which communitiesinstrumentalize heritage for social, economic, and environmental (that is, non-heritage)ends. In the individually authored papers that follow, fourteen researchers andpractitioners describe their work in terms of values-based conservation ideals andmodels. Their examinations draw from a variety of cultural, professional, and geopoliticalcontexts in an effort to shed light on shared challenges and opportunities in practice.The contemporary heritage field is marked by a number of intersecting theoretical lines ofargument (often reexamining long-inherited ideas), cultural dynamics, political issues,practical issues, and challenges of governance and policy. Depending on the author, the2Avrami, Macdonald, Mason, and Myers

place, and the heritage issue, different factors take precedence. This notion ofintersectionality is threaded throughout the understanding of heritage values andvalorization built up by the group of practitioners and scholars represented in this book4(and more broadly in the field).The typical introduction to an edited collection of essays narrates the flow of ideasrepresented in the papers, one after another. We take a different approach here, outlininga range of themes, views, arguments, sources, and writers, and foregrounding thecomplexity of ideas and interconnections.Understanding the Dynamic Nature of ValuesValues have been traditionally tied to the history and materiality of places. Heritage isacknowledged first as a bearer of place-based narratives, such as the story of prisonerincarceration and rehabilitation told at Eastern State Penitentiary and the evocativereminder of traumatic events of the Rwandan genocide memorials described by RandallMason. While development of the heritage profession has greatly refined practicesrelated to understanding these connections, multiple authors speak to the reality thatdecision making revolves less around a set of fixed values reflected in fabric, and isincreasingly influenced by a broader range of values reflective of contemporary society.Kuanghan Li, in her analysis of Dali village in China’s Guizhou province, notes that theintroduction of social and cultural values with “Chinese characteristics” allows forformerly unacknowledged forms of heritage to receive official recognition and protection.Joe Watkins likewise outlines how Native American communities and their views ofheritage brought about US government recognition of values attributed to places becauseof associated cultural practices or beliefs of living communities. In examining the role ofsuch cultural values in natural resource conservation, Josep-Maria Mallarach and BasVerschuuren note their importance to achieving equitable approaches to environmentalas well as cultural heritage management.Erica Avrami and Kristal Buckley, exploring cases in Egypt and Australia respectively, bothspeak to the power of cultural mapping to engage communities more directly in definingthe social-spatial relationships critical to understanding how heritage places are valuedand valorized by multiple publics. Such community-oriented tools can also challengetraditional approaches to conservation that may prioritize historic fabric, as RichardMackay describes in his account of Sydney’s Luna Park. The materiality (tangibleattributes) of heritage has come to be recognized as operating in a more complexdialogue with intangible attributes such as practices, uses, and connections. Communitiesin Ladakh, India, maintain and renew their heritage resources in ways that favor thecontinuity of intangible, social values, and Tara Sharma elucidates how these decisionschallenge the precept of preserving original fabric that is often espoused by heritagenorms and professionals.Bringing an economic lens to the question of evolving values, David Throsby asserts thatbenefits flow from tangible as well as intangible heritage assets, and that the concept ofcultural capital helps model how this works. But both Ayesha Pamela Rogers and Karina V.Korostelina caution that the relationship between tangible and intangible aspects ofheritage can also be a source of tension. Cultural and professional biases as well asidentity-based conflicts between distinct groups can manifest through the different values1. Introduction3

each ascribes to heritage, underscoring the dynamic and often temporal nature of valuesbased approaches to decision making.Balancing Heritage Norms and Cultural DifferencesChanging values and the inclusion of more actors in valuing processes provoke responsesin governance and policy, as well as in professional norms and practices. Broaderinclusion in heritage processes is a means of empowerment and political engagement forcommunities as they grapple with increasing diversity and seek ways to cultivate collectivememory. This can in turn incur new kinds of questioning of heritage policies andpractices, as well as overall governance structures at different scales of jurisdiction,especially in postcolonial contexts. Some authors highlight the power of communitydriven action; others note the limitations said structures impose on participatorymanagement.Many of the texts underscore the pressing need to recognize culturally specific ways ofvaluing heritage and cultural difference in terms of how heritage is perceived, conceived,and managed. In some of the cases, participatory values-based approaches are not thenorm, thereby limiting responsiveness to community concerns. Some papers highlightthat internationalized approaches adopted by governments and heritage professionals,including values-based ones, are often heavily biased by the Eurocentric or Anglocentric5worldviews from which they emerge. For example, the creation of Western-modeledgovernment heritage agencies in Muslim-majority nations has in some cases undercutcenturies-old traditions of locally implemented and community-responsive supportmechanisms, as Hossam Mahdy demonstrates. Watkins examines how US federal policiesand funding focus on stewardship of the tangible places associated with Native Americanbeliefs and practices, without adequate provisions for preserving the intangible traditionsthemselves, creating a mismatch between government and tribal conceptions of heritage.Such differing worldviews highlight the challenges of establishing and maintaining sharedheritage norms and values in multicultural societies. Working across cultures compelsgreater awareness of and sensitivity to differing worldviews among stakeholders. In theirjoint paper Mason and Avrami contend that values-based approaches that are contextresponsive and culturally specific—and that recognize societal, not just heritage, values—have the potential to hold authorities accountable for decisions that counter the societalvalues associated with places and to assert power over governance processes.Mallarach and Verschuuren drive home the point that governance structures are highlyinfluential in the efficacy of values-based heritage management and play a critical role inthe shift between top-down regulatory frameworks and bottom-up, rights-basedapproaches. They argue that the international arena has an important role to helpestablish shared aims of values-based management through policies and practices thatare supportive of and applicable to local cultural contexts. Throsby clarifies this further,suggesting that acknowledging the different treatments and uses of economic andcultural values clarifies the role of state agencies vis-à-vis other actors, which can behelpful as these relationships are being redrawn. Indeed, economic discourse aroundvalues can still provide something of a lingua franca bridging cultural and political divides.In the case of Australia, as Mackay and Buckley assert, the Australia ICOMOS Charter forPlaces of Cultural Significance (also known as the Burra Charter), a non-statutory, values-4Avrami, Macdonald, Mason, and Myers

based decision-making tool, has been central to determining conservation andmanagement policies for Australia’s heritage places. Introducing participatory processesinto governance, as promoted in the Burra Charter, has also increased support forconservation and secured better outcomes. The Burra Charter has evolved over time torecognize intangible dimensions and Indigenous heritage, which underscores howchanging values and new knowledge inform shifts in heritage norms.The development and revision of the China Principles (ICOMOS China 2015) reflect theinternal evolution of Chinese practices through the broadening of both recognized valueand heritage categories and the portrayal of national image, but Li notes that they alsodemonstrate the influence of international norms. Rogers raises the crucial point that theapplication of internationalized values-based heritage management processes to localcontexts, especially those with colonial-based laws and limited participatory governancestructures, presents fundamental challenges. Sharma cautions that conflicts betweencolonial-based heritage policies and contemporary he

heritage values and for their incorporation into conservation processes; and produce case studies examining values in site management. This work resulted in four publications: Economics and Heritage Conservation(1999),Values and Heritage Conservation(2000), Assessing the Values of Cultural Heritage(2002), andHeritage Values in Site Management: