Worth considering Cornelius "where will it end?" question a bit further.
At the risk of (also?) being a Devil's advocate, one might argue that
the "under-represented" in the EH/HE document are the well represented
under-represented. e.g. there is only one mention of mental health in
the document, no mention of travellers of any kind, the homeless etc.
There's also a danger of essentialism here that resembles the recent
debate about the NAACP person. This argument is as old as the hills in
archaeology - whether certain material culture belongs exclusively to
certain groups, ethnicities or whatever. In the case of homeless people,
for example, there is a homeless heritage, but one can both become and
cease to be homeless. Equally any individual can be connected to a
variety of "heritages" as it were. Clearly, as Sarah says, one does not
want to homogenise or sanitise heritage, but perhaps better to see it in
terms of David Clarke's polythetic sets than as a ven diagram of non
intersecting circles.
Another problem, it seems to me, is being choosy about whose heritage we
advocate. Is there a place for studying neo-nazi heritage without
prejudice? wrt what I said earlier about advocacy, the EH/HE document
largely deals with what one might see as officially sanctioned
"under-representedness". Yet as those who have worked with undocumented
migrants on the US border have sometimes found, some heritage is frowned
upon by officialdom. In the UK, to take two examples from John S's work,
the attempt to officially recognise the monument erected at Twyford Down
didn't get official sanction and as far as I know, although the bits
inside the fence at Greenham get recognition, those outside have not yet.
I could say more, but have got to go and cut the lawn
P
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