Heritage in Action: Making the Past in the Present

In this textbook we see heritage in action in indigenous and vernacular communities in urban development and regeneration schemes in expressions of community in acts of nostalgia and memorialization and counteracts of forgetting in museums and other spaces of representation in tourism in the offices of those making public policy and in the politics of identity and claims toward cultural property. Whether renowned or local tangible or intangible the entire heritage enterprise at whatever scale is by now inextricably embedded in value. The global context requires a sanguine approach t o heritage in which the so-called critical stance is not just theorized in a rarefied sphere of scholarly lexical gymnastics but practically engaged and seen to be doing things in the world.