Heritage and ‘Race

‘Race’ appears in the title and body of this chapter in quotation marks - sometimes called ‘sneer quotes’ - for a reason: to foreground the status of the term as a historical fiction which has had, and continues to have, very real and damaging effects. For the concept of ‘race’ is widely discredited as a category, and yet its remnants and legacies continue to shape our contemporary heritage, just as they continue to shape the landscape of contemporary culture more broadly. This chapter considers some of the key issues, contexts and debates that have, both explicitly and implicitly, structured the relationship between ‘race’ and heritage. It does so by providing a summary of different ways in which this relationship has historically been problematic, by outlining contemporary work in the field, and closes by attempting to point towards some possible future directions for research