The crowding out of social values: on the reasons why social values so consistently lose out to other values in heritage management

ABSTRACT

Heritage is a public value, which is determined by many other values. These values can be mutually dependent and reinforcing, but can also displace or nullify each other. As public values are arguments, this can result in discursive struggles when discussing whether something should be valued as ‘heritage’. It turns out that the proponents of so-called ‘social values’ often lose such battles. Why is it that precisely their arguments are so vulnerable? In seeking an answer to this question, it is illuminating to look at discursive struggles from the perspective of Herbert Gottweis’ Argumentative Policy Analysis. It is by applying his rendering of Aristotle’s categories of ‘logos’, ‘pathos’ and ‘ethos’ that we discover that proponents of social values, unlike exponents of an ‘Authorized Heritage Discourse’, are often less capable of constructing a logically consistent and convincing narrative. This also affects their ability to appeal to the emotions of the public (‘pathos’). Having less legitimacy than government-backed experts they also lack ‘ethos’. If social values were ‘lived’ by a community, they could be much stronger. Yet, as they often do not exist ‘out there’, but need to be constructed during discursive struggles, they are perceived as less authentic, consequently less convincing.

KEYWORDS:

• cultural heritage policy
• public values
• social values
• rhetorical policy analysis

Introduction

Over the past two decades, local communities have increasingly been granted a formal position in heritage decision-making. If viewed from a global perspective, the so-called ‘Burra Charter’ - about which more later – might be one of the main causes of this phenomenon (Ireland, Brown, and Schofield 2020, 828, 830–831), and, in Europe the Faro Convention (2005) has been a major influence (Council of Europe 2005; Dolff[1]Bonekämper 2009, 71; Thérond 2009, 10). These are, of course, top-down policies, but at the same time there is pressure from the bottom up, as communities demand a larger role in heritage discourses (Fojut 2019, 16). As these communities bring their own values to the table, often classified as ‘social values’, their rising importance has caused a new awareness of the importance of public values overall among heritage scholars and practitioners (Duval et al. 2019).

Yet, as there are many different public values pertaining to heritage, dealing with this multitude often causes ‘discursive struggles’. It turns out that the proponents of social values often lose such battles (cf. Smith 2006; Jones 2017; Avrami and Mason 2019). Why is it that precisely their arguments are so vulnerable? Finding an answer to this question first requires delving into the meaning of ‘values’ and ‘public values’. Having defined these, in a way new to Heritage Studies, we ask how heritage scholars have dealt with these, and how they explain the weak position of social values. Next, departing from the ‘new’ definition of ‘values’ we freshly introduced, we consider an alternative to the approaches taken in Heritage Studies: Herbert Gottweis’ Argumentative Policy Analysis. Finally, we present three succinct examples of discursive struggles over heritage in The Netherlands to illustrate how using Gottweis’ method of analysis in such conflicts adds to Heritage Studies’ current toolbox.

Heritage as a public value

In order to be clear about what exactly ‘public values’ are, the first step is to define ‘value’. A very concise and broad definition of the term is provided by Perry (1954): ‘A value is anything of interest to a human subject’. More informatively, a value is a concept used to qualify a phenomenon and thereby give direction or legitimisation to thoughts and actions regarding that phenomenon: ‘It stipulates something as desired or reviled, such as beautiful, courageous, honest, or ugly, cowardly, deceitful’. (Rutgers 2015, 33). Hodgkinson (1978, 120) speaks of: ‘concepts of the desirable with motivating force’. Approaching something as a value, for instance by qualifying it as heritage, therefore also implies prescriptions – to guard, cherish, preserve, enjoy, and so on – and thus it maps out courses of thought and action. More specifically, according to Nicholas Rescher, one should regard values as a matter of practical reasoning. This implies that values function as arguments in decision-making to legitimise choices and actions (Rescher 1982, 10). From this perspective, calling something ‘heritage’ implies advocacy for specific actions.

Heritage can be a personal or individual matter, but in this context, heritage as a public value. In the case of a public value, a link is stipulated with a public or a general interest. This cannot simply be considered as the sum of private values. Many people like coffee or old books, but this doesn’t make them public values, unlike food safety or education. Usually, what constitutes a public value is that it is legitimised as such by the decision-making procedures within a political regime. For instance, through voting, the established procedures for policy-making and rules and regulations. This indicates that a public value is constituted by social decision-making practices and rests upon the acceptance of the political processes. In the words of Rutgers (2015, 40):

Public values are enduring beliefs in the organization of and activities in a society that are regarded as crucial or desirable—positively or negatively—for the existence, functioning, and sustainability of that society—instant or distant— the well-being of its members—directly or indirectly, and present and/or future—in reference to an—implicit or explicit—encompassing normative ideal of human society—the Good Society, the Common Wealth, the General Interest—that give meaning, direction, and legitimization to collective action as they function as arguments in the formulation, legitimization, and evaluation of such—proposed or executed—collective actions. They may … . be posed or embraced by either an individual, collectives, and/or the entire political community, thus create consensus, or be the object of debate and twist.

It is important to note that Rescher’s (1982) aforementioned observation that a value is to be regarded as an argument put forward to assert a claim about something is at the heart of this rather long definition. Such a claim does not relate to reality as such (‘a factual statement’), but concerns the desirability of something. To call something ‘heritage’ is thus primarily a claim that it should be considered of specific public value. The problem, however, is that any definition of public value is complex because it must somehow acknowledge the social and political processes involved.

Understanding values as arguments immediately brings us to the problem of counter- and conflicting arguments, i.e. values. The essential question here is what enables some values to prevail in decision-making. Before addressing this core concern, it must be pointed out that the meaning of a value is determined by its relation to other concepts. In other words, no value exists in isolation. Thus, to understand the meaning of a term or concept, i.e. of a value, its relations to other concepts must be studied. This is done by researching its so-called ‘semantic field’ (cf. Boholm 2017; Buchanan 2010). A semantic field of ‘heritage’ would encompass what is sometimes referred to as ‘heritage values’, Thus, the semantic field of ‘heritage’ consists of values such as tradition, identity, protection, history, and community, but also values that may provide some tension with the foregoing, such as enjoyment, tourism, trade, restrictions, and the like. Finally, it may include some mutually exclusive values, such as group identity and exclusivity, versus global significance and accessibility.

While there may be a fairly solid belief in determining or understanding what a specific value is about, stressing the importance of different relations or associations with other values can result in substantially different priorities for action. Rutgers (2019) proposes six kinds of relations between values: complementary, instrumental, diverting, opposing, unrelated, and incommensurable. The latter, however, is a contested phenomenon as it suggests a ‘nonrelation’. It precludes the co-existence of two values simultaneously as they are embedded in totally different ‘worldviews’ or ‘ethical spheres’ making rational comparison and decision impossible.

Clearly, this theoretical distinction into six possible relations is defied by everyday complexity. This is because the relations between values are not static or fixed, but will vary depending on the context. For instance, ‘efficiency’ and ‘legality’ can both support as well as hamper each other, and to what extent they do so is not a given, as it depends on the specific circumstances in which they interact. This entails the perspectives of different persons and groups as to what public values mean, and what is ultimately valued. If we consider values as arguments, it implies that, for example, historical and financial arguments can sometimes support one another, but in other cases can be entirely at odds. How have heritage scholars dealt with this bewildering complexity?

How heritage scholars deal with public values

Heritage scholars have been studying public values for a long time (Cameron 2020, 846–847). If we consider how they currently deal with them, we see that they adopt a variety of perspectives. The French sociologist Heinich has drawn up a semantic field of cultural values to arrive at a sociology of ‘valuation’: the way people valuate (Heinich 2020a, 2020b). She is influenced by the work of Boltanski and Thévenot, which also regularly emerges in (especially the French speaking part of) Heritage Studies. These sociologists developed the notion of ‘justificatory regimes’ or ‘orders of worth’, spheres in society characterised by a specific set of values and hence a particular way of justifying actions (Boltanski and Thévenot 1999; Boltanski and Thévenot 1991; Boltanski 2006; Boltanski and Chiapello 2005, 167–170; Jagd 2011, 347). Heritage scholars, for instance use their work as a means to classify various ways in which people view a particular heritage (De La Broise 2011; Ailhaud and Barbe 2017). Typical among English speaking countries is Moore’s public value framework. Essentially, Moore’s idea is to base public performance management in government on the notion of public value ‘in a similar way to which notions of private value [profit or “shareholder value”] had provided strategic purpose for private sector managers’ (Benington and Moore 2011, 1).Central in this approach is that public managers should interact with the public, i.e. their ‘constituency’ to identify and attain public value. Yet it is ultimately these functionaries themselves who must identify what public values are, and which constituency provides legitimacy (Lennox 1997; Moore 2013; Rutgers and Overeem 2014; Clark and Lennox 2019). Moore’s ideas have spread rapidly throughout the English-speaking part of the world (O’Flynn 2021), but certainly not gone without criticism (Alford 2008; Alford and O’flynn 2009; Bryson, Crosby, and Bloomberg 2014; Rutgers and Overeem 2014; Prebble 2018). Criticism has also been profound in the English cultural sector, where they have been especially influential (Lennox 1997; Oakley, Naylor, and Lee 2006; Gray 2008; Waterton 2010; Lee, Oakley, and Naylor 2011; Courtney 2018; Clark and Lennox 2019).Then there is a small body of theory on ‘cultural contestation’ or ‘social identity conflicts’. The students of these do research into what happens when the values that different groups in society attach to a certain heritage clash (Ross 2009; Rodenberg and Wagenaar 2018; Korostelina 2019). Yet, if we take a helicopter view of the international value discussions in Heritage Studies, we find that Moore, Heinich and the students of cultural contestation are outliers. By far the greatest influence on this debate has been exerted by Laurajane Smith on the one hand and the Burra Charter on the other. Laurajane Smith (2006) has posited that heritage practices are constructed through a dominant heritage discourse, the so-called ‘AHD’ (Authorised Heritage Discourse). In this AHD, the elusiveness of the ‘past’ is used to provide university-trained experts, such as archaeologists or historians, with a dominant role in its interpretation. Such heritage experts do so on the basis of positivistic research into material remnants. Central to their approach is the reconstruction of values such as authenticity and historicity. As historic remnants are considered vulnerable, dealing with them should aim to safeguard them for future generations, and in heritage management it is the experts who decide how. The ‘intrinsic’ heritage values assumed by these experts inevitably related to the historic highlights of the nation-state. Once these are established, protected status as a monument soon follows. However, such treatment of heritage has the consequence of detaching it from the communities in which it exists. While the identities of these groups of people are neglected, a rival social identity is constructed, but in a covert manner, as it is presented as ‘objective’. Since certain communities might not recognise themselves in the ensuing authorised heritage discourse, they become excluded by it (Smith 2006, especially pp. 29–35). Yet while this is happening, rival heritage discourses that express different values can also be identified. Smith identifies an economic discourse and a discourse in which the participation of local communities in heritage management takes centre stage. The latter discourse could be labelled the ‘community discourse’. The economic discourse deals with the commodification and saleability of heritage on the ‘tourism market’. In it, the value of heritage is derived from the possibility of being ‘sold’ to tourists and even funshoppers (Hewison 1987; Featherstone 1991; Kolen 2008). According to Smith there is an overlap between this heritage discourse and the AHD because heritage that sells is often related to the nation-state’s grand narratives (Smith 2006, 35–42). In contrast, the ‘community discourse’ consists of criticism of the AHD. Its adherents argue that not experts but heritage communities should be central to heritage selection and management. This is based on the view that it is history that provides communities with identity through heritage practices. For a society to be inclusive, it has to be so through communities selecting their own heritage based on whether it reflects their values. This is why heritage management should be a bottom-up process.However, as Smith herself points out, it is important to recognise that the concept of community is not unproblematic. There is a tendency to conceive of communities as homogenous groups that share a past, have an established identity, and have preserved their authentic material and immaterial heritage in a pristine state. If we consider communities as ‘ongoing projects’, though, in which identity is ‘explored and (re)created’ (Waterton and Smith 2010, 12), identity, the value attached to heritage and the attribution of authenticity all become fluid. They might very well be contested within the ‘community’ itself and should be seen as the outcome of group processes and power struggles (Rodenberg and Hulst 2012). An even more fundamental criticism is that communities may exist only in the eyes of the researcher examining them, but not as phenomena in themselves, since their alleged members may not see themselves as such. Despite such objections, communities and their values are becoming increasingly central to heritage studies.It was the Australia ICOMOS’ Burra Charter (1979- 1999) which prompted this attention to (community) values among heritage scholars and practitioners (Australia ICOMOS 2013; Ireland, Brown, and Schofield 2020, 828, 830–831). In it, more emphasis was placed on participation. As a result, in the Charter the cultural significance of heritage is determined by many different values of which a typology is given: aesthetic, historic, scientific, social or spiritual values. These must be balanced with each other, which is why the Charter has placed a new emphasis on ‘social values’ - the most ignored category – as an effect (ICOMOS 2013). The development initiated by ‘Burra’ has been reinforced by scholarly attention to heritage values, particularly through the Getty Conservation Institute’s Values of Heritage project (1998–2005) (Jones and Leech 2015; Johnston 2017; Avrami, Macdonald, and Mason 2019, vii). The combined effect of this is that since ‘Burra’ looking at heritage from a values perspective has become quite dominant among heritage managers and scholars alike (Fredheim and Khalaf 2016, 466–467). Some even go as far as to claim that: ‘during the last three decades, the management framework for heritage has shifted from one centred on the protection and conservation of sites and monuments (…) to one based around the management of the values underpinning heritage significance’ (Duval et al. 2019). Of course, the Burra value typology has not gone without criticism (Waterton, Smith, and Campbell 2006). Nor is it the only typology of its kind utilised in Heritage Studies. There are many more, and those who use them also realise that a single universally applicable typology will always remain a chimaera (Fredheim and Khalaf 2016, 467–471). Nevertheless, the idea that heritage ‘is’ because of different categories of values attached to it has certainly gained a foothold. Not surprisingly, as a consequence, (social science) methods have been developed to tease out these values (De la Torre 2002, 2013; Jones and Leech 2015; Jones 2017; Johnston 2017).

Explanations for the weak position of social values

Despite all this attention, however, one finds that ‘social values’ still often lose out. Even in cases where they do become part of the policies of government and heritage institutions, they come second place or are deployed instrumentally (cf. Avrami and Mason 2019). Scholars have come up with several different explanations for this. Smith blames the AHD, as we have already seen (Smith and Waterton 2012), in which she is supported by Jones. Historic, scientific and aesthetic values are institutionally entrenched, writes the latter scholar, and come with their own time-tested evaluation methods, whereas methods for mapping social values are both relatively unknown and expensive (Jones 2017, 24).

The culprit, according to Mason, is the way different values are weighed against each other. According to him, there are roughly speaking two methods applied to dealing with multiple values. One is to emphasise a single category of values and disregard all others. The other is to treat the different sets of values “as a black box, with all aspects of heritage value collapsed into ‘significance’. This latter method can lead to entire categories of values being neglected (Mason 2002, 8). Students of public values are well aware of such mechanisms, and have identified their cause. The problem with values, as indicated earlier, is that they can be mutually supportive, but also completely at odds. Especially authors who frame the tension between values in terms of incommensurability tend to emphasise the impossibility of arriving at a rational weighing up of the arguments presented.

But beyond the theoretical impossibility of comparing values, in practice, we simply have to make choices. As we have already seen, there are six possible relations between values; incommensurability is only one of them. In these instances where values do prove to be incommensurable, ‘coping mechanisms’ exist, enabling us to deal with them in practice. An example often used in (ethics) literature is the necessity to weigh ‘the sanctity of human life’ against ‘the running costs of a hospital’. It seems impossible to find a clear basis for comparison and decision-making, but of course, budgets are limited and choices do have to be made. The way out is to side-step the problem and pose a meta or overriding value (in the case of triage: survival chances). Similarly, in heritage studies, Mason and Avrami (2002, 22–24) suggest ‘sustainability’ as an overarching value in the case of heritage.

Students of public values have identified many more ways administrators ‘cope’ with clashing values or even perceived incommensurability. Thacher and Rein name ‘cycling’, using one value for a specific period of time but a different value at another moment, ‘fire walls’, assigning the safeguarding of different values to separate institutions, and ‘casuistry’, which comes down to judging each case on its own merits (Thacher 2001; Thacher and Rein 2004). Other scholars have added to their list (Schreurs 2005, 306; Stewart 2006; Jaspers and Steen 2019; Meijer and De Jong 2020). Steenhuisen even comes up with more than 40 coping mechanisms (Steenhuisen 2009, 26–29). Different values need not necessarily clash, therefore, and even if they do appear as incommensurable, some decision will have to be taken in the end. There is not an a priori reason why social values would have to be structurally marginalised and lose out in the case of a clash with other values.

A similar thing can be said of Smith’s explanation for their precarious position. In her approach values are part of heritage discourses. One of them, the so-called ‘AHD’, contains expert and economic values and dominates all others. This way of looking at heritage is based on a form of Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA), in which a hegemonic discourse completely determines agency. It is so dominant that actors other than those favoured by it have little or no chance of exerting influence. Yet, within the field of CDA, alternatives do exist. There are other approaches, which allow more room for agency. Were we to apply one of these, we might ascribe better chances to communities to express their values. To do this, however, we would need to define values differently than has hitherto been done in heritage studies.

Rhetoric and public values

Rhetorical political analysis

As stated before we define public values as arguments: qualitative judgements that give direction to our actions and/or legitimise these. Therefore, when we look at values in this manner the question is not why certain (categories of) values lose out, but why arguments do, in a discursive struggle. Precisely this question is at the heart of the so-called ‘rhetorical political analysis’ (RPA) (Finlayson 2007) within ‘argumentative policy analysis’ (Finlayson 2007; Gottweiss 2006; Gottweis 2007; Gottweiss 2012); a perspective that matches nicely with the discursive approaches used in Heritage Studies. In a discursive struggle reality – in our case heritage practice – is constructed by exchanging arguments. Yet, contrary to what happens in Smith’s application of CDA, in RPA discourses do not completely determine what actors do. In the latter approach, attention is explicitly paid to actors, who use various rhetorical strategies to give meaning to social phenomena. Through the quality of their arguments, they can assume an active role in the construction of reality. As the quality of arguments is so important, adherents to RPA have developed a set of tools to chart them. These, essentially, provide the means to make arguments more convincing.RPA has long roots. In the 1980s, the so-called linguistic turn in the Social Sciences took place. This led to growing attention among social scientists for the way language structures social reality, and thus to the development of discourse analysis (Van den Berg 2004, 32). This linguistic turn then gave rise to an ‘argumentative turn’ in the Policy Studies in the 1980s and 1990s (Stone 1988; Fischer and Forester 1993; Fischer and Gottweis 2012), though it also has roots in the work of Laclau and Mouffe (1985) and Perelman (1977). The resulting ‘argumentative policy analysis’ has since branched out into several different approaches, of which RPA is only one (Wagenaar 2014; Fischer et al. 2015). Interestingly, a similar development has occurred in Heritage Studies. Attention to heritage as a discursive construct (e.g. Hall 2000; Smith 2006; Waterton 2010; Harrison 2013; Wu and Hou 2015) has led to the aforementioned ideas about the functioning of the AHD. The logical next step – attention to the function of rhetoric – has already been taken (Blair, Dickinson, and Ott 2010; Lafrenz Samuels and Rico 2015), but has not yet really gained a foothold. There is, however, a growing focus on emotion and affect (e.g. Smith and Campbell 2015; Smith, Wetherell, and Campbell 2018; Tolia-Kelly, Waterton and Watson 2017; Smith 2020) that ties in nicely with RPA.

Gottweis’ approach

One of the most important contributors to the RPA is Herbert Gottweis. For him, the making and/or analysis of policy is essentially about argumentation, which is why rhetoric plays such a major role in his work. Drawing back to classical antiquity he uses Aristoteles’ concepts of ‘logos’, ‘pathos’ and ‘ethos’ for his analyses (Gottweiss 2006, 461–463). ‘logos’ refers to the logical construction of arguments, ‘ethos’ to the legitimacy of the speaker, and ‘pathos’ to how the speaker manages to appeal to the emotions of his audience. A persuasive argument combines these three elements. Gottweis’ main contention is that too much attention has been paid to logos in policy analysis, while the other elements are at least as important (Gottweiss 2006, 476).

Gottweis’ approach applied to the three examples

What would we get if we used Gottweis’ approach to analyse the weakness of social values in heritage management? At the beginning of this article, we announced that we would apply it to three Dutch examples. The first of these is the so-called ‘Black Pete controversy’.

illustration 1. National entry of Saint Nicholas, Maassluis, NL, 2016

The most important tradition in the Netherlands is the Saint Nicholas Festival (Strouken 2010). Every year, from 11 November to 6 December the good Saint can be spotted all over the country, just like Santa Claus or Father Christmas elsewhere. But unlike Santa Claus, Saint Nicholas is accompanied by helpers wearing black-face (see illustration 1). For many Dutch people, these so-called ‘Zwarte Pieten’ (Black Petes)’ are an integral part of the tradition, which itself is construed as a kind of touchstone of Dutchness. Opponents of the tradition, however, see them as a racist relic from a time when slavery still existed, equating them on par with the minstrel shows from the Anglo-Saxon world. A societal debate about the tradition has rocked the country since 2011; a discussion government has tried in vain to stay out of (Rodenberg and Wagenaar 2016; Wagenaar and Rodenberg 2018).

Hence, in this example, we see two sets of social values clashing. Currently, those opposed to the Black Pete tradition seem to have the upper hand, although the tenacity is ongoing (Wagenaar and Rodenberg 2018). Yet both sides seem to have an equal amount of logos, pathos and ethos at their disposal. Opponents of the tradition claim that Black Pete is a racist colonial remnant and employ a chain of (historical) arguments to make this plausible (logos). They then argue that the tradition hurts the feelings of a considerable part of the Dutch population because of its inherent racism (pathos), deploying speakers with the legitimacy to make this point (ethos). Adherents of the tradition mirror this. They provide different, non-colonial, genealogies of Black Pete (logos), pointing out that it was never their intention to hurt anybody’s feelings. On the contrary, they claim, as the festivity is meant for children and therefore a source of fond childhood memories for many Dutch people (pathos). They also know how to find spokespeople who possess the necessary legitimacy (ethos) (Rodenberg and Wagenaar 2016).

The second example concerns the decision-making process surrounding a visualisation of a Roman fort (see illustration 2). In 2007, plans were drawn up to reconstruct a ‘castellum’ in a new housing estate in the Dutch city of Utrecht, on top of the remnants of an actual Roman fortification. Part of the idea was to provide this new residential area with a spatial identity. The relevant stakeholders – who were needed to bring about the elaborate reconstruction, which also included a theatre, a restaurant, an organic farm, and a museum – were involved; and the residents who were also allowed to participate in the decision-making process. Unfortunately, part of the residents, under the impression that the theatre was planning to host noisy dance concerts, began to oppose the project. In 2015, they organised themselves into a protest group, which would sue the municipality, crowdfunding the costs. They lost their court case, but did not relent. In 2016, it took the legal form of a foundation. Currently, it is still active (Amsing et al. 2023).

Illustration 2. The entrance to Castellum Hoge Woerd, Utrecht, NL.

In this example one can see how experts impose an authorised heritage discourse (AHD) on a fledgling community. This ‘community’ itself did not yet have a consistent social values discourse, but parts of it were able to organise around shared NIMBY interests. Although their mobilisation power was considerable, they ultimately lost. Heritage experts, planners and archaeologists pointed out the enormous archaeological value of the area and used this to provide the new residential area with a (spatial) identity. As they used the dominant heritage discourse as a reservoir, the arguments these experts used did not lack logos and ethos, which gave them a strong position in the debates with the community. In some cases, they even showed pathos. When a Roman barge excavated on the site, after being removed for conservation purposes, was returned to the housing estate, it created a lot of enthusiasm for the project. Representatives of the local ‘community’, which consisted of people who had recently moved to the area, could not counter this. As the housing estate was brand new, a local community had not had sufficient time to properly emerge. This made it difficult for residents to construct arguments claiming their position as representatives of a heritage community (ethos). The lack of an established community also made it difficult to develop emotionally appealing arguments (pathos). After all, if there is no community, it is impossible to construct arguments related to a common heritage discourse and the social values associated with it. Thus as they failed to infuse their resistance with a sense of ‘authenticity’, legal action ultimately proved to be the residents’ only means of defence (Amsing et al. 2023). Our final example concerns the nomination of the world’s largest ‘polder’, the Dutch Noordoostpolder, for a place on the UNESCO world heritage list. In 2006 plans for doing so were first developed. The spatial characteristics, particularly the parcelling of agricultural plots, were part of the polder’s allure (see Illustration 3). Agricultural interests, apprehensive that preservation of these could become a barrier to future up-scaling, opposed the project. For local government, this was a reason to abort the plan (Rodenberg 2015). What this final example thus shows is how an AHD formulated by heritage experts was overruled by powerful economic interests.

Illustration 3. Two typical farmsteads surrounded by trees on the Noordoostpolder, located roughly between the towns of Urk and Nagele.

The process leading up to this outcome was characterised by a fierce discursive struggle. In this case, the proponents of heritage listing articulated an AHD and used this as a reservoir of arguments. They lost to opponents who combined an agrarian with an economic and heritage discourse. Planners and heritage experts argued that the significance of the polder was its planning history, which was still visible in the agricultural landscape. This argument was strong in both logos and ethos. It was refuted with arguments based on the historical and current importance of the landscape, which was backed not only by historical but also by economic and agrarian arguments. By combining these arguments the opponents managed to create a ‘discourse coalition’ consisting of entrepreneurs, farmers, and local politicians. In appealing to the feelings of the local farming community they proved to possess more pathos than their opponents. Ethos was provided by the use of spokespeople from the local community, yet it was their economic logos that proved decisive. We have chosen our examples to illustrate how, during discursive struggles, social values can trump other social values, but their adherents have a much harder time defending themselves against an AHD. In turn, an AHD can lose the battle against an economic discourse, certainly if this is framed within another AHD. These phenomena are already well established in Heritage Studies literature (Smith 2006; Waterton 2010; Smith and Waterton 2012). What we have tried to do in this article, however, is to find an explanation for the weak position of community values. Since we view such values as arguments in a public debate, we have presupposed that it is the quality of these arguments that is decisive. Looking at them in the Aristotelian terms of logos, pathos and ethos – as an analysis of our examples shows – helps explain why certain stakeholders consistently manage to come up with more convincing arguments than others.

Conclusion

Heritage is a public value determined by a host of other values. These values may be interdependent and mutually reinforcing, but can also crowd out or even negate one another. Since public values are arguments, this can result in discursive struggles when discussing what the consequences of valuing something as ‘heritage’ are. It turns out that the proponents of so-called ‘social values’ often lose such fights. Why is it that precisely their arguments and the discourses of which they are a part are so vulnerable? In searching for an answer to this question it is highly illuminating to look at discursive struggles from the perspective of argumentative policy analysis, in particular the work of Herbert Gottweis. If we apply his rendering of Aristotle’s categories of ‘logos’, ‘pathos’ and ‘ethos’ to heritage debates, it becomes clear that proponents of social values, contrary to those of an AHD, are often less able to construct a logically consistent and persuasive narrative. This also has consequences for their capacity to appeal to the public’s emotions (‘pathos’). Having less legitimacy than government-backed experts, they also lack ‘ethos’. Economic values, another major contender in heritage debates, usually are embedded in a well-established and logically consistent discourse, adequately justified by pathos and ethos. Naturally, it is only through argumentative policy analysis – made possible by looking at values as arguments – that these conclusions could have been arrived at. That this is so productive is a completely new finding for Heritage Studies. Finally, is there a way to strengthen the position of social values? As Gottweis shows, the strength or weakness of a justification depends partly on how it is constructed. Where social values are concerned, they could possibly become much more powerful if they were supported and ‘lived’ by a local community. However, we should not forget that ‘the’ community often does not exist, as is illustrated in the second example. In many cases ‘imagined communities’ articulate a host of conflicting social values. Quite often, therefore, ‘the’ community values we find when studying a case are merely a construct of the researchers studying them, or a local interest group mustering them. Now, where a strong community heritage discourse is not yet constructed and needs to be created in such a way ex-post, it is likely to be perceived as less ‘authentic’, which has consequences for the strength of its justification.

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Notes on contributors

Pieter Wagenaar

Pieter Wagenaar is an assistant professor at the Department of Public Administration and Political Sciences at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam. His research interests are the history of administration and the administration of history. Currently, he is focused on interactive governance in the heritage sector. He is involved in the HERILAND project: a pan-European research and training network on cultural heritage in relation to Spatial Planning and Design.

Jeroen Rodenberg

Jeroen Rodenberg holds an MA in Medieval History and an MSc in Public Administration (Leiden University). He is a lecturer and PhD candidate at the Department of Public Administration and Political Sciences, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, with research interests in heritage governance and policy and the history of public administration. He is involved in the pan-European research and training project on heritage planning HERILAND. Currently, he is completing his dissertational research on competing heritage policy discourses in decision-making processes.

Mark Rutgers

Mark Rutgers is a professor of Social Philosophy and Dean of the Faculty of Humanities at Leiden University The Netherlands. He has published in, among others, Administration & Society, The American Review of Public Administration, Administrative Theory & Praxis, The International Review of Public Administration, The Journal of Public Administration Research & Theory, Review of Social Economy, Journal of Banking Regulation, and Public Management Review. His research interests include public values, the history of (the study of) public administration, the oath of office, and administrative ethics.