Heritage and Identity

The concepts of heritage and identity have come to the fore in the current era of globalization, a period which has seen the growth of identity politics, multiculturalism, immigrant and diaspora populations, and significant increases in the number of heritage tourist sites such as museums and former battlefields. These processes are complicating traditional notions of the relationship between nation and identity that often simplistically imagined ethnically homogeneous national populations and assumed that an ethnic or national group occupied a distinct territory. The belief that identities are genetic and inherited, stable and unified, and having consistent characteristics has been challenged by the perception that identities are in a continuous process of formation, socially constructed, and able to be manipulated based on context and expediency. These polarized notions of identity often lead to very different beliefs about nationality, heritage, and ethnicity. For some, identity is rooted in ancient ancestries and cannot change and thus an immigrant and her or his descendents can never be fully a part of the nation in which they reside. For others, identity is flexible and people can simultaneously celebrate their ethnicity and ascribe to new national and cultural circumstances. Heritage sites often become locations where national identities are reimagined and reforged, commonly to the exclusion of those who interpret the history presented at these sites differently or feel their identities are marginalized by the representations displayed.