Text
E-book Heritage Conservation and Social Engagement
Professionals working with cultural heritage preservation have had to respond to difficult challenges in the last few decades, mainly brought about by globalisation, armed conflicts, natural disasters and the use of heritage as an ultimate resource to redress injustices of the past. The topics and experiences discussed in this book demonstrate that conservators may play important roles in facilitating and enhancing understanding between different cultural groups or groups with different interests. Though commonly associated with the sciences through interventive and preventive practices, we here discuss other possible perspectives for conservation-related activities. As will be seen, conservation prac-tice may bring opportunities for redressing past and present injustices, healing, reconciliation, social cohesion and the strengthening of socio-cultural identities, as well as facilitating new ways of interaction between individuals and communities.Conservation was already crossing boundaries between science and craft by the second half of the twentieth century – a time when the dominant structure of knowledge was based on division and disciplinary specialisation. Around the 1980s heritage and museum professionals started reviewing the objectives of their disciplines and the policies of access to collections or sites. Increasingly they became more open to sharing decision-making processes with groups related to originators, or descendants of originators, of material culture. Although such reviews did provoke shifts in the way in which museums and heritage institutions operate, real changes have been slow and are still in motion (see chapters 1 and 2 for further discussion). Nonetheless, the roles of conservators have started to become consistently more cross-disciplinary, dynamic and flexible. As a consequence, the discpline’s boundaries have become more complex and new challenges and variables have arisen.Collaboration is a strong aspect of cross-disciplinary work. In fact, such work cannot exist without collaboration. As will be seen in the following chapters, collaborative processes in conservation are not uncommon. That being said, there is no definitive evidence as to how far or how often they occur in conservation practice. The 2013 survey ‘Participatory Processes and Conservation Practice’ (Peters 2019) was disseminated in international conservation discussion lists and blogs in an attempt to bridge this gap. The results revealed that 76.2 per cent of the 168 respondents had participated in such projects at least once in their careers. The survey also indicated that a large majority of these professionals worked for museums or educational institutions completely or partially funded by public money. This predominance may suggest, among other things, that these projects may have been motivated by gov-ernmental policies of social inclusion or by ethical issues flagged up by educational institutions. The survey also revealed that most respondents worked in collaborative projects in North America and Europe (58 in the USA, 15 in Canada, 3 in Mexico, 14 in the UK and 27 in other European countries, 6 in Australia and 1 in New Zealand).
Tidak tersedia versi lain