CharlotteWoodhead, Caring for Cultural Heritage: An Integrated Approach to Legal and Ethical Initiatives in the United Kingdom, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2023, pb, £34.99
Year: 2025
Type: article
Abstract: Charlotte Woodhead's Caring for Cultural Heritage: An Integrated Approach to Legal and Ethical Initiatives in the United Kingdom presents a compelling recontextualisation of approaches to heritage through the 'empathetic, respectful and dialogic' (3) theory of care.The text's in-depth analysis of the nested practices of care surrounding the UK's cultural heritage is a welcome addition to both theoretical and practical heritage frameworks.Here, care is conceived of as the 'varied ways in which communities engage with cultural heritage to maintain it, sustain relationships about it and with it, use it as part of cultural practices, provide access to it and navigate dissonance and threats to tangible and intangible harm, with a view to passing it on to future generations' (33).Through this lens, Woodhead deftly explores how communities recognise the importance of cultural heritage, make use of it, and satisfy their responsibilities to current and future generations in doing so.She contends that cultural heritage is not merely an object of preservation but an active and dynamic part of community life, sustained by interconnected layers of care.These layers encompass legal frameworks, ethical guidelines, institutional policies, and the everyday actions of communities, all of which collectively shape the stewardship of heritage.While the book assesses the UK context, it will provide useful insight for those who care about and for cultural heritage in other jurisdictions as well.It offers critical insights into how cultural heritage is valued, protected, and contested, making it an essential contribution to legal and ethical debates in the field.One of the major contributions of the work to heritage scholarship is found where Woodhead arranges the many communities involved in cultural heritage into one interconnected system of carers engaging in nested practices of care.The idea of nested practices of care originates with Joan Tronto's work on care ethics and suggests that care is arranged in intersecting strata, calling upon numerous carers with varying levels and types of responsibility.In cultural heritage, Woodhead convincingly argues, these carers include community groups, cultural institutions, professional bodies, courts, local and national governments, and national and international communities, with her references spanning local communities who voluntarily take on responsibilities of care to the care practices of parliament.The practices of care here include international, national, and local laws,which may or may not have been drafted with cultural heritage in mind, as well as non-law instruments such as ethical guidelines for professional bodies and cultural institutions.By shifting focus to the overlapping nature of these communities and instruments, Woodhead identifies how the UK creates communities of care (communities that care about cultural heritage), as well as how those communities make use of the law and non-law instruments to support their care for the heritage in question.The layering of various communities' actions with regard to such heritage and the means by which they
Source: Modern Law Review
Author: Lauren Crais
Institution: University of Oxford
Language: English
Subfield: Archeology
Field: Arts and Humanities
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: bronze
OpenAlex ID: W4413062677