Retaining character: heritage conservation and the logic of continuity

Yarrow, Thomas

doi:10.1111/1469-8676.12532

Retaining character: heritage conservation and the logic of continuity

Yarrow, Thomas

Authors

Professor Thomas Yarrow t.g.yarrow@durham.ac.uk
Professor

Abstract

In anthropology and beyond, discussions of character have more often focused on this as a quality of human subjects rather than of the material world. How is character figured as a quality of historic buildings, monuments and places? I situate this question through an ethnographic focus on conservation professionals in Scotland, tracing the practices through which ‘character’ is recognised, understood and conserved. My account explores the practices and dispositions through which practitioners attune themselves to this quality, and highlights the role character plays in resolving a central dilemma for conservation: how things can remain as they are, even while changing. This ethnographic focus questions some of the materially essentialist analytic frameworks that have prevailed in literatures on both conservation and character, while highlighting forms of practice that are elided more than illuminated by countervailing deconstructive approaches to these topics: actions, ideas and commitments that stem from heritage professionals’ own sense of character as ‘in‐built’.

Citation

Yarrow, T. (2018). Retaining character: heritage conservation and the logic of continuity. Social Anthropology, 26(3), 330-344. https://doi.org/10.1111/1469-8676.12532

Journal Article Type	Article
Acceptance Date	May 20, 2018
Online Publication Date	Aug 7, 2018
Publication Date	Aug 7, 2018
Deposit Date	May 22, 2018
Publicly Available Date	Aug 8, 2018
Journal	Social Anthropology
Print ISSN	0964-0282
Publisher	Berghahn Journals
Peer Reviewed	Peer Reviewed
Volume	26
Issue	3
Pages	330-344
DOI	https://doi.org/10.1111/1469-8676.12532

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This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cite.