Next Forum: Preserve not Destroy: The Anthropology of Heritage

In the sixty-eighth number of Antropologicheskij forum, published by the Peter the Great Museum of Anthropology and Ethnography (Kunstkamera), RAS, and the European University at St Petersburg, the discussion will address the concept of “heritage” as a social, historical, and political phenomenon. We would like to invite you to respond to the questionnaire below. You may, as you wish, directly address the questions presented here, or send in a text responding to one or some of them (or taking up some other issue that seems to you relevant). Whichever way, we would be grateful if you could keep your answers to a maximum of 10 pages (1.5 spaced, 12-point type). Please use the author-date in-text citation system for any references in the format [Smith 2002: 12], i.e. author / date (no comma) in square brackets, appending a list of ‘References’ at the end with full publication details: Author: e.g. Smith M. A.; Article title: e.g. ‘Visual Anthropology’; Journal title: e.g. Ethnology, 2002, no. 3, p. 14–19; or alternatively, Author: e.g. Smith M. A.; Book title: e.g. Visual Anthropology; Place: Publisher, date, pages: e.g. London: Anvil Press, 2002, 356 p. Please send replies by 15 December 2025 to forum.for.anthropology@gmail.com, with a copy to aklepikova@eu.spb.ru; your email address should be included in any attached file. We hope that the discussion will appear in spring 2026.

Preserve not Destroy: The Anthropology of Heritage

This issue of the Antropologicheskij forum is devoted to the concept of “heritage,” which stands at the heart of one of today’s most prominent interdisciplinary fields of research. Heritage refers to that part of the past which is regarded as possessing unquestionable, intrinsic, and timeless value. In recent decades, it has drawn close attention on international and national levels alike, as well as within local grassroots initiatives — prompting reflection on the causes of the new “heritage boom,” its mechanisms, its participants, and the contradictions it entails.

With the growth of the “heritage industry” (as Robert Hewison termed the infrastructure that produces the value of the past [Hewison 1987]), criticism has intensified of dominant Eurocentric and national approaches to defining heritage [Meskell 2010; 2018]. In response to the dominance of official institutions, new forms of expertise have begun to emerge — independent of states and international organizations — asserting their own visions of the past as an object of protection and care [Robertson 2008, 2012; Kuutma 2013; Muzaini, Minca 2018; Mochalova 2022; Gutman, Wüstenberg 2023; Kupriaynov 2025; Tanaylova 2025]. However, the global trend toward the de-monopolization of the so-called “authorized heritage discourse” [Smith 2006] and the democratization of heritage practices has given rise to a new critical stance. In this view, such activism is understood not only as grassroots civic engagement, but also as a form of “responsibilization” — the shifting of the state’s responsibility for collective welfare onto society itself — accompanied by a “moral authoritarianism” that exploits the rhetoric of good citizenship and conflates unpaid labor with the notion of gifting [Ilcan 2009; Muehlebach 2012; Hoffman, St. John 2017].

The complex academic and civic landscape of practices and politics of caring for the valued past makes “heritage” one of the most contested yet productive analytical concepts — one that opens up new perspectives on a wide range of political, social, economic, and nation-building processes at multiple scales and levels. It is this analytical richness, it seems, that explains the remarkable upsurge of critical heritage studies in recent years. Many topics that until recently were interpreted within the framework of memory studies are now being reframed through the lens of critical heritage studies, while ritual references to the works of Pierre Nora and Maurice Halbwachs are increasingly replaced by citations of Laurajane Smith and Gregory Ashworth.

Along with the expansion of the field, heritage studies are also becoming more complex. The number of works devoted to various aspects of the “heritage process” [Kolesnik, Rusanov 2022] is steadily increasing, and their diversity continues to grow: they define the subject and research issues differently, employ various methods, and situate heritage in different contexts. This multiplying complexity invites reflection on the coherence of heritage studies as a research field and on the place of different disciplines and academic traditions in its development.

The questions posed in this forum are addressed to specialists from diverse fields whose work, to varying degrees, engages with heritage as a social, historical, or political phenomenon. We invite scholars to share their observations, reflections, or doubts concerning the practice of their work.

1. How is your field of scholarly interest connected to heritage? Do you perceive the expansion of heritage-related themes and problems in your area?

2. In your view, how might the field of heritage studies be structured? What directions, strands, or paradigms can be distinguished within it? How visible and significant are disciplinary boundaries? Which texts and/or authors in heritage studies, in your opinion, can be regarded as classic, influential, or fashionable?

3. What are the methodological and theoretical distinctions between the Memory and Heritage studies as two research perspectives? Should these two approaches be differentiated — and if so, how?

4. What, in your opinion, defines the specificity of heritage practices and politics as an anthropological field? Please share your personal experience in this area.

5. How would you characterize the growing public participation in heritage care: is it a an escape from politics or, conversely, an attempt at political engagement? A form of grassroots democratic activity or an instance of the state’s exploitation of voluntary labor? A manifestation of a conservative turn or an example of the modernization of the surrounding world?

References

Gutman Y., Wüstenberg J.(eds), The Routledge Handbook of Memory Activism. London; New York: Routledge, 2023, XL+558 p.

Hewison R., The Heritage Industry: Britain in a Climate of Decline. London: Methuen, 1987, 160 p.

Hoffman L., St. John H., ‘“Doing Good”: Affect, Neoliberalism, and Responsibilization Among Volunteers in China and the United States’, Higgins V., Larner W. (eds), Assembling Neoliberalism: Expertise, Practices, Subjects. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2017, p. 243–262.

Ilcan S., ‘Privatizing Responsibility: Public Sector Reform Under Neoliberal Government’, Canadian Review of Sociology / Revue Canadienne de Sociologie, 2009, vol. 46, no. 3, p. 207–234. doi: 10.1111/j.1755-618X.2009.01212.x.

Kolesnik A. S., Rusanov A. V., ‘Nasledie-kak-protsess: diskussii o kontsepte kulturnogo naslediya v sovremennykh sotsialnykh i gumanitarnykh naukakh’ [Heritage-as-Process: The Concept of Cultural Heritage in Contemporary Social Sciences and Humanities], Vestnik Permskogo universiteta, series: History, 2022, no. 3 (58), p. 58–69. (In Russian). doi: 10.17072/2219-3111-2022-3-58-69.

Kupriaynov P. S., ‘Sberegaya “levyy bereg”: avtorizovannyy diskurs naslediya na romanovskoy storone Tutaeva’ [Conserving the “Left Bank”: Authorized Heritage Discourse in the Romanov Part of Tutaev], Etnograficheskoe obozrenie. 2025. № 2. С. 11–34. (In Russian). doi: 10.31857/S0869541525020027.

Kuutma K., ‘Between Arbitration and Engineering: Concepts and Contingencies in the Shaping of Heritage Regimes’, Bendix R. F., Eggert A., Peselmann A. (eds), Heritage Regimes and the State. Göttingen: Göttingen University Press, 2013, p. 21–36.

Meskell L., ‘Conflict Heritage and Expert Failure’, Labadi S., Long C. (eds), Heritage and Globalisation. London; New York: Routledge, 2010, p. 192–201.

Meskell L., A Future in Ruins: UNESCO, World Heritage, and the Dream of Peace. Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press, 2018, XXIII+372 p.

Mochalova M. A., ‘Shaman v muzee: opyt izucheniya naslediya indigennogo soobshchestva v regione resursnogo tipa’ [Shaman in the Museum: The Experience of Studying the Heritage of an Indigenous Community in a Resource-Type Region], Sibirskie istoricheskie issledovaniya, 2022, no. 4, p. 195–220. (In Russian). doi: 10.17223/2312461X/38/11.

Muehlebach A. K., The Moral Neoliberal: Welfare and Citizenship in Italy. Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press, 2012, XIII+292 p.

Muzaini H., Minca C., After Heritage: Critical Perspectives on Heritage from Below. Cheltenham; Northampton, MA: Edward Elgar, 2018, XI+187 p.

Robertson I. J. M., ‘Heritage from Below: Class, Social Protest and Resistance’, Graham B., Howard P. (eds), The Ashgate Research Companion to Heritage and Identity. Aldershot: Ashgate, 2008, p. 143–158.

Robertson I. J. M., Heritage from Below. Farnham; Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2012, XI+244 p.

Smith L., Uses of Heritage. London; New York: Routledge, 2006, XIV+351 p.

Tanaylova V. A., ‘Shkolnyy muzey v Krasnogorske, moy ded i ya: motivatsii i mekhanizmy proizvodstva kosmicheskogo naslediya’ [A School Museum in Krasnogorsk, My Grandfather, and Me: Motivations and Mechanisms of Space Heritage Production], Etnograficheskoe obozrenie, 2025, no. 2, p. 77–96. (In Russian). doi: 10.31857/S0869541525020054.