Embedding Inclusion into Entire Preservation Profession
A Step-by-Step Scholarly View of Antiracist Preservation Opportunities
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A Step-by-Step Scholarly View of Antiracist Preservation Opportunities 〰️
Preservation is bigger than designation. Unlike the NCSHPO, the researchers Professor Erica Avrami and doctoral candidate Anna Gasha, doctoral student, Columbia University sought to give a holistic view of the profession of historic preservation's need to decenter "Whiteness" beyond the "Designation" domain of practice. While the preservation field is becoming more diverse, fewer than one percent of professional preservationists are African-American (Cep, 2020), and 80 percent of National Park Service staff are White (Chari, 2020). As part of the Urban Heritage, Sustainability, and Social Inclusion Initiative, their review argues there is work to be done across seven action contexts.
Maintaining Accountability as a Field and Form of Public Policy
Documenting & Collecting Data
Designating
Interpreting Historical Content & Narratives
Physically Intervening at Historic Places
Financing and Managing Historic Places and Projects
Examining Preservation Intentions and Outcomes
They use articles and annotated bibliographies to systematically assess the scholarship pushing preservationists to better confront its racist and othering practices across the entire life-cycle, which includes the following key action contexts. Key insights from select articles relevant for this project of Mapping Hidden Genius are summarized next.
Maintaining Accountability as a Field and Form of Public Policy
Scholars recommend six types of needed forms of accountability.
First, Analyzing race within preservation’s historical underpinnings.
Second, challenging preservation’s foundations. Critical heritage discourse has challenged the Eurocentric origins of the international preservation enterprise (and its influence on national and local preservation frameworks): "they speak to the foundational preservation perspectives that have enabled exclusion based on factors including class, gender, or geography. Using the Burra Charter as a case study we argue that the way we talk, write and otherwise represent heritage both constitutes and is constituted by the operation of a dominant discourse." Specifically, built heritage conservation/CRM practice is too standardized and motivated primarily by speed, efficiency, and compliance. According to some, as of 2017, "the field is not innovative or flexible; and heritage/CRM practitioners and scholars do not engage with each other." Lastly, understanding heritage requires a transdisciplinary approach that is altogether absent in most aspects of theory and practice.
Third, reform preservation policy.
Fourth, Examine diversity in preservation education & academic programs. They argue that related fields like archaeology are still depoliticizing the profession and spinning "the 19th century ideological harbour that is science, evolution, imperialism and progress." Others note that in undergraduate-level historic preservation programs in the United States, the majority of undergraduate majors in preservation are female, White, and middle-class, causing some to point to a lack of diversity in the pool of “young preservationists.” Further, The dominant scholarship produced by the most privileged faculty are not speaking to a broader public. Intra-disciplinary scholarship is defined as the scholarly literature produced by the 58 tenured and tenure-track faculty associated with historic preservation degree programmes in the United States through the end of 2018. A content analysis of this literature by scholar Jeremy C. Wells in 2021 shows a general lack of engagement by authors on issues related to the public’s needs, including topics related to justice, equity, diversity, and inclusion. A citation analysis of this literature reveals meagre faculty productivity and low impact for intra-disciplinary preservation scholarship. In order for the field to sustain itself, it needs to reconsider its anti-intellectual tendencies, increase its socially relevant scholarly publications, and embrace more critical, people-centered approaches.
Fifth, Incorporate anti-racist pedagogy and curricula.
Sixth, increase the diversity in preservation practice & employment.
Documenting & Collecting Data
While seemingly objective, data decisions shape knowledge in the following ways:
Choosing what to document
Documenting sites of injustices & inequities
Co-creating data and community-engaged documentation & cultural mapping
In the context of the resurgence of the Black Lives Matter movement in 2020, CyArk has noted the importance of capturing evidence of these movements in the city. In this webinar Documenting Sites of Social Justice in 3D, the speakers explain their rationale and process for using photogrammetry as a tool to document the rapidly shifting urban landscapes of protest and resistance, comprising murals, graffiti, and interventions on public monuments.
Recognizing & addressing exclusionary documentation standards & methods. In a brief field note, Irene Cheng, Charles L. Davis II, and Mabel O. Wilson question the neutrality of both historians and their subjects, particularly in relation to what constitutes evidence. The availability of architectural evidence– which also plays a large role in preservation efforts – is intimately linked to conceptions of race and subjective judgments of “value” and aesthetics.
Recognizing & supporting constructive cultures & techniques
Designating
Designating non-material or physically “compromised” heritage is a way to practice anti-racism. In addition to highlighting the need to shift attention away from materially intact heritage, Donna Graves discusses the Legacy Business Program and cultural districts in San Francisco, which are examples of designation tools that shift the focus from material to communities’ cultural assets.
Finding representational justice in designation is another way to think about it. While the rationale for diversifying the historic preservation practice is given in terms of imbalances in the National Register, Ned Kaufman also recognizes the limits of the Register’s standards in its ability to account for sites, and concludes by noting that until social inclusion is fully learned (including through the employment of preservationists from underrepresented groups), the profession is unlikely to fully embrace diversity.
Interpreting Historical Content & Narratives
Involving stakeholders/publics in examining significance & appropriate representation
Managing multiple or conflicting values and significance
Considering additive interpretive approaches
Physically Intervening at Historic Places
Involving stakeholders in conservation decisions
Conserving sites that challenge the primacy of materiality
Adding or reconstructing
Subtracting or removing
Propagating and promulgating
Financing and Managing Historic Places and Projects
Supporting BIPOC preservation and sites
Incentivizing anti-racist projects and activities
Examining Preservation Intentions and Outcomes
Understanding impacts of preservation on communities
Instrumentalizing preservation for change