Introduction: heritage as community research

This introductory chapter provides an overview of heritage as community research. Many scholars have explored how discursive processes shape the past and how the past is understood in the present, deconstructing the ‘Authorised Heritage Discourse’ of professional museums and official heritage sites. From the point of view of the communities involved with heritage through research, it is not simply about discursively arguing against a mainstream interpretation of the past, but about making their own way into an exploration of the past. While the cases in this book function on the ‘local’ level in one sense, they are considerably more than just local history. Instead, they locate what may be much broader processes in specific situations of places and people. Framing this work as ‘inquiry’ draws attention to the ways in which ‘ways of knowing’ are also ways of acting in the world, ways of creating change and using the past for future-making.