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This study investigates how managers and employees at County Museums in Sweden think about, work with, and relate to the future in their daily practice. We examined which tools and routines the museums employ to work concretely with different future perspectives. The study is thus about those forms of future consciousness that exist in the museums. The results show that the future is implicitly present but often remains unarticulated in the work of the museum. The museums work with short future perspectives which are often linked to concrete tasks or development work. The future perspectives at the museums are largely locked in the present or in a near future. Concrete tools, skills and routines to develop future consciousness are lacking. However, the results show that there is great interest and willingness among Swedish County Museums to implement tools, skills, and routines for a more developed engagement with futures.
Cultural heritage shapes our identity, delivers capacities, and exposes vulnerabilities, yet cultural heritage value and vulnerability are largely missing from conventional risk assessments. Risk assessments are a fundamental first step in identifying effective mechanisms for Climate Change Adaptation (CCA) and disaster management. However, by ignoring the influence of heritage, decision makers are limiting their understanding of risk and therefore opportunities vital for building and maintaining local resilience. We present findings from a synthesis of peer‐reviewed literature from the last 15 years on cultural heritage risk assessment for primarily CCA but with wider implications for disaster management. We identify a significant lack of research examining intangible aspects of heritage and their influence on risk and resilience. Across the literature, risk assessments focus largely on exposure in isolation from vulnerability or adaptive capacity and where vulnerability is included there is no consistent definition or criterion. We highlight that the most frequently used methods have minimal engagement with local community values, experience, and knowledge relating to heritage practice and customs. Community engagement is most often associated with ‘professional experts’ rather than members of a local community. Furthermore, the Global South is severely under‐represented with a research bias towards Europe and North America. We recommend an agile approach to future assessments with the adjustment of risk tool research and development to include participatory approaches. Future climate risk frameworks must incorporate community‐scale values to understand the role of cultural heritage in relation to adaptive capacity, vulnerability, and resilience.
This book is not a typical academic edited volume. Nor does it subscribe to the usual dictates of an exhibition catalogue. It does not seek to provide a comprehensive overview of work on climate change and museums or claim to have discovered One Quick Trick to Solve the Climate Emergency. Instead, the book reflects the main characteristics of the Reimagining Museums for Climate Action project: it is collaborative, distributed, conversational, subversive, nomadic and, at times, playful. The arguments it puts forward emerge through dialogue and speculation just as much as they respond to and build on empirical research. In this sense, the book is perhaps best seen as a partial and in many ways still evolving artefact of the Reimagining Museums project. It can be read from cover-to-cover, or its varied contents can be traversed in a less rigid fashion. It is one “output” among many, and its main aim is to prompt further transdisciplinary alliances, rather than set out a particular position or manifesto. To this end, the book invites peripatetic readings and strange deviations. It is anchored by eight concepts that reflect the diversity and creativity of museums, but it is also motivated by a desire to (re)situate this field within a broader set of debates on the roots of social and environmental injustice, and the role of museums in these histories.
This article addresses uses of heritage in urban planning projects that seek to adapt coastal landscapes to increasing risks of flooding, storm surges, and sea level rise. We interrelate concepts from recent research on the climate-heritage-nexus with contemporary coastal climate adaptation projects to reveal some of the complex realities and nuances that are apparent on the ground, and to raise heritage concerns for future practice. Questioning the role that heritage plays in specific climate adaptation projects from Denmark and the Netherlands, two low-lying countries with long coastlines facing climate risks, we show the wide range of roles that heritage can play in climate adaptation planning and we propose a framework to conceptualise heritage in this context. The study shows the important role that climate imaginaries (i.e. depictions, affect, and ways of apprehending the climate past) play in climate adaptation projects, and reveals national and local differences. Finally, we discuss the knowledge gained from climate adaption projects in terms of developing dynamic responses to climate change, of working with rather than against landscape processes, and the potential role of heritage in creating climate-resilient living environments.
The coast is a dynamic landscape characterised by change. Although coastal change can provide opportunities to engage with the past as archaeological sites are exposed and uncovered, it also means that climate change pressures are likely to exacerbate and accelerate the inevitable loss of coastal heritage. Many projects and initiatives focus on protecting and saving threatened sites, but there has been less attention to developing tools that will help the heritage profession manage and communicate about loss. New strategies are needed to help heritage professionals engage with communities confronted with the vulnerability of valued coastal heritage sites, and to counter perceptions of mismanagement and misunderstanding. This paper aims to develop language to better articulate the ways in which change and loss are likely to be experienced at coastal heritage sites, so that the challenges and opportunities presented by each situation may be fully appreciated by heritage managers and communities navigating these changes. It does not address the question of how to preserve and protect, but conversely seeks to explore how to respond to and understand loss.
In this paper, we argue that a key component of futures literacy is reflexivity regarding different attitudes toward the future. Various intellectual traditions and futures practices make epistemologically distinct claims about the future and its manifestations in the present. Through their different outlooks on analyzing, understanding, and influencing the future, these diverse approaches represent fundamentally different attitudes to what it means to meaningfully engage with the future. Because of this diversity of attitudes toward the future, and the different possible modes of engagement with the future, futures literacy is more complex than it appears at first glance. Looking at recent developments in futures literature, we build on four epistemologically and ontologically distinct approaches to the problem of the future. We argue that being futures literate depends on reflexivity about these different engagements with the future, and what these different approaches can offer future-oriented action respectively. Such reflexivity entails being reflexive about how different approaches to the problem of the future arise, as well as about the underlying power structures. We also investigate possibilities to cultivate this futures reflexivity and conclude with a set of questions to guide future research in deepening reflexivity as a key element of futures literacy.
The first decades of the new century shake old certainties. In a whirlwind of profound changes, do we have more history or less? Does history overwhelm us in all domains of life or is historical understanding in yet another crisis? The answers do not come easily. The recent demise of humanities education, the technological alterations of our social lifeworlds and the human condition, the anthropogenic changes in the Earth system, the growing sense of memory, trauma and historical injustice as alternative approaches to the past, seem to entail contradictions and complexities that do not fit very well with our existing notions of historical understanding. Historical thought as we know it is facing manifold challenges, and we struggle to grasp a larger picture that could encompass them.
Boasting a range of contributions from leading scholars, this volume attempts just that. In an innovative collection of short essays, Historical Understanding explores the current shape of historical understanding today, by surveying a variety of historical relations to the past, present, and future in the face of socio-political, ecological and technological upheavals.
This book is an invaluable research tool for students and researchers alike, presenting a kaleidoscope-like overview of manifold new ways which we navigate “historically” in coping with present-day challenges, both in wider society and in historiography.
Climate change is currently impacting cultural heritage globally. Despite advances in the understanding of the relationship between climate change impacts and cultural heritage, there are significant barriers that hamper adaptation of cultural heritage to current and projected climate risks. This paper aims to advance the empirical understanding of barriers to adapting cultural heritage to climate-related impacts in the Netherlands by identifying different barriers, their interdependencies, and possible strategies to overcome these barriers. Using a web-based questionnaire with 57 experts, we find that the most frequently reported barriers are a lack of climate change adaptation policy for cultural heritage, and lack of climate vulnerability and risk assessments for diverse cultural heritage types. Our study finds that barriers are perceived to be interdependent and conjointly constrain adapting cultural heritage to climate change. Six actionable strategies are identified to navigate these barriers.
The predicted increases in climate change vulnerability of heritage sites are alarming. Yet, heritage management focuses on enabling a steady state of heritage sites to ensure the continuity of values embedded within those properties. In this paper, we use the concept of resilience to demonstrate how expanding the heritage paradigm from solely a preservation perspective to one that also embraces a transformation perspective can accommodate for loss as well as promote learning. We argue that adaptation as currently conceptualized in the heritage field is limited, as it is not economically or ecologically feasible for all heritage sites or properties. When heritage properties are severely impacted by climatic events, we suggest that some remain damaged to serve as a memory of that event and the inherent vulnerabilities embedded in places. Moreover, when confronted with projected climatic impacts that exceed a financially viable threshold or ecological reality, or when rights holders or associated communities deem persistent adaptation unacceptable, we argue for transformation. We claim that transformation enables a reorganization of values focused on the discovery of future values embedded within changing associations and benefits. Therefore, we recommend that the heritage field adopts an alternative heritage policy that enables transformative continuity through applications of persistent and autonomous or anticipatory adaptation. We conclude by suggesting a pathway for such change at the international level; specifically, we call for the World Heritage Convention to develop a new grouping of sites, World Heritage Sites in Climatic Transformation.
Significance
We show that for thousands of years, humans have concentrated in a surprisingly narrow subset of Earth’s available climates, characterized by mean annual temperatures around ∼13 °C. This distribution likely reflects a human temperature niche related to fundamental constraints. We demonstrate that depending on scenarios of population growth and warming, over the coming 50 y, 1 to 3 billion people are projected to be left outside the climate conditions that have served humanity well over the past 6,000 y. Absent climate mitigation or migration, a substantial part of humanity will be exposed to mean annual temperatures warmer than nearly anywhere today.
In the last decade, many initiatives were taken to digitize colonial archival legacies. In this article, we analyse Dutch policy and a number of Dutch initiatives in this field with the aim to find answers to our central question whether digitization of colonial archival legacies offers possibilities to decolonize these archives. The aspiration to decolonize colonial legacies seems to be a paradoxical statement since there is something innately colonial in the recordkeeping systems that cannot, and should not, be removed. But digitization of archives means creating new recordkeeping infrastructures, and these new infrastructures shape new interfaces between the documents which were created in the past and the users of today. We argue that decolonizing these archives can be based on a comprehensive understanding of the complexity of the variables which shape the new digital archival infrastructure. Inspired by the third-space perspective and the concept of (de)coloniality, we explore the possibilities to develop archival infrastructures that contribute to decolonizing colonial archival legacies in the sense of offering multivocality, multiple agency and multiple provenance. We conclude that what we call third-space infrastructural frameworks create promising opportunities to contribute to the decolonization of colonial archival legacies.
The notions of risk and resilience are increasingly relevant to cultural heritage. Archaeological sites and monuments in particular are widely perceived to be vulnerable and subjected to growing risks of deliberate destruction, e.g. in the context of armed conflicts. At the same time, it has become a familiar claim that cultural heritage needs to be conserved as an important resource for fostering cultural resilience, reducing disaster risk, and supporting peace and reconciliation in the future. In this paper, the author takes issue with that latter view and suggests instead that cultural resilience, risk preparedness, post-disaster recovery and mutual understanding between people will be best enhanced by an increased ability to accept loss and transformation. The evident changes of heritage over time can inspire people to embrace uncertainty and absorb adversity in times of change, thus increasing their cultural resilience. © 2018, © 2018 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.
Mapping out emerging areas for global cultural heritage, this book provides an anthropological perspective on the growing field of heritage studies. Kathryn Lafrenz Samuels adopts a dual focus—looking back on the anthropological foundations for cultural heritage research while looking forward to areas of practice that reach beyond national borders: economic development, climate action, democratic practice, heritage rights, and global justice. Taken together, these growth areas characterize transnational heritage activity and represent channels for working around, negotiating, and pushing back against the traditional authority of nation-states and intergovernmental treaty–based organizations such as UNESCO.
Lafrenz Samuels argues that transnational heritage signals important shifts for heritage practice, from a paradigm of preservation to a paradigm of development. Responding to this expanding developmental sensibility, she positions cultural heritage as a persuasive tool for transformative action, capable of mobilizing and shaping social change. Using examples drawn from her research and fieldwork in North Africa, the Arctic, and the United States, she shows how anthropological approaches foster and support the persuasive power of heritage in the transnational sphere.
Although the future is mentioned frequently in overarching aims and visions, and it is a major drive in the daily work of archaeological heritage managers and indeed heritage professionals more generally, it remains unclear precisely how an overall commitment to the future can best inform specific heritage practices. It seems that most archaeologists and other heritage professionals cannot easily express how they conceive of the future they work for, and how their work will impact on that future. The future tends to remain implicit in daily practice which operates in a continuing, rolling present. The authors argue that this needs to change because present-day heritage management may be much less beneficial for the future than we commonly expect.
This paper addresses the feeling of being at home in time and in place through fieldwork carried out in Mostar, Bosnia and Herzegovina from 2015–2016. Such feelings are needed after a war resulting in geographical displacement as occurred during the breakup of Yugoslavia. This paper argues for the need to see beyond only spatial factors for the ‘making of home’, and therefore considers temporal factors through the role of the heritage in forming narratives, which combine temporal and spatial relations. Alternative narratives to those of ethnic separation are taken into consideration, and it is argued that a sole focus on division may further enforce it rather than lead to its reduction. A sense of disassociation to the current city of Mostar and its narratives has led to the construction of narratives of home within a different time-period (pre-war Mostar). In turn, this may cause nostalgia, passivity, and an ‘othering’ of the newcomers to Mostar. However, there are also cases of employing such a narrative actively in order to envision an alternative future beyond ethnic separation. So far, the institutions working with the heritage of Mostar have not addressed these issues, thus possible ways forward are suggested.
This paper makes use of feminist posthumanism to outline how a range of heritage policies, practices and strategies, partly through their base in social constructivism have a clear anthropocentric focus. Not only do they risk downplaying materiality, but also a number of human and non-human others, driving a wedge between nature and culture. This may in turn be an obstacle for the use of heritage in sustainable development as it deals with range of naturalized others as if they have no agency and leaves the stage open for appropriation and exploitation. This paper probes into what heritage could be in the wake of current climate and environmental challenges if approached differently. It explores how a selection of feminist posthumanisms challenge the distinction between nature:culture in a way that could shift the approach to sustainability in heritage making from a negative to an affirmative framing.
Archaeology in the African continent is a century-long practice, characterized largely by research approaches that do not consult and engage with local and indigenous communities. As a discipline brought about by European colonization, archaeology was and remains a practice situated in the context of the conquered
and dispossessed, who subsequently feature as “ethnographic subjects” or tribes or ethnic groups largely unconnected from pasts constructed by archaeologists. In this manner, it parallels North American archaeology as practiced in Native American communities (Kehoe 1998). The primary interest of the discipline lies in the acquisition
of empirical evidence derived from stratigraphy, artifact collection and
description, and basic culture histories. These are necessary components to build
regional pasts, but they remain the foremost goals in archaeological practice, relatively
untouched by the processual movement and perhaps more influenced by
post-processual approaches. While one might have hoped for more intimate
engagement with communities by post-processual
archaeologists, the record is mixed, ranging from quick surveys in northern Kenya where people were treated
as research “subjects” (e.g., Hodder 1982), to approaches that used extensive interviewing
and long-term community residency and familiarity (e.g., Childs 2000; Fontein 2006; Ndoro 2005; Pikirayi 1993, 2011; Schmidt 1978, 1997), and finally to treatments that use structural analyses that erase historical process and change (e.g., Huffman 1984, 1996, 2014).
The heritage sector all through Europe and beyond is historically linked to the task of providing nations with glorious myths of origin within a metaphysical framework of essentialism. This is now shifting. With ambitions to pluralize the past, archaeology and the heritage sector are transforming within the nation state. Heritage in present-day societies has increasingly come to serve citizens with a range of cultural identities to chose from. But what is actually new in the way archaeology and the heritage sector address issues of heritage and citizenship? This text discusses how the heritage sector tends to renegotiate the essentialism of the nation state in theory, but at the same time maintain essentialism as the driving force in professional practices and interpretative frameworks. I suggest a new way for archaeology to work within another framework than essentialism. This suggestion does not go beyond the nation state, but inspires archaeology to rethink its narratives on how heritage links to citizenship.
Recent decades have witnessed heightened public and governmental awareness of the nature and scale of environmental challenges likely to face the planet over the course of the next fifty to one hundred years. Scholars from across a broad range of disciplines have been drawn into these debates and have begun to reorient their research towards finding solutions to some of the most pressing problems and to devising more sustainable and resilient livelihoods. Archaeologists, with their conventional orientation toward past events and processes have been rather slower to engage with these issues. Recently, however, there has been a steady shift within the discipline so as to incorporate more future-oriented perspectives, and 'the use of the past to plan for a better future' is rapidly becoming a common theme within archaeological research projects and publications. While welcoming some of these developments, this paper offers a critical assessment of the various claims that are now being made of archaeology's potential to help overcome current environmental challenges and its contributions to defining and understanding 'the Anthropocene.'
The world is not more complicated or complex today than yesterday; when it comes to seeing and acting in any specific situation it is capacity that makes the difference, not the absolute number of permutations or even unfamiliarity. What seems complicated to a child may seem like child's play to an adult. In particular, what matters is the sophistication of our sense-making: our ability to discover, invent and construct the world around us. To date, considerable effort has been made to improve sense-making capabilities. Policymakers call on familiar and intuitive methods of everyday experience (preparation and planning), as well as techniques (such as forecasting, horizon scanning, scenarios, expert opinions) considered adequate based on past perceptions of our needs and capacities. Nevertheless, the perceived proliferation of so-called " wicked problems " in recent times has added to a mounting sense of uncertainty, and called into question both the decision-making value of these business-as-usual approaches as well as their sufficiency in accounting for complexity in practice. Recent advances in understanding complexity, uncertainty and emergence have opened up new ways of defining and using the future. The question is therefore not how to cope with a universe that seems to be getting more complex, but how to improve our ability to take advantage of the novel emergence that has always surrounded us.
Why aren't archaeologists engaging in more substantive heritage work, and how might we do so? This article offers a conceptual framework for mobilizing our praxis toward the achievement of collective emancipation—what I am calling heritage as liberation . Heritage as liberation provides a mechanism for reckoning. It asks us to reevaluate our motivations and more clearly articulate what we stand for as archaeologists and heritage practitioners. I offer reflections on recent attempts by archaeologists to organize toward a just future, sketch what I think a practice of heritage as liberation offers that agenda, and then analyze the Equal Justice Initiative's (EJI) heritage work as an example of what is possible when we practice heritage as liberation. I close the article with thoughts on where archaeology stands in attempts to repair and redress past wrongs and on the range of contexts that might see an emancipatory heritage praxis enacted.
In this editorial, the editors briefly introduce the aims of the Special Issue. If the goal of the scientific field of Cognitive Psychology is to improve our understanding of human cognition, then research needs to be conducted on a much broader slice of humanity than it has mostly been doing. The first aim of this Special Issue was to examine cognitive processes in populations that are different from the typical Western young adult samples often used in previously published studies. Studies in this issue therefore included both non-WEIRD participants as well as WEIRD participants who process information using different sensory experiences (e.g., individuals who are deaf). The second aim was to amplify - where possible - the research of scholars from less well-represented regions. The authors of the studies were affiliated with a diverse range of academic institutes and frequently included partnerships between Western and non-Western investigators.
The destruction of heritage in conflict has emerged as a key challenge to global security and the prospects of peace. In response to the deliberate targeting of heritage sites by the Islamic State (IS) and other actors in recent years, the international community has launched a number of initiatives designed to protect and reconstruct key heritage sites in complex (post-)conflict contexts. However, this article demonstrates that such initiatives are often underpinned by the norm that the protection of heritage in conflict can serve to enhance the prospects of reconciliation, stability and peace. This article problematizes this norm by focussing on the case study of Shia responses to the targeting of their religious heritage sites by the IS in Iraq from mid-2014. It documents the ways that key Shia leaders instrumentalized the case of protecting heritage not to advance peace and security, but to create entirely new militias, to recruit thousands of Shia faithful, to mobilize them to fight against the IS, and to engage in violence and human rights abuses. This raises significant concerns about whether the promotion of heritage as a pathway to peace could inadvertently exacerbate conflict and lead to renewed waves of violence and heritage destruction.
There is widespread recognition within futures studies that it is vital to engage with the past when thinking about the future. The disciplines of futures studies and history have much in common: historians have often been concerned with the future, and researchers in futures studies and foresight have noted the importance of working with history. Green (2012) suggests that ‘thinking with history’ is a valuable approach for futures researchers. In this paper, however, I argue that ‘thinking with heritage’ offers another approach towards engaging with the past, and one that is better suited to some kinds of futures work. I distinguish between two kinds of future narrative. ‘Instrumental futures’ (Michael, 2000) are concerned with using ideas of the future to further unexamined present-day interests: they are abstract and exchangeable, being removed from any particular social context. In contrast, ‘lived futures’, following Adam and Groves (2007), are concerned with particular places and groups, depending not just on future imaginaries at large in society but also the material and affective aspects of the social relations within which these groups are embedded. I suggest that futures research that aims to have a positive social impact should concern itself with recognising and developing lived futures over instrumental futures, and that thinking with heritage – engaging with the past through the interests and values of particular groups – is well-suited to supporting this. The argument draws on the different ways in which time is represented in these different ways of engaging with pasts and futures. Instrumental futures, in common with historicised accounts of the past, make use of a universal ‘empty time’ to sequence events or project extrapolations forward. Lived futures, alongside heritage, work with a ‘thick present’ in which past, present and future are interwoven through particular subjectivities. For futures researchers with an interest in further understanding and developing futures that are connected to the cares and interests of particular communities, I suggest that engaging with these communities’ heritage would be a practical way of ensuring that their work remains meaningful.
Many books have been written about the failures of the past, but this is an optimistic book that focuses on past successes. I am particularly interested in how these successes can be reintroduced or reinvented. For example: archaeologists have discovered complex systems for the collection and storage of rainwater for agriculture in the desert, and when reconstructed, these ancient desert farms out-competed the modern ones during extreme drought conditions. In South America, the pre-Columbian people found ways of farming the swamps, making use of fertile lake mud to create hugely productive gardens in punishingly high altitudes. Prehistoric peoples all over the world bred crop varieties to withstand diseases and local climatic extremes, and they found novel ways to improve their agricultural soils to such a degree that, though the people are long-gone, their fields remain rich and fertile to this day.
The reintroduction of ancient agricultural systems has been successful in many developing countries, but early approaches can be made even more effective by combining them with modern technology, e.g. by using water harvesting systems together with modern drip irrigation to save water, with solar powered pumps to operate sluices that regulate the flow. Vernacular architecture, which we admire for its beauty, is also important for its capacity to provide natural cooling in summer and warmth in the winter. Green roofs have an ancient history, but they are also an inexpensive way to cool the temperatures of building interiors and even whole cities. They also soak up noise, pollutants and greenhouse gasses while emitting oxygen and bringing a sense of peace to the urban environment.
As the climate changes, it is imperative that we come up with new ways of managing our environment. Deserts are spreading, wetlands will expand as sea levels rise, and we will need to feed a growing population. I am not advocating a wholesale return to the past; what I am suggesting is that we combine aspects of early technologies with new systems and inventions such as solar energy, to create a healthier, more sustainable and environmentally richer planet. We already have the technology.
Transporting readers from derelict homesteads to imperiled harbors, postindustrial ruins to Cold War test sites, Curated Decay presents an unparalleled provocation to conventional thinking on the conservation of cultural heritage. Caitlin DeSilvey proposes rethinking the care of certain vulnerable sites in terms of ecology and entropy, and explains how we must adopt an ethical stance that allows us to collaborate with-rather than defend against-natural processes. Curated Decay chronicles DeSilvey's travels to places where experiments in curated ruination and creative collapse are under way, or under consideration. It uses case studies from the United States, Europe, and elsewhere to explore how objects and structures produce meaning not only in their preservation and persistence, but also in their decay and disintegration. Through accessible and engaging discussion of specific places and their stories, it traces how cultural memory is generated in encounters with ephemeral artifacts and architectures. An interdisciplinary reframing of the concept of the ruin that combines historical and philosophical depth with attentive storytelling, Curated Decay represents the first attempt to apply new theories of materiality and ecology to the concerns of critical heritage studies. © 2017 by the Regents of the University of Minnesota. All rights reserved.
Because cultural heritage management is an inherently retrospective discipline, too many valuable heritage places were lost because they are not recognised and assessed in time. This paper advances strategic thinking in cultural heritage management by addressing two on-the-horizon and over-the-horizon issues: the management of artefacts created by our closest relatives, the great apes; and the management of artefacts created in the future by the first artificial intelligence (AI)-imbued, self-reflecting robots.Given the increasing understanding that chimpanzees have cultures and traditions in tool use, there is a need to recognise their heritage value in reference to human evolution. Likewise, it is now also time to explore how we are going to deal with the non-human, robotid artefacts. The contemplation of the role of non-human heritage will ultimately foster a re-appraisal of human heritage. The paper outlines some of the conceptual issues that need to be addressed if our heritage is to have an ethical future.
This article argues that the Somali people have a distinctive view on heritage and a different approach to its preservation relevant to their society. It suggests that a locally appropriate theoretical framework for heritage management and archaeological research can only be achieved if this local approach is taken into consideration and integrated into archaeological and heritage methodologies. The lack of qualified Somalis and indigenous perspectives in the archaeological research and heritage management policies characterizes Somali cultural heritage and archaeological research history. This research shows that previous approaches that have been pursued lacked dialogue and incorporation of local views of heritage practice. This lack of dialogue has been of paramount importance for the failure of the preservation of Somali cultural heritage, evident both in the previous neglect of its preservation and in the current looting and destruction of archaeological sites in Somaliland, Puntland and south-central Somalia. It is demonstrated how Somali indigenous perspectives are concurring and contributing to world heritage management and archaeological research methods. I suggest that any heritage work must integrate local approaches and trained local groups should lead archaeological research and heritage management in order to achieve sustainable development and self-representation.
Behavioral scientists routinely publish broad claims about human psychology and behavior in the world's top journals based on samples drawn entirely from Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, and Democratic (WEIRD) societies. Researchers - often implicitly - assume that either there is little variation across human populations, or that these "standard subjects" are as representative of the species as any other population. Are these assumptions justified? Here, our review of the comparative database from across the behavioral sciences suggests both that there is substantial variability in experimental results across populations and that WEIRD subjects are particularly unusual compared with the rest of the species - frequent outliers. The domains reviewed include visual perception, fairness, cooperation, spatial reasoning, categorization and inferential induction, moral reasoning, reasoning styles, self-concepts and related motivations, and the heritability of IQ. The findings suggest that members of WEIRD societies, including young children, are among the least representative populations one could find for generalizing about humans. Many of these findings involve domains that are associated with fundamental aspects of psychology, motivation, and behavior - hence, there are no obvious a priori grounds for claiming that a particular behavioral phenomenon is universal based on sampling from a single subpopulation. Overall, these empirical patterns suggests that we need to be less cavalier in addressing questions of human nature on the basis of data drawn from this particularly thin, and rather unusual, slice of humanity. We close by proposing ways to structurally re-organize the behavioral sciences to best tackle these challenges.
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