The Heritage Crusade and the Spoils of History

ISBN-13: 9780521635622 / Angielski / Miękka / 1998 / 358 str.

David Lowenthal

Opis

Heritage, while it often constitutes and defines the most positive aspects of culture, is a malleable body of historical text subject to interpretation and easily twisted into myth. When it is appealed to on a national or ethnic level in reactions against racial, religious, or economic oppression, the result is often highly-charged political contention or conflict. The extraordinary theme of this unique book is how the rise of a manifold, crusade-like obsession with tradition and inheritance--both physical and cultural--can lead to either good or evil. In a balanced account of the pros and cons of the rhetoric and spoils of heritage--on the one hand cultural identity and unity, on the other, potential holy war--David Lowenthal discusses the myriad uses and abuses of historical appropriation and offers a rare and accessible account of a concept at once familiar and fraught with complexity. David Lowenthal is Emeritus Professor of Geography at University College London, and the author of the bestselling The Past is a Foreign Country (Cambridge, 1985)

Recenzje

'Brave, piquant and impressively broad-ranging.' Linda Colley, The Times Literary Supplement

Spis treści

Introduction; 1. Heritage ascendant; 2. Personal legacies; 3. Collective legacies; 4. Heritage assailed; 5. The purpose and practice of history; 6. The purpose of heritage; 7. The practice of heritage; 8. Being first; 9. Being innate; 10. Rivalry and restitution.