Challenging the problem of un-democratic participation: from destruction to re-construction of heritage
ISSN: 0022-0418
Article publication date: 23 August 2022
Issue publication date: 6 March 2023
Abstract
Purpose
The present study aims to contribute to the understanding of digital participation in heritage collections as a democratizing practice by identifying and challenging silent assumptions concerning how the insufficient influence of participants is conceived of as a problem.
Design/methodology/approach
Three carefully selected scholarly texts incorporating problematizations of insufficient participatory agency were analyzed in detail using a method inspired by Carol Bacchi's approach “what's the problem represented to be?” (WPR), with special emphasis on analysis of ontological elements of the problematizations.
Findings
Participation is problematized based on the assumption that participatory agency risks jeopardizing the protection of heritage and leads to parts of the public memory being forgotten. To challenge the idea that participatory agency is destructive, the present article argues for elaborating an understanding of what forgetting entails for heritage. Framing forgetting as a potentially both harmful and generative concept enables a separation of destructive forgetting (e.g. destruction of historical evidence) and constructive forgetting (re-contextualization).
Research limitations/implications
The study is based on a limited number of texts, and problematizations are investigated in relation to a specific perspective on participatory agency.
Practical implications
By understanding forgetting as a potentially beneficial activity for representation and heritage construction, the article provides a conceptual rationale for facilitating re-contextualization in the design of multi-layered information structures for heritage collections.
Originality/value
There is little earlier research on the silent assumptions that affect how participation is understood and implemented.
Keywords
Acknowledgements
The author remains grateful to Professor Isto Huvila and Docent Reine Rydén, both at the Department of ALM, Uppsala University, for valuable discussions of this text. The author also would like to express gratitude to the anonymous reviewers whose insightful comments helped to improve this work.
Citation
Jansson, I.-M. (2023), "Challenging the problem of un-democratic participation: from destruction to re-construction of heritage", Journal of Documentation, Vol. 79 No. 2, pp. 509-526. https://doi.org/10.1108/JD-01-2022-0025
Publisher
:Emerald Publishing Limited
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