Valuing the Historic Environment: a critical review of existing approaches to social value

该项目旨在促进对历史环境体验如何创造社会价值形式的理解，包括其对人们的认同感，记忆和归属感的贡献。价值是如何将历史环境的各个方面作为遗产进行指定、管理和保护的核心。在二十世纪的大部分时间里，这主要与被视为内在的历史、美学和科学价值有关。最近，在公共政策和保护实践中，人们越来越强调积极利用历史环境所产生的社会价值。围绕着这些不同类型的价值如何相互权衡存在相当大的困难。由于对社会价值缺乏了解，这种情况更加严重，因为社会价值福尔斯基本上不属于传统上与遗产部门有关的专门知识。此外，社会价值不容易用数量方法来衡量，也不容易用工具形式的成本效益分析来衡量。通过对现有研究的批判性审查，该项目将审查当前的知识和对社会价值的理解。社会价值包括历史环境对当代社区的意义，涉及人们的身份感、独特性、归属感和地方感，以及记忆和精神联系的形式。将特别关注的经验，参与和实践，告知人们与历史环境的关系的模式。该项目将考虑如何处理这些关系的动态，迭代和体现的性质以及通过它们创造的价值的棘手问题。它还将探讨越来越多的证据表明，危机和冲突的点，包括那些与困难和创伤形式的记忆有关的点，是创造价值的特别有力的背景。将对现有研究和调查中使用的各种方法进行批判性讨论，沿着讨论它们在遗产保护和公共政策领域的应用。最后，一个概念性的仪器，往往量化和固定价值的适当性将被审查。将考虑捕捉历史环境价值评估的更流动过程的可能性，沿着考虑对艺术和文化部门其他领域的影响。

This project seeks to advance understanding about how experience of the historic environment creates forms of social value, including its contribution to people's sense of identity, memory, and belonging. Value is central to how aspects of the historic environment are designated, managed and conserved as heritage. For much of the twentieth century this was primarily linked to what have been seen as intrinsic historic, aesthetic and scientific values. More recently there has been increasing emphasis, in both public policy and conservation practice, on the social values derived from active use of the historic environment. There are considerable difficulties surrounding how these different kinds of value should be weighed up against one another. This is exacerbated by a lack of understanding about social value, which falls largely outside of the kinds of expert knowledge traditionally associated with the heritage sector. Furthermore, social value is not readily captured by quantitative methods or easily subjected to instrumental forms of cost-benefit analysis. Through a critical review of existing research, this project will examine current knowledge and understanding of social value. Encompassing the significance of the historic environment to contemporary communities, social value relates to people's sense of identity, distinctiveness, belonging, and place, as well as forms of memory and spiritual association. Particular attention will be focused on the modes of experience, engagement and practice that inform people's relationships with the historic environment. The project will consider the thorny issue of how to deal with the dynamic, iterative, and embodied nature of these relationships and the value created through them. It will also explore increasing evidence that points of crisis and conflict, including those associated with difficult and traumatic forms of memory, are particularly potent contexts for the creation of value. The range of methodologies used in existing research and surveys will be critically discussed, along with their application in the spheres of heritage conservation and public policy. Finally, the appropriateness of a conceptual apparatus that tends to quantify and fix values will be examined. The possibilities for capturing more fluid processes of valuing the historic environment will be considered, along with the implications for other spheres of the Arts and the Cultural Sector.