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9th Cambridge Heritage Seminar: The commodification of Heritage, 19.04.2008 |
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Written by Joachim Willms [Managing Director]
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Packaging the past: The commodification of Heritage
The 9th Cambridge Heritage Seminar
April 19th 2008
Call for Papers
What is the difference between commodifying heritage and simply selling it?
Lowenthal asserts that: 'If the past is a foreign country, nostalgia has
made it the foreign country with the healthiest trade of all'. Heritage is
valuable, not merely in social, emotional, aesthetic and historic terms-it
is a commodity which can be bought and sold in the increasingly
capitalistic global market. Heritage objects, places and symbols are being
re-appropriated and sold as destinations, used as marketing tools for
unrelated products, remade into souvenirs, and sold into private hands.
This begs the question, what are consequences of commodifying the past?
According to the World Trade Organisation, tourism and its associated
business is the world's largest industry. According to one interpretation,
'heritage products' (heritage, museums, historic homes, tribal dance
performances, etc) 'lure' tourists through their historic and/or
intellectual curiosity, nostalgia, antiquarian interest, search for roots,
pilgrimage etc. Moreover, the intangible cultural heritage is often
repackaged and converted to suit the needs and the tastes of tourists. Yet,
as places and practices become designated for economic consumption they are
frequently further divorced from the lives of locals and from their
'authentic' purpose, consequently diminishing or at least changing their
value. While the argument outlined above is convincing and commonplace,
heritage is at the same time increasingly understood as open to a
multiplicity of interpretations. The tension between these various
understandings of the heritage calls for a return to these central
interpretative postulates. We need to explore at greater depth how heritage
is commodified and to ask whether and why this matters.
The 9th Cambridge Heritage Seminar intends to examine the positive and
negative aspects of the relationship(s) between commodification and
heritage. Furthermore, it seeks to question the very usefulness of the term
'commodification' in the context of heritage studies. Papers and posters
which investigate this question through a diverse range of heritage 'areas'
such as intangible heritage, museums, the historic environment, monuments,
tourism, heritage theory, etc. are encouraged. Contributions based on case
studies are particularly welcome. Presentations will be limited to 20
minutes; posters should contain a mix of visual and verbal information and
be no smaller than A2 size. Some indicative questions of the type we hope
to address are:
ˇ What are the effects of turning heritage sites and objects into
commodities? ˇ How does heritage have agency in the commodification
process? ˇ What are the effects of the commodification of heritage on local
communities and their practices? ˇ How can we reconcile commodification and
consumption of heritage with other aims such as preservation? ˇ Is private
ownership of the 'past' morally appropriate or acceptable? ˇ How are the
other values of heritage affected by the process of commodification? ˇ How
does the process of commodification affect the wider landscape surrounding
the object/monument? ˇ Does the commodification of heritage lead to the
editing out of unsavoury history? ˇ Can we justify the commodification of
'traumascapes', 'heritage that hurts' or so called 'negative heritage'? ˇ
What are the effects of using terms such as 'cultural property', 'cultural
goods', 'the heritage industry'? ˇ Is heritage becoming nothing more than
entertainment through the process of its commodification?
Please send 500-word paper and poster proposals to Britt Baillie at
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Proposals should be sent as PDF or Word documents and
should include full contact information and a brief academic biography.
Deadline for proposals is February 1st 2008; acceptance will follow
subsequently. General enquiries and registration requests should be sent to
Shadia Taha at
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