Heritage as future-making: aspiration and common destiny in Sierra Leone

Abstract

This paper engages with an arising interest in heritage as a ‘future-making’ project, arguing that in a context such as Sierra Leone heritage work may be better understood as a reflection of aspirations for a ‘common destiny’, than the articulation of common pasts. It questions the centrality with which modern anxiety continues to frame heritage temporalities, drawing on anthropological engagements with contexts of development and social transformation to propose a non-linear model for mapping the relationship between the past and the present. Drawing on a recent surge in heritage work in Sierra Leone, I suggest that heritage has efficacy beyond the provision of emotional security in a context of rapid change, indeed that it may be implicated in the process of instituting and shaping change itself.

Keywords:

• future
• development
• modernity
• common destiny
• Sierra Leone

Acknowledgements

This research was supported by an AHRC PhD Studentship as part of the Beyond Text program from 2009 to 2012, a generous AHRC contribution to fieldwork in 2010, and receipt of a UCL Institute of Archaeology Chair’s Action Award in 2014. I should also like to thank Dr Paul Basu for his helpful comments and support in writing this article.

Notes

1. BRICS is an acronym of Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa, forming an association of five developing or recently industrialised countries distinguished by their fast growing economies and membership of the G-20.