'Living Heritage' and living heritage: the ontology and experience of cultural landscapes in the English Lake District

Shortland, Faye Louise (2021). 'Living Heritage' and living heritage: the ontology and experience of cultural landscapes in the English Lake District. University of Birmingham. Ph.D.

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Abstract

This thesis explores stakeholders’ experience, representation, and interpretation of heritage and landscape in the Lake District National Park and World Heritage Site in England. In so doing, it aims to inform the management of living cultural landscapes in ways that are cognizant of the aspirations of relevant stakeholders. Through ethnographic research and interviews with the Lake District National Park Partnership and the farming community, this thesis advances an understanding of how both policy practitioners and farmers understand and represent the landscape and heritage site in which they live and work.

As such, this thesis builds on more-than-representational theory (Waterton, 2019) and argues for the development of a heritage sensibility (Harvey, 2015); in which stakeholders’ historical, social, and political sensitivities are considered, alongside their embodied engagement with the landscape and heritage site. This thesis fosters an anthropological agenda in which the people are understood and their knowledge is valued; this is explored through three main themes, change, authenticity, and rewilding. This thesis also advances an understanding of how knowledge is formed through the georgic ethic (Cohen, 2009) and develops methods in which farmers and other stakeholders can knowledge-share and develop a sensibility to how each other’s knowledge is created. This thesis concludes that both policy practitioners and farmers create knowledge from their interaction with the land, which informs their decision-making. However, for policy practitioners their engagement is, I argue, more of an engagement for work than a working engagement. The thesis therefore considers the implications of this distinction for the management of living cultural landscapes. Finally, policy recommendations are provided, which drive at the importance of, and mechanism for, reforming statutory power and maintaining institutional knowledge.

Type of Work:

Thesis (Doctorates > Ph.D.)

Award Type:

Doctorates > Ph.D.

Supervisor(s):