UNESCO

HOLTORF, Cornelius, HÖGBERG, Anders (eds.) Cultural Heritage and the Future. London/New York: Routledge, 2021.

Reviewed by Gilmara Benevides, PhD. Professor of Law at Faculdades Integradas do Ceará (UniFIC), Brazil. E-mail: gilmara.benevides@yahoo.com.br.

The field of Cultural Heritage Studies is vast, multidisciplinary and diversified. The issues are usually rooted in events that took place in the past and the interpretation of the consequences of these events in the present time. However, in the book Cultural Heritage and the Future, nineteen authors chosen among academics and experts in the areas of human and social sciences enter into the association between cultural heritage and the future, through different theoretical analyses on heritage management and conservation, archaeological theory and political archeology.

The preface and introduction are written by the book’s editors, archaeologists Cornelius Holtorf and Anders Högberg. Following on from the introduction “Cultural heritage as a futuristic field”, the book is divided into four sections: “The future in heritage studies and heritage management” (Section 1); “The future in cultural heritage” (Section 2); “Re-thinking heritage futures” (Section 3) and “Heritage and future-making” (Section 4). The book contains seventeen short chapters and ends with “Final Reflections: The Future of Heritage”. The book is designed to reach academics and students in the fields of cultural heritage studies, museums, archeology, anthropology, architecture, conservation, sociology, history and geography.

Despite bringing case studies from various parts of the world (Europe, China, Japan, North America, South Africa, Australia and others), the book is based on the scientific understanding of “cultural heritage” and the “future” as per the worldviews of mostly Western researchers, aware that their research will reach an academic audience that is largely found in the countries of the Global North (developed countries). Particularly, as a Brazilian historian, anthropologist and jurist who studies cultural heritage, I was interested in reading the book after learning that one of the book’s editors – Cornelius Holtorf – had published an article in Revista de Arqueologia, a scientific journal in Brazil and is known by renowned researchers in Brazil such as Rita Poloni and Pedro Funari.

Specifically, Rodney Harrison’s article, “Heritage practices as future-making practices”, on the Svalbard Global Seed Vault (SGSV) caught my attention. In my view, global food shortages are already an urgent problem for current generations. Here, in this study, it is possible to see that there is already some anticipatory seed storage strategy, whose ultimate goal is to maintain duplicates of seeds for the long-term conservation of a genetic bank of plants all over the planet. Brazil, a country known for its great natural wealth and biodiversity, has already sent three batches of seeds to the SGSV between 2014 and 2020.

On the other hand, it is clear that there are specific artifacts left behind that, despite being symbols of human futuristic progress, cause countless problems today that still do not have a long-term solution. For example: space junk, according to the discussion in “Future visions and the heritage of space: Nostalgia for infinity” – a very interesting dialogue between Alice Gorman and Sarah May. The excess of artifacts can go from being a cultural asset to being a disaster for the future.

In turn, nuclear waste is seen as a particular kind of cultural heritage of the future, as revealed by Cornelius Holtorf and Anders Högberg in “What lies ahead? Nuclear waste as cultural heritage of the future”. Radioactive heritage is also an object under analysis in “Radioactive heritage of the future: A legacy of risk”, by Marcos Buser, Abraham Van Luik, Roger Nelson and Cornelius Holtorf. In a very specific way, these two articles dialogue with each other and bring a warning about the dangers of this legacy for the next generations, although without imposing a tone of apocalyptic prediction. After all, no one can predict how future generations will manage this waste.

In the last chapter, “Final Thoughts: The Future of Heritage”, Anders Högberg and Cornelius Holtorf discuss the results of an earlier study in which they conducted more than 60 interviews with professionals in the cultural heritage sector. The study showed that professionals found it difficult to think about what kind of future they were working on. Instead, they held back in the present, in the short term, given the lack of opportunities to think about the future at a deeper level. They concluded that this difficulty stemmed from the lack of shared professional strategies on “how to deal with the future in heritage management or how to think about the future of heritage”.

As an alternative, Högberg and Holtorf present some possible strategies: the first is a way of applying “expiry dates” to future decisions about cultural heritage in the short, medium or long term. The second possible strategy focuses on “empowering future generations” in various ways.

As for the third possibility, it concerns the future of heritage and education. The idea of ​​creating a curriculum for cultural heritage specialists struck me as very interesting. I was completely ignorant of the idea of ​​“futures literacy ”, so I needed to get extra information about this concept, elaborated by Riel Miller.

The concept of “futures literacy” has been developed within UNESCO as one of the competences for the 21st century: “the universally accessible skill that builds on the innate human capacity to imagine the future, offers a clear, field tested solution to poverty-of-the-imagination.” The use of this concept seemed very adequate, with regard to the future of heritage and education.

Finally, it is possible to say that the book Cultural Heritage and the Future, despite bringing together intellectuals from different areas, has a considerable balance of ideas. Perhaps, in the near future, Anders Högberg and Cornelius Holtorf will feel the need to elaborate a new book, this time about the future of heritage post-2020, to think about the future of heritage from this new collective perspective.

Cultural Heritage and the Future. Edited by C. Holtorf and A. Högberg. Routledge, 2021.

Reviewed by Carlos Jaramillo, Ph.D., Architect and Cultural Heritage Consultant, Email: A120105@e.ntu.edu.sg

As an amateur Tarot reader, the future is a place where gods and demons are at play, showing an endless dance among the archetypes that define us as humans. As a cultural heritage practitioner and academic, I acknowledge our necessity to transcend into the future, as a continuation of the present, and cultural heritage, a prime vehicle to achieve it. This volume is – from my interpretation – about transcending through cultural heritage.

When giving its right context, we, the humankind, on this planet, with our gods, myths, fetishes (E-Meter™, see Maxwell, chapter 8), religions and truths, are merely a blink of an eye, for the extended TIME (see Holtorf and Högberg, chapter 10), in capital letters. That, in fact, is the milieu of what we call future. Sometimes challenged by disruptions such as the existing pandemic.

The Covid-19 pandemic is placing current generations at the verge of no-return, a narrative of no-future (see Groves-Brown, chapter 15). Now, more than ever before, the concept of future has shifted to one of restricted possibilities, far from hope, and shiny technologies (see Gorman and May, chapter 9) or legacies (see May, chapter 3).

Reading a volume written before the pandemic and commenting while India piles covid-corpses on the streets, Colombia is at 100% occupancy of ICU beds, and, Brazil reached 500 thousands deaths, cultural heritage seems luxurious. For what, for whom and for when, are fair questions (see Arami, chapter 13) to the debacle of the heritage sector. Silenced; unable to contribute to global issues. Built on fragile moral discourses, geopolitics, and power (see Gorman and May, chapter 9).

If we tenaciously carved the values we claim to the cost of life (or death of the planet), what some call “Global Problematique” (see Sandford and Cassar, chapter 16). What kind of cultural heritage would reflect our life, holistically, honestly? From this, and past presents?

It is through nuclear remains (see Holtorf and Högberg, chapter 10), dissonance of heritage assets (see Dixon, chapter 7), fragmentality to understand heritage (see González-Ruibal, chapter 6), or waste caused by “development”, that our time will be seen. Maybe also, insatiable consumption (see Buser, Van Lukit, Nelson and Holtorf, chapter 12) is what defines us. A vision, nevertheless, curated and permeated by heritage expressions (see DeSilvey, chapter 14).

The book, successfully sheds light on sides of the cultural heritage that might give meaning to a future to come. However, when analysed with the lens of the current system in place, cultural heritage has limited possibilities. This work contributes to the general discussion on cultural heritage with the audacity of screening it with alternative eyes, scientific thoughts, multiplicity, span of time and space, from different geographic areas and views of the world. Built on four independent sections, Cultural Heritage and the Future includes one final section (Heritage and future making, with five chapters) that is a breath of fresh air and an effort to conceptualise, define and discuss how our decisions will shape the future of cultural heritage and the cultural heritage of the future.

However, the book leaves behind the Global South (as a topic), from where most of the answers to a future might come from (at least water, food, and lithium), give the sense of non-completion, like cultural heritage (see Dixon, chapter 7). To arrive at a future to be, this work misses a perspective of accountability, and follows the logic of generational “all-included” approach to the future, dismissing the inequality carved along with greed, exercise of politics and power. Mercilessly. Cultural heritage embodies also inequality in the share of economic resources, attention, impact, and of course, value. How could we understand the developed world without the Global South, looted, colonised, segregated, exploited, enslaved, and used throughout centuries?

I want to give special mention to Rodney Harrison’s “Heritage practices as future-making practices” and his study on the Svalbard Global Seed Vault (SGSV). And draw a parallel with Biosphere 2, from the University of Arizona, to establish a preliminary scheme of how cultural heritage can retake its role as a mirror of society at large, without moral content. While Harrison give an unfathomable account of SGSV, as the reserve of agricultural memory, repository of food security worldwide and the best document to show the pettiness of human kind, Biosphere 2 is a fulltime science programme on seven models ecosystems, present on earth. Biosphere 2 addresses challenging topics, such as water and energy, and perform large-scale experiments to impact nature. When read together, SGSV and Biosphere 2, as heritage trajectories, it is possible to envisage new and meaningful forms of cultural heritage, and a purposeful, hopeful and promising perspective on cultural heritage vis-à-vis the future.

FOOD-topia (or heritage value by producing the food for its own consumption). ZERO-heritage-CO₂ (or the need to achieve carbon free heritage sites, assets and practices). And SMART-energy-HERITAGE (or the recognition of unsustainability of the heritage sector), are some of the topics which I envisage will occupy the cultural heritage agenda and synchronize it to the voices able to realistically formulate potential answers to the current crisis.

The number of additional terms, used in this volume, to explain cultural heritage in the light of a future, reminds us of transition, a gap “in-between” old and new structures, where cultural heritage can be particularly eloquent. In short, heritage as part of a stage of liminality. Most chapters address, indirectly, the role of cultural heritage as transition through liminal stages, allowing alternative conceptualization, views, and associations.

Borrowing the principles of liminality, cultural heritage yields the need to deconstruct the old structure, entangled in conventions, decrees, articles and nostalgia (see DeSilvey, chapter 14), impeding potential and critical futures (see Sandford and Cassal Chapter 16) or common sense (see Joyce, chapter 11). This, in my opinion, is the underlying message of this book. The exercise of our will to decide about continuation, transformation or renewal of our own experience, and the heritage to represent it (see Holtorf and Högberg, chapter 4) is now a necessity.