Understanding the Conditions Facing Heritage in a Hybrid Market

Grant received from the Swedish National Heritage Board (RAÄ). Together with Lizette Gradén.

This project aims to analyze:
•How do the conditions of the “hybrid market” that heritage institutions operate in enable (or inhibit) them from fulfilling their mission goals? How do these conditions affect how mission goals are defined and policy documents understood? How can collaborations with groups such as visitors, volunteer staff, and members of the local community be inclusively used in heritage contexts?
•How do the demands to quantitatively account for a museum’s (or other heritage site’s) output affect its way of understanding itself, its collections and programs? When numbers “count”, whose heritage counts most, and why? How are ethics of inclusion handled in light of market driven criteria for success? How is it possible to go beyond quantitative measures to include qualitative methods of judging a museum’s or heritage site’s impact on history in Sweden?

The project’s relevance for the cultural environment sector:
Recent decades have seen a progressive shift in the preconditions under which work in and around cultural heritage is and can be conducted. This has been a change in the direction of a decentralization of decision making processes that has itself been paralleled by the growing influence of market forces (that is perceived as problematic by many) as a factor involved in the financing of Swedish heritage. This project investigates the implications of these shifts. It examines how 1) new financial models are developed as aspect of the commercialization of Swedish heritage (and asks what the possibilities, and problems may be associated with them), 2) national, regional, and municipal policies are interpreted against the background of decentralization, and 3) how the processes behind these two phenomenon effect the ethical choices in how, and whose heritage is addressed.

One way of measuring the impact of heritage is, for example, to measure the number of visitors coming to a site or exhibit. What impact does the chase after larger numbers of visitors have for how heritage is preserved, chosen for exhibition, and marketed, and how these activities are financially framed? How does the market and the search for larger publics affect how institutions perceive the audience they are aiming for? Is everyone’s heritage prioritized equally under market pressures, or how do processes of marginalization work in a heritage market economy, and how might they be countered? The project will provide answers to these questions while striving to develop qualitative modes of appreciating heritage that go beyond numbers.

Governmental heritage politics and market forces are two different phenomena. The project provides insight into how they play off against one another and are interpreted in four specific Swedish heritage environments. In so doing the project it provides important ethnographic insights that can be used in the future development of Swedish heritage policies.