Contemporary Heritage and the Future

Abstract

Studies of the future are pertinent in order to make the best decisions in present society. They are, however, full of difficulties, as the future is an empirical field which does not exist (Slaughter, 1996; Bell, 1997; Mogensen, 2006). Both pertinence and difficulties apply also to studying the future in relation to human culture. The main challenge lies in the circumstance that cultural heritage of the future cannot in itself be empirically investigated and described, since it is in part dependent on decisions that have not yet been made. Studying heritage futures is thus about considering what we know about cultural heritage in the context of prognoses and visions of what will come. Yet how do we do that? The American anthropologist Samuel Gerald Collins contributed to an interesting discussion on how anthropology and anthropologists have previously embraced the future and how they might now be embracing it. He emphasized that an important approach is to vouchsafe the possibility that future ways in which people will think and act may be very different from today, and, in doing so, to open up a space (or a spacetime) for critical reflection on the present (Collins, 2008, p. 8). This approach is a useful programmatic declaration for engaging with the future in disciplines such as anthropology, archaeology, history and heritage studies. These keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.

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