Emotional Heritage

Laurajane Smith is Director of the Centre for Heritage and Museum Studies at the Australian National University, Canberra. She is Founding President of the Association of Critical Heritage Studies, the editor of the International Journal of Heritage Studies, the cogeneral editor of Routledge’s Key Issues in Cultural Heritage and is best known for her previous book Uses of Heritage (2006, Routledge).

• Introduction; Part I: Heritage, Politics and Emotion; 1. Critical realist heritage studies: Agency, reflexivity and materiality; 2. Reconsidering heritage and identity: The politics of recognition and the affective practices of heritage.; 3. Registers of engagement; Part II: Methods and Quantitative Findings; 4. Methods; 5. Overall findings and national comparisons; 6. Genres of museums and heritage sites: Comparisons; 7. Demographic variables and visitor responses; Part III: Emotional Heritage: Themes and Performances; 8. Reassessing learning: Changing views and deepening understanding; 9. Performing reinforcement and affirmation: ‘It just reinforces a lot of the stuff I think’; 10. Emotional banality and heritage-making: The banality of grandiloquence revisited; 11. Intergenerational communication and connection; 12. Heritage and the politics of recognition; 13. Heritage, privilege and the politics of misrecognition; 14. Conclusion

"Based on a massive amount of empirical research – conducted across continents and years – this ambitious book is a major contribution to heritage debates. Written with verve and clarity, its importance goes far beyond its crucial message that we need to take the emotional dimensions of heritage seriously. In Emotional Heritage, Laurajane Smith not only presents this groundbreaking project but also robustly sets out her analytical stall and manifesto for heritage studies." – Sharon Macdonald, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Germany