Below
are the last two of six runners-up for the HAT Award. Later today or tomorrow I’ll
announce THE WINNER.
I should stress that there no ranking is implied by the order in which these runners-up have been published.
Institute for Critical
Heritage and Tourism, British Columbia
The Signatories of this
Document follow the 1992 World Scientists’ Warning to
Humanity (Union of Concerned Scientists 1992) in asserting the following five
principles:
·
We must bring environmentally damaging
activities under control to restore and protect the integrity of the earth’s
systems we depend on.
·
We must manage resources crucial to human
welfare more effectively.
·
We must stabilize population. This will be
possible only if all nations recognize that it requires improved social and
economic conditions, and the adoption of effective, voluntary family planning.
·
We must reduce and eventually eliminate poverty.
·
We must ensure sexual equality, and guarantee
women control over their own reproductive decisions.
We also follow the World Scientists’ Warning to
Humanity in recognizing
A new ethic is required—a new attitude towards
discharging our responsibility for caring for ourselves and for the earth. We
must recognize the earth’s limited capacity to provide for us. We must
recognize its fragility. We must no longer allow it to be ravaged. This ethic
must motivate a great movement, convincing reluctant leaders and reluctant
governments and reluctant peoples themselves to effect the needed changes.
As a consequence,
the Signatories of this Document do not believe a one-size-fits-all heritage policy—however
well-intended (Scott 1998, 2010)—can bring about this new ethic. Indeed, we
believe the promotion by experts of a single-policy solution runs the risk of (1)
misleading the public and other scholars into thinking potentially intractable contemporary
socioenvironmental problems (Fassbinder 2016) are resolvable by modern
governments and (2) reinforcing the idea that experts have either the knowledge
or capabilities to enact meaningful change (Homer-Dixon 2007). A useful point
of departure on this subject is this observation by Fikret Berkes and
colleagues (2007:308):
Resource management is at a crossroads. Problems
are complex, values are in dispute, facts are uncertain, and predictions are
possible only in a limited sense. The scientific system that underlies resource
management is facing a crisis of confidence in legitimacy and power. Top-down
resource management does not work for a multitude of reasons, and the era of expert-knows-best
decision making is all but over.
It is time for heritage experts to move beyond single-policy
solutions (Ostrom et al. 2007).
Recognizing
the scope and scale of the global heritage crisis (Fassbinder 2016; Union of
Concerned Scientists 1992), and to avoid the trappings of naïve optimism in
dealing with that crisis (Homer-Dixon 2007), we have sought a simple but
realistic heritage stewardship model. We believe we have found two key strategies
that define that model.
The first strategy is John Bodley’s Small
Nation Solution, which confronts among many issues (e.g., elite directed
growth) the core problem of population. According to Bodley (2013:vii),
The Small Nation Solution offers a very simple
solution to the world’s biggest problems of poverty and environmental decline.
The solution is simply that first each nation needs to be the optimum size,
which means small, preferably fewer than ten million people. Its citizens then need to reach a consensus
on what they value most highly, and how these valued objects can be most justly
distributed. In addition to scale and consensus, the small nation solution
requires adherence to two fundamental principles that apply both within
individual small nations and in a small nation world system: subsidiarity and
heterogeneity. Subsidiarity means getting decision-making as close to the
people as possible. Heterogeneity is about people in each small nation having
maximum freedom to find the best solution(s) for their particular
situation.
Bodley’s concept of small nations is
intentionally flexible, reflecting his belief in “societies being the best size
to solve human problems, not in categorizing for the sake of categorizing.”
As a step towards implementing small nation
solutions, the second strategy is Alan Parker’s Recommendations to Native
Government Leadership. According to Parker (2012:189-91), “communities must
adapt to changing conditions at a pace that will stress their social, economic,
and cultural fabrics. But, we cannot afford to join our fellow Americans in
massive denial. The time to plan and
adapt is now.” Below is Parker’s 10-point plan (amended):
1. Gather
information on the impacts of global ecological breakdown in your region and
make it available to your community.
2. Secure sources
of water.
3. Secure sources
of food.
4. Prepare for
impacts on plant and animal species.
5. Develop
relationships with neighboring governments and communities regarding disaster
planning.
6. Consider
political alliances to build a renewable energy policy.
7. Consider
strategies to unite communities around the protection needed to defend treaty
rights.
8. Consider active
involvement as sovereign governments in global climate change negotiations.
9. Get youth
involved in cultural education and defending their future.
10. Work with other
communities across imposed colonial boundaries on the basis of being natural
regions.
Our
model for heritage stewardship recognizes the links
between the ideology of growth, development, and progress, and environmental
thus cultural heritage destruction. To counter this, an emancipatory approach
to heritage, as outlined here, begins with local control and questioning authority
(Smith 2004). Designed to promote heritage resilience into the future, the
result is not one but many solutions.
Richard M. Hutchings, Ph.D.
Marina La Salle, Ph.D.
Institute for Critical
Heritage and Tourism, British Columbia, Canada
References
Berkes, Fikret, Derek
Armitage, and Nancy Doubleday
2007. Synthesis:
Adapting, Innovating, Evolving. In Adaptive
Co-Management, edited by D. Armitage, F. Berkes, and N. Doubleday, pp.
308-27. UBC Press, Vancouver.
Bodley, John H.
2013. The Small Nation Solution: How the World’s
Smallest Nations Can Solve the World’s Biggest Problems. AltaMira, Lanham.
Fassbinder, Samuel
Day
2016. The
Literature of the Anthropocene: Four Reviews. Capitalism Nature Socialism DOI: 10.1080/10455752.2016.1245918.
Homer-Dixon,
Thomas
2007. The Upside of Down: Catastrophe, Creativity,
and the Renewal of Civilization. Vintage Canada, Toronto.
Ostrom, Elinor, Marco
A. Janssen, and John M. Anderies
2007. Going
beyond Panaceas. PNAS
104(39):15176-8.
Parker, Alan
2012.
Recommendations to Native Government Leadership. In Asserting Native Resilience, edited by Z. Grossman and A. Parker, pp.
189-92. Oregon State University Press, Corvallis.
Scott, James C.
1998. Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to
Improve the Human Condition Have Failed. Yale University Press, New Haven.
2010. The
Trouble with the View from Above. CATO
Institute September 8. Electronic document,
http://www.cato-unbound.org/2010/09/08/james-c-scott/trouble-view-above.
Smith, Laurajane
2004. Archaeological Theory and the Politics of
Cultural Heritage. Routledge, London.
Union of Concerned
Scientists
1992. 1992 World
Scientists' Warning to Humanity. Electronic document,
http://www.ucsusa.org/about/1992-world-scientists.html.
---------------------------------------------------------
Angela B. McArdle
A Better Cultural
Heritage Program
for the United States
Summary
If the United
States got a do over
on its cultural heritage program, and it were up to me
to create it anew, I would
build it around the idea that we value our cultural heritage. Cultural
heritage means different things to different people, so a better cultural
heritage program would allow for more flexibility and would
put the burden of determining how best
to value cultural heritage
on the communities laying claim to that value –
not on the entities (i.e. project proponents) responsible
for the undertaking.
Value
I use the term
value deliberately. By “value our cultural heritage,” I don’t mean save
our cultural heritage,
or preserve our cultural
heritage. I don’t mean mine
our cultural heritage for data.
Although,
obviously, these actions could
very well be the way in which
a community decides to value its cultural heritage. But saving, preserving, and analyzing are not the only ways
by
which we can value our cultural heritage, nor are they necessarily the best ways. There is no one
size fits all solution so there shouldn’t be a one size fits
all pro forma cultural heritage
program.
I like using
the verb “value” here because
all its traditional meanings
are applicable to this new system
(see definition below).
The varied meanings of “to
value,” namely “to
appraise,” “to consider
its usefulness,” and
“to appreciate,” are integral
to building a cultural heritage program that is inclusive, consultative, and balanced.
Value (verb)
1. to
calculate or reckon the monetary value of; give a
specified material or financial
value to; assess; appraise: to value their assets.
2.
to consider
with respect to worth, excellence, usefulness, or importance.
Every project that
receives federal funding, or
is undertaken by a federal
entity, or takes
place on federal land, must set aside a pre-determined
percentage of their budget, established by legislation, for cultural heritage valuation.
What to do with that percentage is decided by the consulting parties. Once an
undertaking is publicly announced,
via some established network
or (searchable) project database,
there is a call for parties interested
in the consultation process – parties
with some “skin in the game” so
to speak.
These consulting parties can sign
on to a project by submitting a brief discussion of the cultural heritage
that may be affected
by
the undertaking that they are
interested in valuing.
These
consulting parties can
be locals or outsiders. They could
be preservationists, archaeologists, businesses, families,
tribes, organizations, cities,
anything. If they can
make a reasonable (obviously, “reasonable”
is going to be subjective
and would need to be further defined) claim
on cultural heritage they wish
to value that would be affected by the undertaking, then they are eligible
for a seat at the consultation
process.
A foreman
is assigned
to each project. The foreman is a state employee whose sole purpose is to guide the consultation
process from beginning to end. For each project
to which
they
are assigned, it is the foreman’s
job to accept or reject consulting party applications, establish a consultation protocol (could be virtual,
could be an in-person meeting, etc. – whatever
bests fits the situation), mediate the consultation dialogue,
and decide
the outcome (i.e. where the funds go and to what
purpose) based on the recommendations
of the consulting parties.
Ideally, consensus among
consulting parties is reached during the consultation process and
the foreman accepts the recommendations, much in the same way
a judge validates the decision(s) of a jury. However, if consensus
is not reached, the foreman
has the power to make a final
decision based on all the
information presented during the consultation process.
A possible kicker – if the law was to have teeth - funds can
be returned and the project
rejected if the foreman decides that the best
course of action is not to go
through with the project because
the risk to cultural heritage
is too great for a compromise to be reached. However, this should be unlikely,
as there is a monetary incentive
for consulting parties
to come up with creative solutions that allow them to
use the funds provided by the project
to value their cultural heritage. Possible
use of the funds
could include (but are certainly not limited
to) plans to:
Conduct
an archaeological investigation
Preserve or
conserve material objects or portions of the project
area Mitigate damages to cultural resources
Establish a cultural heritage center/museum/education
program Document cultural heritage (e.g.
oral histories, 3D mapping, etc.)
Publish media
(e.g. print and/or digital)
celebrating cultural heritage of the area Establish a scholarship fund for
individuals affiliated with affected cultural communities Strengthen
infrastructure that supports lifeways
of affected
communities
Purchase
parcels of land the
project intended to use to protect
them from adverse effects Host festivals/symposiums/conferences
focused on cultural heritage
Fund
a paid position that keeps
tabs on the projects’ impacts on
cultural heritage
Safeguard
biological/ecological resources in the area that would preserve cultural lifestyles Construct edifices, memorials, art
pieces, etc.
Host a
fundraising gala/dinner intended to raise even more money to value cultural
heritage
The possibilities
for how best to value cultural heritage are bound only by the desires
and
creativity of the consulting parties, and the pre-determined budget set aside by the
project proponents. In
this way, each consultation
can have a unique outcome, custom tailored
to the consulting parties
that have a stake in the cultural
heritage affected by a given
project. Additionally, and advantageously for the project
proponents, there isn’t the chance
of a project going overbudget because the amount is pre-determined
by
a set percentage established by legislation.
Consulting parties will know this amount prior to making their recommendations, so they know what
is feasible given the monetary constraints and can plan accordingly. The funds
can go toward
one large project supported
by
the consulting parties, or
be divided equitably between
the consulting parties
– there is no set rule on distribution.
Once a decision is made (either by consensus of the consulting parties,
or by the foreman) the funds
are
distributed, the foreman
documents the results of the consultation, and the project either
proceeds unencumbered, proceeds with alterations, or is rejected.
The documentation of the consultation
process submitted by the foreman should be kept in a digital repository where the public can access it both for reasons of
transparency and to foster ideas
for future consultations
on what works, what doesn’t, and how different groups negotiate valuing their
cultural heritage.
The flow chart below
depicts the chain of events at work
in this system.
The Bureaucracy
To implement
this program there are two levels
of bureaucracy needed. The state appointed foremen and
a federal agency that manages
the repository of consultation
results and provides support to the state foremen. How many state foremen
are appointed depends on the size,
needs, and budget of the state. State foremen
should be dually qualified in alternative dispute resolution techniques (e.g. evaluation, negotiation, conciliation, mediation,
and arbitration) and cultural
heritage preservation.
Benefits
·
Set
Costs: Project proponents automatically build in
cultural heritage as a fixed part
of their budget and
do not have to worry about going through a
check the box process (e.g.
always hiring a CRM firm)
that may or may not make
sense for their project.
A foreman is automatically assigned
to their project who will guide the consultation process and facilitate communication
between the project proponents
and consulting parties.
No one is caught off guard
and project proponents know what
to expect, as do consulting parties.
·
Flexibility:
This system allows
for a wide range of
outcomes. Say there are old
buildings on a lot that are projected for demolition so a new
building can be constructed. Perhaps no one cares about
the old buildings. If no
one cares, there is no reason
to preserve them, or value
them, but say people are interested in preserving the lifestyles
of those who lived or worked
in those buildings. The buildings can be destroyed but funds can
be used to establish an apprenticeship
that promotes the work that was
done in those buildings (e.g. dying textiles, car
manufacturing, etc.). Perhaps
no one wants to save the old buildings, but they do want to honor them in some way. Funds can go
to making a movie about their history and documenting their features before
destruction. Perhaps lots of people want to save the
old buildings. Funds can go
to relocating the buildings,
preserving the buildings
in situ and incorporating them into the new project, or the funds can be
returned to the project proponents
if consensus among the consulting parties is that there is
no feasible way to value
the cultural heritage if the project goes ahead.
·
Inclusivity:
If no consulting parties are interested in the
project, the funds set aside for valuing
cultural heritage
are returned to the project proponents
and the undertaking can efficiently proceed. If
there are parties interested in cultural
heritage that may be
affected by the project,
they are all invited to the consultation table. There is no pro forma qualification that determines
who may be interested.
Anyone can apply to be a consulting party: CRM firms,
universities, concerned citizens, Native American
tribes, locals affected by the
view- shed, town or city councils,
businesses, politicians, non-profits,
churches, professional guilds, etc.
Anybody that can make a reasonable
claim on why there is cultural
heritage affected by the
project that is of interest
to them gets a voice in
the process.
·
Encourages
Public Engagement: Because
there are funds automatically set aside by the project proponents
to value cultural heritage before
the project even gets
underway, there is a monetary incentive for individuals
and groups to get involved and have a say where those funds get
directed. If they take
part in the consultation process, they could secure funds for valuing
the cultural heritage with
which they feel a connection.
·
Balanced:
This approach doesn’t
hinder progress of new undertakings; it streamlines
it. Project proponents
know ahead of time that funds are
going to be diverted to interested consulting parties and
there is an incentive for a
quick resolution to be reached so that the funds can
be released
to the communities and the project
can
get underway. At the same time, this approach values the cultural heritage
that consulting parties care about, not an esoteric idea of something that
meets pre-set criteria for conservation because
of its age or style.
Consulting communities bring the cultural
heritage they are invested in to the table,
and
they choose how best to value
it.
Drawbacks
·
Corruption: In
this cultural heritage system, the state-appointed foremen hold a considerable amount of power for greenlighting or halting projects. Consequently,
there is the possibility that their appointments may be
politically-driven rather than
qualifications-driven. Additionally,
if the foremen lack ethical fortitude,
they could be bought out by either project proponents
or consulting parties desiring a specific outcome
from the consultation process,
becoming ineffectual
puppets of whosever pocket they reside.
·
Insufficient
Budget: States allocate funds
differently and a system like
this that assigns a foreman
to every project may run
into insufficient funding
for the number of
foremen needed to carry
the work load.
·
Consultation Gridlock/Dissatisfaction: If
too many consulting parties
are heavily invested in the
cultural heritage possibly affected
by
an undertaking, reaching consensus
may become impossible. Giving the foreman
the power to make the ultimate decision can help alleviate this gridlock but may leave
some consulting parties dissatisfied with the results
of the consultation process.
·
Requires
Public Vigilance: The onus
of identifying and advocating for cultural heritage
that could be affected by an undertaking shifts from the project proponent to the public. There are
both positives and negatives to this shift. The downside
is that it requires the public to be vigilant and
continually check in on new projects to see if there is cultural
heritage of interest to them
that may be at risk.
This system does not require a project proponent
to search
for and identify cultural heritage that they may affect; rather, consulting parties have
the responsibility to make
their voices heard and
identify the cultural heritage (or
the possibility of something of cultural
value) that may be affected by an
undertaking. Only the things of
interest to the consulting parties are taken into consideration.
Conclusion
I believe a better
cultural heritage program
for the United States would focus on valuing cultural heritage,
with that value designated
and defined by those closest connected
to it. This cultural heritage
program is simple, easy to implement,
and is inclusive of all
parties expressing interest,
without burdening a project proponent
with duties to preserve
heritage that is of no interest
or value
to anyone. It engages
the public and puts funds back into the communities –
hopefully in useful, creative, and meaningful ways – instead of only funding
CRM practitioners and the
generation of grey literature. I think the benefits of an efficiently stream-lined but still consultation-based
cultural heritage program like this, greatly outweigh the potential
drawbacks. This program gives
the power to the people,
and lets them value their
cultural heritage on their terms.
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