Perspectives on social justice among US historic preservation practitioners: roles, actions and organisational responsibilities

ABSTRACT

This paper examines practitioner perspectives on responsibilities and organisational actions and towards social justice issues in the field among 75 historic preservation practitioners from across the United States. Respondents are representatives of organisations that are formerly partners of the National Trust for Historic Preservation or are affiliated with the National Preservation Partners Network as of 2020. A survey of historic preservation practitioners finds that just over half of organisational leaders agree their organisation has a role in ameliorating social justice issues. Content analysis of open-ended survey questions on current actions and their organisational responsibilities towards social justice reveals distinct categories of response among the participants, with notable overlap but some distinction between actions and responsibilities. Findings contribute to scholarship on preservation by documenting current organisational engagement and practitioner approaches to social justice by active preservationists with a breadth and depth of experience. Findings are useful for practitioners in moving beyond recommendations by scholars or overarching national organisations to yield an overview and provide benchmarking of the scope of activities and aims of U.S. preservation organisations across regions in relation to social justice issues.

KEYWORDS:

• Historic preservation
• social justice
• organisational responsibility
• practitioner perspectives
• nonprofit organisations

Acknowledgments

Thank you to McKenna Magoffin for help in data collection and analysis, to all the practitioners who responded to our survey to share their current practices and perspectives and to Drs Kate Albrecht of University of Illinois, Chicago and Greg Galer of Boston Preservation Alliance for their valuable feedback on this manuscript.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Anne-Lise K. Velez

Anne-Lise K.Velez is a Collegiate Associate Professor in the College of Architecture and Honors College at Virginia Tech, where she engages in transdisciplinary collaborative teaching and research with undergraduate and graduate students. She holds graduate degrees in Architecture and in Public Administration, and her research focuses primarily on governance and decision-making in areas of human-environment interaction, especially those that require multijurisdictional and cross-sector management. She has been studying historic preservation organisations as an integral part of this research agenda since 2010.

Joseph Daniel

Joseph Daniel is an academic advisor for Virginia Tech in the University Studies Department. He is also a PhD. candidate in Virginia Tech’s Center for Public Administration and Policy. His research interests focus on university training policies and the research-practice gap.

Sara Hoxha

Sara Hoxha holds a Bachelor of Architecture from Epoka University in Tirana, Albania, and a Master’s in Architecture from Virginia Tech. She is interested in historic architecture and its influence on users, and is currently a designer for the Dietz Partnership in Parsippany, New Jersey.