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The Sociopolitical Shaping of Heritage Landscapes 

 

Review by Caroline Murray 
 

Critical Theory and the Anthropology of Heritage Landscapes  

By Melissa F. Baird 

University Press of Florida, 2017 

 

Melissa Baird, assistant professor in Anthropology at Michigan Technological University, uses a 

comparative approach based on a variety of fieldworks and methods that focus on social, ecological 

and political impacts of resource extraction, especially in regards to Indigenous communities. In her 

first book Critical Theory and the Anthropology of Heritage Landscapes (2017) published by 

University Press of Florida, she offers surprising insights into the implications of cultural landscape as 

heritage.  

 

Extractive activities in regions with significant heritage values seems to be globally on the rise. 

Anthropology defines heritage as a social construction in everyday practices. Baird explores how 

heritage is mobilized, for what purpose and acknowledges systems at play as well as the many relations 

and significations across time and space. She studies the heritage landscapes as sites of contestation in 

several contemporary contexts, including urban, post-colonial and Indigenous landscapes, wilderness 

areas, archaeological sites, marine environments, and temple complexes. According to Baird, heritage 

landscapes are scenes where issues of preservation are inserted in sociopolitical contexts.   

 

Most analysis regarding heritage lack insights into local representations and social relations with 

regards to communities and their environment. The definition offered by the World Heritage Centre 

concerns natural values and land-use practices. This way of separating nature/culture is incorrect for 

communities that instead see a continuity. Therefore, heritage professionals ignore Indigenous systems 

of knowledge, and this underrepresentation can be seen in the colonial act of renaming. Baird argues 



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that the contested contexts and histories are not only presented as resolved or ignored, but they are also 

reinvented. She questions the meaning of progress itself and argues it brings land alienation, along with 

environmental impacts and community disruptions. Baird criticizes the models that prioritize 

biodiversity and sustainability at the expense of culture, thus placing management of landscapes within 

an environmental frame. This framework cannot adequately explore these tensions and intersections 

while at the same time accommodating Indigenous people’s conception, meaning they provide only a 

fragmented and partial view (p.70). Her work is relevant since people are being displaced from their 

traditional lands as extensive capitalist extraction and natural disasters increase in front of nationalism, 

globalization, urbanization and economic development. Her position is that heritage is constructed 

through historical and cultural processes, transformed into resources and is entangled within 

sociopolitical dynamics.  

 

To overcome the lack of theory and methodology in these debates, the author uses the emerging critical 

heritage theory (CHT). This comparative and multidisciplinary framework, based on postcolonial 

theory, includes insights from anthropology, indigenous, environmental, history, geography, cultural 

studies, public policy, rights, justice, ecology and theories of development. Connecting the 

sociopolitical contexts of heritage, its implications, contradictions and consequences, it investigates 

how knowledge and power intersect with actual practices. Thus, it can be used to address social, 

cultural and political dynamics and systems, along with a diversity of beliefs. As a larger hegemonic 

discourse that engages with issues of rights, neoliberalism, cosmopolitanism, identity and class, it 

focuses more on structures rather than individual motives (p.9). Baird’s research includes a variety of 

case studies and methodologies, including ethnographic, archival, archaeological, participatory and 

historical work. Her choices put different fields at play and illustrate how heritage is intrinsically linked 

with relations of unequal powers. Her main fieldwork was conducted in Alaska, Mongolia and 

Australia from 2000-2016.  

 

Drawing from her work on the Ulurau-Kata Tjuta National Park, she describes how policies work in 

ways that force communities to make claims within bureaucratic systems that are incompatible with 

their philosophy, custodial responsibilities, rules, knowledge and subsistence practices (p.16). The 

reconfiguration of the historical and social conditions redefined their relationship to the land as they 

were forced to adopt the Western land-use lifestyle. Some practices, such as burning and gathering, are 

seen in ecological terms and were used for commercial interests (p.34). Differences in worldviews 



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resulted in appropriation and misuse of Indigenous knowledge, relating back to colonial legacies and 

histories of dispossession that constrained their participation in heritage decisions in Australia. The 

state, which did not truly intend to protect, assigned values and meaning and restricted any other 

alternative perceptions. 

 

Based on the examples of the oil spill at Prince William Sound in Alaska which disrupted communities’ 

subsistence practices and caused a profound cultural loss (p.45), and the Mongolian Altai Mountains 

where pastures lost to wildfires, shrinking glaciers, declining water resources, smog masses and insect 

outbreaks are real (p.51), the author shows how landscape intersect and is central to contemporary 

debates on environmental issues. In these cases, cultural resources were not a top priority in recovery 

efforts, and the separation of cultural and natural resources did not provide space for discussions about 

the real political, economic and social implications that go beyond cultural history. By studying only 

archaeological and environmental data, contemporary representations are silenced (p.50), making it 

difficult to hear various, hybrid and contradictory meanings in areas of transformation, loss and 

renewal. In the end, communities were marginalized, and their subsequent struggles overshadowed in 

the rebuilding efforts.  

 

Moreover, Baird calls “epistemologies of landscapes” the culture of expertise, and its multiple theories 

interfere with cultural heritage, preservation, and identities (p.14). Institutional and expert knowledge 

applied in developing World Heritage nominations affect communities, create inequalities and overstep 

how discourses are historically situated within a disparity of power. To validate social responsibility 

campaigns and their investment, extractive industries, mobilize the language of heritage, Indigenous 

rights and sustainability (p.89). Baird criticizes the strategies that corporations adopt for legitimization, 

away from social concerns. In other words, by cloaking a history of conflicts, human-rights violations 

and environmental impacts within a more acceptable story, “heritage is performed and industry is 

exempt from responsibility” (p.93).  

 

Heritage landscapes are sites of ambiguous status, affecting how they are interpreted. How they are 

used to promote some values more than others reveal their significance in the industrial and 

globalisation contexts. In this sense, we must ensure far more equal management and sensitivity in 

determining importance, knowing that the lack of representation can transform into a lack of power. 

Unfortunately, the past is in service of geopolitical agendas, mediated within systems of exclusion 



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(p.96). In anthropology, it is then essential to locate the sociopolitical, cultural and historical dynamics 

and extend the understanding of where colonial structures remain in heritage landscape practices, but 

more importantly, how they are neutralized, regulated, reproduced and absorb change. In order to bring 

transparency and elucidate the actual contemporary tensions, it is a necessity to question the modalities 

that guide research and its writing.  

 

After reading that book, one can only see that the models, theories and practices of heritage work 

through specific pre-existing systems and mechanisms that underlie sources of tensions, the creation of 

inequalities and construction of knowledge. Baird recommends that engagements with landscapes 

should include emancipatory discourse, providing room for controversial topics and multiple 

understandings (p.101). Personal experiences and stories related to her investigations and evolution of 

thought that are well connected and the well explained reasoning certainly make this book a pleasant 

read. Moreover, the force of her arguments derives from the relatively new and more than suitable 

theoretical framework as well as a great diversity of methodologies and multiple worldwide examples 

that support her explanations. Baird is very daring and raises fundamental questions about the ethics 

and objectivity - behind the scenes and in the open - of cultural landscape as heritage. Comparative and 

critical ethnographic approaches are efficient in understanding how strategies and practices are plotting 

heritage discourse. Within this framework stands a chance for all to apprehend the relationships 

between the past and the harsh contemporary socio-political realities. 

 

 

 

 

© 2018 Caroline Murray 


