Averting loss aversion in cultural heritage

Abstract

According to Daniel Kahneman’s theory of loss aversion in behavioural economics and decision theory, people tend to prefer strongly avoiding losses to acquiring gains of the same value. A recently proposed alternative explanation of the same behaviour is inertia. In this paper, I am heuristically transferring these observations from the realm of economics to the realm of cultural heritage. In the cultural heritage sector of the Western world there has long been a preference for avoiding losses over acquiring gains of the same value. Maintenance of the status quo of cultural heritage is typically perceived as being superior to loss or substitution. However, social anthropologist Tim Ingold recently advocated a view that challenges this preference for loss aversion by considering both people and buildings as something persistent, continuously re-born, and constantly growing and going through a process of ever new creative transformations. By appreciating heritage objects as persistent and continuously being transformed in ongoing processes of change, growth and creation, the preference for loss aversion can be averted and a more dynamic view of cultural heritage be adopted that is better able to work through cases and examples like those presented in this paper.

Keywords:

• heritage values
• conservation
• transformation
• change
• destruction

Acknowledgements

This paper has been rethought and indeed rewritten several times since it was first presented in a conference session on ‘Heritage Erasure: Vandalism and Obliteration in the Historic Environment’ which I co-organised with Troels Myrup Kristensen at the ‘Places, people, stories’ conference held at Kalmar in 2011. For helpful critical comments about previous drafts of this text, I am obliged in particular to Troels Myrup Kristensen, Graham Fairclough, David Lowenthal and three referees. For the illustrations, I would like to thank Tim Grupp, Micha L. Rieser and Manuel Salvisberg.